BS: The BNP conundrum

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:37 AM

Letter to editor:

Marie Stopes and the eugenic use of birth control

Sir – I was astonished to learn (report, August 23) that the Royal Mail is including a stamp commemorating Marie Stopes in its series to mark women's achievements.

Stopes was a notorious eugenicist and an anti-Semite who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the welfare of "the Race".

Indeed her birth-control organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, and her clinics were established in poor areas of London to control the numbers of the poor.

The majority of feminists ignored her campaign, not because they were prudish but because they feared that birth control would undermine women's rights to refuse unwanted sexual relationships.
-Ann Farmer, Woodford Green, Essex

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3561743/Letters-to-The-Telegraph.html

-snip-
4 of 20 comments from readers of Gerald Warner's article about Marie Stopes:

"Surprise at your 20/20 hindsight vision on this one Gerald -you have been reading too much of the propaganda of the victors
H. G Wells and GBS were both in favour of the fashionable 20thc wheeze of eugenics to improve the racial stock so Hitler had many well placed admirers other than Ms Mitford..
Or in matters of eugenics how about this?

'The unnatural and increasingly rapid rise of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady reduction of the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed uop before another year has passed.'
Adolf Hitler? NO!. Winston Spencer Churchill to Asquith in 1910.

So Ms Stopes is in very elevated company and hindsight is a wonderful gift is it not?
- davidjay on Aug 28th, 2008

**
"The most interesting part of this blog is missing: whose idea was this stamp? My guess is that great population reductionist and father of four, Prince Philip.

There is a slow, bowel-like movement in progress to groom the public to accept the reintroduction of eugenics and enforced sterilisation in the West, which was making such spiffing progress in the UK and US until Hitler gave the practice a bad name.
The movement never went away; it was just taken underground by the likes of Henry Kissinger and the Rockefellers. More recent additions to our globalist elite, such as technocrat Bill Gates, have given billions to population reduction "charities":

Enforced sterilisation is going on now in the Third World but its progress is hard to gage given the media blackout. Few know that Alberto Fujimori's government conducted a policy of forced sterilisation among women in poor areas of Peru. A policy of Western aid in exchange for population reduction by any means is in full swing. I'd be unsurprised if Western incentives are behind Mugabe's strange behaviour in Zimbabwe.

We can all expect to be subjected through school education, the media and Hollywood to slow, insidious indoctrination of the merits and necessity of eugenics, sterilisation and one-child families.

"The present vast over population, now far beyond the world carrying capacity cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization, abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction in the numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary".쳌
-rockefeller on Aug 28th, 2008

**
It is so easy to vilify people who are long dead says Canary Islander. But then it is also so easy to do the opposite.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but there are ways of thinking that are of their time or even fashionable. Even Darwin, a gentleman by birth and by nature, thought that the English were the peak of human evolution, and worried that they would be outbred by the Scots...

-hedgehogfive on Aug 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

**
Several years ago I spent a few months in Calcutta.. During that time I visited a home set up solely for rescued survivors of late term sex selective abortions.. In this home there were 152 baby girls and toddlers,from about 7 months gestation (i.e.recently rescued from abortion clinics having been aborted alive) to 2 years of age.. They were extremely well cared for and were destined to be adopted by Western families.. Along Chowringee,a major thoroughfare in Calcutta,and in other parts of the city there was evidence of only ONE abortion provider that advertised and promoted abortion as "Affordable" "Safe" and "legal" on large billboards and posters.. It was "Marie Stopes International".
-the_mahout on Sep 3rd, 2008
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:36 AM

thats just what i was thinking azizi.
people can be suprisingly thoughtful and right about one thing but still believe in some evil things at the same time.
should or does one cancel out the other?

however, in the spirit of trying to move this thread on from way back then ( sorry keith, i seem to have given up wading, i think i am stuck somewhere in the middle of the river bed, if i move now, i will lose my wellies. lol) maybe we should think if there are any modern day experts who the BNP have wooed. mind you it may be abit early for them to publicly admit it. due to the FACT they are NOT racist or bigoted in any way.

i have also forgotten what date the manchester demo is supposed to be. i haven't seen the news for yonks so it could have happened already.

more to come later when i have woken up abit more.

take care all

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:27 AM

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/


Marie Stopes is forgiven racism and eugenics because she was anti-life

Gerald Warner, August 28th, 2008

"Is Marie Stopes really an appropriate icon for Britain's stamps?
Dear Herr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?" … were written in August 1939, just a month before this country went to war with Nazi Germany, by Marie Stopes, the "woman of distinction" who will ornament our 50p stamps from October.

