AMERIKA

Sens. Wyden, Paul introduce bipartisan bill to abolish military draft


Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday introduced a bill to abolish the military draft. He said the all-volunteer military has eliminated the need for "the same draft that sent two million unwilling young men to war 50 years ago." Wyden's bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y., would repeal the Selective Service Act. File 

Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo


Aug. 2 (UPI) -- A bipartisan Senate bill to abolish the Selective Service military draft was introduced Thursday by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

"The Selective Service is a long-outdated program that eats up millions of taxpayer dollars and gives us nothing in return," Wyden said in a statement. "Our volunteer military forces are the strongest in the world, and there simply isn't a need to replicate the same draft that sent two million unwilling young men to war 50 years ago."
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Wyden said this is a commonsense bill that saves taxpayer money. It would repeal the Selective Service Act.

Sen. Paul said in a statement, "It has been over 50 years since the draft was last used. I've long stated that if a war is worth fighting, Congress will vote to declare it and people will volunteer. This outdated government program no longer serves a purpose and should be eliminated permanently."

Selective Service has a budget of over $31 million a year, but there has been no military draft since 1973. An all-volunteer force has been used since then.
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Among the groups endorsing the bill to abolish the Selective Service are Center on Conscience and War, World Beyond War, RootsAction.org, Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, Resisters.info, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Antiwar.com, International Peace Research Association, American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central Committee U.S., War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft.

More than 1.8 million American men were drafted during the Vietnam War, with the final draft call coming Dec. 7, 1972.

According to the Disabled American Veterans, 17,671 U.S. draftees were killed in the Vietnam War. That was a little over 30% of the total U.S. military deaths of 58,220 in Vietnam.

According to the Selective Service System, draft registration was suspended April 1, 1975. Draft registration resumed in July 1980 for men born in 1960 and later. Men are required to register for the draft within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

In 2020 a national commission recommended requiring women to register with the government for a military draft. All combat roles were opened to women by the Defesne Department in 2015.

A federal judge ruled in 2019 that a men-only military draft was unconstitutional. It came in a case brought by a men's rights advocacy group called National Coalition for Men.
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In 2016, President Obama and the Pentagon announced their support for a universal requirement to register women as well as men for the selective service draft.

The Senate approved a bill in June 2016 that would have required women to register, but the House stripped it out.

Texas’ Christian-influenced curriculum spurs worries about bullying

Jaden Edison, Texas Tribune
July 20, 2024

Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

Andy Wine thinks most children can understand the Golden Rule. Talking over your peers is rude. Insulting others is mean. Don't hurt people. In short, it’s common sense, Wine said.

That’s why the 43-year-old parent of two, who is an atheist, finds it appalling that the Texas Education Agency wants to incentivize public schools to teach the Golden Rule as a core value in the Bible.

“We teach kids to be nice to each other and to share,” said Wine, a member of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, a social organization of religiously unaffiliated people. “You don't need to bring up any religion in order to do it.”

Religious and nonreligious groups have raised concerns like this since the TEA proposed a curriculum that would insert Bible teachings into K–5 reading and language arts lessons. They worry the increased emphasis on Christianity could lead non-Christian students to face bullying and isolation, undermine church-state separation and grant the state too much control over how children are taught about religion.

“It's a question of inclusivity,” said Jackie Nirenberg, regional director of Anti-Defamation League Austin, an organization fighting antisemitism and bias against Jewish communities. “It's also a very slippery slope. Because once we open the door to that kind of content, it's much easier to get more and more religious content into the curriculum.”

The State Board of Education will vote on the proposed curriculum in November, which is now available for public viewing and feedback online. The proposal came after the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1605, a law that directed the TEA to create its own free-to-use textbooks with the goal of helping teachers save time preparing for classes.
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If approved, the decision to adopt the curriculum would rest with school districts. Those that do would receive an incentive of up to $60 per student. The extra funds could be particularly attractive after the Legislature failed last year to approve a significant boost to the base amount of money every school gets per student, leaving them to grapple with multi million-dollar budget deficits.

Religious and nonreligious organizations say they are reviewing the material and plan to show up at city council meetings, school boards and the Texas Capitol to voice their concerns.

“What I hear a lot in Texas is parental rights — that we have the right to be able to make decisions about our children's education,” said Nabila Mansoor, a Muslim who is the executive director of Rise AAPI, which primarily serves Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. “And yet, this particular faith tradition is being superimposed on children who come from many different faith backgrounds and whose parents would find it very offensive.”


TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told The Texas Tribune in May that the curriculum as a whole — which consists of lesson plans for K–12 students and spans other subjects that don’t include religious references like math and science — is based on extensive cognitive science research and will help improve student performance in reading and math.

Morath noted that religious references only make up a small “but appropriate” fraction of the content pie and that the textbooks mark a shift from a skills-based curriculum to a more “classical, broad-based liberal arts education.” Conservatives nationwide are championing a similar approach to education, which Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described as “focusing on core academic subjects and rejecting indoctrination.”

The proposed curriculum would prompt teachers to relay the story of The Good Samaritan — a parable about loving everyone, including your enemies — to kindergarteners as an example of what it means to follow the Golden Rule. The story comes from the Bible, the lesson explains, and “was told by a man named Jesus” as part of his Sermon on the Mount, which included the phrase, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Many other religions have their own version of the Golden Rule, which the lesson plan acknowledges.


A first-grade lesson about the Liberty Bell would teach students a story in which “God told Moses about the laws he wanted his people to follow — laws that were designed to help ensure that the Hebrew people lived in peace in the freedom of their new land.”

There’s also a fifth-grade lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper that challenges students to consider “how the disciples may have felt upon hearing Jesus telling them about his betrayal and death.”

References to other religions are also included. A second grade lesson highlights the Jewish celebration of Purim. A fourth grade poetry unit includes Kshemendra, a poet from India who “studied Buddhism and Hinduism.”


The materials drew praise from top Republican officials while raising eyebrows among some school district leaders, parents and education advocates. A handful of people who testified at an SBOE meeting last month raised questions about the lessons’ age-appropriateness, their potential impact on non-Christian children and the motives behind the heavier Christian emphasis. Some people said they believe TEA officials are making curriculum decisions based on their personal beliefs.

Megan Benton, a strategic policy associate at Texas Values, an organization that describes itself as being dedicated to the Judeo-Christian faith, family and freedom, said her group supports “an objective reading of the Bible and other religious texts” in public schools.

“In fact, they'll elevate the quality of education being offered to all Texas students by giving them a well-rounded understanding of important texts and their impact on the world,” Benton said about references to religious texts.


