August 3, 2022

Austrian doctors speak out after suicide of GP following Covid threats

Lisa-Maria Kellermayr was targeted by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers before taking her own life

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/austria-doctors-demand-more-protection-lisa-maria-kellermayr-death



Austrian medical representatives have called for greater protection for doctors after a GP who faced months of violent threats from anti-vaccination activists and pandemic conspiracy theorists took her own life. Lisa-Maria Kellermayr was found dead in her practice in the lakeside resort of Seewalchen am Attersee on Friday. Prosecutors told the media they found three suicide notes and were not planning to carry out an autopsy.

Her death prompted a wave of vigils and demonstrations. There have also been calls for laws against bullying and psychological warfare to be tightened, including making it easier to prosecute perpetrators in other EU countries, after at least two of the people believed to have targeted Kellermayr with death threats were identified as coming from Germany. Thousands of people gathered outside St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on Monday evening and across the country to pay tribute to Kellermayr, 36, in candlelight vigils. Many participants wore pink, her favourite colour. The Austrian president,

Alexander Van der Bellen, led the tributes, laying flowers outside Kellermayr’s practice and appealing for an end “to this intimidation and fear-mongering”. Kellermayr was described by her friends, family and patients as a passionate, caring and plain-speaking doctor who lived for her work. At the start of the pandemic, she volunteered to visit coronavirus patients in their homes for weeks of round-the-clock shifts, telling her friends and family that as a single person with no dependants, “I belong on the frontline”. She was one of the earliest people to share her observations that patients who used asthma inhalers were often better able to deal with the symptoms of the virus.

Kellermayr was also an enthusiastic supporter of vaccines, sharing her thoughts and ideas on Twitter, and was interviewed regularly, earning praise for her clear communication. However, she drew a wave of hate mail after tweeting her fury when, in November 2021, anti-vaccination demonstrators and supporters of the “Querdenker” coronavirus conspiracy theory movement surrounded a clinic she had worked at in nearby Wels and blocked a main entrance used by emergency vehicles.

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Meet Germany's 'Querdenker' COVID protest movement

They act like a peace movement, but Querdenker march alongside the far-right, and their protests often end in violence. A look into the people behind the protests.

https://www.dw.com/en/meet-germanys-querdenker-covid-protest-movement/a-57049985



The trained business administrator Michael Ballweg founded the Querdenker (lateral thinkers) movement in the city of Stuttgart in 2020. Organizing it has become his full-time job, as the movement has spread.

The Querdenker include pandemic sceptics, anti-vaxxers and anti-lockdown protesters. They claim the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal and regional laws aimed at halting the spread of the virus, infringe on citizens' liberties.

Now, protesters regularly take to the streets in cities across the country. Often the demonstrations turn violent.

But images of clashes between demonstrators and police do not fit the image the Querdenker like to create for themselves. Michael Ballweg and his followers are always quick to emphasize their peacefulness and loyalty to the German Constitution.

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August 3, 2022

Strivings of the Negro People - By W. E. B. Du Bois, August 1897 Issue of The Atlantic

“It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/

https://archive.ph/b7D7T



Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, — peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, — some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The “shades of the prison-house” closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes—foolishly, perhaps, but fervently—that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development.

This is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, and to husband and use his best powers. These powers, of body and of mind, have in the past been so wasted and dispersed as to lose all effectiveness, and to seem like absence of all power, like weakness. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan, on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde, could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people the Negro lawyer or doctor was pushed toward quackery and demagogism, and by the criticism of the other world toward an elaborate preparation that overfitted him for his lowly tasks. The would-be black-savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing, a-singing, and a-laughing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people.

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August 3, 2022

Pickle pizza started as a novelty, but now it's a big dill

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/31/pickles-are-pizza-topping-you-didnt-know-you-needed/

https://archive.ph/7wPio



The debate over whether pineapple belongs on pizza is staler than a three-day-old Dominos slice. For evidence of just how long this great national conversation has been going on, check out the finale of Netflix’s nostalgia-heavy, 1980s-set “Stranger Things,” in which a stoner pizza delivery guy tries to sell a skeptical teenager on its merits, or at least the virtue of keeping an open mind. “Try before you deny,” he advises, like a Reagan-era sage.

Not that the matter is settled, but after all these years, can’t we agree that it’s time to move on? Because there’s a new, potentially divisive pie making its way onto menus around the country that deserves our attention instead: Ladies and gentlemen of the social media debate stage, I give you pickle pizza. Discuss. However you feel about this development in human history, it might be time to get your talking points ready. The pickle pie is having a moment.



