Love and Respect x 2: The Propaganda that More Killing is Better

John West has been all over the media in the last week or so, peddling his book about how he helped his parents kill themselves. He’s trying mightily to convince us that he’s a good and loving son because he didn’t have enough backbone to refuse to be an accessory to willful death - twice.

Or, as he puts it, he helped them kick the bucket because, as he says, “I loved and respected my parents.”

Ergo, helping parents die is what good, loving children do. Especially if they respect their parents. Doing it again is love and respect x 2.

These, and other dangerous pro-death party lines were evident in West’s extensive on-line chat with the Washington Post.

Chilling. Not only in what West said, but in the perceptions of the chatters with whom he engaged. Let me just say that most people in the chat seemed dimly uninformed.

Here’s a chatter on the old stereotype that animals and humans are basically the same:

Anywhere, USA: My poor mother had to be off life support for 10 days before she passed, my dog had to endure a few moments before she was able to go to the big dog park in the sky. I believe I will go to my Vet if I get sick, my dog got better treatment and it was with dignity.

Baroness Warnock would be proud.

Others conjured up the usual (and almost entirely ignorant) nightmares of machines and pain.

And of course, West himself raised the pro-death favorite euphemism comparing people to plants:

My mother . . . had no interest in turning into a vegetable, and so she chose to end her life sooner rather than later.

And, just in case you don’t think the underlying motive in this unspeakable squalor isn’t about reducing people to a cold dollar amount, read this little interchange from the chat:

Springfield, Va.: Your point about medical science keeping us "dying longer" is interesting. . . . I have also heard many times if there was a meter running showing the cost incurred keeping someone alive who is going to die anyway, people would make the decision to suspend medical care much faster. Do you think this is true?

John West: I think it might be true. A "meter" is an objective way to show people the truth of what's going on.

But I digress.

John West can write all the books about killing he wants. Good luck to him as he smarmily enjoys his 15 minutes of fame.

But, let me raise two points:

First, I’d encourage the California Bar to tell us what needs to be done with a lawyer who openly admits to committing crimes.

Second, lawyer West’s feigned ignorance about the LAW in Oregon and Washington, and the death machine that is now most of Europe, is not ignorance at all – it’s holding forth in an authoritative way (he’s a lawyer and author, don’t you know? Must be right, right?) to mislead you.

Here are two examples of West’s outrageous and willful disinformation:

The John West Spin I: 

There's a LOT of legal oversight in Oregon and now Washington State, as in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, where it's currently allowed.

Really? Then how come every year thousands of hospital patients in the Netherlands are euthanized without them ever having requested it, talked about it, or anything else?

The John West Spin II: 

The laws in Oregon (and now Washington State) require 2 physician (sic) to agree that you're facing death from a terminal illness within 6 months, and you're in extreme pain, and that you're mentally competent to make the decision to take life-ending drugs.

Yes, and …… ???? 

That’s only half the story.

Here’s the other half: Once the lethal drugs are prescribed, that’s the end of any oversight at all.

West implies that physicians are there at the end: making it all oh-so-proper and transparent, you see!

Uh-huh.

Nope, assisted suicides in Oregon and Washington can happen anywhere, anytime, away from everyone, assisted by somebody else – anyone else.

Even if that somebody else is after your stuff. Even if that somebody "helps" you take the fatal dose without your asking. Even if that somebody is really tired of taking care of you.

Get the picture?

Makes me wonder, although we’ll never know:

West admits that he was there when his parents died.

How can we know, seeing that there was no oversight, what the circumstances were with Loving John and his parents shuttered away behind closed doors?

Twice.

The Real Agenda: Propagandizing Death for All

Well, the Propaganda of the Deed around assisted suicide begins to rear its ugly head in the US.

The latest is a loving son who’s written a book about how he loved his parents to death. He’s doing the talk show circuit.

Help kill my parents. Write a book. Gush (in a solemn kind of way) about how my dead parents are in heaven saying “What a good boy you were, to kill us off.”

More of John West early next week.

First, a primer on what’s really going on here in the assisted suicide assault on our culture: The Propaganda of the Deed.

The Propaganda of the Deed, you’ll recall, is a radical activist tool used to persuade people to accept something that is currently completely unacceptable to the larger society.

