KLAVAN: Leftists Hate ‘Joker’ Because Joker Is The Left – The Daily Wire

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This review contains no spoilers.

Theres been a lot of digital ink spilled over the new film Joker, but whats fascinating to me about it is how much of what the critics said is simply absurd. To be sure, artistic works, like life itself, are open to interpretation, but in both cases works and life youve got to stick to the facts to get at the truth.

Joker is, for all intents and purposes, a comic book remake of the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. Its the story of a troubled loners descent into violence. I should say up front that I dont like comic book movies very much and I didnt like Taxi Driver very much, so I wasnt the films most sympathetic audience. That said, I found Joker stylish, watchable, and well-done with some enriching plot ambiguities. I also found it tonally monotonous and overly derivative.

But the panic the film set off among leftist critics may be the most interesting thing about the movie. To be sure, the films talented director Todd Phillips taunted the leftist Outrage Beast when he gave an interview criticizing the humorlessness of woke culture. The left responded by being humorlessly woke, proving the guys point. After that, Phillips had a target on his back.

But it was the lefts political reaction to the movie itself that was so strangely (or maybe not so strangely) off base. Its an insidious validation of the white-male resentment that helped bring President Donald Trump to power, said Jeff Yang of CNN. Anti-Trumper Max Boot wrote a WaPo piece also linking Joker to Trump and headlined, Joker nails the nihilism and opportunism of populist firebrands.

And in a thoroughly unhinged rant, Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film a blatant and brazen distortion of the most substantial historical elements at which it winks. Joker is the comic-book Green Book, twisting history for the sake of a yarn.

That last review really is the giveaway. Because, with some caveats (the movie doesnt deal with race at all), the films historical perspective is pretty damned accurate. And that perspective condemns the left where it stands.

No matter how you feel about the movies protagonist, the one thing Joker is not is a Trump voter. Hes a leftist: a self-pitying victim; a hater of the rich; a man who takes no responsibility for his own actions but instead blames the unfairness of society. In fact, all in all, the movie is a thoroughly justifiable satire of leftist talking points. It is not like the excellent Dark Knight trilogy a philosophical kick in the groin to leftism in general. But it does hold the mirror up to leftist culture and the image in the glass is not pretty.

The Gotham of the movie is late 1970s New York, a toilet of pornography and violence. I lived there. I remember it. It was, like todays crap-strewn and disintegrating San Francisco, a city the left made. A city that put the tender loving care of criminals above the safety of decent citizens. A city that would not get the homeless off its streets. A city that would not restrict or condemn pornography and prostitution on its main thoroughfares. Its lawmen were handcuffed by left-wing Supreme Court decisions that made it harder to investigate and prosecute the bad guys. And journalists were silenced by racial sensitivity because a lot of the people committing the crimes were black and no one wanted to seem racist.

So the city went to hell. Leftist hell.

Thats where Joker takes place: Leftist hell. And because Gothams left-wing government does not really care about treating real problems like mental illness, Joker goes nuts.

The movie does depict the rich as insensitive louts. If anyone can be said to represent Donald Trump in the film, its millionaire Thomas Wayne, Batmans father. But the peoples inchoate rage and hatred against the wealthy literally turn them into a mob of clowns. And if mob of clowns is not a metaphor for todays left, I dont know what is.

No wonder the leftist critics feared this film. Its a reminder of who leftists are and what they do when you give them power. You can watch it and know everything you need to know about them and its cheaper and safer than a trip to San Francisco.

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KLAVAN: Leftists Hate 'Joker' Because Joker Is The Left - The Daily Wire

Henry Louis Gates Talks Reconstruction To Alt-Right, Trump And Voter Suppression – WFAE

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WFAE's Gwendolyn Glenn talks race, Reconstruction, voting and more with award-winning author and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates.

Henry Louis Gates, a renowned and award-winning filmmaker, author of two dozen books, a professor and director of African American studies at Harvard University, has written about race in America. He explores the Civil War, Reconstruction to Jim Crow, the civil rights movement and the state of race relations today.

Gates spoke at UNC Charlotte Tuesday for the schools 2019 Chancellor Speaker Series and at the uptown campus to school donors and city leaders. WFAE's "All Things Considered" host, Gwendolyn Glenn, caught up with him to talk about race, voting, economics and other issues.

Gwendolyn Glenn: Let's talk about the message that you want to leave people with. You'll be talking with students, faculty from UNC Charlotte and also a lot of city leaders here in Charlotte. What's the message you want to leave today?

Henry Louis Gates: It's very important for people to understand the history of Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War and its rollback because it is a precursor to the period that we're experiencing today. Between 1870 and 1877, 2,000 black men were elected to public office, including Chris Rock's great-great-grandfather, who was elected to the House of Delegates in South Carolina. But within a few years, poof all that disappeared.

Glenn: And I was going to ask you about that because you talk about that in your book and I think in an interview I heard you compare that roll back after Reconstruction to Jim Crow and on to what's happening now with the Trump administration and that rollback.

Gates: Reconstruction was 12 years of unprecedented black freedom followed by an alt-right rollback. And we're living through a period of eight years of a beautiful, brilliant, black family in the White House. A brilliant black president followed by an alt-right rollback. So the lesson of Reconstruction is that rights that we think are permanent, the right to vote, birthright citizenship, and the right of a woman to determine the fate of her own body. We think that these are inviolable. But they're not they're subject to the interpretation of the courts and sometimes the executive orders and that is the crisis that we're facing today. So what happened in Reconstruction can happen again. The most important way, the most devastating way that Reconstruction was rolled back was through voter suppression.

Glenn: And looking at today when you hear charges of voter suppression even right here in North Carolina you hear people talking about how laws are being changed. Compare that to today?

Gates: We see voter suppression happening throughout this country but particularly where there are strong black voting blocs in North Carolina and in other states. And we have to be on guard. We have to fight back and we have to register black people and like-minded people to vote.

Glenn: Well, Charlotte has had issues like that where you have had a lot of distrust by African Americans of the police department. You have economic gaps between the races and you've had a lot of unrest surrounding fatal police shootings, white police officers and black victims. How does Charlotte compare to the rest of the country? Does it sound like most cities large cities like this? How does it compare?

Gates: I'm not an expert on Charlotte or black-white race relations or relationships between the community and the police but I know that throughout the country obviously anyone who's watched the news knows that for the last several years and much longer, there have been basic problems between the police and the black community.

I don't think it's only a racial thing. I think it's a class thing as well. I think that poor people are disenfranchised, poor people across the board feel alienated from all representatives of the power structure, the police included. And I think that one of the most important developments has been having police officers wear video cameras and also the fact that the people being stopped by the police have smartphones and are recording their interaction.

Glenn: Are you optimistic about common ground and also you dedicated your book to the Emanuel Nine. Why was that important to you?

Gates: Well, I did one of the last interviews with Reverend Clementa Pinckney for my series Many Rivers To Cross, which was 500 years of African American history. And I liked him very, very much and I admired him. And right now I'm filming a series on the history the black church. And Mother Emanuel plays a pivotal role both during slavery because it was the site of the plot of a famous slave rebellion in Charleston then it was shut down in 1832 and then reopened in 1865.

So when I heard that Reverend Pinckney and the other eight innocents at Mother Emanuel had been killed it just tore me up because I'd been there, I'd filmed there, I knew him. But if you would have asked me cold...if you had said a terrible racial tragedy happened in Charleston at a black church where do you think it was? I would have said Mother Emanuel because it was a symbol of black freedom. It was a symbol of black resistance during slavery and a symbol of black freedom during Reconstruction.

Glenn: Well, thank you very much.

Gates: Thank you.

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Henry Louis Gates Talks Reconstruction To Alt-Right, Trump And Voter Suppression - WFAE

Shallow Woke-Scolding Won’t Save White Boys From the Alt-Right – Patheos

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In a recent article, the newspaper formerly known as the New York Times offers an eye-catching headline: Racists Are Recruiting. Watch Your White Sons. The image is an inspired piece of pop art: a blond-haired, gangly boy disappearing into a giant iPhone made of writhing snakes. One shoe is still outside the phone, the shoelaces untied. The tag on his shirt sticks out against his neck. Its a perfect visual encapsulation of vulnerability entrapped by evil.

The author, Joanna Schroeder, is a mommy blogger with bylines at the Huffington Post and other outlets who frequently writes about raising sons. In recent months, she has become especially vocal about the alt-right, white nationalist gamer culture, and the vulnerability of boys to online Nazi recruitment. This article is a summary of what shes learned and wants to pass on to other moms like her.

So far, so good. Alt-right online culture is indeed toxic, callous and dangerous, and it is indeed perilously easy these days for disillusioned young men to fall down a rabbit hole and wander into some very dark places. Ive spent years warning friends to educate themselves and take the alt-right phenomenon seriously, learning to recognize the kinds of memes and linguistic tells that typify the right-wing fringe. When young people no longer get what they need from the mainstream, they will wander to the edges, and there they will encounter the sort of ideological static cling that makes for very strange bedfellows. I speak from experience as someone who has been politically homeless for my entire adult life.

