Natural Child, Natural Society

Bears, Women and Men : internalisation of cultural values, development of affective state self-regulation.

A Bear in the Woods.....

Image by Erik Mandre via Shutterstock

Historically, for the major part of the existence of Homo sapiens, the people who lived in forests and woodlands were largely formed of egalitarian cultures.

The peoples that lived in forests knew and understood bears because they had lived together for many tens of thousands of years. The bears knew them. They knew each other well.

In egalitarian cultures rapes are rarer than bear attacks. And bear attacks are exceedingly rare. When they do happen, it is usually due to an accident rather than a deliberate intentional common action, a standard behavioural pattern.

So the issue raised by the bear question is a cultural issue.

No baby is born with a bigotry already in place.

There are no misogyny genes, there are no warrior genes, there are no racism genes, there are no xenophobia genes.

Our behaviour, is this regard, is learned within a cultural context. Hierarchically violent cultures curate bigotries.

We learn to walk, we learn to talk. We are taught to speak. Language is learned. Take an infant born to a mother in one language, and place that infant within another language group, and the child will learn the language of the secondary language group. There is no gene for any specific language.

Our learning of behaviour as we grow up occurs in and is influenced by the culture within which we live.

We internalise the values of the culture in such manner as to feel them as part of our core sense of self, our very identity.

The invisible brain?

I have posted a link to an interesting (quite dense) lecture by Allan Schore on the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of the development of emotional or affective state self regulation, with regards to the potential impacts of living conditions, environment, cultural practice upon these processes.

What goes one in our brains has been invisible, and is now being revealed as technology improves in examining brain development with empirical science tool kits.

There is the matter too of sex brain development, much of which occurs early in gestation, which is highly vulnerable to environmental influences, coming from and through the mother. we now know that brain sex dimorphism is much more complex with a greater range of variables and outcomes which indicate that the trans experience - of sensing oneself as being of the other biological sex - is indeed a natural part of human variability. For now, though, we are addressing the meaning and implications of The Bear Question.

The Bear Question.

The issue then, with regards the Bear Question, for women, is that within the dominant cultural setting on Earth is it stands today 'our lived experience is that many, many men are dangerous to us, and we cannot reliably predict when meeting men which ones are dangerous and which ones are not, in that the majority of men do seem to operate with a sense of entitlement to our bodies as sexual objects to be used, owned, possessed, exploited and discarded as a medium of the Mens Power in this culture and that there is no way to tell in advance as to which adult males are safe and which are not, and the tension of living with that is intolerable, not to mention the actual harms caused....."

And the only people who can change that are the men who call themselves allies of women.

Specifically the genuinely safe men MUST take a stance of confronting the unsafe attitudes that unsafe men hold, within this culture, and that means confronting them directly, robustly and without equivocation. All the time. Until the problem is no longer a problem. It also means confronting every structure of social power that extolls the values of the hierarchy of power, wealth and phenotype.

It is a problem with and of Men who internalise the patriarchal hierarchy cultural values in ways that are a life threatening and life altering problem for Women. Women are correct to point it out.

As a man, I understand the problem is a cultural problem, and I am part of that culture, to the extent that I have and carry any internalisation of the dominant cultural values and then express them in my thinking and my behaviour.

I have a responsibility to confront that culture. To myself, to all women, to all children. Just by being alive and aware of the problem.

It is not about 'me' and I cannot take it personally, even if my confrontation with other men on this is personal, as in one to one.

It is about us, all of us.

Men, women and children.

I was sexually assaulted, brutalised, psychologically abused and mistreated as a child, on a daily basis, and that abuse was mostly perpetrated by adult men. That is my lived experience.

Nuance required.

All our sons: The neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.

