Written by Karen Smith Rotabi for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Because much of my research has focused on reforming intercountry adoption and most especially Guatemala, I opened Siegal’s “Finding Fernanda” cautiously. She began the story by capturing the meager life of a determined mother, Mildred Alvarado, and her children living on poverty’s bitter edge.
By the end of this captivating read, it is impossible to see Alvarado as anything but a strong and resilient woman who is determined to fight circumstances of poverty and oppression–its impact on human dignity and the destruction of her family.
This main thread of the story makes Alvarado not only an interesting woman, but the underdog that everyone must hope for the ‘right thing’ to happen in the end.
However, when Alvarado and many other women’s stories of child abduction for adoption went ‘public’ it seemed everyone in the intercountry adoption community was routing against ‘the truth.’ It was unthinkable that some [1] of the beautiful children who had been adopted from Guatemala came to their adoptive families from sinister pathways. ‘Orphan’ adoption is viewed by most as an honorable act and to suggest that children are not truly orphans (and may be trafficking victims) is more than impolite to most people. Unfortunately the historical context and story of Guatemala is far too complicated for such fantasized notions about ‘orphans’ to always be true and when interrogates the facts, a grotesque reality unfolds.
Siegal pulls together many of the facts in her book, often allowing them to speak for themselves. The villain, an executive director of a notoriously bad adoption agency in Florida, gives the reader some insight into the inner workings of a ‘Christian’ woman who uses faith to manipulate her clients as needed. Then, there is the more subtle manipulation of the US Government, ranging from the US Department of State to the many Senators and Congressmen who demand that their constituent’s adoptions be completed—regardless of fears of fraud, coercion, and abduction of children for adoption.
Siegal rightly identifies that one should follow the money! [2] I am left wondering how an executive director of an adoption agency can make in the range of $250,000 annually with six figure bonuses for her husband (with little documentation for ‘why’ such a payment is legitimate). How can the IRS allow such ridiculous money management of a ‘non-profit’ agency? Further, some suspect that this agency director’s home and vehicle are paid for by the organization. While these allegations are not substantiated, the suspicion is telling.
By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com
Everyone but the emotionally dead had to feel joy at the news that a pretty young blonde American had been rescued from her Somali pirate kidnappers. Equally thrilling was to learn that the rescue had been a pinpoint operation by our courageous Navy SEALS, who managed to snatch the maiden, and kill nine kidnappers while losing none of their own team.
That welcome bit of uplifting news came as our president shared with us the ongoing struggle that is the State of the Union.
Despite the continued difficulties many of us face in terms of daily survival, it was heartening to know that the country was still strong enough to venture and achieve such a mission in the most dangerous parts of the world.
It was stirring. It was downright inspirational.
***
Remember “Wag the Dog”? The 1997 hit comedy featured a spin doctor and Hollywood producer who, in order to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal, convince the public of a non-existent war. The tail wagging the dog. The art of power through distraction.
In light of the continuation of this sort of spectacle into the Obama era, I’d like to propose a new term for our time: “Wag the seal.”
For this is the second time—and presumably not the last—that Obama has gotten a lift from those daring fellows. And in both cases, close scrutiny raises the question of just who is being had.
Each produced a magnificently advantageous moment for a president sweating a tough and uncertain re-election. But Obama was hardly the only winner. Another beneficiary is surely the Pentagon, which is under severe pressure to restrain itself and cut its size and costs, and could use a favorable performance. Though the US military seems incapable of “winning” the complex and mind-bendingly expensive foreign adventures it launches almost like clockwork, it does seem able to execute small, limited operations that please the public.
And of course there is the retinue that profits from all this, the “one percent” who derive substantial profits from the permanent war economy. Not to mention the oil and mineral companies and all other foreign exploitation, er, exploration industries, whose continued high profits are largely dependent on the continued projection of American strength throughout the world.
Finally, as always, there is the media. For it is at root about good story-telling. And was there ever a better story than a pretty maiden rescued by dashing and clean-cut lads from drooling savages?
***
They tell us that the Somali mission was executed by the same Navy SEALs unit that carried out the biggest coup of the Obama administration if not the past decade: taking down the man who was America’s most reviled, and perhaps feared, symbol of danger: Osama bin Laden.