Sending the Fuhrer a book of her sentimental poems was an appropriate gesture. This keen advocate of eugenics and subverter of family life had a long career of activity in the politics of human reproduction. In 1919 she urged the National Birth Rate Commission to support mandatory sterilisation of parents who were diseased, prone to drunkenness or of bad character. In 1920, in her book Radiant Motherhood, she demanded "the sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory". Her 1921 slogan was: "Joyful and Deliberate Motherhood, A Safe Light in our Racial Darkness."

As a letter writer to yesterday's paper pointed out, her organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress and her clinics were situated in poor areas, to reduce the birth rate of the local residents. Not that Stopes wanted the working class to stop having children altogether. On the contrary, she was also a supporter of child labour: "Not many years ago the labourer's child could be set to work early and could very shortly earn his keep… The trend of legislation has continuously extended the age of irresponsible youth in the lower and lower middle classes"...

In 1935 she was present at the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, held under the auspices of the Third Reich. On her death she bequeathed her clinic and much of her fortune to the Eugenics Society. Today, Marie Stopes International has nearly 500 centres in 38 countries, performing more than half a million sterilisations a year, and is a major abortion provider…
Considering the hysteria nowadays attaching to issues of race, at first sight it seems extraordinary that Stopes should have earned commemoration on a stamp. To the PC establishment, however, even racist peccadilloes can be ignored to honour a pioneer who helped promote the anti-life culture and relieve women of the intolerable trauma of giving birth to a child with a cleft palate. Eugenic abortion accounts for an increasing proportion of the 7 million "terminations" in Britain since 1967. Poor old Josef Mengele was not eligible for a stamp, being a dead, white male. Perhaps in 2009."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:23 AM

Some here may be interested in this online article about Marie Stopes. That article and 20 letters in response to it were published in http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/ .

As an American, I know nothing about the political slant or the reputation of that newspaper or that columnist. I'm interested in knowing what posters to this thread think of the article and those letters. For the record, for the sake of this discussion, as well as for the sake of those on dial up Internet connection, and those who don't like to click on hyperlinks, I'll post an excerpt of that article in my next post to this thread. Also for those reasons, I'll post four of the letters-in whole or in part-as well as the letter that promoted this article in my next post to this thread.

My sharing this article and those particular letters does not mean that I agree with everything in that article and those letters. However, with regard to eugenics and Marie Stopes (as well as the other famous persons mentioned in some of the letters written in response to that article), I'll say this:

An individual may be very admirable and very despicable. Also, an individual may be right about somethings and wrong about others. Furthermore, an individual may advocate and do some things that are right-in certain circumstances-for very wrong reasons.

For instance, I believe that Marie Stopes was admirable and courageous in her advocacy for women's rights. However, I believe that Marie Stopes was very wrong in her admiration for and support of Hitler. And I believe that Stopes was very wrong in her support of child labor, and in her advocacy for sterilization as a means of reducing the populations of those people that based on the pseudo science of eugenics, she & others considered to be less desirable.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:40 AM

Owen, I agree about BNP.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:32 AM

Richard. So do I. The BNP are gene freaks and I have no doubt at all that they are planning to weed out the "inferior" members of our own society.

Indeed, it is my considered opinion that they, along with the other European fascist parties, are jointly looking to finish off the job that Hitler started. IE.,

to turn the whole of European society into a white Aryan master race by eliminating said "inferiors". I for one am not going to stand by and let that

happen.

However, this thread is about the BNP and, by implication, how we can best fight them. It's not about the merits or de-merits of eugenics theory. I can

only repeat. If people want to discuss that particular topic then they can best do so on a seperate thread.

Fraternally yours.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:18 AM

Richard, on 2nd October I asked you for the final time,

"I ask you again
Can you associate Coleman with one, single, discreditable statement, idea or theory (eugenic or otherwise)?
If yes please say so clearly.
No lawyer's weasel words.
If not, listen to Jade and leave this great man alone.

NOW ANSWER PLEASE"

I take your silence to mean that you could find no fault, but that you lack the moral courage to admit it.

Why am I not surprised?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:11 AM

The problem is that the idea is being promulgated that by Keith that even the "good" eugenicists oppose immigration, and the subtext is that the BNP have a point. I of course disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 05:37 AM

SPB. Thanks for pointing that out. Eugenics is a pretty distasteful subject and some awful atrocities have been committed in its name.

However, whilst the topic is cartainly germane to discussion of a bunch of gentic fruitcakes like the BNP, I for one am heartily fed up with the way it has taken over this thread.

