Federal health minister appeals to Alberta to reconsider closing opioid treatment program

Terry Reith CBC

© Shutterstock Injectable opioid agonist therapy has been shown effective for people with severe opioid addiction.

Canada's health minister is calling on the Alberta government to reconsider the closure of its injectable opioid agonist treatment program, which Premier Jason Kenney says will end in the spring when the province stops funding it.

The service provides patients with severe opioid use disorder, a recognized condition, with injections of pharmaceutical-grade heroin, known as diacetylmorphine, or hydromorphone.

"We are disappointed by this decision from the Alberta government, and we urge them to reconsider," a spokesperson for Patty Hajdu said.

The health minister's call comes one week after a group of patients benefiting from Alberta's injectable opioid agonist treatment (iOAT) pilot program filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop Alberta's provincial government from ending it.

If the three Alberta clinics that offer the treatment close, few people east of British Columbia would have access to the program, which is a cornerstone of the federal government's latest strategy to combat the opioid crisis.

"Many people are struggling with substance use, and in too many communities, the COVID-19 pandemic is compounding this ongoing public health crisis," the minister's statement said.

From January 2016 to March of this year 16,364 Canadians died from opioid overdoses according to figures from the federal government. The numbers have shown an increasing trajectory, with 3,799 deaths last year, and over 1,000 in the first three months of 2020.

The federal government began opening the door to community-based iOAT treatments in 2018 and has provided funding for pilot projects.

The move followed decades of research — first in Europe, then in British Columbia. Multiple studies suggested that providing daily access to pharmaceutical grade injectable opioids allowed long-term chronic users to stabilize their lives, find homes and stop engaging in criminal activity many relied on to support their addictions. Most stuck with the program long term, and some were able to stop using injection drugs altogether.

Alberta's previous NDP government launched the pilot program in late 2017. Kenney is giving the 60 patients currently enrolled one year to transition to other programs that do not involve injecting opioids. He has called the federal government's approach "facilitating addiction."

"Handing out free narcotics to addicts is not compassion," the premier said in response to questions from CBC News in September.

Patients file lawsuit to keep Alberta program operating

Patients enrolled in the program have have filed 11 affidavits in a lawsuit that is attempting to put a human face on the treatment. People who had focused their entire lives on the pursuit of drugs described awakening to a new world free of the stress and danger on the streets.

Among them a once nationally ranked swimmer. Taylor Maxey began taking opioids following an injury in his late teens. He was soon homeless, panhandling on the streets and committing petty crimes.

Maxey's drug habit was costing $900 a day. He watched friends die around him. He attempted suicide. He tried and failed multiple treatment programs.

Today, at the age of 32, he says in an affidavit that he has stable housing, a new network of supportive friends, and hopes of becoming an outreach worker. Instead of hustling for street drugs, he is injected with opioids at the Calgary clinic slated to close in the spring.

Maxey is terrified of what will happen.

"My life would be shorter and much harsher if I returned to the streets and were denied access to iOAT," he says in an affidavit. "I would be subject to the violence of the streets and the unsafe and precarious world of opioid use. I would be exposed to unsafe supplies of opioids."

© Sam Martin CBC News Patients of Edmonton's injectable opioid agonist treatment program meet outside the office of lawyer Avnish Nanda on October 8, as they announce legal action to block the program's closure.

The Alberta government has not filed a statement of defence in the case. The injunction application will be heard in November.

What the research shows

Beyond personal testimonials, iOAT is supported by a range of clinical research that began in Switzerland in the 1990s. on what was then known as heroin assisted treatment, or HAT. A two-year study of 1,000 people across several centres in Switzerland found "substantial improvements for illicit heroin use, health status and crime among HAT patients," according to a published review of the evidence. It also found a positive cost-benefit ratio because those provided with drugs had fewer medical issues and committed less crime.

A groundbreaking study published in 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded heroin-assisted treatment was safe and effective. Researchers followed 251 people in Vancouver and Montreal over 12 to 15 months. They found 88 per cent of patients receiving heroin stayed with the program, and among them, there was a 67 per cent decrease in criminal behaviour.

Overdoses and seizures were the most common adverse events recorded, though the study noted that since the patients were under close medical supervision, the overdoses were treated and the patients recovered.

As fentanyl and carfentanil have increasingly tainted the illicit drug supply, creating an overdose crisis, the provision of pharmaceutical heroin has increasingly been seen as a potential solution.

In 2019, the federal government formalized regulations, and the Canadian Research Initiative on Substance Misuse added clinical practice guidelines. At the time, Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, said expanding the availability of pharmaceutical-grade heroin "will save lives."

Availability limited as overdose deaths increase

But in spite of expectations the therapy would expand across Canada, it remains limited to a handful of sites in B.C., mostly in Vancouver. If the Alberta program shuts down, the only other places in Canada offering it will be Ottawa's Managed Opioid Program, which treats a maximum of 25 people in a residential setting, and a newly opened program in Fredericton, which currently serves seven patients.

Rob Boyd, the program director of another Ottawa treatment centre, would like to offer iOAT but says he can't, because the drugs are not adequately covered by Ontario's health plan.

"Lots of places want to do it," he said. "We would fill up right away."