Most people, reliant on the coverage of major news organizations, rest content that America justly and efficiently dispatched bin Laden. Only those with keen antennae—or those who read accounts questioning the contradictory, irrational and unnecessarily opaque explanations of exactly what happened, realize that something was wrong with that operation. Something more was going on. What exactly it was—whether that helicopter that crashed did not really manage to disgorge its SEAL occupants unscathed, whether the man who we are told was hurriedly dumped into the ocean before proper public verification of his identity was definitely the man who terrorized the world, whether the people living in that house in Abbottabad were unavoidable casualties or executed by design—these things we still do not know.
But one thing is clear: that raid did wonders for Obama and the military. No one dare call Obama a wimp.
***
When you look carefully at the Somali rescue, you see similarly troubling patterns of manipulation, and the pursuit of propaganda victories cloaked as legitimate policy.
Consider the circumstances: an American citizen, albeit one with seemingly the most admirable intentions, was kidnapped along with a foreign colleague while leaving a charity mission in a region with heavy pirate activity. The US began monitoring her situation, and when, we are told, signs indicated that her health was dangerously deteriorating, the authorities launched their operation.
What are the criteria for such operations? At any given time, some Americans may be being held by kidnapers in various parts of the world. As far as we know, most do not benefit from the attention of the US military. In fact, we don’t even know how many are being held because the numbers are kept under wraps—try asking the FBI. In any case, another American was kidnapped in Somalia recently, and his kidnappers have adopted dramatic measures to make sure that another raid is not attempted.
The stated reason for the timing of the rescue of 32-year-old American Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, her 60-year-old Danish colleague, was that Buchanan’s health had declined precipitously. Yet concern for the health of Americans is not a settled notion at all. In fact, the majority of Republican candidates for the presidency, the same ones who cheered the rescue, oppose guaranteeing the most basic health needs of all American children.
That Buchanan was in captivity for some time, and that her release came at a propitious moment when Obama was under the maximum media spotlight, cannot be dismissed. Neither can the central role of Obama’s discredited counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, whose shifting narratives of the bin Laden raid remain unresolved and havelowered faith in Obama’s veracity among some Americans. It is important to note Brennan’s close relationship with the Saudi royal family, whose survival depends on keeping sea lanes open near the Horn of Africa where the Somali pirates ply the waters.
So, though as humans we cheer the good result of this particular adventure, we must concede that this is not really about health or even saving lives. It is about “sending a message.” But does the message really get sent to those who would harm Americans? There is little evidence that armed intervention is a deterrent. Indeed, the kidnappers of the other American being held in Somalia seem to have upped their threats of violence since the raid.
No, the message is being sent to us. It is no coincidence that these kinds of affairs always involve the most, pardon the expression, black and white of elements. How often do you hear about a person of color who is being held hostage, has gone missing, or was killed. Or of someone obese, or physically unattractive? Think back over the tabloid stories that have sustained the media for months at a time and riveted the American people. Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman. Natalee Holloway and Robyn Gardner. When are the villains more nuanced, run-of-the-mill criminals without distinguishing stories? Pirates indeed. It’s almost as if the same fictional producer in Wag the Dog now shuttles permanently between Hollywood and the White House.
GRAPHIC: : http://vir4l.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/obama_i_got_this.jpg
WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com
On Dec. 18, a dozen retirees, men and women in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, began occupying a median strip along Route 33 in front of the closed Century Aluminum smelter in Ravenswood, W.Va. In tents and under tarps, a small group stays overnight, despite hypertension, arthritis and other old age ailments. One has suffered a stroke.
These vulnerable people expose themselves to weather extremes although some have no health insurance at all. Century cancelled it. That’s why they’re occupying Century.
The retirees labored their entire lives for wages and pensions comparably lower than those of other aluminum workers. They did it believing they made those sacrifices in exchange for good, lifelong health coverage. Over the past two years, however, Century evicted them, about 540 retirees altogether, from the insurance plan.
The betrayal burns. Executives at Century, corporate 1 percenters, committed the same sort of treachery that is being condemned by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators representing the victimized 99 percent across the country. Thus the retirees adopted the grandchildren’s protest tactic of encampment.
