Independent News
“Surrender or Starve”: Israel Weighs Plan to Liquidate Northern Gaza as Siege on Jabaliya Intensifies
This post was originally published on this site
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Israel’s intensifying attacks and siege on northern Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering implementing a “surrender or starve” policy in the area.
We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport, recently wrote an article for +972 headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam.” Meron is an editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, a columnist at +972 Magazine. On Saturday, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Dove for Peace by the International Research Institute Disarmament Archive in Rome, Italy. In his acceptance speech, he said, “Although journalism alone cannot bring peace, it can open spaces of humanity.”
We welcome you, Meron, to Democracy Now! If you can start off by talking about what you are saying, what the policy of Israel now is in Gaza, the separation of Gaza, what it means as you talk about the starving of Gaza?
MERON RAPOPORT: Hello.
Of course, we don’t know exactly what is the Israeli plan now. The general’s plan, what is called the plan offered by ex-Major General Giora Eiland, speaks about offering the Palestinian northern Gaza, north of the Netzarim Corridor, meaning all Gaza City and its surrounding, offering them a week to evacuate Gaza and go south to the humanitarian area, what is called, near the Mawasi, near Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. And then, after a week, there will be a total siege on northern Gaza, and a siege meaning no food, no water, no electricity, no medicine, nothing. And in a week time, all those who stay will be considered terrorists that could be hit. The idea is that the civil population will leave, only the Hamas militants will stay, and therefore Israel will be able to clean this area. This is the plan by General Eiland.
The plan was not adopted officially, neither by the government, although it is said that Netanyahu is considering it, and nor by the army officially. The operation now in Jabaliya that we heard about is officially not part of this plan, but it does seem that many parts of this plan are being implemented on the ground. We heard that there’s no supplies coming into northern Gaza at all in the last two weeks. We are seeing this evacuation order to the population of northern Gaza and to the hospitals in northern Gaza. So, we have the sense here that this plan is being actually implemented without being officially adopted.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the people who escaped the Jabaliya refugee camp told the Financial Times, “It seems that the Jabalia camp will be deleted from Gaza’s geography.” If you can talk more about the intentions of Israel right now? I mean, just in the last week, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes around the camp, thousands more trapped, Israel encircling the area, leaving only one exit. And what do — as we speak to you in Tel Aviv, you’re an Israeli journalist. What does the Israeli population understand what’s happening in Gaza? In the United States, in the corporate broadcast media, you hardly see anything about Gaza now. It’s much more focused on Lebanon. And these major networks do not keep repeating that Israel does not allow international journalists into Gaza.
MERON RAPOPORT: So, again, the Israeli public is also much focused on Lebanon, but even — and certainly after what happened last night, when a drone attack on an army base in Binyamina, which is some hundred kilometers south of the Lebanese border, killing four soldiers. So, the whole attention is on Lebanon. And this is maybe one of the reasons that we see this attack in Jabaliya, because the international attention is on Lebanon, and not in Gaza.
Anyhow, even before that, there was very little attention in the Israeli media and Israeli public to the consequences of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. And if there was some attention, it was mainly seen as what Israel is doing is right, that destroying Gaza, destroying physically Gaza City and its neighborhoods and the camps around it, is a logical thing to do as a response to October 7, because if there will be no Gaza, then there will be no threat. That is how very, very many Israelis see it. So, this is, generally speaking, the Israeli response.
People don’t really understand the connection between this and returning the hostages, don’t see a connection with this and continuing of the war. I think there is a large support for this, although, I must say, of course, the images are not shown on Israeli TV. People don’t see, you know, children burning alive in Gaza, as in the Arab world and elsewhere maybe people see. So, the whole of the information is not in front of most of the Israeli public.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a piece that you wrote in +972. Haaretz also wrote about this “surrender or starve” plan that was proposed last fall by Major General Eiland. Explain who Major General Eiland is, the idea that anyone who remains behind would face hunger and be treated as Hamas operatives and legitimate military targets, as you’ve described, Meron, and what exactly this will constitute in Gaza.
MERON RAPOPORT: Again, the plan by Major General Eiland, and the ex-general, is, as I said, to give the population a week, an opportunity to leave within a week, and then there will be a siege, and those who stay will be considered as terrorists.
Eiland himself is not really a right-wing, in the sense he’s not part of the religious right. He’s not even a supporter of Netanyahu. He comes from a military background, even what is in Israel considered center-left background. So, he is not a fanatic supporter of Netanyahu, not at all.
He says, he claims in all his interviews that this conforms — that this plan conforms with international law, that siege is a legitimate way of war, as long as you give the population, the civil population, time to leave. What does not exist, really, in his plan — and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed in his plan — is, first of all, what will happen with this population if they will leave. Will they be able to come back? Because this is not written in the plan. It says only that they will have to leave, they will be given humanitarian aid, but there’s no promise that they will be able to come back even in a month’s time, two months’ time, three months’ time to their homes. So, this is not there. So, therefore, the fear for another Nakba is there.
