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The male milk-giving goat of Gaza has been turned into meat.

Owner Jaser Abu Said sold the goat for the 400 Jordanian dinar (close to $600) that he and his business partner spent on it. He found a buyer willing to slaughter the goat for meat. And he stuck around to witness the goat's demise personally, along with representatives from the Gaza government.

Goats and Soda

A Hermaphrodite Goat Could Be The Ultimate Scapegoat

Why government officials at a goat slaughtering — which happens pretty frequently in Gaza?

The goat appeared to be a hermaphrodite. It looked like a male, with a large build and visible male sex organs. But it also had udders. And gave milk.

Officials got involved when they heard that some people wanted the goat's milk, believing it could help fertility or cure ailments.

Worried that people could be deceived, the deputy minister of agriculture for Gaza's southern region ordered the animal killed.

The execution order said the goat had been used to violate the public health, which "may cause severe damage to civilians."

Owner Abu Said first said he'd do it himself, but on the appointed day, he hid the goat instead. Police came by, and after an hour at the station, he said he agreed to let the government test the milk.

His business partner, Abdel Rahman, said if the goat was to be slaughtered, at least they should be paid.

And so they were, not by the government but the buyer willing to slaughter it immediately. And the goat was killed even before results of tests on the milk were in. Dr. Zakharia Kafarna, director of veterinary services for the Ministry of Agriculture, says he wanted it that way.

He said that even if the goat's milk had tested normal, people who believed that milk from a male animal had curative powers could be deceived if the goat fell into the wrong hands. "People would believe the milk can heal them," he said. "We don't want people to be fooled."

Tests of the milk found nothing curative — or dangerous. Just "a few milk cells" a male goat "is not supposed to have," Kafarna said. He thought perhaps it was a case of a simple hormone disorder, not a true hermaphrodite goat.

The milk — and meat — Kafarna deemed safe to consume.

If another such goat crosses his path, he'll order it slaughtered too.

hermaphrodite

goat

Gaza

Novelist Gunter Grass, the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature who is perhaps best known for his novel The Tin Drum and who shocked his country when he revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen SS in the last months of World War II, has died. Grass was 87.

The news was announced by his publisher, Steidl Verlag, in a statement on its website. The publisher said Grass died at a clinic in the town of Luebeck. It did not provide a cause of death.

Grass emerged as one of Germany's leading public intellectuals after World War II – a man whom his biographer Michael Juergs described in a 2006 interview with NPR as a "moral icon." The Tin Drum, an anti-Nazi novel, propelled him to literary stardom. The New York Times adds:

"Critics hailed the audacious sweep of his literary imagination. A severed horse's head swarming with hungry eels, a criminal hiding beneath a peasant woman's layered skirts, and a child who shatters windows with his high-pitched voice are among the memorable images that made The Tin Drum a worldwide triumph."

While announcing his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, the Nobel committee said the publication of the novel made it seem "as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction."

Grass was an often controversial figure – and he touched on his aspect of his reputation in his speech while accepting the Nobel Prize.

"The publication of my first two novels, The Tin Drumand Dog Years, and the novella I stuck between them, Cat and Mouse, taught me early on, as a relatively young writer, that books can cause offence, stir up fury, even hatred, that what is undertaken out of love for one's country can be taken as soiling one's nest," he said. "From then on I have been controversial."

The BBC adds:

"Born in what was then Danzig, Grass served in the German military in World War Two and published his breakthrough anti-Nazi novel, The Tin Drum, in 1959.

"Later in life he became a vocal opponent of German reunification in 1990, and argued afterwards that it had been carried out too hastily.

"Grass's home town became the Polish city of Gdansk after the war; he spent much of his later life living near Luebeck."

"Many of his writings focused on the Nazi era, the horrors of the war, and the destruction and guilt that remained after Germany's defeat."

Grass shocked the world in 2006 when he acknowledged in his autobiography, Peeling Onions, that he had been drafted into the Waffen SS, the military branch of the Nazi Party, in the final months of World War II. Juergs, his biographer, said in that same 2006 interview with NPR that the controversy would reduce Grass' stature in Germans' eyes.

"There's a lot of people who don't care, of course, because we are not an intellectual country at all," he said. "That's not the point, but in the literary scene and the political scene and in the scene of my generation - and they say OK, Gunter Grass, we will read your books. Everything is OK, you can write and so on and so on, but please don't talk about moral anymore."

gunter grass

Germany

On the character Bianca in Taming of the Shrew

She does have a mind, but she's outwardly, at any rate, very obedient. She does what her daddy wants her to do,; everybody courts her and she reacts suitably. And in fact she runs off with a man she wants to marry, but it's all a projection ... Shakespeare doesn't even know women properly.

There were lots of pamphlets at the time saying "Can you beat your wife? Is it alright to beat your wife?" And the answer was, "Yes, it's alright to beat your wife, but don't kill them."

