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New Report Highlights Green Failure in Europe and Warns America

By Rick Whitbeck | RealClear Energy | January 4, 2024

As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”

The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.

Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.

In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can.

The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.

Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.

The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.

The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.

Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.

Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.

With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.

Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

SEC Determines Apple Must Allow Free Speech Resolution Proposed by Shareholders To Proceed

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 7, 2024

This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) refuted Apple’s plea to veto a “free speech resolution” proposed by shareholders that were concerned about Apple, as a dominant Big Tech giant, to suppress speech.

This proposal, advanced by the American Family Association (AFA), pushes Apple to scrutinize its processes of content curation and to publish a report addressing fears that the corporation’s policies may inadvertently inhibit speech based on differing views.

The SEC dismissed Apple’s attempt to omit the resolution from the discussion during its 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, effectively setting the stage for a vote on the resolution in spring.

Apple is known for its strict terms of use policy for all apps on the App Store. As Apple’s own App Store is the only way to get apps on its platform, this means that Apple’s is the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to what the public is allowed to say and see.

In November of 2023, concerned about potential Apple censorship, the ADF sent a letter to the SEC insisting that Apple should not be allowed to block the resolution, as it is seen as an area of potential misuse.

Following the SEC’s decision, Jeremy Tedesco, ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement, voiced his approval, referring to the development as a “much-needed step toward transparency.”

He urged Apple to regain the trust of its shareholders and customers by clearly stating its stance on not using its power to discriminate against user’s speech and beliefs – irrespective of their political or even religious persuasion.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

St. Louis Mask Mandate Rescinded Less Than 24 Hours After Woke Health Officials Get Trigger Happy

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 6, 2024

The city of St. Louis reversed course less than 24 hours after reimplementing mask mandates, announcing Friday afternoon that it would no longer require city employees to mask up while working following pushback from hospitals, health experts, and the governor.

“The City of St. Louis has updated its communications with employees surrounding masking,” said a representative from Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office.

“The City of St. Louis Department of Health strongly recommends masking indoors for all City of St. Louis employees, effective immediately.”

This came one day after city health director Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis said that COVID-19, RSV and flu cases in the city justified masking up again.

On Friday, however, the department updated its original statistics with ‘less alarming’ data regarding RSV trends, according to KSDK.

“BJC is not seeing a strain on hospital capacity,” BJC Health Care officials told the outlet, adding “We are experiencing a seasonal increase in respiratory illness, which is typical for this time of year.”

Mercy Hospital described it as a “typical winter.” St. Louis County said they haven’t seen any out-of-the-ordinary strains on the health system.

“Luckily our influenza has not spiked yet and it is going up, but it’s not nearly what it was last year,” according to Dr. Jim Hinrichs, the interim co-director of the St. Louis County Department of Public Health. “It’s moderate. It’s not alarming.”

Gov. Mike Parson’s office confirmed to 5 On Your Side it had a conversation with Jones’ office on Friday related to the city’s mask policy shift. -KSDK

The health department had originally claimed that COVID-19 hospitalizations were up 38% over December, as 278 people were hospitalized with (but not necessarily because of) COVID-19 during the week of Dec. 23. Flu cases rose an alleged 455%.

Perhaps, as Ian Miller noted on X, the reversal was because of the sudden realisation that masks never made a difference in St.Louis anyway…

…”science”.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

J’Accuse… !

The line is clear

NewZealandDoc’s Newsletter | January 7, 2024

We are now approximately four years removed from the unleashing of the covid so-called pandemic and the consequential measures adopted and enforced world-wide that created terror in the global populace, imposed unprecedented strictures, subverted foundational principles of medicine and foisted an unnecessary and dangerous inoculation upon a mostly unwitting public.

Some of us, at the very outset, upon hearing the mainstream messages of bat-inspired trans-species migration of a respiratory virus, suspected that things were amiss. The frenzied media, however, with their ‘case’ counts, death counts and fraudulent reporting about the actual lethality of the pathogen, were unstoppable and relentless, and I can forgive the many who began to shudder at this unexpected turn of events and who lined up for the dubious polymerase chain reaction ‘test’ and who, ultimately, placed every hope upon an emergency so-called vaccine, convinced as they were that our world was engulfed by an incomparable threat.

I have a harder time forgiving doctors who threw their senses and duties out the window, were unperturbed by the omission and suppression of attempts to treat and prevent the pathogen before hospitalization was required, abandoned informed consent, pushed the covid jab and regarded those who preferred to keep their minds and bodies and general health intact by not receiving the jab as a dangerous entity.

I frankly cannot forgive those physicians who, wielding considerable influence in establishment media, used this influence to sway their followers to accept something that has now been shown demonstrably and repetitively to be a health disaster

Perhaps, however, under the unnerving full-court press of a rabid and unchecked propaganda campaign waged by once highly-regarded journalistic authorities, everyone can be forgiven for having, essentially, lost their wits. Perhaps.

