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How bad is red meat for you? Health risks get star ratings

Agence France-Presse
October 10, 2022

Burgers on the grill

Research about what is healthy comes so thick and fast -- red meat can appear good for you one week, stroke-inducing the next -- that a confused public often struggles to keep up.

But a massive new review published on Monday aims to look beyond the latest study by evaluating the available evidence on a range of health topics and giving it a star rating.

The US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has become a global reference for health statistics, analysed the existing research in 180 areas to find out how much a particular risk factor, such as smoking, is linked to a health outcome, such as lung cancer.

The connection between smoking and lung cancer was given the highest five-star rating, as was the link between high blood pressure and heart disease, which means that the evidence is solid and unlikely to change in the future.

However nearly two thirds of the risk-outcome relationships received only one or two stars, suggesting that the proof for a lot of widely believed health advice is weaker than might have been thought.

For example, evidence for a connection between eating a lot of unprocessed red meat and having a stroke was given just one star, meaning there was "no evidence of an association", the study said.

The links between red meat and colon cancer, breast cancer, ischaemic heart disease and diabetes were all given two stars.

Christopher Murray, IHME director and a senior author of several of the "Burden of Proof" studies published in the journal Nature Medicine, said he was "very surprised at how many of the diet risk-outcome relationships are relatively weak."

Murray told a press conference that the meta-analysis was prompted by concern that "everyone follows the latest published study," even though the results often "swing from one end to the other".

The researchers looked at the existing research on the subjects, crunched the numbers to find consistency, then asked "what is the most conservative interpretation of the evidence?" Murray said.

What about vegetables?

The researchers investigated how eating more vegetables affected a range of health outcomes, looking at 50 studies encompassing 4.6 million participants across 34 countries.

Increasing the amount of vegetables people eat from zero to four a day led to a 23 percent decline in the risk of ischaemic stroke, with the connection getting three stars, IHME epidemiologist and study co-author Jeffrey Stanaway said.

The link between eating vegetables and type two diabetes received only one star.

But "even under the most conservative interpretation of the evidence, vegetable consumption is significantly associated with reduced chronic disease risk," Stanaway said.

Experts not involved in the research called it interesting, but warned against over simplification.

Kevin McConway, a statistician at the UK's Open University, worried that "a great deal is inevitably lost" when complex studies were boiled down to a star rating.

Duane Mellor, a dietician at the UK's Aston University, said the red meat research was "not that surprising" because it focused on unprocessed products.

"Typically it is intake of processed red meat, such as bacon and sausages, which have been associated with a higher risk of disease, which these papers did not report on," he said.

The IHME said it plans to update its findings as new research comes in, hoping the new tool will guide the choices of the public and policymakers.

It will also soon release findings about other health relationships including those involving alcohol, air pollution and further dietary factors.

The IHME said it plans to update its findings as new research comes in, hoping the new tool will guide the choices of the public and policymakers.

It will also soon release findings about other health relationships including those involving alcohol, air pollution and further dietary factors.

© 2022 AFP

Heat-resilient Red Sea reefs offer last stand for corals
Agence France-Presse
October 10, 2022

Striated surgeon fish (Ctenochaetus striatus) and royal angelfish (Pygoplites diacanthus) swim by a coral reef along Egypt's Red Sea coast Khaled DESOUKI AFP

Beneath the waters off Egypt's Red Sea coast a kaleidoscopic ecosystem teems with life that could become the world's "last coral refuge" as global heating eradicates reefs elsewhere, researchers say.

Most shallow water corals, battered and bleached white by repeated marine heatwaves, are "unlikely to last the century," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said this year.

That threatens a devastating loss for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who depend on the fish stocks that live and breed in these fragile ecosystems.

Even if global warming is capped within Paris climate goals of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, 99 percent of the world's corals would be unable to recover, experts say.

But Red Sea coral reefs, unlike those elsewhere, have proven "highly tolerant to rising sea temperatures," said Mahmoud Hanafy, professor of marine biology at Egypt's Suez Canal University.

Scientists hope that at least some of the Red Sea corals -- five percent of the total corals left worldwide -- could cling on amid what is otherwise a looming global collapse.

"There's very strong evidence to suggest that this reef is humanity's hope for having a coral reef ecosystem in the future," Hanafy said.

Eslam Osman from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia said: "It is crucial that we preserve the northern Red Sea as one of the last standing coral refuges, because it could be a seed bank for any future restoration effort."
Livelihoods for millions

The impacts of coral loss are dire: they cover only 0.2 percent of the ocean floor, but are home to at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, helping sustain livelihoods for half a billion people worldwide.

Global warming, as well as dynamite fishing and pollution, wiped out a startling 14 percent of the world's coral reefs between 2009 and 2018, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.

Graveyards of bleached coral skeletons are now left where once vibrant and species-rich ecosystems thrived.

Recent studies have shown the northern Red Sea corals are better able to resist the dire impact of heating waters.

"We have a buffer temperature before the coral sees bleaching," Osman said. "One, two, even three degrees (Celsius) of warming, we're still on the safe side."

Osman said one theory explaining the corals' apparent resilience to heat is due to "evolutionary memory" developed many thousands of years ago, when coral larvae migrated north from the Indian Ocean.

"In the southern Red Sea, coral larvae had to pass through very warm waters, which acted as a filter, only letting through species that could survive up to 32 degrees Celsius (89 degrees Fahrenheit)," Osman said.

