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This Christmas marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Harry Potterfilm, and on January 1, HBO Max will release a special,Return to Hogwarts, featuring interviews with the original cast. Noticeably absent from the reunion isHarry Potterauthor J.K. Rowling, who has become outspoken on gender issues and regularly expresses concern that the transgender activist movement is erasing the concept of womanhood. She is increasingly assailed by progressives, and thus it's possible that the controversy is the reason she's being left out. (Neither Rowling nor Warner Bros. have commented on the author's omission from the special.)

Rowling is not exactly a conservative: She has described her politics as center-left, and has supported both the Labour Party and the U.K. remaining part of the European Union. She is at the very least politically open-minded, however her books frequently toy with libertarian ideasmost notably in the later entries, when the incompetence, corruption, and eventual outright authoritarianism of the Ministry of Magic (the wizarding world's government bureaucracy) is on full display.

As a fan of the books and films who had not revisited them in quite some time, I had always remembered how unflatteringly Rowling portrayed the government of her fictional world. But I was surprised to rediscover another entity that is absolutely savaged in the Harry Potteruniverse: the mainstream media. Rewatching the films this month for the first time in years, I was particularly struck by how much fake news was printed in the pages ofThe Daily Prophet.

TheProphetis the main source of news for wizards and witches living in England. Owls deliver it daily to virtually all magical folk, including teenagers: Harry and his classmates receive the paper while they eat breakfast at Hogwarts. It is the wizarding world's version of the mainstream media; it is also an ever-evolving source of lies and propaganda.

In the fourth book and film,Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the newspaper takes on a tabloid role. When Rita Skeeter, a star reporter for the Prophet, interviews Harry about his participation in a magical tournament, she misquotes him deliberately and sensationalizes his life and habits. She also writes articles falsely claiming that Harry and his best friend, Hermione, are in a romantic relationship.

But this is the least of The Daily Prophet's appalling failures. In the fifth book and film,Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the newspaper sides with the government, openly aiding the Ministry of Magic's efforts to paint Harry and his mentor, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, as lunatics and conspiracy theorists. Harry and his friends know that the dangerous dark wizard Voldemort has returned, but the truth is inconvenient for the Ministry, and thus the media does everything it can to paint Harry as deranged. Sample headlines include, "Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lied?" and "Dumbledore: Is He Daft or Is He Dangerous?"

In the final novel, after the villain Voldemort has taken over the government and installed a puppet minister, The Daily Prophetbecomes an outright fascist publication, in full support of Voldemort's tyrannical and genocidal agenda. Meanwhile, alternative media sources take up the cause of reporting actual news about Voldemort's sinister agenda and Harry's resistance to it.The Quibbler, a newspaper edited by Xenophilius Lovegood, father to Harry's friend Luna, starts out the series with a low reputation on account of some poorly sourced articles; toward the end, it's the only newspaper printing the truth about Voldemort. Indeed, in order for Harry to provide his eyewitness account of Voldemort's rise, he relies on The Quibbler to publish "Harry Potter Speaks Out At Last: The Truth About He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the Night I Saw Him Return."

Some of Harry's supporters also launch a pirate radio program, Potterwatch, which provides information about Voldemort's attacks on non-magical folk. Podcasts and contrarian papers are the journalistic heroes of the wizarding world; the mainstream media is, to quote one notable real-world muggle, "the enemy of the people."

Many of the stars of the Harry Potterfilms seem eager to reprise their roles in a potential sequel series or reboot: Here's hoping that any futurePotterproject both 1) involves Rowling, and 2) reflects the source material's independent outlook toward the news.

See the article here:
Harry Potter Knew the Fake News Media Is the Enemy of the People - Reason

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Right-wing personality Candace Owens is urging her fans to consume a quack medical cure known for turning users skin blue.

In an Instagram video posted on Thursday, Owens praised the use of colloidal silver as a daily supplement, a treatment that comes with no valid medical use and plenty of health risks.