But now, four years hence, as the general picture has clarified itself, anyone with a sentient eye or ear not wedded to mainstream pulp can conclude that there never was a genuine pandemic, there never was a need to lock and shut down the entire world, and there never was or will be a need to inject billions with a gene-altering concoction that has hurt and killed too many to pass muster as a real and viable vaccine. We can further conclude that the preposterously tremendous control over people exhibited by the roll-out of the covid campaign, and the submission of people to the evisceration of their unalienable rights — these were not organically evolved developments, but consequences of a highly orchestrated deployment of power.

In short, all things covid was a strategically planned operation — a war-crime — the likes of which are unprecedented, and the consequence of which is to move the world towards some kind of autocratic fiefdom wherein we ‘little people’ surviving the first waves of the onslaught will be subjugated to the whims and directives of The Few.

I don’t care how many X followers one may have, or how many Sierpinski triangles one may conjure, how many high-profile interviews one has done, how many conferences one has attended, how many grants one has received, or how many plaudits one has obtained from our freedom-loving community: unless one can see the line and step across it, I regard you as an Enemy.

What line? The line that separates those who understand the concerted efforts of a Global Cabal to inflict the covid mess upon us for purposes of control, versus those who assert that this mess was essentially the result of unfortunate circumstances complicated by greed, incompetence, opportunism, corruption, human error and the like. To espouse the latter is untruthful and enervating: it takes the life out of our tenuously cobbled opposition and plays into our opposition’s hands.

Pick a side. To deny that the genocide visited upon us has been deliberately perpetrated, regardless of what you may invoke in the way of prudence, reason and thoughtful consideration, is to join the ranks of its perpetrators.

Pick a side, the line is clear, and time is short.

 

Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.

January 2024

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Singling out Smotrich and Ben-Gvir adds to Israel’s impunity

MEMO | January 6, 2024

Earlier this week, the US State Department released a statement rejecting the forced transfer and resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza, attributing the rhetoric from the Israeli side to Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. “We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government,” US State Department’s Spokesperson Matthew Miller declared.

Maybe the US State Department is unaware of the reports that explicitly name Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as making the suggestion during a closed-door meeting for Likud MKs. Or that the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called forced transfer and the international community’s possible complicit participation “a moral imperative”. Going further back, the leaked document by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence also lists the forced transfer of Palestinians as the preferable option for Israel.

If Israel does not go ahead with the plan, it only means that the international community is not willing to go so far as visibly aiding Israel’s colonisation after public opinion has shifted so much towards Palestine, and rightfully so. Before 7 October, the Nakba could only be imagined or read about in terms of statistics on ethnic cleansing and its related destruction. Zionism has now illustrated to the world what genocide looks like, and governments are paying slight heed, if only to prevent themselves from getting further embroiled in the repercussions of Israel’s fabricated security narrative.

To make the forced displacement of Palestinians sound like it was just the concoction of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir lends additional impunity to Israel. Israel was built upon the ethnic cleansing and forced transfer of the Palestinian people. Conceptualising the forced transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population is a continuation of the Nakba, not an innovative idea conjured up by two far-right-wing politicians. The Times of Israel is perpetuating the narrative of forced transfer being the idea of just two politicians, both of them in the public eye for their ongoing incitement. But the Israeli settler-colonial state is an incitement in itself.

Meanwhile, in a brief interlude, an unnamed Israeli official spoke of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for its delivery of humanitarian aid as doing its work “for the first time in its history”. There is no forgetting, however, that Israel wants to destroy UNRWA and, during the Donald Trump administration, embarked upon doing so, emboldened by the so-called “deal of the century” and the US-Israeli insistence to alter the definition of who can be classified as a Palestinian refugee.

The bottom line here, however, is that Israel’s expectation that the international community clears up the mess after its atrocities knows no limit. Had Israel not bombed Gaza and rendered 85 per cent of the population forcibly displaced, the current humanitarian catastrophe could have been avoided. As things stand, and with Gaza almost completely destroyed, Israel and the international community can maintain the humanitarian paradigm for Palestinians because basic needs will always be perceived as more important than a political process where Palestinians are concerned. Colonisation required complicity, and there is no proposal Israeli officials come up with that can be separated from the narrative of Israel’s settler-colonial existence.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli army uses drones to terrorize civilians at Gaza hospital

Palestine Informtion Center – January 7, 2024

GAZA – The health ministry in Gaza has accused the Israeli occupation army of using its armed drones to terrorize the patients and medical staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah City in central Gaza.

“Israeli drones are opening fire at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital’s sections and courtyards, targeting everyone who moves,” the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday evening.