Century shuttered the 50-year-old Ravenswood smelter in February of 2009, throwing 651 workers out of jobs. Century, headquartered in Monterey, Calif., didn’t go bankrupt though. It still operates aluminum plants in Kentucky, South Carolina and Iceland. And it didn’t immediately cancel promised insurance for retirees.
Nine months after the shutdown, it announced it would terminate as of June 1, 2010 health benefits for retirees eligible for Medicare. Then on Nov. 1, 2010, Century told its retirees who weren’t yet eligible for Medicare that it would stop paying for their coverage as of Jan. 1, 2011.
This revoking of earned benefits isn’t an isolated incident or a fluke. It is part of a pattern documented by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz in her new book “Retirement Heist.” The subtitle is, “How companies plunder and profit from the nest eggs of American workers.
She describes in gory detail how corporations raided worker pension accounts, siphoning off surpluses that would be needed later to prop up plans damaged by the Wall Street collapse. She provides detailed accounts of executives gouging the funds to pay for their own exorbitant retirement packages. She tells of corporate executives ending retiree health insurance and freezing pensions but deceptively calling the changes improvements, so that CEOs could pump up company profits with money that had been pledged to workers.
While breaking promises to workers and violating contracts, these CEO 1 percenters falsely portrayed themselves as beleaguered champions of workers, valiantly attempting to preserve underfunded pensions. Like Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino saving himself while abandoning passengers on his sinking cruise ship, the captains of industry padded their own pockets with pension and health care funds intended for retirees, then deserted the workers. Schultz describes the CEO scams this way in the book:
“In reality, they’re the silent pirates who looted the ships and left them to sink, along with the retirees, as they sailed away safely in their lifeboats.”
Most of the Costa Concordia passengers survived, but more than a dozen drowned. In West Virginia, most of the retirees are still kicking. A leader among the Century occupiers, Karen Gorrell, explained:
“We may have one foot in the grave, but we are kicking like hell with the other.”
But some have succumbed. Gorrell, wife of a 33-year veteran aluminum worker, says Century has retiree blood on its hands.
She tells of two tragedies. There’s Bryce Earl Turner who Karen encountered after her first meeting with Century retirees in Ravenswood. He was scared and sick. Both alternatives he faced — buying private insurance or paying for his leukemia treatments out of pocket — were way beyond his means. Losing his insurance was a death sentence. The retirees worked desperately to get him more time.
With the help of West Virginia’s U.S. senators, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, and a provision in Obama’s health care reform law, the retirees managed to get coverage extended to Sept. 1, 2011. Bryce Earl Turner, 59, who worked 37 years at the aluminum plant, died the next day.
The other tragedy is Sam McKinney. He attended a meeting of the retirees on Feb. 14, 2011. He said he feared losing the insurance because his wife was ill. Karen recounts:
“He was very emotional because he had taken his wife to Charleston to try to get some assistance with her health care costs and had been turned down.”
He said, she recalled, that it was hard to believe that in America after a person expended his usefulness to industry, a corporation could coldly cast him aside as if his life had no value.
After the meeting, Sam McKinney took his wife to Outback Steakhouse in Parkersburg for Valentine’s Day. As they left, he collapsed and died in the parking lot. Karen is sure the stress killed him. Wrongful stress. Stress he’d not have experienced if Century was good for its word.
Karen says of Turner and McKinney:
“It was murder without a gun.”
Though Century failed to fulfill its obligation to pay for retiree health care, it handed its last CEO, Logan W. Kruger, $4.9 million in 2010. That’s twelve times more than Americans pay their president, the leader of the free world. Century gave Kruger another $6.2 million to leave last November. Still, he’s suing for $20 million on top of that. Century also is defending against a lawsuit filed for the retirees by the United Steelworkers (USW) union, which represented most of the Century workers.
The USW hopes, however, to resolve the dispute outside the courtroom, with the help of the retirees and West Virginia lawmakers. The elderly agitators managed to win the support of the state’s U.S. senators, its governor and its legislature. So last year when Century went begging to the state for $20 million it claimed it needed to re-open the Ravenswood smelter, the lawmakers sent Century away empty handed with a directive to settle with the retirees before seeking reconsideration.
Not long afterward, Century booted Kruger, and the new management team is negotiating with the USW and the retirees.
The protesters don’t have what they want yet, and they’re not leaving their tents until they do.