Yes, colloidal silver! Owens said in the video. I take colloidal silver every single day, I love colloidal silver. That is a great one. That is another one that people probably know nothing about.

While Owens and others have praised preventative use of colloidal silver as a way to stave off illness, colloidal silver has no valid medical purpose and plenty of potential dangers. In extreme cases, according to the Mayo Clinic, colloidal silver can cause seizure or organ problems.

Owens didnt respond to a request for comment.

But colloidal silvers most famous side effect is argyriaa condition that turns users skin a bluish-gray color, usually permanently. Despite those risks, colloidal silver has sometimes been embraced by political outsiders, including some libertarians seeking treatments for a variety of illnesses outside the medical system. Montana Libertarian politician Stan Jones, for example, turned his skin blue by consuming colloidal silver.

Owens laid out her colloidal silver regimen in a follow-up Instagram comment to a fan asking for more information about colloidal silver, claiming she takes a teaspoon a day and more when Im sick in a post first highlighted by liberal activist William LeGate.

As little as that one teaspoon of silver a day could be enough to cause argyria, depending on the concentration of the silver solution. According to medical research, a 56-year-old man who took a teaspoon every day for allergy and cold medication noticed that his fingernails were turning blue.

Owens isnt the only far-right figure to endorse silver as a fringe medical cure. In 2020, the FDA warned InfoWars chief Alex Jones to stop promising that silver toothpaste and other silver products sold on his website could prevent or treat the coronavirus.

Story continues

Fake Utah Doc Peddled Ingestible Silver as a Bogus COVID Cure: Feds

Owenss pro-colloidal silver video came days after a disastrous interview where Owens, who works for conservative commentator Ben Shapiros The Daily Wire, interviewed former President Donald Trump. In a surprise move, Trump rebuffed Owens criticism of the coronavirus vaccines, praising the vaccines results as very good.

In the same video in which she praised colloidal silver, Owens downplayed Trumps support for the vaccines, claiming Trump is too old to read anti-vaccine information on the internet. She also attacked vaccinations more broadly, claiming, among other things, that theres real evil behind tetanus shots.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Candace Owens Tells Fans to Take Quack Cure That Turns Skin Blue - Yahoo News

We will all remember the lockdowns, Covid-19 tests and other disruptions to our lives in 2021, but the year was also full of extraordinary and sometimes inspirational images. One of the most memorable was also the most bizarre, the QAnon "shaman".

You will recall this tattooed and bearded Trump supporter wearing a buffalo head-dress, yowling at the heavens inside the home of American democracy, Washingtons Capitol building, as part of the violent protest against US President Joe Bidens election victory. I suspect buffalo-man and his friends may haunt our future, but well get to that in a moment.

First, the inspirational image of 2021 for me in Britain was also the saddest. Her Majesty the Queen sat alone in Windsor, socially distanced, wearing a mask, mourning the death of her life-companion Prince Philip. They spent 73 years together. The grief was obvious through the mask. So was the sense of duty and profound dignity of a monarch who has served the UK for seven decades and who spans the great generation of the Second World War through the end of the British empire and in to the 21st century information age.

At a time when some British politicians, including the prime minister, have often made the UK appear incapable of living up to the standards we expect from people in public life, the Queen has been faultless, a solid British rock in a sea of political foolishness.

Yet for many of us it was coronavirus itself which repeatedly supplied the most profound images of 2021.

We will remember the queues of those waiting to be vaccinated, or the faces of health care workers exhausted after long hours in hospital intensive care units.

And who can forget the lines on their cheeks as they took off their masks, images which more than words told us everything we need to know about the sacrifices nurses, doctors and other health workers make everyday on our behalf.

