Abortion, choice, health care, human rights and Wealth Extraction.

Abortion, choice, health care, human rights and Wealth Extraction.

This Earth that supports all life that dies is both beautiful and poignant.

I think the issue has to do with a power struggle. Let me explain why I think this.

I could be wrong. I might be missing something. If one person truly knows something, because they understand it through experience, it is not yet knowledge. When a whole community knows something, because they understand it through experience, they know. Belief is similar. Belief and Knowledge are not the same thing.

For example, I do not believe that war is wrong, I know it is un-necessary harm caused to largely innocent people. That is my opposition to war stance. Such harm cannot be justified. Knowledge.

On a much more personal tip, I know I am a good musician, people tell me this frequently, but somewhere I  believe I am not worthy. I know my belief is a matter of self esteem, and that my knowledge of that fact, and an understanding of how and why I learned the behaviour of  low self esteem helps me attenuate that element of my emotional and psychological character. I know this helps me maintain better health, personally and socially and in my work. 

We know low self esteem is a problem, as is over estimating oneself, as is narcissism, learned in early childhood in adverse circumstances. We know this impacts many, many, many people in our culture. we know this impacts out cultures of Power. 

Childhood is a critical component in determining the behaviour of future adults.

Happily, many people seem to do well enough on that front, Most people are indeed decent, honest, kind and compassionate. People are lovely. That is my bias.

This is not about sex or gender, even though both sex and gender are co-opted by various strands of thinking and rhetoric. It's about power over others. The resolution is power sharing. Simple, and the only way to handle a complex situation, because the action to preserve the gaols of power complicates matters. As we see.

For example war is demonstrably a matter of causing the most harm to force a political objective. This harms people, communities, populations and their shared environment. None of this harm caused to innocent people is ever necessary. Therefore all war is wrong. All of it. Taking sides complicates the public discourse on war. "It's not that simple!" they will claim. It is. Sorry. Complex is not complicated.

Justice is about the processes of detecting abuse, preventing harm, supporting the harmed in their recovery, reducing the prevalence of harmful behaviour. Leading towards peace, rather than a process of punishment. Honesty is it's primary dynamic, or it's not Justice.  

The Power Struggle

The struggle is, on one hand a struggle of power, and one another hand a struggle between personal and collective 'belief' systems and biases over-riding the matter of knowledge. The woman who is pregnant knows. "I do not want to bear this child, I want to abort my foetus." She knows.

It is the willingness of believers, of any kind, to impose their will upon others who make choices that do not accord to the belief, and appear to be breaking the rules of a belief system they do no subscribe to, women who will tell you, if you asked, that they do indeed know what they are doing, and who therefore do not share the belief system. 
Their basis for action is knowledge, the real world that they are, them as persons and their situation, condition, position and prospects.
It is, of course, correct and just for a woman who believes that abortion is 'sinful' and therefore 'wrong', can choose not to arrange an abortion, and choose instead  to continue the pregnancy, to hope to bring the child in utero to full term, birth a healthy baby, and then care for that child for 18 years, and a lifetime. 
I think that every woman who carries a child because she 'feel pregnant' without having chosen to conceive and who carries that child because she believes that abortion is wrong, and sinful, also deserves the fullest possible social and economic support from the community and the state to have the resources to live as a truly supported healthy parent - every child needs and deserves that. An unstressed parent and a community that is good enough, rather than imaginary perfect, supporting the lives of all our children, without fear or favour.
That, for me, is the debt of good enough parenthood as a choice to be made, and it is the supreme responsibility of all parents to meet that debt, and it is the responsibility of the whole community, the population and it's institutions, to support that outcome to the very best of their capability and ability.

Birth Dearth
Another element in the Abortion issue is the concept of 'Birth Dearth' - the idea that White Christian population is not producing enough babies to counter the invasion of non-White folk. To those who believe the ludicrous Biblical concept that White Christian Culture should prevail over all others, Dominion, this is sensed or perceived as an existential threat.

Triggering that dark emotion, existential threat, is a deliberate ploy designed to switch off the forebrain, to derail rational thinking and exacerbate the fight or flight fear dynamic of the target audience.

That the Oligarchy exploit this is blatantly the case - and it drives a confrontational fear based dynamic, which splits the population, and in so doing prevents the kind of humane solidarity that is genuinely Christ-like from emerging as an existential threat to the Wealth Extractor Ruling Class.

Public Health

The public health care provision of medical and social support for women choosing an abortion does not impinge upon the believer's ability to choose to not have an abortion.