All of which is to say, we could use a smart, thoughtful op-ed clearly outlining what the alt-right actually is, the actual dangers it poses to our boys, and the actual best ways for parents to become informed and preempt its influence.

Unfortunately, Ms. Schroeders piece is not that op-ed.

Schroeder bursts out of the gate with what is meant to be a darkly ominous opening anecdote about a car ride with her sons. She overhears them in the back seat with friends crowing Triggered! over a meme on their phones, whereupon she tells us with an absolutely straight face, I almost lost control of the car. If the reader here begins to wonder whether Ms. Schroeder is quite up to the task of calmly navigating land transportation, the rest of the article wont set his mind at rest.

In another anecdote, delivered in ponderous blow-by-blow, she recalls catching a Hitler meme on her sons phone out of the corner of her eye and snatching it to have a closer look: Hold on a minute. Was that Hitler? I have been unable to track down the original meme, but if Ms. Schroeders interpretation is accurate, the gist of it seems to be the kind of elaborately unsavory joke that can in fact find its ultimate origins in alt-right troll dens. As Schroeder tells the story, her son hadnt even been aware of the meaning of the meme and liked it assuming it was innocuous.

It may be worth interjecting here that alt-right memery can indeed turn very ugly very fast, uglier even than the rather clumsily veiled meme Ms. Schroeder seems to be describing. In general outline, the idea of noting the earmarks of an alt-right meme and teaching your son to practice caution isnt unreasonable. Dramatically snatching away your sons phone the moment an image of Hitler flickers on the screen, then writing a New York Times op-ed advertising for the whole world that he accidentally liked the wrong kind of meme on Instagram: slightly less reasonable.

It would be far more constructive for Schroeder to introduce her sons to figures like David French and Ben Shapiro, who have been on the receiving end of alt-right hate mail. There was, for instance, the ugly incident when alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted a picture of a black baby at Shapiro upon the birth of his son. (This is part of a running viciously racist meme involving what black men might do to white mens wives.)

However, Ms. Schroeder is apparently incapable of computing the idea that the alt-right wouldnt be Ben Shapiros biggest fans. While rattling off her list of extremist media, she careens breathlessly from 4chan to PragerU to The Daily Stormer to Jordan Peterson, barely pausing to note that some of these things might not be exactly like some of these other things.

But of course, such an article wouldnt be complete without an obligatory Jordan Peterson reference. While conceding that Peterson and other IDW figures are more mainstream, Schroeder casually wedges the clinical psychologist in between paragraphs about white supremacist outlets and gaming forums. She writes that Petersons conservative perspectives on feminism and gender are very popular among young men and often are a path to more extreme content andideologies.

This, from the advice columnist who offers tips on ethical sexting and writes open letters to her sons telling them that love and sex neednt have anything to do with each other, or that she will be proud if they can become cool enough to bed multiple girls (or boys). Meanwhile, Jordan Peterson tells boys that casual sex is an oxymoron and offers practical advice on how to quit pornography, something Schroeder should appreciate. Here he is chatting with a fan who came to a healthier understanding of sex and sexuality by taking Petersons wisdom to heart. A clinical psychologist right in my own town also shared a story with me about a young man who was the archetypal aggressively foul-mouthed, female-objectifying, porn-addicted high school jock, until he encountered Peterson. The difference before and after, she said, was as night to day.

I also note that in the course of her research, Schroeder found an author who conjectures that young men are drawn to toxic online communities because they want to feel as if theyre part of a heroic struggle. All the more reason why she should be a fan of someone like Jordan Peterson, who also understands this deep need in young men but encourages them to channel it towards personal improvement, costly relational investment (like maybe marrying the girlfriend Ms. Schroeder would say they could just go on bedding without marriage if they feel like it), and taking on family and community responsibility. Yes I know, Im hopelessly naive.

But clearly, Ms. Schroeder doesnt need my advice. Her game plan is all mapped out. In a column entitled 18 Ways to Raise Feminist Boys, Schroeder suggests such helpful tips as buying dollies for your boy toddler, or playing house and asking him if hed like to be the mommy. She has guides to media consumption too, including lists of female-centric book and TV series to make sure your boys read/watch, plus invaluable tips on how to handle old media (Have your teens brainstorm the ways in which James Bond shouldve shown more respect).

Ms. Schroeder also shares her secret sauce for deconstructing terms like snowflake. Whos more of a snowflake, she asks her son with relish, the person who wants people to stop using racial slurs and mocking of gay people, or someone who complains about the phrase Happy Holidays at Christmastime? (A bit that would no doubt have been very cutting-edge in 1991.)

She also has a game plan for teaching her sons how to think about race, particularly recommending Shelly Tochluks Witnessing Whiteness as a how-to guide. One blurber gives this taste of the book: Shelly Tochluk brings to light the most important book about race in a generation. Is whiteness bad in itself? When is it just part of the social, historical and cultural legacy of a people? And what is the prison/poison that this legacy bequeaths us? Tochluk herself informs her readers that Our first step is to identify the ways our whiteness emerges. Our first step is to become witnesses to our whiteness. (p. xvii)

If Ms. Schroeder sincerely believes any of this is going to have any measurable, helpful, useful effect on her white sons, I dont know what to tell her. Truly, I dont.

Some might say I am being too harsh with someone who, for all her foolish and ineffectual finger-wagging, at the end of the day is still a mom of boys who is genuinely scared of at least some things she should be scared of. I confess, the sort of person who instructs teenage boys that their sex lives and their love lives can run on parallel tracks does not awaken my better angels. But the tiny grain of truth buried in Schroeders smarmy fluff is that there is a real threat on the right-wing fringe that can have an attraction for boys and young men who are bored, aimless, and looking for a transgressive thrill.

Ironically, her brand of woke-scolding could not have been better calculated to put off the sort of young man who already feels he is being constantly scolded and doesnt understand why. In other words, exactly the sort who wanders into alt-right Internet forums. But by sweeping all non-conforming right-of-center commentary outside the Overton window with one grand gesture, Schroeder cuts them off from the antidote. In fact, she should be so lucky if she catches her sons watching a Jordan Peterson lecture on YouTube. They might have actually learned something about manhood. They might have actually learned something about human nature. They might have learned something about what makes evil men do evil things. And in the process, they might have learned something about their own hearts.

But hey, at least shell make sure they learn about ethical sexting. So theres that.

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Shallow Woke-Scolding Won't Save White Boys From the Alt-Right - Patheos

In Sri Lanka, Cartoonists Take on the Alt-Right – Fair Observer

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It has been traditionally accepted in modern societiesthat the media play a key role in the way they function. Journalists counteractthe abuses of power by governments, frame political issues and are implicitlyrecognized as being part of the political system with a remarkable amount of socialinfluence.

In countries where the political systems are broken, and where journalism can often carry a risk to ones life, the role of journalists becomes even more critical. They become witnesses against oppression who flag the voices of the unheard, bringing to light facts and events that either fall below the radar or are purposely suppressed. In 2018, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) expressed concern about media safety in Sri Lanka and asked all social actors to defend the freedom and independence of the press, as well as to protect journalists rights. In a 25-year period, from 1990 to 2015, 32 journalists have been killed on the island according to data by the IFJ.

This is not the complete picture, however. Some citizens, who have disappeared over the years, are not on the list of the official victims. There is the case of cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda who, after phoning his wife, never reached home on January 24, 2010. Eknaligoda frequently used his pen to depict corruption, human rights abuses and the erosion of democracy in Sri Lanka. Almost a decade on, he is still missing, while his case remains open. His wife, Sandya, has been restlessly fighting for answers despite death threats, abuse and harassment she and her children have faced over the years.

The genre of political cartoons, which includes satireand caricatures, usually conveys editorial commentary on politics andpoliticians, as well as current events, and plays a vital role in theconstruction of the political discourse in society. Political cartoons aresymbolic illustrations that can also become powerful communicative weapons. Theyare hugely efficient at transmitting messages and do so in the most economicalway. Few words are needed, often coated in witty humor and usually making useof hyperbole and satire in order to question authority and probe socialproblems.

To some extent, cartoonists nowadays are like modern jesters, like those in the Middle Ages who were allowed to tell the truth to the king without risking their heads being chopped off. The big difference, however, is that cartoonists, unlike those merrymen of yore, are not safe. Many have been threatened and even killed for being considered offensive, such as those who lost their lives in the 2015 attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Undeterred, Sri Lankas cartoonists have taken on the extremists flaming inter-ethnic conflict on the island.

Even though there is no far-right movement as such in Sri Lanka, according to Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, a Sri Lankan diplomat and academic, what is rising across the country is a type of religious alt-right movement, with the distinctive markers that define its core constituency and its social consciousness. Some of the markers that make the Sri Lankan alt-right unique, in his opinion, are the role of the clergy/ex-military interface, the dominant ideology, and the mentality and dynamics within the clergy. Assuming a defensive attitude, these extremists are constantly looking for and finding threats to the Sinhala-Buddhist identity, mainly in the form of Sri Lankas multi-ethnic and multi-religious community.

