Yes, if autistic people were in the majority, neurotypical people would be described or perceived as lacking in empathy. Once you realize that, you see that it works both ways.

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/double-empathy

It’s quite similar to what I am experiencing with regards to the people in the island town that I am in. They think I am nuts or wrong; I think they’re nuts or wrong. We’re used to a very different way of being and way of experiencing the world. It’s teaching me more about what life must be like for autistic people.

I’ve argued before that cultural differences are a form of neurodiversity. If you disagree, then you may want to consider things like that which language your speak can determine how you experience time.

Real change happens when we roll up our sleeves and get dirty.

~Persil

I’m not black, but I too am very pleased with Harry and Meghan calling things as they are and not sugarcoating them. I have gotten tears in my eyes a few times when reading about various things Meghan’s experienced here.

The affinity I feel with Meghan strikes me as ridiculous because at first sight you’d think that we have very little in common other than that we are both women from overseas. Maybe that alone says it all.

The way Harry and Meghan speak out about things that go on here was long overdue. I am very grateful they had the guts to do this. It’s not just the Royal Family this is about and we all know it.

So I’d been pretty disgusted and disappointed with some of the responses that I’d seen so far. I’m pleased to see some have the guts to call those responses out too.

Next day: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2022/dec/10/meghan-and-harrys-documentary-has-hit-the-raw-nerve-of-tabloid-prejudice

I just caught up on an online seminar that I had missed earlier this week.

As my “keeper” (see the “tamagotchi” page) may be autistic and I discovered, in the course of trying to find out what the hell I am dealing with here in Portsmouth, that I’d known an autistic woman in Amsterdam for decades (which she’s confirmed), I am trying to learn more about autism.

Here are some resources that I just heard mentioned (by Leon Brenner) and that may be useful to you. I haven’t looked at them myself yet.

Books by Donna Williams:

• Nobody Nowhere: The Remarkable Autobiography of an Autistic Girl
• Autism: An Inside-Out Approach: An Innovative Look at the ‘Mechanics’ of ‘Autism’ and its Developmental ‘Cousins’
• The Jumbled Jigsaw: An Insider’s Approach to the Treatment of Autistic Spectrum `Fruit Salads’
• Exposure Anxiety – The Invisible Cage: An Exploration of Self-Protection Responses in the Autism Spectrum and Beyond
• Somebody Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism
• Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct
• Like Colour to the Blind: Soul Searching and Soul Finding
• Not Just Anything: A Collection of Thoughts on Paper

Book by Bruno Bettelheim:

• Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self

Books by Temple Grandin:

• The Autistic Brain: understanding the autistic brain by one of the most accomplished and well-known adults with autism in the world
• Thinking in Pictures
• Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns and Abstractions
• Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism: New Edition with Author Updates
• Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets For Helping Kids on the Spectrum
• Temple Talks about Autism and Sensory Issues: The World’s Leading Expert on Autism Shares Her Advice and Experiences (Temple Talks about . . .)
• Different… Not Less
• The Way I See It, Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63863088

Via nos.nl: https://nos.nl/artikel/2455639-groenlandse-vrouwen-kregen-ook-na-1991-nog-ongewilde-anticonceptie

Yesterday, I hung out near the entrance of the local Job Centre for a while. I had a bag with goodies ready to hand out, including a warm “thermal” cotton turtleneck. It was quiet, though, and I ended up taking the bag home again.

There was one person who I probably should have given it to, but she was walking fast and it takes a minute to assess whether a person might really like to have some goodies.

She had a see-through supermarket bag with only two or three items, and was likely a foreign student or a student from an English ethnic minority. She walked past me. The pullover would have fitted her, too.

(I only saw one person come out of the Job Centre and he looked upbeat and fine.)

12 December: Went out again. Asked one woman at a bus stop, maybe a little older than me, who said that she was fine and told me to give it to someone else, but she liked the idea. Asked another woman who I passed on the sidewalk, a lot younger, who was very happy with it. I had put the most boring thing on top. Still, I like them and they’re very healthy. Oat cakes.

There is little that cheers you up as much as that, just handing out some goodies to a random stranger. Had to be female and had to be about my size and not seem filthy rich. That was all. (The turtleneck likely wouldn’t fit a male and women tend to feel colder anyway.)

