Medical societies and health-care companies may be too close for comfort

Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Canada - Thursday
The Conversation

There are three different types of organizations for doctors in Canada: ones that license doctors to be able to practise and ensure that they are competent; ones that develop programs to train family doctors and specialists; and medical societies.

Medical societies are voluntary membership organizations primarily for doctors who share a common expertise in either a medical specialty (e.g., cardiology) or a common interest in a particular area of practice (e.g., rural medicine).

Societies serve important purposes: they provide continuing professional education to their members, they advocate to government and others on behalf of their members and the patients that they treat and they promote continual improvement in their area of knowledge.

Because of the nature of their work, medical societies are more likely than the other types of organizations to have interactions with companies that make drugs, medical devices or that develop medical technology. And they often receive money from these health-care companies.

Relationships with industry

There have been reports that recommendations from societies have been influenced by financial conflicts-of-interest and calls for societies to transform their modes of operation to prevent the appearance or reality of undue industry influence on their actions.

In an article that I recently published, I looked into the relationship between Canadian medical societies and health-care companies. There are 65 specialty societies listed on the website of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Twenty-three of these societies get sponsorships from companies for their general activities and 25 get money for their annual conferences. None of the societies say how much money they get from individual companies and only two make public the total amount that they get through donations.

When societies get money from companies, they usually feature the companies’ logos on their websites and doctors can also hyperlink to the websites of those companies.

Alarmingly, only 10 societies have public policies about how to deal with their interactions with companies. The absence of a policy about sponsorships is consistent with previous research about other aspects of the interactions between Canadian medical societies and health-care companies. Adrienne Shnier, a lawyer and adjunct professor at York University’s School of Health Policy & Management, and I found that these societies’ policies on industry involvement in continuing medical education were generally weak or non-existent.

Canadian medical societies are no different from those in other countries. Out of 131 Italian medical societies, 29 per cent had manufacturers’ logos on their web page, 4.6 per cent had an ethical code covering relationships with industry, 6.1 per cent published an annual financial report and 64.9 per cent received sponsorships for their last conference.

Industry influence

Does any of this really matter? Should we care about these relationships? There is good evidence that we should. When doctors hyperlink to company websites, they are directly exposed to information generated by those companies about their products.

A comprehensive review, of which I was one of the authors, examined the relationship between exposure to information from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity and cost of physicians’ prescribing. In studies that found an association between pharma company information and prescribing, the result was either higher prescribing frequency, higher costs or lower prescribing quality. Some studies found no association, and no studies found an improvement in prescribing behaviour.

For medical societies, receiving money from companies is associated with taking actions that are favourable to the interests of those companies. Contraception guidelines released in 2011 by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) that endorsed the use of two oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin, were an almost identical copy of a consensus statement from a workshop sponsored by Bayer, the maker of these pills. The SOGC received funding from Bayer and its executive vice-president defended the guidelines.

In guidelines for prescribing opioids for chronic non-cancer pain, those produced by four organizations with conflicts of interest with opioid manufacturers had multiple “red flags,” meaning items known to introduce potential bias.

In 2009, the American Society of Hypertension partnered with its then largest donor, pharma company Daiichi Sankyo, to create a training program for the company’s sales representatives who visit doctors’ offices.

Disclosure and transparency

Medical societies need to demonstrate to their membership and to the patients they serve that their actions are not influenced by who gives them money. There are some simple measures they can undertake to help achieve that objective.

All societies should have detailed policies about interactions with commercial entities. They should publish the amounts they get from individual companies so that everyone can see what percent of their budget comes from sponsorships. Acknowledging sponsors is appropriate, but hyperlinking to their websites is not and should be stopped.

Medical societies perform valuable work, but if there are doubts about who that work benefits, that’s not good for anyone.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

Why Big Pharma must disclose payments to patient groups

How Big Pharma’s free samples encourage your doctor to prescribe more expensive drugs

In 2019-2021, Joel Lexchin received payments for writing a brief on the role of promotion in generating prescriptions for Goodmans LLP and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for presenting at a workshop on conflict-of-interest in clinical practice guidelines. He is a member of the Foundation Board of Health Action International and the Board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written.

