Urgent - get your flu shot if you haven't already

My college sent out a message today urging everyone to get the flu vaccine, because there's been a serious increase in the number of flu cases on campus.

Influenza Alert 

Contributed by Laura Keefe 

The Hammond Health Center has seen a sudden increase in visits from students suffering from symptoms of the flu (influenza). On Monday and Tuesday of this week, we have had 25 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza. The CDC has reported that H1N1 (swine flu) influenza virus is circulating this season and that it may disproportionately affect young and middle-aged adults. 

We strongly encourage all students, faculty and staff who have not yet received the influenza vaccine this season to get vaccinated.  

Mother Jones published an article today about the danger of one of the flu strains circulating this year, H1N1 - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/01/is-it-too-late-to-get-a-flu-shot

However, CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald notes that more people between the ages of 18 and 64 have been hospitalized for flulike symptoms this year than in previous years. This season's predominant virus strain is H1N1—which, when it originated in 2009, also sent an unusually high number people in the 18-to-64 age range to the hospital. Epidemiologists don't know why H1N1 hits younger people hard, but one theory, says McDonald, is that older adults have built up more immunity to it. H1N1 is similar to the virus that caused the Spanish Flu of 1918, and also to strains that circulated in the '60s and '70s. Another possible factor: Only about 30 percent of younger adults get flu shots, compared to about 40 percent of older adults.

Orac of Respectful Insolence also posted about the flu and how "natural" remedies don't cure it - Surviving the flu using "natural" remedies.

Until a universal flu vaccine that doesn’t depend on the highly variable epitopes that are targeted by today’s flu vaccine is developed, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine will vary from year to year for the foreseeable future. This makes the flu vaccine an easier target for the antivaccine movement, which targets because they can use the flu vaccine as an “example” of a vaccine that they can mislabel as “overhyped,” “useless,” and even “dangerous,” the last of which they try to achieve by massively exaggerating the risks of the flu vaccine and appealing to a flu vaccination campaign from nearly 40 years ago, the “swine flu” campaign. 

Key to this campaign is the need to portray the flu as not being a serious illness, as a normal part of life, as a disease that doesn’t need to be vaccinated against. This portrayal of the flu is completely disconnected with reality, of course. The flu can kill, and, when it does kill, the people it kills are often young and perfectly healthy.

A wonderful article from Daily Kos about what Martin Luther King did

Daily Kos: Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did

The first paragraph:

What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.....

So yes, Dr. King had many other goals, many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals, goals that apply to white people too, like ending poverty, reducing the war-like aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears. So please don't tell me that Martin Luther King's dream has not been achieved, unless you knew what racial terrorism was like back then and can make a convincing case you still feel it today. If you did not go through that transition, you're not qualified to say that the dream was not accomplished. 

Death

Death is ever present.

Death is next door. Death is in the next room.

As I walk down the street, stepping over the puddles, on a raw winter day when the snow is melting, death is beside me.

When I sit down, I can look to my right, and death is there.

The cat comes and sits in my lap and purrs. Does he feel death next to him?

In a house nearby, someone is dying.

I remember my grandmother - she wanted death, she asked for Dr. Kevorkian to come. I told her - I can't kill my Grandma. It's illegal.

The cat kills his prey. One day I looked out the window, and he was running across the grass, holding a mouse in his mouth. One night I heard a strange sound downstairs. The cat ran in, carrying a bat in his mouth.

I'm alive, of course. I'm breathing in and out, I can feel my heart pumping. Sometimes death seems so distant. Death banished by the movements of life.

But in a house nearby, someone I love is dying.

Influenza still kills - get vaccinated against it

Influenza still kills

Good article by Orac (of Respectful Insolence) on how the flu still kills people, and how necessary it is to get vaccinated against it.

When you read the latest screed by the latest antivaccinationist telling you that you shouldn’t get the flu vaccine, consider this. It is true that the flu vaccine could be better. It’s true that it doesn’t provide you anywhere near 100% protection against the flu (although in years when the vaccine matches the flu strains well it is quite good). It’s even true that flu vaccines (for adults, anyway) may contain mercury in the form of the thimerosal preservative that is still in some flu vaccines. You should get it anyway. The risk is minuscule, and the flu can still kill. You might think, as Bill Maher does, that just because you’re perfectly healthy you can prevent the flu with healthy living and, if you’re unlucky and get it anyway, weather its effects with little difficulty.