And more importantly is, he does not detail what will happen if most of the population, as we see now in the description we heard just now, most of the population refuses to leave. It refuses because it saw what happened to the people who left in the beginning of the war, that there is no safe shelter in Gaza, neither in the south. They refuse also for political reasons, because they’re afraid that this is the beginning of a new Nakba and the idea is to really clean Gaza and maybe open it to resettlement by Israelis. So, he does not say what will happen if tens of thousands, if maybe even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will decide to stay after this week. What will happen to them? Will Israel starve a half a million people, 300,000 people, 200,000 people? Nobody really knows the exact number of the people north of Netzarim Corridor, in the northern part of Gaza Strip. So, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about Israel committing an extermination of hundreds, of tens of thousands of people if they will choose to stay? This is not detailed in his plan, and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed.
AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] low-lying, really somewhat low-tech drone that Hezbollah sent into Israel, near Haifa. Explain the significance of Binyamina, this military base that houses the Golani Brigade, and the deaths of four Israeli soldiers and the wounding of 60, what this means for Israel right now.
MERON RAPOPORT: I think, of course, the base itself is not that important. It’s a relatively small base, quite far from the border. It’s a training base. It’s not a combat — it’s not for combat units. It’s for training. So the base itself is not extremely important.
But the fact that a drone arrived so far, almost a hundred kilometers from the Lebanese border, and was very precise, hitting a dining room in this army base, you know, what it made is the whole euphoria that was very present in Israel after the pager attacks, after the assassination of Nasrallah and all the leadership of Hezbollah, where most Israelis thought that here Israel is winning the war, that the war will be over, that the Hamas and Hezbollah will surrender and that Iran will back off — what we are seeing now, that this is far from over. And the fact that Hezbollah, after being hit so hard, is still able to hit at the heart of Israel is, of course, very destabilizing, you know, this state of euphoria that was — existed for a few weeks, but I think now it’s dissipating.
AMY GOODMAN: Meron Rapoport, I want to thank you for being with us, editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, columnist at +972 Magazine, his piece headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam,” and writes for The Nation magazine.
“Every Day Is a Breaking Point”: North Gaza Desperate for Medicine, Fuel, Food, Water & Shelter
This post was originally published on this site
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
As Israel is intensifying its siege on northern Gaza, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Friday five of its staff members were trapped in Jabaliya. One of its members reported about 20 people were killed in an airstrike on Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital.
For more, we go to Dr. Samer Attar, who has volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza with Doctors Without Borders and other groups, most recently in June. Dr. Attar has worked in north Gaza at Al-Awda Hospital, like we just heard from one of its directors, and Kamal Adwan Hospital. He has also worked in south Gaza at European Hospital, Nasser Hospital and Al-Aqsa Hospital.
Can you describe, Doctor, what you are hearing on the ground, as we just listened to the director of Al-Awda and how desperate the situation is in Jabaliya?
DR. SAMER ATTAR: Every day the — every day the news is desperate. Every day you wake up to text messages and videos from nurses and doctors who I worked with, who we all worked with. And even last night we got the horrifying videos of people being bombed and burned alive in front of Al-Aqsa Hospital. So every day is a breaking point. Every day is a desperate rush for food, water, fuel and medicine and shelter.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the Kamal Adwan Hospital. And this is a clip of a doctor who was there describing what’s going on on the ground within this hospital, where you, Dr. Samer Attar, have also worked.
DR. HANY HAMAD: [translated] What is happening is a process of attrition, a siege and artillery shelling. Tanks are present, and the occupation forces are stationed at the walls of these schools. They are surrounding Shadia Abu Ghazala School, Al-Faluja School and Hafsa bint Omar Government School. The army is now at the rear walls of these schools. We hope the world intervenes to lift the siege on the Jabaliya camp, find solutions for the wounded, and provide the necessary medical supplies to these injured people.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hany Hamad, a doctor, describing what’s happening. And now we’re going to go to a doctor inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the hospital, in another video.
DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] We are facing a new challenge and a catastrophic situation that will worsen in the coming hours if there is no fuel supply for emergency services. We are now talking about a sensitive department that provides advanced health services, and we have 24 hours left. It’s not just Kamal Adwan Hospital; Al-Awda in the Indonesian Hospital are also on the verge of running out of the remaining fuel. We are facing a genuine health disaster if fuel is not delivered, as it would result in a catastrophe. We hope there will be attentive ears that will listen to us and assist in enhancing health services.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, describing what’s going on in his hospital. Dr. Samer Attar, you worked there, as well as other places in north Gaza. Explain what’s actually happening, Israel dividing Gaza, the north off from the rest of Gaza, and what this means for the people inside, and the targeting, in particular, of these hospitals.
DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, I know the people in that video. I worked with them. They’re just truly remarkable.
But when we worked in the north, I mean, that whole area has always been cut off. When you work in that area, you feel cut off from the rest of the world. You might as well be at the top of Mount Everest, because they’re always waiting for fuel, they’re always waiting food. Some days we had — we just didn’t have the equipment we needed to do what we needed to do, so no gowns, no drapes. Instruments weren’t sterile.