Here’s how it works:

1. Believe zealously in something that most other people (and the law) think is unacceptable.
   
2. Adopt in-your-face, shocking, and nasty tactics to confront people with the unacceptable idea, belief, or action.
   
3. Command the language of the ensuing debate to define the unacceptable or illegal issue in soft, positive terms.
   
4. Work hard at making the radical issue seem perfectly reasonable, and those who oppose it as completely unreasonable and intolerant.
   
5. Continually attack your opponents by whatever means necessary to keep them permanently on the defensive so that the debate is always to your advantage.
   
6. Make your opponents out to be oppressors, villains, and hysterically insane.
   
7. Introduce even more extreme issues, thereby making your original outlandish idea seem more reasonable.
   

The end result is that as the debate rages, people get familiar and more comfortable with the unacceptable issue. Many become confused about whether the issue is really unacceptable or illegal. At the very least, many think the unacceptable or illegal issue should at least be "discussed." Many join the activist side.

While the radical activists might not immediately win, the Propaganda of the Deed shifts the center of public perception, inevitably, in their favor.

Thas is what the televising of Craig Ewert’s death at Dignitas was all about.

That is what Jack Kevorkian’s CBS-televised murder of Thomas Youk was all about.

That’s what calling for assisted suicide for children in Scotland is all about.

Make the unthinkable thinkable.

Make the thinkable possible.

Make bad good, and good bad.

Make what's illegal legal.

Make killing a beautiful gift.

Make death more attractive than life.

We had better get our act together, before they kill us all.

The Swiss Way Part III: Follow the Cash

Well, I hadn’t planned a Part III about the Swiss death machine Dignitas, but as I suspected, we’re starting to see a trickle of information about the rotten underbelly of the business of killing in the heart of civilized Europe.

It’s the money, stupid……..

On Sunday, London’s Daily Mail reported that nurse Soraya Wernli, who was all for helping people kill themselves, went to work for Dignitas several years ago.

Dignitas bigwig Ludwig Minelli put Nurse Wernli quickly to work sorting out the contents of black plastic bin liners that were cluttering a stairwell.

What she found changed what she thought of Dignitas, it’s claims to dignified dying, and put pay to the whole notion of patients and their loved ones being treated with respect:

Minelli said I should empty the sacks onto a long table - they were huge - and sort through everything. I opened one up and was horrified by what was inside. Mobile phones, handbags, ladies' tights, shoes, spectacles, money, purses, wallets, jewels.

I realised these were possessions which had been left behind by the dead. They had never been returned to family members. Minelli made his patients sign forms saying the possessions were now the property of Dignitas and then sold everything on to pawn and second-hand shops.

I felt disgusted. You see these old photos of people in Nazi death camps sorting through the possessions of those who had been gassed. Well, right then and there, that is how I felt.

Wernli soon realized that Dignitas was, first and foremost, about cold, hard, cash. It was, she said, a 'production line of death concerned only with profits.'

She recalls clashing with Minelli about his deadly production-line. One case that especially irked her was the death of 74-year old Brit Reginald Crew:

Mr. Crew arrived in the morning and was dead just hours later,' she says. 'This was another of my many clashes with Minelli. I argued that it wasn't right that people land at the airport, are ferried to his office, have their requisite half-an-hour with a doctor, get the barbiturates they need and are then sent off to die.

This is the biggest step anyone will ever take. They should at least be allowed to stay overnight, to think about what they are doing. But Minelli would have none of it. He once said to me that if he had his way, he would have vending machines where people could buy barbiturates to end their lives as easily as if they were buying a soft drink or a bar of chocolate. I support assisted suicide - but not the way he went about it.

All well and good, Nurse Wernli, but your assumption is [misguided] compassion.

Minelli’s is money. A simple cash flow issue.

More people dead, more money made.

A win-win:

People want to die.

Minelli charges to help kill them.

They die.

He goes to the bank.

What’s not to like?

The Swiss Way Part II: The Entrepreneurs of Death Making

Dignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide killing machine responsible for hundreds of deaths, is being investigated for profiteering from killing.

Nah. Couldn’t possibly be, right?

After all, this is all about helping people “die with dignity” isn’t it?

I didn't know "dignity" was this expensive.

Seems to me there's nothing too dignified about making money killing. But then again, there are many stories that how they help people die isn’t that dignified either.

