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Category Archives: Our Miserable Death-Loving Culture

Ah, Humanism. It Works So Much Better When There Are Fewer Humans.

You could have seen this coming a mile away, assuming you were standing far enough back from the crematoria:

Mississippi is not alone in the modern debate over the sanctity of life. More than 4,000 miles away, the Netherlands is caught up in its own controversy over a proposal from the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) to expand the definition of who may qualify for assisted suicide — including for the first time such nonmedical factors as loneliness and financial struggles.

“Many older people have various afflictions that are not actually life-threatening but do make them vulnerable,” wrote the KNMG in a ten-year study report published in October.

“Vulnerability stems not only from health problems and the ensuing limitations, but also the measure in which people have social skills, financial resources and a social network.”

Why limit it to the elderly? I know a lot of college students who have no social skills, financial resources, or a social network worth the name. I mean, if Facebook is your only “social network,” then you could argue you have only a virtual quality of life, making 99% of the Occupy folks prime meat for the euthanasia chefs.

Wesley J. Smith, call your office.

 

Strange Herring for Friday, February 25, AD 2011

Why the Oscars telecast will suck for different reasons this year. Like the program didn’t run on and on already, they had to start nominating every film released in the previous calendar year for Best Picture.

Turns out the Mafia has been lying all these years about the corpse-dissolving properties of sulphuric acid. If you can’t trust professional murderers to tell the truth about their craft, I just give up on people.

If any of my readers stole a communal bench from the West Village in New York, would you please put it back? I mean, really. I had such high hopes for you.

In Covent Garden, London, you can now buy ice cream made from, wait for it, breast milk. “No-one’s done anything interesting with ice cream in the last hundred years.” They still haven’t. And I don’t want any new takes on Ben & Jerry’s “Cinnamon Buns.”

Anonymous has taken down Westboro “Baptist” Church’s website. Previous attempts had failed, as computer viruses feared getting coodies.

Finally, Mark Zuckerberg has his own comic book, in which a young antihero steals the idea for a billion-dollar toy only to be hunted down by an unambiguously litigious duo: failed Olympian rowers by day…still failed Olympian rowers by night. Where is R. Crumb when you need him?

More herring during the day @strangeherring.

 

New Yorker Shot with Arrow — Rambo, Robin Hood and 10-Year-Old Smart Aleck Questioned

Five CornersAm I the only one who remembers John Patrick (Doubt) Shanley’s Five Corners?

 

Environmentalist Commissar Says Better More Abortions Than a Cure for Cancer, Still Allowed to Run Loose Without Legal Guardian

earthfirst1The Times of London brings us yet another shot fired from the Brave New World.

The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which [Jonathon] Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2½ acres of old-growth oak woodland — an area the size of Trafalgar Square …

“Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earth and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: ‘You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial,’” he said.

Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion.

And if families refuse to limit the number of children they have to two? How will they be punished? And for those who already have more than two children — should they pay a penalty tax of some kind or perhaps have pressed into service the dispensable children to work on chain gangs cleaning up litter along the sides of highways, wearing orange jumpsuits that read “I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABORTED”?

How did we go from reasonable goals such as clean water and air, not hunting animals to extinction, and responsible conservation to apocalyptic, paranoid, guilt-inducing, misanthropic wackjobdom?

Via Steve Barr at the FIRST THINGS blog

 

University of Wisconsin to Offer 2nd-Trimester Abortions as Elective

200px-thewalloriginalRemember the days when you went to school to learn how to read, write, count, memorize the speed of light, recognize poor logic — you know, stuff like that?

Neither do I.

 

Bush Secures Right of Conscience for Healthcare Workers, MSM Calls Right to Such a Right Probably Wrong

By Laurel Woodcock

Art by Laurel Woodcock

Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion explains why you haven’t really read the story if you can’t read the punctuation.

What’s most scary about scare quotes is that in Britain they’re called “inverted commas.”

Stop it.

 

Want to Be a Star on Brit TV? You’ll Have to Kill … Yourself

bcl_huxley_brave_new_world_3Step right up folks and see the next new thing in reality TV — assisted suicide as broadcast entertainment. Kill one, kill all. Fun for the whole family — assuming you’re the Manson Family.

