*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
https://www.facebook.com/events/s/art-of-movement-and-evening-of/370445182255203/?mibextid=RQdjqZ
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
We are all Palestinian
Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwuhbLczgI
Greetings,
Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!
Mistahi
We are all Palestinian
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Labor for Palestine
Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar
Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.
Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland
https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Mr. Kevin Cooper
C-65304. 4-EB-82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
|
|
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) Nasser hospital in southern Gaza has become a refuge for displaced people.
By Rachel Abrams, Jan. 18, 2024
Mustafa Abutaha, who has been sheltering at the medical center in Khan Younis, Gaza, captured video of people seeking refuge. (Screenshot)
The Nasser Medical Center in southern Gaza has become a refuge for many people who have been displaced since the start of the war. Blankets, mattresses and pillows line the hallways, serving as makeshift beds. Some people have hung up sheets to afford a little bit of privacy. Outside the hospital, laundry hangs from balconies and windows to dry.
Unlike many other places in the enclave, the hospital has had fairly consistent internet and electricity, according to Mustafa Abutaha, a teacher who has been sheltering at the hospital in recent weeks.
Mr. Abutaha has been sending videos to The New York Times from inside Nasser that show daily life for the many people who now have nowhere else to go. In one video, Mr. Abutaha shows piles of blankets and other items that belong to what he says is a family of about 35 people, who are milling about nearby. A baby appears to be asleep, tucked into a pile of blankets, while other people are crowded nearby on the floor.
“Very, very crowded,” Mr. Abutaha says in the video. “This is a hospital. It is supposed to be for the medical treatment of patients.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) A Palestinian official estimates it will cost $15 billion to rebuild housing in Gaza.
By Jordyn Holman and Gaya Gupta, Jan. 18, 2024
A picture taken from southern Israel shows destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The chairman of the Palestinian Investment Fund estimated on Wednesday that it would cost at least $15 billion to rebuild destroyed housing units in the Gaza Strip.
Mohammad Mustafa, chairman of the fund — a state-owned corporation overseen by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank — said during a talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that it would cost about $100,000 to rebuild a single housing unit, and at least 350,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding even half of them would cost $15 billion, he said.
Mr. Mustafa did not say how he arrived at his estimates, though he said the number of destroyed units was based on “international reports.”
Mr. Mustafa declined to offer a figure for the total price tag for restoring Gaza when asked, saying it was too early to give an estimate. He also said that reconstructing Gaza would require rebuilding damaged or destroyed hospitals and other infrastructure, not just housing units.
Like other Palestinian officials, Mr. Mustafa also said that reconstruction could begin only after the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza abates and Israel ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“The financial needs are huge, but again, as we said earlier, that money will not solve Gaza’s problems,” he said, speaking to a room of about 60 people. “It’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take political solutions and it will take also logistical revolution.”
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has left many towns in the enclave in ruins and has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials.
Since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israeli towns and killed 1,200 people, Israeli airstrikes have leveled many neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north.
Israeli tanks have bulldozed farming communities, and houses have been torn down by Israeli soldiers, according to video and satellite imagery verified by The New York Times. The United Nations estimated in mid-December that, based on satellite imagery, about 60 percent of homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
It remains unclear who will govern Gaza after the war, much less who would oversee and pay for reconstruction. The United States has proposed letting the Palestinian Authority administer the enclave, as it does in parts of the West Bank, but the Israeli government has not agreed, insisting Israel must maintain control of security there.
Last week, Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said after a round of shuttle diplomacy that Arab countries have not agreed to pay for rebuilding Gaza, though they might consider doing so if Israel agrees to a pathway toward a Palestinian state. Qatar has previously been a key financier in Gaza’s past rebuilding efforts.
Both Palestinian and Israeli officials have said it will take an international effort to rebuild Gaza.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, recently called for a “multinational task force” to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction and economic development after the war, if Israel were to defeat Hamas. On Tuesday, a Palestinian diplomat accused Israel of trying to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and said that reconstruction would require a “massive international humanitarian effort.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) A communications blackout in Gaza stretches into a seventh day.
