Is Albo another Biden?

With an elite father, an Indonesian mother and being homosexual, you would think that Flinty would be a solid Leftist. And he was in his early life. Around the turn  of the century, however, he switched his allegiance from the ALP to the Liberal party. And that drift has continued to the point where he is now very conservative. 

We see that in the article below.  He makes an energetic case about the importance of the upoming Australian Federal election, when others might see two very centrist candidates, with little depending on who gets in.

He may be right.  An ALP government might create havoc. Politicians saying one thing and doing another are a familiar phenomenon.  If Albo does turn out to be a disaster, Flinty can at least say that he told us so

David Flint

The 2022 election, closely monitored by criminals, domestic and international, could be one of the most important in Australian history.

As with other countries, a poor government could result in Australia becoming an unidentifiable shadow of itself.

The first criminal group is the fraudsters, strengthened by ‘reforms’ camouflaged as ‘making voting easier’. With the weakest protections against fraud among comparable democracies, the advent of pro-Labor ‘independents’ in Liberal electorates has given fraudsters an incentive to move beyond the marginals (this column, 2 April).

Opposition to European-style voter ID legislation, based on the insulting ground that it would disadvantage the indigenous, has been led by the man the pollsters suggest will be the next PM, Anthony Albanese. But pollsters can be very wrong, as this column demonstrated in detail before the last federal election.

The second criminal group is the same people smugglers who, under the Rudd government with Albanese as a minister, delivered with impunity over 50,000 illegal immigrants on 800 boats with over 1,200 drowning.

But when Tony Abbott promised to turn them back, Labor, LINOs (Liberals In Name Only) and the commentariat scorned him, claiming this was impossible and would lead to war with Indonesia.

Albanese claimed in the campaign that he supports Abbott’s Sovereign Borders policy, but draws the line at offshore processing which crucially denies illegal immigrants years of taxpayer-funded access to tribunals and courts. He said he agreed with Abbott’s temporary protection visas. But within hours he reversed himself on both, demonstrating that, as with the economy, he has no idea.

The third criminal group is the ruthless drug lords from the mainly Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Since Joe Biden, whom some Border Control officers say should be named the ‘Drug Lords’ and Chinese Communists’ Employee of the Year’, stopped building Trump’s nearly finished wall and threw open the southern border, there is little difficulty in delivering dangerous drugs into the US. With Biden recently announcing the relaxation of Trump’s Title 42 legislation authorising Border Control’s immediate expulsion of especially single male illegals, both people smugglers and drug lords are ready to step up the drug trade to epidemic proportions.

So is the fourth group of criminal gangsters, the ruthless multi-billionaire thugs who control the Chinese Communist party, the source, directly and indirectly, of fentanyl. This is a powerful synthetic opioid used not only by addicts but also to lace other products taken unwittingly. As a result, opioids are now the major cause of death among the American young, with over 100,000 deaths per year.

At the 2018 Buenos Aires G20, Senator Bill Hagerty says Trump told Xi to stop sending fentanyl to the US. While Xi obeyed, he crucially made no promises about Mexico.

While both drug lords and Beijing are enriched by this evil trade, the communists have a more sinister objective. This is to undermine and punish their enemies, above all the USA.

But since the Morrison government rightly refused to behave like a cowardly tributary country, Australia is now being punished by the most flagrant breaches conceivable of Beijing’s obligations under international trade law.

That this has not had the deleterious effect hoped for will only encourage Beijing to work with the drug lords to push drugs into Australia should the borders be thrown open by an Albanese government.

As they probably will be for the reason that Marxism, which Churchill likened to a bacillus plague, has infected many if not most of the West’s institutions through a variant which could be identified as ME2, Marxism with Elite characteristics. (ME1 would precede Marcuse’s invention of critical theory). Realising both Marx’s proletarians and Mao’s peasants are stubbornly conservative, ME2 thinkers substituted race and their invention, ‘gender’, as the new oppressed through whom the West and its institutions can be destroyed.

ME2 critical race theory has delivered an anti-white, anti-European agenda which has led some Western governments into deceitfully making sudden, secretive and irreversible changes to a country’s population and its sense of order.

This has been done not only without the consent of the electorate, but without even consulting them, probably in the belief that they will be neutered by the new votes the politicians believe they have bought.

Blair did this to Britain, Merkel to Germany and much of the European Union and now Biden is doing this to the US. It was only Abbott, with Morrison and Jim Molan, and at an earlier time, Howard, who saved Australia from a similar fate.

