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NYT’s Orwellian View of Ukraine

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | June 22, 2015

In George Orwell’s 1984, the leaders of Oceania presented “Two Minutes Hate” in which the image of an enemy was put on display and loyal Oceanianians expressed their rage, all the better to prepare them for the country’s endless wars and their own surrender of freedom. And, now, in America, you have The New York Times.

Surely the Times is a bit more subtle than the powers-that-be in Orwell’s Oceania, but the point is the same. The “paper of record” decides who our rotating foreign enemy is and depicts its leader as a demon corrupting whatever he touches. The rest of us aren’t supposed to think for ourselves. We’re just supposed to hate.

As the Times has degenerated from a relatively decent newspaper into a fount of neocon propaganda, its editors also have descended into the practice of simply inventing a narrative of events that serves an ideological purpose, its own version of “Two Minutes Hate.” Like the leaders of Orwell’s Oceania, the Times has become increasingly heavy-handed in its propaganda.

Excluding alternate explanations of events, even if supported by solid evidence, the Times arrogantly creates its own reality and tells us who to hate.

In assessing the Times’s downward spiral into this unethical journalism, one could look back on its false reporting regarding Iraq, Iran, Syria or other Middle East hotspots. But now the Times is putting the lives of ourselves, our children and our grandchildren at risk with its reckless reporting on the Ukraine crisis – by setting up an unnecessary confrontation between nuclear-armed powers, the United States and Russia.

At the center of the Times’ propaganda on Ukraine has been its uncritical – indeed its anti-journalistic – embrace of the Ukrainians coup-makers in late 2013 and early 2014 as they collaborated with neo-Nazi militias to violently overthrow elected President Viktor Yanukovych and hurl Ukraine into a bloody civil war.

Rather than display journalistic professionalism, the Times’ propagandists ignored the evidence of a coup – including an intercepted phone call in which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussed how to “mid-wife” the regime change and handpick the new leaders.

The Times even ignored a national security expert, Statfor founder George Friedman, when he termed the ouster of Ukraine’s elected president “the most blatant coup in history.” The Times just waved a magic wand and pronounced that there was no coup – and anyone who thought so must reside inside “the Russian propaganda bubble.”[See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

Perhaps even more egregiously, the Times has pretended that there were no neo-Nazi militias spearheading the Feb. 22, 2014 coup and then leading the bloody “anti-terrorist operation” against ethnic Russians in the south and east who resisted the coup. The Times explained all this bloodshed as simply “Russian aggression.”

It didn’t even matter when the U.S. House of Representatives – of all groups – unanimously acknowledged the neo-Nazi problem when it prohibited U.S. collaboration in military training of Ukrainian Nazis. The Times simply expunged the vote from its “official history” of the crisis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine.”]

Orwell’s Putin

Yet, for an Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” to work properly, you need to have a villain whose face you can put on display. And, in the case of Ukraine – at least after Yanukovych was driven from the scene – that villain has been Russian President Vladimir Putin, who embodies all evil in the intense hatred sold to the American public.

So, when Putin presents a narrative of the Ukraine crisis, which notes the history of the U.S.-driven expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders and the evidence of the U.S.-directed Ukrainian coup, the Times editors must dismiss it all as “mythology,” as they did in Monday’s editorial regarding Putin’s remarks to an international economic conference in St. Petersburg.

“President Vladimir Putin of Russia is not veering from the mythology he created to explain away the crisis over Ukraine,” the Times’ editors wrote. “It is one that wholly blames the West for provoking a new Cold War and insists that international sanctions have not grievously wounded his country’s flagging economy.”

Without acknowledging any Western guilt in the coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government in 2014, the Times’ editors simply reveled in the harm that the Obama administration and the European Union have inflicted on Russia’s economy for its support of the previously elected government and its continued backers in eastern and southern Ukraine.

For nearly a year and a half, the New York Times and other major U.S. news organizations have simply refused to acknowledge the reality of what happened in Ukraine. In the Western fantasy, the elected Yanukovych government simply disappeared and was replaced by a U.S.-backed regime that then treated any resistance to its rule as “terrorism.” The new regime even dispatched neo-Nazi militias to kill ethnic Russians and other Ukrainians who resisted and thus were deemed “terrorists.”

The upside-down narrative of what happened in Ukraine has become the conventional wisdom in Official Washington and has been imposed on America’s European allies as well. According to The New York Times’ Orwellian storyline, anyone who notes the reality of a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine is engaging in “fantasy” and must be some kind of Putin pawn.