Allan Schore gives a detailed lecture on what was known in 2017 about the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.
His work on the development of emotional self regulation, on the development of the systems within the brain that handle emotional state self directed management helps us understand that there are dynamics that start in utero, and that continue throughout life, that mediate the ways in which we process and handle our emotional states healthfully or otherwise. The developing brain is extremely sensitive to the environmental condition of the mother.
The nuance here is that each child grows up within a cultural setting, a socio-economic condition, a familial environment where many variables come in to play in the formation of formerly invisible neurobiological processes that underpin our behaviour. When we are looking at behaviour, it is important to take this new information into consideration. This helps avoid stereotyping, categorisation and other dehumanising attitudes so often embedded in discussions of adverse behaviour patterns. We are all human, we were all innocent babies.
In this lecture Allan Schore explores what happens for boys at risk, that is to say boys who for reasons outside their control or responsibility are exposed to trauma, neglect, maternal distress, familial distress in regards the maturation of biological systems undermining emotional development and learned behaviour.
This does not form a basis for absolving adults of accountability for harm causation, and it does offer a way to respond that is more concerned with prevention, health and safety than punishment.
For my purposes I have included this here as an indicator of preventative measures that can be taken, informed by current and developing knowledge of neurobiology and neuroendocrinology, to reduce the incidence of male distress, male psychopathology and male violence as part of the overall work to meet the challenges of the bear question.
A friend responds.
I asked a friend of mine to read over this, and she made these comments, which I publish here with her permission.

“some excellent points and thoughts there.

Reading it reminded me of my other experience yesterday in a charity shop…..found a beautiful Italian leather evening style handbag in a stunning shade of turquoise…

was checking out its suitability for my needs in terms of pockets etc. it looked like it had never been used….I felt something in a pocket and thought it might be a lighter but couldn’t find which pocket it was in and the shape was a bit different so I excitedly thought it might be a small roll of cash

NOPE it was a penknife

I then took it up to the ladies at the till who were shocked and apologetic, I made a comment along the lines of whoever previously owned the bag was like me because that’s the sort of thing I’d feel the need to carry on a night out - the shop assistants and other shoppers then had a open conversation about women having such items in their bags for protection…..age range was about 20-75 years old - we all admitted to having done this, we all also agreed knife crime and carrying knives was bad.”

This anecdote, as I wrote previously was provided by a good friend of mine, a woman I respect and admire every much as a friend and fellow humane being, who describes herself as a “handbag granny : as I am a fine example of how strong and determined women become after a life time of having to be tough….yeah it would be lovely to have become old and still be floating around without a care in the world having experienced no trauma or hardship but reality isn’t like that and life makes women tough”.

She also wrote this : “I’d say between the ages of 18 and about 45 I’d regularly carry something in my bag that could easily double up as a weapon if needed when I was going somewhere that I didn’t know was 100% safe, so 99% of the time I had a weapon in my bag and at times that would be in my hand if I was walking somewhere dark etc even if that was just a rolled up umbrella or a large set of keys. For women I think this is just instincts now, it’s not even something we think about - we just do it. Even a heavy overloaded handbag swung in the right way can knock a man off his feet, I think a granny recently took out a jewellery store thief in this way…

She posted this link... https://youtu.be/ySBxMMidbEg?si=6czEfjh5Xd9A4FM_

Culture

Have you ever looked back on a moment and wondered if you made the right choice? Professor Robert Sapolsky has, but he believes that there was no actual choice at that moment.

Professor Sapolsky has staked out an extreme stance in the field: we are nothing more than the sum of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment, over which we also had no control. Explore what it looks like to reject the notion of free will and how doing so can be liberating rather than paralyzing and despairing.

However , he points out that the kind of culture into which we are born, and the kind of culture our mothers were born into, which sets the conditions of their lived experience, has profound impacts upon us in utero, impacts that remain largely invisible yet present as behavioural patterns and dynamics. Because culture is the setting that is created by human interaction, there is room for the possibility of change. And that is exactly what this blog is all about.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

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Being anti-Racist without understanding EXACTLY what Racism is, is ineffective and serves to perpetuate Racism as a weapon.

