It's Pride month, but it's getting darker...

[Camy]

Here is an article from the Gay Times:

Quote

From The Gay Times

As we mark Pride Month and celebrate how we have come as a community, this story is a stark reminder that there is still a long way to go until we have completely stamped out bigotry.

An Alabama mayor has called for the killing of LGBTQ people in a Facebook post – which he has now deleted – saying that it would be the only way to “kill the problem out”.

Carbon Hill Mayor Mark Chambers denied that he made the comments at first, but later confessed.

Birmingham TV station WBRC provided a screenshots of the comments, and read them back to him over the phone.

It came about after Chambers posted a graphic on his Facebook page which read: “We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights and socialists lecture us on economics.”

A friend commented on the post with: “By giving the minority more rights than the majority. I hate to think of the country my grandkids will live in unless somehow we change and I think that will take a revolution.”

In response, Chambers said: “The only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it’s bad to say but without killing them out there’s no way to fix it.”

When confronted about his anti-LGBTQ post, Chambers tried to deny that it was his and claimed that it was on someone else’s page.

He quickly took that claim back, however, then saying that the message was intended to be a private direct message to a friend.

“I never said anything about killing out gays or anything like that,” he added.

The reporter read the message back to him, and Chambers replied with: “That’s in a revolution. That’s right! If it comes to a revolution in this country both sides of these people will be killed out.”

WBRC reports that Chambers then got angry and complained about privacy, and stated that his Facebook page wasn’t for the public despite acknowledging that his page privacy setting s are, in fact, set to public. He later changed them to private.

Chambers became mayor of Carbon Hill back in 2014, and leads the town of 2,000 citizens.

 

Mark Chambers is not the most erudite of gentlemen, but is that an excuse?

It seems to me that after the general liberalism of the last four decades of the 20th century we've made a horrendous U-turn. Freedoms we all take for granted (and have won at great cost) are being seriously threatened.

Here's the link: https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/community/122964/alabama-mayor-says-lgbtq-people-should-be-killed-out-in-facebook-post/

 

[Pedro]

15 hours ago, Camy said:

It seems to me that after the general liberalism of the last four decades of the 20th century we've made a horrendous U-turn. Freedoms we all take for granted (and have won at great cost) are being seriously threatened.

Freedoms across a whole spectrum, not just LGBTQ.

 

[Camy]

18 hours ago, Pedro said:

Freedoms across a whole spectrum, not just LGBTQ.

 

Yep. It feels like there are storm clouds on the horizon....

Had there been social media in the 1930s it might have had a similar flavour.

[Trab]

If the trend continues, and I'm talking about the uber rich controlling all of us with lies, deceit, and intimidation on and in all aspects of our lives, it may take another French Revolution to correct things. 

[Cole Parker]

The Nationalist agenda that has swept through the world with the election of a lot of mini-czars like Trump, seems to forward a movement that wants to take things back to the "good old days", which of course never were good.  I think the main thrust of all this is xenophobia, and that's been the result of the mass emigrations due to instability in so many countries.  Xenophobes don't like foreigners coming into their countries, and they're coming out of the woodwork.

Why the melting pot concept that made America strong in the early days of the last century has been forgotten, I don't know.  I personally welcome people who want to come here.  I find a mix of people creates a thriving, prosperous community.  But I worry about the leaders who've been put in power in so many countries these days.  The next few years may well introduce parlous times for us all.

C

[Camy]

3 hours ago, Cole Parker said:

The next few years may well introduce parlous times for us all.

 

C

 

Parlous times are already here, Cole, banging on the door.

Forget the internecine political claptrap and ponder climate change and population.

Our pale blue dot isn't very big and its population is on course to double from 7.5 Billion to 13 Billion by 2067. That's a lot of food required, not to mention dealing with the resultant pooping.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/health/climate-change-existential-threat-report-intl/index.html

Australian Think Tank Report

Population Doubling

 

 

[Pedro]

It has been said that the biggest single addition to someone’s carbon footprint is for them to have a child.

