When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.
The abhorrent words of former President of the United States, Richard Nixon, they seem to be a rather fitting opening to this post.
There are two sayings that I’ve always appreciated:
‘With great power comes great responsibility’ – Voltaire
Power can come in many different guises. The power of a relationship dynamic, that which a manager has over their subordinates or even the power a well known public figure has over those who look up to them. I have always felt quite strongly that any powers should never be abused, I think we can all agree on that, right? As an ideal, not abusing one’s position of power seems to be a winner.
My personal hate is Men who use their power – my experiences teach me it is predominantly men, though Women are no less capable of this – to behave sexually inappropriately towards others. The range of sexual inappropriateness spans from rape at one extreme, through groping to unwanted verbal advances at the other; I don’t really see grey areas, wherever it falls on the spectrum, it’s all wrong and very few things fill me with such rage as hearing accounts from female friends of this happening to them. I’ve stood up in the past and defended those on the receiving end of this, put myself at risk to challenge vile behaviour and it’s something I’d like to think I would always do…but it’s not that easy.
This brings me onto my next quote that I’ve always appreciated:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the Watchmen?)
The moral arbitrators walk amongst us these days. They pass judgement of every aspect of our reality: they inform us what we should be thinking and who we should support; we empower them with our time, our respect and, often our adulation and, in return, they tell us what’s what. The glare from the spotlight of scrutiny that they shine so mercilessly on others is so bright that rarely does the mirror turn back to face them…this doesn’t last forever, sometimes the mirror does indeed catch a glimpse:
“I have personally witnessed a prominent person getting disturbingly touchy-feely with women and getting away with it, despite the knowledge of nearly everyone who knows him. What’s more I’m willing to bet that you know who I am talking about from just reading the previous sentence.” – Source: Michael W Story
I wholeheartedly support Michael’s post and it’s sentiment. I share his sense of disbelief that something so widely known has been so easily accepted amongst a group of people who would challenge it with all their efforts if it was encountered elsewhere.
We watch the Watchmen.
We should not build a cult of silence around these people, this person, because of who they are. Sexual Harassment is wrong, pure and simple! It doesn’t matter who the person is doing it, in the eyes of the law we are all equal. Richard Nixon still broke the law, him being President of the US didn’t mean anything.
I sincerely hope the women who have suffered at the hands of this person come forward and speak out. I am confident there are witnesses a plenty, credible people who will support your accounts. Infact, Michael himself states:
For all the fact that this has pissed me off a huge amount, I am wary of naming the offending person. He’s someone with a lot of clout, someone who could make life very difficult for anyone who identified him. I feel it’s up to someone whom he has victimised to make that call, but if that’s you and you are reading this then I will absolutely back you up.
My guess, like michael’s, is that no one will. That is perhaps understandable, but unless you challenge the bully, the behaviour is only likely to continue. If you speak out, others will probably follow. You can stop this happening again.
I still sometimes wake in cold sweats. I am there again and it is happening.
Late at night, toally unprovoked, the first attack from behind, knocks me to the floor. A large group, all female, all wasted on alcohol and desperate for destruction. I remember it, all too vividly, I will never forget. They probably were not bad women on the whole, it’s all too easy to demonise our attackers, but they were deeply under the influence of alcohol and they felt invincible. I did not (could not?) fight back. They left their mark…
I’m not the only one, take a look at this picture. These injuries:
All these injuries were caused by people under the heavy influence of alcohol. Let’s put an end to this! Let’s make alcohol illegal. It’s massively addictive, contributes to public disturbances and plagues poorer communities. It’s time that stops…
At this point a large proportion of my readers, I hope, are wondering what’s going on. Logic should have kicked in. I’m deliberately using emotion and shocking images to manipulate your thinking and bring it round to mine. It’s a very simple trick and it is easily combatted with critical reasoning: Although alcoholism is a problem in the UK (and worldwide), on the whole, people have a sensible relationship with alcohol. Alcohol did and does cause the things I described, but you should not legislate based on emotion and isolated incidents. That would be really stupid, right? Prohibition of things that are readily available in society is always ineffectual and destined to fail. Right?
