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Arthur Topham vs Theodore Nathan Kaufman

By Gilad Atzmon | November 13, 2015

Arthur Topham, the man behind Radical Press, was found guilty yesterday on one count of communicating statements that “wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group.”

Some Canadians such as Harry Abrams, former B.C. representative for the League of Human Rights for B’nai Brith Canada, were thrilled. “Canada says that you should be able to walk in peace and not be fearful to be victimized, to be vilified, because of who you are or who you were born as,” Abrams told CBC News. But Topham, who has been married to a Jewish woman for over 37 years, doesn’t criticise or vilify Jews for who they are or the family into which they were born. He actually criticises some Jews, like Abrams, who subscribe to some particularly noxious tribally exclusive politics and ideology. Topham must have wrongly assumed that in a Western society, all forms of politics and ideologies, including Jewish ones, must be subject to criticism.

Topham’s case is full of surprises. Topham was found guilty on ‘count one’ but not guilty on ‘count two.’ But the two counts are pretty much identical in meaning, content and context. Both counts refer to “communication of statements, other than in private conversation, that wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group, people of the Jewish religion or ethnic origin, contrary to Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code.“ The two counts differ only in the dates they cover.

Some commentators and legal experts speculated yesterday what led the jury to form such an inconsistent ruling.  The documents, books and texts disseminated by Topham on his site (The Radical Press ) within the period covered by both counts are all widely available to the Canadian public on many on-line outlets including amazon.ca. The one document on Topham’s site that has not been widely available recently is: ‘Israel Must Perish!’

In fact, ‘Israel Must Perish!’ is a hateful text. It promotes hatred against an ‘identifiable group.’ The book advocates the genocide through sterilization of all Israelis and the territorial dismemberment of Zion. The text is a deeply problematic pamphlet that demands the strongest possible condemnation, except that it wasn’t really written by Arthur Topham. ‘Israel Must Perish!’ was actually written by a politically driven Zionist Jew named Theodore N. Kaufman in 1941 under the title ‘Germany Must Perish!’ While ‘Germany Must Perish!’, is advocating the extinction of all Germans, Topham’s ‘Israel Must Perish!’ is clearly a satire, quoting as it does,verbaitm from Kaufman’s original (He substitutes the word ‘Israel’ for ‘Germany’ and ‘Zionist(s) for German(s).)

Topham’s satire, published in 2011, was obviously intended to make Israelis and Zionists reflect on their politics following a decade of extensive Jewish lobby advocacy of more and more immoral interventionist wars (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran etc). ‘Israeli Must Perish!’ is a mirror placed in front of the forgotten Kaufman’s ‘Germany Must Perish!’ Presumably, Topham saw some applicability of a critique of Germany in 1941 to Israel and global Zionism today.

If history is the attempt to narrate the past as we move along, then the return to Kaufman’s text couldn’t be more timely and essential. In an interview in the September 26, 1941, issue of The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, Kaufman attempted to justify his plan for the “sterilization of all Germans”. He said:

“I believe, that the Jews have a mission in life. They must see to it that the nations of the world get together in one vast federation. ‘Union Now’ is the beginning of this. Slowly but surely the world will develop into a paradise. We will have perpetual peace. And the Jews will do the most to bring about this confederation, because they have the most to gain. … Let us sterilize all Germans and wars of world domination will come to an end!” (Harold U. Ribalow (September 26, 1941). “Hitler Will Be Nothing But A Rosebud Says Author ‘Germany Must Perish!’. One Man’s Plan For Peace Forever”. The Canadian Jewish Chronicle. p. 5. Retrieved December 4, 2011.)

At the time, Kaufman’s book was widely quoted in Germany as evidence of a Jewish plan for genocide against the German people. Goebbels wrote,

“Thanks to the Jew Kaufman, we Germans know only too well what to expect in case of defeat.”

American journalist Howard K. Smith was in Germany when Germany Must Perish! became known. He wrote:

“No man has ever done so irresponsible a disservice to the cause his nation is fighting and suffering for than Nathan Kaufman. His half-baked brochure provided the Nazis with one of the best light artillery pieces they have, for, used as the Nazis used it, it served to bolster up that terror which forces Germans who dislike the Nazis to support, fight and die to keep Nazism alive …”( Howard K. Smith, Last Train from Berlin (London: Phoenix Pr., 1942), 134)

When the Jews of Hanover were evicted on September 8, 1941, the local authorities cited Kaufman’s book as one of the reasons. The well respected German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte argued recently that the German reaction to ‘Germany Must Perish!’ supports his view that WWII was a genuine response to German knowledge of a worldwide Jewish plot.

And yet, Kaufman’s book was concealed for 7 decades. It didn’t fit into the Zionist Shoah narrative. It was, in fact, Arthur Topham and his crude satire that brought Kaufman’s hateful text to our attention.

Topham’s crime is obvious, the radical man is guilty of unveiling some shameful corners in Jewish past, exposing some documents Jews would prefer to keep deep under the carpet.

If Topham has to be penalised for contextualizing Israeli present within a Jewish historical continuum, we may have to accept it. Within the western ethos often enough the brave truth teller pays heavily for other people’s sins. But we should never forget that that within the same Western ethos, the truth has the unique capacity to resurrect itself.

Make sure to save a copy of Germany Must Perish! onto your HD before it is removed by the Canadian thought police: http://www.radicalpress.com/?page_id=1314

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

The NY Times: In Praise of Israel’s Killing Squads

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | November 13, 2015

In The New York Times it’s all part of a high stakes game, the good guys (Israelis) against the bad guys (Palestinians), and this time the good guys won, taking the prize through clever and audacious disguises.

