Category Archives: Politically Incorrect

Will you be my Valentine, Modiji? Waise toh I will be hearting every post that features you. Valentines Day makes most of us mushy. Thank God your government has not banned itremember that clumsy attempt by some out-of-work local politician in Maharashtra who tried and failed a few years ago? You are far more progressive and romantic by nature, Modiji we have all seen and admired your kinder, gentler side. We also wiped a tear when we watched you cry for your friend Ghulam Nabi Azad in Parliament this week. Pyaar-vyaar always triumphs over nafrat. Thats what these Twitter bosses have to realise. We in India are very emotional people. But when someone upsets us, we hit back hard hai, na? See how quickly Twitter fell into line, kissed and made up? It was like a lovers quarrel that was amicably patched up. Most issues in life can be amicably settled as Lataji and Sachinji and Akshayji tweeted. Amicable is a good word, and your PR people made wonderful use of it during that faltu controversy with some Barbadian entertainer whose name hardly anyone in India knows. Big big international companies and personalities are scared of India that much is certain. Look at Twitter! Quietly agreeing to pull down accounts of trouble-makers identified by your administration. Darr gaye! These firangi companies only understand tough talk and you, sir, excel at it!

Aur phir, you quickly came up with a challenge round also! What an idea, sirji Koo is a coup! No doubt about it. I am also thinking of joining Koo and chirping away. If Piyush Goyal, Ravi Shankar Prasad and other mahaan folks can abandon Twitter and start new handles on Koo, so should all other hyper-loyal patriots. Lets show those Twitter-wallas hum kisi se kam nahi! More than a million active users within days on Koo though I am still not sure how it sounds if you say, Did you Koo this morning? Or, Hey, my Koo went viral, My Koo was taken down just now, I just Koo-ed. I dunno. It sounds a little errrm obscene?

Koo needs a little getting used to. Fans of Koo (launched in March last year) insist it has a nice ring to it. My generation associates Koo with a certain Koo Stark, who shot to fame as Prince Andrews girlfriend. Randy Andy, as the tabloids dubbed him, had presented the luscious Koo (allegedly an adult films performer) a message tee shirt that read, Here comes trouble. Ummm Im not saying anything, baba

Well in the current face off, it looks like Twitter blinked, blocking 97% of handles on the government list, with due process being followed for the rest. This is a climbdown that was unexpected and inevitable given how the screws were being tightened. IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney met with Twitters Monique Meche and Jim Baker to amicably sort out the tricky issue before it escalated. Inflammatory content has been blocked for now. Lets be honest Twitter cant afford to be shut out of Indias vast market.

BJP leader Vinit Goenka had filed a petition last May asking for a mechanism to check fake news, stating that there were hundreds of fake Twitter handles and Facebook accounts in the name of famous people. Well, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde has issued notices on the matter. Mission Social Media Regulation is under way.

The implications are vast, complex and innumerable. Social media is the hungriest monster known to mankind. Insatiable too. I tweet, therefore I am is the new Descartes. If eminent people are not on some platform or other, they do not exist. Staying relevant on chosen platforms is not as easy as it looks. Twitter is ganja. Dope. Coke. Morphine. Addicts plead utter helplessness when it comes to staying away. Withdrawal symptoms start kicking in within twenty-four hours.

Twitter is intrusive, potentially dangerous and also horribly irresistible.

Tame this beast and another beast will promptly raise its ugly head! Fake news, fake accounts, fake profiles hey welcome to the Republic of Fake. Everything is kinda fake out there, anyway people, politics, policies. Choose the fake that suits you and get on with life. Go ahead and block 1,398 handles buy time, buy peace. Chances are 10,000 more will come up. Jaaney bhi do yaaron tweet and be damned. Tweet and face the consequences. Tweet and hit the headlines.

So, how about billing and Koo-ing on Valentines Day, guys? Eat your heart out, Twitter!

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Look who is hearting the Koo app as Twitter eats its heart out - The Times of India Blog

The biggest casualty of the lockdown will not be the closed pubs, restaurants and shops and the crippled airlines. It will not be our once-thriving musical, theatrical and sporting culture. It will not even be the wreckage of our economy. These are terrible things to behold. But the biggest casualty of all will be liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is a remarkable but fragile achievement. It is an attempt to meet the challenge of making governments answerable to the people, while protecting personal freedom. This is hard to do. People crave security and look to the state to provide it. To do this, the state needs extensive powers over its citizens. This is why, in democracies across the world, the power of the state has continually increased. It is also why liberal democracy is the exception rather than the rule. Democracies are easily subverted and often fail.

