New Testingstan

Well, how to expose that in understandable terms...

adr wrote:How do you even identify the father? If she declines to tell you, you're out of luck.

I'm pretty sure there's already laws covering that, at least here. But the thing here is not covered by that anyway. I'm speaking about a situation were the father knows the child exist and recognize it (which if necessary can be easily proved by a judiciary mandated paternity test).

It seems your system gives unfair leverage for the mother to deny the father his right to participate in the upbringing of the child, on the sole basis that she was the one to carry it in her womb for 9 month.

That, basically, fathers are guilty until proven innocent in your framework.

Oh boy.

Apparently there's talk that the Assad Regime may have used chemical weapons.

If this is true, this mean that at least the US, and most probably France as well, are going to intervene, having drawn a clear Red Line for intervention at the use of such weapons.

Given neither the US nor France want to intervene, but their policy force them to do so if chemical weapons are effectively used... And that the French's head of diplomacy said there was heavy suspicions that these weapons had been used...

Oh bother.

ADR's fanfiction is reminding me of some ideas I have for a culture in my own uni exploring how a society with very different conceptions of sexuality might work (they originally started out by me wondering what a sapient bonobo society might look like).

One of the ideas was since polyamory is the norm they don't really recognize fatherhood as a thing; families are very matrilineal, and the extended family is a much more important social institution in their society than in ours.

The stomach for gung-ho foreign wars is just not there among Americans and the British at least (it's the French and Turks that seem to have more unrealistic foreign policies now).

Oxymoron wrote:It's not as if they were paying their taxes anyway, so good riddance.

Why are the super rich supposedly seen as wealth generators anyway? The wealthy have a nasty habit of country hopping, but the Globalist focused super-rich will eventually paint themselves into a corner (a corner that's overlooking a big lynch mob).

What annoy me is that they are still more than happy to use our healthcare infrastructures...

The working/middle classes in foundering Western countries are bearing the brunt of state taxation while getting crushed from above by tax dodging megacorporations and bailout hogging megabanks, in addition to getting squeezed by cheaper foreign labour and automation from below. Things may get very ugly relatively fast Tunisian style in so-called "developed" countries.

Oxymoron wrote:Oh boy.

Apparently there's talk that the Assad Regime may have used chemical weapons.

If this is true, this mean that at least the US, and most probably France as well, are going to intervene, having drawn a clear Red Line for intervention at the use of such weapons.

Given neither the US nor France want to intervene, but their policy force them to do so if chemical weapons are effectively used... And that the French's head of diplomacy said there was heavy suspicions that these weapons had been used...

Oh bother.

There's been a lot of suspicion that chemical weapons have been being deployed for weeks now. Frankly it appears that most foreign governments are using "We aren't absolutely 100% sure" as an excuse to delay intervention.

If you're at all interesting in following what's happening in Syria I really recommend you follow the excellent Brown Moses blog : http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/

yeah i've been hearing the chemical weapon thing for a while, of course with both sides pointing fingers at each other

i don't expect much will change in the short term

Big Orangutan wrote:The stomach for gung-ho foreign wars is just not there among Americans and the British at least (it's the French and Turks that seem to have more unrealistic foreign policies now).

Trust me, neither the French people nor its government want to get directly involved in that mess... The current atmosphere here is more along the lines of "well, shit, it seems someone is committing the kind of atrocities we can't ignore, and even if we really don't want to, we might have to step in directly".

As for the Turks, they have a direct interest in not having a new Somalia on their doorsteps, so it's normal for them to get involved in Syria one way or another.


Anyway, it's interesting how overall the Syrian situation is a no-win for everyone involved.

Yeah, its not going to fun doing it all in NBC gear. Fuck thats going to be hot.

Aaron wrote:Yeah, its not going to fun doing it all in NBC gear. Fuck thats going to be hot.

Well at least they'll need it this time?

And if only it was just "mustard gas" or suffocating chemicals like that, but no. Apparently, they were talking about fucking neurotoxins.

Oxymoron wrote:It seems your system gives unfair leverage for the mother to deny the father his right to participate in the upbringing of the child, on the sole basis that she was the one to carry it in her womb for 9 month.

Let's get to the root of the question: why does the father have the right to participate in the upbringing of the child?

I've been assuming the two split before birth btw, since if the parents were still together when the baby was born, I assume they'd raise the child together voluntarily, and there's no need for a court order anyway. A split when the child is a couple years old is going to be a harder question, since there's probably a mutual bond between father and child at that point, independently of the father/mother relationship. And the solution here is to remember that the rights are the child's, delegated to the mother. If the child still wants contact with his or her father, that right exists; even a two year old child might have enough influence to overrule the mother's flat out no, and give the mediator an in to try to work out a solution.

btw if the mother said "I don't want this baby at all", she has several options, including transferring custody, all rights and responsibilities, to the father right after birth and then never seeing either of them again.