Such is the tone of Isabel Kershner’s story today that tells of yet another outrage by Israel: Special forces invaded a hospital in Hebron, held the staff at gunpoint, killed a visitor point blank and kidnapped a patient recovering from surgery.

Condemnation of this atrocity and other recent attacks on Palestinian hospitals has come from Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross and a half dozen United Nations agencies, but none of their criticisms are included in the Times story.

Kershner, instead, only includes objections from Palestinians, and in the context of her writing, they come off as sore losers who would be expected to complain, in any case.

Her story opens with a description of the raid, as undercover Israelis disguised as Arabs enter the hospital, pushing a “pregnant woman” in a wheelchair, and it ends with several paragraphs looking back at other Israeli operations that involved masquerades: a 1972 action to foil a hijacking, a “famous” revenge assassination by former prime minister Ehud Barak, and a raid in Dubai to kill a Hamas commander.

In other words, it was all part of an illustrious Israeli tradition.

The Palestinians are described as “livid,” a term that implies a somewhat excessive rage and carries a hint of derision. It is not a neutral term in news writing, but Times editors apparently had no problem allowing it to stand.

The Israeli operation, on the other hand, is characterized as something of a breeze, not the bloody and outrageous affair that it was. They entered the hospital and then “about 10 minutes later they were on their way out.” They “whisked away” the suspect, Azzam Shalalda, leaving his cousin, Abdallah Shalalda, dead on the floor of the hospital room.

In describing a similar raid on a Nablus hospital last month, Kershner writes that Israeli forces “snatched” a suspect in a fatal shooting. Such vocabulary implies a kind of cinematic caper, devoid of real life complications.

Missing from her story is any mention of international humanitarian law, which forbids such violations of hospital and health care facilities. Amnesty International also noted that the killing of Abdallah Shalalda appeared to be a deliberate extrajudicial execution, and Tikun Olam blogger, Richard Silverstein, wrote that the undercover agents had entered the hospital expressly to kill Abdallah and arrest his cousin.

Kershner, however, is quick to quote the military, which claimed that “a suspect attacked the force, which responded to the assault and fired on the attacker.” Only later in her story does she note that hospital officials said he was shot not during an attack but when he emerged from a bathroom. Amnesty stated that his wounds were consistent with a deliberate execution.

Her story glosses over the recent raids on a Jerusalem hospital and UN demands that they cease. (Israel, however, has continued to invade the facility.)

In the eyes of Kershner (and the Times), it seems that there is no problem with Israeli violations of international law when the state wants to apprehend a Palestinian suspect. She writes that the raid was Israel’s way of saying  that “there will be no safe haven for Palestinian suspects.”

By contrast, the Times has never bothered to report that Israel knows the identity of Jewish settlers responsible for burning to death three members of a Palestinian family but refuses to arrest them because it might reveal intelligence methods.

The terrible irony of this double standard is beyond the radar of Isabel Kershner and the Times editors. On the contrary, they present Israel’s lawless and bloody actions as evidence of ingenuity and daring, celebrating a “victory” over the ultimately helpless and endlessly oppressed Palestinians.

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Carpetbagging ‘Crony Capitalism’ in Ukraine

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | November 13, 2015

Last December, before being named Ukraine’s Finance Minister, American-born Natalie Jaresko accepted Ukrainian citizenship as a prerequisite for getting the job, but – in almost one year since – she has not renounced her U.S. citizenship, according to U.S. records and a Ukrainian official.

The Ukrainian Constitution allows for only “single citizenship,” meaning that a foreigner who is granted Ukrainian citizenship must terminate his or her previous citizenship and must submit a document attesting to that renunciation “within two years from the date of granting of Ukrainian citizenship,” said Mariia Budiakova, press secretary of the Ukraine Embassy in Washington.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

The U.S. government publishes quarterly the names of Americans who have renounced their U.S. citizenship and those names — printed in the Federal Register since last December — do not include Jaresko, who has chosen to remain a U.S. citizen, a fact confirmed by Budiakova.

Jaresko appears to be exploiting the two-year period for submitting proof of renouncing her prior citizenship so she can hold her powerful Ukrainian position for two years with the option of then dropping her Ukrainian citizenship and keeping her U.S. citizenship.

But that manipulation of the process creates the appearance of a carpetbagger with dual loyalties and reinforces the image, highlighted by Russian media, of a Ukrainian government being run behind the scenes by the United States and other outsiders.

There’s also the possibility that Jaresko is exploiting this opportunity to learn all she can about the inner workings of the Ukrainian government to position herself to quit her post after two years, drop her temporary Ukrainian citizenship, and become a well-paid consultant with valuable contacts inside Ukraine’s Finance Ministry.

Such opportunism would fit with Jaresko’s history. Though hailed as the face of Ukrainian “reform,” Jaresko has long used her official connections to enrich herself, an inconvenient truth that undercuts the U.S. government’s desired image for the regime in Kiev as committed to the fight against corruption.

Prior to her appointment as Finance Minister, Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat, headed the U.S.-taxpayer-financed Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), created in the 1990s to help jump-start an investment economy for Ukraine and Moldova. WNISEF was overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

WNISEF officials were limited to $150,000 in compensation a year, but Jaresko maneuvered to exceed that total, ultimately collecting more than $2 million a year by shifting management of WNISEF to her own private company, Horizon Capital, and arranging to get lucrative bonuses when selling off investments, even as the overall WNISEF fund was losing money, according to official records.

