Pet dogs often overlooked as spreader of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella

Proper hygiene may help mitigate infections, researchers say

Penn State

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella is a serious public health concern that has increased in recent years as the bacteria have developed ways to survive drugs. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people can get Salmonella from eating contaminated food products or from infected people or animals — typically via unintentional contact with feces via touching hands or stroking a pet. However, a team of Penn State researchers have found that household dogs are an overlooked transmission point for zoonotic pathogens such as nontyphoidal Salmonella, which can cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps, with some infections potentially having life-threatening complications.

The findings were made available online ahead of the next print edition of the journal Zoonoses and Public Health. Given the proximity of dogs to humans and the use of critically important antibiotics in companion animal medicine, the researchers reported, household dogs represent a risk for the spread of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella. They explained that better awareness of the risk and proper hygiene could potentially help mitigate cross-species infections.

Salmonella infections in dogs can be clinical — showing signs or symptoms — or asymptomatic with numerous studies reporting Salmonella isolation from clinically healthy dogs, according to team leader Erika Ganda, assistant professor of food animal microbiomes, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. A major concern, she explained, is the closeness of humans and pet dogs that creates ample opportunity for Salmonella “zoonosis” — the disease transmitted to humans from animals — and pet-management decisions involving food contamination, improper food handling or both can increase the likelihood of infection.

To investigate antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella and the zoonotic potential of nontyphoidal Salmonella isolated from dogs and humans, the researchers leveraged existing biosurveillance infrastructure. Using the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network, they identified all nontyphoidal Salmonella strains isolated from domestic dogs between May 2017 and March 2023.

Then they matched the timing and location of those 87 cases to strains isolated from humans in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database maintained by the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, which provides access to biomedical and genomic information. They found 77 suspected zoonotic cases — meaning the bacteria moved from a pet dog to a human — comprising 164 strains, collected from 17 states in the United States.

Strains isolated from dogs included diverse serovars, or distinct variations within the species of bacteria, with most being clinically relevant to human health, the researchers reported. While the datasets did not contain information on severity of infection or treatments, the researchers did find that all identified strains possessed antimicrobial resistance genes for drug classes deemed critically or highly important by the World Health Organization.

“We identified 16 nontyphoidal Salmonella isolates from humans closely related to more than one of six dog-associated strains,” said Sophia Kenney, a student in the molecular, cellular and integrative biosciences doctoral program, and in the Department of Animal Science, who spearheaded the study. “Collectively, our data emphasize the importance of antimicrobial stewardship and sustained biosurveillance beyond human and agriculture-associated veterinary medicine, using a ‘One Health’ framework, that accounts for all transmission points — including companion animals. One Health isan approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment.”

Antimicrobial stewardship in companion animal veterinary medicine is crucial for mitigating antimicrobial resistance within the One Health model, Kenney explained.

“Especially with Salmonella, we think about the role of agriculture and transmission — we think about eggs, we think about beef. But the thing is, we don't let cows sleep in our beds or lick our faces, but we do dogs,” she said. “We have this close bond with companion animals in general, and we have a really close interface with dogs. So, we asked the question: What's the role of companion animals in transmission of zoonotic disease like Salmonella, since they can get it. Salmonella infections in dogs are not common but we’re aware of foodborne outbreaks related to pet treats or from contact with contaminated pet food and improper food handling.”

Study co-author Nkuchia M’ikanatha, lead epidemiologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and an affiliated researcher in Penn State’s Department of Food Science, referred to an outbreak of multidrug-resistant Salmonella infections in people linked to pig ear pet treats in the United States a few years ago that sickened 154 people across 34 states.

“This reminds us that simple hygiene practices such as hand washing are needed to protect both our furry friends and ourselves — our dogs are family but even the healthiest pup can carry Salmonella,” he said. "Salmonella is a quintessential human microbe, its presence intertwined with our history since the dawn of agriculture. Emerging research suggests this pathogen may have shadowed humanity for some 10,000 years, coinciding with the rise of animal domestication. With nearly 40% of Pennsylvania households and over half of U.S. homes including dogs, we must respect the enduring threat of Salmonella and remain vigilant in preventing its spread within our families."

Bacteria are never entirely "bad" or "good" — their role depends on the context, Ganda pointed out. While some bacteria, like Salmonella, can pose serious health risks, others are essential for maintaining our health and the health of our pets. It is important to remain vigilant and informed about potential risks, especially when living closely with animals, she added.

“At the same time, several studies highlight the significant physical and mental health benefits of owning a dog, including reduced stress and increased physical activity,” Ganda said. “Our goal is not to discourage pet ownership but to ensure that people are aware of potential risks and take simple steps, like practicing good hygiene, to keep both their families and their furry companions safe.”

