Okay, publishing contract and all the rest of it are done and tonight, for the first time ever, Gmail went crackers on me. I knew I should have used one of my own domain addresses for this. Finally persuaded it to send. The real-paper one goes in the post tomorrow. Now I can drink again - but not too much, there are another 60 samples on the way. Hmm, a lifetime of making up stories or a lifetime up to the elbows in infected shit... it's a tough decision.
Not as tough, perhaps, as deciding whether to have your firing pin removed for £200-worth of smack. Pat Nurse is furious at the implication and with good reason. It is possibly the most ridiculously stupid, dangerous and counterproductive idea ever to pass through a human mind.
Most druggies - and I'm not talking the occasional snort of septum-remover, I'm talking can't-find-a-vein-that-isn't-scarred druggies, have at the back of their heads the thought "I don't want to be like this." Many try to kick the drugs but it's not an easy thing to do. Not when you're addicted, when you live where pushers are always offering you a little bag of escape-dust so you can forget the squalour of life for a while, when you come down to find the world is just as shitty as when you left. Getting out is difficult. I've never had to, I've known quite a few who tried and most failed. Some failed all the way.
In the drug-addled mind, £200 is ten £20-hits. It has no other meaning. Giving them £200 while adding to their debasement and sense of worthlessness simply guarantees that the whole lot will end up in the pocket of the nearest dealer. Yes, telling people they can never hope to be fit to be a parent is debasement. These people are not jolly suited Yuppies snorting a bit of nose-rot through a rolled-up £20 note. These are people at the very bottom and the only way to make them feel worse is to tell them they have no hope of ever getting out.
Consider this - if you're doped up, someone offers you £200 to have a vasectomy while telling you that you are guaranteed to abuse any child you father, what does your mind do? It doesn't do the logical thing of "£200? That's £100 a nut. Not nearly enough to encourage me to embrace a lifetime disability". No, the druggie mind translates £200 into however many bags of whack powder the dealer will give them and thinks "She's right, I'm a failure."
So now you have a druggie who is sterilised. Why would he ever try to get straightened out? What would be the point? He'll never have a family now. He might as well stay on the dream dust because there's nothing to come down for.
Further, why would that druggie worry about using condoms? He's firing blanks anyway. STDs? Why would a druggie care? What are his chances of getting old enough to experience tertiary syphilis or full-blown AIDS? 'Slim' is the word you're looking for there. Why worry about getting old? He'll never be a father, much less a grandfather. By removing all possibility of future responsibility, you create a loose cannon. Female ones too, of course, but I wasn't going to fill that with 'he/she' in the interests of being inclusive. Anyone with sense can see the wider picture and those without aren't worth worrying about.
You know what makes many druggies make the effort to quit? Becoming a parent. They don't all feed the kids on Pot Noodles and end-of-day cakes and LSD. For many, the responsibility of parenthood is when they grow up and think "Shit, my life is a mess and my kid is going to think I'm nothing". It's the kick they need.
You don't hear about those cases. They don't make the news. 'Druggie stops taking drugs' is a headline you'll never see. The ones you hear about are the bad ones, the kids in three-day-old nappies and the parents on a three-day high. By all means, let the SS intervene in those cases. take the kid into a foster home and get those parents sorted out. But sterilise them? Yes, they are unfit parents now, but will they always be so?
There are many problems with this American woman's eugenics program and she can't see any of them. I heard that her gang accosted a woman leaving a clinic in Glasgow. A woman who had never taken drugs but who just happened to be leaving a clinic that deals with addicts - among other medical things. The woman was, shall we say, on the portly side. Not a body shape you would associate with the heavily addicted. They tend not to look well-fed. Yet she was accosted by a gang who tried to get her to agree to sterilisation for £200.
Not a particularly discerning organisation. Unless their ultimate aim is a little more than drugs?
You're too fat to be a good parent. You must be sterilised.