Canada's premiers are missing a real chance to fix our ailing health-care system

Tom McIntosh, Professor, Politics and International Studies, University of Regina 

THE CONVERSATION


When Canada’s premiers doubled down earlier this year on their demand for a $28 billion unconditional increase in the Canada Health Transfer (CHT), they missed an opportunity to finally achieve the kind of health-care reform our underperforming system has been told it needs over and over again.

The rationale for this demand is that the system is chronically underfunded (itself a debatable contention), and this is supposedly because, as Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is fond of tweeting: “Ottawa used to fund 50 per cent of health care costs and now only funds 22 per cent of those costs.”

The premiers are also suggesting they’re being modest in their demands. They’re not asking for a return of the 50/50 deal struck in the 1960s, but only that Ottawa up its share to 35 per cent.

As I’ve argued previously, the premiers’ demand fundamentally misrepresents the history of health-care financing in Canada.

Read more: The disingenuous demands of Canada's premiers for $28 billion in health-care funding

They have forgotten that the 50/50 deal ended in 1977 with the full consent of the provincial governments. Since then, the size of the federal cash transfer for health has been subject to both intense federal-provincial diplomacy and federal unilateralism.

Their misleading take on history aside, the premiers seem determined that any increase in health funding from Ottawa pertains to the more or less unconditional general CHT, set at $45 billion to the provinces in 2022-23 — and not part of an agreement that might specify priorities for action and reform on their part.
Health accords didn’t bring about change

It’s clear that national accords, like those in 2000, 2003 and 2004, did little to effect real change in the system, although the 2004 Health Accord did provide stable and predictable increases in the CHT.

When the 2004 accord expired in 2017, neither the federal nor the provincial governments were in the mood for another grand bargain. Instead, Ottawa took a very different tack. It agreed to a 3.5 per cent annual increase in the CHT (up from a three per cent from 2014 to 2017) and to provide an additional $11.5 billion in targeted funding for improvements to community and mental health care.

In order to receive the cash, provinces had to sign bilateral agreements that set out, in varying degrees of detail, where and how the money would be spent.

As a colleague and I have argued elsewhere, these bilateral agreements, though still imperfect, are a markedly improved way of increasing transparency about where health-care dollars go.

They could also serve as an accountability tool for measuring progress focused not just on fixing but actually improving Canada’s publicly administered health-care system.

In all likelihood, Ottawa will want to continue what it started in 2017 and tie any significant funding increase to a new set of bilateral agreements based on priorities chosen by the provinces. It’s just as likely that this is what the premiers are really trying to avoid.

The impact of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic presents us with a unique opportunity to rethink and reform public health care in Canada.

There is no doubt that the system was hit hard — its capacity was stretched, its workforce took a still uncalculated toll and all manner of service delivery was interrupted. Most notably, surgical wait times (already a serious problem in Canada’s system) were made worse, with one report indicating Ontario alone had a backlog of a million surgical procedures.

Read more: How to solve Canada's wait time problem

Furthermore, the pandemic exposed profound problems in long-term care and community and mental health-care systems.

It’s precisely because of so many simultaneous challenges that we should be thinking not just of rebuilding Canadian health care, but undertaking the necessary and long demanded changes that would create a 21st-century publicly funded and administered health-care system.

There are two likely scenarios.

In the first, Ottawa agrees to a significant increase in the CHT and the provinces simply take the money without making any of the necessary changes to how and what services are delivered (much as the Senate concluded happened with the $40 billion provided by the 2004 Health Accord). At best, that means we return to a pre-pandemic status quo in which the provincial systems continue to lose ground.

In the second, new agreements target the funding to remake the health-care workforce, make better progress on primary health-care reform, reconfigure long-term care, build real community-based mental health care or reconfigure the continuum of care to manage wait times on an ongoing basis.
Co-operation from premiers needed

The second will not happen without some form of conditionality, transparency and accountability from the premiers themselves. Unfortunately, the 2017 bilateral agreements contain no obligation on the provinces’ part to report on achievements relative to their commitments.

Asking provinces to report to the federal government on how they manage their constitutional responsibilities for health care could be taken as a violation of provincial sovereignty. But they should not refuse to report to their own residents.

It’s hardly inappropriate for Ottawa to insist that provinces report to their residents on any targeted funding aimed at priorities the provinces themselves commit to tackling.