Although Native Americans have profoundly diverse backgrounds, many Native voters experience the same substantial and unique barriers to voting. CLC’s Skadden Fellow Nicole Hansen describes some of these barriers and ways to protect the freedom to vote for Native voters.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/05/wales-rhianon-bragg-braces-for-her-stalkers-possible-release-i-feel-like-a-target

Women are HUMANS, and that goes for women of any age. It’s not true that women turn into turnips at 45, that you can do just anything to them because nobody cares anyway. (Sadly, that does seem to be the reality here too often.)

Edited on 10 and 11 December 2022, after having learned new things about autism

Is he aware of these issues? Has he quietly discussed them with these folks?

(Yeah, okay, it’s a difficult balancing act in a place where just about everyone hates just about everyone else. In practice, you may have to cater to lots of small sections of the local demographic, hoping to cater to everyone that way.)

I’ve been told by the folks at Hale Court that they overcharge people who use their services and that the level of the courses they provide sucks by nurse Ruth Mbvundula, who was in her 60s but found a better course at The Learning Place; I helped her with a laptop when she was living in Stamshaw Road and this was possible because she was not English so, unlike English people, she did not think that I was after sex, marriage or another kind of romantic relationship when I offered to help. I also happen to know that they only seem to want to cater to white English people or maybe “Pompey born and bred” people.

In the past, this organization has been in the news because of the exorbitant salaries of its management. I don’t know if that is still the case.

I’m in my sixties too now, but I can’t get any support from them. I no longer want their help. (Someone else in Portsmouth – one of the pleasant, capable and decent public library employees, so someone who isn’t sadistic and hateful – told me to seek their help some time ago. I think I had asked her if she was being pestered too merely because she is no longer under 45. I sometimes ask random people such questions to get a handle on what is going on this town.)

I was looking for something else, when this popped up in my view for some reason (not the hacker’s doing).

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63745857

Going to the police because you’re being stalked usually aggravates the situation.

I have been warning against reporting stalking to the police for years. I have also written a white paper describing a solution. Cases of stalking and harassment need to be dealt with very differently, not just in England but also in the rest of the world, and there needs to be exchange of information on stalkers.

Currently, a stalking victim can go to the police and not be believed only to find out later that the police were completely unaware that there already was a string of complaints from others against the same stalker.

However, the public at large also bears a responsibility. The otherization of victims that makes it possible for stalking to continue not only often comes from police officers but also from people in the surroundings of the victims. There is a tremendous amount of hate for stalking victims. Many people pounce on them like a proverbial pack of hyenas.

This is because stalking victims upset people’s beliefs, for example, beliefs about their own safety. This can make stalking victims be perceived as a threat. (This is neuroscience.) It is why the only empathy for stalking victims usually comes from women who have been stalked themselves.

(Here in Portsmouth, however, there even seem to be gangs of vicious people who collectively engage in stalking and harassment activities. They often target female business owners and business owners who aren’t local or who aren’t ethnic white English. If you’re based in Portsmouth and have a stalker, you should be aware of this because these other folks can complicate the picture, making it hard to figure out who is doing what to you and why. These local folks may even latch on to you because they notice that something isn’t right in your life, then perceive you as “vulnerable” and easy to target.)

A Scottish business owner in Portsmouth was targeted in 2018 in what the Sunday Times called it a “xenophobic campaign”. It has clear echoes of Pizzagate. The perpetrator was living within a stone’s throw from me. (Cross the street, then go left.)

“Businessman falsely branded a paedophile by online bully forced to close vape shop after losing £75,000 in trade | The News” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/businessman-ruined-after-false-online-claims-of-paedophilia-dnkddg93x

Time : “What to Know About Pizzagate, the Fake News Story With Real Consequences”
Wikipedia : Pizzagate conspiracy theory

If you have an anonymous stalker and something like this gets added to the mix, certainly if that too is anonymous or starts at around the same time, how can you still tell who is doing what? Chances are that you will quickly lose credibility among those who are not targeting you.

The following was also in the news this morning: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63669711

I suspect that some with me in it recently started being circulated locally.

Something I want stalking victims to keep in mind is that homelessness can make it much harder for some stalkers to target you remotely. It can even force a stalker to come out of the woodwork if you do not know yet who your stalker is.