But critics worry the TEA’s proposal is a symptom of a growing Christian nationalist movement, the belief that the United States’ founding was ordained by God and that its laws and institutions should favor Christians.

Texas is one of the most religiously diverse states in the nation. Seventy-seven percent of adults adhere to some form of Christianity, according to a study conducted in 2007 and 2014 by the Pew Research Center. Non-Christian faiths, such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, constitute 4% of adults, while 18% are not affiliated with any religion.

Still, state leaders have increasingly pushed to grow Christianity’s presence in public schools.


Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, pledged last month to revive a bill that would require schools to post the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, following in the footsteps of Louisiana. The Legislature passed a measure last year allowing volunteer chaplains to provide mental health services to students. Legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring public schools to display donated posters with the message “In God We Trust.”

Gov. Greg Abbott has made passing school voucher legislation his top priority, which would allow families to use taxpayer dollars to pay for private schools, most of which have a religious focus in Texas. The nation’s largest voucher programs give most of their funds to religious schools, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Texas sits at the center of the Christian nationalist movement, said Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, communications director for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, and he said it has taken a particular interest in public schools, where children are most impressionable.


“I think what we're seeing right now is Christian nationalism taking these religious symbols, the Bible, specifically the Ten Commandments, and pushing them in a way that is trying to say that to be a good Texan, you need to be a Christian,” said Graves-Fitzsimmons, whose organization advocates for church-state separation. “I think it has a major impact on the religious freedom protections of students and families.”

Religious liberty advocates and legal experts are also worried the TEA’s proposed curriculum might violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits states from endorsing or promoting an official religion.

Efforts to infuse more Christianity in schools across the nation are currently facing several legal challenges, but legal experts note that recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority have eroded decades of precedent and made it unclear what state actions are unconstitutional. In its 2022 ruling on Kennedy v. Bremerton, for example, the high court found that a Washington high school football coach did not violate the First Amendment by conducting personal prayers on the field after team games.


In doing so, the Supreme Court put an end to what was known as the Lemon test, a standard the court used to assess whether the primary purpose of a government action was secular, whether it promoted or inhibited religion and whether it represented an excessive entanglement between church and state.

During the same term, justices also ruled that states could not exclude religious schools from programs that use taxpayer dollars to fund private education.

Hannah Bloch-Wehba, a law professor at Texas A&M University, said conservative activists and officials are testing the waters of how far the courts will go in eroding church-state separation precedents.


“I would say there is currently no test for assessing the constitutionality of this curricular change,” Bloch-Wehba said about the TEA proposal. “In a constitutional void where nobody can really predict what the rules are going to be, it facilitates these advances to both entrench religion in public life and also to diminish the protections that are afforded to religious minorities.”

Some Texans, including some Christians, worry about the impact the proposed curriculum’s religious allusions could have on children of other faiths.

“In a public school, you've got people from a variety of backgrounds,” said Paul Ziese, a Lutheran pastor who serves as treasurer of the San Antonio chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “And I think that's a concern — that no one feels that they're not equal to anyone else or that their position or their faith is less, including people who have no faith.”

Gipson Arnold, an atheist who is also a member of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, said he is worried that any perceived preference toward Christianity could lead to children of other religious faiths, or no faith, being bullied or ostracized by their classmates.

Amatullah Contractor, a senior adviser with Emgage Texas, an organization advocating for the rights of Muslim communities, said the emphasis on Christianity could create an identity conflict for some Muslim students. She also questions whether K–5 students need to be taught religious context in public schools at all, considering the diversity of religions and their complexities.

Wine, one of the members of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, is uneasy about what the curriculum could mean for his 5-year-old son, Aidan, who is entering kindergarten in the Boerne Independent School District this year.

He is not at the point where he feels like Aidan understands enough to engage in deeper conversations about religion. And he doesn’t want his school to be the one starting that discussion.

“My taxpayer dollars going toward indoctrinating my child into a religion that I don't believe in just sounds terrible,” Wine said.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.


This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/19/texas-christianity-school-curriculum-worries/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org

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The Long Shadow of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Pathology

By Billy J. Stratton

July 19, 2024

Source: LA Progressive


Image by Don O'Brien, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

After Andy Beshear’s upset win over Matt Bevin in my home state of Kentucky’s 2019 gubernatorial race (which I wrote about then in History News Network), some pundits were quick to dismiss his upset victory as little more than an aberration. Others attempted to explain it away as a natural consequence of an incompetent or unpopular incumbent, or as a columnist for Louisville’s Courier-Journal claimed, because Bevin was just a “jerk.”

Ouch, lol, but since when did being unlikable become a detriment within a political party where spitefulness and belligerence have come to be worn like badges of honor by so many?

At the same time, commentators with more liberal leanings saw in Beshear’s victory a sign of the GOP’s vulnerability heading into the 2020 election. The outcome of which, as a whole, despite what all those well-funded insurrectionists, proud boys, and dishonest election deniers still claim, what? ahem, yeah still…,reinforced the validity of that perspective.

Despite the successes Democrats enjoyed in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, America has only seemed to have sank deeper into the mire of a toxic political culture. This is potently reflected at the level of ideas and policy. With outrage in response to a series of Supreme Court decisions issued over the last three years not abating any time soon, social divisions have become more deeply entrenched along ideological lines on issues from abortion, religion and its influence on government affairs and the Second Amendment, to the status of Native tribal sovereignty and the protection of the environment.

Moreover, the atmosphere in which it has become commonplace to baselessly question the most basic facts, scientific data and truth, if not disregarding them altogether, seems to be spreading. While this way of (un)thinking has now seemed to have seeped into practically every corner of American social life, it is, perhaps, most palpable in the aforementioned anti-democratic election denialism being bandied about by a significant portion of the populace regarding the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

That Joe Biden so soundly defeated Donald Trump for the presidency in the 2020 election by a margin of 74 electoral votes and over 7 million popular votes, and the results can still be so obstinately rejected by so many, remains not just a source of endless bafflement but also cause for serious alarm.

These broader national issues aside, Beshear’s two gubernatorial victories in Kentucky appear as a reason for optimism within this discouraging context. For this positive development to be best appreciated, though, we need to move beyond the shallow surfaces of conventional wisdom and recognize that there may be good reason to reconsider the blunt dividing lines that have been drawn between rural and urban voters, along with those separated by regional boundaries, as well.

It bears reminding that Beshear’s stunning win over Bevin, the incumbent Republican Governor, hinged on a vote difference of less than one half of one percentage point. To emphasize the razor-thin margin this result represents, that’s a mere 5,136 votes out of a total of 1,443,077 votes cast.