Focusing on the post-civil war era, after 2009, minorities in Sri Lanka have not enjoyed a peaceful coexistence with the Buddhist majority. The new preferred target has been the Muslim community that makes up barely 9% of the islands population. Systematic attacks against Muslims have become a constant, with several high casualty incidences recorded in the cities of Aluthgama in 2014, Gintota in 2017 and Digana in 2018. In some of these cases, violence was instigated by the speeches delivered by the ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks, who have acted with impunity under the government of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and now under President Maithripala Sirisena. This ethno-religious, ultra-nationalist alt-right in Sri Lanka has been shaping the agenda of both the previous and the current administrations.

As Professor Javadeya Uyangoda, a constitutional expert and political scientist, suggests, there is a consolidation of a hard right-wing alternative to a weak and shaky democratic regime option, represented by groups of extremist Buddhist monks. One such group is the Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force), which organizes anti-Muslim actions, both online and offline. It has initiated boycotts of Muslim companies and halal products, opposes Muslim womens clothes, stages protests outside Muslim-owned retail outlets and the Embassy of Bangladesh in Colombo, spreading hate speech in public meetings and on social media. The group have also expressed a wish to see a Hitler-type military ruler come to power in the elections scheduled for later this year.

In this political environment, cartoonists become central voices to call out those abuses of power. Their real social function, equivalent to that of journalists, may pass unnoticed by the average reader. In this sense, cartoonists are activists vital for society but threatening for the authorities, since they can easily reach the common man who may not have the time or the capacity to read lengthy articles filled with convoluted political jargon.

Sri Lanka has always had a strong tradition of political cartoons, but currently the genre seems more robust than ever. Among the best-known artists working today are Awantha Artigala, Gihan de Chickera, Dasa Hapuwalana, Sajith Bandara and R.C. Pradeep. Their daily cartoons are easy to consume and direct in the brutality they betray.

Sri Lankan cartoonists have been speaking up against extremism and racism backed by the alt-right, the unconstitutional measures adopted by the government, the periodic bans on social media following outbreaks of ethnic conflict and the wave of Islamophobia that arose after the devastating Easter Sunday attacks earlier this year. They have never lowered their voices, brandishing their pens together with their political conscience and bravery as their only weapons.

Political cartoons are a symptom of a healthy society. Together with the political opposition, members of civil society, activists and journalists, cartoonists are essential actors in democratic and non-democratic spaces. Lets hope that one day, Sri Lankan cartoonists will be able to satirize peaceful and positive events in their homeland.

*[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Rightis a partner institution ofFair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

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In Sri Lanka, Cartoonists Take on the Alt-Right - Fair Observer

Louis Theroux: The world has changed a lot since I started making my programmes – BreakingNews.ie

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With the rise of Donald Trump and the alt right in the US, TV star Louis Theroux does not think he could have made his controversial documentary on American neo-Nazis now.

The broadcaster said he would have to think very carefully about making it today because he would not want to be seen as popularising hate.

He made his Louis And The Nazis documentary in 2003, interviewing several white supremacists and attending skinhead rallies, and when it was broadcast it was described by critics as sinister and unsettling.

Im on board with the whole idea that platforming is something that should be thought through carefully

Theroux said that now, with the rise of the alt right and extreme views becoming more mainstream, he would have to consider carefully whether he was giving these people a platform.

Im on board with the whole idea that platforming is something that should be thought through carefully, he said.

The world has changed a lot since I started making my programmes and a lot of thought went into how we made them.

Back in the days of when I made Louis And The Nazis, which is as far down the road I have gone with that, I spent days, if not a couple of weeks, with basically card-carrying national socialists people who had the most extreme version of Nazism as you can imagine.

I think the reason I felt it was OK was that it was so far outside the window of acceptable discourse that it was verging on pathology.

When you get that extreme it almost provides a certain safety there is almost no danger of anyone seeing it and thinking that looks sensible.

You are in danger of lending credence to or popularising hate and, as a result, I have been very wary of doing that

If they had been closer to the mainstream you might have imagined we are giving them some sort of currency. It was so palpably outlandish, it felt there was a reason to do it.

In this day and age, when you have members of the alt right who, in some cases, have crypto-fascist views or coded racist views and some not-so-coded racist views, and there is a trickle up or trickle down to the White House, suddenly you are in a different space.

You are in danger of lending credence to or popularising hate and, as a result, I have been very wary of doing that.

Theroux, who was speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, was asked whether he could have made Louis And The Nazis today.

I think youd have to think it through, I think it really depends, he said.

I tend to think it also depends on the balance of the programmes I am making.

I make three or four in a given year and I think it would need to be off-set and wed have to think why we are making it. Is there a compelling reason?

The 49-year-old has recently published his autobiography titled Gotta Get Theroux This, of which six chapters are focused on his relationship with Jimmy Savile, who had featured in one of his films.

For a while I thought Id write a book about Jimmy Savile, Theroux said.Six chapters of Louis Therouxs autobiography focus on his relationship with Jimmy Savile (PA)

In the end it was an extraordinary thing to live through. It was very stressful, and I felt it was a weird education in human nature, in both my successes and failures.

I grew to slightly like him, I quite liked him and spent time with him and regarded him in a friendly way.

I knew there was a dimension to his life that I didnt fully understand, I genuinely didnt think that was likely to be what it turned out to be, which was that he was prolific serial paedophile and sex offender.

There was guilt because, when he was unmasked, a part of me to begin with thought Im not sure that all could be true. In other words, it took a while to wrap my arms around the scale of how much he had done and then I had to adapt myself to that.

Then there was a part of the process of a weird feeling of almost feeling a guilt I didnt need to feel.

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Louis Theroux: The world has changed a lot since I started making my programmes - BreakingNews.ie

Dad of Sandy Hook victim wins $450K suit against conspiracy theorist – New York Post

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The father of a boy killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting has been awarded $450,000 in a lawsuit against a conspiracy theorist who claimed the massacre never happened.

Leonard Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, was the youngest of 26 killed in the Connecticut slaughter, successfully sued the authors of Nobody Died at Sandy Hook for claiming he faked copies of his sons death certificate.

The book accused him of being a central part of a conspiracy staged by the Obama administration to enforce tighter gun restrictions. Pozners attorney, Genevieve Zimmerman, called the conspiracy alt-right opium that went around the internet like a virus.

James Fetzer, a retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor, was ordered Tuesday to pay $450,000 by the Wisconsin jury that took almost four hours to decide the amount.

AP

Pozner thanked the Dane County jury for recognizing the pain and terror that Mr. Fetzer has purposefully inflicted on me and on other victims of these horrific mass casualty events, according to the the Wisconsin State Journal.

Mr. Fetzer has the right to believe that Sandy Hook never happened, he said, according to the report. He has the right to express his ignorance.

This award, however, further illustrates the difference between the right of people like Mr. Fetzer to be wrong and the right of victims like myself and my child to be free from defamation, free from harassment and free from the intentional infliction of terror.

Fetzer, who now lives in Wisconsin, called the damages absurd and said he would appeal.

The books co-author, Mike Palacek, reached a settlement with Pozner last month. The terms were never disclosed.

Pozner is among a group of Sandy Hook parents whose defamation case against right-wing conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones is pending, the State Journal reported.

With Post wires

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Dad of Sandy Hook victim wins $450K suit against conspiracy theorist - New York Post

‘Big Mouth’ Mouths Off To Anti-Semites In Its Third Season – Forward

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The new season of Netflixs Big Mouth, the subversive-in-the-extreme sex-ed show about middle schoolers animated adventures in puberty, features the following: The ghost of Harry Houdini; a mist of vape smoke blown into the shape of a Magen David; Neo-Nazis and falsely philo-Semitic Evangelicals; a Passover episode involving incest; a bachelorette party game where you pin Lenny Kravitzs manhood onto his thigh; a discussion of Liev Schreibers net worth; a distinction drawn between Fox News Jews and NPR Jews; Carol Kane as a spirit called The Menopause Banshee; a Michael Douglas wig used in a musical adaptation of Barry Levinsons 1994 film Disclosure.

All this to say, this season, like the seasons before, has a lot of Jewish content. And this consistency is, make no mistake, an act of defiance on the part of the showrunners.

Like a long line of Jews before them, creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg who both, no surprise, developed their comedic sensibilities at a Solomon Schechter school in Westchester County, New York Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, have been smeared for speaking about sex in all its grody glory. Alt-Right corners of the internet see Big Mouth, with its frank libidinal charge, forward-thinking ideas and sexual situations involving pubescent characters (all voiced by adults) as a sign of social decay brought to you by the usual cabal of Hollywood Heebs. Right-wing conspiracy website The Goldwater ran the headline Jewish Netflix Series Big Mouth Promotes Pedophilia, Homosexuality, Child Masturbation. A YouTube video took pains to connect Kroll, his show and Harvey Weinstein in a web of degeneracy. (YouTube comments are best avoided for ones mental health.)

The response to these charges is unequivocal. In Episode 2, one of the protagonists, Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney), attends a mens rights activist meeting that he soon learns is also a neo-Nazi event. The speaker there claims that womens brains are smaller than mens and goes on to allege that his wifes Jew lawyer said she left him for a black doctor because he beat up his gay neighbor.