This work was supported by funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

---

Journal

Zoonoses and Public Health

DOI

10.1111/zph.13174 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Antimicrobial Resistance and Zoonotic Potential of Nontyphoidal Salmonella From Household Dogs

 

Study suggests that magma composition drives volcanic tremor

Daily ashfall sampling at Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands demonstrates potential for near-real-time eruption monitoring and forecasting tool

Peer-Reviewed Publication

American Museum of Natural History

 

image: 

A field of volcanic ash during the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands, located off Africa’s northwest coast,

view more 

Credit: © Samantha Tramontano

A new study based on the sampling and analysis of volcanic ash at Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands, located off Africa’s northwest coast, suggests that the composition of magma could drive tremors during volcanic eruptions. The findings, which are detailed today in the journal Nature Geoscience in a paper led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York (CUNY), highlight the potential of volcanic ash analysis as a monitoring and forecasting tool. 

“The volcano research community has gotten much better in recent years at forecasting the start of a volcanic eruption, but it’s still hard to predict eruption style and duration,” said study co-author Samantha Tramontano, a Kathryn W. Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at the Museum. “If our findings hold true for other volcanoes, we might be able to monitor interior magma properties from the surface of an eruption, and that could be very important for hazard assessment.”

In September 2021, after lying dormant for 50 years, the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma island, in Spain’s Canary Islands, erupted, causing the evacuation of thousands of residents. Over the next 85 days, it destroyed more than 3,000 buildings and hundreds of acres of farmland. Tramontano and her advisor at the time, CUNY’s Marc-Antoine Longpré, set up a system to collect near-daily samples of ashfall during the three-month eruption with help from colleagues at the Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias and the Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

The samples, which captured 94 percent of the eruption timeline, were sent back to the Museum for chemical analysis of the glass within the ash, which originated from the rapidly cooled magma being ejected from the volcano, using an electron microprobe. The resulting dataset was a daily time series of the composition of the liquid part of the magma, the first of its kind.

The study revealed changes in the amount of silica in the samples, a compound that makes magma more viscous. More viscous magma is usually associated with more explosive eruptions. The researchers found that silica content was high in the eruption’s first week, then gradually decreased until a sharp reversal two weeks before the eruption’s end, likely marking the cutoff of the mantle magma supply.

The researchers then compared this chemical record to physical observations being made at the same time, finding a correlation between silica content and the strength of the volcano’s tremor, a seismic “rattling” associated with liquid and gas movement beneath the surface. Based on modeling and further analysis, the research team proposes that the presence of more viscous magma with high silica content causes increased volcanic tremor amplitude, although further research is needed to confirm this mechanism.

In addition to offering new clues into the cause of volcanic tremor, which is a key eruption monitoring parameter, the study shows the benefit of combining petrological data collection—like ashfall—with geophysical data to improve eruption forecasting, hazard assessment, and decision-making during volcanic crises.

“A big challenge for petrological monitoring is the coordination of fieldwork and sample transfer during eruption crises to enable fast analysis,” Longpré said. “Careful pre-planning and technological developments should make efficient, near-site sample analysis possible in the future, better supporting timely interpretation of geophysical data.”

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 with a dual mission of scientific research and science education, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, galleries for temporary exhibitions, the Rose Center for Earth and Space including the Hayden Planetarium, and the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. The Museum’s scientists draw on a world-class permanent collection of more than 30 million specimens and artifacts, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum offers two of the only free-standing, degree-granting programs of their kind at any museum in the U.S.: the Ph.D. program in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Earth Science residency program. Visit amnh.org for more information.

Collecting volcanic ash samples during the 2021 eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands. 

Credit

© Samantha Tramontano

Journal

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-024-01623-x 

 

Storing carbon in buildings could help address climate change

University of California - Davis

 

image: 

Storing carbon dioxide in common construction materials could help address climate change goals, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis and Stanford University. Because of the very large amount of concrete produced worldwide every year, incorporating carbon into concrete would be especially impactful. Shown is a block of concrete made with biochar material. 

view more 

Credit: Sabbie Miller, UC Davis

Construction materials such as concrete and plastic have the potential to lock away billions of tons of carbon dioxide, according to a new study by civil engineers and earth systems scientists at the University of California, Davis and Stanford University. The study, published Jan. 10 in Science, shows that combined with steps to decarbonize the economy, storing CO2 in buildings could help the world achieve goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“The potential is pretty large,” said Elisabeth Van Roijen, who led the study as a graduate student at UC Davis.

The goal of carbon sequestration is to take carbon dioxide, either from where it is being produced or from the atmosphere, convert it into a stable form and store it away from the atmosphere where it cannot contribute to climate change. Proposed schemes have involved, for example, injecting carbon underground or storing it in the deep ocean. These approaches pose both practical challenges and environmental risks.

“What if, instead, we can leverage materials that we already produce in large quantities to store carbon?” Van Roijen said.

Working with Sabbie Miller, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, and Steve Davis at Stanford University, Van Roijen calculated the potential to store carbon in a wide range of common building materials including concrete (cement and aggregates), asphalt, plastics, wood and brick.

More than 30 billion tons of conventional versions of these materials are produced worldwide every year.

Concrete potential

The carbon-storing approaches studied included adding biochar (made by heating waste biomass) into concrete; using artificial rocks that can be loaded with carbon as concrete and asphalt pavement aggregate; plastics and asphalt binders based on biomass rather than fossil petroleum sources; and including biomass fiber into bricks. These technologies are at different stages of readiness, with some still being investigated at a lab or pilot scale and others already available for adoption.