So, unless and until the premiers agree to set out — perhaps in a new set of bilateral agreements — how they intend to spend and report on the 62 per cent increase in transfers they are demanding to actually bring about real change in their respective health systems, Ottawa should refuse. And Canadians themselves should just say no.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Ontario public health cuts will endanger the public

The disingenuous demands of Canada’s premiers for billion in health-care funding

Tom McIntosh received funding through the University of Calgary for a study of the 2017 bilateral health care accords.

Over 40,000 have died from COVID-19 in Canada, but hospitalizations are falling again

Sean Boynton - Friday
 Global News

At least 40,000 people across Canada have died after contracting COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than two years ago, according to provincial data, and more than 70 people are still dying per day.

Yet hospitalizations and confirmed cases have fallen over the past two weeks, suggesting the sixth wave may be coming to an end.

As of Friday, 40,217 fatalities have been confirmed by provinces and territories to date.

Read more:
Canada’s COVID-19 death toll could be thousands higher than official count: report

Experts have previously said the true death toll could be thousands higher than the official count due to gaps in data collection, suggesting around two-thirds of all COVID-19-related deaths may have been missed.

Most provinces have shifted to reporting COVID-19 data weekly, a majority of which report on Thursdays. The official death toll surpassed 40,000 on May 12, while Ontario and Quebec — which still report daily — added another 48 deaths combined on Friday.

The seven-day average of new deaths has hovered around 70 for the past two weeks, plateauing from the near-record of 165 seen during the fifth wave early this year.

The dozens of new deaths per day comes despite signs the sixth wave is waning.

As of Friday, the seven-day average of daily lab-confirmed cases sits just above 4,630, down nearly 50 per cent from the rate seen a month ago.

The number of people in hospital currently sits at 5,664, according to the latest data, down more than 10 per cent from two weeks ago.

That includes 363 people being treated in intensive care units, a number that has also ticked downward after rising throughout April.

Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said on May 6 that cases appear to have plateaued in some provinces and are falling in others, though the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 remains high in some parts of the country.

Tam had warned nearly a month before that Canada was in the midst of a sixth wave, driven by the BA.2 subvariant of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The BA.2 subvariant is believed to be even more infectious than Omicron and is also leading to some reinfections of previous cases, according to Tam and other public health officials and experts.

Read more:
COVID-19 symptoms linger for many 2 years after infection, study shows

Tam and her provincial counterparts have said the number of confirmed cases being reported are likely an undercount of the true number of cases, which could be up to 10 times higher. Many parts of the country no longer provide laboratory tests for a majority of people after capacity was overwhelmed by the spread of Omicron in late 2021.

At the same time, those officials have moved away from widespread mandates toward allowing Canadians to make decisions on how to protect themselves from the latest wave based on their own personal health, as well as the setting they are in and the amount of transmission in their community.

Most provinces and territories have loosened all or nearly all of the public health restrictions they had imposed to combat previous waves of the pandemic.

Tam warned on April 1 that the country is in a period of pandemic transition that might see further waves of COVID-19 cases this year.

"We anticipate that progress will not be linear, and there will likely be more bumps along the way, including resurgence in cases this spring, and likely also in the fall and winter," she told a news briefing that day.

She said Canadians should keep wearing face coverings and ensure vaccinations are up to date amid rising case counts and reduced public health measures.

"I think the bottom line is everybody right now should still wear that mask and keep those layers of measures, no matter where you are in this country," she said.

Health officials are continuing to remind Canadians that vaccinations, including boosters, are the only way through the pandemic.

Although 90 per cent of the eligible population aged five and over have received at least one vaccine dose, and 86 per cent are considered fully vaccinated with two doses, less than half of all Canadians have received a third dose.

Boosters are considered critical to help prevent serious illness from Omicron, which has been proven to be more resilient to existing vaccines.

Vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna are developing a new generation of shots that will be designed to target more transmissible strains like Omicron.

— with files from the Canadian Press

Frank Stronach: Bringing health care to the factory floor
National Post - Tuesday

I’m a great believer that the number 1 priority in life — the one that stands above all others — is to stay healthy. When we become sick and weakened by illness, most of us would give everything we own for the chance to be healthy again.

© Provided by National PostFrank Stronach: Bringing health care to the factory floor

And when it comes to health care, I think we can all agree: in a civilized society, no individual should be denied medical treatment because he or she is unable to afford it.