Thus the removal of that facility is, as a piece of legislation, an imposition of will, an act of oppression. It removes a woman's right to decide on what she does with her own body, and be supported in making that choice. It appears to be an irrational thing to do other than to articulate power to permit cruelty and indeed, to utilise cruelty as a socio-political weapon.There's the cruelty of the sanction, and there's the cruelty of justifying it, then there's the cruelty of shaming and victim-blaming and gaslighting that goes with it. All political. How does any of that improve Public Health?

What's the Constitution got to do with this?

Then again, given the 13th Amendment, which allows Slavery within Prisons, is pretty much the same thing. All the constitutional arguments about Abortion are a distraction.

Here's some of my reasons why I think so. My reasoning is explained, and reflects my bias :  I try to be as transparent as possible.
What Is known:
a) For quite understandable reasons, unwanted children can sometimes develop in a distorted way, if they feel that they are not fully loved and accepted for who they are  (growing up feeling less than adequately loved and respected and assuming personal  responsibility for that and internalising it, can do that and that can disrupt a persons life trajectory)  through no fault of their own (the child's powerlessness, dependency, needs unmet by the adults who brought them to life, none of that is the child's fault, is it?).

We know that children whose needs are not adequately met by their primary carers are harmed by this.

Childcare

"There are things that happen in a child's life that ought not happen, and things that ought to happen, do not.'

School Shootings, for example. Warfare. Poverty. Trafficking. Slavery. Mistrust and punishment by adults, approved of and justified by a cultural belief. The harm caused and the child's pain, terror confusion and sadness is merely collateral damage to the objective of exploitation. 

Cycles of behaviour maketh a culture.

It is easy to understand that a harmed child's behaviour can become distorted by that turn of events we have plenty evidence in the real world of this inequitable culture - there are already, across the USA, and in every country, a multitude of unwanted children, abandoned children, wounded children, a victimised demographic that has no voice, set on a very difficult trajectory for their lives, through the behaviour of adults. We know that there are generations upon generations of children who have been subjected to this dynamic. 

We know that many times, where a child is wanted, and yet behaves in ways that the parents belief system restricts, because when the child not share the belief, the parent cannot accept the difference, the parent cannot accept that the child is not there to meet the adults needs, the adults is there to respond to who the child is, and that this failure to meet needs correctly can cause yet more harm. Conversion Therapy.

Parental punishment to impose a belief or coerce behaviour to align with the belief system is toxic.
b) We know that coercion ruins healthy relationships.
c) Every woman who falls pregnant is a sovereign, autonomous, free human being. She has many things to consider, matters of interdependence, family, social conditions, that make her part of a wider community, because we all live within communities, and she will KNOW whether or not she wants to bear the child.
d) There is therefore no need to withdraw the right of women to make that choice, and to have facility to do so, with best possible health care easily accessible. No matter what the socio-economic status and condition of that woman's life is.
e) Believers can reject abortion for themselves, and the women that know what they are doing when choosing an abortion can avail of an attentive health care service, to meet their needs, as is their human right.
f) These are the basic issues here. The rest is all Cultural and Religious padding, and is irrelevant, really. 
The issue as why one's belief is such and such, is fascinating, and irrelevant to the matter of human rights and health care choices.
g) It is NOT a knowledge base that can compare to the knowledge base of the pregnant woman who really does not want to bear that child, for whatever reason. That woman KNOWS.
h) Roe vs Wade did not impede any woman who believed abortion is wrong for them to undertake, to take that course of action, and bear the child, irrespective of circumstances and social conditions. Thus the Believers rights were in no way impinged.
i) Therefore this is a direct act of power to allow states to impose a belief based restriction as a criminal offence, criminalising everyone associated with the process of abortion as health care provision.
j) The reason the Courts have provided to have Roe is Wade over-ruled and thus repealed are political considerations, not human considerations. 

Less than a Jury of one's peers!
Someone is using Institutional powers to impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. 
Nine old farts, less than a jury of one's peers. And none of those old farts sitting be-robed upon those benches, are any ordinary person's peers. Not by any measure.They are not elected officials, either, so their commitment to genuine democracy is questionable. 
Democracy, if it is healthy, will detect the adverse, malign and harmful, be it intentional or accidental,  in it's consideration and administration of legal and economic processes and correct any errors, to avoid avoidable harm by creating legislation bearing on the subject in hand.

This action by the USCC is not healthy democracy in action, by any stretch of the imagination.
It is one section of society imposing it's will upon another.

Solidarity.
The pattern one can see is that there is a body of power that seeks to generate a divide between ordinary folk, believers and knowers, neighbours and communities, in order to inhibit genuine human solidarity from emerging across all the working peoples of our countries, the kind of solidarity that could challenge the status quo, without resource to violence, if indeed that solidarity emerged robustly.
Which is exactly what is needed for the Earth and the whole species of human beings, and for the biosphere's health. Solidarity  does not mean loss of identity, quite the opposite. Solidarity means diversity, difference integrated and appreciated. 

