J. J. Thomson, prochoice philosopher

Had we but known, our blog could have been called _DAMMIT JUDITH!_ instead.

From Judith Jarvis Thomson's NYT obituary:

Professor Thomson showed that moral questions surrounding abortion suggest more general conclusions about the nature of fundamental rights. As Thomas Nagel, professor emeritus of philosophy and law at New York University, put it, “She expresses very clearly the essentially negative character of the right to life, which is that it’s a right not to be killed unjustly, and not a right to be provided with everything necessary for life.”

Professor Thomson advanced a theory of rights in her book “The Realm of Rights” (1992). But it was her abortion paper that, of all her work, had perhaps the greatest impact.

“A lot of the discussion in that time was focused on what was the fetus or embryo,” said Frances Kamm, a professor of moral philosophy at Rutgers University. “She completely shifted the view of the issues.”

Her brilliant essay published in 1971 argues a scathingly trenchant prochoice perspective. The relevance of her analogies, the elegant simplicity of her prose are eloquent and right on target.

"Everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life." And isn't the child's right to life weightier than anything other than the mother's own right to life, which she might put forward as ground for an abortion?

This argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic. It is not, and this seems to me to be precisely the source of the mistake.

For we should now, at long last, ask what it comes to, to have a right to life. In some views having a right to life includes having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life. But suppose that what in fact is the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? 

[...] to return to the story I told earlier, the fact that for continued life the violinist needs the continued use of your kidneys does not establish that he has a right to be given the continued use of your kidneys. He certainly has no right against you that you should give him continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys unless you give him this right—if you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due. 

Nor has he any right against anybody else that they should give him continued use of your kidneys. Certainly he had no right against the Society of Music Lovers that they should plug him into you in the first place. And if you now start to unplug yourself, having learned that you will otherwise have to spend nine years in bed with him, there is nobody in the world who must try to prevent you, in order to see to it that he is given some thing he has a right to be given.

Here at DJ! and on Twitter, I've challenged many fallacious and disingenuous factoids that fetushists scrape up to justify the forced pregnancy and patriarchal control of female bodies.

Some pithy tweets successfully smacked down these mostly religious zealots but had I been familiar with Thomson's splendid, succinct points, I would have certainly deployed them. Particularly since the jolly use of kidneys as metaphor was often explored.

That essay should be an integral part of the Philosophy Canon, and studied at colleges and universities.

IMMACULATE DECEPTION

In 2007 I wrote and posted a modest little piece at a pro-choice blog site called _Birth Pangs_. Sadly, its brilliant content was not archived when its originator abandoned it.

However. Fernhill and I developed our blogging chops there, and when we launched DAMMIT JANET! we did a copy-paste of selected BP posts. We then continued onward and upward. Fernhill built her blogging reputation on solidly researched prochoice pieces that untangled and exposed political ideology under all the foofaw.

The Virgin, The Angel and Choice is one of my gems, if I may say so with genuine humility.

#ImmaculateConception is trending right now on Twitter.

It's a timely reminder that oppressive, fundamentalist Christian doctrine is based on a deliberately patriarchal interpretation of that scripture, obfuscating the implication of God's formal request via a messenger, for Mary's CONSENT. 

Though it absolutely, fabulously acknowledges Mary's agency, that biblical text has been malevolently used to justify marital rape, the sexual abuse of women and girls, forced impregnation and the criminalization of medical procedures that facilitate women's right to choose.

To that we say: NO. 

We will continue to denounce how religious ideology is weaponized to justify patriarchs' crass need to put words in their God's mouth, only to *normalize* their pathologies, their demands and their fetishes.

Women and girls are not men's servants or handmaids.

Bravo BlockedByRempel observers and The Beaverton!

Whilst working on a blogpost about Kenney and his UCP's greed, rightwing nuttery and gross incompetence, as demonstrated by the mismanagement of the Covid19 pandemic and other public health issues in Alberta, I collected odds'n'ends about the federal government's Official Opposition health critic.

Always in attack mode, Michelle Rempel's tactic is to assault her political opponents with a frenzy of trashy claims and hope something sticks.

In November she launched into a shifty-eyed tirade as she threw out spurious and irrational accusations. It would seem Rempel has graduated from her legendary, copious imbibing of cheap boxed wine to harder pharmaceuticals procured by her 'Murrican husband.

In her wide-ranging selection of squawking points the MP for Oklaberta parroted, she CONveniently left out actual the fact it was Mulroney's Con government that facilitated the sale of Canada's major pharmaceutical laboratories to foreign corporations. Her former boss Stephen Harper did NOTHING to rectify this problem after the H1N1 health crisis.

Recently.

And, listen to this clip.

To summarize:

When did Rempel join a US-based evangelical, extremist cult that requires women to obey their husbands -- and to cleave to their opinions on everything, as Amy Coney Barrett's alleged religious community _People of Praise_ does?

Her preposterous act + her claims reflect the very worst Republican world view and rightwing neocon propaganda.

