TO JACKSON POLLOCK
the sapling's ambition to draw from the secret streams
Pollock, when he swung his wild arcs in the barn-air by
austere rhythm deep down things, beautiful
spread their secondhand books in the scalding sunlight.
all the busted and incomplete, half-finished and lost?
with nobody, thank you, this once nobody talking—
he rode the huge engine of his attention toward silence,
beseechment, praise. Look down into it, the smash-up swirl,
~ Mark Doty
*
JACKSON POLLOCK CONTROLLED HIS “DRIPS”
Pollock at work
~ Seventy-five years ago, in his studio in a Long Island barn, Jackson Pollock made the first of the works that would come to define him. These were (and are) known as ‘drip paintings’, although dripping was hardly to the point. As Hans Namuth was to record in his film of the artist at work in 1950, the artist flicked and spilled and flung diluted enamel paint at least as often as he dripped it. But ‘drip’ was the word that stuck to works such as Full Fathom Five (1947), thanks perhaps to the subeditor at Time magazine who, in the year of his death, bestowed upon Pollock the undying nickname ‘Jack the Dripper’.
Pollock had long since been anointed the crown prince of American painting by that critical kingmaker Clement Greenberg. In November 1943, in The Nation, Greenberg had rhapsodized the work in his first solo show, at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, as ‘among the strongest abstract paintings I have yet seen by an American’. In a taste of what was to come, he breezily noted that Pollock had ‘gone through the influences of Miró, Picasso and what not, and has come out on the other side’. He had, that is to say, taken what he wanted from Europe, and moved on. ‘He is liable to relapse into an influence,’ Greenberg added, darkly, ‘but if the times are propitious, it won’t be for long.’ It was he more than anyone who would see in Pollock’s work of the late 1940s an art that was essentially American.
Yet whether Pollock dripped (or flung or spilled) his paint was an irrelevance lent weight by Greenberg himself. Pollock’s paintings, he said, ‘eliminated the factor of manual skill and seemed to eliminate the factor of control along with it […] excluding anything that resembles control and order, not to mention skill’. If this misreading was that of what Greenberg sniffily called ‘the uninitiated eye’, it was nonetheless to become the standard line on Pollock. In trying to defend his hero’s rejection of skill, Greenberg turned him into raw instinct, tout court. This was what Hans Namuth also saw. His filming, he recalled, had lasted ‘perhaps half an hour’. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally he said, ‘This is it.’ In fact, as Pollock later admitted, he had already finished the work he appeared to paint from new in Namuth’s film, reworking it for the camera. He was an altogether more knowing artist than the film-maker allowed, and a very much more sophisticated one.
In 1998, the conservators of the Museum of Modern Art in New York undertook an exhaustive survey of the post-war Pollocks in their collection. This revealed a number of surprises. ‘The level of intentionality was the biggest,’ said MoMA’s chief conservator, James Coddington. ‘It just flew in the face of everything people have generally thought.’ He went on: ‘There’s a level of consciousness, intention, about [Pollock’s method] that liberates him to paint as unconsciously as he does […] a great deal of consciousness, balance, use of materials, and craft.’ He and a colleague had tried to make their own Pollock. Studying Namuth’s film, they pinned a primed canvas to the studio floor and poured paint on to it from a tin. ‘What this allows you to do is make an infinite line,’ Coddington recalled. ‘You can just go on and on and on. So these thin lines give one great control.’
Pollock himself would have agreed, had he been asked. In 1950, the year Namuth filmed him, Time magazine had run a piece on his art quoting the young Italian critic Bruno Alfieri, who had referred to the ‘chaos’ detectable in it. ‘It is easy to describe a [Pollock],’ Alfieri had said. ‘Think of a canvas surface on which the following have been poured: the contents of several tubes of paint of the best quality; sand, glass, various powders, pastels, gouache, charcoal […] It is important to state immediately that these “colors” have not been distributed according to a logical plan (whether naturalistic, abstract or otherwise). This is essential. Jackson Pollock’s paintings represent absolutely nothing: no facts, no ideas, no geometrical forms.’ Pollock’s response had been an enraged telegram to Time – ‘NO CHAOS DAMN IT’ – from which MoMA’s conservators took the name for their survey.
The story of Pollock’s drips, as he himself saw it, was thus one not of disorder but order. The various claimants to the title of his chief influencer – Max Ernst, William Baziotes, David Alfaro Siqueiros – had all eschewed control of their paint, splashing it from lazy Susans or dripping it from dangling tins with holes punched in them. The point of this was to relinquish intention, that snare of the conscious mind. Pollock’s approach to paint was quite different. His dripping might appear primal, at least to Greenberg, Namuth and Time magazine, but it was an appearance that he went about cultivating in an entirely methodical way. How methodical it was had also come as a surprise to MoMA’s conservators. ‘When you look at the surface of a Pollock, it is very abstracted,’ mused James Coddington, pondering X-rays of the drip paintings. ‘But when we can peer beneath the surface to see the underlying construction of the work, there you begin to see that the final surface organization is actually pretty much laid down earlier on.’ The question, then, is not where Pollock had learned to drip, but where he had learned to give the impression of doing so. The answer to that, surprisingly, was in a studio run by an English printer.
Stanley William Hayter’s name is very well known in printmaking circles, rather less so outside of them. Born into a family of London artists in 1901, he had taken up science instead, setting off to what is now Iran as a geologist with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. He had his first exhibition in 1926, of work produced in Abadan, while recovering in London from malaria. This did well enough for him to throw in his job, buy himself a motorcycle and head for Paris and the Académie Julian.
It was a meeting there with the Polish printmaker Józef Hecht that would set Hayter on the road he was to follow until his death 60 years later. For reasons that remain unclear, he decided to dedicate himself to rescuing intaglio printing from the desuetude into which it had fallen. In the 19th century, as artistic genius had come to be ever more closely equated with speed and spontaneity, engraving, that slowest and least spontaneous of art forms, had fallen out of favour. By 1926, it had been relegated to commercial studios, used in the reproduction of paintings or printing of books.
Hayter’s campaign to promote engraving as a modernist technique – in particular, to champion the use of the burin, an unwieldy instrument requiring not just skill but strength – seemed less quixotic than perverse. And yet it succeeded. By the mid 1930s, he had acquired a Montparnasse studio patronized by Picasso, Giacometti and Miró, not simply producing prints for these artists but teaching them to engrave for themselves. When war came, he moved this to New York, retaining the French name taken from its street number in rue Campagne-Première: Atelier 17. It would find a home on the top floor of the New School for Social Research – the University in Exile – a few blocks from Pollock’s flat.
Pollock was not the only future New York School artist to make work at the atelier, at the New School or its later iteration across the road from his flat in East Eighth Street. Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning all did so, too, each producing there the only engravings they are known to have made. In 1947 at the Eighth Street atelier, Louise Bourgeois would make her breakthrough work, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, a suite of burin prints that prompted her move into sculpture.
But it was Pollock who was most affected by his time at Atelier 17. Introduced to it by his printmaker friend Reuben Kadish, he worked there at night, furiously and alone, from the early autumn of 1944 to late spring 1945. ‘He didn’t work much with a lot of people in the print shop,’ Hayter recalled in the distant 1970s. ‘He’d come in at odd hours and at night when nobody else was there.’ Kadish said, ‘I inveigled Jackson into trying it because I thought his work had a kinship to Hayter’s prints.’ It was a likeness that had already been spotted by the Art News critic James Lane, who in 1942 compared the two men’s ‘general whirling figures’ – Pollock being then so little known that his name had been misspelled ‘Pollack’.
Pollock may have worked alone at Atelier 17, but he spent long hours with Hayter in the latter’s house on Waverly Place, visits that would continue until the older man returned to Paris in 1950. ‘When half drunk, Jack could talk intelligently about the source of inspiration and about the limits of working from the unconscious,’ Hayter said. He also understood what Pollock had been up to in his nights at Atelier 17. ‘A lot of our people, at this time, said. “This is nonsense. Anyone can do [what Pollock] is doing,”’ Hayter recalled. ‘And this infuriated me. So I said, “All right. Go to it. And I bet you not one of you can make one square inch of anything that can be mistaken for what Pollock’s done.” And they tried it… You can’t be fooled. It’s more than handwriting.’
Three decades after the death of his protégé, Hayter said, ‘Jack always claimed that he had two masters: Benton and me.’ The American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton, Pollock’s professor at art school, had taught him the rules of painting; Hayter encouraged him to break them.
That this has been largely forgotten is easy enough to understand: Hayter is known as a printmaker, although he saw himself primarily as a painter; Pollock’s plates remain little known; Hayter was European in a day when the writing of American art history was chauvinistic. But it does need to be remembered. ~
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/jackson-pollock-atelier-17/
*
“On the canvas was not a picture, but an event.” ~ Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Art News (December 1952)
*
ONE LAND, TWO ETHNIC GROUPS — SOME HISTORICAL EXAMPLES
~ There really is just one solution: use the same standards as for any other conflict in the same time period.
The most perverse myth about the issue of Israel and Palestine is the situation is somehow unique, strange, different, unequaled and without parallel in word history. The only example usually cited is the exodus of Israelites from Palestine by the Romans and Palestinians drew from that to create their own version of exodus, so they would have the same claim to sympathy as the Jews did.
Back in the real world, when the “catastrophe”[Nakba] happened (Palestinians fled or were forced out of Palestine), they weren’t called Palestinians yet. They called themselves Syrians for the most part; a smaller but still significant portion called themselves Egyptians. Syria and Egypt were two of the states that attacked Israel, lost the war and consequently the territory the people now called Palestinians lived on. In retaliation the Arab stated expelled Jewish population from their territory by force or threat of force, leaving these people with nowhere but Israel to settle in.
Now the conflict is who this land really belongs to and by what right does Israel claim the land.
Here’s how it was done in some of the other cases in the 1910–1950 period:
Greeks were expelled from Turkey and resettled in Greece proper. Turks were expelled from Greece and resettled in Turkey proper.
Poland took territory from Germany. Germans were forcefully resettled into Germany proper.
USSR took territory from Poland. Poles were forcefully resettled into Poland proper, as a nice thank you for being the first people to oppose Hitler.
Czechoslovakia was liberated from German occupation and expelled ethnic Germans of Sudetenland. Germans were resettled into Germany proper.
Yugoslavia liberated itself from German and Italian occupation and expelled ethnic Italians and Germans. Italians were resettled in Italy proper, Germans went to the USA for the most part, although some also resettled in Germany proper.
India expelled some 8 million Muslims who were resettled in Pakistan. Pakistan expelled approximately 7 million Hindus, who were resettled in India.
None of these led to long-term conflict or war. No one created a new national identity for the dispossessed people so that they wouldn’t have a land to settle in and would be forced into suffering for generations. It was only in Israel and Palestine that a different solution was attempted, with horrific results.
Maybe we should try the same approach as was attempted everywhere else instead? The results are manifestly less bad than in the case of Israel and Palestine. Arab states who expelled Jews take in a number of Palestinians proportional to the number of Jews they forced out, give them citizenship, compensate them for land lost in the war and call it a day. That’s the only solution one can consider “fair”.
The problem of Israel and Palestine can be solved by forcing Arab states to take care of the mess they created for their own gain. The problem of Palestinians can be solved by applying the same solution that was applied to any other people in their situation. ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora
Joe: LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE
When we discuss the war between Palestine and Israel, we need to pay special attention to our language because its misuse leads to violence. This war is between two religiously ultra-conservative governments, Hamas and the Benjamin Netanyahu coalition, not between Palestinians and Jews. The Hamas organization advocates the extermination of all Jews in Israel. The Netanyahu government promotes the removal by forced migration or murder of the Palestinians living along Israel’s borders.
The South African government calls the Jewish war plan genocide. To them, killing and, or removal of any group of people from their land is a form of extermination. At the same time, they defend Hamas’s war crimes. On the other hand, Netanyahu supports the Jewish settlers’ brutal behavior toward the citizens of Gaza. Both Hamas and Netanyahu’s behavior is a carbon copy of the Chinese Government’s treatment of the Chinese Muslim community, the Uyghurs. Xi Jinping’s government confiscated their land and forced them to work in “rehabilitation” camps, which is a euphemism for hard labor, beatings, and starvation.
In India, the conservative government continues to allow Hindu Nationalists to beat Indian Muslims and vandalize their homes. The Russian Orthodox Church supports the Ukraine-Russian war, and the Russian army continues bombing hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. The Israeli military employs the same strategy against the Palestinians, and Hamas used the identical tactic during their October 7th attack. Both sides kidnap, rape, torture, and murder innocent Palestinians and Israelites. The actions of these two governments are not justifiable by their religion or any historically unjust treatment.
These immoral régimes tell the world that it must choose sides and be either anti-Muslim or antisemitic.
