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Daily Caller

‘Dark Day’: Another Western Country Backs Doctor-Assisted Suicide, Opens Door To ‘Murder Of Old And Sick’

Published

2 months ago

3 minute read

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Katelynn Richardson

Oxford ethicist Dr. Calum Miller wrote on X the vote was a “huge step towards state-assisted and doctor-assisted murder of old and sick people” in the UK.

The British parliament backed a bill Friday that would legalize assisted suicide.

Following hours of debate, the United Kingdom’s House of Commons voted 330 to 275 in favor of a law that allows citizens with less than six months to live to end their own lives, according to several reports.

The “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” bill must still pass through parliamentary committees and the UK’s House of Lords to become law, according to CNN. Kim Leadbeater, the lawmaker who introduced the bill, expects this to take an additional six months, according to Reuters.

Oxford ethicist Dr. Calum Miller wrote on X the vote was a “huge step towards state-assisted and doctor-assisted murder of old and sick people” in the UK.

“A truly dark day,” he wrote.

Currently, assisted suicide is illegal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Friday’s vote puts the UK on track to join the handful of other countries that legalize assisted suicide, including Canada, Austrailia and New Zealand. Ten U.S. states, along with Washington, D.C., also permit assisted suicide.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program is now the fifth leading cause of death in the country, with 13,241 people choosing assisted suicide in 2022 alone.

“Almost no MAiD requests are denied by clinicians, and the median time between written request and death from MAiD in 2022 was merely eleven days,” Ethics and Public Policy Center visiting fellow Alexander Raikin wrote in an August report.

In October, a committee reviewing MAiD deaths in Canada found multiple instances of patients seeking assisted suicide for reasons like fears of homelessness or isolation, according to the Associated Press.

During debate Friday, British lawmaker Robert Jenrick said the bill would create “imperceptible changes in behaviors.”

“There will be the grandmother who worries about her grandchildren’s’ inheritance if she does not end her life,” said Jenrick. “There will be the widow who relies on the kindness of strangers, who worries; it preys on her conscience. There will be people who are (and we all know them in our lives) shy, who have low self-esteem, who have demons within them.”

Another parliament member Danny Kruger pointed out that the definition of terminal illness in the bill does not provide safeguards.

“In the case of eating disorders, you just need to refuse food, and the evidence is in jurisdictions around the world… that that would be enough to qualify you for an assisted death,” he said.

Kruger said he has met assisted death specialists in Canada who “personally kill hundreds of patients a year.”

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Google Rejects Eurocrats’ Push For More Censorship

Published on January 16, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Ireland Owens

Google soundly rejected the European Union’s push for the platform to censor content Thursday, declaring that it would not implement so-called “fact-checks.”

The tech giant told the EU that it would not incorporate fact checks into its search results and YouTube videos, Axios first reported. Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker wrote a letter to Renate Nikolay, deputy director-general for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission, stating the fact-checking required by the law “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services.”

The European Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, which was introduced in 2022, would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside its search results and YouTube videos and would also require it to incorporate fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms, Axios reported.

Axios’ report comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7 that his company was ending its third-party fact-checking program in favor of implementing community notes. Meta’s announcement states that Meta’s platforms are “built to be places where people can express themselves freely.” Zuckerberg said that his company’s approach to content moderation often resulted in “censorship,” NPR reported.

Zuckerberg recently criticized the European Union’s data laws as “censoring” social media. The EU has rejected his claims as “misleading.”

Some people have criticized some major tech companies, claiming that they have censored conservative speech. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced in October the launch of an investigation into Google for allegedly censoring conservatives.

Zuckerberg criticized Biden officials for pushing Meta to remove content that the Biden-Harris administration alleged to be disinformation during a recent appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to combat social media censorship.

In December, Trump announced that he was nominating Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, stating that Ferguson “has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country.”

Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said in a post on X that Google’s decision was a “step in the right direction,” adding “Kudos to @Google.”

A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the content of Google’s letter as reported by Axios was accurate.

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Daily Caller

US Ally’s Approach To Handling Drones Over Military Bases Is Vastly Different From Biden Admin

Published on January 16, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

The German Cabinet proposed an amendment Wednesday that would allow its armed forces to shoot down mysterious drones flying over military installations and critical infrastructure, while U.S. authorities took no such actions when faced with a similar threat over its bases in 2024.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandros Mayorkas dismissed calls to shoot down unidentified aircraft over northeastern military installations as “dangerous” in December. In contrast, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser proposed an amendment to the country’s armed forces to “engage” the drones, especially when they threaten lives or endanger critical infrastructure.

“It’s not as though anyone can just take down a drone in the sky — that in and of itself would be dangerous,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in December. “Our authorities are very limited … we can’t just shoot a drone out of the sky.”

Faeser, on the other hand, announced an amendment to Germany’s existing Aviation Security Act after authorities spotted drones over Ramstein Air Base, where Ukrainian forces are trained to use Abrams tanks, according to SWR, a German public broadcaster. They suspect Russian forces are using drones to spy on Ukrainian military developments. Authorities also reported drones over various chemical and technology manufacturing plants.

“Since Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we have seen an increasing deployment of drones that present growing challenges for the police and their current technology,” Faeser, translated from German, said in a statement Wednesday. Therefore, it is essential to create an authority within the Aviation Security Act allowing the Bundeswehr to intervene in severe threats, including the use of force to shoot down illegally operating drones as a last resort … It also sends a clear message: We will not be intimidated and will decisively confront current threats.”

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Staff released a statement on the drone sightings in December, writing that they too had observed drones flying over military installations. Authorities said they spotted unidentified aircraft over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both in New Jersey.

“This is not a new issue for us. We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited,” a Joint Staff spokesperson said. “To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent. But … we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin.”

 

DJI, a Chinese drone manufacturer and the most popular drone brand in the U.S., announced Monday it removed software prohibiting users from flying over restricted airspace, such as airport runways, nuclear power plants and the White House. The update reclassifies what were previously “restricted zones” to “enhanced warning zones,” which DJI says will “plac[e] control back in the hands of the drone operators” who “bear final responsibility.”

The amendment to the German law, which has not yet passed the country’s federal parliament, would allow the military to fire on the drones if deemed a threat to lives or critical infrastructure. Under the current version of the law, German authorities are prohibited from shooting down the aircraft.

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