The Broadcasting Code states: “Methods of suicide and self-harm must not be included in programmes except where they are editorially justified and are also justified by the context.”

Dr Peter Saunders, the director of the campaign group Care Not Killing, which opposes assisted suicide and campaigns for better care for the terminally ill, described the broadcast as a “cynical attempt to boost ratings”. He added: “We’d see it as a new milestone. It glorifies assisted dying when there is a very active campaign by the pro-suicide lobby to get the issue back into parliament.”

Ah, a voice crying in the wilderness …

I know, I know, who are we to judge. After all, suicides are cheap to produce, there are no royalties to dispense, and no worries about bringing back the original cast for a second season.

So join us next Easter for Who Wants to Be a Prison Rapist?

 

Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ Hailed in Havana, Communists Elated: ‘If Only Che Were Alive, So Many More Cubans Would Be Dead!’

che1The sickening hagiography continues. Hollywood is absolutely shameless in its pandering to yet another left-wing fascist.

I recommend this Slate.com review of Motorcycle Diaries, from 2004, as a necessary corrective.

 

British Health Ministry Covers Up Late-Term Abortions, Hides Stats Under ‘Misc.’

booksThis story tells itself:

While abortion is only legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy if carried out on social grounds, “Ground E” of the 1967 Abortion Act makes it legal to abort a foetus which has a serious risk of physical or mental abnormality, right up to birth. There are continuing concerns that the law is being flouted to weed out “less than perfect” babies.

Prof Stuart Campbell, the leading obstetrician whose 3D-scan images of babies “walking in the womb” at 12 weeks led to calls for a lowering of the 24-week limit for social abortion, said last night: “It is a disgraceful situation for this data to be suppressed.

What are “less than perfect babies”?

The last year for which data were fully available, 2002, showed that five foetuses were aborted because they had deformed feet, and a sixth because of a cleft lip and ­palate. In 2000 and 2001, nine foetuses were aborted because of cleft lip and palate, while a further two were aborted for cleft lip alone.

Who’s on the case here?

Information about the number of abortions carried out for cleft lip and palate, and club feet was requested by the Pro-Life Alliance using the Freedom of Information Act.

When the [Department of Health] refused to release the figures, the case was referred to the Information Commissioner, who ruled in favour of the campaigners.

The DoH’s appeal against the commissioner’s decision will be heard by the Information Tribunal, at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £40,000.

Ministers have been accused of “heavy handed” tactics by seeking to bar the Pro-Life Alliance from attending the tribunal, using a legal procedure designed to curb the rights of terrorist suspects.

So England’s Department of “Health” is aiding and abetting the killing of late-term babies suffering from surgically correctable problems, but the folks at the Pro-Life Alliance are being treated like terrorists …

Class: Define “irony.”

 

Amsterdam to Close Brothels, Sex Shops: Tourists Demand Refunds

180px-cagedancernorthvancouver2005What is the point of having an Amsterdam if not to wallow in its open-minded embrace of self-destruction? They’re afraid of organized crime? I thought the government ran all this stuff. That’s the problem: the free market! If the government bought out the pimps and dealers and took over the trade, then at least Amersterdamalangers would know how their tax dollars were being spent.

Strange Herring managed to collar one disappointed tourist from Britain, who agreed to talk with us upon promise of anonymity and 11 euros. “I mean, what’s the deal here? I bring my wife and kiddies to see some prostitutes dancing in windows, to buy some pot with my mocha-choca lattes, and they tell me they’re cleaning everything up so as not to get a bad reputation. Their bad reputation is why we decided on Amsterdam and not Disney World. What do you get when you go to Disney World, a picture with Goofy and some stupid T-shirt? Come to Amsterdam and there’s a good chance you’ll leave with Hep C — the gift that keeps on giving!”

But wait:

Prostitution will be allowed only in two areas in the district — notably De Wallen (“The Walls”), a web of streets and alleys around the city’s medieval retaining dam walls. The area has been a center of prostitution since before the city’s golden shipping age in the 1600s.

“Well that’s something, I guess. But it’s sorta outta the way,” said our tourist. “The kids get cranky — you know how it is: We want to see the painted-up tarts! And it just goes on and on like that, for hours. We want to buy some heroin at the gift shop! Blah blah blah blah blah. Well, I guess it’s Thailand next year …”

 
 
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