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thedansemacabres · 11 months ago

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Hello! As one Hellenic Polytheist to another, and since you have such a huge knowledge of wine and wine making, I was curious if you have any good wine suggestions that might also be good offerings? Unfortunately, do to medical reasons, I can't drink alcohol but I'd like to find some wines that I could use as offerings to Apollo and Ares. I'm sure they wouldn't fault me for grabbing any wine from the grocer, considering I cant actually drink it to see if it tastes any good, but if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear. Thank you and hope you're having a good day :D

Of course! I actually have many thoughts on this, so I'll provide a quick brief on wine in grocery stores:

Grocery store wine tends to be a nightmare to winemakers. The common person does not know what wines they want to purchase, or good wines to buy, and there's a large state of confusion--it does not help that grocery stores throw wines on a self without worry. I'll see Italian wine next to Spanish with completely different histories and flavour profiles, and the history behind it will not be explained. Especially when a Spanish cooking wine is put next to Prosecco... which is why so many winemakers are putting attention into modern, cute, and pretty labels. People buy labels most often instead of decent wine.

So, grocery store wine shopping!

Personally, I avoid any bottle under 10$. This is due to labour and environmental concerns. I do not think you need a full rant on the labour issues of Blackfoot wine, but it's certainly a topic.

Then, what to buy? I associate Ares with full, harsh reds (or even a nice rose...), and Apollon I believe is both a red, rose, and white wine sort. As a general rule, affordable and drinkable (usually food) wine tends to be Italian (DOCG - Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita): Italian for “Controlled and Guaranteed Denomination of Origin” means that it was made under certain quality control constrictions. Besides, a 10$ Chianti is a perfect offering. The quality system on wine labels goes far beyond DOCG, but that's a different post or if anyone asks.

For Ares, I would recommend any wine that states itself as "tannic" "bold" "courageous" etc., and grapes like Cabernet Franc are famous for this. A Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon has similar traits, but it tends to be expensive. If the bottle is blue/green, that means the wine is meant to age, and bolder reds tend to do so. I also think he is definitely a rose guy, so I would gravitate towards rose that calls itself "floral" "light" "refreshing" "breezy" etc., especially one of my favourite grapes, Black Muscat. Chambourcin is also a great grape for him--the floral nature and dark purple hue is beautiful.

Apollon - I would gravitate towards more yellow/gold whites, such as an older Chardonnay or Orange (skin contact white wine) wines. I personally associate him with Traminette, though that one can be rare to find. These tend to be expensive, but noble rot wines I believe fit (often called botrytis wines, but these tend to be more expensive) or straw wines--wines made by grapes shrivelled in the sunlight--which will require some research to find if it's a straw wine if not directly stated. Straw wines are sweet wines, so let's go into that.

Sweet wines will be more "accurate" to the ancient world if you care for that. Sweet wines have hundreds of names depending on region, so here's a tldr;

French wine - demi-sec and above is sweet, especially doux.

Italian - completely opposite of French wine, it's extra-sec (off-sweet), sec (sweet), demi-sec (very sweet), and dolce (syrup sweet)

German - Germany has a whole different approach to sweet wines, with sweetness being a mark of quality; trocken, halbtrocken (half-dry), feinherb (off-dry), lieblich (semi-sweet), and suß (sweet.)

Or the bottle just says "sweet" or "residual sugar" level. This is the easiest.

I hope this helps and may you enjoy offering wines to the theoi!

#dragonis.txt #asks #anon #megwritesnstuff #vīnum #helpol #ares deity #apollon deity #apollo deity

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youreamonocoque · 4 months ago

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What ig frustrates me is if you know this steroid is on wada list and is very commonly found in ointments in Italy and there have been cases of Italian athletes having it in their system because of this reason and even as of recent, the same thing happened to another Italian tennis player (who got cleared of it), why would YOU, as a doctor of a top athlete, even have that anywhere near you when you are seeing/treating your client? Like why even take the risk, surely you have to have heard of this, right?

And was Jannik's doctor not wearing gloves? If not it's very unprofessional and could've even been dangerous in other circumstances.

I won't make any judgement of Jannik yet, we don't have to full details but I hope this will make people at least do a little bit more research about the medicines they are taking and not blindly believing everything a doctor says.

It's just insane to me that his physio didn't check the ingredients of the spray. You're working with someone who will be tested regularly, you're working with someone who has a medical condition that means he gets cuts on his skin, he specifically asked you "have you used anything?" and you go "no" i mean??? There is a certain level of trust between an athlete and their team and this is such an unbelievable betrayal of that trust.

It was such a tiny tiny amount that I believe it was an accident, careless but an accident nonetheless and Jannik is not at fault. And we do pretty much have the full details, nothing else is going to be said that isn't in the report. His performance was not enhanced in any way by this less than one billionth of a gram of steroids that ended up in his system.

The list of banned substances is so widely available as well, hell I can access it lmao. It's how I know that if I were to ever go professional in idk archery I would get banned instantly because I regularly take propranolol which is a banned substance. For a physio not to check the ingredients and take every possible precaution is incredibly negligent.

#anon #answered

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musea-reviews · 2 years ago

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Body Worlds Amsterdam

''fascinating journey through real human body’s’’

Location: Center of Amsterdam Price: 22,50 Duration: 1 - 2 hours Transport: walkable from the central station Language: English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian Activities: seeing real bodies, body scan Date of visit: Tuesday 28 February 2023 Expo at that time: The happiness project Website

The real deal

Body Worlds is part of a series of exhibitions created by Dr. Gunther von Hagens. The original it was an internationally successful touring exhibition that has been shown in more than 100 cities in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Dr. Gunther von Hagens invented the process of plastination in 1977. Plastination is the process where real human bodies are preserved for scientific research and medical education. So everything you see in the museum is from real humans. That is what makes this museum so special. Everything you’re used to seeing in biology textbooks is now right in front of you. At the end of the museum, you can do a body scan where you will be weight and get a printed-out detailed paper about your weight. With things like how many kg bones you have, weight and fat percentile per limb, and other things like that.

Not much to learn

the building is divided into 6 floors, every floor is a different part of the body, nervous system, blood system, bones and muscles, digestive system and production. But tbh most of the information on the signs kinda felt repetitive, a lot of the same facts. Maybe that's also because you don't really learn anything new that you haven't learned in elementary school or high school yet. So the main attraction really is the dead bodies. I assumed the museum would be more focused on learning, but it felt more like an old-school circus, showing curiosities, or doing it for shock value. There was an audio tour, and that will give you a lot of new, interesting information. But the fact that the audio tour is 3,50 shows where their goal really lies, by making a profit, more than by teaching.

Ethical?

Where do these bodies actually come from? von Hagens himself states that everybody in the museum was well-informed and that he has written consent. However, this has not been independently verified. There have been multiple reports of corpses in the Body World's exhibit being prepared and shown without consent. In 2004, a German news magazine made a report based on internal emails and records about his company getting corpses from executed Chinese prisoners. In response to the article, von Hagens said that he has told his Chinese employees not to accept bodies that were executed, and returned seven cadavers to China that had head injuries, including at least two with bullet holes in the skull.

In 2002, two Russian doctors from the University of Novosibirsk were charged with illegally supplying von Hagens with 56 bodies, including convicts, homeless people, and mentally ill people, without consent from their relatives. Von Hagens said that none of the body parts were used in the Body Worlds exhibitions. As all of this got more known people started saying "Somebody at some level of government ought to be able to look at a death certificate, a statement from an embalmer, donation documents, that's a reasonable standard to apply." "These displays do have important educational benefits, but using bodies against a person's will is unacceptable" They try to control this by having paperwork death and donation certificates, but it is of no use since it's so easy to fake. Paperwork is separated from the bodies, No one will know for sure, because each plastinated corpse is made anonymous to protect its privacy.

On the site, however, it states that they have a donor program. Currently, there are 19,000 registered donors in the Body Donation Programme of the Heidelberg Institute for Plastination.

Would I pay the price: I did, but I do think it's overpriced. Would I revisit it: if you have done the body scan you can take it with you a second time, and show proof of identification, and you get to go in for free. So if I'm around, I might hop in again. Who do I recommend it to: people interested in health or biology, people who want to see something unique. Children, since most of this information, will be new to them. Interactive: 2 Educational: 1 Storytelling: 3 Price: 1 Memorable: 2 Total score: 1,8

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drferox · 5 years ago

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Outbreak vs Epidemic vs Pandemic and what’s The Point

The short version of ‘what’s the point of caring about COVID-19 and washing your hands’ is so that less people die. But we’ll get to that.

An Outbreak is an increase in incidences of an infection within a region, whether or not you know what the infection is. For example, a spike of more than usual cases on pneumonia in Wuhan.

An Epidemic is widespread increases in an infection across a large area.

A Pandemic is a widespread increase in an infection internationally, with local transmission of that infection in new locations far away from the original. Eg people in Australia being infected with COVID-19 from other people in Australia, local spread.

The novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, is now declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization. It’s in multiple countries, and spreading locally. People who have not traveled internationally are catching it.

Does this mean you should panic and stockpile toilet paper? No.

Does this mean you should take extra care to wash your hands frequently? Yes. Please.

COVID-19 currently has a basic reproduction number of about 2.2. That means that, on average, each infected person will spread the disease to another 2.2 people. The infection will spread until we can get that number under 1.

COVID-19 is new. There’s no pre-existing population immunity out there. It has the potential to spread very fast, and that’s where this fairly familiar graph below comes in.

The graph demonstrates two possible scenarios. In one, there is uncontrolled spread, causing a huge peak of new very quickly. In one, there is somewhat limited spread thanks to control measures, so the peak is smaller, but lasts longer.

The important line here is the Healthcare System’s Capacity. If we can keep cases below that line, then the survival rate will be better than if we flood the system.

Healthcare workers are human too. They need to stay sane, they need to stay healthy. They need time, and physical equipment and supplies to adequately treat cases, otherwise the mortality rate will climb. There is a finite amount of resources, and while most cases will recover and free up resources again, slowing down the rate will hopefully keep cases below that threshold line for as long as possible.

14% of cases were reported as being ‘severe’, requiring oxygen support and reasonably intensive treatment. In addition to that, 5% of cases were reported as being ‘critical’, where they not only require oxygen support, but ventilation as those people when into respiratory failure, shock, and multi-organ failure. Half of them died.

Without skilled, well-equipped medical care, that could have been up to 19% of patients which were sick enough to die. With good medical care, only about 2.3% died.

This is why it’s important to slow the spread, to not overload our healthcare systems.

Italy is having a really bad time right now, with 10,000 or so Coronavirus cases, which is saturating their healthcare systems. So much so, that they’ve published ventilator guidelines to essentially decide who gets lifesaving intensive care, and who’s going to be left to most likely die.

It’s a triage system with all the brutality of a war. You put resources into those most likely to respond to those resources and be saved, but that leaves a lot of people in the cold. And it’s not a hard line, there’s not a solid cut off for who would be treated and who would not, it compares people to all the other people who are sick. And a person will be pushed down the line if they are elderly, asthmatics, immunosuppressed, etc. The more people competing for those medical resources, the stricter those limits will become. We might see those with obesity or any chronic disease denied ventilators, or the age limit reduced to 40, not 60.

The more strain on the healthcare systems, the harsher the judgements will be. I would be terrified in America, where there’s a good chance those judgements will be based on how deep your pockets are.

Governments are slow to enforce changes. Vaccines are slow to research and make. But you can wash your hands and avoid crowds now.

Slowing down the spread will save lives. It might even be yours, when the pandemic reaches its peak.

In COVID-19 depth info, March 8.

Italian ventilator guidelines, in Italian

Discussion about those guidelines, English.

#covid-19 #coronavirus #pandemic #epidemic #virology #epidemiology #covid 2019

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cattivvo · 3 years ago

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⠀⠀⠀⠀Data Log 01: [ Bloodline ]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Take this head-canon with a mere grain of salt since it's just what I perceive and believe until debunked when Dottore becomes relevant to the game’s story plot.

Dottore has Italian blood and was born in Milan, Italy. The reasons for this is as the following: I see Dottore coming from a privileged lifestyle with riches from birth and no this isn't villainizing the wealthy, just giving leeway for him to have such liberties and advances than other people with low income that can't pay for schools and high knowledge that he has.

Why Milan, Italy? Simple! Milan is the wealthiest city in Italy, with residents earning an average yearly income of €36,252, followed by Rome with €30,543, according to figures from the Ministry of Economy.

⠀⠀⠀Why Italian blood? He can be just a wealthy Russian man? That's true, but looking into the statistics in Italy of medical doctors; Italy has probably the highest level of medical staffing in the world. The medical school intake has been controlled since the early 90's and the annual number of new graduates has recently decreased. However, the number of active doctors has not yet been established!

But said doctors don't get a lot of employment opportunities at times, therefore, comes traveling and recruiting the young Dottore. Another reason than stats about rising medical students in Italy, Italy has a rotten and corrupted medical system that hides behind a mask said by old Italian doctors that left the country. Their testaments are their own experiences and views so it may not be the full truth but still interesting.

Many other harbingers halted from different backgrounds as well like La Signora with Fontaine and Scaramouche with Inazuma! It's probably overthinking like usual but it's fun to research, no~?

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

#₍₍...️₎₎ ⇢ // soon you'll be perfect // headcanon

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truvadateam · 4 years ago

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Meet The Team!

Hello! I am Roberto, 23 years old and from Italy. I am currently completing the Master of Laws in International and European Tax Law at Maastricht University, while as an undergraduate I focused on European Law. During my academic endeavors, I acquired a thorough knowledge on the national legal system of the European Union member states, and my interest for human rights was fueled by the numerous courses taken on the subject. That is the main reason why I decided to participate in this ambitious project.

As a member of the Truvada TEAM, I have the unique privilege to address the issue of essential medicines’ accessibility through legal procedures and the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies in this regard. Being a part of a tem whose work will make a positive impact in this sector provides me with enormous gratification.

As you can see from my clumsy attempt to navigate a boat in the picture above, in my spare time I like hanging out in nature and exercising outdoors. Furthermore, among my hobbies, practicing combat sports and reading novels stand out as my favorite activities.

Hey! I‘m Luisa, 23 years old and from Germany. I follow the research master tract in cognitive and clinical psychology with the focus on psychopathology. Academically, my major interest lies in neuropsychopharmacology. But what’s the point in doing research on drugs if not everyone in need can access them?

I spend most of my free time with my friends, enjoying good food and drinks. But on Sundays, I turn into an 80 years old grandma who just wants her cup of coffee with a nice piece of cake. ☕️🍰

My name is Benedetta, I am 25 and I come from Italy.

I really like European matters. That is the reason why I am doing the Master in European Studies at Fasos. Before coming to Maastricht, I obtained a Master’s degree in Law, so you can call me jurist 🤓 Next year, I would like to move to Brussels and work as a policy consultant, in the pharmaceutical sector? Why not!

During free time, I love hanging out with friends, reading books and, as a good Italian, cooking nice dinners. Maybe if you are lucky enough once you will have the possibility to try my amazing carbonara!!

Hey everyone! I’m Elias, I come from Syria and I’m 26. Currently, I am doing my master in biomedical sciences at FHML. I am really interested in healthcare from all aspects, starting from the innovation and exploration of human functions and medications, and ending with delivering the care and enhancing our quality of life. After my master, I would like to move into the field of public health and policy. In my free time, I enjoy reading novels and non-fiction books, as well as cooking a meal with friends (as long as it is allowed by the measures), going on hikes, and embroidery every now and then!

Hello everyone!

I´m Céline, a 21-year-old Research Master student with the specialization on Psychopathology. I am incredibly passionate about human rights, and part of those is of course the right to be able to access medicine. As this project not only focuses on the social responsibility of pharmaceutical companies, but also on the legality of the evergreening of the drug Truvada, I was incredibly interested! I also loved the opportunity to work with people from other faculties on such a diverse project.

But more important here are some fun facts about me! One little secret I have that barely anyone knows is that I am completely unable to wink! Moreover, I have 2 little cats, but also adore every other kind of animal such as dogs, birds and red pandas. In my free time I love to educate myself more on social and political problems in the world, reading books and playing video games with friends.

#team premium

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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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America's First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation's Persistent Illness

https://sciencespies.com/history/americas-first-black-physician-sought-to-heal-a-nations-persistent-illness/

America's First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation's Persistent Illness

James McCune Smith was not just any physician. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree, educated at the University of Glasgow in the 1830s, when no American university would admit him. For this groundbreaking achievement alone, Smith warrants greater appreciation.

But Smith was also one of the nation’s leading abolitionists. In 1859, Frederick Douglass declared, “No man in this country more thoroughly understands the whole struggle between freedom and slavery than does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his understanding.” A prolific writer, Smith was not only the first African American to publish peer-reviewed articles in medical journals; he also wrote essays and gave lectures refuting pseudoscientific claims of black inferiority and forecast the transformational impact African Americans were destined to make on world culture.

John Stauffer, a Harvard English professor who edited The Works of James McCune Smith, says that Smith is one of the underappreciated literary lights of the 19th century, calling him “one of the best-read people that I’ve encountered.”

“The closest equivalent I really can say about [him] as a writer is [Herman] Melville,” adds Stauffer. “The subtlety and the intricacy and the nuance…and what he reveals about life and culture and society are truly extraordinary. Every sentence contains a huge amount.”

