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Zeranol, widely used as a growth promoter in the U.S. beef industry, is a "powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells" similar to the "known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol (DES),"
The Breast Cancer Fund, dedicated to identifying and eliminating environmental causes of breast cancer,
is a "powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells in vitro at potencies similar to those of the natural hormone estradiol and the known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol (DES)."
"may be a risk factor for breast cancer," says the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University in Beijing. The Breast Cancer Fund, dedicated to identifying and eliminating environmental causes of breast cancer, agrees: The drug The use of Zeranol requires "Appropriate Personal Protective Equipment" according to its instructions for usage--"laboratory coat, gloves, safety glasses and mask." Why is it routinely used in U.S. meat production and not even labeled?
Melengestrol acetate, a synthetic progestin put in feed, is 30 times as active as natural progesterone, says the European Commission (EC) and trenbolone acetate, a synthetic androgen, is several times more active than testosterone. Trenbolone acetate is administered as ear implants commonly seen at livestock operations. Operators say they--and the ears themselves--are thrown out at the slaughterhouse and don't enter the human food supply. Do they become feed for other livestock instead?
“There is an association between steroid hormones and certain cancers and an indication that meat consumption is possibly associated with increased risks of breast cancer and prostate cancer,” says the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures. “The highest rates of breast cancer are observed in North America, where hormone-treated meat consumption is highest in the world,” it says, adding that the same statistics apply to prostate cancer.
In fact, Kwang Hwa, Korea, has only seven new cases of breast cancer per 100,000 people, says the EC report, whereas non-Hispanic Caucasians in Los Angeles have 103 new cases per 100,000 people. The breast cancer rate also increases among immigrant groups when they move to the U.S., says the report, suggesting causes are not genetic but environmental. In all the seeking for a "cure," are people overlooking the "cause" of a lot of possible U.S. breast cancer?
Another growth drug used in U.S. beef, pork and turkey--yes turkey--is ractopamine an asthma-like drug called a beta agonist. Like growth hormones, ractopamine lets livestock operators produce more weight more quickly from their animals. Ractopamine was integrated into the food supply under reporters' and consumers' radar more than ten years ago. It became a favorite on U.S. farms when its ability to increase muscle by “repartitioning” nutrients and slowing protein degradation was discovered in a laboratory.
Unlike other veterinary drugs used in U.S. meat that are withdrawn before slaughter (or thrown away as ears) ractopamine is begun in the days before slaughter and never withdrawn. It is given to cattle for their last 28 to 42 days, to pigs for their last 28 days, and to turkeys for their last seven to 14 days. Marketed as Paylean for pigs, as Optaflexx for cattle, and as Topmax for turkeys, ractopamine is not just banned in Europe, it is banned in 160 countries.
Public health officials and livestock specialists are increasingly questioning the drug's wide and often clandestine use. “Ractopamine usage benefits producers, but not consumers. It is bad for animal welfare and has some bad effects on humans,” said Donald Broom, a professor at the University of Cambridge’s department of veterinary medicine, at a forum on the topic in Taipei earlier this year.
In China, the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce reported that more than 1,700 people have been “poisoned” from eating Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 in 2007, it seized U.S. pork for its ractopamine residues.
Thanks to the effect of Big Meat's black hand on USDA and FDA policies, Americans have an almost unlimited supply of cheap meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Unfortunately it does a lot more for the meat industry's "health" than for food consumers'. END
Martha Rosenberg's acclaimed expose of Big Food, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, is now available in bookstores, libraries, online and as an ebook in time for the holidays.
twitter @marthrosenberg
In a 1986 book by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, the future diplomat argued for the aggressive inclusion of a black history curriculum in American schools, claiming that its omission had “crippling effects” by “providing a child with no more than … a white interpretation of reality.”
The 86-page book, “A History Deferred,” served as a guide for secondary and elementary school teachers wanting to teach “Black Studies,” and was published by the Black Student Fund, an advocacy group where Rice had an internship.
“Susan’s interest in the study of Black history evolved from her desire to learn more about the experiences and achievements of her own people,” notes the preface.
Once more, conservatives and the White Right show you who they really are. Susan Rice is damned for her political beliefs, and also because she has "scary black radical Angela Davis hair" in this photo.
The Right's hostility to Ambassador Susan Rice has been described by the Washington Post and others as motivated by white racism. Partisanship, conspiranoid thinking, and an effort to defrock President Obama are most certainly part of the Republicans' hostility to a black woman who would dare to become Secretary of State. In an era where racism and conservatism are one and the same, Republicans cannot resist the urge and impulse to attack a black woman who serves in the Obama administration--even if race-baiting helped to lead to the downfall of their presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
They have not learned from their failures. Facing demographic suicide, conservatives are addicted to the political meth of white racial resentment and anti-black affect. It is one hell of a drug.
The Tea Party GOP's opposition to Susan Rice has found a new fixation. Just as conservatives wanted to find evidence of anti-white vitriol in Michelle Obama's thesis at Princeton, or anti-white sentiment in black liberation theology and Reverend Wright's common sense observations about American history during Obama first presidential campaign, the new meme will be focused on Susan Rice's work as a college student with the Black Student Fund.
In that capacity, she apparently committed a heinous crime according to the Right-wing muckrakers at The Daily Caller: in 1986, Susan Rice dared to suggest that black kids could benefit from learning that they are not bystanders in American history. To the Right, this is a great crime.
Her offense is also bizarre; Rice supposedly harbors anti-white animus, but somehow she decided to dedicate her life to serving the United States government. Riddle you that one? Maybe she is a Manchurian candidate?
There is nothing in Susan Rice's suggestions from almost twenty years ago, as selectively excised from her longer work (as featured by The Daily Caller) that respected psychologists, social scientists, and others have found disagreement with. Her comments are so basic and obvious that The Daily Caller's white racist histrionics are made all the more apparent.