The ministry also accused the Israeli army of seeking to put Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital out of service through intensively opening fire at it from drones.

The ministry pointed out that the ongoing shooting attack on the hospital forced a number of patients and wounded civilians to leave it and expose themselves to gunfire from the drones.

The ministry warned that thousands of wounded and sick people in central Gaza would be sentenced to death if the hospital stopped providing its services.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli army’s military aggression against Gaza and its deliberate attacks on medical facilities have made the majority of the hospitals and health centers “nonfunctional.” The Israeli army has also destroyed 121 ambulances since then.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Day 93: Israeli Assault Claims Two More Journalists

Al-Manar | January 7, 2024

Gaza Strip is witnessing a sharp escalation in violence, with Israeli military operations in last night’s onslaught in Al-Faluga and Khan Yunis leaving at least 20 Palestinians martyred, a toll that tragically includes civilians seeking refuge and victims from an attack on a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in the Mughazi refugee camp.

In the southern Gaza Strip, at least two journalists, Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh, son of al-Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, and Mustafa Thuraya, were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted and blew up their vehicle in Khan Younis on Sunday.

The journalists, including Hamza, were en route to the Moraj area northeast of Rafah, designated a “humanitarian zone” by the Israeli army but reportedly subject to recent bombings. Their intention was to report on the situation and aftermath of bombings in the area, where many displaced Gazans sought refuge from bombardment in other regions of the territory.

Bureau chief for Al-Jazeera Arabic in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, stands over the body of his son Hamza

Wael al-Dahdouh, Hamza’s father and Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, was recently wounded in an Israeli strike. His wife and two children had been killed by a separate Israeli strike in the initial weeks of the aggression.

The media office of the Hamas resistance movement strongly condemned the “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists.” The Zionist entity aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage,” the office added.

The media office called “on all press unions, human rights and legal bodies to condemn this crime and denounce its repeated commission by the occupation.” It also called for pressuring “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenseless people in the Gaza Strip.”

20 Palestinians lost their lives during the night as the Israeli occupation forces launched airstrikes on Al-Faluga in the Jabalia refugee camp, situated in the northern Gaza Strip. Among the targeted locations was a building belonging to the Abu Alba family in Al-Faluja. Concurrently, air strikes pounded Tal Al-Zaatar in the northern Gaza Strip, further exacerbating the already dire situation.

Adding to the toll, 16 Palestinians were martyred in the bombing of the central Gaza Strip since evening.

Deir al-Balah witnessed 11 casualties due to Zionist attacks, while in Khan Yunis, located in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, the death toll rose to 17. Artillery shelling intensified in the neighborhoods of the city’s center, west, and north.

Rafah also bore the brunt of the occupation’s aggression, with several areas being targeted. The toll rose to 7 as a result of an Israeli bombing that specifically aimed at a building housing displaced people. Disturbingly, reports emerged of injuries resulting from an air strike on a house belonging to the Al-Ajez family in the Al-Zuhur neighborhood, situated in the northern part of Rafah.

According to reports from the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, the Israeli military targeted a residence in Khan Yunis, where a significant number of displaced individuals sought refuge. Tragically, this resulted in the loss of at least 12 civilian lives and injuries to 50 others.

Furthermore, Israeli warplanes struck a school operated by the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in the Mughazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, leading to the death of at least four individuals, including a woman.

The report indicates that the Israeli military employed drones and engaged in intensive firing at homes and streets in the Mughazi camp. Simultaneously, Israeli warplanes launched a fire attack near Sekka Street west of the camp, accompanied by heavy artillery fire from the army.

Eyewitnesses reported a fire breaking out east of the neighboring Nuseirat camp due to sustained Israeli airstrikes.

The Israeli aggression extended to Tel al-Zaatar and the city of Deir al-Balah, where fierce airstrikes resulted in additional casualties, according to the report.

The grim statistics underscore the severity of the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza, with the death toll reaching at least 22,700 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. Additionally, 7,000 individuals are reportedly missing under the rubble, presumed to be casualties of the conflict. The international community faces an urgent call to address the escalating humanitarian crisis and seek a sustainable solution to the longstanding conflict in the region.

Display of Resistance

Palestinian forces thwarted the advances of the Zionist enemy, effectively dealing heavy blows and preventing any consolidation of occupation across various regions of the Gaza Strip.

Despite the passage of two and a half months since the commencement of the ground operation, the relentless efforts of the Palestinian resistance have led to successive defeats for the occupying forces, compelling their withdrawal from the majority of areas in the northern Gaza Strip—an accomplishment of significant magnitude for the steadfast resistance fighters.