However, scientists warn that even if Red Sea corals survive surging water temperatures, they risk being damaged from non-climate threats -- pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction including from costal development and mass tourism.

"When non-climate threats increase, the vulnerability to climate change increases as well," Osman said.

'Global responsibility'


Reefs off Egypt are hugely popular among divers, and some Red Sea dive sites are operating at up to 40 times their recommended capacity, Hanafy said.

Fishing, another huge pressure, must drop to a sixth of current rates to become sustainable, he said.

For Hanafy, protecting the reef is a "global responsibility" and one which Red Sea tourism businesses -- which account for 65 percent of Egypt's vital tourism industry -- must share.

Local professionals say they have already witnessed damage to parts of the delicate ecosystem.

One solution, Hanafy said, is for the environment ministry to boost protection over a 400-square-kilometer (154-square-mile) area of corals known as Egypt's Great Fringing Reef.

More than half already lies within nature reserves or environmentally-administered areas, but creating one continuous protected area would support the coral by "regulating activities and fishing, implementing carrying capacity plans and banning pollution", Hanafy said.


Further south, off Sudan, a near absence of tourism has shielded pristine corals from polluting boats and the wandering fins of divers.

But, despite their greater resilience, the corals are far from immune to climate change, and the reefs there have experienced several bleaching events over the past three decades.

For Sudan, a country mired in a dire economic and political crisis including a military coup last year, monitoring the coral is "difficult" without funding, Sudan's Higher Council for the Environment and Natural Resources said.

Off both the Egyptian and Saudi coasts, corals face the threats of coastal development, including sewage and sedimentation from construction runoff, Osman warned.

The great irony, he said, is that, while the natural wonders of the Red Sea corals that have drawn tourists and developers, the increased man-made pressures are in turn accelerating their destruction.

© 2022 AFP

To save California coasts, scientists turn to the humble oyster

Agence France-Presse
October 10, 2022

Scientists hope reef balls like these, in waters near Chula Vista, California, will ultimately help protect the coast from erosion made worse by climate change 

Robyn Beck AFP/File

There are no pearls growing on the oyster reefs in San Diego Bay, but scientists hope they will yield an even more valuable treasure: protection against coastal erosion wrought by rising sea levels.

Thousands of the tiny mollusks have begun growing on the artificial reefs dropped in the bay as part of a plan to mitigate damage in California's far south.

"We look at numerous different ways to help combat sea-level rise, and these reef balls are one of the tools in our toolbox to do that," Eileen Maher, director of environmental conservation at the Port of San Diego, told AFP.

The port implanted 360 structures last December, along a peninsula wedged between the salt marshes of Southern California and the Coronado peninsula -- home to the naval air base that inspired "Top Gun."

These hemispheres weigh 300 pounds (135 kilograms) and look like huge thimbles.

They are made from a mixture of cement, sand and crushed oyster shells -- a crucial ingredient that attracts living oysters to make their home there.

After 10 months in the water, the reefs are covered with a greenish silt, which hides thousands of still-microscopic oysters, says Maher.

Eventually, the dozen scientists working on this pilot project hope to see the formation of real oyster reefs, which they believe will have a genuine impact on their local environment.

Miniature filters

The reefs are much more than a natural bulwark against tidal erosion; their bivalve occupants are all miniature filtration plants that are essential to the marine ecosystem.


That's because to capture the nutrients an oyster needs to survive, each one filters around 50 gallons (190 liters) of water every day, said Maher.

"They help remove that turbidity out of the water and help clean the water, which will provide additional benefits to eelgrass, the submerged aquatic vegetation," she said.

"The more eelgrass sits in the bay, the less chance there is of the shoreline eroding, because it helps -- any plant will help prevent shorelines from eroding."

And like the oysters, these long-filament seagrass beds will also provide a crucial food source for the 80 species of fish and 300 varieties of birds that make their home in the area.

Flooding and erosion

By 2050, sea levels around California are expected to have risen 20 centimeters (eight inches), according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study released early this year.

This would drastically increase the frequency of flooding on the West Coast, which will also occur more often due to storms and heavy rainfall events exacerbated by human-caused climate change.

And rising seas will worsen the erosion that threatens California's coastline.

Around San Diego, this future is already apparent.

To the south, the streets of Imperial Beach are regularly flooded during high tides. An hour's drive to the north, the rail line that carries the "Pacific Surfliner" has just been closed at San Clemente, where the rocks that support it are sinking because of erosion.

In this context, "We have to make sure that we're resilient," said Jason Giffen, vice president of planning and environment for the Port of San Diego.

The $1.3 million oyster reef project is being evaluated over five years. Similar schemes have been established in San Francisco and New York.

The oyster barriers work only in areas of shallow water, Giffen said.

Elsewhere, the port is exploring other solutions.

In the northern part of the bay, small hollow reinforcements have been attached to the piers.

They not only offer stability but provide refuge to algae, fish and shellfish, helping to bolster biodiversity.

Currently, about 70 percent of the shoreline around San Diego Bay has some type of artificially contructed rock protection.

"We can look at replacing in the long run that infrastructure with something that's more biologically and environmentally sensitive and actually would be a value-add in terms of environmental quality," said Giffen.

