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Beyond Kafka: How Youtube & Facebook Keep Purging Alternative Media

Hassan Nasrallah is persona non grata on Social Networks, where Anti-Zionism is the ultimate thoughtcrime 

By Sayed Hasan | Resistance news, unfiltered. | January 8, 2019

The guillotine’s blade fell again, one year later. On December 2017 already, my 5-years-old Youtube channel Sayed Hasan, mainly translating speeches from Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, was completely removed by Youtube, along with its 10 000 subscribers, +6 millions views and +400 subtitled videos of anti-Zionist & anti-Imperialist content. I then denunced this censorship in detail in my article Kafka 2.0: How Youtube’s Political Censorship is Exercised. And just around New Year’s Eve 2019, the +6000 Subscribed Facebook Page Resistance News Unfiltered, along with all its similar content, got deleted without explanation. The only thing left online is a cache view of the page dating back from this summer, in French.


I had created this Page at the beginning of 2018, since no other place can compete with Youtube and its near-monopoly on video content, in order to reach a broader audience. But it was deleted without explanation by Facebook short of its first anniversary. I can’t even know the precise date of termination. Youtube did at least bother to send emails notifying of the removal of a video or of a whole channel, but Facebook has only internal notifications for posts removals. Here is how it happened. 

I got two warnings from Facebook, dated December 24th and December 25th, 2018:

When I logged in on December 28th and saw these messages, I immediately appealed the decisions through the automated procedure, as shown above, though the specific posts alledgedly violating the Communnity Standards weren’t even accessible, since they had been removed. It means that I didn’t –and still don’t– even know which posts got me these “strikes”. At least, Youtube was specific about the videos alledgedly violating their rules –three speeches of Hassan Nasrallah–, though they didn’t say more than that. I don’t know if the whole Page was finally removed because of a third “strike” –Facebook does not even state how much “strikes” you can get before termination– or because of something else, like constant flagging and reports by cyber-IDF soldiers and Hasbara trolls. But I am positive it has to do with my anti-Zionist content. It is a blatant attempt to take down important speech and silence already marginalized voices, as stated by Vera Eidelman from the ACLU. 

Of course, one should always protest and complain using the due procedures. After all, Facebook has been known to restore such Pages after the public outcry following their removal without proper reason (TeleSur, VenezuelAnalysis, etc.). I did protest, and I am still expecting an answer from them, without much hope, since earlier appeals as old as September 17th are still awaiting a response almost 4 months later, as shown below (screenshot dated January 4th, 2019).

Appeals are not suspensive. Anyway, without any mention of a motive, corpus delicti and mere notification of removal of my page, not even in Facebook’s internal notifications on my personnal account, we are clearly beyond kafkaesque.

This witch-hunt against the voice of the Resistance Axis online, especially Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah (I am the main translator of his speeches in English and French, voluntary and non-affiliated), is not new. Over and over again –most often after Israeli-backed indictment campaigns–, in 2012, 2014, 2016 and June 2018, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter closed down all accounts affiliated to the Lebanese –and Palestinian– Resistance, including Al-Manar TV Channel, banned for good. In 2014 and 2016, Facebook was hunting down Nasrallah’s very picture and temporarily blocking the accounts that featured it, even though they were individuals having no link whatsoever with the organization: not only Hezbollah’s missiles and fighters, but the very voice and picture of its Secretary General are considered as an existential threat for Israel, whose paid trolls keep reporting his videos as terrorist hate-speech to ban mercilessly. The right to information, neutrality or equity is a chimera in the Internet Giants’ turf, where only alternative views, especially videos hostile to Zionism, are subject to censorship and banishment.

On January 8, 2019, Norman Finkelstein commented on the issue:

It is a scandal that the speeches of Hassan Nasrallah are banned on Youtube. Whatever one thinks of his politics, it cannot be doubted that Nasrallah is among the shrewdest and most serious political observers in the world today. Israeli leaders carefully scrutinize Nasrallah’s every word. Why are the rest of us denied this right? One cannot help but wonder whether Nasrallah’s speeches are censored because he doesn’t fit the stereotype of the degenerate, ignorant, blowhard Arab leader. It appears that Western social media aren’t yet ready for an Arab leader of dignified mind and person.