Anyway, the Telegraph has reported that until now, Dignitas’ fiscal transparency has been MIA.

We’re obviousy not going to get answers from the families of people who died under Dignitas macabre watch.

There are clues, however. In Part I last week, I commented that the Daily Mail reported that Maxine Coombes scrimped and saved $15,000 to complete the dastardly deed.

Now, I don’t have the details, but 15K is an awful amount of money to hop from the UK to Switzerland, especially if you have a one-way air ticket.

Another clue: The Telegraph reported that one woman paid about $88,000 “10 times its usual fee.”

So we can surmise that the “usual fee” is about $8,800.

For what? The lethal drugs cost pennies. The venues, apparently, aren’t exactly five-star (backseats of cars, dingy, graffiti-covered apartments). I’ll bet the shifty characters carrying out the deed aren’t been paid as highly trained medical or scientific professionals either.

From the Telegraph:

Juerg Vollenweider, state prosecutor in Zurich, said: "We still don't even know what Dignitas does with the 10,000 Francs it is paid (£6,000) or what it is for. If we are kept from taking a look into their accounting, we could see that as selfish motives."

 "But if Dignitas can also be shown to have selfish motives, it could be in a lot of trouble," a legal source said.

According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, the head of Dignitas, Ludwig Minelli, has so far failed to hand over the books, claiming he needs to transfer them from old computer software.

And, by golly, they certainly seem like they’re cutting as many corners as they can.

Read on:

Swiss officials have also investigated allegations that the remains of dead patients were being dumped in lakes after being cremated. Two Dignitas workers were allegedly caught trying to pour the ashes of 20 bodies into Lake Zurich, but a former employee claimed at least 200 people's mortal remains had ended up in the same body of water.

Making money from killing people?

Not exactly new. Fill in the blank.

As I mentioned last week, don’t let’s hope that this will bring about the closing of Dignitas.

Instead, we’ll have calls for “regulation” “accountability,” and transparency.”

That is, calls to ensure death-making is more efficient.

What we won’t have (or at least not very strongly) are calls for ending this madness.

Too much to hope for, I fear.

The Swiss Way Part I: The Dingy Business of Killing People

I’ve detailed in past posts how people, especially from European countries where assisted suicide is illegal, have been flocking to Switzerland to kill themselves. The Swiss killing machine, Dignitas, is the only pro-death Swiss organization that kills foreign visitors.

They want as many people dead as possible, you see. It’s where Dan James and Craig Ewert went to their deaths.

Just for the record, this macabre tourism happens enough that it even has a name – “euthotourism.” 

Sidebar: A sharp entrepreneur is proposing a travel/death package for Kenyans to Switzerland, all inclusive!!

Nice.

However, “dignity” is not exactly what people have been finding among the Alps and the cuckoo clocks.

Read on.

A little over a year ago, Maxine Coombes decided the extent of her motor neuron disease meant it was time to die. She scrimped and saved the $15,000 for her final trip and travelled to Dignitas accompanied by her sister and her son, Paul Clifford.

Returning to the UK after Coombes’ death, Clifford didn’t see what happened next as dignified at all.

London’s Daily Mail reported what Clifford found. He

said the family had had a “terrible” experience and likened the flat where his mother died to a “backstreet abortion place” with graffiti-covered walls.

To add to his shock, when [Paul’s mother] raised concerns that her son might struggle to cope with her death, a member of staff said he, too, could die at a “cut price” rate.

“When we arrived at the place it was a block of flats, with a buzzer marked Dignitas but there was no answer. We were standing there for about three-quarters of an hour until a man arrived wearing a leather jacket with a sports bag over his shoulder, a dirty blue Tshirt, jeans with the knees cut out and smoking a roll-up [joint]. There was paint and graffiti on the walls outside, and the same on the door to the apartment. Inside there was a coffee table, four chairs around it, a bench, and a little washbasin.

After Coombes died, Paul described his interaction with the Dignitas representatives:

“He wanted us to go out of the room while he checked she was dead. We had to sit on a flight of stairs which stank of urine. We went back in but two police officers, the state prosecutor and two staff and a medical examiner arrived. We were asked loads of questions, with my mum still slumped there . . . in her wheelchair. We were there for at least two and a half hours.