There would be so many people trying to get through the front door after a bombing attack, there’d be no place to step. The floors would be smeared with blood and body parts, and you’d be stepping over dead bodies to try to get to the living. And most people died. I mean, some days the most you could do was just hold people’s hand and look them in the eye as you watch them die, either because they were malnourished, they were starving, or we had no blood to give them. Every day it felt like that. Every day in the north felt like that.
And the directors there only got a chance to breathe once a shipment of fuel and medicine and food came in. And that was always a — that was always a Hail Mary. That was always — always felt like it was last minute. And now that it’s really cut off and they’re not getting supplies in, they’re not getting fuel in, they’re not getting medicines in, they’re not getting food in, now they’re really desperate, because before — before, people would arrive last minute. They would arrive before the point of no return. And nada seems to be happening.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk specifically about the children in these hospitals, the number of children who have died, who are maimed, who have had amputations — well over a thousand now are alive but amputated — the situation there, and this latest situation where one of the hospitals was the site of what was supposed to be a vaccination program today?
DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, that’s — I mean, you leave all of them behind. That’s the hard part. You hate to see anyone suffer or die, but when you’re just seeing innocent kids, it’s — it’s not just the physical wounds, too. I remember one little girl. She was caught in an airstrike, and she was buried alive for 12 hours next to her dead parents. And then she got dug out, and we had to perform emergency surgery on her leg. There was another little girl, 5 years old. She came in with both legs just mangled after an explosion, and the mom was begging us not to amputate her legs. And we both knew the — we both knew her legs weren’t going to make it, but, I mean, those are the conversations we have to have. And I remember another 7-year-old girl came in with her arm just missing. Her arm was just — it was blown off. And the surgeon across from me, just a very stoic, unemotional, strong, resilient surgeon, just broke down in tears. Just he had had it after six months, just couldn’t take it anymore.
So, that toll is very exacting. I mean, the physical wounds, you can get to heal. You can get an amputation wound to heal. But it’s the psychic scars of seeing your parents buried alive, or you’re buried alive, and they’re dead, and you’re looking at them. Everyone in Gaza, every bed you go to, has a horrifying story of loss, of losing a home, losing a loved one, losing a limb, losing an eye. And it never ends. And just every day you wake up to more and more of it. And that’s just what makes it so horrifying.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip from your New York Times opinion short documentary that you created, Dr. Samer Attar, in your diary of two weeks volunteering in Gaza.
DR. SAMER ATTAR: The World Health Organization has documented 450 attacks on the healthcare system since October 7. The staff of this hospital told me they were stripped to their underwear and handcuffed. And after one attack…
HOSPITAL STAFF: They killed them by gunshot, two hygienists and one nurse.
DR. SAMER ATTAR: I’m sorry.
Israel says Hamas hides in these facilities.
This is the entrance to the emergency room of Indonesian Hospital, which is currently nonfunctional.
When this hospital was bombed, it was reported that at least a dozen people were killed. But that’s a massive understatement, because when this CT scanner was destroyed, countless Gazans were given a death sentence. This patient, this patient, both of these patients, every single one of these patients needs a CT scan to diagnose their injury.
DOCTOR: For this patient, in normal situation, we need to brain CT.
DR. SAMER ATTAR: So, just keep an eye on him and make sure nothing bad happens. And if it does, we do our best?
DOCTOR: We cannot do anything.
AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, Dr. Samer Attar, that is a clip from an editorial, video editorial, you did for The New York Times. And here, you’re also talking about medical workers being shot and handcuffed. Explain.
DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, hospitals should be safe. Hospitals represent havens for communities. They represent a community’s capacity to heal and recover. And it’s not a political issue. It’s a medical one. Hospitals shouldn’t be targeted. Hospitals shouldn’t be used for military purposes. They should be places where, if you’re sick or injured, you can go and be treated without having to worry about being bombed in the hospital or in front of the hospital. I mean, I can’t emphasize that point any more than just having said what I said.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Dr. Samer Attar, volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza with Doctors Without Borders and other organizations, most recently in June. He is a surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we go to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport, and then we’ll talk about Israel’s attack on UNIFIL. Stay with us.
Headlines for October 14, 2024
This post was originally published on this site
Vice President Kamala Harris is attempting to expand her appeal to disaffected Republicans. During a campaign stop in Scottsdale, Arizona, Harris vowed to create a bipartisan advisory council.
Vice President Kamala Harris: “I have decided also, not only will I have a Republican in my Cabinet, but I’m also going to — I was talking to my team about it. I want to create some structure around the following, which is … creating a bipartisan council of advisers who can then give feedback on policy as we go forward.”
In other campaign news, the Democratic National Committee has released an ad attacking Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, claiming a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump. Democrats are planning to run the ad in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a survey that showed Stein is leading Harris among Muslim voters in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Stein has criticized Harris for refusing to cut off arms sales to Israel.