Beshear’s improved performance this time around against Kentucky’s current Attorney General, Daniel Cameron who was touting a law and order agenda in a region many continue to see as hostile to Democratic candidates is even more remarkable. As of the time of writing, Beshear’s margin is more than 5 points, translating to an advantage of more than 67,000 votes, with 98% of the ballots counted.

The scope of Beshear’s latest victory, and the strategy deployed to get him there, has even prompted some to start considering him as a viable presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. Although 2028 is quite a ways off, even as the crow flies, Beshear possesses some natural advantages over others already in this discussion, such as California’s Gavin Newsome, in having a lower profile and by virtue of not being associated with a state that so many conservatives have been conditioned to see as anathema.

However one looks at it, his victory is an impressive outcome in Kentucky, which Donald Trump carried by 30 points in 2016, and again by 26 points in 2020. Such a result, especially given the significant financial support Cameron received from Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnel and Rand Paul, along with an endorsement from Trump, reinforce the premise that there is something far more complicated at play here than red state/blue state predispositions and the assumptions they imply.

The assertion I previously advanced, that the ostensibly deep-red regions of rural America made up of areas such as Eastern Kentucky may not be as “reliable for Republicans and unwinnable for Democrats as conventional wisdom suggests,” are bolstered by this week’s results. In fact, the tally for Beshear this election cycle provides additional encouragement as he secured wins in six rural counties in the heart of coal country, including Knott, Breathitt, Magoffin, and my home county of Floyd, with the addition of two other counties he had previously lost to Bevin in Letcher and Perry.

While some may dismiss the significance of Beshear’s support in such places due to their relatively small and disempowered populations—something those living in Appalachia have long dealt with—Tuesday’s results, nonetheless, run counter to the widely accepted narrative that people who live in such communities have closed themselves off to Democratic candidates and the policies they advocate.

This is precisely the notion JD Vance, using Eastern Kentucky as his prime example, deceptively advanced in his New York Times best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was also adapted into a film for Netflix by Ron Howard. Bolstered by sympathetic commentary and interviewers, along with an inexplicable number of largely positive reviews as seen here, here, here, appearing in some of America’s leading literary venues, as well as a myriad of invitations to lecture and give commencement speeches at universities across the country, Vance was successful in pushing a thesis predicated on white working class anger at failed Democratic policies as a means to shift the discussion away from the racial discord long promoted within the conservative movement as a strategy designed to drive a wedge between lower and working class voters. An effort that surged into overdrive with Barak Obama’s candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.

According to the story Vance conjured, the disenchantment of rural, working class people in Eastern Kentucky—which also applies across America more broadly—traces all the way back to the early seventies, as he claims, “it was Greater Appalachia’s political reorientation from Democrat to Republican that redefined American politics after Nixon.” This sweeping assertion is what forms the ideological thesis of Hillbilly Elegy.

A pseudo-memoir that asserts itself as an object lesson on the social realities of white lower and working class frustration and anger that ushered in a new political map, and which should have twice doomed Beshear’s chances in 2019 and 2023, if accurate. It wasn’t.

When I read Vance’s book as a person born and raised in Eastern Kentucky myself, something just didn’t seem right. From my experiences growing up in Floyd County, Kentucky, just seventy miles east of the town of Jackson where Vance’s family was from, many of the claims he made just didn’t mesh with the reality I’d known. So, I did what anyone who values critical thinking and truth should do, I went looking for facts. What I soon found, and with not all that much effort, was that Vance’s central claim based on the stories he tells of Eastern Kentucky from which he derives his claim about the shift in the Appalachian electorate, was just plain wrong.

This judgement is born out in the presidential election results from the very place in which Vance bases his conclusions, Breathitt County, Kentucky, in which Jackson is located. Even a cursory review of the election results themselves, starting with the 1972 contest between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and up through to the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, refute Vance’s claims.

In fact, the election data shows that in every presidential election from 1972 until, wait for it, 2008 and the candidacy of Barak Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate actually won Breathitt County by a margin ranging from a low for Walter Mondale of 9 points in 1984, to a high of 55 points for Jimmy Carter in 1976. That the actual shift in party allegiance from Democrat to Republican, which Vance attempts to rewrite, only happened in the first election in which an African American person stood as the Democratic candidate for president is suggestive of a correlation that is quite different from Vance’s.

This historical preference is emphasized by similarly wide margins of victory for Democratic presidential candidates across several Eastern Kentucky counties in 1980, 1992 and 2000. These results offer a much different take on Vance’s recollection of his Pawpaw’s “hatred” of “that son of a bitch Mondale.” Not as a reflection of the Eastern Kentucky hillbilly attitude he purports to celebrate, but that it was actually his grandfather who’d grown out of step from the place of his birth.

The successes Democrats enjoyed in Breathitt County are reinforced by the similarly large margins they scored in other Eastern Kentucky counties, including Floyd County. Here the margins were often wider, with Carter besting Reagan by 44 points in 1980, along with a pair of wins by Bill Clinton, who notched a 53-point margin over George H.W. Bush in 1992, followed by with a 45-point advantage over Bob Dole in 1996. In all these cases, the actual election data contradicts Vance’s claims of a great electoral shift dating back to Nixon. And speaking of Nixon, the results for Breathitt County also favored George McGovern—the winner of a paltry 17 total electoral votes—by an impressive 18%.

As this data makes clear, the thesis Vance, who has since parlayed the celebrity status brought by the success of his book into being elected to the US Senate in Ohio, offered as an alternative to the inconvenient reality of the conservative exploitation of racial conflict amounted to nothing less than the rewriting of the political and social history of the region. If only people like Ron Howard or the editors at HarperCollins, and many others who praised and lifted Vance’s story, because, perhaps, they really wanted to believe him or at least connect and sympathize with working class people, would have been more diligent in confirming the facts at the time, then maybe they would not be feeling so surprised and appalled by what they have been hearing from Vance since.

But, then, again, what happens to the people of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia hardly ever impacts those so well insulated and distant from life in the hollows, mines and welfare lines. And that, of course, is another part of the problem.

While refuting the ideologically driven and objectively false claims Vance put forth in his book, the relevant facts also challenge much conventional political wisdom that has led the people of Appalachia to being unfairly dismissed, and often derided, as a monolithic assemblage of ignorant, close-minded, conservative voters. This is an assumption that Beshear’s initial win in the Kentucky Governor’s race and re-election serves to dispel.