What makes us a free society is that, although the state has vast powers, there are conventional limits on what it can do with them. The limits are conventional because they do not depend on our laws but on our attitudes. There are islands of human life which are our own, a personal space into which the state should not intrude without some altogether exceptional justification.

Liberal democracy breaks down when frightened majorities demand mass coercion of their fellow citizens, and call for our personal spaces to be invaded. These demands are invariably based on what people conceive to be the public good. They all assert that despotism is in the public interest.

The problem is perfectly encapsulated in a recent interview with Professor Neil Ferguson, whose projections were used to justify the first lockdown last March. Before that, as Prof Ferguson related in that interview, Sage had concluded that the Chinese lockdown had worked but was out of the question in Europe. Its a communist, one-party state, we said. We couldnt get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realised we could If China had not done it, the year would have been very different.

China is not a liberal democracy. It is a totalitarian state. It treats human beings as so many tools of state policy. There is no personal space which the state cannot invade at will. Liberal democracies have good reasons of political morality for not wishing to be like China. Considering this issue only in terms of whether lockdowns are effective against pandemics, and whether governments can "get away with it", serves to reduce liberty from a major principle to a mere question of expediency.

We have to assume, since the Government took his advice, that ministers agreed with Prof Ferguson. Certainly that was the position of the senior minister who recently told me that liberal democracy was an unsuitable model for dealing with a pandemic. Something more Napoleonic was needed, said he.

Many people believe that it is OK to be like China for a time, because when the crisis ends we can go back to being like Britain again. These people are making a serious mistake. We cannot switch in and out of totalitarianism at will. Because a free society is a question of attitude, it is dead once the attitude changes.

A society in which oppressive control of every detail of our lives is unthinkable except when it is thought to be a good idea, is not free. It is not free while the controls are in place. And it is not free after they are lifted, because the new attitude will allow the same thing to happen again whenever there is enough public support.

Covid-19 is not unique. There will be other epidemics. Some will be worse. Other issues will pose similar dilemmas, from terrorism and climate change at one extreme to obesity and censorship of politically incorrect opinion at the other. A threshold has now been crossed. A big taboo has gone. Other governments will say that the only question that matters is whether it works and whether they can get away with it. In a world ruled by the empire of fear, the answer will usually be yes.

We already have a striking example. The vaccine, which was supposed to make the lockdown unnecessary, has become a reason for keeping it in force. Because there is now an exit route, we are told that it doesnt matter how far away it is.

Infections, hospitalisations and deaths are plunging, but millions who are at virtually no risk are being kept in house imprisonment. This is being done mainly because a selective regime of controls would be too difficult for the state to enforce. Coercion quickly becomes an object in itself.

Liberty is not an absolute value but it is a critically important one. Of all freedoms, the freedom to interact with other human beings is perhaps the most valuable. It is a basic human need, the essential condition of human happiness and creativity.

I do not doubt that there are extreme situations in which oppressive controls over our daily lives may be necessary and justified: an imminent threat of invasion, for example, or a violent general insurrection. Some health crises may qualify, such as a major epidemic of smallpox (case mortality about 30 per cent) or Ebola (about 50 per cent).

Covid-19 is serious, but it is not in that category or even close. It is well within the range of perils which we have always had to live with, and always will. According to government figures, more than 99 per cent of people who get Covid survive. The great majority will not even get seriously ill. The average age at which people die of Covid-19 is 82, which is close to the average age at which people die anyway.

The Prime Minister claims to believe in liberty and to find the current measures distasteful. Actions speak louder than words, and I am afraid that I do not believe him. He is too much of a populist to go against public sentiment. He lacks the moral and political stature to lead opinion rather than follow it.

I hope that I am wrong about this. But we shall soon know. In the next week Boris Johnson has an opportunity to show that he has some principles after all.

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Liberal democracy will be the biggest casualty of this pandemic - Telegraph.co.uk

When someone told Disneyland Editor Julie Tremaine the official Disney Parks TikTok was worth checking out, she was skeptical. But, she caught a glimpse of something she'd been dreaming about for years: the secret suite inside Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World.

Access like this to the suite hasnt been available before this. Its very rarely accessible to the public save for a handful of invitation-only tours there are rumors Disney has turned down upwards of $40,000 for just one night in the room

The video convinced her that unlike the corporate and polished Disney content on other platforms, the Disney Parks TikTok is doing something very different.

More:

Disneyland finally reopens huge, long-empty Rainforest Cafe as Star Wars store. The over-the-top jungle is a natural fit for the space. Read more.

Disney drops trailer for live-action Cruella film starring Emma Stone. The film is set to release May 28. Read more.