However, the dilemma every country faces is figuring out the best way to deliver quality care. As a way to deliver better health-care services at a lower cost, one solution I’ve strongly advocated over the years is pushing medical care into the workplace.

Bringing doctors and other health-care providers directly into the workplace would have a dual benefit: it would deliver medical diagnosis and treatment in a timelier and more convenient manner, and it would be more cost-effective by reducing the health-care costs paid annually by employers and their employees, as well as the costs paid by government.

Under such a system, corporate-managed health services would be made available to employees and their immediate families, and would be carried out with the consent of employees, who would remain free to seek medical care elsewhere if they wished.

As part of the program, employees would be required to take part in paid preventive health education programs in the workplace that stress the benefits of adopting healthy lifestyle choices. Employees would also be involved in overseeing the management of the program, as members of a workplace advisory board.

All of the stakeholders involved — the health-care providers, the company and its employees — would get a cut of the savings associated with the health-care efficiencies. Employees would share a portion of the savings in the form of a cash rebate, while the company would divide almost half of the savings amongst the remaining stakeholders.

A portion would go to the doctors and medical staff in the form of an efficiency bonus to reward the more efficient delivery of health-care services, and about 10 per cent would go into a medical emergency account, which would essentially act as a rainy-day fund.

I believe this health-care model is a win-win-win proposition for all of the stakeholders involved. Doctors would be relieved of administrative expenses, would be guaranteed a built-in clientele and would be eligible for bonuses strictly tied to efficiency gains.

The company would have a healthier workforce and less absenteeism due to medical appointments. And employees would receive more convenient service and the ability to earn health-care rebates. Society would also benefit by delivering better health care at a much lower cost through a model that could be replicated by companies across the country.

We need to become more innovative and flexible in how we approach the delivery of health care. Unfortunately, in Canada and the United States, the debate about health care is far too often framed as an either/or proposition: either private care or public care.

But neither of these two systems on their own is ideal: in a completely private system, the poor cannot afford quality health care, and in a completely public system, people do not have timely access to medical attention as a result of governments rationing health-care dollars and a limited number of health-care providers.

I believe the best solution would be a hybrid of the two systems, or a system in which public and private health care co-exist and work in unison. A number of European countries have adopted a public-private model, including France, Denmark and Austria, and their health systems are rated among the best in the world. I see no reason why a hybrid system couldn’t work here in Canada.

We’ve thrown a lot of money at health care over the years, and it hasn’t made much of a dent in terms of reducing so-called “hallway health care” in our emergency rooms, or in terms of reducing wait times for medical specialists and badly needed diagnostic tools such as MRIs.

It’s high time we stopped being so rigid in our thinking and started adopting the best elements of health-care systems that are delivering better care at a better price.

National Post

FRANK STRONACH OWNS MAGNA INTERNATIONAL THE AUTO PARTS COMPANY

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/11/socialized-medicine-began-in-alberta.html

Filmmaker: Officials arrest Iran movie industry workers



DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An award-wining Iranian filmmaker said authorities raided the offices and homes of several filmmakers and other industry professionals and arrested some of them.

Mohammad Rasoulof said in a statement signed by dozens of movie industry professionals on his Instagram account late Saturday that security forces made some arrests and confiscated film production equipment during raids conducted in recent days. The statement condemned the actions and called them “illegal.”

In a separate Instagram post, Rasoulof identified two of the detained filmmakers as Firouzeh Khosravani and Mina Keshavarz. Rasoulof was not targeted in the recent raids.

Iranian media and authorities have not commented on the raids and no additional details were immediately available. Authorities in Iran occasionally arrest activists in cultural fields over alleged security violations.

Rasoulof won the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize in 2020 for his film “There Is No Evil.” It tells four stories loosely connected to the themes of the death penalty in Iran and personal freedoms under tyranny.

Shortly after receiving the award he was sentenced to a year in prison for three films he made that authorities found to be “propaganda against the system.” His lawyer appealed the sentence. He was also banned from making films and traveling abroad.

Iran’s conservative authorities, many with religious sensibilities, control all the levers of power in Iran. They have long viewed many cultural activities as part of a “soft war” by the West against the Islamic Republic. They say Westernization is attempting to tarnish the country’s Islamic beliefs.