When he calls for a Patriarchal ethnostate of pure, European blood, Andrews fascist sense starts tingling: Okay, I get it now. Theyre Nazis.

Next thing you know, Maury the hormone monster (Kroll), Andrews Satyr-like guardian angel, appears dressed like Shoshana from Inglorious Basterds, ready to blow up the hotel convention space that the white supremacists had booked for the night.

In another, later, rebuttal to the Proud Boy set, Andrews father, Marty (Richard Kind), can be heard objecting to the sperm and menarche-themed opening credits saying, The Neo-Nazi trolls on YouTube are right this show is disgusting! But, the subject of that episode, a trip to Florida where Nick Birch (also Kroll) and Andrew observe a Seder, thumbs its nose at the haters, framing the Passover story as, in Martys words, the one time our people did the screwing.

Spun throughout the episodes, in between themes of toxic masculinity, male allyship, the vivid spectrum of human sexuality and the addictive nature of smartphones, is a thread of disquiet thrumming explicitly for American Jews.

When Jessi Glaser (Jessi Klein), goes to the home of her best friend, Matthew (Andrew Rannels), for the first time, she meets his naval officer father, who picks up on her Jewish last name. He asks if her mother is also Jewish, and when Jessi confirms this, he says he and his wife love all those traditional Jewish sitcoms, including The Nanny, Seinfeld, Mad About You, and controversially, Friends.

Its a tense moment for a cartoon about pubic hair, unwanted erections and learning how to pleasure yourself with the aid of a Price is Right-style Alpine Climber shaped like a vulva. It goes deeper, though.

In the middle of the season, Jessi confides in Matthew that his father loves her, noting, He said the rapture cant happen without me and my people. The joke is a one-off line, but speaks to the hidden engine of the show.

Under-girding all of Big Mouth, and making its onslaught of gross-out humor and taboo predicaments endurable, is an empathy for kids forced to grow up too fast. Teens are terrors, it acknowledges, but ones who are finding their footing in spite of an insanity-inducing hormonal cocktail brewing inside them. Add being Jewish to the mix, and things dont get any easier. Surrounded by Christian classmates, teachers and neighbors, they may feel like even more of a freak or geek - especially now.

The creators are aware of the online hate theyre getting. They are also surely aware that the always-online middle-schoolers of today are seeing the same thing. Internet trolls, white nationalists and the American president are giving all of Gen Z an education in dog whistle politics and anti-Semitic tropes that recall the youth of their great-grandparents.

And so, the shows approach is blunt, yet reassuring. Whether or not kids are watching the black box of viewer information hoarded by Netflix gives us no daylight there the message is for them and for their guardians. It tells adolescents that their elders know about the state of the world, and are unafraid to it broach with humor. It tells Jews who have passed the gauntlet of puberty to give kids a break, and to let them know that the comedy offensive is sometimes the best one.

But this tactic carries a tertiary lesson for those who hate us. It lets them know we see them, and they wont stop us from laughing.

PJ Grisar is the Forwards culture fellow. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.

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'Big Mouth' Mouths Off To Anti-Semites In Its Third Season - Forward

Caught out that it was Abiy Ahmed, not Greta? I can help repurpose your rant content – The Guardian

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Huge congratulations to the prime minister of Ethiopia, who has just been awarded the Nobel peace prize in Oslo, beating out competition from hotly fancied regional candidate Greta Thunberg. Abiy Ahmed was garlanded for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and for bringing an end to more than 20 years of conflict between Ethiopia and its neighbouring Eritrea. So yes, this is a victory.

But in a very real sense, far more deeply felt in the content mills of the west, it is also a tragedy. Clearly, Abiys win and Gretas loss leaves countless angry hacks, pundits, shockjocks, populists, provocateurs and alt-right conspiracists with an unexpected hole in their rant schedule. The crusaders had their already somewhat familiar backlashes against this 16-year-old climate activist all ready to go, and then this absolute dog in the manger goes and ruins it for them. How dare he?! That is the most urgent question we face today.

Youll see how easily your criticisms of Greta can be applied to Abiy or anyone else who actually cares about anything

For those guys and they are mostly guys, for whatever reason I have good news. Im here to assist! I know the one type of recycling you really commit to is content recycling. Specifically, your own. Some of you are so committed to this lifestyle that you have not actually availed yourself of any new content in years so why should this occasion be any different? Why not slightly repurpose your anti-Greta rants to suit the person who did end up winning? Simply take your exact same Greta attack lines, and substitute him and his for she and her. Honestly, youll see how easily your rabid criticisms of Greta can be applied to Abiy or, indeed, to anyone else, from anywhere, who actually cares about anything, and tries to do something about it. What follows will show you just how interchangeable your theory-of-everything arguments are. And I hope youll be grateful for the fact Ive included a leeetle pushback against each one, just to keep you sharp.

Like Greta, Abiys voice is weird. Yes, he has an Ethiopian accent. But listen: try not to be overly triggered by people who speak differently to you. If it helps, imagine Greta and Abiy are a pair of European football managers who if they finally wearied of humouring your imbecilic questions could actually insult members of your trade in at least four languages.

Like Greta, Abiy can be publicly emotional. Definitely. In June he was seen weeping at a memorial to an assassinated general. I think people generally prefer the cold, hard logic you scream into the camera on your conspiracy-zine cable show.

Like Greta, Abiy goes about things the wrong way. I feel sure youre on to something here Abiys brand of politics has been credited for its informality, energy and charisma, and you could definitely pick holes in that. One east African political expert said of Abiys rapid achievements in a single year: For Ethiopia, a country where everything has been done in a very prescriptive, slow and managed way, these changes are unprecedented. As you have done with Greta, I know youll find a way of tutting that there are established ways of doing things, and those who dont adhere to them should be treated with suspicion and barely masked fear.

Like Greta, Abiy seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself. I know, right? People have said this about Abiy. And I know Ive heard it about Greta. In fact, I think I heard it on TV, from you, one of those times you went all the way out to the Sky TV studios at half past eleven at night to do the paper review to build your media brand.

Like Greta, Abiy does not speak for working-class people. This ones always worth a punt, so wheel it out again. But to clarify, I assume were talking about working-class people where you are honking this particular observation, typically a broadcast studio in London? Its possible you need to get out a little more and most particularly, out of broadcast studios. For now, let me bring you up to speed: working-class people in Ethiopia really did care about Abiys cause, just as working-class people in, say, the Philippines, definitely care about Gretas cause, because theyre going to drown before you do. This is how we know theres no climate justice in the world.

Like Greta, Abiy just picked a right-on cause. Well, quite and the last thing you should do is wonder why it was right-on. Instead, try to get 10 minutes of talk radio out of explaining why caring about Ethiopia is very Bob Geldof. If anyone can, you can.

Like Greta, is it possible Abiy is being influenced by his parents? Both of Abiys parents are dead, but this is still an important point: its definitely possible they have had an influence on his life. Many people have parents who are or were interested in the things they are interested in, who wished them success, and basically agreed with them on several subjects. Parsing your entire output, Im guessing you dont. Are these two things maybe connected? I know you value saying the unsayable above all, so in that spirit youd support me asking: is it possible your parents openly dislike you? Or maybe secretly do?

Like Greta, shouldnt Abiy be in school? Not really. Im afraid the Ethiopian prime minister is 43, so this is the one point I think youre going to struggle to upcycle. Still, Im sure you could imply heavily that he has an awful lot to learn. We all have and seemingly from you. As long as asking why someone isnt in school counts as you being in work, the entire planet should simply thank you for your service.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Elizabeth Warren is trying to be even tougher on China than Trump, says Steve Bannon – CNBC

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren is positioning herself to be tougher on China that President Donald Trump, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told CNBC on Friday.

"She's trying to get to the right of President Trump," said Bannon, who helped Trump win the White House in 2016 and influenced the early months of the administration.

"If you look at Elizabeth Warren, some of the Democrats, they're trying to get to the right of Trump on China."

Warren in late July released what she called an "economic patriotism" agenda, which outlined her approach on China. "We've let China get away with the suppression of pay and labor rights, poor environmental protections, and years of currency manipulation," Warren wrote in her blog post.

Bannon, who formerly ran the Breitbart News far-right media outlet, has said a key focus in the presidential election will be China. Candidates who pressure Beijing and show they can navigate a trade deal between the world's two largest economies will do better, the longtime critic of China added.

Warren is the only viable Democratic candidate in play who is willing and able to take on China, Bannon said in the interview on "Squawk Box," arguing that former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign is on the decline.

Extreme talk from Warren on China, coupled with her wealth-taxing proposals, could well lead to a centrist challenger joining the race, Bannon speculated. He reiterated his belief that Hillary Clinton or former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman Mike Bloomberg will challenge Warren. Bloomberg and Clinton have repeatedly said they do not plan on launching 2020 campaigns.

Bannon predicted Biden, who has seen his frontrunner status dwindle as Warren surges, will drop out of the race by the end of the year.