To the Times’ editors, all the justice is on their side, even as Ukraine’s new regime has deployed neo-Nazi militias to kill eastern Ukrainians who resisted the anti-Yanukovych coup. To the Times’ editors, the only possible reason to object to Ukraine’s new order is that the Russians must be bribing European dissidents to resist the U.S. version of events. The Times wrote:

The Europeans are indeed divided over the extent to which Russia, with its huge oil and gas resources, should be isolated, but Mr. Putin’s aggression so far has ensured their unity when it counts. In addition to extending existing sanctions, the allies have prepared a new round of sanctions that could be imposed if Russian-backed separatists seized more territory in Ukraine. …

Although Mr. Putin insisted on Friday that Russia had found the ‘inner strength’ to weather sanctions and a drop in oil prices, investment has slowed, capital has fled the country and the economy has been sliding into recession. Even the business forum was not all that it seemed: The heads of many Western companies stayed away for a second year.

An Orwellian World

In the up-is-down world that has become the New York Times’ editorial page, the Western coup-making on Russia’s border with the implicit threat of U.S. and NATO nuclear weapons within easy range of Moscow is transformed into a case of Russian aggression. The Times’ editors wrote: “One of the most alarming aspects of the crisis has been Mr. Putin’s willingness to brandish nuclear weapons.”

Though it would appear objectively that the United States was engaged in serious mischief-making on Russia’s border, the Times editors flip it around to make Russian military maneuvers – inside Russia – a sign of aggression against the West.

Given Mr. Putin’s aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, the allies have begun taking their own military steps. In recent months, NATO approved a rapid-reaction force in case an ally needs to be defended. It also pre-positioned some weapons in front-line countries, is rotating troops there and is conducting many more exercises. There are also plans to store battle tanks and other heavy weapons in several Baltic and Eastern European countries.

If he is not careful, Mr. Putin may end up facing exactly what he has railed against — a NATO more firmly parked on Russia’s borders — not because the alliance wanted to go in that direction, but because Russian behavior left it little choice. That is neither in Russia’s interest, nor the West’s.

There is something truly 1984-ish about reading that kind of propagandistic writing in The New York Times and other Western publications. But it has become the pattern, not the exception.

The Words of the ‘Demon’

Though the Times and the rest of the Western media insist on demonizing Putin, we still should hear the Russian president’s version of events, as simply a matter of journalistic fairness. Here is how Putin explained the situation to American TV talk show host Charlie Rose on June 19:

Why did we arrive at the crisis in Ukraine? I am convinced that after the so-called bipolar system ceased to exist, after the Soviet Union was gone from the political map of the world, some of our partners in the West, including and primarily the United States, of course, were in a state of euphoria of sorts. Instead of developing good neighborly relations and partnerships, they began to develop the new geopolitical space that they thought was unoccupied. This, for instance, is what caused the North Atlantic bloc, NATO, to go east, along with many other developments.

I have been thinking a lot about why this is happening and eventually came to the conclusion that some of our partners [Putin’s way of describing Americans] seem to have gotten the illusion that the world order that was created after World War II, with such a global center as the Soviet Union, does not exist anymore, that a vacuum of sorts has developed that needs to be filled quickly.

I think such an approach is a mistake. This is how we got Iraq, and we know that even today there are people in the United States who think that mistakes were made in Iraq. Many admit that there were mistakes in Iraq, and nevertheless they repeat it all in Libya. Now they got to Ukraine. We did not bring about the crisis in Ukraine. There was no need to support, as I have said many times, the anti-state, anti-constitutional takeover that eventually led to a sharp resistance on the territory of Ukraine, to a civil war in fact.

Where do we go from here?” Putin asked. “Today we primarily need to comply with all the agreements reached in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. … At the same time, I would like to draw your attention and the attention of all our partners to the fact that we cannot do it unilaterally. We keep hearing the same thing, repeated like a mantra – that Russia should influence the southeast of Ukraine. We are. However, it is impossible to resolve the problem through our influence on the southeast alone.

There has to be influence on the current official authorities in Kiev, which is something we cannot do. This is a road our Western partners have to take – those in Europe and America. Let us work together. … We believe that to resolve the situation we need to implement the Minsk agreements, as I said. The elements of a political settlement are key here. There are several. […]

The first one is constitutional reform, and the Minsk agreements say clearly: to provide autonomy or, as they say decentralization of power, let it be decentralization. This is quite clear, our European partners, France and Germany have spelled it out and we are quite satisfied with it, just as the representatives of Donbass [eastern Ukraine where ethnic Russians who had supported Yanukovych have declared independence] are. This is one component.

The second thing that has to be done – the law passed earlier on the special status of these territories – Luhansk and Donetsk, the unrecognized republics, should be enacted. It was passed, but still not acted upon. This requires a resolution of the Supreme Rada – the Ukrainian Parliament – which is also covered in the Minsk agreements. Our friends in Kiev have formally complied with this decision, but simultaneously with the passing by the Rada of the resolution to enact the law they amended the law itself … which practically renders the action null and void. This is a mere manipulation, and they have to move from manipulations to real action.