Would people who wish to discuss eugenics please do so on another thread?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 05:14 AM

Just in case everyone has forgotten who we are supposed to be opposing....

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/1369/Violent-racist-runs-Penrith-BNP-campaign

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:47 AM

Back to the abuse then Royston.
Reasoned argument is not how you do things is it.
You just try to shout down,intimidate and bully into submission anyone who disagrees with you.

It has not worked this time.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:35 AM

thanks Tim'

you are a lot more patient than me, I hope you get the answer this discussion deserves, but I wouldn't suggest you hold your breath.

Keith, anyone with any real experience of racial and cultural diversity in this country or elsewhere and/or with any witness knowledge of what havoc is caused in the third world by 'us' could ever spout the recycled bollocks that you do. For your trenchant refusal to consider even the most patient of debaters with real experience or cogent arguments, I hold you in utter contempt.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:28 AM

I MAY have a US law firm that likes high profile cases interested in doing a pro bono job. THat's MAYBE.

Will all 'catters who are still being impersonated by the BNP on ANY of the social networking sites please PM me with email addresses for themselves? NB there will be identity checks.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:50 AM

Hi again Keith; thanks again for the reply. I think a comment on the idea of 'voluntary' birth control via irreversible methods might be useful. Looking at evidence from around the world (China might be a good example), there seems to be a sort of progression in how these programmes develop. It goes something like; 'Do this if you want to', then 'We will provide the means for you to do this if you want to', then 'It would be more socially responsible if you did this', then 'Most people are doing this, why aren't you?', then 'If you don't do this there will be penalties', then 'You must do this', and finally 'We have the right to do this to you'. This progression doesn't just apply to birth control, it can be seen in things like the environmental movement and any number of political initiatives. The problem comes when you have unelected agencies involved who lack the breadth of vision and the moral compass; they can run through this progression at a frightening rate without considering the wider or longer-term consequences. Their unelected nature makes them immune from the pressures of public opinion, and other democratic checks and balances don't apply.
I don't know if you've seen the stuff on population growth and economic dominance, but there is a comparison between America and India that makes interesting reading; because of birth rate differences, India has more Honours students than America has kids. Educational standards are evening out across the world, and so in a global economic environment dominated by knowledge workers, there is a vested interest for Western developed economies in lobbying for (or providing aid for) limited population growth in those economies likely to be rivals or even dominant players. Organisations like the Galton Institute at the very least give a cloak of respectability to this agenda, whether they intend to or not. 'Pulling up the ladder' I think is the term used. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:21 AM

Just a little more about her.

After hearing Margaret Sanger's story Marie decided to start a birth-control campaign in Britain. She knew it would be dangerous as several people in Britain, including Richard Carlile, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, had been sent to prison for advocating birth-control.

In 1918 Stopes wrote a concise guide to contraception called Wise Parenthood. Marie Stopes' book upset the leaders of the Church of England who believed it was wrong to advocate the use of birth control. Roman Catholics were especially angry, as the Pope had made it clear that he condemned all forms of contraception. Despite this opposition, Marie continued her campaign and in 1921 founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control. With financial help from her rich second husband, Humphrey Roe, Marie also opened the first of her birth-control clinics in Holloway, North London on 17th March 1921.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:18 AM

Richard, marie Stopes was indeed a hero of the feminist movement.
A short biography is here http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wstopes.htm
An extract
Marie argued that marriage should be an equal relationship between husband and wife. However, she had great difficulty finding a publisher. Walter Blackie of Blackie & Son rejected her manuscript with the words: "The theme does not please me. I think there is far too much talking and writing about these things already… Don't you think you should wait publication until after the war? There will be few enough men for the girls to marry; and a book like this would frighten off the few." Blackie objected to passages such as, "far too often, marriage puts an end to women's intellectual life. Marriage can never reach its full stature until women possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners."

It was not until, March 1918, that Marie Stopes found a small company that was willing to take the risk of publishing Married Love. The book was an immediate success, selling 2,000 copies within a fortnight and by the end of the year had been reprinted six times. Married Love was also published in America but the courts declared the book was obscene and it was promptly banned.

Marie's next book was about birth-control. She had become interested in this subject after meeting Margaret Sanger, a birth-control campaigner from America. Sanger had been converted to socialism, while working as a nurse in the slums of New York. She observed that many women died of self-induced abortions or raised large families in poverty.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:10 AM

Royston, a truly pointless and pathetic response.
I invited you to tell us what you had or shut up.
You of course did neither.
Why am I not surprised.

