babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Disability
March 13, 2011 - 7:03am
------------->
NH GOP State Congressman Says Disabled and Mentally Ill Are ‘Defective People’ And Should Be Shipped To Siberia
excerpt:
A community health program manager got a surprise when she e-mailed her NH State Congressman recently to ask him about why he had voted to cut money from mental health programs. The Senator told her that society would be better without disabled people, and he wishes he could ship disabled people to Siberia.
comment:
I've been hearing disabled since birth, and have been living on a disability allowance since 2002 after my hearing declined further. I thought these kind of attitudes that the Senator espouses had disappeared long ago.
(shouldn't there be a permanent forum or subheading in "Body and Soul" for disability issues?)
The story made the HuffPost as well.
From the link:
What hateful bullshit! And advocating the deliberate killing of people? This is now okay I suppose? Fuck.
Thanks for bringing this to the attention of babble, Boom Boom.
It's a disgusting sign of the times that someone in a leadership position with this kind of attitude can feel open to spout such hatred and ableist crap and not fear any political or personal repercussions. Shameful.
I guess once you've fought in a war you get to say all sorts of fucked-up shit and people will excuse it because of your "service to the country". Soldier privilege?
Although, Harty should be careful what he wishes for. He may just find himself on the first ship to Siberia.
Lawmaker advocates eugenics
I think the greatest responsibility for this mess lies with the man's Party and the voters for putting him in a position of responsibility like that.
Of course what he said was wrong and messed up, and my guess is he would have probably expressed a similar sentiment, perhaps more cautiously, even if he was in his right mind. But if he is suffering confusion and memory loss the man is clearly being affected by a disability himself (as Freedom 55 said, above).
And the fact that he tried to pass it off as a joke suggests to me that he doesn't really care too much about taking responsibility for his words even when he isn't on the spot and has time to reflect.
But as for him having the right to say whatever he wants? I suppose he has as much right as an infant who doesn't know any better, but if Harty's colleague means that everything that comes out of his mouth should be respected and off-limits to criticism, that is nonsense. At least he acknowledged that the comments were completely inappropriate, and doubly so given the responsibility of the office he holds.
The Republican stance towards disabled people is inconsistent, and kind of weird.
The brain damage that occurs in dementia manifests early on as a disinhibition, resulting in the person making inappropriate comments. Despite its purported "bootstrap" mentality, however, the GOP has a long-standing history of overlooking, accommodating, and attempting to conceal dementia in persons in positions of power.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/15/us-usa-reagan-alzheimers-idUSTRE70E0ET20110115
At the same time, vicious rhetoric directed against disabled people who happen to be Democrats is not censured, and therefore tacitly condoned.
http://www.observer.com/node/48824
Advocating killing people is not a "right" that anybody has. In fact, it's against the law.
@ Maysie
To clarify.... I was making a facetious "benefit of the doubt" statement in response to the other representative's excuse.
Seriously, I think people who have no sense of right and wrong (infants and those who are not in their right minds) can't be held responsible for their actions and so long as they don't actually pose a danger probably shouldn't be sedated or muzzled to prevent them from saying objectionable (and even murderous) things.
Of course in this case (since we are talking about someone who holds public office, and whom I expect has not been diagnosed) it's kind of complicated. And I would suspect there is a little more than dementia going on here. I am sure the congressman has occasions when he has enough sense that he could take responsibility if he wanted to.
And as I said, I am sure he has a big circle of friends and colleagues who bear some resopnsibility for this too.
Speaking the Nazi references, a good friend of mine told me a relevant story about her grandfather.
He had been sent to the front (as a death sentence, presumably) in the First World War because he was a communist. In fact, he was injured and captured, and sat out the war in a prison camp.
During the second world war, he regularly walked around town yelling "Fuck Hitler" and "Fuck the Nazis". I am sure he was just lucky to be in the town he was, or he would have been sent to a camp or just shot. But for some strange reason everyone left him alone because they just assumed he was out of his mind, and he survived.
From: unionleader.com
Rep. Martin Harty, a Barrington Republican, has resigned after he drew fire for remarks on mental illness and population control.
What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide? 1998
Battin, the co-author of this paper, is not a physician. She's written a number of essays focused on "the right to die." In Nazi Germany, the selective health care system referred to witholding medical care and even murder of the aged and "useless eaters" as mercy killings. But whether or not the US-based Hasting Center is leading themselves down the road to legalizing mass murder or just pushing for personal rights to European style euthanasia, they do have something in common with European fascists of the 1930s and 40s. And it's that they consider public health care needs to be open to interpretation by bureaucrats and politicians - and that saving on health care costs at the expense of human life should be included in efficiency measures when trimming public expenses. In the end the US health care system is deciding which hospitalized Americans have lives worth living and not. Yes, they've been doing it for a long time already to a certain degree. And conservatives and fascists alike tend to use utilitarian arguments to justify their administrative decisions. It's about dollars and cents as far as all of them are concerned.
Can any Toronto Babblers provide more detail on the attacks in Toronto?
Adolescents in military families are often burdened by additional emotional stress when a parent is deployed to Afghanistan, according to a new Canadian study.
University of New Brunswick researchers released a study on Thursday that examined students at Oromocto High School, near Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, who recently had a parent serving in the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.
The UNB researchers reported the teens worried their parents would not return home or would come back "different."
And that stress caused concerns at home. The young people felt a sense of responsibility for the emotional stability of their other parent and for any younger siblings at home.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/03/24/nb-military-family-stress-1127.html
Unlike other disability issues, there's a very simple solution to end the emotional stress in those families, Caissa.
Alas, I don't think that sort of prevention will take place in the near future, Maysie.
I'm a macro-thinker. And macro-dreamer apparently.
The answer my friend...
For a minute I was expecting Dylan
Any chance of a Disability Forum or sub-forum?
As much as the topic is near and dear to my heart, I wonder how much use it would get. Have we had a lot of threads that would easily fit into such a space, Boom Boom?
No, but I could fill them up quickly, all on my lonesome.
(shouldn't there be a permanent forum or subheading in "Body and Soul" for disability issues?)
OK, but you and I would probably be the only ones who would post in it regularly. It would probably end up being a very stagnent place, like the other Anti opression forums on Babble.
I might.
That's three so far.
I'd be interested.
I think that's a great idea.
Rep. Martin Harty, a Barrington Republican, has resigned after he drew fire for remarks on mental illness and population control.
Good, but I would imagine that a lot of North Americans support his position.
The power elite hates us. We consume but a lot of us can't contibute to the capitalist system in any resonably efficiant way. If you can't make a lot of widgets or buy a lot of widgets your of no use to the money men who run the world, and they break your balls. The situation changes of course if you are the disabed child of a power broker, but how many of us can claim that privilage?
Hang on, that's dumb. The capitalist system can mistreat those who produce efficiantly.:o
Talking about disabilities might be useful, as well as resources, such as: Persons with disabilities , with an aim to improving these.
Solar-powered hearing aids invented
excerpt:
He said inventions like the solar-powered hearing aid could make a big difference in Africa. Experts estimate two-thirds of the 250 million people worldwide who have a hearing disability live in poor countries.
The solar-powered device was designed by Andrew Carr, a mechanical engineer in Cambridge, who noticed most hearing aids donated to Africa don't help because they treat a different type of hearing loss more prevalent in the West. The hearing aid Carr developed must be held close to the ear to work, but doesn't have to be worn inside.
Carr's device has an internal solar-powered battery and can be looped into a necklace or attached to a hat so it's next to the person's ear.
Too bad they would never work in Canada.