The results reported from Tuesday’s contest between Beshear and Cameron by election boards in many of these same counties across Eastern Kentucky, including Breathitt, Macgoffin, Floyd, Knott, and others in an area that has been most impacted by the coal mining industry, give promise to the possibility that a region that was among the most consistently reliable Democratic strongholds in America throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century may not be a lost cause for Democrats after all. And that, in reality, lower and working class peoples who live in rural communities across America, more broadly, might not be as rigidly fixed in the red column as the current political maps would have us think.

As these facts, as well as common sense, tell us though, viewpoints built on hasty assumptions that cede the loss of whole populations and regions only act to reinforce simplistic and deeply flawed ways of perceiving America’s social reality. The danger therein, of course, lies in the way that the resultant ideas and expectations, when left unchallenged, can quickly transform into self-fulfilling prophesies. This is especially true when the concerns of such people and the problems they face are not attended to while their loyalties are taken for granted.

Unfortunately, the acceptance and even tolerance of what has become a default means of evaluating America’s voting population will simply continue to feed gas to the fire of the negative political and social feedback loops that debase public discourse and lead to the neglect and marginalization of people from regions and states written off by some strategists as unwinnable. It’s a process that, at the same time, will continue to hinder the success of Democratic candidates, while bolstering the feelings of alienation, isolation, hopelessness and fear conservatives have proven so adept at seizing upon.

Despite how deep such dissent and division has been sown among people who share a myriad of personal, economic and social interests, however, as the results on voter initiatives to protect the constitutional right to abortion and decriminalize recreational marijuana in Ohio show, for those who have a real concern for freedom and justice, there is still much to be optimistic about.

Ultimately, when set against the bogus narrative Vance spun, the lessons of Beshear’s election victories, as well as favorable results for Democrats in Ohio and Virginia, offer a refreshing counter to the trends in Kentucky, and other states like North Carolina and Ohio, that commentators lament as turning more and more red on those ubiquitous election maps over the last few election cycles. How this plays out in the future will depend not just on how much we learn from these lessons but also in our willingness to see and respect the agency and humanity of others instead of merely counting them as numbers.

J. D. Vance Wants to Crack Down Harder on Abortion Access

GOP vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance has pressured lawmakers to kill a rule that blocks police from accessing the medical records of people seeking abortions — an indication of the threat a Trump-Vance administration would pose to reproductive health.

Republican vice president candidate J. D. Vance during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

BY VERONICA RICCOBENE HELEN SANTORO JOEL WARNER

JACOBIN
07.16.2024

Sen. J. D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s pick for vice presidential nominee, pressured federal regulators last June to kill a privacy rule that prevents police from accessing the medical records of people seeking reproductive services, according to documents reviewed by the Lever. The rule was designed to prevent state and local police in antiabortion states from using private records to hunt down and prosecute people who cross state lines in search of abortion services.

If the Trump-Vance ticket wins this year’s presidential election, the new administration could rescind the rule protecting abortion records from police investigation.

The Biden administration proposed the rule in April 2023 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal abortion protections. The proposed rule expanded upon the long-established Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s Privacy Rule, which requires appropriate safeguards to protect individuals’ health information.

While these privacy laws do not usually apply in the case of a criminal investigation, the proposed rule prohibited health officials from divulging records related to reproductive health care — including for fertility issues, contraception, and miscarriages — even if requested by law enforcement.

The following month, Vance and twenty-eight other conservative lawmakers sent a letter to Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra demanding the department withdraw the draft rule. They argued that the Biden administration had overstepped its constitutional bounds and unlawfully infringed on congressional power.

“Abortion is not health care,” they wrote. “It is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women.”

A Vance spokesperson did not respond when asked whether Trump would rescind the rule if he’s reelected.

Supporters of the rule said expanding the privacy laws was a welcome and necessary step in protecting those who seek or perform legal abortions from being prosecuted in outside jurisdictions. Planned Parenthood wrote that tightening medical privacy rules was an “essential element” to securing patient data and supporting patient confidentiality in the health care system.

Similarly, advocacy groups say that securing patients’ privacy is paramount, given the recent gutting of abortion rights at the federal level.

“Since the Dobbs decision, the specter of criminalization has increased significantly, for both patients and providers,” wrote a group of 125 reproductive health and justice organizations in response to the proposed rule. “People must feel — and actually be — safe while accessing health care, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade further erodes this very necessary trust between patients and providers.”

Research on people targeted for allegedly ending or helping to end a pregnancy found that they were most often reported to law enforcement by health care professionals. Once police got involved, the vast majority of cases led to arrests.

Researchers also argue that criminalizing abortion will increase preexisting racial disparities in incarceration rates. While more than 42 percent of women who get abortions in the United States are black, more than half of all black women aged fifteen to forty-nine years old live in states with abortion restrictions or plans to implement them.

Meanwhile, the number of people nationwide who are traveling across state lines for abortion care is rising: nearly one in five abortion patients traveled out of state to obtain this care in the first six months of 2023, compared with one in ten abortion patients during the same period in 2020.

This past April, the Biden administration issued the final rule protecting the medical records of people seeking abortion services, and it went into effect last month.

“The Biden-Harris administration is providing stronger protections to people seeking lawful reproductive health care regardless of whether the care is in their home state or if they must cross state lines to get it,” said Becerra at the time of the rules’ implementation. “With reproductive health under attack by some lawmakers, these protections are more important than ever.”

While he once compared abortion to slavery, Vance has recently tried to soften his public position on abortion — mirroring Trump and the Republican Party as they work to address the fact that many Americans, even in red states, oppose excessively restrictive abortion laws.

Earlier this month, Vance said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he agreed with a recent Supreme Court ruling protecting people’s access to the abortion drug mifepristone. And in June, the Daily Mail reported that someone with the username “Chuengsteven” — an apparent reference to chief Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung — slightly edited Vance’s Wikipedia page to say he believes “abortion laws should be set by states,” echoing Trump’s position.

Still, Vance has worked hard to undermine efforts to secure abortion access even in states where it’s legal. Last December, he cosigned a letter pressuring the Department of Health and Human Services to continue diverting federal funds meant for low-income mothers to crisis pregnancy centers, which researchers say often fail to adhere to medical and ethical standards to dissuade people from getting abortions.

Immediately after Trump named Vance as his running mate on Monday, President Joe Biden’s campaign began targeting Vance’s antiabortion positions.

“A Trump-Vance administration will jeopardize reproductive freedom in all fifty states,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a Biden campaign call.

You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.

Veronica Riccobene is a producer based in Washington, DC. She has experience in live television, long form and vertical video, as well as reporting.

Helen Santoro is a journalist based in Colorado.

Joel Warner is managing editor of the Lever. He is a former staff writer for International Business Times and Westword.