Britfield Counters the Creativity Crisis
For Immediate Release
Rancho Santa Fe, CA 7/5/2023. While America is engulfed in a Creativity Crisis, the Britfield & the Lost Crown series has been countering this trend by offering fast-paced adventure novels that inspire the creative mind, promote critical thinking, encourage collaboration, and foster communication. The writing is active and the vocabulary stimulating, with family and friendship as the narrative drivers. This fresh approach not only entertains readers but educates them by weaving accurate history, geography, and culture into every exciting story. Already in thousands of schools across the nation, Britfield is redefining literature and becoming this generation’s book series.
“It is our belief that all children are gifted and have creative talents which are often dismissed or squandered, because they are not recognized or nurtured. Our schools stigmatize mistakes, censure independent thinking, and criticize individualism. Creative opportunities and programs must be introduced and fostered, because everything flows and flourishes from creativity,”
Author C. R. Stewart
Meanwhile, American Creativity Scores Are Declining: After analyzing 300,000 Torrance results of children and adults, researcher Dr. Kyung Hee Kim discovered that creativity scores have been steadily declining (just like IQ scores) since the 1990s. The scores of younger children, from kindergarten through sixth grade, show the most serious decline. While the consequences are sweeping, the critical necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed: children who were offered more creative ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, doctors, authors, diplomats, and software developers.
Since the 1990s, Schools have:
1. Killed curiosities and passions
2. Narrowed visions and minds
3. Lowered expectations
4. Stifled risk-taking
5. Destroyed collaboration
6. Killed deep thoughts and imagination
7. Forced conformity
8. Solidified hierarchy
Founded on outdated models, most current schools are promoting a “dumbed-down” curriculum where creativity is irrelevant, literacy is deplorable, history is misguided, and geography is abandoned. Instead of nurturing future leaders, our educational system is fostering mindless complacency. Conformity is preferred over ingenuity. Meanwhile, parents are aware of a concerted effort to criticize independent thinking and discourage creativity. They are in search of cultural enrichment and educational opportunities. This has opened the door to alternative options, such as homeschooling, which has grown from 5 million to over 15 million in the last three years.
Educator Roger Schank stated,
“I am horrified by what schools are doing to children. From elementary to college, educational systems drive the love of learning out of kids. They produce students who seem smart because they receive top grades and honors but are in learning’s neutral gear. Some grow up and never find their true calling. While they may become adept at working hard and memorizing facts, they never develop a passion for a subject or follow their own idiosyncratic interest in a topic. Just as alarming, these top students deny themselves the pleasure of play and don’t know how to have fun with their schoolwork.”
George Land conducted a research study to test the creativity of 1,600 children ranging from ages three to five who were enrolled in a Head Start program. The assessment worked so well that he retested the same children at age 10 and again at age 15, with the results published in his book Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today. The proportion of people who scored at the creative Genius Level:
- Among 5-year-olds: 98%
- Among 10-year-olds: 30%
- Among 15-year-olds: 12%
- Same test given to 280,000 adults (average age of 31): 2%
However, Creativity is the #1 most important skill in the world. An IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number one leadership competency of the future. According to the World Economic Forum Report, the top three skills in 2022 will be creativity, critical thinking, and complex problem solving. A 2021 LinkedIn report ranked creativity as the #1 most desired skill among hiring managers. An Adobe Survey based on Creativity and Education revealed that 85% of professionals agree creative thinking is essential in their careers, 82% of professionals wish they had more exposure to creative thinking as students, and creative applicants are preferred 5 to 1. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University reanalyzed Torrance’s data. He found that the correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.
As Sir Ken Robinson said,
“We know three things about intelligence. One, it’s diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, and we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms; we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn’t divided into compartments. And three, we can all agree that children have extraordinary capacities for innovation. In fact, creativity often comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.”
Our entire educational system is predicated on a questionable hierarchy that places conformity above creativity, and the consequences are that many brilliant, talented, and imaginative students never discover their gifts and therefore fail to realize their true potential. To prepare students for future challenges, education and literature must help children achieve their full potential by learning skills that foster creativity, critical thinking, and independence. The Britfield series is bridging this gap and fulfilling this need.
Lauren Hunter
Devonfield Publishing
Director of Media
[email protected]
www.Britfield.com
Republican prosecutors can subpoena phone data to hunt down 'evidence' of possible abortions
This post was originally published on this site
We are about to see a new wave of anti-abortion terrorism and violence, thanks to a Supreme Court majority that believes individual rights not only ought to flip around according to the whims of each new election but that if the U.S. Constitution makes things awkward, the states can designate private-citizen bounty hunters and evade whatever else the courts might say about it.
Sen. Ron Wyden is dead right when he warns that we’re about to see a new era in which women who seek abortions or who might seek abortions are going to have their digital data hunted down. Much of the hunting will be by Republican-state prosecutors looking to convict women who cross state lines into better, less trashy states to seek abortions that are now illegal in New Gilead. But in states like Texas, it’s likely to be private anti-abortion groups gathering up that data—not just to target women seeking abortion, but as potential source of cash. The $10,000 bounty on Texas women who get abortions after six weeks turns such stalking into a potentially lucrative career.