Researchers found that while bio-based plastics could take up the largest amount of carbon by weight, by far the largest potential for carbon storage is in using carbonated aggregates to make concrete. That’s because concrete is by far the world’s most popular building material: Over 20 billion tons are produced every year.

“If feasible, a little bit of storage in concrete could go a long way,” Miller said. The team calculated that if 10% of the world’s concrete aggregate production were carbonateable, it could absorb a gigaton of CO2.  

The feedstocks for these new processes for making building materials are mostly low-value waste materials such as biomass, Van Roijen said. Implementing these new processes would enhance their value, creating economic development and promoting a circular economy, she said.

Some technology development is needed, particularly in cases where material performance and net-storage potential of individual manufacturing methods must be validated. However, many of these technologies are just waiting to be adopted, Miller said.

Van Roijen is now a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The work was supported by Miller’s CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation.

---

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq8594 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Building materials could store more than 15 billion tons of CO2 annually

Article Publication Date

10-Jan-2025

WORD OF THE DAY; "PERFIDY"

Israeli Forces Admit to Hiding Soldiers in Ambulance in West Bank Raid

The incident represents “a flagrant violation” of international law, a UN expert said.

By Sharon Zhang

January 8, 2025

Source: Truthout

Medics transport an injured Palestinian child into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli airstrike on October 11, 2023, as raging battles between Israel and the Hamas movement continued for the fifth consecutive day. Medical supplies, including oxygen, were running low at Gaza's overwhelmed Al-Shifa hospital as the death toll from five days of ferocious fighting between Hamas and Israel rose sharply on October 11 with Israel keeping up its bombardment of Gaza after recovering the dead from the last communities near the border where Palestinian militants had been holed up. Photo by Atia Darwish\ apaimages



The Israeli military has admitted that its soldiers hid in an ambulance in order to infiltrate and raid a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank — a move one UN expert has described as a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law.

Last month, armed Israeli soldiers drove into the Balata refugee camp in Nablus in an ambulance. Soldiers stormed the camp, killing two Palestinians, including an 80-year-old woman, Palestinian sources reported. Three others were wounded by gunfire. The incident was caught on camera and circulated online this week.

After the video emerged, the Israeli military confirmed that Israeli soldiers used the ambulance to enter the camp and claimed to be investigating the incident, even as it maintained in a statement that the army “acts in accordance with international law.”

Human rights expert Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said that the incident is a war crime.

“Misusing the protected status of medical vehicles and personnel is a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and may constitute a crime of perfidy,” said Albanese. “By systemically disregarding IHL, Israel has rendered the legal frameworks meant to protect civilians, completely meaningless.”

Perfidy is defined under international law as committing an attack or military act while under the cover of a protected act or entity — for instance, disguising soldiers as civilians during an attack to surprise the adversary.

UN experts, including Albanese, and human rights groups have previously accused Israel of perfidy after a June attack in which Israeli soldiers raided Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza while disguised as displaced civilians and aid workers in a humanitarian vehicle. That massacre was one of the deadliest single attacks of the genocide as Israel killed at least 274 Palestinians and injured nearly 700 others in order to retrieve four Israeli captives who were being held in Gaza. Israeli officials hailed the attack as a “surgical operation,” and the White House called it a “daring operation.”

Israel has carried out many attacks in which perfidious tactics were used, reports have found. Last year, for instance, Israeli forces raided a hospital in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, disguised as doctors and other medical staff. Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in that raid.

As it’s carrying out a genocide in Gaza, the Israeli military has been undertaking a brutal invasion of the occupied West Bank. Just on Saturday, also in Balata refugee camp, Israeli forces killed an 18-year-old boy and injured nine others in a raid.

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 815 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank amid Israel’s intensified military campaign there, Palestinian officials repo

ICYMI

Gaza: 64,000 deaths due to violence between October 2023 and June 2024, analysis suggests

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

An independent study by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggests the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%.

The LSHTM study estimated 64,260 traumatic injury deaths in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 compared to the 37,877 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The findings, published in The Lancet, indicate that approximately 3% of the population of Gaza has died due to violence with an analysis showing that 59% of these deaths were women, children, and the elderly.

The researchers used a statistical method known as ‘capture-recapture analysis’ to estimate the number of traumatic injury deaths. This method overlaps data from multiple sources to arrive at estimates of deaths when not all data are recorded. The sources included Palestinian Ministry of Health hospital morgue records, a respondent-driven online survey, and social media obituaries.

The significant underreporting of traumatic injury deaths highlights the deterioration of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and consequent inability to count the dead amidst ongoing violence. Based on the estimated underreporting rate, the total traumatic injury death toll as of October 2024 is thought to exceed 70,000 Palestinians.

Zeina Jamaluddine, lead author at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), said: “The UN's Human Rights Office has already condemned the high number of civilians killed in the war in Gaza, and our findings suggest that the traumatic injury death toll is underreported by around 41%. These results underscore the urgent need for interventions to safeguard civilians and prevent further loss of life.”

The total death toll due to the war is likely to be higher as the analysis does not account for non-trauma related deaths caused by disruption to healthcare, food insecurity, inadequate water and sanitation, and disease outbreaks.