Thankfully, my first article got the attention of Ron Unz, who offered to safeguard my videos in his own website, and I published them back gradually in a new Dailymotion Channel from where they are automatically saved in The Unz Review’s internal storage system. Thus, even if they end up deleted by Dailymotion, they’ll still be accessible in one and same place without need to re-upload them again. I will keep posting my videos on Dailymotion –though it has its own, more subtle way of censorship: age-restricting videos, burying them in the search results… –, and I call on everyone to subscribe to my channel on the Unz Review (RSS feed) and on all those who can to donate to support this work. Whatever happens, the Electronic Intifada to which Hassan Nasrallah called will carry on.

January 8, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Operation Iris’ & more: New documents tie Integrity Initiative to spin of Skripal affair

RT | January 4, 2019

Hackers who leaked documents from the Integrity Initiative, a shadowy outfit funded by the UK government, claim they show its connections to the March 2018 alleged poisoning attack in Salisbury and proposed actions against Russia.

The Integrity Initiative (II) was set up in 2015 by the equally shadowy “Institute for Statecraft,” according to the documents published online in November by hackers calling themselves a part of the Anonymous collective. While Anonymous has denied the group was behind the leak, the Institute confirmed the authenticity of the first batch of documents.

The hackers posted a fresh batch of documents purportedly from the Initiative and the Institute on Friday, hinting that both outfits had connections with Western media coverage of the March 2018 alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergey Skripal, and the actions against Russia taken subsequently by the UK government and its allies.

One of the documents is the confidential report by Harod Associates, a company hired by the Initiative to conduct “mainstream & social media analysis” of the Skripal scandal coverage. The entire undertaking was dubbed “Operation Iris.”

Among those who found themselves named “Russian trolls” and Kremlin agents in the report were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

Another document, dated March 11, 2018, contains a “Narrative” of the Skripal incident, blaming Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally and containing a number of recommended actions, such as boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany and block Russian access to SWIFT international banking system, but also to “ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK.”

Other suggestions include propaganda directed at British Muslims “to publicise what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion” (sic) and getting members of Parliament to publicize the “threat Russia poses.”

The document dump also contains the April 14, 2018 email from Andy Pryce, whom the hackers describe as “chief propaganda man” at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, containing the official government narrative of the Skripal affair and the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Pryce ends the email by recommending “good sources of further information” on alleged Russian propaganda, including the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, Bellingcat and Stopfake.

Documents obtained and published by the hackers also show connections between Skripal’s recruiter and neighbor Pablo Miller, the Institute for Statecraft, and the so-called rescue group White Helmets, created in militant-held areas of Syria by a former British official in 2013.

There are also several invoices from Dan Kaszeta of the Institute for Statecraft, for articles he wrote as supposedly a chemical weapons expert advancing the Institute’s narrative on both the Skripals and Syria.

The most intriguing, however, is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971’s Operation Foot. One of the actions by the UK, US and several other NATO countries in the wake of claims that Russia used a nerve agent against Skripal was a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents written long before the Salisbury events call for arrests of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding, “Makes you think…”

Previously published documents have revealed the Initiative and the Institute as being involved in widespread propaganda operations targeting not only foreign countries and media outlets – as one might expect from someone doing the bidding of the Foreign Office – but also domestic political figures, such as Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

January 4, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Who Runs Our World?

Netanyahu addresses US Congress | Photo from Al Jazeera
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019

Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.

Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors.

With this perspective we may judge all kinds of world events, such as the many false flag terror attacks which have been perpetrated in one country after another to bring about political objectives. False flag attacks range from Operation Gladio to demonize leftists, 9-11 to demonize Arabs and Muslims, and the shooting down of the MH-17 airliner to demonize Russia. Under an atmosphere of terror, with citizens clamoring for revenge, all kinds of political goals can be achieved.

Propaganda is also vital. Control of information through a likewise controlled media has facilitated mass brainwashing. To control the narrative, whistle blowers and truth tellers must be isolated and destroyed, preferably in the open, so as to warn others away. This is what is happening with Julian Assange.

The attack on Gilad Atzmon is an other example. Atzmon has been a major critic of the role of Jewish political power in our world — not just in Palestine, but all over the western world. When he says “we are all Palestinians” he is making the observation that Europe and North America are being Israelified. For example, some police in the US go for training in Israel, where they learn to view the US public, particularly African Americans, the way the Israeli military views Palestinians — as enemies to be shot in the streets and abusively treated. In the US, people are not allowed to question or discuss Jewish power, when it is evident that AIPAC, the lobby for Israel, completely controls both houses of the US Congress. We recall the members of Congress giving Benjamin Netanyahu 29 standing ovations during his denunciation of Iran in 2011. In Britain, mass insanity has taken hold, at least in the media, in the demonization of Russia via the Skripal affair and Luke Harding’s MI6 journalism in The Guardian. This is taking place solely because of Russia’s thwarting of Israel in its attempt to destroy Syria. For the neocons, the agenda is always war — the stick to bring recalcitrant states in line with the New World Order. This behavior is so dangerous that it would be crazy if we did not speak about who is doing this, and why.

