Posted by Scott on March 30th, 2007 — Posted in Bullies
Christine S. Moyer writes about a presentation by Rosalind Wiseman:
Wiseman is the author of several books, including Queen Bees & Wannabes, which inspired the 2004 movie, Mean Girls.
And during an assembly Wednesday, Wiseman used a melange of personal stories, clips and a power point presentation to urge students to look beyond cultural expectations of how they should act and to demand dignity for themselves and for their classmates.
“I don’t care if you’re friends. I don’t care if you like each other. What this is about (today) is saying it stops here. Dignity is not negotiable,” Wiseman told the teens.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Wiseman teaches youths and adults about bullying behavior in schools and society and how to prevent it.
Read entire article by Christine S. Moyer.
I think girls often bully harsher than boys, because society tells them to remain lady-like. Where boys can just wrestle with each other and swear, girls often resort to passive aggressive attacks which actually have harsher long-term effects. For example, girls may trash talk their friends behind their friends backs. Also, they may use social isolation and deep-cutting vindictive insults.
Boys tend to use their fists more often. Girls use their minds. And, despite old sayings, in the long run words hurt more than sticks and stones.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on March 29th, 2007 — Posted in Guns
Having a gun or knife will not protect you in all situations. You won’t have your gun or knife ready to use, and assailants won’t warn you before they get 21 feet from you. It takes 21 feet for you to pull out your gun and fire 2 rounds. A victimizer won’t have the good manners to give you fair warning.
If you choose to get a gun, fine. I highly recommend that you get training with it, so that you can use it safely and effectively. However, do not mistakenly think that it makes you invulnerable.
What do you think?
3 Comments »
Posted by Scott on March 23rd, 2007 — Posted in Self-Defense Advice
Jennifer Chancellor interviews Tracie Crocker about self-defense:
“There’s a lot of confusion and nonsense information out there. The most important tip to share with anyone, anywhere is to pay attention to your surroundings,” said Crocker, who’s worked for the Tulsa Police Department for 19 years, and has been teaching safety classes to women and children in the Tulsa area for 12 years.
She’s interviewed countless victims for the police department and participated in victimology studies, too, she said.
“I get asked over and over again for tips about preventing purse snatchings, rapes, assaults and abductions,” she said. “In this line of work, I’ve heard and seen just about everything.”
Other than paying attention to surroundings, the second most important tip Crocker shares in her workshops is: “Be prepared.”
“There is no race, gender or economic criteria to determine who will be a victim,” she said. “Be prepared to fight if you want to fight. Be prepared to run if you choose to run.
“Think about when you’re vulnerable — walking to work, running at night, being alone at night — and make plans now about what you would do when a ‘worst case’ scenario.
Read entire article by Jennifer Chancellor.
Follow the link above, because the article has a quick 10-question quiz to test your safety and self-defense knowledge.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on March 22nd, 2007 — Posted in News
The AP reports that The Chicago Foundation gives grants for violence prevention against women:
The Chicago Foundation for Women is giving out nearly one (M) million dollars in grants for projects that will help prevent violence against girls and women.
Spokeswoman Lois Lipton says it’s the largest amount of money the foundation has given.
The organization is awarding 34 separate grants across the state for the year-long projects.
Some of the projects include engaging high school boys in community education and looking at the long term impact of trauma on victims of gender-based violence.
The recipients include DePaul University College of Law, the Illinois African American Coalition for Prevention and the National Immigrant Justice Center.
The Chicago Foundation for Women was founded in 1986.
I see that as great news all around. Financing goes to violence prevention, and it comes from non-governmental, and thus accountable, organizations. I hope to see more funding like that go to more organizations like that.
What do you think?
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on March 20th, 2007 — Posted in News
Kotv.com reports on an increase in violent crime across the nation (United States):
Violent crime is on the rise across the nation. A new study says we’re facing an alarming trend as many cities deal with double-digit, even triple-digit increases in homicides and other crimes involving guns. The group that did the study is the Police Executive Research Forum, they took crime stats from 2004 to 2006 from 56 cities and found violent crime is definitely making a comeback, especially in Middle America.Half of the 56 cities surveyed had an increase in homicides from 2004 to 2006, 75% of them had an increase in robberies and nearly 70% had an increase in assaults involving guns.