Is that a bottle of gin in your shopping? You are an unfit parent. You must be sterilised.
IQ too low? Snip.
Buying cigarettes? The horror! Off with his knob!
She doesn't realise what she is starting here. This idea of hers is not new and it has been put forward by some of the nastiest people ever to walk the planet. They have supporters who will take this idea and widen it until it encompasses all who do not fit the Standard Human Image and while it will start with bribes, it will end with compulsory. Such ideas always do.
Then of course, there is the problem of people like me. I'm fifty, I have no intention of future fatherhood, so a vasectomy would be no more than a trivial inconvenience. Sounds like an easy £200, and all I have to do is pretend to be a druggie. I'm not going to because voluntary surgery is against my religion (the church of pain avoidance) but others will.
With any luck, she'll get fleeced by pensioners and go home skint. Maybe some of those pensioners will be those who helped dispose of the last eugenics fanatic who wanted the Aryan ideal.
It does give me an idea though. I wonder if I can get 'Druggie Monopoly' ready for Christmas?
...your little metal syringe lands on Chance. You take a card. It says "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass the vasectomy room. Do not collect £200"...
I wonder if it'll sell?
31 comments:
I partly listened to a debate about this on Radio5Live this morning. Couldn't believe what I was hearing from some people who thought it right.
There was one chap at the end who thought it right because both his parents had been druggies and he'd had a hell of a time in care although he'd had various forms of 'help' since. I'm no fan of Nicky Campbell, but he told this chap to leave his number and he'd chat with him after the show. Well done Campbell.
I've just realised that the offer already extends to alcoholics too.
Smokers and the overweight are on the list, for sure.
SR - I hope Campbell started his off-air discussion with 'If your parents had been sterilised, where would you be now?'
A crappy life is still better than no life at all.
"But sterilise them? Yes, they are unfit parents now, but will they always be so?"
That decision is not for you or I or the State to take but the addict themselves. Whilst I disagree enormously with the woman's offer if we should respect a person's right to do with their body what they please such as selling sex and taking drugs it must extend to something like this.
They are at least making a choice - to try and limit the effects of drug taking to themselves. That choice may be influenced by drugs, money, by both or by neither but it is at least people trying to exercise some responsibility.
I would like to point out that eugenics has a number of aspects. Firstly, it is based on biological reductionism – life reduced to biology (i.e., materialist). Of itself, biological reductionism, as a philosophy, is simply a shallow framework of thought. What makes eugenics unique is that a group of reductionists believe that they should oversee the human herd in order to breed/engineer a superior herd, i.e., applied biology. This elite would typically be made up of biologists, zoologists, physicians, behaviourists, geneticists, statisticians. Eugenicists see humans as no more than the equivalent of human cattle. In a reductionist framework, there is no mind, no soul, no spirit, no God, no freedom. The herd is “owned” by the breeders, the human population an experimental quantity entirely at the disposal of the elite. In ideo-political terms, the populace is answerable to the State.
Eugenics is well known for its “breeding” directives based on its thoroughly-flawed heredity trees. Indeed, this genetic/racial aspect was the main emphasis. However, not appreciated is that eugenics also has a behavioral/environmental aspect. Eugenics can be described as the cult of the body. Health is only defined in biological terms. Therefore, things like tobacco, alcohol, diet and exercise were also preoccupations of eugenics. Tobacco and alcohol were considered body/racial poisons, to be avoided.
It should also be noted that, although the worst of eugenics was seen in Nazi Germany, eugenics did not begin in Nazi Germany. Eugenics gained traction in the late-1800s (the term “eugenics” was coined by the English statistician, Francis Galton). There were chapters of the Eugenics Society in a number of countries, e.g., UK, USA, Germany, some Scandinavian countries. The most prominent eugenics influence early last century was in the USA. There were tens of thousands of sterilizations performed in the USA, the greater proportion in California. Eugenics was mainstream in the USA and Eugenics was taught at prominent universities, e.g., Harvard, Princeton. There was a Eugenics Record Office established by Davenport of Harvard University at Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
(cont'd)
At around the same time that sterilization legislation was passed (early 1900s), many States also passed some form of restrictions on tobacco use. In some States, the sale of tobacco was temporarily banned altogether. Around this time Prohibition was also legislated. The mega-wealth supporters/funders of eugenics (e.g., Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Kellogg) also supported/funded anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol.