There Charles Johnson writes:
Central to the book’s ambition was reclaiming lost black achievements and giving black children pride in their history. In that vein, Rice lists black achievements in “Literature,” “the Arts,” “the Music [sic]” and “Public Service” to present an Afrocentric view of U.S. history.
This was necessary, Rice noted in her book’s foreword, because most students were “taught American history, literature, art, drama, and music largely from a white, western European perspective. As a result, their grasp of the truth, of reality, is tainted by a myopia of sorts.”
“American history cannot be understood fully or evaluated critically without ample study of Black history,” Rice added...
Carson, Rice saw a political component in Black Studies, writing that the “absence or cursory coverage of Black history, literature, and culture reinforces pernicious and pervasive social perceptions of Black Americans.”
And failing to teach Black Studies in school, she argued, had negative consequences for the self-esteem of black children.
“Ultimately, what is more important than the white or majority perception of black Americans is the black man, woman, and child’s perception of themselves,” Rice wrote. “The greatest evil in omitting or misrepresenting Black history, literature, and culture in elementary or secondary education is the unmistakable message it sends to the black child. The message is ‘your history, your culture, your language and your literature are insignificant. And so are you.’"
Political speech is a style of discourse that proceeds from a set of unstated assumptions. For the community which frequents The Daily Caller, their prior is one wherein all black people (except bootblack garbage pail kid conservatives) are traitors, untrustworthy, not "real" Americans, and that all events of either significance and importance in the United States (and the world) were created by and for White people.
Students of race and racial ideologies term call this set of attitudes and beliefs "symbolic racism."
In the White Gaze, Black and brown folks are bystanders in human history; smart folks can mock such silliness, but such fictions are taken as the truth for the White Right and the Tea Party GOP. Black people, all of us, everywhere, are also closet radicals who want to get "whitey," and a moment away from attacking our white "hosts."
There are multiple levels of racist, white pathology at work in The Daily Caller's discussion of Susan Rice's work as a young student with the Black Student Fund in 1986.
The comment section is noxious and an ideal typical example of bigotry by the Right, and their basic belief that black and brown folks are not "real" Americans. Moreover, this is a not so subtle demonstration of a disdain for the basic premise that non-whites have anything to offer the American project. As such, for conservatives it is bizarre to think that white children could learn anything about the society in which they live by studying the history of black people in either the Americas or the world.
At times, I am tempted to grumble and complain about the books that my parents, godparents, and teachers gave me in my formative years, and that offered a corrective to the Eurocentric lies that were taught in most public schools. I learned early on that people of color were not bystanders to our own history. I was encouraged to be immediately suspect of "white savior" narratives. Most importantly, I was taught a healthy respect for the Black Freedom Struggle.
Even then, reading the willful lies that made Whiteness and white people central to all events of importance in the United States, and seeing the polite racism masquerading as race neutral disagreement at The Daily Caller and elsewhere, I am troubled.
But, I am not surprised.
I have the armor to resist the mental, psychic, and emotional assaults on people of color brought by the forces of white racism and white supremacy in the Age of Obama. This does not mean that we/us are immune from the blows and/or do not feel impact and vibrations on our metaphorical steel.
As sociologists such as Joe Feagin, Charles Gallagher, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have documented, there is a not so small portion of the American public who has learned to be politically correct in their discussions of race and racism. They have learned a script; however, these same people are still racist. Their new weapon is subterfuge: colorblind racists are now adept at masquerading their true feelings.
In private, online, and in the "backstage", what many white folks really think about non-whites is made clear. The former do not like people of color. Yes, America in the post civil rights era is supposedly "post racial". In reality, there are many people who are simultaneously disdainful of black and brown people, and also fervently believe that non-whites have contributed nothing of worth to American society which White people ought to consider valuable or worthy of respect.
As I have said many times, on a basic level the Right's disdain for President Obama is an extension of a pathological disdain for the humanity of black people, specifically, and the Other, more generally. The casualness of the bigotry on display in the comments section of The Daily Caller's essay on Susan Rice's benign suggestion from 1986 that Eurocentrism is pernicious and harmful, is proof of how white racism is immoral, and also damages not just people of color, but white folks too.
Will white opinion leaders in the Republican Party help to free their own voters and public from the poison pill that is white racism? I am unsure.
Written by Sarah Fisher for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
See all our coverage of the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar here.
As an organisation that hears first-hand from the women who bear the burden of Ireland's archaic abortion laws, the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar was shocking and sickening.
And yet not as surprising as you'd think.
Given that abortion laws in Ireland are among the strictest in the world, a tragedy of this kind wasn't so much a matter of if, but when. The circumstances in which Savita died are truly abhorrent. Admitted to hospital experiencing a miscarriage at 17 weeks, despite being told that the fetus "wasn't viable" she was made to suffer for days, left begging for an abortion that she was refused as long as there was a foetal heart beat.
Haunted by the harrowing details of Savita's death we're left to wonder how many more women in Ireland may have lost their lives as a result of being denied a life-saving abortion.
If Savita's family hadn't bravely made the decision to go public, would her senseless death have come to light? Have the lives of more women been sacrificed because a fetus was deemed more important? Even when it was known that the fetus would not survive? When, technically in Ireland an abortion is permitted if there is a "real and substantial risk to the life of the mother?" These are questions that we cannot ignore and questions that demand answers.
Savita's death is the worst illustration of what happens when abortion is highly restricted, and the worst way for the 'pro-life' lobby to be proved wrong. How often do we hear that abortion is never necessary to save the life of a woman? A protester at a vigil for Savita hit the nail on the head with a placard stating 'Pro-Life beliefs killed Savita Halappanavar -- Ireland needs abortion rights.' So did Kartha Pollit in her compelling reflection on the case When 'Pro-Life' kills.
But what has been absent from the mainstream media coverage of Savita's death has been the mass, day-in day-out misery and discrimination experienced by women as a result of the near-total ban on abortion in Ireland.
Because for every tragic death like Savita's there are many, many more victims of Ireland's abortion laws who, though they don't pay with their lives, are made to endure hardship, shame and violations of their basic rights. It's also important that their plight isn't ignored.
