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Professor Rana Hogarth gives a talk on her new research in the Hagstrum Room of University Hall on Monday. Her lecture argued that the eugenics movement was motivated by the views of the slavery era.

Jason Beeferman/The Daily Northwestern

Professor Rana Hogarth gives a talk on her new research in the Hagstrum Room of University Hall on Monday. Her lecture argued that the eugenics movement was motivated by the views of the slavery era.

Jason Beeferman/The Daily Northwestern

Jason Beeferman/The Daily Northwestern

Professor Rana Hogarth gives a talk on her new research in the Hagstrum Room of University Hall on Monday. Her lecture argued that the eugenics movement was motivated by the views of the slavery era.

University of Illinois Prof. Rana Hogarth discussed her new research into eugenicist movements in University Hall on Monday. Her talk argued that contrary to common views of American history eugenics is actually a continuation of the views of the slavery era, rather than a seperate movement.

Through her talk, Hogarth presented the idea that eugenics was used to affirm prexisting beliefs that originated in the slavery era.

Eugenic-era race crossing studies owed a lot of their creation to old ideas about race mixing from the era of slavery, Hogarth said. Most people think of eugenics as this forward, new genetic science, which it is, but they were actually taking old ideas and repackaging them with new science.

Hogarths research specifically focused on two early 20th century studies of Charles Davenport, a leader of the eugenics movement in the United States. The two studies examined mixed-race populations in the Caribbean.

The lecture, titled, Legacies of Slavery in the Era of Eugenics: Charles B. Davenports Race-Crossing Studies, was part of the Klopsteg Lecture Series, which aims to present popular understandings of science for the general public.

Hogarth discussed multiple aspects of Davenports experiments, including his reluctance to acknowledge the role of white men in the existence of people identifying as mixed-race in the first place. Davenport, for example, would describe his subjects as fair skinned babies from dark mothers, without ever mentioning the role of a white father.

Davenport attempted to craft a narrative that played into white perceptions about black female sexuality, that only suddenly subtly implicated white men, Hogarth said.

Ken Alder is the founding director of the Science in Human Culture program, which hosts the lecture series. Alder said the talk itself was fabulous.

This particular aspect of (eugenics) was a sort of scientific justification for something that Americans already wanted to do, Alder said.

Raina Bhagat is a first year PhD student in comparative literary studies who attended the lecture. Bhagat said she was especially intrigued by Hogarts discussion of how eugenicists sought to use hair as an indication of ancestry.

It felt like a very contemporary link of this research that centered at the beginning of the 20th century, to here in the 21st century (with) the idea that hair comes in different shapes and sizes, Bhagat said.

Bhagat was referring to a discovery Hogarth made while digging through the archives of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

After asking for all the materials relating to Davenport, she found a tiny manila envelope listed under the category of Family Histories. When Hogarth opened the envelope, to her surprise, human samples of hair fell out.

Though the hair was unexpected, it was definitely fascinating, Hogarth said.

When I went to the archives, I was like, this is really gross, but this is totally going into my research, Hogarth said.

To Hogarth, the human hair samples were more than an unusual find.

To me, seeing something like a human article, a part of somebodys body in this archive tells me that this is about reading peoples bodies, Hogarth said. This is about science, what science can tell us about somebodys potential or about someones ancestry by literally studying something as minute your hair. That to me is very telling.

Email: jasonbeeferman2023@u.northwestern.edu

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A new view of eugenics shows its ties to the slavery era - Daily Northwestern

The history of government in medicine is not a pretty one.

By now it should be clear to everyone that Medicare for All doesnt really mean Medicare for all. In fact, it means getting rid of every health plan Americans know and are comfortable with and creating an entirely new, government-run health care system.

In the Bernie Sanders version, health care would be virtually free. Butgovernment would determine what care you get, when you can get it, where you can get it, and how you can get it.

By controlling physicians salaries, the government could make some services so unprofitable that no doctor would offer them. By controlling technology, the government might make some procedures impossible to obtain.

For example, in the private sector 24/7 access to a physician by phone and email is increasingly a reality for many patients, as are Uber-type house calls. Patients also are increasingly able to get medical consultations in their homes (instead of trips to doctors offices or emergency rooms) by means of a phone or laptop computer. Yet the current Medicare program doesnt allow any of this.

And because of global budgets, patients may experience long waits for care lasting months or even years as they do in Britain and Canada.

Why would the government deny people care? One reason is to save money. Whenever health care is made free, the potential demand for it tends to soar. To hold spending in check, governments control resources in order to keep spending in check. As I have written before, the way governments ration health care is not rational. Its dictated by politics.

But there is also another reason why things go wrong. Nobody cares about you more than you care about you. And that includes the government.

The history of government in medicine is not a pretty one. In the early part of the 20th century, forced sterilization of patients was one of themost popular reforms among political progressives. They believed that in order to protect the gene pool, it was necessary to sterilize all manner of patients including the feeble minded, epileptics, others with mental and physical disabilities and even people with proclivities toward alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and prostitution.

Although this was primarily a progressive movement reform, such conservative politicians as Winston Churchill also advocated it.

One case, Buck v. Bell, went all the way to the Supreme Court. In ruling in favor of sterilization, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made the memorable statement that "Three generations ofimbecilesare enough." Only one justice dissented.

In all, an estimated 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized. The Lynchburg Story is a heart-breaking video with patient interviews that describes the human side of the tragedy. Many Americans associate the eugenics movement with Nazi Germany. If anything, the Nazi eugenics program was imported to Germany from the United States.

In an ironic twist of fate, government today intervenes in the opposite way. In general, Downs Syndrome children are not capable of making rational decisions about sex and procreation. So, to prevent unwanted pregnancies their parents often turn to sterilization. Yet in doing so, they face legal obstacles and many procedures are performed illegally.

But why must government be involved at all?

It wasnt until 1972 that the American news media discovered that for 40 years the United States Public Health Service had been conducting a medical experiment in Tuskegee, Alabama, involving several hundred black males with syphilis. The experiment? It consisted of observation without treatment, including withholding penicillin.

Although the general public didnt know about the exercise for four decades, the medical community as a whole was well aware of it. Through the years, the Tuskegee experiment led to numerous articles in medical journals. After public exposure, many doctors throughout the country came to the experiments defense.

Note: this was a federal government experiment, funded with our tax dollars.

The swine flu fiasco in the mid-1970s is another program some people would probably like to forget. Haunted by the specter of the 1918 flu pandemic, public health officials rushed into a mass vaccination program for an outbreak that never occurred. Gerald Ford even weighed in getting his vaccination in front of the national news media.

Unfortunately, there were dangerous side effects. They included the widespread occurrence of the Guillain-Barre Syndrome, whose progressive paralysis leads to death in 5 percent of the cases.

To get the drug companies to produce the vaccine, the government had to assume liability for all the risks associated with inadequate warnings. But even with that, the swine flu episode led to a major change in liability law. The result: sharp increases in the price of all vaccines and a reduction in their availability.

Governments make mistakes. The people who make those mistakes dont know you or your family. They probablywont shed many tears if the system doesnt work well for you.

Thats reason enough to not create a government monopoly over our health care system.

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The Dangers In Nationalizing Health Care - Forbes

Solutions to climate change dont exist in a vacuum. Ideas have real world history, context and impact. Multiple speakers held a public talk at PSU to discuss how climate change intersects with issues of reproductive justice.

The first PSU Black History Month Lecture, hosted by the women, gender and sexuality studies department took place Feb. 5 at Smith Memorial Student Union. According to Lisa Weasel, chair of the WGSS department, PSU has recently experienced the loss of a significant number of Black faculty and staff, which is detrimental to student success and erodes the educational mission of our university. This lecture honors the valuable work of Black scholars, especially Black feminist scholars, to our department and community.

The guest speaker of the lecture was Dr. Jade Sasser. Sasser is an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies and a member of the core faculty of the sustainability studies major at the University of California at Riverside. The WGSS department hopes to make the Black History Month Lecture an annual event.

The lecture was titled, Can we have Reproductive Justice in a Climate Crisis? This was also the question Sasser asked at the beginning of her lecture. For a long time, the question of overpopulation contributing to climate change has been a very debated subject among scientists and reproductive justice advocates.

Overpopulation is just one of the many intersections between reproductive justice and climate change. In her book On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Womens Rights in the Era of Climate Change, Sasser explains how population control as a solution to environmental issues is not, and never was, the answer to solving the climate change crisis.

According to Sasser, climate crisis narratives are based on changing reproductive rights. This is reductive logic to Sasser. Ever since the argument of overpopulation causing climate change has been made, the destruction of female bodies through reproductive justice has seen an astounding increase. Efforts to sterilize women especially among poor communities and women of color have been seen time and time again in medical historiesor as Sasser said, herstories.

Women of color with a low income have been targeted for sterilization because of their inability to take care of their children and reliance on welfare. Sasser brought up the example of John Labruzzo, former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, who infamously suggested paying women on welfare to voluntarily sterilize in 2008.

In addition to political efforts being made to sterilize women, many medical institutions have considered sterilization to be academic training and have encouraged the practice for many years. Most of these sterilization procedures were conducted without the consent of the patient.

The climate crisis has also been put into a framework of a world war against the people, contributing to the push for population engineering. The term population engineering was coined by bioethicists at Georgetown in 2016 in an article published in Social Theory and Practice. Sasser equates population engineering to eugenics, which is when reproduction of individuals is selectively limited to produce better humans. Eugenics is a concept deeply intertwined with histories of racism and oppression.

The example that Sasser mentioned in her lecture was giving tax breaks to people without children vs. having higher fees in hospitals for giving birth. Eugenics is seen even in institutions that are supposed to be advocating for reproductive rights. For example, Sasser mentions the organization of Planned Parenthood has contributed to eugenics, such as sterilization and past reports of pushing for the use of cheap birth control.

Although reproductive justice advocacy has had a complicated past, there are some efforts being made to help regulate the misconceptions of overpopulation. For example, a collective by the name of Sister Song has made significant improvements for the reproductive rights of low-income women of color. Their aim is to advocate for the choice of the woman: either to have children or to not have children; and if there are children to raise, to make sure that the parents involved have enough support and resources to do so.

The main point of Sassers lecture was to critique the idea of overpopulation in relation to reproductive choices. The bottom line is the idea of overpopulation contributing to climate change is destructive to womens bodies. Sasser emphasized that climate change is a living phenomenon and is centered around human bodies and how we are related to and have a direct impact on our surroundings.

Sasser urged the audience to reject the notion of overpopulation and instead focus on our individual behaviors and choices as it relates to the environment. We can collectively make a difference in the climate change crisis, because after all, there is strength in numbers.

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It Was Never About Overpopulation - Psuvanguard.com

CANADA

Through the first half of the 1900s, the eugenics movement had close ties to post-secondary institutions. For example, leaders at the University of Alberta also engaged in the eugenics movement and at the Alberta Eugenics Board. Two of the three founding colleges of the University of Guelph the Macdonald Institute and the Ontario Agricultural College officially taught eugenics between 1914 and 1948.

