Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler
In India, the symbol is ubiquitous and its arms normally point in oppposite directions to the Nazi symbol. I am under the impression that arms pointing in the Nazi diretion are particularly asssociated with devotion to Ganesha, the elephant god. Pictured is one of my images of Ganesh.
And the Nazis never called it a swastika anyway, They called it a hooked cross -- Hakenkreuz. It was only English propagandists who misappropriated the Indian term to refer to the Nazi symbol
Nazi leaders wearing "Swastika" armbands would probaby have been seen as devout in India
Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down. “My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.
The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.
But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitler’s hakenkreuz or the hooked cross – a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitler’s symbol to stoke fear and hate.
Over the past decade, as the Asian diaspora has grown in North America, the call to reclaim the swastika as a sacred symbol has become louder. These minority faith communities are being joined by Native American elders whose ancestors have long used the symbol as part of healing rituals.
Deo believes she and people of other faiths should not have to sacrifice or apologize for a sacred symbol simply because it is often conflated with its tainted version.
Yet to others, the idea that the swastika could be redeemed is unthinkable.
Holocaust survivors in particular could be re-traumatized when they see the symbol, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Center on Holocaust Survivor Care.
“One of the hallmarks of trauma is that it shatters a person’s sense of safety,” said Wernick, whose grandparents met at a displaced persons’ camp in Austria after World War II. “The swastika was a representation of the concept that stood for the annihilation of an entire people.”
For her grandparents and the elderly survivors she serves, Wernick said, the symbol is the physical representation of the horrors they experienced. “I recognize the swastika as a symbol of hate.”
New York-based Steven Heller, a design historian and author of “Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?”, said the swastika is “a charged symbol for so many whose loved ones were criminally and brutally murdered.” Heller’s great-grandfather perished during the Holocaust.
“A rose by any other name is a rose,” he said. “In the end it’s how a symbol affects you visually and emotionally. For many, it creates a visceral impact and that’s a fact.”
The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps. It is used to mark the location of Buddhist temples. In China it’s called Wàn, and denotes the universe or the manifestation and creativity of God. The swastika is carved into the Jains’ emblem representing the four types of birth an embodied soul might attain until it is eventually liberated from the cycle of birth and death. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the four elements – water, fire, air and earth.
In India, the ubiquitous symbol can be seen on thresholds, drawn with vermillion and turmeric, and displayed on shop doors, vehicles, food packaging and at festivals or special occasions. Elsewhere, it has been found in the Roman catacombs, ruins in Greece and Iran, and in Ethiopian and Spanish churches.
The swastika also was a Native American symbol used by many southwestern tribes, particularly the Navajo and Hopi. To the Navajo, it represented a whirling log, a sacred image used in healing rituals and sand paintings. Swastika motifs can be found in items carbon-dated to 15,000 years ago on display at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine as well as on artifacts recovered from the ruins of the ancient Indus Valley civilizations that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BC.
The symbol was revived during the 19th century excavations in the ancient city of Troy by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who connected it to a shared Aryan culture across Europe and Asia. Historians believe it is this notion that made the symbol appealing to nationalist groups in Germany including the Nazi Party, which adopted it in 1920.
In North America, in the early 20th century, swastikas made their way into ceramic tiles, architectural features, military insignia, team logos, government buildings and marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola issued a swastika pendant. Carlsberg beer bottles came etched with swastikas. The Boy Scouts handed out badges with the symbol until 1940.
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This Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor
Killer bureaucracy
It was a Tuesday in early November when federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration paid a visit to the office of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style raid—there were no shots fired or flash-bang grenades deployed—but the agents left behind a slip of paper that, according to those close to the doctor’s patients, had consequences just as deadly as any shootout.
On Nov. 1, the DEA suspended Bockoff’s ability to prescribe controlled substances, including powerful opioids such as fentanyl. While illicit fentanyl smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels has fueled a record surge in overdoses in recent years, doctors still use the pharmaceutical version during surgeries and for soothing the most severe types of pain. But amid efforts to shut down so-called “pill mills” and other illegal operations, advocates for pain patients say the DEA has gone too far, overcorrecting to the point that people with legitimate needs are blocked from obtaining the medication they need to live without suffering.