If stealing land and murder is inexcusable for India, Russia, and China, it is wrong for Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition. In America, hate crimes against African-Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and others are on the rise. Science reveals the connection between the use of ethnically tinged language and violence. When we criticize "Palestinians" instead of Hamas or "Jews" in place of Netanyahu’s government, we risk sliding into a denial of the Palestinians’ and the Jews’ right to live in their own country.
When the language of our criticisms includes the innocent victims of Palestine and Israel, we risk validating the ultra-conservative calls to destroy Gaza or Israel. I believe no one country is superior to another, and it is malicious to discriminate against anyone. The world learned from WWII that ignoring such immorality led to fascism and World War. Therefore, when we criticize the war in the Middle East, we must choose our words wisely because the consequences of our language can be lethal.
Oriana:
Language is indeed especially important in this war. Of course it was important in all modern wars, because at least on the surface these are not the wars motivated by greed — or at least the participants would never admit they are. No, in modern times there has to be justification by ideology.
Thus the Nazis claimed to be a superior race, the Űbermensch, naturally (or divinely) destined to rule over or exterminate the subhuman races — Jews, Slavs, the Roma people — the Untermensch. And now, according to the Orthodox, we have the Chosen People who have come to claim the Promised Land — promised to them alone, and not to the Arabs. “inhabitants of the desert,” who were, nevertheless, also promised to be a “Great Nation.” Both claim to be the sons of Abraham — perhaps the only claim to which all agree. From the religious/mythological point of view, this is sibling rivalry bar none.
So the primary requirement is to remove religious mythology from this conflict, and the first step is to be precise with language. As Joe wisely advises, let us speak about Hamas — rather than Palestinians. Not all Palestinians approve of Hamas, much less belong to it. And not all Israelis — a term much more specific than “Jews” — are right-wing Zionists who dream of somehow expelling all Palestinians. The moderates in both ethnic groups advocate peaceful coexistence, with each side acknowledging the historical claims to the land by the other side, and both sides enjoying full human rights.
As Joe wisely points out, if we use extreme language, we “risk validating the ultra-conservative calls to destroy Gaza or Israel.” WW2 indeed showed us that the way we talk is not innocent. In fact, it can have lethal consequences. It is one thing to say that "Netanyahu must go," and quite another to say that Israel has no right to exist. It is one thing is advocate the extermination of Hamas, a terrorist organization, and another to advocate the "removal" of all Palestinians from the territories of "Greater Israel."
Mary:
The glee of Hamas as they commit horrific crimes is demonic. I cannot think anything other than their religion itself supports evil, naming it virtue. It is aggressive, intolerant, unmerciful and repugnant. I can't separate their acts from their doctrine...it's all one piece. The treatment of women is in itself repugnant — they must cover themselves, partially, or, worse, completely, so as not to incite male lust. Are these men so unregulated and bestial they cannot see an unveiled woman without sexually assaulting her?? That is the message. And is there any room for women in their Islamic heaven?? The reward for males in that heaven, all those rape-able virgins, is simply disgusting. The whole seems as primitive as the tribal nature of their states, as extreme and irrational, foreign to any modern society.
Oriana:
With the possible exception of Buddhim, which is more philosophy than religion, all major religions are in serious conflict with modernity. All supernaturalism is an oxymoron, since in nature there is nothing supernatural — although there are questions to which we don't have answers.
When we delve into history, there is hardly any religion that does not have a long trail of blood. I hope to live long enough to see all religions discussed as mythologies. There are some wonderful stories that religions have given us — Noah and his Ark, Jesus forgiving the woman taken in adultery, various Sufi and Hindu tales — all these are part of the human cultural heritage, which they enrich. But taking these fairy tales literally and being willing to kill in their name is monstrous and also ridiculous — who would be willing to die for Santa Claus?
Alas, any religion carries the danger of producing a blood-thirsty fundamentalism, which is indeed a joyful dream of the horrible tortures and much awaited defeat of the "infidel." At this point Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity do not present a danger. Their adherents are regarded as the lunatic fringe, the merely annoying religious nuts. In Islam, however, we face a murderous, radical fundamentalism totally at odds with modernity. How many more generations before this poison loses its potency? Will it be a gradual decay or a sudden collapse?
Here is what I found online (Reddit):
Islam collapsed a long time ago. It is in terminal decline.
There was a time when Islam looked like it would take over the world. That was a long time ago.
Then it failed and completely collapsed especially after the abolition of the caliphate. The caliphate gave Islam a central authority but all that is now gone.
Now you have Muslims in the same house celebrating eid and doing namaaz at different times. It is over. Average Muslim doesn't even pray anymore or care about Islam more than he has to in order to fit in. Actual effort is minimal.
There will be no recovery or revival. It is over. Especially with the end of the oil era fast approaching, Islam is in terminal decline. It just looks scary because of the media and radical Muslims desperately trying anything they can to keep Islam relevant.
Goodbye Islam. Enjoy it while it lasts. ~ r/exmuslim
Janos:
A strong contender is the myth that the suffering, pain and death Palestinians suffered in the decades since picking the “we’ll never accept Israel” option will somehow be worth it. That the Jews will one day disappear, from the river to the sea, all that. Wunderwaffe all over again.
Many nations shared this belief while fighting a lost war. The lucky ones were offered some kind of peace.
Brian Quinney:
Right now, because they are all Muslim theocracies, they could never justify siding militarily with Jews over Muslims. They wouldn't survive it politically, and the extremist factions that are always waiting to overthrow their governments would gain power. But by sitting back and saying/doing nothing while the IDF wipes the floor with them, and refusing to take in their refugees, they're essentially siding with Israel.
James:
None of the Arab states are insane enough to want anything to do with Palestine or it’s populace. They’ve learned from Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt that their beneficence will only bring the violence to them, instead of being “safely” directed at Israel.
Robert Caccomo:
Jordan, Egypt and Syrian have no interest in having Palestinians resettle in their countries, forcefully or voluntarily. They tried that already and wound up with The Arab Spring and Black September. In recent years ferment has seemed to follow Palestinians around like an ugly shadow, whether or not their combativeness is an understandable reaction to constantly being treated poorly I will let others debate. As we have seen in many places around the world in recent years there is less and less tolerance for anyone who will not live peacefully within their society and until Palestinians show themselves as a peace loving people they will have great difficulty finding anywhere they can call home.
Tim Chiswell:
In a different world, I'd agree with you. Problem is, this isn't the 1940s any more. Times have changed, and what was politically acceptable to the international community in the wake of a long war with casualties running into 9 figures, simply wouldn't fly today.
Not to mention that Syria, Egypt and (especially) Jordan and Lebanon have had very bad experiences with accepting large numbers of Palestinians into their countries. While neighboring Arab nations may be happy to cheer for the Palestinians, none of them actually want a million+ of them turning up and forming a nation-within-a-nation on their home soil.
I don't know what the solution is, but every conceivable approach (including just leaving things as they are) is deeply, fundamentally unacceptable to very considerable numbers of people, and powerful interests… and, again, this isn't the 1940s, when, after years of having to think the unthinkable, simply moving a few million people around didn't seem so extreme…
Dano Latimer:
“The bad experiences of Arab states with Palestinians.” ~ The reason for the bad (violent) experience is not because they accepted Palestinians as such. Rather it is because when the Arab states accepted Palestinians, they did so conditionally that they would remain separate from the rest of the population, with a distinct leadership (PLO) and with a separate military-police force separate from the accepting country — all in order to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict going perpetually.
Had the Arab states accepted the Arabs from Mandatory Palestine, like Israel accepted Jews from the Arab states, Greeks originally living in Turkey, Germans in Eastern Europe, Hindus in Pakistan…. the conflict would have ended right there and there. This clear explanation is never talked about in the Western press, and the plight of Palestinians is used to justify the continuation of the conflict and pressure only the Israeli side to make concessions, despite winning a defensive wars they did not start in 1948 and in 1967 (after Straits of Tiran was closed, Egypt and Syria mobilized for war and the Arab league openly called for military destruction of Israel).
*Straits of Tiran: The Straits of Tiran are the narrow sea passages between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas that connect the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.
Matteo Quitus:
Basically, the Muslim / Arab world doesn’t want Jews in their countries.
BUT it also doesn’t want Jews to be in Israel?!
So what do they want? They want them disappeared is what they want, let’s be real.
Tomaž Vargazon:
But the population transfer already happened. Palestinians should get their own state in West Bank and Gaza, or have the option to resettle in one of Arab states that already expelled their Jewish inhabitants.
Beth Ann Dvorak:
Are you arguing that Israel should’ve annexed all of the land and let Palestinians become its citizens? Do you believe that is what Israel should do now? Many Israelis and Palestinians have been advocating for such a situation. And in fact many so do Palestinians (they identify as Israeli Arabs) who live in Israel not in occupied territory or the West Bank.
But since 1947, Palestinian leadership has consistently resisted any solution that would recognize Israel as a state. And in fact now, the worldwide Palestinian movement denies Israel has a right to exist. They deny that there were ever any non-Muslims living in Palestine before 1947. They claim all the Jews living in Israel are refugees from Europe.
I agree that it is tragic that 710,000 or so Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homelands. But that fact needs to be considered in context. Immediately prior to the Nakba, the neighboring Arab countries began a campaign to cleanse approx. 850,000 Jewish Palestinians from their ancestral homelands throughout Palestine. They and fled to Israel where they were accepted. The burning question remains, why couldn’t the surrounding nations accept a number of Arab Palestinians that equaled the number of Jewish Palestinians they just ejected?
If they had, there’d be no fighting today. That’s what other nations did around the world.
The surrounding Arab nations wanted to use the displaced Palestinians as weapons against Israel, which is ghastly. Arab nations simply did not want a non-Islamic country in the Middle East. They were willing to sacrifice generations of Palestinians to do that.
And what would happen to the descendants of the Jewish Palestinians if Palestinians’ goals were accomplished? Israel would cease to exist. There are 6 million Jews inside of Israel who would be exterminated. And then what would happen to the 15 million Jews worldwide? Jews only have one state. And Jews — not entirely irrationally — believe that having a state is the only way they can protect their religion from annihilation.
Claus Appel:
Arab states don’t want Palestinians because historically too many of them have been violent extremists who caused trouble for the countries they moved to.
Joseph Ekstrand:
The population transfer should have happened seventy years ago. It’s too late now.
At this point, the 'Palestinians' have been calling themselves that for three generations. That's long enough to create and imprint a new identity.
J. a Brinson:
It is a war of religion, not ethnicity. Remove religion and you cannot distinguish one from the other, physically or through DNA. They are Semites and the Canaanites of old. Then the Exodus myth came along and it was followed by the Muslim dominance. There was a place we’re all three major religions and people lived and prospered. They kept their faith and identity and lived side by side during the caliphate of Cordoba in Spain I the earlier Middle Ages. At the time, Cordoba was the largest and most prosperous city in the world and the culture, arts, medicine and engineering in Spain was without equals. Unfortunately, it did not last.
Khul ja Sim Sim:
The problem is ISLAM…
Islam wants to keep reminding it's adherents “how we stamped Al Aqsa on top of the Jewish temple”!!
While the Jews have cultural and historical tied with the land, Palestinians are just ARAB MUSLIMS STAYING IN ISRAEL.
Palestine represents the “CONQUEST OF MOST IMPORTANT JEWISH SYMBOL, DEAR TO JEWISH HERETICS, BY ALLAH’S FORCES”!
It's lame to think that this 1400 year old death cult started by that pedophile would settle amicably, for anything!!
Muslims rebranded:
the most important Eastern Orthodox Church, Hagia Sofia, as a mosque,
the most pivotal of Hindu temples in India — Ram mandir at Ayodhya, Krishna temple at Mathura and Shiva temple at Varanasi. Hindus have reclaimed Ram temple by force — KUDOS to them.
Al Aqsa falls in the same category!!
Demolish the goddamn thing — it is the symbol of Mohammad’s tyranny on the two actual Abrahamic faiths.
Eric Lund:
Fine. Take the Palestinians’ land. But pay for it. Because we won’t. We don’t have to, and we have better uses for our money than relocating a nation that is fine where it is.
And to be perfectly cynical about it, I expect the idealistic program of a “Jewish homeland” to vanish like dew in the morning sun of Galilee when the free real estate and subject race of agricultural laborers (and reliable voters under ethnogenesis as “Haredi”) are off the table.
*
UNFORGIVABLE
~ The youngest hostage, at most three years old. Her dark eyes are full of mistrust. They will never smile again. They have seen too much and will never forget, though they don’t know and won’t say what they saw. The same as the eyes of the other children with her, who will never be childlike again. Deprived of childlike trust, which they will never regain. This damage can’t be repaired, these crimes can’t be forgiven. ~ Henryk Grynberg, translated by Oriana Ivy
This partly explains how Jewish children living in hiding during WW2 must have felt. ~ Leon Rozenbaum
*
SABRINA MADDEAUX: I WATCHED HAMAS HACK INNOCENTS TO DEATH. THE WORST PART WAS THEIR GLEE
Over the span of 43 minutes, I watched 138 humans be murdered or witnessed their corpses, many brutalized beyond recognition and others clearly tortured, in the direct aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
That’s 3.2 bodies per minute— and less than 10 per cent of the more than 1,400 people killed that day.