During the questioning, Mr Clifford said, [a Dignitas assistant] rolled a cigarette while a female member of staff with a red “punkrock” hairstyle took her dog out for a walk.

After the police were “satisfied” with their answers, the pair had to leave again. When they were let back in to spend a few minutes with his mother’s corpse, they found her on a bench “going blue”, covered in a “dirty blanket like half a curtain”, with “her clothes chucked on the floor”.

The banal casualness of death.

Dirty, stinky, routine.

Unremarkable. Cold.

Just like brushing your teeth: A necessary waste of time.

Here’s the kicker: This nightmare will hardly engender much shock or outrage, I’m afraid.

Why? Because the spin and pressure will be to pass laws to make places where people kill themselves nice and comfy, clean, and warm.

Decency and love have disappeared.

Barbarity is cool.

In the UK, Having a Disability Might Make People Want to Kill You

Given the state of affairs in the UK related to futile care, the growing disregard of those who have medical and other disabilities, and the growing popularity of assisted suicide, I must admit I’m a little baffled at the fuss caused by a story in The Times.

The British press was all a-twitter because they got a glimpse of the reality of how the culture of death sees people with disabilities.

I’m shocked that they’re shocked.

Here’s what happened:

59 year-old Barry Baker, a pensioner who could only walk using two canes, called 999 and reported that he was having severe chest pain. He was pretty sure he was having a heart attack.

The emergency operator kept Baker on the line while EMTs were dispatched. By the time they arrived, Baker had collapsed.

One big problem. At least for the two EMTs: The phone line to 999 was still open, the tape rolling.

From The Times:

Two ambulancemen have been arrested by police after they were heard allegedly discussing whether they should bother to resuscitate a disabled man who had collapsed at home and subsequently died. . . . [and] making disparaging comments about the state of the house. . . . They are said to have discussed what to tell ambulance control and decided to say that Mr Baker was already dead when they got there.

I don’t see the problem. What the EMTs did is a perfectly logical outcome of a society that has

• prominent people suggesting those who are ill or disabled should be “put down” (Baroness Warnock);
  
• a prominent Scottish politician calling for legislating assisted suicide for children;
  
• broadcast an assisted suicide on a major TV channel;
  
• public opinion that increasingly thinks that old people or those with severe disabilities should do everyone a favor and kick the bucket; and
  
• a penchant for lionizing families who “did the right thing” by participating in the assisted suicide of a loved one.
  

I’ll bet that the EMTs got a fair dose of futile care theory in their medical training.

I’d bet even further that their profession is riddled with the idea that “quality of life” has to be of the highest order or life’s not worth living - or saving. 

Best bet ‘til last: If you think this doesn’t happen everywhere, on many calls to people with medical and other disabilities, but which slip by because the tape’s not running, then I’m the Queen of England. 

Down Syndrome in Aussie: Get it Early, Get it All

Well, well.

Sibling rivalry in the old Empire has just been raised a notch.

The Brits are hell-bent on assisted suicide show-and-tell. Some Scots are proposing legislation to make available assisted suicide for children. Baroness Warnock charges around the isle hooting about “putting people down.”

Not to be outdone, the Aussies are falling over themselves to do us all a favor and rid their corner of the planet of those pesky people with Down syndrome.

It was the Aussie government, you’ll recall, that refused Dr. Bernard Moeller a permanent residence visa because his son. Lukas, has DS. Those DS kids cost the heath care system lots of money, you know. The powers that be eventually backtracked, but only after a public furor.

I’ll guarantee there won’t be a similar outcry over their latest proposal of eugenic discrimination.

Same syndrome, different tactic.

Problem: Once there are Aussies with DS walking around, they are somewhat protected, even if only by public outrage.

Solution?

Change tactics: Get ‘em really early. 

Sorry, sorry!! I mean the Aussies are proposing a “National Screening Policy for Down Syndrome.”

The get -‘em-early policy is to institute universal in-utero screening  for DS. That way, DS can be destroyed before seeing the light of day.

Think of it. Proposals for an official, legal, government policy to eradicate people who are genetically different.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s 1930s Nazi Germany all over again. Trust me.

The Scots: Let’s Allow Assisted Suicide For CHILDREN

It’s coming thick and fast now, folks.

