Children disappear daily

Families Apart Require Equality (FARE)

"Every day children are not returned to one of their parents and this never makes the news. Is this because it is invariably their fathers that they are not returned to?" FARE spokesperson Darryl Ward asked today. He was commenting on the case of Stella Henley.

"We wonder why, when during one of the comparatively rare occasions that a father fails to return a child, the police rush in and the media have a field day."

"If a father complains to the police about his children not being returned, he is told to try the family court and shown the door. He certainly would not expect his children's plight to become national news."

"We understand how Laura Choat must have felt, as this is the experience of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of New Zealand fathers. However, these fathers and their children have to suffer in silence".

"Every year our adversarial family court system sees approximately 20,000 children lose contact with one of their parents, usually their father. By comparison, only 3,000 New Zealand children lost their fathers during the entire Second World War. This makes the family court New Zealand's leading child abductor."

"This case is clear evidence that mothers have rights as parents that fathers do not have. It is time that the government conceded that family law and the family court are not the gender-neutral entities that they would have us believe they are," he concluded.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>