President of Ithaca College rejects ASA's academic boycott of Israel

Thomas Rochon, the president of Ithaca College, came out with a statement today rejecting the academic boycott of Israel as passed by the American Studies Association:

In mid-December, the American Studies Association voted to boycott Israel’s higher-education institutions to protest the country’s treatment of Palestinians. I have subsequently been asked by some members of the Ithaca College community to articulate my position on the boycott. 

Ithaca College has a history of standing for academic freedom. We also have a history of supporting the underlying practices that make academic freedom effective: freedom of scholars to conduct their research, to associate with each other to share and refine their ideas, and to publish the findings and conclusions of their scholarly work. Academic boycotts, whatever their motivation may be, infringe on these central tenets of higher learning. Several scholarly associations, including the American Studies Association, have recently resolved to boycott Israeli universities. Although Ithaca College has no institutional relationship with those scholarly associations and therefore no venue for communication directly with them, the principles for which we stand lead us to conclude that such boycotts are antithetical to the constructive exchange of ideas in the global communities of scholarship.

Awesome Photo - Ant pushing a water droplet

Ant pushing a water droplet pic.twitter.com/4jnfsv5Fbx
— Microscopic Images (@MicroPicx) January 3, 2014

115 colleges and universities denounce academic boycott of Israel

When the American Studies Association voted to support the academic boycott of Israel in December, I felt very discouraged. Was this anti-Israel and antisemitic scourge going to impose itself on American academia as it has on British academia (the main British academic union, the University and College Union, endorsed the academic boycott several years ago)?  And when I heard that a couple of smaller academic societies - the Native American Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies had also endorsed the boycott, I felt even more anxious about the possibility that American academia would turn against Israel.

The very quick response, however, to oppose the academic boycott, by a wide and growing range of college and university associations and individual colleges and universities has been very heartening. The blog Legal Insurrection has an updated list of institutions that have announced their opposition to the boycott, including my alma mater, Harvard. The blog has also posted letters from various institutions and discussions of the reactions of the boycotters to opposition.

New Year, 2014 from the Ithaca College towers

Photo taken shortly before midnight, on December 31, from a friend's house, looking up South Hill at Ithaca College's two tower dormitories.

Photo taken night of January 2, from West Hill, looking over to South Hill, where Ithaca College is located.

Stoning: Performance Art or Attempt to Harm?

If someone throws a stone at you, is it a statement of performance art, or an attempt to harm you?

From a recent American visitor to the occupied West Bank, at the Aida refugee camp. She came as part of an Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation.

The first day of my trip began in the Aida refugee camp. In a cloud of tear gas, I was introduced to Israel’s war. Exiting our tour bus, we saw a few children around my son’s age throwing stones. 

A quarter-mile away, at the 20-foot-high Separation Wall, were two soldiers with machine guns, face masks, helmets and bulletproof vests. The rocks were not reaching even halfway to where the soldiers were. 

Moreover, the children were not exclusively throwing the rocks in the direction of the soldiers. They threw some rocks at a building to their left, like a game of handball that didn’t return; others threw to their right. 

The stones they threw toward the soldiers seemed not to be in aggression aimed at harm, but as a statement of performance art, saying, “With these rocks, we resist your occupation, your apartheid.” Within moments, the soldiers began an attack of tear-gas canisters aimed at the children. The smoke inadvertently engulfed us as well.

From the book Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel, by Haim Watzman (2005), p. 131. Watzman is describing his experiences as an Israeli reservist soldier in the West Bank village of Bani Na'im in May of 1988, during the first intifada. His company has the duty of patrolling Bani Na'im for a month, and their orders are to respond to every hostile action by Palestinians, including painting PLO graffiti on the wall, throwing stones, or putting up Palestinian flags. Watzman was not happy about these orders and at first does not follow them.

During my first outings as commander of a jeep patrol, I tried to take a different approach. I deliberately ignored the graffiti and the flags, and kept as much as I reasonably could on the margins of the sectors I was sent to patrol. The third time out I had stones thrown in my direction from alleyways and rooftops. Over the vocal protest of the soldiers under my command, I disregarded those as well. The fourth time out the stones were bigger and they hit us. That I couldn't ignore. We chased our attackers but they got away.