Reacting to Bannon's remarks, Biden spokesman Andrew Bates wrote to CNBC by email: "When the festering underbelly of the alt-right is threatened by you, you know you're standing up for our best values."

"Donald Trump's presidency is in a tailspin because of actively seeking foreign interventions in American democracy," Bates also wrote, referring the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry that centers on whether the president sought help from a foreign power to damage Biden.

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Elizabeth Warren is trying to be even tougher on China than Trump, says Steve Bannon - CNBC

The US has a role in the Middle East – Daily Sabah

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A confused President Donald Trump has been confusing the whole world. He is not clear on whether the U.S. has a role in Middle East politics. He is defending his decision to allow Turkey to do the chore of wiping out Daesh terrorists, claiming that the U.S. had no business to be there in the first place. I'll beg to differ with him on this one.

With his pending impeachment inquiry, these are rough days for the U.S. president. He's been betrayed; he said he didn't know if Rudy Giuliani was still his lawyer after he ravaged him with the impeachment scourge. Giuliani has his own vendetta with democratic contender Joe Biden; but any dirt that Giuliani dug up in Ukraine about Biden and his son is not required to win the 2020 elections. Giuliani and the old cadres of the Republicans cannot grasp the new populist and extreme right-wing tendencies in U.S. politics. This new alt-right has individualistic selfishness in its roots, which is the new manifestation of the egocentrism ever-present among the American people.

Trump is right when he thinks that the U.S. public in general would like the idea of "bringing the boys back home" by cooperating with Turkey in Syria. However, he is wrong in thinking that then U.S. has no business in the Middle East. He should not forget the fact that the U.S. had taken over the keys to the major ports in the Middle East capitals from the British at Yalta on Feb. 4, 1945. Since then, the U.S. has played the imperialistic role British Prime Minister Winston Churchill conferred on them. The new alt-right politics does not require world dominance, and Trump is trying to shrink from the duties associated with it.

The U.S. may shed its imperialistic fur, but it cannot leave the Middle East in shambles. Mr. Trump knows better than anyone else that his predecessors put the whole region, from Bangladesh to Kashmir, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Syria to Jerusalem, into this mess. On top of this, his own egomaniacal politics, like pillaging occupied Arab lands and giving them to Israel, made an already bad situation even worse. The U.S. has to redress the damage it has done in the region.

But the most crucial problem is in Syria. After Operation Peace Spring, Turkey will hopefully be able to return at least 2 million Syrians back to their country. Thanks to the faulty policy choices starting with James Baker in 1998, continuing with Hillary Clinton in 2013, and finally ending with Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo as secretaries of state, the United States harmed all the peoples in Iraq and Syria.

The Kurds of Syria have especially been left to the mercy of the PKK terrorist organization. Instead of cooperating with Turkey from the beginning to crush Daesh, U.S. policymakers and those responsible for implementing policy elected to form armies out of PKK terrorists, training and equipping them, and then used them as their boots on the ground against Daesh. The people in the State Department and Defense Department called these terrorist armies "the Kurdish people" and carved a homeland for them in Syria.

The Syrian government has abused the Kurdish people and denied them equal citizenship rights since the 1960s. The Kurds need to be treated equally in their country, by their government. But all other people in Syria also need the same thing: equal, democratic and humane treatment by the government.

The PKK and its Syrian extension, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), could not and have not provided those democratic rights to the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens in Syria. As a result of the de facto dismemberment of the country, more than 1 million Kurds fled PKK/PYD-held areas and took refuge in Turkey. The other 2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey are also from PYD-ruled areas.

After Turkey's military operation brings peace back to the area, the Astana and Geneva partners should get to work and put the country into shape. The Turkish military operation will be the guarantee of the territorial integrity that the new Syria will have.

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Police Officer Who Funded ‘Violent’ Activities by Far-Right Proud Boys Group Goes Unpunished – Newsweek

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A police officer who was found to have been a paying member of the far-right Proud Boys group will face no disciplinary action after it was ruled he did not break any department policies.

An investigation was launched into officer Kevin P. Wilcox, of the East Hampton police department in Connecticut, after the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law group expressed concerns about his online activity to the force.

The civil rights group accused Wilcox of making monthly transactions to the hate group which helped them raise money to commit "violent or otherwise illegal" activities, reports the Associated Press.

Proud Boys, listed as an "extremist group with ties to white nationalism" by the FBI, are known to take part in political rallies that frequently erupt into violence while being met with counter-protests.

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East Hampton Police Chief Dennis Woessner confirmed that Wilcox was a member of the far-right group and had made online payments to one of their leaders. He said that Wilcox "stopped his association" with the Proud Boys in February, around five months before he was brought to the force's attention by the civil rights group.

Woessner said that he then received an "explanatory report" from Wilcox and closed the review after ruling the concerns "unfounded," citing that there was no evidence he violated any police policy.

In a letter to the civil rights group on September 13, Woessner added that Wilcox "adamantly denies being associated with white supremacists' groups."

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the AP she was "astounded" by the decision not to take action against the officer.

"In an era where we are seeing a spike in white supremacist activity, this should sound an alarm," she said. "It should not be business as usual."

Woessner said that there is no question that Wilcox "is not a white supremacist," pointing to how there has never been any racial bias complaints made about him during his 20 years at the department.

The police chief added that records show that Wilcox only stopped white people between January 2018 and September 2019, albeit while patrolling an area which is overwhelmingly white.

Clarke has demanded that the force retrospectively review any stops and arrests made by Wilcox to see if there was any racial biases, which the force has so far failed to comply with.

"We're seeing an increase in white supremacists and extremists infiltrating the ranks of law enforcement," Clarke tweeted after the review into Wilcox ended. "We are taking action to fight back."

Proud Boys, who were launched in 2016 by Vice Media co-founder turned alt-right figurehead Gavin McInnes, have been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

They have become infamous for their violent political rallies or instances of disorder in cities such as New York and Portland, Oregon.

Last year, Facebook removed Proud Boy pages from the social network for violating their policies against hate speech.

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Louis Theroux ‘very wary’ of platforming hate after neo-Nazi documentary – Metro.co.uk

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Louis and the Nazis aired in 2003 (Picture: PA, BBC)

Louis Theroux has admitted that he would struggle to make his 2003 documentary Louis and the Nazis in 2019 due to the fascist ideologys movement from the fringes to mainstream politics.

The British documentary maker has never shied away from covering controversial topics in his TV series, famously documenting the lives of Scientologists, homophobic preachers and, of course, Jimmy Savile.

But with the rise of the alt-right in the US and Europe, Louis told a crowd at Cheltenham Literature Festival that his 2003 documentary following American neo-Nazis would carry different weight if it was released today.

Im on board with the whole idea that platforming is something that should be thought through carefully, he said, admitting that the world has changed a lot in the last 16 years.

Speaking about his experience working on the 2003 documentary, the 49-year-old continued: Back in the days of when I made Louis and the Nazis [], I spent days, if not a couple of weeks, with basically card-carrying national socialists people who had the most extreme version of Nazism as you can imagine.

I think the reason I felt it was OK was that it was so far outside the window of acceptable discourse that it was verging on pathology. If they had been closer to the mainstream you might have imagined we are giving them some sort of currency.

However, 2019s political landscape is vastly different, with Louis admitting: In this day and age, when you have members of the alt right who, in some cases, have crypto-fascist views or coded racist views and some not-so-coded racist views, and there is a trickle up or trickle down to the White House, suddenly you are in a different space.

You are in danger of lending credence to or popularising hate and, as a result, I have been very wary of doing that.

The journalist, whose new book Gotta Get Theroux This was released in September, has recently opened up about his infamous 2001 Savile documentary, calling the filming process: as the strangest and most upsetting thing Ive ever been involved in.

The experience rocked Louis, who was shocked by Saviles tactics to avoid being labelled a paedophile.

The hallmark of his offending was he was weirdly brazen in his ability to address it and take the position that is completely bizarre, he said.

He had an ability not to be nobbled by it. When he was confronted about his offending, people did come to confront him and he had the ability to brazen it out.

If you've got a story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk Entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page - we'd love to hear from you.

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Satire or Propaganda? The Free Speech Implications of the Violent Trump Video – WDET

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A fake and incredibly violent video emerged over theweekend.

In it, Donald Trump is seen attacking his enemies inside the Church of Fake News including a variety of outlets like NPR, CNN and the Washington Post. As Lynyrd Skynyrds Free Bird plays in the background, Trump in a church massacre scene from the 2014 movie Kingsman shoots, stabs and lights fire to members of the news media along with late Senator John McCain, former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Black Lives Matter movementand Congresswoman Maxine Waters, amongothers.

While this could technically be defined as satire something that is a cornerstone of democracy and freedom of speech it feels downright disturbing to watch this video in a time when the president is openly aggressive in his verbal attacks against these people and organizations, and mass shootings are happeningregularly.

Its also worth noting that this video was shown at a Republican event at one of Trumps resorts inFlorida.