It’s a new food item this year at the Minnesota and Indiana state fairs, and announcements about it have attracted attention from local media and social media oglers. Pickles have been popping up among more traditional offerings in pizza shops, too, from chain joints to cheffy pizzerias. Most often served atop a white or ranch sauce instead of the classic red, pickles are proving that they’re more than a novelty act in the pizza-topping game.

https://twitter.com/AHardwickWx/status/1552936868693540864
“There’s this nice sweet, acidic, tangy bite,” says Rachael Jennings, who recently opened her own pizza place, Boogy & Peel, in Washington after years as a chef at white-hot Rose’s Luxury. Pickles are the star of her Big Mac-inspired pie, which layers a version of the fast-food icon’s special sauce (spoiler alert: it’s basically Thousand Island dressing, she says) with American cheese and ground beef. Out of the blistering oven, the pie is topped with crunchy iceberg lettuce, slices of white onion, a lashing of more special sauce — and housemade pickles.

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Pickle pizza, with Canadian bacon and dill, delivers big flavor

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/31/pickle-pizza-recipe/

https://archive.ph/0Zcxg



Pickles on pizza? You’ve probably seen this topping popping up on pies all around the country. We were inspired to create our own after tasting the “Kinda Big Dill” pie from Quad City Pizza in Minnesota. The mornay sauce was adapted from Jacques Pépin’s recipe in “A French Chef Cooks at Home.” We reduced the yield of the sauce (and added a bit of garlic), but you may still have some leftover. Use it to make another pizza or to dress vegetables, or top eggs, chicken or fish. Also, it freezes beautifully.

We preferred this pie with a thin crust, but if you want to mimic Quad City’s dough, make the one included in this recipe, Quad Cities-Style Pizza. For thicker crust, use 1 pound rather than a 1/2 pound of dough. You’ll need to increase the baking time, to 13 to 15 minutes. Also, we found store-bought sliced pickles too thick for this use, so we bought whole dill pickles and sliced them to about 1/8-inch thickness. Make the pizza vegetarian or add thinly sliced Canadian bacon or ham. To save time and effort, use store-bought dough and substitute store-bought alfredo sauce for the mornay.





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August 3, 2022

War Games: The Battle For Taiwan

May 13, 2022

Meet the Press takes over the NBC News Washington Bureau to stage a full-day war game between the U.S. and China.

In our season finale of Meet the Press Reports, we put together remarkable war games simulation of how the U.S might react if China invaded Taiwan. The national security think tank, Center for a New American Security, convened two teams and developed a hypothetical scenario in the year 2027.

August 2, 2022

Al-Qaida's Soon-To-Be Third Emir? A Profile of Saif al-Adl (predicted in February 2021)

https://ctc.westpoint.edu/al-qaidas-soon-to-be-third-emir-a-profile-of-saif-al-adl/





By the time he died in May 2011, Usama bin Ladin had already identified his successor. Under the terms of his organization’s 2001 merger with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), the former leader of EIJ Ayman al-Zawahiri was to be the next emir of al-Qa`ida. But before al-Zawahiri could formally take office, he needed pledges of allegiance (bayat) from the members of its governing council. Al-Zawahiri did not collect those pledges himself; to finish the job, the organization needed someone whose credentials and loyalty were unimpeachable. It turned to a man who had been there since the very beginning, and who had been a leading figure almost as long: the Egyptian former commando named Saif al-`Adl.

Since 2002 or 2003, Saif had been based in Iran. While there, his status shifted periodically. Sometimes he was detained in prison, sometimes under varying forms of house arrest. Toward the end of 2010, he had been allowed to travel back to Waziristan in northern Pakistan, where al-Qa`ida then had its hub. In May 2011, Saif enjoyed enough liberty to act as interim leader of al-Qa`ida, the organization to which he had given the past 22 years of his life.

