A TAX BAKUNIN SUPPORTED

Stronger estate tax would hit

 more inheritances under

 Democrats' plan

Denitsa Tsekova

·Reporter

Sat, October 2, 2021, 

A historic low number of estates paid taxes in 2020, underscoring how much that tax has weakened in the last two decades. But Democrats are looking to change that as part of their tax hikes targeting the wealthy.

Democratic lawmakers want to tax estates worth $5.85 million or more — reverting back to the same exemption amount as in 2017. Currently, only estates worth $11.7 million are taxed. The move would subject more estates to the tax starting next year.

“Estate taxes have basically been gutted over the last couple of decades,” Samantha Jacoby, senior tax legal analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Yahoo Money. “It’s easy to plan around. It's easy for wealthy people with sophisticated advisers to avoid it entirely, and even when people do pay it is a relatively low rate.”

An estate tax is on the transfer of wealth from a deceased person and is enacted before beneficiaries receive their inheritance. Currently, a federal estate tax of 40% applies to estates above $11.7 million for single filers and to estates above $23.4 million for joint filers. Some states also impose additional estate taxes.

As the exemption has progressively increased in the last 20 years, the number of estates paying the tax has drastically decreased. In 2020, 1,900 taxable returns were subject to estate tax, down from 50,500 in 2001, according to data from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. If the Democrats' proposal is enacted, the number of returns subject to the tax will return to 2017 levels or around 5,500, according to Jacoby.

The per-person exemption was $675,000 in 2001, but is $11.7 million in 2021. The last time the exemption was increased — which lowers the number of estates subjected to the tax — was in 2017 when it was nearly doubled by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act under the Trump administration.

Photo: Getty Creative

“We’ve seen both tax rates decrease and exemption levels increase,” Jacoby said. “This means that very few estates pay anything and even the estates that are subject to the estate tax have a relatively low effective rate.”

The effective estate tax in 2018 was only 16.5%. Currently, fewer than 1 in 1,000 estates face the estate tax, according to Jacoby.

‘Reducing income and wealth inequality’

Decreasing the estate tax exemption would also raise $50 billion in the next five years, according to Jacoby. An additional $27 billion of revenue would be raised by changes to the treatment of grantor trusts and modifications to estate tax valuation rules. Both provisions make it harder for the wealthy to escape the estate tax.

“This would reduce the ability of very wealthy people with sophisticated tax advisers to avoid the estate tax even further by using complicated trust arrangements,” Jacoby said.

Inheritances account for about 40% of all household wealth and are concentrated among high-income earners, according to the CBPP. Weakening the estate tax exacerbates wealth inequality, according to Jacoby.

President Joe Biden also wanted to repeal the step-up basis, which allows heirs to pay capital gains based on the price of the asset when it was inherited rather than when it was originally acquired. The provision is not included in the latest version of the plan introduced by the House Ways and Means Committee, meaning it’s likely to be excluded from the final legislation.

“Without repealing the step-up basis, it's even more important for the estate tax to be stronger,” Jacoby said. “You can think of the estate tax as sort of a backstop to not having taxation of unrealized capital gains.”

INSIDER TRADING
Clarida Traded Into Stocks on Eve of Powell Pandemic Statement
Craig Torres
Fri, October 1, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida traded between $1 million and $5 million out of a bond fund into stock funds one day before Chair Jerome Powell issued a statement flagging possible policy action as the pandemic worsened, his 2020 financial disclosures show.

Clarida’s trades, described in forms filed with the government ethics office, show the shifting of the funds out of a Pimco bond fund on Feb. 27, 2020, and on the same day buying the Pimco StocksPlus Fund and the iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor exchange-traded fund in similar dollar ranges. For the year, he listed five transactions.

The following day on Feb. 28, a Friday, at 2:30 p.m., Powell took the unusual step of releasing a statement saying the virus poses “evolving risks to economic activity.” In the same statement, Powell said the Fed was “closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook.”

Emergency Cut

The Fed announced a half percentage-point rate cut on March 3 following an emergency meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “Vice Chair Clarida’s financial disclosure for 2020 shows transactions that represent a pre-planned rebalancing to his accounts,” a Fed spokesman who was speaking on behalf of the vice chair said. “The transactions were executed prior to his involvement in deliberations on Federal Reserve actions to respond to the emergence of the coronavirus and not during a blackout period. The selected funds were chosen with the prior approval of the Board’s ethics official.”