It is easy to be opposed to discrimination and bigotry.

source

Anyone can see the abhorrent cruelty. It’s what we call a ’no brainer’.

It is easy to say that discrimination towards another person because of their skin colour, hair colour, eye colour or any other characteristic is wrong.

It is easy to say that bigotry towards another person because of any naturally occurring variation is wrong, that such hatred is based on a lie.

It is easy to say that hating another person because of their skin colour is insane.

Albeism is abusive. Misogyny is harmful. Misandry is dangerous.

Racism is harmful.

These are all rather obvious considerations for most people.

It is easy to be opposed to Racism in principle.

But that will not end Racism. We see the evidence everywhere.

Combatting Racism is another matter.

Because Racism is a cultural weapon. Misogyny is a cultural weapon.

Dismantling the structures that engender Racism matters, because the way to do this is to be honest about the history of Racism, and to listen to and hear the voices of those whose lived experience is routinely adversely afflicted by structural, cultural and vernacular Racism

One cannot combat and dismantle Racism unless one knows exactly what Racism is.

Racism is a weapon.

Racism is a curated weapon.

Race as a category is a weapon invented by British Plantation owners in the Americas, during the 1640s to 1680s.

There is no such thing as ‘White People’.

The category 'White People' was invented. A discussion.

Race does not exist.

There are no Races. There is only our human species, with myriad naturally occurring variations that only add to the diversity and beauty of Humanity as a species.

The concept of Race is a cultural invention, specific to a historical situation where the invention was designed with intent to cause harm, to counter dissent and to prevent the emerging solidarity of shared humanity developing into an organised political and social material resistance to that harm.

Race was invented to segregate European indentured workers from African indentured workers in the British Colonies of Virginia and Maryland, on the North American continent.

The concept of Race was invented and institutionalised to divide a multi-ethnic working population, to prosecute a class war.

Ethnicity

There are ethnicities, there are faiths, there are language groups, there are heritage lineages, but there are no Races.

We are a single species, all of us equally human, equally vulnerable, equally fallible. We all bleed red.

Modern medicine, genetics and long lived experience proves this assertion.

I would say therefore that those who identify as White Persons, as separate from others, makes of themselves a weapon. Because inventing White as a category was the first step in segregating our species into White and non-White. Segregation asa weapon in the class war.

In the class war.

What is the class war? The class war is the struggle of Extracted Accumulated Wealth as a Political Social and Material Power, a material hierarchy of value and of violence deployed to maintain its dominance of all the population, in order to maintain itself, enhance its extraction and extend its dominance.

In this context, the official use of the category White Person, White Male, White Female, White Child is weaponised. For the purpose of continuing the class war.

There are no White People in the same way that there is no evidence of God, nor is there any evidence of an after life.

One might choose to believe in either, yet that does not establishment them as factual, material realities. To legislate a God or an afterlife would be considered utterly insane. Freedom of Religion is not the same as Theocracy.

Belief or Reality.

One might chose to believe one is a White person, yet that does not establish Whiteness as a fact.

The identity of Whiteness comes with a terrible cost.

It is a lie that perpetuates a war. A class war. The class war. It perpetuates militaristic wars too.

Every time one claims the mantle of Whiteness, one perpetuates the lie, one arms the weapon.

Even if one considers oneself White and anti-Racist, those who claim White Nationalism arm the weapon.

I am Irish by parents, English by birthplace, a citizen of both lands, humane by self definition, a person of Earth.

Speak fluent English, passable Gaelic, stuttering French.

I live in London. I could be considered as an immigrant.

Economic Immigrants.

There are Irish youth who are, once again, immigrating in large numbers, this time due to economic policy rooted in NeoLiberal ideology that makes their lives very difficult. They cannot see a future for themselves in Ireland due in large part to the housing crisis. They fly out in planes, they move about the world freely enough and they are pretty welcomed where ever they go.