Air pollution particles found in babies in the womb for first time
2022/10/10

As air pollution remains a massive health problem for cities around the world (such as Kathmandu, pictured), researchers say they are now seeing particles of soot in unborn babies. Aryan Dhimal/ZUMA Wire/dpa

Air pollution particles can reach babies in the womb, a new study suggests. Researchers found that soot nanoparticles can cross the placenta and get into organs of foetuses.

Experts from the University of Aberdeen and Hasselt University, Belgium, said their finding was "especially concerning" because key organ development occurs when babies are growing in the uterus.

Researchers examined 60 mothers and their babies in Aberdeen and the Grampian region in Scotland. They also analysed tissue samples from 36 foetuses which had been aborted between seven and 20 weeks of gestation.

The team found evidence of "black carbon particles" - also known as soot particles - in umbilical cord blood, which shows that the particles can cross the placenta.

Soot particles were present in all mothers and newborns. The level of particles found was linked to the amount of air pollution the mother was exposed to during pregnancy.

The research team also found the presence of such particles in the livers, lungs and brains of the aborted foetuses. Black carbon particles were found in all tissue samples analysed.

The scientists warned that the particles can be seen in foetuses as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. This is the first time it has been shown that black carbon nanoparticles can be found in developing foetuses.

Black carbon is one of the many particles and gases that are emitted when diesel, coal and other biomass fuels are burned. It is part of the fine particulate air pollution known as PM2.5.

"We found that maternally inhaled carbonaceous air pollution particles can cross the placenta and then translocate into human foetal organs during gestation," the authors wrote in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.

"These findings are especially concerning because this window of exposure is key to organ development."

Professor Tim Nawrot, from Hasselt University, said: "We know that exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and infancy has been linked with still birth, pre-term birth, low weight babies and disturbed brain development, with consequences persisting throughout life.

"We show in this study that the number of black carbon particles that get into the mother are passed on proportionally to the placenta and into the baby.

"This means that air quality regulation should recognise this transfer during gestation and act to protect the most susceptible stages of human development."

Professor Paul Fowler, from the University of Aberdeen, added: "We all worried that if nanoparticles were getting into the foetus, then they might be directly affecting its development in the womb.

"What we have shown for the first time is that black carbon air pollution nanoparticles not only get into the first and second trimester placenta, but then also find their way into the organs of the developing foetus, including the liver and lungs.

"What is even more worrying is that these black carbon particles also get into the developing human brain - this means that it is possible for these nanoparticles to directly interact with control systems within human foetal organs and cells."

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

Editorial: Democrats should scuttle the debt ceiling before America hits the fiscal brink

2022/10/10

Congressional Democrats should get rid of the debt ceiling before a possible takeover by Republicans. - Richie Lomba/Dreamstime/TNS

They aren’t saying it publicly, but behind the scenes, congressional Republican officials and business leaders are bracing for the nightmare scenario of a debt ceiling crisis potentially worse than the one in 2011 if the GOP retakes the House this year. That’s according to an Axios piece that pays special attention to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who could be in line for a key budgetary post in a Republican-led house. Smith tells the website bluntly that he thinks holding the nation’s fiscal stability hostage is a valid political strategy to force policy changes on the Biden administration.

Add it to the long list of reasons a Republican House takeover could be disastrous for America — though that danger would be mitigated if Democrats were to finally get rid of the whole debt ceiling concept now, while they control Congress.

The debt ceiling is the amount of money the treasury is allowed under law to borrow to cover America’s financial obligations. The ceiling has routinely been raised over the years as those obligations have increased, a process that used to be uncontroversial. That has changed in today’s deeply divided Congress, with Republicans occasionally seeking leverage over Democratic presidents by threatening to refuse to raise the limit when it’s needed.

It’s important to stress (because Republican fiscal warriors love to obfuscate this fact) that refusing to raise the debt ceiling is not the same as refusing to take on additional debt. It’s more akin to refusing to pay a loan or a credit card bill for spending that has already happened. That would mean a U.S. default on its financial obligations, which would very likely lead to a global financial meltdown.

Even talking about that is the height of political irresponsibility. But Republicans came close to actually doing it in 2011, in their quest to stymie then-President Barack Obama at every turn. Although a last-minute agreement was finally hammered out to raise the ceiling so America could pay its bills, the mere threat of a federal default caused turmoil in the financial markets, resulted in the nation’s first credit downgrade in history, and added billions to the cost of government borrowing.

In the Axios piece, Republican sources and others questioned whether House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, should the Republican become House speaker, would have the will to stand up to the bomb-throwers in his own caucus (as then-Speaker John Boehner finally did in 2011) to avert a debt ceiling crisis. The signs aren’t good.

Some have called for removing the debt ceiling altogether, since it serves no real purpose today except as a recurring fiscal time bomb. Facing the real chance that Congress next year will be controlled by a radicalized GOP willing to burn down America’s fiscal house in order to burn the Biden administration, Democrats should get rid of this threat now, once and for all.

———

© St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Data shows Wisconsin Democrats are seeing dramatic election enthusiasm ahead of the Nov. vote: party chief

Raw Story - Yesterday
By Sarah K. Burris

GOP

Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday, Wisconsin Democratic Party Ben Wikler cited data from the 2018 election to compare to this year's midterm vote. According to him, they've already surpassed their goals for participation.

Typically during midterm elections, the president's party flops. So, in 2018, that was supposed to be a horrific election for Donald Trump. But according to Wikler, the numbers are favoring the Democrats more in the state there than when Trump was in office.