The third thing is a law on amnesty. It is impossible to have a political dialogue with people who are threatened with criminal persecution. And finally, they need to pass a law on municipal elections on these territories and to have the elections themselves. All this is spelled out in the Minsk agreements, this is something I would like to draw your attention to, and all this should be done with the agreement of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Unfortunately, we still see no direct dialogue, only some signs of it, but too much time has passed after the Minsk agreements were signed. I repeat, it is important now to have a direct dialogue between Luhansk, Donetsk and Kiev – this is missing.

Also missing is any objective and professional explanation of this crisis in the mainstream American press. Instead, The New York Times and other major U.S. news organizations have continued with their pattern of 1984-ish propaganda.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

June 23, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

“Lack of public interest” in Jewish nationalist crimes

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Yesh Din | June 23, 2015

We can see just how seriously the Israeli government takes nationalist crimes from the following case.

On July 26, 2010, a large group of Israeli marauders, whom eyewitnesses said came from the direction of the settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha, allegedly made their way to land belonging to the nearby Palestinian village of Burin. According to witnesses, the marauders burned hundreds of olive trees, some of them more than a century old. Furthermore, they attacked the villagers with stones and in a few cases with clubs, and stoned the houses of the village.

On that same day, some of the victims lodged a complaint with the Israeli police.

In August 2011, i.e. more than a year after the incident, the police informed Yesh Din that the case was turned to the attention of a prosecutor – that is the last we heard of the story for two years. In August 2013, the Shomron Prosecution Unit bothered to update us saying that they had closed the case back in December 2012. Three months later, we received the investigation material of a three-year-old incident, and tried to see whether there is any point in appealing the decision to close the case.

To the utter surprise of our attorneys, who were under the impression that the police closed the case for lack of evidence, the case files contained quite a bit of evidence. At the same time and place of the incident, three Border Policemen detained two Israeli civilians – A. and M. – after police officers testified that they saw them throwing stones at Palestinians.

The testimony of a cop, as well as the detention of suspects at the scene, is generally enough cause for prosecutorial action, particularly since the government takes nationalist crime seriously, as it keeps claiming. Therefore, we appealed the decision to close the case in December 2013, demanding of A. and M. be prosecuted on suspicion of throwing stones and assaulting an officer; we also demanded that the investigation into the question of who attacked one of our clients with an iron rod and set his olive grove on fire continue.

That’s when events took a surrealistic turn. In response to our appeal, the prosecution claimed that they are well aware that there is enough evidence to indict A. and M., but said it would not do so – since it sees no reason to interfere with the decision of the Police Prosecution Unit, which closed the case for lack of public interest.

According to the prosecution, since both sides engaged in stone throwing, and since there is no precise information about how the incident began, and since there was no equivalent interrogation of Palestinian suspects, there is simply no public interest in putting the Israeli marauders on trial.

To quote our sarcastic reply, sent in April by Attorney Noa Amrami:

“To sum, two Israeli civilians woke up one morning, arrived at the village of Burin and the homes and land of our clients, threw stones at them and beat them. Is there any doubt here as to who is the attacker and who the defender? With all due respect, we are not dealing with a kids’ squabble at school here, but with a criminal, methodical action of terrorizing the villagers of Burin, who suffer from the violence of the Israeli civilians residing in the region.”

What the government prefers to call nationalist crimes — and we call ideological crimes — has become a national scourge. As we emphasize here repeatedly, this is not an incident of random violence, but rather violence with a clear political goal: dispossessing Palestinians of their land so it may be transferred to Israeli civilians. The police’ failure at resolving these crimes is systematic and well documented: out of 1,045 investigation cases reviewed by Yesh Din in 2005-2014, only 7.4 percent turned into indictments. 85.2 percent of the cases were closed due to the police’s investigative failure, usually because the police failed in finding suspects or gathering enough evidence to try them.

The village of Burin is a stark example of criminal actions carried out by Israeli civilians: in the years 2005-2013 Yesh Din documented 103 incidents of criminal activity, mostly violent, by Israeli civilians against Palestinians from the village. Yesh Din documented a series of violent actions – both by Israeli forces and Israeli civilians – toward the villagers. If we were to take the official rhetoric about the need to fight ideological crime seriously, we would expect any incident in Burin would be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.

Yet in practice, even when the police detain suspects and the prosecution has enough evidence to indict them, the case is somehow closed. This time the excuse was “lack of public interest.” Bear this in mind during the next press conference when solemn promises that the police will do its best will be made.

