The Tyranny of the Woke Cancel Clause

"I penned an irritated tweet in response to one of the latest happenings on the increasingly heated culture war front."

"There are no rules on Twitter except don't do what we don't like today."

"They are always applied post-hoc by algorithms and idiots bent on maintaining their woke superiority."

"If I can't be let back on because I won't apologize, I couldn't care less."

Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, author, professor emeritus, University of Toronto

"We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized."

"For this reason, we prohibit behaviour that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category."

Twitter Social Media Platform

The Canadian-born actor, formerly known as Ellen Page, said he could not "begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer," he wrote on Twitter.  Reuters

Has there ever been a time in human history where so many people have been more confused about their sex and gender identity? A time when the term 'transgender' must now elicit from one and all, sensitivity of understanding that those born male or born female, adjudged to be such by outward external appearances of genitalia as identification may seek to transform themselves to the opposite gender on the basis of emotionally feeling themselves to be 'other' than their birth designation.

The new progressively 'woke' generation that will not for one moment hesitate to congratulate a woman for deciding she is really a man and henceforth address her as he or they in the preferred parlance of emotive sensitivity, feels it to be fully socially justified to accept protestations of denial of birth sex for the chosen gender the subject feels most comfortable in. And so, overnight, people accept that those they once took for male are now female and must be recognized as such, and vice versa.

The acceptance of what might once have been considered the confusion of delusion is so accepted within society at large in the Western sphere of the Earth's inhabitants that children of five are now being introduced in elementary schools to the child-confusing musing that they may not, after all, be what and who they think they are. That boys are not necessarily boys and girls need not, of persuasion, be girls; each is whatever they feel is most suited to their frame of mind.

Page told Oprah Winfrey transitioning allowed him to "feel comfortable in my body for probably the first time"   Apple TV

 

Parents are forbidden to discuss such matters in a way to persuade their children that such confusion is normal and a temporary aberration that passes as children grow older and more comfortable in the maturity of their characters. And nor are parents asked to give permission that their children be indoctrinated into this fluid-gender psychosis that has stormed the world and which has elicited such grave respect within the medical and ethics and justice community where educators have enrolled their services as a public social duty.

A man recognized publicly both for his professional credits and his lack of enthusiasm for the current situation, Dr.Peterson's name is associated with instructing the public and particularly men how best they may improve themselves and self-confidence, as examples of self-responsible and self-respecting partners in society who has gained a large following who respect his experience and expertise in human foibles and interrelationships, has now once again, been placed in a position of censorship.

He expressed his professional and personal opinion on the surgical removal of a young woman's breasts at her request to enable her to feel more comfortable in her preferred status as a man. That this woman called a man by empathetic onlookers and subscribers to the legitimacy of gender transformation at will chose to excise from her body conformation one of the two most compelling sex-identification areas of a woman's body strikes him and others who believe as he does, that this is misguided and self-injurious.

 

Elliot Page posted the first public picture of himself post-top surgery.  Instagram/@ElliotPage 

 

Jordan Peterson expressed his view that the surgeon who performed the operation -- removing this woman believing herself to be a man's breasts -- defied his own professional creed's signal purpose as healers, and as he dis so, discredited the medical profession's primary premis to "do no harm". What he wrote, using the woman's original female name of Ellen Page, was that she had her "breasts removed by a criminal physician."

For that socially unacceptable comment, the social media platform Twitter has suspended Mr. Peterson from using the platform's full services until such time as he omits the offending statements. Statements made spontaneously in response to an article published in a newspaper where Ellen Page as Elliot Page, is quoted  as professing pride in introducing a trans character in a Netflix show in which she/he stars.

Since Dr. Peterson refuses to withdraw the offending opinion statements, he avers the suspension from the social media platform is effectively a ban since he would "rather die" than delete the statements in question. "Wow, @Jordanpeterson got a twitter strike. No more twitter until he deletes the tweet. Definitely not a free speech platform at the moment", wrote Mikhalia Peterson, Dr. Peterson's daughter, posting a screenshot of the message received by her father notifying him of  his account's diminished status.

The Human Condition : Celebrity Familial Dysfunction

"You can't tell me what's happening? My Dad isn't here with you [funeral home]?"
Jose Joel, Mexican entertainer

"No one knows anything about what's happened. His children are absolutely devastated, to the point where they wonder if it's even true that he died."
"She [youngest daughter Sarita Sosa] wouldn't answer any of our calls, but then she's on TV all pretty, with makeup, and hair, saying a bunch of lies ... It's so easy to pick up the phone and say, 'Come see my dad. Come see your dad."
Brenda Ocana, Manager, Jose Jose

"My history has been one of ups and downs."
"But thanks to God, I keep working, drawing from my life experiences songs that I can sing."
"I want to you to know that aside from the small tumor, I am well. I am ready to take on this new adventure in my life."
Jose Jose

"He left in peace. Thank God, he left very calm."
"Actually, I don't like doing interviews. I don't like fame, that's why I've always been so private, but I know my dad would have wanted me to do this for him."
"Despite all our differences, we must be united in these moments. My responsibility as a daughter and as a sister is to tell them what happened with their dad, and that we have to stick together."
Sarita Sosa, daughter, Jose Jose

"We have every right to see my dad. My half-sister has a lot to explain to me and to all of Mexico."
"Please, wherever you are [Sarita], get in touch with us. I've been talking to you all day [leaving unanswered messages] and I'm here, and I've been telling you since yesterday: I see my dad's body, or I don't believe anything."
Marysol Sosa

The Mexican singer José José accepts his award during the 6th Annual Latin Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles in 2005. Photograph: Héctor Mata/AFP/Getty Images

Spanish language singer, actor and songwriter Jose Jose known to his global music fans as "el Principe de la Cancion ("Prince of Song") has died of pancreatic cancer at age 71. His three children, two older, a son and daughter, and a third through a third marriage, have captured headlines of their own, Jose Joel, the singer's son, and Marysol, the older daughter, accusing their step-sister of a sinister plot to keep them from seeing their father's body.

