Paul Farmer has died

I read the tragic news of his death at the young age of 62 in Rwanda. Farmer was one of the truly inspiring people. A highly trained doctor who came from humble beginnings, his mission in life was to bring high quality health care to some of the poorest nations in the world, starting with Haiti. A strong believer in the need for global justice and equity, along with Ophelia Dahl (who happens to be the daughter of children’s author Roald Dahl and Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal), he co-founded the organization Partners in Health which I have supported for many years. They sent me an email announcing the sad news and saying that his death was due to an ‘acute cardiac event’, which I understand to be a heart attack. The Miami Herald has a report.

Dr. Paul Farmer, the renowned infectious disease specialist who devoted his life to fighting deadly epidemics and spent the last several years working on four continents delivering health care to millions, has died in Rwanda, his organization Partners in Health confirmed. He was 62.

A Florida native who lived in Miami with his wife and children when he wasn’t traveling or teaching at Harvard University, Farmer was co-founder of Partners In Health, a nonprofit health care organization based in Boston with a sister organization, Zanmi Lasante, in Haiti.

The recipient of many awards, one of his most recent being the 2020 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and its $1 million cash award, Farmer told the Miami Herald that his personal mission was to change the way humans think of infectious disease and address social inequalities in health care delivery.
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Canadian trucker protests end with whining and finger pointing

The trucker protests in Canada seem to be coming to an end as the police have moved in with force, arresting people who refused to leave and towing trucks that were blocking the streets. For reasons that are unclear to me, some protestors seem to have been taken by surprise at being thus evicted when to me the puzzlement was why it took so long. This inaction by the authorities, coupled with false assertions by protest leaders, apparently led the protestors to think that they were in the legal right and had widespread support and could dig in for the long haul. And like the January 6th protesters in the US, they now complain about how unfairly they are being treated.

When thousands of protesters against Covid restrictions arrived in Ottawa last month, it would have seemed unimaginable that they would take over parts of the Canadian capital with little resistance.

To their own disbelief, the rightwing protesters soon controlled the streets outside parliament, brazenly flouting the law in the belief nothing could or would stop them.

This weekend, however, the blockade ended in incredulity, accusations of betrayal and questions over the future of the protest movement.

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The Trump family’s terrible week

The legal troubles keep piling up for that band of grifters, so rapidly that it is hard to keep up. It is quite extraordinary how almost everyone in the family seems to be made of the same cloth. The only people who have not been implicated in one scheme or another are the youngest daughter Tiffany (age 28) and youngest son Barron (age 15).

On Monday, Trump’s longtime firm of accountants Mazars said in a statement that they would no longer represent the Trump organization and further added that the financial statements that had been issued for the years 2011-2020 could no longer be relied upon. The Trump organization has long been accused of playing fast and loose with the valuation of his properties and this seems likely to be connected to that.
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Jordan Klepper visits the Canada trucker protesters

As part of his ongoing series of videos where he talks to those who are part of the anti-vax, right-wing, QAnon, Trump-supporting movement, he went to Ottawa in Canada and finds that the people who are blockading the city center say pretty much the same things that people who attend the Trump rallies in the US say, which is mostly nonsense veiled in rhetoric of freedom.


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An example of white privilege

The phrase ‘white privilege’ is often heard in discussions about race and ethnicity. In a recent post on how some people seem to be drawn to using the N-word, I linked to this cartoon by Keith Knight, in which he provides an example of what it looks like in practice.

I became curious about a parenthetical comment written in tiny letters below the last panel so I did what he suggested and did a search on the terms “25 blacks 1 white” and this was the story from 2017 that was returned.

According to CBS affiliate WCSC-TV, Michael Brown and 24 of his family and friends were at Wild Wing Cafe celebrating his cousin’s final day in Charleston, S.C., last month when the group was suddenly told to leave.

The reason? The shift manager allegedly told Brown that a white customer felt “threatened” by his party. When one of Brown’s companions started filming the exchange, the shift manager is said to have told the group to leave.

“[That] totally alarmed all of us because we’re sitting there peaceably for two hours,” Brown told the news outlet.
…

WCSC-TV reports that a representative at the chain reached out to Brown to apologize and offer a free meal for the group.