(Pity then that the politicians have so mishandled legitimate immigration. But that is another question.)

One truly informative feature of the current campaign is the debate over the Liberal candidate Katherine Deves. She is dedicated to saving women’s sport through the self-evident truth that sex is not a matter of choice and a born male can never become a woman. In this debate, Albanese has emerged as a card-carrying adherent of critical gender theory. This is a clear indication that he, like most politicians, is infected to the gills with the ME2 variant. He will inevitably follow this on the borders and everything else. He will be a local mirror of the Biden administration, hopefully not as bad.

Meanwhile, Morrison clearly rejects critical gender theory, has refused to bend the knee to Beijing and has appointed our first real Minister of Defence in many a year, Peter Dutton.

Dutton is the likely architect of Aukus, the one truly global response to the emerging Moscow-Beijing-Tehran Axis. Pending a return to the White House of Donald Trump or someone as effective, we, even more, need a government in Canberra that will stand up to China and resist the pressure to open the borders.

Conservatives would be advised to vote carefully, preferring proven candidates including those from sound smaller parties but ensuring their ultimate choice is a return of the Morrison government.

The future of this country is at stake as it rarely is in an election.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/is-albo-another-biden/

What are the least attractive jobs? Singles reveal the occupations they'd be most turned off by on a date

This report reveals how misleading generalizations can be.  It says, for instance, that nurses are not a good partner choice.  But I have always got on well with nurses.  I had, for instance,  a 7 year mariage to one and a 14 year relationship with another -- not to mention more fleeting liasons.  

So how come?  What attracts me is their down-to-earth nature but how do I deal with the shift-working issue?  I don't.  In the two relationships I mentionred, neither lady worked shifts.  They had normal daytime jobs.  Nursing is a quite varied field and that was no oddity. So the shift issue did not arise. 

Mind you, I am friends with a nurse who does work shifts so that could be an issue if we ever took our friendship further.

But the basic point is that the category "nurse" is too broad.  A lot depends on the particular nurse.  I have some very good memories of nurses

Single men and women have revealed how a date's job can impact their attractiveness - and agree shift workers and those with 'huge responsibilities' are the least desirable.

Dating coach Louanne Ward raised the topic on her She Said, He Said Facebook Page and Aussie men and women explained why some occupations are 'a complete turn-off'.

And while many men and women feared they would be judged for low-paying or unglamorous jobs, it was the opposite.

The singletons admitted to steering clear of people with high-powered jobs, or well-paid industries because it can lead to a 'doomed relationship' and 'narcissism'.

Fifo workers, lawyers, doctors, policemen and sex workers were among the most commonly mentioned.

'I avoid shift worker occupations with irregular shift rostering or long shifts like 12 to 14 hour shifts. So people in nursing, or doctors or truckies,' one man said.

According the the men and women in the Facebook group the following professions are the least likely to 'get a date'. 

 1 - Nurses and doctors who do long shifts

2 - Fifo workers

3 - People in high-powered roles like doctors and lawyers

 4 - Truck drivers 

5 - Police officers and military men

'I think jobs where people are too much power, makes them lack empathy,' one woman said. 

The conversation comes after a divorce lawyer revealed the jobs she would avoid when looking for Mr Right.

Firemen, police officers, military men, surgeons, and pilots all appeared on the list shared by JettieGirl28 on TikTok.

'When I first started practicing family law 13 years ago, a woman attorney gave me a statistic about the top five professions of men that women should avoid marrying,' she said in the video.

'Over the course of my career, I've watched my most difficult cases and, shockingly, many of them involved men in these five professions.' 

The men and women in the dating advice group agreed with the lawyer for many of the fields. 

One woman said she avoids men in the military and police force because she believes they can become 'callous'. 'I can't deal with the callous nature they very easily and scarily switch into as that's what they need to do at work to survive,' she said. 

The divorce lawyer also did a post detailing the occupations people should avoid when looking for Mrs Right.

Many people assumed the same jobs would be on the list but she said that's not the case in her experience.

And while most of her female clients are teachers and nurses these are not the most difficult or dangerous divorces. 

'If you have a problem with this scroll along, because I am about to hurt a lot of people,' she said.

She said the most difficult women in divorces are stay at home mums, explaining they are often terrified of their futures financially.

