ANS forum relaunching

ELAS had close relations with this when it last ran 2007-16.

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As you may know the Asperger Forum took place at the University of Strathclyde for a number of years. The Forum produced 2 documents, An Ordinary Life and An Ordinary Life Too. The Forum is also an opportunity for autistic individuals to meet and discuss relevant issues and topics, with a view to this information being fed back to professionals at both a grass roots and strategic level.

We think now would be a good time to start the Forum again, and are looking for individuals who might be interested in joining the Forum. The Forum is led by autistic individuals, with facilitation support from Autism Network Scotland. Members are invited to come to meetings to discuss issues, topics or focus areas that are important to them. The discussions' outcomes are intended for sharing, via local and national autism strategy connections or to the professional circles connected to the issues. ANS can facilitate this and group members make choices arising.

The Asperger’s Forum membership is open to any autistic adult living in Scotland. Initially meetings will be held online, by routes that participants can best access, but we hope that in the future we can have a mix of online and face-to-face meetings.

If you would be interested in hearing more about the Forum or in becoming a member you can contact Lynsey at lynsey.stewart@strath.ac.uk.

We would also ask that you take part in this short survey to help us develop the Asperger Forum as we move forward.

www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/YPFBJKS

stand with "Neuroclastic" site's fight for Osime Brown against global apartheid cruelty

Worse than Prison: immigration detention could kill Osime Brown.

Neuroclastic is an awful sounding word I hope won't catch on, + name for a site. Wish it had defied our scene's policers of language, not let them push it to change to this name.

Far more important than that, extremely morally important + pressing, it is trying to act as the spectrumite scene's focus to fight against global apartheid's arbitrary racist destruction of a spectrumite life. Namely, the atrocity of deportating to Jamaica an autistic man who has no connections or sources of support there, has lived in Britain since age 4.

When folks are deported, they are usually taken through customs at the destination country and then left at the airport. From there, most often, it’s on them to fend for themselves. In this case an autistic young man with high support needs, PTSD, and a severe heart condition. In advance of which, getting moved to an immigration detention prison on Oct 7. Read the article.

Evil people habitually

• - are noncommittal
• - use the word "unfortunately"
• - talk rhetorically of reality
• - call moral issues grey
• - say they would rather blot them out of thought

#globalapartheid #autistic #OsimeBrown #deportation

not to bounce back

The most blessed thing to miss and forget about, during the life of lockdown emergency, has been the sight of bouncers. The oppression that they are and they redolate, the sheer wrong structure of a society that has them. Their blue armband identity badges ooze repulsively the official stamp on a designed oppression.

Parts of life that more thoughtful folks avoid, during the locdkown it has heen possible to even forget that we had forgotten them. In Kirkcaldy today, first time there since the travel rules eased, it was a real disgusted yuk moment to see blue badged bouncers, and remember they exist, on a laid-out outdoor pub on a verandah. Very continental, except that classically France"s streetside cafes are not behind bouncers!

It was packed full, not even looking socially distanced, with folks who had chosen the down-yo-earth culture of drinking out, even underthe shadow of getting past those. By comparison the big beach was almost deserted, 2 household groups on its whole length. Its coastal location seems wasted on its people.

A permanent society shift left by Covid may be that we meet up more online in our own little video bubbles, That the habit stucks because it is practical. Less tie to gping out and meeting up in person, leafs to less gatekeeping. Less going to places with bouncers, so that they are seen less and start to become outdated. Good riddance.

31 Jul 2020

you no longer beg for, you now cite for by right, straight answers against stupid rules

Here is how you do, on grounds that come from autism work too.

To Livingston Designer Outlet, a central shopping mall there, today Jul 16:

Almondvale Boulevard is a perfectly publicly open street. I walked round the corner to check.

Exit is not like entry. The emergency conditions around entry, around controlling numbers and hand sanitising and enforcing masks, are well known and everyone can see that they would justify limiting entry to the points where those things are organised. Entry enters us into the situation of your shoppers' health. Exit does not. Exit is our return to the outside world and simply ceasing to be your concern.

Hence, no health protection is achieved at all by forbidding exit at any unlocked door. Indeed oppositely, that keeps us mingled inside your premises for longer. If a person sent from one exit to another is infective, they infect the folks around them during that unnecessary walk. Frustration and rational anger caused by it will increase involuntary face touching, and with Covid, that increases both infectivity and personal infection risk.

Nothing is achieved at all, and your shoppers' health is risked more, by forbidding exit at the door on the corner of Almondvale Boulevard and calling it only a staff exit. It does not lead to a special staff space, it leads straight onto a public street that is open. Ordering us not to exit there constitutes confining the public unexpectedly inside a potentially infective space against our will. There is no functional or health difference whatever between staff and shoppers leaving the premises at that exit.

If you have a guy there preventing entry, you are perfectly able to count us out there if that matters, which it appears not to as I could see no one counting us out at the Almondvale Avenue entrance.