Sen. Wyden to Gizmodo: “The simple act of searching for ‘pregnancy test’ could cause a woman to be stalked, harassed and attacked. With Texas style bounty laws, and laws being proposed in Missouri to limit people’s ability to travel to obtain abortion care, there could even be a profit motive for this outsourced persecution.”
It’s not just that Republican prosecutors can subpoena data records of pregnant women looking for, for example, evidence that they might have looked up “pregnancy test” or “abortion pills” or “my remaining civil rights.” All of those would constitute “evidence” that woman who had a miscarriage might not have “wanted” her pregnancy—thus paving the way for criminal charges. It’s happened before, despite Roe, and after Roe falls will likely become a rote fixture of red-state prosecutions.
We’re likely to to see such subpoenas become a primary way for conservative state prosecutors to “prove” that American women crossing state lines did so to obtain now-criminalized abortions. “Even a search for information about a clinic could become illegal under some state laws, or an effort to travel to a clinic with an intent to obtain an abortion,” Electronic Privacy Information Center president Alan Butler told The Washington Post.
Republican states have already been examining ways to criminalize such travel. It’s coming, and American women will find that the phones they use to look up reproductive health questions can also be used by prosecutors to hunt them down for asking the wrong questions.
Bounty hunters looking for women to target may not have those same subpoena powers—though heaven knows what the future will bring, in a theocratic state that finds its best legal wisdom from colonial era witch hunters—but they will have the power of extremely amoral data tracking companies on their side. It was revealed just days ago that data broker SafeGraph, slivers of which may be hidden on your own phone inside apps that quietly collect and sell the information they gather on you, specifically offers tracking data for phones visiting Planned Parenthood providers—including the census tracks visitors came from and returned to.
For just $160, SafeGraph has been selling that data to anyone willing to buy it. It’s a trivial investment for bounty hunters eager to cross-reference such clues to find who to next target. It’s also a valuable tool for would-be domestic terrorists, of the sort that are going to be once again emboldened by a Supreme Court nod to their beliefs that not only should abortion be banned, but that activists are justified in attacking those that think otherwise. Nobody can plausibly think far-right violence will decrease, in the bizarre landscape in which they have finally achieved victory in half the states while being rebuffed by the others. It has never happened that way. It never will.
RELATED STORIES:
Data collection company sells the information of people who visit abortion clinics
Louisiana Republicans push abortion bill doing exactly what national Republicans deny wanting to do
If SCOTUS kills Roe, many states are poised to swiftly enforce abortion bans, sweeping restrictions
America doesn’t want abortion overturned, does want an expanded Supreme Court
Another data miner, Placer, tracks Planned Parenthood visitors to their homes and provides the routes they took. Among the apps mining data for Placer is popular tracking app “Life360.”
Biden reportedly caught off guard by Supreme Court leak; here's how the administration can catch up
This post was originally published on this site
If the Washington Post is to be believed, we’ve got a big problem, because if the White House wasn’t prepared for the news that the Supreme Court is poised to end federal abortion rights start, they have a serious lack of understanding of the reality in which we live.
“Biden officials spent much of Tuesday panicked as they realized how few tools they had at their disposal, according to one outside adviser briefed on several meetings,” the Post reports. “While officials have spent months planning for the possibility the court would overturn the landmark ruling,” the Post reports, “the leaked document caught the White House off guard.” It shouldn’t have. A leak is unusual, yes, but the only surprise in the contents is just how bloodthirsty Justice Samuel Alito is in coming after abortion, and ultimately all the other 20th century rights the court established.
“We will be ready when any ruling is issued,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday. Will they? Because they really should have seen this coming, and been prepared with some ideas by now. The fact that they pivoted to deficit reduction, of all things, as the message for Wednesday doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence that they’ll be ferocious in this fight. That they’ll be creative and that they will try everything to fix this, to tell the majority of Americans who support abortion rights that we’ve got a powerful ally in the fight.
Back in February, Shefali Luthra of The 19th News reported on the executive actions Biden can take. First, expand access to medication abortion, something the Food and Drug Administration can do. “The most significant thing the Biden administration has done is through the FDA, and the most significant things the Biden administration will be able to do going forward are through the FDA,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University who studies abortion, told Luthra.
The FDA has already acted to expand the availability of medication abortion. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it allowed for the pills to be prescribed virtually, via telemedicine, and provided through the mail. It also allowed online-only providers to mail the pills to patients in other states, including those with restrictive abortion laws. Those rules have been made permanent.
The two-pill regimen for medication abortion has been safely used for two decades, and now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute. It’s approved for use up to 10 weeks, though it’s been demonstrated safe to use beyond 10 weeks, up to 20. In Great Britain, it’s used up to nearly 24 weeks.
“There is some support for the idea that states cannot ban FDA-approved medication,” Greer Donley, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, told the 19ths Luthra. “This is a novel legal argument. Maybe it would mean states cannot ban the sale of medication abortion, which would mean states must allow abortion up to 10 weeks.”
Forced birth groups are of course focusing on getting states to enact restrictions on medication abortion, and while there’s no precedent for FDA guidance to supersede state restrictions, it’s worth forcing the challenge.