Going back to that bigotted, ignorant put down you wrote about me,
"sitting on your 'A' in leafy Hertford, you know absolutely diddly squat about this world. "

I work full time with (ethnically diverse) troubled teenagers from deprived and chaotic backgrounds whose extreme behaviour has put them beyond the scope of mainstream education.
Our catchment area extends down to North London.
I reckon that puts me on the "social front line" as much as whatever it was that you once did.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 06:22 PM

Thanks Keith, you've proven my point for me.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 06:03 PM

I've been away from the weekend with only a 2G connection. This is grand. Keep digging, Keith.

However, Stopes did (I think, I have not checked) promote one great truth about abortion. It's the woman's choice, and one I have never known from any of the women with whom I have discussed it, to be taken lightly.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:19 PM

Royston, re sterilisation.
Country reports from Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Honduras, Tunisia and Sudan illustrate the activities of IPAVS under a variety of conditions. The evaluation team concluded that PIAVS has successfully met AID's objective of expanding acceptance of voluntary sterilization as a basic component of family planning and health service programs in the developing world. Recommendations in the areas of management, policy, performance standards, voluntary sterilization services, community education and information, physical facilities, equipment and supplies, and relations with national associations for voluntary sterilization and the World Federation of Associations of Voluntary Sterilization are therefore intended as indications of possible future directions that should be considered by IPAVS and AID to take advantage of new opportunities opened up by the increasing acceptance of voluntary sterilization throughout the world. http://www.popline.org/docs/0369/262935.html

Re Galton.
Even third world governments do not welcome agencies in to assault their citizens.
This is a world respected charity doing wonderful work with some of the poorest and neediest people in the world.
If you have something on them, tell us.
Otherwise I think you should shut up.
Front line hero or not.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:05 PM

Yes, Keith. You are excellent at arguing their case for them. That is exactly what they say. But I am still looking for some sign, presently lacking, that you can actually apply your own reason to this matter and consider their comments, and mine or those of others in some sort of weighing of the case. No rational person could fail to look at the actions of such groups in a critical or questioning light, even if on balance one is minded to give them a qualified benefit of the doubt for the time being.

Of course I don't deny poor people choice and reproductive freedom, I've been on several of this world's social front lines. It's just that some organisations sell some options harder than others, and they do this for their own agenda.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Keith A o Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 11:17 AM

Royston, as you yourself said, they offer all forms of family planning help.
Would you deny poor people a method that we find so helpful?
Why shouldn't they have choice too?
At a certain stage in a person's life, when they are done with having babies, that is the most apropriate method.
Whatever the race.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 09:26 AM

Keith, your vasectomy and the tube-ties on western women leave you, and them, reproductively intact. Some ops are reversible. If either western men or women change their mind then they just have to take the IVF or artificial insemination options that Western couples have,if they are rich enough.

Keith, if you can't see that Groups like the Galton Institute and Marie Stopes International - with all their dangerous and frankly evil histories - direct enormous resources at making sure the poor, 'ethnically undesirable' and disadvantaged don't or can't reproduce (rather than improving their environment) whilst others lavish every reproductive advantage on the rich and 'ethnically worthy'; and/or if that doesn't worry in the context of the awful histories of these groups then, Like Azizi I begin to suspect that you are not just stupid but something altogether more sinister.

Most NGO's are responding to infant mortality rates and reproductive health issues by working on midwifery, sanitation, post-natal care, barrier and hormone contraception as well as education.

You go and read the newsletter that you linked to. Look at the table and look how many sterilisation services Marie Stopes perform in India as opposed to other methods of contraception. Think about in the context of the history of Marie Stopes.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 05:24 AM

Some of the work they have done in India.
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL0209/Birth_Control_Trust.htm
Let me educate you on something Royston.
Sterilization is the commonest form of contraception in some developed countries such as the USA where as many as 10 million are sterilized per annum, although a proportion (0.1 - 10%) subsequently regret the decision1. In most third world countries there is also an increasing acceptance2. The current population annual growth rate in Nigeria of 3% will, if continued, give rise to overpopulation in the near future3. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Lagos Teaching Hospital has provided a family planning clinic since 1980.http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Biology_and_Society/BAS9009/Nigerian_Women.htm

You will probably be pleased to know that I have (voluntarily!) been sterilised after the birth of my third child some years ago.