'Wizard of Oz' remake planned with 'Watchmen' director. New Line said it will be a fresh take and a reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Read more.

Disneyland recalls 1,400 employees as dining and events return to California Adventure. In March, the park will offer an all new, limited-time ticketed experience focusing on food and wine. Read more.

'So inappropriate': This Calif. man is calling out some of Disney's politically incorrect videos. Jack Plotnick is editing himself into old Disney videos from the 1960s and adding commentary, akin to Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Read more.

Dispatches from Disneyland is curated by Jasmine Garnett and Disneyland editor Julie Tremaine. Contact Garnett atJasmine.Garnett@sfgate.comor Tremaine atJulie.Tremaine@sfgate.com.

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Disney's newest platform gives people access to hidden places in Disney World and Disneyland - SFGate

Playing at Gteborg and Rotterdam this past week, Magnus von Horns sophomore feature Sweat has collected plaudits and prizes ever since it launched as part of the Cannes Festivals 2020 official selection last summer.

Since June, the Polish language film which offers an up-tempo character study of a twentysomething fitness influencer has collected festival hardware across the globe, claiming prizes in Chicago, Macau, Gdynia, and Trieste. On Saturday, the Goteborg-born filmmaker was awarded the Church of Sweden Film Prize ahead of his films hometown premiere later that evening.

WhenVarietyspoke with Lodz-based von Horn, he explained how his acclaimed film could only have been made outside of his native country.

Would this project be different were it set elsewhere?

The film would be very different were it set in Sweden. Poland is a great arena for this character. It doesnt have a general consensus as to how things should be; things can be politically incorrect or chauvinistic while others are the exact opposite. Theres such a mix of points of views; its so polarized politically, with so many fights about everything at the moment. [The only through line is] the capitalism that was so embraced after communism, which has created a mole system and mole people that love to feed off fast food TV and culture.

If you look at the world of influencers in Poland, as opposed to Sweden, the differences are night and day in terms of what works on social media and what an influencer does. Theres a big difference, and I dont think [the main character] Sylwia would work in Sweden.

Whys that?

Shes the perfect person to love and hate. Shes so easy to hate, and you need to be dedicated to love her. I think many people go and look for this dedication; they want to belong to something. There are many of these influencers in Poland, and one in particular has a huge following. Shes so hated and so loved that nobody is left without a reaction. [She leaves no room for apathy] and thats why shes so popular. She wouldnt be as popular if she werent hated!

I like the judgments. because I had them myself when I started working on the project. For a long time I thought [these influencers] were narcissists, but then, Im unable to post like them because Im scared of being judged. And I think thats more narcissistic than their behavior.

How would you describe the films emotional register, and its perspective on social media?

Its more about loneliness than fitness. Whats interesting in a fitness motivator is the emotional content she uses on her social media accounts, not the training routines.

When I started following fitness motivators on Snapchat and Instagram, I found 95% of them not so interesting, but the other 5% of the time I came across some deep emotional honesty, which really fascinated me. I was fascinated to find that in the jungle of everyday Instagram content. I liked that I needed to watch the 95% of bullshit to get to the 5% of gold it made the gold all the shinier. That emotional honesty I found on social media was better than what I watched in fiction cinema.

The film has a very particular visual aesthetic, really playing up the bright lights and artifice in a way thats somewhat uncommon for an intimate character study.

It has the faade of something thats very shallow, but what happened is very profound. I think that contrast creates a discomfort that I like very much. For me it was important to embrace everything that comes with the world of this fitness motivator, and everything in the environment she moves in. To not look at a shopping mall as ugly but to embrace it and love it with all the colors and music that comes with the world. Theres no point trying to remake that world with different kinds of visuals, trying to make it more tasteful or something.

How does that tie in to your larger aims as a filmmaker?

I think its really strong when you have characters that you feel very far away from at first glance, and suddenly theres a moment that connects you. Thats what cinema is. You sit with people both next to you and onscreen you wouldnt normally sit next to and you watch something intimate. You get a chance to get closer to the unknown, to something you probably wouldnt get close to otherwise.

Films shouldnt offer a full stop. They should [end] with a comma, and then you have to bring them with you once you finish watching. Otherwise, I dont see the point.

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Sweat Director Magnus von Horn on Cinema, Social Media, and the Promise of Poland - Variety

Jimmy Kimmel and Bill Maher had a wide-ranging, late-night comedy love-in to kick off tonights episode of Real Time, with the guest comparing the host to starting Super Bowl quarterback Tom Brady.