On arrival at the Caballero Rivero Westchester funeral home in Miami on a flight from Mexico City, Jose Joel was informed by a funeral director his father was not there, despite that he was meant to be: "In this moment, he's not. I have no information", the son was told.

The younger daughter was front and centre on television, recounting her famous father's final days, while her two older half-siblings were searching Miami in an effort to discover where their father was lying, preparatory to a funeral and burial. The older siblings, trailed by swarms of reporters no doubt intrigued by the potential of capturing photographs and narratives of family dysfunction in the claims that the younger daughter 'kidnapped' the father, and obstinately refuses to allow her half-siblings access to his body have accused their sister of keeping details of their father's death from them.

She was, however, generously recounting for the studio audience how she had taken her father home to Miami from Mexico, to stay with her while his descending health sapped his life. The children, all themselves in the entertainment industry and as such fodder for gossip, admiration and celebrity status, can not be less than mindful of that old adage in show business that "any publicity is good publicity", focusing the eye of the public on their curious shenanigans.

A singing icon in Latin America, his children obviously seek to replace their father in the Latin American public's vast and admiring public acclaim for one of their own.

Known as the Prince of Song, José José sold over 100 million albums  Getty

Jose Jose, who took on the double name from his father, an opera singer after whom he was named as Jose Romulo Sosa Ortiz, recorded 30 albums and 20 Hot Latin Songs all of them hits, focusing for the most part on love and loneliness; obvious hot-button issues in Latin American song-lore. Jose Jose was one of those rare Mexican artists who surpassed one million album sales each year for twenty years. On the dark side, his alcoholism and cortisone shot-habit prior to performances added up to poor health.

With the poor health went unsteady finances, until the hammer came down with the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2017. Marysol and Joel accuse their half-sister Sarita of isolating their father from the rest of his family, in a calculated effort to profit from his legacy, once she flew him to Miami to live with her. As a result, it has been two years since the two older siblings had seen their father. Just after he died, Sarita contacted her siblings, and that was the last contact they had with her about their father.

When they arrived in Miami with their entourage, they stopped by the police, the Mexican Consulate and the Homestead hospital where their father was reported to have died. None of these authorities were able to give the two any information relating to the death. Moreover, the Homestead hospital found that there was no record of the singer having been there at all. No one was able to confirm the death.

Sarita meanwhile, in her exclusive interview with Primer Impacto on Univision, claimed her father died from the effects of a poor physical state, and not pancreatic cancer as reported. A celebrity-family-style circus to have all their fans salivating in delight.

Singer José José seen Saturday, October 12, 2013. Getty

But Is It Art? The Joke's On You  Seriously

"A chapter in Phaidon’s upcoming Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings 1976-1978-Volume 5 documents three closely related bodies of work—the Piss, Oxidation, and Cum paintings. The Piss paintings were made by urinating and pouring or dripping urine onto primed canvases; the Oxidation paintings were made by urinating and pouring or dripping urine onto canvases prepared with either copper or gold-colored paint; the Cum paintings were made with semen ejaculated, poured, or dripped onto primed canvases. Andy Warhol produced these paintings during the second half of 1977 and 1978. Chronologically, they directly follow and partially overlap with the Torso and Sex Parts paintings of late 1976 through early 1978. Thematically, both groups of work are concerned with the body: the Torsos and Sex Parts are figural representations of the body’s sexual attributes, whereas the Piss, Oxidation, and Cum paintings are process-based and abstract, relating to the body’s elemental functions."
The Phaidon Folio, Artspace editors

Andy Warhol, Oxidation, 1977–78, urine and metallic paint on canvas, six canvases. Collection Norman and Norah Stone, San Francisco © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., NY, Photo by Phillips/Schwab.

Seriously? This is art. Well, the art community seems to feel it is. Not for ordinary art lovers to disagree, since if they do, they're art Philistines, people who are attracted to art for its aesthetic appeal to them personally. What do they know about art markets and auctions of the work that avant-garde 'artists' produce and which connoisseurs claim represents the highest order of art and art investors are prepared to divest themselves of huge sums of money to acquire, gaining prestige and planning to sell when the 'art' they've set aside to gain in value makes it worth their while.

Who might be interested in hanging on their walls, a piece of 'art' construed as meaningful, beyond abstract, and comprised of semen? Or urine? Take your pick. But you can't have them, either one -- or any of Andy Warhol's great masterpieces unless you're rolling in money and funding such a purchase represents no hardship. Think of the respect you'd acquire in the arts community for owning such an engaging piece of art representative of the human experience, after all....

Andy Warhol, Cum, 1977–78, semen on cotton. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., NY, Photo by Phillips/Schwarb

As a Pop Art icon, Andy Warhol has few peers, unless perhaps one thinks of Banksy and his art meant to self-destruct as soon as it has been sold at auction for an unimaginable price, and the purchaser carries through his bid, despite that the piece of art he bought no longer exists in its original form, banking on the very real fact that this destroyed piece of 'art' will only gain in value because of the renowned name of its author and the spectacular trick of destroying its 'integrity' as it passed hands.

Warhol was born in the United States to parents who arrived there as immigrants from Slovakia, from a little town in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, a place called Mikova. The residents of that tiny hamlet were mostly unaware that one of their own was a celebrity in the United States and the international art world. "I thought he painted houses", Jan Zavacky, 73, said, at one time, though they all know better now. For they cannot be ignorant of the fact that Warhol's fame is such that his admirers will make pilgrimages to the place where his ancestors were born.

Andy Warhol, Oxidation, 1977–78, urine and metallic paint on linen, six canvases. Present location unknown © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., NY, Photo by Phillips/Schwab

An old post office has been transformed into the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, in the nearby town of Medzilaborce, and the main road in the town was been renamed Andy Warhol Street. But it is on the road leading to Mikova that a billboard sits with the visage of Warhol in his wig of wild hair, identifying the village as his family home, his ancestral home, though it is not that of an aristocrat. Few people remain in the town. But now they all recognize the name Andy Warhol, son of Andrej Varchola and Julia Zavacky-Varchola. Warhol simplified things by changing his name.