The Consulate of Israel in Toronto screened the footage, taken from a mix of body cameras, dashboard cams, CCTV tapes, and victims’ cell phones, some used by Hamas to record and livestream their sadism, for a small group of media on Monday. Not everyone made it through the full 43 minutes, with others moved to tears and outbursts of emotion.
There were babies. Toddlers. So many children of all ages. Young men and women dressed for a music festival, not the wanton slaughter that saw their bloodied bodies piled atop one another in scenes reminiscent of some of the Holocaust’s worst images.
Parents. The elderly. A dad who, attempting to hide from Hamas attackers with his sons, all three of them still in their underwear, was blown up by a grenade in front of his children. The two young boys, covered in blood, crying, throwing themselves on the ground in grief, as a Hamas gunman raids the family’s fridge and takes a swig of soda. One of the sons’ panicked voice as he realizes he can no longer see out of one eye.
The man’s wife as kibbutz security bring her to identify her husband’s remains. The moment she literally collapses and has to be dragged away from the scene, thrashing wildly, her legs folding under her like every bone had simply vanished from her body.
A family attempting to decipher whether the burned remains in front of them, skirt hiked up above bare genitals, is the loved one they’re looking for.
The literal streams of blood, the hacked off arms and legs, the infant missing part of its skull, brain leaking out. The dog shot over and over again as its limbs splay in every direction until they don’t anymore. Mickey mouse pyjamas on a young corpse, skull fragments on floors, victims shot point blank. So much blood.
But none of what I’ve detailed so far was the worst part of those 43 minutes. The worst part was the glee.
The pure jubilation of Hamas terrorists as they filmed themselves killing and torturing; their excited voices bragging about their atrocities. The videos of them playing with victims’ heads with their feet, and excitedly shooting out the tires of a kibbutz’s ambulance before massacring its residents.
I’ll never forget the gore, but it’s the look of euphoria and pride in the terrorists’ eyes, cheering for the cameras as if they were the ones partying at a music festival that day, that will haunt me.
In the videos, Hamas attackers did not behave as soldiers or freedom fighters. They hunted their victims in their homes like serial killers in a horror film, peering through blinds, slashing through screen doors with knives, following families wherever they tried to run or hide. If they couldn’t find them, they’d use lighters to make sure fire did. They toyed with their victims’ lifeless bodies. They kept trophies, both physical and digital.
It’s unimaginable that anyone could watch this and still equate what happened on Oct. 7 to resistance or war. I’ve seen war footage; this was not that. These were terrorist attacks targeted at civilians and mass shootings of innocents. Hamas was indiscriminate in their cruelty, killing not for cause, but for pleasure.
I don’t know if the full footage will ever be made public, but if it ever is, every single Canadian should watch it to understand how far beyond any conceivable rules of engagement Hamas went, why this time was different, and why it must never, ever happen again.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-i-watched-hamas-hack-innocents-to-death-the-worst-part-was-their-glee
*
OCTOBER 7 MASSACRE WAS JUST A REHEARSAL, SAYS HAMAS LEADER
Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter was “just a rehearsal,” the Islamist group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar threatened on Thursday, in his first public statement since the terrorist organization massacred more than a thousand people in Israel.
“The leaders of the occupation [Israel] should know, Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal,” stated Sinwar, according to the Maariv newspaper.
At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border. Another 240 men, women, children and soldiers were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
On Monday, Israeli media reported that Sinwar paid a visit to several of the hostages held in an underground tunnel in the Strip. One of the hostages released over the weekend said the terror mastermind spoke to them in Hebrew without an accent.
As Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their ceasefire-for-hostages agreement on Monday, Egypt reportedly put heavy pressure on Sinwar.
“Twice during the ceasefire the parties got into a crisis when Yahya Sinwar tried to violate the agreements, the first time last Saturday night,” said an Egyptian source with access to official circles in Cairo.
“Egyptian intelligence officers arrived at the Rafah Crossing [to Gaza] and conveyed to Sinwar extremely difficult messages and threats peppered with juicy curses. A short hour later … the Israeli hostages were released,” the source added.
On Oct. 14, Israel Defense Forces International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists that Sinwar and his entire command team “are in our sights.”
“Yahya Sinwar is the face of evil. He is the mastermind behind this, like [Osama] bin Laden was. He built his career on murdering Palestinians when he understood they were collaborators. That’s how he became known as the butcher of Khan Yunis [in southern Gaza],” said Hecht.
Sinwar was convicted on multiple murder counts by an Israeli court and sentenced to five life sentences, which he was supposed to serve until his death, but in October 2011 he was released from prison—having served only 22 years—as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.
After his release, Sinwar gained power and popularity within Hamas, becoming its Gaza leader in February 2017 by defeating Ismail Haniyeh in an internal vote.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/oct-7-massacre-was-just-a-rehearsal-says-hamas-leader-in-first-public-address-since-attack-on-israel
Ti Maigre:
This will never end until one side completely destroys the other. My fear is if that happens will they go after another group?
Joey Sidonar:
This is the face of tolerance that the woke progressive crowd associate with diversity and inclusion. They support and encourage this behavior in their misguided attempt to rebuild the Western World.
*
Muslim family on vacation
*
PUTIN DESPERATE FOR LARGE FAMILIES
~ “Having large families should become the norm of life for all nations of Russia,” announced Vladimir Putin recently.
Looks like the losses by the Russian army are so bad that without every family having 8 kids (yes, seriously!), Russia won’t be able to get out of the demographic pit that Putin plunged it into.
Of course, it’s not only the losses at war, but also the desperate situation that families with kids in Russia are facing: Russians simply stopped procreating.
According to forecast by Russia’s federal statistics service Rosstat, in 2024-26, the birth rate in Russia will fall to its lowest level since the beginning of the 19th century.
It will be worse than during the WWII and WWI.
“Having many children should become the norm and a way of life,” Putin insisted at the Christian Orthodox forum in Moscow.
Watching the Congress, one couldn’t help the feeling of deja vu.
The Kremlin Palace of Congresses.There is probably no shortage of former members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the audience.
If this isn't a time loop, then what is?
25th Soviet party congress
Only this time, the image of Lenin is replaced with posters of Jesus.
Putin himself was too scared to arrive to such an important event in person: he spoke via a broadcast (likely, it was a recording). Putin has plenty of reasons to fear for his life, now even more than before. The movement of the wives of the mobilized soldiers just issued a message that instantly went viral, directly mentioning Putin.
Once again, Putin was bragging about some special “family values” that only Russia possesses, and how important they are, and how Russia is a God-chosen country to save the world.
Putin, who is:
Divorced;
Has multiple kids with women he’s never acknowledged as partners;
Never shows up with his children;
Brought the birth rate in Russia down to the World War II levels;
Destroyed hundreds of thousands of Russian families by taking men and sending them to the war;
Killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (who he says are “Russians who were simply misled”), causing family tragedies;
Deliberately separated Ukrainian children from their families.
That very same man is preaching to Russians at a church Congress about “family values”.
It’s not even cynicism anymore. Cynicism itself is sickened by the words of this shameless creature.
Putin doesn’t have a family, like all normal people. He has a Family — and not just one.
First, there are his buddies from the cooperative “Ozero” (“Lake”) — a dacha community of 12 Putin’s close associates whom he made oligarchs.
Then, there are his colleagues from KGB/FSB — the Family that Putin keeps increasing in size and giving them more power, more money, more rights and more privileges.
So, Putin knows everything about the Family in the spirit of the Godfather. But, alas, nothing about the normal, wholesome family.
In the spirit of this peculiar kind of “family values”, Putin’s daughter was made a co-owner of the largest drone manufacturer in Russia.
The drones produced at the factory, co-owned by Putin’s daughter, are used in the war with Ukraine, to kill Ukrainians.
Keeping the lucrative military contracts in the family, that’s the type of family values that Putin lives — not just proclaims.
Meanwhile, in the Orenburg region, 27 district maternity hospitals were closed as part of “modernization”. Now, women in labor from smaller towns have to be transported to cities that are 100-150 km away by bad roads. As a result, infant mortality increased.
In 2024, Moscow will spend 106 billion rubles on the “Safe City” program (video surveillance, enforcers, equipment for suppressing protests). Compare it with the entire budget of the city of Omsk, where 1.2 million people live, which is only 35 billion rubles (including social services, roads, housing and communal services, healthcare, schools, etc.).
A dedicated defender of “family values”, 70-year-old Sergei Mironov, leader of the party “A Just Russia — For Truth”, with his 5th wife (the more wives, the more family values), snatched a 10-month-old girl out of Ukraine.
10-month-old Ukrainian girl Margarita Prokopenko was in an orphanage in Kherson during the occupation of the city. She was taken to Russia, where she was given Russian citizenship, her name was changed, and now she is officially Mironov’s daughter. The little girl has 2 grandmothers in Ukraine.
Reportedly, Mironov’s wife personally went to Ukraine to pick a baby to her liking.
Mironov with a sledge hammer
Not long ago, in January 2023, Mironov proudly posed with a sledge hammer, personally given to him by the chief of ‘Wagner’ Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Those are the true, unabridged Russian family values.
Mihai C:
8 kids each, and don’t worry about their future, Putin has it all planned. It will be short and glorious.
Alexi Lebrun:
Leo Tolstoy wrote words that explain not only the fall of Czardom and the Soviet Union, but Putin’s Russia as well:
"...The bells will ring and the Russian people will dress in gold clothes and begin to pray for the murders. And the old, long-known terrible thing will begin.
People will fuss under the guise of patriotism, all kinds of officials will fuss, anticipating the opportunity to steal more money, the military will fuss, receiving double wages for killing people. They will receive ribbons, crosses, braids and stars.
They will drown their souls with debauchery, vulgarity and vodka. They will be cut off from peaceful labor, from their wives, mothers, children. They will be cold, hungry, sick, will die from diseases on the battlefields, killing people whom they had never seen and did not know, who had done nothing bad to them.
And when thousands of Russians — sick, wounded and killed — accumulate, and there will be no one to collect them from the fields, when even the air gets infected with the pus of cannon fodder, they will casually dump the wounded in droves. They will bury the dead with no regard where...
And again, they will lead the crowd of savages further... And they will turn frenzied and completely brutalized.
Because of the actions of the barbarians, love will move away for tens and hundreds of years. And again, they will say that the war was necessary and will instill this thought into the future generations, corrupting their souls and hearts…"
~ Leo Tolstoy, ”Christianity and Patriotism", 1894.
Robe Garnet:
This is another well researched and well written document of the psychosis known as Russia!
Tom Long:
When Putin decriminalized domestic violence to relieve the overloaded “justice” system who could’ve predicted lowered fecundity? Sure the FSB is freed up to prosecute political enemies, but at what cost to Russia?
Oriana:
The parallel with the Nazi attempts to induce German women to produce more children is inescapable. More children means, eventually, more young men and a larger army. Even single women were urged to bear children (e.g. the Lebensborn [“fount of life”] [program). No need for a family: a woman should have children for Germany! Right now, while she is fertile!
Authoritarian regimes are indeed all alike when it comes to their view of the role of women. There is no need to educate women beyond the basics. That would only delay their duty to bear children, particularly sons who can serve in "meat wave" attacks, winning by sheer numerical superiority.
Russia has become increasingly reliant on immigration to maintain its population; 2021 had the highest net immigration since 1994, despite which there was a small overall decline from 146.1 million to 145.4 million in 2021, the largest decline in over a decade. (~ Wikipedia)
Over the past
three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would
ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti.
*
WHEN THE PARDONED CONVICTS RETURN FROM UKRAINE
~ In the Russian town of Sol-Iletsk, Orenburg region, a criminal, pardoned by Putin after the 6-month stunt at the front in Ukraine, raped an 11-year-old girl. The girl's mother allowed her to visit his home to collect a loudspeaker.
The 33-year-old rapist is a well-known to locals drug addict and criminal, who was released (pardoned by Putin) because he agreed to go to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.
The girl, who is a school student in the fifth year, went to visit the 33-year-old neighbor in order to pick a loudspeaker from him. Her mother was aware and allowed it, since the family had known the man for a long time.
When the girl did not return after a short time, the mother got worried and went to check the situation. She knocked on the door of the man’s apartment, but heard only silence in response.
The mother decided that her daughter had already collected the speaker, after which the girl and the man left the apartment, and on the way home the girl probably just got distracted.
But the girl all this time was inside the man’s apartment and all this time the bastard was raping the 11-year-old child. And then he threatened her not to tell anyone and let her go.
The bastard didn't take into account the girl's appearance — she was all disheveled and covered in scratches. When her mother saw her in the street, she realized what happened and immediately called the police. The “SMO veteran” was arrested the same evening.
