*
ANZA-BORREGO DESERT, SPRINGTIME
Every stick bursts into blossom.
Flame-beaked ocotillos
wave in the warm wind.
In the scar of an arroyo
silvers a live stream.
This is the most precious garden:
not hothouse orchids
but the desert lavish with gold
brittlebush, our-lady’s-slippers,
bells ringing purple, indigo and mauve.
Just one season of unstinting rain,
and this place of thirst
blooms the richest Eden.
Lilac-plumed grass tames to my hand.
Prickly pear opens its softest veils.
So after years without love,
tenderness makes us flower.
So our face
becomes the face of all,
unfolding petal by petal.
~ Oriana
*
Yoko Ono is a lens through which to understand John Lennon’s psychology. He called her mother: he’d always been looking for his mum. “Not bad, eh, mother?” he said one November morning in 1980, as he looked at Billboard magazine over breakfast and saw the couple’s album Double Fantasy creeping up the charts. He drew an arrow from number 25 to number one in red pen: “We’re on our way, mother!” He had just turned 40 and was by his own admission excited about the second half of life.
I’ve been thinking about the photo for a day now, and I’ve noticed telling questions sliding into my mind. Did she save the glasses knowing she would take this shot? Was it real blood? This is the Yoko phenomenon: decades of suspicion, putting Lennon’s lover under the microscope in an attempt to prove she a) broke up the Beatles on purpose, and b) cashed in on Lennon’s death, and has been ever since the ultimate professional widow.
Perhaps, in the photo’s composition, is her commentary on her
role in the Beatles story: if Lennon was bigger than Jesus, she was the
Devil, and here was the holy relic – my piece of him, while you got
yours. Downstairs at the Dakota, fans sang Lennon’s songs in a constant
vigil, making it hard for her to leave. Maybe she set out to repulse.
The photo is exploitative, but it is art. The artist mindset can feel
alien – and to everyone apart from Lennon, Ono was an alien too. ~ David
Sheff
*
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER: EVELYN WAUGH
Evelyn Waugh was one of those characters that English literature throws up now and again, who put a special stamp on the times, like Jonathan Swift or Dr. Johnson. Almost fifty years after his death, Waugh remains a presence because the spirit of comedy in his books is pure and irrepressible. Indeed, Captain Grimes, the Emperor Seth of Azania, Basil Seal, Mr. Todd, William Boot, Mr. Joyboy and Aimée Thanatogenos, and Apthorpe command their place in the British psyche along with Mr. Pickwick and Jeeves.
Literature, for those who embarked on writing careers in the 1920s, was often more a means to enter society than a genuine vocation. A white tie and a tailcoat were as much tools of the trade as a typewriter. So equipped, the talented young with ideas for a masterpiece in their heads were able to meet the right people in the right houses. Waugh fitted naturally into this coterie, and he was to immortalize the particular house of Madresfield as Brideshead, and its owner Lord Beauchamp as Lord Marchmain.
Waugh explored all the possible uses to which the private joke can be put in fiction and in life. The private joke and the hope to write a great novel were similar defining characteristics of Cyril Connolly, a close contemporary, born within a few weeks of Waugh in the autumn of 1903. His review of Decline and Fall in the New Statesman reads as though he wished he had written this novel.
The Waugh–Connolly relationship was unsettling and competitive because each wanted the good opinion of the other and was determined to have it. Friendly or otherwise, it was Waugh’s private joke to attach the name of Connolly to comic characters. A sub-plot in Sword of Honour turns on a contraption called Connolly’s Chemical Closet. The Loved One was Waugh’s private joke about America, and Connolly devoted a whole issue of Horizon, the magazine he edited, to it.
The ways of the world of course put Waugh to the test. He steered clear of the Spanish Civil War, did not visit Berlin or Moscow, converted to Catholicism through the Jesuits, and did not care whom he mocked, writing sentences like “As that great Negro Karl Marx has so nobly written . . .” and “Women of Tomorrow Demand an Empty Cradle.”
My father, Alan Pryce-Jones, had almost certainly stayed at Madresfield and put on his white tie and tails for the same occasions as Waugh. He, too, aspired to write a great novel, and meanwhile invited Waugh to contribute to Little Innocents, an anthology of childhood reminiscences that he edited in 1932. Ten years later, in the review that Alan wrote of Put Out More Flags, he spoke for quite a number of readers when he wondered, “Doesn’t Mr. Waugh overdo it a little?” Waugh then referred to “the man Jones,” until Alan converted to Catholicism and was rewarded with an inscribed copy of Helena.
Waugh was not going to be told what to think and what to do, and he seized on people who should have known better than to let their opinions make fools of them. Attaching the nicknames Parsnip and Pimpernel to an easily identifiable W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, he put them down because they had been professional anti-fascists who had run away to the United States the moment there was real fighting to be done.
His friend Henry Green was ridiculed because war work for him involved joining “a group of experimental novelists in firemen’s uniform” who were to be seen squirting a little jet of water into a burning London club. Closely modeled on Lady Diana Cooper, one of the famous beauties of the period, Mrs. Stitch is a forceful character who makes and breaks careers whimsically. Readers in the know could enjoy these private jokes and the accompanying quarrels and gossip; everyone else had to make of it what they could.
The publication in 1945 of Brideshead Revisited was a turning point for Waugh. The book sold half a million copies in the United States and gave him independence. Ironically, the evocation of a past that was truly over and done with allowed Waugh to live as though it were still present. Successful Englishmen have kept alive a time-honored ideal of living in a handsome country house amid books and pictures of their choice, and Waugh could realize it.
The novel’s subject, its aura of nostalgia, was open to misrepresentation. Sure enough, Edmund Wilson wrote a long review in The New Yorker that branded Waugh as a hopeless reactionary. During a prolonged stay in the Soviet Union, Wilson had picked up tips on how to wage the class war. The snobbery associated with the fictional Lord Marchmain and his family in Brideshead, Wilson wrote more in anger than sorrow, was “shameless and rampant.” The book was mere romantic fantasy, a Catholic tract. Edmund Wilson seems not to have noticed that Anthony Blanche, the flamboyant character who deals in reality, finds the entire Marchmain family “sinister.”
The individual distress of each of them becomes a collective failure. The great houses of the family are sold or degraded. The plot could almost be summarized as a warning against the abuse of privilege that aristocrats are prone to. Those who might replace them are Rex Mottram and his Conservative friends, but Waugh reduces them to figures of farce. Their cross-talk about Hitler on the eve of the World War runs for a couple of pages that seem lifted from one of his earlier comedies. “The communists will tear him limb from limb”; “He’ll scupper himself”; “He’d do it now if it wasn’t for Chamberlain”; and so on.
A minor character in Brideshead Revisited is made to stand for the Common Man. Hooper is a sallow youth with a flat Midland accent who says “rightyoh,” and observes the universe in a “general, enveloping fog.” The worst of it is that Hooper is no romantic. Knowing nothing about past heroes and victories, he cannot possibly understand why England is a country worth fighting for. The older Waugh got, the more he detected a Hooper in everyone, and the greater the disappointment that he couldn’t help giving vent to. “I am by nature a bully and a scold,” he said of himself. Gilbert Pinfold, his fictional alter ego, is “bulging with wrath that was half-facetious, and with half-simulated incredulity . . . he was absurd to many but to some rather formidable.”
Pinfold’s distress arose just like Waugh’s, from “plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz—everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.” Christopher Sykes was a close friend and admirer of Waugh. In the biography that Sykes wrote, he considers that Waugh, rejecting so much that was going on around him, ought to be described as an anarchist, even a revolutionary, and in a wonderful understatement muses, “He was never much influenced by the common desire to be liked.”
By the time I came to know Waugh, I was at Oxford. Intellectual activity in the university was restricted to discussing which elements of Left-wing doctrine would bring about utopia. Indoctrination had replaced education. Waugh’s eldest daughter, Teresa, was also an Oxford undergraduate, and she arranged for a dozen of her more passable contemporaries to lunch with her father in the Randolph Hotel. I imagine that Waugh felt as cautious about us as we felt about him.
*
Later that term, Teresa invited me for the weekend to Combe Florey. After a three-hour drive, we reached the house. A window on the second floor opened with a rattle, and Waugh leaned out shouting, “Go away!”
When he’s like that, Teresa said, we had better go—and so we drove back the three hours to Oxford. For a party to celebrate Teresa’s marriage, he engaged a military brass band that played music like the Post Horn Gallop to which it was impossible to dance. As midnight struck, Waugh stepped into the center of the room, clapped his hands, and said at the top of his voice, “It’s over.”
Earlier, during military service in Cyprus, Bron accidentally shot and nearly killed himself. Visiting him in hospital, his father said, “It is a soldier’s duty to die for his country.” A journalist in his turn, Bron adopted his father’s playacting in every respect as though he had no emotional independence of his own. I came to miss his regular portrayals of me as a Welsh dwarf who stole rolls of wire from the tips in the valleys and had somehow escaped from the coal mines.
His father’s exaggeration was under better control. Face to Face, for instance, was a television program with a huge audience. Its star interviewer was John Freeman, a member of the socialist elite. He was determined to make a fool of Waugh, and Waugh knew it. During his appearance, he wore one of his favorite black-and-white checkered suits with a flower in the buttonhole, and added to the posture of defiance by smoking a cigar while denigrating the modern world, and television in particular. “Since you object so much to television,” Freeman asked, finally falling into the trap, “why do you appear on it?” Releasing another vast puff of cigar smoke, Waugh went for the kill: “For the same reason as you, Mr. Freeman, for the money.”
I have to confess that my Oxford brainwashing persisted for some time. Mea maxima culpa—in my essay about the revised edition of Brideshead Revisited, I called Waugh “a social Philistine” and repeated clichés that Edmund Wilson had popularized. A number of prominent Lefties congratulated me. Waugh sent a mutual friend to tell me that he felt hurt that the boy Jones could do such a thing, but he was generous enough to let it go at that.
Soon afterwards I became literary editor of The Spectator and asked him to review a novel by Muriel Spark. He answered, “I like to write for The Spectator when there is some writer who seems to be getting too little or too much praise, or when there is an expensive book on Victorian painting or architecture which I want for my library. I don’t do routine reviewing any more.” When he did contribute, his copy was handwritten without a single erasure.
The final edited version of Sword of Honour is a personal statement large and grand enough to have a universal dimension. A fictionalized version of Waugh himself, Guy Crouchback, its hero, discovers his responsibilities to other people and to God. The name Crouchback derives from the cross that Crusaders once had stitched on their tunics. Volunteering for military service as war is declared, Guy stops at the tomb of one such knight, an exemplary predecessor: “Sir Roger, pray for me, and for our endangered kingdom.” The Hitler–Stalin Pact at the end of August 1939 inspires love of country, sacrifice, and honor, and Waugh gives Guy a noble expression of this spirit. “The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle.”
When he enrolled, Waugh was already thirty-six, and so was Guy—old enough to be known by his fellow officers as “uncle.” Waugh attributes to Guy his own complete experience of the war. Both trained as commandos, both were fearless. Parachute jumps provided a thrill akin to mysticism. Like Waugh, Guy was present at the fall of Crete, and English literature has nothing comparable to the first-hand description of that disastrous battle. Both saw service in Egypt and then with the British Military Mission in Yugoslavia. In a private joke that he did not pass on to Guy, Waugh maintained that Marshal Tito was a woman.