For instance, Jaresko collected $1.77 million in bonuses in 2013, according to WNISEF’s latest available filing with the Internal Revenue Service. In her financial disclosure forms with the Ukrainian government, she reported earning $2.66 million in 2013 and $2.05 million in 2014, thus amassing a sizeable personal fortune while investing U.S. taxpayers’ money supposedly to benefit the Ukrainian people.

Meanwhile, WNISEF continued to hemorrhage money, shrinking from its original $150 million to $89.8 million in the 2013 tax year, according to the IRS filing. WNISEF reported that the bonuses to Jaresko and other corporate officers were based on profitable exits from some investments even if the overall fund was losing money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich.”]

Hailed as ‘Reformer’

Still, Jaresko and other foreigners who were brought in to fill key positions in the current Ukrainian regime were described as “technocrats” whose only interest was to bring good government to Ukraine, a country long saddled with institutionalized corruption. Jaresko was hailed as a Ukrainian “reformer” who – in the words of New York Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman – “shares our values.”

But Jaresko’s business history offers little reason for optimism about Ukraine rooting out official self-interest. Indeed, Jaresko would seem to fit the bill as a classic “crony capitalist,” someone who takes advantage of government connections to line his or her own pockets. Her failure to expeditiously comply with the Ukrainian Constitution and renounce her U.S. citizenship reinforces the view that she is more opportunist than reformer.

According to recent accounts from Ukraine, official corruption remains a deep-seated problem more than a year-and-a-half after the February 2014 overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was lambasted by the Western media for having a sauna in his official residence, the sauna becoming emblematic of his alleged abuse of power.

Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Prior to his ouster, Yanukovych and his government were targeted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which is funded by USAID, the same organization that hired Jaresko to run WNISEF, and Open Society, a foundation headed by George Soros, a hedge-fund billionaire who has profited off the financial destabilization of fragile governments.

OCCRP’s selective outrage over “corruption” raises questions as to whether it is a genuinely journalistic operation or a propaganda front for the U.S. government and Western business interests targeting regimes that don’t play ball. After all, Jaresko’s multi-million-dollar profiting off her relationship with the U.S.-taxpayer-funded WNISEF would seem to be a starker example of corruption than Yanukovych’s sauna.

The new U.S.-backed regime in Kiev also has enacted “reforms” that slash pensions, energy subsidies and other social programs (reducing the living standards of average Ukrainians) while moving to privatize Ukraine’s economy and encouraging large Western corporations to exploit the country’s resources including “fracking” for shale gas in eastern Ukraine.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Ukraine has Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet, an inviting target especially since other European nations, such as Great Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria, have resisted fracking technology because of environmental concerns. An economically supine Ukraine is presumably less able to say no. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Beneath the Ukraine Crisis: Shale Gas.”]

This process in Ukraine also appears to have benefited from some greasing of the skids by hiring well-connected Americans besides Jaresko. Just three months after Yanukovych’s ouster, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings, appointed Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors. Burisma – a shadowy Cyprus-based company – also lined up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.

As Time magazine reported, “Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.”

According to investigative journalism inside Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the U.S.-backed “reform” regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine (though Kolomoisky was eventually ousted from that post in a power struggle over control of UkrTransNafta, Ukraine’s state-owned oil pipeline operator).

Also, regarding Western energy interests, on Dec. 13, 2013, when neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland was pushing for Yanukovych’s ouster, she reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations” at a conference sponsored by Chevron. She even stood next to the company’s logo.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013.

The Carpetbaggers

Jaresko was only one of several foreigners recruited by President Petro Poroshenko to fill key positions in the Ukrainian government, with these officials also granted instant Ukrainian citizenship. Along with Jaresko’s appointment last December, Poroshenko brought onboard Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavicius, a partner in investment firm East Capital, as Economy Minister and Georgian Aleksander Kvitashvili, who had served as Georgia’s health minister and labor minister, as Health Minister.

Last May, Poroshenko appointed ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saaskashvili to be governor of Ukraine’s restive Odessa region. Saaskashvili, who faces charges in Georgia for alleged abuse of power during his presidency, also received overnight Ukrainian citizenship but — unlike Jaresko — he announced that he had dropped his Georgian citizenship, a move that short-circuited his possible extradition back to Georgia.

Another foreigner whose appointment raised eyebrows was the choice of Estonian Jaanika Merilo to be put in charge of attracting foreign investments. Merilo was a Jaresko associate known more for her personal ties to wealthy business tycoons, such as English businessman and investor Richard Branson, and kinky online photos than her skills as a technocrat.

Janika Merilo, an Estonian brought into the Ukrainian government to oversee foreign investments. (From her Facebook page via Zero Hedge)

Janika Merilo, an Estonian brought into the Ukrainian government to oversee foreign investments. (From her Facebook page via Zero Hedge)

The message from the new regime in Kiev may be that Ukraine is open for Western investment, but a less charitable interpretation is that Ukraine is open for unbridled exploitation led by foreign operatives with a history of self-dealing who are overseeing another — and possibly far grander — era of official corruption.

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).

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Corruption | Leave a comment

The race theories of Jabotinsky, a central figure of Zionism

ZULFAHMED | December 13, 2011

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s race views are likely quite informed by his father, Benzion Netanyahu, who was Secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whose race theories are the subject of this note.  Benzion Netanyahu was interviewed by Ma’ariv in April 2009, a few months after the Operation Cast Lead which killed more than 1,100 people including deliberate murder of more than 300 children, and his comments included the following:

Prof. Netanyahu: “The Jews and the Arabs are like two goats facing each other on a narrow bridge. One must jump to the river – but that involves a danger of death. The strong goat will make the weaker one jump… and I believe the Jewish power will prevail.”

Q: What does the Arab’s jump mean?