Century gave the retiree occupiers port-o-potties and installed concrete barriers to prevent cars careening on an icy Route 33 from plowing through the encampment.
Very nice gesture. But resuming payment for promised health insurance would be a whole lot better.
By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com
It’s exciting to see how a coordinated Web blackout this Wednesday got members of Congress to reverse themselves so quickly—and do the right thing. By the end of the day, the number of Senators publicly opposing PIPA (the anti-piracy legislation that threatens free speech) jumped to 35 from five the week before. By the time you read this, those numbers may have jumped again. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if, with the tidal wave of public anger, we see 100 senators scrambling to get on the bandwagon. (Well, probably not 100, but a lot.)
However, it’s important to remember that, no matter how many citizens expressed themselves on PIPA (or the House version, SOPA), it was corporations partially driving this—in competition with other corporations. Basically, it is a battle between companies that create original content (especially movie and music makers) and those who derive their living from providing communications platforms where pretty much anything goes, including “borrowing” imagery, film clips, songs and more from their owners and creators for the purposes of a vibrant dialogue.
Putting aside the complicated pros and cons of the issue, in which both sides have legitimate concerns, and the overriding conclusion that the legislation could cast a severe pall over free discourse and Internet innovation, there is another matter to consider.
Namely this: What would it take for a public movement to get a similar response from elected officials, when billion-dollar interests were not lined up on the same side? Twitter, Reddit, Google, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, etc. may be cool, but they’re giant, or at least popular, for-profit enterprises with agendas of their own. Wikipedia and Mozilla are huge, albeit nonprofit, commercial-type enterprises with major brands to promote and protect. All of these and more were on the “free speech” side of this battle. And their role, up front and center, was indispensable in driving home the point, and making congress- members squeal.
As soon as the blackout went into effect, and these outfits got their users to begin a massive and immediate campaign of petitions, emails, and calls, elected officials reversed themselves faster than you can say “one term.”
But suppose the free-speech forces had to make their case without a turbocharging from interested parties? How would we get some other onerous piece of legislation blocked when there was no strong financial incentive for deep-pocketed corporations with slick marketing/publicity arms to mobilize?
For example, what about the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), with its onerous and vague provisions that could, under certain circumstances, potentially allow for the indefinite detention without charge of American citizens accused of connections with terrorist groups? Despite a public uproar, Congress went ahead and passed that bill. (Obama signed it, but in a “signing statement” said that his administration would not sanction indefinite detention of citizens – a proviso that offers no restraint on future administrations.)
The point is this: indefinite detention of citizens, even the remote threat of it, is surely as important a threat to our liberties as legislation that curtails our freedom to use copyrighted material on the Internet. Yet what corporations were troubled enough to join the ACLU and other liberties groups in opposing NDAA?
Before we get too self-satisfied over the SOPA/PIPA victory, we need to take a long, hard look at our increasing alliance with all manner of corporate entities to advance our own interests. We should ask ourselves: If we don’t believe that corporations should be treated as persons, why do we need to work with them as if they are? And how can we the people join together to attain political goals without an 800-pound corporate gorilla in our corner?
GRAPHIC: http://artwales.biz/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/stop-sopa-bill-300×300.jpg
WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visitWhoWhatWhy.com
Imagine Charles and David Koch testifying, under oath, in Congress.
Even though the billionaire oil industry brothers continue trying to dodge accountability, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) invited the Koch brothers to testify and answer a few simple questions about how the Kochs are positioned to gain financially by the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a 1,700-mile long boondoggle that would make the Koch brothers even richer.
There’s ample evidence linking the Kochs’ business to the Canadian tar sands, which is the dirtiest energy in North America. Indeed, the Koch brothers’ stand to be among the pipeline’s biggest beneficiaries. Even the Koch brothers’ website confesses to being a party to tar sands oil.
The Koch brothers are doing whatever they can to avoid testifying in Congress, despite the fact that the Kochs informed the Canadian government of their “direct and substantial” interest in the pipeline. Waxman has been trying to get answers from the Koch brothers since last spring, but the Kochs have not cooperated.
At the same time, the Kochs’ allies in Congress are doing their best to stonewall oversight. This outcome doesn’t surprise me one bit given the Koch brothers’ near-monopoly on the influential and powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. According to the Los Angeles Times, Koch Industries and its employees are the single largest oil and gas donors to the committee. They’ve contributed $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats. Talk about the best democracy money can buy!
