cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/40778464

Published date: 24 December 2025 09:30 GMT

Youssef Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, says the giant Christmas tree that once stood as a symbol of communal celebration will not be lit this year.

For a third consecutive year, Gaza's Christian community says they will be observing Christmas without public celebrations, as Israel's repeated ceasefire violations and restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the enclave continue to cast a shadow over the holiday.

Before the war, churches across Gaza transformed their courtyards into gathering spaces, decorated streets with festive lights and hosted carols that brought families together.

Peter Link

2025-12-25 04:27:00

'There is nothing to celebrate': Gaza's Christians mark sombre Christmas amid fragile truce

Published date: 24 December 2025 09:30 GMT

Youssef Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, says the giant Christmas tree that once stood as a symbol of communal celebration will not be lit this year.

For a third consecutive year, Gaza's Christian community says they will be observing Christmas without public celebrations, as Israel's repeated ceasefire violations and restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the enclave continue to cast a shadow over the holiday.

Before the war, churches across Gaza transformed their courtyards into gathering spaces, decorated streets with festive lights and hosted carols that brought families together.

'There is nothing to celebrate': Gaza's Christians mark sombre Christmas amid fragile truce

^{Maha Hussaini (Middle East Eye)}

TL;DR, should I, and if so then how should I, warm it up?

I'm poor, been through a rough time.

Luckily, I have some very generous food banks in the area. One of which I've gone to for a while now. Some people know there know me, and things have been in a bit of an uptick in my life lately. And that hasn't gone unnoticed either. I've been in a significantly better mood and more, approachable, I guess?

One of the funny little results of that, is that they've been giving me more. I give away a bunch of the stuff I get that I don't need myself even in the hostel I'm staying at.

This foodbank closes for a few weeks for Christmas/New Years. They gave out a bit more than usual to all, but someone went a bit further.

They made individual fruit cakes. Only seven so I'm told. And the staff gave them away to their "favourites". I'm not super big into favouritism but, well. They gave me one. Even declined it at first but gave in.

Now, the only time I've had fruit cake I've hated it. But it was the dry store-bought crap.

This cake? Looks amazing. Whole pecans and a dollop of caramel on the top. In this nice little hard-foil container and plastic-wrapped inside as well.

Given all the prep and thought and care that went into it, I have to try it. (And they made a point of wanting to know what I think of it since they know I was a bit hesitant in the first place.)

But for the life of me I am wondering the most inane question.

Should I warm it up?

Typically if I want a warm muffin/pastry I just put it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds.

If I really want to go out of my way I might wrap something in foil and throw it in an oven/toaster-oven. Or for pizza I'll put it in frying pan and cover it on low if it's really good pizza and I want to warm up the crust so it's "just right" rather than microwaving it into a soggy mess. (Which I will happily do if time is an issue and it's cheap pizza.)

But in this case, I feel like I should do it by the best method possible. If I even should?

Apparently I'm supposed to enjoy it with a cup of coffee as well. So it may turn into breakfast for a few days if I like it.

What is Lemmy?

Lemmy is a self-hosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. It is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms. Content is organized into communities, so it is easy to subscribe to topics that you are interested in, and ignore others. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top. Thanks to @flamingos-cant for contributing to resolve this.

Changes

We messed up the previous release and did not include the full list of changes. In fact there were a handful of other bug fixes, and notably a maximum page limit of 10 to prevent a DDoS attack. Some users were also hitting this limit, so with this version the limit is increased to 100. We apologize for these mistakes.