Killing people, that is, especially in the UK

If you’re going to be an overachieving country, it might as well be in the realm of assisted suicide.

Dan James. Valerie Grosvenor Myer.

And tonight’s Sky Real Lives channel airing of the filmed assisted suicide of Craig Ewert.

Remember, in all these cases, part of the pro-killing argument was that it wasn’t the act of assisted suicide that was bad; it was those pesky laws in the UK that prevented it.

So, aided and abetted by the largely uncritical media, the clarion call came from the seat of the former Empire: We need to change the law.

Not wanting to be seen as retrograde neanderthals to their English cousins, the Scots have stepped in to take the lead.

Scotland’s The Herald reports today that a Scottish MP, Margo MacDonald, is planning to introduce legislation that would legalize assisted suicide for children.

No, I’m not kidding. Wish I were.

Here’s MacDonald’s rationale: In Scotland, when parents divorce, and the children are 12 or older, the court takes into consideration the child’s choice as to which parent they wish to live with. Under some circumstances, the living choice is offered to younger children.

So, goes MacDonald, why not give the same legal status for choices about living or dying?

Get a load of the proposed legislation’s slimy rationale:

The outlined proposal would allow patients with degenerative, irreversible conditions to approach a doctor who would be specially registered to help terminate life at the patient's request.

OK, that’s standard let’s-kill-you-when-you-have-a-bad-disease language.

But, listen to this:

Assisted suicide would also be possible for patients who unexpectedly became incapacitated to an "intolerable" degree, or who simply find their life "intolerable" - although the latter case would require the doctor to seek a second opinion from another health professional.

So, now, if you think any “incapacitation” you have is a drag, or even if you think your life is just yucky, you have a way out. Remember, because we don't want to be too hasty, for this aspect of the legislation you’ll have to find not one, but two doctors who agree you should be done in. (Shouldn’t be difficult with a little doctor-shopping for medicos who share the pro-killing view of the world).

And now, potentially, in Scotland, you don’t even have to wait until you’re legally an adult.

Children have rights too, you know.

The New Reality TV: Assisted Suicide is "Love"

Well Jack Kervorkian must be proud, as must the 58% of Washingtonians that celebrated their win in making assisted suicide legal in their state barely a month ago.

You’ll recall that Kervorkian started a trend in making suicide a living room experience when he filmed killing Thomas Youk in 1998, and paraded the grisly deed on CBS’ 60 Minutes a few weeks later.

It’s baaack!!

Britain’s newspapers are all abuzz today over the planned screening on the Sky Real Lives channel tomorrow night of the documentary Right To Die - The Suicide Tourist, which shows, in part, the assisted suicide of 59 year-old Craig Ewert.

Ewert, from Britain, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease a while back and given a few years to live. The disease progressed fairly quickly to where he was confined to a wheelchair. 

(Sidebar, my good friend in South Africa, Tony, who also has motor neuron disease, and is in much worse shape than Ewert was, has a vastly different opinion than Ewert).

No worries, mate, Switzerland’s Dignitas can help. For a £3000 fee, of course.

Ewert made the decision to end his life before he was in a position where he couldn’t kill himself. As he put it:

Once I become completely paralysed then I am nothing more than a living tomb that takes in nutrients through a tube in the stomach - it's painful. . . . Let's face it, when you're completely paralysed and cannot talk how do you let somebody know you are suffering?

To avoid this difficult situation, he travelled to Switzerland accompanied by his wife.  (Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain). The documentary shows Ewert, his wife at his side, drinking a fatal dose of drugs and using his lips to press the button (helpfully held to his lips by his loving wife) that stopped his ventilator.

He was dead in less than an hour. Just ike that.

Two points among many, if I may:

One: All the buzz is about Ewert’s suicide on TV, there, for all to see, rather than the act of suicide itself, which the British media regularly, and fawningly, presents as a perfectly reasonable thing for people to do. Methinks they protesteth too much.

Two: As with the Dan James case a few weeks ago (courtesy of the same diligent, deadly, Dignitas) the spin of the media is this:

What a shame that this poor man had to kill himself so far from his home and the comfort of his surroundings, without his whole loving family by his side to hold his hand and hug him as he slipped away from his pain and torment. What kind of barbaric society is Britain that it still has laws outlawing this ultimate act of loving sacrifice?