This was one of those instances where you cant help but be angry, says Tim Alberta, POLITICO Magazines chief political correspondent, on Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson. POLITICO is one of the news organizations depicted in the video beingkilled.

This is a really tense time in America, and when the President of the United States is regularly deploying violent rhetoric against the media, and he does not immediately come out on camera to denounce [the video], its just disturbing, Albertacontinues.

Experts who study satire and propaganda say that this video could fit into the definition of either of those kinds of speech. They say, although Trump might not be directly responsible for the video, he should still bear some of the moral burden itcreates.

Although the violence in the video was fiction, that kind of violence is not fictional, points out University of Texas Rio Grande Valley associate professor of philosophy Cory Wimberly, the author of an upcoming book called How Propaganda Became PublicRelations.

A lot of it is coded. There are a lot of things we might see when we see the video, but there are also elements of it that are only meant to be understood by its intended audience that are lost on the rest of us, he continues, referencing memes on alt-right and incelinternetforums.

Fred Vultee, a Wayne State University associate professor of journalism who studies satire, says the video might be repugnant, but its still likely constitutionally protectedspeech.

Its hard to me to look at this and think that it poses a direct threat to anyone, says Vultee. I dont think, partly because its been up for 15 months now,that an immediate effect of this is likely. But there might be a more indirect and a more tangentialeffect.

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Satire or Propaganda? The Free Speech Implications of the Violent Trump Video - WDET

Gabbard slams New York Times profile of her | TheHill – The Hill

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Rep. Tulsi GabbardTulsi GabbardWarren defends, Buttigieg attacks in debate that shrank the field Warren leads in speaking time during debate Democrats debate in Ohio: Who came out on top? MORE (D-Hawaii)slammedThe New York Times' feature of her Saturday afternoon.

The Democratic presidential candidate tweeted "As if to prove my point, NYT just published a greatest hits smear piece."

"All your favorite hits in one article! These are the folks who will be acting as the neutral questioners/moderators of Tuesdays debate lol," Gabbard continued.

As if to prove my point, NYT just published a greatest hits smear piece. All your favorite hits in one article! These are the folks who will be acting as the neutral questioners/moderators of Tuesdays debate lol

The Times' article is titled "What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?" with the sub head reading "As she injects chaos into the 2020 Democratic primary by accusing her own party of rigging the election, an array of alt-right internet stars, white nationalists and Russians have praised her."

OnFriday, Gabbard tweeted that she is "seriously considering boycotting October 15 debate to bring attention to DNC/corporate medias effort to rig the 2020 primary."

Tuesday's debate ishosted by the Times and CNN.

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Gabbard slams New York Times profile of her | TheHill - The Hill

Psilocybin: Active agent in magic mushrooms could treat addiction, depression and anxiety – 60 Minutes – CBS News

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The thought of dying was killing Kerry Pappas. Then the cancer patient took a trip on psilocybin the active agent in "magic mushrooms." Ever since, she says she is perfectly comfortable with her life.Pappas is one of dozens of cancer patients whose painful anxiety over their illness was commuted to more peaceful acceptance after participating in a study that involved intensive therapy and being given a drug that was once a symbol of the 60's counterculture. She and others, who say the psychedelic experience helped them overcome other problems like depression and addiction, talk to Anderson Cooper for a report on the study of psychedelics inside some of the country's foremost medical research centers. The story will be broadcast on "60 Minutes," Sunday, October 13, at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS.Pappas was being treated for lung cancer when she was given the psilocybin. This is what she tells Cooper she saw. "An ancient, prehistoric, barren land there's these men with pickaxes, just slamming on the rocks," she recalls. "I was being shown the truth of reality. Life is meaningless. We have no purpose." And then it hit her she says, "I look and I'm still like a witness with the eyes, a beautiful, shimmering bright jewel and then it was sound booming, booming, booming. Right here right now. Yes, you are alive. Right here. Right now. Because that's all you have." She tells Cooper: "That is my mantra to this day."Cooper speaks with participants and scientists who conduct clinical trials. Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins University, is a pioneer in psychedelic research, which was studied extensively until former President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Thirty years later, Griffiths received FDA approval for to study psilocybin. The results amazed him. "The red light started flashing. It's unprecedented the capacity of the human organism to change. It just was astounding."The experiences of the study participants on psychedelics, even under the highly controlled conditions used, are often harrowing but still worth it in the end. Researchers screen out people with psychotic disorders or with close relatives who have schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder. So far, none of the participants reports any serious adverse outcomes.Griffiths said he is optimistic about the potential therapeutic value of the drugs but acknowledges they can be harmful under different circumstances. "Let's be really clear on that We're very aware of the risks and would not recommend people simply go out and do this."

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Psilocybin: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know – Heavy.com

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GettyA woman attends an event to decriminalize psilocybin in Denver, Colorado.

Psilocybin, more commonly known as magic mushrooms, shrooms or simply mushrooms, is a psychedelic drug which was outlawed as a substance with no legitimate medical purpose in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

However, the medical benefits of psilocybin were being studied before the ban, and studies were halted once the Controlled Substances Act was signed into law. Studies resumed 30 years after the law was signed by President Richard Nixon. Studies are now being conducted into whether the substance, known as a party drug from the counterculture, can help reduce death anxiety in cancer patients. In ancient times, psilocybin was considered a substance that promoted healing and spiritual connectedness. It is this quality that researchers like Roland Griffiths believe may help people in modern society, as long as risk factors are controlled.

The study, its lead researcher, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University, and one of its participants, Kerry Pappas, are featured on the October 13, 2019 episode of 60 Minutes. It airs at 7:30 p.m. EST on CBS.

Heres what you need to know:

Psilocybin and its effects were the subjects of research and studies, but those projects were effectively banned by the Controlled Substances Act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

Several studies were conducted in the late 1960s and 1970s that showed psilocybin might be effective in treating mood disorders in cancer patients, but they required further research, Johns Hopkins University researchers wrote in their study published in 2016.

Several unblinded studies in the 1960s and 70s suggested that such compounds might be effective in treating psychological distress in cancer patients (Grof et al., 1973; Kast, 1967; Richards et al., 1977); however, these studies did not include the comparison conditions that would be expected of modern psychopharmacology trials, the researchers wrote. Subsequently, human research with these compounds was halted for almost three decades because of safety and other concerns raised in response to widespread non-medical use in the 1960s. Recent resumption of clinical research with these compounds has established conditions for safe administration (Johnson et al., 2008; Studerus et al., 2011).

Research projects in other countries were being conducted, such as trials in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Such studies have been largely dormant since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which effectively ended most medical research on psychedelics, writes SciPol, a Duke University Science and Technology publication of studies in the United States. That, of course, came amid the fallout from widespread abuse of LSD, which had its roots partly in medical experiments that were led by the Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary.

The law classifies psilocybin as a substance with no legitimate medical purpose and high potential for abuse. Justice.gov notes that psilocybin, often called magic mushrooms or shrooms, is often abused at raves, clubs and college campuses. The effects last about six hours.

Psilocybin is a Schedule 1 controlled substance, according to Justice.gov. Schedule 1 drugs have high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate purpose. Schedule 1 drugs include heroin and LSD. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, is still a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law, even though some states have legalized it, decriminalized it or signed laws to make medical marijuana legal.

Psilocybin is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, Justice.gov says. Schedule I drugs, which include heroin and LSD, have a high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States.

Drugs are classified based on their addictive potential and dangers, potential for abuse and accepted medical uses in the country.

Justice.gov says, Psilocybin mushrooms are popular at raves, clubs and, increasingly, on college campuses and generally are abused by teenagers and young adults. It is difficult to gauge the extent of psilocybin use in the United States because most data sources that quantify drug use exclude psilocybin. The Monitoring the Future Survey, conducted by the University of Michigan, does reveal that 9.2 percent of high school seniors in the United States used hallucinogens other than LSDa category that includes psilocybinat least once in their lifetime. Two percent of high school seniors used hallucinogens other than LSD in the past month.

Johns Hopkins University and New York University conducted similar but separate studies on the effects of drugs on cancer patients who are experiencing death anxiety and depression. The NYU study used niacin. The Johns Hopkins University study was conducted by Roland Griffiths and others, and published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology November 30, 2016. You can read the full study here.

Cancer patients often develop chronic, clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety, the abstract says. Previous studies suggest that psilocybin may decrease depression and anxiety in cancer patients. The effects of psilocybin were studied in 51 cancer patients with life-threatening diagnoses and symptoms of depression and/or anxiety.

The study was a double-blind cross-over trial. Some participants received a very low, placebo-like dosage. The study involved multiple sessions with 5 weeks in between and a 6-month followup.

The study found there were no adverse effects on patients, the researchers wrote.

Johns Hopkins Medicine/Wikimedia CommonsRoland Griffths/psilocybin mushrooms

The Johns Hopkins University study found psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer following its trial. The study was published November 30, 2016, in the Journal of Phsychopharmacology. The trial involved 51 patients and included a six month followup which asked participants about their quality of life, optimism, acceptance of death and other factors.