She also said in relationships where the mum stays at home the father often 'feels like an ATM' and the women feel under valued. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/relationships/article-10752857/What-attractive-jobs-Singles-reveal-biggest-turn-offs.html

Targin pain relief drug shortages leave cancer patients, chronic pain sufferers without options

This is a  bit overhyped.  I am myself on Targin to control the pain from a cracked rib.  And it does seem to help.  I am able to take it because I have a supply left over from last year

But is not irreplaceable. It is just an opiate plus something to combat the constipation that opioids cause.  And it is not so good at that. I have to take an apieriant as well

Thousands of cancer patients are being forced to spend their final days sitting in medical waiting rooms trying to source alternative pain relief because of a critical nationwide shortage of a major drug.

Targin is a slow-release oxycodone and naloxone combination often prescribed to cancer patients in the palliative stages and chronic pain sufferers to reduce severe pain.

But stocks have dwindled due to issues with shipping lines and flight availability.

"These patients don't want to spend what limited time they have left at the hospital on the phone to doctors, in waiting rooms, trying to get prescriptions," north Queensland pharmacist Cate Whalen said.

"They want to be spending those last days with their families and those that love them."

Finding alternatives

Dr Abhishek Joshi is a medical oncologist at Townsville ICON Cancer Care and Townsville University Hospital.

He said his clinic saw about 1,000 new patients each year and the shortage would affect about half of them.

"Switching a pain drug which a patient has been using for a long time to a newer alternative and finding a drug of an equivalent dose is not an easy task. That process can take time," he said.

"Patients might now have to undergo a period ranging from days to weeks in which their pain levels might actually fluctuate and start affecting their lifestyle."

Dr Joshi said it was the first time he had seen a shortage of Targin.

"I know regional towns are not the preference sites where these stocks are channelled, mostly bigger cities and metros are much more advantaged," he said.

"So, we have to really fight hard to make sure our patients are getting the stock. There is no sort of specific timeline as to when these shortages will go away."

Unlike many other drugs on the market, Targin does not have a suitable substitute.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-26/targin-pain-relief-shortages-leave-cancer-patients-suffering/101008036

The blessing of 'rote' memory

I agree with Jeff Jacoby below. The poetry I memorized in my student days is a lasting pleasure to me. Sometimes I just recite it in my head and sometimes I recite it out loud for an audience. I know, for instance, about the first hundred lines of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" by heart -- in the original Middle English. I once won a heart by reciting it to a lady.

I also once got a very good response from a brilliant lady by reciting in an appropriate setting Goethe's Meeres Stille, even though the lady knew no German

I also enjoy Tennyson's poems but since "Break, Break, Break" is in fact praise of a homosexual love I have never recited it to anyone

HERE'S A hypothesis: Perhaps one factor in Volodymyr Zelensky's skill as a wartime political leader is his training as an actor, which developed his ability to rally followers, evoke empathy, and convincingly express the justice of the cause for which Ukraine is fighting. Arguably, the many years Zelensky spent memorizing scripts and honing the ability to deliver lines effectively are now contributing to his effectiveness as Ukraine's president.

In a similar vein, historians have argued that Ronald Reagan's experience in Hollywood prepared him to become the "Great Communicator" who later proved so successful as president of the United States.

Winston Churchill wasn't a professional actor. But he too committed prodigious amounts of material to memory — not only entire speeches to be delivered in Parliament, but also vast swaths of Shakespeare's plays. Richard Burton ruefully recalled playing Hamlet in a performance attended by Churchill, who, from his seat in the audience, could be heard reciting the prince of Denmark's lines. "I could not shake him off," Burton said. "I tried going fast. I tried going slow. . . . He knew the play absolutely backward; he knows perhaps a dozen of Shakespeare's plays intimately."

More than one observer has suggested that the rhetoric in Churchill's wartime speeches echoes the inspiriting patriotism — "We few, we band of brothers" — of the message delivered by Shakespeare's Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt.

I don't want to overstate the point. It does seem plausible to me that practice at memorizing texts and reciting them by heart would be an asset for anyone with political aspirations. But memorization is a wonderful and valuable activity regardless of any political benefits.

