'Smoking gun': Rage mounts after WSJ reports Vance knew Haitian pet story had no basis

Kathleen Culliton
September 18, 2024 

Trump's pick for Vice President, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Sen. J.D. Vance faced backlash Wednesday after a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed former President Donald Trump's running mate knew there was no reason to believe Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — but shared the story anyway.

Springfield city manager Bryan Heck told the Journal that he told a Vance staffer "point blank" the claims were baseless on Sept. 9 — the same day the Ohio Republican posted the claim on X, where it remained as of Wednesday morning — and sparked a backlash from critics.

"A smoking gun," Ohio Capital Journal reporter Marty Schladen responded on X. "Despite at least 33 bomb threats, death threats against public officials, terror among Haitians — in a town in the state he represents — Vance kept saying it anyway."

The Wall Street Journal also reported that, on Tuesday, Vance's campaign gave them the name of a woman who claimed a Haitian had indeed taken her cat in August.

The Journal arrived Tuesday evening to find cat Miss Sassy had returned a few days later and her owner Anna Kilgore had apologized to her Haitian neighbors, the report showed.

Conservative commentator Pedro L. Gonzalez vented his frustration over what he described as a poorly mishandled narrative delivered by Vance.

"The Springfield lady who called the police when she suspected Haitians of eating her missing cat found the cat safe in her basement and then apologized to her Haitian neighbors for starting a rumor that became a GOP talking point," Gonzalez wrote.

"'At least we brought attention to what's happening in Springfield' the right says. You did, and you managed to even make people in Springfield who were or are frustrated by the immigration issue apologize or rethink their complaints because of how badly you handled it."

ALSO READ: 'I want Vance to apologize': We went to Springfield and found community hurt — and divided

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell condemned Vance in more blunt terms.

"Vance’s team actually did look into the rumor, and was told unequivocally that it was BS," she summarized. "Vance amplified it anyway."

Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg raised concerns about what Vance's willingness to amplify untrue stories — sourced to far right activists and neo-Nazis — said about his fitness to lead from the White House.


"If Vance is willing to lie and unleash hell on his own constituents for what he believed was political gain," Rosenberg asked, "what does that say about he would be willing to do to the country?"

David Darmofal, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina, replied, "The Trump-Vance slogan should be Make America Springfield. Because they want to do to this country what they've done to Springfield."

 Study finds e-cigarette ads on social media often misleading

Boston UniversitySep 14 2024

Island breeze, blue lagoon, dew drop-;these aren't the names of scented candles on display at your local home goods store. They're flavors of synthetic nicotine used in e-cigarettes, often advertised with neon-electric colors and bright lettering to make them look like boxes of candy or fruit juice. But underneath all the flair, a specific label written clearly in black text on a white background is required by law to be there: a warning that says the product contains nicotine and that nicotine is an addictive substance. 

Even though health warnings need to be written on physical products sold in stores and included in traditional advertisements, a new research study led by Boston University found that the majority of ads posted on social media by synthetic nicotine brands left the warnings off.

Synthetic nicotine is a substance created in a laboratory that has the same, or very similar, chemical structure to the nicotine derived from tobacco leaves. Despite marketing that labels it as "tobacco-free nicotine," it still has the same addictive properties and additives that can cause lung damage, cancer, and other health issues. Plus, since it's commonly paired with appealing flavors-;made from chemicals that are known to be unsafe to inhale-;it can be even harder to quit. 

"When synthetic nicotine started appearing in products, we really wanted to know how it was being received and how it was being promoted," says Traci Hong, a BU College of Communication professor of media studies.

When she first started in her career as a health communication researcher, she says, it was a different era: social media was not widely used, cigarette use was declining, and electronic cigarettes and vapes were in their infancy. But when vapes containing synthetic nicotine started getting more and more popular, she turned her attention to social media to find out how the advertising of these products was being regulated-;and what could be done to make them less appealing to kids and young adults. 

In their new paper, Hong and her collaborators found that in over 2,000 Instagram posts from 25 different synthetic nicotine brands, the vast majority did not include warning labels informing users about the health risks. The findings have been published in JAMA Network Open. 

These are brands that I think have a legitimate responsibility to inform their potential consumers that there are health risks and you need to be aware of them."

Traci Hong, Professor, Media Studies, College of Communication, Boston University 

Especially considering that Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the US for young adults. 