Here’s a picture of Leah Betts:
In 1995, this picture outraged the nation. It prompted a sit-down with my parents to warn me about THOSE Drugs. For many in the anti-drugs lobby in the UK, Leah’s picture is enough to vindicate their point that all drugs are bad and all drug use ends in the death of the user.
A single picture proves nothing. This picture of Leah Betts proves nothing, other than life is perilously fragile and the tragic death of a young girl is A Tragedy. It is worth noting that despite common perceptions that Leah died from taking Ecstasy, in fact her death was caused by drinking too much water, which diluted her bloodstream. But, even if she had died from an Ecstasy tablet, you can’t (and shouldn’t) legislate based on this. We should expect and demand evidence-based practice and pictures of dead girls, while shocking and terribly sad, are no aid to critical reasoning. It’s a very simple trick. It’s okay to talk about it, here’s why…
In 2009, the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation calculated/estimated/made-up, the cost of UK enforcement of drugs legislation to £16 Billion. We are paying for that. You, Me and Everyone else in the UK, we’re all paying for that. Part of paying for something is you get to have a voice in how that money is spent. I can think of a lot better uses for that money and we need more than shock tactics and propaganda if we are to have a sensible, adult discussion on legislation that costs our country vast sums of money to enforce every year.
I’m not going to labour the point on why the, so-called, War on Drugs is dumb, there are far more interesting and educated folk who’ve done that better than I ever could (see further reading), but to summarise:
Most of the problems with illegal drugs stem from their illegality not individual substances;
In about 60 years of activity, the anti-drugs lobby and enforcement activity worldwide has summarily failed to reduce the number of users and the availability of drugs in society;
While Alcohol and Nicotine remain legal, any moral argument based on overall public harm is at best mis-guided and, at worst, deceiptful and morally bereft;
Drugs legislation often criminalises those who otherwise lead totally moral and law-abiding lifestyles; and
At a time of economic decline the War on Drugs is costing us all a small fortune and achieving nothing.
…But I’m more concerned about one of the by-products of this mis-guided War. Unless we learn from history, it repeats, cliched and entirely true; prohibition does not work. There is always a response.
Over the last few years there has been an alarming rise in the variety and widespread availability of totally legal ‘Research Chemicals’, often known as Legal Highs. These highs come in a variety of shapes and sizes: pills, powders, smokes; all attractively packaged and branded with names such as Herbal Haze (smoke), black mamba (smoke), Columbiana (powder) all totally unregulated available on the UK highstreet and over the internet. What is more, I am reliably informed, many of these Research Chemicals are as strong and, in many cases, stronger than illegal alternatives. Let me say again: no one is regulating this absolutely vast industry that must be worth millions every year.
I am also reliably informed that there are massive inconsistancies between products, even those branded the same way, and I have heard from numerous friends that this has lead them to have quite negative, unpleasant and frightening experiences using such substances. One friend reported smoking a substance, branded as anhilation, which produced a near psychosis, short term loss of some muscle control and days of detachment afterwards. I have a genuine concern that it is a matter of time before people start dying as a result of these substances. But…
Further prohibition is not the answer. It can’t be. Prohibition is the root cause at the heart of the market for research chemicals. Prohibition is no longer an adequate response to the problem. If the government bans one batch of chemicals, within a matter of days a new batch will appear and there is no forseeable end to that. The war on drugs has ultimately created the problem that it was designed to tackle.
We need a serious discussion about drugs legislation in the UK (and worldwide), we need evidence-based legislative practice, logic and less fear. It’s another cliche, but sometimes it’s better the devil you know and we have had many decades to scientifically study substances like cocaine Sulphate, THC and MDMA, so we know their effects on the human body. This is important: we know, quite accurately, their relative levels of harm to society. We know precious little, often nothing at all, about these research chemicals. The clue is in the name.
I believe, that we need to spend more money on dealing with the problems of addiction and stop spending any money on fighting a war that was lost sometime around 1960. Alternatively, we can continue with the cycles of restriction, control and prohibition towards emerging substances; we can continue pushing users towards newer and increasingly dangerous substances, the long term effects of which we can only begin to guess at. If we do this and maintain the status quo, it is my belief that people will start dying. As a society, it’s not too late, we can prevent that happening.