There was a time when memorization was a standard feature of American schooling. In 1927, New York City's board of education directed grade school teachers to teach poetry to pupils, with particular emphasis on the use of rhythm, diction, and imagery. Children were to memorize at least some of the poems they studied. Among the material recommended by the board "for reading and memorization" in the first, second, and third grades were works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By the time they were in seventh and eighth grades, students were memorizing chunks of Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare, along with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Needless to say, it isn't only literature that can be memorized. The elements of the periodic table, the names and locations of the 50 states, the 46 US presidents, the first 100 digits of pi, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, all the Best Picture Oscar winners — the list is literally endless.

When I was 11 or 12, I took it into my head to memorize the names of every sitting US senator and governor. Some of my sports-minded friends knew the starting lineup of each American League baseball team. When my twin niece and nephew were toddlers, my brother taught them the names of the 15 former Soviet republics and their capitals. He would say "Kyrgyzstan" and, from their high chairs, they would call out "Bishkek."

Everyone memorizes some things — the multiplication tables, their Social Security number, song lyrics, the wifi password, family members' birthdays — but memorization for its own sake has long since gone out of favor. Writing in The American Scholar more than 40 years ago, the late Clara Claiborne Park, a professor of English at Williams College, commented on the disdain with which professional educators dismissed learning material by heart as mere "rote memory."

She quoted one college professor who sneeringly called memorization "the lowest form of human intellectual activity." If anything, the rise of the Internet has exacerbated that attitude. "I've almost given up making an effort to remember anything," Clive Thompson, a columnist at Wired, has written, "because I can instantly retrieve the information online."

Winston Churchill was known to commit prodigious amounts of material to memory, including speeches to be delivered in Parliament and vast swaths of Shakespeare's plays.

But there is nothing "low" about mastering a block of information so effectively that you can surface it at will. Who has ever regretted being able to recite Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" from memory? Or readily identify a bird from its songs? Or name the planets of the Solar System? You don't have to be a "Jeopardy!" contestant to relish having instant recall of thick slices of knowledge. Memorization takes work, but there is joy in the accumulation of knowledge that requires no googling.

The more information for which you develop "muscle memory," the more tools you have for thinking and reasoning — the more connections you can perceive in the world, the more insights you can draw, the more moments of intellectual serendipity you may experience. In that sense, memorized information is mental circuitry that provides a path for imagination and understanding to flow.

Granted, memorizing "mere" facts and figures is not the same as learning to think. But it does stock one's mind, as Park put it, with something "to think about, to think with, a range of language to think and speak in."

Our brain's capacity for memory is immense. We really should be putting it to better use.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26166/the-blessing-of-rote-memory

It's a mistake to ban Holocaust denial

I agree with Jeff Jacoby below. He makes some good points.  He could have added that antismitism is a deeply ingrained European tradition.  And that usually includes holocaust denial. I am pretty sure that all holocaust deniers are also antisemites. 

So is there any hope of eradicating antisemitism?  There is not.  Poland once had a very large Jewish population and still has particularly strong antisemitic traditions even though Jews are a rarity there now.  

The Polish govenment does its best to prevent expressions of antisemitism but the idea seems to be passed on privately.  I know of antisemitic utterances even among people of Polish ancestry who have grown up in the Anglosphere.  It  looks like there is something ineradicable in Polish brains

And for the less prosperous populations in Europe -- e.g. in the Balkans -- antisemitism can be fairly openly expressed.  It provides a ready explanation of why they are economically backward.  They claim that they are somehow kept down by "The Jews".  It is a very useful belief there.  It will never go away.

And there is little point in arguing with something so deeply ingrained. Antisemites of European origin can be otherwise pleasant people.  They are just expressing ingrained traditions. As Jeff Jacoby says, all we can hope for is to be aware of who they are

Holocaust denial is an explicit crime in 17 nations, among them Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, and Israel. Canada is on the brink of becoming the 18th. Included in the federal budget that Parliament will pass in coming days is an amendment to the nation's criminal code making it illegal for anyone to publicly deny that the Holocaust took place or to justify or minimize the genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II. The measure has support across party lines; there seems little doubt that it will be enacted — perhaps as early as Yom Hashoah, the annual day of Holocaust remembrance, which returns Thursday. Whether it should be enacted is a different matter.

"There is no place for antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Canada," Marco Mendicino, the nation's public safety minister, told reporters earlier this month. "That's why we've pledged to prohibit the willful promotion of antisemitism through condoning, denying, or downplaying the Holocaust." The proposed change is backed by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a leading advocacy group, and by Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and a highly respected human rights activist.

I'm against it.