Once, eugenics spread the deeply damaging idea that it is possible, and even desirable, to improve the human race through selective breeding. It ultimately spawned policies aimed at eradicating those deemed unfit through institutional confinement, restrictive marriage, immigration laws and sterilisation. Eugenics was considered a science from the early 1900s until the 1930s, when its scientific reputation began to decline and shift.

Exhibiting eugenics

Canadian universities have restricted access to those archives that implicate their institutions in profiting from oppressive ideas and practices. Kathryn Harvey, the schools head archivist, made the University of Guelph archive available to us.

Using the archives, we developed a co-created, multimedia and multi-sensory exhibition at the Guelph Civic Museum called Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario, which began in September 2019 and runs until March 2020. It is the first of its kind to bring to light the difficult history of Canadian university involvement in teaching eugenics.

Into the Light is co-created by Mona Stonefish (our project Elder), Peter Park, Dolleen Tisawiiashii Manning, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Sky Stonefish, with key supports from Carla Rice (ReVision Centre), Dawn Owen (Guelph Civic Museum) and Sue Hutton (Respecting Rights, a project at ARCH Disability Law Centre). It brings together Indigenous and disabled people who carry personal histories of forced confinement and sterilisation.

The exhibition embraces disability and decolonising curatorial practices that disrupt and unsettle. By presenting artistic, sensory and material expressions of memory through different formats, it speaks the hard truths of colonialism as Ho-Chunk scholar Amy Lonetree writes. By showing more than 30 years of eugenics course documents (1914-48) from the Macdonald Institute and Ontario Agricultural College, it is thus a rare opportunity to consider how eugenics was taught and practised in Ontario.

Teaching eugenics

In Into the Light, the eugenics course documents are accompanied by multiple perspectives. Take, for example, one of the course slides, entitled Eugenical Classification of the Human Stock that was initially displayed at the Second International Eugenics Congress in 1921.

The slide includes a chart which shows the connection between eugenics and British colonialism. In it, Cecil Rhodes is classified as a superior person of genius. In 1921, Rhodes was celebrated for his forceful British colonial and white supremacist agenda. Today, Rhodes is recognised as an early architect of apartheid, a policy that involved the systematic dehumanisation of South Africas Black population from 1948 to 1994.

Also shown on the chart are the eugenic traits of those whom eugenicists deemed to be unfit, including people classified as feeble-minded, poor, criminal and epileptic. In the process of claiming the land and its peoples, Canadian colonial administrators, officers, physicians, educators and scientists framed First Peoples as impaired and mentally unfit in order to justify their actions.

As decolonising scholar Karen Stote writes in An Act of Genocide, this was a precursor to unethical sterilisation and forced institutionalisation.

Food was often used to perpetuate colonialism. In a section of the exhibit at the Guelph Civic Museum, there is a stack of potato sacks, created by the artists, which shows a stereotypical image of an Indian with Eugenics Brand written on the sacks. Bright light streams between the sacks.

The sacks reveal the forced domestic and agricultural labour imposed on those who were placed, sometimes violently, in Ontario residential institutions.

The sacks are accompanied by the smell of rotting potato to evoke the feeling of being denied comfort and nutrition.

The eugenics course suppressed independent thinking and experiential knowledges. But Into The Light centres once-marginalised survivor experiences and encourages viewers to think critically.

The effect of eugenics

The exhibition has had a jarring impact on university students, especially those in psychology, sociology, human development, political science and social work who are aiming for careers in the same professions that once supported eugenics.

One psychology graduate student, for example, spoke about how his relationship towards the University of Guelph transformed after visiting the exhibition. When he learned about the universitys role in teaching eugenics, his pride quickly turned to feelings of discomfort and disorientation. But he became open and eager to change when he realised that the university chose to expose and address its history instead of trying to cover it up.

For survivors and aggrieved groups, the display of archival documents has had an impact also. One survivor of the Mohawk Institute and the Training School for Girls said she felt relieved and validated after decades of being silenced, denied and disbelieved all of which compounded the crimes she experienced due to eugenics.

Dalhousie University and Ryerson University are two schools with close ties to 19th century figures who profited from oppression, enslavement and colonisation Lord Dalhousie and Egerton Ryerson, respectively.

Both schools are coming to terms with these histories. They are establishing scholarly panels and consultation processes with aggrieved groups, that can address colonial, racist and ableist attitudes, policies and practices.

University archivists, librarians, researchers and administrators across the country should work with communities to find meaningful ways of making their archives accessible to those targeted by destructive ideas and practices. Uncovering hidden stories of the past calls into question our ways of doing things in the present; for aggrieved and justice-seeking groups, an open past opens up more just possibilities for the future.

Evadne Kelly is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph and Carla Rice is professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Guelph, Canada. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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Universities must share their oppressive pasts - University World News

On Jan. 27, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I will sit with thousands of people, including approximately 200 Holocaust survivors and delegations from 37 countries, astride the infamous train tracks leading into the camp. This concentration camp and killing center was part of Nazi Germanys effort to murder every Jew in Europe, resulting in the deaths of 6 million Jews. It will be a historic day and surely the last time the world will gather in the presence of so many survivors as we pledge to never forget. My thoughts are consumed with the unimaginable horrors those survivors endured deportation, starvation, torture, forced labor and the very troubled world they now inhabit.

Humanity might have assumed that, after 1945, Auschwitz and its unthinkable crimes would have contained anti-Semitism. Yet, with anti-Semitism on the rise in the lands of the Holocaust and even America, my thoughts turned to a radio show I heard last year after one of the anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. A young woman who called into the show knew about the Holocaust and about anti-Semitism, but never connected the two. This is clearly a failure of Holocaust education to teach not only that the Holocaust happened, but also how and why, and what made it possible.

Historians largely agree that three big events at the beginning of the 20th century made the Nazi rise to power possible: World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression. But it was also big ideas dangerous ideas such as anti-Semitism and not just big events that made the Holocaust possible.

Hatred against Jews has been around since the dawn of Christianity resulting over the centuries in forced conversions, ghettoization, expulsions, and exclusion from Europes political, economic, and social life. With modern ideas came modern forms of hating Jews, confirming Jews status as a universal and enduring scapegoat. The word anti-Semitism was popularized in 1879 by German Wilhelm Marr, who believed Jews and Germans were different races locked in eternal existential struggle and therefore assimilation a dominant idea since the Enlightenment and French Revolution was not possible.

Ironically, several years later, Theodor Herzl, himself an assimilated Jew, was also articulating from a completely different perspective his view that assimilation in Europe was ultimately not viable: without a Jewish homeland, Jews could never really be safe and free. He recognized that Europes progress over the centuries did not prevent the extensive wave of organized massacres, known as pogroms, in Russia from 1881 to 1884, or the Dreyfus Affair, in which the French military wrongly convicted an innocent Jewish officer of treason, a scandal that gripped France for 12 years beginning in 1894, or the new approach of Marr and many other activists and intellectuals. Their racial anti-Semitism demanded new strategies. Segregation, conversion, assimilation were no longer workable solutions. It was no longer a matter of belief or behavior. It was a matter of biology. Therefore, removal was required.

During this period the mid- to late 19th century a combination of racial science, eugenics, and social Darwinism was used to justify and promote ideas about ethnic nationalism, identity, and colonialism. Now there was something innate about Frenchness, Germanness, and Jewishness. It was in this environment that Julius Langbehn, a German intellectual and anti-Semite said, A Jew can no more become a German than a plum can turn into an apple.

Four decades after Marr coined the term anti-Semitism, Hitler and other Nazi thinkers skillfully fused these existing ideas racial anti-Semitism, ultra-nationalism, and eugenics into a powerful ideology and an effective political movement. And eventually, into the vision and defining policy of a modern state. A genocidal state.

Hatred against Jews has a long and versatile history, easily adapting to new circumstances. Its effectiveness is such that it doesnt even require Jews. It thrives in all kinds of religious, political, and cultural arrangements, and especially at times of rapid change. Its so pervasive that even after the Holocaust, instead of receding, two new forms emerged: Holocaust denial attempts to deny or distort the established facts of the Holocaust and anti-Zionism prejudice against the Jewish movement for self-determination and the right to a homeland in Israel.

Long before social media became a powerful tool that amplifies hatred, Auschwitz-Birkenau has stood as a unique warning about the myth of progress when it comes to human nature. But so too is the long history of anti-Semitism that preceded Auschwitz and outlived it. That is something we must never forget on historic days such as this anniversary and every day.

Sara J. Bloomfield is the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Anti-Semitism preceded Auschwitz and outlived it - The Boston Globe

Questions about the late sex offender and his sidekick blackmailing and spying for the U.S. and Israel have gone unanswered. Why?

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend a fundraiser on March 15, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Jeffrey Epstein was the talented Mr. Ripley of shadowy sexual predators.

With a mind-numbing contact list, from Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew and Mohammad bin Salman, the leering billionaire financier and alleged eugenics enthusiast evaded real punishment for almost his entire life. One might say this continued even after he was finally apprehended and facing the music for his sexual abuse and extensive trafficking ring, when he was snuffed out like a cheap cigarette.

What becomes of the case now? Victim Courtney Wilds attempts to unseal records in court that would reveal co-conspirators and hold the government responsible is ongoing, but the case seems largely dead in the water, particularly as Epsteins procurer and occasional sex abuse co-participant Ghislaine Maxwell has disappeared from the scene. Maxwell has reportedly fled to Israel and is now shuttling between there and other unspecified countries where shes being protected by powerful contacts.

The media and Hollywooddespite Ricky Gervais recent remarks at the Golden Globesremain largely uninterested in this massive story. Epsteins Hollywood connections are numerous, including disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, who flew on Epsteins jet to his pedophile island various times, and Harvey Weinstein, whos currently on trial for his alleged sexual abuses. (Its hard to forget the 2006 photo in which Weinstein is standing with Epstein and Maxwell at Prince Andrews party.) What about #MeToo or #TimesUp? Do such movements not apply to a pedophile like Epstein who raped and psychologically tortured preteens for decades?

So many details of Epsteins abuses and sex trafficking operations remain unknown, as do numerous aspects of his close associates, potential connections with various intelligence agencies, and where and exactly how he obtained his copious amounts of money. The disturbing accounts of his victims and his years of being shepherded away from punishment indicate that Epstein was a man of limitless arrogancea man who knew he was protected at the highest levels. In fact, reports from the Virgin Islands allege that Epstein was trafficking 12-year-old girls to his private island of Little St. James as recently as 2018.

Epstein victim Virginia Guiffrewho has faced credible death threats for coming forward about her past abuse, allegedly at the hands of Prince Andrewput it this way as she was walking past Epsteins vacant Manhattan palace with a reporter: Being a kid I didnt even really realize what world I was being brought into. I was abused by people that I cant even mention here. Theres a lot of scars hidden behind those walls. It should be ripped down. It should be burned to the ground.

