Armchair Revolutionaries

Warning! Socialism ahead...

Hi to everybody...here's Obama's speech in Berlin tonight if anybody out there is interested to hear what he said...500,000 Berliners came out to listen so he's very popular there...

Would be interested to know what you think of it afterwards...

Hi to everybody...I don't think I can be the only person here who is extremely disturbed by what happened in Croydon yesterday to the two policemen. Apparently, two policemen approached a girl of about fourteen who they had seen dropping a piece of paper on the ground and went over and asked her to pick it up and put it in the litter bin. She did then deliberately dropped it on the ground again. They asked her to put in the litter bin again near her and found themselves surrounded by thirty or so youngsters who proceeded to kick, bite and punch them...they managed to call for assistance and within five minutes, it arrived so there must be a pretty fast call out capacity...the crowd was dispersed and the girl and I believe some other youngsters were arrested and bailed, while the two officers are being treated for shock and are now off work.
This is Croydon...it's not some sink hole estate. It was the High Street full of shoppers. I would like to know where the thirty or so youngsters materialized from because that's a large number to come to her aid...one witness, who didn't wish to be identified, said that, if the reinforcements hadn't turned up, she believed they would have killed the two policemen. This is appalling...and very frightening. When youngsters are prepared to attack the police en masse for something so minor, how long will it be before a policemen does die at the hands of kids...not even young adults but very young teenagers?
Hmmm...I think this has disturbed me as much as the killings of so many people recently...another died yesterday...the willingness to be savage at such a young age doesn't bode well for the future...it also shows you that it only takes a very, very minor incident to spark off seriously bad violence...for the sake of a piece of paper, two officers will now walk the streets with a totally different attitude towards the young and that's a real shame...

The Myth of Male Power - Warren Farrell.

Hi to everybody...heard on the BBC news tonight that the subject of buying and selling human organs is on the agenda again over whether or not to legalize it...I've put an interesting article here for your consideration and to give you some idea of the complexity of the subject, and to find out how you feel about it..
The site I have copied the article from is:
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blphil_ethbio_organsale.htm
Should you wish to pursue this subject in more detail.

Is it ethical to let organs be sold on the open market?
Exploring: Philosophy > Ethics & Morality > Bioethics

Should people be allowed to sell their organs? Currently, exchanging organs for money or other "valuable considerations" is illegal, but some members of the medical and business communities would like to change that. One of those is the American Medical Association's influential Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Convinced that the balance of moral and ethical concerns favors the ability to sell organs, they would like the laws to change, and the AMA's governing house of delegates is scheduled to vote in June on whether to support a pilot program. The American Society of Transplant Surgeons has already endorsed giving money for cadaveric organs to the families of the deceased.

There are two primary arguments normally offered in favor of allowing the sale of organs. First is the fact that a person's organs belong to them and that a person should be able to do with them as they wish. Second, the shortage of organs available for transplantation is so great that more radical solutions for getting additional organs are needed - and if paying for them will result in more organs, then this is justified.

A number of arguments against selling organs get bandied about, but there are two which lie behind most of the others and which address both of the above arguments. The first involves the concern with how selling organs leads to the commodification of human bodies, and the second is the concern with the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the rich. These are difficult arguments to explain and are not convincing to everyone, but they cut to the heart of what we want our society ultimately to be like.

As to the issue of commodification, it is not clear that just because the only possible "owner" of an organ is the person in whose body it exists that, therefore, this same person should also be able to sell it to the highest bidder. You own your body as a whole as well, but does that mean you can sell yourself into slavery? Of course not - human beings cannot be made into commodities like that. There are even restrictions on how a person can sell their labor, such as laws concerning minimum wages.

A commodity is something that "can be turned to commercial or other advantage." A person certainly uses their body for themselves and their own benefit, but they cannot turn that body over to others for their own permanent use and benefit. Restrictions on the ability to transfer ownership and control are not only common, but in fact inherent in how society defines ownership in the first place.

In modern society, the "ownership" a person exercises over their body is treated as a unique sort in that it is not an ownership which can be legally transferred to any other party. Merely observing that you "own" something does not also confer the absolute right to transfer ownership and control to anyone else and in any manner you wish.

An important social reason why the ability to transfer "ownership" of one's own body is so restricted is because of the ways in which it is readily exploitable against the poor by the rich. Traditionally, rich people have not sold themselves into slavery, the poor have. Rich people are not protected by minimum wage laws, the poor are. And rich people are not protected by laws against selling organs, the poor are. Moreover, in each case, it is the rich who would most benefit by moving laws into the opposite direction, not the poor.

There are two possible forms which selling organs could take: selling organs of the living and selling organs of the dead. Because it is difficult to live without your internal organs, the former would be limited just to selling kidneys because people can generally live with only one of two kidneys if necessary.

Nevertheless, having a kidney removed is a difficult, painful and dangerous process. It hurts quite a lot, and the pain continues for a while after the surgery. Like any surgery, the process itself is dangerous, and it is possible that the person undergoing the process will not wake up. If they do, there remains the problem of post-operative infection - which can kill - and the muscles of their abdomen may never regain their former strength and elasticity.