The EMAA [Exanding Medication Abortion Access] Project has been having preliminary conversations with the administration, its director Kirsten Moore told the LA Times Jennifer Haberkorn. One thing they’re considering is pressing insurers to cover the drugs. “There is no obvious, one, two, three things to solve the problem,” she said. “We’re going to have to be really creative. And it may only be helpful on the margins—which may be important margins.”
Online providers of the medication are also getting creative. Aid Access, one of the sites, uses European healthcare providers and a pharmacy in India to provide the pills. It’s a relatively inexpensive option at $110, but takes up to four weeks. Another provider, PlanCPills.org has been gaming out the options for people in every state.
For instance, a patient in Texas—where abortion is banned after fetal cardiac activity is detected, or about 6 weeks of pregnancy—could – https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-09-17/is-this-legal-texans-scramble-to-get-abortions-out-of-state – drive across the border – into New Mexico and conduct a telehealth appointment with a doctor there. The pills can be shipped to a friend in New Mexico or a temporary mailbox the patient has set up in the state and forwarded to Texas. Or a patient could stay in Texas and directly buy the drugs from an online pharmacy at a cost of $200 to $500.
Another option for the federal government: federally-sponsored clinics or leases to abortion clinics on public lands. Located on federal lands, the clinics could be exempt from state laws. They could also be located on tribal lands, where tribal leaders would allow them.
“It is possible that clinics can operate on federal lands without having to follow state law. That has to be explored. The federal government needs to push the envelope,” David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law, told Luthra. “It’s not a slam-dunk legal argument, but these are the kinds of things that need to be tried.”
Audio: McCarthy weighed 25th Amendment for Trump in private after Jan. 6
This post was originally published on this site
A new audio recording of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has reportedly captured him weighing whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove then-President Donald Trump from the White House two days after the assault on the Capitol.
With much attention largely trained right now on the Supreme Court after the leak of a draft opinion poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, McCarthy has managed a slight reprieve from the headlines.
It was just over a week ago that a different series of audio recordings featuring the House GOP leader went public and he was heard, in his own words, telling members of his party that he was prepared to call for then-President Donald Trump’s resignation.
In those recordings, and now in this new set, McCarthy’s private agony is yet again starkly contrasted against the public support—and cover—that he has ceaselessly heaped upon Trump.
Related story: Jan. 6 committee may have another ‘invitation’ for Kevin McCarthy
The latest audio recordings—obtained by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns as a part of their book, This Too Shall Not Pass and shared with CNN—reportedly have McCarthy considering invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump as he listened to an aide go over deliberations then underway by House Democrats.
When the aide said that the 25th Amendment would “not exactly” be an “elegant solution” to removing Trump, McCarthy is reportedly heard interrupting as he attempts to get a sense of his options.
The process of invoking the 25th Amendment is one not taken lightly and would require majority approval from members of Trump’s Cabinet as well as from the vice president.
“That takes too long,” McCarthy said after an aide walked him through the steps. “And it could go back to the House, right?”
Indeed, it wasn’t an easy prospect.
Trump would not only have to submit a letter overruling the Cabinet and Pence, but a two-thirds majority would have to be achieved in the House and Senate to overrule Trump.
“So, it’s kind of an armful,” the aide said.
On Jan. 7, 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the president’s allies to divorce themselves from Trump after he loosed his mob on them, Capitol Hill staff, and police.
“While there are only 13 days left, any day could be a horror show,” Pelosi said at a press conference where she called for the 25th Amendment to be put in motion.
Publicly, McCarthy would not budge.
The House voted 232-197 to approve a resolution that would activate the amendment on Jan. 13. McCarthy called for censure instead of impeachment through the 25th Amendment. Then, from the floor of the House, McCarthy denounced Trump.
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said.
During the Jan. 8 call, the House GOP leader lamented that impeachment could divide the nation more. He worried it might also inspire new conflicts. He also told the aide he wanted to have Trump and Biden meet before the inauguration.
It would help with a smooth transition, he said.
In another moment in the recording after discussing a sit-down with Biden where they could discuss ways to publicly smooth tensions over the transition, McCarthy can be heard saying that “he’s trying to do it not from the basis of Republicans.”
But rather, “of a basis of, hey, it’s not healthy for the nation” to continue with such uncertainty.
Yet within the scant week that passed from the time McCarthy said Trump bore some responsibility for the attack and the impeachment vote, McCarthy switched gears again.
He didn’t believe Trump “provoked” the mob, he said on Jan. 21.
Not if people “listened to what [Trump] said at the rally,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy met with Trump at the 45th president’s property in Mar-a-Lago, Florida a week after Biden was inaugurated. Once he was back in Washington, the House leader issued a statement saying Trump had “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022.”
They had founded a “united conservative movement,” he said.
Don't look now, but Stacey Abrams is mowing down Gov. Kemp's financial lead
This post was originally published on this site
Things are looking pretty good in the Georgia governor’s race.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Democratic powerhouse Stacey Abrams, even with a late start entering the race, is nipping at the heels of Gov. Brian Kemp when it comes to campaign contributions.