Maxwell and Epstein would often specifically target children in lower-income neighborhoods for grooming, offering kids a wonderful life serving Epstein with all the money, education, and adventures they could hope for. Epstein sexually molested numerous young girls and reportedly demanded sex three times a day from whoever was on hand. He also paid his victims a commission if they found more girls for him, with a premium placed on those who were a younger age.

Around half of Americans polled believe Epstein was murdered. But apart from that, who was Epstein? Who was he working for and why exactly? Epsteins Israel connections are extensive. He was reportedly tied to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak who received millions from an Epstein-funded organization created to support Jewish and Israeli professional successes. Baraks services that led to the payoff are unknown and he wont say anything apart from claiming they were research-related (although Barak did threaten to sue media organizations that reported the story). After photos surfaced of Barak entering Epsteins house in 2016 with his face hidden, he scoffed at allegations of wrongdoing, saying he was there for lunch or a chat.

How did Epstein get rich? Money laundering via hedge funds and other methods? Spying for Israel, Saudi Arabia, and possibly certain American interests? Or direct funding from Victorias Secret billionaire Les Wexner?For his part, Trumps former labor secretary Alexander Acostawho says he was ordered by unspecified higher-ups to give Epstein a slap on the wrist while serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Floridaclaimed he was told at the time that Epstein belongs to intelligence, leave him alone. Journalist Vicky Ward said Epstein definitely trades in the knowledge he has over the rich and famous, and uses it for leverage. He also introduces rich and famous people, like Bill Clinton, like Donald Trump, to girls.

Epstein routinely bragged about his tight friendship with Jamal Khashoggi-chopping madman Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and had a wide circle of associates, many of whom are notable for their fondness or policy flexibility towards Israel and Israeli interests. Maxwells press baron father Robert was himself reportedly a spook. He died in 1991 on his Lady Ghislaine yacht near the Canary Islands, shortly after it was revealed that he was allegedly spying for Israel. Maxwell was given a state funeral befitting a national hero before being buried in Israel, with then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir stating that Maxwell has done more for Israel than can today be said.

Incidentally, Shamirs spokesman at the time, Ehud Gol, dismissed claims that Maxwell had been with Mossad as leveled by Seymour Hersh as nonsense. Regardless of whether he was conducting espionage or not, Maxwell was one of the most important supporters Israel has ever had and was even key in Israel gaining air superiority among their hostile Arab neighbors by turning post-war Czech factories into production facilities for Israeli fighter jet parts.

Could these allegations, if true, help explain why Ghislaine Maxwell is reportedly being protected by Israel?

Was Epstein a Mossad honeypot to get blackmail kompromat on everyone from Bill Clinton to the Saudis or just a freelancer? Former business associate and scam partner in a massive Ponzi scheme Steven Hoffenberg has written a book claiming that Epstein was in fact a top Mossad spy and was taken out precisely because he was becoming too much of a liability. The claims that Epstein and Maxwell ran a Mossad honeypot are echoed in former Israeli spy Ari Ben Menashes book, which says the two blackmailed politicians for info on behalf of Mossad. He also claims that Epstein was introduced to working with Israel by Robert Maxwell prior to Epsteins meeting and partnership with Ghislaine Maxwell, and that Maxwell wanted to bring Epstein into the weapons dealing on the Iran Contra scheme (with which Ben Menashe was reportedly involved).

The Epstein case should be important to everyone who cares about the truth because it marks the dividing line between cynical resignation and uncovering the facts no matter how disgusting or who they might implicate. The Epstein case and the cast of depraved vampires surrounding it may involve espionage, blackmail, money laundering, and many other sick things that attended the trafficking of teenage girls, but it is also characterized by a brazen dismissal of the law. If those at the top are exempt from the rules, society will eventually collapse and vigilantism will become the norm. Elites engaging in abuse and exploitation is nothing new, from the ancient Mayans to the Romans to the European ruling class of medieval times. But in todays flagrantly self-righteous #MeToo environment, it is particularly important that the establishment and liberal culture faces up to the monsters it has in its midstand has arguably helped create by accepting their money and support.

Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for the BBC, Reuters, andForeign Policy, and contributed toThe Week, The Federalist, and others. You can follow him on Twitter@paulrbrianor visit his websitewww.paulrbrian.com.

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The Talented Mr. Epstein - The American Conservative

Margaret Sanger, the womens rights activist and founder ofPlanned Parenthoodthe largest abortion provider in Americais a hero to themodern Left. And little wonder, given her outsized role in the founding andpromotion of the modern abortion industry.

But what few people realize is that Planned Parenthood isactually more extreme than its founder, at least when it comes to abortion. Infact, Sanger, as remarkable as it seems, looks positively tame next to themodern agenda.

Which raises the question: why would Planned Parenthood, whichhas gone so far beyond Sanger in its promotion of abortion, eugenics, andpopulation control, still hold her up as a leader of the movement? Isnt she abit behind the times?

The movement can thank prominent Progressive leaders of thelast decade for raising Sangers profile. Shes featured prominently in liberalspeeches and interviews, like when Hillary Clinton told supporters in 2009 thatshe was in awe of her. In 2014, Barack Obama became the first sittingpresident to address the abortion groups national conference, praisingSangers legacy as its core principle [that] has guided everything all of youdo.

Interestingly, Planned Parenthood, whose highest award still bears Sangers name, has moved so far to the left that its hero probably couldnt even get a job selling T-shirts for the radical abortion giant today. If they were consistent, modern leftists wouldcall Sanger a white supremacist or an extremist for her views on immigration, raceand yes, abortion.

Take, for example, Sangers desire to see Americas borderssealed to all unfit immigrants to protect what she considered a fragile gene pool.That sounds a lot like the caricature of pro-Trump conservatives conjured up inleft-wing fantasies.

Then there was her notorious speech before a branch of theNew Jersey Ku Klux Klan, a well-documented event despite the content beingnearly forgotten. In that speech, Sanger warned that America must keep thedoors of Immigration closed to genetic undesirables.

Then theres Sangers opinion of non-whites, which, if utterednow, would (rightly) cause a conniption among Americans. She consideredAustralias Aborigines compulsiverapists and the lowest known species of the human family, just a stephigher than the chimpanzee in brain development. Because he has no greatbrain development, Sanger wrote, police authority alone prevents [Aborigines]from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.

But if Planned Parenthood was honest about its founder,Sangers most unforgivable sin would be her skepticism of abortion itself.

One of Sangers few criticisms of the Soviet Union when shevisited the communist state in 1934 was its outright insistence on encouragingabortion over contraception. Four hundred thousand abortions a year indicatewomen do not want to have so many children, a perplexed Sanger told a Sovietdoctor.

She thought that access to birth control was a human rightbutwas repulsed by abortion. In my opinion it is a cruel method of dealing withthe problem, Sanger wrote upon returning home, because abortion, no matterhow well done, is a terrific nervous strain and an exhausting physical hardship.

In fact, the founder of Planned Parenthood was deeplyconcerned about the tremendous number of abortions taking place in the SovietUnion, as historian Paul Kengor has documented.Legalization of abortion was one of the communist governments first acts followingthe 1917 Russian Revolutionnearly 60 years before Roe v. Wadeaccomplished the same thing in America. By1920, the Soviet Union was providing abortions free of charge to its citizens.

Sanger wrote that the number of abortions in Moscow was 100,000per year. By the 1970s, there were 78 millionabortions annually in the USSRa rate unmatched in human history, Kengorpoints out. Roe v. Wade only managed 1.5 million in 1973, the year the SupremeCourt legalized abortion.

By these metrics, Planned Parenthoods position on abortion in2020 is far closer to that of post-Revolutionary Soviet Union than their hero, MargaretSanger.

If Progressives held Sanger to their own standards, theydhave to denounce her antiquated viewsso why do they continue to applaud her?Because the Left believes that Sangers contributions to the pro-choicemovement outweigh her racist views. So Planned Parenthood sticks with itsdespicable founder, refusing to disavow her altogether, to its shame.

If leftists were honest, theyd renounce Margaret Sangerandthen reflect on what it means that theyve become even more radical than theeugenicist who started their anti-life movement.

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Margaret Sanger Is a Hero to the Left. Here's Her History of Ugly Views. - Daily Signal

CBC Editorial: Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020; Editorial #8506The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.

Elections should focus on bringing diverse interests together toward common concerns and the greater good. Campaigns must be about the truth.

But North Carolinas Lt. Gov. Dan Forest believes otherwise. In a speech on Martin Luther King Jr. Day a time when unity and understanding are typically the themes Forest sought to deepen divisions. While he gives lip-service to unity in his remarks, his sharpest words aim to isolate.

There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire black race,, Forest said in remarks to a breakfast at a Raleigh church. That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. Thats the truth!

No. It is not the truth which well get to shortly.

Forest has a passion for divisiveness. He was a leader and most vocal advocate of the mean-spirited and ill-conceived discriminatory House Bill 2 bathroom regulations. The legislation became a national model for discrimination to a point where businesses and hosts of major athletic events didnt want to associate themselves with North Carolina.

Forest doesnt stop there. Hes decried diversity and multiculturalism with the notion that everyone needs to assimilate to what he demands our state and nation adhere to.

But, most disturbing about Forests King Day remarks on Planned Parenthood and abortion is that he was wrong. He DID NOT tell the truth. He spread fake news.

Just how wrong was this? Fully and completely.

In 2011, presidential candidate Herman Cain said Planned Parenthoods early objective was to "help kill black babies before they came into the world." PolitiFact, the much-honored fact-checking organization, researched and found Cains claim is a ridiculous, cynical play of the race card. It was rated Pants on Fire.

Factcheck.org, another independent fact-checking organization, investigated the same allegation and came to the same conclusion. Herman Cain has offered an alternate version of history, they concluded. We find no support for that old claim.

In September 2015, presidential candidate Ben Carson said Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger "believed that people like me should be eliminated." Substantial evidence shows, PolitiFact reported, that she was not racist and in fact worked closely with black leaders and health care professionals. Carsons statement bears no relation to historical reality. It was rated False.

When asked by a reporter for clarification of Forest's comments, campaign spokesman Andrew Dunn noted articles about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's controversial background and quotes about King's opposition to abortion. Dunn noted Sangers beliefs on eugenics and ties a program called the Negro Project that brought birth control services but not abortion to black communities in the South. All, as noted above, clarified and debunked by the fact checkers.

Spreading falsehoods and fostering divisiveness may help the lieutenant governor win a primary in a few weeks. But no reputable candidate will allow truth and unity to be campaign battlefield casualties.

North Carolina deserves honest candidates who will work to unite the state in pursuit of excellence. The primary voters should insist upon it when they go to the polling place.

Forest must apologize for spreading lies and commit himself to a campaign that elevates truth and the common good.