Sundays Super Bowl LV pits Bradys Tampa Bay Buccaneers against quarterback Patrick Mahomes defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. Maher groaned, If I have to listen to sportscasters or anyone else on TV sucking Tom Bradys dk Hearing the hype, Maher said he has been praying, Please, Mahomes, beat this motherfker!

The host of ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live conceded that even though Brady has certainly won his share of everything, he is nevertheless rooting for Brady on Sunday for a reason that he said is universal. This is a guy who was told by his employer he said, preparing to describe Bradys departure from the New England Patriots, before a thought occurred to him. By the way, this reminds me a little bit of you, he told Maher. When you were at ABC, they said, Alright, thats it were done. You went on to become tremendously successful here at HBO. Youre like the Tom Brady. I think you want the accolades for yourself! In other words, he seemed to suggest, Maher is in some way jealous of Brady for possibly pulling off a revenge act that would outdo Mahers rebound from being bounced from ABCs Politically Incorrect.

Everybody whos been fired from a job goes, Ugh, Id love to see this guy leave this job,' Kimmel reasoned. They go in the toilet, he goes to Tampa which is also a toilet, lets be honest. I lived there, I know. And then hes in the Super Bowl again and, who knows, he might win it.

The pair covered a few other topics during the chatty segment, including Mahers 10-year investment in the New York Mets baseball team which Maher said reached its end during the near-death experience of 2020. Even though he was constantly writing checks during a period when the team was unable to play, he still made out like a fking bandit on his original outlay.

Noting how many people seem to be wanting to leave California (a pet topic of Mahers), the host asked Kimmel to describe a recent road trip he took to Idaho in an RV with his family. He admitted that after sweating it out in a hot tent Did you know tents dont have air conditoning? Kimmel asked. Tents?! Maher replied the family packed up and drove to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. They have parking for RVs there! Kimmel added. Of course they do, Maher said, after admitting he pines for his tour dates in Vegas lost to Covid-19.

Speaking of the pandemic, the two also compared notes on having to perform to an audience consisting only of their own writing staffs due to health and safety restrictions. Kimmel joked that his writers are sick of listening to him. We should switch staffs! he proposed. It will be like swinging, he explained, but for talk shows.

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Jimmy Kimmel Compares Bill Maher To Tom Brady, Admitting He Is Pulling For The Super Bowl Quarterback - Deadline

Two of late night televisions best will share the spotlight tonight on an all-newReal Time with Bill Maher. Jimmy Kimmel is set to be Bill Mahers featured guest.

Kimmel and Maher will have plenty to talk about on tonights show. Both are trying to figure how to do a late night comedy show in these times, both have been targets of former President Donald Trump, and both have set their comedic sights on Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Anytime there is a crossover event among late night television hosts, fans get excited. Combinations like Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert and Conan OBrien have resulted in some memorable moments.

OnReal Time, Kimmel will be even more free to speak his mind than when hes on ABC. Any uncertainty about how he feels about the news should be put to rest tonight.

Real Time with Bill Maheris currently at the start of season 19 on HBO. Maher jumped headfirst into the discussion surrounding the Capitol insurrection and former President Donald Trumps impeachment.

Meanwhile,Jimmy Kimmel Live!recently celebrated its 18th year on ABC. The show has become increasingly political in the past five years and it has paid off.

It was actually Jimmy Kimmel whom ABC tapped to fill the late night slot left behind when Bill MahersPolitically Incorrectwas canceled.

Kimmel has made one previous appearance onReal Time with Bill Maher. It came in April of 2003, just a few months afterJimmy Kimmel Live!premiered on ABC.

It all worked out for both comedians as Maher has thrived on HBO and Kimmel currently sits in second place behindThe Late Show with Stephen Colbertin the late night ratings. Now the two are back together for what should be an entertaining conversation.

Real Time with Bill Maherairs tonight at 10:00 P.M. The other guests are journalist and author Charlotte Alter and author, pundit, and podcast host Matt Welch.You can watch on HBO or on HBO Max. Be sure to check back with Last Night On for all the highlights.

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Bill Maher welcomes another late night host to Real Time tonight - Last Night On

Expert: Hate group 'Proud Boys' part of Trump base AP Domestic

The Canadian government addedthe Proud Boys,an extremist group with ties to white nationalism, to its list of terrorist organizations.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced Wednesday the Proud Boys were one of 13 groups now designated as terrorist organizations, includingthe Russian Imperial Movementand two neo-Nazi groups the Atomwaffen Division and The Base.

Canada will not tolerate ideological, religious or politically motivated acts of violence, Blair said.

Canada is the first country to designate the Proud Boysas a terrorist entity.

Designating a groupa terrorist organization allows the government to seize its assets and increase terrorism-related penalties.