The Associated Press

Famous rallying speech by feminist leader Millicent Fawcett was never made, says new book



Donna Ferguson - 
The Guardian


It has become a fashionable feminist slogan that is printed on everything from T-shirts and badges to fridge magnets and mugs: “Courage calls to courage everywhere”.

On her statue in Parliament Square, the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett even proudly displays her famous quotation on a stone banner.

But a new book suggests that Fawcett’s words have been taken out of context and that she was not making the rallying cry for feminism and suffrage that many people have thought.

“We have taken a quote where Fawcett’s making a statement and we’ve turned it into this feminist go-getting slogan,” said Edinburgh University professor Melissa Terras, editor of a forthcoming book, Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings.

“Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied” is often cited as a quote from a speech Fawcett made in 1913 about Emily Davison, the suffragette who died after she ran on to Epsom racecourse and was trampled by King George V’s horse.

In fact, Fawcett – who did not approve of the suffragettes’ militant tactics to get the vote – never made any such speech, claimed Terras.

It was not until after some women had the vote, in 1920, that she finally penned her famous line about the contagious impact of the suffragette’s courage.

At that point, Fawcett was merely trying to explain why Davison’s death – which she described as a deliberately “sensational” act of self-sacrifice – made headlines around the world, argues Terras.

“She thought that Davison’s death was pointless,” said Terras, who co-edited the book with suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford. “She sees it as a senseless loss of life.”

In 1913, Fawcett ran a tersely worded editorial in her weekly newspaper, the Common Cause, stating that, for all who believed in the enfranchisement of women, Davison’s death was a “piteous waste of courage and devotion” that did not deserve the name of “heroism”. She made no other attempt to publicly mourn or comment on Davison’s death at the time, the new book will show.

Terras thinks it is extremely unlikely that when Fawcett wrote her now famous quotation in a book, seven years after Davison’s death, she had decided to rally other women to stand up and fight for their rights as Davison did.

Instead, she suggests that Fawcett, a patriotic pro-war imperialist, was making a connection between Davison’s “self-sacrifice” for the cause of “freedom” and the deaths of so many men during the first world war. Terras said: “In the context of 1920, when lots of young people had just lost their lives, she writes that giving up your life for something you believe in is courageous.”

She may also have been making a call for unity, said the social historian Jane Robinson, who specialises in women’s history. “For many years, the fight for the vote had been divided, and now here was a chance, after the war and ahead of universal suffrage, to bring healing. Hence, courage calls to courage everywhere: we’re all in this together,” Robinson said.

Beverley Cook, curator of the suffragette collection at the Museum of London, said she thinks it is fashionable for contemporary feminists to reclaim the words of the “votes for women” campaigners for their own ends. “Sometimes the words of the suffragists and suffragettes are taken out of context and given a contemporary reinterpretation.”

Terras decided to write the book, which will be published on an open access basis by UCL Press on 9 June, because she could not find the speech Fawcett supposedly made in 1913 and realised that no collection of Fawcett’s speeches and writings existed.

“I thought: how can it be that someone so famous as the first woman to have a statue in Parliament Square – how can it be that no one can read her words? And that felt like an injustice to me.”

Russia’s Black Sea blockade pushing millions towards famine, G7 says


Daniel Boffey in Kyiv - Saturday
The Guardian

Millions of people will starve to death unless Russia allows the export of Ukrainian grain from blockaded ports, foreign ministers from the G7 have said.

As German’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, warned that Vladimir Putin was intransigent during their bilateral call on Friday, the ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US condemned Moscow for stoking a food crisis.

The G7 governments said the Russian president was pushing 43 million people towards famine by refusing to allow cereals to leave Ukraine via Black sea ports.

“Russia’s unprovoked and premeditated war of aggression has exacerbated the global economic outlook with sharply rising food, fuel and energy prices,” they said in a joint statement. “Combined with Russia blocking the exit routes for Ukraine’s grain, the world is now facing a worsening state of food insecurity and malnutrition … This is at a time when 43 million people were already one step away from famine.”

Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, told reporters: “We need to make sure that these cereals are sent to the world. If not, millions of people will be facing famine.”

The call came as Ukrainian officials claimed some major military successes, with the mayor of Kharkiv saying on Saturday that the Russians had withdrawn “far out” from Ukraine’s second-largest city.