The Beaverton nails the Conspiracy Party of Canada's current depraved and delusional hypocrisy as K'erin O'Toole literally acts exactly as spoofed by The Beaverton. 

Read more hilarious responses to The Beaverton's tweet, here.

The foundation of science is evidence. It's evident the Con party led by O'Toole and informed by the MP from Oklaberta's obfuscations is based on lies and propaganda -- which they may or may not *believe* to be true and/or accurate.

Dementors: the ongoing horror of Fraud Nation's political theatre.

Watch this 12-seconds clip. Christine Elliott, Minister for Lies, Disease and Death in the Fraud Nation government has absorbed, virtually and literally, the most vile obfuscation techniques that Kellyanne Conway deployed as Trump's mouthpiece at the White House.

Elliott nails the worm tongue wording that flows out of KaC's cloaca like snakes and centipedes, but needs more voice coaching. Though spewing McKinsey's boilerplate propaganda points, she sounds like a screechy crank, unable to parrot Kellyanne's silky smooth and poisonously dulcet tones. 

Vomitrocious.

 

Juxtapose with spundit KaC, plying her meretricious trade.

In case you've just stumbled onto this blogpost, go read VERMIN wherein Elliott's chosen *expertise* for managing the pandemic -- McKinsey -- is exposed as malevolent, then Dementors, where her own particular brand of political perfidy is laid out. 

From the viewpoint of Ontario's frontline healthcare professionals and essential workers, Covid19 carnage is real. 

It is NOT *only* Grand Guignol depravity staged by Premier Drug Lord and his murderous ministers, for the titillation of Toronto Sun readers and their Con followers.

Greedy, corrupt, histrionic, fraudulent, conniving liars.

That is the Ford Family, of course whose members claim to be _The Kennedys of Canada_ but are actually and truly Ontario's Trumps. 

Here's a chart from CTV to help sort out all the players, including some of the more public faces.

Fernhill and I have written quite a bit about these crassly venal circus clowns at DJ! 

Teams of journalists have not only investigated the Fords' dubious activities but published such accounts widely.

A mind-boggling range of media and publications have covered this clan of faux-riche Etobicoke white trash in the last decades, from Frank Magazine to The Atlantic.

Landmarks!!! A tour guide to the stoopid.

There are surely hugely unlawful endeavours the Fords have facilitated which I hope journalists will soon expose, after lawyers have ensured all confidential sources requesting anonymity are legally credible. I suspect it involves international crime networks, real estate, gambling and $$$ laundering.

The Ford gals are a mixed bag of wacko: Kayla, Ky-Ky and Krista. Each one tries to monetize her family connections. But only *Ivankayla* dipped into the dark side where ignorant antivaxxers lurk. Such grifting involves celebrity super-spreading of fallacious propaganda about Covid19 and monetizing their followers' gullibility for profit, as that vile dickhead ChrisSky does.

Speaking of malignant narcissists, Premier Drug Lord continues to flaunt his meretricious incompetence, through the ravages and mass carnage his Fraud Nation government inflicts every day.

One last question..

Did Renata (Rob's widow) Ford's civil suit and her claims ever get resolved in court? Oh.. it seems not.

Dementors

Christine Elliott was once a respected and highly regarded public servant, appointed to this position by the Liberals in 2015. 

“Christine Elliott’s advocacy for vulnerable people, extensive knowledge of the health care system, and commitment to the betterment of this province make her the perfect choice for Ontario’s first patient ombudsman,” Hoskins said in a statement.

“I am delighted that she agreed to put her name forward for this critical role as we work to put patients first by improving both the quality of our health care system and the patient experience,” he said.

After Ford was declared winner of the Ontario PC leadership race in 2018, Elliott identified numerous procedural irregularities that she demanded be investigated. She ultimately dropped her complaint. Was she or her family threatened with harm, by someone in Premier Drug Lord's criminal entourage? Possibly but more likely, Elliott leveraged her claim that his win was illegal. Her need for power and money allowed her to embrace the Fraud Nation's "Open for Business" imperative that ensures Ontario's public resources are fully exploited and sucked dry by foreign corporations. 

Here's a quote from a 2017 interview with Kellyanne Conway that I find evocative.  

When asked why she accepted her White House job as counsel to Trump she said: “It wasn’t an easy decision” to take the job, Conway told me. “I was staring at a goldmine and I really had to avert my eyes."

Reminder that Elliott has set the stage for savage, no-rules privatization of public healthcare in Ontario. 

In recent public appearances, Elliott and Conway appear to have morphed into pastel-robed Dementors (inhumane creatures who extract life from people) whilst Premier Drug Lord's gargantuan appetites transform him into the demonic spawn of Godzilla and Pillsbury Dough Boy, spewing self-serving glurge and prevarication. 

Death and destruction are profitable for those who lodge at the top of the capitalism pyramid.

VERMIN.

Nothing that's been exposed by the MSM so far about Premier Drug Lord's squalid, corrupt pandemic malfeasance comes as a shock.

Everything that is known about Ford, his crime profiteering past and present in the public realm, as well as in the shadows -- points to a familial, connected network and political reign, rife with prevarication, grift, venality and quid pro quo.