The study says the Feds have spent so much time and money worrying about terrorism that they’re not doing as much to fight local crime.
Read entire article at kotv.com.
I think the government could most effectively reduce violent crime & victimization by ending their enforcement of victimless crimes and refocusing the resources on preventing victimization, such as rape, murder, theft, and assault.
What do you think we and/or the government can do to reduce violent crime and victimization.
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on March 19th, 2007 — Posted in Teen Violence
The ASA reports that violent video games do not cause teen violence:
The American Sociological Association (ASA) has published a report claiming that there is no link between violent video games and homicidal behaviour in children.
Following high profile school shootings in the US, most famously at Columbine High School, many reports have attempted to create a link between such events and violent video games such as the first person shooter Doom.
The ASA article focuses on why people are so ready to blame video games for violent attacks by troubled teens, pointing out that in the 10 years following Doom’s 1993 release, homicide arrest rates among juveniles fell by 77 per cent.
School shootings remain extremely rare; even during the 1990s, when fears of school violence were high, students had less than a seven in 10 million chance of being killed at school.
The ASA said that video games and other violent entertainment are being used as a “folk devil” and have no real impact on the behaviour of children.
Read entire article at itnews.com.au.
I cannot say this surprises me. Those who blamed video games and such almost always relied on post hoc fallacies. Most students who shoot up schools played violent video games, but that in no way implies that the video games caused it. Similarly, most students who shoot up schools were breastfed as children; surely we can see the idiocy in saying that implies that breastfeeding causes school-shootings.
It appears they used video games as a scapegoat. School-shootings have decreased steadily for a long time. Still, they occasionally happen. Who do we blame beside the disturbed children? How about the neglectful parents, incompetent schools, and the bad example of our offensively violent governments?
What do you think?
3 Comments »
Posted by Scott on March 18th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
Women’s Health News reports on recent research of sexual victimization:
Sexual victimization can mean several things — verbal coercion to have sex with an intimate partner, rape by a stranger, a woman fondled in a bar or forced intercourse when a woman is too intoxicated to consent or object.
Researchers at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions report that 18 percent of young women recruited into a study experienced sexual victimization in a two-year period. Victimization was defined as unwanted sexual contact, verbally coerced sex, rape or attempted rape. Among this group, the majority (approximately 66 percent) stated that their victimization was perpetrated by an intimate partner.
Importantly, it was found that sexual victimization of women by intimate partners and non-intimate partners are two completely separate phenomena. Two different sets of risk factors exist for victimization by two different types of perpetrators.
The factors that predicted victimization from intimates were different than the factors that predicted victimization from non-intimates. Predictors of intimate partner victimization included being married or living together, prior intimate partner victimization and difficulty refusing a partner’s request for sex. Thus, women who experience this type of sexual victimization are at risk of experiencing it multiple times, by virtue of remaining in relationships with sexually aggressive men.
A predictor of victimization by a non-intimate perpetrator was binge drinking. “One explanation for this may be that a perpetrator who is not intimately acquainted with a victim is more likely to take advantage of a woman’s intoxication as a way to facilitate having sex with her,” according to Testa. “Women who are heavy drinkers or binge drinkers typically drink outside the home and in the presence of others who are drinking, reflecting a lifestyle that poses greater risk from men they don’t know.”
Another predictor of victimization by a non-intimate perpetrator was engaging in sex with a greater number of sexual partners. This behavior also increased risk for subsequent sexual victimization due to exposure to a greater number of potential perpetrators.
Read entire article.
Many times women get drunk, choose to have sex, regret it later, and then blame the person with whom they had sex by calling it sexual victimization. I do not see that as sexual victimization. I highly recommend to all people: Don’t drink so much that you make bad decisions you wouldn’t otherwise make; If you do, blame yourself.
Statistics show that when using objective criteria (i.e. how much the person drank), men get “taken advantage of” just as much as women.
I doubt the accuracy of studies that rely on the allegedly victimized person’s definition of victimization – because this definition varies from person to person. In other words, a study that simply asks women if they have been victimized won’t get accurate numbers.