A: “That they won’t be able to face [anymore] the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won’t be able to exist, and they will run away from here. But it all depends on the war, and whether we will win the battles with them.”

Q: I suppose you don’t believe in the peace process.

A: “I don’t see any signs that the Arabs want peace… we will face fierce attacks from the Arabs, and we must react firmly. If we don’t, they will go on and Jews will start leaving the country… we just handed them a strong blow in Gaza, and they still bargain with us over one hostage… if we gave them a blow that would really hurt them, they would have given us Gilad Shalit back.”

Q: Operation “cast Lead” was one of the worst blows we handed on a civilian population.

A: “That’s not enough. It’s possible that we should have hit harder.”

Q: You don’t like the Arabs, to say the least.

A: “The bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases.
The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetuate war.”

Q: Is there any hope of peace?

A: “Out of agreement? No. the other side might stay in peace if it understands that doing anything [else] will cause it enormous pain.

The two states solution doesn’t exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews.”

Q: So what’s the solution?

A: “No solution but force… strong military rule. Any outbreak will bring upon the Arabs enormous suffering. We shouldn’t wait for a big mutiny to start, but rather act immediately with great force to prevent them from going on…

If it’s possible, we should conquer any disputed territory in the land of Israel. Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war. We should conquer Gaza, and parts of the Galil, and the Golan. This will bring upon us a bloody war, since war is difficult for us – we don’t have a lot of territory, while the Arabs have lots of space to retreat to. But that’s the only way to survive here.”

There is valuable experience [on this matter] we don’t pay notice to. I mean the Ottoman rule over the Arabs. The Turks ruled over the Arabs for 400 years, and there was peace and quiet everywhere. The Arabs hated the Ottomans, but every little thing they did brought mass killings and hanging in towns squares. They were hanging people in Damascus, and Izmir… every town had hanging posts in its center…the Arabs were so badly beaten, they didn’t dare revolt. Naturally, I don’t recommend the use of hangings as a show of force like the Turks did, I just want to show that the only thing that might move the Arabs from the rejectionist position is force.”

Note that one is tempted to think that perhaps Benzion Netanyahu, who is quite old, might be holding views that are disconnected from the younger Israelis but this would be quite wrong. Here is a fairly random conversation between Zionists translated into English:

The controversy of considering Zionism a form of racism had played out in the UN, with the only UN resolution ever to be retracted was precisely one which agreed that Zionism is a form of racism, after which Israel made its revocation the precondition to participation in the Madrid Peace Conference. Specifically, UN Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. The resolution was revoked by Resolution 46/86 on December 16, 1991. In the history of the UN, this is the only resolution that has ever been revoked.  So that’s the status of the issue in UN, but it is interesting nonetheless to consider the views of Jabotinsky on race:

So it is interesting to look at the ideas of race in one of the pioneering figures of Zionism, Ze’ev Jabotinksy (from Lenni Brenner: The Iron Wall)

Jabotinsky was indeed a believer in the “very much besmirched” term, insisting in a letter written in 1914 that,

the source of national feeling … lies in a man’s blood … in his racio-physical type, and in that alone … a man’s spiritual outlooks are primarily determined by his physical structure … For that reason we do not believe in spiritual assimilation. It is inconceivable, from the physical point of view, that a Jew born to a family of pure Jewish blood … can become adapted to the spiritual outlooks of a German or a Frenchman … He maybe wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish … The spiritual assimilation of peoples whose blood is different is impossible … In order to become truly assimilated he must change his body. He must become one of them in blood … he mast bring into the world … over a period of many scores of years, a great-grandson in whose veins only a minute trace of Jewish blood remained … There can be no assimilation as long as there is no mixed marriage … All the nations that have disappeared (apart from those … who were massacred …) were swallowed up in the chasm of mixed marriages … autonomy in the Golah [exile] is likely to lead … to the complete disappearance of the Jewish nation as such from the face of the earth … Just imagine … when our offspring will be living at peace among a strange people … These conditions will lead naturally and freely to an increase in mixed marriages … this will mean the inception of complete assimilation … Without those physical roots, the spiritual flower is bound to wither … This will mark the end of the battle waged by the Jewish people for national existence … Only those can call themselves “nationalists” who desire to preserve national integrity for the everlasting and at all costs…

A preservation of national integrity is impossible except by a preservation of racial purity, and for that purpose we are in need of a territory of our own … If you should ask me in a sense of revolt and outrage: but surely in that case you want segregation at all costs! I would answer that one must not be afraid of words and not of the word “segregation”. The poet, the scholar, the thinker … must cut himself off and remain alone with himself … No creativeness is possible without segregation … The nation, too, must create … a creative nation is in need of segregation … it will create new values in its segregation … it will not keep them to itself but will place them on the common international table for the general good, and so its segregation will be looked upon with favor by humanity, [53]

In 1913, in his aptly titled article Rasa, he gave his answer to the vexing theoretical question of what constituted a nation:

A nation is manifested by its own racial spectrum” which permeates to a greater or lesser degree, the personality of any average member of the group beneath and above the diversity of their individual physiognomies. [54]

Nations were not racially pure, all were mixtures, but in the end each nation carries with it its own substance, the

first and last bulwark of a nation’s personality-the peculiarity of its physical nature (“racial spectrum”) and parallel to it its psyche … Some day science may achieve such refinement that it will become possible by a special. analysis of the blood, or perhaps, the secret of the glands, to establish the “spectrum” or “recipe” of the various racial types showing all the ingredients: that go into a typical Italian or an average Pole. I venture a forecast that most recipes” wilt be found to contain practically the same ingredients, only the proportion in which God and history have mined them wilt prove. different … The Irish race may contain the same ingredients as the Scottish, but their respective quantities are probably far from the same in each combination: hence the great difference between the two national characters which no observer would question. [55]

The Zionist quarrelled with the Marxist notion of historical materialism. He recognized, in arguendo, that societies worked within economic frameworks. But, in the final analysis, culture had to be reduced to race:

Given a complete similarity of all other conditions – climate, soil, history – two “races” would create two different types of economy … If the types of economy, its special characteristics, the social order etc., are stamped by the “racial” psyche, it is even more so in the sphere of religion, philosophy, literature.