Between February and April, Abrams raised $11.7 million, collecting contributions from over 187,000 donors, the AJC reports. And at the end of the reporting period, she claimed over $8 million in the bank.
But, just as the state enters midterms, and after a leaked draft of the U.S. Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to The Washington Post, the Abrams camp temporarily paused fundraising, and instead began raising money for pro-choice groups in the state—The Feminist Women’s Health Center, SisterSong, ARC Southeast, Planned Parenthood Southeast, and others.
RELATED STORY: Stacey Abrams turns tables on Gov. Kemp, files suit to use law he signed for himself in her favor
“This moment demands action, so I will be blunt: The abomination of that leaked opinion is coming to find every one of us,” Abrams wrote in a campaign email. “Women in Georgia and across this country. LGBTQ+ and disabled people. And particularly those of color or low-income. This is a terrifying time for our nation.”
According to the Associated Press, Kemp has reported $10.7 million in cash on hand, down from $12.7 million as of Jan. 31. Kemp’s had to spend big in the battle against Sen. David Perdue and his other Republican rivals. Abrams has spent over $9 million in TV, radio, and digital ads in the last five months, AJC reports.
In late April, a federal judge ruled in favor of Abrams to block Georgians First, Kemp’s leadership committee, from raising unlimited money for him until he became the official GOP nominee on May 24. The rule applies equally to Abrams; until the primary is over she is unable to raise money from her leadership committee.
Perdue hasn’t released his financial records, but according to AJC, his last report ended with an underwhelming $1 million in the bank, despite backing from former President Trump.
Meanwhile, in the Sen. Raphael Warnock battle against the assumed GOP nominee and COVID-spray salesman, Herschel Walker in November, in mid-April, the AJC reported that Warnock broke records as he collected $13.6 million in the first quarter of 2022. Walker ended 2021 with around $5 million in the bank.
Border Patrol has not been counting all migrants who've died along the border, watchdog says
This post was originally published on this site
Border Patrol agents have not been counting the total number of migrants who’ve died attempting to cross the harsh southern borderlands, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report. Some immigrant rights advocates have estimated that as many as 10,000 migrants have died from exposure and other elements within the last two decades, a number significantly higher than what border officials have stated. The watchdog report confirms the fears of many: they just haven’t been counting them.
“Border Patrol has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths, or disclosed associated data limitations,” the office said. The Tucson sector highlighted in the report is representative of the border agency’s overall negligence.
RELATED STORY: Border Patrol policies kill hundreds of migrants each year—and they were designed to
“Border Patrol sector officials from the four sectors we contacted told us that they coordinate with external entities—such as medical examiners—when remains are discovered,” the report said. But investigators said that a collaborative effort between the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office and humanitarian organization Humane Borders, Inc. recorded higher numbers than border officials in the region.
While investigators highlight the implementation of the Missing Migrant Program in 2017 “to help rescue migrants in distress and reduce migrant deaths along the southwest border,” they note the agency “does not have a plan to evaluate the program overall.” But actions by border agents indicate that while there’s a program to aid distressed immigrants in name, the action has been continued harassment.
Take No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization with one goal: To prevent the agonizing deaths of migrants in the desert, where temperatures commonly rise into the triple digits. But the group has been repeatedly harassed by border agents throughout multiple administrations, most recently last summer. The year prior, the same tactical unit that harassed anti-police violence protesters in Portland helped raid No More Deaths’ humanitarian aid station.
This escalation began when the organization released shocking footage of grinning border agents destroying jugs of water left for migrants in the desert. Humanitarian workers had said containers were being routinely tampered with by human hands. While racist border vigilante extremists have eagerly confessed to some of the destruction, human rights groups had suspected Border Patrol as well. The footage proved them right.
“The practice of destruction of and interference with aid is not the deviant behavior of a few rogue border patrol agents, it is a systemic feature of enforcement practices in the borderlands,” No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos said in the report. Warning: The following footage is disturbing.
It is a fact that harsh immigration policies have helped led to this tragic death toll. The common misconception is that stricter policies make a more secure border, but deterrence policies beginning in the mid-1990s have only killed migrants, by knowingly pushing them into more and more dangerous terrain. “Of course, the U.S. government knew that Prevention Through Deterrence would send people to their deaths,” researcher John Washington told Rewire’s Tina Vasquez in 2016.
“If you look at the strategic plan for Prevention Through Deterrence, it is clearly stated that they were going to use the landscape as an ally,” Washington continued in the report. “Everything that’s outlined implies greater suffering. These are people in charge of the Southwest border, of course they knew that walking for five days in these conditions would kill people.”
Earlier we noted Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program, which is supposed to aid migrants in crisis. Vasquez reported last year that advocates have led their own initiative, with a similar goal of aiding missing migrants. But she said that when advocates have fielded urgent calls to border officials, they have frequently gone ignored.
“In 63% of all distress calls referred to Border Patrol by crisis line volunteers, the agency did not conduct any confirmed search or rescue mobilization whatsoever—this includes 40% of cases where Border Patrol directly refused to take any measures in response to a life-or-death emergency.”
