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Here’s Who Pressured the Medical Journal

Do we want to live in a world in which medical journals are afraid to publish certain conclusions?

By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | January 29, 2020

I recently described an organized campaign against a medical journal that published research over the objections of anti-meat activists. After the Annals of Internal Medicine refused to halt publication, the US Federal Trade Commission was urged to intervene. So was the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.

Do we really want to live in a world in which medical journals are afraid to publish certain conclusions because activists will sic the authorities on them? Does it really need to be said that, once government officials and the courts start second-guessing medical journals, free speech and honest scholarship are as good as dead?

So who, precisely, tried to get this research retracted before it saw the light of day? Who arrogantly wanted to extinguish the public’s right to hear that the evidence linking meat consumption and poor health is quite weak?

A lot of people who should know better. People associated with prestigious institutions.

Let’s start with David L. Katz, of Yale University. In a bizarre newspaper column Katz implies the journal is guilty of “information terrorism.” In his universe, this isn’t a matter of different researchers examining the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. It’s a matter of anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-has-nefarious-motives. It’s how-dare-you-challenge-the-prevailing-consensus!

Katz is the founder/director of the True Health Initiative. That organization describes itself as a “voice of reason and consensus.” It claims to be “fighting fake facts” and “combating false doubts” via an “evidence-based” approach. Shutting down competing perspectives is not the voice of reason. It’s the voice of authoritarianism.

Neal Barnard, of George Washington University’s School of Medicine, heads the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It was his organization that appealed to the Trade Commission and then to the district attorney.

Other signatories to the letter urging the journal to halt publication include Frank Hu, JoAnn E. Manson, Eric Rimm, Meir Stampfer, and Walter Willett. All of these people are associated with Harvard’s School of Public Health. That entity has a party line where meat is concerned. It’s difficult to imagine a researcher with an alternative perspective surviving there long. I wrote about Willett’s vegetarian climate change activism last year.

These are the other individuals who took the highly unusual step of trying to influence the editorial decisions of a respected medical journal:

Dariush Mozaffarian – a Dean at Tufts University

Richard Carmona of the University of Arizona

Christopher Gardner of Stanford University

David J.A. Jenkins and John Sievenpiper of the University of Toronto

Dean Ornish of the University of California

Kim A. Williams of Rush University

January 29, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | 6 Comments

MESA: Israeli Government Involved in Cyberbullying US College Students

A letter from the Middle East Studies Association to Israeli Security Minister Gilad Erdan charges Israeli government harassment of American students.

By Judith Tucker | May 25, 2018

Dear Minister Erdan:

We write on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express our dismay that the Israeli government has been involved in facilitating and directing abusive actions, including cyberbullying, against students at universities in the United States who have been active in campaigns for divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This constitutes unwarranted interference by a foreign power in these students’ free speech rights and threatens academic freedom at institutions of higher education in the United States.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,500 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

The most recent incident of which we are aware took place at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C. during April 2018. On 16 April 2018, a Student Senate vote on a resolution urging the university to divest from a number of companies (including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, CEMEX, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Motorola Solutions) was cancelled after students witnessed two unidentified individuals placing threatening posters around the university. The vote was rescheduled for 24 April 2018 and on that date the divestment resolution was approved by a vote of 18-6, with 6 abstentions.

Two men wearing bird costumes and masks, apparently evoking the Canary Mission website which features some two thousand derogatory and generally inaccurate and misleading profiles of students and faculty who have advocated for Palestinian rights, along with someone who appeared to be coordinating their activities, stood outside the room in which the Senate Senators were meeting to vote on the resolution. The clear intent was to intimidate the Senators as well as student supporters of the resolution. These individuals were later seen putting up posters around campus that read, “SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], you saw two of us, we saw all of you.”

After the vote, administrators of the Act.il app, which media reports indicate your ministry was integrally involved in developing and promoting in order to combat the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, began directing its users to “like” and share a Facebook page set up to threaten and bully the GWU Student Senators who voted in support of the resolution. The Facebook page was taken down soon after the Senate vote, but Act.il did not remove its listing of the cyberbullying campaign as a “mission” to be conducted by anti-BDS activists until it expired.