Smith was born enslaved in New York City, in 1813, to Lavinia Smith, a woman born in Charleston, South Carolina, who historians believe was brought to New York in bondage. While James McCune Smith never knew his father, a white man, university records indicate he was a merchant named Samuel Smith. (Amy Cools, a University of Edinburgh scholar who has conducted the most extensive research into Smith’s paternity, maintains, however, “Meticulous research has thus far failed to yield any records of [such] a Samuel Smith…indicating the name “Samuel” may possibly have been entered into [the] university records for convenience or respectability’s sake.”). Smith received his primary education at the African Free School #2 on Lower Manhattan’s Mulberry Street, an institution founded in 1787 by governing New York elites. Their aim was to prepare free and enslaved blacks “to the end that they may become good and useful Citizens of the State,” once the state granted full emancipation.

The school graduated a roster of boys who would fill the upper ranks of black intellectual and public life. Smith’s cohort alone included Ira Aldridge, the Shakespearean tragedian and first black actor to play Othello on the London stage; the abolitionist minister Henry Highland Garnet, the first African American to address Congress; Alexander Crummell, an early pan-Africanist minister and inspiration to W.E.B. DuBois; and brothers Charles and Patrick Reason, the first African American to teach at a largely white college and a renowned illustrator-engraver, respectively. These men’s achievements would be exceptional by any standard, but even more so, for a group who were born enslaved or deprived basic rights as free blacks.

They were also all leading abolitionists, contributing their varied talents to the cause. University of Connecticut literature professor Anna Mae Duane, who tells the intertwined life stories of Smith and his classmate Garnet in her book Educated for Freedom, says the boys at the African Free School spurred each other on to great success and that the school’s innovative method of teaching contributed to that. The schoolmaster, a white Englishman named Charles C. Andrews, brought with him from his home country the Lancasterian system to help one or a handful of teachers instruct a class of 500 boys. “The boys would teach other,” Duane says. “They were all deputized as assistant teachers, basically.” This had a galvanizing effect on their confidence.

“When you are learning something, you are learning from another black person,” Duane says. “There was so much they did for each other because of way the school was run. It gave this incredible sense of authority and community.” Just as they elevated each other, the boys were destined to do the same for their people. Garnet formed a club of among the boys, Duane says, and the boys took an oath to “get their education and free everyone down south.”

Even among this exceptional group, Smith stood out as the school’s star pupil. In 1824, the school selected him to address the Marquis de Lafayette when the abolitionist Revolutionary War hero visited the school during his farewell tour of America. Freed by New York’s Emancipation Act of 1827, and after graduating the African Free School at 15, with honors, the next year, Smith apprenticed to a blacksmith, while continuing his studies with area ministers.

He took instruction in Latin and Greek from his mentor, the Reverend Peter Williams, Jr., another African Free School alum, and the pastor of St. Philip’s Church, the leading black church in the city. Garnet recalls his friend working “at a forge with a bellows in one hand and a Latin grammar in the other.” In time, Smith would master French, and demonstrate proficiency in Spanish, German, Italian and Hebrew.

When Columbia University and Geneva College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York) refused Smith admission because of his race, Smith’s benefactors raised funds so he could attend the University of Glasgow, which Stauffer describes as “a deeply abolitionist university at the time,” with ties to the abolitionist movement in New York. “Glasgow was a far better university than any American college at the time,” Stauffer said, and “on par with Oxford and Cambridge.” The university had been the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment just decades earlier, and had graduated pioneering thinkers including Adam Smith and James Watt.

At Glasgow, Smith was a charter member of in the Glasgow Emancipation Society, joining just before Britain abolished slavery in 1833. In a span of five years, he earned his bachelors, masters,’ and medical degrees, graduating at or near top of his class. Then, he completed his residency in Paris. The African American press heralded his return to the U.S. in 1837.

In New York, Smith established his medical practice at 55 West Broadway, where he also opened the first black-owned pharmacy in the United States. He saw both black and white patients, men and women. “[Whites] were willing to go to him because of his reputation,” Stauffer says. “He was widely recognized as one of the leading medical doctors in New York.…Even white doctors who were racists couldn’t help [but respect his expertise] because of his publications.” In 1840, Smith authored the first medical case report by an African American, titled, “Case of ptyalism with fatal termination,” but was denied the opportunity to present this paper on fatal tongue-swelling to the New York Medical and Surgical Society, “lest it might interfere with the ‘harmony’ of the young institution,” the society insisted. His paper, “On the Influence of Opium upon the Catamenial Functions,” was the first publication by an African American in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

While the foregoing represents Smith’s contributions to conventional medical research and treatment (and concerned mostly white patients), Smith dedicated considerable attention to challenging pseudoscientific justifications for African American oppression. The moment he stepped back on U.S. soil, he delivered a lecture titled “The Fallacy of Phrenology,” where he attacked the notion that head shape and size dictates the relative intelligence of different racial groups.

Having embraced at Glasgow Adolphe Quetelet’s pioneering application of statistics to social science, Smith frequently marshaled sophisticated statistical analysis to make his case. When the federal government used data from the 1840 census to argue that emancipated blacks in the North, when compared to those still enslaved, were “more prone to vice and pauperism, accompanied by the bodily and mental inflictions incident thereto—deafness, blindness, insanity and idiocy,” Smith mounted a campaign to refute the claim.

The Harvard-trained physician Edward Jarvis, who had initially supported these government findings, later joined Smith in exposing fundamental errors in the census. For example, Smith demonstrated that the census often tallied more infirm or “insane” black persons than there were black persons in a given state (“to make 19 crazy men out of one man”). More fundamentally, he showed the census failed to account for the higher mortality rate among the enslaved population—the murder of blacks, he charged, at young ages. In an 1844 letter to the New York Herald on the topic, he writes, “What mockery it is for men to talk of the kindness of masters in taking care of aged slaves, when Death has relieved them of so large a share of the burden!”

Smith served for 20 years as the medical director of the Colored Orphan Asylum, a position he assumed some years after he accused the asylum’s previous doctor of negligence for concluding that the deaths among his charges were due to the “peculiar constitution and condition of the colored race.” Smith made great improvements in the medical care at the institution, containing outbreaks of contagious diseases by expanding the medical ward to allow for greater separation and isolation of sick children. He saw the Quaker-run institution as one of the best schools in the city for black children, providing for them what the African Free School provided for him, with a critical difference: Duane says the philosophy of the African Free School was, “You need to admire a version of history that disconnects you from the history of slavery in this country…your own mother… You’re not orphaned but you orphan yourself. You leave the past behind.”

The leaders of the African Free School contemplated the children would educate themselves, gain freedom and repatriate to Africa. By contrast, Smith, says Duane, “saw education [at the orphanage] as a way of supporting families, of putting down roots in the U.S. And fighting for citizenship.”

He also knew an educated black population marked the beginning of the end of slavery. Slavery, Stauffer says, relies on a “totalitarian state” where no one is permitted to question the status quo. So, in the case of enslaved persons like Smith and his cohort who become free, he says, “That’s when they start speaking and writing profusely, and that’s what really fuels or creates the abolition movement.” Education and freedom of expression is anathema to slavery. “All slave societies do their best to prevent slaves from having a public voice, because if they do it’s going to wreak havoc on the society.”

Havoc was necessary if abolition could not be achieved by other means. Smith defied the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which required that citizens in free States aid in the recapture of persons fleeing bondage, as he met with other black activists in the back room of his pharmacy to arrange for the protection of runaways. In 1855, he co-founded the interracial Radical Abolitionist Party, with Frederick Douglass, former Congressman Gerrit Smith, and John Brown, the abolitionist man-in-the-arena, who in 1859 would lead a foiled attack on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to instigate a revolt among the area’s enslaved population. The party advocated a pluralistic, egalitarian society, for men and women of all backgrounds.

Unlike William Lloyd Garrison advocated “moral suasion” as the means to rid the nation of slavery, these radical abolitionists were prepared to use violence if it would liberate their brethren from bondage. Smith reasoned in an 1856 essay in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, “Our white brethren cannot understand us unless we speak to them in their own language; they recognize only the philosophy of force. They will never recognize our manhood until we knock them down a time or two; they will then hug us as men and brethren.”

Smith predicted the institution of slavery would not give up the ghost on its own. “African Americans recognized that violence is at the heart of slavery,” Stauffer says. “Without violence, slavery cannot exist…And so, [African Americans] were practical.”

In general, Smith and the Radical Abolitionist Party believed that white Americans needed to embrace African-American perspectives in order to see America in its true light and redeem it. He wrote, “[W]e are destined to spread over our common country the holy influences of principles, the glorious light of Truth.” This access to truth, he predicted, would be manifested in African American oratory, poetry, literature, music and art. Stauffer says that one of Smith’s lifelong interests was to reveal to people the unrecognized influence of Africans and African Americans in the advance of scholarship and culture. An 1843 publication records Smith proclaiming in an 1841 lecture:

“For we are destined to write the literature of this republic, which is still, in letters, a mere province of Great Britain. We have already, even from the depths of slavery, furnished the only music this country has yet produced. We are also destined to write the poetry of the nation; for as real poetry gushes forth from minds embued with a lofty perception of the truth, so our faculties, enlarged in the intellectual struggle for liberty, will necessarily become fired with glimpses at the glorious and the true, and will weave their inspiration into song.”