The town of Sol-Iletsk is known for its prison. It is there the most notorious criminals — serial murderers, rapists, cannibals, who were sentenced to life imprisonment, were sent.
The crime level went up in Russia already in the first months of Putin’s “special Ukrainian operation”: Russian soldiers, returning from the spree of killing, looting and raping on the occupied Ukrainian territories, were behaving the same way in the locations within Russia where they were sent to rest while on rotation.
Many of the soldiers coming from the front on vacations at home also committed violent crimes.
After tens of thousands of violent criminals were released from Russian prisons and sent to fight in Ukraine, in exchange for presidential pardon, the situation got worse.
Statistically, 93% of criminals released from Russian prisons, re-offend.
If a criminal also got a chance to commit unthinkable crimes for months — without any threat of repercussions, this definitely doesn’t increase the chances of him staying on straight and narrow after returning to civilian life.
But for Putin, it’s just another hiccup not worth worrying about. Serfs killing each other isn’t a big deal — the most important is that they don’t protest against the war. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
*
TROTSKY’S PROPHECY
(Trotsky tried to warn against the creeping “bourgeois rot” — meaning that once the children of the original Bolshevik revolutionaries get used to a comfortable, elite life style, they will become the new bourgeoisie, with no interest in revolutionary struggle and ideals.)
Watch out for bourgeois rot!
Soviet rule was going to change, warned Trotsky. Bureaucrats would fall in love with the power and comfort. The Party would succumb to the spells of a bourgeois lifestyle.
Deep down inside, Stalin knew Trotsky was right. Hence, he did everything in the spirit of Trotsky: the build-up of the military machine, the bloody purges of the elites, the collectivization, the revolutionary expansion. And then he killed the man, to get rid of a witness.
With Stalin’s death, this spirit of proletarian vigilance expired. (Or moved to China, some insist.)
Socialist consumerism
Without Stalin, we saw the most rapid rise in living standards among the Soviet commoners.
The use of fertilizers and herbicides in agriculture made the food situation more stable. On Stalin’s watch, we had three catastrophic famines and two wars. After him, none.
Post-Stalin, we had a large program of residential construction. More and more families moved to apartments they didn’t have to share with strangers. (Mine was one of them.) Fridges and TV sets became ubiquitous, food got better and more varied. We even surpassed the Americans in calorie consumption and life expectancy: 68.4 years vs. 68.0 years in 1960.
The 2nd superpower
The old exploitative classes were long gone. The USSR was now a nuclear power. The British and French colonial rule was crumbling. The Soviet space program seemed to be a decade ahead of the Americans. The Soviet economy rose by an annual rate of 5-7%, at least, for many years in a row, with no sign of easing.
The country was teeming with baby boomers. A few top men lost their chairs every now and then. But there were no new purges, not even indictments.
A new, unusual sense of safety and contentment was taking hold on all levels of state administration.
Tired of the heat
This is when Brezhnev came to power in the mid-1960s.
He was surrounded by non-bureaucrats and technocrats who had made good careers in the era of Stalin. They had a first-hand memory of hunger and poverty. Soviet rule was a harsh mother. Another shared memory was the ever-present promise of a swift fall and death at the hands of Stalin’s executioners to anyone deemed incompetent, too free-thinking, or overly ambitious.
These men had gone through hell. Now, they wanted their reward—for themselves and their families.
This is how the Communist cause in the USSR was doomed.
The sense of contentment and self-indulgence set in at the top and cascaded downward. Gulag was closed. On average, about a thousand people were still executed in our prisons every year. But they weren’t convicted for being a slacker, a negligent moron, a saboteur, or an enemy of people like during the Great Purge.
If you were loyal, did your work—kind of did, at least—and didn’t steal too much, you were safe. Such a blessed time.
And then, it took just one generation before hundreds of thousands of middle- and lower-level state servants and Party functionaries decided that they would be much better off under Capitalism. In the early 1990s, they picked apart Soviet rule and became the new class of Russian state oligarchs and minigarchs.
Below are some visuals for you to illustrate how this happened.
First, a poster that shows what Soviet rule taught the kids in 1930. “Pioneer, teach yourself to fight for the cause of the working class.” You see two parts of that learning: good Communist reading and sharpshooting. The Communists were preparing the nation for war.
Pioneer learn jpg
Below, Soviet toddlers, as our rulers saw them. That angry bunch is not big and strong enough for an Antifa-style muscle action as yet. But they already have a long and very insistent list of requirements for the world. Their battle cries are: “We require! Midwives, not healers. Healthy parents. Fresh water and light. Breast-feeding. Dry, clean diapers. Protection from flies”.
Soviet poster babies
Toward the end of Stalin’s rule, the Communists indeed delivered quite a lot of what they promised. Many people died in the process, but the survivors took care of their kids much better than their parents. Look how contented kids have become. The text reads, “Hail the heroic mother!” Don’t forget, this is 1944, and WW2 is still going on:
heroic Soviet mother
However, already under Stalin, you can trace an unforgivable bourgeois cuteness creeping in. The motif below is a shameless Hallmark knockoff. The schoolgirl is wearing a Young Pioneer’s red necktie, but both kids are as if from a Capitalist advertisement piece.
The new generation of Soviet citizens started to feel a certain entitlement. True Stalinists saw the rot and tried to warn the nation. Below, you see one of the grave warnings: “Don’t raise spoiled brats!”
(Oriana: It’s interesting that the rug the “spoiled brat is lying on says, above his head, Certificate of Maturity — meaning a high school diploma.)
But the nation wasn’t listening.
Below, a poster titled: “Be good citizens from the outset! The Soviet land will bequeath you in time everything that it brought about”.
The silver-haired veteran with the star of Hero of the Soviet Union on his lapel and the blond teenagers look like a good old European bourgeois family. No wonder quite a lot of these young citizens, just in a few decades, would dismember the country.
Bryan J Maloney:
Marxist-Leninism in all its variants is doomed to always betray itself. It offers no goal but permanently deferred prosperity. The vanguard inherently has the right to present-day comfort, since it is the revolutionary vanguard. Who can succeed the vanguard? Only the children of the vanguard, who inherit their rank like the nobility they have become. For the nobodies, it is posters and deferred comfort, forever deferred for a communist paradise that is always around the next corner. Eventually, that will collapse.
Dima Vorobiev:
To me, the Chinese thing is what the 20th century promised to bring as a mainstream, if not for the big Black Swan that was our October Revolution.
Bismarck’s Staatsocialismus, the epic rise of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, the original Fascism, Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Scandinavian “class reconciliation” between the world wars all pointed in this direction.
Paul Delinger:
There are many similarities and copying in the Western and Soviet propaganda of the time: belief in science and a brighter future for humanity which could only be achieved through socialism or capitalism.
Western mass media and consumerism eventually won that messaging war, while the USSR was undercut by shortages, which made the west more attractive to many Soviet citizens.
Then, enter Gorbachev.
*
HIDING THEIR FACES: RUSSIAN SOLDIERS WEARING “BURKAS”
Look at the faces of Russian war heroes! Oh, you can’t see their faces. They wear burkas out of modesty. Perhaps they’re Hamas or Hizbollah fighters bringing peace to the Middle East?
Why do you hide yourself: you are ridding Ukraine of evil Nazis! You should feel proud. Open up to your people who cheer your heroic acts. The state has put you up on the pedestal with “our grandfathers who fought in WW2.” Our grandfathers, however, never hid their faces.
The owner of the Russian Media Group, Vladimir Kiselev, and singer Irina Dubtsova presented two Russian bounty hunters with certificates for a million rubles for destroying Leopard tank in the war. It’s wild wild east. With Nazis.
The bounty hunters wore masks during presentation and didn’t say their names. Are you ashamed of your heroic acts or you’re terrified that the next bounty will be placed on your head?
The shenanigans took place at the music awards ceremony Golden Gramophone (if it sounds like Grammy to you, it’s not a coincidence) and sums on the certificates have been raised by famous Russian singers and musicians who wanted to motivate soldiers to destroy more German tanks.
Dear reader, I want you to picture this. Grammy awards ceremony broadcast live. On stage, two American soldiers wearing ski masks. Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber hold certificates for $10,000 each.
“We raised this money at a charity event in Los Angeles. Madonna donated 2,000 dollars. Ed Sheeran pitched five bucks. Dua Lipa paid in pounds because she’s from the other side of the pond. Real Slim Shady provided the rest for his homies as so many soldiers fighting Nazis in Mexico are from poor Michigan towns paid $2,000 a month to fight this sacred war.”
Taylor chimes in, “I encourage all of you to join. I’m talking about you, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop can donate some of his weed to our fighters, Jon Bon Jovi , why haven’t you yet performed in Monterrey, Mexico that we’ve liberated from Mexican Nazis? And you hip hop artists but only after you delete all the curses from your lyrics, add more gratuitous violence, and comply with new anti-eastern laws. You’re all worthy artists. I hope that you will not only declare that you are citizens of Americo-Mexican confederation, but will join our people on the bright side of life who are busy annihilating Mexico with the pyramids and flooding Cancun by blown up dam because they wanted to have a democracy.”
Sounds dystopian to you? I’ve just used a quote from the Russian mainstream media and changed all the names to the ones that you can recognize but analogous in popularity in Russia.
Ekaterina SolovyevnaThis is Ekaterina, daughter of the Russian propagandist and TV presenter Vladimir Solovyev who’s under Western sanctions for inciting hatred against Ukrainians in his shows.
Ekaterina is on the bright side of life. She regularly speaks against actions of the Russian government and Vladimir Putin. She opposes war with Ukraine. She openly helps out Russians who want to avoid mobilization. And she also absolutely freely stages feminist plays. Yesterday, she spoke in defense of LGBT that was branded as an extremist organization.
Ekaterina continues to live in Moscow, Russia, and doesn’t have to face any arrests or detentions.
What’s the catch ? What about censorship and authoritarianism?
Ekaterina’s father is in Putin’s inner circle and he’s also a FSB officer. The old maxim holds true: “for my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” ~ Misha Firer, Quora
*
WHY COMMUNISM DOESN’T WORK WHILE REGULATED CAPITALISM DOES
~ A functional socioeconomic system has to be grounded upon a functional model of decision making, which has to include accountability for the results of decisions that are made. Communism tends towards a lack of accountability, due to the way in which power hierarchies are formed: ruthlessness, rather than competence, is rewarded, which is why all Communist countries were economically marginal dictatorships.
Business decisions made by entrenched bureaucrats, rather than businesspeople, tend to be awful, since as part of the power hierarchy of a command economy, they are not held accountable to market forces; nobody in West Germany would have chosen to drive East Germany’s main model of vehicle, the Trabant; a two stroke piece of crap that East Germans had to join a long waiting list in order to acquire.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the “enough for everyone” philosophy of Communism, but sub-optimal decision making and poor incentives tend to mean that “enough” tends to mean very little in practice. In a Capitalist economy, people tend to work for their own benefit, and incentives include higher social status, a better home, a nicer car, and so on, and such things are actually available; such incentives are rather more effective than winning a medal for “Hero of Socialist Labor”, a week at a dingy and rundown resort on the Baltic, and finally owning a crappy car after waiting for ten years. Other than running a black market business, the only real way to get ahead in Communist societies was to become a member of the Nomenklatura, the political elite, and even then, there was always the danger of being betrayed and denounced by someone who’s after your position.
Capitalism is a far from perfect system, but it can and does deliver greater general prosperity when tempered by laws, and a system of accountable government that can partially ameliorate the vast income disparities that capitalism generates according to phenomena like the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) and the Matthew Effect ("the rich get richer"). To my mind, free market fundamentalists are just as naive as Communists with regards to their insistence on ideological purity, and their misplaced faith in the absolute supremacy of their respective socioeconomic systems. Pragmatists will tend to recognize that regulated Capitalism, in combination with government provision of services like education, welfare, and healthcare, tends to lead to better outcomes, compared with the implementation of simplistic socioeconomic models upon complex societies.
Capitalism can operate under both an authoritarian or democratic system of government, whereas Communism requires a strong and coercive government in order to prevent people from bettering themselves through their own private enterprise. It is this severe limitation of individual freedoms by an authoritarian and unaccountable state which makes Communism “bad” in most people’s eyes, and why my Slovak neighbors fled their country in the Eighties to seek and find a better life in the West. ~ Philip Husband, Quora
*
NAPOLEON, THE MOVIE BY RIDLEY SCOTT
Let’s start with a negative review from The Observer:
Another in a long list of flawed and boring movies about the Emperor of France, I could hardly sit through Ridley Scott’s Napoleon with my eyes open. I prefer both the classic 1927 silent film by Abel Gance and the 1954 flop Desiree with Marlon Brando as a miscast but memorable Bonaparte and rapturous Jean Simmons as Desiree Clary, the fiancee he should have married, who became Queen of Sweden, instead of the trashy, adulterous Josephine, who broke his heart and allegedly died of a nasty combination of diphtheria and syphilis. None of this, nor anything else that threatens to take Napoleon off the battlefield long enough to tell a moving or human story, is detailed enough to concern producer-director Ridley Scott, who is more interested in overloaded and overpopulated war scenes than illuminating history. The result is a colossal bore that is never passionate, exciting, sexy or entertaining, with an ill-fated titled performance by Joaquin Phoenix that borders on catatonic.