Count Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum Title 42 among failed border policies, experts have said. The policy, which may or may not end at the end of this month depending on a GOP-led lawsuit, has only resulted in higher apprehensions at the border. “That is because under Title 42, individuals who are expelled to Mexico within hours after apprehension can simply try again a second or third time in hopes of getting through.” And sometimes through ways that may cost them their lives.
RELATED STORIES: ‘Ongoing pattern of harassment and surveillance’: CBP is still tormenting humanitarian volunteers
BORTAC unit that terrorized Portland just helped raid a humanitarian medical camp at border
Border Patrol agents are destroying lifesaving jugs of water left for migrants in the desert
'It’s wild': Black nurse sues hospital after she was targeted with unjust criminal charges
This post was originally published on this site
A Black nurse is suing a hospital about 15 miles east of Denver in the city of Aurora after she says she was discriminated against and targeted with a manslaughter charge for doing her job and even going above and beyond what was required of her. DonQuenick Joppy named the Medical Center of Aurora (TMCA); HealthONE, which owns the medical center; and employees at the center, Katie Weihe and Bonnie Andrews, in a lawsuit filed April 22.
Ultimately, the charges Joppy faced in connection with the death of a 94-year-old patient in 2019—“manslaughter, negligent death of an at-risk person and neglect of an at-risk”—were dropped by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office “in the interest of justice,” according to a motion The Denver Post obtained. “It’s wild,” Joppy said in an interview the newspaper cited. “My life has been turned upside down … I never killed anyone. I’m a great nurse.”
RELATED STORY: Don’t forget Elijah McClain: Forced into chokehold, injected for looking ‘sketchy.’ He is dead now
Spelled out in Joppy’s complaint:
1. During her employment with TMCA Ms. Joppy, a Black nurse, was subjected to verbal and nonverbal slights or microagressions designed to marginalize, segregate and undermine her based on stereotypical and harmful views of Black professionals.
2. TMCA unlawfully denied Ms. Joppy training and transfer opportunities, refused to investigate her complaints of race discrimination, placed her on an unwarranted Performance Improvement Plan (“PIP”), isolated her from colleagues, then ultimately terminated her employment because of her race and because she engaged in protected activity.
3. In a final blow to Ms. Joppy, in an effort to have her professional nursing license revoked and end her career, TMCA, Andrews and Weihe, in a “take no prisoners” approach, maliciously caused felony manslaughter charges to be brought against Ms. Joppy for the death of a patient known to have died from natural causes.
Joppy was terminated on June 4, 2019 after working for the hospital for two years and receiving an Excellence Award from the American Heart Association for performing CPR and saving a patient’s life her first year on the job. She also received a positive performance review for her work from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, according to the suit.
“In spite of the positive performance review, patient care comments and other awards and accolades, Ms. Joppy’s treatment by the overwhelmingly non-Black management in the ICU was racially biased and on many occasions the Charge Nurses would publicly and openly yell at Ms. Joppy undermining her in a humiliating and demeaning manner,” Joppy’s attorney stated in the suit. “None of the non-Black nurses were treated in this manner.”
In the incident that led to Joppy’s termination, she was told to make room in an understaffed intensive care unit for a critically ill patient dying in the hospital’s emergency room, according to the suit. Joppy hadn’t cared for the patient before but she was assigned as his nurse before her shift’s end at 7 AM, her attorney spelled out in the suit.
According to the complaint, when the doctor ordered Joppy verbally to prepare the patient for “versed and morphine” and to assume “end of life” measures, Joppy contacted the respiratory therapist on duty to carry out the doctor’s order.
When the therapist arrived, he told Joppy he was busy and would give her directions for turning off the ventilator, which she followed, according to the suit. The therapist returned later to disconnect the patient’s ventilator, and he died of “septic shock due to pneumonia and bowel infarction; acute renal failure,” according to the death certificate cited in the lawsuit.
A supervising nurse who, according to the suit, showed animosity to Joppy in the past questioned how she responded in the incident, sparking the hospital’s investigation. It ultimately determined that it was “standard practice for nurses to ensure orders are being followed as received and entered” and “no order was placed into the chart until after the patient had deceased.”
The hospital also claimed Joppy should have waited for the respiratory therapist to disconnect the ventilator, and the medical center even cited as grounds for her termination, “staying after her assigned shift continuing to provide care to the patient unnecessarily”—a common practice of nurses, according to the suit.
Rachel Robinson, a spokesperson for the medical center, tried to dismiss Joppy’s allegations in a statement The Denver Post obtained on Tuesday.
“The lawsuit that has been filed against The Medical Center of Aurora is without merit and is a tactic by a disgruntled former colleague,” she said in the statement.
Jennifer Robinson, Joppy’s attorney, told The Denver Post Joppy has struggled to find stable housing and ceased work as a nurse, although her license is active.
“I took this case on because I thought it was particularly egregious that they would do this to someone’s life,” Robinson said. “She’s pretty much homeless now and hasn’t recovered since all of this happened. Who is going to hire a nurse who has manslaughter charges against her, even if they are dropped? It’s just not cool to treat people this way.”