The data show that psilocybin produced large and significant decreases in clinician-rated and self-rated measures of depression, anxiety or mood disturbance, and increases in measures of quality of life, life meaning, death acceptance, and optimism, the study said. These effects were sustained at 6 months. For the clinician-rated measures of depression and anxiety, respectively, the overall rate of clinical response at 6 months was 78% and 83% and the overall rate of symptom remission was 65% and 57%. Participants attributed to the high-dose experience positive changes in attitudes about life, self, mood, relationships and spirituality, with over 80% endorsing moderately or higher increased well-being or life satisfaction. These positive effects were reflected in significant corresponding changes in ratings by community observers (friends, family, work colleagues) of participant attitudes and behavior.

The trial was considered Phase 2 of the project. Roland Griffiths told SciPol he would like to conduct a much larger study involving many more participants at sites throughout the country. However, that trial, considered Phase 3, would cost $20 to $40 million.

Psilocybin, which is typically referred to as magic mushrooms, shrooms or mushrooms when it is being used as a recreational drug, is most commonly associated with the counterculture in the 60s and with raves and clubs. It is a psychedelic drug which can cause hallucinations and significantly altered perceptions of reality. The effects can last six hours.

The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified psilocybin as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, meaning it is considered to have high abuse potential and no medical benefits. Justice.gov notes it there is not evidence of chemical dependence, or addiction, but frequent users can develop a tolerance for it.

The Justice.gov page for psilocybin says:

Use of psilocybin is associated with negative physical and psychological consequences. The physical effects, which appear within 20 minutes of ingestion and last approximately 6 hours, include nausea, vomiting, muscle weakness, drowsiness, and lack of coordination. While there is no evidence that users may become physically dependent on psilocybin, tolerance for the drug does develop when it is ingested continuously over a short period of time.

The psychological consequences of psilocybin use include hallucinations and an inability to discern fantasy from reality. Panic reactions and psychosis also may occur, particularly if a user ingests a large dose.

In addition to the risks associated with ingestion of psilocybin, individuals who seek to abuse psilocybin mushrooms also risk poisoning if one of the many varieties of poisonous mushrooms is incorrectly identified as a psilocybin mushroom.

READ NEXT: Lead Psilocybin Researcher Roland Griffiths: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

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Psilocybin: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know - Heavy.com

Psychedelic Toad Venom Is the New Trendy Hallucinogenic – Addiction Center

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Comparable to the likes of ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, and mescaline, a new mind-altering drug is hitting the US psychedelic scene toad venom. The drug comes from a rare species of toad native to the Sonoran Desert, Bufo Alvarius, which produces a venom known as 5-MeO-DMT: an extremely potent natural psychedelic. 5-MeO-DMT is about four to six times more powerful than its better-known cousin DMT (dimethyltryptamine).

The narcotic has long been ingested by licking the poisonous amphibians back but is now more commonly consumed as a smokable dust form. The liquid is extracted by milking the toads toxic venom glands and then dehydrating it into a crumbly dry paste. Shamans throughout Mexico and the southwestern US have been harvesting and smoking the substance for decades, and now thousands of people throughout the country are seeking out the powerful psychedelic.

The drugs hallucinogenic effects take hold in about five minutes after ingestion, causing a powerful religious-like trip that lasts about an hour. Individuals that have taken the toad venom described their trips as being one with the universe and feeling reborn one user said they felt a total fusion with God while under the influence. Users experience bright colors, moving environments, or recursive patterns. According to researchers, the drug often leaves users immobile and unresponsive, and can cause intense emotional reactions, euphoria, convulsions, and vomiting.

Its such an intense experience that, in most cases, doing it at a party isnt safe. Its not a recreational drug. If people get dosed too high, they can white out and disassociate from their mind and body.

In addition to the possible harmful effects users can experience while tripping, many people suffer from extreme nausea and confusion for days after. However, this hasnt stopped psychedelic drug-lovers across the nation from seeking out the Schedule 1 classified substance, which carries the threat of a 10-year prison sentence for possession. Users even hire foreign shamans to distribute the drug at parties that typically cost around $200 to $500 a head to attend.

Once the venom wears off, users say that they experience an afterglow that can trigger them to make major, positive life changes. 5-MeO-DMT appears to have a placebo analgesic effect comparable to hypnosis. The drug has shown to help break attachments to past trauma, negative behaviors, and habitual negative thought patterns.

Such beneficial psychological effects has led some researchers to believe that in a controlled setting with a well-trained professional, the venom could be useful in treating anxiety and depression. In fact, preliminary studies performed by John Hopkins University suggest that it may combat depression and anxiety just as effectively as psilocybin, in addition to requiring a much shorter duration of time to reap the therapeutic benefits.

To study the potential medicinal effects of 5-MeO-DMT, John Hopkins Psychedelics researcher Alan Davis conducted an online survey that included 362 people that routinely uses the toad venom in ceremonial group settings. Respondents reported that they had attended sessions containing between five to 12 people in which each ceremony is overseen by a sober facilitator who administers the drug. Participants took turns being dosed and then ended the experience with a closing circle where they shared their thoughts on the spiritual journeys they each took while tripping. Of the 162 individuals that self-reported as suffering from anxiety or depression, approximately 80% reported improvements in these conditions after using the drug.

Davis believes the 5-MeO-DMT found in toad venom is effective at treating these mental illnesses due to a combination of neurological changes in users brains and insights they gained through the psychedelic experience. Davis hopes that the research that is being performed at John Hopkins will inspire other people to follow suit and explore the option of using psychedelics as possible treatment options.

However, its important to note that researchers do not support recreational use of toad venom and cite that the drug should only be administered under medical supervision.

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Psychedelic Toad Venom Is the New Trendy Hallucinogenic - Addiction Center

Spirituality at Tufts: The Humanist Approach – Tufts Now

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Finding community is always a key part of the student university experience, and for many at Tufts that centers around spirituality. With many spiritual traditions represented on Tufts campuses, students can make deep and abiding connections, enriching their lives and the universitys. In this occasional series, Spirituality at Tufts,Tufts Nowexplores the many and varied traditions that students take part in.

On the night before graduation in May, seniors walk up the Hill holding candles for an illumination ceremony, a bookend to their walkalso uphill and candleliton their first day of orientation as matriculating students.

In 2018, the Tufts Humanist chaplain gave the invocation at the Illumination Ceremony: Source of light and of strength, All that which sustains us and teaches us and has bound us these past years, the invocation began, we here tonight remember what these flames meant to us in our first few days on the Hill.

Humanism is one of six chaplaincies at Tufts, the only one that is purely secular, concerned with our life in the natural world and what we as creatures in that world can accomplish among ourselves, according to its brochure.

One-third of Tufts students self-report as non-religious on the first-year Spiritual Interest Survey, which doesnt mean that a yearning for meaning or even spirituality is any less important, or the need to create a community to discuss these questions.

As part of that, ritualsfor instance, the lighting of candlescan be important. It was new last year, a way of beginning our Thursday meetings and setting the space, said Walker Bristol, A14, the Tufts Humanist chaplain. The year before, a number of students arrived with a Unitarian background, and said they wanted to do more rituals. It felt important to say, this is how we create a meaningful space.

Similarly, among Humanists, rituals or traditions can be abandoned. Bristol, who has been on campus nine yearsa good chunk of the lifetime of a young movementrecalls how the Thursday meetings were originally dubbed discussions, often based on an article someone brought in.

There was an argumentative feeling about it, they said, until students approached them and said the drive for intellectual discussion wasnt why they came together.

Are we allowed to just not do this anymore? the students asked. Of course, Bristol said.

What were once discussions are now called reflections, which isnt to say the discussions cant re-emerge, but you have to be attentive to whos in the room, they said.

Bristol remembers arriving on campus nine years ago and finding a Humanist movement whose identity was mostly atheism. We used to get in the room and talk about being not religious.

But for students now, they said, questions of how logical religion is are not so interesting. Its important for me to follow. In becoming officially endorsed as a chaplain by the American Humanist Association, they received the charge to aid people in supporting their own agency.

And from agency, perhaps, comes a sense of communal identity. At the 2018 Baccalaureate service, one of the Tufts Humanists, graduating senior Corrinne Smith, A18, offered a reading, an adaptation of the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes.

During the daylight service, Smith offered the graduates the possibility that, like the poet, they knew rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins, with souls grown deep like the rivers.

For the 2019 commencement, Bristol prepared a new invocation for the School of Medicine ceremony, another first for the Humanist chaplaincy.

Thinking to the academic year ahead, they expect the candle-lighting ritual on Thursdays will continue. It reflects the space, and what we want from it.

But, like the rivers, the flamesand everything natural on the planetall can and will change. If the space changed, maybe the candles would, too, Bristol said. Im never trying to create something that doesnt need to exist.

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on the spiritual matter of art – Announcements – E-Flux

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on the spiritual matter of artOctober 17, 2019March 8, 2020

Andrea Carandini in converstion with Bartolomeo Pietromarchi:January 23, 67pm

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century ArtsVia Guido Reni 4A00196 Rome italyItalyHours: TuesdaySunday11am7pm,Saturday11am10pm

http://www.maxxi.artFacebook / Instagram / Twitter / #spiritualealMAXXI

What does it mean today to talk about spirituality? Where does spirituality fit into a world dominated by digital and technological culture and an ultra-deterministic mentality? Is there still a spiritual dimension underpinning the demands of art?