He was insistent. All the categories that the scholars attempted to use to define the illusive essence of nationality were, in his eyes, ultimately inadequate:

One is therefore bound to state: Territory, language, religion, common history – all these are not the essence of a nation but its adjectives only … the essence of a nation, its first and last fortress of uniqueness of its image, is its distinctive physical characteristics, the compound of its racial recipe.

But there were many who assumed that the great mass migrations of the day were in fact breaking down the homogeneity of national populations. Here again Jabotinsky chose to differ. Suddenly, for polemical purpose, he assumed that the future would be socialistic. Therefore, he argued, migration would be greatly reduced as each nation would be able to solve its economic problems. It is immediately apparent that he is merely using any means to justify his a priori thesis that nations would not and should not ever truly merge.

Will there ever be one herd and one shepherd? … when to this is added the dream of the integration of nations into one mixture, here it is already possible to state with some certainty: It shall not be … In such conditions the national characteristics of each closed district can only increase in purity” and strength, but never to the contrary … to this future vision in its entirety there is no prospect of integration of cultures and their mixture, but on the contrary; glorious flourishing, such as we have not witnessed yet, of each national essence in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility.

The human race consists of 7 billion people. We live in a dystopia and have inherited ugly ideologies, beliefs, prejudices, lies, from the past. We must clearly see the ugliness and seek deeper truth. We must rise out of the sewers of consciousness of the past ages and rise above it. We should not stoop to their level but only observe and understand the mechanism which had wired them so that we can avoid the same problems in the future.

It is also noteworthy that some of the people who later became the Zionist elite, the owning oligarchs of the Federal Reserve, such as Lehman Brothers and J P Morgan were literally involved in the slave trade and exploitation business in America. Thus when we read that the Sheldon Adelson-backed Birthright Israel has such charming examples of racism as this, we should not be surprised:

From my notes on Day 8: “Israel just went in and cleaned Gaza,” Shachar said of Operation Cast Lead, which had taken place a year earlier, as we drove south to an organic farm along the border. There, the Israeli proprietor explained that his low-hanging trellises were Thai worker–sized and invited us to nibble the dangling strawberries. “Thank you, Thai worker!” he instructed us to say when a laborer walked by. En route to the next stop on the itinerary, Shachar pointed to tin shacks—Bedouin villages—and jovially detailed the government’s Bedouin home-demolition campaign, saying the IDF needed to “kick them away.” We arrived at our far more picturesque “Bedouin Dessert [sic] Village Experience” and rode camels into the sunset. A man named Mohammed served coffee and played a familiar tune on the oud: “Hava Nagila.”

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Supremacism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Unmasking the GMO ‘Humanitarian’ Narrative

By Colin Todhunter | CounterPunch | November 13, 2015

Genetically modified (GM) crops are going to feed the world. Not only that, supporters of GM technology say it will produce better yields than non-GM crops, increase farmers’ incomes, lead to less chemical inputs, be better suited to climatic changes, is safe for human consumption and will save the lives of millions. Sections of the pro-GMO lobby are modern-day evangelists who denounce, often with a hefty dose of bigoted zeal, anyone who questions their claims and self-proclaimed humanitarian motives.

But their claims do not stack up. Even if some of their assertions about GMOs (GM organisms) appear to be credible, they are often based on generalisations, selective data or questionable research and thus convey a distorted picture. The claims made about GMOs resemble a house of cards that rest on some very fraudulent foundations indeed (see ‘Altered Genes and Twisted Truth’ by Steven Druker).

The fact that many of the pro-GMO lobby spend a good deal of their time attacking and smearing critics and flagging up the technology’s alleged virtues while ignoring certain important issues says much about their priorities.

If they care about farmers so much, indeed if they value food security, choice and democracy so much – as they frequently claim to – why do they not spend their time and energy highlighting and challenging the practices of some of the corporations that are behind the GM project and which have adversely impacted so many across the world?

For instance, consider the following.

1) There is a massive spike in cancer cases in Argentina which is strongly associated with glyphosate-based herbicides – a massive earner for agribusiness. Not only that but throughout South America smallholders and indigenous peoples are being driven from their lands as a result of a corporate takeover aimed at expanding this type of (GM) chemical-intensive agriculture. The outcome has been described as ecocide and genocide.

2) GM technology has not enhanced the world’s ability to feed itself and has arguably led to greater food insecurity (also see this).

3) Petrochemical, industrialised agriculture is less productively efficient than smallholder agriculture. However, the latter is being squeezed onto less and less land as a result of the expansion of corporate commodity crop farming and the taking over of fertile land by institutional investors and agribusiness concerns. As a result of this, the world is in danger of losing the ability to feed itself. Across the world, not least in Asia, peasant farming is being dismantled in favour of this type of corporate agriculture, which is unsustainable and associated with cancers, water contamination, soil degradation and falling water tables.

4) This is a model that from field to plate is causing obesity, diabetes and various other ailments and diseases. Facilitated and supported by trade agreements like NAFTA, people’s quality of food is being sacrificed and local farming devastated (see this to read about the situation in Mexico).