A cousin who lives in the tiny village of Mikova observed astutely that In America "You don't need to be very good at something. You just need to be different", something her cousin Andy figured out a long time ago, and made a prodigious effort to distinguish himself, doing it very successfully, by being wildly, outrageously 'different'. There was a time when Andy Warhol said, "I come from nowhere", and perhaps he meant the town of 100 residents is so insignificant it is actually nowhere.

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As, for example, his art could be characterized by some who appreciate traditional art forms, as 'nothing'. Or even an assault on art, or an insult to the medium. The Medzilaborce museum was set up by Michal Bycko, an art expert, aided by Warhol's U.S. family. "They laughed in my face", were "outraged", when he showed a photograph of Warhol in his wild-haired wig to the locals and tried to convince them that the son of Andrej and Julia was famous for painting pictures of Campbell's soup cans.

The artist Andy Warhol on fire escape of the Factory at 231 East 47th Street in the 1970s

Now, the Medzilaborce museum is where Europe's largest collection of Warhol art and artifacts can be found. There are no fewer than ten Campbell's Soup Can prints, a number of Marilyn Monroes, and a snakeskin jacket the artist once wore, along with a pair of his glasses. Warhol's parents both spoke Ruthenian, part of a culture and language bordering between Slovakia, Ukraine and Poland. He was able to understand it sufficiently so as to use it when he met Pope John Paul II, who as a Pole, knew the language.

Imagine, paint enough Campbell's soup cans and you get to meet the Pope! Andy Warhol did, and he laughed all the way to the bank....

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Yoga Master, Ballroom Dancing Competitor Extraordinaire

"That's my side with the hip replacement [demonstrating floor stretches without perfect alignment on the right]."
"My partner [in a ballroom dance 'America's Got Talent' presentation in 2015] was 70 years younger than me, and he was throwing me around his neck!"
"I thought it was a new game [at age 8 in India]. I went to my aunt and said, 'Can they let me be part of it?' And she said: 'That isn't a game, it is yoga and it's not for girls. It's not ladylike'. So I started doing it."
"I am invited all over the world!"
Tao Porchon-Lynch, New York 

TaoPorchonLynch.com

This is a talented, determined woman who has lived a long, rich life. She is 98 years of age, dresses in contemporary fashion, wears high heels, and drives herself about in her Smart Car. She also teaches a regular 90-minute yoga class in a suburb of New York. The class she teaches is a combination of Iyengar, meditation and vinyasa, on occasion supplementing her instructions by treating her regular students to the sight of their instructor performing the moves herself, fairly close to perfection. Not quite perfect, since she has undergone no fewer than three hip replacement surgeries.

This woman is beyond remarkable. She is a dauntless perpetual-motion septuagenarian whose energy is matchless, even by those less than half her age, accustomed to the rigorous exercises she undertakes herself. "I'm 50 years younger than her, and her schedule exhausts me", Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy said admiringly. She knows of what she speaks, having got close up and personal when she co-authored Ms. Porchon-Lynch's "Dancing Light: The Spiritual Side of Being Through the Eyes of a Modern Yoga Master" memoir.



Born in 1918 with her mother failing to survive childbirth, she was raised by an uncle in Pondicherry, India. At age 12 she discovered herself in the presence of "a little man sitting on the floor" of her home, surrounded by other visitors clearly in awe of this man's presence. After which she and her guardians travelled and marched with Mahatma Gandhi during his historical rendezvous with history. During the Second World War, she spent time in London and the South of France. Her family was involved in the French Resistance and did their humanitarian part by sheltering refugees.

Eventually she arrived in the United States, and worked on contract in Hollywood, for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, teaching actresses yoga and occasionally appearing in films herself as an actress. In New York she met her future husband, insurance salesman Bill Lynch, and married him in 1953, settling in Hartsdale, New York. He was an oenophile and together they founded the American Wine Society. Following her husband's death in 1982 after a motorcycle accident, Ms. Porchon-Lynch returned to practising yoga, and in 2012 became "The Oldest Living Yoga Teacher."

"She sees things in people they don't see in themselves. Her students love her. She has a large band of students who would do anything for her."
Susan Douglass, 61, New York

"It's incredible. Even His Holiness was totally impressed by her", said Deepak Chopra, who met this extraordinary woman in 2011 during a panel discussion with the Dalai Lama. Ms. Porchon0-Lynch receives invitations to attend yoga festivals as a featured star, from sites as diverse as Bosnia and Dubai. "I think that people were so hungry for someone to look up to who wasn't a young, skinny blond yogi in a bra top. There is just so much of that. Then came someone who was the opposite of that. Then came Tao", said Yoga instructor Kelly Kamm, herself accustomed to travelling the workshop circuit.

All Photos: TaoPorchonLynch.com

Living A Delusion

"We [his musical band in North Carolina] became popular with the college crowd."
"I kept it very hush-hush [that he is Eric Clapton's half-brother]. I did not want to be known as 'Eddie Fryer, the half-brother of Eric Clapton."
"This writer came in and did a character assassination on the place where I live [rooming house in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside]. Granted, it is not the Hilton. It is a shelter that has a medical team and they do a good job of looking after me."
"He [Eric Clapton] played it [a demo tape of his music], and right away he wrote me a personal letter where he said he played the CD and it blew him away.Yes, he liked it and I sent him a letter back just to say I was glad you were able to get an opportunity to see what your brother's music was like."
"I have never asked him for money. A person is not entitled to another person's achievements."
"I gain nothing by being defeated [by heroin and illness]. I am a fighter and want to play again, maybe even with Eric."
Fast Eddie Fryer, Vancouver musician

Jason Payne/Postmedia News   At one time, Eddie Fryer was convinced he would meet his half-brother Eric Clapton.