The FDA passed a requirement in 2022 that says health warnings need to take up 20 percent of the advertising and appear in the upper portion of the advertisement for e-cigarettes that contain synthetic nicotine. Hong, who is a research fellow at BU's Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, and her colleagues identified whether an image posted on Instagram included the required health warning and, if it did, whether it took up the right amount of space. The study involved interdisciplinary collaboration across the University, including experts from BU's School of Public Health, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and College of Arts & Sciences. 

The Instagram posts were analyzed using a custom-built AI algorithm, called Warning Label Multi-Layer Image Identification (WaLi), which uses computer vision to detect if health warnings follow the FDA rules. The team found that only 13 percent of the analyzed posts complied with FDA health warning requirements. They also discovered that the posts with health warnings received fewer likes and comments than posts without the warnings. According to the paper, the larger the warning label, the less comments the posts received. This means that having health warning labels could reduce how many social media users, especially young adults, are seeing and engaging with this content. 

"We need federal government policies to combat the appeal of e-cigarette advertising on social media and to prevent kids from using tobacco products," says Jessica Fetterman, a Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine assistant professor of medicine and coauthor on the study. The FDA recently estimated that the number of middle and high school students using e-cigarettes in 2024 is about 1.63 million, down from 2.13 million in 2023, with the vast majority using flavored nicotine. Enforcing and requiring health warning labels on social media content is one way to make products less visible and appealing, Fetterman says. 

"Our study indicates that e-cigarette brands are creating Instagram posts advertising their products with seemingly no enforcement by the social media platform or government," Fetterman says. Instagram lists tobacco products, electronic cigarettes, "and any other products that simulate smoking" on their list of prohibited branded content. But, Fetterman says, synthetic nicotine products are flouting that rule.

"All our work is really trying to find evidence-based research to help people make informed decisions about their health," Hong says. With synthetic nicotine and e-cigarette companies continuing to use flavors as a way to appeal to youth, she says, her team plans to monitor social media posts with WaLi to ensure brands are using the correct language to dissuade people from getting hooked. 

Source:

Boston University

UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST THUGS

Toronto festival suspends screening of Russian war film over threats

The Toronto International Film Festival announced Thursday it is cancelling all screenings of the documentary Russians at War due to "significant threats" to public safety. Organizers cited reports of potential risks to festival operations. Directed by Anastasia Trofimova, the film follows a Russian battalion during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. TIFF described the decision as unprecedented.


Issued on: 13/09/2024 -

People pose in front of an illuminated sign at the Toronto Film Festival, Canada, September 8, 2023. © Geoff Robins, AFP

By: NEWS WIRES



The Toronto International Film Festival said Thursday it was cancelling all upcoming screenings of controversial documentary "Russians at War" after receiving "significant threats."

"We have been made aware of significant threats to festival operations and public safety," festival organizers said in a statement, pointing to reports it received "indicating potential activity in the coming days that pose significant risk."

"This is an unprecedented move for TIFF," read the statement.

Anastasia Trofimova first presented at the Venice Film Festival "Russians at War", in which she embedded with a Russian battalion as it advanced across eastern Ukraine after Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.

It was to have its North American premiere in Toronto on Friday, followed by additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday.

Both in Venice and Toronto it has sparked outrage across Ukrainian cultural and political circles against what many consider a pro-Kremlin film that seeks to whitewash and justify Moscow's assault.

Canada's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, earlier this week deplored its screening in Toronto, saying "there can be no moral equivalency in our understanding of this conflict."

Ukraine's state film agency also appealed to TIFF to drop the film, calling it "a dangerous tool for public opinion manipulation."

Trofimova has rejected the criticisms, telling AFP the Canada-France production is "an anti-war film" that shows "ordinary guys" who are fighting for Russia.

The soldiers depicted appear to have little idea of why they have been sent to the front, and are shown struggling to make Soviet-era weapons serviceable, with others chain-smoking cigarettes and downing shots of alcohol amid the deaths and wounds of their comrades.

Producer Sean Farnel said on X that the decision to cancel the screenings was "heartbreaking."

He blamed officials' public criticisms for having "incited the violent hate that has led to TIFF's painful decision to pause its presentation of 'Russians at War.'"

(AFP)

Take a Lesson from Paul Nitze: Abolish Nuclear Weapons

by John Laforge

 September 11, 2024
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Image by Alex Shuper.