Anti-tobacco (and anti-alcohol) rear their heads again in Nazi Germany - also eugenics-driven. Hitler was a student of American eugenics and was a great admirer of Ford’s eugenics and anti-semitic ideas (Ford was a rabid anti-cigarettist). There were numerous links between American and German eugenicists and industrialists during the Nazi era. As it became apparent that Germany would lose the war, the mega-wealthy distanced themselves from their links with Nazi Germany and their eugenics proclivities.
The critical point is that post-WWII eugenics did not just go away. Eugenics is a dangerously shallow framework of thought. People don’t just instantaneously grow out of that thinking. It seems that the sentiment amongst eugenicists was that Hitler had simply gone too far, i.e., the problem was Hitler, not eugenics. To them, the eugenics view was still workable. They dispensed with their flawed heredity trees, replaced with genetics/genetic engineering (the current Human Genome Project is housed in the very same building complex in Cold Spring Harbor as the original and long-defunct Eugenics Record Office). They dropped the use of the “E”[ugenics] word because of its horrific connotations and eugenics would be practiced under a variety of crypto-terms (e.g., healthism, population control, family planning, many aspects of environmentalism, humanism). It would seem that with genetic engineering in its infancy and with the racial/genetic catastrophe of eugenics still in recent memory, the eugenics emphasis shifted to the behavioral/environmental aspect. And the first port of call was anti-tobacco which got underway in the 1950s. The emphasis on tobacco-use, alcohol, diet, exercise – health defined in entirely biological terms - that was gaining momentum through the 1970s was termed “healthism” in the early-1980s. Healthism defining a biological reductionist idea of health is a crypto-term. The biological reductionism is obviously eugenics. And the intent to impose “required lifestyle” on the populace that has been seen over the last number of decades is obviously the eugenics peculiarity of social-engineering.
"She doesn't realise what she is starting here."
Sure about that?
Post-WWII, the United Nations was formed. Rockefeller (the lineage has long been committed to eugenics) donated the land for the UN building in NY. Two major agencies of the UN – the World Health Organization and UNESCO – were formed. George Brock Chisholm, a Canadian Army MD (psychiatrist) and eugenicist, headed the World Health Organization; Julian Huxley, biologist/zoologist and a eugenicist, headed UNESCO. These eugenicists defined a eugenics foundation for these organizations.
The current antismoking crusade was set in motion by George Godber, a WHO representative, the World Health Organization, and the American Cancer Society.
In the last 50 years the particular agencies of the WHO and UNESCO have infiltrated most countries on earth with all manner of [eugenic] “strategies”, “programs”, and “initiatives”, primarily through government health bureaucracies. These government health bureaucracies (dominated by eugenics thinkers) have literally hog-tied countries around the world to the UN and its eugenics agenda. The medical establishment (including front groups such as cancer societies, heart foundations) has direct access to federal, state, and local governments worldwide.
Julian Huxley
Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975), one of the outstanding biologists of the 20th century, was a Life Fellow of the Eugenics Society from 1925, its President 1959-62, and is the only person ever to have given two Galton Lectures, in 1936 and 1962. He was also, at various times, Professor of Zoology at King’s College, London, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, and the first Director-General of UNESCO. Huxley also founded the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL9912/julian_huxley.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9477
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/julian-huxleys-enviro-eugenics-agenda-exposed-on-tv-during-great-global-warming-swindle-debate/
Brock Chisholm
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/chisholm.htm
I found the attitudes on Radio 5 far more terrifying than the idea itself. At least we were kind of expecting that. But the fact that so many of the British public can actually think this is a good idea just shows how deeply the righteous indoctrination has sunk in.