---

Journal

The Lancet

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip, 7 October 2023 to 30 June 2024: a capture-recapture analysis

Article Publication Date

9-Jan-2025

Why Planned Parenthood Workers Revolted Over Gaza

Planned Parenthood workers organized to expose the limits of the nonprofit industrial complex.

By Nicole Froio

January 10, 2025

Source: Yes! Magazine


Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun

On Dec. 5, 2023, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) released an official statement condemning what they called “atrocities committed by Hamas,” citing violations of bodily autonomy both in Israel and in Gaza and characterizing Israel’s aggression on the Gaza strip as “the war on Hamas.” In the days that followed, many workers within the national Planned Parenthood organization and its affiliates across the United States organized a response to this statement through a group chat on Signal.

According to Cherry, a PPFA worker who requested a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation, unionized PPFA workers were “really upset” by their employer’s public and internal statements on Israel’s aggression on Gaza. A Signal group was created to work on an open letter that circulated later that month.

The Dec. 5 statement was PPFA’s first public comment about Gaza, but Cherry says, “[PPFA] had sent a couple of internal all-staff emails before that one that very much deprioritized the historical context and experience of Palestinians over the last nearly a century.” Cherry adds, “As workers, we wanted to demonstrate that the PPFA statement does not necessarily reflect those of us in the national office.”

The collectively written open letter was drafted by both unionized and non-unionized PPFA workers, as well as workers from PPFA affiliates. Letter writers urged for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and unequivocally called Israel’s aggression on Gaza a genocide. Signed by more than 500 patients, volunteers, organizers, health care providers, donors, supporters, and workers, the letter also called out the hypocrisy of the organization’s stance.

“For PPFA to ignore the Israeli government’s war crimes against the Palestinian people stands antithetical to their purported mission to fight for the dignity, safety, and rights of all people,” the letter reads. “We urge PPFA’s leadership to follow the lead of other reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in calling for a ceasefire and an end to the U.S. funding of the Israeli government’s occupation and genocide in Gaza.”

According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), 50 percent of pregnant Palestinian women who were displaced to shelters in Gaza suffered from thirst and malnutrition, and health care and vaccinations for newborns were scarce. Though PPFA is a member of the IPPF, the latter has no governance power over the former.

In July 2024, the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association estimated that miscarriages had risen at least 300 percent since October 2023. If PPFA leadership and its affiliates—independently incorporated local Planned Parenthood clinics supported by PPFA—refused to take a stance for a ceasefire, the letter signers wanted to make clear that not all workers and supporters of the organization were content to be silent in the face of a genocide.

“The other thing that bothered me and made me want to write and sign the letter is that we’re a reproductive rights organization and we were completely out of step with the IPPF,” says Emma, a worker in the national Planned Parenthood office who also requested a pseudonym out of fear of retribution. Emma felt PPFA should be more supportive of the international organization, which called for a ceasefire in November 2023, citing the violation of women and girls specifically.

“The IPPF is a global reproductive rights organization that has been very vocal about the maternal mortality rates [in Gaza], the lack of period sanitation products, [and] how people have to experience C-sections without anesthesia,” says Emma. “Just all these things the PPFA is supposed to be an advocate for and is just completely ignoring, and then when it stopped ignoring what’s going on, it chose to just spout propaganda.”

For some workers at PPFA and its affiliates across the U.S., the lack of reproductive health care in Gaza was difficult to ignore in day-to-day operations. The PPFA’s official statement on Gaza and the lack of internal discussion of the issue was what pushed Aseel Houmsse, research and clinical training coordinator at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM), to organize with other workers, sign the open letter published last December, and send a letter to their affiliate’s equity department.

Houmsse, a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. who is of Middle Eastern descent, says they expected conversations about Palestine to happen in Planned Parenthood employee affinity group meetings due to the organization’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion. Houmsse expected those conversations to be “geared toward advancing equity and advancing the idea of health care for all,” but was surprised to encounter complete silence about the issue at their affiliate. “That’s when I decided to organize with others who were concerned about the silence,” Houmsse explains.

Houmsse and other workers wrote an internal letter to the equity division of PPLM that they say was “rejected immediately with no feedback.” Houmsse felt not only the organization-wide silence and its general chilling effect, but its particular impact on workers with roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Houmsse found PPFA’s response “incredibly disappointing,” before adding that it “goes against the idea of how we need to talk about the uncomfortable things.”

This continues a pattern Houmsse has witnessed all their life: a systemic refusal to discuss Palestine in left-wing and liberal spaces. “[T]hese… groups… are meant to tackle uncomfortable conversations in a way that’s functional.”

That is the reason Houmsse thought it important for unions and workers to come together and sign the open letter to PPFA leadership. “What I love about unions is that they provide, ideally, a sense of psychological safety,” Houmsse says. “I think especially when we work in areas that are highly stressful like an abortion clinic, for instance, I think it’s really nice to know that there is an entity out there that has your back, that is able to keep your security, safety, all these things in mind.” (Neither PPFA nor PPLM responded to YES! Media’s requests for comment.)
Autonomy and Cybersecurity

PPFA leadership ignored the first open letter. In May 2024, I wrote a Prism Reports feature breaking the news that PPFA had a cybersecurity contract with Raytheon, a notorious corporation that, according to the American Friends Service Committee, makes “missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets, and other weapon systems used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians.”