Ah well, it is human nature to dream and to fantasize, and to believe and to have hope that one's dearest wishes will be realized some day. But Eddie Fryer is fast running out of time. He learned seventeen years ago that the famous Eric Clapton is his half-brother, both biological sons of a shared father. Correction: Eddie Fryer shared his early life with his father, Edward Fryer Sr., who'd had a wartime fling in Britain with Patricia Clapton who was left to raise her son Eric as a single mother.

Eddie Fryer Sr. was also a musician; he played piano. When he was demobilized at war's end, he set out on a dinner club piano-playing career in appearances across North America. Both his boys inherited his love of music; each of them played guitar. And both boys when they reached maturity struggled with addiction to heroin. But whereas Eric Clapton left his heroin addiction to the past and carried on with his career, his half-brother had no such luck.

And now he suffers from "end-stage" cirrhosis of the liver. And he is dependent on social services for a place to live, for social welfare assistance, and for medical treatment for his poor health condition and just as poor health outlook. At an age when new opportunities no longer present themselves, when age and failing health guarantees not too many years on the horizon, Eddie Fryer still has a fond hope that he will some day play guitar with his half-brother.

Jason Payne/Postmedia News   After discovering his lineage 17 years ago, “Fast Eddie” Fryer, now dying of cirrhosis of the liver, remembers how he was hounded by the press and just wanted to be left alone to deal with his own musical career — and his own demons.

Presumably, that hope sustains him. As for his brother, it seems that he is not that much given to brotherly affection for another man whom he has never met. Perhaps he feels nothing but resentment to have been abandoned, ignored by the biological parent he never met. In any event, that world-famous celebrity with wealth to spare, had none to spare for his indigent brother. While Eddie Fryer takes pride in never having asked his brother for money, perhaps his brother takes pride in never having offered any.

But it would appear that Eddie Fryer is a reasonable man, grateful for whatever life had to offer him, back when he was young and ambitious, and even now that he is old and ailing. A story written for the British media recently made the observation that Mr. Fryer lived in squalid conditions. A misunderstanding, says Mr. Fryer, of the rooming house where he lives, and where he is well cared for.

"They have been very much responsible for getting my medical condition under control", he observes of his subsidized "medical" housing. He still dreams of revisiting his musical career. He still believes that he will meet his half-brother, that Eric Clapton will make a magnificent effort to take the trouble to visit with his half-brother in Vancouver.

He would have to have surgery on his hands because of the tightened tendons, to enable him to hold a guitar once again. And if that happened, and if he met his half-brother, and if they played a duet, he would die a happy man. He feasts on his dreams of fulfillment, as a musician, as a man whose playing ability might match that of his famous, multi-millionaire half-brother.

Courage, Among Her Many Traits

"I had been planning this for some time. It is a less complex surgery than the mastectomy, but its effects are more severe. It puts a woman into forced menopause. So I was readying myself physically and emotionally, discussing options with doctors, researching alternative medicine, and mapping my hormones for estrogen or progesterone replacement. But I felt I still had months to make the date.

Then two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor with blood-test results. “Your CA-125 is normal,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. That test measures the amount of the protein CA-125 in the blood, and is used to monitor ovarian cancer. I have it every year because of my family history.

But that wasn’t all. He went on. “There are a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer.” I took a pause. “CA-125 has a 50 to 75 percent chance of missing ovarian cancer at early stages,” he said. He wanted me to see the surgeon immediately to check my ovaries."

Angeline Jolie, Diary of a Surgery, New York Times

Angelina Jolie Pitt -- Credit Luke MacGregor/Reuters

It doesn't take talent to be born beautiful. It does take talent to make a name for oneself through excelling in a profession, and Angelina Jolie was more or less born to the profession of acting. She has also distinguished herself as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations. Through the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees she was appointed a special envoy to focus on the crises of mass population displacements; using her celebrity appeal for humanitarian work.

As a hugely admired celebrity and a role model she is contributing to the public weal on an international scale. The mindless admiration for actors that elevates many in Hollywood as flamboyant examples that people largely tend to adore and emulate usually relates to their physical appeal, their personalities, their charisma, as much as their professionalism in portraying characters in the film roles they undertake. Angelina Jolie became famous for her beauty and her voluptuous figure.

Both stood her in good stead as a box office attraction, gaining her fame and fortune. She has not consigned herself to that kind of vacuous figurehead, but has used her celebrity status to reach out to those whose backgrounds are that of poverty, deprivation, disease, displacement. And for that alone she is to be greatly admired. But she has gone further, using her own experience with a genetic inheritance that not only endowed her with beauty, intelligence and poise, but a potentially morbid propensity to a deadly disease.

© UNHCR/K.McKinsey

Now 39, and having undergone genetic testing to determine what her chances are of facing various types of cancer in light of the unfortunate fact that women in her family line have died early deaths due to cancer, including her mother, she decided to sacrifice the very symbols of womanly physical attributes that gave her fame. She did that in favour of increasing the chances that her children would never have to face a future without their mother, as she was forced to do.

"There's this belief in our society that more information about our health is always better and that's not the case. Most people are not going to be in Angelina's situation."
"Is more information always more valuable, is screening always effective? The answer is no."
Timothy Caulfield, Canada research chair, health law and policy, University of Alberta

Angelina Jolie's well-publicized surgeries to remove the potential source of cancer infection after having been screened for genetic mutations, has motivated thousands of women to do the very same thing; be screened for the possibility of detecting genetic mutations that would place them in the high percentile of future cancers. Many medical researchers believe this kind of screening popularity represents a form of social hysteria, and criticize it is entirely unnecessary.

"While three of four Americans were aware of Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy, fewer than ten percent of respondents had the information necessary to accurately interpret Ms. Jolie's risk of developing cancer relative to a woman unaffected by the BRCA gene mutation", stated a British study in response to referrals for genetic services to identify hereditary breast cancer doubling in 2013.