Thirty minutes drive from "leafy Hertford" is a Marie Stopes clinic.
I have made that drive.
The young person I took had been referred by her GP, but they welcome anyone who needs help, and they give it for free.
I met some girls from Ireland there who dearly wished such help was available nearer to home.
I do not think that we were all victims of wicked eugenicists.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 04:28 PM

That was from Wikipedia. However, I researched it for a "Letter to the Editor" in the 1990s and unfortunately it's true.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 04:27 PM

"In 1928, the Province of Alberta, Canada, passed legislation that enabled the government to perform involuntary sterilizations on individuals classified as mentally deficient. In order to implement the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta in 1928, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created. These four individuals were responsible for approving sterilization procedures. In 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000 individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually performed."

FYI, Alberta was the first part of the British Empire to do this. It's disgusting.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 02:02 PM

In fact, Keith, I am concluding that from sitting on your 'A' in leafy Hertford, you know absolutely diddly squat about this world.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 02:00 PM

Keith, you really are wilfully stupid aren't you?

I have worked with NGO's providing family planning in Afghanistan.

Family planning is barrier (condoms, coils, caps) and pharmacological (pills, hormone implants etc) contraception.

The Galton Insitute funds, and MSI delivers irreversible sterilisation programmes, as well as contraception.

If you can't see the difference between those then you are a lost cause.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:43 PM

Most people think family planning aid is vital to third world Royston.
World Bankhttp://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18324165
United Nations http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6193

President Obama http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7848038.stm

womenhttp://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3988

Me.

But not Royston

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:11 PM

The Galton is not involved, except by encouraging debate on that and similar issues.

Except that via its division "The Birth Control Trust" and its outreach organisation, the Marie Stopes Foundation, it actively practices sterilisation and other birth control campaigns in the less developed nations and among the "less developed" races.

Imagine if all that brainpower and money were put into sanitation, agriculture, water and education in the same places. Healthy and educated people tend to make less babies. There is less need to reproduce when infant mortality rates are at Western standards. In mant parts of the world you have to have 10 kids just to be haf-way certain that one or two will make it to adults.

Nah, on second thoughts, screw that. Just set about them with the 21st century social equivalent of a jot of brandy and a knitting needle.

This is still not about any individual, it is about where Eugenics sits in the 21st century. A change of name and "voluntary" programmes, in the name of compassion.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:56 AM

Thanks Tim. As you say there are major ethical questions about genetic counselling. Also the question of whether it is acceptable to abort a foetus because it has an abnormality.
That painful choice is now being offered to parents every day.

The Galton is not involved, except by encouraging debate on that and similar issues.

On birth control, would you deny people access to it?
The trust only offers it to those who could not otherwise afford it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:34 AM

Thanks for that Keith, the clarification is appreciated. Perhaps I could just add something though; from my searches, I get the distinct impression that the Galton institute has formed a particular 'world view' in terms of what is beneficial to the human species and what is not. This judgement is indeed based on some rudimentary thinking about inherited diseases (the role of spontaneous mutation is never considered), but also has roots in the now completely discredited work on intelligence by Eysenck and others. Add to that the avowed intent to pursue a cause of curtailing population growth among those classes of people, nations or races it deems to be less beneficial, there seems to be a commonality of ends (though not of means) with earlier practitioners of eugenics.
I find this disturbing on a number of levels; the main issue for me is the attempt by those who are successful in the genetic lottery to stack the odds against those who are less so. I'm disturbed on a personal level too. I'm a senior academic these days, but I'm the first male member of my entire family who didn't earn his living from working with his hands. My family also carries a gene for hereditary blindness. Had the Galton institute been as influential in the 1950s as they would no doubt like to be, my parents would have been discouraged (via 'genetic counselling') from having children, and I might not be here. Put another way, judgement would have been passed that my life, and that of my younger siblings (a history teacher, a doctor and a professional musician)would not have been worthwhile.
The problem with Coleman and so many other scientists of his ilk is that they have tremendous intellectual gifts in their field, but a narrowness of focus that prevents them fully considering either the wide moral compass of their work or the degree of uncertainty that the real world brings to the equation. I find Coleman's work interesting on that narrow level in the same way that the work of Thomas Malthus is interesting, but the moral critique of Coleman's ideas is far more convincing than the ideas themselves.
Thanks again for the thoughtful reply, I hope I've done it justice.
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:07 AM

Sorry, Emma B.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:06 AM

I have checked Jade, and the Galton is definately not in league with racists or fascists, and I agree with everything in your post except one thing.
Helen B brought eugenics into this thread, and she did it to try to make Coleman look bad.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 10:33 AM

thanks keith, i hadn't heard of him before either, and as much as i have been looking i haven't found that much about him.
i have yet to look at the newsletters, so i might get somewhat of a shock.