There are Libyan, Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani, Sudanese, Eritrean and other international youth immigrating in large numbers due to wars prosecuted in their lands rooted in neoliberal economic ideology travelling as refugees, seeking asylum and looking for a safe land to work in, to build their families lives in safety.

The refugees and asylum seekers all seek safe routes to safety because the lands they flee have been ruined by warfare, warfare with roots traceable back to Western Hegemony. When those safe routes are block, they move through clandestine routes, which are dangerous and liable to failure. Desperation drives them to take the risk.

There are Indian, Pakistani, Kenyan, Nigerian, South African, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese people travelling to study and work in different countries, for a host of very good reasons.

We are all immigrants, archeologically and anthropologically.

I am not 'White'. I reject the category entirely. I refuse to be made a weapon.

I am Human.

We all are.

Racism is a weapon.

Race is a lie.

Facing the Dominator System : Solidarity, Empathy, Partnership - Crafting Egalitarian ways of living well..

Even in the ruins of their homes, in the midst of a Genocide, they prepare and share food in solidarity.
~Solidarity, humane solidarity across every variation of our cultures, our faiths, our economic status, our ethnicities is the path we need to walk, as persons, as peoples, as a species.

Solidarity requires empathy.
How would we feel is that was being done to us?
How would I feel if that was being done to me?

Solidarity in social action requires our best efforts of understanding vulnerability.

Solidarity in political action requires knowledge, rather than belief and effort through daily engagement and involvement.

Solidarity requires we examine what we have internalised of the culture that divides us in order to de-colonise our minds so that we can meet with minimal bias each others needs.

Solidarity requires we make an effort to understand that poverty is a weapon.

Solidarity requires we understand that our comfort must never come at a cost to others.

Solidarity requires we humanise ourselves, it requires that we confront every effort at dehumanising others.
Solidarity requires determination, vision and trust. We must trust ourselves to continue until the work is done. The work of solidarity is worth the effort, even if we fail from time to time.
For me, for some reason, the certainty of health as a reality, as a biological standard, optimal health of a species, or a habitat or a living environment is deeper than any sense of hope I have ever felt. That is where solidarity leads me. I stand in solidarity with life asa nurturant process. How is it for you?

Solidarity requires we self-care and work to reduce our rage to redirect our anger about the needless suffering towards active prevention and repair, and it requires we eschew lateral violence. Stop lashing out at each other in frustration...

Solidarity requires we confront Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Ableism as curated, taught hatreds and we must understand that every form of bigotry that is weaponised to maintain the status quo of the Hierarchy of Wealth. Bigotry is unknown in all infants.

Solidarity requires that we get politically active, well beyond merely voting for choices others have made for us. We must learn the skills of shared deliberation and decision making, shared effort to implement and shared accountability.

Without solidarity across the grass roots, the Mad Bull of Hierarchy will continue to eat us, it will shit on us and we will not be able to turn that shit to compost for future nurturing of our grass roots into healthy landscapes.
And that is our evolutionary function - to nurture the shared commons of life.
Every other organism does so. We are not unique.
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.

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Conflating Freedom of Belief with Free Speech - an epistemological error weaponised as a political strategy

Has it dawned on you?

Crossed lines and beliefs really do matter -

Right, Center, Social. There is no Left.

Conflating Freedom of Belief with Free Speech - an epistemological error weaponised as a political strategy

There's a deliberate long term strategic and tactical conflation of Freedom of Religion (which is freedom to believe whatever..) and Freedom of Speech (which is protection of public political discourse from oppression or censorship by Government or legislation abusing it's power).

Freedom of Religion : you can make up any old shit, and set up a temple, and invite people in, and if they bite the bait, all good and you have tax exemption status.