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Editorial: Lt. Gov. Forest -- Embrace the truth. Stop spreading divisive falsehoods - WRAL.com

MengeleBy David G MarwellNorton, 420pp, 20/$32

Josef Mengele, the doctor-scientist of Auschwitz, reared in a conservative, Catholic, conventional family, was perhaps, the Italian author Claudio Magris wrote, the most atrocious murderer in all the death camps. With a ready smile he performed horrible experiments on children, pursuing his research on twins with a particular relish for gypsy twins. He would gouge out eyes, inject prisoners with viruses and burn their genitals. Merely to read about his work is disgusting and horrifying. Nobody more than Mengele seems to confirm the truth of George Steiners assertion that the Nazis created the hell on earth which for centuries Europeans had imagined and poets and painters had depicted.

Magris devoted three pages to Mengele in his excellent book Danube. But what he writes about the Angel of Death isnt always accurate. That is made clear in this absorbing new book by David G Marwell, who worked on the Mengele case at the US Justice Departments Office of Special Investigations in the 1980s, proving among other things that Mengele had died in 1979.

Yet Magriss mistakes, chief among them his belief that Mengele was sheltered for three years in a monastery rather than working incognito as a farmhand in a hamlet in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps are not that important. What matters and disturbs is his observation that when he was in hiding he did not gouge out eyes or disembowel people, and I do not imagine that he suffered from withdrawal symptoms. He will have behaved well He did not kill because he couldnt and he resigned himself to this sacrifice without making a fuss. Conversely of course, he had tortured, mutilated and murdered at Auschwitz because he could, because it was expected of him, and because he found pleasure and satisfaction in doing so.

When he eventually made his escape to South America, first to Argentina, then to Paraguay, he re-established himself as a modestly successful businessman. He didnt torture or kill anyone there either. For the most part he kept his head down and led what appeared to be a normal, rather dull life.

I find this disconnection between his past and present, and his ability to live as if everything he had done in Auschwitz had been a matter of duty, fascinating. Thirty years ago I attempted to understand such disconnection in a novel entitled The Sins of the Father. That told the story of a Nazi criminal snatched by Mossad in Argentina and transported to Israel for trial. The novel was concerned with the effect on the next generation, but I also attempted, certainly not altogether to my satisfaction, to try to understand how a man could put his criminal past behind him as something no longer of any importance.

My Nazi was an engineer, Mengele a scientist, and it seems that he continued to believe that his scientific work was valuable, its value justifying whatever he did. Of course the race science he pursued is now thoroughly discredited. Things were different in Mengeles youth. The science (or pseudo-science) of eugenics, with which Mengeles research on twins was concerned, had a respectable following in England and the United States.

Marwell notes that Mengeles mentor, Otmar von Verschuer, gave a lecture to the Royal Society in London in June 1939 in which he paid tribute to Francis Galton (Darwins cousin) as the founder of our science. If the Nazis made the science of eugenics the subject of practical experiment, they were translating into action ideas which had been held by high-minded men and women seeking means of improving the national stock and preventing the unfit from breeding.

Late in life Mengele made contact with his son, Rolf, whom he hadnt seen since the boy was a baby. They exchanged letters in which Mengele explained himself with no hint of apology, and eventually Rolf visited him in Paraguay. Differences between them were apparent. In a last letter, after Rolf had returned to Germany, Mengele wrote: On the basis of my worldview and my specific profession I attach, more than most, of course, special meaning to the terms offspring, inheritance, son. On the other hand, I understand, as well, the power of environment.

It was quite a long letter, but the meaning was clear. If Rolf didnt think as he did, it was because Rolf had been led to view the content of my life incorrectly, if not intentionally negatively.

Mengeles world view, Marwell concludes, was little changed from that summer day in 1944 when he had stalked the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1984, Mengeles divorced wife Irene wrote to researchers working on a book about her first husband: I knew Josef Mengele as an absolutely honourable, decent, conscientious, very charming, elegant and amusing person. Otherwise I probably wouldnt have married him. Magris ended his note on Mengele rather differently: The Gorgon, said Joseph Roth about Nazism, is banal. Mengeles victims are characters in a tragedy, but Mengele himself is a figure in a farrago of gibberish.

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Mengele was a monster and a product of his time - Catholic Herald Online

A world where we can predict what traits and diseases that a baby will be born with is nearly upon us. With the expanding availability of genetic data, researchers in both universities and industry are trying to figure out the complicated relationship between our DNA and human health. For traits and diseases that reflect the interaction between many genetic and oftentimes environmental risk factors, these sorts of predictions are more difficult to make.

Scientists use genome-wide association studies with very large sample sizes to calculate polygenic scores, which correlate genetic factors with complex traits, like height or BMI, and risk for complex diseases, like heart disease or autism.

Almost everything you can think of is highly polygenic meaning [that] many, many, many genes or hundreds of thousands of genetic locations could be affecting [a complex trait], Jason Fletcher, a UW-Madison professor of public affairs studying some of the ethical, legal and social implications of genomic science, said.

Since an individuals genome generally does not change over the course of their lifetime, polygenic scores could offer an avenue for identifying individuals for specialized treatments or early interventions, Fletcher adds.

The positive case might be something like thinking about an instance where there is polygenic score for dyslexia and potentially being able to use a score like that very early in a child's life as a way of collecting individuals who might benefit from specific learning interventions, Fletcher said.

Intellectual disabilities and learning disabilities often go unnoticed for years, which can leave a child to struggle.

Lauren Schmitz, a UW-Madison assistant professor of public affairs, also notes that whereas for heart disease, preventative measures are viewed favorably, for intellectual disability the measures used to intervene would need to be carefully considered to avoid stigmatizing individuals.

Schmitz also stresses that although the science is moving fast, the predictive accuracy of these polygenic risk scores varies depending on the trait or disease in question. However, the for-profit, direct-to-consumer DNA testing industry is blurring the lines on what genomic science can say.

The way I see it, it's the next frontier in personalized things, Schmitz said. I think we're a culture that loves things that are personalized to us me and my experience and so I think the genome is the next marketing frontier.

For example, last November the biotech company Genomic Prediction claimed it could offer polygenic scores for traits including diabetes, heart disease and even IQ as an additional amenity for parents having children through in vitro fertilization. Currently, IVF clinics test fertilized embryos before they are implanted into a uterus to check for inherited genetic disease, like cystic fibrosis or Tays-Sachs disease, or for major chromosome abnormalities that can dramatically decrease the likelihood of a fetus being carried to term.

The announcement has been met with concern from scientists about the accuracy of these new preimplantation tests as well as the long-term effects of selecting on the basis of these traits.

There's all sorts of things where we don't even understand how these different mechanisms are operating and how they're correlated with other aspects of the genome, Schmitz said.

Measurements of intelligence like IQ tests are controversial, and as Angela Saini writes in Superior: The Return of Race Science, much of the work correlating educational attainment with genetics has direct ties to the vestiges of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Additionally, for many complex traits and diseases in combination with social and environmental factors at play, these polygenic scores are not necessarily an indication that the trait or disease will manifest.

We should be clear that the scores are not destiny, and there's an upper limit on how predictive it could be, Fletcher said.

Read the original:

Genetic risk scores open a host of concerns and implications - The Daily Cardinal

digiD8/ Screenshotdigid8

BOKARO STEEL CITY, JharkhandWhat do you hope for when you log into a dating app? Chemistry, good looks, educational qualification, maybe family background? Sanaya (name changed) was lucky enough to meet her partner through a dating app and even better, both their families were on board for the wedding.

But the couples first child was born with a genetic disorder that, doctors said, would prevent his mental development as he grew past infancy. Sanaya told HuffPost India she wished she was aware of this risk before going through this heartbreak with her husband.

People like Sanaya may have their wish granted if one Harvard geneticist succeeds in his plans.Earlier this month, Harvard professor George Church, who specialises in gene editing research, said on aTV showthat he is trying to ensure no child is born with genetic disorders. How will this happen? Through developing a dating app that would match people through DNAmeaning two people who share the same gene will not be matched with each other.

For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India onTwitter,Facebook, and subscribe to ournewsletter.

The dating app, named digiD8, has been co-founded by Church, and engineer Barghavi Govindarajan who spoke to HuffPost India about their app, and its vision. Asked how this app does not promote eugenics, Govindarajan highlighted a statement from Church to the media:There are a lot of diseases which are not so serious which may be beneficial to society in providing, for example, brain diversity. We wouldnt want to lose that. But if [a baby] has some very serious genetic disease that causes a lot of pain and suffering, costs millions of dollars to treat and they still die young, thats what were trying to deal with.

While this sounds like a reasonable way to ensure that babies and their parents are safe from the risk of genetic disorders such as down syndrome, cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anaemia, the proposal has also received criticism from people who say that it is a way of promoting eugenicsa philosophy that advocates that its possible to improve the quality of the human species through selective breeding. The eugenics movement, which began in the US in the late 19th century, was infamously advocated by Hitler and the Nazis, to create a Germanic bermensch.

The movement lost its credibility after the Second World War, and it is now widely accepted that variations in genes give rise to diversity in a culture, which is essential for its flourishing generation after generation. Critics have called out digiD8 for bringing back these issuesfor example, Janus Rose argued in Vice that although Church and Govindarajan may not mean to use it in such a way, others could use the technology to identify people with a theoretical gene for gender dysphoria, eliminating trans people or people with other kinds of disabilities.

Its not the technology itself thats problematic. Its how we use it, Vardit Ravitsky, a bioethicist at the Universit de Montral, wrote on a Medium blog.So I guess this means wiping me out along with millions of other disabled people. Ever considered that having a disease doesnt mean a life thats tragic or full of suffering?

Alice Wong, the founder of the Disability Visibility Project, tweeted, calling it ableism and eugenics.

From the time Church revealed the concept behind digiD8, many people have been horrified by the notion. On 60 Minutes, he claimed it could be a cheap way to eradicate thousands of diseases that cost about a trillion dollars a year, worldwide, although he didnt give specific data about the source of this figure.

A since-removed job listing on the digiD8 website also claimed the company is pursuing an untapped market by creating a dating service that uses science to evaluate lineal compatibility, an apparent reference to caste and tribe group self-segregation practices that occur in the Gulf region and in India, the MIT Technology Review reported.

In todays world, where we have a clearer understanding of how genes work,is there any justification for the idea of matching people based on their genomes? And if so, is a dating app the right way to actually make it happen? And lastly, who will be responsible for the security of the humongous amounts of sensitive data generated?

Most people carry a mutant genea gene whose structure is different from that found normallywhich they pass on to their offspring.A single mutant gene may or may not cause sickness, depending on how dominant it is. But if a person has two copies of the same recessive mutant gene, that causes sickness.

Children inherit genes from both the parents. If both their parents have the same mutant gene, they have a 25% probability of being born with the disease caused by that recessive mutant gene.

Church argues that if everyone chose partners based on their genome sequence, about 7,000 diseases could be eliminated forever, and removing the 5% of the worlds population that would have been born with rare diseases, if the DNA matching wasnt done.

Of course, for this, everyone would need to get their genome sequenced.