I despise Holocaust deniers. They are contemptible antisemites and brazen liars who express their Jew-hatred through the grotesque project of rehabilitating the reputation of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. In their eagerness to pervert history, they do more than insist, idiotically, that the most comprehensively documented crime in history never occurred. They also ridicule and taunt the innocent men, women, and children who were its victims. "I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a legend," sneered the notorious Holocaust denier David Irving. "I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Liars, or A-S-S-H-O-L-S."

My father was one of those survivors, the only member of his family to come out of Auschwitz alive. Until the day he died, his left arm was marked with the tattoo he received during the Nazi Selektion that designated him for slave labor on his first day in the notorious extermination camp. He died last year, coincidentally on the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Anyone who denies, justifies, or minimizes the Holocaust is guilty of a vile rhetorical assault not just against truth but against my father and his martyred parents, brothers, and sisters. Those deniers deserve to be drenched with all the obloquy and contempt decent people can pour upon them.

But they do not deserve to be prosecuted as criminals, or punished by the state.

I oppose laws criminalizing Holocaust denial for reasons both moral and practical.

As an American, I cherish the First Amendment and the principle of unfettered expression it embodies. To ban something as odious as Holocaust denial may seem a modest price to pay to maintain a minimal level of social hygiene. Who is harmed, after all, if scurrilous hatemongers are forced to keep their malicious ideas to themselves?

The answer is that we are all harmed. It's dangerous to empower the state to punish ideas — even ideas that are cruel, obnoxious, and false. A government that can criminalize Holocaust denial this week can criminalize other opinions next week. "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other," wrote Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1929, "it is the principle of free thought. Not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate."

That is the first reason Holocaust denial shouldn't be added to the criminal code. But it's not the only one.

Emory University historian Deborah Lipstadt, recently confirmed by the Senate as the new US envoy for combating antisemitism, makes the point that such laws amount to intellectual surrender. In a 2016 debate at Oxford University, Lipstadt argued that "laws against Holocaust denial suggest that we do not have the facts, figures, and extensive documentation to prove precisely what happened." Never was there a genocide more meticulously recorded by its perpetrators while it was underway or more comprehensively described by scholars and survivors in the years since.

When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe, visited the Buchenwald concentration camp complex immediately after its liberation by US forces, he understood at once that the sights he was viewing were the antidote to what we now call Holocaust denial.

"The things I saw beggar description," he cabled the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. . . . I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the near future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'"

An immense ocean of evidence attests to the horror of the Holocaust and the scope of its evil — from contemporaneous notes made by liberators to oral histories recorded by thousands of survivors (including my father) to, not least, the powerful acknowledgments of German guilt by postwar German governments. That is the best response to Holocaust denial.

Proponents of measures like the one in Canada endorse a ban on Holocaust denial as a prophylactic against antisemitism. Their case would be stronger if the laws actually had that effect. Yet in all the countries that have made it a crime to lie about Hitler's war against the Jews, has antisemitism been suppressed? In many of them, it is surging. A ban on Holocaust denial and other antisemitic hate speech may be easy to enact. But there is no reason to think it will do any good.

Prosecution is no way for a free society to deal with haters who deny and distort the Holocaust — or any other historical truth. "I tremble at the thought," Lipstadt told her Oxford audience, "that we might leave the regulation of ideas in the hands of politicians." I do too. You either believe in free expression for people you loathe or you don't believe in free expression at all.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26176/it-a-mistake-to-ban-holocaust-denial

Riots in Sweden as anti-Islam activists set fire to the Quran

When it comes to Muslims, many Swedes do not agree with their government's tolerant policies.  The more they see of Muslims the less they like them.  The specifically anti-immigrant "Sweden Democrats" party gets around a third of the vote in national elections

Sweden has arrested more than 40 people after clashes between police and protesters rallying against plans by a far-right group to burn copies of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, police said on Monday.

Eight people were arrested in the city of Norrkoping and 18 people were detained in the neighbouring city of Linkoping, police said in a statement.

Protests have turned violent in several cities since Thursday, leaving 26 police officers and 14 civilians injured, police said at a press conference on Monday.

The unrest has been sparked by the leader of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam group Hard Line, the Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan who is aiming to drum up support ahead of September elections.

Paludan, a lawyer and a YouTuber who intends to stand in Swedish legislative elections in September but does not yet have the necessary number of signatures to secure his candidature, is currently on a “tour” of Sweden.