Europe wary of Trump VP pick Vance’s opposition to Ukraine military aid

US presidential candidate Donald Trump's choice of Republican Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate for the November election has been met with alarm by some European politicians, who warn that his opposition to US military aid for Ukraine could force Kyiv to make substantial concessions to Moscow.

Issued on: 16/07/2024 - 

Republican presidential nominee and former US president Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance point to the stage during Day 1 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, July 15, 2024. 

© Elizabeth Frantz, Reuters

In February, Europe's political and foreign policy elite heard directly from Senator J.D. Vance on his opposition to military aid for Ukraine and his blunt warning that Europe will have to rely less on the United States to defend the continent.

If those comments at the annual Munich Security Conference were a first wake-up call, alarm bells are now ringing loudly across the continent after Republican Donald Trump picked Vance as his vice presidential candidate for November's U.S. election.

"His selection as the running mate is worrying for Europe," said Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the German Green party that is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government, who took part in a panel discussion with Vance in Munich.

The pick stoked fears in Europe that if Trump returns to the White House, he will drop, or curb, U.S. support for Kyiv and push Ukraine into peace negotiations to end the war that would give Moscow a substantial slice of Ukraine and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to pursue further military adventures.

That view was bolstered by a letter to EU leaders from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who visited Trump last week. Orban, a Trump ally, said the ex-president will be "ready to act as a peace broker immediately" if he wins in November.

Lang said on X that Vance had made very clear in Munich how quickly he and Trump would "deliver Ukraine to Putin".

U.S. strategic priorities

At the Munich conference, Vance said Putin did not pose an existential threat to Europe, and Americans and Europeans could not provide enough munitions to defeat Russia in Ukraine.

He suggested the United States' strategic priorities lay more in Asia and the Middle East.

"There are a lot of bad guys all over the world. And I'm much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe," he told the conference.

Speaking on a podcast with Trump ally Steve Bannon in 2022, Vance said: "I don't really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the other."

In Munich, he advocated for a "negotiated peace" and said he thought Russia had an incentive to come to the table.

Read moreFormer US president Donald Trump could ‘paralyse’ NATO if re-elected, specialist says

That stance is in stark contrast with the view of most European leaders, who argue the West should continue to support Ukraine massively with military aid and say they see no sign of Putin being willing to engage in serious negotiations.

Vance also voted against a U.S. funding bill for Ukraine that eventually passed in April. In a New York Times op-ed justifying his vote, he argued Kyiv and Washington must abandon Ukraine's goal of returning to its 1991 borders with Russia.

Nils Schmid, the foreign policy spokesperson of Scholz's Social Democrat party, said he had observed Vance in Munich and concluded the senator saw himself as Trump's mouthpiece.

"He takes an even more radical stance on Ukraine than Trump and wants to end military support. In terms of foreign policy, he is more isolationist than Trump," Schmid told Reuters.

Caution counselled

But some cautioned against jumping to conclusions about Vance, who was born into an impoverished home in southern Ohio.

"J.D. Vance is a devout Christian and the circumstances of his childhood give me great hope that he, like Speaker Mike Johnson, will conclude that U.S. support for Ukraine is the only option," said Melinda Haring, a senior adviser for Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based charitable organisation that advocates for Ukraine.

"While Vance has come out strongly against Ukraine, he hasn’t been in a top job and as vice president I expect to see his views evolve."

Some diplomats also cautioned that the U.S. election was far from over.

"We need to stop creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trump hasn’t won and Biden hasn’t lost," said a French diplomat.

In Ukraine, politicians were wary of criticising Vance openly, as they may have to deal with him as U.S. vice president. But some acknowledged harbouring concerns.


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Oleksiy Honcharenko, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, said he had met Vance at the Munich conference and found him to be "a very intelligent and cool-headed man".

"Is there any concern about Vance's statements? Of course. The U.S. is our biggest and most important ally," he told Reuters.

"We must remain allies and show the U.S. that Ukraine not only needs help, but can help itself."

Maryan Zablotskyy, a lawmaker for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party, argued Russia was harming U.S. interests on many fronts. He said any U.S. politician pursuing an America First agenda "will never be positive towards Russia".

(Reuters)

Choice of 'mega-MAGA-misogynist' J.D. Vance just one more step in Trump's war on women

Tom Boggioni
July 20, 2024 

Donald Trump's and J.D. Vance (AFP)

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show," former GOP campaign consultant Tara Setmayer claimed the choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) should come as no surprise due to his attitude toward women's rights.

Speaking with the host, Setmayer pinned the label "mega MAGA misogynist" before documenting the Ohio Republican's history and what could happen if the Trump team wins in November.

According to both the host and Setmayer, the GOP convention was a decidedly anti-woman affair.

Pointingto the choice of Vance as a running mate, Setmayer stated, "This is the direction they are going in."

"It's a a big 'FU' to women whose rights are literally under assault," she continued. "This election is about life or death for women in America and the attacks on our freedom."

For her part, host Phang once again noted that the Trump campaign, with the selection of Vance" is treating American voters as if they are dumb, a point she took up earlier on MSNBC's "The Weekend."

Watch below or at the link.

Tara Setmayer on JD Vance: ‘You have a full mega-MAGA-misogynist ticket’youtu.be

 

J.D. Vance's brain 'pickled' by 'monstrous' conspiracies: MSNBC's Chris Hayes

Matthew Chapman
July 16, 2024


Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio in Detroit on June 16, 2024 (Gage Skidmore)


Former President Donald Trump's new running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), is emblematic of a deeper intellectual rot at the heart of the newer generation of Republican thinkers, wrote MSNBC's Chris Hayes in a scathing thread on X Tuesday evening.

Vance, a former venture capitalist who became famous for his "Hillbilly Elegy" memoir of growing up in western Ohio, started out as a never-Trump conservative who proclaimed Trump could become "America's Hitler" — but rapidly changed his tune when it came time to run for Senate in Ohio, going full-blown MAGA and now proclaiming he would help Trump overturn the results of elections.

That didn't happen by accident, wrote Hayes — and it's not entirely an act to win office, either.

"Something under appreciated in discussions of Vance and his ilk is the degree to which, yes, his ideological transformation is opportunistic, but also I think he and huge swaths of the modern right really have self-radicalized largely online and are constantly imbibing all kinds of genuinely monstrous, insane and bizarre ideas and have come to believe them," wrote Hayes.

Much ink has been spilled about how the far-right has established a following online, giving rise to the so-called "Groyper movement" seeking to inject white nationalism into mainstream political thought; the architect of this, Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, was catapulted into national awareness when Trump took a meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago. These are the kinds of ideologies that people like Vance are adjacent to as they harden their beliefs online, Hayes argued.