A notable triumph unfolded today as the Al-Qassam Brigades orchestrated the complete destruction of a Zionist personnel carrier situated in Al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, employing the formidable “Al-Yassin 105” shell. Scenes depicting the obliteration of the personnel carrier were released by Al-Qassam, symbolizing a powerful stance against the occupiers.

The resilience of Al-Qassam forces further manifested as they obliterated enemy forces that had penetrated Al-Maghazi camp, utilizing a barrage of heavy-caliber mortar shells. Simultaneously, the Al-Quds Brigades announced the successful missile salvoes targeting strategic locations, including “Nahal Oz,” “Sufa,” and “Hulit.”

In another commendable operation, the Brigades revealed their precision and efficacy by targeting an occupation army force entrenched in a house in Tal al-Hawa, Gaza, with an OG-7V anti-personnel missile. This precise strike resulted in casualties within the force, and the Mujahideen successfully seized the soldiers’ equipment.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

China’s COSCO halts shipping to Israeli ports: Israeli media

The Cradle | January 7, 2024

Chinese state-owned shipping company COSCO, the fourth largest in the world, has halted sailing to Israeli ports, Israeli media outlet Globes reported on 7 January, in the wake of attacks and attempted seizures of vessels heading to Israel via the Red Sea by Yemeni armed forces.

The Israeli report indicated that the Chinese firm did not disclose a reason for the policy change. COSCO’s offices in Israel have refused to comment on the development.

The Globes report attributed the decision to the close ties between China and Iran, which sells 90 percent of its crude oil exports to Beijing. Iran is a supporter of the Yemeni government and opposes Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

In a similar development, the Hong Kong-based OOCL halted all cargo deliveries to Israel last month, citing “operational problems.”

In the same month, other major shipping firms, including the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM, announced their decision to halt shipments to Israel one day after the Yemeni Armed Forces attacked two Israel-bound vessels.

Yemeni forces have been attacking Israeli-bound vessels in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, which the Sanaa government views as genocide.

Washington and its allies in turn formed the Prosperity Guardian naval coalition and issued an ultimatum to Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government to stop their Red Sea operations or suffer the “consequences.”

Yemen’s actions have forced numerous leading shipping companies to instead travel around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to reach Europe, extending the shipping times by two weeks and increasing costs.

On 31 December, US naval forces sank three Yemeni boats in the Red Sea, killing ten Yemeni naval soldiers.

From the onset of the Gaza conflict on 7 October, Yemeni military forces have targeted a minimum of 15 merchant vessels either bound for Israeli harbors or owned by entities associated with Israel.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

So You’re a Professor? Here’s What You Can Do to Oppose Genocide

By Steve Salaita | January 7, 2024

College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South. Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror. They ought to do something, then, even if it seems pyrrhic or inadequate.

People around the world are now witnessing a particularly gruesome event as the Zionist entity, armed by its U.S. sponsor and enjoying the support of capitalist institutions across the globe, commits one atrocity after the other in the Gaza Strip (along with the West Bank and at times further afield). The atrocities, anyone with a modicum of integrity agrees, add up to genocide. The depth of grief and suffering Palestinians now experience is indescribable, immeasurable.

Do professors and other campus workers have any ability to mitigate the grief and suffering? Not really. But we’re not entirely powerless, either. Higher education is an important sector for information and activism and an industry where participants like to contemplate the role of both exceptional and ordinary people in making a better world. Like anybody else, teachers and researchers can be most effective in their own communities, which are not inoculated from the genocide. Zionist groups have organized hundreds of defamation campaigns against Palestinian students and faculty, often resulting in employment termination and other serious forms of recrimination. These campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum.  Targeting Palestinians and anti-Zionists is an extension of the genocide, or at least one of its attendant tactics. And then, of course, many of the campuses are somehow invested in the Zionist entity—financially, politically, or logistically.  It does no good to say that “we” aren’t affected by what happens “there.”

The following is a list of suggestions for Western academics, with the understanding that not all professors are equal and each campus is different in terms of its cultural and economic composition. In turn, I have tried to be comprehensive, offering comments that I hope will be useful to everyone from contingent faculty whose employment is precarious to senior scholars with big platforms at elite institutions. (The latter are much more likely to be facilitating the genocide, either obliquely or explicitly, but nevertheless.)

One thing is clear:  the world is now experiencing a moral crisis whose enormity will reshape political attitudes and alliances for generations to come. Pretending that life, no matter how sheltered or comfortable, can simply continue as normal is its own kind of moral crisis.

Try one or more of the following if you can:

Defend Palestinian Students: Be it from forces on or off campus, or be it individuals you know or don’t know personally, it is reprehensible that students should suffer doxing and harassment, whether it is orchestrated by skeezy has-beens like Michael Rapaport or hysterical faculty on their own campus. Speak on behalf of your students. It can be done publicly through the usual channels or in private communication with chairs, deans, and other administrators. Or keep it simpler: reach out to the students and offer yourself as a resource.