Republicans, the party of the nation’s entitled rich, are holding a knife to the throat of America’s frail recovery.
The GOP sore losers have America up against a wall. Republicans don’t care that the majority of the country voted for a candidate who promised to raise taxes on the rich. Republicans don’t care that an even larger majority – 60 percent – told election day pollsters they wanted those taxes raised. Republicans don’t care about majority-rule democracy at all. They’re demanding ransom – extension of tax cuts for the rich. If Americans don’t submit, Republicans will slash the nation’s economy.
“Back away from your Social Security, your Medicare, your Medicaid,” the Republicans are ordering. The GOP insists those crucial social insurance programs be sacrificed to prevent the entitled rich from once again paying the income tax rates that they did during the boom years of Bill Clinton. The party that lost the Presidency, lost seats in the House and lost seats in the Senate is willing to take down the economy, to eviscerate programs like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration rather than require the entitled rich pull their weight as citizens of the country that enabled them to live lives of unprecedented luxury.
The candidate Republicans chose as their presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, stated the party’s position loud and clear last spring and reiterated it during a phone call last week with his millionaire financiers. Romney told funders in May that he had no intention of “worrying about” 47 percent of Americans who he described as moochers, citizens he slandered with the allegation that they refuse to “take personal responsibility.”
In the phone call last week, Romney claimed that the Americans he referred to as government moochers all voted for President Obama because the Democrat gave them “gifts.” Romney, a quarter-billionaire, described the administration's plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest as a “gift” to students. The Republican candidate born into wealth and pampered in private schools characterized as a “gift” the requirement in Obamacare that health insurance companies provide prescription contraceptives without co-payments.
The rich boy said President Obama bought women’s votes for $10 co-pay forgiveness. But for Republicans, it’s never the other way around. Romney and the GOP don’t think they were buying the votes of the rich with their promise to add another 20 percent break on top of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest.
That’s because they believe they’re entitled. They derisively refer to the social safety net programs that prevent the nation’s poor and elderly from being reduced to eating cat food as “entitlements.” But it’s the entitled rich – Romney, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and their ilk – who demand that America give them “stuff” like tax breaks for sending jobs overseas, like tax loopholes for hoarding their assets in the Caymans, like government-paid roads and sewers and rail lines to their businesses.
The entitled rich and their political party don’t seem to get the fact that they lost the election. Eighty CEOs have ponied up $37 million to make sure the so-called fiscal cliff problem is resolved their way. They’re saying, basically, they’re willing to give up one of the “couple of Cadillacs” they drive if the middle class just accepts cat food as its meat course. The CEOs, calling themselves the “Fix the Debt” coalition, claim they’ll pay a secret amount more in taxes if the 99 percent suffers cuts to its social safety net and endures slashed government programs.
Republicans in Congress won’t even go that far. Their legislation would give more to the rich and less to everyone else. They’ve proposed, for example, extending the estate tax cuts that benefit the richest 0.3 percent of American families when their millionaire relatives die, an estimated 7,000 people in 2013. At the same time, Republicans are demanding an end to child tax credit and earned income tax credit enhancements that help 13 million families get by, families that include 26 million children. Those 7,000 entitled rich people and their Republican representatives believe 26 million kids can always join the grandmas dining on cat food. Tastes like chicken, right?
Congress and the President are confronted with a deadline in these hostage negotiations. On Jan. 1, half a trillion in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. It’s called the fiscal cliff because many economists believe the combined effect during a weak recovery would shove the economy back down into recession.
Democrats don’t want to risk damaging the economy. They’ve proposed extending the tax cuts for the 98 percent right now. The richest two percent would benefit from these breaks as well, receiving them on the first $250,000 of their earnings. Everybody gets something. This proposal passed the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Republican-controlled House refuses to even vote on it.
Republicans aren’t talking about extending tax breaks for the 98 percent. Instead, they’re threatening the economic life of the country if they don’t get what they want – tax breaks for people who don’t need them.
Law enforcement experts discourage paying off blackmailers and kidnappers.
President Obama is right to take that advice and refuse to pay the ransom Republicans are demanding to appease the entitled rich.
Amy Goodman, iconic host of the popular independent Pacifica news program, Democracy Now, has been quoted frequently stating:
“I really do think that if for one week in the United States we saw the true face of war, we saw people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war would be eradicated..."
It's easy to argue that graphic images of the carnage of war evoke lasting impressions on those who view them. Few people can forget the horrific photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bomb or the suffering faces and emaciated bodies from the Holocaust. Indeed some of history's most memorable and haunting photographic images arise from war. For people of my era, who lived through the time of Vietnam, the image of naked nine year old Kim Phuc, running, arms in air, screaming, her back seared from napalm, is carved into our memories. Many believe as I do, that Kim's photo, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize, swayed public opinion enough that it helped to end the war.
Interestingly, audio tapes of a cynical Richard Nixon, famous for his hatred of media and his belief that it conspired to take him down, reveal Nixon thought Ut's photo was altered. But it wasn't altered. It was painfully real.
One can't emphasize enough the unique ability media has to influence public opinion. In America, and most countries, media is routinely used by governments to manipulate consensus for, or opposition to, public policy. The George W. Bush administration was particularly adept at using corporate media and right-leaning independent media to push acceptance for attacking Iraq. But once the war began, Bush, Cheney, et al, were equally adept at keeping the visual images of Iraqi deaths from the public eye; quite a feat since some reports estimate Iraqi casualties to number as high as one-million. Of course, embedding compliant journalists made censoring graphic photos a fairly simple task.
But it wasn't only images of dead and wounded Iraqis that Bush, Cheney, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and submissive photo journalists hid from the American people. They also hid the highly emotional images of flag-draped coffins of American troops being transported home to their families. Only after a successful ruling of an October 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed by University of Delaware Professor Ralph Begleiter, were more than 700 photos of flag-draped military caskets released in April 2005. But it wasn't until February 2009, during the Presidency of Barack Obama, that the ban on viewing coffins was officially lifted.