Nonetheless, predators do prey on easy targets such as drunk people. Additionally, women who party often obviously have more of a risk of victimization from a stranger than women who do not party as much.
Women need to take precautions to avoid sexual victimization, such as staying with trusted friends, not drinking too much, and taking self-defense classes. Society needs to reduce the threat to women by taking active steps to stop sexual victimization, which it can do by such methods as increasing awareness and jailing victimizers and assailants. Hosts of parties can ensure the safety of their guests. Other people, including men, can ensure the safety of their female friends (and any woman for that matter) by keeping an eye on them and making sure they have a safe way home.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on March 17th, 2007 — Posted in Child Protection
Rachel Arora reports from Inda on child abuse:
There are millions of children in the world who are victims of child abuse in one way or the other. What does it take for someone to carry out such a horrendous crime? Children are vulnerable and they easily bestow their trust in others. Do those villains, who commit this gross act, ever feel ashamed or guilty? They not only devastate the trust of a child at such a tender age, but also crush his childhood.
Says Dr Rajat Mitra, director of Swanchetan, a well-known non-profit working for the cause of children, “Child abuse is a very serious crime and its implications are likely to be visible on a whole generation of children. A series of scripted violence and abuse will be cascaded by the victims if no one hears their cry soon. Parents are also responsible for letting their children suffer.”
But what can be done to prevent this? “There are no safe institutions or policies to defend the rights of the children. Awareness needs to be created on a large scale. If a child turns up for help, teachers must be equipped with the ability to handle such a situation. The mothers often feel scared to raise their voice if the criminal is the father or a close family member. The government will only take action when it is shaken up. We need to build public opinion and bring out the extent of abuse and trauma.”
Read entire article by Rachel Arora.
I highly recommend reading the entire article by Rachel Arora. It goes into even more depth than the part I excerpted above. Plus, it uses specific stories of abused children.
Sadly, prosecutors have a hard time prosecuting child abuse, because children cannot provide reliable testimony. Worried adults can help prevent unreliable testimony by having a professional question their child on video tape. The more people that talk to the child about an incident before the child gives a testimony, the less reliable the testimony. Additionally, never use suggestive questioning; doing such makes any accusation of the child useless.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on March 16th, 2007 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
I quote an excerpt from chapter 12 of The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard:
If every man has the absolute right to his justly-held property it then follows that he has the right to keep that property — to defend it by violence against violent invasion.
Absolute pacifists who also assert their belief in property rights — such as Mr. Robert LeFevre — are caught in an inescapable inner contradiction: for if a man owns property and yet is denied the right to defend it against attack, then it is clear that a very important aspect of that ownership is being denied to him. To say that someone has the absolute right to a certain property but lacks the right to defend it against attack or invasion is also to say that he does not have total right to that property.
Furthermore, if every man has the right to defend his person and property against attack, then he must also have the right to hire or accept the aid of other people to do such defending: he may employ or accept defenders just as he may employ or accept the volunteer services of gardeners on his lawn.
How extensive is a man’s right of self-defense of person and property? The basic answer must be: up to the point at which he begins to infringe on the property rights of someone else. For, in that case, his “defense” would in itself constitute a criminal invasion of the just property of some other man, which the latter could properly defend himself against.
Buy The Ethics of Liberty on Amazon.
I agree with the above philosophy regarding self-defense, but I believe one can argue against the property of objects beside the self.
In other words, some may argue that a person cannot justly own non-bodily property, because natural resources, such as land, water, wood, metal, etcetera, belong to all people equally. Nonetheless, few would argue that a person does not own his or her own body. So, regardless of how one feels about non-bodily property, we can all agree on giving every person the right to defend his body and employ the help of others in that defense.
Since a person owns himself, he has every right to do what he wants with his body insofar as he does not offensively harm another person. If another person offensively harms the first person or attempts to offensively harm the first person, then the first person has the right to defend himself even if it entails the use of non-offensively defensive violence.
I cannot see how anyone can disagree with such rights to the defense of one’s own person. Yet, we see people get denied that right to self-defense all the time.