One of Bockoff’s patients who relied on fentanyl was Danny Elliott, a 61-year-old native of Warner Robins, Georgia. In March 1991, Elliott was nearly electrocuted to death when a water pump he was using to drain a flooded basement malfunctioned, sending high-voltage shocks through his body for nearly 15 minutes until his father intervened to save his life. Elliott was never the same after the accident, which left him with debilitating, migraine-like headaches. Once a class president and basketball star in high school, he found himself spending days on end in a darkened bedroom, unable to bear sunlight or the sound of the outdoors.
“I have these sensations like my brain is loose inside my skull,” Elliott told me in 2019, when I first interviewed him for the VICE News podcast series Painkiller. “If I turn my head too quickly, left or right, it feels like my brain sloshes around. Literally my eyes burn deep into my skull. My eyes hurt so bad that it hurts to blink.”
After years of trying alternative pain treatments such as acupuncture, along with other types of opioids, around 2002 Elliott found a doctor who prescribed fentanyl, which gave him some relief. But keeping a doctor proved nearly impossible amid the ongoing federal crackdown on opioids. Bockoff, Elliott said, was his third doctor to be shut down by the DEA since 2018. As Elliott described it, each transition meant weeks or months of desperate scrambling to find a replacement, plus excruciating withdrawals due to his physical dependence on opioids, followed by the return of that burning eyeball pit of despair.
After the DEA visited Bockoff on Nov. 1, Elliott posted on Twitter: “Even though I knew this would happen at some point, I'm stunned. Now I can't get ANY pain relief as a #cpp [chronic pain patient.] So I'm officially done w/ the US HC [healthcare] system.”
Privately, Elliott and his wife Gretchen, 59, were frantically trying to find another doctor. He sent a text to his brother, Jim Elliott, saying he was “praying for help but not expecting it.”
Jim, a former city attorney for Warner Robins who is now in private practice, was traveling when he received his brother’s message. They made plans to talk later in the week, after Danny had visited a local physician for a consultation. In subsequent messages, Danny told Jim that Gretchen had reached out to more than a dozen doctors. Each one had responded saying they would not take him as a patient.
Jim recalled sensing in Danny “a level of desperation I hadn't seen before.” Then, on the morning of Nov. 8, he woke up to find what he called “a suicide email” from his brother. Jim called the local police department in Warner Robins to request a welfare check. The officers arrived a few minutes before 8:30 a.m. to find both Danny and Gretchen dead inside their home.
A police report obtained by VICE News lists a handgun as the only weapon found at the scene. Warner Robins police said additional records could not be released because the case is “still active.” The department issued a press release calling the deaths a “dual suicide.”
Jim shared a portion of a note that Danny left behind: “I just can't live with this severe pain anymore, and I don't have any options left,” he wrote. “There are millions of chronic pain patients suffering just like me because of the DEA. Nobody cares. I haven't lived without some sort of pain and pain relief meds since 1998, and I considered suicide back then. My wife called 17 doctors this past week looking for some kind of help. The only doctor who agreed to see me refused to help in any way. What am I supposed to do?”
At a joint funeral for Danny and Gretchen Elliott on Nov. 14 in Warner Robins, mourners filled a mortuary chapel to overflow capacity. Eulogies recalled a couple completely devoted to each other. They were doting cat owners, dedicated fans of Georgia Tech and Atlanta sports teams, and devout Christians, even as Danny’s chronic pain increasingly left him unable to attend church. In photos, the Elliotts radiate happiness with their smiles. But their lives were marred by pain: Gretchen was a breast cancer survivor. She married Danny in 1996, well after his accident, signing up to be his caregiver as part of their life partnership.
“It was a Romeo and Juliet story. They didn't want to live without each other,” said Chuck Shaheen, Danny’s friend since childhood and Warner Robins’ former mayor. “I understand the DEA and other law enforcement, they investigate and then act. But what do they do with the patients that are no longer able to have treatment?”
Shaheen and Danny both worked in years past for Johnson & Johnson, which is among the companies sued for allegedly causing the opioid crisis. Shaheen was also previously a salesperson for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, another company blamed for spreading addiction. But Shaheen said Danny was not among those chasing a high—he, like others with severe chronic pain, was just seeking a semblance of normalcy.
“They're not doctor shopping,” Shaheen said. “They're not trying to escalate their dose. They're trying to function.”
Danny told me in 2019 that the relief he obtained from fentanyl didn’t make him feel euphoric or even completely pain free. He was using fentanyl patches and lozenges designed for people with terminal cancer pain, at extremely high doses that raised eyebrows whenever he was forced to switch doctors. But it was the only thing that worked for him.
“I call it turning the volume of my pain down from an eight or nine or even 10 sometimes to a six or a five,” he said. “The pain doesn't get much lower than that, but for me, that's almost pain free. It was the happiest thing I've ever experienced in my life.”
There are millions of chronic pain patients suffering just like me because of the DEA. Nobody cares
Gretchen’s brother, Eric Welde, choked up as he spoke with VICE News at the funeral about his perspective on the family’s loss: “In my mind, what the DEA is essentially doing is telling a diabetic who's been on insulin for 20 years that they no longer need insulin and they should be cured. They just don't understand what chronic pain is.”
So far, no criminal charges have been filed against Bockoff. In response to an inquiry from VICE News about the deaths of Danny and Gretchen Elliott, the doctor emailed a statement that said: “I am unable to participate in an interview except to say: Their blood is on the DEA’s hands.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnyb9/dea-fentanyl-doctor-patient-suicide ?
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What is Ozempic and why is there a shortage of it?
Judie Thompson recently drove to a pharmacy 45 kilometres from home to replenish her dwindling supply of the drug she says changed her life. Thompson, 64, from Brisbane, began using the drug in March to manage her type 2 diabetes. Since then, she has lowered her insulin usage from five injections a day to just two – and lost 20 kilograms.
“It’s changed my life totally,” she says. “I was 107 kilos when I went on it, and I started losing weight as well as noticing how well my insulin was working.
“I walk my dogs, which I haven’t done in 10 years. I’m so happy to be me now.”
The drug, Ozempic, which comes as a weekly injection, has been approved in Australia for treating type 2 diabetes but is also sought after because it can help with weight loss, as is its weight-loss-specific counterpart, Wegovy, in the United States. Ozempic is now a “Hollywood drug”, according to some reports. Asked how he got to look “so ripped”, billionaire Elon Musk tweeted it was down to “fasting … and Wegovy”.
Now there’s a global shortage of Ozempic. It will not be available in Australia until April, affecting people who use the drug to manage their diabetes.
What’s causing the shortage? Who should be using Ozempic? And is it a magic shortcut for weight loss?
Ozempic was created by Danish drug company Novo Nordisk in 2012 and approved for use for type 2 diabetes in the US in 2017 and in Australia in 2019. In July 2020, it was listed on the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme (PBS) so that it costs about $40 (or $6.60 with a concession card) for a monthly course of weekly injections. The same amount on a private script, or “off label”, can cost $130 or more.
About 1.3 million Australians were newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 2000 and 2020, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Diabetes is caused by the body’s inability to use and/or produce insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose levels.
In clinical trials by Novo Nordisk, it was discovered that semaglutide, which Ozempic contains, had a dual effect: it could also lead to weight loss in patients.
Semaglutide stimulates cells that make insulin while suppressing glucagon, affecting blood glucose levels, says leading endocrinologist and obesity specialist Professor Joseph Proietto at the University of Melbourne. “Semaglutide is an analog of one of our own hormones that we make in our small bowel called glucagon-like-peptide-1 [GLP-1],” adds Proietto, who established the weight control clinic at Austin Health. He says GLP-1 slows gastric emptying “so that it makes you feel fuller for longer, and then it goes to the brain and suppresses hunger. And both of those actions help with weight loss.”
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The lost shrunken heads of Oxford and the museums hell bent on erasing our past
By PETER HITCHENS
The most frightening thing in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the torture or the naked terror. It is the obliteration of the past. This makes it impossible to know what life was once like, or to know if it has improved or grown worse.
So far, much of Orwell's prophecy has yet to come about. There are no actual Thought Police, though there are a lot of people who would fit well into such a body. The surveillance he describes is in its infancy here — though far advanced in China. But much of the past is being erased.
If a piece of information is not on the internet, most people have no idea how to find out about it. Modern books and media actually alter the truth for political reasons. But the most startling example of the wiping out of the past can be found in museums.
For example, the Wellcome Trust has just closed a permanent display in London because it 'perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language'.