In December 2018 Atzmon was banned from playing a jazz gig in Islington, north of London, because a powerful entity — the Zionist Herut Likud UK — initiated a character assassination and attack on his livelihood through Richard Watts, leader of the Islington Town Council. The Council created the lie that in banning Atzmon it was protecting the citizens of Islington from “antisemitism.” In fact, it is only protecting organized Zionists — supporters of the racist state of Israel — from one of their most effective critics.

Two paid staff for the Council — Ian Adams and Martin Bevis — were assigned to carry out the bureaucratic part of the job. They defended the assassination in the name of political correctness. They responded to Atzmon’s appeal of the Council ruling by citing almost entirely Zionist and Israeli sources to back up the claim that Atzmon is an “antisemite.” These sources include the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and The Forward. When Atzmon countered these sources with a list of well-known academics who have supported his work — Richard Falk, John Mearschimer, Ramzy Baroud, Paul Craig Roberts, Cynthia McKinney, James Petras, Francis Boyle, among others — Ian Adams responded by saying, “I have found that the majority of them would appear to have also been subject to significant controversy or allegations of being anti-Semitic themselves.” To Adams, representing a town in Britain, the only valid authorities are in the media run out of Israel, with its blatant record of discrimination and genocide against Palestinians, which all those media support.

Power likes to cover up its crude manipulations with a veneer of reason and legality. Islington based its original decision on Atzmon’s banning on a clause in the town’s books having to do with events at the Islington Assembly Hall. The clause states:

“You must not, in connection with any Live Event, use, provide or display any material, whether written or spoken, or allow behaviour that constitutes direct or indirect discrimination or harassment, victimisation of, villification of, any person or group of persons on grounds of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or age.”

In their letters, Adams and Bevis provide no response to the fact that Atzmon was to appear at the December 21, 2018 event as a saxophone player with a jazz group called The Blockheads. There was no logical way to assume that his saxophone playing would discriminate against, harass, victimize, or vilify anyone at this event. The banning was therefore not backed up by law; it was illegal in itself, as it discriminated against Atzmon.

The only thing one can say about the bureaucrats’ defense of Islington’s decision is that they and the town officials, and indeed much of Britain’s political class, seem to be unaware that Zionism is the water in which their boat is floating. When the entire mainstream narrative is dictated by Jewish identity politics, of course all criticism of those politics must be heresy. Britain was once a sovereign nation, not a colony of Israel — much like the US. Much like Canada, Germany, France, and so on. These countries were not invaded by tanks and infantry; they were invaded by dogma. Political dogma, political “correctness,” and the totalitarian policing of our thoughts and words, are the things which Gilad Atzmon has pointed to in western culture and held up for us to examine. Zionists have made criticism of Israel “antisemitic” by definition. There is no way to win the argument. The word no longer has any meaning. This is aside from the fact that ‘semitic’ refers to a language group which includes Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew and that the majority of the settlers claiming rights to the Holy Land did not come from areas, like Palestine, where semitic languages were spoken.

Atzmon has asked the most basic questions: Israel defines itself as “the Jewish state” — what then is the Jewish state? What are Jewish identity politics? And why are we not allowed open discussion and debate on these questions? This is the reason for the attempt to denounce him. The bureaucrats and politicians of Islington say they’re fighting bigotry, but because they are part of a system which bigotry built, they’re actually speaking on behalf of it. Once again, the oligarchs have put through a dirty scheme under cover of benevolence and human rights.

January 4, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Mumia Abu-Jamal Wins Major Court Victory

By Jeff Mackler | CounterPunch | January 3, 2019

On December 27, Philadelphia Superior Court Judge Leon Tucker ruled in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, holding that the actions of former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge Ronald Castille demonstrated a “lack of impartiality” and “the appearance of bias.”

Tucker’s decision represents a major victory for Abu-Jamal that opens the door to a new trial–or dismissal of the murder charges against him–after an appeal to the Pennsylvania courts.