According to Church, matching people by their genes will prevent the birth of children with debilitating genetic disordersso factors such as race, or even what the genes carry wont matter at all; the app is only concerned with matching genes that dont carry markers for disorders.

digiD8/ ScreenshotThe digiD8 founders, Bhargavi Govindarajan (L) and George Church (R).

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy, Associate Professor at IIIT Hyderabad, who researches on the Sociology of Digital Media, and has worked in the development of technologies for consumer-centric heath care, at Xerox, and done ethnographic field research on technology use in developing countries for Microsoft Research, thinks parents should have a say in whether they want such a child or not. Technocracy cannot determine what is right for them. There have been known cases where parents have gone ahead with the second child despite the first child being born with inherited genetic disorder, people shouldnt be controlled by technology.

At the same time, Rangaswamy, who is also supervising research on dating app experiences, thinks a dating app shouldnt be the way to go about this. It seems almost as if Bhargavi and Church are proposing to use a dating app because it grabs [the] attention.

These apps are used by individuals to meet new people, have fun and explore the possibility of developing relationships, she said.

Marriage and making babies is the last thing on the mind of those using dating apps. They are there just to expand their social circle beyond the existing one. And in case of restrictive societies like India, explore their sexuality too. If marriage happens, thats a bonus.

Church told HuffPost India that, people choosing digiD8 would just need to spit, send and sit back. The app will throw up matches after screening out candidates based on their genome matching, in addition to the usual dating app criteria. The genome sequencing would be kept confidential, even from the person themselves.

But that sounds counter-intuitive. Genome data is critical information that should belong to the person whose DNA is being used.

Pre-nuptial or IVF genetic counselling is not entirely unheard ofthere are many ethnicities globally that carry more than their fair share of genetic variants and kids born in such societies are more likely to have inherited genetic disorders than anywhere else in the world. Organisations such asDor Yeshorim have been able to eradicate rare diseases like Tay Sachs among Jewish communities through pre-nuptial genetic counselling.

As experience has shown time and again,once any data is lodged within an app or its server, its privacy and security are questionable. The privacy of genotype data and how it is handled must be considered carefully before any such data is collected. This may be even more important in countries where data privacy laws are not very robust, like India.

Doctors, however, caution against dismissing Churchs suggestions completely. Dr. Apeksha Pathak, a pediatrician, says, It is a good idea to match genotype genes to predict inherited diseases in offspring. There are certain inherited diseases which are quite common, like thalassemia. But there are some that are rare, but life-threatening and expensive to manage.

Read more:

There's A New Problematic Dating Trend, One Based On DNA Matching - HuffPost India

A couple of Seven Days reporters tracked down seven ex-priests accused of sexual molestation and knocked on their doors.Another questioned an impeachment hearing witness in a Capitol Hill men's room. One brave writer spent a week milking cows, and getting shit upon, to find out what it's really like to work on a Vermont dairy farm.

Seven Days journalists go to great lengths sometimes literally to find good stories, and the process can be awkward, painful, scary or inconvenient. But it's never boring.

The original story idea may well change in the process of investigation. And not everything makes it into the final published piece. So, once a year, our reporters and editors share what we call "backstories," the tales behind the ones you read in Seven Days. They can be fascinating, humorous or sad.

These anecdotes reveal our purpose and methods for example, how difficult it is to communicate with a source in prison, or what to do when no one will talk to you in Orwell, of all places.

This year our data editor wrangled a trove of public records from the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living to build a database that showed violations at eldercare facilities. At the State Archives, our Burlington reporter had to surrender her backpack, pen and water bottle to study the original, hard-copy documents that chronicle Vermont's involvement in the eugenics movement.

Verifying that the state owns two World War II-era rifles with Nazi insignia required a little more sleuthing.

Each week, the editorial team fans out with notebooks and cameras, driven by curiosity and a desire to tell readers what's happening and why it's important. Their "backstories" show the obstacles we face and the fun we have while pursuing the people, events and news that make Vermont such an interesting place.

Go here to read the rest:

Backstory 2019: What Seven Days Writers Didn't Tell You the First Time Around - Seven Days

THEY are small huts, scattered across the country, which appear on the outside to be fairly unassuming

But behind the walls of the barely habitable dwellings lay the truth of a bizarre experiment that saw Scottish authorities attempt to control a distinct racial group in a bid to get them to integrate into mainstream society.

Known as the "Tinker Experiment", it saw members of the travelling community placed in specially provided huts, far from the rest of society, in a bid to break them into joining the rest of the population and effectively kill off their culture.

Remarkably, most of these sites only closed in the 1980s, but one in Pitlochry remained in use only a decade ago.

READ MORE:Gypsy Travellers: Scotland's human rights shame

Now members of the travelling community are demanding an official apology from the Scottish Government for what they call Scotland's secret shame, and they're planning a protest at Holyrood next month.

They are angry that other sections of society have received apologies for historically poor treatment from the state while they still wait, despite it being illegal to discriminate against gypsy travellers on grounds of race since the Equality Act of 2010.

Shamus McPhee, who was a subject of the experiment at Bobbin Mill, Pitlochry, pointed out that each reason the Scottish Government had given why it couldn't apologise for the Tinker Experiment could be rebutted through a previous apology to another distinct group.

He said the Government had in the past said it was unable to apologise for the actions of a previous government, ignoring an unreserved apologise to the gay community. On another occasion, he said, it claimed claimed it couldn't apologise for local government initiatives or the actions of public bodies but apologised for the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

Mr McPhee said another government defence had been that it couldn't offer apologies for events which predated devolution, but that that overlooked an apology to those affected by the contaminated blood scandals of the 1980s and 1990s.

He said: "A programme of eugenics saw Gypsy Travellers separated out on racial grounds for removal from Scottish society. This marked a top-down, concerted approach, designed to eradicate a specific group of people.

"I think that quite a striking analogy can be drawn between our treatment, almost colonial in aspect, especially the level of subsequent denial, and that of the aboriginal people in Australia. The extent of that institutional racism is most clearly illuminated in the response from central government in Scotland, which has been described as 'wilful blindness' on the part of the ruling elite."

READ MORE:Scotland needs to do better for Gypsy/Travellers

His sister Roseanna adds: "Although the authorities said it was a housing experiment it was actually a racial experiment, it was a form of eugenics because nobody could be put in the houses unless they were what they called a 'tinker'.

"There was no one from mainstream society who was put there and we were kept away from that mainstream. These houses were specifically designed to ease the tinker problem."

The genesis of what became known as the Tinker Experiment in private government circles began just over a century ago. In a deputation to the Secretary of Scotland in 1917, it was claimed that "with kindly treatment, tinkers could be reclaimed and brought into line with ordinary civilisation".

The chair of the Department of Tinkers in Scotland, the Duchess of Atholl, asked for a Scotland-wide census on the numbers and social make-up of these communities.

This was an attempt to measure what was called at the time in the press as the "Tinker Problem", and then solve this problem by assimilating travellers into mainstream Scottish society by threatening to remove their children into care.

By forcing them to send their children to school for a set number of days, the gypsy families would have to settle in permanent accommodation as governments and local authorities recognised that the families had a close bond with their children.

Due to the secretive nature of the plan, exact figures have been hard to come by, but it is believed that thousands of individuals were forced to exist in properties with no hot water, electricity or proper washing facilities.

Those who refused had their children taken into care.

Throughout the 20th century huts to house travellers were built in at least 10 different locations across Scotland.

These included the Bridge of Don barracks in Aberdeen, Red Rocks in Inverness-shire and Muir of Ord on the edge of the Black Isle.

These sites were basic by design with minimum living facilities and were closely supervised by the authorities.

On the Muir of Ord site, the idea "was to train the tinker how to live in a house, instead of in sheds, old buses and under canvas which would give them a better chance in life".

In Perthshire alone, 35 traveller families were housed in substandard huts, many unaware that they were part of a racial experiment.

Perthshire Council initially bought a former WWII prisoner of war hut to be used as housing for four gypsy families.

In a letter from 1945 concerning the creation of the property, the council ignored bylaws for minimum standards of housing, instead applying regulations intended for tents, vans or sheds.

The huts were deliberately substandard to encourage travelling families to quickly move into mainstream accommodation and so be assimilated into Scottish society, reasoning no-one would put up with the property for more than three years.

However, this assimilation was difficult as many gypsies felt they couldn't practise their own culture living in a council estate isolated from their own community.

Those affected have repeatedly asked the Scottish Government for an apology, but without success.

Most of these sites closed in the 1980s but one in Pitlochry remained in use only a decade ago.

The Bobbin Mill huts were partitioned with asbestos-coated wood into four sections for different families to occupy.

Each hut consisted of one bedroom and a toilet and cold water sink. It had no electricity and accommodated up to 10 family members.

Yet according to resident Alexander Johnstone, who lived there from the 1960s, the poor conditions were despite the fact there was ready access to utilities. "Even though there was a gas tank nearby and a house over the back that had electricity only about 30 metres away, they wouldn't install it for some reason.

"I never saw a council person the whole time I was there, and if anything was broken we just had to fix it ourselves."

The building was condemned as unfit for human habitation in 1962 yet the council continued to place families there throughout the decade.

Many former residents believe that their recurring health problems today stem from the asbestos dust and freezing conditions of their childhood home.

Roseanna McPhee recalls a locum doctor who had previously worked in South Africa making a house call.

She said: "He compared the huts to Soweto. If you didn't just get on with living in the bad conditions and thole it, the children would be taken into care."

Even if the families did suffer in silence, their children were still at risk of being removed.

Jessie McPhee's family were also occupants, but she and her twin brother Robert were taken into care in 1956 at birth as the local council decided there was not enough room to accommodate any more children in the family of 12.

She believes her parents simply accepted the authorities' decision out of fear that all of their children would be taken away from them.

Jessie returned to the family home to start primary school, but Robert was placed in a boarding school because of his behaviour. He kept running away from the home because of the treatment he received there, coming from a minority group. She is convinced Robert, who died 20 years ago, never recovered from the double rejection.

She said: "He felt he had been rejected twice, by my parents when he was taken into the children's home and then by the boarding school. He was an alcoholic who drank himself to death because he couldn't accept what had happened to him."

The experiment in assimilation failed as the children were mercilessly bullied at the local primary and secondary school and then became stigmatised because of their sub-human housing, which affected their chances of forming relationships outside those in the same situation.

Roseanna explains: "You couldn't assimilate. If you went out with someone from the wider community and they found out you were from the hut, you never saw them again.

"People could accept you were a traveller or a gypsy but they couldn't accept that you were living in these appalling conditions they couldn't understand that you didn't want to be there they didn't understand that you were put there."

When asked about the Tinker Experiment, the Scottish Government acknowledged the treatment the travellers had received and the impact it had on them, but again stopped short of an apology.

READ MORE:It needs guts to take the road less travelled. And for Gypsies, that means protecting their children from the outside world. But at what cost?