5) In India, 300,000 farmers have committed suicide over the past 20 years as farming has deliberately been made financially non-viable. The aim is to displace hundreds of millions who rely on agriculture to make a living and free up land for Western agribusiness to reshape farming. As NAFTA has done to Mexico, the agribusiness-backed Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture seems likely to do to India. The aim is to dismantle Indian agriculture for the benefit of corporate agribusiness.

We now witness grass-root responses to what is outlined above on a daily basis: farmer protests on the streets of Delhi and local movements from Ghana to Brazil resisting the corporatization of seeds, land, water, food processing, food retail and decision making/regulatory processes.

We also see the wrecking of traditional, productive rural economies and the attack on indigenous knowledge at the behest of global agribusiness, facilitated by compliant politicians. If corporate aims cannot be achieved via trade agreements or the machinations of international institutions like the WTO (whose rules agribusiness shape), they are sought on the back of war or through strings-attached loans as is the case in Ukraine. Objectives are sought by various means.

The world can feed itself without GMOs. It is current policies and the global system of food production that militate against achieving global food security and which contribute towards hunger and poverty. No amount of gene splicing can rectify this.

How convenient it is for sections of the pro-GMO lobby to ignore, side-line or dismiss all of the above and offer a techno-fix supposed panacea that comes courtesy of the same companies whose practices are helping to undermine food security and which are fuelling much of the devastation in the first place. It betrays an ideological adherence to a pro-corporate neoliberal agenda.

Instead of attempting to dismiss the issues set out here as being based on ‘romantic twaddle’, the ramblings of wicked ideologues or the fads and inventions of some notional ‘green blob’ red in tooth and claw that hates humanity, science and freedom of choice (all of which have been levelled at critics), it would be better to acknowledge the issues described here and work to address them and challenge the practices that fuel them.

The pro-GMO lobby is fond of trying to discredit its critics and engages in pious, emotive rhetoric. They often ask them: ‘What are you doing to save the lives of millions?’

The question for them is: What are you?

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

MIT grad challenges Monsanto over ‘nonexistent GMO safety standards’

RT | November 13, 2015

One of the world’s largest GMO producers has been challenged by an MIT graduate who claims there are absolutely no GMO safety assessment standards. He earlier alleged that GMO-engineered plants accumulate high levels of formaldehyde.

Livingston (New Jersey) High School Hall of Fame member, Dr. V A Shiva Ayyadurai threw down the gauntlet to the Monsanto Company, claiming it would be next to impossible for the agro-giant to disprove his claim that safety assessment standards for genetically-modified organisms (GMO) are nonexistent.

“If Monsanto can disprove the fact that there are no safety assessment standards for GMOs, the conclusion of our fourth paper, then I will give them my $10 million building,” Ayyadurai, also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, told Patch.

Ayyadurai’s argument is based on his alleged discovery that GMO plants accumulate high levels of formaldehyde, a finding Ayyadurai asserted in an article published back in July in an expert opinion for the Agricultural Sciences trade journal.

“This is not a pro- or anti-GMO question,” Ayyadurai wrote in his abstract. “But [rather], are we following the scientific method to ensure the safety of our food supply? Right now, the answer is no. But we need to, and we can if we engage in open, transparent and collaborative scientific discourse, based on a systems approach.”

“Formaldehyde is a known class-one carcinogen,” Dr. Ray Seidler, a former EPA senior scientist, said in a statement on Ayyadurai’s study. “Its elevated presence in soybeans caused by a common genetic engineering event is alarming and deserves immediate attention and action from the FDA and the Obama administration.”

An estimated 94 percent of US-grown soybeans are genetically engineered.

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Ups the US Ante

By Ann Wright | Consortium News | November 12, 2015

President Barack Obama, having met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Nov. 9 at the White House, is considering Israel’s request for a 50 percent increase of nearly $1.5 billion in U.S. military funding, which would bring the U.S. donation – used for killing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza – to $4.5 billion a year.

As it stands now, more that half of the U.S. foreign military aid for 2016 goes to Israel. As in all things, Israel gets special treatment by the U.S. allowing Israel to spend 25 percent of its U.S. gift to pay itself for buying weapons from its own weapons industry.

According to a recent congressional report, Israel has received $124.3 billion in military assistance from the U.S. since its founding in 1948. The report states that “strong congressional support for Israel has resulted in Israel receiving benefits not available to any other countries; for example, Israel can use U.S. military assistance both for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers.

“In addition, U.S. assistance earmarked for Israel is generally delivered in the first 30 days of the fiscal year, while most other recipients normally receive aid in installments, and Israel (as is also the case with Egypt) is permitted to use cash flow financing for its U.S. arms purchases.

”In addition to receiving U.S. State Department-administered foreign assistance, Israel also receives funds from annual defense appropriations bills for rocket and missile defense programs. Israel pursues some of those programs jointly with the United States.”

As Obama was meeting Netanyahu, eight blocks away at the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., a surgeon from Norway who works part of each year in al Shifa hospital in Gaza, told of the devastation, destruction and human suffering these American weapons and dollars cause.

Dr. Mads Gilbert spoke of 51 days of terror in Gaza in the summer of 2014 as the Israeli attack forces brutalized the people of Gaza with Israeli and U.S. artillery, drone ordnance for assassinations, F-16s, hellfire missiles and dense inert military explosives.

Gilbert said the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza was 500 percent stronger than Israel’s 2009 attack, when he was also working at al Shifa hospital when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) attacked Gaza. In 2014, the IDF fired 50,000 shells into Gaza and conducted over 6,000 air strikes, destroying over 3,500 buildings in Gaza City alone including over 50 percent of the hospitals in Gaza.