We have asked that the appeal be reconsidered. We’ll keep you posted.

June 23, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

Druze Attack Israeli Ambulance Carrying Wounded Al-Nusra Gunmen

Al-Manar | June 23, 2015

A wounded takfiri of Al-Nusra Front terrorist group was killed on Monday when a group of Druze in Majdal Shams attacked an Israeli military ambulance taking him and his fellow terrorist to hospital for treatment, occupation police said.

“A crowd attacked an ambulance with stones near Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights,” as it was transporting two wounded gunmen operating in Syria, a police statement said, adding that one of the injured “died after the attack”.

It said that the second Al-Nusra gunman was in a serious condition, and that two soldiers who were also inside the vehicle had been lightly wounded.

The Zionist Public radio earlier said that around 200 Druze from Majdal Shams had pelted the ambulance with stones, forcing it to stop, and dragged the wounded gunmen from the vehicle.

Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident “very serious” and vowed those behind the attack would be held to account.

“We will not let anyone take the law into their hands and prevent the army from carrying out its mission,” he said in a statement, appealing for leaders in the Druze community to maintain calm.

The attack came amid growing concern for the fate of Syria’s Druze minority who are surrounded by takfiris operating in the country.

Tensions have flared in Druze areas of northern occupied Palestine and the Zionist-occupied Golan Heights after Al-Nusra Front takfiri group surrounded a government-held Druze village on the Syrian side last week.

Monday’s attack came hours after another group of Druze also blocked and threw stones at an army vehicle they believed was transferring wounded mercenaries for treatment, Zionist police said.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the first incident happened in the northern Zionist settlement of Horfish and that the Druze tried to check the identities of those inside the ambulance.

The Druze threw stones at the vehicle as it tried to drive off, she said, adding that one Druze was moderately injured in the incident.

Officials say there are 110,000 Druze in northern Occupied Palestine, and another 20,000 in the Zionist-occupied Syrian Golan.

June 23, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

UN Report Delegitimizes NY Times Hype on “Terror Tunnels”

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | June 22, 2015

The New York Times has had plenty to say about the infamous tunnels built from Gaza into Israel, providing us with photos, articles, videos and frequent talk of “terrorist attacks.” The presence of the tunnels, Times editors said, justified the bloody ground invasion of the strip last summer.

Today we find little mention of these threatening tunnels in a story by Jodi Rudoren about the just-released United Nations Human Rights Council report on the attacks. She tells us that the report “extensively discussed the tunnels militants had used to infiltrate Israeli territory,” but that is the end of it. [Note: this was expanded in later versions of the article.]

The report by the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict had this to say about the tunnels: “The commission observes that during the period under examination, the tunnels were used only to conduct attacks directed at IDF positions in Israel in the vicinity of the Green Line, which are legitimate military targets.”

It seems that the Times has scant interest in telling readers that tunnels were used for legitimate purposes. The discussions Rudoren mentions have little to say except that Israelis were scared by the tunnel reports; the final tally shows that not a single civilian was harmed because of them.

The Times, however, bought into the hype of the Israeli government and army. At the beginning of the ground invasion, it ran an editorial claiming that troops were in Gaza to stop rockets and “terrorist attacks via underground tunnels” even though the newspaper had yet to report even one such assault.

The absence of civilian casualties or even of a single attack, however, did not stop the Times from publishing three articles (here, here and here), two of them with Rudoren’s byline, and two videos (here and here), which focused on the tunnels, all of this in addition to the editorial.

It later followed up with a piece about Hezbollah tunnels reportedly running from Lebanon into northern Israel. Again, the Hezbollah story has only Israeli fear to report and no hard evidence of either tunnels or their use in attacks.

The UN report notes such Israeli anxieties in its Concluding Observations: “The increased level of fear among Israeli civilians resulting from the use of the tunnels was palpable.” This is the full extent of damage from the notorious “terror tunnels”—they frightened people.

When the Israeli army and government eagerly played up this supposed evidence of Palestinian “terrorist” intentions, The New York Times (and the United States government) followed suit, citing the tunnels as justification for the invasion. With so much hysteria emanating from the media and officialdom, it is no wonder Israeli civilians were expressing fear.

With its alarmist focus on the Gaza-Israel tunnels, the Times played the role of propagandist for Israel. Now, with the UN report, it could place the issue in a more valid perspective, but Rudoren’s piece suggests that the newspaper would rather avoid the facts in favor of a false Israeli narrative.

June 23, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | 2 Comments

Israel bans publication of details of report into church arson attack

MEMO | June 22, 2015

Israeli police yesterday obtained a court order banning the publication of details of the investigation into the burning of Tabgha’s Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish last week.