"A big part of modern right-wing culture is this frisson of the elicit, the reading of this or that writer or account who are outre in whatever ways (fascists, race-IQ obsessives, holocaust denial adjacent, people with very weird sexual fixations and pathologies they turn into their own philosophy, etc)" he wrote.

"A lot of them, and I think is true of Vance and definitely true of the creepy Silicon Valley MAGA weirdos, have simply pickled their brains," Hayes concluded.

UK Election 2024 polls were wide of the mark on Labour’s margin of victory – this is what may have happened

Even the exit poll struggled to pin down Reform’s seat count. 

Alamy/Ron Fassbender

THE CONVERSATION
Published: July 12, 2024 

The 2024 UK election campaign was dominated by discussion of the polls, from start to finish. This was partially because of the sheer volume of polls being published. We had more MRP (multi-level regression post-stratification) polls than ever before, many giving quite different pictures of the size of Labour’s lead.

The chart below shows the average performance of 27 polls which predicted vote shares in the contest just prior to the election on July 4. The polling predictions are on the left and the actual vote shares are on the right for each of the five UK-wide political parties.

As a standard industry approximation, if the results differ from the outcomes by more than 3%, there is a statistically significant difference between the polling and the outcome. In other words, the pollsters got it wrong.

Final poll predictions and actual vote shares:

How the pollsters did. P Whiteley, CC BY-ND

Using that rough yardstick, the pollsters over-predicted the Labour and arguably under-predicted the Tory vote, although in the latter case it was on the boundary of statistical significance. The other parties were within the margin of error. To be fair, different polling companies varied in their accuracy, so we need to look a little more closely at the results.

The list below shows how accurate 27 polling agencies were in forecasting the vote shares in the election. Accuracy can be measured in different ways, but the method used here is easier to understand than most others. A low score means the poll was more accurate.

Pollster accuracy. Mark Pack

To explain how this was calculated, we can look at the example of More in Common’s regular poll, which was one of the most accurate. We simply calculate the distance between the poll and the vote shares for each party and then add them all up. For example, More in Common predicted that Labour would get 39%, the Conservatives 24%, Reform 15%, the Liberal Democrats 12% and the Greens 5%.

The final vote share on July 4 was 34% for Labour, 24% for the Conservatives, 14% for Reform, 12% for the Liberal Democrats and 7% for the Greens. If we calculate the difference between the forecast and the outcomes, More in Common was 5% out for Labour, 1% out for Reform, spot on for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and 2% for the Greens which produces an accuracy score of eight.

Accuracy scores vary quite a lot between pollsters. The list contains five MRP polls. These big data polls are best known for predicting the results in specific constituencies using large samples. The YouGov MRP had a sample of nearly 60,000 respondents.

It is noticeable that despite the very large samples associated with MRP polls, they were not the most accurate in the list, although they did better than the average accuracy score of just under 13. At the same time this difference was not consistent. The YouGov MRP had a score of eight compared with a score of 11 for its regular poll. However, the reverse was true for the More in Common, which scored eight for its regular poll and ten for its MRP.

Why do polls get it wrong?

One of the most acute problems in polling is getting representative samples of the electorate. All survey firms are struggling with this problem since the gold standard, random probability surveys, where people across the country are randomly selected and called, have all but died out on account of being too expensive and time consuming to conduct.

Practically all polling companies now use quota samples. This involves interviewing a set proportion of different groups needed to make the sample representative of the electorate. They interview defined numbers of people from groups based on things like age, gender and ethnic background. This requires data from the census and other sources to identify the size of the quotas.

When the quotas are not filled this can create bias in the samples. This is not always a problem since weights can be used to compensate for non-response. For example, if we need a quota of 200 voters under the age of 25 for a representative sample but we only get 100, we can count the latter twice in the analysis. This is essentially what weighting does.

However, the hidden assumption here is that the young people interviewed are representative of those who aren’t interviewed. The US journalist Ken Goldstein has cited this as contributing to the failure of the polls to predict the 2016 US presidential election. He said: “Usually we assume the problem is that group X is too small, but the actual problem is that group X is too weird.”

Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

This gives rise to a serious problem highlighted by political scientist Michael Bailey in his recent book, Polling at a Crossroads. The technical term for this is “non-ignorable non-response”. If respondents and non-respondents differ and we cannot verify this from other sources, then the poll will be biased and give the wrong answers.

We can find out from the census if the quotas of young people or ethnic minorities are correct, but it will not tell us if respondents are more interested and less alienated from politics than non-respondents.

The implication is that the eve of election polls contained this type of non-response and so exaggerated Labour and Reform party support. It was very likely caused by non-respondents being more apathetic or more alienated from politics than respondents.

Author   

  

Paul Whiteley
Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex
Disclosure statement
Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

Lancet: 186,000 Palestinians or more killed in Gaza

By denying the world access to the true death toll in Gaza, Israel is acting, once again, as a complete rogue state

Owen Schalk / July 9, 2024 / CANADIAN DIMENSION



Peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet has just published an article “conservatively” estimating that the death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza could be 186,000 people or more. Photo by Humberto Patrick/Wikimedia Commons.


A new study by the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet estimates that the current death toll from Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip—which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has described as “plausible genocide”—is at least 186,000. This would translate to nearly eight percent of Gaza’s population.

The bombshell death toll estimate is roughly 150,000 more than current numbers offered by the Gaza Ministry of Health. If The Lancet figure is accurate, then the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has killed 169 Palestinians for every Israeli killed on October 7, 2023.

The Lancet notes that between October 7, 2023 and June 19, 2024, the Israeli military has killed 37,396 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, per the Gaza Ministry of Health. While the Israeli government has attempted to discredit the Ministry of Health’s casualty figures, the report’s authors, Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf, write that “[the numbers] have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO,” as well as independent analyses.

Data on Palestinians killed by the IDF has become increasingly difficult to collect due to the IDF’s destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Even so, the authors argue that “the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate”:

The nongovernmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of identifiable victims are included in the Ministry’s list. Furthermore, the UN estimates that, by Feb 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed, so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10000.

The Lancet distinguishes between “direct” and “indirect” deaths—Palestinians directly killed by the IDF, and those killed as a result of health implications caused by Israeli violence. As the authors note, the combined total of direct and indirect deaths is already enormous due to the IDF’s destruction of health care infrastructure; food and water shortages caused by Israel’s blockading of aid into the strip; the IDF’s bombing of supposed “safe zones”; and Western countries cutting funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“In recent conflicts,” the authors write, “indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths.” Therefore, a conservative estimate of “indirect” deaths—four “indirect” deaths for every Palestinian directly killed by the IDF—brings total deaths up to over 186,000. The actual number may be much higher.