Melvin A. Goodman, national security columnist for Counterpunch.org, presents a fine review of the absurdities today’s U.S. nuclear weapons production. (“A Looming Nuclear Catastrophe,” Aug. 30). The Pentagon’s new nuclear weapons only enlarge the genocidal and self-destructive arsenal already deployed on U.S. bombers, submarines, ICBMs, and in NATO bunkers at six European air bases.

For weapons contractors, Congress, the White House, and the military to point to the nuclear arsenals of other countries as reasons for increasing U.S. over-kill capacity, is, as Goodman points out, the height of “strategic madness.”

Goodman correctly targets the late Paul H. Nitze as one of the best-known advocates of nuclear “escalation dominance” in “Nukespeak.” Nitze was a life-long military hawk and nuclear threat strategist, an anti-Soviet propagandist, and a founder of the Committee on the Present Danger ⸺ a group once known as “the most effective organ of Cold War revivalism.” But Goodman’s analysis missed the chance to bolster his analysis with the fact that after retiring Nitze rejected decades of pro-nuclear advocacy by publicly abandoning the fundamental basis of nuclear deterrence theory ⸺ namely, that it is practical and rational to threaten massive nuclear retaliation in response to a nuclear attack — and calling for elimination of the U.S. arsenal regardless of what other countries do.

In his October 28, 1999 op/ed in The New York Times, titled “A Threat Mostly to Ourselves,” Nitze wrote:

“I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them … adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even if retaliation for their prior use against us.”

Nitze, a former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, noted that the destructiveness of “conventional” weapons make nuclear warheads redundant and unnecessary. Nitze wrote:

“In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal.”

Recent history illustrates Nitze’s point in spades, as conventional U.S. bombs, missiles, and troops: killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, and again in the 2003 Iraq War (“100,000 Iraqis killed since U.S. invasion, analysis says,” Mpls Star Tribune, Oct. 29, 2004, -&- “Greenpeace Count Puts Dead From War in Gulf at 200,000,” New York Times, May 30, 1991); leveled Afghanistan’s major cities beginning in 2001; and, turned Syria’s cities into smoking ruins after first attacking ISIS then Syrian government forces. The Pentagon says that “Operation Inherent Resolve” conducted 13,331 airstrikes in Iraq and 11,235 airstrikes in Syria by August 9, 2017. No nukes required.

The unimaginably expensive maintenance, refurbishment, and expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a hugely profitable jobs program which is defended and protected by Congressional representatives from coast to coast, because weapons contracts in one’s district mean votes. But the weapons themselves are just for show. Our nuclear weapons “theater” is the government’s perpetual public threat to conduct nuclear attacks, a permanent bomb threat known as “credible deterrence.” This nuclear terror is used by the government to claim that our conventional wars of mass destruction are “measured,” “surgical,” “limited,” and “moderate” — because the shooters didn’t resort to nuclear attacks.

The 30-year $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons rebuild program ⸺ launched in 2014 by Barack Obama and Joe Biden ⸺ must be protested and resisted on economic and environmental grounds, but the absurdity and self-deception of deterrence theory itself must be denounced and abandoned, the way Paul Nitze did, in order to finally end the nightmare and colossal waste of fielding a nuclear arsenal.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

Gaza’s toxic air a ‘death sentence’ for trapped Palestinians, warn experts

Nearly 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections reported in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to WHO data

Rabia Ali |10.09.2024 - TRT/AA 

Experts fear more birth defects, lung cancers, mouth cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses and asthma cases in Gaza

ISTANBUL

Experts are warning that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are breathing toxic and polluted air that is nothing short of a “death sentence.”

Hundreds of thousands of people in the besieged and bombarded enclave are suffering breathing problems and respiratory issues, and doctors say the scale of the problem will continue to grow as Israeli bombs disperse more chemicals into the air, mixing with dust from the unending mounds of rubble throughout Gaza.

The extent of the crisis will also become clearer when Gaza’s health system is restored and hospitals get back the ability to conduct tests and offer other basic services destroyed in Israel’s ongoing assault.

Dr. Riyad Abu Shamala, a Palestinian ENT specialist in Gaza, fears an increase in birth defects in the near future, along with cases of lung cancer, particularly once “hospitals resume operations and departments such as radiology, MRI, CT scan and others … are restored.”