We are not clones.
The two problems - the abortion/anti-abortion issue, and the abuse of Institutional Power justified by a Wealth Extraction Class, in ways which harm the workers, and their shared environment, from which that wealth is extracted, with the 'belief' that Wealth as a political hegemon is entitled to strip mine this planet to maintain it's dominance - are part of the pattern of belief trumping knowledge.

Discuss : USSC Roe vs Wade Decision - written for corporate privatised adoption services, among other things?

My family are Irish. Have you heard the tale of the Magdalene Laundries? How's that for a business model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland

 "Wash your sins away, hand over the baby, here's the baby, that's $200, thank you.!"
It is a belief. We know and they know that it is toxic. Yet they persist.  That's the core of this pattern.

In Power struggles, gaining power over others is the goal. This is not healthy behaviour. It means lies and secrecy, it means manipulation and coercion, which leads to violence as a tool. Honesty is useful, if we want to confront the minority who abuse Power.

Useful too would be a genuine solidarity as Human Beings, Homo Social Sapiens, people walking this Earth, growing up together, in a shared environment full of interdependent species, our fecund, nurturing Home. Looking after each other, rather than our groups 'interests'.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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COVID is Over, Give Greed a Chance!

COVID is Over, Give Greed a Chance!

I was in my local chip shop, yesterday late afternoon, it's been a while since I splashed out on a bag of chips.
A bag of chips costs me £2.40, which is the same price as 2kg of Organic Potatoes, and so for me to buy chips - eating out - is a rare luxury. Some will say buying Organic is also a luxury. I have eaten Organic food all my adult life, and I deem it an essential element of my approach to food as the first medicine. I do not remember the last time I ate at a restaurant. I cook for myself everyday, using whole foods.  Thus far I have fared well enough, I think. 
It's mostly good luck. Health is. Most of us do not understand exactly how much good health is a matter of luck and circumstance. Ascribing personal responsibility for good luck is also a common error. Survivorship bias is among one of the most common biases.

I know because all of these are errors I make almost every day.
At 63, I can run 2 km without collapsing, I sleep 6 hours most nights, my cholesterol is 5.1, (recent blood test) and apart from genetic gum disease and loss of teeth exacerbated by 40 years of smoking (I have stopped smoking this past year, and feel so much the better for it) and neglect due to an irrational terror of dentistry, and the teeth grinding, a symptom of cPTSD from childhood and adult trauma, I appear to be in robust health.   'Appear' being the descriptive word.

I have not been to a doctor in 40 years, for any kind of detailed check up. I do not know what lurks within this battered body and mind in terms of chronic disease.
I feel the aging process, and I think am comfortable with it, (that said, I am thinking of getting rid of all mirrors in my home... lol!) and I can see into a future with more frailty. That's the nature of life. We grow, and we grow older, if we live long enough, we become decrepit. I'm well aware that I am very, very lucky. So far.

Health, Luck and Circumstance

There are millions of people who are not so lucky, who live with chronic disease, which they suffer through no fault of their own. Millions of people, active, working people, live with a vulnerability and an endurance and grace the fit are largely unaware of. Ableism is the conceit that anyone with a disability is somehow inferior, that they are lessor human beings, rather than simply unlucky in health. Ableism is also the un-realisation that some chronic disease states are almost invisible. There are a myriad of factors that determine a persons life health chances, many of which are determined even before that person is born.

So like I say, I know I am very lucky indeed. The fit are more lucky than actively fit.

Johnson and his sponsors are about to change all that. Again.  
So there I was, buying a good sized paper cone of chips, (my chippie is generous with his portions) splashing out on a luxury, and whilst exchanging pleasantries, my Chippie Man was explaining his plan to move the business to a site opposite the local train station, a process that had been delayed by successive COVID surges. 
He told me he hopes he will gain more passing trade. I have been buying chips from his shop, and from the previous owner, for 19 years. Their chips have remained the best standard throughout. I love those chips. He deserves more trade. He's also a really nice person.
He told me "COVID is over now, it's all going back to normal! I'm really happy about that."
"Hmmm..." I said as I handed over my payment, in change, in 5p coins. I am digging into my reserves for this luxury.
I suggested he might want to rethink that. "The Pandemic is not over." I said. "The virus is still circulating."
He was having none of it. He rejected my assertion. "It's in the papers! Covid is over. They are lifting all the restrictions."
I responded by asserting that Johnson was a liar, and a real danger to all of us, and that he could not be trusted. He accepted the liar allegation, (everybody does now, apart from other liars) but he did not my Covid risk assessment. 