this thread shouldn't be just about david colman though, he is not really the issue.

as in the case with george though, the galton institute,if in league with people who are racist and facist with regards to women, they are as culpable as those who think that way.

you cannot stand up and say one thig while befriending those who you say you dissagree with.

george, you know this was not meant as a dig at you, just to show a point. although i still do not fully understand your reasons for still being involved with the BNP, i do kind of understand what drove you there.

i think the reason we got on to eugenics in the first place was because once the BNP have doported everyone they can, they will then turn on the british people.

never forget that their hero is hitler. they want to recreat his vision and will go to any lengths, to make it so, if they ever get any sort of power.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 07:52 AM

Mandotim,
A couple of days ago I had not heard of Coleman, and knew only of eugenics that Nazi Germany used it to justify sterilisation of handicapped people and extermination of Jews, Gypsies and gays.

Then it was brought up to discredit Coleman and through him Migration Watch.

I googled all I could find on Coleman.
As an Oxford professor of Demography, he is a leading authority in the world on poulation changes.
Because he believes UK immigration is too high he was a victim of a far left smear campaign to get him sacked.
It failed because it was found to be groundless.

Eugenics is the Science of using genetics to improve the human gene pool. The Nazis and others thought to achieve improvement by eliminating "inferior" races and people.
Modern eugenics seek to do it by preventing the spread of inherited diseases by genetic profiling and counselling.
The word eugenics is rarely used because of the association with evil practices.

I found that the Galton Institute does no research, but organises lectures and seminars on the ethical use of genetics. They also have a trust that funds family planning help in poor countries.
Its president is a professor of genetics at Universty College London.

In Hitler's time the Jewish left wing sociologist Glass was invoved with it, which shows the gulf betweeen it and the nazis.

When I posted to Jade I remebered that she hates wading through figures and long explanations. I said the Galton only does good things.
Though simple, I have been able to find nothing that undermines that.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 07:49 AM

""I can't remember the precise genetic qualifications necessary to be "White" enough to allow you into mix with the pure Aryan breeding stock,""

Neither can I Crow Sister, but I do know that fat dark, ape-like Nasty Nick CERTAINLY DOES NOT POSSESS THEM!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 02:36 PM

Keith; a polite enquiry. I think you need to be a little more specific when defending the Eugenics Society, in Britain or elsewhere. You use value-laden descriptors such as 'good', 'bad', 'blameless' etc. Since I may or may not share your definitions or perceptions of these terms, perhaps (from your reading) could give some specific examples of what you mean by 'good things' etc. in the work of Coleman and the Society, so that I and perhaps others can engage more meaningfully with your arguments? At the moment this all seems a little circular, as there are no points of common locus in the argument.
Thanks
Ps a small point; do try to get the names of your fellow contributors right, it seems disrespectful not to.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:45 PM

Azizi, you misjudge me and it hurts.
I do not "still think that eugenics is a good thing "

It has been misused for evil by many people in many places, but least of all by that British society.
You extracts identify plenty of nasty historical stuff, but do not accuse the British society, and that was a hundred years ago.

The eugenics issue was only brought in to the thread to discredit Coleman.
I am not defending the evil misuse of eugenics, only the reputation of one man.
I find him blameless.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:15 PM

Ah. Another typo.

"higer" means "higher" and does not rhyme with you know which racial slur.

I tend to make typos when I'm upset. And "Yes" this thread upsets me. But then again, I have no excuse. I knew that this thread wouldn't be a comfortable read given its title.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:05 PM

Ha!

And I hadn't read that "guest" 02 Oct 09 - 01:02 PM
post before writing and submitting my 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM post.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM

Marie Stopes - the legendary abortionist and birth control advocate with a foundation named after her that continues its sefless efforts to stop poor people and less worthy people reproducing all over the world - was a leading member of the Eugenics Movement. She was also, like all Eugenicists a great believer in racial "value" and racial "hygiene"

The Eugenics Society supported and funded her work. In fact Stopes was regarded as the military wing of Eugenics.

The Galton Institute continues to give cash grants to the Marie Stopes Foundation in support of its birth control and sterilisation programs in the developing world.

I am fed up with cut and paste. Go to www.galtoninstitute.org.uk and look through the newsletters. Loads of Grants to MSI. I'm currently looking at the June 2000 newsletter (section: The Birth Control Trust) but there are plenty of entries. Or just google "galton eugencis marie stopes"

Dr. Marie Stopes was a vile racist, classist and murderous harridan. She wrote love poetry to Adolf Hitler.

For starters you could go HERE to the telelgraph website, not known for its left-wing spin or tendencies.