One might presume that since President Obama lifted the ban, he was more inclined toward transparency, but nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout his first term as President, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still being waged, few photos of civilian or military casualties were seen by the public. The same is true of photos of the many casualties, including civilians, of Obama's covert and highly controversial weaponized drone attacks. Photos of drone casualties are never broadcast and difficult to find . If one googles "US drone attack photos," "US drone attack victims," or similar word combinations, hardly any drone victim photos on English language websites appear. Hence most Americans, upon hearing the words weaponized drones, don't conjure images of bloodied dead children, strewn body parts and decapitations, although they should, because that is the job of the drones.
Bottom line: war is heinous and perverse. As Amy Goodman posits, seeing images of sheared off limbs and blown apart kids should evoke a righteous revulsion for war. The limp and bloodied body of a child is a travesty, a crime, and for most people (sadly not all), nearly impossible to justify - which is why those who orchestrate war try so hard to conceal its results.
Operation Pillar of Defense
In Israel's recent incursion into Gaza, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense, Hamas and Israel faced off in an uneven battle. Hamas' long range missiles, most of which were intercepted by Israel's state of the art American-made defense system, flew into Israel as far as the areas around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, reportedly taking the lives of six Israelis and injuring many more.
For its part, Israel bombarded Gaza using American-made F-16 fighter-bombers and American-made Apache helicopter gun ships that repeatedly dropped American-made bombs into heavily populated areas. As of now, the eight long and brutal days of bombing, resulted in 170 Gazan deaths and reportedly over 1000 wounded.
Journalists Under Fire
As is often the case in the middle east, the incursion into Gaza caught the attention of the world. Journalists from across the globe made their way into Gaza to cover Operation Pillar of Defense. Unlike other battles, fought in remote regions spread across a vast mass of territory (think Afghanistan), Gaza's war zone was the impoverished, densely populated small strip of land that has long been controlled by Israel. In this condensed arena, journalists were in just as much danger as Gaza's civilian population, and they suffered greatly for being there. Israel attacked their hotels and dropped bombs on their cars, killing several Palestinian journalists and injuring many more. As a result, Israel is facing accusations from several fronts of purposely targeting journalists, but it rejects all such charges.
The most vocal challenger of Israel's aggression is Abby Martin, a TV anchor for Russia's RT station. After Israel accused Martin of being a terror sympathizer, Martin hit back at Israel on her show in a no-holds-barred lashing for Israel's bombing of RT's office in Gaza. She excoriated Israel for verbally attacking her after she characterized it as an apartheid state, and she pummeled Israel for deliberately targeting journalists. It's a performance worth watching for its fearlessness in confronting Israel directly - which American journalists and the American government lack the courage to do.
Despite the extreme dangers for journalists covering Operation Pillar of Defense, one positive (which is equally a negative) was the fact that it was fought in so confined an area that journalists didn't need travel great distances to get their stories. Reaching dead and injured victims or locating the charred and damaged remains of homes, businesses and mosques was often a matter of following explosions as they happened. Journalists were able to arrive on scene in a short enough time to photograph the dead and wounded and document the brutal events while they were still fresh. As a result, a large number of gruesome and disturbing photos made their way to newspapers and online news sites around the world. Many of the photos were of fallen children, which increased the already widespread and loud condemnation of Israel for being overly aggressive and reckless in bombarding areas populated by innocent civilians - including children.
Israel, which sees itself as the world's perpetual victim, an increasingly implausible portrayal, went on an all-out media offensive against journalists who photographed the casualties. Understanding how incriminating images of massive explosions, battered bodies, demolished buildings, dead babies and grieving families could be for Israel, Israel deployed every available surrogate to appear on as many international media platforms as possible to parrot the story that Israel had been forced to defend its people against the relentless assault by Hamas.
The Surrogates
American born Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., became an everyday presence on American media. Speeches or interviews with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and others, were broadcast regularly on American TV. And, as is commonly the case in American corporate media, few, if any, representatives for the Palestinians were given an equal platform.
Some more diligent interviewers, like MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and CNN's Piers Morgan, questioned the surrogates about the wisdom of jeopardizing civilians by bombing highly concentrated residential areas. Well-schooled in their responses, the surrogates answered with Israel's customary refrain that it wasn't Israel jeopardizing the civilians, but Hamas, who purposely hid in residential neighborhoods to use civilians as human shields - a claim refuted by the 2009 United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, which stated:
The Mission, however, found no evidence of Palestinian armed groups placing civilians in areas where attacks were being launched; of engaging in combat in civilian dress; or of using a mosque for military purposes or to shield military activities.
Perhaps the most shrill and offensive of Israel's surrogates is American lawyer and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who in a November 19th appearance with CNN's Piers Morgan, repeated a claim he has made in the past. It's a claim Dershowitz has not categorically proved. It's a claim Dershowitz has no way of knowing from seeing first hand. And it appears to be a claim Dershowitz may have invented for the purpose of dehumanizing the Palestinian people. It's hideous in its label and its tone.
Here is part of Dershowitz' conversation with Piers Morgan regarding Operation Pillar of Defense and what he refers to as the Dead Baby Stategy:
Morgan: But they [Israelis] killed a whole family.
Dershowitz: Hamas was firing rockets in order to induce them to kill the family. You know what it's called in Gaza? It's called the Dead Baby Strategy. It's a strategy. They want - this sounds terribly brutal - but it's absolutely true. They want their children to be martyred so they can carry them out, show them to the international media and thereby gain an advantage over Israel. It's a double war crime and the media encourages it.
Dershowitz' seems to allege that in Gaza, Hamas, with the complicity of the families of Gazan babies, knowingly station the babies where the Israeli military will kill them. Dershowitz contends in his comment that some unnamed [it's called] entity in Gaza calls this plan the Dead Baby Strategy. Dershowitz presents Dead Baby Strategy as a known label, but he never identifies exactly who in Gaza uses this label.