Large crowds participated in the Sunday mass in the church and the protest rally following it.

A Jerusalem magistrate’s court banned the publication of any details which could lead to the identification of any of the suspects.

The decision is valid until July 21st.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the General Security Service to investigate the attack on the church.

Since 2011, 17 hate crimes have been committed inside the Green Line in Jerusalem. The perpetrators of the 17 crimes, which targeted mosques and churches, have not been prosecuted.

According to a report published last week by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the early months of 2014 saw a 200 per cent increase in such crimes which were attributed to far right groups. The overwhelming majority of the criminals responsible for those attacks were not brought to trial.

Thousands of Arab Israelis protested on Sunday against the arson attack. The demonstrators called for the protection of Christian and Muslim holy sites from Jewish settlers. The former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, and Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo led a special Mass inside the church “in protest against the deliberate attack”.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing | , | 1 Comment

The CIA Can’t Keep Its Drone Propaganda Straight

By Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman | Just Security | June 20, 2015

This week, one government intelligence agency, after patiently and methodically tracking a terrorist leader for months through precise electronic surveillance, successfully targeted him for death by drone. Also this week, a government intelligence agency eliminated a terrorist leader through a drone strike without even knowing the leader was present, basing its decision to use lethal force on sophisticated analysis of militants’ patterns of life.

Bizarrely, this was the same agency, and this was the same terrorist leader.

On Tuesday, hardly before the dust in Yemen had settled, Bloomberg’s Eli Lake and Josh Rogin, relying on information provided by anonymous sources, supplied the public with the first narrative. In this version, the CIA killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi, “general manager” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, “by building a methodical case on his whereabouts over months from information collected through technical means.”

On Thursday, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, also relying on information provided by anonymous officials, supplied the second narrative. In this version, al-Wuhayshi was dead not because the CIA had tracked him down but because the Obama administration had “eased” certain drone-strike guidelines in Yemen and permitted the CIA to carry out “signature strikes” — strikes that take place without the agency’s specific knowledge of the identities of the individuals marked for death. 

Rarely do the rival motives of anonymous officials come so nakedly into view, and conflict, around a single event. One faction immediately tries to capitalize on the al-Wuhayshi strike as evidence of the CIA’s other-worldly tracking abilities, even in the fog of a confusing and fraught war in Yemen. At the same time, another faction exploits the same strike to make a public case for expanding the use of a controversial targeting technique that the Obama administration earlier said, in an effort to assuage public concerns about the lawfulness of the drone program, it would retire.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” is the “test of a first-rate intelligence.” Here, though, the government’s conflicting stories seem something less than first-rate or intelligent — they seem amateurish and ham-handed. They also seem to suggest a total lack of concern for the possibility that anyone will ever hold officials accountable for their statements.

Lake, Rogin, and Miller work in a field in which reliance on anonymous sources is probably unavoidable and sometimes even illuminating. In this instance, though, they can’t all be right, and their competing stories serve as another reminder — in case any were needed — that the statements of anonymous intelligence officials are often efforts to mislead and manipulate, and that much of the “information” the government has provided the public about the drone program is merely propaganda.

Regrettably, this is unlikely to change anytime soon. A federal district court judge — the same judge who earlier dismissed a constitutional case relating to the government’s killing of four Americans in Yemen — ruled on Thursday that the CIA isn’t legally obliged to release any information about the drone program it hasn’t already released. For the time being at least, the CIA will continue to decide what the public knows about the CIA’s activities — even if it can’t keep its own story straight.

About the Authors

is Deputy Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union and Director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. Follow him on Twitter (@JameelJaffer).

is a teaching fellow and supervising attorney in the Technology Law & Policy Clinic at NYU School of Law. Follow him on Twitter (@brettmaxkaufman).

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

JVP and Alison Weir – A Dissident View

By Ned Rosenberg* | June 21, 2015

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has disassociated from a number of activists working for the liberation of Palestinians, including Gilad Atzmon, Greta Berlin (founder of Free Gaza) and now Alison Weir, who seeks to disseminate unbiased information about Israel/Palestine (IP) through her website If Americans Knew.org and presentations.  JVP’s recent public statement concerning Weir specifically, credited to Anonymous, is a confused document.  I examine some parts of this statement.   Gilad Atzmon has commented insightfully on this public statement already and I will simply try to add to his work.