 I talked it over with Eiger [one of the other soldiers in the company], and what he said made a lot of sense. The young men of Bani Na'im were well organized. They had us under observation and were certainly capable of identifying individual soldiers and commanders. They'd seen that I was avoiding confrontations that other patrols sought out, and they interpreted it as cowardice. So they singled me out as an easy target, and that's why my patrols were getting stoned. Keep up my hands-off policy and I'd soon be the target of a Molotov cocktail, Eiger warned - and that was dangerous. Two soldiers from another unit had been horribly burned by one when their patrol was attacked a few weeks ago.

Stones as performance art? Or stones as attempts to harm? You, my readers, are the judges.

Snow cats in Jerusalem

During the snow a couple of weekends ago in Jerusalem many people became very creative in making snow sculptures - see below the snow cats and snow dogs, along with snow people.

Temple Mount today

Graphic from the Washington Post, December 2, 2013, showing the holy places on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.

The grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, to Hitler, about the Jews

Another twitter post from Real Time WWII -

Grand Mufti, to Hitler: "The Arabs are Germany's natural friends because they have the same enemies, namely the British and the Jews."
— WW2 Tweets from 1941 (@RealTimeWWII) November 28, 2013

November 25, 1941 - Nazis seize Terezin to use as ghetto

I follow the twitter feed for Real Time WWII, and this is today's post: Nazi occupiers of Czechoslovakia have taken over walled fortress of Terezín to use as a ghetto & concentration camp. pic.twitter.com/lNq1oJvSac

Nazi looting of Jews

The Banality of Robbing the Jews

I just saw this article on the New York Times website - about what happened when the Nazis deported Jews from western Europe to the death camps. Their apartments were completely emptied and their property was stolen for the benefit of German soldiers, German families, and to satisfy the avarice of top Nazi officials.

The recent discovery of more than 1,400 prized paintings in the Munich residence of Cornelius Gurlitt, an art collector whose father collaborated with the Nazis, has brought the pillage of the Jews back into the limelight. Yet the bulk of anti-Semitic looting during World War II was at once much more banal and more widespread. 

In Paris, the plunder of Jewish possessions began with the arrival of German troops in June 1940. At first, it applied only to art collections. But as soon as the Final Solution was devised in January 1942, the confiscations spread to the entire Jewish population, most of which comprised poor immigrants from Eastern Europe. Stripping Jews of their belongings was part and parcel of the effort to destroy them; pillage was an essential tool of extermination.

Kafranbel: The Syrian Revolution in 3 minutes

So now the UN is destroying the Assad regime's chemical weapons - but what about all the rest of them? We stand by with our hands folded and do nothing. This is a video from the rebel village of Kafranbel that covers the Syrian revolution in three minutes.

For more explanation see this CNN story: In Northern Syria, rebels use satire as a weapon.

And for more on Kafranbel, see their Facebook page, Kafranbel Syrian Revolution.

Western Wall in 1898, as painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner, "The Wailing Wall", ca. 1898

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was an African American artist (born in Pittsburgh), who spent most of his artistic career in Paris, where he was freed of the anti-Black racism of the United States and was able to pursue his art without constantly being insulted and mistreated. He studied with the painter Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1879-1885, and then in 1891 he went to Paris and spent the rest of his life there.

He visited Palestine twice in 1897 (for six weeks) and in 1898 (for six months). As a result of his visit, in addition to many other biblical scenes, he painted Jews praying at the Western Wall, both men and women. Notice that there's no mehitza (screen to divide men and women at prayer), and that there is a row of women standing right in front of the Kotel, all wearing colorful scarves.

In "Mutual Reflections: Jews and Blacks in American Art," Milly Heyd writes that Tanner

depicted the  site as symbolizing the destruction and hoped for revival of the old Temple, an image that became a visual icon for a specific national struggle, constantly repeated by artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tanner painted the wall and worshipers with great empathy and an emphasis on the group as well as on the individual: "Nor do I forget the deep pathos of 'Jews' Wailing Place' - those tremendous foundation stones of that glorious temple that stood upon Mount Moriah, worn smooth by the loving touch of tearful and devout worshippers from all over the world, under the scornful gaze of the to-day Turkish conqueror."

This painting is on display at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

HT: Failed Messiah.

Some good news from the world of Hebrew manuscripts. The National Library of Israel in Jerusalem is digitizing and will be posting online 1600 manuscripts from the Palatina Library in Parma, Italy.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's National Library says it has signed an agreement with a leading Italian collection to display online some of the world's most important Hebrew manuscripts, making them accessible to the public for the first time. 