The transactions are likely to further heighten scrutiny of the ethics rules and governance of the U.S. central bank after two regional Fed chiefs announced their departures following revelations about their trading activity last year. One of the presidents, Eric Rosengren of Boston, said his resignation was due to a serious health condition.

Clarida, a former executive at Pacific Investment Management Company LLC, was visiting faculty and students at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the day of the trading, and not in his office in Washington. His calendar for the month shows a single phone call with a Board member on Feb. 27 at 4:45 p.m. after the market close, as well as numerous meetings with Fed staff on prior days.

The Fed spells out clear guidelines for trading activity by policy makers. Its Voluntary Guide to Conduct for Senior Officials says “they should carefully avoid engaging in any financial transaction the timing of which could create the appearance of acting on inside information concerning Federal Reserve deliberations and actions.”

It also says that they should avoid dealings that might “convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest.” February 2020 was a time of extreme moves in financial markets as investors reacted to the threat of the global spread of Covid-19. Stocks fell steeply and bond markets were in a powerful rally.

“The pandemic was spreading quickly and the economic outlook was evolving rapidly. That was not the appropriate time for top Fed officials to be making multi-million dollar changes to their portfolios,” said Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth College professor and former special advisor to the Fed’s Board. “The Fed should welcome an external review of all financial transactions made by Federal Reserve Board members last year.”

A declassified 2018 State Dept. report suggests noises linked to 'Havana Syndrome' were probably just crickets


Marianne Guenot
Fri, October 1, 2021,

Close-up of a cricket (not the species in the story) perching outdoors. 

Andrew Casson/EyeEm/Getty Images


An advisory group for the State Department analyzed sounds associated with the "Havana syndrome."


The 2018 report, now declassified, found the sound was likely made by a particularly loud cricket.


The report found that the sounds were not likely to have caused the potential medical effects.

A 2018 State Department inquiry into the loud noise associated with a mysterious set of symptoms nicknamed the "Havana Syndrome" found that the sound was probably caused by local crickets.

The document, which was originally marked as "secret" and has since been declassified, was obtained by BuzzFeed News using a freedom of information request.

The so-called Havana Syndrome is characterized by symptoms consistent with a head injury such as balance issues, visual impairment, tinnitus, trouble sleeping, headaches, and problems with thinking or remembering, Insider's Aylin Woodward previously reported.

Several who had symptoms consistent with the "syndrome" reported hearing a high-pitched noise, a recording of which was published by the Associated Press in 2017 and can be heard in the video below.

While the declassified report suggests a cause for the noise, it does not purport to explain the other troubling symptoms.

Despite increased attention in the years that followed, no conclusive explanation has emerged as of October 2021.

But the 2018 State Department report, led by the JASON, a group that provides scientific advice to the Pentagon on matters of national security, found that the "most likely source is the Indies short-tailed cricket," BuzzFeed reported.

These crickets, also called Anurogryllus celerinictus, are known to be particularly loud.

 Below is a recording of the crickets in Jamaica:

The findings are consistent with those of a study published in 2019.

It is still not clear what might be causing the putative syndrome.

Symptoms consistent with the unexplained set of symptoms, which gets its name from the first reported cases in Havana, Cuba, in 2016, have been reported for more than 130 spies, diplomats, military service members, and other US personnel so far, as well as two people close to the White House, according to reports.

A 2020 National Academies of Science found that the most plausible explanation for the symptoms appeared to be "pulsed radio frequency energy," although it could not rule out other leading theories such as chemical exposures, infection, or psychological issues.

Cheryl Rofer, a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, previously told Insider that if a microwave weapon had been used, there would be physical marks of the attack.

"The evidence would be on the outside of their body," she told Insider's Aylin Woodward, adding: "It would be like a thermal burn."

The Pentagon has asked its 2.9 million service members to come forward if they have felt symptoms consistent with the "syndrome," according to a memo seen by The New York Times.

In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate


LISBON, PORTUGAL - SEPTEMBER 29: Tourists check their cellphones outside Belem Tower by the Tagus River at the end of the afternoon during the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic on September 29, 2021 in Lisbon, Portugal. The use of protective mask outdoors has not been longer mandatory as of September 13, but according to the measures of the third phase of the deconfinement associated with the pandemic, as of October 01 the use of masks is still mandatory in shops, schools (except at outdoor playgrounds), theaters, cinemas, congress halls, event venues, health establishments and services, residential or foster care facilities, or home support services for vulnerable populations, elderly people, or people with disabilities. 

(Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)More

Marc Santora and Raphael Minder
Sat, October 2, 2021

Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread.

The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship.

Eight months later, Portugal is among the world’s leaders in vaccinations, with roughly 86% of its population of 10.3 million fully vaccinated. About 98% of all of those eligible for vaccines — meaning anyone over 12 — have been fully vaccinated, Gouveia e Melo said.

“We believe we have reached the point of group protection and nearly herd immunity,” he said. “Things look very good.”

On Friday, Portugal ended nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions. There has been a sharp drop in new cases, to about 650 a day, and vanishingly few deaths.

Many Western nations fortunate enough to have abundant vaccine supplies have seen inoculation rates plateau, with more than 20% of their populations still unprotected. So other governments are looking to Portugal for possible insights and are watching closely to see what happens when nearly every eligible person is protected.

False dawns in the coronavirus pandemic have been as common as new nightmare waves of infection. So Portugal could still see a setback as the delta variant continues to spread globally.

There have been worrying signs from Israel and elsewhere that protection offered by vaccines can fade over time, and a worldwide debate is raging over who should be offered booster shots and when.

Portugal may soon start offering boosters to older people and those deemed clinically vulnerable, Gouveia e Melo said, and he was confident they could all be reached by the end of December.

But for the moment, as bars and nightclubs buzz with life, infections dwindle and deaths plummet, the country’s vaccination drive has succeeded even after encountering many of the same hurdles that caused others to flounder.

The same flood of misinformation about vaccines has filled the social media accounts of the Portuguese. The country is run by a minority left-wing government, a reflection of its political divisions. And, according to public opinion polls, there was widespread doubt about the vaccines when they first arrived.

Gouveia e Melo has been credited with turning it around. With a background working on complicated logistical challenges in the military, he was named in February to lead the national vaccination task force.

Standing 6 feet, 3 inches, the admiral made it a point to wear only his combat uniform in his many public and television appearances as he sought to essentially draft the nation into one collective pandemic-fighting force.

“The first thing is to make this thing a war,” Gouveia e Melo said in an interview, recalling how he approached the job. “I use not only the language of war, but military language.”

While politicians around the world have invoked a similar martial rhetoric, he said it was critical to his success that he was widely seen as detached from politics.

He quickly assembled a team of some three dozen people, led by elite military personnel — including mathematicians, doctors, analysts and strategic experts from Portugal’s army, air force and navy.

Asked what other countries can do to bolster their own vaccination efforts, he did not hesitate to offer his best advice.

“They need to find people who are not politicians,” he said.

Before the pandemic, Portugal was fortunate to have a robust national vaccination program. It grew out of the country’s devastating experience battling polio, which was still affecting the country after Gouveia e Melo was born in 1960. He recalls when the daughter of a family friend fell ill from the disease and the suffering that followed.

Manuela Ivone da Cunha, a Portuguese anthropologist who has studied anti-vaccination movements, said that “vaccine doubters and anti-vaxxers are in the minority in Portugal, and they are also less vocal” than they are in many other countries.

Leonor Beleza, a former Portuguese health minister who is now the president of the Champalimaud medical foundation, said Portugal’s rollout clearly benefited from the discipline stemming from the nomination of a military officer.

“He formulated a communications policy about what was happening that gave credibility and trust,” she said.

As the task force devised the most efficient system to safely stream the most people through inoculation centers, they used troops to build confidence in the system. People could see the vaccines were safe as soldier after soldier got shots.

At the same time, the task force made a point of showing doctors and nurses getting their shots, as well, to drive home the message of vaccine safety.

While other countries have featured doctors, nurses, police officers and soldiers in their vaccine campaigns, Gouveia e Melo said the consistency of the messaging was critical.

Still, as the campaign moved onto younger age groups over the summer — with less than half of the public vaccinated — there were signs that resistance was building.

In a submarine, the admiral said, you are in a slow ship trying to catch faster ships.

“You have to position yourself and be smart about how to do it,” he said, “and seize the opportunity when it arrives.”

In July, Gouveia e Melo seized such an opportunity.

Protesters were blocking the entrance to a vaccination center in Lisbon, so he donned his combat uniform and went there with no security detail.

“I went through these crazy people,” he said. “They started to call me ‘murderer, murderer.’”

As the television cameras rolled, the admiral calmly stood his ground.

“I said the murderer is the virus,” Gouveia e Melo recalled. The true killer, he said, would be people who live like it is the 13th century without any notion of reality.