Bad, bad, naughty law. Needs to be changed.

OK, maybe it’s just me, but we’ve obviously moved to seeing assisted suicide as a good thing, and laws and people that oppose it as those nasty intolerants.

Interesting, very interesting.

The UN Advocates for the Disabled, The US Should Do The Same

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities celebrating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Convention and its Optional Protocol were adopted in late 2006 as a treaty whose provisions are considered binding on the member countries who sign it.

The Convention recognizes the plight of the world’s 650 million people with disabilities and is designed to level the playing field so that they, irrespective of their geographical location, might take their rightful place in mainstream society.

So far, 136 of the world’s 192 countries have signed on.

It would be nice if the US signed on—soon.

Why the US hasn’t signed on is pretty much a mystery to most people, especially because the Convention was partially inspired by the Americans with Disabilities Act and complements ADA quite well.

In the developed world, social and legal recognition of people with disabilities is far advanced.

Even so, major blind spots abound.            

One: In the two-year run-up to last month’s US elections, people with disabilities were deeply frustrated that they, the largest minority group in the country, were ignored on the national stage. Ironically, when Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, the mother and aunt of children with disabilities, finally broke the national silence, her advocacy potential was quickly overwhelmed by partisan astonishment that someone other than a Democrat had the temerity to acknowledge people with disabilities. Hence, a potentiality powerful moment of behalf of disability issues was wasted.

Two: Other less visible, but no less important problems for people with disabilities exist. In-utero genetic testing already detects scores of anomalies that result in some form of disability discrimination. Given powerful social pressures for conformity and perfection, many pregnancies revealing genetic irregularity are routinely terminated.

Three: People with disabilities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the growing utilitarian nature of medical care. Facing the reality of a large disconnect between available resources and patients’ expensive treatment needs, people with disabilities are likely to be among the first victims who will be pressured or made to succumb to euthanasia, an idea that is rapidly gaining in acceptance - both here and abroad.

Celebrating the Convention today reaffirms our commitment to fundamental principles of dignity and justice and to ensure that the Convention becomes more than a paper tiger.

Let’s encourage our elected representatives in Congress to consider signing the Convention, not only as an acknowledgement of the needs and rights of Americans with disabilities, but also as an exemplar of US leadership on behalf of the world’s 650 million disabled.

Killing as a Joyful Duty, Part I

The Brits are providing more sympathetic pro-killing stories than many of us can keep up with.

Enter Valerie and Michael Grosvenor Myer, a pretty average couple, apparently.

A chance meeting 52 years ago soon lead to marriage. He became a teacher, and later devoted his energies to being a freelance theatre critic and a folk singer. She, linked to a prominent and wealthy family, engaged in literary pursuits. Valerie and Michael “shared a love of the theatre and literature, particularly Jane Austen and Shakespeare.”

Fast-forward to 1998: Valerie was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Chronically degenerative, to be sure, but not a terminal illness.

Valerie’s health got worse, and she began talking of suicide three or four years ago. She tried several times, including a failed attempt in 2005 that left her comatose.

It was the 2005 episode that helped Valerie and Michael set the stage for her eventual death last year. In 2005, Michael, realizing Valerie was comatose, and not dead as planned, panicked and called for help. Here’s what Michael told London’s Telegraph last Saturday:

One of the paramedics said very meaningfully to me: 'It's as well you phoned us as soon as you could or you might have found yourself on a manslaughter charge'. So he obviously knew what the score was and was giving me a hint to be careful."

So now they knew. The next time Valerie decided to kill herself, Michael couldn’t be around because it’s illegal to aid and abet suicide in the UK.

Since 2005, their stiff British upper lips firmly in place, Valerie and Michael dispassionately talked about what needed to happen when she decided to do herself in.

One of their primary concerns was that Michael not be around when Valerie died.

He wasn’t.

Valerie took the fatal dose, shooed him out of the house as if he was late for work, and off Michael went. To the university library:

So, after a day's work at the library, I had dinner at the university centre. I was reading a very interesting article in The New Yorker about the British political situation. And I was thinking: 'I must tell Valerie about this'. Then I thought: 'You great booby. You will never tell her about anything ever again – if she has managed to do it properly this time.'

I’m not making this up.