The 40-year-old is visiting neighbourhoods with large Muslim populations where he wants to burn copies of the Muslim holy book Quran as Muslims observe the holy month of Ramadan.

In Malmo, where he burned a Quran on Saturday, fire erupted in a school overnight, officials said.

“Criminals have profited from the situation to show violence toward society, without any link to the demonstrations,” national police chief Anders Thornberg said at a press conference on Monday.

“There are too few of us. We have grown, but we have not grown at the same pace as the problems at the heart of society,” he said, asking for more resources for the police.

As protesters burned cars and lobbed rocks at the police in Sunday clashes, officers responded, head of police special forces Jonas Hysing said.

“Some 200 participants were violent and the police had to respond with arms in legitimate self-defence,” he said.

Police had earlier said officers wounded three people after firing warning shots during Sunday’s “riot”.

On Thursday and Friday, around 12 police officers were injured in the clashes. In the wake of the string of incidents, Iraq’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that it had summoned the Swedish charge d’affairs in Baghdad.

It warned that the affair could have “serious repercussions” on “relations between Sweden and Muslims in general, both Muslim and Arab countries and Muslim communities in Europe”.

Saudi Arabia has condemned what it called the “deliberate abuse of the holy Koran by some extremists in Sweden, and provocation and incitement against Muslims”.

Iran and Iraq earlier summoned the Swedish ambassadors to lodge protests.

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/riots-in-sweden-as-antiislam-activists-set-fire-to-the-quran/news-story/97029fae87c93200d0f69d4a0563a7d5

Ivermectin as Treatment for COVID-19 May Become More Accessible in Tennessee

If you read the research reports that purport to discredit Ivermectin, you find that NONE of them observed the stipulation that it must be administered as soon as possible after onset of the illness -- e.g. here. A typical interval in the studies concerned is 5 days. It can work after that time but usually does not

Tennessee may make ivermectin accessible without a prescription for treatment against COVID-19 if legislation that was approved in the Senate on April 6 is signed by Gov. Bill Lee.

One of the sponsors of Senate Bill 2188 (pdf), state Sen. Frank Niceley, a Republican, told The Epoch Times, “It’s one of the most important bills we’ve passed this year.”

“The bill would put it behind the counter with a consultation, which means you would explain your symptoms to the pharmacist, fill out a sheet listing your preexisting conditions and what other medication you’re on in order for the pharmacist to determine the right dosage,” Niceley said.

“Ivermectin is one of the many therapeutic options, like vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and anti-virals, that have proven to be effective in the treatment of COVID-19,” Republican state Sen. Rusty Crowe, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “This bill will provide for a safe and effective way for patients to quickly access ivermectin over the counter, and under the supervision of their pharmacists and the physician with whom the pharmacists have their collaborative agreement.”

Ivermectin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an anti-parasitic drug but isn’t authorized for treatment of COVID-19.

In 2021, ivermectin joined hydroxychloroquine as one of the controversial early treatments for COVID-19. Many medical professionals were threatened with losing or lost their medical licenses for prescribing both drugs to treat COVID-19, based on the allegation of misinformation.

“Ivermectin clearly works,” Niceley said. “We’ve had doctors in the Senate who prescribe it all the time. You’ve got to take it early. As with any disease, early treatment is better than late,” he said, adding that he took ivermectin when he tested positive for COVID-19.

Niceley said one of the reasons for the bill is to make ivermectin safer so that people aren’t getting the wrong dose, as many have resorted to purchasing the farm-grade veterinary horse de-wormer. Though some have reported positive results even from using the veterinary version of the drug, media reports focused on allegations of people overdosing and crowding emergency rooms, leading to a false report that gunshot victims were being prevented from receiving care.

“Ivermectin is safer than Tylenol,” Niceley said. “There’s no reason to not try it.”

Because the efficacy of ivermectin depends on early treatment, the bill will facilitate a person’s ability to get the drug in the early stages.

“If you have to make an appointment with a doctor and wait two weeks to get in, it’s too late for early treatment,” Niceley said.

In a March Senate Health and Welfare Committee hearing, Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance co-founder Dr. Paul Marik, who has advocated for the use of ivermectin, spoke in support of the bill.

“It’s probably one of the safest medications ever made,” Marik said. “Over 3.7 billion people have been given ivermectin for the treatment of parasitic diseases in Africa, Asia, and South America.”

More people have died from Tylenol, which is also referred to as Panadol in some parts of the world, than from ivermectin, Marik said.