Here is the full changelog since 0.19.13:

• Don't allow accessing page numbers greater than 10 by @dessalines #6017
• Update deps based on cargo audit by @Nutomic in #6258
• Increase page limit to 100 by @Nutomic in #6252
• Ban federation for deleted users by @Nutomic in #6207
• Federate mod actions on deleted users by @Nutomic in #6199
• Allow admins to view deleted user profiles by @Nutomic in #6194
• Adding creator and community indexes for post_aggregates. by @dessalines in #6025
• Ignore apub person banners which cannot be parsed by @Nutomic in #6015u

Now for the good news, the development version of Lemmy 1.0 is available for testing on voyager.lemmy.ml with lots of new features. Registration is open, you're welcome to create an account. Feel free to post spam and try everything out. Here is only a short overview:

• Multi-communities: Combine different communities together into a custom feed.
• Post scheduling: Specify when your post should be published.
• Keyword filter: Automatically hide posts about certain topics.
• Private communities: Only followers can view the content, and need to be approved manually by mods. Other community visibilities are also available (unlisted, local only).
• New notification system: Including notifications for mod actions, and subscribing to communities and posts to be notified about new comments.
• OAuth: Login to Lemmy with existing account from another website. Use this link to signup with your Github account (the UI still needs to be improved).
• Post Tags: Categorize posts within a community (UI part not implemented yet).
• User vote totals: You can see the total number of upvotes and downvotes given to each user.
• User notes: You can keep notes on other users.
• Combined Feeds: View your saved, liked posts and comments together in a single list.
• Comment Locking: Mods can now lock comments recursively.
• GDPR style data exporting: You can now export your full posting history as a JSON file.
• Plugins: Can be written in JS, Python, Rust, and any other language that targets Webassembly. The test server has a plugin for automatic language tagging of posts.
• Cursor pagination: Don't lose your place in the feed when switching pages.
• API v3 compat: Lemmy 1.0 can be used by existing apps with no changes (but most new features are only available via the new API v4).
• More: Countless smaller features, bug fixes and improvements, too much to list here.

All the above mentioned features are already implemented and fully working, but may need some polishing. If you encounter any problems, please open an issue (backend, frontend). voyager.lemmy.ml is automatically updated to the latest development version every night, so that changes can immediately be tested.

Keep in mind that Lemmy 1.0 is still in alpha state. There may be breaking changes and critical bugs, so do not attempt to upgrade your own instances yet. We intend to publish the first beta version in January, along with API docs and upgrade instructions for test servers.

We hope that you are as excited about these new features as we are. With all this said, happy testing and Merry Christmas!

Upgrade instructions

There are no breaking changes with this release.

Follow the upgrade instructions for ansible or docker.

If you need help with the upgrade, you can ask in our support forum or on the Matrix Chat.

Thanks to everyone

We’d like to thank our many contributors and users of Lemmy for coding, translating, testing, donating and reporting bugs. We're glad many people find it useful and enjoyable enough to contribute.

Support development

We (@dessalines and @nutomic) have been working full-time on Lemmy for over five years. This is largely thanks to support from NLnet foundation, as well as donations from individual users.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. A recurring donation is the best way to ensure that open-source software like Lemmy can stay independent and alive, and helps us grow our little developer co-op to support more full-time developers.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency

A little over a month ago my two best friends tried to kill themselves on the same night. Throughout the month one of those friends has done that several times. Thankfully they're both still alive today.

Ever since that happened I haven't felt like myself at all, I just, feel like I'm carrying too much and like I'm all alone. People know being suicidal is hard and loosing someone to suicide is hard but having someone you really care about try to kill themselves (and describe how they did it) can also be hard on anyone. I can't make a description of the event on this post but I can say that they didn't pull back, they didn't stop and turn back, they tried to go through and were stopped by an external source. For me that's the part that hurts the most. Knowing they wanted to go through with it.

Ever since it happened Ive been having intrusive thoughts/images about it and just feeling constantly stressed/irritable and having nightmares every now and them. Nightmares in either which I watch them hurt themselves or they die by some form and its my fault. I also had per-existing abandonment issues so before this happened I'd constantly wonder how I would feel if my friends died but the one thing that kept me grounded was knowing that that can't happen in any realistic scenario and now its happening.

Going through life I feel so different, like none of the people I see from day to day have gone through something like this so that makes me different, and if I told them what's going on in my head they'd see me as pathetic because I shouldn't feel this way since they're still alive.