Alison’s mistake was her appearance on ‘Clay Douglas’s white supremacist radio show’ five years ago. JVP’s statement throws down the anti-racist gauntlet “… Clay Douglas is concerned primarily with the survival of the White race and sees malign Jewish influence everywhere. His racist, anti-Jewish, and anti-gay rhetoric can be found across the front pages of his multiple websites.”  Yet, transcribing this pronouncement suggests a very different racism: “JVP is concerned primarily with the survival of the Jewish race and sees malign gentile influence everywhere. JVP’s racist, anti-gentile rhetoric can be found across its website, including ideological statements condemning “Americans,” and assaults on other activists who step outside its  boundaries.” Alison is further cited for failing to defend Jews when Douglas launched into The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As Gilad notes, Alison has no duty to defend Jews, especially given her devotion to Americans, as such. In JVP’s estimate, Alison’s error is all the more grievous since “Americans” are now the bad guys regarding IP, an important distinction in rejecting Alison’s work.

Unsurprisingly, divorce from these activists is not the end of the line. The organization continues to assault them with behind-the-scenes character assassinations and interventions to forestall their speaking engagements. Alison Weir reports several such instances of JVP interference and Atzmon documents the outspoken attempt of the Denver JVP to stop his appearance there. These efforts are disturbing to some JVP members who did not envision interfering with the free speech of other activists dedicated to Palestine at the behest of JVP’s Jewish board. JVP is now in the dirty business of judging, condemning and punishing Palestinian allies for not treating Jews or “Jewishness” with political correctness. This is probably the fate of all self-identified “Jewish” groups

As Gilad notes, JVP finds something suspicious in Alison Weir’s statement of intent for her website. This harmless statement

[Alison Weir] founded an organization to be directed by Americans without personal or family ties to the region who would research and actively disseminate accurate information to the American public.

is identified as racist because of its exclusions, a very cheap shot, in my opinion. And what then would we think of this hypothetical version:

Anonymous founded an organization to be directed by Jews with personal and family ties to the region who would research and actively disseminate accurate information to the American public.

Alison errs by insisting on diverse American researchers instead of Jews. Maybe this is just a labor dispute.

JVP’s statement proposes a progressive program which does not begin or end with IP but rather seeks continuation and long life by engaging other cases of injustices credited to, and sustained by US policies and practices across the globe. It is not happenstance that this expanded political program focused on global injustices has the virtue of placing the injustice of IP in the company of other troubling injustices credited to the craven, acquisitive very bad “American” people. The American people, after all, benefit from these abiding injustices, as in Saudi Arabia now or throughout South America routinely over the last century. JVP would like us to believe that Americans must also benefit from US support for the criminal Zionist regime in Israel, as though this support issues from the same base motives as the other instances. Were this true, then the American people are proper enablers of the oppression of Palestinians. In this schema, the American dog properly wags the American dog.

Unfortunately, the model doesn’t explain much about IP. Israel is not sustained by the American people for the sake of the benefits accruing to them because there are no such benefits. It’s an interesting game, if one has time, to try to find such a benefit. Scholars have given up in disgust while others venture that America seeks some unspecified strategic position from its support of Israel, but every such framing is really unconvincing. On net, Israel is just a very expensive adjunct to American power. American taxpayers fork over truly astonishing sums to the Zionists, directly and indirectly, and derive no benefit from so doing.

JVP’s broad attribution of cause to the bad Americans begs the question. We know why the US supports and sustains this particular injustice. The US does so because it is subjected to an army of well-heeled Zionist fellow travelers who work to influence the Congress, mostly through campaign contributions and other incentives, to provide such support. Certainly, it is very expensive to impact US legislators, media and institutions, but then again, consider the largesse of US taxpayers. The army consists of American Jews, American Jewish civil organizations, most American Jewish temples and synagogues, Zionist organizations, Christian Evangelicals and some defense contractors who have a bottomless interest in conflict. The model which attributes injustice in IP to “Americans”, their perfidy and exploitation, is disingenuous and indefensible. The proximal immediate cause for American support of Israel is the Jewish Lobby plain and simple. The pro Israel tail wags this American dog.

The effort to offload responsibility for the crimes of Zionism onto the “American people” is not just inadequate, but repugnant as well. Zionism is a creature of the Jewish people, not the American people. The Jewish people, its organizations and “helpers” are important accessories to the Zionist program and share responsibility for its dubious successes, especially its success in the obliteration of another people.  Agents of the Jewish people are responsible for US support and this is well known and well documented. JVP’s theory, however, might be construed to provide fellow American Jews relief from the onus of the “Jewish power” accusation, the mere suggestion of which is considered anti-semitic no doubt. This nifty “two step” won’t do: The American people, their legislators, their institutions have been thoroughly compromised by the Lobby and JVP will not get away with doubletalk about this.