Indeed, as Smith observed, songs among the enslaved were already shaping American music in his time. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” a haunting spiritual about the separation of children from their mothers during slavery, would later, as musicologists acknowledge, form the basis for George Gershwin’s 1934 song, “Summertime.”

Smith himself made significant contributions to the American literary canon with a series of narrative sketches in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, which he called, “The Heads of Colored People.” With its title mocking the attempts of phrenology to diminish the worth of African Americans, Smith paints dignified portraits of everyday black people—a bootblack, a washerman—as examples of the unique personalities inherent to every human being.

Smith died in November 1865 of congestive heart failure, living his final years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He and many black families fled Manhattan after the 1863 Draft Riots, where largely working-class Irish draft resisters assaulted and killed black New Yorkers and attacked charitable institutions associated with African-Americans and the war. Most distressing for Smith were these events of July 13 of that year, as reported by the New York Times:

“The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob about 4 o’clock. … Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of the rioters, the majority of whom were women and children, entered the premises, and in the most excited and violent manner they ransacked and plundered the building from cellar to garret.”

The rioters burned the building to the ground. Fortunately, the staff managed to escort all the children to safety through a back exit. An ailing Smith was not at the asylum that day, and despite attacks in the vicinity of his home and pharmacy was not harmed. But he and other black New Yorkers were shaken. The mob ultimately killed an estimated 175 people, including many who were hanged or burned alive. It’s estimated that in the riot’s aftermath, Manhattan’s black population declined by 20 percent, many departing for Brooklyn.

“I didn’t know he was my ancestor,” says Greta Blau, a white woman who learned about Smith when she wrote a paper on the Colored Orphan Asylum for a class at Hunter College in the 1990s. While she had seen his name in her grandmother’s family Bible, he was a “Scottish doctor” in family lore. Only later did she make the connection. “I think all his children “passed,” she said, meaning that Smith’s descendants hid their black ancestry in order to enjoy the privileges of whites in a segregated world. The 1870 U.S. census recorded Smith’s children as white and they, in turn, married white spouses.

Knowledge of Smith’s achievements as an African American might have endured had he published books, but his essays from periodicals were more easily forgotten. Whereas Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century, only one portrait of Smith exists. Blau realizes why Smith’s children did not seek to keep his legacy alive: “In order for his children to be safe and pass, he had to be forgotten,…which is tragic.” In 2010, Blau arranged for the placement of a new headstone at Smith’s grave in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hill Cemetery.

Remarkably, several white descendants of Smith are interred in the same section established by St. Philip’s Church, the black church Smith attended. Blau’s grandmother, who died in 2019 at 99 years old, joined her for the ceremony at the gravesite, as did descendants from Smith’s other children, whom Blau first met when she contacted them to share the news of their ancestor. While other descendants she contacted did not welcome the news of her discovery, these distant cousins who joined her for the ceremony made the journey from the Midwest to be there. “They were proud of it. Just proud.”

#History

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rosecorcoranwrites · 4 years ago

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September Reading Roundup

It's time for this month's reading roundup, but first, a little announcement that no one but me will care about: I'm staying off the internet until the election. Well, mostly. I'll still post to Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram when the mood strikes me or when I have a writing update. I'll still post Rant Rave Reviews on here and Youtube (the theme this month is spooky stories, of course). But I won't be interacting much (ie, I won't be spending hours reading through Twitter and Tumblr and watching random Youtube videos I've already seen). If you @ me or retweet or reblog a post, I'll probably respond in a day or two, but other than that, I'm becoming a recluse.

The reason for this is twofold. First, I'm offering it up. For those of you who aren't Catholic, "offering it up" is sort of like giving up something for Lent. You discipline yourself by enduring some deprivation (either natural, like pain, or of your own choosing, like not watching hours of Youtube). At the same time, you offer up your (albeit, in this case, slight) suffering as a sacrifice for some good. I'm offering it up for America. Not the election, America. Because, not to get political or anything, but no matter who wins the garbage fire that is the 2020 election, America is doomed unless our culture changes. As I said to a friend recently, if this was the 90s, we could weather whatever storm Trump or Biden brings, but people hate each other so much right now that our country is pretty much over. Unless...

I don't know what I'm praying for, but I'm praying, praying that come what may, God in his Providence will drag something good out of all of it, kicking and screaming if need be. I will also be doing a rosary novena with my diocese October 14th through October 22, and then another one with the USCCB October 26th to November 3rd. Join me if you would like.

On a lighter note, I'm a volunteer writer-in-residence again at my hometown library, so I'm obligated to focus on writing this month, and need write, research, and workshop without distraction. I have two Forensics and Fiction books all tabbed and ready to read, plus a book about army nurses in the Vietnam War. The plot of book one in the alternate-history/fantasy/mystery trilogy is fast congealing, and I want to strike while the iron is hot. I need to focus! My ultimate goal is to be ready to write a little each day in November, returning to my heretical NaNoWriMo ways.

I'll let you know how it all turns out in my first Novemebr post, which will be a reading roundup of October. Until then, let's take a look at what I read this month:

Two Six Shooters Beat Four Aces: Stories of a Young Arizona by Barbara Marriott Ph.D

Genre: History - Anecdotes

Why I read it: Arizona book club pic

What I thought of it: While it's clear that Marriott is an excellent researcher, she is either a bad writer or in serious need of an editor. Individual paragraphs proved internally repetitive, and the overall structure of each chapter was slapdash. It needed smoother transitions from anecdote to anecdote or more section breaks and section headers.

Would I recommend it: No, everyone in my book club, including myself, hated it.

7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Genre: Supernatural Mystery

Why I read it: I'd been wanting to for a while; the premise caught my eye

What I thought of it: The body-hopping time-loop stuff was brilliant, the characters likable, and the story delightfully twisty. The last twist and conclusion were unsatisfying, though.

Would I recommend it: Yes!! Despite it's flaws, it was an exciting, fun, and original book. I will definitely be reading Turton's next book (which involves a closed circle of suspects and, possibly, demons!?).

The Exorcist by William Blatty

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: I'd been meaning to for a while, and writing research gave me an excuse to do so

What I thought of it: I like that it doesn't pull it's punches; I'm kind of shocked that it's only been censored a couple times, actually. It presents demons as they are: hateful, grotesque jerks who get off on picking on humans. I also liked that there was a murder mystery subplot. I'm not sure I approve 100% of the ending, theologically speaking, but that's a pretty minor quibble.

Would I recommend it: Yes, but it is not for the feint of heart. Trigger warnings for child sexual abuse, adult sexual abuse, language, violence, the works.

How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro

Genre: Nonfiction - politics

Why I read it: It's a long story that I shall tell about in my memoir of library life, but not here. Also the cover is 10/10

What I thought of it: It was ok. I already knew most of what he said. I disagreed with some of it, like seeing the constant moving of people from town to town in 1950s as a positive thing; in actuality, "company men" in the 50s were moved around so they wouldn't have community ties but instead ties to the company, which is anti-human to the extreme. I did think it was interesting that he combatted the idea of America's greatness being built off the backs of slaves by pointing out that slavery was actually terrible for the south, as reliance on slavery retarded their economic system well after the Civil War.

Would I recommend it: If you're into political books, sure.

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson

Genre: True Crime - forensic history

Why I read it: I love historical true crime

What I thought of it: It was ok, but kind of didn't make the case for him being "The American Sherlock Holmes" (even though people really did call him that back in the day), in that a lot of his conclusions ended up being a little dubious. Still, from a research perspective, it did establish when various forensic practices started being used in the USA.

Would I recommend it: Maybe? I personally liked Father of Forensics more. I'd say this book is, like, 3/5 stars, just because it could have been tightened up a bit.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: It's spooky season!

What I thought of it: Having already seen the movie, I knew pretty much what was going to happen, but I love Gaiman's turn of phrase.

Would I recommend it: Yes, especially for children who are too young for scarier fair but still want a creepy story.

The Horror at Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: It's still spooky season!

What I thought of it: I honestly liked this a lot more than the Cthulhu mythos stuff. Rather than vague demoniac blasphemies or black cyclopean gulfs, there's a real tangible cult that sacrifices (reanimated?) corpses to a pale, dancing, snickering Thing on a golden pedestal. I dig it.

Would I recommend it: Yes. Just... ignore the racism. That goes for all of Lovecraft's stuff, by the by.

Herbert West: Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: Turns out I like HP Lovecraft. Who knew?

What I thought of it: You gotta love mad scientists who try to reanimate the dead, right? I think this one would make an excellent mini-series.

Would I recommend it: Yes.

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

Genre: Essay - illustration/comics

Why I read it: I loved Hyperbole and a Half, and was excited when I saw Brosh was coming out with another book.

What I thought of it: It was okay. Not as good as her first book, but for an understandable reason: medical complications and her sister's suicide (that's not a spoiler, as the book is dedicated to her sister). Thus, the book had a heaviness to it that the first one didn't. Still there were some parts that made me laugh so hard I cried.