That is a good indicator of a privileged mentality. It would never occur to me to inform the management of any institution that I felt uncomfortable by the mere presence of someone else, unless they were directly targeting me. To not only feel that I can complain but actually have the management ask the group to leave because of my mere discomfort is a good indicator of the privilege that some groups of people feel.

NFTs are a playground for crooks and grifters

NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) are the new rage, riding the wave of the fascination with blockchain and cryptocurrency, two other things that do not seem to deter people from getting on the bandwagon even though they may have just the haziest idea of what they are. Naturally this leads to crooks moving in, selling NFTs of items that do not even belong to them.

When Lois van Baarle, a Dutch artist, scoured the biggest NFT marketplace for her name late last year, she found more than 100 pieces of her art for sale. None of them had been put up by her.

Van Baarle is a popular digital artist, with millions of followers on social media. She’s one of a growing number of artists who have had online images of their art stolen, minted as unique digital assets on a blockchain, and offered up to trade in cryptocurrency on the NFT platform OpenSea.
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Prince Andrew settles sexual abuse case against Virginia Giuffre

It appears that the lawyers for both sides have arrived at a settlement that will prevent the case from being litigated in court. Andrew had for the longest time vigorously denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight to clear his name of what he claimed were false allegations against him by Giuffre. You can read the short statement released y Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies here that says in its entirety:

Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew have reached an out of court settlement. The parties will file a stipulated dismissal upon Ms. Giuffre’s receipt of the settlement (the sum of which is not being disclosed). Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.

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US anti-vax virus spreads to Canada

I am somewhat baffled by the protests that have been talking place in the city center in Ottawa and the bridge to Detroit in Windsor Ontario where truckers and people in RVs and have been blocking streets for weeks now. The police finally moved in to clear the Windsor-Detroit bridge which opened today and it looks like they are beginning to clear the Ottawa streets too. Meanwhile prime minister Justin Trudeau has invoked emergency powers to be used of necessary.

So who are these protestors? Some of them are protesting the covid-19 restrictions that are still in place but others seem to be anti-vaxxers whom one would think would be a fairly insignificant presence since Canada has one of the highest covid-19 vaccination rates in the world, around 90%. But it seems like these people are similar to the anti-vaxxers in the US, very loud and angry though small in numbers and consist of the usual suspects that we find here.
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The disturbing allure of the N-word for some people

The N-word is a horrible slur. Like all other slurs that are used as synonyms for people’s ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and gender identity, it is used to demean people. They are not words that I think anyone should use, the only exception being in highly academic contexts where the words themselves are the subject of study and one needs to use them to avoid ambiguity or when people who belong to the group being described derogatorily use the words in an attempt to defang them.

But it does seem to be the case that there are people who are not Black who relish the opportunity to use the N-word. The word seems to have an allure for them that they cannot resist and they seem to seize any opportunity to use it and even go to the extent of creating opportunities for them to use it, while trying to act as if the context makes it acceptable. I have written before about how filmmaker Quentin Tarantino seems to absolutely delight in using the word in his films and even plays a part in the film Pulp Fiction where his character throws the word around. (Incidentally, whenever I write a post that castigates Tarantino, I get responses from his fans who assert that he is some kind film making genius and that I am too stupid to understand the humor and subtlety. These fans are as passionate about their idol as are fans of Sam Harris.)
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New York Times has still not mentioned the AI report on Israel

By any stretch of the word, one would think that the blistering critique of Israel’s apartheid practices by Amnesty International would constitute ‘news’. And yet, as James North writes, a week has passed and the New York Times has still not written a single word on the report. This is from the newspaper that prides itself as being the ‘newspaper of record’ and has on its masthead the slogan “All the news that’s fit to print”, implying that within its pages you will get all the news that you need to know.

This will not come as a surprise to veteran media watchers who have long known that this newspaper serves as a conduit for the message of the Israel lobby in the US, providing cover for Israeli apartheid practices under the guise of being even-handed by occasionally allowing minor criticisms to be written.
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