We live in an age requiring that we step out from beneath the fear around drugs thrust on us all by the national media and recognise that legalisation, for a huge swathe of reasons, is the right, the moral and the only option for addressing this hugely important social issue.
Please Note
Writing a post in favour of the decriminalisation of drugs is not the same as advocating the use of drugs. Please bear that in mind, I really don’t care either way whether you do or don’t use drugs (past/present/future). If you are going to read this and suggest that I am advocating drug use, then you’re an idiot.
Also, if you’re going to tell me about your brother/auntie/uncle/cousin who got addicted to Heroin/Cocaine/Crystal Meth and try and use that as the basis for a counter-argument, you will have already failed. So, let me save you the time.
And finally, Something to think about
There are many interesting books (and many not-so) on the history of drugs. Amongst my favourites is The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Cultural Anthropologist Jeremy Narby. Narby makes the controversial suggestion that human intelligence and language, The very building blocks of the first human societies, arose from the ritual use of hallucinogenic plants and roots. He makes a fascinating case and it is well worth a read.
Few people have ever summed up the war on drugs better than the genius that is Bill Hicks:
I’ve never had to point a firearm at someone and make the decision to pull the trigger. I hope I never will. My Granddad did. It was a decision taken, not out of anger, or fear (though he was afraid) but from duty and the instinct to live. ‘Here be man’s most monstrous’ he’d write in margins. It was horror that he could not find words to express, at first. He awoke screaming for the rest of his life and never spoke of the war if he could avoid it. Granddad died before anyone knew what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was. My Granddad was a hero.
I’m posting this a bit earlier than Friday to meet the real (not one of the squidgier variety) deadline for this week’s Weekly Blog Club. It’s such a great initiative aimed at encouraging people (especially in public & 3rd Sector) to write. Each week, there are suggested topics for any writers who are struggling to come up with something to write about, one of last week’s topics was Hero’s and it reminded me I should post this one. Anyway, I highly recommend checking them out on Twitter and visiting the site, they always have a lot of great content from some really brilliant writers.
My mate Skip’s a hero.
He’s seen darkness far worse than anything Granddad saw, but took the same action and lives with a similar consequence.
King of the Stickmen. Hardcore Troll. Carried a rifle once, then got shot at… Fuck off and be offended somewhere else
It’s the Hardcore Troll bit that gets some of my followers hot under the collar and not in the groovy, post-watershed way. To them, Skip’s just a Troll and Trolls are bad. mmkay? There is only one other person* I am warned about more for following and talking to on Twitter than Skip.
I like Skip, I have from the first time I read one of his blogs and chatted to him. I take people as I finds them and Skip has always been lovely to me. More than this though, Skip has a lot of very interesting things to say about a lot of different things. He is a fantastic writer with a voice that swings, often disarmingly, from sneering, acidic wit to warmth and empathy.
I’m most interested in his thoughts on war. You see, Skip’s writing a book about his experiences and, just as I think she’d approve of my granddad’s journals, I think Mary O’Hare would approve of Skip’s portrayal of war…
If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, it probably means you haven’t read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. You should rectify that situation immediately, it truly is a brilliant book. Vonnegut was writing a War book too – an anti-war book in fact, as perfectly pointless as an ‘anti-glacier’ book – he was reminiscing with an old war buddy, when the man’s wife interrupted:
“You were just babies then!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“I — I don’t know,” I said.
“Well I know,” she said. “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn’t want her babies or anybody else’s babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. – Slaughterhouse 5 – Chapter 1
I think we can be certain that wars are not even party encouraged by books or films but, just in case, Skip’s writing will have no role for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. Read this: Words in a Skip: Hang em’ High and this: Words in a skip: Holes and Me
Quite recently, Skip has been a voice of reason in the growing cycles of online ‘outrages’ following trolling and is amongst a group of interesting folk asking important questions about Freedom of Speech. One of the few things that the Left and Right of UK politics seem to agree on is the need for freedom of speech applied to some and not others. You can threaten to blow up an airport and get away with it, but don’t dare threaten an Olympic Diver…
Skip thinks you should be able to say anything you want and he’s right, I think. That is how Freedom of Speech works? I’m asking, not telling. Either everything is okay to say, or nothing is. Read this: Words in a Skip: Frankie Says Relax and this: Words in a Skip: Sticks and Stones.