I feel so isolated. Like I want someone, not anyone, but a close friend, who I can talk to about this, but then I remember I have three friends in this world, and two of them want to die. The third one I can talk to but wasn't affected the same way and doesn't really relate.

I don't really know what I'm asking through this post, I guess I just wanted to let it out. I guess I also want to know I'm not alone. Anyone else going through this?

Scores of journalists, political and human rights activists attended a protest jointly organized by Bangladesh’s Editor’s Council and Newspaper Owners Association (NOAM) in Dhaka on Monday, December 22 to denounce last week’s attacks on leading newspapers and journalists in the country.

Claiming such attacks are attempts to silence critical voices, speakers appealed to the social forces in the country to raise their voices in protest in order to protect the (remaining) social and political freedoms in the country.

Bangladesh has seen repeated attacks on opposition parties such as the Awami League and Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), religious minorities, and symbols of Bangladesh’s national liberation struggle, since the formation of the interim administration last year.

However, a fresh round of violence erupted in the country last week following the news of the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, a lead organizer of the anti-quota protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government in July-August last year and a candidate for the upcoming national elections in the from one of the constituencies in Dhaka.

Hadi was shot on December 12 in Dhaka and was getting treatment in a hospital in Singapore where he passed on December 18.

The night of his death, Mostakur Rahman, a student leader and member of Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir, the male student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, gave a speech calling for two leading daily newspapers, the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, in the country to be shut down.

As reported by Prothom Alo, Rahman told a large crowd in Rajshahi, “We declare from today’s program that these so-called ‘civil’ newspapers, including Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, must be shut down. We believe that if any journalists from Prothom Alo or The Daily Star are attending this programme, they should leave immediately.”

His calls were echoed by others across social media and soon, mobs of people acted on it.

That very night and into the next morning, the offices of the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, were attacked and vandalized by large violent mobs while hundreds of journalists and other staff inside. The editor of another newspaper New Age was also harassed by a mob on the same day.

Both the Daily Star and Prothom Alo could not publish their editions on December 19 due to the damages caused by the attack. Prothom Alo claimed it missed publishing an edition for the first time since their founding 27 years ago.

The attackers, as reported in the local media, had accused the Daily Star and Prothom Alo of pushing the ideology of Hasina’s Awami League which has been banned from contesting the national election next year.

The attacks on the newspaper was part of a series of violent attacks on various opposition parties including the offices of the left-wing WPB and its student and youth organizations, the country’s leading cultural organizations Chayyanaut and Udichi, members of the minority religious communities and monument of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh’s liberation war and its first prime minister.

Known as Bangbandhu Bhavan, the monument is located at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. It was targeted and vandalized in February this year as well.

February’s attack on Dhanmandi was led by the leaders of the anti-quota protest who are part of the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus. These political sectors have now formed the National Citizens Party (NCP) and are contesting in the upcoming national elections.

Push towards a civil war

The Awami League called the attacks on Dhanmondi an attempt to destroy the history of the country expressing hope that such attempts will be resisted by the people.

In dialogue with Peoples Dispatch, Sharif Shamsir, a left activist, claimed that the attacks last week were part of the concerned effort to silence the secular and nationalist opposition in the country. He claimed that the newspapers were targeted despite their pro-Yunus stance as they continue to write against the rising religious extremism in the country and are in favor of secular polity.

Shamsir also claimed that the attackers were supported by the political formations such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and others had expressed their discontent that these newspapers had published a series of articles celebrating the country’s national liberation movement on the occasion of this years’ National Liberation Day on December 16.

Offices of the WPB and its youth and student fronts have been attacked repeatedly by right-wing mobs as it is seen as a part of the secular nationalist alliance opposed to the religious groups in politics. WPB has also called the interim government an instrument of imperialist intervention in the country.

“These repeated incidents of attacks, vandalism, arson and occupation constitute serious obstacles to the ongoing struggle to build a democratic Bangladesh and severely hinder the practice of free thought and expression,” said Jubo Maitree (youth wing of the WPB) in a statement on Monday.