“I attempted to communicate in a very true and honest way about all doubts and problems,” he said.

But not everybody welcomed his approach.

“We don’t really have a culture of questioning authorities,” said Laura Sanches, a clinical psychologist who has criticized Portugal’s mass vaccination rollout as too militaristic and called for it to exclude younger people.

“And the way he always presented himself in camouflage army suits — as if he was fighting a war — together with the language used by the media and the politicians, has contributed to a feeling of fear that also makes us more prone to obey and not question,” she said.

Still, the public messaging campaign — including an aggressive television and media blitz — made steady progress.

“In the beginning, we had some 40% who were unsure,” Gouveia e Melo said. Now, according to polls, he said, only 2.2% do not want the vaccine.

As he stepped down from the task force this week, the admiral said he felt the country was on a good course. But, ever the submariner, he cautioned that vigilance would remain essential to ensuring that this war was won.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Florida miner's lawsuit accuses JPMorgan of manipulating silver prices

Fri, October 1, 2021

FILE PHOTO: JPMorgan Chase & Co corporate headquarters in New York

LONDON (Reuters) - A Florida-based silver miner has filed a damages claim against JPMorgan , accusing the bank of manipulating the silver market to push prices so low the company's mine had to close.

The complaint, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, said Hidalgo Mining Corp raised $10.35 million from investors to finance a silver mine in Mexico that began production around 2012 and stopped in 2014.

Silver prices averaged around $31 an ounce in 2012 and $19 an ounce in 2014.

JPMorgan declined to comment.

Hidalgo's claim, seen by Reuters, uses as evidence information from an investigation by U.S. regulators which found that JPMorgan staff between 2008 and 2016 sent fake buy and sell orders into metals and Treasuries markets to move prices in their favour.

Traders say this technique, known as spoofing, is a short term trading tactic rather than a means of long-term price suppression.

JPMorgan last year agreed to pay more than $920 million to settle the investigation.

The bank also paid $15.7 million last week to settle a class action lawsuit brought by investors who said the manipulation had caused them losses.

(Reporting by Peter Hobson)

How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then ...
https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market


2016-08-04 · And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases …


Nelson Bunker Hunt: How two brothers from Texas drove the ...
https://newsrnd.com/business/2021-02-03-nelson-bunker-hunt--how-two...
2021-02-03 · Many Americans carried their silver cutlery to the pawnbroker to turn it into cash. But then the financial establishment put an end to the hustle and bustle: On "Silver

Nelson Bunker Hunt - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt
In the last nine months of 1979, the brothers profited by an estimated US$2-4 billion in silver speculation, with estimated silver holdings of 100 million troy ounces (3,100 t). [9] Primarily because of the Hunt brothers' accumulation of the precious metal , prices of silver futures contracts and silver bullion rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to $50 an ounce in …

FTC report reveals Big Tech's acquisition loopholes

Chairwoman Lina Khan is calling for Big Tech watchdogs to shut down these workarounds in the future.

Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Matt Wille
9.16.2021 1:58 PM

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a new report about Big Tech’s anticompetitive practices that manages to be somewhat disparaging to both corporations and its own ranks. In presenting the report, FTC chair Lina Khan said merger watchdogs, including the FTC itself, must do better to keep score of smaller acquisition transactions, hundreds of which have flown under the commission’s radar in the last decade.

“The study highlights the systemic nature of their acquisition strategy,” Khan said during the meeting (h/t Bloomberg). “Digital markets in particular reveal how smaller transactions invite vigilance.”

The study focuses on acquisitions made by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, though the FTC’s advice is not by any means limited to those specific companies. Khan’s public FTC meeting about the report concluded that watchdogs should be more assertive in closing loopholes that allow these transactions to slide by without investigation.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? — This week’s report is the culmination of research started by the FTC back in February 2020. The initiative’s goal was always very pointed: Quantify the many smaller acquisitions made by Big Tech companies between 2010 and 2019. Corporations are only required to report their acquisitions if they’re worth more than $92 million. This rule is taken advantage of more often than not so companies can keep their smaller deals out of the purview of watchdogs.

The FTC’s investigation found that, between the five of them, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft made 8616 not-reported acquisition transactions. Of those, 94 did actually go over the $92 million mark but met other criteria that let them slide by. Three more would’ve hit the threshold if they’d added debts and liabilities; nine more would’ve hit it if “contingent compensation to founders and key employees” had been added.