Interesting that two years ago, on November 5, 2010, Dershowitz appeared as a panelist in Israel at the annual John Gandel Symposium. There he also talked about the Dead Baby Strategy, but he described the genesis of its label somewhat differently. He said at 15:46 minutes into the panel:
And then you have military deligitimation. It is such a clever - if it weren't such a horrible technique - such a clever technique. Again, I have a name for it. I call it Hamas' and Hesbollah's Dead Baby Strategy.
In this case, Dershowitz proclaims that he named the Dead Baby Strategy. Are we then to believe Hamas liked Dershowitz' label and strategy so much that they somehow appropriated it and began using it in Gaza? Or that the IDF said, 'Hey, let's use Alan's label and say Hamas uses the Dead Baby Strategy so we can kill their kids.' Likely not.
What it does appear we should believe is that the term Dead Baby Strategy is an invention of Mr. Dershowitz, used to promote a heinous accusation against Palestinians. Here's the rest of Mr. Dershowitz' description of his so-called Strategy. Do note his mention of the Goldstone Report, which (as shown above) refutes Dershowitz' contention that Hamas purposely endangers civilians through the placement of its rockets.
It sounds cruel but it's very very simple. The media, the most powerful image in the media is a mother holding a dead baby - whether it be Jesus being held by Mary after the Crucifixion, whether it be Guernica, Picasso's painting where you have mothers holding dead children. And what Hamas and Hesbollah know is that then when they fire enough rockets at Israeli children, at school buses. When they aim the rockets from 7:00 to 8:00 in the morning when school buses are on the way. When they hit schools, fortunately the principals had the foresight to release the students, they know eventually any democracy, any democracy will have to respond. And how do you respond? You try to get the rocket firing. Where do they put the rockets? You wouldn't know it if you read the Goldstone Report, but right in the middle of civilian populations and the goal is to induce Israel to kill as many Palestinian babies as possible. That's the goal. The object is to have the Al Jazeera and the camera there to photograph the dead baby.
Those Who Have Been There
I've never been to Gaza but I've known many Americans who have visited there and even some who have lived there. I asked some of them if they had ever heard of Dershowitz' Dead Baby Strategy or if they had ever witnessed Gazans doing anything that would purposely endanger their children.
Freelance journalist Kristen Ess Schurr, who lived in Gaza from 2002 to 2006, and traveled frequently between Gaza and the West Bank during Israel's physical occupation of Gaza, had never heard of theStrategy. She said:
I lived in Gaza and worked there. Strikes were part of daily life during the occupation. I was there during many of them, having to run in supermarkets when Apache helicopters fired missiles into the city. I've seen children get shot and parents horrified, screaming and crying. I saw Palestinian parents try to protect their children at all costs. I saw Israeli soldiers target children and schools and talk about children as terrorists. These people have endured more than anyone should ever endure and they show only love and compassion, stronger than I've ever seen.
Asked why she thinks Dershowitz invented the Dead Baby Stategy, Kristen responded:
The only way Israelis get away with what they do is to dehumanize Palestinians to the point where they're not even allowed to publicly mourn the deaths of their children.
I spoke with Barbara Lubin, Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), who will be returning to Gaza in two weeks with emergency supplies for the children. She, too, had never heard of Dershowitz'Dead Baby Strategy. Here's some of what she said:
In my twenty-five years of traveling to Gaza and working there, I have never seen any such endangerment between Palestinian parents and their children. It's insulting and obnoxious for him [Dershowitz] to make any kind of statement like this about Palestinians using children for some Dead Baby Strategy. It's sickening.
I agree. It is sickening.
To The Heroes
For those like me who've never been to war or lived through war, it's difficult to grasp the degree of pain, fear, destruction and suffering its victims endure. What must it be like to cling to tumbling walls when bombs fall, or watch a loved one explode into pieces, having done nothing to deserve such a fate? It took the photo of nine-year old Kim Phuc to show many my age the horror of Vietnam. Discussions of nuclear weapons evoke devastating images of a mushroom cloud and a torched landscape of burned bodies. Mention of the Holocaust brings vivid recollections of emaciated bodies caged behind fences and mass graves piled high with corpses. And in Gaza, because of the hard work and valor of intrepid journalists, we have the horrific photos of dead children and their grieving families that Dershowitz and his cohorts vindictively besmirch.
We need these photos. We need more of them and we need to honor and protect the heroes who take them. Having these photos helps pave a path to ending wars. Having them (for most of us) challenges the perception of glorified war promoted by video games and corporate media. Having these photos allows us to equate war with the pain, loss, suffering and failure that war always is.
Further reading on the Dead Baby Strategy:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/16/hamas-dead-baby-strategy/
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2010/05/17/dershowitz-arabs-dead-baby-...
Written by Andrea Grimes for RH Reality Check . This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The new executive commissioner of Texas' Health and Human Services Department -- the social services behemoth that's currently in the process of building a whole new Texas Women's Health Program (WHP) so it can exclude Planned Parenthood from providing contraceptives and cancer screenings to low-income Texans -- has some interesting views on the condition of public health care in his state. And by "interesting," I mean shocking. I mean shockingly ignorant. Astounding, even.
Dr. Kyle Janek is an anesthesiologist by training, but for the last 18 years has served as a Republican in the Texas Legislature and as a lobbyist for various medical organizations. Governor Rick Perry appointed him as executive commissioner of the Texas HHSC on September 1st. You might expect that in 18 years of being plugged into Texas politics and state health policy, he'd have a decent grasp on the issues facing Texans.
You'd be wrong. Because Kyle Janek doesn't believe -- despite credible, widely accepted evidence to the contrary -- that one of Texas' most pressing health problems, its high number of uninsured adults, is real. He doesn't believe that more than a quarter of Texans are uninsured, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau. He told a Texas Tribune reporter in early October that he believed that number to be "inflated," and then reiterated his point in an extended interview with Tribune editor Evan Smith on October 31st. (Through his press representatives, he refused an interview with RH Reality Check.) Here's his most recent take via the Tribune:
"It's not that I don't believe those numbers. I don't believe the reasoning for those numbers."