National Library Judaica curator Aviad Stollman says it will be digitizing the Palatina Library's collection of about 1,600 documents dating to the Middle Ages. He says the collection includes rare illuminated manuscripts and one of the oldest existing copies of the Mishna, a central Jewish text. 

Stollman said Thursday the manuscripts are on par with Vatican and Oxford collections. He says Israel's library is also negotiating with those institutions to scan their manuscripts 

Stollman said Israel's National Library is seeking to digitize and post online all of the world's Hebrew manuscripts.

Folio from a 13th century Hebrew Bible written in Toledo, Spain.

Are these people crazy???

Speaker of the House Boehner said today that the U.S. Is On A Path To Default, unless President Obama gives in to the Republicans. He said that he wants a "serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up. It would be irresponsible of me to do this." If a conversation is all he wants, why doesn't he just make a phone call? You don't threaten to tear down the house if all you want is a conversation.

Is he serious? It is supremely irresponsible for him to threaten not to raise the debt limit, since not raising it would lead to an economic catastrophe. Doesn't he remember the financial meltdown of 5 years ago? I was just thinking about that the other day. On September 14, 2008, Lehman Brothers was not saved by the Federal Reserve and filed for bankruptcy. Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch. AIG was in big trouble, and eventually was saved by the Fed. On September 15, The Dow Jones fell 504 points. On September 28, 2008, the House of Representatives voted no on the plan to bailout the financial industry, and the stock market plunged over 700 points. I remember staring at the graphic of the falling stock market on the Times website in the middle of the afternoon and having the feeling that no one was in charge.

Is this what Boehner really wants? If he has any concern about the financial state of the United States and its standing in the world, he would not be making these threats and he certainly would not carry them out. I had thought that one stable point in the American political system was that the Republicans were the party of business, especially big business. I suppose I should have been disabused of that notion in the fall of 2008 when Republicans opposed bailing out the auto companies. But this is even crazier.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

If U.S. lawmakers fail to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit this month they will cause a “very, very severe recession with no obvious way out,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said Friday.

With the government unable to enact fiscal policies and the interest rates set by the Federal Reserve already near zero, “there would be no policy levers” to use against the resulting recession, Mr. Zandi said in a conference call with clients.

Mr. Zandi’s comment’s echo recent warnings from Wall Street titans like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and from the White House.

The U.S. Treasury has said it will run out of room to maneuver to remain below the $16.7 trillion debt limit “no later” than Oct. 17 unless Congress raises it. That deadline is fast approaching, even as the government entered its fourth day of shutdown because of deep-seated disagreements among lawmakers over spending.

If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, Treasury will have to match its ongoing expenditures to its revenue on a day-by-day basis. Since the government spends more than it takes in, the inability to borrow money will take billions of dollars out of the economy that it injects through daily operations and spending. The situation could also eventually lead to a government default if the Treasury is unable to make payments to its creditors.

Even if the U.S. Treasury were to prioritize debt repayment over outlays for Social Security, Medicare and other payments, investors would grow increasingly nervous about their holdings of government debt securities. “The real unknown is how financial markets will react,” Mr. Zandi said.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Zandi expects to investors to start applying increasing pressure on lawmakers in Washington to resolve the twin fiscal crises. He noted the stock market this week has been “softening,” while the cost of insuring U.S. Treasuries against default has been rising. “If this drags into next week the sell-off will start to intensify,” he said.

In other words, if the government defaults on its debt, what happened in fall of 2008 will seem like a walk in the park.

Western "pacifists" volunteer to become "human shields" for Assad's government

This is the craziest political movement I've seen in many years - western so-called "pacifists" volunteering to go to Syria to defend the Syrian government against possible US airstrikes.

The 'International Human Shields' movement, started by a group of activists in Britain and the US, plans to bring to Syria civilians from countries around the globe, who will try to deter US strikes on the country by staking out potential military targets.

Franklin Lamb, a lawyer recently appointed as the legal adviser for the group said he had been "inundated" with requests from activists including from Canada, France, Italy, the US, and Britain.

The Syrian regime has not yet indicated whether it will allow the group to enter the country, but it raises the prospect of hundreds of pacifists descending on Damascus, as happened in Baghdad before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Many of those volunteering to go to Syria also took part in the 'Human Shields' movement that travelled to Baghdad, initially to protect hospitals and schools, and later, key government infrastructure sites.