NO MORE ROOM TO SLIDE BY — The report, along with Khan’s guidance, follows the FTC’s larger tear against Big Tech. The FTC is no longer willing to allow these enormous technology companies to wield their power unchecked.

That’s not going to let up any time soon. FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, who President Biden appointed earlier this year, has made it her express mission to bring more balance to the tech world. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse,” Khan said in a statement at the time of her confirmation.

As Khan stated in the public meeting about this report, it will now be up to the FTC to ensure the next decade doesn’t follow suit. Let’s hope watchdogs take Khan’s missive to heart.

 CRYPTOCURRENCY NEWS

IMF: Growing cryptocurrency adoption poses financial stability challenges

Jordan
Major

The rapid development and growing adoption of crypto assets represent a threat to financial stability, according to the latest Global Financial Stability Report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published on October 1.

Indeed, three IMF officials, Dimitris Drakopoulos, Fabio Natalucci, and Evan Papageorgiou, stated in a chapter of the report titled “The Crypto Ecosystem and Financial Stability Challenges” that as crypto assets gain traction, authorities must step up their efforts to protect investors. 

The IMF commented:

“Despite potential gains, the rapid growth and increasing adoption of crypto assets also pose financial stability challenges.” 

They added: 

“In emerging markets, the advent of crypto assets has benefits but can accelerate cryptoisation and circumvent exchange and capital control restrictions. Increased trading of crypto-assets in these economies could lead to destabilizing capital flows.”

Crypto tool for cross border payments

Related

‘Uptober’ pulls $160 billion into the crypto market as central bank rates fall furtherBitcoin eyes $45,000 as analysts predict a rebound in Q4El Salvador officially starts historic Bitcoin mining from volcanic energy

In particular, technology based on crypto assets can be used as a tool for making cross-border payments that are both quicker and more affordable. Thus, individuals may convert bank deposits into stablecoins that provide immediate access to a wide variety of financial goods from digital platforms as well as fast currency conversion. 

Moreover, according to the report, decentralized finance may serve as a foundation for the development of financial services that are more creative, inclusive, and transparent.

The IMF declared:

“Crypto-assets offer a new world of opportunities: Quick and easy payments. Innovative financial services. Inclusive access to previously “unbanked” parts of the world. All are made possible by the crypto ecosystem. But along with the opportunities come challenges and risks.”

By way of illustration, the crypto ecosystem faces operational and financial integrity risks from crypto asset providers, investor protection concerns regarding crypto-assets and digital currency exchanges, and reserve and transparency deficiencies for certain stable currencies.

Lawmakers should establish global rules 

Thus, the IMF argued policymakers should establish worldwide regulations for crypto-assets and strengthen their monitoring capabilities by solving data shortages. As the importance of stablecoins expands, laws must keep pace with the dangers they pose and the economic services they serve. 

For example, emerging economies confronted with the threat of cryptoisation should bolster macroeconomic policies and explore the advantages of central bank digital currency issuance.

IMF concerned about Bitcoin becoming legal tender

Meanwhile, in a blog post published on August 29, the International Monetary Fund expressed worry about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies becoming national currencies. 

It seems that the IMF is worried about the increasing number of nations, such as El Salvador, who recognize Bitcoin as their national currency and how this may impact their global operations.

Watch the video: Global Financial Stability Report Chapter 2: The Crypto Ecosystem and Financial Stability Challenges

Israel escalating abuse against Palestinians in Hebron: PLO

PLO accuses Israel of subjecting Palestinians in Hebron to harsh life and depriving them of basic needs

Awad Rajoub |02.10.2021


RAMALLAH, Palestine

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Saturday accused Israel of escalating its abuses against 3,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank city of Hebron to pave way for their eventual displacement.

Hebron is witnessing "an escalation in attacks on citizens and their properties in an attempt to intimidate them…to eventually displace them from their lands in favor of expanding (its illegal) settlements, "the PLO’s National Center for the Defense of Land said in a report.

“The threats of the occupation and its settlement ambitions affect the residents in an area of about 38,500 dunams where more than 3,000 citizens reside,” it added.

A dunam equals 1,000 square meters.

The PLO accused Israel of subjecting Palestinians in Hebron -- especially those in Yatta district -- to harsh life and depriving them of basic needs to conduct “ethnic cleansing using various means including hiring settlers to carry out this task under the protection of the occupation army."

Last week, the PLO warned of Israeli plans to consolidate its settlements in the occupied West Bank by building synagogues. It mentioned a number of villages and ruins mostly affected by the Israeli violations.