Janek's problem: he said the Census Bureau only takes a "snapshot" by asking people if they're uninsured, and doesn't ask them if they had insurance in the past or if they think they have a job lined up with insurance in the future. Janek must not be aware that for nearly 25 years, the Census Bureau's "snapshot" has shown practically the same thing: since 1987, Texas repeatedly has one of the highest, or the very highest, number of uninsured adults in the country. That rate has not been below 1987's 23 percent; it peaked at 26.8 percent in 2009 and is currently estimated at 26.2 percent.
That's a remarkably consistent snapshot of something that Janek seems to believe changes for millions of people by the day. Janek says he isn't sure why Texas "is different" when it comes to health care, but he told the Tribune it could be because the weather here is nice.
"Do we have so many people that are temporarily uninsured? Or is it the general climate of better weather and glorious place to live? Folks come here, and that attracts more folks with health care needs or disabilities?" he wondered during the interview. Surely our high uninsured numbers couldn't be due to the fact that Texas jobs generally don't provide health insurance, that Medicaid in the state is limited, that insurance rates are unregulated or that Texas has a large immigrant population, as the Washington Post reported last year. No, it's probably just the purty weather.
In tonight's final round of public testimony at Tucson's historic three forums on the proposed "Unitary Status Plan," the federally arranged desegregation agreement between Mexican American and African American plaintiffs and the Tucson Unified School District, the voices of one community desperately need to be heard by the court-appointed "Special Master" and rest of the nation: Tucson's youth.
"In order for these court-ordered district changes to be genuine, sustainable, and transformative," concludes a new statement released by an alliance of student and youth activists, "students and community members must be engaged in meaningful ways at every level of the process."
Few other participants understand and have carried the burden of TUSD's national disgrace over banning Mexican American Studies better than Tucson's youth.
Among the nearly 7,000 students served by the nationally acclaimed but now dismantled Mexican American Studies program, recognized by recent studies for its higher graduation rates, test scores and civic engagement and hailed by educational experts as "the nation's most innovative and successful academic and instructional program in Ethnic Studies at the secondary school level," they have been demonized by extremist state politicians in a bizarre witch hunt for sheer election gain, and dismissed by patronizing TUSD officials; they have witnessed the firing and persecution of their beloved teachers, and had their Mexican American Studies literature and history curricula and books confiscated from their classrooms.
Throughout Arizona's manufactured crisis over Ethnic Studies, Tucson's youth have been in the forefront of engaging in dialogue and discussion, galvanizing an enduring new civil rights movement, and carrying on a legacy "to restore respect, justice, and equity in our educational experience and school district."
"As a collective, as students and alumni (Chicano Literature After School Studies program, Tucson High and U of A MEChA, and UNIDOS)," Mexican American Studies alumni and UNIDOS activist Danny Montoya noted, "we held a forum on the Unitary Status Plan, and out of the suggestions of the community, along with our input, we drafted this document--Declaration of Intellectual Warriors--to present to the Special Master and the plaintiffs."
Here's a copy of the document:
Declaration of Intellectual Warriors
November 26, 2012
Created by:
Chicano Literature After School Studies program
Tucson High M.E.Ch.A
University of Arizona M.E.CH.A
U.N.I.D.O.S
Declaration of Intellectual Warriors
Dear Special Master Hawley,
We, the youth belonging to the Chicano Literature After School Studies program (C.L.A.S.S.), Tucson High M.E.Ch.A, University of Arizona M.E.CH.A, and U.N.I.D.O.S., along with community input, collectively submit the following response addressing the proposed TUSD Unitary Status Plan:
Restoration of Mexican American Studies
The new Mexican American Indigenous Studies program must be built on the foundation of the previous program that had demonstrated quantitative and qualitative measures of success. Therefore, the implementation of the Mexican American Indigenous Studies program and the other Ethnic Studies Programs must take budgetary priority over the implementation of the Multicultural Program.
Expansion of Ethnic Studies
With the expansion and implementation of the new Mexican American Indigenous Studies and African American Studies, we demand that Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern American Studies be included in the plan. Core level curriculum will be essential for these courses. We believe that all ethnic groups should have a chance to develop their cultural identity by learning the contributions their people have made in the United States, as well as their experiences in this country.
Core vs. Elective
All Ethnic Studies course must be considered as core English and core Social Studies classes, as opposed to Elective credits.
Women’s Studies and LGBTQ Studies (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer)
In every section of the Ethnic Studies curriculum there will be an emphasis on the perspective and contributions regarding gender, women, and the LGBTQ community.
K-8 Expansion
It is imperative that all of the Ethnic Studies programs be expanded to all learning levels. We reaffirm the decision to expand the programs from K-12 grade levels and expect that the newly developed African American, Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern American courses be held to the same standard.
Directors
The position of Coordinator of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy needs to be changed to a Director’s position. In addition, there should be multiple directors (i.e., one representing Latino, and one representing African American Studies), with each Director having appropriate teaching experience in the field of study s/he will be directing, and each reflecting the ethnic background of the community s/he serves.
Public Hiring of Directors
The hiring process of the Directors of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy must include representatives of the community who are former Ethnic Studies students and teachers because of their unique expertise and experience with culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. These community members must also have decision-making power in the hiring of the directors.
Community Decision-making Power
To ensure grassroots participation, we demand the creation of a community committee with formal representatives and full voting powers be established, that takes part in the following areas and decisions:
The hiring process of the Directors of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy, and other staff.
Curriculum
Course creation
And Overall USP Implementation and Accountability
The district must ensure formal representation, with full voting powers, to:
C.L.A.S.S.
M.E.C.h.A.
U.N.I.D.O.S.