IN OTHER NEWS: Ron Johnson whines: 'People in Wisconsin think I'm a tool of Vladimir Putin'

Related video: Panelist: Wisconsin Senate race a "cautionary tale about the dangers of being held captive" by your base

Panelist: Wisconsin Senate race a "cautionary tale about the dangers of being held captive" by your base

View on Watch   Duration 8:23

"You know, Wisconsin-ites, like most Americans, love freedom. When someone takes away a basic, fundamental freedom, for more than half the population, it doesn't sit well," said Wikler of the Supreme Court decision to eliminate Roe v. Wade. "We have seen people come out of the woodwork, run for office because our so infuriated by what Republicans are doing in our state. Volunteers, we begin our midterm records from 2018 hands down for knocks on the door, phone calls, text messages, and everything else."

He also noted what other states are seeing as well, that there has been a dramatic increase in voter registration among women.

"And we see, among voters, a huge gender gap in who is registering to vote. Normally a midterm election goes against the president's party," said Wikler. "But this is not a normal moment. I think the reaction to the Republican attack on the freedom to decide what to do with people's own bodies, the decisions about when and whether to start a family, those things are producing a massive, massive backlash that has rendered a governor's race and a senate race that are now 'coin tosses' in the state of Wisconsin."

IN OTHER NEWS: The 2022 midterm elections — and what the data really says

There will be a huge need for turnout in early voting and on election day, but Wikler thinks Democrats have a very real shot at winning.

The pandemic changed how we work. Now, mothers want it to stay that way

Kiernan Green - 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Brianna Shereck was at odds between getting ahead in her career and caring for her two pre-school aged children.

"If you've ever had kids in daycare, you're familiar that they get sick all of the time," said Shereck. In 2019, she took five weeks away from her job in Victoria's tourism industry to look after her kids.

Despite the ease with which she said she could fulfil her role as marketing co-ordinator from home, Shereck said her company barred her from working remotely. She was let go following the pandemic's blow to Victoria's tourism industry. Today, she works entirely remotely for a Saskatoon-based retirement firm.

Shereck said neither she nor her husband, who works remotely in tech, could go back to traditional work while they have young children.
Pandemic introduced positive changes

Before the pandemic, she said there was "unspoken confusion" if she needed to work from home for the sake of her children. Now, Shereck said there's a better understanding about the lack of child-care options and the need to work remotely.

"I feel like there's been a massive social shift. People understand that you also have a family."

The number of Canadians working exclusively from home fell from almost 25 per cent at the beginning of 2022 to nearly 17 per cent in August, according to that month's Statistics Canada labour force survey.

In August 2020, a third of the Canadian workforce was concerned about returning to normal working conditions, according to StatsCan — of that number, half were mothers whose youngest children were younger than six.

As many Canadian workplaces mandate their employees to return to the office, Odette Hutchings, chief operating officer for the Women in Capital Markets (WCM) network, said they shouldn't miss an unprecedented opportunity to make the inclusion of new mothers in the workforce a legacy of the pandemic.

WCM's The Future of Work in Finance Report, conducted throughout February and March, found that work flexibility was a critical need for those caring for children under six years old. Sixty-seven per cent of 417 surveyed finance workers — 82 per cent of whom were women contacted through WCM's online network — said they found remote work allowed them to have flexibility without sacrificing productivity.

"Working from home helps women balance those responsibilities while still being able to perform their job at the same level," said Hutchings. "We're really at this golden opportunity to make workplaces more inclusive, more flexible and more welcoming to all kinds of people."


In August 2020, a third of the Canadian workforce was concerned about returning to normal working conditions, according to Statistics Canada. Of that number, half were mothers whose youngest children were younger than six.© Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Having young kids makes return to work difficult

A Sept. 15 study from Canadian economics research organization the C.D. Howe Institute titled Uneven Odds: Men, Women and the Obstacles to Getting Back to Work with Kids, showed that having young children made the search for employment more difficult for mothers than fathers.

Women with two-year-old children were six per cent less likely to reenter the workforce than those with kids seven and older. For men, the age of their children was largely irrelevant to their reentry into the workforce.

Tiffany Cowper, a Victoria mother on maternity leave until November 2023, is worried about returning to work given the extra responsibility she's assumed for her three step children and her newborn.

"Before the pandemic hit, your kids are used to only having this percentage of access to you. When the pandemic hit, it didn't increase a little bit — I was with them all day, everyday," said Cowper, referring to the time she spent helping the kids with remote school and nightly homemade dinners.

What's more, the rising cost of living in Victoria could make returning to work more expensive than it's worth for her family of five.

The cost of food, shelter, transportation and other expenses included in Canada's consumer price index increased seven per cent in August over last year, according to StatsCan.

"If we're going to be spending more on me going into the office, in addition to full-time daycare, we might be putting out more than we're getting or breaking even. It seems to cost time and money just to go back to work. At that point, is it worth it?" asked Cowper. "It's a really hard position to be in."

Although her office doesn't endorse remote work, Cowper said being able to work from home would be "the absolute best case scenario."

Companies should model shift

According to Hutchings, the first step to ensuring mothers are included in the workforce is to avoid remote or hybrid work options that are tied to complex permission procedures.

"If these flexible work arrangements are so complicated to access that employees aren't making use of them, then obviously that's not useful," she said.