At the end of the 51-day attack, 2,250 Palestinians were dead, including 551 children and 299 women. Some 3,500 Palestinian children were wounded and the 1 million children and youth who live in Gaza were all deeply affected by the attacks. Sixty percent of the 1.8 million who live in Gaza are under the age of 22.

Dr. Gilbert’s presentation included photos of the carnage caused by Israeli attacks and the audio of the sounds of jets racing overhead, bombs exploding and buildings collapsing.

Citing the report of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict, Gilbert said that the IDF purposefully targeted the civilian population including entire families and that the IDF purposefully targeted hospitals, ambulances and four UN shelter facilities.

The report said, “Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in their own homes, especially women and children. At least 142 families lost three or more members in an attack on a residential building during the summer of 2014, resulting in 742 deaths. The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government.”

Additionally, “the commission is concerned about Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius; though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately. There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings to people to leave a neighbourhood and then automatically considered anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on civilians highly likely. During the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza that began in mid-July 2014, hundreds of people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged.”

The commission report added: “Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July and August 2014, killing 6 civilians, including one child and injuring at least 1,600.” A total of 66 Israeli soldiers were killed in military operations inside Gaza.

The commission also reported: “In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, 27 Palestinians were killed and 3,020 injured between June and August 2014. The number killed in these three months was equivalent to the total for the whole of 2013. The commission is concerned about what appears to be the increasing use of live ammunition for crowd control by the Israeli Security Forces, which raises the likelihood of death or serious injury.”

The report continued, “Impunity prevails across the board for violations allegedly committed by Israeli forces, both in Gaza and the West Bank. ‘Israel must break with its lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable,’ said the commissioners, ‘and accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate.’”

Signaling further attacks on Gaza during a Nov. 10 talk at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Netanyahu said Gaza has “become this poison thumb, this poison dagger that sends rockets” into Israel and that Israel must be prepared for a long period of tension.

The U.S. government’s blind backing for whatever Israel does, while providing the weapons for Israel to do it, is dangerous for both the United States and Israel.

As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote concerning Hillary Clinton’s unwavering support for Israel: “support [for] the continued occupation is like a person who continues to buy drugs for an addicted relative. This is neither concern nor friendship; it is destruction. … ‘false’ friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.”

Levy’s comments about former Secretary of State Clinton equally applies to the unqualified support for Israel given by both Republican- and Democratic-led U.S. administrations.

Israeli attacks on people in Gaza and the West Bank will end only when we the citizens of the United States force our government to stop its military and diplomatic backing of the State of Israel.

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She has been in Gaza six times and was on the 2010 Gaza Flotilla that was attacked by the IDF, which executed nine passengers and wounded 50.

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ecuador Rejects HRW Report as “Manipulative”

teleSUR – November 12, 2015

In a statement released Wednesday, Ecuador’s governing party, Alianza PAIS, rejected the “latest political intervention against the government of Ecuador by the U.S.-based organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report released on 10 November 2015.”

The report made unsubstantiated claims that “the administration of President Rafael Correa has expanded state control over media and civil society” and argued that security forces used “excessive force” against “peaceful” protests this year. It left out important context, such as the calls by the leaders of those protests to get rid of the democratically elected and very popular left wing government. The report criticized Ecuador because the well known US political tool, USAID shut their offices this year, and claimed the government has “broad powers to limit free speech.” Finally, the report took a political position on Ecuador’s internal legislative decisions.

“This organization repeatedly ignores the unprecedented advances in human rights that have occurred in Ecuador while manipulating human rights discourse to unjustly attack the nation’s elected government. It is not the first time HRW releases partisan reports against Latin America’s progressive governments,” Alianza PAIS stated.

Allianza PAIS accused HRW of misrepresenting the sizes of demonstrations, minimizing opposition violence, and of misrepresenting the state of emergency declared with the eruption of the Cotopaxi volanco – portraying that measure as a repressive tool.

“The sources of HRW’s funding, including corporate funding, contribute to its political bias while its board members and advisers have links with the financial, military and political sectors, the latter criticized by significant figures including Nobel laureates,” Alianza stated.

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Higher Ed’s Scrutiny Gap: Is Corruption Getting a Free Press?

By David Mihalyfy | CounterPunch | November 13, 2015

As a University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate, I’ve not only undertaken investigative reporting of my home institution, the famed Obama library site and a college rankings powerhouse, but also used that odd opportunity to sort out consequences from causes and identify our higher ed system’s major problems.

Currently, higher ed’s greatest flaw is its pre-modern, pre-democratic institutional structure: although 99.9% of universities are permanently dependent on taxpayer-funded student loans and research grants, their ultimate authorities are either self-appointing or politically appointed and thus face inadequate checks-and-balances against corruption.

In other words, vital stakeholders like alumni and frontline mission fulfillers of educators and researchers can’t say “enough!” with a simple vote, even when “badmin” seek personal prestige through unduly hasty building campaign or counterproductive cover-ups, or they even go and start blatantly self-enriching through CEO salaries and crony contracts.

This fundamental problem, however, is compounded by a second, even less discussed problem, higher ed’s “scrutiny gap” – that is, the blind spot in press coverage that gives colleges too much free rein with our tax money.

What’s more newsworthy than 8 college administrators receiving $7.6 million through pay raises over 5 years, each getting $450,000 to $3.3 million as a result, and not only that, but in the middle of trustee contracts and even as the school heads toward a credit downgrade? And at the main Obama Library contender of the time, and eventual winner?