Allegedly, the display also told a story of 'a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege'. And we can't have that. The museum claimed that 'we can't change our past', though surely that is exactly what you do when you close such exhibits. It added: 'But we can work towards a future where we give voice to the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced, erased and ignored.'
I'd say that this process ends up erasing, ignoring and silencing voices from the past that we still ought to know about, even if — especially if — we do not like what they say.
This sort of thing is very common now. No museum or gallery is safe from it. As the years pass, the labels on pictures and the notes in exhibition catalogues grow more and more politically correct.
In one rare case, the historian and biographer Andrew Roberts (now Lord Roberts of Belgravia) was able to reverse highly political changes made to the National Army Museum in London. Before his victory, the corrected museum boasted that it 'challenges you to think again about what an army museum is'.
But as Roberts rightly asked: 'Why should it? Why can't it just be a museum that houses the paraphernalia of the national Army? Why should it be somewhere that leaves visitors ashamed of the Army's supposed legacy of colonialism, imperialism and slavery, when that constituted only a tiny part of its story and isn't accurately portrayed anyhow?
'On a greater issue, when will the long march of political correctness through our great national institutions be finally checked?'
The answer to that is that it probably won't be. Much credit goes to Roberts for fighting in this case. But most of us do not know where to start.
This week, impelled by the sour news from the Wellcome Trust, I forced myself to visit, for the first time in years, what was once one of my favourite museums in the world. This is the once-enchanting Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
You will almost certainly have heard of its gruesome collection of shrunken heads. The Pitt Rivers appears in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse story The Daughters Of Cain and in the TV version of it.
Morse found the place uncanny (as I did) and mused that it might not be pleasant to be locked in its sinister clanging galleries after dark when everyone had gone. Who knew what might stir? The museum's uncorrected delights were also celebrated by that fine poet James Fenton, half a century ago.
He describes it as I first saw it, a shadowy series of iron floors in a sort of barn, dominated by a 35 ft carved totem pole and crammed with often quite creepy trophies of intrepid Victorian and Edwardian expeditions to the remote places of the world.
Whatever you actually think of the British imperial era, I doubt whether there was ever a better place to find out what it had felt and looked like, when it was still flourishing.
As Fenton said: 'You have come upon the fabled lands where myths go when they die.' Peering at the tiny ancient labels in Indian ink, you might spot 'the hair of a witch, earth from the grave of a man killed by a tiger'.
The whole thing was supposed to have been based on some sort of Eurocentric idea of civilisation. Yet the second most potent exhibit (after the shrunken heads) was from a 19th-century Oxfordshire country estate.
It was a vicious and cruel 'spring-gun' — a blunderbuss set off by a hidden tripwire to blast buckshot into an unwary poacher. This item is still there (though easy to miss) but has been inexplicably separated from the sign-board which once accompanied it.
This said in chilly, severe lettering: 'Take notice. Men traps and spring-guns are set on these premises.'
This is as nasty in its way as any of the other more alarming exhibits from various jungles.
This week I found a far more brightly-lit place, with much bigger labels and righteous notices explaining that during the recent refit, 'displays with problematic case labels using derogatory language or reinforcing negative stereotypes were identified as requiring urgent attention'.
A prominent poster declared the museum 'a footprint of colonialism', explaining that although the colonial era is over 'the past is still present, and the invisible structures of colonialism still persist today. These invisible structures, known as coloniality, shape our ideas about race, class, culture, gender and sexuality'.
It announced that, 'Coloniality divides the world into 'the West and the rest' and assigns racial, intellectual and cultural superiority to the West.'
Many surviving labels, it warned, use language which is 'derogatory, racist and Eurocentric'.
I couldn't help thinking, as I read this, that another purge surely cannot be far off, along with even brighter lights, tedious interactive displays and perhaps a top-floor vegan cafe.
The shrunken heads, unsurprisingly, have now gone for good. I had feared for years that this would happen. Once just on show without fuss, then rather apologetically explained, they are now apparently not fit to be seen.
But, like the Oxfordshire spring-gun, the shrunken heads told the raw truth about man's capacity for savagery in all places and at all times. Anyone who saw them was a better person for it.
Outside lay the tree-shaded, gentle world of Oxford with its colleges, churches and tea-shops. Inside crouched this sinister, evocative treasure house, evidence that our planet contains more wonders and terrors, and more beliefs about them, than we begin to know.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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