“I believe the general situation will worsen due to the deterioration of living conditions, increased pollution, lack of sanitation, and the contamination of water and air,” he told Anadolu.

Since Oct. 7 last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded 995,000 cases of acute respiratory infections in Gaza.

Yara Asi, an academic specializing in health management, believes these numbers are likely a significant undercount.

“It’s much worse than we know because there are countless people that are in homes or in shelters with no access to physicians or hospitals to tell them about their ailments,” said Asi, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida’s School of Global Health Management and Informatics.

Why are respiratory infections rising in Gaza?

The problem is rooted in “air pollution caused by dust, debris, chemicals from the destruction of buildings … and explosions,” said Abu Shamala.

Another major pollutant is vegetable oil that is being used as a substitute for diesel, he said.

The living conditions in Gaza are dire, with severe overcrowding in displacement camps, thousands of tents in close proximity, and piles of garbage everywhere, which are exacerbating the health crisis, said the doctor.

Along with that is the weakened immunity of people who are malnourished and relying on canned food as the main source of sustenance, he said.

Abu Shamala said the most common respiratory ailments among Gazans right now are acute and chronic bronchial asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumonia, bronchitis, sarcoidosis, and lung cancer.

Most people have symptoms such as severe cough, difficulty in breathing, phlegm with cough, including bloody phlegm, rapid breathing and wheezing, he added.

Since last October, Israel has dropped more than 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, and there is more than 40 million tons of rubble across the enclave.

“There are thousands of tons of rubble and dust and people don’t have the tools to clear it. They don’t have the machinery, they don’t have appropriate masks, they’re just walking around in this environment,” said Asi.

Civil rescue workers are literally inside destroyed buildings, trying to dig through the rubble with no protective gear, she said.

“This, of course, will also exacerbate respiratory illnesses,” said Asi.

Normally, smoking is the biggest cause for COPD, but Gaza’s case is entirely different, she said.

“This isn’t a population that is smoking. This is a population that is living amid ruins ... with dust, smoke and toxic chemicals that they cannot avoid,” said Asi.

Is prevention possible?

Another major unknown and exacerbating factor, according to Asi, is the kind of warfare being seen in Gaza.

There is indiscriminate bombing all around civilian areas and with bombs packing thousands of pounds of explosives, she said.

“We’ve seen glimpses of this in Syria, but in many cases there, aside from areas under siege, people were able to escape. Here, they are trapped,” said the researcher.

“It’s kind of an unprecedented health crisis in many ways.”

Health problems for the people of Gaza “will unfold over the years … (and) we will have to manage and deal with it,” she said.

Asi finds it particularly frustrating that many of the diseases that are threatening Palestinian lives are completely preventable or treatable.

“We have the treatments. We have vaccines for many of them ... All of that is gone, or never was in Gaza, because of the (Israeli) blockade,” she said.

She feels at a loss as to what Gazans can do to protect themselves.

“The ultimate fix … would be to leave Gaza entirely right now, but they cannot even do that,” she said.

“The only thing that will stop this at this point is a cease-fire, and a rigorous and sustained humanitarian effort that includes, in some cases, getting the most vulnerable people out of Gaza to receive the medical care they need.”

Long-term consequences

Asi warned that respiratory illnesses can have long-term consequences, including for babies, children, elderly people, people with compromised immune systems, people with cancer, and pregnant women.

“It is especially dangerous for children whose bodies, immune systems, and lungs are still developing,” she said.

There are studies on the link between exposure to viral infections or toxins and developing asthma or other types of wheezing disorders later in life, she added.

After the US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were more cases of cancers and other genetic anomalies for decades, as was the case after the Iraq war, said Asi.

“We saw greater incidents of cancers and other ailments, especially in children that were born in those settings,” she said.

“Gaza is yet another setting of environmental disaster and destruction that children are growing up or being born in.”

She fears there will be a rise in “lung cancers, mouth cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, and asthma.”

“This could be a death sentence for many in the near or short-term future,” she warned.​​​​​​​

No, Pakistan is not Israel’s doppelganger

The Grand Canyon-sized crater in Faisal Devji’s argument is one that anyone with any basic reading of South Asian history could point out to you — we were already here.

Ayesha Malik

Published September 10, 2024 

I started to read Faisal Devji’s 2013 book Muslim Zion in a cafe in Lahore where the Palestinian flag dominated one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. I would look up at it every now and then when I was most frustrated by Devji’s feeble arguments that Pakistan was the Israel of the Muslim world and the Indian subcontinent.