That was my striking and substantiated factoid, but publication was difficult even in this best case scenario of a “juicy story”, a situation that in its particulars opens up circumstances plaguing higher ed coverage as a whole.

First off, our country has not completely confronted how universities are legalized old boys clubs tapped into public coffers and set on silently bleeding us dry.

Unaware that pretty much all universities couldn’t function without massive infusions of taxpayer cash, many people I’ve met still give kneejerk reactions like “They’re private!” or “That’s their problem!” when faced with obscene administrative salaries or misbehavior at UChicago or elsewhere.

Accordingly, neither CEO salaries nor crony contracts are seen as symptoms of a single common problem, though similar actions at somewhere like the Environmental Protection Agency would hoist up red flags and maybe even lead to congressional investigations.

More than this, though, any given university out there experiences practically no consistent press scrutiny.

Thorough coverage of all our country’s colleges is beyond the capacity of trade publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

Among geographically limited journalists who could conceivably provide local monitoring, institution-specific stories are infrequent and tend to focus on already-developing scandals of “public” institutions, likely due to the pernicious belief that so-called “private” institutions somehow don’t involve our tax money.

Furthermore, laudable exceptions like the Mercury News’ coverage of San Diego State crony contracts and the attention of Crain’s Chicago Business to University of Chicago finances show that reporters must have patience for and comfort-level with bureaucratic process and number-crunching.

That said, the numbers of such skilled journalists are rapidly thinning. Thus, the “in-house PR firms” of schools’ communications offices can run scrimmage even more effectively, a problem increased by the exemption of so-called “private” schools from sunlight laws like FOIA despite their receipt of tax money hand-over-fist.

Tellingly, I once met a reporter for a well-regarded alternative newspaper at an activist event, and started speaking about the third trustee contract I’d discovered at University of Chicago, to an Obama bundler for parking garage construction, perhaps with cost overruns.

“Oh,” she was like, glancing to somewhere else in the room. “Sounds complicated.”

Nevertheless, media skepticism exists towards freelance investigative reporters.

In my own case, freelancing a straight news piece did not meet with success despite multiple drafts and multiple submissions to higher ed and city news sites, even though some reporting has since resurfaced in places like Crain’s Chicago Business.

Fortunately, a tangential freelancing acquaintance mentored me and recommended that I fold original reporting into “big picture” think pieces in order to maximize chances at publication.

Doubly fortunately, known forums like Jacobin and CounterPunch took an interest and ultimately published that work.

All the same, despite its dearth and social necessity, such serious freelance reporting is very rare, given the required levels of charity and luck.

Beyond these forums, student newspapers seem even less prone to provide the needed scrutiny, sadly.

In addition to the entrance barriers that all reporters face, undergraduates can lack the life experience sometimes necessary to identify and properly frame issues, and their population turnover can militate against the collective memory needed to tease out scandals and sustain long-term series.

True, student newspapers associated with journalism programs and faculty journalist advisers seem to produce better coverage.

For example, the student newspaper of Chicago’s open-enrollment Columbia College admirably identifies and memorably conveys challenging process-and-budget stories. Last spring’s coverage was especially notable; it highlighted a sham of a community input process and the strange decision to simultaneously increase class size and add in high-level, high-earning administrators.

In comparison, the University of Chicago student newpaper’s coverage of a nationwide publicity-getting restrictive elevator policy failed to challenge the school’s president and clearly ask “Who started it?”, while a recent editorial on Aramark’s food, service and health and safety violations fails to mention how the Chairman of the Board of Trustees was a former CEO.

Still other stories read like puff piece press releases from the in-house PR firm of the school’s News Office.

“An organ of the state,” a Slavic Studies professor friend once cracked.

Anecdotally, too, the reporters know that they can’t ask certain questions about pay when granted interview with administrators, because otherwise they’d sacrifice the material that fills their pages.

Such uncertain reporters are also prone to manipulation by News Office personnel, word-on-the-street goes; brush-offs work, as do sly suggestions of “better angles” that derail investigations ultimately benefitting the institution but not its exploitative administrators. I myself have encountered such challenges in pressing simple inquiries on who began the restrictive elevator policy, only to meet with official communications from a then-News Office staffer and current Carnegie Mellon Vice President, who mocked “several false premises you are clinging to, despite our best efforts to help you understand.”

Ironically, then, our country values the students who could get attention with incisive stories but are unsure in confrontation with authority figures, while the less elite students who understand the situation and have the skills to communicate it don’t get much of our attention at all.

Even worse? When some well-known institutions like Butler do produce good papers, badmin are doing their best to gut them and avoid any oversight whatsoever, as Inside Higher Ed has importantly reported.

In sum, then, between public unawareness and sporadic, decreasing media attention at best, higher ed oligarchies can run rampant if they wish, to the degree that they can escape bad publicity and any ensuing public outcry.

Within current laws, however, hope rests in increased public awareness about the use of taxpayer investment, the ambitiousness of competent reporters, and the unionization efforts of precarious faculty, among whom increased security will foster exposure of abuses as well as better instruction.

More importantly, though, our country needs to tie receipt of public monies to better legal oversight that directly takes on badmin through reforms like mandatory sunlight laws, conversion to civil service pay scales, and most of all a ban on trustee contracts alongside opening up their positions to election.

Under such reforms, journalists would have increased tools like a more broadly applicable FOIA, but less material due to less corruption.

Could we be so lucky that higher ed muckrakers will have so much less work to do?

Yes, when we face the crisis around us and reform higher ed, deeply.

Waste of our resources may be festering now, but everyone out there knows that the current path of American higher ed is unsustainable, and that a day of reckoning is coming.

November 13, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment