Episode 23 Medieval Warfare Ends with Gunpowder

The Middle Ages Around the World

Dr Joyce E Salisbury

Film Review

Gunpowder was discovered by Chinese alchemists looking for a chemical to bestow immortality who discovered a white organic crust formed on decaying matter called saltpeter (potassium nitrate) was flammable. They first used it in 1110 in fireworks and initially attached it to arrows. By 1240, gunpowder, fireworks and rockets had spread to the Muslim world. From there it spread to Western Europe. In 1267, Roger Bacon wrote to the pope describing gunpowder.

The first recorded use of gunpowder bombs was in 1232, when Song dynasty combatants launched an iron device against Mongol warriors that exploded on hitting its target. After hiring Chinese engineers to make their own bombs, which often included shrapnel, urine, feces or oil, the Mongols used them extensively by the 14th century.

One hundred years later, gunpowder had made traditional warfare, carried out by medieval knights on horseback, obsolete. The combined use of gunpowder and the longbow enabled England to conquer most of France during the 100 Years War (1337-1453).  Both the primitive guns (which shot iron balls) had a far greater range than French knights with crossbows, which allowed the English to trike the French defenders long before they were in range to be fired on. In addition,

Primitive handgun used at Battle of Crecy

Likewise, crossbows took much longer to load – an English archer could fire 10 arrows a minute with a longbow, in contrast with a France archer who could only fire two with a crossbow.

By 1415 the British and their Burgundian allies controlled northern France as far south as the Loire, and the French king Charles VI had abdicated and disenfranchised his son Charles. The outcome of the war was significantly altered by a teenage peasant girl named Joan of Arc, who heard voices from God directing her to lead the French armies to victory and assure the coronation of Charles the VII. According to Dr Salisbury, Joan of Arc revival of national loyalty (as opposed to loyalty to a king) significantly changed the course of the war for the French. The armies she liberated Orleans and other cities that stood in the way of Charles’s coronation (according to French tradition) in the cathedral at Reims.

After capturing her, the Burgundian army turned her over to the English, who turned her over to the Inquisition – who tried her for heresy and burned her at the stake.

Charles VII would be the first king to organize a French artillery, leading to a string of French victories until only Calais remained in English hands.

The most significant transformation this created in European warfare was that kings and nobles could now hire commoners trained in the use of gun, cannon and longbows to fight their wars for them.

*The Hundred Years War was triggered by a dispute over succession when the French king Charles IV died in 1328 without a direct heir. Charles IV’s through the English king Edward III was the closest living relative through his mother, Charles’s sister Isabella. After the French parliament ruled succession couldn’t pass through the female line, Charles IV’s first cousin Phillip VI became king of France. After the latter attempted to claim supremacy over English lands in southern France, Edward III invaded France with 4,000 knights, 10,000 commoners with longbows and 50 commoners with small guns.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/13172786/13172834Medi

By Thomas Buckle

These are not the droids you are looking for.

With a wave of his hand, Obi-Wan Kenobi made thoughts and suspicions disappear.

When it comes to Covid, it is what the pharmaphorcedcopulation conglomeration is trying to do right now.

Well, no.

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Dr. Rachel Bedard – who specializes in “medicine and criminal justice” – said the world needs to move on from the whole Covid catastrophe, the pandemic response, and the wholesale destruction of liberties.

In complaining about the possibility that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be appointed by a – horrors! – potential Donald Trump administration, she had this to say:

The Covid-19 pandemic was a divisive crisis for Americans. I worry that appointing Mr. Kennedy to a top health job would entrench the maddening, counterproductive, personality-driven dynamics that have dominated the politics of health and medicine for the first half of this decade, especially post-Covid…

The future will surely bring both predictable and unforeseen public health crises that will require cool, experienced, nonpartisan leadership. Should Mr. Kennedy be appointed to the federal government, he is unlikely to use his power to turn down the temperature. We should learn from what the pandemic revealed about our culture’s deep divisions. If Mr. Kennedy is in the administration, I fear we never will.

Arrogance aside, Bedard’s opinion piece screams enforced forgetfulness. While she may claim her position is about being able to “learn” from the pandemic, her statements belie that.

Her version of learning is about learning how to trust the public health complex that lied to the world for two – and counting – years about the dangers, origins, and potential treatments for Covid.

Bedard does admit that many and much politics were played and that maybe kinda sorta the pronouncements from the likes of Anthony Fauci were too “prescriptive” rather than “persuasive,” which is the best way to handle discussions in the midst of any public health crisis, from pandemic to weird goo appearing in the public pool.

She says RFK, Jr.’s pronouncements are about power rather than the necessary “nuance” needed and is therefore unfit for office.

One assumes one can replace “nuance” with ‘I was just following orders,’ but, either way, Bedard whitewashes fault and then – for purely pejorative reasons – goes into a tangent about raw milk.

Pejorative because it seems that people who go beyond the socially acceptable “farm to table” and “non-GMO” and “certified organic” to demanding purer foods concepts are weird stupid people who are endangering the rest of the population, even though the rest of the population will most likely stick with things like pasteurized moo juice.

It’s a red non-sequitur herring, intentionally included to try to lump various types of officially designated crazy people together.

Kennedy’s appointment, Bedard frets, would lead to people remembering what happened during the pandemic and may even lead to investigations into exactly why it happened.

And that would be bad because it would not allow for the enforced amnesia, the demand for the Great Forgetting.

Prior to this, the folks who did very very well during the pandemic asked for “Covid amnesty” for the public health experts who led the effort and their terrifying minions who did things like yell at people who were not wearing a mask and refused to allow family members to attend Thanksgiving if they were not vaccinated.

The argument – made by Brown University economist Emily Oster, who no one had ever heard of before the pandemic – for amnesty was that “everyone tried their best, no one did anything intentionally bad, we now know better, we’re not bad people, we didn’t really know…”

In other words, we did the best we could, be nice, can’t we all get along?

The hubris of Oster’s argument is put paid by a very simple observation about what the pandemic response did:

Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal over-reaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street. The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends. The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches, approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable – that had been tested and succeeded before.   

What Oster forgot – and what Bedard wants everyone to forget forever – is the fact that, despite the heroic efforts of the public health establishment, a million people still died.

Note as to the use of the one million figure:

It is absolutely true that the number of people who died “from Covid” alone and/or primarily is, of course, nowhere near one million – pretty sure even the CDC is side-of-the-mouth admitting that now.

Co-morbidities and advanced age played a huge role in the toll the virus took, and then there were the people who died in a car accident and tested positive at the hospital and were listed as dying of Covid, etc.

That issue is another massive scandal that we will not know the actual truth for years.

But I chose the one million number because that is what they – the experts, the “scientists,” the public health officials, the pandemicists, the media, etc. and/or all the people who lied to the public and caused massive societal disruption – use as a figure. 

And since they – Oster is not the only one who thinks as she does – claim they did the best they could, they had good intentions, they tried really hard so please don’t be mean to us, it demands a question be asked: if one million people, as you say, died while you were doing your best, exactly how awful are you at your job, why should anyone trust you about anything ever again, and why should anyone forgive your gross incompetence and negligence and systemic – using that word correctly – dissembling? And that’s not even considering the fact that you now admit you KNEW the unnecessary damage you were causing while you were causing it?

In other words, if they are going to claim the pandemic was so serious it cost a million lives, it makes the request for “amnesty” even more unconscionable.

And never forget that the people who asked for amnesty and, when that was laughed out of the building, are now demanding amnesia, again, did well during the pandemic.

Oster kept her job. Oster got famous. The pandemic was good for Oster.

The pandemic was also good for bureaucrats, multi-nationals, putative experts, the mindless media, and internet scolds. It was good for woke adults who want to remain children, it was good for the national security-industrial complex, it was good for hiding behind, it was good for expanding societal power.

It was not good for people.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/bedard-from-covid-amnesty-to-covid-amnesia/

By David Barnhizer

The Covid-19 virus attack actually had a single good side, along with its tragic costs. It is that if the K-12 schools had not abandoned in-person teaching and shifted to online computer and Zoom classes, parents would never have discovered that their children were being brainwashed. When that shift occurred, parents all over the nation, as well as state legislatures, governors, politicians, school boards, state boards of education, public interest organizations, and the like suddenly “AWoke” to the dangers of “Wokeness.”

This spread to the various manifestations of the theme of “Anti-Racism” being trumpeted by Critical Race Theory activists. Whatever the name concocted to conceal what is occurring, “Anti-Racism” is itself a new and dangerous form of Neo-Racism hidden behind linguistic masks and formulations.