While I can hardly claim to have come to the book unbiased (I did not of course believe Pakistan to be a Muslim Israel), I did think that Devji’s book would have at least left me a little perplexed at some of the similarities between Pakistan and Israel or persuaded me somewhat that it wasn’t so clearcut.

Unfortunately, Devji writes as well as he thinks, which is to say not very well at all, and so neither of those things happened.

‘Muslim Zion’

The notion that Pakistan was a ‘Muslim Zion’ was popularised by Devji and is premised on the argument that Pakistan and Israel share a braided history — that they both sought to create a promised land based on religion in a strange neighbourhood surrounded by foes. Most recently, in the Munk Debate for 2024, guffawing British critic Douglas Murray also proposed a likeness between Pakistan and Israel, arguing that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism as nobody would dare suggest that Pakistan be abolished or that it has no right to be a state. According to Devji, “Pakistan and Israel both emerged from situations in which minority populations dispersed across vast subcontinents sought to escape the majorities whose persecution they rightly or wrongly feared”.

The Grand Canyon-sized crater in Devji’s argument is one that anyone with any basic reading of South Asian history could point out to you — we were already here.

Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan’s finest diplomat, and international lawyer, pointed out the fallacies of this argument to the UN General Assembly when analogies were made between the Jews in Palestine and the Muslims in India. He highlighted that Muslims were an integral part of the population. In contrast, European Jews had been artificially shipped into Palestine — a foreign country they had no ties to — to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of the local Arab population.

Gandhi supported this argument when he said that the “Muslim population is a population of converts … all descendants of Indian-born people”. We were indigenous to the land, a land we sought to partition to escape a British Raj giving way to a Hindu Raj, which we cleft with the assent of both.

Pakistan had become independent with the consent of the Hindu majority, hard-won but won in the end, negotiated without bloodshed, and it had only been formed in areas where Muslims were in the majority, with the maharajas, nawabs, and nizams of every princely state choosing which country to join — Kashmir remaining a notable exception to this. Pakistan’s consistent position even in 1948 was that if the Palestinians were to consent to partition, they would also vote in favour of the plan to part the territory. But Palestinians refused to consent on the basis that the Jews had been in a minority everywhere except in Jaffa, one out of 14 subdistricts at the time and had been settled into the land to drive them out of it.

Devji’s argument that Indian Muslims came to Pakistan from great distances, “to become the Ashkenazis of their new homeland”, is incredibly disingenuous, and should by that token also apply to Hindus and Sikhs who moved to India. What is axed from Devji’s narrative is that Partition gave every family the choice to leave or to stay, a choice open to all, and availed by many.

The decision to move was never to be conquerors in a country they’d just liberated.
A crumbling analogy

They say that in the slippery slope of analogies, you must never ski right to the bottom. Unfortunately, Devji slaloms exactly there and then stays for an uncomfortably long time. The threads he attempts to weave together to create his frayed tapestry of an argument include that Urdu was made the language of Pakistan despite it not being any of its people’s mother tongue which is akin to Hebrew being chosen as Israel’s national language — that is, it being an attempt to unify a nation and create a new nationality which wasn’t there.

While this argument can be debated in its own right, it seems to ignore entirely Devji’s main thesis. For if Pakistan really was the Muslim Zion with no historical connection to the land, premised on religion as a unifying basis, wouldn’t we have picked Arabic as our national language?

Perhaps an indication of how weak Devji’s arguments are is the fact that he deems it worth pointing out very early in his book that Jinnah’s library contained ‘more books on the problems of European Jewry than on any Muslim people or country’ and he also highlights repeatedly that the Muslim League’s acolytes frequently compared themselves to the minorities in Europe and the Jews scattered around the world. The fly in the milk of this argument is that minorities fighting for their right to a homeland are bound to highlight the plight of other persecuted minorities.

Indeed, the Muslim League seems to have mentioned the partition of Ireland far more when discussing how to make a nation out of a multitude of scattered Muslims. Also, despite these comparisons between the Muslims in India to the Jews in Europe, Pakistan consistently took a strong stance in favour of Palestine at the United Nations and constantly rebuffed Israel’s attempts to get Pakistan to recognise it as a state.