“One couldn’t have asked for nature to give us a more perfect drug because it kills the virus, via a number of mechanisms, and it also has potent anti-inflammatory properties. So it really is the perfect drug for the treatment of COVID-19,” Marik said.

There has been a propaganda campaign to dismiss the drug as a toxic horse de-wormer, he said, though “it’s probably the most effective drug against SARs-CoV-2.”

“It’s an outrage that there’s been such a profound propaganda to limit its use to silence doctors who prescribe it and to limit pharmacists from dispensing it,” he said. “If we had utilized our protocol, which we had published in March 2020, it’s my belief we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives because the key to COVID is early treatment.”

Dr. Denise Sibley, a Johnson City, Tennessee, physician who said she had adopted Marik’s and the Front Line protocols using ivermectin in treating “almost 4,400 folks,” including members of the Tennessee House and Senate, said she’s used ivermectin not only for COVID-19 symptoms in her patients but also for vaccine injuries. Unfortunately, it became difficult to obtain after “a certain letter went out” in September 2021, she said.

The Misinformation Inquisition

In July 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), a non-profit organization, issued a statement warning that physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

Medical boards such as the American Medical Association and the American Pharmacists Association followed suit.

In September 2021, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners (TBME) adopted the FSMB’s statement.

Throughout this time, the safety and efficacy of the vaccine has also come into question, with more reports of people contracting COVID-19 after getting the jab, as well as people experiencing sometimes fatal side effects.

After the TBME issued its own warning, Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan said the board didn’t have the authority to create a new disciplinary offense without lawmakers’ approval.

The board pulled the statement from its website, but the question remained as to whether the board would continue to investigate and charge physicians. To date, there isn’t a precedent for the board upholding a policy that was not published on its website.

Ragan had told The Epoch Times that the adopted policy moved out of “the guardrails of the law” and gives the board arbitrary judgment on what misinformation is.

“I explained that if they are going to have a policy on this sometime in the future, they need to define what misinformation and disinformation are because otherwise what you have is the Inquisition,” Ragan said. “It then becomes a situation of, ‘Heresy is what I say it is, and I’ll know it when I see it kind of thing.’”

In October 2021, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that emphasized the legislature’s role in drafting laws that establish disciplinary offenses regarding dispensing and prescribing medication for COVID-19.

Still, the stigma around the drug continued, and physicians such as Sibley reported the drug close to impossible to find.

“I’ve had patients drive four hours on a Sunday to a pharmacy that had ivermectin, so it’s very difficult to obtain,” she said. “Any increased access to ivermectin would help save lives.”

A Placebo?

In an April 6 Senate floor discussion on the bill, Republican Sen. Richard Briggs said Marik and other “experts that we had testifying on this may be spreading more misinformation than actual information on it,” and said that, based on his research, he believes ivermectin has a placebo effect.

However, he went on to say that ivermectin must be administered within the first 48 hours “or it doesn’t work.”

Briggs’s concern, he said, is that by making ivermectin more accessible, it would show to the public that ivermectin is as effective as other drugs such as Remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies.

“We’re going to have patients on a scientifically proven ineffective drug rather than getting the treatment they need for COVID,” Briggs said.

Others who spoke in opposition to the bill, such as Democrat Sen. Jeff Yarbro, echoed Briggs’s argument, pointing to research that he said proved ivermectin is ineffective, and that what he called misinformation surrounding ivermectin had led to overdoses.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ivermectin-as-treatment-for-covid-19-may-become-more-accessible-in-tennessee_4391967.html

Flirty emails got Mark Schlissel fired. A deeper history weighs on Michigan’s flagship

This is a rather sad case. To be a bit corny about it, Cupid's arrow strikes unpredictably. Sometimes you just know that a person you meet is one whom you can communicate with in a totally easy and enjoyable way. It happens to me on rare occasions. Though I am perhaps lucky to have autistic tendencies and so have always had no difficulty staying on the strait and narrow with my partner at the time. I think Prof. Schlissel was punished for being simply human. There appears after all to have been no affair, just lovelorn emails. I feel sorry for him

He is a lonely, bearded scientist who has an important job in the Midwest. A Brooklyn native, raised in a traditional Jewish household, he is amused by a satirization of the sexual fantasies of New Yorkers.

He is married with children. But he dreams at work about a sojourn in Paris with a woman other than his wife — someone who enjoys a good bistro; someone who makes his heart hurt.
He asks saucily if he might “lure” her with a knish.