Would I recommend it: Maybe? I'd say borrow it from the library, but don't buy it, unless you are also suffering a loss. It might be really relatable and cathartic in that case.

The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: I like HP Lovecraft

What I thought of it: Not as scary as I had been led to believe by my brother, but still a good story. I plan on reading Lovecraft Country at some point, which supposedly flips Lovecraft's racism on it's head, and so help me, if it doesn't make reference to this story and chattel slavery, I'll throw a fit.

Would I recommend it: Yes. I like that the cat didn't die. :)

The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: I just... I just really like Lovecraft, okay?

What I thought of it: I find the sea inherently creepy, so when you have a decrepit backwater filled with a fishy stench and secrets, it's gotta be good.

Would I recommend it: Yes, especially if you liked the Fishing Hamlet part of the Bloodborne DLC (which I could not help but think of the whole time reading this novella).

The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: You know why.

What I thought of it: So if you've read enough Lovecraft, especially Dunwich Horror and Shadow Over Innsmouth, you already know what's coming... or do you? Right away, HP establishes that there is a special knock the guy uses with his friend, so I assumed the twist end would involve the Thing appearing in the guy's body but not using the knock, thus revealing itself to be (redacted for slight spoilers). I was wrong. That's not how it played out, and the way it played out was so much creepier!!!

Would I recommend it: Yeah! I really liked this one!

Haunter of the Dark by H.P. Lovecraft

Genre: Horror

Why I read it: Yup

What I thought of it: Same ol', same ol, but what I thought was cool in this one was that the supposedly superstitious Italian Catholic immigrants totally know what's up and spend their stormy nights keeping the Haunter at bay with nothing but candles and flashlights. What a neat detail!

Would I recommend it: Yup. :)

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thesecondmate · 4 years ago

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reading: wk1

the new year is here!! whilst i don’t make resolutions, bc failing at my own goals is v bad for my motivation, i do want to do more of what i love: reading, running, and learning languages. i want to keep up with the stack of books on my bedside table (to remind me to read them) and to actually use duolingo (blessed free resource), and i signed up for a beginner’s mandarin course online so we’ll see how that goes.

in terms of my actual degree, i’ve just started my orthopaedics/trauma/emergency rotation and oh boy am i in love with critical care. the adrenaline of waiting for a crash call to arrive. the physiology and pharmacology. the way it requires you to be on top form, as good as you can be. love it. anyways.

books

✩ calling a wolf a wolf // akbar (finished) i’ve had this book for a very long time but have only just finished it! some of akbar’s imagery is gorgeous, like a warm golden hug, the smell of tea and persimmons, but i don’t understand some of the poems or feel very much with them. i want to get more into poetry in 2021 - or at least, stop berating myself for not ‘understanding’ it! - so am trying to be gentle with myself.

✩ emporium // johnson (in progress) reread of this collection of short stories. ‘teen sniper’ is the first story - cannot believe this collection was published in 2002, it’s so very late-stage capitalist america.

poetry & essay

✩ Real Estate // Siken

✩ Pig Bttm Looking Up & Babe the Pig Does the Sheep-Noise When Mourning the Sheep // Sax

✩ Time Decides // Taylor oh so sad. oh so quotable. a raw wound, as if seen through rippled glass - just out of reach but i know its shape from having seen it, albeit never touched it.

articles: covid-19

✩ A side-by-side comparison of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines - Helen Branswell, Stat

✩ Two more life-saving Covid drugs discovered - Michelle Roberts, BBC finally! not one but two covid articles (this + the above) that don’t make me want to claw my eyes out!!

articles: medicine & psychology

✩ Black Death - History growing up in the uk, i do actually know quite a lot about the black death - it’s taught v commonly in uk history classes - but needed a reference for the origins of quarantine, which comes from the venetian for ‘forty days’, because that’s how long sailors were made to stay aboard their vessels in venice to curb the spread of the plague.

✩ Healing hands: the Italian surgeon treating Libya torture camp survivors - Giorgio Ghiglione, Guardian

✩ Chinese scientist who edited babies' genes jailed for three years - Ian Sample, Guardian

✩ Chinese scientists use CRISPR tool on HIV patient for the first time - Julie Zaugg & Serenitie Wang, CNN HOW did i miss this?!

✩ CRISPR-Edited Stems Cells in a Patient with HIV and Acute Lymphocytic Leukaemia - Xu et al. (2019), NEJM paper that the above article is based on. so so interesting - amazing that they got proof of principle, even if not a total success!!

✩ Does Your Daughter Know It’s OK To Be Angry? - Soraya Chemaly i cannot overstate how much this article shaped me - i think i saw a quote from it a few years ago, or something similar, and i’m not sure it ever left me. i’ve saved a lot of the references to read later, when i can handle 44-page pdfs (today is not that day). favourite quotes are: - Anger impairs people’s immune systems, contributes to high blood pressure, heart damage, migraines, skin ailments, and chronic fatigue. Unresolved anger contributes to stress, tension, anxiety, depression, and excessive nervousness. - Clinicians believe that a large component of depression is anger and a specific type of anger caused by a perceived or actual loss or rejection. There are many reasons why girls might feel rejected, powerless, and angry. First, they begin to see the effects of gender–based double standards that fly in the face of everything they’ve learned so far about their abilities, equality, and potential...Second, they become aware of physical vulnerability...Third, they begin to encounter the cultural erasure of women, people who look like them and whom they are meant to emulate, as authoritative. The older girls get, the fewer women they see in positions of power and leadership. Boys and girls move from childhood realms where women are their primary caretakers, teachers, babysitters, neighborhood, and family adults to institutions where they are marginally represented as leaders.

articles: refugee/migration issues i work for a charity that does fundraising + education around refugee issues, predominantly in europe, hence the detailed research on particular topics that sometimes arises (in this case, the italian govt’s abhorrent quarantine policy).

✩ Pressure grows on Italy to abolish migrant quarantine ships - Stefania D’Ignoti, Politico

✩ Italy’s use of ferries to quarantine migrants comes under fire - Sara Creta, The New Humanitarian the fact that a medical doctor, no matter how junior, did not recognise such signs of illness that a 15-year-old boy died is beyond comprehension. i am furious and heartbroken.

✩ Nice church attacker identified as 21-year-old Tunisian man - Lorenzo Tondo & Jason Burke, Guardian

articles: culture

✩ Uncertain Attraction in “Work in Progress” and “Dare Me” - Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker i only read the dare me half of this article whilst trying to find hard proof that beth and/or addy is gay. the author gets the vibe but no comment on gayness. pity.

#weekly #reading 2021

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luckylq30-blog · 4 years ago

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anonymousdior · 5 years ago

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My Lived Experience

I’ve been silent the last few weeks, not because I don’t have a voice or an opinion on what’s happening in this world right now or even more specifically, in my home country. But, because there is just so many feelings of all kind of everything. But, I feel like it’s time to speak up and tell my story and my views.

First off, If you are new here or need a reminder; I am Tri-Racial. My father is African American; my mother is Italian and Indigenous. Mix those three with being a medical anomaly; it can be confusing thing to divulge to people. Which is probably why I usually don’t. In fact, most people don’t know anything about me I would say. But, that’s about to change.

Let’s get real blunt.. I grew up within Racism. In fact, Racism is as much as my family as a brother and sister would be. How so? One family was so disgusted with my blackness that they administered burning liquids to my scalp to change the way my hair follicles grow. Yes, this was something the main culprit had researched. This family had called me every slur in the book, “The N word”, “Burrhead” were some to name a few. I was treated differently from my cousins because they were considered “pure” and I was “polluted and dirty.” That was just one family. My other family refuses to acknowledge me due to being mixed and insults are hurled on a regular basis in reference to my whiteness or indigenous side. In fact, some self hatred resides within my Father’s family as well. On another note, I was given away and sent away because of my blackness and how it would be easier if I was not nearby for the One side of the family.

Fast forward a few years, I was living with my meema and mooma, a strong Cameroonian woman and African man and my uncle C, an African American male. I am in a neighbourhood that was 96% African American and had a 92% crime rate. Racism was very much apart of this neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was fenced in, to not allow the residents inside venture out. In fact, there was a school, library and a shitty grocery store within this fenced area. It was expected that everyone residing within these buildings would stay within the fence and not “pollute” the rest of Atlanta. If you did get out, well expect to be hunted down and harassed. If you wanted a job, you would have to lie on your application of where you lived. The APD would roll in every day, with guns in hand, not even in the holster anymore. They would rough you up for no reason and if you fought back, you’re arrested on the spot and lucky if you made it to the precinct without needing medical attention. However, in the “white” neighbourhoods, no policing was needed and when you were arrested, you were treated as a human. This neighbourhood was treated as less than. Don’t think the APD are bad? Don’t understand why Atlantans are so suspicious of the APD?