I was most incredulous with Devji’s argument though when he started to explore a strange point unique in its ridiculousness. He argues that Jinnah was the “Satan of the Pakistan movement” [I am quoting this verbatim], pointing out that Congress had ‘always seen Jinnah as being possessed of demonic qualities’. He comments on his ‘satanic solitude’, his ‘dangerously demonic style’, and his ‘satanic character’ which ‘made him quite different from and indeed more devilish than the Devil himself.’

The smoking gun for this is apparently supplied by virtue of Jinnah’s arrogance as well as a speech in which Jinnah said that he “would be the ally of even the Devil if need be in the interest of Muslims”. Further proof is found, as per Devji, in the fact that Allama Iqbal had already made satan a heroic figure in his popular poetry which apparently represented “a new kind of political ideal for a free-floating and self-possessed nation that rejected its grounding in nature or history”.

I have no idea what this means or what Devji is trying to say. He apparently is unfamiliar with the fact that many strands of Islamic thought believe that satan himself will be forgiven on the last day, but a theological debate is unnecessary. I did wonder what the editors at Harvard University Press were doing when they reviewed these histrionics. Would they have been as open to declarations that Churchill, Roosevelt, or Gandhi were satanic figures? How did this make it through a simple peer review?
Uncomfortable parallels

It is all the more annoying then, that some uncomfortable parallels do exist between Israel and Pakistan, though they are not found in Devji’s inelegant prose. Rephael Stern has written about how Israel, shortly after becoming a state in 1948, transplanted Pakistani law into its books to expropriate Palestinian property similar to the way Pakistan had to take over non-Muslim property left behind following Partition. Israeli legal advisers had urged the use of Pakistani laws as ‘first-rate international precedent’ which was used by their Transfer Committee in the 1950s with one adviser stating that the ‘birth pangs’ of both countries were the same.

While the laws were transplanted, they were meant to address very different issues. Pakistan had initially saved the properties of evacuating non-Muslims so that they could be returned to them, believing that ‘evacuees’ would return after the violence wrought by Partition subsided. But after realising that we had nowhere to home the swathes of Muslims entering the country after the slicing of the subcontinent, the Pakistani state had given their property over to the Muslims arriving from India. While initially, the law claimed that any leaving Hindus or Sikhs could return to the country and reclaim their property, given how cash-strapped and resource-ridden we were, Pakistan quickly took that property over and gave it instead to Muslim arrivals.

Israel studied these laws to expropriate the property of the 700,000 Palestinians they had ethnically cleansed from the land during the nakba of 1948 but took it further. The Pakistani law didn’t apply to movable property, while Israel’s did, allowing them to seize money from the bank accounts of Palestinians.

The critical point of departure between the purpose of these transplanted laws was that Israel used Pakistani laws against the Palestinian people with the aim to dispossess them and settle their own. Ironically, India was to later study Israel’s laws (not knowing they were based on Pakistani laws) to similarly provide homes for those who had fled to India during Partition.

While the same laws were imposed, the aims were very different — India and Pakistan intended to house those who had fled to their countries after a consensual Partition, whereas Israel enacted those laws to exile Palestinians from their homes and ensure they could never return.
Parting of the people

Liberal wisdom dictates that states created for a religious minority are a bad idea, with the prime reason for this being that no state based on religion can ever then protect its religious minorities. But I disagree.

Out of the many reasons for which states may be formed, along political, ethnic, or cultural lines, religion is as good a reason as any to forge a homeland. Our faith is the best explanation we have for the tragedy that is life. It seems only natural that we should choose to build our nations along the tenets of our shared belief. I have no issue with a Muslim or Jewish state, and in fact, the Jewish desire for their own country is one I have utmost sympathy for. But a nation cannot be trojan horsed into the international community through the displacement and dispossession of another people.

Over the years, the map of Palestine has turned into a photo negative of itself with settlers claiming nativity taking over the land, ink blot by ink blot, while the Arab world remains imperial petrol stations looking on. I do wonder though whether now the Partition of the Indian subcontinent could offer a useful parallel for Palestine. Jinnah, while a former ambassador for Hindu-Muslim unity, seems to have come to the anguished conclusion that Pakistan was an unfortunate necessity as both peoples were too different to live together.

The poet, W. H. Auden, mocked Cyril Radcliffe’s role in light of this when he arrived in India in 1947:

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,

Having never set eyes on this land he was called to Partition

Between two peoples fanatically at odds,

With their different diets and incompatible gods.