A spokesperson told The Herald on Sunday: The lives of many gypsy travellers have been blighted by the historical housing polices of councils and charities. We absolutely recognise the devastating impact which these polices had on families, many of whom are still suffering the consequences.

A joint Scottish Government and Cosla 3 million action plan to tackle the discrimination and challenges faced by the gypsy/traveller community was published in October.

Read the original post:

Scandal of The Tinker Experiment: demands for apology over Scotland's treatment of gypsy travellers - HeraldScotland

As I write this review every year the more recent programmes tend to have unfair advantage.

And so The Crown (Netflix) gets first mention this year. I reviewed two particularly good episodes from Season 3 (November) in a recent column the ones that focused on the Aberfan disaster and Sr Alice, Prince Philips mother and later a nun. Faith themes were picked up again in Episode 7, Moondust which explored Philips religious life in more detail, and tied his faith development into his obsession with the 1969 moon landings.

His private audience with his moon walking heroes (different planets, almost literally!) contrasted with his heartfelt opening of heart and mind with a group of troubled clergymen in a retreat house he supported. Rarely has religion been treated so seriously and maturely in a TV drama.

Another drama that featured religion quite regularly was The Kids Are Alright (RT 2) where an adult narrator recalled events from his past, growing up in a Catholic family in the US in the 1970s. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it funny and touching. It helped that it didnt have a laugh track, and that all the characters were so believable, if exaggerated. Was it looking back fondly or was it more jaundiced?

Of all the regular programmes Leap of Faith (RT Radio 1) with Michael Comyn continues to maintain a high standard

There were plenty of jibes at the Church and some predictable Catholic stereotypes, but perhaps of the type that comes from people who are sticking to the faith despite the flaws of the flock.

Also making an impression on the drama front, last January, was a new BBC production of Les Misrables where religion was also treated positively and themes of justice, forgiveness and redemption were prominent, though there was some brief but unnecessary adult content.

Dark Money impressed in July a story about the abuse of a child actor in Hollywood and the destructive consequences for the child and his family.

Also in January RTs War of Independence drama Resistance was better than I expected, despite some lazy stereotyping of nuns.

A new series of Derry Girls (Channel 4) started in March, and while it was undeniably funny, it was marred by gratuitous foul language and over-the-top irreverence. One scene became iconic where the priest on a cross-community youth retreat tried to get the youngsters to outline what Catholics and Protestants had in common, but all they could come up with were differences.

Good Omens (Amazon Prime Video) was a curious adaptation of a book by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman, with uneasily comical struggles between the forces of good and evil, with humanity seen as caught in the middle. It was intriguing though it could have been more religiously literate.

RT featured several worthwhile documentaries during the year. In January the one-off documentary Pope Francis in Ireland Behind the Scenes was a useful recap on the previous summers papal visit.

In March Guns and Rosaries was an excellent documentary about Fr Patrick Peyton, the Irish Rosary Priest who enlisted the help of various Hollywood celebrities different times!

Divorcing God, in June, was comedian Oliver Callans look at the Church in Ireland, interesting, not hostile, but could have been more unpredictable and incisive.

In Father Delaney: Silent Witness (RT 1, November), Joe Duffy presented a fascinating documentary about the cine films of Irish life taken by Fr Jack Delaney, from the 1930s on. Even better, shown in early November, was his film Children of the Troubles, a sad and moving programme about the children killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

BBC had its share of fine documentaries in March BBC2 Northern Ireland had a very impressive series Oilithreacht, about young people taking on the Lough Derg pilgrimage their faith and enthusiasm was inspiring.

In April, Pilgrimage: Road to Rome (BBC2) had various celebrities walking to Rome and reflecting on their faith or lack of it. Though irritating at times there were inspiring moments and a moving meeting with Pope Francis at the end.

Fern Brittons Holy Land Journey followed a similar path and gave insights into modern Jerusalem.

Our Dementia Choir, with actress Vicky McClure was an emotional exploration of the power of music.

In September, Inside the Vatican on BBC2 was an impressive, very human and insightful look behind the scenes of day to day life in the Vatican, including Pope Francis visit to Ireland.

Eugenics: Sciences Greatest Scandal (BBC4) was one of Octobers scariest programmes, tracing the history of eugenics and showing how the arrogant underlying attitudes are still very much alive today.

January saw the introduction of liberal abortion legislation into Ireland. The programmes that covered it then and still have largely failed to ask any hard questions of those who promote this unjust and cruel practice.

Pro-life voices are sidelined as pro-choicers continue to get a free pass with easy interviews and if they are pushed by interviewers its usually politicians being pressed on why they arent introducing more liberal laws.

By May we were hearing about the abortion of a baby that did not have a fatal abnormality on Today With Sen ORourke (RT Radio 1). The media outrage ranged from muted to non-existent.

In July, Panorama (BBC1 did a special on the abortion controversy in the US and by usual standards it was reasonably balanced, though generally on BBC I find interviewers favouring the pro-choice side. No mainstream debate I heard during the UK General Election challenged the parties on their abortion policies which were very extreme in some cases.

In August, a new Frontline documentary The Abortion Divide on PBS America was reasonably fair, food for thought for the viewer without strong opinions either way.

The excesses of political correctness became more pervasive during the year, though Prime Time (RT) did have a reasonably balanced programme on transgenderism in January, while Newsnight (BBC) had a robust item in November that asked some hard questions about the issue and highlighted those who de-transition.

Of all the regular programmes Leap of Faith (RT Radio 1) with Michael Comyn continues to maintain a high standard, a programme that promotes reflective discussions and builds bridges in a world becoming more polarised and fractious. I particularly remember a programme last January that highlighted the widespread persecution of Christians around the world, and also flagged to persecution of Muslims in China, nearly a year before this became hot news after a Panorama (BBC) documentary in November.

In February, Comyn featured a reflective discussion on the difficult issue of clerical child abuse, there was an interesting special for St Patricks Day and a considered coverage of the massacre of Christians in Sri Lanka in April. More recently I enjoyed his interview with religious affairs journalists Anne Thompson and Ins San Martn.

Life and Soul (RT1 and Radio 1 Extra), launched in July, was an excellent, though occasional, addition to RTs Sunday morning line up. It replaces Sunday Service though, Id prefer if it was in addition. That being said it is imaginative and innovative, with a mixture of personal stories of faith, prayers and some fine contemporary Christian music.

Songs of Praise (BBC) continued its long run and among the episodes I liked were specials on St Valentines Day, St Marys University in Twickenham and Lourdes. Sunday Sequence (BBC Radio Ulster) continued to be one the best religious programmes on radio, with unique insights into the religious life of Northern Ireland and beyond, with frequent contributions from Irish Catholic Managing Editor Michael Kelly.

He was particularly insightful discussing the canonisation of John Henry Newman in October. The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live (both BBC1) alternated, maintaining high standards on Sunday mornings, with quite a diverse range of opinions.

After initially being doubtful, the regular slot where a comedian and one other reviewed the religious stories of the week grew on me and now Ill miss it for the winter season.

EWTN News Nightly continued to make a valuable contribution in getting a Catholic perspective on news from around the world and provided a useful balance to the secular media.

In general the EWTN channel is a valuable resource for following papal visits, most recently the trip to Thailand and Japan.

And so, happy new year to all media folks I hope you will resist the temptation to polarise and offend but that you will provide us with imaginative programmes that will entertain, challenge, inspire and unite.

Related

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A year of more Netflix progress - The Irish Catholic

Guest Writer x Dec 10, 2019

CW/TW: this article contains mentions of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, ableism, forced sterilization, and chattel slavery.

By Vanessa Taylor

With apps like Tinder and Bumble, dating has taken on a new appearance. We like to think that were in total control of our intimate lives, making our own decisions when it comes to swiping left or right, but thats not the case. A recent 60 Minute story followed a Harvard scientist named George Church working on a dating app that matches people by DNA to eliminate all genetic diseases. Its both cisheternormative and pro-natalist. The story not only illuminates how future plans for dating apps are flirting with eugenics but the role of tech in legitimizing terrible sciences.

Although the word eugenics is never explicitly used by 60 Minutes, its legacy is clear within Churchs work. If youre unfamiliar, eugenics intends to improve the genetic quality of humans through selective breeding. That means not only looking to pair people who have desirable traits, but also getting rid of the undesirables, like by force sterilizing poor people, disabled people, and people of color.

According to 60 Minutes, Churchs dating app intends to screen out matches that would result in a child with an inherited disease. Church told interviewer Scott Pelley that, You wouldnt find out who youre not compatible with. Youll just find out who you are compatible with.

While the plan to combine eugenics with dating apps may surprise some, Churchs own quote shows why it shouldnt. The algorithms behind many popular dating apps are digital matchmakers filtering who you see. In 2016, Buzzfeed reporter Katie Notopoulos found that the dating app CoffeeMeetsBagel would only show users potential partners of the same race, even if users said they had no preference. Then, a 2018 study by Cornell researchers found further racial discrimination on the 25 highest-grossing dating apps in the US.

The idea that dating apps opened a new door to eugenics is not really shocking, Jevan Hutson, a researcher at the University of Washington and lead author on the Cornell study, told Wear Your Voice. At the higher level, the intimate realm is inextricably tied to relationships of power, and has historically been a crucial locus for the production of social hierarchy and state control.

Examples of this can be found within Harvards own history. Author Adam Cohen described Harvard as more central to American eugenics than any other university. In August 1912, Harvards president emeritus Charles William Eliot talked about the grave danger of immigration and the threat of mixing racial groups. Each nation should keep its stock pure, Eliot said. There should be no blending of races.

Anxieties around racial mixing were captured in miscegenation laws that banned Black peopleand sometimes other people of colorfrom marrying or having sex with white people. Teen Vogue reported that the laws started in the late 1600s and in slave-holding colonies like Maryland directly addressed white women, who forgetful of their free condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves.

Dating apps are in the business of facilitating individual preferences [along the lines of race, disability, and more] regardless of the individual or structural outcome, Hutson said. However, to describe this lack of concern as a phenomenon limited to dating apps would be inaccurate because the problem spans across tech as an industry.

While touting tech advancements as being explicitly based in eugenics or scientific racism may be out of fashion, that doesnt mean its not happening. For example, Hutson pointed out the surge of physiognomic AI, where artificial intelligence makes inferences or predictions about a persons internal state or character on the basis of their external characteristic. Take Faception which offers facial personality analytics. As I wrote before, Faception claims that its technology is objective because of machine learning, but all mentions of mental illness correlate with categories of criminal offense, or undesirable behavior, such as white-collar offenders, terrorists, and pedophiles.

Phrenologyan offshoot of physiognomyis packed into tech despite it providing the scientific justification for many prejudices. For example, U.S. physician James W. Redfields 1852 Comparative Physiognomy featured gems like of Negroes to Elephants, of Jews to goats, and more. And again, as I wrote previously, is it than any coincidence that Google Images once classified Black people as gorillas?