The final edited version of Sword of Honour is a personal statement large and grand enough to have a universal dimension. A fictionalized version of Waugh himself, Guy Crouchback, its hero, discovers his responsibilities to other people and to God. The name Crouchback derives from the cross that Crusaders once had stitched on their tunics.
The assumption underlying Guy’s frame of mind is that England has the moral strength and the armed might to win the war on its own. This is a delusion. In reality, the political and military conduct of the war is all too often incompetent or just plain wrong. Furthermore, the alliance of Britain with the Soviet Union makes nonsense of Guy’s prayer over Sir Roger’s tomb. A brother officer tells Guy that the more men there are to shoot at Germans the better, but this truth does little to console him.
As things go wrong, Winston Churchill comes to sound “painfully boastful” while Tito, by comparison, appears a highly skilled politician who can run rings round an old boy who knows nothing except parliamentary politics. Modeled on a famously dashing soldier whom Waugh knew and admired, the character of Ivor Claire seems to Guy to be “quintessential England, the man Hitler had not taken into account.”
Disappointingly, however, he abandons the men under his command in Crete to be taken prisoner and shamefully saves himself. Not helping matters, a fool of a general “helped drive numerous Canadians to their death at Dieppe,” while another loses his life stupidly in the belief he’s “biffing” Germans. Corporal-Major Ludovic is the most ambiguous figure Waugh ever conceived. He shoots the cowardly Major Hound in Crete but saves Guy’s life. Home again, he writes aphorisms that a fashionable editor given the name Everard Spruce publishes in a monthly called Survival.
(I happened to be present when someone asked Cyril Connolly what he thought about being caricatured as Spruce, whereupon he pulled out of his pocket a letter from Waugh that he was carrying around like a laissez-passer. Passionately refuting any such identification, the letter was a rite of passage in this relationship, and of course a lie.) As if cowards were not bad enough, intelligence agents and a homosexual diplomat are traitors engaged in a Communist conspiracy. A few years later, Philby, Burgess, and Maclean proved that what had seemed another unlikely private joke had been reportage.
“Quantitative judgments don’t apply,” is the guidance Guy receives from his father and repeats to himself. Waugh lets it be understood that in the sight of God it is enough to save one’s own soul; the collectivity is beside the point. Guy is redeemed by an act of charity and forgiveness towards the wife who ran away and had a child in a meaningless affair with an unsuitable man.
He accuses himself of feeling an “indefinable numbness” where others are concerned, but in Yugoslavia he finds himself in a position to help defenseless Jews: “He was Moses leading a people out of captivity.” One of the Jewish women trying to flee puts an end to the crusade against the Modern Age. “It seems to me there was a will to war, a death wish everywhere. Even good men thought their private honor would be satisfied by war,” she says. “God forgive me, I was one of them,” is Guy’s reply.
“Do you think things will ever be normal again?” one of the other minor characters asks at the end of Sword of Honour. What has been lost is beyond recovery. George Orwell was a very different character, but his 1984 is also a vehicle of regret and elegy; both writers speak like nobody else to a country in decline. Airstrip One is fate. A glass paperweight carries a charge powerful enough to evoke England as it was when normal. By coincidence, Orwell was born in the summer of 1903 within weeks of Waugh and Connolly; the latter thought him a revolutionary in love with the past. Wounded in Spain, Orwell was unable to fight the war against the hateful Modern Age in arms, but nonetheless he too was a Crusader.
In the blitzkrieg of 1940, he hoped the British army in France would be cut to pieces rather than surrender. Waugh wrote to Orwell that he admired 1984 and thought conditions by then might well be as described. The book had failed to make his flesh creep, he went on, because through the Church some would still save their souls. This reputedly uncharitable man asked if Orwell would welcome a visit from him and some friends. And on his deathbed, the reputedly socialist and secular Orwell jotted down notes for an article on Waugh that he never had time to write. One of these final notes concludes that Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can be while holding his opinions.
I saw Waugh one last time, at a wedding in a small Catholic chapel in the country. He and Christopher Sykes came in together and sat side by side near the front. Corresponding to a recent Vatican decree, the service was in English, not Latin. Waugh waved his ear trumpet, that brilliantly symbolic prop, and he interrupted loudly and often: “What’s going on?” and “Can’t understand a word.”
A few weeks later, he died.
https://newcriterion.com/article/the-pen-is-mightier/
Oriana:
I adored reading The Loved One, Waugh's satire on a pretentious Los Angeles cemetery, Forest Lawn. Eventually I got to visit Forest Lawn, and was amazed that Waugh managed to make it even more funny than it unintentionally already was. I think the book is a masterpiece of satire.
I also watched Brideshead Revisited, the BBC television series, and was quite impressed.
Fun fact: the name of Evelyn Waugh's first wife was also Evelyn.
Castle Howard in Yorkshire, the setting of Brideshead Revisited in the BBC series.*
Genghis Khan just needed better PR "I have come to liberate you and bring modern civilization. Let us start with some demolition to promote urban renewal.” ~ Sandy McReynolds, Facebook
*
RUSSIA AND THE CONSTANT LIES
Everything in Russia is fake: news, pictures, the president, patriotism — everything is deception and profound lies.
Everything is to deceive, mislead, to make you accept the fakes as truth, to convince you that black is white. That’s how it was in the Soviet Union — this is how it is in 2025 Russia under Putin.
Russia is one big lie.
It’s a country built on lies and falsehoods.
The country that only seeks to corrupt and deceive, to dominate and oppress.
The U.S. administration aligning itself with Russia is genuinely terrifying for anyone who understands what Russia is.
Imagine you in 3 years, trying to figure out whether what you are shown on TV and government media is true?
Trust me: you don’t want to live in a country like this.
Putin is weak now.
Time to end this war in a just peace for Ukraine.
Putin is not an idiot.
He knows he’s fighting the war he can’t win.
He desires a way out — while also announcing a “win”.
And he announced a “win” even in Syria, where the Russian troops were kicked out.
Russian propagandists will find a way to spin it. Just move discussions behind the closed doors and stop making announcements.
Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.
The future of independent and prosperous Ukraine’s depends on it.
Putin wants a ceasefire.
Anything Russian diplomats say publicly is just a smokescreen.
Russia was seeking a ceasefire since their initial invasion plans were crushed in 2022. It's the only way for them to keep control over the occupied territories.
Meanwhile, the latest poll in Ukraine (Ipsos) shows that 74% of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine should fight Russia, even without the US support.
In Russia, it’s not even the reverse — people are over this whole war.
All the Russians want is that the war ends.
Of course, in “victory.”
~ Elena Gold, Quora
From a 2022 post:
A self-described “middle class” woman from Moscow said everyone she knew was “totally shocked” at the news that Russia was invading Ukraine. “No one asked us our opinion of doing this,” she noted. “If they had, no one would have agreed to it.”
When most of the passengers had cleared off Platform 9 on Sunday night, I saw a tall Russian man step out of the rear car. At first he demurred when I asked if we could talk, but then he changed his mind.
“It all definitely feels like we are going very far backwards in history,” he told me. “It’s worse than the Iron Curtain, it’s worse than going back to Soviet times. I don’t have the words to compare it, but maybe if you’ve read Russian a bit you’ve heard of someone named Vasili Rozanov. He was the first one to coin the expression the Iron Curtain about Russia.”
“One hundred years ago, in 1918, he wrote that with a clang, a creak and a scream the iron curtain dropped on Russian history,” my interlocutor said, quoting Rozanov nearly perfectly. “An announcer declared the performance was over. The audience was told to put on their fur coats and go home. The people got up from their seats and looked around, but the fur coats and the houses had all vanished.”
It was all lies, all an illusion. Not long after Rozanov wrote this in the wake of the Russian Revolution in a work titled “The Apocalypse of Our Time, and Other Writings,” he starved to death in a monastery in the hungry years following the revolution (Wikipedia).
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/29/last-train-out-of-russia-00021263
*
HAMAS TORTURES, KILLS A MAN WHO CRITICIZED THEM
Uday Rabie had participated alongside thousands of others in anti-Hamas and anti-war protests that took place in the enclave earlier last week, his brother said. Rabie demonstrated in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, Hassan said, chanting “No to Hamas” during the rally.
Last Friday, a group of armed men affiliated with the Al-Qassam Brigades kidnapped and then tortured Rabie, Hassan said. The Palestinian man was taken off the street, days after he protested.
“They took him, they kept torturing him,” Hassan told CNN. “They then called me and said: come get your brother.”
“He was still alive” when the militants returned him, Hassan said. Rabie was only wearing underwear and the fighters had him “tied by the neck with a rope, and were dragging him, beating him,” Hassan added.
“They handed him over to me, and told me, in these words: This is the fate of everyone who disrespects Al-Qassam Brigades and speaks ill of them,” Hassan said.
Hassan said he collected his injured brother and took him to a nearby hospital. Footage shared on social media showed Rabie lying on a hospital bed, covered in large cuts and bruises that stretched along his arms, back and feet. Hassan confirmed the authenticity of the video, and said the man on the bed was indeed his brother.
Rabie died shortly after being taken to the hospital, he said.
Large demonstrations against Hamas have been held in northern Gaza in recent days as Palestinians call for end to a war in which more than 50,000 people have been killed during Israel’s military campaign following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In a statement, the Independent Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian rights organization established by former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) head Yasser Arafat, condemned Rabie’s killing, saying it views “this crime as part of the deteriorating security chaos, the proliferation of weapons, and the absence of the rule of law in Gaza, posing a serious threat to public rights and freedoms.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/middleeast/uday-rabie-palestinian-tortured-hamas-intl-latam?cid=ios_app
*
ANTI-SEMITISM AND “ANTI-SEMITISM” (TIMOTHY SNYDER)
Vladimir Putin says that the Ukrainian president is not really Jewish, implying that Putin himself decides who is Jewish and what that means. This is a central trope of modern antisemitism, associated most famously with Karl Lueger, who was mayor of Vienna when young Adolf Hitler arrived there in 1908, and who set the ideological tone of the city. Hitler's Holocaust killed about two million Jews in what is now Ukraine, including members of Zelens'kyi's family.
The Russian foreign minister claimed that Hitler was Jewish. The idea was to suggest that the Ukrainian president, because he is of Jewish origin, is like Hitler. The Russian foreign minister has also questioned whether Zelens'kyi is fully human.
The point of repeating antisemitic tropes while claiming to fight antisemitism is to evacuate any meaning from the term "antisemitism" and to erase the lessons of the Holocaust. And there can hardly be a more antisemitic action than that.
Antisemitism is a terrible problem in our battered world, and it is worse from year to year, moment to moment. There are antisemites among Americans, among American young people, and among college students. This is no reason, however, to attack higher education or undermine the legal and moral basis of the American republic.
Antisemites claim that they themselves can make up what they like about history, they can decide who is a real Jew, that the Jews brought suffering upon themselves. Antisemites meanwhile apply the word "antisemitic" to other people who are simply doing things that the actual antisemites do not like. The absurdity is part of the point: the claim that Jewish democrats are the real antisemites or the real Nazis or the real Hitlers is meant to disorient well-meaning people who assume that there must be some logic somewhere, and to provide guidance for malicious people who actually wish to further antisemitism.