Free Speech : the legal right and duty to speak truth to Power as part of combatting oppressive and authoritarian Governments,

Right Wing

Most of what is 'Right-wing' is really a matter of belief, the core belief in the might is right ideology. Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, hatred of immigrants as a category, Traditional Values and Hierarchy of Wealth and a sense of superiority.

That is why they are so LOUD!

Center

Most of what is centre is evading the issue of abuse of Power. They are terrified of the Might of the Right, because they understand the danger and they just want to get along. That is why they are so quiet. They never confront the Might is Right head on, they make feeble attempts to regulate minimally the ordinary street level might is righters.

Social

Most of what is Social is confronting abuse of Power. That is why they are so often cancelled, their voices regulated to the sides by the Right and the Center. They want to call it all out, they wish to build social solidarity because they understand that the only way to handle a bully in a crowd is for the crowd to stand in solidarity and say no.

Whiteness is a lie.

British ex-Empire Asset Management (the Establishment we rarely see - symbolised by The Crown which we do see) involvement is a large part of every EU and US 'intervention'. From China to Afghanistan, across Africa South America and the anglophone arena.

Even after WW2, British Commercial Interests retained dominant control of all assets previously held under Empire. They destabilised every former colony that attempted to take back control of local or indigenous assets.

And they succeeded apart from Russia, China, Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.

US UK have been more than mere allies. Anglophone business partners. Not each others puppets. The narrative of puppetry places the blame on the individuals and the Governments of the day, which masks the Asset Management Group both Governments work for, and have always worked for.

Cameron initiated the bombing of Libya.

Johnson barred peace talks in Ukraine.

Blair invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, Sierra Leone.

Every British prime minister since WW2 has operated warfare on behalf of the Asset Management Group, and has done so with the assent of The British Monarch.

There are many countries that pay homage to The Crown. Those countries are not independent.

Anglophone oppression of indigenous people is still very much happening in Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand.

The reason is Asset Management, the tactic is Racist Superiority, the strategic value is control of resources.

Imagine if the indigenous polities were instantly given full rights and they decided no more Industrial extraction of Oil, no more Uranium, Copper, Iron Ore, Lithium Mining, no more Logging, no more Fishing, no more Cattle Ranching and Commodity Crop Agriculture was to be permitted on indigenous lands?

Who would oppose that and why? And how would they go about it?

Internalised Values

There is a difficulty for lots of people born to the anglophone Caucasian European heritage, in that as long as we identify as White, we re-internalise the first step of Racism. We protect the racist asset management system with our identification.

There are no white people, they do not exist.

The very first step of Racism and Supremacy is the definition of White as a category. There are no white people. It is a delusion, an confidence trick, a very dodgy belief.

Repudiating that delusion, that confidence trick, that very dodgy belief within one's own identity construction is an essential part of the work to begin to start to dismantle the Racist Element of the Domination system.

This is essential to the task of building the kind of social political solidarity that can confront the might is right dynamic that is killing people in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and in many other policies, the same dynamic that is refusing to enable action of Climate Disruption to be taken in the way it is needed, the same dynamic the drives misogyny, ableism, xenophobia, anti-trans hatreds...

Right, Center, Social. There is no Left.

I am not left, I am social, I am for social equity and kindness, I am for governance that avoids avoidable harms, I am for a culture that nurtures..

Human Kind by Rutger Bergman - a useful book in these times, an indication of what is possible.

I understand why some people feel like Humanity is the problem. For some reason I have never really felt that in my bones. Even in my darkest moments, and there have been many of those.

I found this book. Human Kind, to be a useful exploration of this.

Donald and many others would disagree, of course.

six fingers to egalitarianism, accidentally, or not?

I also see a lot of memes and content that seems to be designed to exacerbate that feeling, that humanity, all the other people we don't know, are the problems. It is rare that someone will hold that view and include themselves within it. I have never heard someone say I am the problem too. It's almost always someone, if not everyone else.