You see this is what taints Galton's followers, whatever they choose to call themselves this week.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM

abd=and

I suppose followers of eugenics would say that people of higer genes wouldn't make typos or people of lower genes wouldn't be able to catch the typos that they made.

I'm trying to be light about this very serious matter. But there is nothing "light" about those who deny their racism (perhaps even to themselves) and/or hide their bigotry and beliefs in White racial superiority under pseudo-scientific covers such as eugenics.

Here's a modern day African American proverb (which I just made up)

"Stink still smells even when it's hidden."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:55 PM

Keith A of Hertford, that you could read those excerpts from those two articles that I posted at 02 Oct 09 - 11:43 AM abd at 02 Oct 09 -11:49 AM and still think that eugenics is a good thing tells me all I that I need to know about you.

**

Royston, you have much more patience than I will ever have.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Stringsinger
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:51 PM

The BNP represents the worst parody of patriotism. It relies on jingoism and a self-conscious nationalism that discriminates against outsiders. There is no conundrum here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:46 PM

Keith

Thanks Royston.
I take it then, that you find no fault with the man though you oppose his views.
Fair enough, again thanks.

No, Keith. My personal opinion of anyone associated with the Eugenics Society when it was called that and who continued their fellowship of the Galton Institute (idolising the racist founder of Eugenics) remains suspicious to say the least.

The Eugenics Society is to the Galton Instiute as Windscale is to Sellafield. You can change the name, you can never entirely remove the toxic contamination. My opinion.

But my point to you is that we are talking about Nazi Eugenics, modern Eugenics and BNP Eugenic beliefs. We are not talking about Coleman. Only you seem to want to keep talking about Coleman. Please, stop talking about Coleman.

And to answer a qestion you put to Azizi - yes, you do need to read a lot more.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:18 PM

the thing i was talking about came from here.

http://www.eugenics.net/

in the Q&A section.


i am sorry we have gone slightly off point.
the nazi eugenics are important as this is what the BNP aspire to.

the new wave of the galton institue, does seem to want to hlep those who ask for it, i will say that i have only just been able to look at the news letters so i will wade through some of them when i get the chance.

i don't blame anyone for wanting to disassociate from the actions of others in the past, it is only fair i give them the benifit of doubt until i have read enough to make my own mind up.

however, if they are innocent of past crimes against humaity, they are being used by the BNP as much as immigrants.

this david coleman,may want to look at these thigns from a purely .. educational..no... scientific?..yes. point of veiw, but i feel like they are missing the fact that they are talking about people, feeling, thinking people.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:00 PM

Your extracts do not seem contradict my statement that the British society only did good things.
Did I miss a bad thing or must I read the whole article?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:49 AM

Also, some here may be interested in reading this article which is titled "A Weapon of Eugenics: Sterilization as a Means to Better the Race"

http://www.umw.edu/hisa/resources/Student%20Projects/Cincinnati/students.umw.edu/_ncinc5ce/eugenics.html


Here is an except of that article:

"It was no coincidence that modern sterilization procedures were developed as the science of eugenics emerged in Western thought. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term "eugenics" in 1883. This pseudo-science, an outgrowth of social Darwinism and Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance, stressed that heredity was law and that those with good genes should be harnessed while those with "defective" genes should be eliminated. Positive eugenics was the science of nourishing those fit to reproduce while negative eugenics developed methods to eradicate undesirable elements. This elitist science, which targeted the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and certain racial groups, found fertile ground in the United States where upper and middle class professionals feared "race suicide" among the fit. Indeed, the United States shaped and transformed eugenics into a movement which was mimicked all over the world—including in Nazi Germany.

The mid to late nineteenth century was a time when birth control knowledge and use was still very taboo and very illegal, thus doctors were not interested in developing sterilization for middle and upper class Americans but rather for those elements causing "degeneracy." At a time when many American scientific and medical circles believed criminality, poverty, depravity, and mental illness were genetically inherited, a technique to prevent reproduction of these qualities was greatly desired. Sterilization offered the "surgical solution." With a perceived sense that defective Americans reproduced much faster than normal ones, eugenicists, like Ochsner and others, viewed sterilization as a panacea.Sterilization become an integral part of a population control system where eugenicists, doctors, and politicians worked together to ensure the sterilization of the unfit. Eugenic sterilization laws legalizing the involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill, criminals, and other defectives, came to being in close to thirty states with more than 70,000 Americans losing the ability to reproduce by the mid-twentieth century."