Incarcerated in 1981 in a racist frame-up murder trial of police officer Daniel Faulkner and on death row for most of the past 37 years, Mumia was a prize-winning journalist and today the author of 10 books on various aspects of the freedom struggle. His latest book, Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide, Manifest Destiny, 2017, co-authored by filmmaker Stephen Victoria (Long Distance Revolutionary, 2014) with a forward by Chris Hedges, is invaluable reading for revolutionary activists who seek the truth about capitalist imperialism’s centuries of horrors and the historic resistance against them.

Mumia’s freedom struggle has been supported by scores of trade unions across the U.S. and in Europe as well as by Amnesty International, the NAACP and numerous city council resolutions from San Francisco to Detroit.

Tucker’s 27-page ruling was in two parts. He held in Part Two that with regard to all of Mumia’s numerous denied Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) appeals between 1998 and 2014, Supreme Court Judge Ronald Castille’s actions in campaigning for the Pennsylvania governor to sign death penalty warrants for all “convicted cop killers” and other biased acts, violated Mumia’s fundamental constitutional rights.

Castille had participated in PA Supreme Court decisions that denied all of Mumia’s appeals, including a request from Mumia’s attorneys that he recuse himself from deciding the case he had helped to prosecute and another decision where the same Castille court refused to consider documented evidence submitted by court stenographer Terri Maurer Carter that Mumia’s trial judge Albert “the hanging judge” Sabo had stated in his antechambers before entering the courtroom to adjudicate Mumia’s case, “Yeah, I’m going to help ‘em fry the nigger.” Mumia’s decades long sojourn through the racist U.S. “criminal justice system” is replete with what has become infamously known as “the Mumia exception,” that is, contorted applications of the “law” aimed at denying its applicability to the facts in Mumia’s case. These include systematic exclusion of eyewitness testimony proving his innocence, intimidation of witnesses, falsification of exonerating ballistics findings, fabrication of testimony that Mumia admitted to the killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner and Mumia’s physical exclusion from a majority of his trial proceedings – to name a few of the legal atrocities attendant to his trial and subsequent proceedings.

Judge Tucker’s ruling opens the door for Mumia to appeal all of Castille’s decisions over a 17-years period. Tucker denied Part One of Mumia’s appeal that pertained to whether or not Castille had been significantly or personally involved in Mumia’s prosecution in order to qualify under the provisions of the 2016 Supreme Court William’s case. Mumia’s attorneys may appeal this decision in order to fight on both legal fronts.

While the present Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner may well appeal Tucker’s amazing and unexpected decision, the door is nevertheless wide open to a lengthy legal battle along with renewed national and international campaigns to win massive and united support in the streets to demand Mumia’s freedom.

Jeff Mackler is a staffwriter for Socialist Action. He can be reached at jmackler@lmi.net  socialist action.org

January 4, 2019 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Nineteen Palestinian Journalists Are Still Imprisoned By Israel

IMEMC News – December 31, 2018

The Palestinian Information Ministry has reported that there are nineteen Palestinian journalists who are still imprisoned by Israel, in direct violation of various treaties and International Law.

In a press statement Monday, the Ministry said that the Israeli occupation and its military courts are ongoing with their serious violations against the journalists and various media outlets in occupied Palestine.

It said that many journalists have also been forced under house arrest, others were forced out of their towns, in addition to facing high fines by the Israeli military courts for performing their duties.

The Ministry also said that some of the abducted journalists were shot and injured, while others are sick, in need of specialized medical treatment but are denied that right.

The soldiers also invaded and violently searched many media outlets across the West Bank, and confiscated equipment.

The Information Ministry stated that Israel’s violations are ongoing attempts to silence the Palestinian media outlets and the journalists, and urged the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and various related organizations around the world to intervene and stop the escalating abuses against the media and the Freedom of the Press in occupied Palestine.

It is worth mentioning that the soldiers have also killed Palestinian Photojournalist Yasser Mortaja, and journalist Ahmad Abu Hussein, in the Gaza Strip, in addition to wounding dozens of journalists, during the Great Return March processions.

January 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 27.12.2018

Irony is dead when British state media controllers accuse Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik of “imbalance” over their reporting on the Skripal alleged poisoning affair.

In the past week, Ofcom, the British media watchdog, condemned seven programs aired during March and April this year following the apparent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The Russian outlets may be fined or denied future broadcasting rights in Britain. The latter suggests what the real, ulterior agenda is all about.

