My main professional background is in the earth & life sciences, but I now also explore topics in the broad area of bioethics. That's about equality, fairness, justice, diversity and inclusivity. It's also about people's biases, the associated otherization and everything that this can result in. That includes poverty, homelessness and poor health, shabby looks and shrinking personal bubbles, exposure to chemical and noise pollution and lots more. It's also about law, philosophy, neuroscience, technology, forensic psychology, politics and public policy (governance). Diversity and inclusivity are much bigger challenges than I used to believe. I for example now think that society's lack of genuine acceptance and support for people whose brains work very differently can among other things result in destructive behaviours for which the forensic psychology terminology is sadistic stalking or resentful stalking. My own experiences on the receiving end of something like this caused me to start looking into personality disorders and neurodiversity. That is how I stumbled upon bioethics. Seeing the massive inequality and deep poverty in England had a lot to do with it too. No, I don't have all the answers. Do you?
Human rights – diversity – neurodiversity – equality – inclusivity – discrimination – otherisation – speciesism – planet – consumerism – bioethics sensu lato
“Yesterday, the new Government announced their plans for the year in the King’s Speech. We are pleased to hear they plan to finally go ahead with reforms to the Mental Health Act. This inclusion is an opportunity to change the law so autism is no longer defined as a ‘mental disorder’ and autistic people will not be detained in mental health hospitals just for being autistic. Last year, over 18,000 of you signed an open letter to Rishi Sunak saying its #TimeToAct on the Mental Health Bill but despite this huge demand for action, it was shelved. We’ve been campaigning on this for years and we want to take the time to celebrate this success with everyone who has campaigned to end the human rights scandal of autistic people being stuck in mental health hospitals. We will work with this parliament to strengthen the Mental Health Bill before it is passed into law to make sure we have better mental health and social services in the community to prevent autistic people from reaching crisis point in the first place. The Government also announced plans for a new Education Bill which will include a focus on teacher recruitment. Only 26% of autistic pupils say they feel happy at school, so it is vital that this comes with proper training on autism for both school and council staff so they can fully meet the needs of autistic children being let down by insufficient support.”
I just spotted an article in the Dutch news about groups of people who want to overthrow the government or whatever – called “soevereinen”. In the article, “common law” is described as jargon exclusive to these Dutch circles.
That’s incorrect.
This is a potentially dangerous mistake by this journalist, in my view.
You can for example be someone’s common law wife and that has nothing to do with wishing to overthrow the government.
I notice that I have a tendency to mix up AIVD and IND. Probably a good thing.
“Common Law Nederland Earth”? Really? These particular Dutchies sound like nutcases to me. Unfortunately, apparently they’re also dangerous nutcases. They must be folks quite like the crazy lunatics who still continue to pester me, for whatever reason. These dangerous Dutchies use code words, such as “bananas” for “weapons”. The lunatics who are after me do that too.
About people who have lost their way and pester, abuse and sabotage others to death, perhaps?
I had the Fela Kuti documentary on DVD. Just one of the handful of things I had dared treat myself to again. I found it in the British Heart Foundation charity shop. I’ve now lost just about everything (and everyone, sort of) that I had four or five times. I’ve lost count. I’m done.
I hope that the horrific vilification of foreigners in the UK will now finally start to subside again. I’m not a fan of Labour but it’s better than the Tories.
Fareham MP Suella Braverman still MP? Hopefully not. (Fareham is the next town to the northwest of Portsmouth.)
In the 1980s, on my way to fieldwork, I stayed in Perpignan for a few days and walked around a lot. I found a lovely little museum with Picasso’s, but I also picked up on ethnic tensions. It has a far-right government now.
Does “walking the dog” have a sexual connotation? I first wondered years ago when this kept cropping up in Portsmouth. I was also called a cat once and there was a lot of talk about cats at times.
(Almost everything that was flung at me in Portsmouth had a sexual meaning and if not, then it was just regularly abusive or even plain sadistic.)
I want this horrible nightmare to be over. I want my life back.
It’s definitely got nothing to do with this, in any case:
Most of my ancestors on both sides of the family are from there. I still have close family there on both sides of the family. Our department head was from there (Jacques Touret). I’ve spent time in the geology there. I’ve interviewed a scientist and former minister there (Claude Allègre). I traveled through it. I’ve been at hotels and other facilities in places like Paris, Perpignan and Toulouse. I know two Dutch women who live there.
I started learning French when I was still in primary school.
Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Get your act together.
The world’s become a really shitty place. Don’t make it even shittier.
Also, my tablet currently thinks it’s in Malta again. Or Google feeds it Malta stuff, to be exact. The Malta stuff that I recently posted about was on my computer. Different SIM card, different phone.
I’m a geologist, among other things. That’s also how I know that asbestos is not invisible and that it doesn’t have a smell. You can’t remove invisible asbestos; that only exists in some people’s imagination.
I remember sitting in an office at the Westergasfabriek while the terrain was being remediated. We were talking about the cyanide pollution on the site. The guy I was talking with clearly knew that I knew what’s what because when someone came in and hesitated, he got the nod. They’d found an asbestos pipe. It was under water.
Btw, some cardboard pipes look like asbestos, but aren’t.
(There was a major panic at the Westergasfabriek one summer day, when the sunshine caused the release of actual cyanide gas. I missed it. I think I was in the States at the time. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259841685_Living_with_cyanide/ Cyanide and manufactured gas plants or MGPs go hand in hand, but people were very sensitive about it.)
My dad had a cooling facility that was clad with Eternit plates sheets (siding, cladding). I remember that the plates sheets were cut into shape on site. At our home. We didn’t know much about asbestos yet in these days, so I doubt that protective measures were taken.