K-12 Education is a “Critical” Target for the Woke Because That is When Children Are Most Vulnerable and Susceptible

In the K-12 system, teachers are dealing with highly suggestive children whose minds are still developing. Many are vulnerable, anxious, and in the early phases of trying to understand the world into which they have been thrust. They see teachers as strong, caring, and nurturing authority figures. For such young people, ideological systems such as Critical Race Theory can be perceived as powerful and prophetic, regardless of how CRT is restated for political purposes. The practitioners of Wokeism, CRT, and Radical Progressivism—like the earlier European “Deconstructionists” to whom they owe allegiance—use continually shifting landscapes made up of “big” words that can be made to mean anything the advocates choose.

This manipulation of powerful and moralistic constructs establishes control and creates what philosopher Eric Hoffer called “true believers.” Hoffer, in The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), described how the “fault finding man of words” attacks a dominant orthodoxy in order to undermine its perceived legitimacy and hold on power. This is one function of the intellectual, but due to the combination of naivete and self-interest, few intellectual “prophets” have the experience or wisdom needed to prepare for what occurs after they have helped others gain power.

Francois Furet, for example, describes the treatment of intellectuals under Soviet Marxism, a situation in which the Marxist revolutionaries had first relied on such intellectuals to create cracks in the defenses of the existing political system in Europe and Russia. In Russia, following the 1917 Revolution, the newly installed Soviet Marxists either co-opted the intellectuals into becoming state propagandists, exiled or executed them if it was determined they posed a danger to the State. See, Francois Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999).

The problem is that once in power, revolutionary ideologues who base their crusades on claims of hate, oppression, injustice, and inequity, always themselves become the “Oppressors.” The Soviet Marxists ruthlessly suppressed independent thought and subverted the less conscientious or more cowardly intellectuals into serving the ends of the totalitarian state. They understood, as did Mao Zedong, that naive and uncontrolled intellectuals, “Liberals” as Mao wrote in a 1937 tract, because they asked too many questions and challenged authority and were therefore dangerous to those now in power.

In the preliminary stages, this is what is occurring in America with the Woke, Crits, and Radical Progressives. They are seeking nothing less than to undermine and weaken the unique system America represents, and effectively parallel what occurred in Europe to facilitate the rise of the Soviet Union. The reality for us at this point is that we are not as naive, and unless we are stupid or an agent of the Progressive “revolutionaries” know what lies on the “other side” of their “revolutionary transformation” if they are successful.

There should be no doubt that what is playing out in America’s schools and core institutions is a “stealth” strategy involving brainwashing, indoctrination, and power-grabbing—not honest teaching. The intention is to create a kind of quasi-religious devotion operating through the dynamics of “original sin” and “collective guilt” that appeals to our need to be part of something we think is deep, moral, and worthwhile.

An important part of this strategy involves taking control of the instruments of education and communication. When this is achieved, it allows those in power to shape what people know, how they think, and how they interpret the world. Applying this strategic approach to America’s K-12 educational systems is a critical step being taken by the Woke. Capturing our youths’ minds at an early age consolidates and sustains the power of ideologues and fanatics. It provides them with a critical mass of “true believers” that grows steadily over time.

This phenomenon holds true whether we are talking about Xi Jinping’s China of today with his mandating of “Xi Jinping Thought” to all schools in China at all levels, or Mao’s Red Guard. It mirrors the intent of the madrassa schools of Fundamentalist Islam, the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany, and the young Komsomol of the former Soviet Union who brought their heavily biased form of literacy to rural areas. It applies now to many of America’s K-12 schools and universities. Yale, James Madison, UCLA, USC, Stanford, Syracuse, Portland State, Buffalo, and numerous other universities offer dramatic and dismaying examples.

“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” 

—Diogenes

The ancient Greek philosopher and Cynic Diogenes purportedly carried a lantern in the streets of Athens in an unsuccessful search for an “honest man.” However dismaying his search, he provides us with the vital insight that: “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” As you read the examples offered below, consider what is being done and what has already been done to the minds and hearts of our children and the consequences for our society.

An Example from an 8-Year-Old Child: “This ‘feels’ like racism to me”

At the center of the Woke/Crit effort to control our educational processes is injecting their agenda and concepts at our children’s most vulnerable points. Canadian writer Barbara Kay related her experience with her eight-year-old granddaughter.