By taking sides in the struggle in IP “as Jews”, American Jews created a political identity out of their alleged ethnicity. It is therefore fair to suggest that Jewish power and its allies continue to tie the US to Israel, continue to tie, in JVP terms attributed to Clay,  US white supremacist racism —  specifically Jewish supremacist racism  —  to Israeli supremacist racism and its unacceptable consequences. The disingenuous attempt to sidestep the relationship of Jews worldwide to Zionism in our time, to subsume this powerful dynamic under the umbrella of American interests, to undertake such a huge displacement of moral/ethical culpability, places JVP squarely in the pack of other Jewish organizations who fret about “what’s good for the Jews” first and foremost and which end up defending the Zionist “no choice” sanctimony.

As Atzmon demonstrates, JVP does not escape racism by proclamation. It does not free itself from racist taint simply by saying it is opposed to all racism, not when it continues to act according to its own racist conceits, e.g. Alison Weir somehow owes it to the Jews to defend them against Clay Douglas or when it condemns white Americans for caring about white Americans, while focusing itself so obviously on what is good for the Jews.  As currently constituted, JVP is not fit to join, much less lead, any progressive coalition because it will not face Jewish responsibility for IP forthrightly.

*The Author of this article is an American JVP activist. Ned Rosenberg isn’t his real name. Being a dissident voice within JVP is proven to be a dangerous adventure.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , | 1 Comment

Ariel University chemical waste threatens agriculture in Selfit

MEMO | June 22, 2015

Chemical waste produced by the laboratories of Ariel University, in the illegal West Bank settlement of the same name, threatens Palestinian agricultural land in Salfit, locals reported.

According to the locals, Ariel University pours its chemical waste into the settlement’s sewer network which runs into the agricultural lands owned by Palestinians in Selfit thus polluting the groundwater, soil and air.

Environmental researcher Khalid Al-Maaly said Ariel University does not take the environment in the surrounding areas into account when pouring hazardous materials into the land turning it into a dumping ground because the waste flows without treatment.

According to Al-Maaly, nearly 20,000 students are enrolled at the university.

He called on the environmental institutions to visit Salfit and witness the suffering caused by the university’s sewage.

Al-Maaly stressed that the presence of Ariel University on Selfit’s land is contrary to international law which considers this area occupied and therefore state institutions cannot be built on it.

Last month, Israeli authorities expanded the university’s campus by constructing new laboratories and student dorms over lands confiscated from Palestinians in Selfit.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt builds trench along Gaza border

Ma’an – June 22, 2015

CAIRO – The Egyptian military has constructed a trench along the border of Rafah to prevent smugglers from operating in the area, the army said.

The trench is 20 meters deep and 10 meters wide and is located two kilometers from the border with Gaza outside of Rafah city.

The new infrastructure — part of a larger buffer zone being constructed in the area — is intended to prevent smugglers from driving their vehicles to the opening of tunnels along the border.

A military official said that the army plans to expand the trench and install watchtowers along its length.

Work on the buffer zone on the Egyptian side began in February 2014, but was at the time slated to extend only about 300 meters in urban areas and 500 meters in rural areas.

After a bombing killed more than 30 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai in October 2014, however, the military stepped up a campaign to build the buffer zone amid accusations of Hamas support for the group that carried out the attack.

Hamas, which denies Egyptian accusations, has suffered poor relations with the Egyptian government ever since the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood, with whom they were closely allied, was thrown out of power in July 2013.

Deteriorating relations between Egypt and Hamas come at a high price to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents for whom the smuggling tunnels have served as a lifeline to the outside world since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal enclave in 2007.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

NATO plans 40,000-strong rapid response force in E. Europe

RT | June 22, 2015

NATO’s rapid response Spearhead Force in Europe might reach 40,000 troops, a tenfold growth from the initial 4,000-strong force deployed last year, the military alliance’s chief said. Most of these troops will be stationed near Russian borders.

“NATO defense ministers … [will] make a decision to further increase the strength and capacity of the 13,000-strong NATO Response Force (NRF) to 30,000 or 40,000 troops,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.

The decision is to be officially announced during NATO’s defense ministers meeting on June 24-25 in Brussels.

The troops will be under the command of 6 HQs to be stationed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The Spearhead Force will include Special Forces and rapid response teams, enforced with marine and air components.

A new rapid reaction force ready to be deployed within 48 hours was initially intended to consist of 4,000 troops.

The Spearhead Force has already held its first military drills codenamed Noble Jump in Poland. The war games became “the biggest reinforcement” of defense since Cold War times, said Stoltenberg, adding that the alliance is facing challenges from “the behavior of a more assertive” Russia.

Last week, Stoltenberg criticized Russia for announced plans to add to its nuclear arsenal 40 newly made intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015.

“This nuclear saber-rattling of Russia is unjustified. It’s destabilizing and it’s dangerous. This is something which we are addressing, and it’s also one of the reasons we are now increasing the readiness and preparedness of our forces,” Stoltenberg said during a news briefing in Brussels last Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement about further development of the strategic nuclear armed forces in response to a report that the US is seriously considering deployment of heavy weapons to new NATO member states on permanent basis.