It's going to end in tears (and no doubt blood)
Aren't vasectomies reversable?
If so, then whats the harm?
Yo Leggy,
Yeah I heard the debate on five live too and I couldn`t believe what I was hearing,and I thought I`d seen and heard it all.
These righteous maniacs are truly evil,there is a circle in Hell awaiting them....hopefully!...:(
When you hear perfectly ordinary, apparently decent people support this kind of proposal you finally understand how Hitler was able to achieve what he did and how the inquisition was able to function. The motivation to be on the "right" side along with the self proclaimed "good" people was enough to result in otherwise harmless human beings inflicting the most horrific suffering on other human beings. Now read some of the comments threads on articles about obesity, smoking and drinking. There they are the proto prison camp guards proudly telling the world what self righteous, well behaved, right minded little bigots they are. Scary isn't it.
Heretic
This is without doubt the most barbaric, inhuman (besides certain Islamic punishments), things that I have ever heard of.
Leggie, you would know,
it seems to me that as a nation we are too stoned to make sense.
Could it be that there is something in the water that makes us all mongs?
Dear Mr Leg-iron
A mild defence of Barbara Harris. Assuming the lady is doing this entirely on her own, for the reasons stated, and is not a front for any other organisation, I would defend her on the grounds that she has experience of the problems of children born to addicts and has come up with a scheme to try to reduce that problem by encouraging drug addicts to forgo having children whilst they are addicts. Her approach is ameliorative; the greatest problem of drugs is their illegality, and her solution addresses the problems of illegal drug use without addressing the cause. Her solution may not be right in many ways but if it is hers alone, a libertarian should allow her to at least try to do what she thinks is right, while advising her of the implications of what she is doing.
The US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._wade) is credited by some with a huge reduction in crime in the decades after the decision allowed greater freedom of American women to have abortions. The theory being that a disproportionate number of abortions were had by poor single women who’s offspring would otherwise have grown up to swell the ranks of the petty criminals and gangs. Ms Harris’s approach is one step back; to avoid pregnancy in women whose lives are already in dire shape, thus saving on the trauma of abortion or the birth of a child who may be adversely affected by the drug use of its mother, and which may face a life of abuse with its mother or in care, or if extremely lucky have the help of devoted adoptive parents to overcome any disabilities.
Pat Nurse rightly reminds us that the real problem lies with the illegality of drugs.
However Ms Harris is attempting to prevent more harm being done under the current regime, which doesn’t look as if it will change any time soon.
I think she is wrong, but in the scheme of things only mildly so, and she ought to be credited with trying. Perhaps she could be persuaded to join the campaign for legalisation of drugs. She would be an asset because she does, instead of merely talk.
DP
Personally, not something I would support but the Libertarian in me says it is not compulsory and they sign up of their own free will.
Now the problem will come when they start pointing to the reduced number of children in care, stats can prove anything, and advocate its rollout by law.
Anyway, all those looking at getting sterilised here is something to buy yourself some treats with after.
I have had weight loss surgery and I'm unable to drink for six weeks. Between a Musslimb woman (white convert, natch) who is involved with my treatment giving me a sickly gurn when I said I wasn't drinking and this article, I want a drink now. Ardbeg please.
If you get round to it, have one for me LI. Straight. From the bottle, preferably.
Personally I see no issues here other than that an army of sickly unwanted orphans aren't going to be dumped on the NHS, social services and the rest of to take care of. Not that I have anything against most kids BUT have any of you bleeding heart wackos ever seen a junkie's kids? I watched a docu a while back about the health problems junkie kids are born with. I also lived in a rough area of Glasgow for a while. Get off your high middle class Oxbridge fucking horses and stop telling the rest of us what we should be doing. Who made you judge and fucking jury? If a junkie is happy trimming the nads for a couple of hundred squids then what the fuck has that got to do with anyone other than seller and buyer? Free market? Supply and demand? Customer is always right etc etc
I'm off to buy a junkie's balls! Genius!