By Anushka Patil and Adam Rasgon, Jan. 18, 2024
Palestinians walking through debris from damaged building in Rafah, Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
A near-total communications blackout across the Gaza Strip extended for a seventh consecutive day on Thursday, leaving besieged civilians unable to call for help and aid workers struggling to reach them, as Israeli airstrikes continue to rain down on the south.
Paltel, the strip’s largest telecommunications company, said the blackout was the longest of several that Gaza has experienced since the start of the war, and said it was the result of damaged infrastructure in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Airstrikes and fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in the city have been so intense that repair crews have had trouble reaching the damaged sites, Paltel said. Last week, two of its workers were killed while out making repairs, when their company car came under fire, Paltel said, adding that it had coordinated the repairs with Israeli authorities in advance. The Israeli military said the incident was being investigated.
The blackout is the ninth in Gaza since the war began and by far the longest — the second longest was in December and lasted approximately three days, according to Isik Mater, director of research at NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group.
The lack of internet and phone service significantly limited what Palestinians could share with each other and with the outside world over the past week as Israeli forces bombarded the south and central regions of the Gaza Strip.
“Today, we spent five hours searching for internet to upload our materials,” one Palestinian journalist and activist, Ahmed Elmadhoun, said on Sunday on social media, where he shared a short video of a documentary filmmaker, Bisan Owda, and others using cooking oil to fuel a car.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it had lost contact with its teams in Gaza when the blackout began and that its emergency workers were finding it hard to quickly reach injured people. Gazan health officials said on Thursday that approximately 900 people have been killed and 1,800 wounded in Gaza since Friday, when the blackout began.
Hisham Mhanna, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the blackout had made it nearly impossible to communicate with the organization’s teams across the territory, including those responsible for receiving I.C.R.C. aid trucks at the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt.
“When you try to plan for any mission during a blackout, you cannot predict the surprises or challenges that the team may face on their way — it’s hard to report back to our headquarters,” Mr. Mhanna said. “This is where it becomes dangerous.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Mhanna said he himself was unable to reach the I.C.R.C. and return to work after visiting his displaced family in Rafah. He resorted to keeping watch from the building’s balcony and flagging down passing Red Cross vehicles, eventually returning two days behind schedule, he said.
Mr. Mhanna spoke to a reporter for The New York Times by phone on Wednesday, on a spotty connection that gave out twice during the conversation. “This is just a glimpse of how we are impacted,” he said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) See the Rapid Expansion of Tent Camps in Southern Gaza
By Leanne Abraham and Zach Levitt, Jan. 18, 2024
A tent camp in Rafah. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Recent satellite imagery shows an influx of displaced Palestinians into Rafah, the Gaza Strip’s southernmost region, where about 1.25 million people are now living in squalid, cramped conditions.
This increase is visible in commercially available satellite imagery from Planet Labs that was taken over the past two months. It reveals the scale of the dire humanitarian crisis in Rafah that has worsened as the Israeli offensive against Hamas has intensified in central and southern Gaza.
Source: Satellite images by Planet Labs
The part of northwest Rafah in the image above has become the primary area for new impromptu encampments to house displaced Gazans. Yet tents are also visible in areas across Rafah’s approximately 25 square miles.
With little space available to shelter indoors, “Rafah has become a city covered with plastic sheeting,” said Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The arrival of displaced people in Rafah in recent weeks has led to the spread of tent camps farther away from established shelters. These areas come with challenges like a lack of electricity, clean water, bathrooms and other basics, as well as less access to the limited aid trickling into Rafah, said Shaina Low, a communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“Because these are informal camps without official leadership or representation, aid agencies have no one to coordinate distribution with, forcing those seeking assistance to go to established sites to receive aid,” Ms. Low said.
While aid groups like the Norwegian Refugee Council have provided some displaced people with tents, many people have been forced to build their own. Thousands more have struggled without any kind of shelter.
“Streets and open spaces are now filled with homemade structures and tents,” Ms. Low said. “Makeshift shelters constructed from salvaged materials are unable to withstand increasingly cold, wet and windy winter weather.”
Satellite imagery from Planet Labs taken on Sunday shows the rapid expansion of one of these tent camps in an open area along the border between Gaza and Egypt that was empty in early December.