(I learned that the hard way. Hindsight, however, is 20/20. I had no idea what I was dealing with at the time, let alone who.)

There are no more locks to be picked, there is no more postal mail to be stolen and there are much fewer hacking opportunities. Get yourself a clean phone and do not communicate via your usual communication channels (use new email addresses etc). Your contacts’ phones may get hacked, though; keep that in mind. Stalkers can be immensely persistent.

If you’re of a certain age, choosing homelessness as an effective solution that helps you get out of the claws of a stalker is not an easy thing to do, though. It’s easier if you’re in your twenties or thirties or perfectly healthy and in great shape. The season also plays a role. It’s not nice to be out there when you’re cold and soaking wet from the rain.

I wrote this in 2011:

That was also the term that UN rapporteur Philip Alston used with regard to the UK government.

Author and patron for torture-survivor charity criticises politicians for encouraging ‘mean-spiritedness’

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/24/britain-is-a-bifurcated-place-nowadays-says-julian-barnes

Continue reading →

“It’s okay for them to be hungry. Because they’re poor.”

(I’m hearing a lot here that I have been saying for 10, 15 years too.)

Yeah, you can say that again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-63680822

These women were “unlawfully killed”? When did the UK reinstate the death penalty?

A political choice

I’ve recently read several times that women’s health issues are just as important as tackling poverty and inequality in the UK (for the government).

Boorish Boris at work again. So infuriating. He has pulled this kind of shit many times before. He’s like a drunken bull in a China shop, pardon the pun.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/18/mike-bloomberg-forced-to-apologise-after-boris-johnson-speech-criticising-china

Sophisticated? Only if you consider mooning sophisticated, but hey, that is our Boris, always putting his foot in it (and oddly enough, perhaps describing England).

After nearly 20 years of this, I have stopped keeping my mouth shut so as not to offend the tender insular English souls. So I put my foot in it very deliberately.

Boris, so I understand, declined to run for PM again this time because giving speeches was much more lucrative. That’s going very well, then.

Boris, go have a chat with Seth Godin. He could teach you a few things. Also about growing up and behaving like an adult.

This is abuse.

I suspect that the mere therapeutic use of colors, the provision of warm SOFT cuddly materials to decorate the rooms with and the application of nature sounds and music could already make a huge difference.

These kids and adults are locked away the same way wild animals like tigers are kept on concrete or grid floors in bare cages at the facilities where so many people from all over the world are trying to free them from. This is also almost like Yulin, isn’t it?

Nicolas Joncour. He doesn’t speak but he uses a keyboard to communicate, writes and plays the piano. He wrote this article and the above quote in 2016: https://hennyk.com/2016/09/26/the-right-to-an-education-article-typed-by-non-verbal-autistic-piano-student-with-dyspraxia/

This is a wonderful 2018 video about him. He was a university student by that time.

This is him now:

By the way, something similar goes for children with Down syndrome. While countries like Iceland have eradicated Down syndrome from the population (via abortion etc), in the US, more and more people with Down syndrome are graduating from colleges and universities. (So you see, there is another side to almost very story.) Where there is a will to empower people, there is a way.

Surprised? Well, remember that women too were kept out of universities for a long time. Studying would damage their reproductive systems was one of the claims made to accomplish that. Even the length of women’s thigh bones has been thrown in as a measure to prove that women were not suitable for education.

People with Down syndrome used to have short lives because of the medical challenges they are born with, but nowadays, medicine having advanced over time, once they’ve made it into their twenties, they can put that behind them and lead relatively long and happy and even fairly conventionally “productive” lives.

Non-Down people, by contrast, tend to require increasingly expensive medical care the older they get. This goes particularly for women. Because women live longer than men. You don’t eradicate women for that reason, do you? And you don’t talk about the financial cost of constructing highways and homes and office buildings and factories – or of IVF and midwives and caesarians – as a reason for limiting population growth either. So why talk about the financial costs of helping non-mainstream people thrive?

(I addressed such issues in an online course that I made a few years ago after I wrote the first version of my book about the new eugenics.)

PS Henny K also is autistic.

Next week, we’ll have the judgement in the case of the Scottish Independence Referendum. That too was initially expected today, I think; the judges had warned at the start of that case that the judgement might take some time.