I’m sure I would have remembered, you see. There is a photo of the huge garage being built, years earlier, with me standing there in a red-and-white knitted – or crocheted – dress, sticking my nose into everything, wanting to know what was going on. I was what? 2, or 3? That curiosity is also how I once burned my hand. My dad was showing an uncle how well the fire was going in the wood stove in the kitchen and I wanted to see what was going on and put my hand on the stove surface to prop myself up so that I could see for myself.
I was born with a great deal of scientific curiosity. I observe. I analyze. I’ve always asked questions. Why this, why that? My dentist of many years sometimes had to laugh because I kept asking questions to which he didn’t always know the answer. To me, that is part of the fun in life. Finding out how stuff works. Finding out what is going on.
To come back to asbestos and Eternit, which some people might freak out about… there is a lot of cancer in my family on my mother’s side, but it’s all very different cancers. There’s no heart disease, only some high blood pressure, and no dementia. One uncle had a fatal stroke, I think, and another one had or has Parkinson’s, both on my dad’s side. Health-wise, our family is truly blessed. None of the “youngsters” have a huge chance of getting anything specific. We are all going to die eventually, but in our family, we have a lot of control over how healthy we are, because of the choices we are free to make and because no genes are destined to mess things up for all of us.
Some of us, in our family, have a negligible deformation in our spine. I have it too. It comes from my mother’s side.
I’ve worked with toxic substances (bromoform and osmium tetroxide) as well as with very hot acids in the lab. I’ve had training for how to deal with radioactive substances in the lab, both in the US and in the UK. Asbestos does not freak me out, invisible or real.
I bet that that is not what CNN called him twelve years ago.
Almost all countries have made or are making a worrisome shift to the far right.
Even the Netherlands feels extremely authoritarian these days. It’s creepy, frankly (but maybe I am mostly dealing with local corruption, which would be a different story).
It’s not just England, though. Protesting rights are being curbed everywhere, aren’t they? But perhaps more so in England than elsewhere. We’ll see what happens on 4 July. I want to see a real shift. I want to see the Green Party in power. I know that that’s not going to happen but it is the only real alternative to what we have now. Reform, Labour, the Conservatives, it’s all the same (and I suspect that Reform UK – aka UKIP – has only been revived in order to steal votes but I am not sure from which party it is supposed to steal those votes).
(This also helps explain why I have little patience with dreamy rosy candyfloss people these days. You can’t live in England for as long as I have and keep seeing the world through pink-tinted spectacles.)
Here is an unedited ChatGPT translation of the Dutch news article:
A lawyer with connections to the Danish underworld feels remorse and offers to become an informant for a group of journalists. For ten months, every conversation in her office is recorded by hidden cameras. The result is a revealing look behind the scenes, showing how the upper and underworlds in Denmark are deeply intertwined.
The scenario seems perfect for one of the many acclaimed Scandinavian crime series. However, instead of fiction, “The Black Swan” is a documentary series that dominates conversations among Danes at the coffee machine this week.
Torture Chambers and Contract Killings
Central to the story is Amira Smajic, a lawyer who represents criminals from organized crime. After contacting a TV station, she opens a new office and equips it with hidden cameras. These cameras film officials, lawyers, and businessmen advising criminals on various matters, from money laundering through municipal funds to tax fraud and bribery. Criminals themselves openly discuss torture chambers and contract killings.
Everyone who visits the office believes they are unobserved and speaks freely. Financial-economic crime is facilitated by legal companies and service providers, resulting in millions of crowns, which belong to the state treasury, ending up in the pockets of criminals.
It all contradicts the self-image of Denmark, which is known for its transparency. For years, the country has topped the list of least corrupt nations. The public administration is highly accessible: every Dane has the possibility to inspect public decisions, while government agencies are obliged to accurately record communications around decision-making. That in such a society, lawyers and businesses consciously collaborate with criminals to circumvent the law and embezzle state funds, shocks many Danes.
This systematic undermining has caused a significant stir. Several complaints have already been filed against involved lawyers and businessmen, some of whom have already been dismissed or have resigned from their board positions. The Danish Bar Association is investigating multiple lawyers, some of whom work at the largest law firms in the country.
Uproar at the Highest Level
The issue is also affecting politicians. A local social-democratic politician has already resigned after it was revealed that he had connections with one of the businessmen featured in the documentary.
National politics is also abuzz with the documentary. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen publicly thanked the creators for their work, and the government met with opposition parties to discuss the documentary. The question arises whether the authorities possess sufficient economic knowledge to detect and prevent such crimes.
Does the End Justify the Means?
However, part of the outrage in the country is also directed at the documentary makers themselves. The public debate, for example, questions whether the end justifies the means. Is it permissible to secretly record conversations with hidden cameras? Are crimes not being incited this way?
There is also the question of the extent to which lawyer Smajic should have been protected: when it became clear upon completion of the documentary that it would not portray her entirely positively, she tried to prevent its broadcast. She says she fears reprisals from the criminal network she helped expose as a whistleblower.
It took two court rulings before the documentary could be aired. Since then, Smajic has gone into hiding.
According to the documentary makers, the societal interest weighed more heavily. They aptly named the series ‘Black Swan,’ referring to the theory that an unexpected event with enormous impact can make people view the world differently. This certainly applies to the Danish government: after the summer vacation, they will present a bill to strengthen money laundering controls.
Blue = organic and transitioning into organic (not separated) Pale green = transitioning into organic Saturated green = fully organic (as percentage of the country’s agricultural surface area)