As overdose deaths increase — there have been more than 1,000 in British Columbia alone this year — Canada's health minister is urging provinces and regulatory bodies to adopt the treatment.

"Do all you can to help provide people who use drugs a full spectrum of options for accessing medication," she wrote in a letter to her provincial counterparts and regulatory bodies on Aug. 24.

"We need immediate action from all levels of government and health care practitioners to prevent further deaths from the contaminated illegal drug supply and COVID-19."

Video: Alberta critical care doctor stresses importance of vaccines as COVID-19 long-term impacts begin to emerge (Global News)

https://tinyurl.com/y5z8fvxr
WATCH | Unauthorized safe injection site set up in Lethbridge:

The cannabis industry could be a big winner on Election Day

Many states have adult-use legalization initiatives on their November ballots.

 Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Senator Kamala Harris support adult-use marijuana decriminalization, moderate rescheduling, federal medicinal legalization, allowing states to set their own laws and expunging prior cannabis convictions — though not federal legalization.

 Alongside tax revenue and job creation, social justice reform is the strongest argument for legalization, on both the federal and state levels

.

© Provided by CNBC A customer lights a joint at Lowell Farms, America's first official Cannabis Cafe offering farm-to-table dining and smoking of cannabis in West Hollywood, California, October 1, 2019.

New Jersey is expected to approve a ballot initiative to legalize adult-use (aka recreational) marijuana on Election Day next month. Aside from stoking up the 61% of likely Garden State voters in favor of the measure, its passage is projected to generate up to $400 million in adult-use sales in its first year and $950 million by 2024, translating then to nearly $63 million in annual state tax revenue and an additional $19 million in local taxes, as estimated by Marijuana Business Daily. In an economy shattered by the coronavirus pandemic, legal weed looks like a great idea.


That may not be the only good news for legalization proponents after Nov. 3. They're hoping New Jersey's pro-pot vote will trigger a domino effect in neighboring states considering similar efforts. "Once New Jersey goes, it's going to set off an arms race along the East Coast, putting New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania on the clock," said DeVaughn Ward, senior legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, a cannabis advocacy group in Hartford.

Those three states already permit medicinal marijuana sales and have been moving toward legalizing adult-use for several years, considering tax revenue, job creation and the will of the majority of residents in favor of full legalization. The legislative stars appeared aligned following the 2018 midterm elections' blue wave, yet ultimately there weren't enough yea votes in the respective state houses last year. Then the pandemic hit in March, keeping legalization bills in lockdown until next year.

Three additional states — Arizona, South Dakota and Montana — have adult-use legalization initiatives on their November ballots, and Mississippians will vote on a bill allowing medicinal sales. If all five measures pass, medicinal marijuana will be legal in 38 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and adult-use in 14 of those, plus D.C.

Legalization is another leg on the long, strange trip the U.S. cannabis industry is experiencing in the Year of Covid. Marijuana sales have gone up during the pandemic, thanks to stay-at-home orders and federal stimulus money. And the prospects for continued growth are high.

Total cannabis sales in the U.S. this year are projected to reach $15.8 billion, according to Arcview Market Research/BDSA, up from $12.1 billion in 2019. In adult-use states, the numbers are eye-popping. Illinois, for instance, recently reported its fifth straight month of record-breaking marijuana sales, which hit $67 million in September. Oregon has seen adult-use sales rise 30% above forecast since the pandemic began, averaging $100 million a month over the summer.

"As a whole, the industry is doing fairly well," said Chris Walsh, CEO of Marijuana Business Daily. "Some companies have struggled, but in general we haven't seen an overwhelming number of layoffs or companies going out of business." A big boost, he added, was that most states deemed cannabis businesses as essential during the pandemic. "They were able to stay open while the economy virtually came to a grinding halt," Walsh said.

© Provided by CNBC A customer holding a cannabis product gestures while leaving the Natural Vibe store after legal recreational marijuana went on sale in St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada October 17, 2018.

Even so, because marijuana remains illegal on the federal level, the industry was ineligible for funds distributed through the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program. "It's just another irony on top of irony about how the country handles cannabis in general," Walsh said. House Democrats have included the industry in previous and proposed Covid stimulus packages, but to no avail.
Federal stance on pot legalization

Depending on the outcome of next month's presidential and Congressional elections, the likelihood of full federal legalization — which means removing it from its highly restrictive Schedule I drug classification under the Controlled Substances Act — could be greater than ever. What's more, there's a good chance that the rampant injustices inflicted during the nation's nearly century-old cannabis prohibition, disproportionately upon people of color, may be overcome.

The Trump administration has had an enigmatic relationship with cannabis. It rescinded an Obama-era policy that prevented federal prosecutions for marijuana offenses and made immigrants ineligible for citizenship if they consume marijuana or work in the cannabis industry. Yet Trump has previously favored states' rights to legalize pot and signed the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp, its non-intoxicating variety. He's running for reelection on a law-and-order platform and has never promoted federal legalization, so even if Congress turns solid blue, it's hard to predict where he might come down on the issue.