For a long time. have felt that this feeling is being weaponised to breed despair and nihilism as part of larger efforts to divide us from each as persons..... Cognitive Warfare is the technical term, and I coined the term 'Political Grooming' to apply to this adversarial dynamic in our political and cultural exchanges.

I think the culture, the Dominator Culture, is the problem. To form a culture is part of our 'DNA' only in that we are creative beings, we make things, we learn to do things... wisely or otherwise.

Dominator Culture is not genetic, it is cultural. I host a daily live stream show, where I sing what I call ‘Lovesongs for Egalitarians’, currently hosted by farcebark. Readers can go to the page, and catch the shows, and see and listen to past shows archived therein.

I know that an egalitarian culture is indeed possible.

Human Kind

Product information

Author: Rutger Bregman

Type: Paperback

ISBN: 9781408898956

Date: 13th May, 2021

Publisher: BLOOMSBURY

https://www.dubraybooks.ie/product/humankind-pb-9781408898956

"THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian , Daily Telegraph , New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year 'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind .

You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought.

Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history.

From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature."

egalitarians at home, relaxed.

Thatcher claimed there is no such thing as Society. IEA tries to mitigate that with sophistry.

a useful chart...

This is what I believe to be true, in spite of the claims of others.

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.

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Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform - a brief history.

Me too. UK Government "crackdown on benefits fraud" my arse..

Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform has a history...... read all about it.

BENEFITS REFORM - What price preventable harm: social policies designed to

disregard human need?

Here's a history of the introduction of the system that led to Work Capability Assessments, Benefits Sanctions and so much else along those lines... I have posted here a section, the introduction, to *peak your interest, dear reader.

*(A dear reader pointed out my spelling error, I used the incorrect word. I ought to have used 'pique' - thank you Bernie Hastie on Facebook...)

I offer this in the hope you will read the paper. I'm afraid it will infuriate and inform in equal measure. Knowledge is powerful, because understanding the evidence makes for better decision making, and also assists in firming resistance to ill-informed policy.

This is critically important information and all to often left out of even the liberal press in their ruminations on this subject of 'benefits reforms'.

To tell the truth so that the population can understand what is being done matters.

Reading Mo Stewart's Paper will, I believe, inform and infuriate in equal measure. I know. I have just repeated myself.

It is shameful the 'news media' refuse this rather straight forward task so often.

https://citizen-network.org/uploads/attachment/746/what-price-preventable-harm.pdf

Mo Stewart

The Centre for Welfare Reform, England

Abstract

"Historically, the UK welfare system was designed to protect those in greatest need, which provided the necessary financial and psychological security for the unemployed and especially for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unfit to work.

This paper identifies how social policy reforms based on fiscal priorities have had the opposite effect, creating a crisis for disability benefit claimants. Conducted over a period of ten years, the Preventable Harm Project demonstrates the negative impact of the adoption of American social and labour market policies, and the often fatal human consequences of the removal of medical opinion from disability benefit assessments.

I argue that the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment for the restriction of disability benefit(s) has created preventable harm for those in greatest need, and this article identifies the negative influences impacting on UK social policy reforms to the detriment of the chronically ill and disabled community.

Key words: preventable harm, work capability assessment

Introduction

The past financial and psychological security provided by state financial support for the long-term chronically ill and disabled community was destined to end with the adoption of neoliberal politics, which is an ideology that supports free market competition with an emphasis on minimal state intervention in all aspects of social affairs.

Neoliberal ideology has swept the globe and has impacted on all countries in the Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who are influential in the social policy reforms of all OECD member countries (OECD, 2003; Soldatic & Grover, 2012; Stafford et al, 2019). Margaret Thatcher was the first elected neoliberal politician in the UK and in 1982, during her first term in office as Prime Minister, Thatcher identified her political ambition to remove the UK’s welfare support system, including the National Health Service (NHS), in favour of the adoption of the American welfare system using private health insurance (Travis, 2016).