Defend Palestinian Colleagues: The same idea holds, but with a quick addendum. Being a Palestinian in Western academe can be deeply alienating, in no small part because shitting on Palestinians is a reliable method of upward mobility. I’m sure some of your Palestinian colleagues will appreciate any gesture that might make them feel slightly less alone.

Boycott: Up to this point, academic boycott of Israeli universities has been controversial, even in supposedly progressive quarters of the industry. The facts, however, are clear.  Israel has destroyed every institution of higher learning in the Gaza Strip. It has murdered dozens of faculty and administrators, including university presidents, and an untold number of students. There is no academic freedom in Palestine. There is no academe at all in Gaza. Reluctance to boycott is no longer acceptable. It is the baseline of political decency. Anybody who continues to oppose or dissemble about academic boycott should be regarded as untrustworthy on everything else.

Divest:  Start or join a local campaign to force your university to divest any holdings from the Zionist entity. Divestment can include study abroad programs in Israel, which inherently discriminate against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.  In the past decade, students have successfully passed divestment resolutions at numerous universities, but management simply ignores them.  Faculty voices will help these efforts.

Invite People from Gaza: Surely the rank-and-file in academe are tired of the same few dozen big-name professors and celebrity activists saying the same three or four things in the lucrative lecture economy. Decisionmakers on campus invite speakers for prestige, for the brand, or else to network or be in the presence of fame. The habit needs to die and there’s no better time than now. Instead of summoning the usual Endowed Chair of Gobbledygook at Wealthy Private University to deliver radical affectations at a cost of multiple thousands, reach out to scholars and journalists from Gaza (and for God’s sake give them a proper honorarium). They will assuredly be more insightful than warmed-over relics of the pre-millennial theory craze. Likewise:  recruit graduate students from Palestine. You can also look into bringing Palestinians as visiting writers/scholars or as researchers/consultants in any effort to document the genocide. Start with people who are currently outside of Gaza; when conditions are better, reach out to those still inside the territory. Gaza is filled with individuals of remarkable talent. You will be better off for having sought it.

Organize or Attend a Demonstration: You don’t need to be a seasoned organizer to raise hell about the abomination that is the Zionist entity.

Direct Action: Why should students always be the ones to shut down administrative offices or gum up the machinery of genocide? Professors can participate, as well. I’m not saying you need to do it. I just want you to bear in mind that nobody, no matter how urbane or well-published, is too good to get fired or sit in jail for a few hours in solidarity with a people whose heroism is known and admired around the world.

Teach Palestine: Hundreds of Palestinian poets, novelists, and essayists write in English or are available in translation. Consider including them on your syllabus. So what if your courses don’t focus on Palestine or the surrounding region? If you’re a modernist, then assign Fadwa Tuqan or Mahmoud Darwish. If you’re in gender studies, look up Fatima Bernawi or Rasmea Odeh. If you teach novels, try Susan Abulhawa, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Sahar Mustafah… on goes the list.  If you’re an Americanist, there are numerous options.  Same for Latin Americanists. A critical theorist? No problem: there’s Elias Sanbar and Bassel Al-Araj and Ghassan Kanafani. And if you’re, say, a medievalist?  That’s no problem, either.

Stop Pandering to Customs of Civility: You don’t need to condemn “Hamas.” You don’t need to “affirm Israel’s right to exist.” You don’t need to bang on about “democratic values.” You don’t need to be “nuanced.” You need to defend the people suffering a genocide. Not a single one of them is asking for anything else. (“Who is my audience?” keep asking yourself. If the answer is anything other than “the dispossessed,” then recalibrate your ethics and try again.)

Shun the Genocidaires: Those rationalizing or cheering on the genocide are personae non grata from here on out.  No co-authoring articles with them. No sitting together on conference panels. No buddy-buddy bullshit on the networking circuit. Sure, sometimes circumstance will force you onto the same committee or whatever, but, if the association is voluntary, then decline the opportunity and find colleagues who don’t celebrate mass murder.

Speak: [speak]

Or better still: Listen.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Reporters without shame: Top ‘media rights’ organization ignores rampant killings of Gaza journalists

By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 7, 2024

At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.

The report’s announcement, titled, “Round-up: 45 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide – a drop despite the tragedy in Gaza,” excludes most of the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in 2023, particularly in the past few months. It claims 16 fewer journalists were killed worldwide in 2023 than in 2022. This doesn’t reflect reality.

The report claims that (as of December 1, 2023), only 13 Palestinian journalists were killed while actively reporting, noting separately that 56 journalists were killed in Gaza, “if we include journalists killed in circumstances unproven to be related to their duties.”