Condemning last week’s violence WPB reiterated that the interim government has failed to protect the political and media freedom in the country and has surrendered in front of the extremist forces.

Though Yunus personally condemned the attacks as barbaric, his government has been criticized for failing to take strong action against the attackers.

“Imperialist and fundamentalist forces, in a highly premeditated manner, have destabilized Bangladesh and established a reign of mob rule with the cooperation of the ruling regime,” WPB’s statement said.

WPB denounced that under Yunus regime incidents of murder, terrorism, rape and human rights violations have now become commonplace.

The government’s failure to protect the religious and political plurality of the country by letting the extremist forces take the law of the land in their hands without any repercussions, WPB said, will push the country towards a civil war.

The post Interim government is pushing Bangladesh towards a civil war, says Workers Party appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1543…

Scores of journalists, political and human rights activists attended a protest jointly organized by Bangladesh’s Editor’s Council and Newspaper Owners Association (NOAM) in Dhaka on Monday, December 22 to denounce last week’s attacks on leading newspapers and journalists in the country.

Claiming such attacks are attempts to silence critical voices, speakers appealed to the social forces in the country to raise their voices in protest in order to protect the (remaining) social and political freedoms in the country.

Bangladesh has seen repeated attacks on opposition parties such as the Awami League and Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), religious minorities, and symbols of Bangladesh’s national liberation struggle, since the formation of the interim administration last year.

However, a fresh round of violence erupted in the country last week following the news of the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, a lead organizer of the anti-quota protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government in July-August last year and a candidate for the upcoming national elections in the from one of the constituencies in Dhaka.

Hadi was shot on December 12 in Dhaka and was getting treatment in a hospital in Singapore where he passed on December 18.

The night of his death, Mostakur Rahman, a student leader and member of Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir, the male student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, gave a speech calling for two leading daily newspapers, the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, in the country to be shut down.

As reported by Prothom Alo, Rahman told a large crowd in Rajshahi, “We declare from today’s program that these so-called ‘civil’ newspapers, including Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, must be shut down. We believe that if any journalists from Prothom Alo or The Daily Star are attending this programme, they should leave immediately.”

His calls were echoed by others across social media and soon, mobs of people acted on it.

That very night and into the next morning, the offices of the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, were attacked and vandalized by large violent mobs while hundreds of journalists and other staff inside. The editor of another newspaper New Age was also harassed by a mob on the same day.

Both the Daily Star and Prothom Alo could not publish their editions on December 19 due to the damages caused by the attack. Prothom Alo claimed it missed publishing an edition for the first time since their founding 27 years ago.

The attackers, as reported in the local media, had accused the Daily Star and Prothom Alo of pushing the ideology of Hasina’s Awami League which has been banned from contesting the national election next year.

The attacks on the newspaper was part of a series of violent attacks on various opposition parties including the offices of the left-wing WPB and its student and youth organizations, the country’s leading cultural organizations Chayyanaut and Udichi, members of the minority religious communities and monument of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh’s liberation war and its first prime minister.

Known as Bangbandhu Bhavan, the monument is located at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. It was targeted and vandalized in February this year as well.

February’s attack on Dhanmandi was led by the leaders of the anti-quota protest who are part of the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus. These political sectors have now formed the National Citizens Party (NCP) and are contesting in the upcoming national elections.

Push towards a civil war

The Awami League called the attacks on Dhanmondi an attempt to destroy the history of the country expressing hope that such attempts will be resisted by the people.

In dialogue with Peoples Dispatch, Sharif Shamsir, a left activist, claimed that the attacks last week were part of the concerned effort to silence the secular and nationalist opposition in the country. He claimed that the newspapers were targeted despite their pro-Yunus stance as they continue to write against the rising religious extremism in the country and are in favor of secular polity.

Shamsir also claimed that the attackers were supported by the political formations such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and others had expressed their discontent that these newspapers had published a series of articles celebrating the country’s national liberation movement on the occasion of this years’ National Liberation Day on December 16.