Many in al-Qa`ida probably wished his appointment could be made permanent; for while Saif and al-Zawahiri were both Egyptians, al-Qa`ida’s membership saw them in very different lights. As this article will show, Saif was a loyal member, a military and intelligence leader who had helped transform al-Qa`ida from a loose band of former anti-Soviet militiamen into the world’s most deadly terrorist organization. Al-Zawahiri, by contrast, was an interloper, the failed leader of a group that, by the time it merged with al-Qa`ida, had only around 10 members left. At the time, Saif himself had opposed the merger. But he knew bin Ladin’s wishes as to the succession, and after bin Ladin’s death, he carried them out with the same efficiency and single-mindedness that characterized everything he did. Within six weeks, he had secured pledges of bay`a from all but one of the members of al-Qa`ida’s governing Shura council. (Intriguingly, the sole holdout was Saif’s former private secretary Harun Fazul—then the leader of al-Qa`ida in East Africa—who had often derided al-Zawahiri in the past. Harun was killed around the same time al-Zawahiri became emir, and some reports suggested that he was lured to his death by al-Qa`ida’s Somali affiliate, al-Shabaab—possibly in retaliation for his failure to give bay`a to the new leader.) His job done, Saif al-`Adl again faded into the background. Indeed, by the fall of 2011, Saif had apparently returned to captivity in Iran.

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August 1, 2022

Shady AF: Dr. Oz's Dark History of Promoting Companies He Was Quietly Invested In

The celebrity doctor turned Senate candidate has long used his platform to hawk supplements. But he had a more personal interest in some products.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-ozs-dark-history-of-promoting-companies-he-was-quietly-invested-in



When Dr. Mehmet Oz sat in front of the camera last year for a promotional video for Walmart, it ostensibly was to inform his fans and viewers how best to improve their immune health. “You may not realize that a quality probiotic is a proven immunity booster,” Oz said to the camera, before holding up a little green-and-blue package containing a supplement called TruBiotics, which purports to improve health by introducing good bacteria into the gut. “Two probiotic strains can strengthen your digestive and immune health,” Oz said. “These two complementary strains can be found in TruBiotics.”

It was a characteristic piece of advice from America’s foremost TV doctor, who built a national brand on dispensing surprising—and surprisingly simple—remedies for widespread health concerns. And fittingly, for a doctor whose daily show was a promotional cash cow, the spot was clearly labeled as sponsored by TruBiotics. Viewers may have surmised that Oz’s video plugging TruBiotics was, essentially, an ad. What they were not aware of, however, is that Oz was a member of the board of directors of the brand’s parent company, PanTheryx. He holds a stake in the business worth as much as $1 million.

The full extent of Oz’s financial relationship with PanTheryx—along with several other health supplement companies—has been revealed for the first time thanks to personal financial disclosure forms he was required to file as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. In several other instances, Oz’s platforms boosted PanTheryx products without disclosing Oz’s personal financial relationship to the company. In 2018, for example, videos ran on the Dr. Oz Show website that were sponsored by DiaResQ, another PanTheryx supplement. None of the PanTheryx products Oz plugged were approved by the Food and Drug Administration; one study found DiaResQ was “no better than a placebo.”

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Oz has long used his platform—and the trust of his audience—to hawk specific products, though he has claimed in the past that he has never personally profited from that activity. Under oath at a U.S. Senate committee hearing in 2014, Oz testified that he “never” endorses “one specific brand” and that “doctors shouldn’t endorse.” But according to Arthur Caplan, a leading medical ethics expert at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Oz’s actions in this case represent a “mountain of a conflict of interest.” “It’s one thing to say, ‘I have commercials on my show that advertise products and I’m going to flag that.’ It’s very different to say, ‘Take this, and I’m not going to tell you, I own it,” Caplan said. “You simply cannot do what he’s disclosing he did.”

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August 1, 2022

Big Country - In A Big Country (Pure Mix) 1983

Label: Phonogram – COUNT 312, Phonogram – 812 467-1
Format:
Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Single
Country: UK
Released: 20 May 1983
Genre: Rock
Style: Pop Rock, New Wave

August 1, 2022

In Michigan, a pro-Israel group works to beat a Jewish Democrat

Rep. Andy Levin find himself fighting for his political life against a fellow Democrat, Rep. Haley Stevens

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/29/michigan-pro-israel-group-works-beat-jewish-democrat/

https://archive.ph/7GHhr



PONTIAC, Mich. — Rep. Andy Levin had watched it happen in Ohio, then in Pennsylvania, then North Carolina, then Maryland. He knew that the United Democracy Project, a super PAC created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had become the single biggest spender in Democratic congressional primaries, helping pro-Israel Democrats beat left-leaning candidates.

But it was astounding, he said, to see the pro-Israel PAC spend at least $4.2 million to help Rep. Haley Stevens in their member-on-member primary just outside Detroit. “The whole thing is so absurd,” said Levin, 61, in an interview here, after a rally with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “I’m a way out-there Jewish person. I have mezuzas on the doors in my office. I’m one of two former synagogue presidents in the Congress.”