I remember a certain feeling of confusion from February 2022 and the initial Russian war propaganda. I am afraid that the same confused atmosphere prevails now in the United States. The American government's war on higher education and freedom of expression is proceeding according to the same antisemitic rules of engagement as Russia's war against Ukraine.
The Musk-Trump policy today is to defund, harass and persecute American universities on the grounds that they permit antisemitism. The word "antisemitism" is being used to justify actions that, aside from many other wrongs, will harm Jews, and we should consider whether they are designed to do so.
The federal government is undertaking to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, on the grounds that as a student he led protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza. There is no accusation that Khalil committed a crime. He is being singled out, in what amounts to a test case for American authoritarianism as a whole, for the expression of his views. The Constitution protects his right to freedom of expression no less than it protects that right for American citizens. If it does not apply to him, in other words, it applies to no one.
According to Trump, Khalil is the "first of many to come." Without evidence, Trump associates Khalil in a general way with "pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity." These are slurs designed to generate emotion, and neither Trump nor anyone else in government has provided any evidentiary basis for any of them. The stigmatization of a particular individual and his particular cause is a template for doing the same to other people and other causes. The stigmatization of specific protests at specific universities is being used to delegitimize higher education and freedom of expression.
"Anti-American activity" is a very broad category of behavior, and of course, when simply defined at a given by the president, perfectly arbitrary. At the same time the word "antisemitism" is also being deployed in a familiar and concerning way. The notion is that antisemitism is such a problem that we should accept obviously authoritarian policies to combat it. But will authoritarianism help Jews? And is this particular policy of deportation in any way designed to support Jewish Americans? This seems unlikely to be the motivation of those who made the policy.
Deporting a Muslim who has committed no crime in the name of Jews is not exactly a favor to Jews. It looks more like a provocation by the federal government, designed to generate strife among communities. And making exceptions to constitutional protections of free speech and free assembly in one case undermines the rule of law as a whole.
The specific target of the campaign is also revealing. Khalil was a student at Columbia University, now the showpiece of a larger federal assault on higher education. There will be an investigation of sixty American universities for supposedly allowing antisemitic discrimination against their students. This investigation, like Khalil's arrest, is framed as opposing antisemitism and as supporting Jews.
(I should say that I have worked for more than two decades at Yale University, one of the targeted institutions, where I have taught the history of the Holocaust, sat on the advisory group of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, and served as faculty advisor for the Fortunoff Archive of Video Holocaust Testimonies, one of the early initiatives to collect survivor testimony. I say this for transparency about my own affiliations and commitments, not to speak for colleagues at any of these institutions or for these institutions themselves.)
But why was Columbia put first? It is in New York. More than twenty percent of its undergraduate students are Jewish. No matter the experiences or attitudes of these students, their university suddenly losing four hundred million dollars is unlikely to improve their education and life chances. Columbia students can speak for themselves. My guess is that Columbia was selected as the symbolic first target less because of the presence of antisemitism than because of the presence of Jews.
And I think that this is something that actual American antisemites will immediately have grasped. The city of New York is coded for antisemites as Jewish. The antisemites in America, seeing Columbia and New York punished, will see Jews being punished — and they will be pleased by this. The same goes for universities as a whole. Universities are often understood by antisemites to be Jewish. The attempt to bring universities to heel will be met by antisemites with approval.
By American journalistic habit, Musk-Trump's public framing of the anti-university campaign as opposition to antisemitism is accepted. But these basic elements of context are enough to put that into doubt. History teaches clear lessons about breakdowns in the rule of law and about campaigns against cities and universities. These are very often associated with antisemitism. It is very hard, for me at least, to think of historical examples of campaigns against universities and freedom of expression that were intended to benefit Jews. The only reason journalists and the rest of us have to believe that these efforts are made on behalf of Jews is Trump's assurances.%20red%20blue.jpg)
But how likely is it that this administration, in fact, would act from a sincere concern for the well-being of Jews?
The Trump team recently engaged in an action of highly public Jew-baiting inside the Oval Office. Elon Musk performs the Hitler salute and claims that people whom he does not like are "Soros puppets"; in other words, Musk endorses the theory of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Musk has enabled antisemitism by the way he has chosen to run Twitter. He trivializes the Holocaust by making jokes about Himmler and Goebbels or by blaming public sector workers for the Holocaust. JD Vance visited Europe in February to endorse the German far right. The secretary of defense is a Christian reconstructionist who associates with a very well-known promoter of antisemitic ideas.
Under the new leadership of the FBI, the American far right, the center of American violent terrorism, will receive much less attention. Antisemitic incidents increased during Trump's previous term, during which Trump characterized participants at a neo-Nazi gathering ("Jews will not replace us," Charlottesville) as "very fine people."
Trump says that Jews who do not vote for him are not loyal Americans. He refers to people and institutions with whom he disagrees as "globalist," which is a code for "Jewish" that every antisemite understands. His supporters antisemitically attack Jewish judges who rule in ways that Trump does not like, including in the case of Mahmoud Khalil.
Like Karl Lueger in Hitler's Vienna, and like Vladimir Putin during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Donald Trump assigns to himself the right to decide who is Jewish and who is not. On March 12th Trump said that Senator Chuck Schumer is not Jewish but Palestinian: "Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian."
Trump is using Palestinian here as a slur, as if it were some lesser human state that can result from wrong action, as opposed to being a normal human identification with a people. He is also, like Putin and Lueger before him, claiming that Jewishness is something that does not belong to Jews, but to those who rule them. It is the rulers who decide who are the good Jews and the bad Jews, the real Jews and the fake Jews. The point of all this is that all Jews, and Jews especially, have to be obedient to the ruler, or else.
What, then, to conclude?
Americans are being trained to see antisemitism as something other than the oppression of Jews by non-Jews — which is of course a very real, very dangerous, and growing problem in the world.
Rulers who deploy the word "antisemitism" can themselves be antisemites or promoters of antisemitism. The abuse of the word "antisemitism" is meant to generate a sense of plausibility, confuse opposition, and create more space for the actual phenomenon of antisemitism. And this misdirection is an integral part of the effort to replace a constitutional order with an authoritarian one.
Jews in the United States are being instrumentalized in an effort to build a more authoritarian American system. The real and continuing history of the oppression of Jews is transformed into a bureaucratic tool called "antisemitism" which is used to suppress education and human rights — and so, in the end, to harm Jews themselves.
As the word "antisemitism" becomes the cover for aggression, we lose the concept. And then, when actual antisemitism manifests itself, there will be no way to describe it, since "antisemitism" will have come to mean something like "the power of arbitrary rulers to suppress freedom of assembly and freedom of speech under cover of disinformation and propaganda."
At the moment the word takes on that meaning, such power will have been achieved. Words will have become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader.
Charles:
There is no
accusation that Khalil committed a crime. NOT TRUE. There is
documentation that he committed several crimes, the first one being that
he lied when he applied to be a US student.
Stephanie Wilson:
There is so much coded and overt anti-Jewish rhetoric it's alarming. For instance, "globalist" always means "Jew." "Globalist economics" means Jews control the world economy. "New York values" means Jewish. "New York humor" means Jewish. It matters, and the most relevant cognate to what is going on in the United States right now is Hitler's Germany. No hyperbole. No joke. And that didn't end well for Jews or virtually anyone else.
Mary:
I was interested in the discussion of how the idea of antisemitism is being used to actually perpetuate antisemitism. This had been confusing for me, as I knew the Right has always been a bastion of actual antisemitism. At first I thought it was due to their support of Netanyahu, but can see how in practice it is being used to control, punish, and even destroy the universities that have been leaders in the world of liberal intellectual thought.
The chief project of the Right is to redefine how we think and behave, to destroy and disable opposition. Language is a prime instrument. It can be used to destabilize and reshape our sense of reality, to negate historical memory, to make words indicate their opposites until black is white, hate is love, violence is kindness and evil is good. This process has been on going for a while...think of changing the path of a hurricane by using a sharpie on a map, of saying we'll have fewer cases of Covid if we stop testing, of calling the violent attempted coup of Jan 6 "a love fest," and the perpetrators "patriots."
With this process well underway truth becomes lies and lies become truth. You can then legislate and dictate behavior. So journalists can be refused entrance to press briefings because they won't call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" (which they must do because the blond at the podium says "That's what it IS.") Just this morning on my local news I heard of a teacher whose contract was not renewed because she used a student's "preferred name."
These are examples of how we are being forced to speak and behave as if the world exists in terms defined by the ideology of the fascist State. At first it seems things like the sharpie incident and the renaming of the Gulf are absurd and even funny — but they are actually at the heart of the fascist project. What allows them to do things like the mass seizure, inhumane treatment, and deportation of hundreds of men to the horror of el Salvador's worst prison — without even a gesture toward due process.
It is a horrific act, and filmed for our edification: men all reduced to identical white underwear, heads forcibly shaved, chained and cuffed and pushed, heads forced down manually by "police" into huge empty planes and stacked cages in a warehouse prison. Of course the "police" are as anonymous as the prisoners — all wearing black hoods or masks. This visual is meant not to induce the shame we should feel at such action, but to bring satisfaction and even gratitude for the leaders who were able to identify and then eradicate the threat of these "violent gang members" intent on harming us. No evidence is really offered or presented. We must accept they are called gang members and criminals because we are told that is what they ARE.
Sorry for going on, but I am horrified by these events.
Oriana:
And only now we more fully appreciate writers like Orwell, Sinclair Lewis (It Can’t Happen Here), or Philip Roth (The American Pastoral) who tried to warn us about fascism, which would come to us wrapped in the flag and calling itself “patriotism.” In spite of the “checks and balances,” no country is completely immune to becoming a fascist dictatorship. And one of the main weapons — perhaps even the chief weapon — is the use of language, as Orwell so brilliantly illustrated.
I’m also reminded of Misha’s remark that the Soviet Union was never a Communist country — it was always a fascist country. While the post-Soviet, post-KGB Putin is not in the rank of Hitler, we must remember that he has become a fascist dictator with blood on his hands.
WHEN THE NAZIS TRIED TO GET HITLER ON THE EIFFEL TOWER (BUT FAILED MISERABLY)
In June 1940, Paris fell to Nazi Germany. Swastikas flew on the city’s most iconic buildings, and soldiers marched down the Champs-Élysées with the confidence of those who believed they had conquered the world. Among the many images that symbolize the Nazi occupation of Paris, there is one that is missing: Adolf Hitler on the Eiffel Tower. And it was no coincidence.
Hitler, who considered himself a lover of art and architecture, wanted to celebrate the conquest of Paris with a visit to its most famous monuments. And what could be more iconic than the Eiffel Tower? A photo of the Führer atop the symbol of Paris would have been a perfect trophy for Nazi propaganda.
The problem? The French had already anticipated this.
When German troops entered the city, the Eiffel Tower technicians decided to put up a little symbolic resistance. They deactivated the elevators, declaring them "out of order" due to a lack of spare parts, which officially could not be obtained due to the war. This meant that anyone who wanted to reach the top would have to climb over 1,600 steps.