Trump's Democratic opponent, Vice President Joe Biden, has a complicated history with cannabis, too. As a senator, he championed the 1994 crime bill that sent tens of thousands of minor drug offenders to prison. Yet while serving as Obama's vice president, the administration issued the Cole memo, which cleared the way for state-legal marijuana businesses to operate largely without federal interference. Biden and running mate Senator Kamala Harris support adult-use marijuana decriminalization, moderate rescheduling, federal medicinal legalization, allowing states to set their own laws and expunging prior cannabis convictions — though not federal legalization.

Harris and Rep. Jerry Nadler were co-sponsors last year of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and eliminate criminal penalties under federal law. The MORE Act also would expedite expungements, impose a 5% tax on cannabis products to fund criminal and social reforms and prohibit the denial of any federal public benefits based on marijuana use. Congress was scheduled to vote on the bill in September, but it was delayed, probably until next year.

Alongside tax revenue and job creation, social justice reform is the strongest argument for legalization, on both the federal and state levels. Dating back to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, criminalization and incarceration, especially of minorities, have been foundational to drug laws. "The war on drugs has historically and continues to disproportionately target communities of color," said David Abernathy, vice president of research and consulting for Arcview Group, an Oakland-based firm that matches cannabis businesses and investors, who also is on the board of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

Business opportunities in the cannabis market

While decriminalization and expungement are paramount to legalization, providing business opportunities for minorities in legal cannabis is equally vital, Abernathy said. "It's harder for communities of color to participate in the industry as it gets better capitalized and folks from other industries move into it with their connections," he said. That's why there's been pushback in some state initiatives that disqualify individuals with drug convictions from working with cannabis.

On the investment side of the equation, Abernathy noted that even before Covid, there was a significantly slower capital market than in recent years. But with the industry's uptick during the pandemic, for some investors it's been "a good place to put money in this volatile time," he said. Next year, especially if legalization initiatives pass, "we expect this growth trend to continue."

Another positive trend is the increasing sophistication of cannabis businesses, with publicly-traded companies such as Tilray, Cronos Group, Aurora Cannabis, GW Pharmaceuticals and Canopy Growth as prime examples. They are among start-ups involved in medicinals, CBDs, edibles, vaping and smokable products, as well as cannabis cultivation and distribution, where allowed in the U.S. and other countries. If and when marijuana becomes federally legal in the U.S., those endemic players are likely to be joined by conventional food, beverage, tobacco and other consumer product companies that for years have been anticipating a multi-billion-dollar global cannabis market.

Additionally, the industry has the potential for significant job growth, said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association in Washington. There are already 250,000 people working in legal cannabis, according to a report by Leafly last year, "but with new states coming on board and [possible] federal legalization, that could turn into tens of millions of jobs," Smith said. "Given the state of the economy, policy makers and voters ought to look to this industry for its economic potential."

UNQUALIFIED QUACK

Twitter removes post from Trump coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas claiming masks don’t work

Dr. Scott Atlas, member of the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, walks at the White House in Washington, DC, on October 12, 2020. 

(Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP) 

Twitter has removed a tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump's novel coronavirus advisor, Scott Atlas, suggesting wearing masks does not help stem the spread of the virus.

In a tweet Saturday morning, Atlas shared an article suggesting face coverings do not help limit the spread of COVID-19.

"Masks Work? NO," he wrote.

One physician, Dr. Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was among those who called on the social media platform to remove the post.

"This is dangerous misinformation from a primary advisor to the president on the COVID response. This needs to be taken down immediately," he wrote, "It is simply false."

In an email to Global News, a spokesperson for Twitter said the tweet was taken down for "violating our Covid Misinformation Policy."

It was removed Sunday morning, the platform confirmed.

Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases, has faced scrutiny for downplaying the importance of face masks and his reported views on "herd immunity," an approach that holds that once enough individuals have been infected and become immune, others are less likely to be infected.

Atlas was a late addition to the White House's coronavirus task force, joining the team in August.

In a subsequent tweet later Saturday morning, Atlas said "the right policy is @realDonaldTrump's guideline: use masks for their intended purpose -- when close to others, especially hi risk," he wrote. "Otherwise social distance. No widespread mandates. #CommonSense."

However, in June, the World Health Organization recommended everyone wear a fabric or non-medical mask in public areas where there is a risk of transmission.

"Masks are a key measure to suppress transmission and save lives. Masks reduce potential exposure risk from an infected person whether they have symptoms or not," the organization's website reads.

"People wearing masks are protected from getting infected. Masks also prevent onward transmission when worn by a person who is infected."

Read more: Trump campaign rolls out vote-by-mail ads after months of raising fraud concerns

While Trump has said wearing a mask is appropriate in some settings, he has not issued a countrywide mask mandate.

What's more, the Republican president has also repeatedly mocked his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, for wearing masks in public.

“I don’t wear a mask like him, every time you see him he’s got a mask on. He could be 200 feet away, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen,” Trump said during the first presidential debate earlier this month.

Trump himself contracted COVID-19 earlier this month, and spent three days seeking treatment for the respiratory illness at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

However, with less than three weeks until the election, the president has sought to downplay the threat of the virus.

“The light at the end of the tunnel is near. We are rounding the turn,” Trump told supporters Friday at an event in Fort Myers, Florida. “Don’t listen to the cynics and angry partisans and pessimists.”