Parental leave should also be equalized for both caretakers, said Hutchings, noting that when mothers have access to longer parental leave benefits than fathers, it implies that women are expected to take time off at a higher rate than men.

For organizations to truly embrace the shift, company leadership needs to not only enforce equal use of parental leave and flexible or remote work options, but model its use themselves, she said.

"It's not enough to say [mothers] can access flexible work, meanwhile all of the leadership are going in five days a week."

Likewise, Hutchings said management needs to limit the amount of correspondence that occurs after work hours, when caregivers are typically occupied with home life.

"We have an opportunity to make a better working life for all people going forward," said Hutchings. "But if we don't take the opportunity now, we could really see that slip away from us."

Columbus was a thug. But the church was the big problem

Celia Wexler, Salon
October 10, 2022

Portrait of a man, said to be Christopher Columbus (MetMuseum)

Despite my Italian heritage, I don't understand the adulation that some Italian-Americans continue to bestow on Christopher Columbus, who, as history demonstrates, was less a hero than a thug, exploiting and enslaving indigenous peoples.

But the real culprit behind the subjugation of non-European peoples across the globe wasn't an individual, or even a monarch. It was the Roman Catholic Church. It's time the church owned that grievous mistake.

As early as the 15th century, as European nations were making voyages of discovery, Catholic popes gave them permission to subjugate and steal. The most significant of these papal permission slips was the Doctrine of Discovery. A decree Issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI, it essentially told Catholic countries that any lands they "discovered" were theirs to keep and exploit, provided the inhabitants were not Christians but heathens ripe for conversion.

Popes issue lots of decrees, but this one stuck. The Doctrine of Discovery proved to be very popular with monarchs across Europe, Catholic and Protestant alike. Its impact has been felt in Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas. The idea was simple and attractive: Plant a flag and a cross on a land not claimed by any other Christian ruler, and it's yours.

The doctrine also served to legitimize the seizure of lands by white American settlers. In considering an Illinois property dispute that came before the Supreme Court in 1823, Chief Justice John Marshall referred to the discovery doctrine to rule that Native Americans couldn't sell their lands — since they hadn't "owned" them in the first place.

"All the nations of Europe, who have acquired territory on this continent, have asserted in themselves, and have recognised [sic] in others, the exclusive right of the discoverer to appropriate the lands occupied by the Indians," Marshall wrote. When the U.S. became independent from Britain, he concluded, it inherited all the land the British crown had claimed.

Even the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg invoked the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery in a 2005 ruling against the Oneida tribe of New York, holding that honoring its land claims would be "disruptive."

In 2005, even the sainted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled against the Oneida tribe, which had repurchased some of its tribal lands from the city of Sherrill, New York, and then argued that these properties should be exempt from city taxes. The Oneidas once held six million acres in New York, but agreed to a treaty ceding nearly all their land to the state.

Writing for the court's 8-1 decision, Ginsburg concluded that siding with the Oneida tribe in the 21st century would be too "disruptive," given the town's "distinctly non-Indian character." Her decision cites the Doctrine of Discovery, essentially conceding that longstanding oppression can acquire the status of legal precedence.

But stolen lands don't tell the whole story. The idea that indigenous peoples were less fully human than white settlers clearly informed how the Canadian and U.S. governments treated Native American children. As we have learned in recent years, thousands of Native children were ripped from their families and forced to "assimilate" to white society in a system of cruel and sadistic boarding schools. More than 400 such schools existed, from 1819 until the last were closed in 1969, and about 150 of those were run by either the Catholic church or various Protestant denominations. Some victims of this abusive system have spoken out, but the true extent of the harms done to Native children in this country have yet to be fully investigated.

Canada's church-run "residential schools," which operated well into the 20th century, were hotbeds of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the 150,000 children who were forcibly taken from their parents and effectively imprisoned in these schools were victims of "cultural genocide." More than 4,000 children went missing, and are now presumed to have died. Since 2021, hundreds of children have been found in unmarked graves on the grounds of some of these schools.

The evidence of abuse was so compelling that Pope Francis was forced to make an apology tour of Canada this summer. While there, the pope was repeatedly asked to repeal the Doctrine of Discovery. So far he has demurred.

The church is an institution whose brand is infallibility, so it's rare for it to own up to errors. The Vatican contends that later papal decrees and teachings have effectively revoked the Doctrine of Discovery. But it's clear its existence still has power.

Revoking the Doctrine would "absolutely make a difference," said Elsie Boudreau, a member of Alaska's Yup'ik people.

The Doctrine of Discovery, she said, was an effective tool "to justify the actions of people in power" who "erased our native culture" and identity as "a spiritual people interconnected with the land."

The presumption that Alaska Native peoples were "less than human" and "simple-minded" also made it easy for Alaskan villages to become "a dumping ground" for predatory priests, Boudreau charged, an accusation that appears to be borne out by media accounts. One of those priests began abusing her, she said, when she was 10 years old. The fact that the Doctrine of Discovery has never officially been revoked, she said, "is absolutely not OK."

Boudreau is not alone. In 2014, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents most Catholic nuns in the U.S., asked Pope Francis to formally repudiate the doctrine and to urge "settler nations" (which would include the U.S. and Canada) to revise any laws they have enacted over the centuries that relied on the doctrine's legitimacy.