The story raised questions about whether liberal nonprofit organizations defending human rights should work with a company that manufactures military weapons. In addition, PPFA workers were concerned about their lack of participation in the hiring of a company that handles data essential to the daily operations of reproductive health care.

“Seeing [the connection between Planned Parenthood and Raytheon] laid out so directly was devastating,” says Casey, a unionized worker from an East Coast affiliate who requested a pseudonym. “I can speak for my fellow union members and workers [that], generally, we love this work. To know that our labor was, in this very direct way, going to this frankly evil company was just horrible. The next day in the clinic, we were all crying and were like, ‘Alright, what can we do?’”

The collective despair motivated PPFA workers to send another letter to leadership in July, this time demanding PPFA’s divestment from Raytheon as well as “full transparency about its business dealings with cybersecurity companies.” Workers requested a say on the cybersecurity company hired to handle highly sensitive data that could, in some cases, further marginalize Planned Parenthood clients who are undocumented or could be criminalized for getting an abortion. The letter also charged the organization with “co-opting the language of freedom and self-determination while maintaining relationships with warmongers and military arms profiteers.”

For Emma, PPFA’s contract with Raytheon exposed a gap of values between workers providing on-the-ground reproductive health care and PPFA leadership. “I won’t deny that Planned Parenthood affiliates provide so many health care services, but it’s the workers who … are on the ground doing that,” Emma says. “There definitely should be a distinction, but as a larger institution, I’m not even disappointed. I’m furious.”

The fractures over Gaza and the Raytheon contract made distinctions between leadership and workers clearer. While leadership seemed preoccupied with putting out neutral messaging on Israel’s siege on Gaza to protect the organization, workers were watching videos of children, men, and women being massacred and disabled by weapons closely related to their workplace’s choice of cybersecurity provider.

According to Casey, organizing with unionized and non-unionized workers, as well as Planned Parenthood supporters and donors, has offered PPFA workers opportunities to learn from each other and clarify how workers in the U.S. can show up in solidarity with Palestine.

“It really gave us learning and growing opportunities to better understand the idea of solidarity and what unions do,” Casey says. For them, this movement was evidence that unions are more than an “insurance policy for workers—they exist to build our working-class power.” And it made them realize how workers have “so much power collectively, but we have to get to that place where we believe that and can mobilize it.”

This can be true for unions across the U.S. “We can [all] mobilize to make material changes for Palestinian liberation,” Casey says.

The Palestinian solidarity movement within Planned Parenthood is an example of how working-class power can be used to clarify connections between struggles, even when they seem to be disconnected from our own workplace, geographically or otherwise. Through organizing and community building, Planned Parenthood workers helped expose the nonprofit-industrial complex operating within the U.S. empire, demonstrating how diversity, equity and inclusion efforts fail when imperialism and colonialism aren’t tackled head on.

By reminding their employer of the organization’s own mission, organized workers and unions pushed for rights and justice outside U.S. borders.

Nicole Froio is a reporter, researcher, and translator based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


Doctors Against Genocide Hold Global Sick-Out to Highlight Atrocities in Gaza

By Chris Walker

January 7, 2025
Source: Truthout


Image by John Avalos, Healthcare workers for Palestine, Bay Area

Doctors and health care providers across the globe are engaging in a day of action, calling in sick and taking part in other demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The “Sick From Genocide” global vigil, organized by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and several other organizations demonstrating against Israel’s thus-far 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, features pop-up clinics in cities across the world, including in the U.S. Health care workers participating in the event are urging others in their profession to take a day of mental health leave “to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

“After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal,” the account for DAG wrote in a post on X. “The international system has failed, and we are sick — sick from genocide, sick from complicity, and sick from silence.”

“To all healthcare workers, professionals, and allies — stand with us. Pause. Grieve. Demand change,” the post added.

In a press release, DAG stated:


As healthcare workers, we have witnessed unimaginable atrocities: hospitals destroyed, patients and colleagues targeted, and entire communities left in ruins.

…

This is not just a day off — it is a call to action. Together, we will demand accountability, justice, and an end to the ongoing genocide. Organizing to end genocide is not only our responsibility — it is our path to healing.

The effects of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, including its attacks on health care facilities, have been horrific. Just last week, the Israeli military forced the evacuation of the last two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, leaving around 75,000 people trapped in that area without access to health care of any kind.

The official death toll from Israel’s genocide, which began in October 2023, sits at over 45,000 people. However, other estimates suggest that the true death toll could be much higher, with thousands of Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble. Another 100,000 have fled the region, and an estimated 107,000 have been injured by Israeli attacks, according to Gaza officials, dropping Gaza’s population totals by a devastating 6 percent.

Rupa Marya — a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is currently on paid suspension after condemning the U.S.’s financial backing of Israel’s genocide — provided a statement to Truthout regarding Monday’s call to action.