In order to reflect on these and other questions MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, is bringing together a number of leading figures from the contemporary art scene in the major group show on the spiritual matter of art, strongly supported by the President of the Fondazione MAXXI Giovanna Melandri and curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (from October 17, 2019 to March 8, 2020). Main partner ENEL.

on the spiritual matter of art is a project that investigates the issue of the spiritual through the lens of contemporary art and, at the same time, that of the ancient history of Rome. In a layout offering diverse possible paths, the exhibition features the works of 19 artists, leading names on the international scene from very different backgrounds and cultures.

There will be a number of installations on display, including those byMatilde Cassani(fabric drapery, like a threshold introducing the space of the sacred),Enzo Cucchi(an artist to whom MAXXI is also devoting an Art Collection Focus show in the Gian Ferrari Hall, October 17January 2020),Jimmie Durham, Haris Epaminonda, Remo SalvadoriandNamsalSiedlecki, produced or revised specifically for this project. The layout opens and closes with sound installations byHassan Khan(a composition for handclaps) andKimsooja(transmitting the echoes of a Tibetan chant), after which one accesses the large central space that houses large two-dimensional works including those byJohn Armleder,Francesco Clemente,Abdoulaye Konat,Victor ManandSean Scullyin close relations with the objects from antiquity (the pair ofPeacocksfrom theMusei Vaticani, theFegato dello ScasatofromVilla Giulia, theWinged Scarabfrom theMusei Capitolini,theChrismon Necklaceand theLeontocefalastatue, both from theMuseo Nazionale Romanoand theGem of the Goddess Romefrom theMuseiCapitolini Fondazione Santarelli). Photography (the hands of Iranian women in the gesture of offering verses by poets of the Farsi tradition byShirin Neshat) and video (Michal RovnerandJeremy Shaw) dialogue with the immersive installations byElisabetta Di Maggio(who recreates with postage stamps the Cosmatesque floor of St. Marks Basilica) and byToms Saraceno(who transforms the fluctuations of spiders webs into sonic vibrations), concluding with a major work of participatory work byYoko Ono.

The question of being, of mans spiritual expansion, has always defined artistic research,says Giovanna Melandri, Art is at times capable of capturing our tension and going beyond the illusion of forms and matter (Maya). As Schopenhauer wrote, art can miraculously elevate itself above life, contemplating and transcending it. I was very eager for this project to go ahead. It was not easy to define its contents and confines, but I am certain that this exhibition will make a further contribution to amplifying the boundaries of the artistic and conceptual research of the MAXXI laboratory.

The compresence and the relationship between contrasting elements are clearly evident,says Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, and its emphasis underlies the entire project. It is actually this impossible composition of body and spirit, between matter and spirit that is the most faithful representation of our existence. By the spiritual stuff of art, I mean that which leverages this dichotomy, between a material dimension bound up with personal experience and a need to rediscover practices and meanings that elevate the spirit above it.

Flanking the exhibition project, an extensive Public Program will see a series of talks with the artists, book presentations, performances, lectures and conferences.

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on the spiritual matter of art - Announcements - E-Flux

My Bhutan Pilgrimage-ish, Part Tourism, Part Leaning into the Spirituality of a Himalayan Buddhist Country – Patheos

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When Marla and Charles from Two Truths invited me to come aboard as teaching staff for their trip to Bhutan I said no. I begged off being old and fat and not up for something seriously physically demanding. They persisted. I am glad they did.

That I was able to add in a few days centered in Bangkok to make pilgrimages to the site where Thomas Merton died and then to where John Blofelds ashes were interred, was something I will never forget. Actually the list of things I will not forget from this trip is quite long. Im amazed at our interconnectedness. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that via the inter webs my friend Justin Whitaker was able to introduce me to his friend Will Yaryan, who introduced me to his friends Daru & Joe Shakarchi. They simply gave over three days to squiring me about, including my two pilgrimages, and a day visiting the great reclining Buddha as well as a visit to Bangkoks amulet market.Daru & Joes kindness speak to the many small and larger encounters that touched me and enriched me and made me glad for this opportunity, so rare in our lives, for most of us, to see parts of the world outside our normal experience.

Then it was time for Bhutan.We gathered from our lives at the Orchid Resort Hotel, a modest boutique hotel between the airport and Bangkok proper. There were our leaders Charles Simmons & Marla Perry. By such standards we werent an especially large group. Two of us were from Australia, Hang Nguyen &Jeanette Tran. The rest of us were Americans, Jeff Carter.Sheldon Cohen,Dawn Duncan, Mike Gruber,Wendy Roberts,Nancy Doyle, &Penelope Wong. We took off for the airport. In a hair raising race across the airport Emily Turner joined us just in time. In addition,David Roadhouse & I rounded it out with various teaching responsibilities.We touched wheels in Calcutta. As we were not given an opportunity to debark, I guess I cannot say Ive been to India.

Then after witnessing the rise of the Himalayas, and having Mt Everest pointed out to us, we landed in Paro Airport in the Kingdom Of Bhutan. From there we were greeted by Kezang Nendag and his crew from Bhutan Wisdom Tours. Special shoutouts to Tashi who was our principal guide and to Pema for driving us and, well, keeping us alive on small and winding roads. From this moment we were pretty much completely in their capable hands. (As an aside if you are considering going to Bhutan, I cannot recommend them highly enough. Professional, caring, and with a focus on the spiritual & Buddhist aspects of a visit to the country.)From there it begins to blur. We visited monasteries and convents. We saw temples. We met people and heard talks from dignitaries both secular and religious. We learned much of the history of the kingdom and its astonish rapid growth from an absolute monarchy at the beginning of the twentieth century, which then, due almost entirely to the kings themselves, transformed into a constitutional monarchy and functioning democracy with a vision for itself that has inspired the world. Not to let them off the hook for some very bad things. We cant. But, also fully acknowledged and nuanced for a tiny and very poor country sandwiched between two regional powers, both thinking super powers, and happy to stretch their muscles, the kingdom and its existence is something genuinely marvelous.I blogged my adventures. My first day,our landing in Paro, and realizing this was not Kansas. A drive to the capital Thimphu with a stop along the way to visit a Nyngmapa convent. Another day exploring Thimphu and environs. Followed by a drive across the Dochula Pass and into Punakha.

There was that moment in Punakha, attending the sacred dances, when we were invited by the governor of the region to sit with the bigwigs, and were served salty butter tea.

Slow I began to get a feel for this tiny country that managed never to be colonized, neither by the Tibetans nor anyone else. Their pride in who they were, and their hopes for their future preserving their unique culture while fronting into modernity.Then there was a brief non-blogging interlude as I entertained the joys of travelers diarrhea. And as I was recovering, fortunately a light touch, bending over wrong while trying to rummage in my bag, I experienced a nasty back spasm. All in all one day lost. With some caution for a while regarding my normal propensity for the spicer foods and for the whole rest of the trip pretty careful in walking up and down steps. This is not a country for folk in wheelchairs, or, even with significant mobility issues. All sidewalks are littered with hazards of one sort or another.From the interlude, well for me, they all got on just fine, weresumedour adventures. Learned a lot about the amazing Dilgo Khyentse, whose influence touched a great deal of our time in the country.

Then a bit more digging in, including some exploring of Paro. Letting the experience sink in and to see how it was part straight ahead tourism, and part genuine spiritual pilgrimage, pilgrimage-ish, if you will. Then, without a doubt for me, the highest point of many high points, encountering the nun Namgyel Lhamo.

Finally it ended. We said goodbye to Jeff who was off to meet his spouse elsewhere in the kingdom, as well as to Charles & Marla who were off to India. At the Bangkok airport Dawn, Mike, and Nancy peeled off to catch planes. David took off to a separate hotel in town. The rest of us returned to the Orchid.

This morning Penelope (our unofficial leader if a crowd as independent minded as this could have one) and Sheldon left. In about an hour Wendy and I will go to the airport. Leaving Huang & Jennifer to dawdle for another day before they take off.Our little band reminded me, at least in my more romantic moments of Herman Hesses little novel Journey to the East. At least if one doesnt think too hard and try to find actual comparisons. A more congenial group I cannot imagine. I am so grateful they were my companions, and I theirs

What next?Well, as much as I admire the functionality of the bum gun, Ill be glad not to have to use adaptors for charging my electronics, and, well, its true, theres no place like home.

Ill be processing all that Ive experienced for a while yet. Especially my reflections as a more or less modernist Buddhist, and Zen person encountering an ancient and in many ways alien to me form of Buddhism, in an historically Buddhist country. Rich. Challenging.

And I expect Ill be sharing at least some of that here.

But, in the moment, its time to lean into the long ride home.

Submitted respectfully,

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My Bhutan Pilgrimage-ish, Part Tourism, Part Leaning into the Spirituality of a Himalayan Buddhist Country - Patheos