Just like with the MH17 case, the judges have had to read through a huge number of pages of documentation in this case (more than 8,000, even).

That decision will be delivered on Wednesday 23 November.

Update: One suspect has been acquitted. The three remaining suspects each have received a life sentence (life in prison). The 2-hour court hearing could be watched live online, but it was all in Dutch.

In English:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63637625

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/17/three-men-found-guilty-of-murdering-298-people-in-flight-mh17-bombing (Is “firing a missile” or “shooting down” the same as “bombing”? That’s the writer in me asking that.)

UK foreign secretary statement: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flight-mh17-trial-verdict-foreign-secretarys-statement

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/17/europe/mh17-trial-verdict-intl/index.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/17/mh17-eight-year-wait-for-justice-is-finally-over-for-families-of-australian-victims

Although Canada had one victim on board too, a 24-year-old medical student called Andrei Anghel (pictured in the second video below), CBC (still) has nothing on its front page either, btw, but if you search on MH17, you will find this Reuters item: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/netherlands-mh17-trial-1.6654577

—

Eight years ago, a Russian Buk missile system was smuggled from Russia into Ukraine and shot down flight MH17, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Then it was smuggled out of Ukraine again. According to the prosecutors, the launcher belonged to Russia’s 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade.

A large number of Dutch people (196) lost their lives but people in 16 other countries lost loved ones too. In total, 298 people were killed.

The Dutch responded with great dignity to the tragedy, honoring the dead with very impressive sober and respectful ceremonies upon the arrival of the bodies in their home country.

Today, it is a court in the Netherlands that will have its say about Igor Girkin (aliases Strelkov and Pervi), Sergej Doebinski, Oleg Poelatov and Leonid Chartsjenko, three Russians and one Ukrainian (Dutch spelling of names).

The prosecution has asked for four life sentences.

More cases may follow against others who were involved in this tragedy.

The current war in Ukraine is directly related to what happened to MH17. It’s an escalation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

A large group of Australians arrived yesterday, to be present during the sentencing. The suspects aren’t there. Yes, it’s a trial in absentia, but you cannot just give in, sigh and say “oh well”.*

The CNN website lists the news about the pending verdict on its front page. The sites of the BBC and the Guardian don’t seem to mention it at all. The Guardian has written about it extensively in the past: https://www.google.co.uk/search?as_q=mh17&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=www.theguardian.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=#mmc=1 The BBC does have an item about the pending verdict on its site but you have to search on “MH17” to find it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63637625

*I find myself wondering once again whether many English people understand the Dutch drive for justice for the sake of justice. There was no oil or gas to be gained from this trial, and not even any wheat. As some people that the BBC spoke with have said, if the response back then – 8 years ago – had been stronger, we might not have the war in Ukraine now. Atrocities often happen because it is too convenient for people to look the other way and do little or nothing.

Yes, I was highly moved by the way the Dutch honored the victims at the time; I watched some of it live, online. I didn’t know any of them as far as I know but the Dutch response was in such stark contrast to that of the British (who lost 10 people on board that plane). It made me really proud of my home country back then and I know that nothing in Britain England will ever come close to the sentiment those Dutch ceremonies radiated.

They contained a lot of silence.

The hearses were also greeted by the Dutch along the roads when the bodies were driven from Eindhoven to Hilversum.

This first video below is LOUD (but you’ll get the idea of what I mean, if you pay attention) and this was only the first ceremony, concerning the first 40 bodies (of any nationality, I should add).

Dignity for the dead is not something the English do well.

(Neither is sophistication, I should add. Nor hospitality.)

At the same time, they have continued to look down their ridiculous neo-colonial noses at all those “savages” that live beyond Dover and sometimes even dare dirty the English soil and air. Isn’t it weird and so desperately sad that the war in Ukraine served to help get the English to abandon at least some of that barbaric insular nonsense?

No, not literally all of the English did that (look down their noses and so on). I know that. I am not a proverbial savage, am not blind. My country has many faults and it has made many mistakes. I am not necessarily fond of it but unlike England, it has a spine when it counts and it seems to know a lot better what really matters in life when it comes to the crunch. And it has guts. Violence does not equate to having guts.