-snip-

All of this to say, Keith A of Hertford, that for what it's worth, I definitely don't agree with you that "The Eugenics Society, a British charity now called the Galton Institute, has only ever done good things."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:43 AM

As background to the discussion about contemporary eugenics, some here may be interested in this document that I found about the British & United States Eugenics organizations:

http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/eug.01-30.html
Eugenics becomes popular (1901-1930)

Here are some excerpts from that document:

"Notice that the eugenic policy may be divided into two: "positive eugenics" which aims to foster more prolific breeding among the socially meritorious, and "negative eugenics" which intends to encourage the socially disadvantaged to breed less or not at all. (see Kevles 1985, 85)

[Organizations]

The vogue of eugenics derived energy from the organizational efforts of its advocates. In 1907, inspired by Galton, a national Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain. ... Branches of the society sprang up in Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester, Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Sydney, Australia. Local eugenics groups sprouted across the United States, ... Eugenic themes diffused into groups devoted to sex education and sex hygiene, and were evident in the baby-health competitions that spread to some forty states before the war. Various efforts ... were mounted to organize eugnics on a national basis, along the lines of the British society; they culminated in the formation in 1923 of the American Eugenics society, which rapidly spawned twenty-eight state committees and a southern California branch. (Kevles 1985, 59)

[Eugenic contests]

The Fitter Families contests had started in Topeka, in 1920, at the Kansas Free Fair. Under the aegis of the American Eugenics Society, they were soon being featured---together with eugenic exhibits---at seven to ten state fairs yearly; ... Local publications gave front-page attention to the competitions and their winners. At the state fairs, the Fitter Families competitions were held in the "human stock" sections. ... Any healthy family could enter. Contestants had only to provide an examiner with the family's eugenic history. All family members had to submit to a medical examination---including a Wassermann test and a psychiatric assessment---and take an intelligence test. At the 1924 Kansas Free Fair, winning families in three categories---small, average, and large---were awarded a Governor's Fitter Family Trophy, ... (Kevles 1985, 61-2)


[The movement spread]

After the turn of the century, eugenic efforts---often called "race hygene"---had also developed in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, France, and Italy; in the nineteen-twenties, the movement spread to Japan and Latin America. (Kevles 1985, 63)

[Wide spectrum of supporters]

..."Eugenics enthusiasts in the United States and Britain were largely middle to upper middle class, white, Anglo-Saxon, predominantly Protestant, and educated. The movement's leaders tended to be well-to-do rather than rich, and many wer eprofessionals---physicians, social workers, clerics, writers, and numerous professors, notably in the biological and social sciences. ... Fully half the membership of the British eugenics society consisted of women, and so did about a quarter of its officers...

**


[Racism]

Racism---in that era racial differences were identified with variations not only in skin color but in ethnic identity---was a feature of both British and American eugenics. ...

[Intelligence tests]

Like Francis Galton, whom they took as their patron saint, eugeniticists identified human worth with the qualities they presumed themselves to possess--the sort tha tfacilitated passage through schools, universities, and professional training. They tended to equate merit with intelligence, particularly of the academic sort. ... the idea of systematically measuring intelligence had captured the attention of the French psychologist Alfred Binet, an acolyte of Galton's quantifying aims, if not of his particular methods.

[Eugenics and mental tests]

Whatever their prejudices, American and British eugenicists were alike distressed over the trend in their respective nations' intelligence. Before the First World War, eugenicists like Karl Pearson and Charles Davenport had warned that excessive breeding of the lower classes was giving the edge to the less fit. The growth of I.Q. testing after the war gave a quantitative authority to the eugenic notion of fitness. For the voque of mental testing did more than encourage fears regarding the "menace of the feeble-minded." It also identified the principal source of heedless fecundity with low-I.Q. groups, and it equated national deterioration with a decline in national intelligence. (Kevles 1985, 84)

[Eugenics and birth-control]

Eugenicists were generally against the feminist movement and the birth-control; but some people such as Margaret Sanger combined eugenic ideas with birth-control.

Women were said to expect sexual fulfillment in marriage without fear of pregnancy. Birth control had come to stay, and so, it seemed, had a steady decline in the birthrate of the upper classes. As Margaret Sanger put it, the sensible eugenic response to the differential birthrate was to make available to lower-income and less educated groups the contraceptive knowledge and opportunities enjoyed by others. Before the war, Sangar had linked birth control with feminism. Now, like her British counterpart Marie Stopes, she tied contraception increasingly to the eugenic cause. In 1919, she wrote: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit---that is the chief issue of birth control." (Kevles 1985, 90)"

-snip-

Italics added by me to highlight that phrase.