When Hitler arrived at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, accompanied by his generals, the reality became clear: to reach the top, he would have to walk up. The dictator, known for his poor health and poor physical stamina, decided that perhaps Paris could be admired just as well from the Trocadéro. So, the group limited themselves to a few photos from the terrace with the Eiffel Tower in the background and then continued their tour of the city.
That was Hitler's only visit to Paris. The dictator left the city shortly thereafter and never returned. The Eiffel Tower, however, remained standing as a silent symbol of the Parisian resistance, and when the city was liberated in 1944, the elevators began to work again...
The sabotage of the Eiffel Tower did not change the course of the war, but it became one of the small acts of resistance that showed that the spirit of Paris would not be easily broken.
And so, the photo of Hitler smiling from the top of the Eiffel Tower does not exist. And it never will. ~ Morgan, Quora
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Let’s detox with more pleasant images:
Sophia Loren at 85
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“IT’S OK TO FEEL AFRAID”
I was born in 1979, in Leningrad, in a Jewish family. I grew up very sheltered and very afraid. My grandfather, a survivor of a German POW camp, who managed to escape arrest and prosecution in the USSR, taught me to behave "lower than grass, quieter than water," showing total submission toward any and all authority figures.
At my school, my brother's teacher tore an earring out of a girl's ear, tore it “with flesh," right through the earlobe, because of some Soviet prejudice against earrings. That teacher remained a teacher in the school. Two other teachers in two different schools I went to had been known sexual predators who went after boys. One of them was eventually pushed out of teaching, but the other remained. I don't even mention the daily groping on the bus and subway, on my way to school; that violence seemed so every day that it still feels pointless to speak up about.
At 16, when I had to get my first passport, my family insisted that I try facing the authorities on my own. I tried and got a run-around and received a set of impossible instructions and returned home in tears and full of hatred for all the stone-faced people who refused to help with such an everyday task. (I hadn't read Kafka by then yet, but when I did, I knew what he was writing about.)
The next day, my grandmother came to the passport office with me. She fixed the problem as she always did, by begging and pleading — I'm old and my granddaughter is young and stupid, could you please help us — the skill she had that always horrified me. I refused to imagine how she had come by it. I resisted learning to beg, and I resisted fear, too, but fear was the air I breathed. I left Russia at the earliest opportunity, and in my subsequent visits there, considered: Could I live here now? Could I feel free and unafraid? There were years when I imagined I could.
One other thing I've noticed. Fear masks itself as so many other things. Anger. Hatred. Cynicism. "This isn't about me." "Why rock the boat?" "Why should I get involved?" "I shouldn't do anything that might hurt my family." I find my mind going through these motions. My mind isn't comfortable with fear and tries to bury the feeling inside the ever-longer logical chains. And I, among many of us, who grew up in Russia, am badly trained to unpack these logical threads and to face the fear.
It's OK to be afraid. It's not OK to attack another country.
~ Olga Zilberbourg (from the Facebook page of Steven Black)
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THE DANGERS OF FLEECE
Teddy holds his fleece stuffed animal, Bunny, at the KQED offices in San Francisco on Jan. 2, 2025. Each week, the average person is estimated to ingest up to the weight of a credit card in microplastics.
It’s not just the fleece sweater.
It’s the fleece stuffed animals and lovies my kid sleeps with, cuddled up under his chin throughout the night. It’s also the blankets, hats and pants. I’m increasingly concerned about the ubiquity of fleece.
Why worry?
Because it’s plastic. And plastic is a poison. It can both cause harm due to its size and composition and act as a chemical Velcro, trapping and transporting toxic materials that shouldn’t be in a young, growing body.
I’ve wondered about this for years — ever since learning babies have significantly higher levels of plastic in their poop than adults — and even more so since giving birth to my own child. To decide what to do for myself and my family, I spent weeks talking to toxicologists, chemistry experts and professionals in the textile industry.
The upshot: Many experts agree that microplastic shedding poses risks to children, particularly through exposure to food and air. However, reasonable households and parents may reach different conclusions about how they want to handle fleece toys and clothes. Examining this opened up a new way for me to think about consumer choices, regulation and whether we can ever be rid of what we throw away.
For my family, I’m slowly reducing the fleece in our house without waging outright war.
Before I continue, first, let me tell you a little bit about my sweet and talkative three-year-old boy. He adores his stuffed animals like I adore him. The favorites are Bunny, a green, floppy rabbit, and Dancing Man, a sky-blue sea otter with a blanket-like tummy. In the morning, he wakes up and gathers all the lovies together in his arms to bring them into our bed. He tells us about dreams or disputes the animals had and gives each of us one or two to hold for ourselves. I feel lucky when I’m handed Dancing Man — but I also feel a twinge of concern.
The stuffed animal crew is made from polyester fleece, a fabric created by combining two petroleum derivatives: terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. When these refined crude oils are blended at high temperatures, they form a new liquid chemical called polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. As it cools, the mixture grows thick and syrupy, and a machine pushes it through tiny holes in a disk, where it hardens into a string that can be knitted together.
Plastic bottles, which are single-use plastics, are piled on the floor of one section of the Recology Center in Hunters Point in San Francisco on Sept. 6, 2019.
Many fleece garments are formed from a combination of virgin polyester and recycled soda bottles, which can seem like a great thing. However, recycled plastic can retain chemicals from whatever it was recycled from. Washing fleece releases plastic fibers that flow away from our house and, whether passing through a water treatment facility or a septic system, end up in the natural world. It ultimately returns to us — to our kids — in the form of polluted water, food and air.
The average person globally is estimated to ingest up to the weight of a credit card in microplastics each week from a variety of sources. Ingested plastic is linked to a host of respiratory, digestive and reproductive problems.
In 2023, researchers found strong evidence that microplastics harm human fertility and could increase cancer risk in the digestive and respiratory tracts, according to a survey commissioned by the California Legislature that summarized 2,000 studies. In an update last year, the researchers added an additional 1,000 studies and reached the same conclusions.
“Scientists have gotten used to saying, ‘We don’t know for sure if microplastics are harming us,’” said Tracey Woodruff, a researcher in reproductive health and the environment at UCSF and one of the report authors. That became an excuse used by industry and policymakers for not enacting regulations. Plastic pollution comes from many sources, but fabric is a large contributor to the microplastic particles found in the environment. “I think we’re now at the point where we have enough evidence to act,” Woodruff said. “It is really mind-blowing how much comes from textiles.”
Kids’ bodies are smaller, and they crawl around on floors and put hands, feet — heck, everything — in their mouths, making them especially at risk.
“There is reason to be concerned,” Woodruff said, adding that reducing exposure to plastic is in everyone’s interest. “The production of plastic is expected to double to triple in the next 20, 30 years.”
Of the half dozen experts I spoke to, none said I should take Bunny and Dancing Man away.
“[I think] individual prized objects like a stuffy or a favorite sweater are not the things to try to eliminate,” said Megan Schwarzman, researcher and associate director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Green Chemistry, who has a young son herself.
The Roberts Regional Recreation Area Barrier Free Playground in Oakland on March 17, 2025. Microplastics can trigger inflammation and oxidative stress in human cells, potentially damaging DNA, breaking cell membranes, and contributing to chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Plastic is everywhere, and one stuffed animal is “such a tiny fraction of the real true exposure that the battle is not worth it in terms of real risk reduction to the kid,” Schwarzman said.
Children wearing or holding fleece might inhale some particles, but probably aren’t absorbing a lot of plastic through their skin, she said. A likely larger source of microplastics would be from degraded tires and paint sloughing off our roads and buildings.
Sure, his fleece is exposing him to a little bit of extra plastic, but the best short-term strategy to keep it out of his body would be to eliminate plastic from the kitchen, Schwarzman said. Store food and beverages in glass or metal. Do not microwave food in plastic. Do not reuse takeout containers, as they tend to be made from low-quality plastics.
This is currently a matter of personal choice and responsibility, but ought it to be?
I started thinking about new kitchen items to buy to cut down on plastic, but Schwarzman pushed me to think bigger. A shift toward fewer plastics and more natural materials would reduce some personal exposure and could send signals to the marketplace.
“We do a disservice when we suggest that people can solve the problem by buying different things,” she said. “It’s really putting public pressure on policymakers, [large-scale] purchasers, brands and manufacturers is what creates change.”
Greener products, she noted, come at a price premium, “and there’s no way for them to compete because plastic is really cheap.”
Currently, the environment and our bodies bear the toxic cost of manufactured materials, but the producers do not. What’s needed, Schwarzman said, is public policy that makes manufacturers responsible for a product’s true cost. California is taking a stab with SB 54, a 2022 law designed to reduce plastic packaging and increase recycling.
Industry groups acknowledge concerns about the potential for their products to harm human health and the environment but emphasize the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of plastic. They point to innovating new products and recycling as a solution for sustainability. Although only a tiny fraction of plastic produced is recycled, the process itself releases a ton of microplastic pollution.
Some people within private industry are working to influence the marketplace to reduce the production of new garments altogether. Americans are buying four times as many apparel items as we did in the 1980s, according to Andy Ruben, who launched Walmart’s sustainability efforts in 2004, which set standards for product sourcing and reducing corporate emissions.
After Walmart, he founded Trove, a company that helps businesses create a resale market so that less new stuff needs to be made for a brand to be profitable.
“We have enough clothing on the planet right this minute to dress the next six generations of humans,” Ruben said, quoting data touted by the British Fashion Council. “The best thing to do with an item you no longer need is to pass it down, sell it back, keep it in use.
“The microplastics that we’re talking about last 500 to 1,000 years. To address the root cause, we really need to talk about the amount of production.”
Changing consumption habits is a big challenge, he said. His views on the best approach to a more sustainable future have evolved over the past 20 years. He once believed that individual choices would put enough pressure on markets to drive change.
“I still believe market forces are a powerful driver for innovation and progress,” he said. “But ultimately, I think that [change] will require legislation.”
After spending an embarrassing amount of time thinking about this, I’ve identified my fleece policy.
1. No new fleece, only hand-me-downs
“Clothes shed a lot in their first few washes when they’re new,” said Lisa Erdle, a biologist and toxicologist at the 5 Gyres Institute, which researches plastic pollution. “Typically, hand-me-downs or things from the thrift store have already gone through the majority of microfiber shedding.” She noted that at the end of their lifespan, when they become threadbare, shedding can accelerate again, so I’ll watch out for that.
2. No big fleece, even if used
Fleece sheets, blankets or pajamas would likely cause more fiber inhalation than holding a lovie or wearing a fleece jacket.
3. Wash on cold, line dry
Laundering is the major route for fleece fabrics to shed, so I wash on cold — hot causes more shedding — and hang dry. I am also going to buy a filter that attaches to a washing machine to take out some of the microplastic particles.
4. No kiddos around the dryer lint trap
Sanjay Mohanty, an associate professor at UCLA who studies microplastics, lets his kids wear fleece, but he doesn’t want them near the dryer when he opens the door. The lint trap collects a lot of plastic when the dryer is stuffed with synthetics. “I would not want my kid around, or at least I would want them to wear a mask when taking out clothes from the drying machine,” Mohanty said.