Tent camps expand near Egypt’s border
Those staying in official shelters are considered somewhat safer from Israeli airstrikes than people living in makeshift tent camps. Shelters for displaced people are protected under humanitarian law, according to U.N. officials. That said, at least 330 displaced people staying in U.N. shelters across the Gaza Strip have been killed since the war began on Oct. 7, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Since Dec. 1, the Israeli military has ordered civilians to evacuate from large swaths of the central and southern regions of Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, areas that were sheltering more than 550,000 internally displaced people and were home to over one million people before the war, according to the United Nations.
Many of these displaced people have fled to Rafah. By mid-December, Rafah was already estimated to be sheltering over a million people and had become Gaza’s most densely populated area, with a roughly four-fold increase in population compared with before the war. With at least 100,000 additional people having poured in, the region is struggling to meet the massive humanitarian need.
“Rafah is one of the poorest parts of Gaza,” Ms. Touma said. “The infrastructure is not at all suitable to absorb this huge influx.”
The number of people registered at shelters in Rafah was 978,000 as of Jan. 14, up from 705,000 on Dec. 25 and 463,000 on Dec. 1, according to U.N. data. Hundreds of thousands of additional people are also estimated to be staying in the region unregistered with the shelter system.
Many within Gaza have been displaced multiple times since the onset of Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion in response to Hamas’s attack in Israel in October. Relief officials say that repeated displacements make it difficult to accurately track the movement of people over time.
With a vast majority of Gaza’s population displaced, aid groups and the U.N. have been struggling to keep up with the staggering demand for help in Rafah and across the Gaza Strip. Even when aid is available, relief officials say that its delivery has been impeded by exhaustive inspections by Israeli authorities and that aid trucks sometimes come under fire from Israeli forces.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) Turning Down Food Aid for Millions of Children Reflects Shocking Political Callousness
By Charles M. Blow, Jan. 17, 2024
James Estrin/The New York Times
Last week I read something that shocked me, even if it really shouldn’t have: Fifteen states — all but one run by Republican governors — skipped the deadline to apply for a new federally-funded program that will provide $120 per child for groceries during the summer months to families of children who already qualify for free or reduced-price lunch at school.
Some of those states have some of the highest poverty rates in the country, including Mississippi, with the highest rate, and Louisiana, where I grew up, with the second highest. When Louisiana rejected the lunch program, a Democrat was still the governor; on Jan. 8, a Republican took over.
According to KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy, seven of those states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming — are among those that have not fully extended Medicaid to the poor under the Affordable Care Act. Imagine withholding funding for food that would keep children healthy, while denying people medical care when they get sick.
The cruelty of it is almost incomprehensible, but I’m convinced that this is all part of the punitive posture of so many of today’s Republicans — which in this case is meant to punish poverty, to intensify hardships: their version of an economic “scared straight” program.
I was a child who benefited from a summer lunch program. In fact, I didn’t know of a child who went to my school who didn’t eat free or reduced-price lunches during the school year or participate in the free summer lunch program.
Most of the families I knew seemed to be in poverty or skating just above it, which was the case with my family, as my mother supported a household of six on a paltry teacher’s salary.
Constantly trying to better our lives and hers, she took evening and summer classes to earn certifications and an advanced degree — and that was when she wasn’t teaching night G.E.D. classes or summer school.
So, the free summer lunch program available to us was helpful to her. But it didn’t lift the burden completely. Summer lunch programs were for just that: lunch. They didn’t provide breakfast, which only some families could provide during the school year. My family could afford that expense. I doubt that every other family could.
Last month, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska said his state would reject the new grocery aid funds in favor of the federal Summer Food Service Program and that his state was going to “take care of every one of these kids through the summer, feeding them,” but: “We just want to make sure that they’re out. They’re at church camps. They’re at schools. They’re at 4-H. And we’ll take care of them at all of the places that they’re at, so that they’re out amongst (other people) and not feeding a welfare system with food at home.”
In a small town like the one where I grew up, there were no summer enrichment programs. We had to keep ourselves busy as parents went off to work, most in neighboring communities.
In that way, the school cafeteria where summer lunch was served was more than just a place that served meals. It was also a congregational place where kids could socialize with other kids, where we could fight off loneliness and isolation.
After we’d eaten our lunches, we would disperse to play — girls teaching one another the latest dances, boys playing sandlot basketball — until sunset called us home and parents provided dinner.
Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, announcing in December that her state would reject the new funds, said, “An E.B.T. card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
But it has been my experience that when people don’t have the money for healthy groceries, they’ll scrounge up just enough money for junk — anything filling — because hunger is a vicious beast from whom all want to steer clear.
My mother often told us about catching a ride every day to college, which for her was about 20 miles away. And because she couldn’t afford lunch like most other students, she would pack a honey bun. It wasn’t nutritious, but the high sugar content would make her feel full.
These are the choices poor people make, and giving them the greatest amount of flexibility to make choices for their families is not only smart policy, it also extends a modicum of respect.
But respect for the poor is anathema to some people.
And the decisions of these 15 states comes at a time when lower-income families are truly feeling the pinch.
During the Covid pandemic, many families received additional food aid, which was tremendously helpful. But now that it has been cut back, one 2023 report found, four in 10 families who had received that extra benefit are skipping meals. And what may seem to some like a minor scaling-back can have devastating consequences for a family.
The governors, mostly Republican, putting philosophy over food are displaying astonishing political callousness.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) At least 8 people are killed in a 2-day Israeli raid in the West Bank, Palestinians say.
By Anushka Patil, Jan. 19, 2024
A destroyed house in the Palestinian Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, West Bank, on Thursday. Credit...Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm were holding funeral processions and examining the remains of damaged homes on Friday after a two-day raid by the Israeli military that killed at least eight people in and around the city, according to Palestinian news media.
Israeli forces blindfolded and bound detainees, stopped and searched ambulances transporting injured people and tore up several roads with bulldozers, according to witnesses and photos published by news agencies.
The Israeli military described the raid as a counterterrorism operation, saying that it had found hundreds of explosives.
The raid was one of the deadliest by Israel in recent weeks in the occupied West Bank, where violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces have risen sharply alongside the war in Gaza that began Oct. 7.
Thabet Sameeh, a head nurse at the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarm, said that he had received at least four Palestinian patients who were shot during the raid that began on Wednesday, and 10 others who were beaten while detained.
By Thursday morning, the Palestinian health ministry said that six people had been killed in the raid. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that for several hours on Thursday, Israeli forces blocked its medics from reaching the body of a seventh person, who was seen lying on the ground with his feet tied together in photos shared on social media.
An eighth body was found in Tulkarm a few hours later, according to Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the West Bank.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its ambulances attempting to bring victims to hospitals were searched by Israeli forces before being allowed to leave Tulkarm, and that two of its medics were injured after an explosion near one of its ambulances, which a spokeswoman for the group, Nebal Farsakh, called a “direct attack from Israeli forces.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incidents. International law prohibits attacking medical personnel and obstructing their access to wounded people.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) A U.N. official says Israeli treatment of detainees ‘may amount to torture.’
By Nick Cumming-Bruce, Jan. 19. 2024
An Israeli tank along the border with Gaza on Thursday. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinians who were detained and released by Israeli forces in Gaza described being beaten and humiliated, including being blindfolded and left “mostly unclothed” for hours, a United Nations human rights official said on Friday.
Gazans who had been held for 30 to 55 days said they had been “subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture,” Ajith Sunghay, the head of the U.N. human rights office for the occupied Palestinian territory, told reporters by video link from Gaza.
“Detention conditions are horrific overall,” he said. Mr. Sunghay said he had spoken to some former detainees, though he did not offer further details on how many, the timing of the conversations or the reasons that they had been detained.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the claims. Reuters reported that the military had said it was detaining and questioning people suspected of militant activity as a part of its military campaign in the enclave and that detainees were “treated in accordance with international law.” Suspects were required to give up their clothes to ensure they were not concealing weapons, it said.
Video footage verified by The New York Times showing dozens of Palestinians in Gaza lined up and stripped to their underwear as armed Israeli soldiers look on has generated outrage since the start of the war in Gaza.
The former detainees reported that they had been blindfolded for many hours and in some cases for several days, Mr. Sunghay said. They could not identify where they were being held, but judging from the time taken to move them believed they had initially been held in makeshift locations in Gaza before being transferred to Israel while “mostly unclothed,” he said.