Anyway, let's go back and say the father/child relationship hasn't formed yet, say because the child hasn't been born yet, or he's never met the baby. Why does he have a right to be involved in this new life? And the question I'd ask with each answer is why doesn't this apply to any other random person?


There's only two things I can think of that aren't immediately disqualified:

1) he's the father, biologically speaking, but the question here is why should a genetic relationship, a mere curiosity of science when standing alone, have a controlling influence over the social relationships of the independently thinking mother? Remember, she said no, if she was ok with him being a part of her or the baby's life, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I don't disqualify it, and this is why I put in the right to ask her for access, but I don't find it particularly compelling either, which is why she can simply say 'no'.


2) he's formed an emotional bond with the idea of the baby. Maybe he's really looking forward to playing a role and the mother's "no, get out of my life" crushes this.

But let me rephrase this toward the mother herself: if he had some unrequited love for her, and she said no, his hurt feelings wouldn't be enough to get a court to order her to deal with him anyway, right? So, why does that change when there's a baby involved? Keep in mind, unless she surrenders her own rights, any relationship between father and child is going to impact the mother too, so that's gotta weigh into the decision. I think this one is disqualified.


And that's all I can think of, at least from the angle of the parent's rights. A more successful angle might be the child's rights, to say the baby has a right to know his or her father, even if the mother isn't happy with it. But I'd still ask: why? If the child is old enough to ask for him or her self, well, I can see that, like I said above, but that's because a human relationship is formed, the same would apply if the child was, for example, adopted by a homosexual couple who split up a couple years later. The genetic relationship isn't compelling to me, and that's all the biological father has at this point.

Why is it that whenever I read the n&p forum over on SDN, I seriously consider whether or not I want to live to see all the awful shit that's coming for humanity? This is not helping my so-called "depression."

"So-called 'depression'"?

Darksi4190 wrote:Why is it that whenever I read the n&p forum over on SDN, I seriously consider whether or not I want to live to see all the awful shit that's coming for humanity? This is not helping my so-called "depression."

Just let the hatred of the baby boomers flow through you. It will make you stronger!

Oxymoron wrote:And if only it was just "mustard gas" or suffocating chemicals like that, but no. Apparently, they were talking about fucking neurotoxins.

Its better to be a victim of nerve gas, its instant death versus a chance of death and a more likely chance of disability and shit quality of life until you die.

Aaron wrote:

Oxymoron wrote:And if only it was just "mustard gas" or suffocating chemicals like that, but no. Apparently, they were talking about fucking neurotoxins.

Its better to be a victim of nerve gas, its instant death versus a chance of death and a more likely chance of disability and shit quality of life until you die.

Seriously. Plus mustard gas burns the skin.

Oxymoron wrote:

Big Orangutan wrote:The stomach for gung-ho foreign wars is just not there among Americans and the British at least (it's the French and Turks that seem to have more unrealistic foreign policies now).

Trust me, neither the French people nor its government want to get directly involved in that mess... The current atmosphere here is more along the lines of "well, shit, it seems someone is committing the kind of atrocities we can't ignore, and even if we really don't want to, we might have to step in directly".

The French military has its hands full in Africa for a while now anyway.

As for the Turks, they have a direct interest in not having a new Somalia on their doorsteps, so it's normal for them to get involved in Syria one way or another.

Turkey's main problem was being used as a bulwark for the American military machine and having unresolved issues with the Kurds. And when the Assad regime that it seems to dislike collapses, it'll most probably get Somalia 2.0 anyway.

Anyway, it's interesting how overall the Syrian situation is a no-win for everyone involved.

It sounds like a clusterfuck decades if not centuries in the making, with the Syrian crisis (and the rest of the troubled Middle East) being an accumulation of unintended consequences of the Ottoman, French, and British empires exacerbating an already volatile region (with the Americans and Russians being the front seat mismanaging imperialists since WW2).

Russia is now more openly waving its dick about, making things more "interesting".

As opposed to secretly waving its dick about?

ganders i don't suppose you are going to supanova sydney?

No. It's not what it used to be, so I lost interest.

RyanThunder wrote:As opposed to secretly waving its dick about?

As opposed to being a -bit- less obvious about the fact that Russia is back, and it is a power to be counted on.

By the way BO, it is incorrect to refer to modern Turkey as the "Ottomans", for several reasons :

- First and the most obvious, that Empire dismantled itself in the 1910s-1920s.
- Then modern Turkey was built on voluntarily detaching itself from the "Ottoman" multicultural identity, by insisting on building Turkey as an ethnically Turkic state (which is, among other things, the source of the problem with the Kurds and other minorities).

So it's a bit counter-factual to refer to modern Turkey as the "Ottomans". They sure did inherit from them, but they aren't a successor state.

I think he's referring to issues that may or may not have been created during Ottoman rule, rather than by modern Turkey as a separate nation?

Possibly, yes. 'Was just showing off.

I know the difference between the modern nation of Turkey and the extinct Ottoman Empire (which the former country emerged from). Both seem to have had a hand in the ME problems.