A government official said just because a person is a member of the organization doesnt mean they will automatically be charged with a crime. But if that personwas to engage in violent acts, they could face terrorism charges.

Sending money to the organization or buying Proud Boys paraphernalia would also be a crime.

The announcement comes a little more than a week after Canada'sHouse of Commons unanimously passed a motioncalling for the government to use all available tools to address the proliferation of white supremacists and hate groupsstarting with the immediately designating the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity," Global News reported.

The motion was introduced by the leader of the country's New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, who urged Canadians to "keep the pressure on" Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government to formally add the group to the list of terrorist organizations, which includes Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Singh celebrated the announcement, calling it a victory for young people, working people and Black, brown and Indigenous people on Twitter.

The Proud Boyswere founded in 2016 byVice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, a Canadian, anddescribed themselves at the time as a politically incorrect mens club for Western chauvinists."

Who are the Proud Boys?Far-right group has concerned experts for years

McInnes quit the Proud Boys after an October2018clashbetween group members and antifa that followedhis speech at New Yorks Metropolitan Republican Club.

The group is known for its"anti-Muslimand misogynistic rhetoric," according toThe Southern Poverty Law Center, a legaladvocacy organizationthat has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group. The SPLC has been warning about the group's violent tendencies for years.

The Canadian government calls the Proud Boys a neo-fascist organization with semiautonomous chapters located in Canada, the United States and other countries. It said the groupengages in political violence and that members espouse misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrantand white supremacist ideologies.

The group has faced renewed criticismafter several members were arrested for participating in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol building in support of former President Donald Trump.A Canadian government senior official said the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol contributed to the designation.

More: Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs charged in deadly Capitol riot

Enrique Tarrio, the group's current leader,was arrestedlast month in Washington, D.C., and charged with destruction of property in connection with a Decemberincidentwhere set fire toaBlack Lives Matter banner after a Trump rally. The banner had been taken from a historic Black church.

Contributing: Joel Shannon and Will Carless, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg

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Canada becomes first nation to declare the Proud Boys a terrorist organization - USA TODAY

publication date: Feb. 5, 2021

By Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD

Professor and chairman, Department of Leukemia,

Samsung Distinguished University Chair in Cancer Medicine,

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Humans cannot live without hope. Hopelessness is the greatest trauma a person has to suffer.Emil J Freireich, MD

Dr. Emil J Freireich gave me hopejust as he did for millions of patients, loved ones, physicians and researchers. He brought me from Lebanon to the United States and provided me with endless opportunities to develop as a leukemia researcher and as a human being.

Not only was he my mentor, I considered him my third parent. After losing both my parents, in 2000 and 2001my mother being the most intelligent person I have ever known and my father being the hardest-working person I have ever metI realized that the people I loved most outside my immediate family were those in my professional one.

Foremost among them was Freireich.

When I started my career as a medical student at the American University of Beirut in 1972, I had decided I wanted to cure cancer (like millions of others). I told my father, but he said, There is no such specialty. Dont waste your time.

This was somewhat true considering that the field of cancer research and care was in its infancy. When Freireich joined the National Institutes of Health in 1955, he was among the first generation of cancer doctors, perhaps a dozen, that included Gordon Zubrod, James Holland, Emil Frei, and otherstodays pioneering giants in cancer.

He was the inaugural leukemia expert, and soon enough demonstrated that leukemia was the first cancer that could be cured with drugs. Before him, M.C. Li had shown that choriocarcinomas could be cured with methotrexate (1955), but a common belief then was that this was a tumor of the fetus, thus foreign or allogeneic, but that syngeneic tumors were incurable. But I digress

Despite my fathers objections, I was reading the 1970s literature, and the name of Freireich and his colleagues from MD Anderson came up over and over in many of the innovative cancer discoveries and papers: Gerald Bodey, Edmond Gehan, Michael Keating, Kenneth McCredie, Evan Hersh, Jordan Gutterman (the list goes on and on).

Memorial Sloan Kettering was then the only other fully dedicated cancer research center. So, in 1978, as a fourth-year medical student, I applied to both Memorial Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson for a four-month elective rotation.

Memorial rejected me immediately. Freireichwho led the Developmental Therapeutics department at MD Andersonaccepted me immediately, sans voir (as they say in poker). I thought it was because I was so great, but I realized later that Freireichs motto was similar to a line in Georges Brassenss poetry: Embrasse-les tous, Dieu reconnaitra le sien (Embrace them all, God will sort his own).