When asked whether he believed the difference between Bengali Hindus and Muslims to be greater than that between Muslim Pathans and Sindhis, Jinnah argued that ‘the fundamentals’ were common to all Muslims as they believed in one God, equality of man, and human brotherhood.

The core basis upon which Jinnah believed Hindus and Muslims were antithetical was the fact that Hinduism distinguished due to caste which is the foundation of its religious and social system, whereas Islam was based on equality of man. He was supported in this view by other Hindus, including Rao Bahadar M. C. Rajah, a leader of the ‘Untouchables’, who said: “I admire Mr Jinnah and feel grateful to him because, in advocating the cause of the Muslims, he is championing the claims of all classes who stand the danger of being crushed under the steam roller of a [caste-] Hindu majority.”

Jinnah intended for Pakistan to be based on the principles of Islam — of equality of man, and freedom for minorities. Pakistan is currently falling far short of that. It should not be inconceivable, in such an Islamic state, to have a Hindu, Jewish or Christian President, who espouses those same values. Just like a Jewish or Christian state could have a Muslim president who shares their values, which Abrahamic faiths largely do.

It was the continued discussion of a one- or two-state solution for Palestine and Israel which brought me to that café clutching Muslim Zion. Unlike Auden’s poem about the Indian subcontinent, Israelis and Palestinians don’t have different diets nor incompatible gods, yet they remain fanatically at odds. While many decry a two-state solution as something Israel would never allow, leading to the Israeli taunt that one ‘might as well call for a Palestinian state on the moon’, a one-state solution among these warring peoples seems all the more difficult to achieve.

Edward Said believed that both Palestinians and Jews had the right to live in Zion and were ‘condemned to live there together’. But I wonder then whether perhaps the Solomonic model of our Partition should be followed, with Palestine instead becoming our doppelgänger. Two states, side by side, independent, free, and equal sovereigns.

After all, is it not itself the worst form of idolatry, for two monotheistic faiths to fight over the holy land?

Header illustration by Abro/ EOS

 

Young vapers perform worse in exercise testing

European Respiratory Society

 

image: 

Portrait of researcher Dr Azmy Faisal

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Credit: Azmy Faisal / European Respiratory Society

Young people who vape perform worse than non-vapers in tests designed to measure their capacity for exercise, according to a study presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Vienna, Austria [1]. The research also showed that the performance of young vapers was similar to that of young smokers.

 

The study adds to growing evidence that long-term use of vaping is harmful and challenges the idea that vaping could be a healthier alternative to smoking.

 

The research was presented by Dr Azmy Faisal, senior lecturer in cardiorespiratory physiology in the department of sport and exercise sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He said: “Previous research has shown that vaping is linked to lung inflammation and damage, and harmful changes to the blood vessels. Although, some research suggests that vaping could be used to cut back or quit smoking, we don’t yet know what longer-term vaping use does to our bodies.”

 

The study included 60 people in their 20s who all had normal lung function according to spirometry testing. Twenty were non-smokers and non-vapers, 20 had been vaping for at least two years and 20 had been smoking for at least two years.

 

Each person took part in an incremental exercise test on a static bike. This is the gold-standard for testing physical ability and how well a person copes with exercise, looking at their heart, lungs, and muscles’ responses at harder and harder levels until they reach their maximum. They were also given blood tests and an ultrasound scan to analyse how well their arteries were functioning.

 

On average, the group of young vapers had lower ‘peak exercise capacity’ (186 watts) than the group who did not vape or smoke (226 watts) but similar capacity to the group of smokers (182 watts). This is a measure of the maximum amount of physical exertion that a person can achieve. At peak exercise, vapers and smokers were also less able to consume oxygen on average (2.7 litres per minute and 2.6 litres per minute) compared to the non-smoking non-vaping groups (3 litres per minute).

 

Both vapers and smokers showed signs that their blood vessels were not working as well as the non-smoking and non-vaping group, according to the blood tests and ultrasound scans. The smokers and the vapers were more out of breath, experienced intense leg fatigue and had higher levels of lactate in their blood, a sign of muscle fatigue, even before they reached their maximum level of exercise.

 

Dr Faisal said: “In this study, we looked at a group of young people with no apparent signs of lung damage. Among the people who had been vaping or smoking for at least two years, we saw important differences in how well they coped with exercise. The smokers and the vapers had measurably excess breathing while using the exercise bikes. They found it harder to breath, their muscles became more fatigued, and they were less fit overall. In this regard, our research indicated that vaping is no better than smoking.”