On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid termed an Israeli settler attack on Palestinians in Hebron, in which 12 people were injured, as “terror”.

Attackers, who even stabbed some of the goats of Palestinian farmers in the area, also threw stones at Palestinian houses and vehicles.

Meanwhile, left-wing Knesset member Ofer Kassif shared a video clip on his Twitter account showing a number of dead sheep bearing stab wounds caused by sharp tools and knives used by settlers.

Israeli and Palestinian estimates indicate that there are about 650,000 settlers in West Bank settlements, including occupied Jerusalem, living in 164 settlements and 116 outposts.

Under international law, all Jewish settlements in occupied territories are considered illegal.

*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar

US, UK condemn Israeli settler attack on Palestinian village in South Hebron Hills

Masked Israeli settlers getting ready to attack Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills.

RAMALLAH, Saturday, October 02, 2021 (WAFA) – The United States and the United Kingdom have condemned an attack carried out by colonial Israeli settlers on Tuesday evening in which 12 Palestinian civilians were injured, including a 3-year-old boy, in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank.

James Cleverly, the UK Minister of State for Middle East and North Africa, condemned the attack in a tweet. "The UK condemns this violent act against a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills by settlers on 28 Sept," Cleverly tweeted. "Israel must tackle this problem and protect Palestinians," he added.

The US government also condemned the attack. "The U.S. government strongly condemns the acts of settler violence that took place against Palestinians in villages near Hebron in the West Bank on September 28," a US Embassy spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNN.

On Tuesday afternoon, dozens of masked Israelis, marking the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, threw stones at Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. The rocks smashed cars and injured at least 12 Palestinians including Mohammad Bakr Hussein, aged three.

In videos from the scene, Israeli settlers can be seen breaking Palestinian car windows and hurling stones at Palestinian homes.

The confrontations took place near the small Palestinian shepherding village of al-Mufaqara, a cluster of homes located close to two illegal Israeli outposts, Avigayil and Havat Maon.

The left-wing NGO Peace Now called the attack a "pogrom." According to another Israeli human rights group, Breaking the Silence, while incidents like the one on Tuesday represent one of the worst acts of settler violence in the area for years, other types of intimidation against local Palestinians, like stealing goats and sheep, polluting water cisterns, and attacking children on their way to school, are an almost daily occurrence.

Human rights groups say settlers suspected of violence against Palestinians are rarely arrested or detained, and by Friday evening up to four of the five detained in connection with Tuesday's attack had been released, according to Israeli media reports.

M.N./M.K.

More than 17,000 deaths caused by police have been misclassified since 1980

October 01, 2021
Martin Kaste

After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., news organizations started to keep their own tallies of deaths, which turned out to be higher than the government's numbers. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Deaths involving police have been greatly undercounted in the United States, and African American people die in such encounters at 3.5 times the rate of whites, according to a new analysis by public health researchers.

In an article published Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet, researchers found that deaths from police violence between 1980 and 2018 were misclassified by 55.5% in the U.S. National Vital Statistics System, which tracks information from death certificates.

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"For most causes of death, the death certificate filled out by a physician is sort of the gold standard," says Chris Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who is one of the study's authors. But he says that in this area, the certificates seem to fall short. "There is a pretty systematic underrecording of police violence deaths. "

That realization isn't entirely new. After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., news organizations started to keep their own tallies of police-related deaths, which turned out to be higher than the government's numbers.

What Murray and his co-authors have done, though, is measure the discrepancy between independent tallies and the government data, and project it back in time.

"We've used those relationships of what fraction get underreported to go back and infer, for example, in the 1980s, what was the likely number of police violence deaths," Murray says.

The researchers based their inferences on numbers from three open-source databases: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Guardian's The Counted, which they compared with the data from the death certificates.

They calculate that the death certificates misclassified the cause of death on more than 17,000 such deaths since 1980.

"If it's legit, it's pretty cool how they can take existing data from a short time frame and work backwards," says Justin Nix, associate professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska.

But as a criminologist who studies shootings by police, Nix has reservations about the underlying data.

"My concerns with this paper are the same as many that use these crowd-sourced databases," he says. He has documented cases where the databases count, for example, domestic violence by off-duty officers as police killings.

"I'm not saying we don't need to track that in these sorts of databases, but I'm just saying that all police killings are not created equally," he says.