5. When we’re done with fleece garments, we’ll pass them on
I pondered simply throwing away fleece garments once we’re done with them, but Schwarzman encouraged me to think more carefully. Giving someone a used but well-maintained fleece sweater is a win-win. It eliminates the need to buy a new one, and it’s already gone through most of its shedding, reducing pollution.
“In going to a landfill, it’s going to break down and pollute the landfill with microplastics,” Schwarzman said. “We might think of that as a safer place for it to be kind of locked away in there.”
But data from the state water board show that California landfills have a history of leaking.
“There’s no way where we can throw things away. They all come back to us,” Schwarzman said.
“As long as we keep basing our material economy on hazardous substances, we can never get away from them.”
https://www.kqed.org/science/1996394/cuddly-costly-unseen-dangers-fleece-kids-clothes-toys
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MORE ON STRANGE EXPERIENCES WHILE DYING
In 2011, Mr A, a 57-year-old social worker from England, was admitted to Southampton General Hospital after collapsing at work. Medical personnel were in the middle of inserting a catheter into his groin when he went into cardiac arrest. With oxygen cut off, his brain immediately flat-lined. Mr A died.
Despite this, he remembers what happened next. The staff grabbed an automated external defibrillator (AED), a shock-delivery machine used to try to reactivate the heart. Mr A heard a mechanical voice twice say, “Shock the patient.” In between those orders, he looked up to see a strange woman beckoning to him from the back corner of the room, near the ceiling. He joined her, leaving his inert body behind.
“I felt that she knew me, I felt that I could trust her, and I felt she was there for a reason [but] I didn’t know what that was,” Mr A later recalled. “The next second, I was up there, looking down at me, the nurse and another man who had a bald head.”
Hospital records later verified the AED’s two verbal commands. Mr A’s descriptions of the people in the room – people he had not seen before he lost consciousness – and their actions were also accurate. He was describing things that happened during a three-minute window of time that, according to what we know about biology, he should not have had any awareness of.
Mr A’s story – described in a paper in the journal Resuscitation – is one of a number of reports that challenge accepted wisdom on near-death experiences.
Until now, researchers assumed that when the heart ceases to beat and stops sending vital blood to a person’s brain, all awareness immediately ends. At this point, the person is technically dead – although as we learn more about the science of death, we are beginning to understand that, in some cases, the condition can be reversible.
For years, those who have come back from that inscrutable place have often reported memories of the event. Doctors mostly dismissed such anecdotal evidence as hallucinations, and researchers have been reluctant to delve into the study of near-death experiences, predominantly because it was viewed as something outside of the reach of scientific exploration.
But Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, along with colleagues from 17 institutions in the US and UK, wanted to do away with assumptions about what people did or did not experience on their deathbeds. It is possible, they believe, to collect scientific data about those would-be final moments. So for four years, they analyzed more than 2,000 cardiac arrest events – moments when a patient’s heart stops and they are officially dead.
Of those patients, doctors were able to bring 16% back from the dead, and Parnia and his colleagues were able to interview 101 of them, or about a third. “The goal was to try to understand, first of all, what is the mental and cognitive experience of death?” Parnia says. “And then, if we got people who claimed auditory and visual awareness at the time of death, to see if we are able to determine if they really were aware.”
Seven flavors of death
Mr A, it turned out, was not the only patient who had some memory of his death. Nearly 50% of the study participants could recall something, but unlike Mr A and just one other woman whose out-of-body account could not be verified externally, the other patients’ experiences did not seem to be tied to actual events that took place during their death.
Instead, they reported dream-like or hallucinatory scenarios that Parnia and his co-authors categorized into seven major themes. “Most of these were not consistent to what’s called ‘near-death’ experiences,” Parnia says. “It seems like the mental experience of death is much broader than what’s been assumed in the past.”
Those seven themes were:
Fear;
Seeing animals or plants;
Bright light
; Violence and persecution;
Deja-vu;
Seeing family;
Recalling events post-cardiac arrest
These mental experiences ranged from terrifying to blissful. There were those who reported feeling afraid or suffering persecution, for example. “I had to get through a ceremony … and the ceremony was to get burned,” one patient recalled. “There were four men with me, and whichever lied would die … I saw men in coffins being buried upright.” Another remembered being “dragged through deep water”, and still another was “told I was going to die and the quickest way was to say the last short word I could remember”.
Others, however, experienced the opposite sensation, with 22% reporting “a feeling of peace or pleasantness.” Some saw living things: “All plants, no flowers” or “lions and tigers”; while others basked in the glow of “a brilliant light” or were reunited with family. Some, meanwhile, reported a strong sense of deja-vu: “I felt like I knew what people were going to do before they did it”. Heightened senses, a distorted perception of the passage of time and a feeling of disconnection from the body were also common sensations that survivors reported.
While it is “definitely clear that people do have experience at the time that they’re dead,” Parnia says, how individuals actually choose to interpret those experiences depends entirely on their background and pre-existing beliefs. Someone from India might return from the dead and say they saw Krishna, whereas someone from the Midwest of the US could experience the same thing but claim to have seen God.
“If the father of a child from the Midwest says, ‘When you die, you’ll see Jesus and he’ll be full of love and compassion,’ then of course he’ll see that,” Parnia says. “He’ll come back and say, ‘Oh dad, you’re right, I definitely saw Jesus!’ But would any of us actually recognize Jesus or God? You don’t know what God is. I don’t know what God is. Besides a man with a white beard, which is just a picture.
“All of these things – what’s the soul, what is heaven and hell – I have no idea what they mean, and there’s probably thousands and thousands of interpretations based on where you’re born and what your background is,” he continues. “It’s important to move this out of the realm of religious teaching and into objectivity.”
Common cases
So far, the team has uncovered no predictor for who is most likely to remember something from their death, and explanations are lacking for why some people experience terrifying scenarios while others report euphoric ones. Parnia also points out that it’s very likely that more people have near-death experiences than the study numbers reflect. For many people, memories are almost certainly wiped away by the massive brain swelling that occurs following cardiac arrest, or by strong sedatives administered at the hospital.
Even if people do not explicitly recall their experience of death, however, it could affect them on a subconscious level. Parnia hypothesizes that this might help explain the wildly different reactions cardiac arrest patients often have following their recovery: some become unafraid of death and adopt a more altruistic approach to life, whereas others develop PTSD.
Parnia and his colleagues are already planning follow-up studies to try to address some of these questions. They also hope their work will help broaden the traditionally diametric conversation about death, breaking it free from the confines of either a religious or skeptical stance. Instead, they think, death should be treated as a scientific subject just like any other.
“Anyone with a relatively objective mind will agree that this is something that should be investigated further,” Parnia says. “We have the means and the technology. Now it’s time to do it.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150303-what-its-really-like-to-die
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IS SHOWERING EVERY DAY GOOD FOR YOUR SKIN?
“If you’d asked me a couple of months ago, my answer might have been different,” says Dr Rosalind Simpson, a medical dermatologist at the University of Nottingham.
Historically, she says, daily washing was seen as problematic. It was thought that it might alter the skin’s microbiome, stripping away natural protective oils and beneficial bacteria. People also worried that it might dry out the skin, causing cracks that allow bacteria and allergens to penetrate, potentially leading to infections and flare-ups of conditions such as eczema and psoriasis.
“But our department recently completed a randomized controlled trial on bathing in eczema patients, and the results are surprising,” she says.
The trial involved 438 eczema patients split into two groups: one that was asked to have a bath or shower six or more times a week; the other only once or twice weekly. “You’d expect daily bathing to dry out the skin more and worsen eczema symptoms, but it didn’t,” says Simpson. “The study found no difference in symptoms between those who bathed daily and those who bathed less frequently.”
Her takeaway? Frequency of washing doesn’t correlate with increased skin dryness – and she believes this is true whether we have eczema or not.
The type of shower you take could increase irritation, though, Simpson adds. “The longer you’re in the water, the more it can dry out your skin, regardless of frequency. Shorter, cooler showers are better.” She says the shower gels, soaps and shaving products we choose can make a difference too. Ingredients such as methylisothiazolinone, methylchloroisothiazolinone, sulphates and parabens can cause reactions in some people. “It’s best to choose products with as few ingredients as possible, avoiding excessive fragrances and preservatives,” says Simpson. If you’re experiencing irritation, she suggests using an emollient cream, instead of standard soap, to wash yourself.
Overall, she says, the best shower routine is the one that makes you feel good. “Do what suits your skin – everyone’s going to be different.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/is-it-true-that-showering-every-day-is-bad-for-your-skin?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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AROUND THE WORLD, PEOPLE ARE LEAVING THEIR CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS
Light shines through the doors of Zionskirche, a Protestant church in Berlin
In many countries around the world, a fifth or more of all adults have left the religious group in which they were raised. Christianity and Buddhism have experienced especially large losses from this “religious switching,” while rising numbers of adults have no religious affiliation, according to Pew Research Center surveys of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries.
Rates of religious switching vary widely around the globe, the surveys show.
In some countries, changing religions is very rare. In India, Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, 95% or more of adults say they still belong to the religious group in which they were raised.
But across East Asia, Western Europe, North America and South America, switching is fairly common. For example, 50% of adults in South Korea, 36% in the Netherlands, 28% in the United States and 21% in Brazil no longer identify with their childhood religion.
Which religions are people switching to?
Most of the movement has been into the category we call religiously unaffiliated, which consists of people who answer a question about their religion by saying they are atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
In other words, most of the switching is disaffiliation – people leaving the religion of their childhood and no longer identifying with any religion.
Many of these people were raised as Christians. For example, 29% of adults in Sweden say they were raised Christian but now describe themselves religiously as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
Buddhism also is losing adherents through disaffiliation in some countries. For example, 23% of adults surveyed in Japan and 13% in South Korea say they were raised as Buddhists but don’t identify with any religion today.
However, not all switching is away from religion. Some people move in the opposite direction. Of the 36 countries surveyed, South Korea has the highest share of people who say they were raised with no affiliation but have a religion today (9%). Most of them (6% of all South Korean adults) say they had no religious upbringing and are now Christian.
Additionally, about one-in-ten or more adults in Singapore (13%), South Africa (12%) and South Korea (11%) have switched between two religions.
While these figures reflect religious trends in the 36 countries included in the survey, they are not necessarily representative of the entire world’s population. Christianity – the world’s largest and most geographically widespread religion, by Pew Research Center’s estimates – is either the current majority faith or historically has been a predominant religion in 25 of the countries surveyed.
Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, is a historically predominant religion in six of the 36 countries surveyed: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tunisia and Turkey. (We consider both Christianity and Islam to predominate in Nigeria, which is closely divided religiously.)
Buddhism has been predominant in five other countries surveyed: Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Thailand. (We also count South Korea as having two predominant religions, Buddhism and Christianity.)
Hinduism and Judaism are each the predominant religion in just one country surveyed (India and Israel, respectively).
While these figures reflect religious trends in the 36 countries included in the survey, they are not necessarily representative of the entire world’s population. Christianity – the world’s largest and most geographically widespread religion, by Pew Research Center’s estimates – is either the current majority faith or historically has been a predominant religion in 25 of the countries surveyed.
Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, is a historically predominant religion in six of the 36 countries surveyed: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tunisia and Turkey. (We consider both Christianity and Islam to predominate in Nigeria, which is closely divided religiously.)
Buddhism has been predominant in five other countries surveyed: Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Thailand. (We also count South Korea as having two predominant religions, Buddhism and Christianity.)
Hinduism and Judaism are each the predominant religion in just one country surveyed (India and Israel, respectively).
In most of the countries surveyed, Christianity has the highest ratios of people leaving to people joining – the largest net losses.
In Germany, for example, this ratio among Christians is 19.7 to 1.0, meaning there are nearly 20 Germans who say they were raised as Christians in childhood but don’t consider themselves Christian today for every one German who has become a Christian after being raised in another world religion or in no religion.
In a handful of countries, though, Christianity is making small gains from religious switching. In Singapore, for instance, the ratio among Christians is 1.0 to 3.2. For every Singaporean who has left Christianity, about three others have become Christians.
And in a few other places, roughly equal numbers of people are leaving and joining Christianity. For example, the ratio in Nigeria is 1.0 to 1.0.
The survey also shows that Buddhism is experiencing large losses from religious switching – mostly disaffiliation – in a few countries, such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
However, the leaving-to-joining ratios are not as high as those for Christianity. For instance, in Japan – the country with the largest percentage of people who say they were raised Buddhist but are no longer Buddhists – the leaving-to-joining ratio among Buddhists is 11.7 to 1.0.
The category that has experienced the largest net gains from switching is the religiously unaffiliated.
In countries with substantial numbers of people who describe themselves as having no religion – sometimes called “nones” – many more survey respondents have become unaffiliated than have joined a religion after being raised without one.
In Italy, for example, the ratio of leaving to joining among the unaffiliated is 1.0 to 28.7. For every person who was raised without a religious affiliation but who now has a religion, more than 28 people say they were raised in a religion but no longer have one.
However, in Hungary, this is not the case. For every Hungarian who has become religiously unaffiliated, nearly two others say they were raised without a religion but now identify with one (a leaving-to-joining ratio of 1.9 to 1.0). Most of the Hungarians who have taken on a religion after being raised without one are now Christians.
Age
In most countries surveyed, roughly equal percentages of younger and older adults have switched religions. For example, in Singapore, 29% of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 say they belong to a religious group that is different from the one in which they were raised, as do 29% of adults older than 50.
However, in 13 countries – including nearly all Latin American nations surveyed, as well as several countries in Europe and North America – adults under 35 are more likely than adults ages 50 and older to have switched religions.
In Spain, for instance, 48% of 18- to 34-year-olds have switched religions since childhood, compared with 36% of adults ages 50 and older. And in Colombia, 34% of the youngest adults have switched religions, compared with 14% of the oldest adults.
In Australia, however, younger adults are slightly less likely than older adults to have switched religions (32% vs. 37%).
In most cases, the bulk of the switching in all age groups is disaffiliation – much of which is people leaving Christianity. But the rates of disaffiliation are often higher among young adults. In Colombia, for example, 26% of 18- to 34-year-olds say they were raised as Christians but no longer identify with any religion, compared with 9% of Colombians ages 50 and older.
Because the survey questions pick up changes that have happened at any time since childhood, it is not possible to know whether the adults older than 50 who have disaffiliated did so recently or long ago, perhaps when they were in their teens or early 20s. Some older adults may have disaffiliated when they were young and then came back to a religion as they aged.
In short, these age patterns might be signs of secularization, indicating that countries like Spain, Canada, Italy and the U.S. are gradually becoming less religious. However, it’s also possible that some of the age differences in religious affiliation revealed in a single survey (or multiple surveys conducted at the same point in time) could result from people becoming more religious as they grow older.
Education
In most countries, rates of religious switching don’t vary a great deal between people with different levels of education.
However, in 12 of the 36 countries surveyed, people with more education tend to have higher rates of religious switching. Once again, most of the switching by people at each level of education is disaffiliation – in particular, people who say they were raised in a religious tradition (often as Christians or Buddhists) but no longer identify with any religion.
The Netherlands displays the largest differences in switching rates by education: 42% of Dutch adults with higher levels of education (a postsecondary degree or higher) have changed religions since childhood, compared with 29% of Dutch adults with lower levels of education.
Gender
Likewise, in most countries surveyed, roughly equal percentages of women and men have changed religions. For instance, in South Korea – the country with the largest share of adults who have switched religions – 51% of women and 50% of men have changed religions over the course of their lives.
But in six countries, there are statistically significant differences in switching rates by gender, with men more likely than women to have switched religions.
And, as with the differences by age and education, much of the switching among both men and women is disaffiliation – especially from Christianity or, in Japan, from Buddhism.
Across the countries surveyed, most people who currently identify as Christian were raised as Christians. Among the smaller numbers who have become Christian after being brought up in a different way, most say they were raised as Buddhists or religiously unaffiliated.
Most adults who are now religiously unaffiliated say they were raised in some religion – in many cases, Christianity or Buddhism.
In some countries, Buddhism has declined due to religious switching, while in other countries, it has remained relatively stable.
Very small percentages of the overall adult population have left or joined Islam in most of the countries surveyed.
Most people who were raised Jewish in Israel and the U.S. still identify this way today, resulting in high Jewish retention rates in both countries.
Nearly all people who were raised Hindu in India and Bangladesh still identify as Hindu today.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/03/26/around-the-world-many-people-are-leaving-their-childhood-religions/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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TAJIKISTAN’S RESTRICTIONS ON ISLAM
List of some state restrictions on islam in Tajikistan:
— Long beards are unofficially banned, with bearded men sometimes shaved by police in the street
— Foreign (read: islamic) clothing is banned
— Islamic and Arabic baby names are banned, with Tajik/Persian names encouraged instead
— The hijab is banned
— Islamic holidays and celebrations are severely restricted, while Persian traditions are promoted instead
— Cousin marriages are illegal
— No mosque is allowed to operate outside of state control
— Nobody under 18 is allowed to attend religious services in mosques
~ Shilig, Quora
Kin Chuan Koo:
Good actions before the country is swamped by horrendous culture and religion. Just keep to your own country ‘s culture .
Andy Dragomir:
And never let your kids be indoctrinated by religion.
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FOUR STEPS TO A YOUNGER, SMARTER BRAIN
As we age, brain cells that normally fight off infection and repair tissue begin to attack healthy brain cells.
Brain health is key to successful aging, and it involves several mental functions including memory, reasoning and planning. Memory defines who we are – without memory we have no past, cannot plan for the future and are unable to enjoy the present. Our reasoning and planning skills help us create and maintain healthy lifestyle habits that protect our bodies and minds.
People are living much longer than ever before. Those born in 1900 would have been lucky to reach their 50th birthday. Today, life expectancy in many countries exceeds 80, but unfortunately age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes can diminish quality of life.
As we age, brain cells that normally fight off infection and repair tissue begin to attack healthy brain cells. This causes inflammation and can lead to cognitive deficits and disease. But adopting healthy, anti-inflammatory lifestyle habits, such as eating fish, getting a good night’s sleep and doing physical exercise, can slow and even reverse the process.
The typical 45-year-old has worse memory than a 25-year-old, and our brains will continue to decline if we do nothing to protect them. However, if we intervene early, we can slow the decline. It’s always easier to protect a healthy brain than to try to repair damage once it is extensive.
Although there is a genetic component to healthy aging, lifestyle habits may be more critical than genes. The landmark MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging showed that, on average, non-genetic factors are more important than genetics in determining how well and long we live, suggesting that we have more control than we realize over remaining healthy as we get older. Compelling scientific evidence points to a formula for successful aging, in particular four habits that facilitate aging well.
Physical activity
You don’t have to become a triathlete to live better for longer — 20 minutes of daily brisk walking will lower your risk for dementia and improve your overall health. Exercise produces proteins that stimulate brain cells to sprout branches and communicate more effectively. Workouts boost endorphins, which lift mood. Exercise will make your brain bigger, and a bigger brain is a better brain.
Mental exercise
Playing games, socializing and traveling activate brain cells, and a university education is associated with a lower dementia risk. Although smartphones and new technology often distract us, certain brain games boost multitasking and problem-solving skills, and searching online can activate neural circuits.
We can also train our brains using memory methods to compensate for everyday forgetfulness. These methods can help us focus attention and use mental images and associations to make information meaningful and memorable.
Stress management
Stress shrinks the brain’s memory centers, and the stress hormone cortisol temporarily impairs memory. However, meditation, yoga, tai chi and other relaxation methods can reverse stress and improve mood and memory. Meditation even rewires the brain and improves measures of chromosomes’ telomere (protective cap) length, which predicts longer life expectancy.
Spending time with friends and getting a good night’s sleep also reduce stress.
Healthy diet
Mid-life obesity increases the risk of late-life dementia, but portion control and exercise can help people avoid obesity. Obese people who lose weight experience significant, lasting memory improvements after just 12 weeks. Omega-3 fats from fish or nuts fight inflammation associated with neurodegeneration. Fruit and vegetables combat age-related oxidative stress that causes wear and tear on brain cells.
People can protect their brains by avoiding crisps, biscuits and other processed foods that increase the risk of diabetes, which doubles the risk of dementia. Several studies have suggested that alcohol and caffeine in moderation lead to better brain health.
It is never too early or too late to start living more healthily. Your daily habits have more impact on how long and how well you live than your genes, and you can take control of your longevity by following the formula for successful aging: exercise your body, stimulate your mind, manage stress and eat right so you can enjoy yourself as you live better for longer.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/14/four-steps-to-better-brain-health#img-1
Oriana:
Current thinking about alcohol is that it’s bad at any dose. But who knows, this opinion may change ten years from now. Alcohol is still a champion in opening up narrow blood vessels.(Yes, nitroglycerine may be even faster, but at the price of causing a violent instant headache. This headache will pass, but while it lasts it will overwhelm you. True, wine also causes headaches, but if you take a megadose of N-acetyl-cysteine with or just before your first sip, your levels of glutathione will increase and help detoxify the alcohol.
Personally, I can never forget a long-ago interview with a Los Angeles coroner, who had done autopsies on skid-row alcoholics, among others. He said theirs were the cleanest arteries he’d ever seen. Not that this should encourage anyone to drink — but it is, nevertheless, a striking finding.
But what really interests me in this otherwise banal little article is the first statement: “As we age, brain cells that normally fight off infection and repair tissue begin to attack healthy brain cells.”
This points to the involvement of the immune system in brain diseases. Could we go so far as as to propose that the various kinds of dementia are auto-immune?
Here is the AI overview of this question:
The autoimmune nature of Alzheimer's disease is a controversial and ongoing area of research. While there is no definitive evidence to classify Alzheimer's as an autoimmune disease, there are several observations and theories that support this hypothesis.
Observations Supporting an Autoimmune Connection:
Presence of autoantibodies:
Antibodies that target brain proteins, such as amyloid beta and tau, have been found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.
Inflammation in the brain:
Alzheimer's disease is characterized by chronic inflammation in the brain, which is a hallmark of autoimmune disorders.
Genetic risk factors: Some genes associated with autoimmune diseases, such as APOE ε4, are also risk factors for Alzheimer's.
Association with other autoimmune conditions: People with other autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's.