Skip suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That didn’t come from nowhere, it came from the things he saw and did at war and the things done to him in preparation for war. Skip is not alone, there are likely huge numbers of troops returning from war with mental scars invisible to the naked eye, but that are as debilitating as lost limbs. Read more of my thoughts on War and the armed forces
So there we have it, follow my mate Skip…but not literally, that probably won’t end well.
*The dubious honour of ‘Person I am warned most about on Twitter’ goes to Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero), Editor-in-Chief at The Kernal. I like him too, he’s a brilliant writer with an acerbic tongue and yes, if you’re going to tell me about the horrible things he’s said…I know. He’s said a lot of things that I find pretty awful, but I suspect a lot of them he has said because he likes to shock and, besides, he’s always been sweet with me, as I said before, I takes ’em as I finds them. Also rumour has it that he is a great deal nicer in real life than how he sometimes chooses to present himself in print.
You Know the score: If you don’t like these Thoughts, stick around, I’ve got plenty of others.
This week, I remembered that there is a wealth of difference between UK and US politics.
Picture the scene…
The leader of the main opposition party takes the stage for his keynote at the party conference and promises the party faithful that, if he is elected Prime Minister, there will be:
More war;
Less global stability;
Abortion will be made illegal; and
An isolationist approach to trade and imports/exports
There’s no way that would happen and, if it did, there is little hope that politician would ever be anything other than in opposition. Mitt Romney may be the next President of the United States and that’s the basis of his election campaign.
Watch Romney’s speech from the Republican Party Convention:
I found the moronic chanting of “U-S-A” an interesting touch.
Seriously America, you can’t honestly think this guy’s a viable alternative to Barack Obama. Mitt Romney strikes me as a rather venomous man, but here’s what his vague speech seemed to promise if he wins:
Romney will have America back to being seen as bully of the world in no time. Obama has said sorry once too often for Mitt’s liking, there’ll be no more apologising and Romney has a plan to create some awesome new situations to not be sorry for.
You’ll be going to war with Iran over their ‘nuclear weapons programme;’
You’ll be going to war with Syria…reason will be found at a later date;
Relations will be deliberately be soured with Russia by adopting a much less flexible approach with the Kremlin. Obama has been too soft there, apparently;
Not content with pissing off Russia, Romney also has a bone to pick with China whose loan of $1 Trillion now basically underpins the US economy;
He will save the State of Israel from the ‘wheels of the bus’ that he is certain President Obama has thrown them under; and
When not busy antagonising other superpowers and bombing small, Muslim countries back into the stone age, Mitt is committed to the criminalisation of abortion in the US, because all life is sacred…well all life except for the lives of those people in aforementioned countries that he will flatten.
It goes on, but it’s not all bad…in between all the war and infringements on basic human rights and freedoms, Uncle Mitt’s going to create a lot of jobs. He doesn’t really state how, exactly, these jobs will be created, but create them he will.
There was a single moment of praise for Obama, for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden…there is a cheer and chanting… Please. Don’t. Let. Them. Win
Political satire must be difficult in the US! I sat through a lot of the Republican Party speeches not entirely convinced that I wasn’t in fact watching a heavy-handed political satire. Mitt Romney strikes me as little more than a very sinister parody, but this is no joke, he might win in November’s US Election. That misguidedly dangerous fool might be the next President,
America doesn’t need Mitt Romney and the world certainly doesn’t need Mitt Romney.
Think of it like this, a vote for:
Probably leads to a future that looks like this:
So yeah, vote Mitt Romney: vote for the destruction of the environment, for religious intolerance, and for worldwide belligerence with massive helpings of war and death…
Alternatively, use your common sense, say no to the Republican morons. Vote for Barack Obama in the November 6th Elections. He’s not Mitt Romney!
That Paul Coxon's Blog 