Pope Francis has a historic opportunity to move the world's largest Christian denomination into the future. It's obvious that admitting that previous generations of popes and cardinals were wrong is not easy. But papering over past sins with more enlightened pronouncements and apologies clearly isn't enough. It's long past time for the church to face the painful truth and undo this hateful doctrine that has caused so much pain.

U$A

How a well-funded conservative alliance is leveraging controversy to pursue the real prize: school education funding

History News Network
October 10, 2022

(Shutterstock.com)

Just over a decade ago, the state of Texas was in the spotlight for its bitter disputes over social studies education, a recurring brawl that had national impact primarily because of the leverage the state wielded with textbook publishers. That leverage has abated, but like a fading star who refuses to leave the stage, the state is reviving its reactionary script with an even gaudier supporting cast.

Now, as then, the Texas State Board of Education is in the middle of the fight. With a current membership that has on occasion acted effectively on a bipartisan basis, the sad news now is that the Board was unable to resolve differences over the teaching of Texas history and voted eight to seven to delay new social studies standards that had previously been fast-tracked for consideration. The official reason for delaying the new standards was that the volume and grade sequence of topics for Texas history were insufficient or failed to deliver fully the message of Texas “exceptionalism.”

Democratic board members saw the official reason as a pretext for allowing the Board to put off implementation until after November, when more hard-right conservatives are favored to win seats now occupied by relatively moderate members. Outgoing member and Board secretary Georgina Cecilia Pérez, a Democrat from El Paso, fears the vote might have marked “the death of bipartisanship on the Board.” One professional historian who is an advisor to the Board said the delay was justifiable in order to expand Texas history topics, but he had “the impression” that an anticipated “shift in membership” was another reason.

The ascendancy of conservative extremists on the Board and in many local school districts is due largely to huge contributions from Christian nationalist PACs and prominent backers of school choice, especially investors in charter schools. With a rapidly expanding suburban population driving the need for more schools, charter backers, including out-of-state billionaires such as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and the Walton family, see opportunities for state-subsidized profit even as they compete increasingly with local school districts for state funds. In one El Paso-area SBOE race alone, charter school proponents contributed $200,000 to a candidate in a losing primary race. That candidate, a Democrat who was himself the founder of a charter school, was the rare non-Republican candidate to receive strong charter support.

The pro-charter PACs see more than profit in targeting suburban and vulnerable rural areas for expansion. Their motives can also be ideological. According to the website of the Texans for Educational Freedom PAC,

We are committed to fighting against Critical Race Theory and other anti-American agendas and curriculums. We will work to bring power back to the parents, and help elect leaders who are committed to getting back to the basics and keeping politics out of the classroom.

While the pro-charter PACs often support all kinds of “school choice” candidates, their money also goes to Christian nationalist candidates who bring much of the group pressure on local school systems and on the SBOE. School board meetings in areas with well-funded PACs—most notably Southlake’s Carroll ISD—often turn ugly, requiring the presence of security. Members of the Southlake group flood the SBOE with emails, most of them containing almost exactly the same wording. Right-wing churches and Patriot Mobile, “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider,” contribute even more money, time, and energy to further the shrill lobbying of Christian nationalist groups. The Southlake PAC began receiving a flood of donations after Southlake resident Dana Loesch, a former NRA spokesperson, went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News broadcast and, while condemning CRT, gave out the link to the PAC.

The engine driving both the fund-raising and the rhetoric is the all-purpose bugbear of “critical race theory,” increasingly augmented by the harsh condemnation of LGBTQ and transgender equality. One person almost certain to gain a seat on the SBOE in November exemplifies how the potent combination of far-right Christian nationalist views and lavish PAC support are transforming education in the state.

“After winning the primary in March, the frontrunner in the District 7 [SBOE] race is Julie Pickren, a former trustee for the Alvin Independent School District,” the Houston Chronicle reported. “Pickren was voted off that board last year after her participation in the protest at the U.S. Capitol was revealed—the basis of a campaign against her by the Brazoria County NAACP.”

Among those who testified against going forward with the proposed TEKS at an August 30 SBOE meeting, Pickren, like many who spoke, seemed to fall back on standard anti-Left, anti-government, anti-CRT, or even more generalized animus in their remarks:


In order for a child to be successful in what is now the fifth largest economy in the world because Texas is growing so rapidly and other economies are shrinking because of our great leadership—and because of other peoples’ not so great leadership—because they prefer socialism over free market capitalism—we have to train our children in who they are and what their culture is….
she told the Board.

A woman from Southlake, Jolyn Potenza, fixed on “globalism” as the main threat:

The TEKS provisions are slanted with a globalist view and not American exceptionalism.…It requires kids to learn history and government through a world globalist view that diminishes the value of our American legacy and culture…. Reject this radical overhaul, entirely.

Asked by moderate Republican member Matt Robinson, a generally soft-spoken physician from the Houston metro area, whether she could accept a view of America as a nation that, while imperfect, was at least relatively better than other great nations have been, Ms. Potenza replied: “

Do I think that America is completely 100 percent exceptional? Yes I do. Have we made mistakes? Yes, we have. But we are America, we have resolve, we have resiliency, and we bounce back. And we don’t cower, and we don’t cater, just because it hurts someone’s feelings—and look, we’re not gonna hug this one out.