The detainees said they had been released without any information at the Kerem Shalom crossing point with Gaza. At that point, Mr. Sunghay said, some had reportedly been released without adequate clothing for the winter and wearing only diapers.
The U.N. human rights office did not know the number of Gazans detained by Israel but estimated the number ran into the thousands, Mr. Sunghay said.
The claims follow a report by the U.N. human rights office last month on mass arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank that found that arrests there were regularly accompanied by physical and psychological abuse by Israeli security forces. It noted that six Palestinians had died while in detention in Israel and that the treatment dramatically worsened for those held on security charges.
Israel has said that all prisoners in its custody are legally detained and that prisoner deaths were under investigation.
At least 4,700 Palestinians from the West Bank are now detained by Israel, a number that is at its highest in many years and continues to grow, Mr. Sunghay said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) A U.N. official and a U.S. doctor describe extreme suffering among wounded children in Gaza.
By Anushka Patil, Jan. 19, 2024
Injured children receiving treatment at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in November. Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
A top U.N. children’s fund official who visited Gaza this week said Thursday that the conditions there were “some of the most horrific” he had ever seen, describing badly injured children enduring surgeries in war zone conditions.
“UNICEF has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” Ted Chaiban, the agency’s deputy executive director, said in a statement. “We have said this is a war on children. But these truths do not seem to be getting through.”
Mr. Chaiban said his three-day trip to the Gaza Strip included a visit to Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military says it is trying to crush a Hamas stronghold. The hospital has been deluged by people wounded in airstrikes, and scores of people who were sheltering there have fled in recent days as fighting rages around the complex.
He described meeting a child at the hospital whose spleen had been removed after shrapnel sliced through her abdomen. The spleen plays an important role in the body’s immune system, so the child has to recover in isolation, Mr. Chaiban said, because she is in “a war zone full of disease and infection.”
A 13-year-old at the hospital, Mr. Chaiban said, had developed gangrene from a hand injury and had to undergo an operation to amputate his arm — without anesthesia.
The United Nations has described dire conditions in the enclave, with water scarce, sanitation poor and many children malnourished and sick. Only 15 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partly functional, according to the World Health Organization, which has said that Nasser hospital alone treated 700 patients on Monday, more than double its typical caseload.
Children make up roughly half of Gaza’s population, and thousands of them have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Children are “everywhere” in the strip, said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, the president of an aid group, MedGlobal, who was also at Nasser Hospital this week. “Any missile, no matter how focused or targeted it is, is going to hit children. It’s impossible not to.”
Dr. Sahloul, a critical care specialist from Chicago who has extensive experience treating war victims in Syria, said in an interview that what he saw at Nasser Hospital was “beyond description.”
Dr. Sahloul said that he had seen a missile strike that hit an aid distribution site in Khan Younis on Tuesday. Among the casualties were more than a dozen children, some of whom suffered shrapnel head injuries so severe that their brains were largely outside of their skulls, Dr. Sahloul said, holding out little hope that they could have survived.
The United States has not done enough to stop the war or to allow more aid into Gaza, he said, leaving children dying “senseless” deaths. Like nearly all medical facilities in Gaza, he said, Nasser Hospital still lacks basic supplies, including IV fluids, antibiotics, gauze and clean water.
He said that a 14-year-old boy with shrapnel injuries to his jaw has been waiting for weeks at Nasser for a relatively simple but lifesaving surgery to restore the bone with a metal plate and screws.
“But there are no plates or screws for bone fractures in the whole of Gaza,” Dr. Sahloul said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) The Subversive Act of Photographing Palestinian Life
By Adam Rouhana, Jan. 19, 2024
Mr. Rouhana is a Palestinian American photographer.
In one of my earliest memories, I am sitting in my teta’s (grandmother’s) lap. The scent of ripe figs fills the air with the calm satisfaction of late summer. We’re in the shade of our cool limestone veranda surrounded by the family’s verdant mountain farmland in a village that is now in Israel but to me has always been Palestine.
Our hands work together to pull apart grape leaves we had picked from the vines in her garden. My teta would use the leaves to cook my favorite dish: warak enab, or stuffed grape leaves. My grandparents were fellahin (farmers). They worked the land, and the land worked them.