Although 60 Minutes reported that Church is dyslexic with attention deficit and narcolepsy, this doesnt mean he cant participate in eugenics. Church says he works with an ethicist but that alone doesnt mean much. Ethics by itself isnt a neutral field, either, and if Western history has marked eugenics as a benefit to society, then why wouldnt some ethicists, too?

Both science and tech have adopted the idea that neither needs to consider the broad human implications of a project and if the after-shocks are unpleasant, it isnt their responsibility. This cavalier attitude is not only seen with the development of facial recognition and other surveillance technologies but with big tech companies like Amazon who provide the technological backbone for ICE. The reality is, science and tech are not exceptional, and not everything that you can imagine needs to exist.

Vanessa Taylor is a writer based out of Philadelphia, although the Midwest will always be home. She has work in outlets such as Teen Vogue, Racked, and Catapult. Her work focuses on Black Muslim womanhood and the taboo. You can follow her across social media at @bacontribe.

Every single dollar matters to usespecially now when media is under constant threat. Your support is essential and your generosity is why Wear Your Voice keeps going! You are a part of the resistance that is neededuplifting Black and brown feminists through your pledges is the direct community support that allows us to make more space for marginalized voices. For as little as $1 every month you can be a part of this journey with us. This platform is our way of making necessary and positive change, and together we can keep growing.

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Eugenics Is Influencing Dating Apps and Other Forms of Tech - Wear Your Voice

Over the years, The News & Advance has told the stories of those who were involuntarily sterilized at what now is known as the Central Virginia Training Center.

At least 3,800 sterilization procedures were done as part of the now-discredited eugenics movement at the training center. About 8,000 Virginians were sterilized statewide.

Here are some of their stories:

Janet Ingram remembered the day in 1965 she was taken to what now is the Central Virginia Training Center.

She was 16 years old, living in a Nelson County foster home with a woman who made her care for babies assigned to the home by the welfare system.

The social worker came and got us and took us to the training school, and told Janet she and other girls were going to get a physical examination.

They said, get in bed, and we did, Janet told The News & Advance in 2014.

Then the nurse came back, and she had a needle. She gave us a shot, and we went to sleep.

And then my stomach was hurting. I looked down there, and it was stitches in it.

The nurse came in and said, Why are you crying?

I said, Ive got stitches in my stomach.

She said, Oh, youve just been sterilized. You didnt want a baby, because they are nasty.

I told her, I would love to have a kid, I like kids.

I thought about how it would look just like me, Janet remembered.

Janet befriended a nurse at the training center and eventually went to live at her familys farm in Campbell County where, at 19, she took on a nanny-type role with the nurses 5-year-old daughter, Hope Wright, andended up caring for the sisters.

Neither Sadie nor Janet went beyond the 6th grade in a Nelson County elementary school.

Sadie was sterilized in 1960 and Janet five years later. Their mother, two sisters and an aunt all were sterilized at the Madison Heights facility.

The reason court documents list for Janet and Sadies sterilization is cultural familial mental retardation.

Lewis Reynolds began having seizures at 3, after an older cousin hit him in the head with a rock during play.

He was admitted to the institution at age 12 and sterilized on Jan. 30, 1942 at age 13. The doctor wrote the procedure will take a big burden off him in the future.

Sometimes I cry when I see a lady pregnant or something like that. I always wanted children and never could have them, he told The News & Advance in 2012. Sometimes I get off by myself and cry.

Reynolds joined the Marines, serving in Korea and Vietnam. He became a licensed electrician later in life. He was married twice.

During his time in Korea, Reynolds received a dear-John letter from his first wife. One reason she gave for leaving was his inability to have a family.

Later, he married Deloris Layne of Lynchburg. He said he suggested they adopt children, but she refused. She said, If I cant have my own, Im not going to have somebody elses children and be responsible for them, he said.

Deloris Reynolds died in 2007, after they had been married 47 years.

Still, Reynolds wished he could have been a father.

Sarah Pack Wiley understood little of what the operation meant, but she remembers one part.

They gave me ether, she told The News & Advance in 2012. Wileys discharge documents from the training school confirm a sterilization procedure in 1959 when she was 24 years old.

Wiley, Shirley and their older brother, Marvin, were taken from their parents in Patrick County and admitted to the training school in March 1948, according to documents she has kept.

Wiley was diagnosed as having a moderate mental deficiency upon admission to the institution at age 11.

Training-school officials sent Wiley to work in peoples homes, doing housekeeping or babysitting. In many cases, the homes were owned by the institutions staff members.

She was discharged from the training school in 1976.

At age 51, she met and married James Wiley, who cooked chili at the Texas Inn. Their marriage lasted until his death 11 years later.

One of the medical documents confirms SarahWiley underwent the sterilization procedure in 1959. It reads MEDICAL EVENTS IN THE INSTITUTION: In 1948 she had acute tonsillitis, in 1949 pharyngitis, 1959 sterilization, and in 1974 arrhythmia.

Sidener is the special publications editor for The News & Advance. Reach her at (434) 385-5539.

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CVTC eugenics victims: 'I always wanted children and never could have them' - Lynchburg News and Advance

Campus and Community

ByVictor Rogers | December 9, 2019 Atlanta, GA

Click image to enlarge

Book jackets of What to Read recommendations.

The guests are gone, the dishes have been cleared, and you have some quiet time to yourself. So, wheres a good book when you need one?

We asked several avid readers for recommendations. The books range from a story of the reflections and adventures of a failed novelist to a how-to on bullet journaling.

By Andrew Sean Greer, Little, Brown and Company (2017)

This national bestseller and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is the story of Arthur Less, a failed novelist about to turn 50, who responds to an ex-lover's wedding invitation by embarking on a trip around the world for a series of literary events. Regrets and reminiscences of past loves are interspersed with new adventures both endearingly awkward and deeply graceful. This was the perfect novel to read in my 49th summer. I recommend it for anyone who has ever been in love, or who wonders what a year of saying yes could be.

Marlee Givens, librarian for Modern Languages and Psychology

By Charles King, Doubleday Publishers (2019)

An inspiring group biography told within the context of the social, cultural, and political events of the 20th century. Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ruth Benedict developed revolutionary methods and theories that challenged eugenics, the prevailing scientific theory at that time. The scientific community considered them a group of misfits but later they were recognized as the founders of cultural anthropology. Their courageous explorations of disparate cultures debunked absolutist ideas that there is a superior people. Interwoven in the chronicle of their professional lives, the author also shares personal tales of romance, friendships, and rivalries within the group of anthropologists.

Cathy Carpenter, head of Campus Engagement and Scholarly Outreach, Georgia Tech Library

By Bill Courtney, Weinstein Books (2014)

The author is the high school football coach featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated as well as Esquire magazines 2012 Coach of the Year. Bill Courtney coached the downtrodden Manassas High School football team in North Memphis to success after everyone else had given up on them. Not only were his coaching skills imperative to the teams success, but they also made a deep impact on the individual lives of his players, including overcoming drug addiction, earning college acceptances at places such as West Point, and lifting up their communities. His core values of service, civility, leadership, character, commitment, and forgiveness are an example for all of us.

Jamison Keller, Assistant Dean of Students and director of Fraternity and Sorority Life

Engineering and Chemistry Librarian Isabel Altamirano recommended two books:

By Ryder Carroll, Fourth Estate Publishers (2018)

I was looking for a new method to keep track of my work and personal activities and decided to do it by the 21st-century learning method, YouTube. I found videos on bullet journaling, but they were too complicated too many decorations and drawings.

Then I found the original source. Carroll's book shows that you just need a blank journal, a writing instrument, and a ruler.

His method involves yearly, monthly, and daily planning with simple setups for repetitive tasks (like exercising or eating fruit), and a reflection section. By keeping up with the index, you can plan and execute different activities with just one journal.

By Eric M. Scott and David R. Modler, North Light Books (2012)

Start 2020 by doing creative work that does not require extensive training. This paperback book shows how to be artistic with collage, simple stencils, watercolors, and markers.

Each activity has a writing prompt, recommended page layouts, and step-by-step instruction on how to achieve a cohesive look. And you don't need to start on New Years Day; the work can happen at any time.

Its also perfect to have this book on hand if the electricity goes out during an ice storm. If children complain that theyre bored you can entertain them with the techniques found in this book.

Some of these books are available by searching the Librarys online catalog. Visit library.gatech.edu. You can also search other libraries, using Techs interlibrary loan system. Visit library.gatech.edu/borrow-other-libraries. Or visit your local book store.

Happy reading!

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What to Read During the Holiday Break - Georgia Tech News Center

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an agreement with the state of Oregon to develop a system to ensure the states child welfare agency does not discriminate against parents with disabilities, a move that could benefit one in ten parents in the United States.

The agreement stems from a case involving Amy Fabbrini and Eric Ziegler. Fabbrini and Ziegler endured a five-yearbattle with the state of Oregon to regain custody of their two sons, who were both taken into foster care after their respective births following concern that Fabbrini and Ziegler would be unable to care for them.

No abuse was alleged against Fabbrini and Ziegler, who say their below-average scores on state-sanctioned IQ tests are why Oregon held the children in foster care until their court-ordered releases in late 2017 and early 2018.

Fabbrini and Zieglers case is not unique. At least 40 percent to 80 percent of parents in the United States with intellectual disabilities will lose custody of their children, according to a 2012 report from the National Council on Disability, on which I was the primary author.

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This discrimination is not only harmful to familiesit is also unlawful. Indeed, both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibit child welfare agencies and courts from discriminating against disabled parents.

These federal laws also require child welfare agencies and courts to provide reasonable modifications in policies, programs, and procedures to ensure disabled parents are offered an equal opportunity. For example, Deaf parents must be provided sign language interpreters, and parents with intellectual disabilities should receive individualized services based on the familys needs.

Yet, nearly 50 years since the Rehabilitation Act was passed and 30 years since the ADA became law, discrimination continues to persist. As a result, families are being torn apart.

Such discrimination is a long-standing issue in U.S. history, rooted in eugenics practices like intelligence tests and other standards that, historically, have resulted in children being removed from families and forced sterilization of those withor those perceived to havedisabilities.

Roughly two-thirds of state child welfare laws still allow for a parents disability to be considered for the purposes of terminating parental rights, according to the National Council on Disability. Tellingly, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that nationally, 19 percent of children in foster care had been removed from their homes at least in part because they had a disabled parent. That same study found parents with disabilities had 22 percent higher odds of having their parental rights terminated, compared to other parents. And, a recent study found that parents with psychiatric disabilities were eight times more likely than other parents to have involvement with the child welfare system.

The belief that disabled people are unfit parents dates back to the eugenics movement in the early 20th century, when people with disabilities and others who were deemed unfit to procreate were forcibly sterilized. This barbaric treatment even gained the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case, which held it was constitutional to sterilize people with disabilities forcibly. This alarming decision led to more than 30 states enacting laws that permitted involuntary sterilization, and an estimated 70,000 Americans, many of whom had disabilities, sterilized against their wishes.