Long before the hearing, Dr. Robinson, a vocal champion of local public school districts dealing with the charter threat, criticized Heritage Classical Charter School backer Stuart Saunders back in June for joining his brother in contributing $252,000 to SBOE candidates. “Now, whereas that’s undoubtedly legal, it really appears to be unethical—it appears like you’re trying to remake this Board after last summer when you were denied this charter school for the second time.” Dr. Robinson had by then already been redistricted out of his current seat, and will almost certainly be replaced by none other than Julie Pickren.

Sometimes appearing to occupy the center in SBOE debates, Republican member Will Hickman of Houston comes across as a thoughtful, committed, and articulate conservative who strongly supports school choice and just as firmly opposes CRT; but he also offers what seems to be a middle ground approach to the Board’s role in expanding charter schools. Although he has received almost $60,000 from the very conservative Texans for Educational Freedom PAC, whose larger donors include the Saunders brothers, Hickman believes the Board should be able to vote on every application to expand a charter’s campuses, not just on the charter’s original application to begin operations in the state. Democratic members have expressed a similar desire, including Georgina Cecilia Pérez and Dr. Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

“We should have the right to vote on charter expansions,” Hickman says, even if the charter company is already in place. “We see the charter one time when they come to Texas and we never see them again.” Charters receive the same head count money from the state that the local ISDs receive but have no local governance. He hopes the legislature will establish guidelines limiting charters to areas of geographical or programmatic need and require them to achieve positive track records before any expansions can be approved, thus providing a version of public oversight.

As for the core controversy in Texas over CRT, Hickman is straightforward and predictably conservative. Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King and civil rights legislation—all these “are not CRT” and should be included in the curriculum. But when it comes to systemic racism and its persistence into the present, he says “I don’t favor [teaching] that.” For Hickman, a lawyer who is familiar with critical legal theory, there is a bright red line between past de jure discrimination and current allegations of persistent systemic discrimination against Black people. For Hickman, the latter, at least in its CRT framework, is too reliant on disparities in outcomes as justification for actions benefiting one group of people. He sees this as the opposite of “Martin Luther King’s view that you judge individuals irrespective of race.” Criticism of the SAT and meritocracy in general are, he says, examples of how a focus on group outcomes and equity can diminish the importance of individual effort by prioritizing access over evidence of achievement.

Beyond questions of merit, and setting aside White grievance over perceptions of “blame” and “privilege,” many objections about equity and CRT really come down to money. Achieving actual equity in the face of systemic, embedded wrongs requires, in the view of CRT proponents, appropriately systemic measures, especially reparations. Yet these are opposed by the majority of Americans. As part of that opposition, one will hear cries of socialism, communism, fiscal ruin, the decline of both meritocracy and individual responsibility. And when you add White grievance, progressive demands, and the real pain and suffering of Black Americans, what curriculum can possibly be both truthful and acceptable, and how can teachers navigate it?

One response would be to set aside the theories and remedies, and the often emotional reactions to them, and teach the facts: the horrors and grave injustices of Black enslavement; the terrible Civil War that was fought to end it; the brutality, hope, and heartbreak of Reconstruction and Jim Crow; the courageous battles of the civil rights era and the real, but incomplete changes they brought; and, where there has been clear evidence of continuing racism in our institutions, make it known. Period.

John Willingham writes about Texas history, literature, and politics, including an upcoming paper in the April 2023 issue of Southwestern Historical Quarterly on slavery and the Texas Revolution. The following article is based on interviews with members of the Texas State Board of Education and on digital recordings of SBOE meetings.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

'Straight up fraud': Data confirms private insurers are stealing billions

Kenny Stancil, 

Common Dreams
October 10, 2022

Photo by Nicola Fioravanti on Unsplash

Insurance giants are exploiting Medicare Advantage—a corporate-managed program that threatens to result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare—to capture billions of dollars in extra profits, Saturday reporting by The New York Times confirmed.

"Medicare Advantage shouldn't exist."

The newspaper's analysis of dozens of lawsuits, inspector general reports, and watchdog investigations found that overbilling by Medicare Advantage (MA) providers is so pervasive it exceeds the budgets of entire federal agencies, prompting journalist Ryan Cooper to call the program "a straight up fraud scheme."

Nearly half of Medicare's 60 million beneficiaries are now enrolled in MA plans managed by for-profit insurance companies, and it is expected that most of the nation's seniors will be ensnared in the private-sector alternative to traditional Medicare by next year. Six weeks ago, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched an inquiry into "potentially deceptive" marketing tactics used by MA providers to "take advantage" of vulnerable individuals.

As the table below shows, almost every major player in the industry has been accused of fraud by a whistleblower or the U.S. government. In addition, the vast majority are engaged in rampant upcoding, or exaggerating patients' illnesses in order to reap more money from taxpayers—something they do while refusing to provide necessary care for tens of thousands each year.

Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which has has no connection with Kaiser Permanente, wrote on social media that "the move to privatize Medicare" has "been very profitable, in part because insurers are good at making their patients seem sicker."

Journalist Natalie Shure concurred, tweeting: "Privatized Medicare plans cherry pick healthier enrollees, fudge medical records to make them look as sick as possible, coax doctors into tacking on extra sham diagnoses to bill for, and pay themselves a profit on top of it. Medicare Advantage shouldn't exist."

"For all its faults, Medicare is a (nearly) universal program for 65+, with overhead hovering around 2%—far lower than its private counterparts," Shure added. "What inefficiencies did anyone think MA would be solving exactly[?]" she asked.