 

Dr Filippos Filippidis is Chair of the ERS Tobacco Control Committee, a reader in public health at Imperial College London and was not involved in the research. He said: “Vapes are being sold cheaply and in a variety of flavours to appeal to young people. As a result, we’re seeing more and more young people take up the habit without knowing what the long-term consequences could be to their health.

 

“Although it’s always a challenge to know if the associations we find in these studies are causal or a result of some other systematic differences between groups, people who vape need to be aware that using these products could make them less fit and able to take part in exercise. Doctors and policymakers also need to know about the risks of vaping, and we should be doing all we can to support children and young people to avoid or quit vaping.”

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Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

 

New research shows regular mobile phone use can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, especially in smokers and people with diabetes

A new study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology investigates the association between mobile phone use, risk of heart diseases, and modifiable lifestyle factors

Elsevier

 

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A new study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology has found that regular mobile phone use was positively associated with incident cardiovascular diseases risk, especially in current smokers and individuals with diabetes.

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Credit: Canadian Journal of Cardiology

Philadelphia, September 4, 2024 – A new study has found that regular mobile phone use was positively associated with incident cardiovascular diseases risk, especially in current smokers and individuals with diabetes. In addition, this association was partly attributed to poor sleep, psychological distress, and neuroticism. The article in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, details the results of this large-scale prospective cohort study.

Yanjun Zhang, MD, Division of Nephrology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, explains, "Mobile phone use is a ubiquitous exposure in modern society, so exploring its impact on health has significant public health value. Radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) emitted by mobile phones cause dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, inflammatory responses, and oxidative stress, and are therefore expected to affect a variety of organs such as the heart and blood vessels. However, whether mobile phone use is associated with the risk of cardiovascular diseases remains uncertain."

Co-investigator Ziliang Ye, MD, Division of Nephrology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, adds, "We aimed to assess the prospective association of regular mobile phone use with incident cardiovascular diseases and explore the mediating effects of sleep and mental health. We found that compared with non-regular mobile phone users, regular mobile phone users had a significantly higher risk of incident cardiovascular diseases."

The study included 444,027 individuals from the UK Biobank without a history of cardiovascular diseases who self-reported on the frequency of their mobile phone use from 2006 to 2010. Regular mobile phone use was defined as at least one call per week. Using linked hospital and mortality records, the composite outcome of incident stroke, coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure was ascertained over a median followup time of 12.3 years. Researchers also investigated the role of sleep patterns, psychological distress, and neuroticism.

Co-investigator Xianhui Qin, MD, Division of Nephrology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, notes, "We found that sleep patterns, psychological distress, and neuroticism may be potential mechanisms of the association between mobile phone use and cardiovascular diseases. A poor sleep pattern and poor mental health may adversely affect the development of cardiovascular diseases through disrupted circadian rhythm, endocrine and metabolic disruption, and increased inflammation. In addition, chronic exposure to RF-EMF radiation emitted from mobile phones could lead to oxidative stress and inflammatory response. Therefore, RF-EMF radiation exposure from mobile phones in combination with smoking and diabetes may have a synergistic effect in increasing cardiovascular diseases risk."

An accompanying editorial contextualizes the findings of the study. Given that the recruitment window of this study (2006-2010) occurred before the widespread use of modern smartphones, which are now more commonly used for other activities (e.g., entertainment, text messaging/email, social networking, etc.), the generalizability and current relevance of these findings require careful consideration.

Co-author of the editorial Nicholas Grubic, MSc, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, ON, Canada, concludes, "While the current study suggests that using a mobile phone may moderately increase the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, more conclusive evidence with valid measurements of mobile phone use is needed before this association becomes a concern for the general public. Maintaining responsible mobile phone habits should be a valuable component of an all-encompassing approach to supporting cardiovascular health. Before diving into hours of mindless ’doom-scrolling’ on your smartphone today, consider redirecting this time toward a more heart-healthy activity."

 

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Journal

Canadian Journal of Cardiology

DOI

10.1016/j.cjca.2024.06.006 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Regular Mobile Phone Use and Incident Cardiovascular Diseases: Mediating Effects of Sleep Patterns, Psychological Distress, and Neuroticism

Article Publication Date

4-Sep-2024