He accepted us all, the geniuses and the less so, the hardest working and the lesser ones, and molded us over time into the best cancer researchers we could be. And perhaps because of Freireichs massive magnetic personality, his dashing expansive charisma, his unlimited innovative capacities, his larger-than-life figure, and his infinite optimism, he attracted a certain breed of physicians, students, cancer researchers and followers destined to remain in cancer research and transformed them into the cancer researchers he wanted them to become.

And he attracted then from the four corners of the world. Fernando Cabanillas tells this story:

When Freireich welcomed the new fellows in July 1974, in his welcome speech he said that all of us in the room had been selected because we were geniuses. I was so naive that I believed him. I did not consider myself a genius, and was even worried that I had been accepted at MD Anderson through a bureaucratic error, and that I would eventually be discovered. Nevertheless, I started believing him, and he made us all feel important and capable of anything, which I obviously think was what he wanted.

When Freireich came with Frei to MD Anderson in 1965, the institution was barely on the map. Freireich was tasked with starting a cancer research program for developmental therapeutics, or DT.

Ten years later, DT became the largest cancer research program in the world, with more than 100 experts drawn from over 60 countries: New Zealand (Kenneth McCredie), Australia (Michael Keating,Andrew Burgess, Gary Spitzer, John Seymour), Japan (Ryuzo Ohno), Sweden (Borje Andersson),Czechoslovakia (Miloslav Beran), Germany (Bart Barlogie and Axel Zander), Hungary via Colombia (Gabriel Hortobagyi), Canada (Razelle Kurzrock), Holland (Karl Dickie, Lejda Vellekoop), India (Sewa Legha, Sunda Jagannath, Varsha Gandhi), Israel (Giora Mavligit, Moshe Talpaz, Zeev Estrov, Meir Wetzler), Lebanon (Elias Anaissie, Issam Raad, Fadlo Khuri,Philip Salem), Mexico (Jorge Quesada, Jorge Cortes), Panama (Adan Rios), Puerto Rico (Fernando Cabanillas), Peru (Manuel Valdivieso, Carlos Vallejos, who later became minister of health in Peru), and on and on.

There were even Americans: Gerald Bodey, Edmond Gehan, Evan Hersh, William Plunkett, Walter Hittleman, Susan OBrien, Jeane Hester, Jordan Gutterman, Robert Benjamin, Elihu Estey, etc

The 1974-75 fellowship class included the four bearded ones: Keating, Hortobagyi, Cabanillas, Barlogie. Each became one of the most prominent cancer researchers in his field (leukemia, breast, lymphoma, myeloma, respectively). The Department of Developmental Therapeutics was not only the largest, but also the most diverse in the world, akin to the Tower of Babel.

Before meeting Freireich, I was very much a person who followed established medical traditions and textbooks. I accepted medical standards and norms without questioning and believed everything that was in the booksunchallenged. At the American University of Beirut as in many other places in the world, knowledge is acquired by absorption of existing facts and information.

Freireich emphasized that all knowledge is contemporary and transient, that medical knowledge doubles every two years, and that 90% of what we hold as true in cancer research and care will be obsolete in 10 years. He taught me to think outside of the box, to always challenge concepts of leukemia care and research.

When I first arrived at MD Anderson in 1978, I started going to the DT meetings, attended by over 40-50 of the then best known cancer researchers in the world, the ones whose work and research I was reading in numerous publications (Bodey, Hersh, Gutterman, Benjamin, Hortobagyi, Keating, McCredie, Barlogie, Cabanillas, Legha, etc.).

I was still a 24-year-old who accepted established authorities, but I realized that this was Texas, the Wild West, a true Babel of cacophonies and opposing views espoused by brilliant researchers with big egos, brought together to advance the cancer cause.

Meetings would get tense, as many opinions were shared, sometimes even shouted. I would leave that dangerous environment four months later to return home to the safety of the civil war in Lebanon.

But I was already infected by the Freireich bug and returned to MD Anderson in 1981 to join his fellowship program. In 1983, I became an associate faculty member in the Leukemia Department and spent the next three to four years rounding with Freireich, McCredie, Keating and Estey almost every other month.

Each was a great teacher, and all had a great sense of humor. For me, these were the happiest, most fun memories. Freireich was a great raconteur, and I learned much through his humor.

Freireich, Michael Keating, and Hagop Kantarjian at a 1985 meeting in Sicily Source: Hagop Kantarjian

The so called Freireichs Laws were often funny, and he delivered them, as he did many of his conversations, with the perfect pitch and timing of a great comedian, while they still carried an unparalleled depth of wisdom and knowledge.

Discussing a famous statement attributed to Hippocrates, First do no harm, Freireich pointed out in his Karnofsky lecture that Primum non nocere fails to do the possible and the necessary (Law number 5; physicians creed).