But it is unmistakable that this woman is doing a public service by being up front and fearless in revealing her personal health history and the decisions she has chosen to make. In so doing, she has empowered herself by rejecting the symbols of femininity so beloved of men, as representing all that matters in being a woman, and in the process, empowered other women to confront the myth of that objectification.

Whatever surgeries have taken place, there she is, radiant and rational.

"Regardless of the hormone replacements I'm taking, I am now in menopause. I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes. But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared", she wrote.

The thoughts of a powerfully strong-willed and admirable woman whose priorities cannot be faulted.

"Cancer Sucks But Life Is Great"

"It's a final thumbs up from me. It's a shame the end has come so suddenly -- there's so many people I haven't got round to properly thank or say goodbye to. Apologies for that."
"That's it from me. But life has been good. Very good."
"If it had been caught earlier it could have led to a better prognosis. It could have changed the situation. But even saying that, I'm not one to dwell on the past. It is what it is."
Stephen Sutton, 19, Staffordshire, England

British teen Stephen Sutton, who chronicled his battle with terminal bowel cancer in a series of positive blog posts, died on Wednesday.  Photo: Stephen Sutton / The Associated Press

"My heart is bursting with pride but breaking with pain for my courageous, selfless, inspirational son who passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of this morning, Wednesday 14th May."
Jane Sutton, Staffordshire, England

"He was determined not to waste a minute, not to waste an hour or a day. I can hardly think of anyone I have met with such a zest for life, with such a belief that you can get things done and who wanted to live every minute."
"He was absolutely inspiring, he did extraordinary things for charity and meeting him was a huge privilege."
British Prime Minister David Cameron

Sometimes courage exists where one might least expect to find it, not with the determination to rise to the occasion of a physical challenge on a mountain expedition -- or to defend a companion from a bear attack, or dive into icy waters to save a child from drowning, or on the field of battle to distinguish oneself by hauling a fellow out of imminent danger -- but perhaps also and more spectacularly from a hospital bed with a diagnosis of death soon to arrive.

He could have been saved from the anguish and pain he was forced to undergo through circumstances beyond his control. When he originally presented with symptoms like stomach cramps, weight loss, illness and appetite loss in 2011, the doctors he consulted simply prescribed laxatives and sent him home to recover from what they diagnosed as constipation. That he had a family history of Lynch Syndrome, a genetic condition capable of increasing the risk of bowel cancer appears to have been overlooked.

His condition continued to deteriorate, leaving him unable to keep down food and liquids, and the pain he experienced was too intense to enable him to sleep. He was finally given an emergency CT scan. And it revealed a blockage in his bowel. Surgery that took place a day later to remove the blockage resulted in a biopsy confirming that the growth was cancerous.

He had incurable bowel cancer. Incurable because it had advanced to a stage where nothing could really be done, no intervention that might restore the future to him.

Last year, he decided to raise charitable funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust, setting a target of ten thousand pounds ($18,300). He began writing of his experiences in a blog that became quite popular in Britain, mostly because of the sunny outlook of the blog entries showcasing the young man's pluck and determination. In the end, his fund-raising succeeded to the extent of raising $5.9-million for the Trust. Hours after his death was announced an additional $220,000 rolled in.

Stephen Sutton was an athletic young man, playing soccer, competing in cross-country running. And then in 2011 he began suffer from stomach cramps, weight loss, loss of appetite. After his diagnosis he decided to list things he wanted to do or experience before his inevitable, too-soon death. He wanted to play drums at a stadium, to travel to CERN in Switzerland, to hug an elephant, and to get a tattoo.

Impulsively full of life's opportunities, unwilling to withdraw from life before he was forced to, he was a life-force of his own, impressing people who became aware of him.

"He's one of the most amazing people I've ever met. To still be thinking, even on his death bed, 'How could I help others?' -- he is absolutely inspiring", said Jason Manford who had assisted in the young man's fundraising efforts.

Conveniently Dying

"A detective is following up to make sure nothing suspicious occurred with her death. We're making sure everything is above board."
"Unfortunately, the victim passed away and this may change things for us with the state attorney and what charges they can proceed with. Grand theft may be out the window."
Captain Jeff Trylch, Palm Beach Police

"As long as we have sufficient factual basis, we will proceed. If we are missing an element that only the victim could provide, the state would then have to decide whether or not to proceed."
"We aggressively prosecute cases regardless of the economic or social standing of those involved."
Mike Edmondson, spokesman, Florida state attorney

Carrie Bradburn/Lucien Capehart Photography Nancy Tsai, Stephen Lindsay, Helga Marston in 2009. Tsai is accused of defrauding Marston.

 

In some ways this is a tale of two women born to relatively humble circumstances whose beauty and skills carried them into the higher echelons of society through felicitous marriages to wealthy older men. It is also a tale of one generation joining an earlier generation, both finding much in common within the scope of their life experiences and their attraction to high society and philanthropy, which high society venerates almost as much as social celebrity.

Two women, the first born in Romania who moved to New York in 1962 where she married an investment banker who died in 2004, leaving her immensely wealthy as a widow. "We've been lucky. There has been no heart disease in our families, they died simply from old age, at 93 and 94", Helga Marston was reported to have said in a social column dating to 1985. She died herself a few days ago, at age 92, and it could be said that age took her, but Alzheimer's had the first shot.

She was a great good friend of another woman quite like herself; beautiful, intelligently accomplished, wealthy by inheritance of marriage, moving comfortably in elite social circles, and having the distinction of founding the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, as well as being involved in advancing the arts, though of a later generation of her friend Helga Marston. Nancy Tsai, originally from small-town Ontario, also married well, not once but twice, first to a millionaire, then a billionaire.

They had been friends for many decades, growing old/er together, leaving one just past her prime, the other advanced into the status of the elderly frail. While Nancy Tsai retained her cerebral function intact, her older friend Helga Marston succumbed to Alzheimer's, her mind increasingly absent while her body strove to match her genetic familial history's penchant to long life. Helga trusted Nancy, and so Nancy had Power of Attorney of the older woman's estate, then became a Trustee.

