by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / October 31st, 2023
There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?
We are won over by “words that work” from an Israeli training manual.
Hasbara has become a dirty word, thanks to it’s dirt practitioners and the dirty job they are trained to do.
It’s Hebrew for Israel’s sophisticated public relations machinery that’s set up to cynically justify the Jewish entity’s crimes and to create for Israel a “brand image” completely at odds with the ugly truth.
Fiction and distortion are among hasbara’s standard propaganda tools used for spinning fairy tales and propagating disinformation. And it is very effective, up to a point. The reason why it will ultimately fail is that it has …
While a serving president, George W Bush opined about the antiwar movement: “First of all, you know, size of protests–it’s like deciding, ‘Well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.’ The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon, in this case, the security of the people.” In other words, killing over a million Iraqis and Saddam Hussein was required for the security of the United States. So much for the security of Iraqis.
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 31st, 2023
Life in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. Photo credit: canada talks israel palestine
On Friday, October 27, the nations of the world voted in the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 120 to 14, for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. The resolution was sponsored by the government of sometime U.S. ally King Abdullah of Jordan.
Israel’s UN Ambassador responded with utter disdain, accusing those who voted in favor of the “ridiculous resolution” of supporting “the defense of Nazi terrorists” …
I’ve been thinking for quite awhile how the most depraved position of the Israeli government becomes the baseline view here in the United States, particularly in politics and media. It makes sense that the genocidal, racist, colonial project of Israel would find admiration in the ruling class of a nation founded on indigenous genocide and built by black slavery.
Here in the United States of Israel media, Hamas commits “massacres” but the Israeli government never “massacres” anyone – they do “ground operations.” (The latter typically kills 50-100-1,000 times more civilians …
My title is redundant for a reason, since the root of the word radical is the Latin word, radix, meaning root. For I mean to show how the use and misuse of language, its history or etymology, and ours as etymological animals as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gassett called us, is crucial for understanding our world, a world once again teetering on the edge of a world war that will almost inexorably turn nuclear as events are proceeding. If our language is corrupted, as it surely is, and political propaganda flourishes as a result, the correct use of …
Guardian columnist feigns concern for two peoples ‘fated to share the same land’. But yet again he finds excuses to keep one of those people penned into a prison
by Jonathan Cook / October 30th, 2023
Will the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland ever write a column on Israel that doesn’t rehash dishonest, Zionist talking-points that were discredited decades ago?
Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, shows people feasting and playing divination games on Halloween in Ireland. It was inspired by a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832.
The answer seems to be that we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. With the endless inventiveness of humankind, we grasp the very elements which are so divisive and destructive and try to turn them into tools—to dismantle themselves.
― Stephen King, Danse Macabre, April 209, 1981
A country broken by constant foreign interventions, its tyrannical regimes propped up by the back brace of the United States (when it wasn’t intervening to adjust it), marred by appalling natural disasters, tells a sad tale of the crippled Haitian state. Haiti’s political existence is the stuff and stuffing of pornographic violence, the crutch upon which moralists can always point to as the end, doom and despair that needs change. Every conundrum needs its intrusive deliverer, even though that deliverer is bound to make things worse.
Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations to …
As a classic settler-colonial state, Israel is doing the only thing it knows how to do. So long as the West keeps cheerleading, that includes genocide
by Jonathan Cook / October 28th, 2023
It shocks me that in my threads I keep coming across variations of the following tweet:
The Palestinians have it within them to rise up against Hamas to free themselves. Or Hamas can willingly surrender. Two real choices there.
This view isn’t just being promoted in bad faith by Israeli apologists. It seems to resonate with ordinary people who presumably know very little about the histories either of Palestine or of settler colonial movements such as the Zionist movement that founded Israel.
So let’s delve briefly into both.
First, settler colonial movements are distinguished from standard colonialism – like British rule in India – …
Eva Bartlett joins Scott Ritter and Jeff Norman to relate an on-the-ground perspective — a perspective entirely missing or marginalized from western mass media — of what Palestinians endure daily from the Israeli siege on the open-air concentration camp of Gaza. People have a right and a moral duty to be aware of what their governments are supporting.
In the midst of extensive coverage of the war in Gaza, there are questions that the U.S. mass media should address:
1. How did Hamas, with tiny Gaza surrounded by a 17-year Israeli blockade, subjected to unparalleled electronic surveillance, with spies and informants, and augmented by an overwhelming air, sea and land military presence, manage to get these weapons and associated technology for their October 7 surprise raid?
2. What is the connection between the stunning failure of the Israeli government to protect its people on the border and the policy of P.M. Netanyahu? Recall the New York Times (October 22, 2023) article …
• More US sanctions against Chinese chip industry
• China tightens graphite export controls
• Industrial renaissance in northeast China
• China approves GM soybeans and corn
Our global environmental crisis is widely understood to be reaching a crucial moment; the danger signals are flashing almost daily. Yet a certain complacency follows the many catastrophic climate events attributable to a critically injured environment. People talk easily of …
It is carnage in Gaza. Over 5,700 Palestinian civilians are currently estimated to have been murdered by the relentless Israeli assault, 2,055 are children. More than 15,000 people have been injured, including 5,364 children. In the West Bank around 100 have been killed and at least 1,650 injured.