Certainly, any lay person is qualified to do no harm. The physicians admonition must clearly bedo what can possibly be done and, perhaps more important, do that which is necessary.

Law number 1 (clinical investigators creed): The primary beneficiary of clinical research is the patient participating in that research.

Law number 2 (optimists creed): Always be prepared for success. Failure creates problems.

Law number 7 (regulators creed): The general solution to a specific problem will soon become a specific problem requiring a general solution.

Law number 17: Dont let toxicity interfere with success. Figure out a way to avoid it The worst toxicity is progressive cancer.

Another unnumbered law: Any research not worth doing is not worth doing well.

Freireichs laws in the treatment of sarcomas

Clinical Investigators Creed: The primary beneficiary of clinical research is the patient participating in that research.

Optimists Creed: Always be prepared for success. Failure creates problems.

The Academic Question: If we must experiment on patients to obtain medical information, then we had best do without that information.

Statisticians Creed: The best therapeutic research gives the best results.

Physicians Creed: Primum Non Nocere fails to do the possible and the necessary.

Health Service Delivery Creed: The best care (service) is clinical research. Alternate form: the best clinical research offers the patient the best possible care.

Freireich loomed over our lives. On our best days, we could only wish to be what Freireich was on any one of his average days.

Still, because of his dominating personality, strong opinions and unfiltered counsel, the world of Freireich was divided into two kinds of people: Those who loved him unconditionally and those who resented him unconditionally. Yet, even in their resentment, they admired him, respected him and continued to follow his research.

Still, because of the clashes with the cancer establishment, he never received his full due. He was the first leukemia researcher ever and the first to cure leukemia, yet he never received any of the American Society of Hematology awards. He was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, but then, greatness is not measured in awards.

Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel, the two greatest French poets ever, and Van Morrison were never awarded the Nobel in literature (although Bob Dylan finally was). And neither were Philip Roth or Salman Rushdie (yet).

But as controversial as Freireich was in leukemia and cancer, he was extremely respectful of the opinions of individuals he loved.

Freireich, Michael Keating, and Hagop Kantarjian at a 1985 meeting in Sicily Source: Hagop Kantarjian

As an example, he and I were on far opposite ends of the political spectrumIll let you guess which endsbut we never had a cross word about this.

Yes, he was larger than life, bombastic, abrasive, and politically incorrect at times. He was good at ruffling feathers, but he also had a sense of humor in abundance and a magnetism so irresistible that he made everyone who worked with him feel like they were the most important and favorite person to him.

If you asked the hundreds of researchers who worked with Freireich, each would categorically state that they were his favorite and they are carrying the torch of his legacy. And we all are.

Freireich always said, We are going to cure all the leukemias in my lifetime.

Initially, it was thought of as a pipe dream. When he started, none of the leukemias were curable. When I joined the MD Anderson faculty in 1981, only 20% of acute leukemias were cured, but none of the chronic leukemia were.

By 2018, all the chronic leukemiasCML and CLLhad become functionally or molecularly curable, and the cure rate of acute leukemia had reached more than 60-70%. We started to think his prophecy might actually be realized in his lifetime.

When I last saw him, in January 2021, over a span of a 30-minute conversation, he asked me three times, Are you happy? I replied each time in the affirmative.

Of course, I was sad in the moment, but to have spent 40 years with Freireich has made my life on this Earth very much worthwhile. I am the happiest person here because of him. Rest in peace, dearest friend of mine and of many others.

Your prophecy will come true very soon.

The author is professor and chairman,

Department of Leukemia,

Samsung Distinguished University Chair in Cancer Medicine,

MD Anderson Cancer Center

The rest is here:
Ode to J - The Cancer Letter

Theyre mostly politically incorrect and easy targets, so fraternities are getting blamed for COVID outbreaks on college campuses that are open. Should they be?

In todays Martin Center article, NC State student Megan Zogby argues that Greek groups are getting a bum rap.

She writes:

Some less-than-responsible students in fraternities and sororities have caused outbreaks, but so have non-Greek students throwing and attending parties. University officials, sometimes reluctant to enforce COVID-19 guidelines, havent lived up to their responsibility of enforcing rules to keep students and staff safe. Administrators cant point fingers at students without acknowledging their own failures to limit outbreaks.

Actually, housing for students in fraternities and sororities is less dense and therefore students there are somewhat less at risk than elsewhere, Zogby notes.

She concludes, If university officials are serious about their commitment to public health and safety, they need to consistently enforce rules and provide accurate information. That includes making hard decisions, even when it could hurt their budget.