What do you think?
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on March 15th, 2007 — Posted in Child Protection
Chuck Plunkett and Jeffrey A. Roberts recently wrote an article about the sexual assault of children:
…the most likely victims of sexual abuse — by far — remain young children.
A review of about 55,000 reported cases of rape and sex assault in 2004 shows that about 67 percent of all sex victims are 17 and younger, and 30 percent are 11 and younger.
What makes the data more troubling, experts say, is that there is no simple fix to the problem of childhood sex abuse.
“Most people don’t know about these statistics,” said Victoria Strong, who directs Colorado’s Front Range Center for Assault Prevention, which provides sex-abuse prevention education to schools.
“I don’t think most of the school districts pay attention to it as much as they need to,” Strong said. “Until something happens.”
Strong and other experts say that while it is common for adults to warn children about the very rare danger of stranger abduction, studies have shown that most perpetrators are trusted relatives, friends, teachers, coaches and clergy. Older siblings or cousins also can be abusers.
And experts say even the best prevention education for young children isn’t enough.
“You cannot expect children to protect themselves,” said Mary Wyman, a counselor with Lost and Found in Wheat Ridge, Colo., which works with victims and perpetrators of sex assault.
“Children are so programmed to submit to authority,” Wyman said. And those who prey on children are skilled at what they do, she said, adding, “I’ve never met a sex offender I didn’t like.”
Read entire article by Chuck Plunkett and Jeffrey A. Roberts.
Unfortunately, the overcrowded, underfunded, and inefficient incarceration system in the United States releases non-rehabilitated convicted sex offenders, many of which continue to victimize people. Once convicted, I say do not let these victimizers out of jail until, if ever, they have been rehabilitated.
Non-violent drug “offenders” make up over 25% of the United States inmate population. Instead of wasting resources on victimless crimes, why not use the space and resources to jail and, where possible, rehabilitate victimizers such as child sex-predators?! Further, instead of wasting resources chasing down non-violent people for victimless crimes, why not put the resources towards protecting children from sexual victimization?!
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on March 14th, 2007 — Posted in Guns
Newstandardnews.com reports:
On the basis of Second Amendment protections, a US appeals court has struck down Washington, DC’s ban on owning most handguns. The case will likely to go to the Supreme Court, which would address the scope of the amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years. If the ruling is upheld there, it would not likely end the many laws regulating gun ownership but could cast doubt on measures affecting law-abiding residents. The court also ruled unconstitutional the DC requirement that registered guns be kept unloaded, disassembled and trigger-locked.
In ruling on the D.C. gun ban case, the majority opinion of the Circuit Court held as follows:
“To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Anti-federalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.”
In many cases, I think many persons are better off without guns. Granted, in the hands of a trained professional with common sense, guns can be the best self-defense. Regardless, I support freedom, and that includes the right for innocent people (i.e. people who have not offensively hurt anyone else) to choose how to defend themselves. Even if owning a gun is a mistake, freedom means that people have the right to make that mistake. If a person offensively hurts another person, then that first person belongs in jail regardless of whether or not they used a gun to do the harm. Insofar as a person does not offensively harm another person, then I say let that person do what they wish.
In the name of freedom, stop the enforcement of victimless “crimes” such as gun-ownership, drug possession, and prostitution. Also, by stopping the enforcement of victimless crimes, we can put our saved resources towards the agreeable goal of stopping victimizers such as murderers, rapists, and thieves.
What do you think?
3 Comments »
Posted by Scott on March 13th, 2007 — Posted in Identity Theft
Identity theft could happen to anyone. It is a criminal offense in which a person intends to acquire an identification of another person and uses it without proper authorization as he adopts it as it was his own. Most often, the purpose is for financial gain. A criminal may gather information by tapping a phone call, listening to conversations, hacking passwords and banking information over the internet, etc.
Shredding sensitive documents and refusing to give away sensitive information (e.g. your social security number) can make you less vulnerable to identity theft. Additionally, federal law dictates that you can get your credit report for free; do not pay for this service! Use your free credit report to verify that no fraudulent activity has taken place under your name.
What do you think?
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