Let’s get real again...I was walking home one night from my shift at T-Mobile. It was dark but I was dirt ass poor, not to mention my money had been taken from me (That will be discussed later on). I am minding my own business and all of a sudden, the APD with their cherries on pull over and draw their guns at me, I am 17 years old and alone, not to mention a girl. They yell at me to get on the ground only once, when I ask what is happening or why, I am lunged at and my face is pushed into the ground. With guns still drawn at my head and this heavy officer on me, I’m asked where I live and what am I? I answer the name of the neighbourhood and I am bi-racial. All of a sudden I’m told that I will do and I fit the description of an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon from a bar that was at least a 2.5-hour walk away. I was arrested and thrown into the back of the car, while wearing my T-Mobile uniform, the whole time I am pleading with them that I didn’t do this crime, that I was at work and to call my boss, he will tell them. I was told by an Officer to shut up and that all people from my neighbourhood are guilty and that anyone with “Black” is straight up wrong and guilty of being alive. AN OFFICER, someone who is supposed to serve and protect. They refused to listen to anything I had to say, didn’t allow me a call to notify anybody and threw me in jail and as they threw me in there, the arresting officer called me a “dirty ghetto N word.” I spent a month fighting charges that weren’t mine to begin with and that based off my registered ethnicity aka racism, I was automatically guilty. In the end, a judge was smart enough to actually read the whole case and discovered I actually DID NOT fit the description among other things.. However, I was still 1 hearing from going to prison for 10-20 years... all because I was bi-racial and one of those races was black.

I had a grandfather once, we called him mooma. He was an amazing man and one of my hero’s. He was amazing, respected anyone and everyone and would love to talk proverbs with you. A god-fearing man. When I was young, he had an “accident” that left him permanently blind. By accident I mean white supremacists thought it would be fun and an act of god to my mooma who was simply asking if there was biracial kid books within a bookstore. After he left the bookstore that’s when they jumped him. The APD did nothing and refused to file a police report and dropped my mooma off at a mental health area instead of a hospital. Years from that incident, my mooma would leave for a work trip to Texas and would never return home. My mooma became just another black man gone missing. When we went to report it to the police, we waited 3 hours to file the report while other White families were served asap. When they got around to us, they never wrote anything down and said he probably had a 2nd family because he’s black.... My mooma was murdered by White people who thought they were better then my grandfather...Who didn’t care he had a family waiting for him and a granddaughter waiting for the next critter book. Someone deemed my mooma was not fit to live simply because he was a black man.

As I grew up, I took note how other kids would be treated compared to myself and the people within my neighbourhood. When my uncle would take me to the aquarium, we would be questioned for 5 minutes on the pricing of the aquarium and how there was no guns or drugs allowed. During this time, the white families were let through with no problems. The black families were always questioned and lectured. When I went to school I noticed the kids from my church had better books, their books went to Bill Clinton, my books went to Jimmy Carter. They were assigned homework and readings, I went to class with the lesson on the board with maybe only 4-5 kids in the classroom while our teacher read the newspaper or a book, the white kids teachers were invested in their future.

As I went into high school, I started attending church with my meema at her request. In her words, “to pray the white devil out of you.” While my meema was busy praying for the white devil out of me, I was getting beat up every Sunday in the back of the church for being black by the pastor kids and their friends. They called me every name in the book, called me disgusting, ripped my shirt and spat on me. They always stole my money (as per for my comment a few paragraphs up, I was always broke because of it) In fact, one Sunday they beat me up so badly I went to the hospital. We tried to file a police report but the APD never came... That was the last time we went to that white church. From this moment on, I have only stepped in a church twice.

When I moved back to Canada, I was hopeful that it would be different and more peaceful. In fact, I have heard how not racist Canada is. I have to disagree; it’s just more behind your back, less in your face then back home. I once was told I need to calm down on the alcohol as I’ll fully turn into a “Drunken Savage.” Or not wanting to learn about the culture and mocking it at every moment someone has. Of course, a racist slur towards my Indigenous side.

Even from my Canadian city I reside in, Georgia still inflicts is racist ways on me. The black vote is suppressed to the point legal actions have been launched all around. The white adults can register easily and usually have a flawless voting process. That is not the case for the minority population and people who reside within low income neighbourhoods. To the point, the last election I was given a hard time to register saying my W looks like a V and that I was trying to defraud the voting process. After persistence, I was able to vote but was given 3 faulty ballots that were already filled out for the current president. When asked for new ones each time I was told why wouldn’t I vote for Donald Trump, he loves the poor. On top of that, this year’s voting process was no different and I was given a timeline that was not given to my white friends to register. I was given the run-around and every excuse to vote and was told the same excuse, that my paperwork was filled out with the wrong color pen, that there was problems with a computer system that they don't even use to register or that I was registered within a different state. None of this was an issue before they read where I was from and the ethnicity on file...

The above is just a taste of the racism I have experienced/witnessed. It’s a daily battle within myself to love myself and embrace all that I am. The Black, the white and the indigenous. I still avoid mirrors, most photos and you will never catch me at the beach or the pool in fear my hair get’s wet and you see that little hint of curl come to light.

So yes, these protests are justifiable. Yes, the Atlanta protests were the first turn to ugly and violent.. It’s because we are angry and it’s not just these few incidents, it’s a history of corruption, systemic and blatant racism. It’s years of oppression and anger bubbling it’s ugly head to the surface. I can assure you, it’s always been there..I end this blog with one of my favourite quotes from a movie “The Great Debaters” (If you have not seen it you should!)

“Saint Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all," which means I have a right, even a duty, to resist -- with violence or civil disobedience...You should pray I choose the latter.”

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reading-writing-revolution · 5 years ago

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This is long but an important insight..m.

Yu Li - Posted originally

February 8 at 8:09 AM ·

Thanks for speak out! Mario Cavolo

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加油中国！When the United States 2009 H1N1 swine flu emerged, an international emergency, a declared global pandemic, it eventually infected 60 million and initially killed a minimum of 18,449 cases that year. But the final story of the H1N1 global pandemic was far worse than that, with close to 300,000 deaths, according to the final tallies in 2012 reported by the CDC, as you will read below.

Which is why I am scratching my head at how bizarrely negative forces are attacking China and Chinese people as it engages a remarkably aggressive front addressing this Corona virus outbreak which started in Wuhan, central China. I am forced to ask and answer a few questions.

During 2009 H1N1 outbreak, I don't recall xenophobic anti-America attacks across the globe, do you? In fact, do you recall it took six months for the U.S. to declare a national emergency? Did any government from the onset in April 2009 through the end in April 2010, including the month of June, when H1N1 was declared an international emergency global pandemic, then send out a notice to its citizens that they should leave the United States? Close their borders to American travelers? Nope, not a peep.

Like I said, something's not right, folks. I am reading hateful vicious attacks on the Chinese government for their supposed intentional conspiracy to intentionally under report the number of infections, yet that is exactly and always the case with such flu outbreaks no matter what country and the CDC reports illustrate that crystal clear. The U.S. H1N1 swine flu numbers were vastly underestimated and updated three years later, because dear friends, that is the nature of such viral outbreaks which don't care which country they started in. There is never enough man power, there are never enough test kits, there is never enough medicine or medical supplies. China is not trying to hide these hardships, they are well known, they are being reported on the news daily in China. There are always people who die, thousands of them whom we'll never know if they actually died because of a particular virus. Those are the facts, not any problem unique to China's healthcare system or government.

Its not a conspiracy, its just tragedy.

According to the June 27, 2012 research report followup three years later, it gets much more disturbing when you learn about the CDC's final estimate of the H1N1 virus global death toll. You and I find at this at this article at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy website, the CDC's 18,449 total deaths number was "...regarded as WELL BELOW THE TRUE TOTAL, mainly because many people who die of flu-related causes are not tested for the disease." So during the 2009 outbreak, was anyone accusing the American medical and government authorities of hiding the numbers? Were Americans with hidden cameras strolling into the Mayo Clinic to PROVE how many people were really dying? The absurdity of these vicious attacks are that whether or not a person specifically does have the Corona virus or some other viral bug presenting as pneumonia, the treatment is the same supportive treatment anyway.

Something's not right here folks. The world should be applauding China's unprecedented, broad, aggressive response. (WHO officials and many other government and healthcare officials across the globe are.) I am on the ground here in China READ IT HERE watching with my own eyes and it is quite incredible by any measure, not to mention an enormous economic sacrifice.

Instead of looking at the will of an entire system of government acting faster than any other government on the planet could, we are one month later, still busy bashing a few local government officials in Wuhan who should have told us a couple weeks sooner. And yes, that is true those local officials screwed up. And by the way, those officials are in deep trouble for it. Just like the recent Puerto Rican politicians who are in trouble when we learned they didn't distribute hurricane emergency supplies that were sent to them to help during last year's terrible hurricane. A disgrace. Individual people screw up all the time and hopefully justice gets served later, but that's not an indictment of an entire country's government. Secondly, on this point, every provincial government has sent out a notice to its government officials pretty much saying that if they are stupid enough to do the same, they will face the wrath of harsh punishment. I don't doubt it for a moment. Lets contrast to what countless western politicians have gotten away with and remain in office to remind all of us that human error, stupidity and greed is not unique to any particular skin color or race or country. "What about..." reactions don't help.