The tedium begins in 1794 when Robespierre’s reign of terror, symbolized by gambling and guillotines, ignited the French Revolution and war hero Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general of the French Republic. There is no mention of Desiree, but when he meets Josephine, she spreads her legs and says, “If you look down, you’ll see a surprise. Once you see it, you’ll always want it.” Whatever it is, I guess he likes it because he marries the trollop in Corsica, liberates Egypt, declaring, “I’m a brute that is nothing without you,” and by 1799, seizes power and divides the government with Josephine at his side.
Thus begins a dull history lesson, from the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 to the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, a defeat with 28,000 French losses. If this movie has any basis in fact, Napoleon’s conquests and failures were the most boring in history. Louis the 18th demanded his arrest, but French troops embraced him with loyalty. One battle after another, and he declared himself Emperor of France, leading up to the eventual Battle of Waterloo and yet another arsenal of cannons, swords and exploding horses with their guts blown all over the landscape.
Screen titles inform you what battle you’re watching, but the armies all look alike, so you never know who Napoleon is fighting or why. The longer it goes on, the more exasperated and emotionally uninvolved Joaquin Phoenix becomes, and the more I look at my watch. The only impressive thing about Ridley Scott’s direction is the masses of extras he employed—thousands of them. Even if they were paid as little as $10 an hour, the budget must have been astronomical. One battle scene follows the next, and we are forced to live through every one of them.
Through it all, the acting remains muted and forgettable, except for the eye-rolling over-emoting of Vanessa Kirby, a Josephine who is always on the verge of hysterics. The screenplay by David Scarpa is dreary and turgid, hopping around episodically without any character development and evoking only a sketchy picture of Napoleon’s historic rise and fall and his nasty, violent marriage to Josephine. There is nothing here to engage the heart, nothing to explain or demonstrate the qualities that made him charismatic enough to captivate France. A Napoleon without a valid Napoleon is a Fourth of July without a firecracker.
https://observer.com/2023/11/napoleon-movie-review-a-dull-history-lesson-with-exploding-horses/
Oriana:
I found plenty to engage my heart. I agree that this Napoleon isn't charismatic enough to explain why his soldiers loved him, or how he became a heroic legend.
*
“NAPOLEON STANDS ALONE IN HISTORY”
I never thought I’d say this about a film, but I can’t wait for Ridley Scott’s four-plus hour director’s cut of Napoleon.
It’s such an expansive subject, and Scott’s cinematic coverage is so intriguing, that with Napoleon’s 2.5 hour runtime, I couldn’t get enough.
Authenticity was clearly not the goal. Surprisingly, the film doesn’t suffer from that. Napoleon stands alone in history, and Phoenix’s interpretation of him stands alone in film.
What Napoleon achieved in France, rising from relative Corsican obscurity to become an all-powerful commander and Emperor of France, then facing exile on a barren island only to escape and return to power again, is a quite the mercurial feat.
Punctuate that with his outrageously volatile relationship with Joséphine (played masterfully by Vanessa Kirby), and you have an epic tale to tell. If the editing leaves audiences a bit confounded, it’s understandable—there’s just so much juicy material to pack into one film.
I would suggest viewers read up on Napoleon, even if it only involves skimming the Wikipedia notes, before settling in for this riveting cinematic event—it will decrease your confusion and increase your awareness of the utter havoc one audacious man can wreak on the world.
Scott has always been both revered and skewered for his graphic and unforgettable battle scenes, and Napoleon could be the apex of them all. More than gore (although make no mistake, there’s plenty of that) they rivet attention with insights into military strategy and personal dynamics, giving them unique and fascinating dimension.
But at the core of Napoleon is his manic fascination with his lover, wife and ex Josephine. Kirby is sublimely layered, while Phoenix is creepily unhinged. It’s a portrayal of a relationship unlike any you’ve ever seen.
https://athomeinhollywood.com/2023/11/24/napoleon-review-ridley-scott/
Here’s another mostly positive review:
EPIC BATTLES, AWKWARD SEX
Scott’s Napoleon is a rousing, red-blooded experience, an old-fashioned—and emotionally relatively uncomplicated—historical epic outfitted with modern production techniques and filled to overflowing with battles, intrigues and the scandalous relationship between former artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) and his restless wife, Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby).
In Scott’s film, with a screenplay by frequent collaborator David Scarpa (All the Money in the World, The Man in the High Castle), Napoleon works his way up from an army captain in league with the French Revolution, luridly depicted in the film’s opening scene, to the rank of brigadier general—and eventually, Emperor of France—thanks to his seemingly unquenchable thirst for bloody warfare. Toulon, the corridors of Paris during the Reign of Terror, Egypt, Italy, the Austrian Empire, Russia—Napoleon and his troops subjugate the population everywhere they march, up until that nasty business in Waterloo. CGI soldiers’ heads and horses’ necks explode under mortar fire, and regimes go up in flames.
Meanwhile, the conqueror falls in love with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Kirby), the young widow of a guillotined aristocrat. She’s a post-revolutionary party girl not entirely smitten by the coarse Corsican and his battering-ram style of sexual intercourse, but willing to overlook some matters while living in some of the continent’s most lavish houses. Director Scott digs down deep into his bag of extravagant European settings here. Even in the wake of House of Gucci, All the Money in the World, Hannibal and The Duellists, he apparently hasn’t yet exhausted the supply. Despite centuries of destruction, Europe is still remarkably well equipped with fancy real estate.
Phoenix may not be every moviegoer’s first choice for the title role, especially for those who winced at his performance as the cruel Roman emperor, Commodus, in Gladiator. And yet the actor who starred in Joker and Two Lovers arguably deserves the role of a violent megalomaniac, so all is forgiven. Never mind that a few of his line readings are stiff, and that Napoleon’s childish friskiness in one or two scenes seems odd. Let’s just say that Phoenix cuts a fine figure in the saddle, waving a saber, and let it go at that.
Kirby’s impersonation of Joséphine is another matter entirely. From the very first glimpse of her as the merry widow at a cocktail party, she’s a beguiling combination of the bewildered coquette and the poule de luxe [trophy wife] every time Darusz Wolski’s camera swings her way. Joséphine looks as authentic in her empire-waist gowns as Phoenix does in his cockade-bedecked uniforms. Kudos likewise to Paul Rhys, as diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, and Edouard Philipponat, as Alexander, Tsar of Russia, a pair of dealmakers in the Age of Enlightenment.
Volumes have been written about Scott and the lasting effect his visual sense has had on contemporary big-screen entertainment. Napoleon belongs in the front rank of his creations, alongside such landmarks as Blade Runner, Alien and Black Hawk Down. For its thrilling battle scenes, its ironic characterizations of the revolutionaries who became their own special brand of aristocracy and for the essential European-ness of the project itself, this glittering, sweaty panorama of antique world history should be essential viewing.
https://eastbayexpress.com/napoleon-epic-battles-awkward-sex/
*
THE LEGEND MADE HUMAN
From a historical perspective, ‘Napoleon’ is a commendable attempt at capturing the essence of the enigmatic French military leader and emperor. Scott's attention to detail in the film's set design, costume, and overall atmosphere authentically recreates the early 19th-century European milieu. The film's portrayal of key battles, political intrigues, and the societal landscape of the era are visually impressive, with some artistic liberties taken for cinematic effect. The most prominent one is the lack of a French accent, featuring Joaquin Phoenix sounding pretty much like himself in the lead role.
Barring that, performance-wise, Phoenix delivers a compelling portrayal of Napoleon. He nimbly switches from Napoleon’s ruthless ambition to moments of vulnerability and introspection, especially when paired with Vanessa Kirby as Josephine. This humanization of Napoleon is one of the film's strengths, as it allows the audience to connect with a figure often reduced to historical myth.
Kirby is particularly impressive as Josephine, who cuts Napoleon down to size outside his successful conquests around the world. Intimate character moments featuring the lead pair amidst large-scale and gritty battlefield scenes create an interesting dynamic in the film, even leading to humorous moments in unexpected ways.
However, the broad scope of Napoleon’s political and military career undercut the emotional depth of most of the proceedings. While the cinematography features sweeping shots of landscapes and battlefields, the screenplay often ends up glossing over critical moments. At times, the narrative feels rushed, trying to cover too many aspects of Napoleon's life, and since Scott aims to cover pivotal moments of Napoleon’s life and career, the pacing of the film is also affected. This leads to specific historical events being superficially explored, which could have been alleviated with a more focused narrative, perhaps in a different format. Still, despite falling short in critical areas of maintaining a compelling pace and gripping storytelling, ‘Napoleon’ is a noteworthy addition to the genre of historical epics, with engaging performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
My favorite review:
Joaquin Phoenix indelibly plays Napoleon Bonaparte with an elusiveness that befits the film’s treatment. Phoenix’s enigmatic, playful and casually authoritarian Napoleon saunters rather than strides into the hallways and battlegrounds that will earn him a place in history books. He’s a man of his time but also already beyond time – as aspect that is vividly brought out in the scene when he arrives in Egypt and witnesses the fate of its pharaohs.
First encountered during the anarchy of the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon makes a play for total power, swatting away royalists and opponents while proving his military genius through a series of wars. One conquest bedevils Napoleon.
Out of the chaos of the French Revolution emerges Josephine. Played by Vanessa Kirby with becoming hauteur laced with animalistic survival instincts, Josephine provides Napoleon with an emotional anchor. She marries Napoleon but stays just out of his reach in the same way that the movie itself stops short of an unambiguous portrayal.
Helpful title cards chart the years and locations of Napoleon’s rise. He marches on uninterrupted until a campaign in Russia, where his eventual Waterloo is foreshadowed.
If the Russia segment references Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 classic Alexander Nevsky, Scott’s film has resounding echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s equally elusive Barry Lyndon (1975) – among Kubrick’s unrealized projects was a Napoleon biopic. Scott’s own directorial debut The Duellists (1977), set during the Napoleonic Wars, haunts his latest account of the folly of narcissistic power-mongers.
Renowned cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s soft lighting and painterly compositions reflect a pre-photography era. Scott’s reputation for brutal and yet poetic battle sequences punctuate a narrative filled with conversations and arguments. In the quietest, and most compelling, moments, Napoleon and Josephine sit at either ends of a couch, he uninhibited in his ardour and she implacable in her reserve.
The mildly satirical tone in David Scarpa’s screenplay is a nifty way to avoid an explicit critique of Napoleons reign, while also providing a fresh way to drag the moth-balled historical drama into the revisionist present. The movie isn’t quite history as farce, but it’s nearly there.
There is startling guts-and-gore detailing in the violence wrought by Napoleon, but also a studious distance from the man whose overweening ambition reshaped France, and much of the world. “I see nothing but success in my future,” Napoleon declares in one of his many missives to Josephine. Surely he’s joking?
If Napoleon appears to be parodying himself at times, there’s never any danger of taking Tahar Rahim, as French courtier Paul Barrass, or Rupert Everett as British duke Arthur Wellesley, too seriously either.
The light touch carries over for the most part. Hypnotic in its own way but also slippery at times, the 160-minute movie is kept on course by Scott’s masterly staging – magisterial without the bombast, delicate where it could have been heavy-handed – vividly filmed battle scenes, and the two perfectly judged central performances.
The general is most electric in his grown-up dynamic with his consort, which is tempered with an understanding of how transactional such relationships could be. If Phoenix is quietly mesmerizing, Kirby is combustible.
Napoleon is never more petulant when he demands absolute fidelity from Josephine, or credible in his yearning for her even after the relationship has ended. Inscrutable for the most part, Phoenix’s Napoleon gives himself away when he first sets eyes on Josephine. Of all his conquests, she proves to be the most challenging – and the most elusive. ~
https://scroll.in/reel/1059411/napoleon-review-an-anti-biopic-powered-by-spectacle-and-laced-with-humour
And this I think is one paragraph that best encompasses the movie:
~ This feels like a movie they simply don't make anymore, playing out as both a jaw-dropping spectacle and deeper character drama. It's expertly shot by Dariusz Wolski, edited by Sam Restivo and scored by Martin Phipps; Scott clearly knows how to assemble a first-rate cast and crew, and this is also one of his most emotionally complex films, making some important observations about the nature of war, ambition and loyalty. ~
http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/23/napoleon.htm
Oriana:
I loved the movie. I admit that my first thought at seeing Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon was “too old.” Napoleon was only twenty four during the siege of Toulon — not that I knew that at the time of watching the movie. Rather, I’d seen the various paintings of Napoleon, in which he’s always youthful, vigorous, and . . . for lack of a better word, Napoleonic — even when quite young.
But that "too old" thought was soon forgotten as I fell under the spell of Joaquin Phoenix’s unforgettable performance. What struck me most — and I was new to this perception — was Napoleon’s emotional vulnerability and his need to be loved, the pathos of his passion for the cold-hearted (at least at first) Josephine. In this movie, it was Josephine that was his real Waterloo.
He comes across as soulful; she comes across as a bitch.
His last word, on his deathbed, was “Josephine.”
She didn’t deserve it, but that’s life.
His soulfulness came as a surprise to me. This is probably due to my high school history lessons, where he was turned into a long list of dates of battles we were required to memorize.
This brings back the memory of my brief but emotionally significant summer romance with a green-eyed motorcycle rider who suddenly turned to me and asked, “1803?” ~ “Jena,” I replied, a sheer guess. I was wrong (the Battle of Jena took place in 1806), but the young man gallantly didn’t correct me. Maybe it counted simply because I realized that his out-of-the-blue question was about Napoleon. My brave motorcycle rider would not have been inspired by a less valiant figure.
*
AND FINALLY, HERE IS THE NEW YORKER REVIEW OF NAPOLEON
~ The whole point and rationale—the raison d’être, as we say in English—of the theatrical arts is to extend our circles of compassion through acts of creative empathy: we want people who are unlike the characters they play to inhabit them so that in acts of sympathetic resonance we too expand ourselves. It’s why we love Laurence Olivier’s Shylock, or, for that matter, Russell Crowe’s gladiator.
Almost all French commentators italicize the ambiguities of Napoleon’s historical role—was he the reincarnation of Alexander the Great or the sinister precursor of Hitler? Perhaps the sole exception is the far-right polemicist and onetime Presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, who contributed a laudatory story to the far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles with the cover line “L’empereur anti-woke.”
It’s the fiendishly hidden English prejudices of the movie, though, that the French find most pernicious. “This film was made by an Englishman” was the historian Patrice Gueniffey’s blunt verdict in the magazine Le Point, “and openly anti-French.” (Gueniffey has written two mostly admiring books about the Emperor.) The many historical anomalies in the movie—which are bound to be there—are viewed with his suspicious eye as part of a pattern of anti-French sentiment. Napoleon was not anywhere near the execution of Marie Antoinette, as he is shown to be at the start of the movie, and this makes it seem as if Napoleon’s authoritarianism was the reaction to the Reign of Terror, true only in a very general sense that Hitler’s rise was tied to the previous Weimar inflation—there are many missing steps in the sequence. But this is, as in both Edmund Burke and “A Tale of Two Cities,” the traditional British way of imagining the revolution: the bloody-minded French need a boss, or they go mad.
Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, meanwhile, is represented as a kind of creepy mix of loot-taking and pyramid-destroying, though in fact Bonaparte and his men never aimed cannons at the peaks of pyramids, as they do here, and the expedition came complete with an earnest set of scholars, including the great Vivant Denon, and led eventually to Champollion’s decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Rosetta stone, taken from Egypt by Napoleon, was in turn taken from him by the Brits—it still lives in the British Museum—and so Napoleon’s sagacious purpose in Egypt is presumably deliberately left out of the “British” movie.
Worse still, from the French view, the Emperor is portrayed as a clumsy lover. One of the current Bonapartist pretenders—there are two, with different lineage—the Prince Murat, a descendant of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was so offended by this that he was moved to write indignantly in Le Figaro on behalf of the Emperor’s erotic equipoise. (There are two ungainly scenes of Napoleon having sex with Joséphine, fully dressed and from behind.) The Emperor, the Prince protested, was shown making love “like a clumsy, awkward and frightened little boy,” but then he added, no wonder, since he was throughout portrayed as “clumsy, infantile, cruel, indecisive and weak.”
Yet what truly offends French opinion about the film is a very French thing: the failure to sufficiently dramatize administrative excellence. Napoleon, a reasonable counterintuitive case can be made, was a mediocre general but an excellent national manager—he lost key battles and made doomed decisions to try to invade England by sea and then Russia by land, but the civil code he midwifed into existence remains today, and his ideas of meritocratic advancement, of careers “open to the talents,” were genuinely new and enduring. One thing the film doesn’t make clear—in some part at least because that play of accents won’t allow class divides to be appropriately marked—is that the people surrounding Napoleon had risen from the ranks, and his generals and marshals were as likely to be Corsican riffraff as Bourbon aristocrats. Napoleon was a hands-on manager and promoter of men—he once even wrote sympathetically about a lowly corporal with a drinking problem.
Gueniffey also insists that the casualty numbers that run in the credits at the end of “Napoleon,” intended to make one aware of the horror inflicted by the man whom the film has just spent the past two and a half hours heroizing, are greatly inflated. In any case, the perpetual choice between the two Napoleons—the revived Alexander or the premature Hitler—will not be settled here. The actor Albert Dieudonné, who played Bonaparte in Abel Gance’s legendary five-and-a-half-hour silent version, was buried in his Napoleonic costume. Phoenix seems likelier to go to his grave as Johnny Cash.
Still, the cult of the Emperor won’t end, and even an often awkward film can’t end it. In several scenes, Napoleon is shown being sketched by artists even as he acts as Emperor, and that part is true: charismatic tyrants attracted a better class of artists then. David, Géricault, and Ingres were all in his immediate train—a score that no contemporary dictator could equal, although perhaps only because there was a better class of artists around. After all, Napoleon was able to fool many men of genius into thinking that he might be the bringer of republican ideals, as with Beethoven and the “Eroica,” written in Napoleon’s honor until Beethoven figured out who he really was. (“Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!”)
When Napoleon fell and the French painters sighed and went to work for the mediocre royals who followed him, they did not do good work—until Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” made for the revolution of 1830, restored the nobility of revolutionary painting, which retains its own peculiar and glamorous aura to this day. But, then, the romantic glory of revolution is perhaps the most distinct cultural accent left to us by the era and its Emperor. It explains why Napoleon movies, never made well, will never stop being made, in whatever language lies at hand. ~
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-french-are-not-happy-about-napoleon
Napoleon crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David
*
IN SUFI SHRINES, RITUALS OFFER SUFFERERS A PATH BEYOND THE FEAR AND ISOLATION OF THEIR MENTAL DISTRESS
This is why Madhavi and her husband Raj, both devout middle-class Hindus, had driven six hours from Delhi to a Sufi shrine called Badaun in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Through a neighbor, they had learned that the shrine was renowned for the treatment of pagalpan (madness). And it was here, through rituals of Sufi healing, that Madhavi finally began to feel better. At Badaun, her husband said, ‘the thing revealed itself fully, who did it, what it was.’ Over the next few years, the couple from Delhi would become regular visitors to the shrine.
It may be contentious to affirm a Sufi cult of saints as a treatment for mental illness in this day and age. But as I spent time with mareez (patients) like Madhavi, I began to understand why, even in the 21st century, Sufi conceptions of illness and healing have remained helpful for many people suffering from forms of schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and other maladies. What these experiences of Sufi healing reveal are the complexities of a global mental health puzzle that has remained stubbornly unresolved for the past 50 years.
Beginning in the late 1960s, a series of studies by the World Health Organization found that long-term outcomes for severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, were better in so-called developing countries that lacked psychiatric support systems. How could this be? In the years since, the ‘outcomes paradox’ (also known as the ‘better prognosis hypothesis’) has been debated but never fully disproved or resolved.
One explanation for the paradox is that the symptoms of severe mental illness are more common in non-Western ‘spirit-infused cultures’ and therefore perceived as less threatening. And without fear, so the argument goes, people who are hearing voices or suffering from other afflictions do not need professional psychiatric help like patients in Western contexts. But as most anthropologists who have worked in so-called spirit-infused cultures will tell you, myself included, hallucinations, disembodied voices and unexplained variations of mood do evoke fear and uncertainty.
Another possible explanation is that people in these ‘spirit-infused cultures’ are experiencing forms of mental illness unlike those listed in the diagnostic manuals of mainstream psychiatry. On the surface, this may seem to be true. What afflicted treatment-seekers at Badaun is often called an asrat. In Hindi-Urdu, this word translates as ‘effect’, and at Hindu temples similar afflictions are called sankat, meaning ‘crisis’. An asrat is a Sufi concept of illness describing a relational disorder that can spread, like a contagion, between members of a household or between kin. Rather than being located only in an individual body or brain, an asrat is conceived as transferrable between close friends or family members.
The idea of mental contagion may sound unsettling or absurd, but even the most hardened rationalists would accept that relationships and households can have a profound impact on a person’s mental health – research has shown that caregivers will sometimes ‘take on’ the afflictions of those they are caring for. An asrat begins either with a harm done by an intimate other through ‘sorcery’, or more ordinary antagonisms such as a court case or a dispute between spouses, siblings, neighbors, kin or business associates. According to Madhavi, her asrat began because of a property dispute with her brother-in-law’s family. As her husband, Raj, put it: ‘It is always someone from home, never an outsider. The nearer they are, the more dangerous they are.’
The concept of an asrat may appear to be a purely spiritual ‘belief’, entirely irreconcilable with biomedical ideas of psychiatric illness. However, while the maladies of asrat are not described in any edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, even as ‘culture-bound syndromes’, the symptoms are relatively recognisable within biomedical idioms of mental illness. Consider some of the Hindi-Urdu words used to identify its symptoms: pagalpan (madness), shaq (suspicion), vehem (unfounded doubt), chinta (worry), udasi (sadness), tenshun (a Hindi-Urdu version of the English word ‘tension’). So why is it that Madhavi found healing in a Sufi shrine, and not in a psychiatric ward? The answer was more complicated than I expected.
Like many other parts of the ‘developing’ world, psychiatric systems appear to be severely lacking in India. According to 2021 data, there are only around 9,000 psychiatrists for India ’s population of 1.4 billion (and neighboring Pakistan has fewer than 500 psychiatrists for its population of 230 million). In comparison, consider that the United States, with a population of 330 million, has more than 38,000 registered psychiatrists, and even this is considered a ‘shortage’. What, then, explains the better outcomes experienced by people in places without robust psychiatric systems?
One possible explanation for this apparent paradox, at least in South Asia, may be the continuing significance of Sufi shrine-based healing for mental illnesses. Sufism is sometimes described as a mystical form of Islam, and its shrines are organized around the graves of saints (pirs). Badaun, for instance, is the shrine of two brothers, displaced kings said to have come from Yemen in the 12th century: Sultan Arifin (known as Bade Sarkar) and Badruddin (Chote Sarkar).
Such shrines, when they appear in international media, are often depicted as archaic and barbaric. In contrast, a first-time visitor to a shrine like Badaun may be simultaneously intrigued and disoriented. Unlike India’s often dismal and claustrophobic state-run asylums, Sufi shrines are sprawling, colorful, incense-infused complexes. Most shrines typically have rooms that can be rented by long-term treatment-seekers, and communal spaces for those with no income. They are homes for the homeless.
First-time visitors might also find some aspects of the shrine disorienting or troubling. Debates continue about controversial methods used to ‘pacify’ a small minority of violent patients without sedatives or straitjackets, such as chaining them to trees. It may also be disorienting to see patients circumambulating saintly graves by day and, at sunset, ritually self-flagellating while whirling to the hypnotic devotional sounds of qawwali. Among the crowds, patients seeking treatment pay for the services of neighborhood healers (who are sometimes labelled as charlatans by displeased customers, rivals or shrine-keepers). And whirling patients often express themselves through unsettling screams and wailing. It can all seem hopelessly arcane and superstitious, which make the effectiveness of these spaces even more baffling to outsiders.
*
I write not as a believer, but as an anthropologist. I arrived at Badaun by a secular route. In 2015, I began an ethnographic project studying mental illness at one of India’s largest public hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. As I followed patients moving between different forms of treatment, I found myself journeying with Hindu and Muslim patients from the hospital to neighborhood healers and shrines. In India, as in many other parts of the world, receiving medical help does not stop someone from also seeking other forms of healing.
Neighborhood-based Sufi healers need not be charismatic or have large followings. They can be ordinary men and women, living in poor neighborhoods or villages. One such healer with whom I have worked closely for the past eight years, popularly known as Sufi-ji, lives in a one-room dwelling in a lower-income neighborhood in East Delhi. Sufi-ji, who claims to draw his healing powers from Badaun, sometimes meets patients at his home, which is arranged like a miniature version of a Sufi shrine with icons and incense. At other times, he ferries patients back and forth between Delhi and Badaun.
As I followed some of these patients, I was in for a few surprises. The first was the sheer number of shrine visitors, especially at a time when the Hindu Right is on the rise in India. As Sufi-ji put it when I first visited Badaun with him in 2016:
Imagine if all the asylums and psychiatry wards in India were full. How many patients do you think could be accommodated? 30,000 at most? Badaun has more visitors than that on a single day. And then think of how many dargahs [Sufi shrines] there are all over India.