Meanwhile, the United States remained the epicentre of the virus on Sunday, with more than 8.1 million confirmed cases.

The virus has also claimed 219,311 lives in the U.S., according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

Since it was first detected in Wuhan, China late last year, it has killed 1,110,955 around the world.

--With a file from Reuters and the Associated Press

Canada's Economy Needs Tougher Shutdowns To Reopen: CIBC
Daniel Tencer 

© Provided by HuffPost Canada People leave after buying takeout at a food court in Yorkdale Shopping Center, Toronto, Ont., Oct. 10, 2020. CIBC says Canada's lockdowns need to be more stringent if the pandemic-stricken parts of the economy are to reopen.

If Canadians want to get back to eating in indoor restaurants and drinking in bars ― as others in some places in the world can do today ― the country will need tougher lockdowns in the short term first.

That’s the prognosis from CIBC’s chief economist, Avery Shenfeld, in a report issued Friday that explored what lessons the pandemic-stricken parts of Canada can learn from places such as Japan, South Korea and Newfoundland, where authorities have been able to reopen the economy to a large extent without a major new outbreak.

In Shenfeld’s analysis, the problem is pandemic-stricken areas are reopening bars, restaurants and similar establishments too soon, allowing caseloads to rise back up again.

“You need to smash the curve before reopening such venues, not just ‘flatten’ it,” Shenfeld wrote. “If community caseloads are at extremely low levels, the odds that the person at the next table has Covid are also very low.”

The CIBC chief economist’s comments come at a time when a debate has broken out over the extent to which lockdowns are needed as a second wave of COVID-19 hits North America, Europe and other regions of the world.

Two World Health Organization officials recently made public comments that some interpreted as discouraging lockdowns, or at least particularly strict ones.

But Shenfeld argues that once lockdowns have reduced the virus’s spread enough, it will be easier to reopen the economy. That’s because contact tracing ― which can be used to prevent further outbreaks ― is much easier when the number of cases you’re tracing is low. This is why countries in East Asia have had better luck, Shenfeld argued.

“Japan had a breakout (originating in) bars. The difference is they got the case numbers to such a low level … they could keep track of all those people,” he told HuffPost Canada.

At the level of infections Ontario and Quebec are seeing ― hundreds of new cases daily ― contact tracing “starts to get pretty hopeless,” he added.

Shenfeld suggested the current approach to lockdowns favoured by provinces, which is to implement limited restrictions for a set period of time, may not cut it.

“We shouldn’t set a deadline for reopening based on time, we should have a picture of the (level of) background cases in the community that we’ll need to reopen,” he said.

And that means governments will have to keep the emergency funding going ― not just to laid-off workers but to businesses that are facing a very hard winter ahead.

Beyond the rent subsidy for businesses that the federal government has launched, Shenfeld suggested targeted help for specific industries that are suffering, and pushed for more aggressive solutions.

“Perhaps take-out meals and alcohol to-go at bars should be sales tax free? We’ll need to think creatively if it takes longer than a month to unlock this lockdown.”


This article originally appeared on HuffPost Canada.

Canada joins U.S.-led Artemis Accords to send human explorers back to Moon and beyond

WASHINGTON, Wash. — Canada has signed on to the Artemis Accords, a U.S.-led effort to establish global guidelines for sending explorers back to the Moon and beyond.

NASA says space agencies in Australia, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates also joined the pact.

The accords, which establish rules for extracting and using "space resources," commit signatories to exploring space peacefully and in the spirit of international co-operation.

They also call for transparency, the protection of heritage sites like the 1969 moon landing location and preventing the spread of orbital debris. 

Canadian Space Agency president Lisa Campbell cheers the accords, but says more robust rules for the exploration of deep space are still a long ways off. 

Campbell says the agency will begin consulting with Canadians, as well as a United Nations committee that oversees space exploration.

"The Artemis Accords are an important achievement for safe and sustainable space exploration," Campbell said in a statement.

"More work is needed to further solidify the framework for deep-space exploration activities, both nationally and internationally."


Canada has signed on to Artemis for the next 20 years, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told a virtual news conference Tuesday.

The country's role as a NASA partner has been evident for decades, Bridenstine said, most notably when the Maple Leaf-emblazoned Canadarm was a fixture of Space Shuttle missions throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

"Canada was the third nation on the planet to launch an object into space," he said. "Canada has a very robust history in space exploration."

It's also a country that's proud of its accomplishments in space, added Mike Gold, NASA's acting associate administrator for international and interagency relations.

"Canada is the only partner nation that has their space contribution on the $5 bill, so that absolutely makes Canada unique."

NASA's Artemis program, launched in 2017, aims to land the first woman and "the next man" on the moon in the southern pole region by 2024.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2020.

Huge cat found etched into desert among Nazca Lines in Peru

Feline geoglyph from 200-100BC emerges during work at Unesco world heritage site


Sam Jones in Madrid Sun 18 Oct 2020
 

The feline figure, seen on a hillside in Nazca, Peru, has been cleaned and conserved since its discovery. Photograph: Jhony Islas/AP


The dun sands of southern Peru, etched centuries ago with geoglyphs of a hummingbird, a monkey, an orca – and a figure some would dearly love to believe is an astronaut – have now revealed the form of an enormous cat lounging across a desert hillside.

The feline Nazca line, dated to between 200BC and 100BC, emerged during work to improve access to one of the hills that provides a natural vantage point from which many of the designs can be seen.

A Unesco world heritage site since 1994, the Nazca Lines, which are made up of hundreds of geometric and zoomorphic images, were created by removing rocks and earth to reveal the contrasting materials below. They lie 250 miles (400km) south of Lima and cover about 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of Peru’s arid coastal plain.
 Archaeologists carry out maintenance work at the site. 

Photograph: Jhony Islas/AP

“The figure was scarcely visible and was about to disappear because it’s situated on quite a steep slope that’s prone to the effects of natural erosion,” Peru’s culture ministry said in a statement this week.


“Over the past week, the geoglyph was cleaned and conserved, and shows a feline figure in profile, with its head facing the front.” It said the cat was 37 metres long, with well-defined lines that varied in width between 30cm and 40cm.

“It’s quite striking that we’re still finding new figures, but we also know that there are more to be found,” Johny Isla, Peru’s chief archaeologist for the lines, told the Spanish news agency Efe.

“Over the past few years, the use of drones has allowed us to take images of hillsides.”

Isla said between 80 and 100 new figures had emerged over recent years in the Nazca and Palpa valleys, all of which predated the Nazca culture (AD200-700). “These are smaller in size, drawn on to hillsides, and clearly belong to an earlier tradition.”

The archaeologist said the cat had been put out during the late Paracas era, which ran from 500BC to AD200. “We know that from comparing iconographies,” said Isla. “Paracas textiles, for example, show birds, cats and people that are easily comparable to these geoglyphs.”

Flesh Gordon? Artwork reveals erotic version that was never made

Draft designs for a planned Nicolas Roeg sci-fi movie in 1979 finally see the light of day


Dalya Alberge Sun 18 Oct 2020 

Artwork for the abandoned film depicts Flash Gordon confronting Ming the Merciless on top of the emperor’s royal spaceship. Photograph: StudioCanal/King Features Inc


Flash Gordon fans worldwide can only imagine what might have been. Futuristic artwork – including lots of phallic imagery – that was created for an aborted 1979 feature film about the cult spaceman superhero and his intergalactic adventures is to be published for the first time.

The production was to have been directed by one of Britain’s foremost film-makers, the late Nicolas Roeg, who had made Don’t Look Now, a horror story starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and The Man Who Fell to Earth, the arthouse science fiction drama starring David Bowie as an alien.

His Flash Gordon film would have starred Debbie Harry, lead singer of the American band Blondie, as Princess Aura, the seductive daughter of Ming the Merciless, the tyrannical dictator, who would have been played by Hollywood movie star Keith Carradine.

Sam J Jones as Flash Gordon in Mike Hodges’s 1980 film. Photograph: Alamy

But the production was abandoned before Roeg had cast his superhero after he fell out with its producer, Dino De Laurentiis, the movie mogul who made Barbarella, a 1968 science-fiction comic adaptation that turned Jane Fonda into a sex symbol. De Laurentiis had dreamed of three Flash Gordon films. He only made one, the 1980 version directed by Mike Hodges, which became a cult favourite, with huge conventions worldwide despite disappointing reviews.

The film has now been restored by StudioCanal to mark December’s 40th anniversary of its original release.

Flash Gordon was originally created by Alex Raymond, the American artist. In 1933, publisher King Features asked him and writer Don Moore to create a rival to the 1929 comic strip Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon made his newspaper debut in 1934 and became an instant hit, read by more than 50 million people a week in 130 newspapers worldwide.

John Walsh, a film-maker and author, has retrieved about 40 designs for the Roeg version from the British Film Institute (BFI) archives: “It’s public knowledge that Roeg worked on the film’s development. What hasn’t been seen is its artwork.”

Walsh will feature the artwork in his forthcoming book, Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film, to be published on 20 November.

One image depicts Flash Gordon confronting Ming for a sword fight on top of the emperor’s royal spaceship. “It is a vast sequence that could not have been realised using 1970s technology,” Walsh said. “This image has more of the flourish of the original Raymond comic strips from the 1930s.”

The artwork was created by the production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who went on to win an Oscar for The Last Emperor in 1987.

But most of the imagery suggests a very different film, Walsh said: “It would have been a much more sexually explicit sci-fi romp. Dino chose Roeg, who died in 2018, because he’d worked on The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is science fiction and a very good film, but it’s as far from comic strip melodrama as you could get.”
Ferdinando Scarfiotti’s vision of Arboria dwarfed the actors with giant vegetation and trees. Photograph: StudioCanal/BFI

Of the artwork, he said: “Everything’s quite organic. They look like plants… Ming’s spaceship is the most conventional of the designs, but most of the spaceships are a cross between phallic imagery and orchid flowers, reflecting a more adult tone based on the sexualised imagery of the 1930s strip.

“I interviewed John Richardson, who had worked on its special effects for four months before De Laurentiis pulled the plug. He said, I asked Nic one day ‘what do you see Ming’s spaceship looking like?’ He replied, ‘I see it like a heaving, mucus-covered placenta’ [though that] differs from the design shown.

“Richardson was taken aback because he was expecting something that had much more of a 1930s Chrysler motor look to it.

“Instead, Roeg was taking it in a completely opposite organic direction. In a sense, Dino was right to pull the plug.”

Wide Awakes: the Lincoln-era youth movement inspiring anti-Trump protests

In 1860, on the brink of civil war, caped young men with lanterns sought to safeguard democracy. 

Now, in a nation divided once more, the group has returned to the light


Ted Widmer Sat 17 Oct 2020 
 

Grand procession of Wide-Awakes at New York on the evening of 3 October 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540


On 21 September, a tweeted image of an eyeball, with the words “WIDE AWAKE”, accompanied an urgent appeal to demonstrators in Washington, eager to protest against Republican plans to nominate a supreme court replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A disputed election, a constitutional crisis, polarisation … welcome to 1876
Read more

The tweet was part of a rapidly growing interest in the Wide Awakes, a shadowy youth movement that rose up in 1860, as the nation teetered toward civil war, then vanished. Now, in another bitterly divided moment, historians, journalists and even fashionistas are converging on the movement, which helped elect Abraham Lincoln.

Who were the Wide Awakes? At any point in history, it can be hard to pinpoint a sprawling youth movement with no central organization. But thanks to surviving photographs, we have a strong sense of what the Wide Awakes looked like. They live on in old ambrotypes and daguerrotypes, staring out resolutely from the faded chemicals, serious young men returning the gaze of the camera.

'We don't have any choice': the young climate activists naming and shaming US politicians
Read more

There is no single collection – like the original movement, the surviving Wide Awakes are spread out, in libraries and old auction catalogues, on eBay and through the half-life of Pinterest, where so many images refuse to die.

We know, from the historical record, that the Wide Awakes began to assemble in Hartford, Connecticut, on the night of 25 February 1860. An anti-slavery politician from Kentucky, Cassius Clay, came to speak. Escorting him, a group of young men formed a parade by torchlight. Someone improvised a cape, made out of oilcloth, to protect his clothes from the dripping oil of the torches. He was quickly imitated – a dashing new look was born.
 

A Wide Awake, in costume. Photograph: The Progress-Index and Pamplin Historical Park

A week later, the first Wide Awake Club was formed in Hartford. Thirty-six young men agreed to buy their own capes, just in time for the next political visitor. On 5 March, he arrived, an unusual speaker from Illinois, gaunt and angular. Lincoln had just given his great speech at the Cooper Union in New York, and as one observer put it, the “presidential bee” had begun to buzz around him. That night in Hartford, the Wide Awakes lit their torches, donned their capes and escorted Lincoln to his hotel.

The new look spread like … wildfire. The capes were splendid, especially when augmented by military caps, the flickering light of the torches and all those painted eyeballs, staring out from large banners.

 A banner in the the Old Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. Photograph: Michael Christensen

But it was not just a look. It was a genuine feeling, as if young people were waking from a long slumber, and seeing for the first time how much corruption and rot had set in. The country was very young: 51% were 19 or younger. But for as long as anyone could remember, the government had been controlled by Washington’s largest lobby, the Slave Power, which selected mediocre presidents, eager to do its bidding, and placed compliant lackeys on the supreme court.

Three years earlier, in the Dred Scott decision, the court had ruled that black lives emphatically did not matter – that African Americans could never become citizens or hold any rights at all. The day before Lincoln came to Hartford, a large slave ship, the Clotilda, left Alabama for Africa, flouting all laws against the slave trade. Under President James Buchanan, slaveholders were free to do as they liked; as Frederick Douglass complained, slave traders actually flew the Stars and Stripes as they carried their human cargoes back from Africa.

But Lincoln and others had risen in protest against these injustices, which so clearly violated America’s founding ideals. Now the young were joining them, in huge numbers. They wanted their country back. An editor at the Atlantic Monthly wrote that the time had come to decide, once and for all, “whether the American idea is to govern this continent”. In defense of that idea, first hundreds, then thousands of Wide Awakes would pour into the streets in 1860.

 

A Wide Awakes ribbon made for veterans of the movement, in 1892. Photograph: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection

The movement grew quickly in the spring and summer, with clubs forming across the north and midwest. Chicago had 48 clubs alone. Shrewdly, they used new networks of communication: one young writer improvised a kind of early comic book, Pipps Among the Wide Awakes, to celebrate the dashing caped crusaders. It was a badge of honor to wear “the Cape of Good Hope”, as one called it, and they thrilled onlookers with huge nighttime parades, fireworks added to the torchlight, and “moving transparencies”, like slide shows, a distant ancestor of what would become cinema. Wide Awake sheet music was printed and quickly sent around the country, thrilling a nation of young people, waking up. Even the dour abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote: “It was hard not to tap one’s feet to the jaunty rhythms.”

Lincoln as Wide Awake, in a news cartoon from 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

 

A Wide Awake Club ribbon featuring Abraham Lincoln. Photograph: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana.

The clubs visited each other, and thousands watched the rallies, including large numbers of women, who formed groups of “Lady Wide Awakes”, sewed uniforms and linked the cause to their own fight for empowerment. A Wide Awake rally in Seneca Falls, New York, was addressed by Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, campaigners for women’s suffrage. African Americans were occasionally invited to join the clubs, especially in Boston – deepening the south’s horror. Southern politicians ridiculed the young marchers as “infants whose mammas didn’t know they were out”, and threatened violence against them. But they were intimidated by the sight of thousands of young men, disciplined, standing up for their non-violent ideals.

The Wide Awakes were not, technically, a part of the Republican party. But they loved Lincoln, whose authenticity mirrored their own. Party leaders shrewdly adapted their message to the movement, which peaked in the fall, as the election approached. William Seward, soon to be secretary of state, gave a speech in Detroit promising that “the young men throughout the land are Wide Awake”. In Boston, Lincoln’s running mate, Hannibal Hamlin, marched through the street with “the boys”. On 3 October, a huge torchlight procession and pyrotechnic display dazzled New York City. Tens of thousands came out.

To be sure, these events were a kind of entertainment. But true to their banners, the Wide Awakes kept their eyes open as the great day of the election approached. Many served as “patrol-men” at voting stations, on guard against dirty tricks, determined to use “all honorable means” to ensure a fair count

A membership certificate sent to Lincoln from Chicago in June 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Abraham Lincoln Papers.

It worked, and Lincoln’s victory owed something to tremendous support from the young. Estimates vary, but as many as half a million young men may have joined the movement, and the number rises quickly when spectators are added.

After Lincoln’s election, the Wide Awakes faded away, as mysteriously as they assembled, but they had accomplished something important. When Lincoln was inaugurated on 4 March – a year to the day after the Clotilda sailed from Alabama – America had come a long way toward reclaiming its ideals. A last contingent of Wide Awakes attended his inauguration, determined to shield him from harm.

Nowadays, the Wide Awakes occasionally resurface in the history books, including a study by Jon Grinspan and a book by Adam Goodheart. Sometimes, they are awakened accidentally – as when the Florida representative Matt Gaetz, a Trump ally, denounced young people as “woketopians” during an angry speech at the Republican convention. But they will always live on in haunting photographs, lingering evidence of a generation that stood up to reclaim its democracy.


Ted Widmer is distinguished lecturer at Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, and the author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington

FacebookTwitterPinterest A protester on 5th Avenue in New York, earlier this month. Photograph: Niyi Fote/via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Trump and Barrett's threat to abortion and LGBTQ rights is simply un-American

Republicans won’t tell Americans to wear masks to beat Covid, but will say what women and gay people can and cannot do


Sun 18 Oct 2020
 

Opponents of nominee Amy Coney Barrett demonstrate outside the supreme court in Washington. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump and many Republicans insist that whether to wear a mask or to go to work during a pandemic should be personal choices. Yet what a woman does with her own body, or whether same-sex couples can marry, should be decided by government.

It’s a tortured, upside-down view of freedom. Yet it’s remarkably prevalent even as the pandemic resurges – America is back up to more than 60,000 new cases a day, the highest rate since July, and numbers continue to rise – and as the Senate considers Trump’s pick for the supreme court.

By contrast, Joe Biden has wisely declared he would do “whatever it takes” to stop the pandemic, including mandating masks and locking down the entire economy if scientists recommend it.

“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he said.

Biden also wants to protect both abortion and same-sex marriage from government intrusion – in 2012 he memorably declared his support of the latter before even Barack Obama did so.


What’s public, what’s private and where should government intervene? The question suffuses the impending election

Trump’s opposite approaches, discouraging masks and other Covid restrictions while seeking government intrusion into the most intimate decisions anyone makes, have become the de facto centerpieces of his campaign.

At his “town hall” on Thursday night, Trump falsely claimed that most people who wear masks contract the virus.

He also criticized governors for ordering lockdowns, adding that the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, “wants to be a dictator”. He was speaking just one week after state and federal authorities announced they had thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap and possibly kill Whitmer.

The attorney general, William Barr – once again contesting Trump for the most wacky analogy – has called state lockdown orders the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” since slavery.

Yet at the very same time Trump and his fellow-travelers defend people’s freedom to infect others or become infected with Covid-19, they’re inviting government to intrude into the most intimate aspects of personal life.

Trump has promised that the supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision, establishing a federal right to abortion, will be reversed “because I am putting pro-life justices on the court”.

Much of the controversy over Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett hinges on her putative willingness to repeal Roe.

While an appeals court judge, Barrett ruled in favor of a law requiring doctors to inform the parents of any minor seeking an abortion, without exceptions, and also joined a dissent suggesting an Indiana law requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains was constitutional.

A Justice Barrett might also provide the deciding vote for reversing Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 supreme court decision protecting same-sex marriage. Only three members of the majority in that case remain on the court.

Barrett says her views are rooted in the “text” of the constitution. That’s a worrisome omen given that earlier this month justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito opined that the right to same-sex marriage “is found nowhere in the text” of the constitution.

What’s public, what’s private and where should government intervene? The question suffuses the impending election and much else in modern American life.

It is nonsensical to argue, as do Trump and his allies, that government cannot mandate masks or close businesses during a pandemic but can prevent women from having abortions and same-sex couples from marrying.

The underlying issue is the common good, what we owe each other as members of the same society.

During wartime, we expect government to intrude on our daily lives for the common good: drafting us into armies, converting our workplaces and businesses, demanding we sacrifice normal pleasures and conveniences. During a pandemic as grave as this one we should expect no less intrusion, in order that we not expose others to the risk of contracting the virus.

But we have no right to impose on others our moral or religious views about when life begins or the nature and meaning of marriage. The common good requires instead that we honor such profoundly personal decisions.

Public or private? We owe it to each other to understand the distinction.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

'I expected more': Teófimo López stuns Vasiliy Lomachenko to unify titles

López unifies IBF, WBA and WBO titles in major upset win

Bryan Armen Graham Sun 18 Oct 2020

Teófimo López lands a right hand on Vasiliy Lomachenko during their lightweight title unification fight on Saturday night. Photograph: Top Rank/Getty Images

A star was born in the bubble on Saturday night as Teófimo López delivered on his enormous promise with a surprisingly comprehensive victory over Vasiliy Lomachenko, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-weight champion from Ukraine widely regarded as boxing’s pound-for-pound best.

López upsets Lomachenko in unification bout – as it happened

The 23-year-old Brooklyn native dominated the first half of the hotly anticipated lightweight title unification fight at the MGM Grand Conference Center, then held off a late-round surge and showed the finishing kick of a champion to unify the IBF, WBA and WBO title belts at 135lbs. The three judges at ringside favored López by scores of 119-109, 117-111 and 116-112. (The Guardian had it 116-112.)

López, who captured the IBF’s version of the lightweight championship with a concussive knockout of Richard Commey in December and went off as a 3-1 underdog on Saturday, sprung the upset not with his formidable power but by outboxing the sport’s most technically proficient fighter – an outcome foreseen by virtually no one.

“A lot of people were talking highly about him and I expected more,” López said. “Basic. It was pretty basic, honestly. Maybe it was the 14-month layoff that did it, I don’t know. But I had 10 months laid off, so why does it matter? I fought the guy that everybody says is the pound-for-pound (best).”

López took advantage of a slow start by Lomachenko, a former world champion at featherweight and junior lightweight whose only flickers of vulnerability have come since moving up to lightweight. The 32-year-old southpaw spent the first four rounds throwing punches very sparingly, content to sit back and measure the task before him. López was able to bank rounds easily by touching his opponent with a steady diet of jabs and straight rights to the head and body.

As the fight went into the middle rounds, Lomachenko continued to wait on a mistake that never came and was forced to alter his tactics as his face began to swell from the accumulation of López’s blows. After a warning from referee Russell Mora for leading with his head, Lomachenko burst to life midway through the eighth and landed a three-punch combination followed by a crisp right hand. He landed 19 of 38 punches in the round after connected on a scant 31 in the first seven combined, but the fight at last was on.

Sensing López could not contend with the pressure, Lomachenko picked up in the ninth where he’d left off and continued to let his hands go. He wobbled López with a combination early in the round but the younger champion held his ground and hit back with an uppercut through Lomachenko’s guard. By the 11th, Lomachenko was pouring on the punishment and the momentum had swung clearly in his favor, though whether he’d waited too long to flip the switch

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Teófimo López lands a punch on Vasiliy Lomachenko during Saturday’s fight. 

Photograph: Top Rank/Getty Images

Knowing Lomachenko likely needed a knockout to win entering the 12th, López’s father and trainer urged his son to box from range. But López ignored the advice and bit down in the final round in a clear effort to go for the knockout. He battered and bloodied Lomachenko with straight rights and uppercuts throughout the final three minutes. The referee appeared to spare Lomachenko by calling time on the action after an accidental head butt in the final seconds caused a large gash over López’s right eye, but by then the outcome was all but a handshake away.

“I’m a fighter,” López said when asked why he ignored his father’s counsel. “I got to dig in deep. I knew he was coming. I didn’t know if they had him up on the scorecards or not, and I love to fight. I can bang, too. I don’t care, man. I’ll take one to give one. That’s what a true champion does. I find a way to win.”

Lomachenko connected on 141 of 321 punches compared to 183 of 659 for López, according to Compubox’s punch statistics.

“I think in the first half of the fight, he got more rounds than I did,” Lomachenko said through a translator. “But then in the second half of the fight, I took it over and I was much better. I want to go home and to review the fight to see. I can’t comment right now much about it. But I definitely am not agreeing with the scorecards.”

He added: “At the moment I think (I won the fight). But the result is the result. I’m not going to argue right now.”

Afterward López claimed it as a victory for the younger generation of fighters who are eager to break through, putting himself at the head of an up-and-coming class that includes Shakur Stevenson, Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and David Benavidez.

“This is the new generation,” he said. “We’re bringing back what the old school was. Fight the best and you push on it. I’m not here to pick and choose who I want to fight because I want to defend my title and keep that ‘O’. No. And now, who knows how my figures are going to go up after this.

“Everyone wants to be like Mayweather. In order to be like Mayweather, you got to be like Pretty Boy first. You go to fight those guys where people don’t think you’ll win. You got to fight the likes of those guys that are undefeated and it’s a good fight in order to make those types of millions that people want to make.”