In the 2010 elections that gave the Republicans the majority in the house, many of these committee members were ones who owed their electoral fortunes to the Kochs or groups affiliated with the Kochs. One representative hired a Koch Industries lawyer after election day. Another needed a lift from the Koch brothers’ Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity, to unseat an incumbent. No matter how you slice it, the Koch brothers have their fingerprints, not only the oversight of the Keystone XL pipeline, but on the pipeline’s profits.
Since last year, the Koch brothers have attacked those in and out of Congress who’re merely trying to find the truth. And sorry Charles and David, your word alone is no substitute for the truth.
So what are the Koch brothers hiding? It’s time to stop whispering and start shouting. Insist the Koch brothers testify before Congress.
The Keystone XL pipeline is but another example of the Koch brothers use their wealth to advance policy that makes them richer. Their wealth enables them to write the script for politicians and others to follow.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you’re like me and are demanding truth, I invite you to help us shine a light on the Koch brothers position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline but signing our petition to leading members of Congress.
Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
One of the most frustrating parts of dealing with the modern conservative movement is their incredibly practiced disingenuousness. From a bunch of white people denying racism while pushing racist policies to a bunch of straight people claiming that they want to ban gay marriage not because they hate gays, but because they love “traditional marriage,” the constant pose of the modern right winger is one of bad faith.
Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the anti-choice movement. Despite arsons, vandalism and occasional assassinations, anti-choice activists demand the right to label their movement “non-violent.” And despite the fact that the movement is organized by religious people whose religion teaches that women should be constrained to traditional gender roles and that sex outside of marriage (or for pleasure instead of procreation) is wrong, anti-choicers cry foul if you suggest that their activism against women’s liberation or sexual freedom somehow is rooted in opposition to women’s liberation or hostility to sex.
All this means that liberals have to spend a lot of time collecting evidence that conservatives are arguing in bad faith. Some times that takes the form of catching them in moments of honesty when they’re only speaking to their fellow travelers, and their relaxed state allows racist or sexist language to fly. And some times that means proving that it’s literally impossible for someone who claims to be accepting of liberal value like anti-sexism or anti-racism to hold the views that conservatives do.
That’s what the recent study did, where researchers compiled national statistics on abortion and childbirth and found that childbirth is 14 times more dangerous than abortion.
A 2005 article on now disgraced Atlanta pastor Eddie Long highlights a disturbing perspective to this issue of the National Organization for Marriage utilizing the black church and leaders against marriage equality that very few people are openly talking about.
The article theorizes that there was a tie between Long’s 2005 anti-marriage equality march held in Atlanta and a $1 million grant he received from the faith-based initiatives of the Bush Administration. The article also theorizes that other black pastors were rewarded like so for making public positions against marriage equality.
When I read the recent disgusting comments of Pastor Patrick Wooden of Raleigh, NC (they involved gerbils, cell phones, baseball bats, and diapers) and several other black ministers and leaders assembled by the NOM to combat marriage equality, I can’t help wondering if we are seeing a retread of this theory.
While I’m certainly not making pointed accusations, I have been amazed at how quickly and convenient these coalitions between NOM and several black pastors and leaders have come together I have also been alarmed by the rhetoric. There seems to be a degree of unrestrained glee and vindictive pleasure in not only attacking marriage equality, dehumanizing the gay community, and also – particularly in Wooden’s case – going on a tangent about alleged gay sex acts.
And they do this even though they know personally members of the gay community either by family relationships or as members of their congregations.
These folks come across like well-paid hired guns. Their tone betray a certain eagerness, like that of customers attempting to advantage of an exclusive sale at the mall or prospectors who just discovered a mountain of gold for the taking.
And in this case, we may be talking about NOM’s mysterious funds. Remember, the organization has fought tooth and nail to conceal not only how much it has, but also just who is footing the bill. Yet NOM spends that money like water, brazenly committing large sums of money to stop marriage equality in states like New Hampshire and Washington.
Also, I would be remiss not to mention that former NOM head Maggie Gallagher is used to receiving possibly inappropriate largesse for her “opinion.” According to Media Matters, Gallagher:
received $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2002 to conduct a briefing and write brochures and a Crisis magazine article that promoted the Bush administration’s $300 million marriage initiative. She received an additional $20,000 in 2002 and 2003 to write a report (”Can Government Strengthen Marriage?”) for the National Fatherhood Initiative.