Whether or not these numbers are an exaggeration, there are undeniably more patients visiting Sufi shrines than psychiatrists in India and elsewhere in South Asia. My second surprise was that, without any holy book or theological formula, treatment practices are replicated in both Sufi shrines and Hindu temples across India. Shared treatments include the use of ‘cooling’ water, amulets, sacred ash, daily circumambulations, forms of trance and the ‘expulsion’ of harmful spirits, and also more ordinary social interactions between visiting families and healers.
One further surprise was that psychiatrists were not necessarily against shrine- or temple-based healing. In fact, in 2000, a team of psychiatrists from one of India’s leading institutions for mental health research followed a cohort of treatment-seekers over a three-month period at a temple in Tamil Nadu. The results of their study, published in 2002 in the British Medical Journal, showed significant improvements as measured by psychiatric rating scales.
So how do Sufi shrines like Badaun heal an asrat? A ‘rational’ explanation is that, within the relapsing-remitting tempos of mental illnesses, shrines work as a space of refuge and supportive sociality during the phase when symptoms are, in psychiatric terms, ‘florid’. Once symptoms recede, patients and caregivers return home (or, if they have nowhere else to go, they might find a safe haven in the space of the shrine). This may indeed be the tempo of illness for some people, but it is an explanation that misses out on what is most important about the healing that takes place in Sufi shrines.
Understanding this form of healing requires a clearer conception of what animates an asrat. This form of mental illness often begins with a shaq (a suspicion) about intimate others, which may turn into forms of suspicion and rumination that are not entirely foreign to Western ideas of mental illness. How are these suspicions or anxieties put to rest? According to the philosopher Stanley Cavell, the antidote to self-negating doubt or relational toxicity is not necessarily truth or certainty – finding out what is really going on – but finding forms of resonance with oneself or with others. Cavell calls this attunement.
For those with either serious mental illnesses or more common disorders like depression and anxiety, Badaun and other Sufi shrines offer different forms of attunement. As the psychiatrist Pratap Sharan and I followed patients journeying between hospitals, homes and shrines, we found two forms of attunement that helped us understand the better outcomes paradox: one is subjective, relating to how a person attunes with their own feelings and thought processes; the other is inter-subjective, relating to how close friends and families attune with each other in damaging or healing ways.
Ritual objects such as amulets or incense and repetitive actions such as circumambulations may at times be aiming for similar ends to those of biomedicine and psychiatry, such as containing the tempo of a rumination to prevent it from spiraling into more dangerous or self-negating forms. Restorative ritual actions can be as ordinary as an amulet worn to ‘cool’ an anxious spiral, or an incense said to be charged with keeping voices (‘auditory hallucinations’ in psychiatric terms) at bay. In other cases, the transfer of symptoms between people can serve as a binding force for an injured family unit. These methods are not infallible, and dissatisfied patients may seek out other shrines or psychiatrists for treatment. But for patients such as Madhavi and her husband Raj, the mood-shifting techniques and protection offered by Badaun and its healers allowed them to strengthen their subjective and inter-subjective attunement.
Analysts have often called these forms of spiritual healing ‘folk’ psychotherapy. Last year, the Badaun shrine celebrated its 812th Urs, an annual event commemorating the death of its saints, which suggests that the shrine has been in operation as a healing space for more than 800 years. Viewed from Badaun, we might say that psychotherapy and psychiatry have a relatively emergent and folk understanding of how to treat an asrat. ~
https://psyche.co/ideas/why-a-sufi-approach-to-healing-mental-illness-is-so-powerful?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=7ab8860ec2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
~ Sufi meditation not only improves mental concentration and memory but also helps in the treatment of depression and anxiety It play an important role in lowering high blood pressure (hypertension) and also psychosomatic illnesses. ~ https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA676838602&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10160604&p=HRCA&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ef36f769a&aty=open-web-entry
Mary:
Oriana:
I strongly believe that as we grow older and hopefully wiser, we become our own best therapists. There is that voice of sanity, of a detached witness, that can win against deluded thoughts. Buddhism has much to offer here, but each person needs to find their path to healing. Life itself, i.e. consequences of our thoughts and actions, will guide. Love yourself, totally accept yourself, and ultimately the voice of sanity will prevail. The voice of deep caring. The wise self that knows how to hope, not the immature self that secretly prefers to take refuge in mental illness rather than cope with whatever life throws at us. Us the Magnificent! Us the Special! Us the Superior! No wonder group therapy works so well. Religion, too, can be a form of group therapy, since the first idea it destroys is that we are separate, different, and superior.
*
CHILDREN NEED ALLOPARENTS
~ A squishy, slippery blob that cries often. Sometimes very often. That's how you – and everyone of us – began our lives.
Homo sapien babies are born incredibly needy. They have little to no motor coordination. They can't cling to their mothers. And many of them even have trouble breastfeeding. They require an enormous amount of attention, care and nurturing.
"Even the most adorable, sweet, easy babies are a ton of work," says psychologist Kathryn Humphreys at Vanderbilt University.
In Western societies, much of the responsibility often falls to one person. In many instances, that's the mother, who must muster the patience and sensitivity to care for an infant. And a lot of time she's working in isolation, says evolutionary anthropologist Gul Deniz Salali, who's at the University College London. "I just had a baby 9 months ago, and it's been really lonely."
"There are these narratives [in Western society], that mothers should just know how to look after children and be able to do it [alone]," says Chaudhary, who's at Cambridge University.
But human parents probably aren't psychologically adapted for this isolation, a new study with a group of hunter-gatherers in the Congo suggests. A "mismatch" likely exists between the conditions in which humans evolved to care for babies and the situation many parents find themselves in today, says Salali, who contributed to the study.
Together with a handful of previous studies, this new one suggests that for the vast majority of human history, mothers had a huge amount of help caring for infants – and even a lot of support with toddlers as well.
We're not talking about just an extra hand on the weekends. We're talking about more than a dozen people for daily help with all sorts of tasks – cleaning a child, holding them, keeping an eye on them and soothing them when they cry. Scientists call these helpers "alloparents." The prefix "allo" derives from the Greek word for "other." So these helpers are literally "other parents."
The study, published in Developmental Psychology, took place among a group of people called Mbendjele. They live in the northern rainforests of the Republic of Congo and acquire their food primarily by foraging, hunting and fishing. "Sometimes they also make campsites along logging roads because they trade with farmers. They exchange products from the forest for agricultural products, alcohol and cigarettes," Salali says.
In the study, evolutionary anthropologist Nikhil Chaudhary closely followed 18 young children from birth to age 4. He observed each child separately for a total of 12 hours. Every 20 seconds, he wrote down a description of who was taking care of the child and what they were doing. Were they feeding, carrying or soothing the child? He also noted the state of the child. Were they sleeping or crying?
"So you're just writing down all that information constantly," he says.
Chaudhary and Salali analyzed all the data and found striking patterns. "The numbers were really quite amazing," Chaudhary says. "Each child had about 15 to 20 caregivers, but in terms of people providing hands-on care, the number was lower."
On average, the children had eight people, other than their mothers, giving regular hands-on care, such as bathing, feeding and loving them with kisses, hugs and stroking. The youngsters had two to three other people responding to their crying.
And these alloparents responded quickly. Chaudhary documented a total of about 220 bouts of crying that didn't resolve quickly. Half the time, these caregivers responded within 10 seconds. And for 90% of the crying bouts help arrived within 25 seconds.
Altogether, the alloparents provided about 36% of the close care for babies. Fathers provided another 6% and mothers provided the rest — about 60%. "The moms just have so much support," says UCL's Gul Deniz Salali. "When I became a mom, I had to pay somebody to teach me how to breastfeed. It was so difficult at the beginning, and I was on the verge of depression, really. So I do think that this allocare is really helpful.”
The study was quite small, with only 18 children, Kathryn Humphreys at Vanderbilt notes. So it's hard to draw generalizations for the full community in Congo.
"However, they studied the children in a way that allowed them to really understand what the children's day-to-day life is like, which is important," she adds. "That's also quite different from most research on early caregiving relationships, in which researchers usually study a child with one caregiver – typically mom – in the lab for ten minutes of free play time."
The findings also support a handful of similar studies with hunter-gatherer communities, looking at how much support new moms receive from members of the community. For example, one study, published in 2021, quantified alloparenting for Agta children from birth to age 6. Agta live in the northeastern part of the Philippines and obtain their food primarily by spearfishing in rivers and oceans, along with foraging and hunting. The researchers found that, on average, alloparents provided nearly three-quarters of the care for babies under age 2, and nearly 80% of care for children ages 2 to 6.
Hunter-gatherer communities are not the only ones to rely on – and value – alloparents. Studies on a variety of cultures worldwide show that new mothers almost always have a system of care around them, says Emily Emmott, who's also at the University College London but wasn't involved in the study. "And it's often a system of complex care that includes people beyond the partner and the family members. The whole community is helping."
Altogether the research across cultures suggests that human parents are psychologically adapted to raise children cooperatively, not in isolation.
Yet in Western culture, many times the mother alone is expected – or even required – to provide this incredibly intensive parenting, Emmott says. "There's this idea that mothering is so important. And there's lots and lots of research on sensitive parenting by the mother."
So, as the paper puts it, there's a "mismatch" between how parents are primed evolutionarily to take care of babies and how they're expected to do it, or even how they end up doing a portion of it. This mismatch and isolation may be a key reason for high rates of postpartum depression in the U.S. and Europe, several of the researchers point out.
"It's almost certainly true that we weren't really adapted to raise children as a single parent or just as two-parent families," says developmental psychologist Pasco Fearon at the University of Cambridge, who wasn't involved with the study. "There's clear evidence that social support is really important for preventing depression.”
So we end up with a second mismatch, beyond the evolutionary one, says UCL's Emily Emmott. "There's a kind of societal mismatch," she says, between how our society is set up to raise young children and what caretakers actually need to do."
"You need a lot of support when you have a baby, but the laws don't reflect that, and the child-care system available doesn't reflect that," Emmott says.
So many primary caregivers end up relying largely on one other person: their partner.
Congo hunter-gatherers"Some women don't have a partner," she adds. "And what do you do when your partner needs to go to work? What are you supposed to do? So I think many women are put in this impossible situation. They're set up to fail."
And so, she says, it's not surprising that many new parents feel depressed. "Because, a lot of the time, you are in a quite depressing situation."
There's no shame in getting help with a baby, the researchers interviewed for this article point out. "We need to cooperate," Emmott adds. "It's just the way we've evolved.”
Oriana:
I’ve always strongly favored lots of help with raising children. But childcare workers need to remember that what a child needs most is affection. Looking back on my own early years, with much of the time in preschool care, the greatest and least-met need was for the hunger for affection.
*
CHRISTIANITY’S PROBLEM WITH BLOOD SACRIFICE
Anglyn Hays:
What kind of twisted god requires the torture and death of his own offspring to forgive his other creation — mankind? Christianity is designed to thwart rational thinking altogether through sheer cruelty and barbarism.
Tom Margolis:
The Old Testament Christian god, among others, does.
But there’s nothing more irrational about a mean god than there is about a nice god. It’s not the meanness of the Christian god that undercuts Christianity —it’s the entirety of the belief in magic and the supernatural.
Rejecting Christianity because God is mean is like rejecting Santa Claus because how would he fit down the chimney?
There are much greater, more fundamental reasons for rejecting supernatural beliefs.
Anglyn Hays:
Santa Claus fits down the chimney through magic. Are you saying Christian cruelty is magical? I think it serves Christian goals. The fact the Old Testament god returns in Revelation to destroy the world once again more or less proves the Jesus-love stuff was nonsense. There are so many holes in the religion that a hole to crawl into must be what its adherents are looking for — total forgiveness for themselves no matter what they do. Christians are amoral actors who have no social contract with the rest of humanity. They have proven that much over centuries of torture, murder and genocide.
Jamer 169:
I’m an atheist, I asked a priest that once and he said only a fool believes anyone is really in hell. He believed in a loving god who would not give his enemy (satan) any additional soldiers at the cost of human suffering. Of course this negates the whole threat of hell as a punishment, but the priest didn't seem bothered by that particular loop hole.
Devil, Codex Gigas, 13th century
*
MONTH OF BIRTH AND LIFE EXPECTANCY
~ Month of birth influences adult life expectancy at ages 50+. Why? In two countries of the Northern Hemisphere–Austria and Denmark–people born in autumn (October–December) live longer than those born in spring (April–June). Data for Australia show that, in the Southern Hemisphere, the pattern is shifted by half a year. The lifespan pattern of British immigrants to Australia is similar to that of Austrians and Danes and significantly different from that of Australians. These findings are based on population data with more than a million observations and little or no selectivity. The differences in lifespan are independent of the seasonal distribution of deaths and the social differences in the seasonal distribution of births.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the excess mortality in the first year of life of infants born in spring does not support the explanation of selective infant survival. Instead, remaining life expectancy at age 50 appears to depend on factors that arise in utero or early in infancy and that increase susceptibility to diseases later in life. This result is consistent with the finding that, at the turn of the last century, infants born in autumn had higher birth weights than those born in other seasons. Furthermore, differences in adult lifespan by month of birth decrease over time and are significantly smaller in more recent cohorts, which benefited from substantial improvements in maternal and infant health.