Read more:
Are Fraternities to Blame for COVID on Campuses? - National Review

Its politically incorrect but true: Ehud Olmert is responsible for the haredi riots, and the radical Squad is responsible for the Capitol Hill invasion, just as Donald Trump was responsible for the Black Lives Matter riots.

Admittedly, the word partially should sit in front of the word responsible. But when historians assess our era, they will cross such wires insightfully. As dot-connectors deputized to reject partisan groupthink, they will link verbal violence with mob violence, spreading blame broadly. It makes sense. Shouldnt they and we hold those responsible for irresponsible rhetoric at least partially responsible?

Morally and legally, fouling the atmosphere isnt as bad as committing foul crimes. And false equivalences are no better than partisan blinders. But the historical docket is less forgiving than courts of law: quicker to convict, while sentencing only to eternal damnation, not actual incarceration.

There should be a self-imposed moratorium on trash-talking most people when they first die. We used to call it decency or menschlichkeit. Why upset this admittedly controversial but generous mans family?

To make the point crassly, its fair to snipe that Olmerts self-righteousness might be easier to take if he hadnt spent 16 months in the slammer. Today, he can defend himself. I would not make that jab upon his death, because it might hurt his family to read those words at that sensitive time.

Similarly, in the US, its obviously easier to see how overheated left-wing rhetoric fueled the summer riots that killed more than 26 and destroyed thousands of businesses, while blaming right-wing Trumpian hooligans for the Capitol invasion. Crossing wires emphasizes the wider problem, diffusing guilt widely despite many peoples certitude that their side is blameless and their opponents are evil.

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IN 1895, the French intellectual Gustave Le Bon published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon identified three keys to mob psychology: anonymity, contagion and suggestibility. Those elements he teased out 125 years ago to describe rioting masses explain todays virtual mass Internet bullying, too.

I know perfectly nice people who post perfectly awful posts online emboldened by anonymity, joining the pile-on, validated by everyone elses harshness. Note how many of Trumps Capitol Hill hooligans reject masks to fight coronavirus but hid behind masks to assail democracy.

Recently, I wrote a controversial article endorsing Trumps Senate conviction but suggesting Joe Biden pardon him as a healing gesture. The abuse I received was predictable and personal. When I responded to some attackers respectfully but unapologetically most continued to disagree but de-escalated. Sorry, I was perhaps caught in the moment, one wrote.

This is why Le Bon taught: The power of crowds is only to destroy.

The masses have never thirsted after truth, he warned. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master....

In crowds, it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated, he realized. Why? Because a crowd thinks in images, making it intolerant because the shorthand of images forces everyone to deal in absolutes. After all, The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.

Le Bon expected scholars to destroy chimeras partisan illusions, certitudes and monsters while politicians make use of them, proving that fanatics and the hallucinated create history.

Alas, our politics, our media, our social media, even todays hyper-politicized professors, favor the fanatics and the hallucinated, those mobilized by simplistic images and cemented in certitude. They are nevertheless the shrill minority. We, the silenced majority, are too passive: wringing our hands, furrowing our brows, letting the bullies reign.

WE MUST mobilize. Just as so many of us take responsibility for the environment by reducing our carbon footprints recycling, going green, reusing shopping bags believing our little household can make a difference in a world of big polluters, try reducing your partisan toxic carbon footprint. Every reduction helps.

First, avoid simplicity, seek complexity. When politics seems so black-and-white, when you cant conceive of anything good about their leader or anything bad about yours, check your arrogance. Most political positions are compromises, hedges; if its all black-and-white without any gray think self-critically.

Second, resist joining the cancel culture against rivals while creating a call-out culture among your allies. Confront your sides bullies. Spend more time policing your own than others, not to enforce unanimity but to acknowledge complexity and cultivate decency.

And third, find people in your community who voted the wrong way, then dont just talk to them but listen to them, generously. Try understanding their perspective, bringing humble pie to the conversation, not the usual red meat. A little humility, a little less certitude, goes far.

Ultimately: individuals resist crowds; the idiosyncratic counters fanatics, and mature democrats see the realists three-dimensional mosaic, not the hallucinators one-dimensional blueprint.

My father, Bernard Dov Troy, raised us on pitgamim, lovely Jewish aphorisms. He particularly loves: Who are wise? Those who learn from everyone! Too many today learn only from those who agree with them. Lets master this rabbinic teaching to improve politics, culture, society, democracy, while saving our souls and improving our moods.

The writer is a distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University and the author of nine books on American history and three on Zionism. His book Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People, coauthored with Natan Sharansky, was just published by PublicAffairs of Hachette.

Excerpt from:
Amid political riots, we need to learn from other points of view -opinion - The Jerusalem Post