Hence it would be an act against public health, suable by anyone infected as a result, to put on any airs and graces whatever of having in theory the power to decide to do it: and to make any other response whatever including none than to stop this oppression. The following particular responses, in taking part in autism work I have flagged up as being exploitations of vulnerabilities, then cited that because of the vulnerable groups' invisibility, that in fact establishes that these responses can never be given to any of the public at all, about anything ever. On Covid related matters, it also would be suable acts against public health to give any of these responses, instead of automatically only the answer of upholding personal fairness:

• Be noncommittal,
• Use the word "unfortunately" or any synonyms of it,
• Deny that they should do anything or answer substantively until an indefinitely deferrable eventuality,
• Ignore, or omit to answer, any of the entire content of the evidence available from the person being answered,
• Declare unilaterally that any step not reasoningly accepted as upholding personal fairness is "their decision",
• "I'm sorry but .." or "I'm afraid .." or "I/we note your comments..." or "I understand how you feel but..." a tough bruising assertion of decision not to fix it,
• Declare unilaterally that any of these types of answer, or any answer not standing up to reasoning, is a last word,
• Assert that these are what people will do,
• Give no answer at all because of being prevented from giving these types of answer,
• Declare any matter of fairness closed, or unilaterally close down contact, before its entire content has been fairly answered, and at a stage preventing this from being ascertained from logical scrutiny of answers given.

It is always right to end with that notice, passing it on until its observation by all bodies engaging with the public becomes generally established.

Maurice Frank

Jul 17. This is not an answer. This attempts to play the device of decision assertion while blaming the government for it. They are perfectly capable of including the corner exit in a footfall count. Notice no mention at all of the practicalities of using that exit, or of the face touching point:

Good morning, thank you for your email. We would advise the following points:

• In relation to the new operating procedures within the Outlet, we are following Scottish Government guidelines
• We have implemented a one way system within the Outlet to assist with social distancing
• We are managing capacity in and out of the building via automatic footfall counters
• We have sanitisation stations available throughout the Outlet, including exits
• The exit door has been chosen to support guests accessing the south car park and public services, along with access to The Centre
• The welfare, safety and wellbeing of both guests and staff are at the forefront of the decision making.

Kind Regards,
Morag Eadie
Centre Administrator – Livingston Designer Outlet

careless talk of aggression is itself aggressive

This further article on the Matthew Rushin case neuroclastic.com/2020/06/10/matthew-rushin-and-the-virginia-beach-police-department/ is on THE DANGER OF INTERPRETING AUTISTIC SOCIAL PRESENTATION AS AGGRESSIVE BECAUSE IT'S NOT SUBMISSIVE, and the writer's efforts to research the too little that US police practices have done about that.

BUT IT IS ACTUALLY A WRONG THAT AUTISTICS CAN DO TO EACH OTHER TOO. It features in the foul play politics within the autistic scene. Real aggression also features in that, but the point is there is a duty to analyse and back up WITH DETAILED REASONING any accusation of aggression. Unless it stands up to rational reasoning it is a medical abuse to maintain the accusation.

This makes it A CRIME, a violation of safe support, for anyone in our scene to accuse another of aggression then to stop answering them then to block/cut off contact without explaining or defending the accusation in detail.

The petition link again:
www.change.org/p/ralph-s-northam-matthew-rushin-autistic-college-student-odu

be afraid hence care

A US black injustice brought to surface by the present events. This one involves autism and is a serious corruption of ignoring the impact of a meltdown panic state of kind on words said, making up extra things there is no proof he said, and interpreting an echolalia (repetition of words spoken to you) as a statement of suicidal intent.

Matthew Rushin. Case described shockingly here neuroclastic.com/2020/06/09/urgent-matthew-rushin-is-in-prison-for-being-black-and-autistic/
and psychologically insighted here
neuroclastic.com/2020/06/09/freematthewrushin/
may motivate supporting him here
www.change.org/p/ralph-s-northam-matthew-rushin-autistic-college-student-odu

5G irradiated environment ?

We are sensitive to our environments. Sensory issues, unfiltered overwhelms by bright light or a teeming crowd's sound, irritating electronic hums, all that. I have to keep the cable unplugged from my bedside radio to sleep, otherwise the faint hum is annoying as well as a waste of electricity.

One of our members us highly concerned against 5G, the plan to do the web + phones by a stronger level of signal radiation called 5G. Impact details set out in this petition based in New Zealand include:
" If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems. "

Reflect. Support if you agree with the health concern.

Eugenie Sage: I do not consent to 5G radiation.