Arrogant Repetitive Reckless Serial Endangerment .
He was not angry, nor was I. He smiled, I smiled. 
I said to him "I look to the epidemiologists and virologists, rather than the politicians or news papers." 
He smiled back at, me, shook his head and repeated "It's over. We'll be fine."
Hope springs eternal, and flows more easily through knowledge gaps exploited by News Media and Politicians working for Oligarchs whose Wealth Extraction Cult dominates our lives. 
Of course, I said none of this. Indeed that through did not occur to me until I was down the street a bit, munching on the slightly cooled, salted chips on top. That's when I started thinking about writing this piece.

My chippie is a hard working guy, looking after his small business, his family and he's not greedy. He's a good person. One of many, many millions. The vast majority of people are indeed good people.

Johnson is not a good person.
The UK Government - The Johnson Regime - is going to end the legal requirement for Covid positive tested citizens to self isolate, and that will also allow them to end payments for those who test positive, payments designed to support them self-isolating, as a way to reduce transmission of the virus. 

Savige Javid, a CDO salesman at the heart of the fraud of the 2008 crash, is criminally insane, and he's working for JP Morgan, and their agenda.

Criminally insane! Reckless Endangerment

It's not about saving money, it's about their hatred of giving ordinary people 'money for nothing'. That game is for the wealthy and their cronies. Well, it's money for connections, rather than nothing. Those connections are part of their currency of power and influence.

Someone asked, if we were back in 2020, and knowing what we know now what we have done differently?

I replied we would have removed the governments that ignored the epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists, public health experts as soon as they showed any signs of ignoring the science and gaslighting the population or enabling profiteering.

We would have chased down misinformation generators, and imprisoned them for attempted manslaughter
All of which still needs to be done.
The Johnson Regime, with Health Secretary Savige Javid (lately of JP Morgan) in political control of our NHS, and our National Health Policy, are going to end free test availability, be they Lateral Flow or PCR tests. Austerity was always a punishment strategy. Universal Credit : Sanctions, removing funding. Making the claimants scream! Making low paid work seem more attractive by maintaining or escalating poverty levels.

Circumstance 
This new strategy of ignoring COVID, of removing support for self isolation, ceasing free availability of tests, and mandating full return to offices etc, is something that will impact most heavily upon those on the lowest incomes, the minimum wage and just above it - hospitality staff, shop assistants, care workers, prison officers, teaching assistants and many others whose work brings them face to face with lots of people, many of them clinically vulnerable, on a daily basis. 
Low income workers who will be forced to pay out of their already meagre and shrinking budgets to assess their own risk in order to act as responsible citizens. Some may well decide to take the risk. We know that lack of economic support - lowest sick pay rates in Europe - has undermined suppression of the community transmission of the virus. 

One cannot see what one does not measure.
The reduction in testing will of course lead to a reduction in the numbers of confirmed cases, but it will not reduce the numbers of cases.  As noted by Trump and John Hopkins University, albeit it different contexts, less testing means less numbers of confirmed cases - but it does not mean less cases.
The reduction in PCR testing will diminish the UK's world beating genome sequencing, and we will begin to go blind to the virus and it's variants. What we don't know could well kill us, harm us, expose us to life long chronic disease. 
And with regards SARSCOV2, what doesn't kill us quite evidently does not make us stronger.
This Johnson Regime policy is head in the sand, arse in the air: see no virus, hear no virus, virus is not happening. Pretend it is not happening. World beating denial. There were no parties.  Well there were parties, but I was not there. OK, I was there but all guidelines were followed. Russia is on the cusp of an invasion. Brexit is working. 
This is called living with the lying bastards. This is a world beating strategy. Tony Blair, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell. Liars that rule the world. Giving the world a beating.

In the most simple terms, the Johnson Regime is intent on ignoring the virus, letting the little people take it on the chin. We, the impotent plebs - oh  my, how we are understanding our impotence in ways we never expected to or wanted to know - you and I and our elderly relatives, our vulnerable neighbours, everyone in our communities, we must take it on the chin.
Protect the Hoard, let the Herd take it on the chin. 
The last two years has shown quite clearly that the poorer members of 'the herd' which  includes people who are disabled, people from ethnic minorities, low income citizens and the clinically vulnerable have taken the most on our chins, with devastating harms inflicted upon these more vulnerable parts of our population.