Every successive neoliberal government since Thatcher adopted social policy reforms to work towards this political ambition. In doing so, the past psychological security provided by the UK welfare state was removed, and every effort was made to ensure that access to state financial support would be made as difficult as possible when moving from a welfare state to a market state.

Commonly known as ‘welfare reforms’ the combination of social policy reforms, together with the adoption of increasingly punitive conditionality using financial sanctions (Dwyer, 2018), increased the prevalence of psychological distress identified within the disabled community (Patrick, 2012). The Preventable Harm Project (the Project) was created to offer a critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area of social policy reforms.

Preventable harm: the creation of a social policy crisis

The Project identified the adoption of a ‘non-medical’ functional assessment model, known as the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which disregards medical opinion when used to assess claimants of disability benefit (Stewart, 2018) .

The WCA was introduced in 2008 to restrict access to the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) disability benefit, by tightening the benefit gateway in order to reduce the costs of the social policy budget (DWP, 2006); as recommended by government commissioned research (Waddell & Aylward, 2005) which was funded by the American corporate sponsors UnumProvident Insurance (Cover, 2004).

Introduced on an exclusive fiscal basis, with a dangerous disregard for health and wellbeing (Barr et al, 2016), this flawed method of assessment guaranteed that disability benefit claimants would learn to live in fear of the WCA (Garthwaite, 2014), which became a matter of life or death for many of those in greatest need.

The use of harsh sanctions by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for often minor misdemeanors associated with the WCA is linked to a disturbing number of chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants attempting suicide (Mills, 2017; Barr et al 2016), and others have starved to death in C21st UK when they were sanctioned with all benefit income removed, identified as being ‘killed by the state’ (Elward, 2016: 30)."

https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58235/1/1351_Shakespeare.pdf - a more detailed paper on the Waddell & Aylward, 2005 model. The devastation that the implementation of the BPS model as interpreted by Waddel and Aylward is an immense unspeakable horror story. Millions of lives have been adversely impacted, just to 'save a few bob'...

In essence the voices of the vulnerable, their interior sense of what they are going through, are key to designing healthy policy. Always ask the locals, they know their territory really well.

Meeting the unmet needs of the vulnerable (we are all vulnerable) is an essential element of healthy policy, in as much healthy policy seeks always to avoid avoidable harms.

I think it is not so much to ask for, when we consider Governance of our society. The improved outcomes for all of us are what I describe as the profit of healthy policy. Rather than wealth extracted from privatisation of health care, we ought to mandate the profit as being the outcomes for the whole population.

Clean water is the profit denied when water utilities refuse to invest, and their negligence leads to raw sewage being free, from the rivers to the sea, as CEOs take their bonus's and the shareholders celebrate with glee.

The Iron Wall - in 1923 leading Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote about the impossibility of a Two State Solution, because he understood the nature of colonialism.

Ze'ev Jacobintsky

The Iron Wall is an essay written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923. It was originally published in Russian, as he was born in Russia as Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky and wrote for the Russian press.^[1]

Written in 1923, by Ze'ev Jacobintsky, in the same year as The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, which was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic.

He wrote the essay after the British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill prohibited Zionist settlement on the east bank of the Jordan River, and formed the Zionist Revisionist party after writing it.^[2]

Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinian Arabs would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that "Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."^[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he argued, would be for Jews to first establish a strong Jewish state, which would eventually prompt the Arabs to "drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is ‘never!’ and pass the leadership to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions."

A week following the publication of this essay, Jabotinsky followed with "The Ethics of the Iron Wall," in which he argued that morality comes before everything else, and that Zionism is "moral and just," since it subscribes to "national self-determination" as a "sacred principle," which Arabs may also enjoy

The Iron Wall.

Full essay

https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf

I recommend my readers to read it, it is a short read, 8 minutes or 10...