Before improvements in medicine and public health reduced infant mortality rates, large families were common in the hope that one or more child would survive to look after you in old age. With those improvements and the availability of contraception birth rates in western societies dropped to replacement or below as rational parents only had the children they felt they could afford. Unfortunately improved healthcare and lowering birth rates have not been achieved in other parts of the world. In addition the responsibility (either deliberate or incidental) of western societies seems to have gone by the board and larger families appear to be making a come back. Cynical me suspects bunny-hugging, sandal-wearing, climate change activists are prominent contributors who see no hypocrisy in their procreation.  

In the eighties we in the UK had a colourful MP (when they were still allowed a modicum of independent thought) who, during a discussion  on the aid to be sent to a third world country that had suffered some natural disaster that had killed tens of thousands, remarked that the best aid we could send the country would be condoms as the birth rate in the country meant that the number killed had already been replaced in the time between the disaster and the emergency debate in the Commons. Needless to say he was branded as a racist (which he probably was ) and that unfortunately detracted from the validity of his underlying argument.  

I find I still have a copy of ‘A Blueprint for Survival’, a 1970’s paper on population and the environment on my book shelf. I think it is time I re-read it. I seem to remember that its arguments helped me rationalise not wanting to marry and have children. I know the paper made a big impact on me at the time but, unsurprisingly it has been ignored by generations of policymakers too intent on the short term.

 

[Cole Parker]

There's no doubt that population explosion is right up there with climate change as our most critical problems for our long term existence.  I think we've already reached the tipping point.  How many more people will this orb support without wars being fought for habitable land and food?

C

 

 

[Nigel Gordon]

4 hours ago, Cole Parker said:

There's no doubt that population explosion is right up there with climate change as our most critical problems for our long term existence.  I think we've already reached the tipping point.  How many more people will this orb support without wars being fought for habitable land and food?

C

 

 

I think we have gone past the tipping point. The demand for food production, limited resources and the impact of climate change have resulted in a socio-economic structure that cannot be maintained. I hate to say this but antibiotic resistant bacteria may be the last hope of humanity. A plague or two might be what we need to get the world back to a situation where we can sort things out and get a balanced society that works.

[Camy]

1 hour ago, Nigel Gordon said:

I think we have gone past the tipping point. The demand for food production, limited resources and the impact of climate change have resulted in a socio-economic structure that cannot be maintained. I hate to say this but antibiotic resistant bacteria may be the last hope of humanity. A plague or two might be what we need to get the world back to a situation where we can sort things out and get a balanced society that works.

Sad though it is, I have to agree.

Accepting an existential threat is far harder than fighting for your own small bit of turf. Maybe it's the reason fantasy has taken off in such a big way: better to see the world trashed by monsters than by our own self interest, lack of foresight and inaction.

 

[Cole Parker]

I too worry about more and more bacteria becoming indifferent to our various antibiotics.  Nigel could well be right: that might be the beginning of the end.

C

[Trab]

Sadly, I too feel it's too damned late to change our impending doom, as a civilization and maybe a species. On a personal level I'm ready to go if it comes to that, but I don't want to suffer to get there. We should encourage the powers that be to provide quick release pills, rather than fighting to maintain people in an unwanted and often painful life of helpless misery. Dignity in dying (assisted suicide) is being fought all over the place: why? 

[Merkin]

I would beware of any government or controlling authority that distributes quick release pills.  I think immediately of
Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid.  Assisted dying on a one-to-one basis under regulated circumstances is quite different.

[Nigel Gordon]

On 6/14/2019 at 9:15 PM, Trab said:

Sadly, I too feel it's too damned late to change our impending doom, as a civilization and maybe a species. On a personal level I'm ready to go if it comes to that, but I don't want to suffer to get there. We should encourage the powers that be to provide quick release pills, rather than fighting to maintain people in an unwanted and often painful life of helpless misery. Dignity in dying (assisted suicide) is being fought all over the place: why? 

It is not being fought everywhere, there are some placed where it is allowed. Hopefully we will get more places adopting a more realistic attitude to assisted dying. Doctors need to remember the old guidance that they should not strive officiously to maintain life.