But studies do not indicate that parents with disabilities are more likely than nondisabled parents to abuse or neglect their children. In fact, research has consistently found that most disabled parents and their families fare quite well when provided the chance. Studies have shown that a lower IQ has nothing to do with ones fitness as a parent. IQ scores themselves are rooted in flawed methodology and have been used to justify racist and eugenics practices. Further, some scholars contend that there are ways in which children actually benefit from having a disabled parent, such as exhibiting increased empathy.

Thus, the overrepresentation of parents with disabilities within the child welfare system is most often based on prejudice rather than actual harm. But the federal government largely has been silent about the rights of parents with disabilities, which makes OCRs recent action notableand long overdue.

As a result of the new agreement, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) must now review ten other cases concerning parents with disabilities to discern if each were handled properly. In the voluntary resolution agreement, the state agency promises to make decisions about removing children from their parents based on actual risks that pertain to the individual parent and not on mere speculation, generalizations, or stereotypes about individuals with disabilities. In other words, the state should only remove children if there is actual abuse or neglect, and not simply because their parent is disabled.

Such reasoning led to the removal of Fabbrini and Zieglers first-born son, Christopher, in September 2013. Within days of bringing him home from the hospital, Fabbrinis family contacted DHS, expressing concerns that the couples intellectual disabilities made them unable to care for their infant. DHS agreed and placed Christopher in foster care.

In order to regain custody, DHS required the couple to complete parenting and nutrition classes, and learn CPR and first aid, and they did. They also underwent psychological evaluations and participated in supervised visitation with Christopher.

Despite the parents resolve, the then-1-year-old remained in foster care. In 2015, the couples lawyer filed a motion to return him to his parents, arguing there was no current threat of serious loss or injury to the child. It was denied.

Four years later, in February 2017, the couple gave birth to their second child, Hunter. This time, DHS immediately put him in foster care while Fabbrini was still in the hospital. Meanwhile, the parents battle for custody of their children persisted.

In court, the states arguments centered on the parents cognitive and executive functioning skills. The average IQ scoreis between 90 and 110; Zieglers IQ tested at 66, Fabbrinis at 72.DHS focused in court proceedings on the parents cognitive skills and executive functioning, citing, among other things, the parents failure to read to their sons or use sunscreen on the boys, and feeding them chicken nuggets as a snack. The state also accused the parents of asking both too many and too few questions about parenting matters.

In the agreement, OCR says it found systemic deficiencies related to how DHS works with parents with disabilities, emphasizing that removing children from parents with disabilities based on IQ scores, and similar arbitrary measures, is not acceptable.

According to the settlement, DHS promises to give parents with disabilities the same opportunities to reunify their families as nondisabled parents, such as ensuring they have access to family supports. DHS will also update its nondiscrimination policy, designate an employee to oversee compliance with the ADA, provide training about working with disabled parents to all staff, establish a grievance procedure for complaints alleging disability discrimination, and provide regular progress reports on its efforts to OCR.

While this is not the first time the federal government has investigated a case involving discrimination by the child welfare system against parents with disabilities, it is the first time they have done so in three years.

In November 2012, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) placed a newborn baby in foster care after Sara Gordon, a mother with an intellectual disability, experienced trouble with feeding and diapering. While many new parents have similar challenges, state officials determined that Gordon was not able to comprehend how to handle or care for the child due to the mothers mental retardation.

Such actions were discriminatory and unlawful, according to a January 2015 joint letter of findings issued by the OCR and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Specifically, the departments investigated Gordons case and found DCF violated both the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA by discriminating against Gordon based on her disability and denying her support and services to assist her in caring for her daughter.

Two months later, Gordon and her daughter were reunited.

In August 2015, DOJ and OCR issued technical assistance to child welfare agencies and courts detailing the legal obligations of the child welfare system when working with disabled parents and their families. According to the guidance, both federal agencies had received several complaints of discrimination by the child welfare system, and that the frequency of such complaints was rising. Further, the guidance noted that child welfare agencies and courts greatly varied in how they support disabled parents and their families.

By the end of the year, OCR entered into a voluntary agreement with the Georgia Department of Human Services related to foster parents with disabilities.

Groups such as the Arc and the National Council on Disability have praised OCR for its recent agreement with Oregon. We are glad to see federal regulators reject stereotypical and discriminatory beliefs about the abilities of parents with [intellectual and developmental disabilites] to care for their children, particularly when considering the history of discrimination, including involuntary sterilization, said Peter Berns, CEO of the Arc.

While efforts like the agreement are important, however, questions remain about how much change it can really effectuate.

Attention to the rights of parents with disabilities is, of course, significant. And involvement by the federal government should hold some weight. Nonetheless, the Oregon agreement is voluntary and does not establish any sort of legal precedent. So far, its unclear if there are penalties if Oregon were to fail to adhere.

Further, unlike the letter of findings issued in the Gordon case, this agreement explicitly states it should not be construed as an admission that the state violated federal disability rights laws.

What happened to Fabbrini and Ziegler, as well as Gordon and countless other couples, must end. Families shouldnt be torn apart because of antiquated beliefs about the fitness of disabled people to raise children. Further, states must be held accountable when they break federal law.

But under the Trump administration, disability rights have been under constant siege. And, by not explicitly stating that Oregon violated both the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA, the federal governments silence in this case may be just another example of the administration not doing enough.

Originally posted here:

An Oregon Couple Can Get Their Kids Back From Foster Care. But Many Disabled Parents Don't Get That Chance. - Rewire.News

I am 24, which is roughly 12 in New York years. No one expects me to have a kid or own a home. The same cannot be said for the small town I grew up in. There, Times up! is less of a #MeToo rallying cry and more of something a friends father tells his oldest daughter upon learning shes still single.

There comes a time in young womanhood where people who once really didnt want you to get pregnant suddenly start to care a lot about the babies you must have, right now. I cannot fathom why anyone at my familys Christmas dinner table would want to talk about freezing my eggs in between bites of mashed potatoes. And yet.

Despite what her poreless skin and dumb lyrics like spelling is fun might make you believe, Taylor Swift will turn 30 this week. The milestone means next to nothing, except that I hope she has a very nice birthday party. But of course, that means peoplenamely, menare falling over themselves to remind her she should spawn at once, or else shell almost certainly die alone and unloved.

One of those men happens to be Stefan Molyneux, an alt-right personality who boasts over 900,000 YouTube subscribers. He regularly spouts social Darwinist bullshit to his followers, and the Southern Poverty Law Center added him to its Extremist Files. Leave it to this guy to have thoughts on Taylor Swifts uterus.

I cant believe Taylor Swift is about to turn 30 - she looks so young! Molyneux began. Its strange to think that 90% of her eggs are already gone - 97% by the time she turns 40 - so I hope she thinks about having kids before its too late! Shed be a fun mom. 🙂

Yes, Stefan, it is strange, for you or anyone who is not Taylor Swift to spend even a moment thinking about her reproductive system. Please log off and factory reset your invasive man mind.

Swift has not responded to Molyneuxs tweet, and representatives for parties did not respond to my request for comment. But the singer addressed a similar topic last week.

In what she surely hoped would be a nice sound bite for an interview with People magazine, Swift said, The more women are able to voice their discomfort in social situations, the more it becomes the social norm that people who ask the questions at parties like When are you going to start a family to someone as soon as they turn 25 are a little bit rude.

Its good that were allowed to say, Hey, just so you know, were more than incubators. You dont have to ask that of someone just because theyre in their mid-20s and theyre a female, she added.

Molyneuxs trolling of Swift is less troubling than his enthusiastic promotion of scientific racism and eugenics. But its still concerning that many meneven otherwise lovely, well-intended menview a womans fertility as a point of friendly chatter.

Molyneux punctuated his tweet with a smile emoji, in what looks like an attempt at congeniality. Hes posed his unwarranted and unwanted message to Swift as a public service announcement, even beginning it with a complimentalbeit a seriously creepy one. (She looks so young! Seriously, my dude, close the tab on your computer thats just Google images of Taylor Swift and go take a walk.)

It brings me no joy to imagine Molyneux at his desk, stroking his chin, deep in thought imagining Taylor Swifts parenting abilities. Though, I guess it is probably one of his better thoughts, considering all the other abhorrent things hes said.

Still, when Youd be such a fun mom comes from the mouth not of a total stranger and internet conspiracy theorist, but a loved one, it seems innocuous, almost kind and caring.

But what if the man saying this is talking to one of the 6 million women in the United States struggling with infertility? They probably already know theyd be excellent mothers; after all, theyre trying. The women in my life who are struggling to get pregnant think about their situation nearly every day; why dont we give them some time off this holiday.

Maybe a woman just plain doesnt want to have a kid, now or ever. Thats her right, even as patriarchal laws attempting to control her sexual everything continue to arise.

So if you find yourself unable to control opening your mouth this holiday season to demand why a female family member is still childless, I beg you: find the nearest forkful of Christmas ham, and shove it there instead.

Originally posted here:

Even Taylor Swift Can't Escape 'When Will You Have Kids?' - The Daily Beast

Pennsylvania's Democratic governor has vetoed a bill that was created to protect babies from abortion after they've been diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome.

Gov. Tom Wolf had said he would reject the bill if it made it to his desk, and that's just what he did.

Pennsylvania state law allows for abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason, except in cases where it is used for gender selection. In other words, a mother can't abort her baby just because he's a boy when she really wanted a girl.

This new bill would have also prevented the eugenic targeting of a specific population of people, protecting individuals with Down syndrome from selective elimination. Republicans who control the state Senate said it would've protected a "vulnerable population whose lives are productive."

Supporters of the measure believe it's essential because other countries have expressly targeted people with Down syndrome for elimination. For example, in Iceland, nearly 100% of babies with the syndrome are aborted, and in Denmark, that figure stands at roughly 98%. In the US, an estimated 67% of children with the condition are aborted.

The Pennsylvania Family Council stated, "Children are being targeted for abortion simply because they may have Down syndrome. Medical professionals are pressuring women and families to have an abortion upon a diagnosis of Down syndrome. And tragically, the vast majority of babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted after the diagnosis. A diagnosis of Down syndrome should never be a reason to terminate a child. Down syndrome is a life worth living."

Earlier this year, President Trump summed up what's at stake in the battle to protect the lives of unborn children with this condition.

"Sadly, there remain too many people both in the United States and throughout the world that still see Down syndrome as an excuse to ignore or discard human life. This sentiment is and will always be tragically misguided," he wrote. "We must always be vigilant in defending and promoting the unique and special gifts of all citizens in need. We should not tolerate any discrimination against them, as all people have inherent dignity."

The Pennsylvania Family Council has created a powerful photo series that gives nearly 30 examples of Pennsylvania residents with Down syndrome who are enjoying life and contributing in many ways to our world. Click here to see their smiling faces.

Original post:

'Targeted for Abortion Simply Because They May Have Down Syndrome': PA Gov. Blocks Anti-Eugenics Bill - CBN News