Parent
Community member
Former MAS teacher
Naming
Each program Director (i.e. Mexican American Indigenous, African American, Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern Studies) must have the authority to name her/his corresponding program as s/he sees fit in reflecting the cultural relevance of the curriculum.
Capacity for new classes
A course involving culturally relevant pedagogy must be available at every high school. As enrollment demands indicate the need for additional courses, additional courses must be established. The establishment of an Ethnic Studies Class shall be determined by the number of students requesting the class, not by the set number of previously established classes. The number of students in a class should not exceed thirty students; allowing more than thirty students in one class is detrimental to the learning environment.
Censorship
The Unitary Status Plan must promote a pedagogy and curriculum that is free from censorship. Teachers must have the freedom to teach all aspects of the literature and history called for in the curriculum.
English Language Learners (ELL)
The Unitary Status Plan must limit the segregation of ELLs to no more than two hours per day. Interaction between ELLs and their English-speaking peers promotes ELLs' acquisition of English and fosters a shared sense of community among all students, while extended segregation creates social divisions and restricts ELLs' opportunities to acquire English in real-world situations.
Dual Language Programs
The Unitary Status Plan must also recognize and include Dual Language (DL) classes as Advanced Learning Experiences. Dual Language programs provide academic enrichment and offer the same kind of rigorous and challenging instruction found in GATE and IB programs. Moreover, DL programs have a greater capacity to serve ELLs and are more likely to positively affect a significant portion of the ELL population.
Discipline
Students guilty of minor infractions shall not be subject to removal from class as a part of their punishment, whether through in-school suspensions or out-of-school suspensions. Humiliation and demeaning disciplinary tactics must be prohibited.
Restorative Justice
Restorative Practices must be used as stated in the Unitary Status Plan in order to promote accountability, while building a healthy, positive, constructive, and supportive school environment for every student. TUSD must not resort to police, border patrol, or Juvenile Hall as means of disciplinary action.
Transportation
TUSD is responsible for the providing school bus transportation for all students. Students must be provided with school buses before and after school. Providing students with public transportation vouchers is an inadequate form of transportation. The use of public transportation extends the travel time from students, taking time from their studies.
Equal Time in Class
All schools of equivalent educational levels need to be in the classroom for the same amount of time. Decreasing any schools meeting time creates disparities in the quality of education a student receives.
No School Closures
TUSD proposes school closures that are disproportionately targeting Southside and Westside area schools. This negatively impacts working class, students of color, and their families and communities. It is impossible for TUSD to implement a Unitary Status Plan if it finds solutions in closing down our schools. We ask that the USP clearly state that no school closures are acceptable.
Supervising of the Implementation of the Unitary Status Plan
Students enrolled in TUSD schools and Ethnic Studies courses must have the same right as other community members to play an active role in monitoring the district’s implementation of the Unitary Status Plan. Their active participation in the monitoring process will be a key factor in keeping TUSD in compliance with the Unitary Status Plan.
Conclusion
As students, we are clear that in order for these court-ordered district changes to be genuine, sustainable, and transformative, students and community members must be engaged in meaningful ways at every level of the process. To restore respect, justice, and equity in our educational experience and school district, we ask for the full integration of our student demands in your Unitary Status Plan.
Mr. Hawley, we, the students await a detailed response to all our points above.
With Gratitude & Sincerity,
Chicano Literature After School Studies program,
Tucson High M.E.Ch.A,
University of Arizona M.E.CH.A,
U.N.I.D.O.S
Here we go again. We've seen this so many times. A national figure disrespects the gay community. That's the first act and today, it features nationally known pastor Rick Warren. Recently, he said the following to Piers Morgan on CNN
WARREN: Here’s what we know about life. I have all kinds of natural feelings in my life and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should act on every feeling. Sometimes I get angry and I feel like punching a guy in the nose. It doesn’t mean I act on it. Sometimes I feel attracted to women who are not my wife. I don’t act on it. Just because I have a feeling doesn’t make it right. Not everything natural is good for me. Arsenic is natural.
Now allow me to predict what will probably happen next:
Act II - The gay community, justifiably insulted by the comments, will make our displeasure known.
Act III - Rick Warren will play the victim by either whining about how the gay community is intolerant of his opinion of them as arsenic. Groups like the Family Research Council will hail him as "standing on Biblical principles," and the entire situation will be looked at as us gay folks not being accepting of "someone else's point of view."
What always gets my goat is how when public figures attack the gay community, they are always quick to be technically dishonest and plead ennui. They refuse to acknowledge that they are attacking an actual group of people. Not a lifestyle, not state of being, but real people with real families.
Gays are not puppy dogs who should be "tolerated" or "condoned."
Gays are not hypothetical entities.
Gays are not streams of arguments in a philosophy class.
It's insulting enough when folks like Warren make such awful statements about our lives. It's even worse when after their attacks, they dismiss our basic and normal reaction of righteous indignation as "intolerance."
It's as if they don't think we are human beings and should instead take their insults with a good natured smile.
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily / By Matt Sienkiewicz
For years residents of southern Israel have lived in the fear of rockets falling on their homes and schools. It is a terrifying reality and one that no ethically minded person should accept or attempt to justify. Any show of support for people living in such circumstances is laudable, particularly if it draws attention to the broader military and political circumstances in which such terror flourishes.
It was not, however, low-tech but lethal rockets falling on Sderot that prompted thousands of people to participate in “Stand with Israel” events last week. It was, paradoxically, a full-fledged military assault on the Gaza Strip that provoked such action.
Though I disagree, I understand that for some Israel’s attack appeared to be a necessary action in the context of a long-running war. What I cannot accept, however, is the insinuation that “Pillar of Cloud” in any way illustrated Israel’s vulnerability or its need for further external support. “Standing”with Israel during last week’s assault did not denote support for people, Israeli or otherwise. It was support for a status quo in which cyclical mass violence has become accepted and even valorized.