Notice that last line - "government infrastructure sites." The people who went to Baghdad in 2003 were protecting Saddam Hussein's government. They should have been there to protect the people of Baghdad against Saddam's government.

And how can we call these people "pacifists"? They're not anti-war - if they truly were they would already have been in Syria for 2 1/2 years as "human shields" against the government's attack on its own people. They would have been embedded with the citizens of Damascus who were gassed by the government two weeks ago - men, women, and children.

These people are truly those who believe in the "anti-imperialism of fools." They despise anything - anything - the United States does, and their hatred of the US blinds them to the decades of dictatorship in Syria and the atrocities committed both by Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar.

Ken O'Keefe, an ex-US Marine who gave up his American citizenship in disgust at Iraq war and who became a leader of that Human Shields group, told The Daily Telegraph that he has been acting as an adviser for this Syrian-focused movement. "I have been sharing my experience with Mr Lamb. I have a feeling that if the Syrian government allows it, there would be a huge inundation of volunteers," he said. "The policies of Britain and the US make no sense; we are aligning ourselves with the people who we were supposedly fighting in Iraq." 

Andrew, 33, a Canadian pianist, who did not wish to provide his full name, is one of several hundred people who contacted the group to volunteer themselves as human shields. He told the Daily Telegraph that he is willing to fly himself to Damascus and to die there for this cause. 

"I don't want to see Syria turn into another Libya," said Andrew. "If I had a hand big enough to squash the US tanks then I would. Democracy is America's deadliest export, they use it as an excuse to destroy countries."

The Syrian government is already doing a pretty good job at destroying the country. Hasn't he noticed what they've done to the ancient city of Aleppo?

"I think a movement of solidarity on a global scale could grab the attention of a lot of people. I think if there are that many people in the US who are willing to do that it would send a powerful message. Even if people have to die for it".

This particular group is being invited to Syria by a pro-government Syrian group that has stationed itself on a mountain overlooking Damascus where there is a large military base:

The 'human shield' strategy has also been taken up by some Damascenes. A group calling itself 'Over Our Dead Bodies' has established a sit-in at Qassioun, a mountain overlooking Damascus that is home to both a large military base and state television centre. 

"We think the first target might be Syrian state media," said Ozgret Dandashi, the founder of the group. "Even if the American's attack we will stay here."

The state media? No, the military base!

In the past week some high profile Syrian actors, actresses, and sports personalities have joined the stakeout at Qassioun. Video footage showed Omar al-Hassano, a Syrian basketball player standing on the mountainside with the protesters. 

Some demonstrators have brought along their children. Their cheeks painted in the colours of the Syrian flag, they waved posters of Bashar al-Assad and sang patriotic songs. 

Miss Dandashi said that she and other organisers of the Over Our Dead Bodies movement had been lobbying the Syrian government to convince them to allow their foreign compatriots into the country. 

"We are receiving messages from people in Britain, Italy, Germany and all over Europe who want to be human shields with us here but we have a big problem in getting them visas. We are trying to solve this," she said. 

The Syrian government has launched its own propaganda campaign in recent weeks. Posters are everywhere in Damascus, warning civilians to move away from homes near government ministries.

Wise idea. Perhaps the people on the mountain should follow suit. Get away from the probable target, rather than going to it.

Full-page adverts in local papers warn Syrians to look out for "American spies" in their midst and attributing recent news of defections from the Syrian military as nothing more than "psychological warfare" by the US.

Damascus: What to do to prepare for US airstrikes

From the twitter feed of someone living in Damascus (https://twitter.com/d_sights):

1. d_sights21m

   7- took a deep breath and relaxed #Damascus

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2. \d ‏@d_sights22m

   6- Checked car is fueled up #Damascus

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3. \d ‏@d_sights23m

   5- Packed bags of essentials, meds, clothes/PJs, canned food, etc #Damascus

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4. \d ‏@d_sights24m

   4- Went down to shelter, placed candles, flashlights, batteries, first aid kit, blankets, towels, etc... #Damascus

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5. \d ‏@d_sights25m

   3- Opened up all windows in our building staircase #Damascus

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6. \d ‏@d_sights26m

   2- Opened all windows, moved our mattresses into a room with no windows, kept all doors open #Damascus

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7. \d ‏@d_sights27m

   1- Right after Obama's talk finished, we were like the strike is gonna happen any unexpected moment & this is what we did at home: #Damascus

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