The general staff of Ukraine’s army echoed the comments, saying the Russians had left their positions around the north-eastern city, which is 31 miles (50km) from the Russian border.

The remorseless shelling endured by the civilian population in the region had also paused, according to the regional governor, Oleh Sinegubov, while Ukrainian forces were launching a counteroffensive near the city of Izium, 78 miles south of Kharkiv.

However, Putin’s forces have also captured territory in the Donbas region, including Rubizhne, a city with a prewar population of about 55,000, and the situation appeared increasingly grave for the remaining soldiers trapped in the Azovstal steelworks in the south-eastern city of Mariupol.

Speaking on Saturday at a press conference in Kyiv, Natalia Zarytska, the wife of Bogdan Sements, who is among those trapped in the sprawling steelworks, called on China to intervene and help liberate the remaining.

She said: “Strong leaders cannot stand aside when there is evil … After all these negotiations, there is one person worldwide who it would be difficult for Vladimir Putin to refuse. We hope that strong and good China can make difficult decisions for the good.

“We ask the esteemed premier of China, Xi Jinping, to express love and care for global values and eastern wisdom and to join the process of rescuing the defenders of Mariupol.”

Hanna Ivleieva, the wife of a soldier in Mariupol, said only those who had lost their arms or legs were not fighting among the Ukrainian forces left in the city.

She said: “I am a soldier with the marines. My husband, my commanding officers, and close friends are now in Azovstal.

“They were the first to engage in the battle in this war. We are proud of all Azovstal defenders, as they are stronger than the steel [that] used to be produced here.

“But we do not want them to be killed there. We need our heroes alive. We ask the President of China as Putin’s economic partner to undertake all the necessary procedures and rescue our guys”.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Friday that talks with Moscow on extracting a “large number” of wounded defenders and some medics from the plant in Mariupol in return for the release of Russian prisoners of war were “very complex”, adding that Kyiv was using influential intermediaries.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk told local TV on Saturday that efforts were now focused on evacuating about 60 people.

Sviatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov regiment, which makes up most of the remaining forces at the plant, said in a YouTube video that his soldiers were holding on.

He said: “Our enemy, supported by planes and artillery, continues to attack. They continue their assault on our positions but we continue to repel them.”

The G7 countries said they would expand sanctions on Russia and that they would not accept the new borders Russia is seeking to draw.

They said: “We will never recognise borders Russia has attempted to change by military aggression, and will uphold our engagement in the support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea, and all states.

“We reaffirm our determination to further increase economic and political pressure on Russia, continuing to act in unity.”

They called on China not to aid Putin and “to desist from engaging in information manipulation, disinformation and other means to legitimise Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”.

Three weeks before Putin launched his war in Ukraine, the Russian president signed a pact with his Chinese counterpart that said there would be “no limits” to the two countries’ cooperation.

Palestinians mourn Israel's creation amid outcry over funeral raid

AFP - Yesterday 


Palestinians rallied Sunday to mark the "Nakba," or catastrophe, 74 years after Israel's creation, with condemnation spreading over a police raid on the funeral of a slain journalist.


© STAFFMap of Israel and the occupied West Bank

The annual demonstrations across the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and inside Israel came with tensions high over the killing of 51-year-old Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

The Palestinian-American was shot dead Wednesday during an Israeli raid in Jenin, a West Bank flashpoint. A Palestinian militant wounded in clashes there, Daoud al-Zubaidi, died from his injuries in an Israeli hospital Sunday.

Israeli police have vowed to investigate the chaos that marred the day of Abu Akleh's funeral, after television footage seen worldwide showed pallbearers struggling to stop the casket from toppling to the ground as baton-wielding police descended upon them, grabbing Palestinian flags.

The scenes Friday sparked international condemnation, including from the United States, United Nations and the European Union, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday calling for a "credible" investigation into Abu Akleh's death as he offered condolences to her family.


© Ahmad GHARABLI

Violence erupts between Israeli security forces and Palestinian mourners carrying the casket of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 13, 2022

Late South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu's foundation said Israeli police "attacking pallbearers" was "chillingly reminiscent of the brutality" seen at the funerals of anti-apartheid activists.


© ABBAS MOMANI

Palestinians wave flags as they march to mark the 74th anniversary of the "Nakba" or "catastrophe", in the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah, on May 15

- 'Unbridled brutality' -

Israeli commentators joined the chorus lambasting the raid as Abu Akleh's coffin emerged a Jerusalem hospital.

In leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, Oded Shalom said the footage "documented a shocking display of unbridled brutality and violence".

"The Jerusalem District Police decided to come down like a tonne of bricks on anyone who dared to hold a Palestinian flag," Shalom wrote.

"As if holding up a flag -- a mere piece of cloth, for God's sake -- at a funeral procession for an hour or two could have had any impact whatsoever" on Israeli claims to control over Jerusalem, he added.


© ABBAS MOMAN

Palestinians march under a huge flag in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to mark the "Nakba", or catastrophe of Israel's creation 74 years ago

Israeli police regularly crack down on people holding Palestinian flags.

Thousands of Palestinians streamed through central Ramallah for the main Nakba rally, with crowds also turning out in Gaza City, in the Israeli-blocked strip.

At a student Nakba event at Tel Aviv University (TAU), police said three Arabs were arrested "for attacking demonstrators and police officers."

The arrests followed a confrontation with Im Tirtzu, a right-wing Israeli movement holding a counter rally.

Arab TAU student Aline Nasra said that demonstrators were assaulted by police as they moved to protect one of their members from Im Tirtzu threats.

The right-wing Israelis taunted the Arab students, including with calls that Israel is only for "Jewish people," Nasra said.

- Posthumous report -

Al Jazeera on Sunday posthumously aired a piece produced by Abu Akleh on the Nakba, which marks Israel's 1948 declaration of independence.

A highly respected reporter, she was killed while wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest marked "Press".

Israel's army said an interim investigation could not determine who fired the fatal bullet, noting that stray Palestinian gunfire or Israeli sniper fire aimed at militants were both possible causes.

The Palestinian public prosecution said an initial probe proved Israeli troops were to blame.

Abu Akleh's posthumously aired piece retraced the fate of the Palestinian people since 1948, with a particular focus on refugees and the displaced.

More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the conflict that surrounded Israel's creation.

One of the latest casualties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Daoud al-Zubaidi, was the brother of Zakaria, who headed the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement and briefly escaped from an Israeli prison last year.


© ABBAS MOMANIThis aerial view shows Palestinians marching in a rally to mark the 74th anniversary of the "Nakba" or "catastrophe", in the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah, on May 15

The most recent Israeli fatality was special forces police officer Noam Raz, 46, who was shot Friday in Jenin. He was being buried on Sunday.

bur-jjm/bs/pjm

‘Cold-blooded’ killing and funeral chaos leave West Bank in turmoil

Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem 

- Yesterday 
 The Guardian


Nahed Araf Imran and her husband Jamal were exhausted but excited on Wednesday morning: Nahed was in labour with their third child at a local hospital in Nablus, in the north of the occupied West Bank.

But when Jamal’s mother arrived at the hospital crying just before the couple’s daughter was born, he knew something was wrong.

“I asked her what happened and she told me that Shireen Abu Aqleh had been shot dead by the Israelis. Shireen had visited us in our town, Bureen, and covered demonstrations here many times. Everybody knows her,” the 29-year-old construction worker said.

“My mum was heartbroken. I said to myself, when the baby comes, we will call her Shireen, and my wife agreed.”

Shireen Abu Aqleh Jamal Imran came into the world at about noon on Wednesday. At dawn that morning, her namesake, a 51-year-old veteran Al Jazeera journalist, had been shot in the head and killed during an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid in the West Bank town of Jenin.

Israeli officials said they believed the dual Palestinian-American citizen had died after being hit by Palestinian fire during an altercation between IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen.

But the reporter’s colleagues at the scene said there were no militants near the small group of journalists – all wearing helmets and body armour clearly marked as “press” – when they came under fire from the direction of the Israeli unit. Ali Samodi, an Al Jazeera producer who was shot in the back, told the Observer from his hospital bed that even after Abu Aqleh had fallen to the ground and colleagues tried to reach her, the bullets kept coming. Video of the incident confirms this version of events.

Israel has firmly rejected allegations that its soldiers deliberately targeted the journalists, but the international community is demanding answers in what Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network, has described as an “assassination” carried out “in cold blood”.