The Queen has been faultless, a solid British rock in a sea of political foolishness

There was a flip side to this, however. We also saw the images of irrational hatred from anti-vaccination protesters. Curiously those who most loudly trumpeted their so-called libertarian" views in 2021 and claimed the right to their personal choice not to accept coronavirus vaccines were often violently furious that millions of other citizens had a different personal choice and welcomed the protection of vaccines.

In 2021 the word libertarian increasingly sounded like a synonym for selfish or perhaps just dim. One British anti-vaxxer group tried to storm what they thought were BBC headquarters in west London. Sadly these anti-vaxxer luminaries failed to notice that the BBC had moved out of the Television Centre complex a decade ago, in 2012. The same inability to get a grip on facts and reality led to images of another group of anti-vaxxers protesting at the Apple store in central London.

In the anti-vaxxer world, Bill Gates is supposed to be a controlling figure in the great vaccination conspiracy. Unfortunately for this theory Bill Gates is not involved in the vaccination programme, nor is he involved with Apple. Apples founder was Steve Jobs, who died a decade ago. But facts really dont matter to conspiracy theorists, even if they do matter to the rest of us.

The stunning extreme weather images of 2021 surely proved even to the most recalcitrant climate change deniers that the threat to all human existence is real.

Floods some deadly hit Germany, Belgium, Myanmar, the US and other countries. Out-of-control fires destroyed vast areas in Siberia, Australia, California, Canada and elsewhere. Climate activists picketed Cop-26 in Glasgow demanding that governments do more, and yet despite the scientific evidence and the images of destruction the result was a somewhat half-hearted and disappointing agreement about real solutions. And the problems of governments to act bring us back to the QAnon "shaman" and the Capitol Hill riot, because that assault on US democracy casts a shadow over all of us in the year ahead.

The "shaman" like the anti-vaxxers, is not a joke. Together these images are emblems of a world in which fantasy and nonsense shout so loudly they risk drowning out reason, science, and traditional norms of behaviour. Donald Trumps reaction to his defeat in November 2020s presidential election, and the subsequent assault on the US Capitol in January 2021 led the US World Values Survey to note:

Elections are the heart of liberal democracy. Losers voluntarily leave office. Winners assume rightful power. There is nothing in the US Constitution mandating that presidents concede graciously, but it is a centuries-old practice. When faith in these fundamental norms of democracy fades, when comity between opponents erodes, so does our civic culture.

Faith in fundamental norms of decent and reasonable behaviour did indeed fade in 2021. The images of 2021 capture this reality for our lives. But they also capture the bizarre unreality of the lives of those whose irrational and sometimes violent behaviour will, unfortunately, still be with us in 2022, and beyond.

Published: December 27th 2021, 2:00 PM

Updated: December 28th 2021, 3:28 PM

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Memorable images of 2021 capture a reality of our lives - The National

This pandemic has always been in our control. Its out of control because we failed to exercise control over it.

BOISE, Idaho This article originally appeared in theIdaho Press.

In Rexburg last December, a doctor named Russ McUne rolled up his sleeves and became the first Idahoan to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Some followed in his footsteps this year, but others have put off or resisted vaccinations as hospitals have struggled with staffing, available beds and the sheer amount of oxygen needed to save patients in their care.

This pandemic has always been in our control, said David Pate, a physician and retired CEO of St. Lukes Health System in Idaho. Its out of control because we failed to exercise control over it.

The greatest tragedy is those who made decisions based on misinformation, Pate said. Vaccines absolutely work, he said. The past year will end with Idaho at the bottom of the list nationwide for percentage of the population with a first dose and percentage fully vaccinated. The Gem State just narrowly deactivated Crisis Standards of Care in all health districts before the end of the year on Dec. 20.

This year was like a rollercoaster, said Nurse Practitioner Brad Bigford, but without extreme high points, just extreme low points.

September and October were really horrible, Bigford said. We sent more people to the hospital and emergency rooms and called 911 more times in the past six months than we did in the previous four years.