Other sources put the overall number of Palestinian journalists killed in the enclave much higher. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on December 1 that 73 journalists and media workers had been killed, citing to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

While The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) December 20, 2023 numbers are lower (at least 61 Palestinian journalists killed since October 7), CPJ at least didn’t disregard dozens of slain Palestinian journalists like RSF did.

In fact, in contrast to RSF’s cheerful “things are much better for journalists than previous years” tone, CPJ emphasized that in the first 10 weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza, “more journalists have been killed than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” It voiced its concern about, “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”

It isn’t clear how RSF discerns which circumstances were “unproven to be related” to the duties of slain Gazan journalists, nor who is “actively reporting” when Gaza is under relentless Israeli bombardment and suffers frequent internet cuts. In fact, given the nonstop Israeli bombing (and sniping) throughout the strip, it would be nearly impossible to discern whether journalists were reporting (including from their homes) at the time of their death.

However, in the methodology section near the end of its more detailed report, RSF notes it “logs a journalist’s death in its press freedom barometer when they are killed in the exercise of their duties or in connection with their status as a journalist.”

Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have received death threats from officers in the Israeli army precisely due to their status as journalists. And many of those threatened have subsequently been killed, along with family members, when Israeli airstrikes targeted their homes or places of shelter.

We also have the precedent in prior wars (in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021) of Israel bombing Gazan media buildings (including one I was in in 2009) with varying severity, damaging and finally destroying two major media buildings in 2021. This is clearly intended to stop the flow of reports from Gaza under Israeli bombs, and so is the killing of journalists.

On December 15, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate criticized the RSF report, going as far as accusing RSF of complicity with Israel’s war crimes against Palestinian journalists through whitewashing.

This is the same PJS whose statistics the UN’s OCHA cites, statistics which PJS says are “accurate and based on professional and legal documentation that follows the highest standards in documenting crimes against journalists.” This documentation includes journalists who Israeli airstrikes targeted in their homes, killed precisely because they are journalists.

In response, RSF claimed it, “did not yet have sufficient evidence or indications,” to state that any more than 14 journalists in the Gaza Strip (as of December 23, the date of its response) “had been killed in the course of their work or because of it.”

RSF called the PJS accusations “inane,” complaining that they “damage our organisation’s image,” and chastised the PSJ to not “impugn our motives,” or “quarrel” over numbers. “Quarreling over numbers” is a pretty cavalier objection from an organization espousing concern over journalists being targeted.

At least three journalists were shot dead, at least three killed by an Israeli airstrike on media outlets in central Gaza City, and many more were killed by Israeli airstrikes on “safe” areas – areas south of Wadi Gaza, which Israel had commanded civilians to flee to for their “safety.” In spite of this command, Israeli bombings continued all over the strip, including all the way south to Rafah.

Still many more – in Gaza City, as well as to the north and to the south of it – were killed at home with their families, including one journalist in Khan Younis, killed along with 11 members of his family when an Israeli airstrike targeted his home on November 2. On November 23, a journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 family members.

The Cradle reported that, “The Israeli army sent a letter to legacy news outlets, Reuters and AFP.” The letter said, “The [Israeli Army] is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza. Under these circumstances, we cannot guarantee your employees’ safety.”

One Israeli bombing of a journalist’s home on November 7 killed him and 42 family members. Like many of his slain colleagues, he was a journalist for Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news. Many of the other murdered journalists worked for: Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV, independent news agencies, local TV and radio programs, and larger outlets like al Jazeera. Others worked with Hamas-affiliated media and radio. Still others were freelancers.

On November 5, PJS reported that at least 20 of the journalists killed (since October 7) “were intentionally targeted by strikes on their homes or during their work covering Israel’s attacks.” This tally is already greater than RSF’s reported total of 13 journalists killed at work or because of their work, even though the RSF report covers a period of almost a month more.

Israel threatens journalists, kills family members

Many Gaza journalists report being threatened by the Israeli army. CPJ noted it is “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.”

One such incident followed a threat to Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al-Sharif. CPJ noted he had received multiple phone calls from officers in the Israeli army instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza. Additionally, he received voice notes on WhatsApp disclosing his location. His 90-year-old father was killed on December 11 by an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

On November 13, CPJ noted, “eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles. Qudih survived the attack.”

On October 25, an Israel airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza killed the wife, son, daughter, and grandson of Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh.

The popular young independent journalist, Motaz Azaiza, reported receiving multiple threats from anonymous numbers urging him to cease his coverage, CPJ reported, noting that another Al-Jazeera correspondent, Youmna El-Sayed, said her husband received a threatening phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the IDF and told the family “to leave or die.”