According to the Times, MA was created by congressional Republicans "two decades ago to encourage health insurers to find innovative ways to provide better care at lower cost."


Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, argued that the notion that private insurers would "provide more benefit for less money" than traditional Medicare "while taking a profit" is insane on its face.

"They innovate on other margins, namely by bending and breaking rules that determine how much money Medicare gives them, as such things are hard to detect," said Bruenig, "and we are now stuck in an endless cat and mouse enforcement game with them."

As the Times reported:

The government pays Medicare Advantage insurers a set amount for each person who enrolls, with higher rates for sicker patients. And the insurers, among the largest and most prosperous American companies, have developed elaborate systems to make their patients appear as sick as possible, often without providing additional treatment, according to the lawsuits.
As a result, a program devised to help lower health care spending has instead become substantially more costly than the traditional government program it was meant to improve.

[...]
The government now spends nearly as much on Medicare Advantage's 29 million beneficiaries as on the Army and Navy combined. It's enough money that even a small increase in the average patient's bill adds up: The additional diagnoses led to $12 billion in overpayments in 2020, according to an estimate from the group that advises Medicare on payment policies—enough to cover hearing and vision care for every American over 65.

Another estimate, from a former top government health official, suggested the overpayments in 2020 were double that, more than $25 billion.

Citing a KFF study which found that companies typically rake in twice as much gross profit from MA plans as from other types of insurance, the Times pointed out that the growing privatization of Medicare is "strikingly lucrative."

MA plans "can limit patients' choice of doctors, and sometimes require jumping through more hoops before getting certain types of expensive care," the newspaper noted. "But they often have lower premiums or perks like dental benefits—extras that draw beneficiaries to the programs. The more the plans are overpaid by Medicare, the more generous to customers they can afford to be."

"By exploiting and overbilling Medicare, these companies profit off the public. Think of how this money could have been better spent."

The MA program has grown in popularity, including in Democratic strongholds, over the course of four presidential administrations. Meanwhile, regulatory and legislative efforts to rein in abuses have failed to gain traction.

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), some of whom move between the agency and industry, have not been aggressive "even as the overpayments have been described in inspector general investigations, academic research, Government Accountability Office studies, MedPAC reports, and numerous news articles," the Times reported. "Congress gave the agency the power to reduce the insurers' rates in response to evidence of systematic overbilling, but CMS has never chosen to do so."

Ted Doolittle, who served as a senior official for CMS' Center for Program Integrity from 2011 to 2014, said that "it was clear that there was some resistance coming from inside" the agency. "There was foot dragging."

Almost 80% percent of U.S. House members, many of whom are bankrolled by the insurance industry, signed a letter earlier this year indicating their readiness "to protect the program from policies that would undermine" its stability.

David Moore, co-founder of Sludge, an independent news outlet focused on the corrupting influence of corporate cash on politics, observed on social media that "members of the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee could publicly on whether they think oversight of the insurance industry has been adequate."

However, Moore pointed out, committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) "has received $3.1 million from the insurance industry, the most in the House."

As the Times noted, "Some critics say the lack of oversight has encouraged the industry to compete over who can most effectively game the system rather than who can provide the best care."

"Medicare Advantage overpayments are a political third rail," Richard Gilfillan, a former hospital and insurance executive and a former top regulator at Medicare, told the newspaper. "The big healthcare plans know it's wrong, and they know how to fix it, but they're making too much money to stop."


"There's a risk" that the increased scrutiny of MA providers "blows over because the program's beneficiaries continue to have access to doctors and hospitals," Joseph Ross, a primary care physician and health policy researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, wrote on Twitter. "But by exploiting and overbilling Medicare, these companies profit off the public."

"Think of how this money could have been better spent," said Ross. "The overbilling alone could have provided hearing and vision care to ALL Medicare beneficiaries, or been used to fund any of these agency's budgets."

"The overbilling alone could have provided hearing and vision care to ALL Medicare beneficiaries."

Despite mounting evidence of widespread fraud in MA plans, the Biden administration announced in April that MA insurers will receive one of the largest payment increases in the program's history in 2023, eliciting pushback from several congressional Democrats led by Rep. Katie Porter of California.

Progressives argue that MA is part of a broader effort to privatize Medicare and must be resisted.

Another major culprit is ACO REACH, a pilot program that critics have described as "Medicare Advantage on steroids."

The pilot—an updated version of Direct Contracting launched by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration—invites MA insurers and Wall Street firms to "manage" care for Medicare beneficiaries and allows the profit-maximizing middlemen to pocket as much as 40% of what they don't spend on patients, all but ensuring deadly cost-cutting.

Physicians and healthcare advocates have warned that failing to stop ACO REACH could result in the total privatization of traditional Medicare in a matter of years.

"Even though Medicare is relied on by millions of seniors across the country, and precisely because it is so necessary and cost-effective, it is under threat today from the constant efforts of private insurance companies and for-profit investors who want to privatize it and turn it into yet another shameful opportunity to make money off of peoples' health problems," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in May.

Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has called on the Biden administration to "fully end" ACO REACH and other privatization schemes and urged lawmakers to enact the Medicare for All Act, of which she is lead sponsor in the House.

Numerous studies have found that implementing a single-payer health insurance program would guarantee the provision of lifesaving care for every person in the country while reducing overall spending by as much as $650 billion per year.