Take, for example, the online I Stand With Israel Day movement. Yes, it’s only a Facebook event, but it is nonetheless over 18,000 people deep and still growing; and it’s indicative of some of the most troubling elements of the “pro-Israel” world. Employing a logic distorted by the lens of war, the event asked members to “stand with Israel” and thereby “stand for peace” as the IDF brought death upon both combatants and the civilians caught in the crossfire. The rhetoric of “I Stand With Israel Day” demands that we ignore the horrible reality of war in order to engage in a parable in which Israel is the White Knight to Gaza’s black-hearted villain. Acts of extreme violence may be necessary in the worst of circumstances. By definition, however, they are not acts of peace. To position them as such is dishonest assumes that Jewish victimhood can explain even the most aggressive actions.
Even more disturbing, however, is that the rhetoric of Standing with Israel only seems to emerge in instances in which it is Israeli policies, and not people, that are under distress. “I Stand With Israel Day” did not ask for blankets or blood donations or letters of caring support to the citizens of Ashkelon, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. It instead asked for advocacy- imploring Facebook members to counter any critic who opposes Israeli military action. The movement attempts to twist reality, taking the real life strength of Israel’s army and conflating it with a perceived weakness in terms of international political support. The powerful Israeli Defence Forces were thus positioned as underdogs. Concern for the disempowered people of Gaza somehow became, by implication, an act of oppression.
This perversion of reality prevents us from asking the most fundamental question of all: how did this war, with all of its death and destruction, ultimately provide security for the people of Israel? How will it be any more effective than Operation Cast Lead which, quite obviously, did not provide long-term protection for Israelis or Palestinians? The truth is that “Pillar of Cloud”was not the act of an overpowered nation desperately trying to protect its citizens. Justified or not, it was a well-planned attack by a world-class military. World-class militaries do not need people to stand with them. People, whether Israeli, Palestinian or anything else, need people to stand with them. If standing with Israel means demanding that the Israeli government do everything it can to secure the long-term peace and security of its people, then I will be first in line. If it means playing at public relations for one of the world’s most powerful defense forces, I’ll keep sitting out.
Matt Sienkiewicz is a Modern Orthodox Jewish American who researches and teaches global media at Boston College. His documentary Live From Bethlehem is available from the Media Education Foundation and he can be followed on Twitter.
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter , sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
In regards to the recent election when voters approved marriage equality measures in Maryland, Washington state, and Maine and defeated an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in Minnesota, the one thing that will not be talked about but needs to be discussed is the utter failure of the National Organization for Marriage's attempt to play the black and gay communities against each other.
We've witnessed the organization garnering much success with this tactic in the past, most recently in North Carolina. However on election day, the tactic failed miserably. The following are three reasons why NOM's strategy failed:
1. The wedge strategy becomes public - Ironically enough, the seeds of yesterday's embarrassment were sowed in March of this year when lgbt bloggers (myself included) published a secret memo from the National Organization of Marriage detailing how the organization plotted to specifically divide the gay and black communities by seeking out black spokespeople to publicly speak out against marriage equality in hopes of using these spokespeople as targets for the ire of gays:
The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.
Marriage equality supporters long suspected that the partnership between NOM and the black leaders who supported their cause was less noble than suspected (at least on NOM's part) and this memo confirmed it. While the revelation was too late to save NC from falling to an anti-marriage equality vote, the constant mention of this memo in later articles and interviews every time NOM trotted out a black leader to speak against marriage equality could have proved ultimately devastating because it was a constant reminder to the African-American community that NOM was using them.
2. NOM overestimated its power - Though the National Organization for Marriage never publicly declared it to be so, the organization had a lot to do with the plan of asking African-Americans to withhold their votes. While the front organization for this plot was the Coalition of African-American Pastors, it wasn't too difficult to discover that the leader of CAAP, Bill Owens, was NOM's religious liasion and that he was on salary with NOM. It was a plot that was doomed to failure from the start and it gave an indication of what NOM truly thought about the black community and the civil rights movement. NOM seems to have thought that they could trot out several black pastors who would tell African-Americans what to do and that the community would follow lockstep. One of the biggest misconceptions about black people is that we are ruled by what pastors say. While we see pastors as spiritual advisors, we are not monolithic. And we are also not stupid to note simple irony. Or more specifically, allow me to reveal a few questions that ran through the mind of black Americans - What's more insulting to the legacy of the civil rights movement? Marriage equality or refusing to vote even though a hallmark of the civil rights movement was to receive the right to vote in the first place? What's more of an insult to Fannie Lou Hamer, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner and the thousands of people beaten or killed for American-Americans to be able to vote? Marriage equality or refusing to vote at all. These were two questions which NOM conveniently did not address, but trust me when I say that they ran through the minds of millions of African-Americans.
3. The Obama factor - Let's be honest. There was no way in the world that black people were going to miss this election. People can gripe about black people voting for Obama simply because he is black but you know what? Big deal. So what. That was only a small portion of it. The fact of the matter is that Obama is a very popular person in the black community. He has passed legislation that many African-Americans considered important. In my church, when the Supreme Court declared Obamacare to be legal, several folks called that decision an "act of God." He has been personalized as a brother, son, or comrade by millions of African-Americans, which means many African-Americans took what they felt disrespect given to him very personally. When AZ governor Jan Brewer had that argument with him on the tarmac, all I heard in my community, particularly from old black women, was how dare she stick her finger in his face. To us, Obama became the personification of the trials and tribulations that African-Americans face in this country, i.e. no matter how intelligent we are or how successful we become, there will be always folks who will look at us as if we are second-class citizens and will treat us accordingly. Every time Fox News came out with something ugly about Obama or the tea party marched with their signs, it sent a message to black folks; messages that while we didn't make any noise about, we quietly noted. And we didn't forget. To those not supporting marriage equality, standing against it played second fiddle to supporting "our president." And when he announced his support of marriage equality, it wasn't a strong enough factor for him to lose support in the black community. We either rationalized his support away or began to take a second look at the issue. In other words, Obama is so strong of a hero in the black community, NOM's plans to make him a pariah was doomed from the start.