True story—My 8-year-old granddaughter and her mother were working on a jigsaw puzzle, an image of a cat’s face surrounded by black background. We adults were complaining about the difficulty of joining up so many all-black pieces. My granddaughter said, without a shred of irony, “This feels like racism to me.” Well, her remark felt like “Crimestop” to me. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, children absorb the principle of Crimestop, a trope from Newspeak, the totalitarian regime’s language. Crimestop is the abrupt, instinctual, fear-driven self-silencing that precludes utterance of politically incorrect words that may invoke shaming or worse. My granddaughter’s public school teachers have apparently installed a Crimestop-like app in her tender psyche: Just hearing the disembodied word “black” voiced in a mildly negative light triggers rote guilt in her.

It’s Never Too Early for the Woke:

Babies Apparently Need Anti-Racism “Guidance”

“The Arizona Department of Education is conducting a review of its equity-related resources after material surfaced suggesting that babies and children of other ages harbored racial biases that should be addressed by adults. [T]he material warns that at three months, infants look more at the faces that match the race of their caregivers. A graphic maps out purported racial biases from infancy to 6+ years of age. [Not taking steps to prevent the bias in favor of their White caregivers] forces racism by letting children draw their own conclusions based on what they see,” the graphic reads. The title of the graphic appears to be “They’re not too young to talk about race!” “Arizona teaching material suggests babies need anti-racism guidance: ‘Silence about race reinforces racism by letting children draw their own conclusions,’ the material says,” Sam Dorman, 7/8/21.

“KinderCare Wants Parents to Talk about ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ at Home with Their Six-Week-Old Children”

“A for-profit child care facility is encouraging parents to talk about “anti-racism” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at home with their children as young as six weeks old. KinderCare … is telling parents that “it’s never too early” to teach children about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in the home. The organization’s DEI homepage promised to introduce students to “culturally responsive teaching,” which places students’ identity and emotions at the center of their education.”

Oregon’s Kindergartners Are Already Being Separated

Into Their Differing “Identities!”

“The state of Oregon has adopted social studies standards for kindergartners that require children to understand their own identity groups and identify examples of racial injustice.…Kindergartners will “engage in respectful dialogue with classmates to define diversity comparing and contrasting visible and invisible similarities and differences,” according to the new standards. Kindergartners will also learn to “develop an understanding of one’s own identity groups including, but not limited to, race, gender, family, ethnicity, culture, religion, and ability,”…according to the new standards.

Kids in first grade will learn to “describe how individual and group characteristics are used to divide, unite, and categorize racial, ethnic, and social groups,” according to the new standards. Kids in second grade will learn how to “use listening, consensus-building, and voting procedures to decide on and take informed action to interrupt injustice or promote justice in their community.” Kids in third grade will learn how to “identify how systems of power, including white supremacy, institutional racism, racial hierarchy, and oppression affect the perspectives of different individuals and groups when examining an event, issue, or problem with an emphasis on multiple perspectives.” “Oregon’s racial standards for kindergartners requires kids to ‘identify possible solutions to injustices:’ The standards also require kindergartners to ‘identify examples of unfairness.,” Jessica Chasmar, 3/14/22.

The Bank School “is teaching white 6-year-olds they’re born racist”

Another example of what happens when a dominant orthodoxy gains control is offered in a report involving the Bank School, long considered an elite early educational institution. As you read the paragraph below, think about the effects such procedures can have. They include the intensification of class divisions, the inculcation of “Original Sin” as a core perception of self among very young children in the critical formative years of their early development, and the creation of a divisive creed of “Black Supremacy” to replace the broad brush accusation of “White Supremacy.” What is the Bank School doing?

“An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers. … [S]everal other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it. … “Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum,” said a parent who requested anonymity because he has children currently enrolled in the school.” “Teaching Kindergartners about White Privilege,” 7/2/16.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-exposed-the-fall-of-education-like-nothing-else/

Drone footage shows destruction left by tornado ripping through Florida solar farm before Milton USA Today Mary Walrath-Holdridge

Stop These Things

Leave intellectual pygmies in charge, and weather-dependent wind and solar is what you get. However, not only does their output depend entirely on the weather and/or where the Sun sits in the sky, wind and solar’s capacity to (occasionally) generate power can be eradicated in a matter of minutes.

A few hailstones from the heavens make short work of solar panels. Typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes readily wipe out both solar panels and wind turbines, leaving nothing but expensive wreckage in their path.

In the latter case, twisters will strip the 20 tonne blades from a turbine as if plucking the leaves from a flower and/or flatten the whole shebang in seconds (see the video above).

Proving, once again, how utterly ridiculous solar power is, the twisters that followed in the wake of Hurricane Milton have pounded large-scale solar plants across Florida, including this one.