We note in this connection that you personally promoted the launch of Act.il at the February 2017 Celebrate Israel Parade and that your ministry placed paid articles advertising the app in the Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel (see The Forward ).

Your status as an official of the Israeli government makes your involvement, and that of the ministry you head, in campaigns to try to intimidate American college and university students and to inhibit or suppress their freedom of expression especially egregious. These students have a right to be free of harassment, intimidation and cyberbullying by people who are in effect agents of the Israeli government. We therefore call on you and your ministry to cease promoting or supporting such campaigns of harassment, whether online or in person, and to refrain from interference of any kind when students and faculty in the United States exercise their constitutionally protected right of free speech and their academic freedom rights.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Judith E. Tucker
MESA President
Professor, Georgetown University

Amy W. Newhall
MESA Executive Director

Judith E. Tucker is the President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and writes on behalf of the MESA Committee on Academic Freedom. She is Professor of History at Georgetown University, former Director of the Master of Arts in Arab Studies Program, former Editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. 

May 25, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

US university says sorry for Palestinian flag ultimatum

RT | December 11, 2015

George Washington University president Steven Knapp has issued an apology to a student who was told to take down his Palestinian flag.

A university campus police officer entered Ramie Abounaja’s room on October 26 and told him to take down the Palestinian flag that he had hanging from his window.

The officer said he had received multiple complaints and that the flag was in violation of the housing code.

Visitors to the university confirmed many other national flags hanging from dorm rooms without being taken down.

A week later, Ramie Abounaja received a warning letter from the university, threatening future disciplinary action, despite the fact he had removed the flag.

“As a member of the larger residential community we hope that you will be respectful of your peers and be aware of your behavior. The act of an individual has a profound impact on the community,” it read.

Unsure of what he was in violation of, Ramie wrote a letter back. In it, he explained his reason for hanging the Palestinian flag: “I was motivated to do this after I had seen dozens of different banners and flags hung outside other residential campus living spaces throughout my three years here at GW. I felt like I was being singled-out, because of my heritage and the viewpoint of my speech, for something I’ve seen dozens of students, fraternities and other student groups do in my three years at GW.”

Civil rights groups called the order a violation of free speech and said the actions pointed to anti-Palestinian sentiment.

Students for Justice in Palestine at GW said: “Flags of other countries hang out of dorm windows with no disciplinary consequence. Selective reinforcement of these rules is discrimination.”

Universities in the US stand accused of cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech, with a high profile example in the state of Illinois where professor Steven Salaita was dismissed after tweeting about Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014.

The recent Palestinian Exception to Free Speech report revealed intensifying suppression Israeli criticism on campuses: “Israel’s fiercest defenders in the United States — a network of advocacy organizations, public relations firms, and think tanks — have intensified their efforts to stifle criticism of Israeli government policies. Rather than engage such criticism on its merits, these groups leverage their significant resources and lobbying power to pressure universities, government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in support of Palestinian rights.”

Palestine Legal responded to 140 incidents and 33 requests for assistance in anticipation of potential suppression in the first 6 months of 2015. 80% of those were aimed at students and scholars.

The report highlights a number of tactics used to quash pro-Palestinian feeling in universities, including academic sanctions.

Northeastern University in Boston suspended a student group the spring of 2014 after members distributed flyers describing Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes.

Around the same time, San Francisco State University investigated Professor Rabab Abdulhadi for going on a research trip to Palestine after an Israel advocacy group accused her of meeting with terrorists.

Palestinian Legal wrote to George Washington University, demanding they withdraw its warning letter and threat to sanction the student.

University President Steven Knapp said he has apologized to Abounaja and that the student had been subjected to a flawed process: “I have instructed the relevant offices to end the practice of sending warning letters to students solely because of a reported violation of a university policy. I have also instructed them to ensure consistent enforcement of all university policies.”

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | 1 Comment