Fuck it!
What take's precedence? A junkie's 'right' to churn out a never ending supply of sick fucking snappers or my 'right' not to have to fucking pay for them. Reading the nonce comments above you'd think we were killing kids. This isn't 10:10 ffs. This lovely woman is actually stopping kids dying and doing a better job with cuts (pun intended) than the pair of Common Purpose drones running the country.
Hat off to her. Where do I donate? Do I get to keep the goods I've paid for and wear them as trophies of the free market economy?
We often hear about celebrities going into rehab of their own volition. But I always wonder how voluntary it is. I suspect that in many cases it is more a plea bargain. i.e. no prosecution for drug offences if you go into rehab.
The slippery slope is that this could easily turn into "no prosecution if you volunteer to get sterilised".
Tony
“Hat off to her. Where do I donate?”
I take it that by “donating” you mean donating your “nads”? ;)
Being a fine, upstanding master of wit, prose and sensibility (and the free market), your “nads” donation would indeed be a noble gesture to humanity. Hat off to you.
Without a doubt the Bovine Broadcasters Club have been pushing this: I saw the article yesterday on both the regional news as well as the national. They're evidently desperate to get this nasty idea into the public consciousness - and a few vox pops from unreflective creatures from the streets help to get the message home.
Personally I would like to see Fabianistas sterilised. At least there won't be any progeny to spread their toxic ideas..
Leg-iron,
It looks as if they aren't leaving you with many possible fictional scenarios to use in your novel about our dystopian future.
Some of the people who have left comments clearly know nothing about history.
Gareth,
I don't believe it should be someone's right to do this, even from a libertarian's viewpoint because the patient - or victim - has a serious condition and may not be able to make sound judgments.
I'm an alcoholic, coming on 13 years clean with God's help. I dread to think what I could have been coerced into doing for money for drink.
This just stinks of wrongness.
Be very wary of the foot in the door. If it is allowed without strong disapproval, the sterilization idea becomes normalized in the populace. Consider another example. In Australia, the small Greens party (a supposed environmental party) won even greater support at recent elections. Their first, urgent priority on being elected was to open the discussion on ….guess? Euthanasia.
Sterilization and euthanasia in the hands of the eugenics mentality would be catastrophic. And there is already an entrenched eugenics infrastructure around the world, directed from the UN. The situations surrounding drug addictions, poverty and pain are tough indeed. And we’re falling way short of the mark. But, in the moral floundering, what some do not seem to consider is that particular pathways open up a far, far greater beast with greater ramifications – a step further into the abyss. And the pathway to the beast usually has small, seemingly “well-intentioned”, seemingly contained beginnings.
Those that smoke should be very familiar with the “foot in the door” phenomenon. If you read the “comments” section on Siegel’s next-to-last thread, there is indicated some of the greater and greater restrictions on smoking and smokers. There are bans indoors; there are attempts to ban smoking outdoors. There are attempts to ban smoking in apartment complexes. There is now “thirdhand smoke” insanity. There is no shortage of disciples and organizations (and funding) ever-willing to find new ways of leper-izing smokers, vanquishing them from normal society. And it all began way back in the 1980s when the antismokers managed to get smokefree flights for short-haul flights in the USA. At the time they declared with conviction that they weren’t after any more, ridiculing slippery-slope claims. And, yet, here we are.
Siegel’s blog:
www.tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com
Be very wary of the foot in the door. If it is allowed without strong disapproval, the sterilization idea becomes normalized in the populace. Consider another example. In Australia, the small Greens party (a supposed environmental party) won even greater support at recent elections. Their first, urgent priority on being elected was to open the discussion on ….guess? Euthanasia.