The Aug. 2 primary in the new 11th Congressional District, drawn last year by a nonpartisan commission, has become one of the country’s most expensive, and the latest battle between the Democratic Party’s left and donors who want to reduce progressive clout in Congress. It’s also a test of the pro-Israel group’s clout in Democratic primaries, where, seven months into its existence, it’s won all but one of the races it has played in.

Four years after Levin and Stevens arrived in the House — the scion of a Michigan political dynasty, and a first-time candidate who became freshman class president — they’ve waged a bitter, sometimes personal battle for a safe Democratic seat. As donors fought a proxy conflict over support for Israel, Levin, echoing supporters like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has framed their race as a fight for the party’s soul. Stevens, who has easily outraised Levin, sees a different choice — a pragmatic young Democrat who’d be the first woman to represent some of the district’s towns, or a “60-something white man,” as she referred to him in a debate, who shouldn’t have run here.

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related


AIPAC endorses dozens of Republicans who refused to certify Biden’s election

(Including Gym 'the paedo enabler' Jordan, ultra MAGAette cheerleader Elise Stefanik, the worm of worms Kevin McCarthy, the crazed gunhumper Greg Steube, Ronny 'Trump's drunk Dr Feelgood' Jackson, Joe 'you lie!' Wilson, John 'I am a racist, climate change denying MAGAt, but Henry Cuellar campaigns and fundraises for me so it's all good' Carter, Troy 'make shit up about being threatened, get caught, and then distract by trying to get Biden 25th Amendment'ed' Nehls, etc etc)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/j-street-blasts-aipac-for-endorsing-republicans-who-voted-against-certifying-2020-election-results/

AIPAC’s new political action committee announces its first string of Congressional endorsements. They are 120 lawmakers from both parties, but also includes 37 Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results after the January 6 insurrection — drawing criticism from rival lobby J Street.

“AIPAC’s support for these candidates endangers American democracy and undermines the true interests and values of millions of American Jews and pro-Israel Americans who they often claim to represent,” says Laura Birnbaum, J Street’s National Political Director.

“Claims of ‘bipartisanship’ cannot excuse support for candidates who only respect election results when their party wins,” the group adds.

Responding to the criticism, AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittmann says, “as a single-issue organization, we remain focused on our mission of building bipartisan support in Congress to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.

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August 1, 2022

This Is What Decolonizing a Spirit Looks Like

By untangling ògógóró’s false reputation as a British gin knockoff, a Nigerian distiller is reclaiming the West African palm sap spirit.

https://punchdrink.com/articles/pedros-ogogoro-history-nigeria/



It was 4 a.m. on a hazy harmattan day in 2015 when Lola Pedro made her way to Lagos’ Ojota motor park, a rowdy transit hub on the city’s mainland, in search of a driver that would take her to a place ògógóró is made. Years later, Lola, a researcher by trade and liquor enthusiast by choice, would introduce me to the once-illegal spirit. Over several cocktails, we would drink our way through the layered backstory of the premium ògógóró between us, the eponymously named bottle symbolically shaped like an industrial oil drum.

Until Lola and co-founder Chibu Akukwe created Pedro’s Ògógóró in 2017, “premium” was not a word associated with the clear, floral spirit, which is made of palm sap tapped from West Africa’s oil and raffia palms. After fermenting for 24 to 48 hours, the sap becomes palm wine, which is then distilled. Sometimes tinged with a tropical sweetness, other times nesting notes of spice, ògógóró ripples from the palm-dense forests of southern Nigeria through the country in a current of upcycled plastic bottles, stuffed in basins and hawked from the scalps of street sellers.

Though the spirit is clear, its history is murky. While ògógóró has been deeply woven into the cultures and traditions of southern Nigeria since at least the late 1800s, it was during the country’s colonial era, which spanned 1861 to 1960, that the liquor earned the reputation that Pedro is trying to untangle—and ultimately correct.

In Nigeria’s colonial era, teetotaling British missionaries opposed to the spirits trade lobbied for laws that imposed higher tariffs on British imported liquors, like gin. Thanks to the resulting higher prices, local distillation of ògógóró picked up. The British, who had taken over control of the Nigerian spirits market from the Dutch and Germans, didn’t like the competition. By 1910, they launched a smear campaign painting ògógóró as dangerous, harmful, illicit and, more insidiously, as a local knockoff of British imported gin. (Today, the spirit is still colloquially referred to as “local gin.”) The looming loss of colonial revenue and the growing ògógóró market inspired the British to quell ògógóró production, ultimately leading to an era of prohibition that began in 1910 and remained until Nigeria reclaimed independence in 1960.

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