RSF bias: Not only in Palestine

Whereas RSF only reluctantly, as an afterthought, mentioned Palestinian journalists killed in “circumstances unproven to be related to their duties,” in a 2021 report on Syria, it stated, “at least 300 professional and non-professional journalists have been killed while covering artillery bombardments and airstrikes or murdered by the various parties to the conflict,” since 2011, going on to say, “this figure could in reality be even higher.”

It cited a report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) claiming the number could be up to 700. While endorsing these numbers, the RSF also gave a caveat, albeit a much meeker one than the one about Gaza journalists: “Confirming such estimates is not currently possible because of the difficulty of accessing information.”

Aside from reporting numbers it could not confirm, RSF cited a body in no way impartial or credible. As an investigative article noted, the SNHR is “based in Qatar… funded by foreign governments and staffed by top opposition leaders,” and “has openly clamored for Western military intervention.”

In 2017, Stephen Lendman wrote of RSF’s attempt to shut down a panel sponsored by the Swiss Press Club in which British journalist Vanessa Beeley would be participating. “An organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference,” the club’s executive director Guy Mettan said at the time. He refused to cancel the event.

RSF’s 2023 roundup also didn’t include two Russian journalists killed this year, one by a Ukrainian cluster bomb strike and the other by a Ukrainian drone attack (targeting journalists).

Sputnik pursued the matter and reported that RSF, “refused to give any comments to Sputnik ” citing “editorial policy.”

Journalist Christelle Neant likewise noted RSF’s glaring omission of the Russian journalists. She wrote about the body’s funding from various governments, and more notably from regime change agencies: the Open Society foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.

RSF’s notorious funders explain why it cherry picks or inflates its reports. The borderless organization has lines it won’t cross. It reports a grain of truth but otherwise whitewashes the crimes of Israel and Washington.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | 1 Comment

While Gaza Burns, Media Zionists Still Portray Israel as Victim

By Niall McCrae | 21st Century Wire | January 7, 2024

In words often wrongly attributed to Voltaire, Kevin Alfred Strom asserted that ‘to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise’.

Since the Hamas attack on 7th October, this has been made very clear. Influential Zionist activists, who exert phenomenal influence on western politics, governments, and media, have ensured that only the one version of events, the Israeli version, is socially acceptable. This political reality was demonstrated in grave detail in Al Jazeera’s multi-part investigative documentary, The Lobby -Britain and The Lobby – USA. Of course, a different truth is known by any objective observer, especially millions of Palestinian people, and also by the millions who march worldwide against the brutal military bombardment and massacre of civilians in Gaza. But the BBC and The Daily Mail still refuse to broadcast or publish the widespread and justified disgust at the actions of the Israeli government.

Disturbingly, the British mainstream media have been actively shilling for the Israeli government, as their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continuing the annihilation of Gaza. A prime asset of the campaign to cast Israelis as the oppressed, and the Palestinians as the oppressor is British media pundit Douglas Murray. Writing in the Spectator, Why I’m considering a life of crime, Murray denounced posters at Heathrow Airport inviting travellers from the ‘Israel/Palestinian territories’ who have ‘witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity’ to report to it police, in potential pursuance of a case by the International Criminal Court. This call for international justice deeply offends Murray, who asserts that ‘there is no country called Palestine’. Why not, Douglas? My old atlas from the 1930s clearly shows a land of this name, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea and bordering on Trans-Jordan.

Curiously, Murray is not sure what status to give the remaining Palestinian area. As he explains, ‘there is the disputed territory of the West Bank and there is Gaza, which was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 and which promptly became a ‘terror state’. Hold on, Douglas, don’t you deny such statehood? It seems that Murray wants Gaza to have responsibility without any sovereign recognition or power, and the inverse for Israel.

But their journalists and commentators are not only concerned with what’s happening in a narrow strip of land invaded by Israeli troops. They portray all Jews living in Britain as victims of hate, because supporters of the Palestinian cause are railing against the murderous exploits of a state that claims to represent Jewish people worldwide. Meanwhile our police and judiciary appear bent on protecting a foreign jurisdiction two thousand miles away; for example, arresting UK protestors with placards likening the Knesset to the Third Reich.


INFOGRAPHIC: Latest number in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in Gaza (Source: EuroMed)

The lead opinion piece in the Daily Express (4th January 2024), by the chairman of Glasgow Friends of Israel, shows the way that the wind is blowing. According to Sammy Stein, anti-Zionism is nothing but rebranded anti-Semitism. Although Stein acknowledges the right to criticise Israel and its leaders (as do many Israelis), he smears the regular large pro-Palestinian rallies in Glasgow as “anti-Semitic,” based on his experience in running a market stall in the city centre adorned with Israeli flags. He believes that flying a national flag (of a country that is clearly committing crimes against humanity) is somehow defending the rights of Jews. Within reasonable limits, criticism of his stall is an expected and justifiable act of free speech, a fundamental right in a free society.