In addition, Gallagher promoted Bush administration policies in several of her independent columns. She also testified in front of Congress in favor of “healthy marriage programs.” And she did all of this without disclosing the payments she was receiving.
So Gallagher is used to such questionable practices. The question is did she bring these practices to NOM. It’s not farfetched to wonder whether or not any honorariums have been used to “motivate” prominent black ministers and leaders.
I am not the only lgbtq of color to have voiced this opinion. In the lgbtq of color community, there has been much talk and opinion-forming that these ministers and leaders who step out publicly to not only vilify marriage equality but verbally crucify the gay community in general aren’t exactly doing it solely on spiritual terms.
Again, I am merely speculating. However, if, when it’s all said and done, we find out that money has in fact been greasing some brown, very well manicured palms, lgbtqs of color won’t be surprised and we won’t be shocked.
But we will say “we told you so.”
It’s a phrase we have learned to use a lot. Usually when it’s discovered that a homophobic black pastor is actually a closeted gay.
Written by Jason Salzman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Reporters are having a real hard time sorting out Mitt Romney’s position on personhood. Here’s a quick and easy way for journos to think about the issue, and Romney’s evolving stance on it.
Personhood has two tracks: federal and state. At the federal level, proponents are trying to pass a law giving fertilized eggs (or zygotes) the legal rights of a “person,” under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution. At the state level, the personhood campaign wants to pass amendments to state constitutions defining life as beginning at conception.
Romney on federal personhood. Romney has made it clear that he’s currently against federal personhood. This is a flip from his position in 2007, when he stated on national TV that he favored a GOP platform position supporting a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, which would ban abortion at the federal level. When Romney said this, he believed, like he does now, that life begins at conception, so Romney’s federal ban on abortion, based on his definition of “life,” would have met the requirements of Personhood USA for a national personhood law. But last year at a GOP prez forum, Romney abandoned this position because now thinks adding personhood to the U.S. Constitution could set up a “constituional crisis.”
“People love turkey. We love turkey, too,” says the corporate website for Butterball, the nation’s largest vertically integrated turkey producer.
Butterball is certified by the British Retail Consortium, says the site, on “300 elements related to food safety and quality, as well as worker safety, environmental impact and management commitment.” The turkey processor practices “good citizenship” based on “self-governance,” “social responsibility,” and “sustainability.”
But search for the words “welfare,” “Mercy For Animals” or “Shannon, North Carolina” (where a grisly Christmas-time expose took place) and you will get no results. Maybe you didn’t spell the words correctly.
Between November and December of 2011, while people were making their holiday plans, an undercover employee at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon documented turkeys with open sores, infected eyes and broken bones, covered in flies and living in their own waste. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
“In the video, workers can be seen kicking and stomping on turkeys, as well as dragging them by their wings and necks,” reported ABC news. “The video also shows injured birds with open wounds and exposed flesh.”
Birds at the Butterball facility were left to slowly die from their injuries, some unable to even reach food or water, says the undercover employee. The “pain and the suffering that they’re experiencing,” is clearly visible she told NBS news.
Like scores of other gigantic food producers who have been exposed on undercover videos as harboring sadistic employees and sick and dying animals, Butterball pleads ignorance. It has a “zero tolerance policy for any mistreatment of our birds,” and has fired the proverbial “bad apple” employees it did not know about. Who knew?
Butterball is also “taking steps to help ensure that all new and existing associates have a clear understanding of our animal well-being policies,” said Rod Brenneman, president and CEO of Butterball. Maybe employees don’t know they aren’t supposed to stomp and kick birds, drag them by their wings and necks, not to mention bash them in the heads with metal bars, as the employee reports. Let’s tell them!
But, it wasn’t only Butterball management that enabled the agricultural hell for turkeys in the interests of cheap “holiday” food. Dr. Sarah Mason, head of animal health programs in the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, tipped off Butterball about a December 28 raid and managed to sabotaged it. Even as the Hoke County Sheriff’s Department sought to raid Butterball on the basis of videotaped evidence, Mason contacted “a friend and fellow veterinarian” who works for Butterball, which assured that the raid “never had a chance,” reports the Fayetteville Observer.