“Since October 2023 we have watched in horror as Israel has targeted our Palestinian colleagues and destroyed hospitals under false pretense,” Marya, who is the author of “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice,” said in her statement. “The Israeli military has rounded up physicians and other healthcare workers and tortured them, some to death such as Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, professor of orthopedic surgery.”

“Currently the Israeli military has abducted our colleague, pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and sent him to the same torture facility where Dr. Al-Bursh was killed,” Marya pointed out. “We are calling for his immediate release and the release of the hundreds of healthcare workers who the Israeli military has detained.”

According to witness reports, Safiya, 51, was abducted by Israeli soldiers from the hospital he managed in northern Gaza, beaten with batons, and forced to strip and wear prisoner garb before being taken away.

Marya went on to reference other first-hand accounts of physicians who have been to Gaza, stating:


Physicians report that Israeli soldiers throw drones into the hospitals to kill patients in their beds and staff in the act of care. Israeli soldiers enter the hospitals to attack the machinery — lab machines, hemodialysis units, CT scanners. These actions together with bombing the hospitals and setting them on fire render them completely useless for patient care.

“As human beings we are wired for empathy. … To ignore this is to ignore our very humanity,” Marya concluded. “We cannot and will not sever our care for one another. And as we care, we are sickened by this violence.”

Other DAG members and supporters also spoke about their reasons for taking part in the sick-out on Monday.

“We are answering the call from Gaza and Doctors Against Genocide. Release all the abducted Palestinian healthcare workers taken hostage by Israel. End the attacks on hospitals. End the genocide. End the occupation. Free the people of Palestine,” wrote Ottawa-based primary care doctor Yipeng Ge in a post on Bluesky.

In a separate post, Ge added:


The only cure is an end to genocide, justice for the victims, and accountability for those responsible, and spending tax dollars on housing, healthcare and education, NOT genocide and occupation.

The Schiller Institute, a think tank based in Germany that aims to “defend the rights of all humanity to progress” also published its support of the DAG “Sick From Genocide” global vigil.

“With urgency, the Schiller Institute adds its voice to those of dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals worldwide in support of the demand by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) that the ongoing genocide being perpetrated in Gaza must stop immediately,” the institute wrote.

Hannah Janeway, an emergency physician in Los Angeles, spoke to Truthout about the DAG action on Monday.

“The truth is that health is not apolitical. It’s affected by policies that reflect the distribution of power and denial/inequality of health services and infrastructure has been used to oppress people historically and in the present,” Janeway said. “As healers, doctors have a moral and ethical imperative to provide healthcare to all, even when it goes against the dominant political will and even when it gets us in trouble with those systems of oppression that uphold it.”

They added:


We aren’t just fighting for our colleagues who have been maimed and killed en masse in Gaza. We are working in solidarity with them and with the people of Gaza to assure basic rights to health and wellbeing, which have been systematically denied through the genocide occurring there.

“Equity will never be achieved until we are willing to risk our privilege in service of our mission to heal,” Janeway said.

Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.

VIDEO

Yanis Varoufakis: Palestinian Genocide – Gaza, Resistance, Truth, and Europe’s Role

By Yanis Varoufakis

January 9, 2025

Source: DiEM25

As the genocide of Palestinians continues, the images and stories coming from Gaza and the West Bank are almost unbearable. Israeli soldiers openly confess to genocidal intent, while Palestinians livestream their own destruction. Despair feels inevitable—but surrendering to it is not an option. In this video, Yanis Varoufakis dissects the reality behind the headlines: Israel’s failure to win on the battlefield, its economy entering a spiral of collapse, and the complete erosion of its carefully crafted image as a liberal democracy. At the same time, Yanis explores the seeds of hope taking root under unimaginable circumstances and outlines how global solidarity can amplify the struggle for a just peace.

Thoughts on Insurrection and Genocide

By M. Reza Behnam

January 7, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Image in public domain

5 January 2025

I adjusted my eyes. I wanted to know the time. Outside it is as dark as when I went to bed at midnight. Now it is 4:00 in the morning. I can’t sleep.

My brain is full of images. Four years ago tomorrow, 6 January, I saw a sitting president rally a crowd to attack the People’s House. I saw officers get bitten, beaten and others killed trying to keep order.

People who earlier in the day were in line buying their morning coffee, were getting ready to hang the vice president of the United States and the speaker of the People’s House.

I saw my Oregon representative struggle to hide under her desk. I saw a woman demonstrator shot to death in the hallway of the People’s House—from votes to bullets. And on that day “order” died.

Days and months passed. Committees were formed, votes taken; resolutions passed and “Citizen Medals” handed out to chairpersons of the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. While the sitting president was handing out Medals of Freedom, the incoming president was honoring insurrectionists at Mar-a-Logo.

Normalcy and abnormality took over our lives and we do what we usually do—live—until, 7 October 2023. Fed up with surviving in an Israeli prison in the besieged Gaza Strip, the prisoners broke free. And the prison’s guards began a campaign of terror against the Palestinians that has no end.

Like most people in the world, Pope Francis cried in the face of the carnage.