The Israeli bombardment has so far destroyed or damaged 169,184 residential buildings, 206 educational facilities, and 29 health care centres — including the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which, despite denials and finger pointing, evidence strongly suggests was hit by an Israeli air raid on 17 October, killing 471 people.
The population of …
For decades, time and again, America’s tax code has been twisted and tweaked to give tax breaks to the top and crumbs (or nothing) to the tens of millions on the bottom and in the middle. Levels of wealth and inequality have become so gross that experts are clamoring for change, painting unflattering portraits of the country those laws have created.
In the latest example, Senators Manchin and Sinema joined Republicans to throw 5.1 million children into poverty. Of course, nobody knew the exact number, but they knew exactly what would happen when they blocked …
The main press stable was keen to see the scrappy benefits of the 31-hour visit to Israel by US President Joe Biden. On National Public Radio (NPR), Scott Neuman expressed the view that the “largely symbolic” visit did yield a few “concrete accomplishments” including an announcement of $100 million in Palestinian aid, convincing Israel to permit humanitarian aid into Gaza and persuade Egypt’s strongman president Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi to open up an access route via land into southern Gaza. If these were seen as achievements, one dare not look at the picture of bright success.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said, “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” The Israeli Ambassador responded that Guterres’ comments were “shocking”, “unfathomable” and “disconnected from reality”. He called for the Secretary General’s resignation. Below are some facts about Gaza to evaluate whether Guterres was accurate or not.
Gaza is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean coast with the 5,000 year old Gaza City in the north. The entire strip is only 5 miles wide by 25 miles in length with …
Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon describes the struggles of the Osage people. Here’s why they are still fighting...
by Greg Palast / October 27th, 2023
This week, director Martin Scorsese releases his film Killers of the Flower Moon: the true story of the mass murder of Osage Native Americans and the plot to steal the tribe’s oil wealth. The film is a powerful telling of what came to be known as the Reign of Terror, a period that resulted in the deaths of as many as 200 Osage. But the story didn’t end there. For the past 27 years, I have been reporting on what happened afterwards.
My documentary Long Knife – produced by George DiCaprio, with his son Leonardo’s encouragement – …
“Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release”, Bob Berwyn, February 28, 2017 (Credit: Wikimedia)
New studies show the Arctic heating up 4-times the overall rate of global warming. This startling rate in one of the most sensitive environments in the world could trigger toxic disasters in up to 20,000 industrial contamination sites.
Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by permafrost that’s melting the fastest ever. The risks of toxic leaks at industrial sites are immeasurable. Nobody really knows for sure how it ends, …
Instead of there being the U.S.-Government-promised ‘peace dividend’ after the Soviet Union ended in 1991, there has been soaring militarism by the U.S., and also soaring profits for the American producers of war-weapons. Both the profits on this, and the escalation in America’s aggressiveness following after 1991, have been stunning. Whereas there were 53 “Instances of United States Use of Armed Forces Abroad” (U.S. invasions) during the 46 years of 1945-1991, there were 244 such instances during the 31 years of 1991-2022, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. From a rate …
Who is Canada’s new antisemitism envoy?
At a big apartheid lobby convention in Ottawa last week Justin Trudeau’s government announced its new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. Deborah Lyons will replace Irwin Cotler in a position the Liberals created three years ago.
Cotler used the platform and public funds allocated to the envoy to defend Israeli apartheid and said he sought out Lyons to replace him. Apparently, Cotler wanted an anti-Palestinian non-Jew to take over in a position designed to entrench apartheid.
Canada’s Ambassador to Israel from 2016 to 2020, Lyons has an anti-Palestinian track record. In January 2020 Lyons …
The US doesn’t seem to be hesitant for a second to sacrifice its allies so as to contain China. The tightening chip export restrictions show that it is willing to do whatever it takes to hinder China’s technological development. But that doesn’t mean its allies will unconditionally follow such an extreme approach toward China, especially when their own interests will be at greater risk.
The fact that the subject of the new US export restrictions involving ASML is under heated debate in the …
The relevance given to a UN Secretary-General is often judged by the degree of controversy caused. In history, the most relevant are usually targeted. Dag Hammarskjöld, refusing to remain a mere bauble of international office, was almost certainly murdered over his intervention in the Congo civil war in 1961. The least relevant (who was that sweet little fella, Ban Ki-Moon?) have barely registered a note of dissent. The big powers like to know they can render such figures impotent, if not insignificant.
It was, for that reason, refreshing to see the current occupant of that post make the less than …
From 9 to 15 October, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their annual joint meeting in Marrakech (Morocco). The last time that these two Bretton Woods institutions met on African soil was in 1973, when the IMF-World Bank meeting was held in Nairobi (Kenya). Kenya’s then President Jomo Kenyatta (1897–1978) urged those gathered to find ‘an early cure to the monetary sickness of inflation and instability that has afflicted the world’. Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president in 1964, noted …