The chill in Russia-US relations already resemble the worst years of the Cold War, yet experts warn that further escalation of the Ukrainian crisis could lead to an open standoff between Moscow and Washington.

If Washington opts to send armaments to Kiev authorities, as some Republicans congressmen want, Moscow would react immediately, experts quoted in US media believe.

Washington should pursue a diplomatic solution for its conflict with Russia, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told The New York Times.

“The US-Russia conflict is not going to be resolved in weeks or months,” McFaul said. “This challenge will take years, even decades.”

Read more

NATO conducting biggest beef up of defenses since Cold War – alliance chief

Moscow will respond to NATO approaching Russian borders ‘accordingly’ – Putin

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

There is no renewables revolution in China. Here are the numbers that show this

By Robert Wilson | Carbon Counter | June 17, 2015

Last year China installed more new wind and solar capacity than any country in history. This is a fact, and it has led some to talk of China being a “renewables powerhouse” and of there being a “renewables revolution”.

But out of context this fact can be much less impressive than it really is.

Let me put it into context using the most recent data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

Over the last decade China’s primary energy consumption grew by 1398 million tonnes of equivalent (Mtoe). Though, if history is a guide this figure will eventually be revised upwards.

The annual average increase then was 140 Mtoe. For a comparison, Britain’s annual primary energy consumption was 188 Mtoe last year.

China’s growth rate was actually higher in the early 2010s, but has slowed recently (probably due to a worsening economic situation.

But that’s the context for judging the growth of wind and solar in China: 140 Mtoe of (mostly coal) energy added per year for the last decade.

How does China’s world leading wind and solar build out compare with this?

In total, China got 42.4 Mtoe from wind and solar in 2014. In other words, the total production of energy from wind and solar energy is less than one third of a year’s of growth in primary energy consumption.

When you look at annual growth things are even clearer. Wind and solar grew by 6.97 Mtoe last year. This is a mere 5% of the average total growth in primary energy.

China_re

There is no renewables revolution in China. So, as always, I recommend that people spend some time with data sources such as the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and less time reading pundits and the instant experts of Twitter.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Tory crackdown on Freedom of Information sparks transparency fears

RT | June 22, 2015

Conservative ministers are plotting a clampdown on Britain’s Freedom of Information (FoI) laws, a move that observers warn could signal the death knell for Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to cultivate a new wave of transparency in Westminster.

Justice Secretary Michael Gove is attempting to make it considerably more difficult for citizens to seek information from state bodies, the Financial Times revealed Monday.

Sources told the newspaper that a number of proposals have been floated and Gove is currently considering how they might be implemented.

Giving ministers the power to veto the publication of certain documents has been tabled, as was attempted when Prince Charles’ notorious “black spider” letters were recently published.

Altering government officials’ method of calculating the cost of sourcing government data has also been proposed. Both measures could seriously impact on Britons’ right to know, bolstering state secrecy in the process, critics warn.

These legal changes will also serve to create “think time” and redaction costs that will considerably drive up the cost of FoI requests. Transparency advocates warn they will leave government data inaccessible for many.

The planned crackdown on citizens’ right to know contrasts starkly with Cameron’s transparency rhetoric four years ago. Writing in the Telegraph, the PM promised the electorate a far-reaching “revolution in [government] transparency.”

“Information is power,” he wrote in 2011.

“It lets people hold the powerful to account, giving them the tools they need to take on politicians and bureaucrats.”

The state’s FoI Act was implemented in 2005, under Tony Blair’s Labour government. Current plans to reform the legislation will likely receive strong opposition from Labour Party and Scottish Nationalist Party MPs.

Critics maintain Westminster’s quiet assault on Britons’ right to access government data has already begun.

A number of Downing Street practices have recently surfaced, which reduce Whitehall’s ability to uphold the public interest.

On Tuesday, it emerged that emails sent from computers in 10 Downing Street are deleted within three months as a rule. The practice was leaked to the FT by a number of ex-Downing Street employees. It was reportedly put in place 10 years ago under Blair’s government.

One former Number 10 worker told the FT the system breeds dysfunctionality in Whitehall.

Speaking to the newspaper, director of Britain’s Campaign for Freedom of Information said citizens’ right to access information freely is under threat.

He warned many of the proposals being discussed by Tory ministers “could have had severe consequences for the right to know.”

The campaign called upon Labour MPs Jenny Chapman, Dan Jarvis, and Stephen Twigg to challenge Gove’s transparency crackdown plans in parliament on Tuesday.

June 22, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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