Hey, from one vet to another, we better hide the animal abuse we’re permitting!
Given that the state agency is in charge of regulating Butterball yet undermined the raid, was there a quid pro quo involved? “That’s a criminal matter, to be decided by the district attorney’s office,” opines the Observer.
The sordid collegiality between government and industry which makes a mockery of democracy, consumer rights and animal welfare, brings to mind the saga of egg don Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the salmonella king.
Despite the recall of half a billion salmonella-contaminated eggs from DeCoster-affiliated farms in 2010, his conviction on animal cruelty the same year and nine deaths and 500 illnesses traced to his eggs in 1987, Iowa state agencies thought he was a pretty cool dude.
“One of the things I’ve always said about DeCoster is that when there’s a problem at his facilities, he acts fast,” enthused Kevin Buskins, a spokesman for Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources which shares oversight of egg operations with the state agriculture department, reported the Washington Post.
Will Butterball get a pass like DeCoster did? So far no charges have been filed against the turkey processor and its state regulator “friend” still has her job. And there is even more good news for the turkey processor. The company and its communications agency, Howard, Merrell & Partners, received four public relations awards from the Virginia Chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association, Carolinas, this month at an industry banquet.
Receiving honors were a celebration for the “millionth fresh bird produced during the 2010 holiday season,” a press release announcing 330,000 pounds of turkey products donated to the needy and a campaign in partnership with the Weekly Reader that demonstrates “how responsible agricultural practices lead to healthy animals and safe, high-quality food for consumers.”
On February 14, Scott Air Force Base in Illinois will be holding its annual National Prayer Breakfast. The guest speaker this year will be Esther Jungreis, a Holocaust survivor who founded the international Hineni movement in 1973 to discourage intermarriage and Jewish participation in cults, according to the Jewish Women’s Archive.
In her speeches and writings, Jungreis throws around the name Hitler and the word Holocaust more than Glenn Beck — not in the expected context of her being a Holocaust survivor talking about the actual Hitler and actual Holocaust, but to make comparisons to things that are not the actual Hitler or the actual Holocaust. One of the most controversial examples of this is her equating interracial marriage between Jews and non-Jews to the Holocaust, with statements like this:
“It’s a question of understanding that Hitler’s aim was to annihilate our people, and intermarriage is also a form of annihilation, which is sometimes even more deadly than the Holocaust.”
That statement was made when Jungreis was in Canada in 2007 to deliver a lecture titled “The Holocaust and the Final Solution to Intermarriage.”
Jungreis even includes marriages in which the non-Jewish partner converts to Judaism in what she calls a “spiritual Holocaust,” saying:
“Conversions are usually a sham, you know, in name only. It’s easy come, easy go, and there’s no commitment behind it. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just to accommodate someone in the family.”
After making these statements, Jungreis was criticized by two prominent Orthodox rabbis in Ottawa, one for her use of the word Holocaust to refer to anything other than the actual Holocaust, and another for her claim that conversions to Judaism are a sham.
Jungreis is a very prolific speaker, appearing in venues ranging from Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum in 1973 to the Republican National Convention in 2004. She also speaks regularly at military bases, which, on February 14, will include Scott Air Force Base.
In addition to hosting such a controversial speaker for this Prayer Breakfast, the commander of the 375th Air Mobility Wing, Col. Michael Hornitschek, has blatantly ignored the September 2011 Memorandum on Maintaining Government Neutrality Regarding Religion from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, which said that all invitations for religious events must come from the Chaplain Corps and not the command structure.
The invitation the Scott Air Force Base Prayer Breakfast begins:
The Commander, 375th Air Mobility Wing
cordially invites you to attend the
National Prayer Breakfast
featuring guest speaker
Mrs. Esther Jungreis
Now, we here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) have received many complaints that Gen. Schwartz’s memorandum is being ignored, and that nothing is being done to enforce it. But maybe this particular violation at Scott Air Force Base will get the general’s attention. Why? Well, not just because Col. Hornitschek is disregarding his religious neutrality edict, but because rumor has it that Gen. Scwartz, a Jew, married a non-Jew, which would make he himself part of Esther Jungreis’s so-called Holocaust!
