There is work done on fathers, but it is hidden away in a ghetto called “fatherhood” and is rarely drawn upon in mainstream provision or by mainstream researchers.In mainstream parenting education and support services, I regularly note the use of the word “parent” to mean “mother”. Even the research in this field generally looks mainly or exclusively at mothers. I have to say I cannot agree: it seems to me that, in parenting education and support, services are overwhelmingly designed with mothers in mind and fail to take fathers into account. Yet I think there’s a great deal of confusion about fathers – even resistance to involving them.I have, recently, even seen it asserted that to consider special policies for fathers is out of order because mothers don’t have any. Adrienne

Burgess
From a speech bythe Institute forPublic Policy Research fellow to aNational Children’s Bureau conferenceAs you’ll have noticed, fatherhood is a hot topic with the Government. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that we will ignore the rhetoric this time round But at least we could refuse to believe it..

And if the United States did pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia – why they are still there remains something of a mystery – then the likes of Bin Laden and his friends would lose their support.So how long will Europeans, let alone Arabs, go on accepting America’s theatricals in the Middle East? Even the British must weary of the astonishing and repetitive crises in the region. And the Jewish settlements on the West Bank will continue to be expanded, destroying any hope of a Palestinian state.Sanity would dictate that all UN Security Council resolutions should be adhered to. The Arab world would have no reason to ignore Cohen’s appeals over Iraqi non-compliance if Israel abided by the wishes of the Security Council. Support for a real democracy in Iraq – not for the bunch of secret agents now receiving even more millions of dollars in aid – might ensure that Saddam would, indeed, be overthrown, along with his anthrax spores. Ossama Bin Laden is the world’s new Super Criminal (you can forget General Mladic and his anti-Muslim mass murderers), and Bin Laden’s demand for the withdrawal of US troops from the Gulf will go unmentioned – because this is not something which Washington wishes to debate. Indeed, the very word “settlers” has a cosy ring about it, resonant of the history of the Old West (the Israelis playing the role of the white settlers, the Palestinians being the Apache Indians).And so it goes on. UN sanctions against Iraq – which leave Saddam untouched but are approaching genocidal proportions for the civil population – will be maintained We may bomb Iraq again.

This year alone, for example, Israel is spending $235m on the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian land, a figure which is set to rise to almost $400m next year But there’s no debate about this in the United States. Now we have information- wanted posters of Ossama Bin Laden (the latest Public Enemy Number One) – who may or may not be as ferocious as the Beast of Baghdad – and a Dodge City-style reward of $5m for the dissident Saudi whom America accuses of more violence than Attila the Hun.As a matter of fact, $5m is a rather paltry sum in the Middle East. When the mass media in our country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the US government, the result is responsible journalism.” As George Orwell said, “circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip”.Thus the United States gets away with a Middle East policy that sometimes resembles a western movie. Back in 1986, President Reagan – no doubt remembering one of his own B-movies – announced that Colonel Gaddafi (then America’s Public Enemy Number One) “can run but he can’t hide”. Gearing up for a new crisis, there are some things that just have to be forgotten.As the American commentator Norman Solomon put it so well in a recent cynical column, “when the mass media in some foreign countries serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government, the result is ludicrous propaganda. In his latest bellicose statements about Iraq, Butler made no mention of Ritter’s trips to Israel (though he most surely knew of them) and Ritter himself got away with a half-hour interview on BBC World Service television earlier this month without once being asked about his most secretive and politically damaging visits to Tel Aviv. “The players want the tour to go ahead,” he said.The tour is due to begin with a one-day match in Johannesburg next Tuesday, with the first Test scheduled to start on 26 November.Lara appears to have the support of most of his team-mates, with the Players’ Association secretary, Roland Holder, insisting that his members are backing the former captain.Earlier, Bacher had confirmed that the five-Test tour, due to end in February, was in serious jeopardy “I can’t lie to anybody The situation is very serious The players and the WICB have reached an impasse.

All, of course, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and the Oslo agreement – but we’ve not heard about any “serious confrontation” here.And why should we? Was it not Israel which supposedly gave so much intelligence information to the UN arms inspectors in Iraq? Was it not UN inspector Scott Ritter – repeatedly accused by Saddam of consorting with Iraq’s Israeli enemies – who revealed last month that he had indeed visited Israel “many times” for intelligence work?Needless to say, this is not something we are being reminded of just now – not least because Iraq is claiming that other inspectors have also been in league with the Israelis. For on every front page this week, alongside the photographs of UN inspectors in Baghdad, are pictures of Israeli bulldozers ripping into the earth of occupied Palestinian land to build ever-greater extensions to Jewish settlements. Already the Saudis have told Cohen that he can’t strike Iraq from their kingdom. And is it any surprise? A mere glance at my local Beirut newspapers show the reason for the Arab refusal to help Washington. It was only last February that Tony Blair told us that Saddam had enough weapons “to wipe out the whole world”. And now, presumably, he has even more weapons.The truth is that Saddam Hussein – wicked, vicious, murderous dictator that he is (and this is a mantra which still has to be recited by anyone daring to suggest that the West’s policies towards Iraq are folly) – has realised that US credibility in the Middle East is at an all-time low and that no Arab nation will stomach another bombardment of Baghdad.