In what follows I make my own comments on the meaning of this essays and it's impact upon the shituation in Palestine.

"The Iron Wall

Original in Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923

Colonisation of Palestine

Agreement with Arabs Impossible at present

Zionism Must Go Forward

"It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important point. But this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction, and, moreover, with a personal introduction.

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.

Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference.

Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles.

First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority.

And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme, the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State.

In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews , but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.

This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.

But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means.

For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism."

----

In this last paragraph in this section Jacobintsky lays all the responsibility for any difficulties the Zionists might face squarely upon the Palestinian people and their resistance to being colonised. The Zionists are innocent.

He then states the following.

----

Voluntary Agreement Not Possible

"Voluntary Agreement Not Possible.

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs.

Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists.

I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries.

I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage."

----

Jabotinsky admits that Colonialism always generates a fierce resistance amongst the people who lands are to colonised. We all know that Colonialism is inherently an evil process, a cruel and bloody one.

As he processes into this essay he makes it quite clear what the true stance of Zionism is, all the time seeking to absolve the Zionist project of any culpability.

The phrase 'the most moral army in the world' is drawn from this essay. Read on to see it’s roots, and the soil in which that false flag is planted.

----

Colonisation.

"It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's.

Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

The Iron Wall

We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism."

----

Two State Solution as a strategic weapon of hopeless hope.

The Two State solution was always dead in the water. It was never at the centre of Zionist aspirations, from the get-go, and the aspirations of the Two State Solution promoted to Western Audiences was always a strategic tactic, designed to enable the colonisation to move ahead, protected by Hope. The Hope of The Western audiences.

Zionists, and importantly, the Ruling Class in the West fully understood this strategic tactic and played along, delaying the necessary awakening amongst the western electorates, to buy the Zionists time to 'change the facts on the ground' through mass immigration of Jewish people, and settlement, and then by conquest and occupation, and now by total destruction of Palestinian civil and social and economic and political infrastructure.

---

Jabotisnky proceeds.

Here Jabotinsky sets ups the claim that Zionism is inherently Moral, and that outside forces should back it all the way.

——

The Iron Wall

"Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population.

Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not.

What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate?

Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.

And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.

In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians".

Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British.

We all demand that there should be an iron wall.

Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest.”

Zionism Moral and Just

“Two brief remarks:

In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true: either Zionism is moral and just ,or it is immoral and unjust.

But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality."

----

This then lays out the coffin of Palestinian self determination, the sarcophagus of their human rights, the entombment of their land tenure and polity, the grave that is the erasure of their culture and their peoples from those lands, and ultimately the denial of their natural right to live peacefully on the land they have lived on for thousands of years, long before the advent os Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

The question then becomes how many nails must be used to ensure that the coffin lid is firmly shut, and cannot be re-opened.

The assault on Gaza is one of those nails.

The settlements across the West Bank are another bag of nails.

USUK unconditional support for their pet colonial project is another. That support is strategic in that it is designed to enrage, divide and destabilise the entire Arab polity.

The lack of detailed understanding of the history, the genesis of the so-called Israel -Palestine 'conflict' amongst the voters of the Western Christian Colonial States is another nail.

My task here is to describe those nails, to describe the hammer striking those nails.

The hammer is the collective Euro-Centric commercial interests, operating under the false flag of race superiority. Blair's odious 'clash of civilisations' articulated this in blatant terms, albeit misunderstood by Western audiences, as intended.

Our task as a democratic peace loving population is to ensure our Governments do not facilitate the hammer, that the nails already hammered in are removed, gently and with care, such that the Zionists (and all colonialists and Neo-colonialists) are isolated from our collective legislatures where they wield undue influence and that they are eventually placed where they cannot harm the Palestinian people or any other people, for that matter.

Free Palestine!

Free Western Democracy!

Free us all from the abject, venal and cruel Ruling Class Establishment who have operated the colonial process for centuries.

The two are inextricably linked.