The environment early in life affects the susceptibility of adults to infectious as well as chronic diseases. These findings are congruent with our result that significant differences in mean age at death by month of birth exist for chronic diseases related to the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems, as well as for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and influenza.
Significant differences exist for violent deaths, which at old age mainly consist of traffic accidents, accidental deaths other than traffic accidents, and suicides. At old age, accidental deaths and suicides are related to the health status of the individual, mainly to cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. Thus, it seems plausible that the increased susceptibility of the spring-born to chronic diseases also affects their overall risk to die from violent deaths.
Our findings are also consistent with ecological studies that found a significant positive correlation between arteriosclerotic heart disease and lung cancer at adult ages 40 to 69, and the infant mortality in the early years of the same cohorts. These studies, which were published a quarter century ago, stimulated extensive research on how conditions early in life might influence health later in life. As reviewed below, much of this research focuses on birth weight or adult height.
A study of weight at birth in Vienna, Austria, for infants born between 1865 and 1930 (35) shows that infants born between September and November have a significantly higher weight at birth (plus 47.3 g) than those born in the other months of the year. The author explains the higher birth weight by the better nutritional status of the mothers during pregnancy. This explanation is supported by the finding that birth weight differs less over the year in social groups that were less exposed to annual cycles in food commodities.
Seasonal differences in gestational age and weight at birth have also been attributed to the seasonal incidence of infectious diseases of the uro-genital tract of the mother during the third trimester of pregnancy.
The relationship, however, between birth weight and adult susceptibility to diseases may be complex. Recent studies find a strong inverse relation between cardiovascular mortality of the mother and birth weight of her offspring, which suggests the existence of genetic and epigenetic intergenerational factors. Intergenerational factors affecting the seasonal distribution of births are found in a Japanese study. The findings suggest that the birth month of the mother significantly influences the seasonal distribution of births of her offspring.
In our study, the month of birth is therefore not merely a proxy for birth weight. It is a complex indicator for the nutritional status and the disease environment during the prenatal and early postnatal period of an infant, and for the intergenerational factors that may operate through birth weight. But not all effects of month of birth must necessarily operate through birth weight as the correlation in the seasonal distribution of births of mothers and their offspring shows.
Seasonal differences in nutrition and disease environment early in life could explain the relationship between month of birth and adult lifespan. In past decades, the food supplies in general, and the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables in particular, differed from season to season. Mothers who gave birth in autumn and early winter had access to plentiful food and fresh fruit and vegetables throughout most of their pregnancy; those who gave birth in spring and early summer experienced longer periods of inadequate nutrition.
It is important to point out that the mothers of the birth cohorts in our study were not exposed to severe seasonally occurring malnutrition. They rather suffered from seasonally inadequate nutrition. Over time, nutrition in winter and early spring has improved considerably, which is consistent with the result in our study that the relationship between month of birth and lifespan seems to be stronger among the older birth cohorts than among the more recently born.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.041431898#sec-3
*
ALZHEIMER’S, INFLAMMATION, AND THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
For decades researchers have focused their attacks against Alzheimer’s on two proteins, amyloid beta and tau. Their buildup in the brain often serves as a defining indicator of the disease. Get rid of the amyloid and tau, and patients should do better, the thinking goes.
But drug trial after drug trial has failed to improve patients’ memory, agitation and anxiety. One trial of a drug that removes amyloid even seemed to make some patients worse. The failures suggest researchers were missing something. A series of observations and recently published research findings have hinted at a somewhat different path for progression of Alzheimer’s, offering new ways to attack a disease that robs memories and devastates the lives of 5.7 million Americans and their families.
One clue hinting at the need to look further afield was a close inspection of the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic, which left survivors with a higher chance of later developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. A second inkling came from the discovery that the amyloid of Alzheimer’s and the alpha-synuclein protein that characterizes Parkinson’s are antimicrobials, which help the immune system fight off invaders. The third piece of evidence was the finding in recent years, as more genes involved in Alzheimer’s have been identified, that traces nearly all of them to the immune system. Finally, neuroscientists have paid attention to cells that had been seen as ancillary—“helper” or “nursemaid” cells. They have come to recognize these brain cells, called microglia and astrocytes, play a central role in brain function—and one intimately related to the immune system.
All of these hints are pointing toward the conclusion that both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s may be the results of neuroinflammation—in which the brain’s immune system has gotten out of whack. “The accumulating evidence that inflammation is a driver of this disease is enormous,” says Paul Morgan, a professor of immunology and a member of the Systems Immunity Research Institute at Cardiff University in Wales. “It makes very good biological sense.”
The exact process remains unclear. In some cases the spark that starts the disease process might be some kind of insult—perhaps a passing virus, gut microbe or long-dormant infection. Or maybe in some people, simply getting older—adding some pounds or suffering too much stress could trigger inflammation that starts a cascade of harmful events.
This theory also would explain one of the biggest mysteries about Alzheimer’s: why some people can have brains clogged with amyloid plaques and tau tangles and still think and behave perfectly normally. “What made those people resilient was lack of neuroinflammation,” says Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and one of the leaders behind this new view of Alzheimer’s. Their immune systems kept functioning normally, so although the spark was lit, the forest fire never took off, he says.
In Tanzi’s fire analogy, the infection or insult sparks the amyloid match, triggering a brush fire. As amyloid and tau accumulate, they start interfering with the brain’s activities and killing neurons, leading to a raging inflammatory state that impairs memory and other cognitive capacities. The implication, he says, is that it is not enough to just treat the amyloid plaques, as most previous drug trials have done. “If you try to just treat plaques in those people, it’s like trying to put out forest fire by blowing out a match.”
Lighting the Fire
One study published earlier this year found gum disease might be the match that triggers this neuroinflammatory conflagration—but Tanzi is not yet convinced. The study was too small to be conclusive, he says. Plus, he has tried to find a link himself and found nothing. Other research has suggested the herpes virus could start this downward spiral, and he is currently investigating whether air pollution might as well. He used to think amyloid took years to develop, but he co-authored a companion paper to the herpes one last year, showing amyloid plaques can literally appear overnight.
It is not clear whether the microbes—say for herpes or gum disease—enter the brain or whether inflammation elsewhere in the body triggers the pathology, says Jessica Teeling, a professor of experimental neuroimmunology at the University of Southampton in England. If microbes can have an impact without entering the brain or spinal cord—staying in what’s called the peripheral nervous system—it may be possible to treat Alzheimer’s without having to cross the blood–brain barrier, Teeling says.
Genetics clearly play a role in Alzheimer’s, too. Rare cases of Alzheimer’s occurring at a relatively young age result from inheriting a single dominant gene. Another variant of a gene that transports fats in brain cells, APOE4, increases risk for more typical, later-onset disease. Over the last five years or so large studies of tens of thousands of people have looked across the human genome for other genetic risk factors. About 30 genes have jumped out, according to Alison Goate, a professor of neurogenetics and director of the Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Goate, who has been involved in some of those studies, says those genes are all involved in how the body responds to tissue debris—clearing out the gunk left behind after infections, cell death and similar insults. So, perhaps people with high genetic risk cannot cope as well with the debris that builds up in the brain after an infection or other insult, leading to a quicker spiral into Alzheimer’s. “Whatever the trigger is, the tissue-level response to that trigger is genetically regulated and seems to be at the heart of genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” she says. When microglia—immune cells in the brain—are activated in response to tissue damage, these genes and APOE get activated. “How microglia respond to this tissue damage—that is at the heart of the genetic regulation of risk for Alzheimer’s,” she says.
But APOE4 and other genes are part of the genome for life, so why do Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s mainly strike older people? says Joel Dudley, a professor of genetics and genomics, also at Mount Sinai. He thinks the answer is likely to be inflammation, not from a single cause for everyone but from different immune triggers in different individuals.
Newer technologies that allow researchers to examine a person’s aggregate immune activity should help provide some of those answers, he says. Cardiff’s Morgan is developing a panel of inflammatory markers found in the blood to predict the onset of Alzheimer’s before much damage is done in the brain, a possible diagnostic that could point to the need for anti-inflammatory therapy.
Like Threads
A similar inflammatory process is probably also at play in Parkinson’s disease, says Ole Isacson, a professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Isacson points to another early clue about the role of inflammation in Parkinson’s: people who regularly took anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen developed the disease one to two years later than average. Whereas other researchers focused exclusively on genetics, Isacson found the evidence suggested the environment had a substantial impact on who got Parkinson’s.
In 2008–09, Isacson worked with a postdoctoral student on an experiment trying to figure out which comes first in the disease process: inflammation or the death of dopamine-producing neurons, which make the brain chemical involved in transmitting signals among nerve cells. The student first triggered inflammation in the brains of some rodents with molecules from gram-negative bacteria and then damaged the neurons that produce dopamine. In another group of rodents, he damaged the neurons first and then introduced inflammation. When inflammation came first, the cells died en masse, just as they do in Parkinson’s disease. Blocking inflammation prevented their demise, they reported in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Other neurodegenerative diseases also have immune connections. In multiple sclerosis, which usually strikes young people, the body’s immune system attacks the insulation around nerve cells, slowing the transmission of signals in the body and brain.
The spinal fluid of people with MS include antibodies and high levels of white blood cells, indicating the immune system is revved up—although it is not clear whether that immune system activation is the cause or result of MS, says Mitchell Wallin, who directs the Veterans Affairs Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence. People with antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus in their systems, especially if they caught the virus in late adolescence or early adulthood run a higher risk of developing MS—supporting the idea that an infection plays a role in MS.
Thanks to newer medications and improvements in fighting infections, people with MS are now living longer. This increased longevity puts them at risk for neurological diseases of aging, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Wallin says. Lack of data has left it unclear whether people with MS are at the same, higher or lower risk for these diseases than the general population. “How common it is, we’re just starting to explore right now,” Wallin says.
COMING SOON?
It will be years before the concept of a neuroinflammatory can be fully tested, but there are already some relevant drugs in development. One start-up, California-based INmune Bio, recently received a $1-million grant from the Alzheimer’s Association to advance XPro1595, a drug that targets neuroinflammation. The company is beginning its first clinical trial this spring, treating 18 patients with mild to moderate-stage Alzheimer’s who also show signs of inflammation.
The company plans to test blood, breath by-products and cerebral spinal fluid as well as conduct brain scans to look for changes in inflammatory markers. That first trial will just explore if XPro1595 can safely bring down inflammation and change behaviors such as depression and sleep disorders. Company CEO and co-founder Raymond Tesi says he expects to see those indicators improve, even in a short, three-month trial.
The best way to avoid Alzheimer’s is to prevent it from ever starting, which might require keeping brain inflammation to a minimum, particularly in later life. Preventative measures are already well known: eat healthy foods, sleep well, exercise regularly, minimize stress and avoid smoking and heavy drinking.
You can’t do anything about your genetics but living a healthy lifestyle will help control your inheritance, says Tanzi, who, along with Deepak Chopra, wrote a book on the topic, The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well for Life. “It’s important to get that set point as high as possible.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/for-alzheimer-s-sufferers-brain-inflammation-ignites-a-neuron-killing-forest-fire?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
Oriana:
Coffee (caffeinated, both brewed and instant) has been found to help prevent brain diseases. And so does nicotine — in the form of nicotine patch, so the lungs remain uninjured. Old-type tricyclic antidepressants also seem to lower the risk of neurogenerative disease.
Note that these are stimulants; they increase energy production by the mitochondria. The role of mitochondria and energy production in the brain remains a an active research topic.
“The dementia patients were more likely to have diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and head injury. The adjusted OR for dementia was 0.24 (95% CI, 0.22-0.27) in patients using tricyclics.”
https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/antidepressants-and-dementia-risk/
By contrast, the newer serotonin-increasing antidepressants, “such as Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Zoloft, etc., are associated with a twofold increase in the odds of developing some form of cognitive impairment, such as dementia, including Alzheimer’s.”
Overall, dopamine and its agonists appear to decrease the risk of neurodegenerative disease, while drugs designed to increase serotonin raise the risk.
I don’t know if this is directly relevant, but dopamine and dopamine mimics tend to be cause minor weight loss or at least to preserve leanness, while serotonin mimics lead to weight gain.
https://www.anxietycentre.com/research/antidepressants-linked-to-dementia-including-alzheimers/
ending on beauty:
According to the Talmud, God braided
Eve’s hair for her wedding. He served
as Adam’s groomsman, too, though I doubt
he made any ball & chain jokes—before the Fall
at least…. And yes, if they had a garden
wedding, there must have been a steamy wedding night—
~ from “Braids” by Leonard Kress
No comments:
Post a Comment