The trouble was, the financial institution with which Nancy Tsai registered her friend's trust saw some alarming irregularities which concerned them and they, most uncharitably, but with an eye to their reputation, called in the police to investigate. It seemed to them evidently, unreasonable that while Ms. Marston languished during her end-of-days in a health-care facility (hospice), her trusted friend proceeded to make some peculiar investments on her behalf.

As, for example, by withdrawing $2,292,000 from Helga Marston's account for the purchase of a penthouse apartment; $302,000 to renovate that apartment; $270,000 to take possession of a Bentley Continental GT V8 coup; and $101,200 to pay for a 2013 Mercedes S550, an executive sedan. Jetting to Toronto and back, the sole passenger on a private jet, charging shopping and expensive restaurant invoices to the trust, that kind of, ahem,' irregularity'.

Palm Beach Police Captain Trylch looked up financial records, sought medical opinions and interviewed a cast of witnesses, all the while keeping in mind Ms. Marston's vulnerable state of health, teetering between being "on another planet" mentally in the words of a medical specialist, and departing this planet to remain permanently on that other planet whose plane of being we have no idea about.

"It is why we tried to move as expeditiously as possible", he explained. And so, he as lead investigator, established from the interview with that same doctor that Ms. Marsten's awareness simply was absent, she had "zero" mental capacity. Astonishingly, though that was the reality it would appear she managed somehow to approve legal and banking documents providing Ms. Tsai with access to her millions.

Even more amazing, in March of 2013, Ms. Marston amended her will, naming as beneficiaries Nancy Tsai and her daughter. A handsome inheritance indeed. And imagine, this is how peculiarly fortune would have it; a trusted, long-time friend who bought a costly property and vehicles to enrich her elderly friend's lifestyle, will now inherit it all.

Pure, blind luck!

Rail Thin? or Pleasingly Plump...

In the socially elite crowd of British and North American aristocrats and royalty among whom the Duchess of Windsor, (Wallis Simpson) moved, one could never be thin enough to achieve that look of
wealth, cosmopolitan sophistication and ennui that so characterized the women of her class. The expensive couturier clothing and jewels she wore simply emphasized the glamour she was acclaimed to exemplify. Hers was the world of the demi-monde; elegant beyond question, with a touch of moral ambiguity. No beauty she, but bearing a certain charismatic, louche attraction that led a monarch to choose life with her rather than a life without her, since a divorced woman could never be accepted as a consort for King Edward VIII.

Glamorous: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Miami in 1941

Now it's not just the aristocracy and royalty that are celebrated for their lifestyle and social position; their celebrity is shared by sport figures, entertainers, actors and the wealthy who have both inherited position and wealth, and those who have achieved wealth alternately through diligent enterpreneurial skill. Where once a well-fed robust physical presence personified personal wealth, because only the rich could afford to eat well and as much as they wished to, the situation has been now reversed in our time.

Where food, particularly food that has been processed to contain high levels of fat, sugar and salt, is readily available, inexpensive and popular, leading to weight gain among society's lower classes, the working poor, the lower middle-classes, people reliant on not whole food, but food products that have undergone such alterations from their original state that their nutrient content is questionable, and the harmful substances they contain are injurious to human health, depressing quality of life leading to obesity which itself leads to early death through diabetes onset to which maladies such as stroke, heart attack, neuropathy, kidney failure, and blindness are attributed.

Oh, and of course, the unattractiveness of being overweight, sometimes hugely overweight, morbidly obese, in fact. While society admires the svelte figure and is envious of those who are casually and proudly slim, on whose forms any kind of clothing looks good, another type of illness develops in the desire to become fashionably trim. Bulimia and anorexia are addictive and unpleasant pathological conditions affecting mind and body when women in particular, as well as impressionable teens seek to severely restrict food intake in a slenderizing process that can have extremely serious health results, even leading to death.

And then, there are people who are aware of good nutrition, and avoid a sedentary lifestyle; who make an effort to lead a moderate lifestyle incorporating whole foods and physical activity into their daily routines, who are not concerned with being elegantly thin, but rather muscularly fit. These are people who may work out regularly to ensure they don't put on additional weight, retaining an ideal weight; still looking physically attractive, but not catwalk-strutting thin, nor the reverse.

Martyna Budna exposes her tiny frame on the catwalk during Mark Fast's autumn/winter 2011 collection at London Fashion Week. Photo: Rex

 

Now comes the results of new research out of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, lead by Dr. Joel Ray, a physician and researcher at the hospital, whose team of researchers analyzed 51 studies on links between body mass index and death from any cause. Their research concluded that those categorized as underweight harbour the highest risk of premature death.




Underweight adults with a body-mass index of less than 18.5 have a 1.8 times greater risk of perishing prematurely than those with a normal BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, according to the results of their study. On the other hand, people classed as obese (BMI of 30 to 34.9) were 1.2 times likelier to die during a minimum five years of follow-up as compared to people bearing a normal weight. For the severely obese; those with a BMI of 35 or over, the risk rose to 1.3 times higher.

How's that for overturning common wisdom that had it that the obese and severely obese suffered because of the weight pressing in on their viscera (interior organs), and the weight they carried distributed over their body and within the cavity of their midsection causing too great a strain leading to early death. Dr. Ray agrees that the problems associated with obesity are real, but he is concerned that the worries over rising obesity rates in society risks creating an "epidemic" of underweight adults.

"Our focus as a society has been on overweight, obese and very obese, and there's no problem in our focus. It's an important public health and individual health issue. But in the process we've neglected the influence of being underweight on mortality."
"We also know that it also has the risk of potentially affecting people who are already sufficiently healthy in size, or who are so slightly overweight that it's irrelevant -- their risk of dying or diabetes isn't important."
"It's those individuals who become unintended victims of the campaign [aimed at curbing obesity]."

Being severely underweight places people at increased risk of diseases that include lung disease, cardiovascular disease such as heart failure, and falls and injuries from poor fitness and insufficient muscle mass.

Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Jason Merritt/Getty Images; George Pimentel/WireImage

Toronto The Tawdry

Clearly, the worship of celebrity represents a human frailty. Celebrity owes little to performing acts of grace and courage, of dedicating one's self to the well-being of humanity, even at the local level, within one's geographic sphere. The celebrity culture of the day is one consumed with avid fascination and admiration mostly for entertainers. And the more outrageously anti-social their actions, the greater their iconic status.

Defiance of societal mores is right up there in leading to public fascination and esteem.

Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube   Center of attention: Rob Ford appears on Jimmy Kimmel live on Monday night.

 

That great metropolis of Toronto has gained notoriety, diminishing its status as a great multilingual, pluralist gathering place for people from a multitude of other countries, cultures, religions and heritage, through the misfortune of the population somehow having thrown in their political fortunes with the sad and silly antics of a man professing to love the city, but unable to care for it through every fault of his own.

Screenshot     Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford appear on The Today Show with Matt Lauer.

 

And Mayor Rob Ford too is consumed with celebrity, envious of those who gain it, and hold it, and deserve that status now tarnished by adoring all those who manage to offend fundamental values of good taste and decency.

Despite the obvious exceptions by exceptional people who do offer themselves still as templates of human excellence, the vast majority of those who cling to their sordid celebrity function as living examples of what people aspiring to a life of good relations with others, obeying the law and contributing meaningfully to the society in which they live, living a satisfying lifestyle supported by friends and relatives, somehow manage to still clamour for ever more indications of human beings' propensity to shame themselves.

And Rob Ford is no different. And why should he be? He adores, and fixates on celebrity. And he has discovered his own. Manoeuvring himself skilfully into just such a position himself, and not by intention but by default. Defaulting to what comes naturally to a man who embodies all the elements of an oafish thug, but who manages regardless to convince people of his sincerity, probity and usefulness to them. As mayor of Canada's largest city.



He is so wedded to his celebrity that he will go to any means, inclusive of breaking the law, of offending the most basic morals, of challenging ethics and replacing them with his own of questionable heritage, for the payback it offers him. Attention. Lots and lots of attention. Not merely by outraged citizens of Toronto who cannot fathom where his popularity arises from among those who support him still, but internationally.

What other mayor's disgraced behaviour regularly pops up in international news, but his?

Causing him to primp and prance as much as someone of elephantine proportions can. True, his entertainment quotient both to those who abhor the man and those who admire him, cannot be denied, although it does all too often stretch the patience of even those who manage a grimace of amusement that someone could possibly land himself time after time in an aura of common-sense carnage.

o.canada.com/ Renata Ford just another political pawn. Like other political spouses, Toronto mayor's wife was used to help redeem her disgraced politician husband

Some theatre wag once said there is no such thing as bad publicity; all publicity has its value, for with it comes attention and those who are emotionally fixated on themselves crave attention. That in itself may go a long way to explaining actors' famous self-absorption expressed in an inability to see themselves in the round other than as thespians of entitled fame.

Rob Ford is a thespian of unentitled fame, unless consorting with underworld characters, exposing the public to exhibitions of alcohol-fuelled misbehaviour, surreptitiously acquiring illegal street drugs and using them with people of ill-repute identifies him as 'entitled' to his celebrity.

Toronto would do well to gift their mayor with a tight little island, say on the St.Lawrence, all of his own, and invite him to remove himself to that island, giving him also the means by which he can videotape himself endlessly performing all the little tricks and treats he so yearns toward. As long as he removes himself from public office and spares the city from any more needless embarrassment.

Now, what an ill-humoured, bad-mouthing tract this is...!

Why? Just for the Hell of it!

"You've been in your boat for 15 hours and you've got another 12 hours to go. You just do everything in your power to not think about how much you don't want to be paddling."
"For the first month, I kept thinking to myself, 'Why are we doing this?'"
Graham Henry, 23, Victoria, British Columbia

Photo courtesy henrykayak.com

"You can see the storms coming. It would be blue skies. Then the wind and rain comes and you're in the middle of this massive, dark, brutal thunder storm.
"And our paddles are carbon fibre, so they're conductive. We're just hoping we don't get hit [by lightning'."
Russell Henry, 21

Anyone living in beautiful British Columbia has access to any number of outdoor adventures. From paddling the Bowron Lakes circuit, to embarking on a week-end of alpine camping. When I was in my 50s, I did both. We clambered up Long Peak, making our way over the Gates of Shangri-la, a rockfall with boulders the size of a vehicle, halfway through the scramble to the mountainside where we pitched our tent on the gentlest slope we could find, vaguely approximating level ground, above a melting glacier, in August, where we got our drinking water.

As for the Bowron Lakes canoe circuit, it took us a week to canoe all the lakes and rivers to complete the circuit. We did that in September, the adventure of driving from Vancouver to Cache Creek and beyond to our Cariboo Mountains destination at the 3,000-foot-above-sea-level area where we had to wear winter jackets against the cold and rain gear over that, because it rained every single day without let-up. I know what it's like to paddle for long, long hours, exhausted and wanting to stop.

But brothers Russell and Graham Henry embarked purposefully for "the hell of it", on a 7,000-kilometre kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. It took them 200 days to paddle from Brazil to Florida. They spoke afterward about "that gnawing sense of dread". I'm familiar with that feeling too, the joy of the unknown adventure ahead mingled with worries about what obstacles you may meet on the way.

Russell and Graham Henry kayaking in the Dominican Republic. (Yanna Cueto)

I can relate to that too, in a minor way, for the day-trips that took us further up the mountain from our camp site, along ridges leading to other summits, finding blue-green lakes high in the mountains and glaciers pink with algae bloom also introduced us to the adrenalin-high adventure of sitting atop a mountain summit admiring the view when, looking up, up and beyond where we sat, where the mountain tops marched on endlessly, we saw a huge black cloud formation headed our way.