Offices of the WPB and its youth and student fronts have been attacked repeatedly by right-wing mobs as it is seen as a part of the secular nationalist alliance opposed to the religious groups in politics. WPB has also called the interim government an instrument of imperialist intervention in the country.

“These repeated incidents of attacks, vandalism, arson and occupation constitute serious obstacles to the ongoing struggle to build a democratic Bangladesh and severely hinder the practice of free thought and expression,” said Jubo Maitree (youth wing of the WPB) in a statement on Monday.

Condemning last week’s violence WPB reiterated that the interim government has failed to protect the political and media freedom in the country and has surrendered in front of the extremist forces.

Though Yunus personally condemned the attacks as barbaric, his government has been criticized for failing to take strong action against the attackers.

“Imperialist and fundamentalist forces, in a highly premeditated manner, have destabilized Bangladesh and established a reign of mob rule with the cooperation of the ruling regime,” WPB’s statement said.

WPB denounced that under Yunus regime incidents of murder, terrorism,removed and human rights violations have now become commonplace.

The government’s failure to protect the religious and political plurality of the country by letting the extremist forces take the law of the land in their hands without any repercussions, WPB said, will push the country towards a civil war.

The post Interim government is pushing Bangladesh towards a civil war, says Workers Party appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

---

From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.

rss

2025-12-23 19:08:30

Interim government is pushing Bangladesh towards a civil war, says Workers Party

Scores of journalists, political and human rights activists attended a protest jointly organized by Bangladesh’s Editor’s Council and Newspaper Owners Association (NOAM) in Dhaka on Monday, December 22 to denounce last week’s attacks on leading newspapers and journalists in the country.

Claiming such attacks are attempts to silence critical voices, speakers appealed to the social forces in the country to raise their voices in protest in order to protect the (remaining) social and political freedoms in the country.

Bangladesh has seen repeated attacks on opposition parties such as the Awami League and Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), religious minorities, and symbols of Bangladesh’s national liberation struggle, since the formation of the interim administration last year.

However, a fresh round of violence erupted in the country last week following the news of the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, a lead organizer of the anti-quota protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government in July-August last year and a candidate for the upcoming national elections in the from one of the constituencies in Dhaka.

Hadi was shot on December 12 in Dhaka and was getting treatment in a hospital in Singapore where he passed on December 18.

The night of his death, Mostakur Rahman, a student leader and member of Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir, the male student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, gave a speech calling for two leading daily newspapers, the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, in the country to be shut down.

As reported by Prothom Alo, Rahman told a large crowd in Rajshahi, “We declare from today’s program that these so-called ‘civil’ newspapers, including Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, must be shut down. We believe that if any journalists from Prothom Alo or The Daily Star are attending this programme, they should leave immediately.”

His calls were echoed by others across social media and soon, mobs of people acted on it.

That very night and into the next morning, the offices of the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, were attacked and vandalized by large violent mobs while hundreds of journalists and other staff inside. The editor of another newspaper New Age was also harassed by a mob on the same day.

Both the Daily Star and Prothom Alo could not publish their editions on December 19 due to the damages caused by the attack. Prothom Alo claimed it missed publishing an edition for the first time since their founding 27 years ago.

The attackers, as reported in the local media, had accused the Daily Star and Prothom Alo of pushing the ideology of Hasina’s Awami League which has been banned from contesting the national election next year.

The attacks on the newspaper was part of a series of violent attacks on various opposition parties including the offices of the left-wing WPB and its student and youth organizations, the country’s leading cultural organizations Chayyanaut and Udichi, members of the minority religious communities and monument of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh’s liberation war and its first prime minister.

Known as Bangbandhu Bhavan, the monument is located at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. It was targeted and vandalized in February this year as well.

February’s attack on Dhanmandi was led by the leaders of the anti-quota protest who are part of the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus. These political sectors have now formed the National Citizens Party (NCP) and are contesting in the upcoming national elections.