On the play with a more sophisticated female character

It's really quite astounding because — Romeo and Juliet. There's a huge break between those early plays where the women are more one dimensional or perhaps two-[dimensional]. Suddenly, in one huge leap, not only does [Juliet] have equal billing in the title, but ... we follow the insight to her character, how she feels, how she thinks. She's just as courageous as Romeo. [Shakespeare] doesn't turn away from how difficult it is for women, but as far as her courage is concerned, it's equal to Romeo's.

"Whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings."

- Tina Packer, on Shakespeare's later works

And he never goes back from that ... from there after. Whether the women are disguised as men or whether they're in their women's dresses, or whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings.

On why she thinks Shakespeare's understanding of women changed

I think he was a great artist. And he was a great artist who wrote about human beings all the time. You can have a great artist like Wagner who writes great emotions, but is a horrible human being, but for Shakespeare he was writing about what does it mean to be a human being.

And I think because he was a great artist, he was deeply in touch with his own feminine side. And as he did that he began to see more and more, not just the bind the women had been in, but how those attributes, the creative attributes, and the way in which women saw the world, could be the way we could stop all of this violence.

women

Shakespeare

In the mid- and late 1800s, the Buffalo Soldiers were all-black cavalries and regiments deployed to patrol and protect what would eventually become America's national parks.

Their moniker was said to have been given to the cavalries by Native Americans who thought the soldiers' hair resembled the woolly texture of a buffalo.

It's a name that carries a lot of pride — and one that lives on today. But instead of horses, today's Buffalo Soldiers ride bikes.

As a "modern progressive motorcycle club," one that strives to promote positivity, they pay homage to the frontier soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth cavalry.

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Soldiers of the 25th Infantry — some wearing buffalo robes — pose for a photo in Montana in the late 19th Century. Like the men of the 9th and 10th cavalry, these troops were referred to as Buffalo Soldiers. Library of Congress hide caption

itoggle caption Library of Congress

Soldiers of the 25th Infantry — some wearing buffalo robes — pose for a photo in Montana in the late 19th Century. Like the men of the 9th and 10th cavalry, these troops were referred to as Buffalo Soldiers.

Library of Congress

Welcoming A New Season

One morning this spring, more than 50 bikers from the club gathered in the parking lot of Lillie Mae's House of Chicken and Wafflez in San Jose, Calif..

They're here to welcome a new season of riding together — and to have their bikes blessed.

The Rev. Jeff Moore, wearing a long gold robe, does the honors, pronouncing "the spirit of God is in the wheels of the bikes that we ride." Then he presses anointing oil on the forehead of a biker nicknamed Squirt.

"Squirt, we ask that he guides you and loves you," he says.

Haymon Jahi, the president of the San Jose Chapter, shows off the patches on his leather motorcycle jacket — from one that says Buffalo Soldier, with crossed sabers, to some with more individual significance.

"I'm a member of the National Brotherhood of Skiers. I wear dreads; I'm definitely an advocate of Bob Marley," he says. "You kind of put your identity on the front."

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But the most important symbol is on the back of his jacket: A Buffalo Soldier from the late 1800s.

"We are representing a legacy of a group of men that fought and died for this country," says Jahi.

'It's 24/7 Love'

In the modern day, these bikers pride themselves on not being your average motorcycle club.

"The Buffalo Soldiers is multi-racial, multi-gender and multi-bike," says Mark Nielsen, whose ride name is Wolfguard.

Wolfguard is more than 6 feet tall, wears a leather sleeveless vest and has thick arms full of tattoos. He says being a white member of a mostly black bike club is actually the place where he's felt most at home.

"The brothers like to joke around — you can't be thin-skinned," he says. "But it is all in love — it's 24/7 love."

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Reverend Jeff Moore blesses a biker at the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club rally in San Jose, Calif. Leila Day/KALW hide caption

itoggle caption Leila Day/KALW

Reverend Jeff Moore blesses a biker at the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club rally in San Jose, Calif.

Leila Day/KALW

Also among the crowd is rider Cheryl Morgan, who has prepared for the day by baking cookies in the shape of buffaloes.

"Everyone has this image of a hardcore female biker who's more male-oriented than female-oriented and ... bikers don't bake cookies," she says with a laugh.

After handing out cookies Morgan gathers the bikers. They hold hands and bow their heads while Moore leads a prayer.

"May God hold you and your bikes. May God keep you in the palm of His hands," he says. "Because He says, 'Once I have you in the palm of my hands, can't nothing take you out of that.' "

Local chapters of the Buffalo Soldiers are gearing up for the riding season. Some will deliver scholarships on their bikes; other chapters will be re-tracing routes of the original Buffalo Soldiers.

And if their bikes weren't loud enough, they make sure their voices are. Chants fill the parking lot: "Buffalo! Soldiers!

"It's what? It's all good!"

motorcycles

History