In March of this year, former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader argued that the death toll published by the Gaza Ministry of Health is a substantial undercount. Significantly, the Ministry of Health only reports the deaths of those named deceased by hospitals and morgues—but Israel bombs Gaza’s hospitals as a matter of policy, kills health care workers, and abducts and tortures hospital administrators, as the case of Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya shows.



Israel’s nine-month assault has sent Gaza’s health care infrastructure teetering on the brink of nonexistence. The rubble continues to pile up with no end in sight, burying untold thousands of unidentified victims while aid is barred from entering Gaza and humanitarian agencies are deterred by targeted assassinations of aid workers.

Last month, Save the Children reported nearly 21,000 children missing in Gaza, “trapped beneath rubble, buried in unmarked graves, harmed beyond recognition by explosives, detained by Israeli forces, or lost in the chaos of conflict.”

There is simply no way the Ministry of Health’s death toll has kept up with the actual number of dead. And yet media outlets continue to report it, ignoring evidence that the actual number of Palestinians killed by Israel is likely much higher. As a result, many observers are left with a faulty impression of the magnitude of Gaza’s devastation.

As Nader wrote in March:
It matters greatly whether the aggregate toll so far, and counting, is three, four, five, six times more than the Health Ministry’s undercount. It matters for elevating the urgency for a permanent cease-fire, and direct and massive humanitarian aid by the US and other countries, bypassing the sadistic cruelty against innocent families of the Israeli siege. It matters for the columnists and editorial writers who have been self-censoring themselves, with some… fictionally claiming that Israel’s military doesn’t “intentionally target civilians.” It matters for accountability under international law.


Nader is right: the death toll resulting from Israel’s invasion is a matter of international law. As The Lancet authors note, the Israeli government is legally required to document the full cost of its war on Gaza:
The interim measures set out by the International Court of Justice in January, 2024, require Israel to ‘take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of … the Genocide Convention.’ [But] the Gaza Health Ministry is the only organisation counting the dead.


By denying the world access to the true death toll in Gaza, Israel is acting, once again, as a complete rogue state. But Western governments, including Canada, don’t see it this way. Because they are supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, they seem to believe that international law no longer applies.

Canada, for its part, has offered steadfast military and diplomatic support for Israel since the Hamas attacks of October 7.

In fact, Ottawa is an accessory to the epochal humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The Canadian government accelerated weapons shipments to Israel as the IDF launched its invasion of coastal enclave, and since then, Ottawa has declined to suspend military exports to Israel despite the ICJ’s genocide ruling. At the same time, Ottawa has offered consistent rhetorical support for the Israeli invasion while refusing to condemn IDF atrocities against Palestinians.

The Canadian government has demonized Palestine solidarity actions across the country. Canadian media has whitewashed Israeli crimes. Across Canada, police departments have targeted pro-Palestine activists and violently torn down peaceful encampments on university campuses—all while the death toll in Gaza has climbed to horrific proportions.

By pressing forward with the mass killing of Palestinians despite international calls for a ceasefire, Israel stands condemned before the world—a criminal pariah state. And Canada, by supporting the bloodshed and repressing domestic resistance to its blindly pro-Israel orientation, will forever be marked as an active participant in the genocide of Palestinians.

This is undeniable right now, but as The Lancet’s death toll estimate shows, the scale of Israeli violence will become clearer—and more reprehensible—with time.

As the death toll increases, so does Canadian complicity in the eradication of Gaza, one of the most documented, shocking, and abhorrent crimes against humanity this century.

Owen Schalk is a writer from rural Manitoba. He is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023 and the co-author of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy with Yves Engler.

Israeli Campaign against Gaza may have Killed 186,000 or More — 8% of Population: The Lancet

By Juan Cole

July 8, 2024

Source: Informed Content



Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, The Lancet calculate that 186,000 or more people have been killed by the Israeli total war on Gaza, about 8% of the population.

If you do not see this study reported on your cable “news” channel, you may conclude that the corporation that owns it is complicit in genocide.

One of the paper’s authors, Martin McKee, “is a member of the editorial board of the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research and of the International Advisory Committee of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research.” Although McKee says he is writing solely in a personal capacity, I think we may conclude that some members of the professional Israeli public health community have their hair on fire about the prosecution of the Gaza War.

The Gaza Ministry of Health now says that over 38,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis. As The Lancet notes, the World Health Organization and even the Israeli intelligence services accept these figures. Since the Israeli Air Force has dropped as many as five hundred two-thousand-pound bombs and by now has destroyed or damaged a majority of the buildings in the Gaza Strip, it is likely that at least 10,000 uncounted dead are under the rubble.

The 38,000 dead are the result of what is called direct gathering of the figures. Initially the dead were identified and reported by hospitals. As Israel has reduced the ability of hospitals to function by its attacks on them, this direct reporting has continued, but hospitals began being unable in some cases to send along identification, though they could confirm the reception of the corpses. Some dishonest observers suggested that this inability to know the names of the dead somehow made the numbers less reliable, but the World Health Organization refuted this allegation. The dead are in makeshift morgues still gradually being identified.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Dozens killed across Gaza as Israel’s war enters 10th month”



Indirect counting of the dead attempts to calculate the missing people using statistical methods. Sometimes public health experts have attempted to interview people to collect data on dead family members and friends, and then projected totals based on these surveys. That method is not available in Gaza, where the Israeli authorities will not permit journalists and other observers, and where it is dangerous to be because there are no real safe zones, with those regions declared safe zones often having been bombed.

Muhammad Jawad et al., in a survey of 118 unique armed conflicts affecting 102 countries from 1990 to 2017 found that they produced an average of 19.2 battle-related deaths per 100,000 population (54.7 for those in war as opposed to minor conflict). There were in addition an average of 311 excess deaths per 100,000 population from causes other than being immediately killed by a bomb or bullet. So, 16 civilians died of starvation, communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and injuries, for every direct death in combat.

And this seems important, in the Jawad et al. study: “Effect estimates were disproportionately larger for children aged under 5 years, regardless of the cause of death.” Gaza had some 350,000 children under 5. UNICEF reported in May, “9 out of 10 children under 5 in Gaza are suffering from one or more infectious diseases. Levels of acute watery diarrhea are 20 times higher than typical.” Already last March, 1 in 3 children under 2 were acutely malnourished, a condition that produces permanent cognitive and emotional damage.