Finally, there is no guarantee that the person really will be able to live with just one kidney - disease or injury later on could be fatal for a kidney donor. This is even more likely with the poor because of their health, behavior, where they live, etc. Do we really want to start flying poor people from Africa or Asia to Europe and North America so that they can sell a kidney to the wealthy?

Given the above circumstances, why would anyone sell a kidney? The rich don't do it, and neither does the middle class - only the poor are likely to do it, and it is without question an act of desperation. When such desperation is the motive for selling a kidney, to what degree can we argue that the decision is genuinely voluntary? In a just society, no person should have to sell off pieces of their body in order to survive. This, then, is why these issues cut to the heart of what we want our society to be like: will it be just enough that selling organs is something people can, but never feel they need, to do?

Selling organs from the deceased raises entirely different problems, because a dead person isn't desperate, and selling the organs of your deceased relative isn't nearly such an act of desperation on your part. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that the situation would be entirely acceptable. Organ transplantation is already an expensive process - so expensive that many poor people are unable to have it done and simply end up dying.

Paying people for the organs of deceased relatives may make more organs available, but it would also increase the cost of the process - shutting out more poor people and increasing the cost for those who do have enough insurance to pay. Neither of those results is desirable, but the former one undermines the point of selling organs, which is to save more lives by making more organs available.

Another issue involves the pressures placed upon people before the donor dies. There are already serious ethical concerns when it comes to doctors recommending that a person on life support be taken off the machines and their organs donated. These questions will increase if money changes hands. Will families be tempted to have their relatives denied medical care in order to sell the organs? Will hospitals be tempted to withhold treatments for the sake of money?

However, a general policy against selling organs does not necessarily mean that such sales should not be allowed in very narrow circumstances or in the context of special exceptions. For example, it might be legitimate for two families to "trade," perhaps a kidney for a bone marrow transplant. This sort of trade is also prohibited as a type of sale, but it is not an unreasonable exception.

Narrow allowances for selling would have to ensure that the poor have other, genuine options in order to prevent exploitation. There would have to be safeguards to prevent things like bidding wars and "organ markets" which would cause problems with the general costs of transplantation. Finally, there would have to be sound measures to ensure that no one is pressured or tempted to allow others to die for the sake of cash. All of this would be difficult, but without it, the ethical problems with unregulated and unmanaged trafficing in human organs would be enormous and unacceptable.
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* Selling Organs for Transplants: Commodification and Ownership of Bodies
* Should Selling Human Organs Be Legal? Polls on Ethics and Morality
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* Transplant rejection

Austin Cline

That's it...

Hi to everybody...following on with this discussion Jack has found a very interesting article on the subject, which you may be interested in reading...answers a lot of questions in depth....

http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ews410/nogreatwomen.html

Hi to everybody...read this in the Independent recently and nearly had apoplexy...Brian Sewell is a pompous, bigoted prat of the first order - every time he comes out with some outrageous comment, I wonder why he's given a voice...he's nobody...he's a critic...and critics are given powers to raise up or destroy that shouldn't be given to anybody...especially not the likes of Sewell who relishes his ridiculous voice and effeminate persona, and earns a living devastating struggling artists or established artists for that matter...there is also a bloody good reason why women artists rarely reach the heights of fame in the art world and it's more than likely because the majority aren't obsessive and anally retentive like the majority of male artists...they don't paint the same things over and over and over and over again...those that do adopt a theme and stick with it achieve fame but they are very few and far between...
Here's what he said...though I am loathe to give him a voice here, I should because I need to show you what I'm so annoyed about...women have had the door closed to them in the art world for so long and it's still more or less closed to them...if you're not male, transvestite, gay or lesbian...you've had it...you might as well hang up your brushes and bugger off because you're not going to get anywhere...this is the response of Laurie Lewis to his remarks....

'There's never been a great woman artist'

So says the critic Brian Sewell, and the art market seems to agree, with men's work commanding millions more at auction. By Andrew Johnson

Laurie Lewis

Women artists face prejudice and discrimination, with their works selling for a fraction of the price of their male counterparts, one of the world's leading art dealers claimed yesterday.

Iwan Wirth, who represents the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois, whose giant spider, Maman, became a landmark outside Tate Modern in London last year, said the huge gap in prices between the likes of Lucian Freud and Bourgeois was "a constant source of disappointment".

Sales in London last week generated a fresh round of head-spinning prices: a Freud for £11.8m and a Jeff Koons sculpture for £13m. By comparison, the South African-born artist Marlene Dumas became the most expensive living woman artist at auction on Tuesday when her work The Visitor sold for £3.2m at Sotheby's.

"It's a constant source of disappointment to see the discrepancy in prices between outstanding female artists and their male counterparts," Mr Wirth said.