I have felt the pain from a distance away. Last night, I saw a weeping Palestinian man cradling his five-day old baby, preparing to bury the little one in a shallow grave. Moments later I saw the custodians of the “greatest democracy” vote billions more for the bombers to kill more babies. Ironically, many who have and who will vote for weapons of mass destruction to be used against innocents in Palestine were the very ones to run for their lives, scared witless four years ago.

The vile cheer leader who inspired and led the insurrection is about to lead again. And me, I have to get up.

ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.   Donate

M. Reza Behnam
Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics, with a focus on West Asia.

A World’s Soul in Tatters

By Robert Koehler

January 10, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Malak Mattar (Gaza, Occupied Palestinian Territory), Prematurely Stolen, 2023.


“I left you for God, Daddy.”

Let those words resonate across the planet. The speaker is Yahya Al-Batran, a Palestinian man – a dad – imagining the words his newborn son would have said. The boy, Jumaa, froze to death in the family’s tent. The infant had a twin brother who was also lying still in their bed one morning recently. The parents rushed the boys to a functioning hospital, where Jumaa’s brother, at the time NBC’s story came out last week, was still fighting for his life.

Jumaa was one of half a dozen Palestinian babies (so far) who have frozen to death in their family’s tents since the onset of winter – just one more fragment of hell the Palestinians are enduring as Israel’s US-complicit genocide continues . . . one death at a time.

Every week, every day, I have less of a sense of how to write about this or, indeed, how to think about it as I absorb the news of the day. Yes, there are wars and hellish suffering across the whole planet – there always have been – but in this current moment I feel less able to shrug and move on with my own life. I feel connected to it: a participant, you might say, simply as a citizen of the genocide’s largest enabler, as strike after strike after strike kills more Palestinians.

As Abby Zimet writes: “America’s newest $8 billion contribution to an increasingly normalized genocide and its bloody, barbarous, macabre delusions will ensure more of the same. As Gazans plead for mercy and reason from an uncaring world, they in truth know and say they have ‘nothing but God.’”

An increasingly normalized genocide . . .

I think that’s what’s shredding my soul about this: the lack of any sort of mainstream awareness beyond the need for endless militarism – beyond the world’s brutally divided nature. Us vs. them is apparently the limit of our understanding, with no awareness of the effect that ongoing war against “them,” and the ensuing planetary dividedness, is having on our shared human home, not to mention our future.

A recent New York Times mini-analysis of America’s current mass murder situation – particularly the horrific motor-vehicle murders in New Orleans on New Years Day – definitely seemed, as I read it, like the normalization of genocide, in its implication that only our enemies are bad. Watch out, the story warned us: Terrorism is back!

“The killing of 14 people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans was the latest sign of a resurgence in radical Islamist terrorism,” the Times story informs us. “Some of the attacks — like the one last week — seem to have been merely inspired by ISIS, the network of groups that are offshoots of Al Qaeda. In other cases, ISIS groups played an active role in the planning.”

The alleged killer, who drove his rented truck into a crowd of people in the French Quarter, had an ISIS flag in the truck. The Times then proceeds to catalog 16 instances of violence over the last five years, in countries all over the world, that were either “inspired by” or directly plotted and carried out by ISIS.

And who the hell is ISIS, anyway? The story notes that the organization came into being during the US war in Iraq, but fails to mention . . . uh, the half a million or so Iraqis who died as a result of our bloody invasion. All that matters, apparently, is the emergence of the terrorist organization, not the US shock-and-awe bombings and brutal dismantling of Iraq’s national infrastructure. You know, the terrorists just popped up and started doing bad things. If this isn’t the normalization of genocide, it’s something worse: the utter denial of genocide.

A few paragraphs later, the Times story moves to Afghanistan, noting that President Biden’s withdrawal from the country in 2021 “reduced the pressure on an ISIS chapter there known as ISIS-K, and it has since expanded beyond Afghanistan. ISIS-K was behind the Iran bombing, the Moscow concert attack and the Taylor Swift plot.”

So, shame on Genocide Joe! His pullout allowed ISIS to expand. For some reason the story fails to note that, prior to its withdrawal, that US military presence in Afghanistan resulted in over 175,000 Afghan deaths.

As Brown University’s Costs of War project notes:

“In Afghanistan, even after the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021, people continue to die due to the war-induced breakdown of the economy, public health, security, and infrastructure. The majority of the population faces impoverishment and food insecurity. The CIA armed Afghan militia groups to fight Islamist militants and these militias are responsible for serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings of civilians. Unexploded ordnance from this war and landmines from previous wars continue to kill, injure, and maim civilians. Fields, roads, and school buildings are contaminated by ordnance, which often harms children as they go about chores like gathering wood.”

Attention, New York Times: Terrorism doesn’t exist all by itself. While actions thought to be terrorist in nature can indeed be horrific, they cannot begin to compare to the horrors that result from heavily armed state terrorism – in particular, the terrorism committed by the “good states,” i.e., the United States and its allies. We live in a disconnected planet at war with itself – and in possession of the means to kill itself.