Theories Proposing an Autoimmune Mechanism:
Amyloid beta as an autoantigen:
The amyloid beta protein, which accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, may act as an autoantigen that triggers an immune response against brain cells.
Dysregulated immune response: The immune system in Alzheimer's disease may become dysregulated, leading to an attack on healthy brain cells.
Neuroinflammation: Chronic inflammation in the brain may damage neurons and contribute to the development of Alzheimer's.
Challenges to the Autoimmune Hypothesis:
Lack of specific autoantibodies:
While autoantibodies are present in Alzheimer's, there have not been any specific autoantibodies identified that consistently correlate with the disease.
Variability in disease progression: The variability in disease progression and symptoms in Alzheimer's is not typical of autoimmune disorders.
Absence of effective autoimmune therapies: Treatments that target the immune system have not been effective in treating Alzheimer's
Conclusion:
While the autoimmune nature of Alzheimer's disease remains unproven, there is growing evidence that supports this hypothesis. Further research is needed to understand the role of the immune system in the development and progression of Alzheimer's and to explore potential therapeutic targets based on this theory.
Oriana:
But are immunosuppressant drugs really of no interest? Again I turn to AI:
~ Some immunosuppressant drugs, particularly calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs), like tacrolimus and cyclosporine, have shown potential in reducing the risk or slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease, possibly by targeting the brain's immune system.
Research suggests that rapamycin, an immunosuppressant, can regulate over-excited neurons in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease and seizures, and preserve cognitive function. ~
Oriana:
Of course immunosuppressants have serious side effects, so it seems we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Is there a supplement whose action is similar to that of rapamycin? Yes. It’s curcumin. Now, curcumin is poorly absorbed, and I only hope that the kind I myself take, the Omax brand, truly delivers. Side effects? None that I’ve noticed.
Ashwaganda has also been described as a rapamycin mimic. It’s best taken near bedtime, since it may cause drowsiness. 
Ashwaganda plant
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RADICAL NEW APPROACH TO TREATING ADDICTION
In 1986, Maia Szalavitz was addicted to heroin in New York City, weighing a scant 80 pounds and shooting up as often as 40 times a day. She had just discovered the heady mixture of cocaine and heroin known as speedballs, and had no intention of quitting, even though HIV was spreading rapidly through the community thanks to the practice of sharing dirty needles. But a chance encounter in an East Village apartment likely saved her life.
A woman visiting from California taught Szalavitz how to protect herself by running bleach through a shared syringe at least twice, then rinsing twice with water, as well as washing the injection point. It was Szalavitz's first encounter with so-called "harm reduction," an approach to treating addiction that emphasizes ways to minimize the risks and negative consequences associated with substance abuse—not just the risk of addiction and disease, but also social stigma, poverty, and imprisonment. Needle-exchange programs, for instance, supply free clean syringes to addicts, thereby reducing the spread of HIV.
Szalavitz eventually found her way back from addiction through a typical 28-day abstinence and 12-step program. She finished college and became a highly respected science writer, focusing on science, public policy, and addiction treatment. But she never forgot that California woman's compassionate approach and wondered if perhaps there was a better alternative. Her personal experience, and many years spent researching the science behind addiction and harm reduction, gave birth to two books: 2017's Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, and Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, published in July 2021.
Last year, Szalavitz finally tracked down the woman who saved her life in 1986 and was able to thank her personally. "Ours was a story of how change happens, and how even the smallest things we do can sometimes make a tremendous difference," Szalavitz writes in Undoing Drugs. "This also brought to mind the wisdom of the Talmud, which says that saving one life is equivalent to saving the entire world. These ideas are at the very heart of harm reduction, which takes the perspective that every life is worth saving.”
Ars sat down with Szalavitz to learn more.
Ars Technica: In your prior book, Unbroken Brain (2017), you advocated for a different view of addiction. We tend to either take the view that it's morally bad and people with addictions are weak, or it's a disease and people with addictions are broken in some way. You champion viewing addiction as a learning disorder. Can you explain a bit more about that?
Maia Szalavitz: I see addiction as a learning and developmental disorder. There's a lot of evidence that supports this perspective because it tends to come on at a specific time in brain development: adolescence and young adulthood. Ninety percent of all addictions start in the teens and 20s. That doesn't mean that you don't see it developing in older people. It's just much more rare.
Addiction requires learning because if you do not learn that this drug does something for you, you cannot find it and crave it. It requires you to learn that this fixes something for you. And that learning process is very similar to the one that you experience when you fall in love with someone, for instance, or when new parents fall in love with their baby. It completely shifts your priorities. Addiction changes your priorities in ways that may end up compelling you to do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do.
Ars Technica: The traditional focus in the “war on drugs” has been on disrupting supply lines and reducing demand by discouraging use. Why has this approach been such a colossal failure?
Maia Szalavitz: Teenaged brains are wired to take new risks and to try to push away from their family because otherwise they would never get out of the nest. If you tell them, "Don't do this,” they are quite likely to do it. So, the most sensible approach is to say, "Okay, we really don't want you to do this. But if you’re going to do it, let's make sure it doesn't kill you.”
Scaring kids off of drugs doesn't work. The reality is that, if you are a kid who is traumatized or beginning to develop a mental illness like depression, or who just cannot connect for whatever reason, drugs do help that. We don't want to admit that. People don't understand what's actually going on when people take drugs. They think it's only rebellion and it just needs to be crushed. Or it’s hedonism that also just needs to be crushed.
It just doesn't work that way. The people who end up getting addicted are people who have something that is preventing them from being emotionally comfortable in their own skin. At least at first, drugs work for that. When you find something that at last makes you feel okay and warm and safe and comforted, that is going to be very attractive.
I’ve asked people about their experience of opioids in the medical system who admitted, "You know what, I had Oxycontin for some surgery and it was the best thing ever. And I knew I wouldn't touch it again because I didn't want to lose my job or my marriage or my kids." They think they're the only person that had that experience, the only one who was ever able to resist that irresistible euphoria. In fact, that is the most common experience. It's not the case that this intense drug pleasure is irresistible to everybody. It's irresistible when you have no alternative, when the rest of your life is dark.
It's hard for people to understand that. And so addiction is defined as compulsive drug use despite negative consequences. We spent the last 100 years trying to use negative consequences to fix something that's defined by its resistance to them. It's time for something else. That's where harm reduction comes in. Once reducing harm becomes the goal, you realize, we're doing harm and it's not actually helping. And you have a very strong moral weapon against prohibitionists, because their greatest goal is stopping the evil drugs. Your greatest goal is saving lives.
Ars Technica: There seems to be a strong belief in our culture that people must suffer consequences for any behavior that is seen as outside the norm. So your notion of what you call “radical empathy” is something that is quite foreign to many people.
Maia Szalavitz: People with addiction are often homeless, rejected, and marginalized. Many have pre-existing mental issues. Nobody wants to see them. So when somebody approaches them with love and no judgment and says, "Hey, I don't care if you're using drugs, I just want you to stay alive"—that changes everything. When people feel valued, they might value themselves more.
Sometimes they find out that drugs are getting in the way of that, and they stop the drugs.
Sometimes they cut back, and sometimes they are so traumatized they still can't get out of it. But at least they're not dying. To me, it's a spiritual thing. I don't generally categorize my experience that way, but harm reduction is so different from the way people with addiction are typically treated: "You’ve got to hit bottom,” or “we’ve got to break your personality down in order to fix you.” Harm reduction is the antidote to that.
There are programs where they prescribe heroin to people with addiction. I mean, it’s free heroin. You’d think those people would never get into recovery because they’re getting exactly what they want. The reality is, when you get free heroin and you're not chasing, chasing, chasing the next fix, and you don't have all of that drama, your life suddenly has this massive hole. That's where recovery can come in, because you actually get bored. People with especially traumatic histories might have to be on drugs for a while and learn ways of dealing with their trauma before they're capable of stopping the drugs.
Nothing's perfect. Nothing will work every time. This is why it's called harm reduction. We want people to change in a flash. That makes for great TV, but that is not how most people change. If you do meet people with addictions where they are, if you do listen to them and hear their concerns, that's the only way you're going to be able to affect them. How do we try to change people who have heart disease or diabetes and need to change their diet? We certainly don't put them in jail for having high blood sugar.
Ars Technica:. The difficulty is that radical empathy runs counter to the worst of human nature.
Maia Szalavitz: Absolutely. I feel radical empathy is the heart of all religions, in the true sense of actually practicing it. I’m Jewish, but when you see harm reduction in action, it is about as Christ-like as you could imagine. You’re providing something to somebody with no hope of them paying you back for it—no hope of anything other than helping that person.
Harm reduction focuses on trying to practice that. Maybe we can, for this one person, help them avoid an overdose, or provide them with medication when they're incarcerated. The long-term goal is to move beyond that. But we can do something to save these lives now. Every time I talk to people who are actively addicted I realize, these are human beings who have something to give. Every single one of them. And we just throw them away.
Ars Technica: I want to talk a little bit about the distinction between helping and enabling, because this is something that many people struggle with when dealing with addicted loved ones.
Maia Szalavitz: My feeling is that we should get rid of the word enabling. The concept of enabling comes from the idea that addiction is cured by hitting bottom. So if you enable a person with addiction, you're preventing them from hitting bottom and therefore preventing them from recovering. However, for many people the concept of hitting bottom is ridiculous, because every time you relapse, you hit a new bottom. It's a narrative device, it's not scientific. Instead, what you want to do is help the person to stay alive until they can hopefully find their way as best they're able.
For friends or family members, you have to figure out what you're comfortable with doing. But don't just think, "Everybody says I should just throw them in the street and then they'll get better." They might get better or they might die. If you want to throw somebody out of your house because they are stealing from you or harming your children, or you can't deal with their active addiction, that's fine. It's totally okay not to let somebody abuse you. But do that for you. Don't do it for them.
Ars Technica: The US is currently in the midst of an "opioid epidemic" in which increased prescription of opioid medications led to their widespread misuse. I know you have strong opinions on how US public health policymakers have handled the crisis.
Maia Szalavitz: Eighty percent of people who develop problems with prescription opioids did not have a prescription for the first opioid they misused. They got into someone's leftovers. This is a sign of how non-addictive opioids generally are: between 40 percent to 60 percent of people who are prescribed opioids end up with leftovers.
We had an overprescribing issue where the people who were getting addicted were not the patients. They were the friends and relatives of the patients. There were also people who would fake pain to get prescriptions, and there were pill mills. So what did we do? We decided to monitor all prescriptions and start cutting doses, and cutting people off.
It's happening to hundreds of thousands of people. Doctors are being told, "You can't prescribe over X amount and if you do, law enforcement's going to be on you." There's even a reduction in opioid prescriptions for patients with terminal cancer. How does that make any sense?
Denying people who have gotten benefit from opioids access to the medication that is often the only thing that works for them does not help anybody. It is more likely to make that person commit suicide or turn to a street drug than it is to help them. We've forgotten everything we know about how to use these medications effectively.
Ars Technica: So what is the solution?