Is it just me, or is this a macabre truth that trumps most people’s worst nightmares?

Ever fans of death, the Telegraph called it “poignant story.”

I had a different take: Coldblooded. Chilling. Empty.

Stay tuned for Part II. 

Prediction: Webcam Suicide will Become Part of Pro-Death Spin

According to his sister, 19-year-old Abraham Biggs, despite his bipolar disorder, liked striking up friendly conversations with service people and always looked forward to taking his nieces to Chuck E. Cheese.

Abraham took time off from being a Broward College student last Wednesday.

To kill himself.

Live on the web - death via webcam.

Log on. Adjust the camera. Swallow pills. Lie down.

Die.

Abraham executed himself in front of an audience of thousands, who commented, chat-room style, while it was happening.

Some viewers were skeptical. Others joined in merrily in what they thought was a prank.

A few were perceptive enough to get it, and chimed in, trying to dissuade Abraham from what he was doing. A couple of these viewers finally contacted the site moderator.

The cold eye of the webcam ran live for 12 hours, showing, at the end, police entering the room and finally switching the camera off.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time that suicide via webcam as happened. Some would argue that it’s simply a digital age way of committing suicide in public, just like jumping off a bridge or building.

Hardly the point, is it?

Bipolar disorder is a significant psychological disability. There’s little doubt that it had an impact in Abraham’s suicide. Published excerpts from his suicide note show that he was clearly depressed, feeling helpless, and bereft of personal worth.

Here’s the caution I’d offer based on Abraham’s suicide:

In the Netherlands, people like Abraham don’t need to die alone on webcam. They can go to their doctor and report that their psychological disability means that they have no hope of any kind of future quality of life.

Under Dutch law, they can request assisted suicide or euthanasia. There are few constraints on Dutch physicians if they agree with the patient’s perceptions.

Ask, and you shall receive.

In the Netherlands, I have no doubt that physicians would have judged Abraham a perfect candidate for assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Here’s a prediction: The pro-death lobby will use Abraham’s suicide to show why we need legal assisted suicide and euthanasia in the US. That way, people like Abraham won’t have to die alone, watched by strangers.

If assisted suicide and euthanasia were legal (so they’ll say), Abraham could have committed suicide surrounded by his loved ones, in comfort, and with happy memories as he fades from this earth.

Death with dignity, you see.

Uh-huh.

Speaking out Against the Pressure of Being Required to Die

Well, it didn’t take long in Britain.

It’s already a fact of life in the Netherlands.

Feeling that if you have a disability you should somehow feel guilty for not wanting to do yourself in, that is.

Good for Sue Garner-Jones. We need more people with disabilities like her to speak out, to join her and my friend Tony.

We, and they, need to speak out very, very loudly.

For 34 years, following an accident, Sue has been in a wheelchair, pretty much paralyzed from the neck down with only very limited use of her hands. She receives 24/7 care from her 72 year-old mother.

She’s done pretty well along the way. Sue has a PhD, is a part-time lecturer at Liverpool University, and helps out in her community by tutoring school children in English.

She’d had enough after reading about all the fawning press accounts of the assisted suicide of Daniel James. Dan, you’ll recall, was taken by his parents to Switzerland from England where the Swiss assisted suicide Nazis, Dignitas, were happy to help kill him.

Here’s part of what Sue said:

People make their own decisions about how to live their life. But there’s a lot of talk about bravery and courage for people who were opting out of living their lives. I didn’t like the inverse of that. To call this action ‘brave’, ‘courageous’ and ‘selfless’ implies that those of us who battle on are ‘cowardly’ and ‘selfish’, which is unfair and untrue.

Great point, Sue, but that’s what it’s soon coming to in the formerly glorious seat of Empire.

But it’s hardly news, unfortunately.

In the Netherlands, many elderly people carry identification or wear bracelets that read if I am hospitalized, do not euthanize me or I do not request assisted suicide. Not that it means much. There’s very strong evidence that each year in the Netherlands hundreds of people are snuffed out anyway, even if they have never talked about, considered, or requested assistance in dying.

In a nutshell, many people in the Netherlands feel the seeping pressure to get on with it and die – as a community service, of course. Now it's Britain's turn.

Have a disability? Choose "a loving, dignified, and easy death" – or else.