Drone footage taken after tornados spawned by Hurricane Milton hit the U.S. last week captured a prime example of just how destructive a twister can be.

The footage, shared by North Carolina-based power and gas company Duke Energy, showed the damage left behind in a field of Florida solar panels. In the video, taken Oct. 10 at the Lake Placid Solar Power Plant in Sylvan Shores, a clear path of destruction can be seen snaking through the middle of the field where the twister passed over.

Amid the thousands of still-standing panels, which generate enough energy to power 12,000 households [except at night and during cloudy and inclement weather], , a diagonal line of metal debris can be seen stretching almost completely across one plot of the facility, leaving behind empty rows of scrap.

Highlands County, where the solar farm is located, reported at least one person injured after the tornado severely damaged the Tropical Harbor Mobile Home Park on Wednesday ahead of Milton, reported Fox 13 News.

As of Tuesday, Duke Energy’s outage map reported 46,809 Florida customers still without power.

In total, more than 400,000 people in the state are still in the dark as emergency responders grapple with widespread outages and gas shortages.
USA Today

By Josh Hammer

Perhaps if the Harris-Walz ticket does go down in flames, Democrats will pause and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Perhaps. But if history is any indication, they probably won’t.

On July 26, in the aftermath of the Democratic Party’s ruthless midsummer coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, this column predicted that the elevation of dimwitted cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris to the party’s presidential slot would “spectacularly backfire.” More specifically, I wrote: “Practically, the path to winning 270 Electoral College votes still runs through the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It is frankly bizarre for Democrats to swap out the man who talks ceaselessly about his hardscrabble Scranton upbringing for a Californian who boasts the most left-wing voting record of any presidential nominee in modern history.”

I’m feeling pretty good these days about that prognosis.

Harris recently campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania—a crucial regional hub in this election cycle’s most important battleground state. Conspicuously absent from that snoozefest was incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). Harris tried to pass off the snub as a nothingburger, suggesting that Casey was doing the more important work of knocking on doors and getting out the vote. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Facing a spirited challenge from Republican hopeful Dave McCormick, Casey has clearly concluded that Harris’ immense Bay Area lefty baggage—her history of endorsing the Green New Deal, a national fracking ban, and crippling electric vehicle mandates—is an electoral albatross around his neck.

It’s tough to blame Casey. Other vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents, such as Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), reached the same conclusion a while ago. Such a conclusion makes a great deal of sense: A recent Marist national general election poll, for instance, shows Trump up a whopping 10 points on Harris with registered independents. If that margin ends up being anywhere near accurate, it is extraordinarily difficult to see a scenario in which Trump loses.

Harris has recently been engaging in what the psychology profession calls “projection,” ludicrously criticizing Donald Trump for avoiding the media when it was actually Harris who infamously avoided a single one-on-one sit-down interview for weeks on end following the Biden coup. In reality, Trump recently sat down for two interviews with Time magazine, whose owner is a vocal Harris donor. Harris declined a Time interview nonetheless. Prior to this week’s desperate, last-second change of course, which saw her sit down with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Harris had only deigned to sit down with the most obsequious media imaginable.

One can only wonder how bad the Harris-Walz internal polling must be to impel her to ditch the far-left “Call Her Daddy” podcast and the friendly ladies of “The View” for the considerably more mainstream Baier. Desperate times sure call for desperate measures. Democrats routinely blast Republicans as misogynistic, but their own chronic misandry is so bad that Kamala is apparently considering a sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan, whose own brand of woke-skeptical irreverence sharply clashes with Harris’ identity politics obsessions and overt race-based pandering. The tables sure have turned. Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights?

Snark aside, this race isn’t over yet. But the Harris-Walz camp cannot possibly be feeling too good right now, either.

Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their predicament. Throughout this interminable campaign season, they have studiously avoided substantive discussion of the four issues that Americans consistently tell pollsters are most important to them this cycle: the economy, inflation, immigration, and crime. Instead, they have repeatedly attempted to shift the electoral terrain back to the few issues that poll in their favor: namely, abortion and the Jan. 6 jamboree at the Capitol. In this, they have completely failed. The American people still care above all about the same four basic quality-of-life issues that they have cared the most about for years now. It is Democrats’ fault that they are so woefully out of touch with the voters’ sentiments on those issues and that the Biden-Harris administration’s track record polls as poorly as it does.