And here's the mic drop for you: "The CDC researchers estimate that the H1N1 2009 pandemic virus caused 201,200 respiratory deaths and another 83,300 deaths from cardiovascular disease associated with H1N1 infections." Total: 284,000 deaths. Shocking, isn't it?

Was there a travel ban for any length of time to and from the United States?

Did China, Germany, Japan or any other country close their border to American travelers?

Today I noticed in the updates that following the United States Department of State policy suggesting U.S. citizens leave China, the United Kingdom embassy just released the same recommendation to subjects of the kingdom.

In 2009, did UK subjects in America get a notice from their kingdom to leave America? No.

Did the world suggest we isolate from America? Close the U.S. borders!? No.

Did Americans get xenophobically attacked and targeted by anti-American sentiments like the Chinese are experiencing now? Um, no.

Fascinating and disturbing to say the least. If you're an expat currently in China, unless you're in Wuhan, fact is that you're most likely safer and more peaceful and more stable by simply staying put than by leaving right now. You couldn't be safer than in this country, where almost everyone is staying home and dutifully isolating themselves with awareness. Not to mention that the Chinese government's decision to safeguard the society, the families, the people, is coming at a devastating economic cost in the hundreds of billions.

I have a friend in Mesa, Arizona. He told me earlier that the big popular China City buffet, a huge busy place, has no customers. Does that make any sense at all?

Let's test our ability to reason, to be rational:

If you were in Miami and you heard that there was a virus outbreak that started in Milan, in central Italy, would you cancel your dinner reservation at the Italian restaurant that night in South Beach? No. Would you buy a pizza next week at Joey's Pizzeria in Delray Beach?

If you were in Singapore and you heard there was a virus outbreak in Dallas, Texas in the central United States, would you stop going to your favorite local Texas southern BBQ restaurant with the owner from Houston, in Singapore?

Would you avoid olive-skinned dark-haired Italian-looking people on the street in Chicago? Would you avoid big guys wearing cowboy hats, cuz they're obviously from Texas in Singapore cuz there's a virus in Dallas and they might have just gotten off the plane? There's a strange senseless bullying extremism and activism in today's society and you should do your best to avoid it and not be a part of it. It is fomented by a small group of extremist activists while definitely not supported by your average mainstream person who is simply exhausted by their outrage-inducing antics.

Finally, here are some straight up, sensible accurate descriptions of this Corona virus which started in Wuhan, China. Its not called the China virus and neither was H1N1 called the America virus. Whether two weeks or two months from now, this flu season type virus will have passed and the joy of Spring will have arrived. Just like every flu season. However, don't misunderstand me. The extra caution and the remarkable response by the Chinese governments and people together to quell the spread of this virus was warranted because, yes it is correct that this corona virus is nastier than the usual annual flu bug, as was H1N1 in 2009. As of now, what we can confidently note the following regarding this Corona virus:

This Corona virus is highly contagious, it spreads quite easily. It binds to lung tissue and so in particular, likes to cause pneumonia, that's what infection of lung tissue is. That's more severe than a respiratory infection which is only in your throat or bronchial tubes.

The Corona virus currently has a 2% death rate. That's a lot higher, around 20x higher, than a more typical annual flu virus with a death rate of 0.1%. However, a 2% death rate is still much lower by comparison to the SARS virus which had a 9% death rate or the MERS virus with a really nasty 37% death rate.

The Corona virus is causing severe symptoms in 10-15% of cases. 80% to 90% of deaths from this virus are happening in elderly patients, mostly with other existing health problems, not younger people. That characteristic by the way, is in contrast to the America 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus which in fact had a higher death rate amongst younger people including children rather than those over 60 years old.

China identified and shared the Corona virus genome in record times, in only days and of course, immediately shared it with all international health and disease organizations. Medical researchers are already discovering that certain existing anti-viral medications seem to be effective against this Corona virus.

Its impossible not to marvel at China's broad and aggressive domestic response directed by the provincial level governments to restrict movement, restrict transportation, restrict business for a period of time combined with the voluntary dutiful cooperation of its 1.3 billion citizens who are in the majority quietly staying at home these weeks to let the virus pass; this model response is already being hailed by the international community as a remarkable unprecedented response setting a new standard in understanding what is possible for future outbreaks in whatever country they may occur. Is it inconvenient and costly. You bet.

Like I said, something's not right with the way humanity is responding to what's happening here. I haven't put my finger on it because well, its certainly complex and the world is upside down in many other ways that I also can't for the life of me understand or explain without ending up writing a very thick book.

But I do know this: It needs to stop. This vicious, political, xenophobic racist attacks and smearing of all things China needs to stop. Its really not helping anyone in the political corridors of Washington nor is it doing anything to help the man on the street who is just concerned with taking care of his family.

My family is originally from the Basilicata region of Italy, the little hillside Italian towns of Potenza and also, Grottola, which is just outside of Matera. They left their home country and moved to America where I was born, in Yonkers, New York. America became their home and it was my home until I left, too. Now over two decades ago, I left the United States, the country I was born in, the country that has plenty to admire and plenty to improve. But I left and I came to China and now China is my home. If you had asked me thirty years ago if this was my life plan on planet earth, I would have said you were nuts or a really bad fortune teller. But that's how it has turned out. I am truly blessed with my lovely Chinese wife and our family living here in Shenyang in China's northeast. You get my meaning? I am a mature adult like many with the powers of observation. I can easily see that whether we are talking about China or the United States or any other country, their societies and their governments have good points and bad points.

The xenophobia needs to stop now. Whether in a couple of weeks or months later, this nasty flu type Corona virus will begin declining and the joy of Spring will arrive. Between now and then if you don't have anything good, anything supportive to say about China or Chinese people, how about you just keep your mouth shut.

Mario Cavolo, Shenyang.

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alkaliyogi · 5 years ago

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WE ARE CURRENTLY IN HELLS PIT OF FIRE AND MISERY…

How did we get here?

2020 is shaping-up to be quite a year; we lost Kobe an important figure to sports yes, but more importantly a role model for black fathers and especially fathers to beautiful brown skinned girls. Now we have COVID, deaths, social distancing and possibly (and I shudder at this thought) mandatory vaccines in the near future.

Many people lack the vitality and life-force energy required to participate in a democracy. This is not by accident. It was designed this way.

There is a long history of manipulation of the human race at the hands of the 1% of the 1%- this is what I predict will happen on the other side of COVID;

Travel will become more of a nightmare than it already is. More abuse at the hands of underpaid/overworked security personnel and undignified body searches. I worked in aviation for over 10 years- if you still believe that Arab men flew those aircrafts into the Pentagon and World Trade Towers you are ignorant of the concept of protected air space. The planet’s only Superpower had comprehensive protected air space before, during and after the “attack” on America. Military and law enforcement of this great land long adopted the motto of “shoot first, ask questions later” long before Bin Laden was a spec in his father’s testicles. Besides, who spends more on their military and the protection of their own country than the world’s Superpower?

Already, we are subjected to unnecessary liquid restrictions- you can’t even bring a tub of hummus onboard with you...pause for reaction. If you choose to believe that restricting liquids has saved your life, I invite you to watch a lighthearted episode of “Adam Ruins Everything” where they covered ‘security theatre’ designed to provide you, the average citizen, with little more than a false sense of security. And if you look at what constitutes a ‘potential terrorist’-it’s a pretty broad net covering how you wear your baseball cap all the way to facial hair grooming standards. Seems like legalized stereotyping, unless of course you’re a polished white male in corporate America.

But perhaps in the fight against mandatory vaccines- even the average white male may find himself in the trenches with us.

Will it be vaccines passports or vaccines with hardware implanted in our bodies? Will we eventually replace handheld passports for data stored in a fingerprint, retina or swab sample? Is that where we’re headed to already? Let’s keep things in perspective, shall we? Thousands of people died on September 11th. Millions more have died at the end of a gun- but the policy makers are very selective with what tragedies they will amplify and how they’ll pick and choose (based on their own agenda) when to introduce new bills or change laws. So even though innocent children die every single year in the greatest country on earth- purchased votes by the NRA (formerly the KKK) prevent amendments to the Second Amendment. Ain’t that something? An Amendment that can’t be amended. You’d think it was written by God and not men. Illusions of grandeur coupled with idolizing the forefathers of America is the exact opposite of being Christian, spiritual, a person of faith, etc. The is the same type of fandom associated with pre-adolescent girls and boy bands.

An inside job designed to illicit fear of a common enemy (and weapons of mass destruction) became justification for us giving away many of our personal freedoms (i.e. fingerprints scans, eye retina scans, mass surveillance by our smart phones, email providers, search engines, CCTV, etc.). Does this sound familiar? It’s happened before and millions were executed as a result. Hitler wanted complete control of his people- unwavering compliance and that’s exactly where we are headed if The Gates Foundation and the WHO have anything to say about it. China is already practicing this type of population control with their face-recognition software and social behavioural grading system that assigns citizens a credit score that impacts your ability to navigate everything in your life from career, to housing to who and how one travel. Is this what we want? Who benefits? Not you, not I.