Stein confines the concept of anti-Semitism to dislike of Jews, despite the broader meaning of Semitic peoples (including the Semitic Palestinian people, the targets of Israeli bombs and bullets). He claims that this ‘is a term established specifically for the hatred of the Jewish people and not, as some believe, hatred against people who can be described as Semites, such as Muslims’. The expanding scope of anti-Semitism, as determined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), is now sufficiently wide enough to quell any opprobrium towards Israel, while there is no equivalent protection for the native Palestinian people and their diaspora. Shamefully, nearly all major Western political parties have signed up to this blatantly one-sided censorship.

Despite the efforts of these Western institutions to impose an arbitrary definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime,’ the fact remains that Jews are not the same as the state of Israel, and both of which is not the same as the ideology known as Zionism. But the distinction between Zionists and the Israeli leadership is becoming blurred. As the Palestinians and their supporters chant of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, treated by many Western authorities as a potentially hateful message, Netanyahu’s administration seems to be aiming for that very same outcome – capturing the whole land for Israel and evicting the Palestinians from their homeland. Stein notes that ‘today, Zionism refers to support for the continued existence of Israel, in the face of regular calls for its dissolution’. The Israelis have a right to self-determination, Stein believes, but not the Palestinian inmates trapped in the world’s largest concentration camp.

Stein also reminds us that ‘Jesus was a Jew,’ who, ironically, was persecuted by the Jews, leading to his crucifixion under the aegis of Roman authority at the time. But for Stein and Zionists, the land of historic Palestine belongs to the Jews because some Jews have continuously inhabited the area for thousands of years, after having first established their presence thousands of years ago. Also, they believe that this homeland was supposedly promised to them as a fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham. This is a simplistic and convenient reading of history. There is no straightforward link between Judah of the Bible and present-day Zionists. Regardless, should Israel really be allowed to run an exclusionary ethno-nationalist and inhumane Apartheid state (as Western societies simultaneously promote multiculturalism, diversity, equity and inclusion)?

Stein regards anti-Zionism as ‘unique in demanding the dismantling of an existing state after over seventy years of independence.’ Palestinians would splutter over such hypocrisy. For Stein, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are now the same thing, being slightly different ‘ways of saying that Jews have no right to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as other humans’. Perhaps Stein should spend a few days on the Gaza strip to learn whose hate is most powerful – that of desperate, bombed-out Palestinians or that of the American-backed Israeli branch of the military-industrial complex.

***

Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018).

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

French Historian Predicts Imminent NATO Defeat in Ukraine, Russia-Europe Reconciliation

By Chimauchem Nwosu – Sputnik – 07.01.2024

A renowned French historian and sociologist better known for predicting the Soviet Union’s dissolution well in advance now foretells the West’s overthrow in his newest book.

French historian Emmanuel Todd believes that NATO is already losing the Ukrainian conflict. He likewise concluded that the defeat would eventually culminate in Russia’s reconciliation with Europe and its rapprochement with Germany, contrary to the wishes of the United States.

This view was expressed to Le Point Magazine during an interview ahead the release of his new book La Defaite de L’Occident (The Defeat of the West).

In the book, he denounces the Western attitude toward Russia, stating that “Avoiding the rapprochement between Germany and Russia was one of the US goals. This rapprochement would have signed the ejection of the United States from the European system of power. Americans have preferred to destroy Europe rather than save the West.”

Todd’s La Defaite de L’Occident excerpt highlights America’s waning status as a global superpower and its weak military-industrial complex.

The French historian also underlined the diminished influence of Europe, once represented by a strong partnership between France and Germany, highlighting that Germany has taken a dominant role since the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Furthermore, he pointed out that in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict, the European Union has distanced itself from Russia, therefore hurting its own trade and energy interests.

“We also saw Emmanuel Macron’s France vaporize on the international stage, while Poland became Washington’s main agent in the European Union, succeeding in the role of the United Kingdom that became outside the Union by the grace of Brexit… On the mainland, overall, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced a London-Warsaw-Kiev axis piloted from Washington,” Todd opined.

Todd decried the dominant narrative in the West about the conflict in Ukraine: “We are in a completely Putinophobic and Russophobic world.” He went on to argue for a pluralistic view that recognizes different perspectives. “I am fighting to keep the West pluralistic. If we look for my values, they are values of truth and pluralism,” he remarked.

Addressing the question of how this year’s US election might alter the trajectory of the Ukrainian conflict, the expert highlighted Russia’s steadfast commitment to its existing course. “For the Russians, it makes no difference. For Russia is at war with America, and they ignore changes in rulers,” according to Todd.

January 7, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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