"An artist's gender should have nothing to do with their market value. I see this happen with the major artists we represent, such as Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell and Eva Hesse, who are exceptionally high-ranking artists."

This week saw a new record price for the female British artist Bridget Riley, who sold for £2.5m at Sotheby's. Bourgeois herself set the record for a living female artist in May this year when one of her spiders sold in Paris for £2.3m.

The Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova, who died in 1962, holds the record for the most expensive female artist sold at auction, with her Les Fleurs selling for £5.5m at Christie's in June. Yet this pales in comparison with the £43m made by Bacon's Triptych, 1976 in May – the most expensive piece of contemporary art sold at auction.

Mr Wirth complained that, while even the best-known female artists sell for around £2m-3m, lesser male artists make more money at auction: "Surely the art market, of all places, should be free of such prejudices. I was delighted to see an important painting by Dumas sell at Sotheby's for £3.2m. However, one has to compare this with works from the same sale, which included a Bacon that sold for £13.7m, a [Jean-Michel] Basquiat for £5m and a Richard Prince for £4.2 m. Female artists are the bargain in today's markets."

The writer and sociologist Sarah Thornton, whose book on the art market will be published later this year, said that only 30 per cent of works in museums and galleries are by women, while the top 100 artists at auction in 2007 includes only four women, with the highest at No 49.

"You cannot equate the monetary value of art with the aesthetic worth of the artist," she said. "One would expect the art world to be more egalitarian. It was only in 2004 that a living woman, Marlene Dumas, broke through the $1m barrier. At the top end of the market, the people who can afford to spend a lot are entrepreneurial men. And they buy entrepreneurial artists – Warhol, Hirst, Koons – artists they perhaps identify with.

"Second, it's about volume. Women don't tend to have factories of assistants churning out work. If you want to boost an artist's price you need to bring their work to auction again and again. Women don't usually work in that way."

But the art critic Brian Sewell pointed out that, historically, women have done better in the art world than elsewhere. Throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, women artists were praised by male contemporaries. The likes of Artemisia Gentileschi, born in 1593, and her contemporary Fede Galizia were considered great painters of their day.

"The art market is not sexist," Mr Sewell said. "The likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.

"Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it's something to do with bearing children."

Mr Wirth, however, believes things could change. "The problem has been that female artists have been historically excluded from museums," he told The Art Newspaper. "Now there are more female curators and a new generation of male curators rewriting art history."

Pilar Ordovas, the head of contemporary art at Christie's, also rejected claims the market is sexist. "There are many male artists who sell for the same as women," she said. "It is too simplistic to suggest that gender or age determines price."

That's it...that's why I'm so hopping mad with the pompous prat....

Hi to everybody...I decided today was the day when I checked out what the Lisbon Treaty entailed because I was fed up not know what all the fuss was about, and I've been roused to overcome my laziness by discussions on other sites to do so...here are my conclusions...
Ah, at last, I've been spurred on to read it, and, from what I can gather, it's seeking the establishment of a stronger European central government with leaders and an overall representative while assuring protection for all EU citizens politically, socially and economically....It does say that EU member countries will have a say on every decision made but I also presume, any country opposing a decision, can be outvoted by the rest and so will have to abide by that decision as binding...that could be a problem I guess...it also promises to defend any EU member if attacked so I'm presuming a EU defence force would be introduced and armed accordingly...the question is...where do we go if we chose to withdraw from membership of the EU? There really is no where else to go...certainly not to have closer ties to the USA or the Commonwealth, which will soon, I would imagine, cease to exist...I think the binding of all the EU members into a bloc of countries all with the same aims, laws and rights for every citizen isn't necessarily a bad thing as none of us will go to war with each other again...always a damned good incentive to stay where we are...the problem is in the small details concerning those aims, laws and rights, which, no doubt, will be a source of concern for those still distrustful of non-English speaking Europeans in general...we shouldn't forget though that the blood of non-English speaking Europeans runs through us and that we're more closely linked to Europe than we are to anywhere else in the world...I think it's time we remembered that and try to see the benefits of a united Europe rather than seeing it as a threat to our freedoms, which, incidentally, have been systematically reduced not by the EU but by our own government...if a strengthened EU government can safeguard those freedoms perhaps it's not so bad after all...it has promised in the Lisbon Treaty to do so....and that's as far as I got in my assessment of it...no doubt people hear will tell me what's wrong with it in more detail...LOL

We know what works to reduce abortion amoung teenagers. We need high quality sex and relationship education at school and at home, and effective contraception" Gill Frances, Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group.

Do we?? Do we know what works??

More and more sex education for younger and younger children.

One in three secondary schools in England have sexual health clinics, offering free pregnancy testing, distribute condoms and morning after pills to children as young as 11 without parental consent. A piolt program has been launched that will also arrange abortions without parental knowledge.

Teen pregnancy and abortion numbers continue to rise. Figures released on 19th June show a 21% increase in girls younger than 14 seeking abortions.

Ministers are expected to call for an increase in sex education which could include teaching 5 year olds about relationships.