Fewer people were staying at home and masking in public this year in certain parts of Idaho, Bigford said, and more dangerous variants of the disease, like delta and omicron, were prevalent. In India, a delta-fueled surge in the spring peaked at over 400,000 new cases a day.

This year, Idaho had widespread vaccines available. Yet only 46% of Idahoans are fully vaccinated.

As the delta wave swept through the U.S., many Gem State residents had no protection against the virus.

Idaho had over 32,000 more cases this year than last year, as of Dec. 20. Almost 1,000 more Idahoans died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020. Hospitalizations peaked at 793 on one day this year, higher than last years record of 496 in one day. Pediatric hospitalizations rose to 15 this year from a high of 10 last year.

Intensive care unit admissions peaked at 213 this year over 2020s high water mark of 126.

In Idaho, nearly all COVID-19 patients were unvaccinated, according to multiple news reports.

I think what is so disappointing is that here we are in 2021 and our knowledge of epidemiology, of viruses, of vaccines has never been greater, Pate said. Weve made such tremendous advances and yet we had so many unwilling to take advantage of that.

There is a variety of reasons why some have been unwilling, including distrust of the government.

Dr. Ted Epperly, an Idaho native and CEO of Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, said in a recent interview with the Idaho Capital Sun that, in a sense, the Intermountain West and Rocky Mountain West is the last frontier in the continental United States. In many cases, those who migrated here in the 1800s wanted to get away from government.

They wanted to be distanced and spaced, and they didnt want people telling them what to do, Epperly told the Capital Sun. So its been a perfect breeding ground, I think, for that kind of libertarian thinking.

Some individuals, however, have based current decisions during the pandemic on misinformation, Pate said.

We have great tools at our disposal, its just that so many people are not willing to avail themselves, Pate said. We certainly have to take that into consideration for our next pandemic planning, because there will be another pandemic.

But for now, the current pandemic does not seem to be abating. The omicron variant made up 73% of new infections as of Dec. 20.

Omicron has been spreading rapidly, likely due both to increased transmissibility and its ability to evade immunity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Omicron wont be the last, Pate said. Its going to continue to pose a threat to all those who are susceptible, especially when they are indoors for prolonged periods of time, whether thats going to be at work, at school, at church, at events.

This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press. Read more at IdahoPress.com

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Year in Review: COVID-19 pandemic saw an uptick in Idaho - KTVB.com

As this Congressional session comes to an end, many people have been disappointed by the lack of action on important legislation. One of those is cannabis. Going forward, pro-cannabis legislators ultimately have choices to make. If comprehensive cannabis legislation is dead in this Congressand it isis any alternative palatable? Is the status quo of prohibition preferable to holding out hope for broad-based legislation at a later date?

As Democrats took control of the House, Senate, and White House in 2021, hopes were up. Many legalization supporters believed the time had arrived to advance this issue to the finish line. However, one year into the new Congress, reality should have finally set in: the math is still not favorable in Congress to pass comprehensive cannabis legalization and an alternative is likely necessary.

The reality that is holding Congress back from passing federal cannabis legalization is a simple one that often undermines complex, multi-faceted policy changes that have deep divisions within the legislative branch: there is not a sufficient coalition of House members and a filibuster-proof majority of senators who agree on comprehensive legalization. That result is often frustrating or bewildering for supporters of reform for two reasons. First, they look at national polling and see not just a majority, but a supermajority of Americans who support full-scale cannabis reform. Second, there are majorities of House and Senate members who would say yes to the basic question: Should cannabis be legalized nationally?

The latter, however, is the wrong question to ask. Often, in a legislative body, the issue is not whether a law should be reformed, but how that law should be reformed. And theres the rub for federal legalization legislation. Liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party cannot agree with moderate and libertarian Republicans on what cannabis reform should look like, even if majorities agree that the law should be changed. And as pro-cannabis reform members from both sides dig their heels in on the importance of provisions that are close to their heart (and the heart of their base), it makes assembling that coalition impossible.