This report is just one of a number detailing how ethnic minorities have fared worse than others throughout this pandemic.
https://www.keele.ac.uk/about/news/2022/february/keele-comment/covid-poverty-ethnic-minorities.php

"Ethnic minority groups have suffered the highest risk of COVID mortality in the UK, according to the latest official figures. In the first wave (before the vaccine roll-out), the risk of death was highest for those with a black African background. During the second and third waves, it was consistently highest among those with Bangladeshi origins.
Those high levels of risk are partly to do with where people live and how they earn a living. Members of ethnic minorities tend to work in sectors which require face-to-face contact such as social care, retail and transport. They are also more likely to live in places where it is difficult to practice social distancing."

"Our research into rates of ethnic poverty (systemic poverty within an ethnic group) found levels before COVID of 50% for Bangladeshis, 47% for Pakistanis and 40% for black people, compared with 19% for white British people. Our work also supports fears that the pandemic risks making things even worse if action isn’t taken to reverse its effects.
For example, reports suggest that while ethnic minorities had higher unemployment rates before the pandemic, they then suffered a higher proportion of job loses during it. Rates of ethnic unemployment in the period from October to December 2019 were 4.5% for Bangladeshis, 7.7% for Pakistanis and 8.7% for black people, compared with 3.4% for white British. A year later, after almost a year of COVID, those rates went up respectively to 6.4%, 9.8%, 14% and 4.5%."
It is important to note that while the impacts of pandemic mismanagement and poverty impact ethnic minorities are as described, the mismanagement has caused immense harm to the ethnic majority as well. Nobody is safe under the Johnson Regime.

This article from December 2020 by a human rights advocacy group looks at the failures of the Johnson Regime in terms of protecting the populations right to health which, as it happens, is the legal duty of the Government.

"The UK’s response to COVID-19 has been widely criticized by scientists and the public. According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring initiative, the excess mortality that may be attributable to COVID-19 in England is one of the highest in Europe, second only to Spain.

"In this article, we observe the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify some issues that have emerged in such exceptional times. We argue that the right to health as enacted today is not sufficient to address these issues. The current international human rights framework is robust, but states’ obligations should be clarified so they can be adapted to public health measures in times of pandemic. At the same time, international public health documents to prepare for pandemics are not sufficient on their own to protect the right to health of everyone. We offer some recommendations to that effect.
Writing about issues as we witness them allows us to construct reliable historic memory. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths that could have been avoided had we been better prepared with strong rights-based provisions. These are essential lessons to be learned, and the human rights community has a crucial role to play to ensure that future responses to pandemics are grounded in human rights law."

The People's Covid Inquiry laid out in greater detail the legislation on protecting the populations right to health, and how this Government has failed to uphold the law, and in some cases transgressed laws, including committing the offence of Misconduct in Public Office in relation to protecting the populations right to health.
Risk and Vulnerability.
Poverty aside, there are 11 million people in the UK living with chronic disease, 6 million of whom have two or more conditions - these people are clinically vulnerable. Many of these people are part of the working population.

There are are 1.3 million  clinically vulnerable children.
A similar number of adults are now enduring Long Covid. We do not yet know or understand the long term implications of their condition.
Is this Government embarking on a strategy towards total population infection?

Are they assuming that the vaccines will keep the harms below the radar of public awareness?

Are they anticipating that the deaths of the vulnerable will reduce pension costs? Is that potential saving of any real economic significance? Or is it just spite?

Are they hoping that the apparently healthy survivors will retain some kind of immunity?

Are they planning that the cases of Long Covid will be excluded from Insurance under pre-existing condition clauses?

Is the strategy of failing to control transmission of the virus congruent with the plan to proceed with privatisation of the NHS and steady withdrawal of state funded and operated social care as laid out by various Free Market think tanks and writers?

As things stand all state funded and operated services are being unreasonably stressed, staff are facing burn-out, staff retention is at record low levels - ripe for take over by private capital to 'solve the problems of socialistic state inefficiency'.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions' - pushing back at cunning linguists.

 A letter to various Editors of News Papers and others. Concerning the use of bad language within the context of policy decisions in the middle of a global pandemic. A gentle nudge of sorts.


Dear Editor,

After 20 months of Pandemic,  I have had enough of a certain, deliberate linguistic inaccuracy.

Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions'.  They are measures designed to protect Public Health, a fundamental moral and legal duty of care of every decent Government.

'Restrictions' is an emotive word trap. It engenders an emotional reaction to resist being restricted. It is a wholly inappropriate term to use under the current conditions.

There are some cunning linguists in positions of Public and Civil Authority, and in the Press and News Media and elsewhere.

We must outwit them. To protect the Public Health.

Yours sincerely,

Corneilius Crowley

London

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

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https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

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