I was born to their son, who married an American from New York. Raised in New England, I grew up an American — I read Steinbeck and Baldwin and listened to Bob Dylan — but returned to visit my family on Mount Carmel every year. When I picked up a camera at age 12, I began taking photos of what was around me: Palestinian life.
As I got older and developed my practice, I noticed a dissonance between the West’s conception of Palestinian society and the images I was making — the life I was living. In the news media, Palestinians were often portrayed as masked and violent or as disposable and lifeless: a faceless, miserable people.
But that’s not what I see when I am there. Instead, what I photograph is unconditional communal love, a rootedness and sense of historical belonging in the land, and a daily generosity and collective spirit that I rarely experience in America. Over the years, I’ve heard an endless number of stories passed down through generations that underscore a mosaic of social, cultural and religious pluralism.
Many of the photos of Palestinians I see today reflect the image of us as a suffering people. I see pictures of parents holding their ashen children in front of a pile of gray rubble or men being arrested by heavily armed Israeli soldiers or starving children with hands extended for food and water.
On the one hand, this type of photography documents the brutal reality of Israel’s indiscriminate violence in Gaza. But it also makes it easier for the viewer to see Palestinians as silhouettes who have always been this way instead of as people with entire lives, histories, and dreams.
When images like these become the dominant depiction of a people, preconceptions become embedded in the minds of those who view them. In the case of the Palestinians, these insidious representations have paved the way for Israel’s wanton destruction of Gaza, for which Israel is now facing accusations of genocide in the international community’s highest court. In the context of violence and destruction, inflicting more violence and destruction becomes routine.
But this structure is changing. Social media is circumventing the traditional flows of information and providing space for more accurate representations to form in the Western imagination. As I write, the few remaining heroic Palestinian photographers in Gaza — at least six of them have been killed since Oct. 7, in addition to at least 70 other journalists — are releasing an unmediated version of their reality, all too often at the price of their own lives.
Now, instead of Gaza’s beauty, they’re left with little to document other than landscapes of death. “I desperately dream of the days before, when I documented my people and my land,” the photographer Motaz Azaiza, who has been documenting the war in Gaza for millions of his Instagram followers, said in an interview. “I miss taking photographs of children playing on the swings, the elderly smiling, families gathering, the sights of nature and the sea, my beautiful Gaza.”
Long before Oct. 7, Palestinian photographers like me have been building a contemporary Palestinian visual language, inscribed with an ethic of self-determination. If photographs tell the stories of people, our images tell the story of our people.
Some have argued that Zionism is built on the myth that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land. My photography subverts this myth: Palestine is our homeland. Photographing Palestinian life stands against forces of erasure.
Images like these can help reorient us toward a just future — a Palestine where we can all live together with equality and freedom. A home where I can one day sit with my granddaughter. A place where she has a past and a future.
Adam Rouhana is a Palestinian American photographer. He took these images in Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalandia, Isfiya, Huwara, Ramallah, Battir, Nablus and Jerusalem from 2021 to 2023.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
By David Brooks, Jan. 18, 2024
Photo illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times
Sometimes in this job I have a kernel of a column idea that doesn’t pan out. But other times I begin looking into a topic and find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life. It’s not only that growing bureaucracies cost a lot of money; they also enervate American society. They redistribute power from workers to rule makers, and in so doing sap initiative, discretion, creativity and drive.
Once you start poking around, the statistics are staggering. Over a third of all health care costs go to administration. As the health care expert David Himmelstein put it in 2020, “The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy.” All of us who have been entangled in the medical system know why administrators are there: to wrangle over coverage for the treatments doctors think patients need.
The growth of bureaucracy costs America over $3 trillion in lost economic output every year, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 in The Harvard Business Review. That was about 17 percent of G.D.P. According to their analysis, there is now one administrator or manager for every 4.7 employees, doing things like designing anti-harassment trainings, writing corporate mission statements, collecting data and managing “systems.”
This situation is especially grave in higher education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has almost eight times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent between 2004 and 2014. The number of tenure-track faculty members grew by just 8 percent.
Conservatives complain that diversity, equity and inclusion administrators are injecting a dangerous ideology into American campuses. That’s true. But the bigger problem is that these workers are among the swelling ranks of administrators.