Sterilization and euthanasia in the hands of the eugenics mentality would be catastrophic. And there is already an entrenched eugenics infrastructure around the world, directed from the UN. The situations surrounding drug addictions, poverty and pain are tough indeed. And we’re falling way short of the mark. But, in the moral floundering, what some do not seem to consider is that particular pathways open up a far, far greater beast with greater ramifications – a step further into the abyss. And the pathway to the beast usually has small, seemingly “well-intentioned”, seemingly contained beginnings.
Those that smoke should be very familiar with the “foot in the door” phenomenon. If you read the “comments” section on Siegel’s next-to-last thread, there is indicated some of the greater and greater restrictions on smoking and smokers. There are bans indoors; there are attempts to ban smoking outdoors. There are attempts to ban smoking in apartment complexes. There is now “thirdhand smoke” insanity. There is no shortage of disciples and organizations (and funding) ever-willing to find new ways of leper-izing smokers, vanquishing them from normal society. And it all began way back in the 1980s when the antismokers managed to get smokefree flights for short-haul flights in the USA. At the time they declared with conviction that they weren’t after any more, ridiculing slippery-slope claims. And, yet, here we are.
Siegel’s blog:
www.tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com
Defender - Not in the water. On the TV. Where the message of the moment is repeated and repeated until it takes root.
Five-a-Day? demonstrated to be a made-up number with no research of any kind behind it at all. Yet try and argue with a drone who believes it.
Alcohol units per week. Second hand smoke.Carbon footprints. Try finding the real research behind any of the huge numbers quoted. It's not there.
Repetition is a brainwashing technique that works so well that I have personally convinced several people that the moon is a flat disk and not a globe at all. You see photos of this side and the other side. Ever seen a photo side-on? Actually, they exist, but it's a pockmarked rock so few people will spot it.
All you need do is keep saying something and many people will accept it as true.
It's disturbingly easy.
DP - I think she means well. I don't think she has evil intent, I just don't think she has extrapolated the consequences.
The trouble comes when those with evil intent see the potential.
Paul - Ardbeg from the bottle? No chance. Once this work madness passes, I'll have one from a fine crystal glass. Then another.
I think you're right, LI, in your reply to Defender, that it's mainly the mantras on telly which are responsible for the conditioning, but fluoride in water has been shown to reduce IQs by up to ten points.
As if state education hasn't lowered them enough already.
Just Woke Up-
What take's precedence? A junkie's 'right' to churn out a never ending supply of sick fucking snappers or my 'right' not to have to fucking pay for them.
Neither takes precedence. Anyone, junkie or otherwise, has the right to churn out as many sprogs as they like. Nobody else should be held responsible for them, morally or financially.
Look at it this way. Growing up with a parent who is permanently stoned is not a good start in life, but it's life. I didn't have that experience but if scans and termination were so easily available back then, I might not have existed for non-drug reasons. The start wasn't great but it turned out okay in the end, because I made it so. Now I run my own business. Two businesses, with the new publishing one. I claim nothing from the State and have paid into it for a long time, yet by the logic of the Righteous I should have been terminated. Would you prefer I was eugenicised out of your way?
Sterilisation solves nothing. It does not help druggies quit, it ensures they will never have a reason to quit. It also ensures they will see no need to bother with barrier contraception and will enhance the spread of STDs.
A Libertarian view? How about this one - 'informed consent'. If a surgeon is going to cut you for any reason, he/she must have your informed consent to do so.
If you have been coerced by any form of threat or by bribery, that does not constitute informed consent and the surgeon will be breaking the law if they proceed. Even if you know you will die without the procedure, nobody - including the surgeon - can force you to have it.
If you undertake the procedure because of the intervention of any third party, that does not constitute informed consent.
Either way, once the choice is made it's your choice and you have no business expecting anyone else to pay for it.
How does that sound?
Another great post Leg-Iron, thanks
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