There is growing evidence that COVID is a man-made (military controlled) virus. To many this may seem utterly ridiculous. I would invite you to research this information as discovered by numerous holistic doctors (who have been censored on Google but are searchable on Qwant, a reliable search engine free from the prying eyes of Google surveillance. If you’re wondering why the government would allow for something like a manufactured virus to be unleased on it’s on citizens let me help you. It begins with big pharma and ends with decreasing the human population.

As it stands today over 300,000 people have died- not from COVID but from underlying health issues. Like an episode of Black Mirror- doctors and health professionals are threatened if they don’t adhere to naming COVID as the cause of death. It doesn’t take a genius to observe that the overwhelming majority of people that contracted COVID recovered because they did not have underlying health issues. The Italian Parliament recently went viral for stating this. I’ll say it again, the COVID virus does not kill. Ask any self-respecting health professional/scientist that is not on the receiving end of grants issued by big pharma. Even the CDC has been corrupted, pick-up a copy of Marcia Angell’s book; The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. Marcia Angell was the first woman to serve as Editor-In-Chief at The New England Journal of Medicine, the most influential science journal in the world. She’s done her part to warn us of how drug companies collude not for the benefit of the public, but for their own gain. History will show unequivocally that the real tragedy was not COVID- but the mandatory vaccines that have polluted our bodies for years with unsafe levels of heavy metals, formaldehyde, MSG and more to render your well enough to stay alive and on medications until you die. Newer vaccines will also render you sterile. That is the pandemic we’re headed towards.

Big pharma is greater and more powerful than any government on the planet. And what’s more, they’ve purchased almost every single politician there is to be purchased. In medicine, the first rule is ‘Do no harm’. In Aviation the first rule is ‘if we don’t know, we don’t go’. Thousands of people have had their lives permanently changed when their once healthy children were exposed to vaccines that left them autistic, some children have even died. Unless you can prove without a shadow of a doubt that vaccines are not harmful and toxic (which they have not proven) why do we agree to subject perfectly healthy, clean bodies to foreign matter? And no, vaccines did not eradicate polio- you can still catch that shit. The difference is more people have access to clean food and water today than ever before. As more and more countries develop, more of the planet’s population can practice better hygiene. Vaccines have cured nothing. Measles, malaria, hepatitis are still around!

Fun fact: the US government actually owns more patents of the measles virus than anyone else. Something to chew on.

Are we going to roll over and pretend that the supposed benefits of a vaccine for a non-lethal virus outweighs the damage is can have to the nervous system and reproductive functions of millions of people? We’re already dying a slow death with pollution in the air, water, food and soil we’re consuming. A great portion of the population is already unable to conceive naturally- which is your body’s way of telling you your currently too sick to create new life. So, what do we do? We employee fertility specialists to implant us with embryos instead of addressing the foundational causes and habits for our body’s rejection of bringing new life to our sick planet.

The world’s population is nearing 8 billion- very few people have died during this pandemic relative to deaths associated to lung cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, medical drug overdoses, etc. It’s sad that we lost anyone. I live in Brooklyn, New York so I’m not removed from the collective loss we’re experiencing. Let’s also take a moment to step back and take a deep breath. This was never a reason to make us anxious, depressed and fearful of each other. This is how they separate and then conquer us. And it’s certainly not a reason to change our way of living and give away more personal freedoms (that were fought and paid for).

I’m calling on citizens of the world. Stand-up! We are many in numbers- they are few. Don’t let them violate you or anyone else in a way that is not humane.

One last interesting fact to research- the United States Supreme Court or Congress (depending on which article you come across) that vaccines are ‘unavoidably unsafe’. And the kicker? If you or a loved one are damaged from a vaccine you can’t sue the vaccine manufacturers. How’s that for democracy?! Look it up for yourselves, but not on Google.

Stay up!

Alkali Yogi

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the-daily-tizzy · 5 years ago

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ITALY’S COMMUNIST RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Published March 24, 2020 | By Giacomino Nicolazzo

Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy.

As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. ( Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30pm in Italy.)

Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago.Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!

Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.

Sixty million of us are in lock-down…it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming…or at least they should have.So who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No…I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater!

At the same time that Renzi was leading Italy into oblivion, strange things were happening in Italy’s economy. Banks were failing…but not closing. Retirement ages were being extended…for some reason the pension funds were dwindling or disappearing. The national sales tax we call IVA (Value Added Tax) rose from 18% to 20%, then to 21% and again to 22%.And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.Now the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China. A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.

To be brief…China was getting away with purchases and acquisitions in violation of Italian law and EU Trade Agreements with the US and the UK…and no one in either of those countries (not Obama in the US or Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense. As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.In 2014, China infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each.

By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion. When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies…representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy…all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds! Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.

Chinese state entities own Italy’s major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) as well as its major utilities (ENI and ENEL). Upon entry into the telecommunication market, Huawei established a facility in Segrate, a suburb of Milano. It launched is first research center there and worked on the study of microwaves which has resulted in the possibly-dangerous technology we call 5G.China also now owns controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler, Prysmian and Terna. You will be surprised to know that when you put a set of Pirelli tires on your car, the profits are going to China.

Yep…the Chinese colossus of ChemChina, a chemical industry titan, bought that company too!Last but not least is Ferretti yachts…the most prestigious yacht builder in Europe. Incredibly, it is no longer owned by the Ferretti family.

But the sector in which Chinese companies invested most was Italy’s profitable fashion industry. The Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani brands have been acquired by 100%.Designer Salvatore Ferragamo sold 16% and Caruso sold 35%. The most famous case is Krizia, purchased in 2014 by Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Company, one of the leaders of high-priced, ready-to-wear fashions in Asia.

Throughout all of these purchases and acquisitions, Renzi’s government afforded the Chinese unrestricted and unfettered access to Italy and its financial markets, many coming through without customs inspections.

Quite literally, tens of thousands of Chinese came in through Milano (illegally) and went back out carrying money, technology and corporate secrets.

Thousands more were allowed to enter and disappeared into shadows of Milano and other manufacturing cities of Lombardy, only to surface in illegal sewing shops, producing knock-off designer clothes and slapping ‘Made In Italy’ labels on them. All with the tacit approval of the Renzi government.It was not until there was a change in the governing party in Italy that the sweatshops and the illegal entry and departure of Chinese nationals was stopped. Matteo Salvini, representing the Lega Nord party, closed Italy’s ports to immigrants and systematically began disassembling the sweatshops and deporting those in Italy illegally.

But his rise to power was short-lived. Italy is a communist country…socialism is in the national DNA. Ways were found to remove Salvini, after which the communist party, under the direction of Giuseppe Conte, reopened the ports. Immediately, thousands of unvetted, undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again.

Access was again provided to the Chinese, under the old terms, and as a consequence thousands of Chinese, the majority from Wuhan, began arriving in Milano.

In December of last year, the first inklings of a coronavirus were noticed in Lombardy…in the Chinese neighborhoods. There is no doubt amongst senior medical officials that the virus was brought here from China.

By the end of January 2020 cases were being reported left and right. By mid-February the virus was beginning to seriously overload the Lombardy hospitals and medical clinics. They are now in a state of collapse.

The Far-Left politicians sold out and betrayed the Italian people with open border policies and social justice programs. One of the reasons the health care system collapsed so quickly is because the Renzi government (and now continued under the Conte government) redirected funds meant to sustain the medical system, to pay for the tens of thousands of immigrants brought in to Italy against the will of the Italian people.

If you remember the horrible earthquake that decimated the villages around Amatricia, in the mountains east of Rome in 2015, you would also remember how the world responded by sending millions of dollars to help those affected.

But there is a law in Italy that prevents private donations to charitable Italian organizations. All money and donations received must be turned over to a government agency, who in turn is to appropriate the funds as needed. But that agency is corrupt just as are all the others.Most of the money never reached a single victim in the mountains. The Renzi government redirected the vast majority of those funds to pay for the growing immigrant and refugee costs.

As the economy worsened under the burden of illegal immigration, compounded by gross government spending and incompetence, unemployment rose quickly…especially among young people. The unemployment rate for men and women under age 35 is close to 40%.

So more money was diverted from the health care system and used to pay what is known here as guaranteed income. Whether you work or not you are paid here, especially if you belong to the PD! The government simply raises taxes on those who do work

.Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen.

If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies…and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax! I will say no more!

The point I am trying to make here is that not only did the Chinese bring the virus to Italy (and the rest of the world) it was far-Left politics and policies that facilitated it.

This should hopefully be a warning to Americans that while they work to rid themselves of the China Virus, they should just as vehemently endeavor to rid their government of any politician that circumvents the Constitution and ignores the laws of the land…plain and simple.

Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books.

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