Nothing illustrates this better than his Fraud Nation government hiring McKinsey to do its dirty work.

Facts about the consultants started tumbling out.

Ontarians respond to public money being pissed away down the grifters' abyss, aka Doug's gravy train.

What the hell is McKinsey? Oh. This explains why it is intrinsically anti-union, and how its brand supports union-smashing.

These guys who claim they only accept contracts congruent with their values. Okay then.

McKinsey's wet work. Its global record is quite horrifying, yet characteristic of private sector courtiers who enable and facilitate rapacious, predatory capitalism in the name of neoliberalism.

 

"To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspects are Illuminati, Lizard People, or “globalists.” They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.

The biggest, oldest, most influential, and most prestigious of the “Big Three” management consulting firms, McKinsey has played an outsized role in creating the world we occupy today."

Consulting firms are the true beneficiaries of the spurious *trickle-down effect* by scoring multi-million $$$ contracts -- with corporations that harvest billion$, to help them extract more billion$ -- or with murderous political regimes.

Recently.. McKinsey did not face criminal charges alongside Purdue executives for aiding and abetting this extremely profitable mass carnage. Did it turn in state evidence to avoid prosecution?

Ma$$ carnage. Just culling the human herd for fun and profit$.

How many more Ontarians will Fraud Nation's CONjob malfeasance kill?

Premier Drug Lord and his Minister for Disease and Death, Christine Elliott are guilty. Hundreds of Ontarians died and many more are chronically ill and physically impaired. Fraud Nation government's crass and venal incompetence in handling the public health challenges of the Covid19 pandemic is clearly exposed.

Yesterday I wrote this about Dr Williams, Ford's Chief Bullshitter for Public Health.

Today: 

There's more, much more.

Here are trenchant highlights from the Auditor General's report. It SLAMS Fraud Nation's mismanagement which veers into criminal negligence and malfeasance. Oh, and about those much-touted Covid19 *command tables*..

Where are the BILLION$$$ the federal government gave Ford, Elliott and Lecce for the purpose of containing the pandemic with judicious, scientifically recommended ressources, and keeping healthcare professionals, essential / frontline workers + ALL Ontarians safe and healthy? The AG couldn't find evidence of that money being used efficiently. 

Are Doug's donor buddies, criminal cronies and Republican associates riding Fraud Nation's gravy train entitled to get $$$ that was intended to be used to benefit ordinary Ontarians?

Some last observations regarding Fraud Nation's deliberate and malevolent damage to the public good, to the detriment of we, the 99% who are not wealthy and powerful.

Make Williams apologize for his disastrous Covid19 response and remove him from public health.

In August 2020 the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario DEMANDED David Williams' resignation, and an apology for his fallacious and unscientific claims about front line health care workers. He stayed, praised by Premier Drug Lord and Dementor Christine Elliott, minister for the facilitation of Disease and Death.

From here: 

Williams [..] said that public health investigations often find that when health-care workers contract COVID-19, they contracted it in the community. He then offered examples of people becoming “casual” in their personal life, by not wearing a mask, socially distancing, or travelling to areas with higher rates of the virus.

Grinspun said the response made her “furious” because health-care workers lost their lives — 10, so far eight of them personal support workers in the long-term care system — and thousands of others have become ill.

She said the evidence shows Williams' assertion is "absurd," particularly when the it shows health-care workers have acquired COVID-19 at a rate at least three to six times higher than the general population. She also noted the families of some of the personal support workers who died told the media that their loved one didn't have access to proper personal protective equipment at work — and Grinspun lays the blame for the lack of PPE in the long-term care system early in the pandemic at Williams' feet.

She cited a litany of mistakes the province made with the long-term care sector — including not having universal masking in long-term care and failing to do surveillance testing early in the pandemic — as reasons more than 1,800 residents died and Williams should resign.

Grinspun went on to criticize his “wishy-washy” guidance on the reopening of schools and questioned why he had the “gall” to blame health-care workers for contracting COVID-19 when he had been asked about the safety of teachers.

“Is this because now he wants to say if a teacher contracts a virus, it's their fault too?" she said. "It's very upsetting — very, very, very upsetting and inappropriate and not characteristic of a person that should be playing a leadership role. It's the opposite of a person that should be playing a leadership role, blaming those that gave their life, or contracted the disease and put their families and themselves at risk.” 

On November 23, Fraud Nation government extended his contract.

“I don’t think he’s useless,” said one highly respected member of the medical community, who requested anonymity because of connections to the provincial response. “He’s dangerous. He’s dangerous because he can’t communicate, and he doesn’t advocate for sound public health measures. If you flipped a coin you’d get it right more often than David.”

IMHO, Doug appointed Dave Chief Medical Officer of Health and keeps him around because the latter is a CONjob incompetent like him. Williams' annual salary is $413,776. 

Consider how much PPE that amount could have purchased, and how many lives would have been saved had the $$$ been used thus, instead of paying this lazy, uninformed, incompetent prevaricator.