This is the portrait of Mark S. Schlissel that emerges from 118 pages of documents that the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents made public on a Saturday evening in January, shortly after they had removed him as president.

In this collection of cringey communications between Schlissel and a subordinate, the university’s former top executive is stripped of his veneer of esteem, reduced instead to a lovestruck buffoon. All of it was so unbecoming of a man in Schlissel’s position, the regents agreed, that he should be summarily fired with cause.

Schlissel’s termination ranks among one of the more profoundly embarrassing firings of a major university leader in modern memory. Instantly memeable, excerpts from the emails quickly wound up on T-shirts and stickers. Before the Sunday sun had risen, some prankster had chalked the word “Lonely” on a campus sidewalk above a Michigan “M,” referencing one of the messages Schlissel had signed with the first letter of his name.

Turbulence around Schlissel was nothing new. He had, since 2020, worn the scarlet letter of a Faculty Senate vote of no-confidence, drawing the ire of professors for his handling of the pandemic, among other things. His tensions with the board, whose members are elected by statewide vote, had begun to bleed into public view. Even so, most expected this to end just as it often does for people in Schlissel’s rarified air: The president walks away with warm regards from the board and giant fistfuls of money. Schlissel’s transgressions upset this timeworn choreography.

But his story is about more than a president getting crosswise with his board, or what appears to have been a workplace romance. The university’s recent history imbues his downfall with a complicated resonance that people in Ann Arbor are still sorting through. His firing came less than two years after Schlissel dismissed the university’s [black] provost, Martin A. Philbert, who was accused of sexually harassing multiple women over the course of 15 years at Michigan.

Taken together, the two cases sent a message that the the university’s problems with sexual misconduct go all the way to the top. It isn’t that simple. There is nothing in the public evidence that would definitively establish that Schlissel engaged in sexual harassment. Even so, he gave fodder to a more systematic criticism that Michigan’s leaders still don’t get it. After all of the apologies, the legal settlements, the training sessions, the promises, and the shame, something has yet to sink in at the highest levels. Something is left to understand.

Since Philbert’s firing, in 2020, the university has signaled its willingness to turn over every rock, hiring an outside law firm to investigate how the system failed. As president, Schlissel was a visible champion of this work. But new reporting from The Chronicle suggests that the job remains unfinished.

A retired professor, who has not previously discussed with the news media her role in the Philbert case, told The Chronicle that she was met with intimidation and indifference more than 15 years ago, when she first reported allegations against the future provost. Another faculty member, who has not spoken with news reporters about the case before, said she was twice told that decision makers at the university believed in Philbert’s capacity for “rehabilitation.”

The University of Michigan’s administration considers the matter of Martin A. Philbert settled. But Schlissel’s firing cracks open history, inviting still unanswered questions. When powerful people cross the lines of propriety, who renders the final verdict on what really happened? Whose memory counts? Who is burdened by history, and who is allowed to forget it?

Why exactly was Schlissel fired? On a recent afternoon at Zingerman’s Delicatessen, a storied sandwich shop in Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown District, Jordan B. Acker confronts that question over a chicken-pesto sandwich. Acker, a 37-year-old lawyer from the Detroit suburbs, is chairman of the Board of Regents. On the subject of Schlissel’s termination, Acker stays mostly on script. He circles back continually to a letter that the board sent to Schlissel in January, stating the regents’ rationale for firing the president with cause.
“I think the letter kind of speaks for itself,” Acker says. ”It’s a judgment question at the end of the day. And I think it’s clear from the letter, what was lacking here was judgment.”

Strictly speaking, Schlissel was fired for violating a morals clause in his contract, which stipulated that he must at all times comport himself in a manner that promotes the “dignity, reputation, and academic excellence of the university.” Nevertheless, the board saw fit to invoke the past, calling Schlissel’s conduct “particularly egregious” in light of his commitment to stamp out sexual misconduct at the university. The letter lets the reader decide exactly what’s being charged here. Is the board calling Schlissel a hypocrite or accusing him of harassment?

“Mark Schlissel is not a monster,” Acker says. “He’s not an evil, evil guy. Mark Schlissel was guilty of extraordinarily poor judgment. But I put him and Martin Philbert in very different categories. Martin Philbert was engaged in sexual harassment. I can’t say the same about Mark Schlissel.”

https://archive.ph/4od8N