"I think there's definitely issues around exactly the criteria used," says the IHME's Murray. "I think that's an important question, given that we're looking at multiple sources. [But] I don't think it's really influencing the time-trend we're seeing. In other words, the numbers are going up, regardless."

The study shows the death rate in these encounters dropping in the 1980s, then generally rising again since about 2000.

The article also highlights the disparity in the mortality rate for African-Americans, which it says is 3.5 times higher than that of whites.

The article suggests the disparity is caused by "systemic racism in policing," but it doesn't specify how that happens. Specifically, it doesn't address whether police are more likely to use lethal force against African-Americans or whether nonpolicing factors lead African-Americans to have more encounters with police.

Murray says this analysis doesn't answer that.

"I don't think from a scientific point of view, we have enough information here to parse out how much of this is, you know, basic differences in where people live, what sort of disadvantage they have, versus the actual specific actions of the police," he says.

But as a public health expert, Murray says the more we know about these deaths, the easier it will be to find policy solutions.

"It's the old saw: You manage what you measure. And so we've got to do a better job of tracking in what's actually happening," he says.

Copyright NPR 2021.

Related:

Fatal Police Shootings Of Unarmed Black People Reveal Troubling Patterns

Law Professor: Police Hold 'Extraordinary' Power Over Black People In Traffic Stops

'Mothers of Gynecology' monument honors enslaved Black women who were tortured to help advance science


Christine Fernando and Javonte Anderson, USA TODAY
Fri, October 1, 2021, 4:03 AM·8 min read


Pieced together from a mixture of recycled copper, brass and bronze metals and standing nearly 15 feet tall, a new monument in Montgomery, Alabama, honors the legacy of three enslaved women whose suffering helped advance modern medicine.

The monument, entitled "Mothers of Gynecology," features statues of three women--Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy--who were unwillingly experimented on by a white physician. It was unveiled last week.

“They represent the strength and resilient spirit of Black women,” said Michelle Browder, the artist who created the monument. “ We can’t let history forget their sacrifice and their contributions to medicine.”

Just a few blocks from the monument, under the shade of an oak tree at the Alabama State House, stands a statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the doctor who experimented on their bodies. Without giving consent and without receiving anesthesia to numb the pain, these enslaved women suffered to bolster his reputation.

The statues of the women stand as a reminder of the pain Sims inflicted on enslaved Black women but also of a larger story of how Black women have been harmed throughout the history of reproductive science, experts said.

The three sculptures are welded together with all recycled materials, including door hinges, crews and surgical equipment. Bicycle chains are used for the cornrows.

“We used only discarded objects that symbolize how Black women have been treated in this country,” Browder said.

“I look at the objectification of women and how our bodies have been used to cleanse and cure women of all races. I look at them as being the strength and backbone of women’s health and gynecology.”

Sims, himself a slaveholder, is heralded as a pioneer for American medicine, often referred to as the father of modern gynecology.

“He gets the accolades, he has the statue, the hospital named after him, but it was because of these women’s Black bodies,” Browder said. “He’s the so-called father of gynecology, but what about these women? It’s time to recognize them and celebrate their strength.”

Lucy, from left, Anarcha and Betsey statues represent the "Mothers of Gynecology" at The More Up Campus in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021.

Sims’ unethical experimentation on Black women

Much of Sims’ work centered around vesicovaginal fistula, which results from a tear from the bladder to the vagina following labor and causes urinary leakage, according to a 1993 paper on Sims in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Unable to work or have more children in their condition, enslaved Black women with vesicovaginal fistulae were brought to Sims by slave-owners in hopes of a cure so that they could retain their economic value, said Nicole Maskiell, an assistant history professor at the University of South Carolina

Sims experimented on at least 11 enslaved Black women, many of them teenagers, without anesthesia in the mid-1800s, Maskiell said. After refining his technique, Sims began offering the procedure to white women under anesthesia.

One of the Black women, Lucy, endured “excruciating pain" during an hour-long surgery, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics. But the operation failed, and Lucy nearly died after becoming “extremely ill with fever resulting from blood-poisoning.”

“Lucy’s agony was extreme,” Sims wrote in his autobiography, "The Story of My Life." “She was much prostrated, and I thought that she was going to die.”

Anarcha endured at least 30 painful surgeries until in 1849 Sims successfully completed the procedure, according to the journal. These procedures were so painful that Sims had other men hold the Black women down. When they became too gruesome, the men began refusing to participate and the enslaved women were forced to hold each other down, Maskiell said.