[…]

Via https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/18/the-collapse-of-kamala-harris/

Lady_Luck/Shutterstock

Jonathon Van Maren

As Canada expands its euthanasia regime, vulnerable individuals like the homeless, obese, and grieving are increasingly offered assisted suicide, countering claims that ‘safeguards’ ensure the protocol remains limited in its scope.

(LifeSiteNews) — Canada’s suicide activists and euthanasia advocates promised the public that the path to “medical aid in dying” would be a narrow path with high guardrails. They were lying. It is a four-lane highway, and there’s nobody patrolling it.

Not a week goes by without some grim new development, and our government refuses to listen to those hoarsely sounding the alarm.

On October 16, the Associated Press covered the questions euthanasia providers are discussing on their private forums. One story featured a homeless man being killed by lethal injection:

One doctor wrote that although his patient had a serious lung disease, his suffering was “mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of (long-term care) of any kind.” A respondent questioned whether the fear of living in the nursing home was truly intolerable. Another said the prospect of “looking at the wall or ceiling waiting to be fed … to have diapers changed” was sufficiently painful. The man was eventually euthanized. One provider said any suggestion they should provide patients with better housing options before offering euthanasia “seems simply unrealistic and hence, cruel,” amid a national housing crisis.

READ: Disability groups files legal challenge against Canada’s euthanasia regime

Another featured a doctor debating whether obesity made someone eligible for assisted suicide:

One woman with severe obesity described herself as a “useless body taking up space” – she’d lost interest in activities, became socially withdrawn and said she had “no purpose,” according to the doctor who reviewed her case. Another physician reasoned that euthanasia was warranted because obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”

And perhaps the most chilling story of all is the case of a woman who was consistently pushed into accepting death:

When a health worker inquired whether anyone had euthanized patients for blindness, one provider reported four such cases. In one, they said, an elderly man who saw “only shadows” was his wife’s caregiver when he requested euthanasia; he wanted her to die with him. The couple had several appointments with an assessor before the wife “finally agreed” to be killed, the provider said. She died unexpectedly just days before the scheduled euthanasia.

Read that carefully: the couple had several appointments with the person assessing their eligibility for euthanasia before the wife “finally agreed” – that is, broke down and assented – to be euthanized. Other providers cited examples of people being euthanized for grief. It should be obvious to anyone looking at what is happening in Canada: there are no brakes on this train.

It just keeps getting worse. Linda Maddaford, the newly elected president of the Regina Catholic Women’s League, is sharing her family’s experience this month at the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan convention.

After her mother passed away, Maddaford’s family moved their father to a care facility in Saskatoon. “The very day after, we got a blanket email inviting us to come to a presentation in the dining room,” she said. The topic? Accessing euthanasia. Maddaford added that there is a “push from the top-down. That if you don’t – if you aren’t open to the idea; you should be. I worry for the people who feel the pressure of: ‘Well my doctor advised it.’ Or ‘someone with a clipboard came around and kept asking.’”

READ: Canadian woman shares ‘appalling’ story of care center pushing euthanasia on her father

Another story, covered this month by the Telegraph, relayed the experience of a Canadian woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery… who was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room for her mastectomy.  

None of these stories appear to give euthanasia activists pause. Instead, they are constantly pushing for more.

On October 16, the Financial Post published an editorial by Andrew Roman titled, “You should be able to reserve MAID service: Quebec is going to let people pre-order medical assistance in dying. Ottawa shouldn’t try to stop it. People should have that right.” Anyone still arguing about “rights” as Canadian physicians euthanize patients for grief, obesity, homelessness, disability, and a plethora of other conditions should not be taken seriously. But here’s Roman, arguing that if we don’t permit this, all kinds of elderly people with dementia will not be killed:

As Canada’s population continues to age, demand for MAiD – medical assistance in dying – will only increase. But, with rates of dementia also increasing, the cognitive ability of patients to consent becomes a barrier. The prevalence of dementia more than doubles every five years among seniors, rising from less than one per cent in those aged 65-69 to about 25 per cent among people 85 and older.

Then, revealing a breathtaking ignorance of how Canada’s euthanasia regime has unfolded, Roman writes this:

There is no good reason why, with the numerous safeguards in Ottawa’s and Quebec’s laws, patients should be precluded from making advance requests before their condition renders them incapable of giving consent; and no good reason why their physicians should become criminals for honouring their patients’ duly stipulated advance requests.

[…]

Via https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/canada-is-moving-ever-closer-to-euthanasia-on-demand-without-exceptions/