Push towards a civil war

The Awami League called the attacks on Dhanmondi an attempt to destroy the history of the country expressing hope that such attempts will be resisted by the people.

In dialogue with Peoples Dispatch, Sharif Shamsir, a left activist, claimed that the attacks last week were part of the concerned effort to silence the secular and nationalist opposition in the country. He claimed that the newspapers were targeted despite their pro-Yunus stance as they continue to write against the rising religious extremism in the country and are in favor of secular polity.

Shamsir also claimed that the attackers were supported by the political formations such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and others had expressed their discontent that these newspapers had published a series of articles celebrating the country’s national liberation movement on the occasion of this years’ National Liberation Day on December 16.

Offices of the WPB and its youth and student fronts have been attacked repeatedly by right-wing mobs as it is seen as a part of the secular nationalist alliance opposed to the religious groups in politics. WPB has also called the interim government an instrument of imperialist intervention in the country.

“These repeated incidents of attacks, vandalism, arson and occupation constitute serious obstacles to the ongoing struggle to build a democratic Bangladesh and severely hinder the practice of free thought and expression,” said Jubo Maitree (youth wing of the WPB) in a statement on Monday.

Condemning last week’s violence WPB reiterated that the interim government has failed to protect the political and media freedom in the country and has surrendered in front of the extremist forces.

Though Yunus personally condemned the attacks as barbaric, his government has been criticized for failing to take strong action against the attackers.

“Imperialist and fundamentalist forces, in a highly premeditated manner, have destabilized Bangladesh and established a reign of mob rule with the cooperation of the ruling regime,” WPB’s statement said.

WPB denounced that under Yunus regime incidents of murder, terrorism, rape and human rights violations have now become commonplace.

The government’s failure to protect the religious and political plurality of the country by letting the extremist forces take the law of the land in their hands without any repercussions, WPB said, will push the country towards a civil war.

The post Interim government is pushing Bangladesh towards a civil war, says Workers Party appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

---

From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.

Bangladesh's liberation under siege : Peoples Dispatch

As Bangladesh marks the victory of its 1971 liberation, the secular, socialist foundations of the nation’s birth are under assault by the convergence of US geopolitical interests with religious fundamentalism.

^{Atul Chandra (Peoples Dispatch)}

This is a rare question hed I can actually abide. The sourcing doesn't prove anything either way.

Susie Wiles has the gimlet eye of an alcoholic’s daughter. She is always on edge, vigilant to the slightest movement, fearful of sudden danger, and has learned to withdraw herself from the chaos in order to survive. She is keenly observant, sees through people around her who are not drinkers to decipher their underlying motives that might flare into unexpected menace, and practiced in passive aggression of which her interview with Vanity Fair is a classic case study.

Wiles defines herself as the child of a raging drunk and it is through that singular lens of her formative experience that she defines her current boss. “I make a specialty of it,” she told the writer Christopher Whipple for his Vanity Fair profile of the Trump White House chief of staff in one of the eleven interviews she granted him. Donald Trump, she stated, “has an alcoholic’s personality,” though he does not drink. She didn’t stop there, but elaborated that “high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” Trump, she said, “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Saying Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” reveals Wiles’ personal understanding about a megalomaniacal celebrity who fosters pandemonium around himself without any care for others. Her father, Pat Summerall, the great football placekicker and the play-by-play broadcaster of National Football League games on CBS for 40 years, was the original bad daddy. “Alcoholism does bad things to relationships, and so it was with my dad and me,” she said. She remembered him as a mostly absentee father and so drunk he “wouldn’t recognize” his granddaughter, which Wiles thought “horrifying.” Alcoholism, she said, is a “disease that clouds your judgment,” and no one, however smart they think they are can “out think addiction.” In 1992, Wiles and her mother staged an intervention to take him to the Betty Ford Drug Rehab Center. She gave him a letter reading, “Dad, the few times we’ve been out in public together recently, I’ve been ashamed we shared the same last name.” That is what she means when she says someone has an “alcoholic’s personality.”