Can the US be far behind?

If you read this blog, you already know the answer.

In Washington State, The Doctors of Death Await

Well, Washington state’s ballot initiative allowing assisted suicide, I-1000, passed by a wide margin yesterday.

What that means is that we now have two states in the US (Washington and Oregon) that think it’s ok to allow assisted suicide.

First and foremost this will mean, automatically and unequivocally, that people considering suicide now have the imprimatur of the state to be helped in killing themselves.

Don’t worry, advocates say, it’s nothing nefarious, just the state being compassionate towards those who are suffering and who want to maintain their “autonomy” to end their lives at a time of their choosing.

And, of course, don’t worry, there’s no slippery slope.

Sounds almost reasonable.

But here’s what the pro-death crowd don’t want you to know:

This is how things started in the Netherlands – compassion, dignity, and all. No slippery slope? In a very few short years, the Netherlands moved from euthanasia for a very, very few under very specific circumstances, to now being a country where euthanasia and assisted suicide are available for almost everyone for almost any reason.

Many elderly Dutch people now fear being admitted to a hospital, and with good reason: Holland now routinely euthanizes people who never even asked for euthanasia or wanted to die. Many elderly people in the Netherlands feel that their culture of death puts a lot of pressure on them to assume a duty to die - whether they want to or not.

Here’s another thing the pro-death crowd doesn’t want to get out:

In Oregon, there are widespread gaps in accountability. For example:

Records of assisted suicides are officially destroyed annually.

The only accountability in reporting and tracking assisted suicides comes from the very doctors who are complicit in the death-making. 

On this second point, it seems to me that trusting doctors to faithfully report each and every assisted suicide, or where such procedures went wrong or are abused, is tantamount to having required guards at Birkenau to alert their superiors when murdering Jews didn’t proceed too smoothly.

Too harsh?

If you think so, please answer this question:

Why, in the first place, are physicians ever involved in killing people?

Australian Government to Residents with Down Syndrome: Get Out, You Cost Too Much

It’s spreading like wildfire. Every continent, almost every country.

Discrimination against people with Down Syndrome, that is.

If you don’t think we’re back to Useless Eaters, you’re wrong.

Just plain old wrong.

Useless Eaters is the term the Nazis used for people who were in some way disabled and who therefore couldn’t contribute to the economy. If you consume more resources than you can produce, we need to dispose of you. Just an economic decision, that’s all. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that we need to use our finite resources for people who will produce. 

You are using too many of our resources. You are not producing. Goodbye.

Now, eugenic discrimination against people with Down Syndrome is hardly new. We already terminate the vast majority of pregnancies where the genetic disorder is discovered. In that regard, I predict that we’ll soon move on to openly eugenic euthanasia for those who are genetically different and inconveniently alive.

Here’s the latest in Governments Gone Wild:

German-born Dr. Bernard Moeller lives with his family in Australia on a temporary resident visa. He helps reduce the government-acknowledged shortage of physicians. He’s applied for permanent residency.

No can do. Sorry.

Why?

Because his 13-year old son, Lukas, has Down Syndrome.

I kid you not.

Here’s what Australia’s news.com reported:

. . .the Immigration Department has rejected his application for permanent residency because his youngest son, Lukas, 13, does not meet the health requirement.

Health requirement? Not sure what this apparatchik euphemism means?

Here’s what it means:

The Immigration Department wrote to Dr Moeller saying his son had been assessed as a burden on Australian taxpayers and could not be granted permanent residency . . . . A copy of the decision said care for Lukas was "likely to result in significant costs to the Australian community in health care and community services".

Not only is this nakedly eugenic, it’s official, government-sanctioned eugenics.

If you have a disability, you are a burden to the government and to society.

If you have a disability, you are not welcome here.

If you have a disability you cost too much.

If you have a disability go away.

It’s a very short skip from this line of thinking to the Australian versions of Brandenburg, Sonnerstein, Bernburg, Hadamar, Grafeneck, and Hartheim, institutions which cared for people with disabilities and which were turned into the first gas chambers the Nazis ever used.

Australians with disabilities need to be afraid – very afraid. Their government is coming after them using the exact same logic as did the Nazis.

1930s: German useless eaters.

2008: Australian useless eaters.

Coming soon to a country near you.