Sims’ defenders say he was merely a product of his time, but historians today have raised concerns over whether the women he experimented gave consent -- or if they even could.

Details of the statue during the reveal of the "Mothers of Gynecology" statues at The More Up Campus in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021.

The women were not asked if they agreed to the surgeries, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics, and Sims instead got permission from their slaveholders.

"These experiments were done under severe coercion,” Maskiell said. “This man had power over these women's lives in a way we can't fully comprehend today.”
Long history of injustice in reproductive science

Sims is just one chapter of a larger history of Black women being harmed in the evolution of reproductive science, historians said.

In the 19th century, most Caesarean sections in the South were performed on Black women, Sharla Fett, a history professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, said in a March interview with USA TODAY. At the time, the operation was “usually fatal for either mother or infant, and sometimes both,” Fett wrote in her award-winning book, “Working Cures.”

These experiments on enslaved Black women “wouldn't have been done on white women because they would have been considered too risky.”

Much of our knowledge of reproductive science was built on unethical experimentation on Black women, Maskiell said. But that knowledge was also weaponized against Black women. For example, enslaved women who ran away could be punished through physical scarring, often affecting their reproductive capabilities.

Civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer spoke openly about a white doctor taking away her ability to have children when in 1961 she was given a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent. She became one of history’s best-known examples of commonplace forced sterilizations of Black women in many Southern states, Maskiell said.

Myisha S. Eatmon, an assistant history professor at the University of South Carolina, said forced sterilizations of Black women occurred in North Carolina in her grandmother’s and mother’s generations.

“Black women have been used to advance the medical field as subjects,” she said. “They are used and exploited for certain things and then they are cast aside or thrown away or abused afterward by the very knowledge they helped create.”
Black women today have limited access to reproductive health

While reproductive science rests on the pain of Black women used in unethical experiments, Maskiell said the fruits of that knowledge remain less accessible to Black women today.

Pregnancy-related deaths among Black women was four to five times as high as rates for white women, according to a 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

Black women also have less access to prenatal care, contraceptive care and abortions, among a slew of other reproductive health access issues resulting from systemic racism in healthcare, Maskiell said. With current efforts to limit abortion access, including recent legislation in Texas prohibiting abortions as early as six weeks, she said these inequities may only get worse.

“Women of color are being adversely affected by policies that limit their access to life-saving technologies that stemmed from the forced labor of their foremothers,” Maskiell said. “That is just such a basic transgression of justice.”

Eatmon added that doctors are quick to dismiss Black women.

“The irony is that Black women's bodies are experimented on, but when Black women tell doctors what's wrong with them, they're not believed,” she said.
'Representatives of the forgotten'

Across from the New York Academy of Medicine in Central Park, a statue of Sims stood from the 1890s until 2018 as one of the best-known symbols of his stature in medical history. In 2017, a group of women stood in front of the statue in hospital gowns splattered with red paint, demanding the statue be removed. It came down in 2018.

People gather to watch as a statue of J. Marion Sims is taken down.

Sims had once been honored with at least a half dozen statues across the country. But a statue of Sims outside Jefferson University, his former medical school in Philadelphia, was moved to storage. A painting of his at the University of Alabama at Birmingham came down in 2006.

At the University of South Carolina, student-led efforts are pushing to remove Sims’ name from a residence hall in the women’s quad. Maskiell teaches lectures on Sims and has seen many of her students join the movement.

But his name still graces the dorm, as well as a road and a park named after him in South Carolina. Maskiell calls it a continued form of violence.

“His name is everywhere,” she said. “There's an enduring legacy, even though the names of women he brutalized are nowhere, and it is impossible to ignore the history even if I wanted to forget.”

When Maskiell found out about the monument to the mothers of gynecology in Montgomery, it was a moment of joy. It was the first monument to the women in Sims’ experiments that she had seen and she hopes a similar one may one day come to South Carolina, reminding people of the pain inflicted on Black women in the history of reproductive science.

Eatmon said she hopes the stories of the mother of gynecology, among others who were subjected to unethical experimentation, find their way into more classrooms.

“While we honor Lucy, Betsey and Anarcha, we have to remember that there are so many other Black people who've had similar experiences whose names are either forgotten or buried in the archives,” she said. “So when we honor some as individuals, we honor them as part of the collective, representatives of the forgotten."

Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern. Contact Javonte Anderson at janderson1@usatoday.com or follow him on Twitter at @JavonteA.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mothers of gynecology statues honor Black women tortured for science