The Lancet authors used a much smaller multiplier, of four indirect deaths for each direct death. Based on the death toll known when the paper was written, they arrived at 186,000 dead. They admit that the estimate of four indirect deaths for every direct one is conservative, so the number could be substantially greater.

Khatib et al. point out that public health officials as early as last February were predicting 90,000 deaths, at least, by August 6 if the war escalated and an epidemic broke out. There certainly has been a vast escalation, with a full bore Israeli attack on Rafah during the past two months, the last of the so-called safe zones, to which over a million people had been displaced.

The Lancet authors make these points:A ceasefire is required without a second’s delay.
Medical supplies, food, and clean water must be flowed into the Strip immediately.
The scale and character of the suffering in this conflict must be documented. That is important for establishing historical accountability and for estimating the full cost of this war. Such documentation is, moreover, legally required of Israel by the January 26, 2024 ruling on interim measures by the International Court of Justice as part of its deliberations on whether Israel is committing genocide, to which Israel has not been responsive.
“Furthermore, these data will be crucial for post-war recovery, restoring infrastructure, and planning humanitarian aid.”

I have pointed out that given the definition of famine and the identification of 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza as being in a stage 5 famine zone, nearly 20,000 Palestinians could be starving each month. If the zone were defined by only 20% of it seeing that level of death, then that would still be 5,000 dead of famine each month, on top of those killed by bombs and airstrikes and those falling ill to rampant disease, malnutrition and dehydration. The Lancet study is consistent with total deaths of nearly 21,000 a month, though, again, this is a conservative estimate.



Juan Cole
Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three and a half decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context, and he has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. His books include Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires; The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East; Engaging the Muslim World; and Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

Gaza death toll could surpass 186,000 due to indirect effects of conflict

New analysis highlights the devastating indirect effects of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, suggesting the true death toll could reach nearly 200,000, far surpassing official counts.

By Jordan Atwood

July 10, 2024

Source: Nation of Change


A new analysis has revealed that the death toll in Gaza could exceed 186,000 as a result of indirect effects from the ongoing conflict, highlighting a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions. The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet on July 5, suggests that the true impact of the war extends far beyond the immediate casualties from violence.

The official death toll reported by Gaza health officials stands at 38,193, a figure that includes those killed directly by Israeli airstrikes and military actions. However, public health experts Rasha Khatib of the Advocate Aurora Research Institute, Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Salim Yusuf of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences argue that this number significantly underestimates the actual death toll. They cite the destruction of healthcare infrastructure, the blockade on humanitarian aid, and widespread starvation as contributing factors to a much higher number of deaths.

“Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence,” wrote the authors. They estimate that the total number of deaths could approach 200,000 when including indirect causes such as reproductive, communicable, and noncommunicable diseases. The experts point out that in recent conflicts, indirect deaths have ranged from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the reported figures, the study suggests a possible death toll of up to 186,000.

This projected toll represents approximately 7%-9% of Gaza’s population, which was estimated at over 2.3 million people in 2022. The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system has had devastating consequences. Hospitals and medical facilities have been obliterated, severely limiting access to medical care for those in need. The blockade on humanitarian aid has exacerbated these conditions, leading to shortages of medical supplies, food, and clean water.

The study emphasizes that even if the conflict were to end immediately, the indirect deaths would continue to rise due to the prolonged impact on healthcare and living conditions. An untold number of Palestinians in Gaza have already died because they were unable to receive medical care, suffered from malnutrition, or were affected by the overall collapse of public infrastructure.

The authors also highlight the difficulty in accurately counting the dead in such a chaotic environment. U.S. President Joe Biden expressed skepticism about the reported death counts early in the conflict, and the U.N. revised its civilian death toll in May. However, the study’s authors argue that these figures are likely still underestimates. They note that thousands of Palestinians may remain buried under rubble from Israeli airstrikes. According to the U.N., by February 2024, 35% of buildings in Gaza had been destroyed, suggesting a substantial number of bodies could still be undiscovered.

Israeli intelligence services, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations have all agreed that claims of data fabrication by Palestinian authorities in Gaza are “implausible.” The study reiterates this point, dismissing allegations that the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures are inflated.

Political analyst Omar Baddar noted that statements from top-level Israeli officials regarding their intent to “thin the population” of Gaza lend credibility to the high death toll estimates. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made remarks about reducing the population, which align with the grim projections provided by the Lancet study.

Additional reports have supported the findings of widespread and systematic violence. The Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine published interviews with six Israeli soldiers who described the routine execution of Palestinian civilians and the systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on fire after occupying them.

The study calls for an immediate and urgent ceasefire in Gaza, accompanied by measures to distribute medical supplies, food, clean water, and other essential resources. “At the same time, there is a need to record the scale and nature of suffering in this conflict,” the authors wrote. “Documenting the true scale is crucial for ensuring historical accountability and acknowledging the full cost of the war.”


Jordan Atwood is a dynamic War and Politics Reporter known for his incisive analysis and comprehensive coverage of international conflicts and political landscapes. His work is driven by a commitment to uncovering the truth and providing a clear, informed understanding of complex geopolitical events. Jordan's reporting not only captures the realities of war but also delves into the political strategies and implications behind them, making his work essential for those seeking a deeper understanding of world affairs.

 

The Gaza Death Toll Is Likely Multiples Higher Than Commonly Reported – OpEd

Bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

 July 10, 2024  

By Adam Dick

Last month, I wrote about how the death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza may be significantly higher than the commonly cited estimate that has lately been stuck at under 40,000 individuals. A Friday article at The Lancet medical journal makes the case that the death toll, conservatively estimated, may be more than four times higher — even if the war were to end immediately.

The article’s authors Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf note in reaching their conclusion:

“Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.

“In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.“

Of course, as long as the military action and blockade on Gaza continues, the number of deaths will keep increasing. Also, the suffering will continue for Gazans who manage to survive while being subjected to serious physical and mental injuries.

• This article was published at RonPaul Institutehare

Adam Dick

Adam Dick is a Senior Fellow at Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Adam worked from 2003 through 2013 as a legislative aide for Rep. Ron Paul. Previously, he was a member of the Wisconsin State Board of Elections, a co-manager of Ed Thompson's 2002 Wisconsin governor campaign, and a lawyer in New York and Connecticut.

FAIR AND BALANCED

UK 

Jewish Board of Deputies writes to The Lancet about unsubstantiated claims on Gaza death toll published in letter

July 10th, 2024

We are outraged that a prestigious journal such as the Lancet has published a non-peer reviewed letter (Counting the Dead in Gaza: difficult but essential) making entirely unsubstantiated claims regarding the death toll in Gaza.

Our letter to The Lancet editor in full:

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