Unlike the killings of anonymous Palestinians that occur in the occupied West Bank on a regular basis, Abu Aqleh was a familiar face, broadcasting to millions across the Arab world and well known for her bravery during a 15-year television news career. She was also a US citizen. This time, an Israeli strategy of deflection and denial has backfired.

What is seen by the Palestinians as Israeli obfuscation also threatens to inflame a spate of violence that has surged across Israel and the Palestinian territories since late March.

Gallery: Mourning Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (dw.com)

1 of 8 Photos in Gallery©AFP

A veteran journalist

Shireen Abu Akleh spent over 25 years working as journalist for Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian of Christian faith, lived and worked in East Jerusalem. Her coverage mainly focused on the Middle East conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. She often reported from dangerous places but was known for remaining calm and cautious.

A video released by the IDF of what it said were Palestinian militants engaged in a firefight in Jenin on the morning Abu Aqleh was killed has been heavily criticised: human rights group B’Tselem, which visited the two locations, found it was impossible for the shooting in the IDF-distributed video to be the same gunfire that hit Abu Aqleh and Samodi.

And the spectacle of Israeli police storming Abu Aqleh’s funeral procession in Jerusalem on Friday, causing pallbearers to drop her coffin, has added to Palestinian and international outrage.

The public display of Palestinian flags in occupied East Jerusalem is forbidden by the Israeli authorities under any circumstances, but many mourners arrived waving Palestinian banners. The journalist’s casket was also draped in the flag, followed by an orange stretcher bearing a flak jacket marked “press”.


© Provided by The Guardian

Israeli police confront mourners as they carry the casket of Shireen Abu Aqleh on Friday. Photograph: Maya Levin/AP

The EU said it was appalled by the “unnecessary” force used by the Israeli police, while the White House described footage of the scene as “deeply disturbing”.

Israel’s police said the mourners were “disrupting public order” by throwing stones at the heavy police presence, but on Saturdayyesterday said an investigation into the officers’ actions would be launched.

“I was horrified by what I saw on TV from the funeral. I think it shows how Shireen exposed [Israel], she succeeded in that not just in life but in death also,” Imran said. Not letting her funeral proceed with respect … they have publicly exposed themselves for the world to see.”

The battle of narratives sparked by Abu Aqleh’s death is far from over. Palestinian officials have rejected the Israeli offer of a joint investigation, saying “criminals cannot be trusted”, leading Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett to accuse the Palestinians of denying Israel “access to the basic findings required to get to the truth”.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said during a state memorial for Abu Aqleh in the Palestinian town of Ramallah on Thursday that the case will be referred to the international criminal court, of which Israel is not a member and whose jurisdiction the state disputes.

An interim Israeli army investigation “could not determine” who fired the fatal bullet, an IDF statement said on Friday, while an initial probe by the Palestinian public prosecution found that “the only origin of the shooting was the Israeli occupation forces”.

In the meantime, even more so than during her career, Abu Aqleh’s fame has grown. Outside the reporter’s home in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem this week, neighbours and friends gathered daily to mourn her death despite a raid on the house on Wednesday by Israeli forces: many have put up pictures of her in their windows. On the quiet street outside, local children gather waving Palestinian flags.

“Shireen was a Christian and we are a Muslim family, but that didn’t matter,” one neighbour said. “She has united us.”

For the thousands of people who have thronged streets across the West Bank and Jerusalem this week in tribute, Abu Aqleh’s life and death has become a potent symbol.

“Shireen’s story is the story of the Palestinian people,” said Imran, the father of newborn Shireen. “She will never be forgotten, especially for our family. Every time we call her name we will remember.”

Croupiers plan to walk off the job at Montreal Casino for the second time in two days

 The Canadian Press


MONTREAL — Croupiers at the Montreal Casino say they will walk off the job once again today following a surprise four-hour strike on Saturday.

Employees stopped working on Saturday afternoon to denounce stalled negotiations over the new collective agreement, which came to an impasse last weekend.

The strike is set to resume today from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The collective agreement that regulates the working conditions of 521 dealers expired on March 31, 2020, with salaries and schedules among the issues at stake.

Union representative Jean-Pierre Proulx said contract talks will resume on Tuesday with a mediator, adding he hopes this weekend's actions demonstrate the need to find a satisfactory deal.

Loto-Québec, which manages the province's casinos, said clients will still be able to access gaming tables during the temporary strike except in the poker room.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2022.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.