We did an absolutely mad scramble back the way we had come, telescoping the area from here to there in record time, managing to dive into our welcoming tent just as the massive storm struck, wind pushing and shoving our tent, rain pelting down all around us for what seemed like hours in the dark, cramped and worrying circumstances of being caught out, vulnerable, and by that time getting fairly hungry.

When the storm finally wore itself out and moved on elsewhere, we saw across from where we sat, on another mountain peak over at the Stein Valley, that someone had succeeded in lighting a fire, and we cheered lustily.

Our adventure was as nothing compared to brothers Russell and Graham, needless to say. They travelled, according to their account, as long as 27 hours between rest stops. Tropical storms and massive waves were what they were forced to contend with. They were on a vast, open and endless ocean, in two specialized, one-man kayaks.

Russell Henry, 23, took this photo from his kayak as he and his brother paddled into a thunderstorm off the coast of the island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. (Russell Henry)

Seven months after they set off from northeastern Brazil, along the South American coast, and kayaking between Caribbean Islands, they landed at Juno Beach, on the southern tip of Florida. This was their bid for "adventure for adventure's sake". Quite the adventure for anyone to boldly contemplate much less to commit to because what they had looked forward to was "being outdoors for the hell of it."

It no doubt helped enormously that their father is a water sports outfitter. Who designed the Kevlar boats his sons depended on throughout their trip. No strangers to kayaks the brothers were confident in their proficiency at handling the small craft. And handle them they did under the most excruciatingly concerning circumstances. Their travels on the high seas took them past twenty countries and territories.

Sending regular email updates to their parents throughout their adventure. They also maintained a daily website. They had a number of sponsors who helped with their adventure in a supporting role with the equipment and provisioning they required. An inheritance they had from their grandmother was an additional expenses lift. They memorialized their grandmother by painting each of their watercraft with her name.

"I might have wanted to kill Russell on more than one occasion, but I couldn't, because I wouldn't have finished the trip", Graham stated jocularly, more in gratitude for having enjoyed the companionship of someone intimate who shared his ambitious idea of the outside and adventurous fun, than the expression of mild irritation that the adventure was finally over.

Aitzaz Hasan: Tributes to Pakistan teenager killed when he stopped a bomber

BBC News online -- 9 January 2014

Aitzaz Hasan was described as a brave and good student

Tributes have been pouring in for a Pakistani teenager who was killed on Monday when he tackled a suicide bomber targeting his school in the Hangu area.

Aitzaz Hasan, 15, was with friends outside school when they spotted a man wearing a suicide vest.
Despite the pleas of his fellow students, he decided to confront and capture the bomber who then detonated his vest, his cousin told the BBC.

Aitzaz is being hailed as a hero in an outpouring of praise on social media.

There have even been calls for him to receive the army's highest honour awarded to those who have sacrificed their life for their country, though it is unclear if he would be qualified to receive it as a civilian.

"We the citizens believe that State of Pk must award Nishan-i-Haider to Pk's brave son Shaheed Aitezaz," journalist Nasim Zehra tweeted on Thursday.

The incident took place on Monday in Ibrahimzai, a Shia-dominated region of Hangu, in north-western Pakistan. There were almost 2,000 students in attendance at the time of the attack, media reports say.

"My cousin sacrificed his life saving his school and hundreds of students and school fellows," his cousin Mudassar Hassan Bangish told the BBC's Aleem Maqbool.

"The suicide bomber wanted to destroy the school and school students. It was my cousin who stopped him from this...destruction."

There were said to be about 2,000 students at Aitzaz's school at the time of the attack

 

He then described the sequence of events as related to him by witnesses at the school.
Aitzaz's friends had urged him not to confront the suicide bomber but he ignored their pleas and decided to confront the man with the intention of halting him.

"So he told them 'I'm going to stop him. He is going to school to kill my friends'. He wanted to capture this suicide bomber. He wanted to stop [him]. Meanwhile the suicide bomber blasted himself which resulted in the death of my cousin," Mr Bangish said.

He described Aitzaz as "brave" and a good student. "He always used to say 'I am always ready for my country'."

His family insist that rather than focus on the sorrow brought about by his death, they want to focus on their pride in his actions.
"He is a shahid [martyr]. A shahid of his whole nation," he said.

Aitzaz's death: Twitter reaction

Hundreds of users have been tweeting the story of Pakistan's fallen teenager.
"Aitzaz Hasan, 15 years old, gave his life to stop a suicide bomber in Pakistan. A reminder to us all what real courage is. RIP, brave soul," writer and journalist Omer Aziz tweeted on Thursday.
"From #Malala to #Aitzaz Irum young people paving the way for Jinnah's #Pakistan with their blood. #onemillionaitzazs," blogger Murtaza Solangi tweeted.

Government officials have not yet visited the school or Aitzaz's family, prompting requests from Twitter users that they do so. Politicians and public figures also added to the chorus of praise for Aitzaz.

His family have also spoken of Aitzaz's actions in Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper.

"My son made his mother cry, but saved hundreds of mothers from crying for their children," Mujahid Ali, Aitzaz's father is quoted as saying.

According to Mr Bangish, people in the area would like to see the government give Aitzaz an award to recognise his bravery, and compared him with celebrated Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai - a comparison being echoed across social media.

On Twitter, users are paying tribute to Aitzaz using the hashtags #onemillionaitzaz and #AitzazBraveheart echoing the language used online around figures such as Malala and the Delhi rape victim, whose death galvanised Indian public opinion and prompted changes in rape laws there.
Former Pakistani ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman tweeted: "Hangu's shaheed Aitzaz Hasan is #Pakistan's pride. Give him a medal at least. Another young one with heartstopping courage #AitzazBraveheart."

Hangu is close to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions, which have a strong Taliban and al-Qaeda presence and the area is also known for sectarian violence against Shia Muslims.
Mr Bangish said the region's residents are "patriotic people" but have to contend with difficult conditions.

He he added that in order to cope with such conditions and tackle the "fights and blast ... needs courage like Aitzaz has. We salute his bravery"