Here are the fault lines

Liberal Democrats and especially the partys most progressive members are unwilling to support legislation that does not incorporate significant social equity and racial justice provisions into it. Their argument is a straightforward and convincing one: the War on Drugs was waged on the backs of Black Americans, Latinos, and indigenous populations, and reform should not proceed without a significant effort to right the wrongs of the past.

Moderate Republicans and libertarian members of the party see the issue from a market perspective. They believe government should get out of the way and let cannabis be treated as an agricultural commodity in which the business community and the free marketrather than government prohibitionshould prevail. (It should be noted that most pro-cannabis Democrats and Republicans do agree on some restorative justice such as pardons and record expungement for non-violent cannabis offenders.)

However, as legislation is drafted, any bill that does not include extensive provisions to advance social equity and racial justice is a non-starter for some key Democrats as well as within those communities hit hardest by the drug war. This situation played out most recently in efforts to include the SAFE Banking Act in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That effort to include an amendment to expand access to financial institutions for the cannabis industry ultimately failed in the Senate as senators like Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) preferred their own, comprehensive legislation. The stripping of SAFE Banking from the NDAA happened even as some in the cannabis advocacy community argued that SAFE Banking would help minority business owners in the industry.

When the SAFE Banking Act passed the House as a standalone bill in 2021, it garnered the votes of 106 Republicans, demonstrating that the GOP can deliver votes on cannabis legislation that makes it easier for markets and businesses to operate. However, months later, Sen. Booker announced his outright opposition to SAFE Banking if the comprehensive MORE Act or his (and Leader Schumers and Sen. Ron Wydens [D-Ore.]) Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act did not pass.

It is here that the division over cannabis reform is most obvious. While SAFE Banking garnered the votes of more than half of the House GOP Conference, the MORE Act (which passed the House in December 2020) received only five Republican votes. Since the legislation was reintroduced in the 117th Congress it has, to date, garnered only one Republican co-sponsor.

It is clear that as a legalization bill shifts away from a pro-business direction, the number of Republican supporters plummets. And while in a Democratic-controlled House, leadership can muster the votes to pass something like the MORE Act, the requirement to beat a filibuster in the Senate makes passage of more social equity and racial justice-oriented comprehensive legislation an impossibility. It is not clear if Democrats can even keep all 50 of their Democratic members in line for such a vote, and it is a certainty that they cannot attract the 10 or more Republicans necessary to clear the 60-vote hurdle. And more moderate legislation that could attract more Republicans will likely lose the more progressive members of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Surely some progressives (perhaps rightly) worry that moderate legislation with the vague promise to do better for communities of color at a later date is likely an empty promisethose communities have lost that hand of poker on other issues in the past. At the same time, the status quo means there will be more cannabis arrests every year that disproportionately impact communities of color. Could something that offers a bit to both sides be possible? Perhaps combining federal decriminalization, seed funding for state level record expungement, a presidential promise to pardon past offenders at the bill signing, and SAFE Banking could be seen as a step in the right direction? Would piecemeal legislation under a Democratic Congress be better than rolling the dice in a (likely) Republican Congress in 2023, knowing the hostility of Republican leadership to legalization? The latter is the central question legalization advocates must ask themselves and answer.

Ultimately, cannabis reform supporters inside and outside of Congress need a reality check about the state of play of current cannabis reform proposals, and what additional complications the future may offer. Regardless of the chosen path forward, there will be naysayers, holdouts, resistance, and anger. There will be accusations of bloated government or not doing enough to reverse the effects of the drug war. That is standard for an interest group environment on a passionate issue in a deliberative body. However, in the end, Congress has a choice between doing nothing and letting prohibition win the day and allowing all of the consequences of that to remain. Or doing something short of perfect, that addresses some of the real harms that drug prohibition has created in this country.

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The numbers for drug reform in Congress dont add up - Brookings Institution