A year ago, on, good God, the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shootings, I wrote:

“What is power? Is it simply and sheerly us vs. them, good vs. evil? Every war on Planet Earth is sold with this advertising slogan. Perhaps this is why I find myself thinking about the Columbine shootings — and all the mass shootings since then. Define an enemy, then kill it. This is what we learn in history class — but would-be mass shooters, caged in their own isolation, cross a line. They take this lesson personally.”

All of which is to say that war begets violence of all sorts and at every level of devastation. “I left you for God, Daddy.” Perhaps these will be our last words as we exit the planet we have chosen to destroy.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate



Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Koehler has been the recipient of multiple awards for writing and journalism from organizations including the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club.

When Partners Become Enemies: Can Netanyahu Maintain Control After the War?

By Ramzy Baroud

January 9, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Netanyahu Cabinet



Suddenly, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s notorious Minister of Defense, disappeared into obscurity. The man who served in his country’s military for about 35 years, in politics for nearly 10, and oversaw major wars, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza, quickly retreated from headlines and political significance.

In his resignation letter, Gallant accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who fired him on November 5, along with his replacement, Israel Katz, of endangering the country’s security. However, he kept his criticism largely focused on the issue of military conscription for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.

Gallant’s refusal to offer an exemption to Israel’s Haredim had always been a source of tension between him and his domineering boss. Yet, the political weight of that issue seems to have been greatly inflated by all parties, each with a political purpose in mind.

Gallant wanted to signal to the more secular and nationalistic factions within the Likud party—the largest in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition—that he advocated for a fairer and more equitable Israel. Netanyahu, who heads the Likud, wanted to appeal to the more religious segments of the party and to his deeply religious coalition partners.

Considering Israel’s shift towards the extreme religious right, it was only natural for Netanyahu to ultimately win this round. Gallant, who as of January 1 had also resigned from the Israeli Knesset, made his resignation letter largely about the Likud, and less about Israel itself.

“My path is the Likud path, and I believe in its principles, trust its members and voters,” he said, linking his first vote for the party to a partnership in “Menachem Begin’s revolution,” while priding himself on remaining “loyal to the movement’s national and ideological path.”

Gallant’s sentiment could be understood in two ways: either as a way to seal his legacy before quitting politics altogether, or, more likely, as the charting of a new political discourse that would allow him to compete for the leadership of Likud—and perhaps even for the premiership.

Netanyahu understands this well and seems to have concluded that his only path to political survival is the continuation of the Gaza war and the expansion of the conflict to engage multiple parties. It is this expanded war that has allowed him to recover his pre-war approval ratings and keep his coalition partners satisfied.

The Israeli prime minister’s strategy over the last 15 months of genocidal war has been consistent with his political legacy: achieving power and holding onto it. But the events that followed October 7, 2023, have made his chances of political survival much slimmer.

In the past, Netanyahu mastered the art of survival by exploiting his rivals’ weaknesses, using his power to emotionally manipulate the Israeli public with a mix of nationalistic, religious, and personal discourse. This narrative often portrays Netanyahu and his family as victims of numerous enemies who have ceaselessly plotted his downfall, despite all the good he has done for the country.

“Netanyahu’s victim mentality” has long been a topic in Israeli media, even years before the war. It is a strategy he has used to defend himself in court against accusations of corruption, and it continues to serve him even during the war. Even the arrest warrants against him and his sacked defense minister, Gallant, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on November 21, have been used to feed the narrative that Netanyahu is being punished for simply loving Israel too much.

However, when the war ends, merely playing the victim card will no longer suffice. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to explain what transpired beginning on October 7: the collapse of the security apparatus, the failure of the military, the lack of strategy, the severely weakened economy, the splintering of the nation, the killing of hostages,e and much more.

Even Netanyahu, the master politician, will struggle to keep the public on his side or to keep his angry coalition partners in line. In fact, the right-wing coalition is already on the verge of collapse. The joining of Gideon Sa’ar and his New Hope Party on September 29 may have breathed some life into it, but the constant threats from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir make the government unstable, at best.

The strength of the government was tested on December 31, when a decisive vote on the budget law sparked a public fight between Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, almost leading to the latter’s removal.

Yet, the government remains intact simply because the war remains ongoing. The war, and the expanded conflict, have allowed Netanyahu’s ministers to push their extremist agendas without question, which ultimately allows Netanyahu to stay at the helm a bit longer.

But none of this is likely to change the post-war scenario: where the coalition is likely to falter, Likud may enter its own civil war, and Israeli society will likely erupt in mass protests.

It is then that coalition partners will become enemies, and the likes of Gallant may return, offering themselves as saviors. What will Netanyahu do then?


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.   Donate

Ramzy Baroud  is a US-Palestinian journalist, media consultant, an author, internationally-syndicated columnist, Editor of Palestine Chronicle (1999-present), former Managing Editor of London-based Middle East Eye, former Editor-in-Chief of The Brunei Times and former Deputy Managing Editor of Al Jazeera online. Baroud’s work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, and is the author of six books and a contributor to many others. Baroud is also a regular guest on many television and radio programs including RT, Al Jazeera, CNN International, BBC, ABC Australia, National Public Radio, Press TV, TRT, and many other stations. Baroud was inducted as an Honorary Member into the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, NU OMEGA Chapter of Oakland University, Feb 18, 2020.