The general job of administrators, who are invariably good and well-meaning people, is to supervise and control, and they gain power and job security by hiring more people to work for them to create more supervision and control. In every organization I’ve interacted with, the administrators genuinely want to serve the mission of the organization, but the nature of their jobs is to enforce compliance with this or that rule.
Their power is similar to what Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic has called the “time tax.” If you’ve ever fought a health care, corporate or university bureaucracy, you quickly realize you don’t have the time for it, so you give up. I don’t know about you, but my health insurer sometimes denies my family coverage for things that seem like obvious necessities, but I let it go unless it’s a major expense. I calculate that my time is more valuable.
As Philip K. Howard has been arguing for years, good organizations give people discretion to do what is right. But the trend in public and private sector organizations has been to write rules that rob people of the power of discretion. These are two different mentalities. As Howard writes, “Studies of cognitive overload suggest that the real problem is that people who are thinking about rules actually have diminished capacity to think about solving problems.”
Not long ago, an airline accidentally canceled one of my flight reservations. I called the 800 number and the guy on the other end of the line seemed truly unable to wrap his mind around the idea of getting me on another flight, because the rule said that my reservation was nonrefundable. I had that by now familiar feeling of talking to a brick wall.
This state of affairs pervades American life. Childhood is now thoroughly administered. I’m lucky enough to have grown up at a time when parents let children roam free to invent their own games and solve their own problems. Now kids’ activities, from travel sports to recess, are supervised, and rules dominate. Parents are afraid their kids might be harmed, but as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have argued, by being overprotective, parents make their kids more fragile and more vulnerable to harm.
High school students design their lives to fit the metrics that college admissions officers require. And what traits are selective schools looking for? They’re looking for students who are willing to conform to the formulas the gatekeepers devise.
I’ve found the administrators’ code of safety first is now prevalent at the colleges where I’ve taught and visited. Aside from being a great school, Stanford used to be a weird school, where students set up idiosyncratic arrangements like an anarchist house or built their own islands in the middle of the lake. This was great preparation for life as a creative entrepreneur. But Stanford is apparently now tamed. I invite you to read Ginevra Davis’s essay “Stanford’s War on Social Life” in Palladium, which won a vaunted Sidney Award in 2022 and details how university administrators cracked down on student initiatives to make everything boring, supervised and safe.
Professors used to be among the most unsupervised people in America, but even they are feeling the pinch. For example, Mark Edmundson teaches literature at the University of Virginia. The annual self-evaluations he had to submit used to be one page. Now he has to fill out about 15 electronic pages of bureaucratese that include demonstrating how his work advances D.E.I., to make sure his every waking moment conforms to the reigning ideology.
In a recent essay in Liberties Journal, he illustrates how administrators control campus life by citing the rules they have devised to govern how members of the campus community should practice sadomasochistic sex: “When parties consent to BDSM 3, or other forms of kink, nonconsent may be shown by the use of a safe word, whereas actions and words that may signal nonconsent in non-kink situations, such as force or violence, may be deemed signals of consent.” Do institutions really need to govern private life this minutely?
Organizations are trying to protect themselves from lawsuits, but the whole administrative apparatus comes with an implied view of human nature. People are weak, fragile, vulnerable and kind of stupid. They need administrators to run their lives. They have to be trained never to take initiative, lest they wander off into activities that are deemed by the authorities to be out of bounds.
The result is the soft despotism that Tocqueville warned us about centuries ago, a power that “is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.” In his Liberties essay, Edmundson writes that this kind of power is now centerless. Presidents and executives don’t run companies, universities or nations. Power is now held by everyone who issues work surveys and annual reports, the people who create H.R. trainings and collect data. He concludes: “They are using the terms of liberation to bring more and more free people closer to mental serfdom. Some day they will awaken in a cage of their own devising, so harshly confining that even they, drunk on their own virtue, will have to notice how their lives are the lives of snails tucked in their shells.”
Trumpian populism is about many things, but one of them is this: working-class people rebelling against administrators. It is about people who want to lead lives of freedom, creativity and vitality, who find themselves working at jobs, sending their kids to schools and visiting hospitals, where they confront “an immense and tutelary power” (Tocqueville’s words) that is out to diminish them.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