26 Apr 2020

social real life justified the gradual wind down

I have been interested to observe this. Every frequently meeting group in my social life has been psychologically reluctant to stop. It was always been irresistible to go on and achieve their next meet so long as folks generally seem well. There is that mismatch, then, between a thinking group's natural instincts and the advice. Folks have stayed active until last weekend before the move to major shutdown from Mar 16, feeling they owed to each other to try not to drop activities, and there was always a next meet that would still be good to get done if folks were still well. Precautions like separately wrapped food started, and Anglican churches stopping their handshakes and shared wine, but knowing there were not yet many cases, folks all seemed to need the week of build-up of threat awareness, before the govt announcements of Mar 16, to get mentally ready to stop their social activities.

That felt right. It's particularly reasonable for support activities. I found that it aligned me against the armchair opinion on Facebook for a sudden instant "lockdown" on the shockingly authoritarian model seen in some countries like Italy. As a report by Robert Peston raised, heavy handed lockdowns put the elderly at risk of unseen neglect inside their homes, which counters the argument that the authoritarian lockdown makes them safer from the virus. I agreed with the government keeping the country active as long as we were still mostly healthy, and being driven by events re when we had to tip over into shutdown. Because it all matched folks' irresistible common sense day-to-day behaviour in my experience, mine included. That has been the real life practicality of folks' social and support lives, during the descent into this health emergency.

So I'm very glad and morally defend, that ELAS met on Mar 14. It was a good success for the 2 folks with ADHD who came to it: one new, so we achieved support by having it for them. That makes it right that we had it. Then it was reasonable that we supported each other into the shutdown period by an outdoor strolling meet of 1 1/2 hours today, around discussing it. An intermediate stage of wind down before stopping meeting. It met a need, it was supportive, but it was supportive about knowing we can't return to keep doing it for the duration, as the outbreak gets worse.

Maurice Frank
21 Mar 2020

diverse language forbidden

Paul Wady is an activist + writer on autism who does an Edinburgh Fringe show on it annually. I have seen a lot of the silly radical language politics he describes going on for several years + getting ever purgier + more factionally radicalised. Today Paul shared on social media:
*******

An ethos has been invented in which the term Neurodiversity Movement means people who reject and ignore the severely disabled and autistic, and won't hear anything negative said about being on the spectrum. Which is of course absurd. This seems to be something we have to address daily.

It was invented by people with different motives such as Anti Vaxxers, ABA practitioners and people who hate being autistic. Also people who just plain hate being. Finally a certain BE CURED OR BE DAMNED attitude?

I might also venture to describe them as 'Wannabe NT's'.

Assertion of this definition of the term, invariably takes the form of people ignoring anyone trying to reason or debate with them and just going around in circles. Saying her and over that they are right. It's not sane.

If you meet anyone on social media who ignores what you say and just replies any way they want, for example when you describe the loose umbrella term autism as anything but a disorder and that's that - you can predict what you get back. It's a disorder and that's that. No amount of reason seems to get through. But the bizarre thing is, they must understand what you are trying to tell them.

Personally I see it all as relative and you have to have the conditions/symptoms of disability to be disabled rather than one condition that always means you are.

So thank you to everyone doing this. Without such facist eugenicist attitudes, I would not have been able to so clearly define my ideas and attitudes in the field of self advocacy. Keep up the good work - because people can spot when someone does not listen to reason or have the ability to engage in a rational dialogue.

12 Feb 2020

we want you to bring someone to your hospital appointment

Consider one of the hospital treatments they can do just in a day visit, without needing any cutting operation or inpatienthood. How it's a weight off our minds, a welcomed good, that space agey technologies, with lasers or sound or microsurgeries, save us trouble.

So, the appointment letter comes. Ever so casually, just by the way, it says: bring someone to acc ompany you home, in case you need the stronger painkiller, because under its effects you can't get home alone.

How the bloody'ell is a spectrumite supposed to arrange that? Many folks who are not autistic would have trouble arranging that, too, so I make the point for them too. For autistics it this request is in obvious conflict with our condition.

You are not going to know the work hour patterns followed by every friend + acquaintance. This is not only for single folks: if you have a partner or offspring who are working or away at the needed time, you are in exactly the same position. A conversationally afflicted spectrumite can't work up the brazenness, first to tell everyone in turn about a physical health condition, which is against privacy too, then to request sacrifice of hours out of that person's own time, for them to sit around in a hospital while you get your treatment.

It's a sharp practice for the NHS to ask folks to achieve something so impractical. It's practical common sense, that if the stronger painkilker will impair for a day your ability to get home, they should keep you in hospital for one night. Or at minimum, take you home in an ambulance. Surely the obvious reason for not wanting to do that, is the pressure from CUTS.

So they try to wing it by asking you for the most they hope you might be able to sort tor yourself.

So with phoning as an autistic difficulty too, you phone them about this. They say you can still come in and we will see how we get on - let's welcome that they have to say that rather than abandon the treatment. But when you are there, they say that because you are alone they can't give the stronger painkiller, so they are more limited in what level they can do the treatment at. Which leaves more question over whether it will work effectively. Clearly the wrong way to organise it. Not equality for us.

Maurice Frank
18 Jan 2020