Maia Szalavitz: The solution is complicated. One, stop cutting people off of pain medications even if you think they're addicted. It should be legal for doctors to maintain people's prescriptions if only to avoid forcing them to resort to street drugs. Just cutting them off doesn't "cure" the addiction. Two, stop locking them up, which is also killing them. And three, figure out ways to provide a safe supply without marketing it.
Ideally, we would fund treatment that is user-friendly and welcoming and evidence-based and that recognizes that addiction is a highly individualized, complex thing. If I come in, and my problem is depression and loneliness, and I'm using drugs to self-medicate that, we need to find a way out of that that will give me a new sense of meaning and purpose and comfort in life. That’s going to be different for different people; what helps you, I might hate.
We need to re-humanize the whole system. I'm actually hopeful about this, because two-thirds of the public now supports decriminalization of possession. You couldn't have imagined that in the 1990s. I have seen harm reduction go from being championed by two people in Liverpool, to being an international movement that is making inroads against prohibition.
There is still a fight over needle exchange programs, but now the CDC is saying that states should have them, rather than the federal government saying, "We're going to ban funding on that because it sends the wrong message." And I am very hopeful about medical students and young doctors who've really grasped the idea of harm reduction and are trying to change systems to adopt it.
Uncivil Servant:
One thing I'd add is that in addition to all of that, you need to expand access to and use of drugs like buprenorphine/naltrexone for opioids. The combination prevents withdrawals and blunts the drug-seeking behavior. Once you have that under control, other improvements are possible, but that's currently the best evidence-based treatment, per the American Society for Addiction Medicine.
Valorous Thunderaxe:
America's private, for-profit prison industry will make sure none of these reforms ever see the light of day.
mjeffer
She did explicitly say that if you need to kick a loved one out on the street because of the abuse of the addict then that's perfectly ok. Her argument is that if you do, you should be doing it for yourself and not thinking that it will save the loved one because you're tough on them. But I think she is ultimately advocating for the entire system to be more compassionate and focus on reducing harm, not the people feeling the immediate impacts from family members, though it could be a valuable tool for them too to at least prevent loved ones from dying until they hopefully do find a way out.
Anthroobug:
Nobody is asking for the ultimate sacrifice to help someone you love who has addiction problems. She even addresses it here: "For friends or family members, you have to figure out what you're comfortable with doing. But don't just think, "Everybody says I should just throw them in the street and then they'll get better." They might get better or they might die. If you want to throw somebody out of your house because they are stealing from you or harming your children, or you can't deal with their active addiction, that's fine. It's totally okay not to let somebody abuse you.
But do that for you. Don't do it for them."
The problem is that it's very hard to ask for help for someone else when it feels like you yourself are drowning. While also not blaming this other person for their addiction. And trying to still love them. It's a balance issue, I also think it's gotten too easy to say 'I love them, but I can't go down with them' when we imagine that people need to hit rock bottom before they can really recover. It's given us an easy way out, and even if you don't take it, it's a corrosive concept.
jinjuku:
I can sympathize as this has been a 4-5 year old cycle with my brother. Everyone is done with him.
My parents had to go through a legal eviction after his 9 months of living in his room in filth, no job or inclination to get one, arguing with my parents when the urged him to do something, anything positive.
Bernardo Verda:
This approach seems to be a good (and necessary) counter-balance to the moral panic over the opioid crisis.
There are better ways (like "harm reduction") to deal with drug addiction than "Tough On Drugs" approaches that treat addiction itself as some sort of severe moral failing on the part of the addict. And this is true not only for the addict, but also for the society of which they are a part.
We've largely learned that lesson when the drug is alcohol, or even nicotine. Addicts of those drugs often even get company sponsored treatment programs. So why are other drugs so much scarier, and the addicts subject to such different responses?
Jackattack:
I would recommend al-anon or something similar. You are absolutely not alone and those support groups exist solely to help loved ones of addicts/alcoholics cope.
orwelldesign:
One thought I've had — the dope game is as addictive, if not more addictive, than the dope itself. That is — the criminalization of heroin, and the concomitant necessity of all heroin transactions being illegal, thus sketchy, is a part of what makes junkie life into junkie life. You get to spend a significant portion of your day waiting for the connect.
You get to know interesting people! You get to not be sure if you can get drugs today or not, so there's a very boom-bust cycle which encourages binge behavior — no junkie will look at 300 bucks of heroin as (10 days * 30 bucks) worth.
I imagine if you just said "hey, if you want some heroin, just knock on the door at 7AM" -- like a methadone clinic -- it would lose a lot of its charm.
I know that for me one of the key parts of heroin addiction was, no joke, the knowledge that I was violating an extreme social taboo: there's no such thing as telling your boss "yeah, me and the boys shot up Friday night, maybe you want to come next time?" like there is with beer.
Source: 8 years of an opiate habit, last used opiates recreationally in 2011.
Uclebugs:
My oldest brother is a retired experimental psychologist who has been studying this issue for 50 years. About two decades ago we talked about it, and he was talking about the shifting in his professional community from seeing addiction as a choice to seeing it as a disease or a human predisposition. Our society has, for the most part, learned to see human sexuality as also not a choice despite the evangelical Christians who also see drug addiction as a good vs evil choice conflict. The War on Drugs has been a massive failure because the president that initiated was doing for political reasons. All you have to do is listen to the Nixon tapes to see how calculated it was to put hippies and blacks in prison.
Bobcee:
My therapist had me try strength training, which provided the window I needed, and I made very rapid progress applying my therapy. But I wondered if the chemistry changes in my body (and brain) from strenuous workouts was in any way similar to the changes from low-dose LSD 30 years before. I still wonder how much sooner my progress would have happened had LSD been available as an adjunct to my therapy. Not that I'm disappointed that workouts worked: Getting ripped abs as a result of my therapy really does rock, and I've never lost my motivation to stay fit.
Today we know that ketamine has shown clear benefits when combined with therapy for both depression and PTSD. More trials and studies are underway for a wide variety of other psychoactive substances, and the early data is very encouraging.
The "War on Drugs" actively hindered research and progress on mental health. Enough already.
Dave Simmons:
We know criminalization does harm to the addicts and in some cases to the people they steal from to pay for their habit. We know it supports violent criminals who manufacture and distribute the black market drugs, and it even supports repressive regimes in Afghanistan and North Korea.
Would legalization do more harm than that by increasing the number of addicts? Possibly, but predictions of that happening on a massive scale with the legalization of marijuana have failed to materialize.
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SHINGLES VACCINE MAY LOWER DEMENTIA RISK
WASHINGTON (AP) — A vaccine to fight dementia? It turns out there may already be one – shots that prevent painful shingles also appear to protect aging brains.
A new study found shingles vaccination cut older adults’ risk of developing dementia over the next seven years by 20%.
The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is part of growing understanding about how many factors influence brain health as we age – and what we can do about it.
“It’s a very robust finding,” said lead researcher Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University. And “women seem to benefit more,” important as they’re at higher risk of dementia.
The study tracked people in Wales who were around 80 when receiving the world’s first-generation shingles vaccine over a decade ago. Now, Americans 50 and older are urged to get a newer vaccine that’s proven more effective against shingles than its predecessor.
The new findings add another reason for people to consider rolling up their sleeves, said Dr. Maria Nagel of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, who studies viruses that infiltrate the nervous system.
The virus “is a risk for dementia and now we have an intervention that can decrease the risk,” Nagel said.
With Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia on the rise in an aging population, “the implications of the study are profound,” Dr. Anupam Jena, a Harvard physician and health economist, wrote in a Nature commentary.
What is shingles?
Anyone who’s had ever had chickenpox – nearly everybody born before 1980 – harbors that virus for the rest of their life. It hides in nerves and can break out when the immune system weakens from illness or age, causing painful, blister-like sores typically on one side of the body that last for weeks – what’s called shingles.
About 1 in 3 Americans will get shingles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most recover, it sometimes causes severe complications. If it infects an eye it can cause vision loss. Up to 20% of shingles patients suffer excruciating nerve pain months or even years after the rash itself is gone.
What’s the link between shingles and dementia?
It’s not clear exactly how Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia form. But certain viruses that sneak inside the nervous system – especially members of the herpes family including the chickenpox virus -- have long been suspected of adding to genetic and other factors that make people more vulnerable.
Last summer, doctors at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported that an episode of shingles could raise someone’s risk of dementia by about 20%.
Partly, it’s because that virus can cause inflammation, bad for organs including the brain. It also can directly infect blood vessels in the brain, causing clots and impeding blood flow, said Colorado’s Nagel, a risk both for strokes and for dementia.
More intriguing, her lab also discovered shingles can spur formation of a sticky protein called amyloid that’s one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.
Do shingles vaccines protect against dementia?
Adults who get recommended vaccines tend to have other brain-healthy habits including exercising and a good diet, which made it hard to prove an extra benefit.
Stanford’s Geldsetzer took advantage of “a natural experiment” in Wales, which opened shingles vaccinations with an age limit: anyone 80 or older on Sept. 1, 2013, was ineligible but those still 79 could squeeze in. Comparing seniors who just met or just missed that cutoff would mimic a research study that randomly assigned otherwise similar people to be vaccinated or not.
Geldsetzer’s team analyzed more than 280,000 medical records and found evidence that vaccination did offer some protection against dementia. At the time, people received a first-generation vaccine called Zostavax.
An important next step is testing whether today’s vaccine, Shingrix, also offers dementia protection, Nagel said. Another research group recently reported some evidence that it does. Vaccine manufacturer GSK last month announced a collaboration with UK health officials to track seniors’ cognitive health as they get vaccinated.
Geldsetzer also hopes to further study that earlier shot to see if the type of vaccine might make a difference.
What are the shingles vaccine recommendations?
Shingrix is a onetime vaccination, given in two doses a few months apart. The CDC recommends it starting at age 50 for most people but also for younger adults with certain immune-weakening conditions – including those who years ago got that first-generation shingles vaccine. Fewer than 40% of eligible Americans have gotten vaccinated.
Side effects including injection-site pain and flu-like fever and achiness are common. The CDC cautions if you’re currently fighting another virus such as the flu or COVID-19, to wait on a shingles shot until you’re well.
While there’s no proven prevention for dementia, doctors also recommend other commonsense steps to lower the risk. Stay socially and cognitively active. And control high blood pressure and, for people with diabetes, high blood sugar, both of which are linked to cognitive decline.
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PROTEIN POISONING
Your body can’t digest protein without fat, and you can develop protein poisoning without it. Rabbit starvation and the French-Canadian term mal de caribou (caribou sickness) are common colloquialisms for protein poisoning.
Basically, no matter how many rabbits, snails, limpets, or venison steaks you eat, you can still starve to death because your body can’t digest all of that protein without fat. This is one of the reasons why beaver hunting and trapping was so key to many North American indigenous people for so long—because beavers are fatty. The fat from a black bear would have been of upmost importance, too.
The survival lesson here is that fat is much more precious in a survival situation than most would think, because it allows you to digest lean meats. Fat can be the difference between life and death in all but the most hospitable environments.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/four-survival-myths-that-could-get-you-killed?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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ending on beauty:
CHICKADEE
Chickadee, your whistle
on the threshold of dawn
is the beginning of the world.
Soft as flesh, the first light
falls on the silver maple.
Words, leave the pages.
Become stone.
Chickadee, whistle.
~ Sutton Breiding