It remains a mystery as to what happened exactly to Skripal and his daughter when they reportedly fell ill on March 4 in the famous south of England cathedral town. Neither Sergei nor Julia have been seen in public since, apart from a brief and carefully controlled interview given by Julia to Reuters a few months ago, apparently having recovered from her stricken condition. Russian consular services have been denied access to Julia by the British authorities, despite her being a Russian citizen.

The murkiness of the affair, the flagrant obfuscation by the British authorities and their violation of diplomatic norms speaks of a British state intrigue aimed at provoking international recriminations against Russia. Such is the outrageous apparent skullduggery by the British state, it is arguably very appropriate therefore for critical media coverage of the incident and the subsequent prevarication by London.

However, in a staggering inversion of reality, British media regulators complain that Russian news outlets have broken “impartiality rules” in their reporting on what is a bizarre de facto disappearance of a Russian citizen and her father while in the custody of British authorities. The protagonists are off-limits from criticism; their ropey claims must be treated as the sane version of events.

Within days of the Salisbury incident, senior British officials, including Prime Minister Theresa May, were accusing Russia of an assassination attempt against the Skripals, allegedly with a Soviet-era nerve poison.

London’s narrative inculpating the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues, despite Russia’s vehement denial of involvement and despite the lack of independently verifiable evidence.

This week, in her Christmas speech to the nation, premier May again repeated her condemnation of the “nerve agent attack in Salisbury” and she praised British armed forces for “protecting the country’s waters and skies from Russian intrusion”.

So, Russian media are castigated for “bias”, but British media are evidently permitted to report and broadcast official British assertions that are unproven and wildly sensational, if not tantamount to inciting international conflict. Just who is breaking journalistic standards?

Among the news outlets reporting May’s words were the BBC. The government-owned British broadcaster routinely and snidely refers to Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik as “Kremlin-backed”. As if the state-backed BBC is somehow immune from disseminating British government propaganda.

May’s assertions in her Christmas speech about Russia carrying out an alleged assassination and threatening Britain with invasion went unchallenged by the BBC. Nor were her other claims about chemical weapons being used by Syrian government forces against civilians.

On Syria, May was referring to an incident near Damascus in April this year when toxic chlorine was purportedly used in an assault on civilians. Back then, the British prime minister joined with US President Trump and France’s President Macron to order air strikes on Syria, supposedly in retaliation for the Syrian army’s use of chemical weapons. But it soon transpired that the incident was a provocation staged by jihadist militants and their media operatives, the so-called White Helmets. In other words, the British, American and French carried out a criminal act of aggression against Syria under false pretenses.

Yet May in her solemn set-piece nationwide Christmas speech this week was allowed by British media to repeat blatant lies against Syria, and brazenly avoid the issue of justice facing her government over illegal air strikes on Syria, as well as to continue smearing Russia over the murky Skripal affair.

The arrogant hypocrisy of British media and the state regulator is astounding. British citizens are compelled by law to pay an annual license fee of £150 ($190) per household for possessing a television set. Failure to pay can result in a jail sentence. The TV license fee collected by the British state is handed over to the BBC. So, here we have a state-owned media channel that is funded through a compulsory tax on citizens, and yet this same channel willingly broadcasts British government propaganda claims denigrating Russia and covering up for British war crimes in Syria. If that sounds Orwellian, that’s because it is.

The BBC’s corporate advertising claims to be the “world’s leader in breaking global news”. It also assures its listeners and readers that it produces “news you can trust”.

There are countless cases where the BBC’s pompous self-importance can be exposed, revealing an altogether more malevolent purpose. One of the most notorious cases was its complicity in orchestrating the 1953 coup in Iran carried out by the American CIA and Britain’s MI6. In his book, Web of Deceit, British historian Mark Curtis details the crucial role played by the BBC and its Persian service in helping to foment the coup against the elected premier Mohammad Mosaddegh.

More recently, BBC coverage of the war in Syria over the past eight years has been a relentless propaganda assault on the government of President Bashar al Assad. It is not merely about omission or biased distortion. The BBC has been caught out actually fabricating fake news in Syria, such as the case when it accused the Syrian army of using napalm on civilians near Aleppo in 2013. Those reports were later exposed as deliberate fabrications.

More generally on Syria, the BBC, as with other Western news media, are serving as facilitators of the criminal regime-change objective of their governments. May’s grotesque falsehoods reiterated this week – in a Christmas speech of all things! – about chemical weapons are afforded respectability and apparent credibility by the way the BBC and other British outlets dutifully report her words without any qualification, let alone criticism.

It is a measure of how distorted the British media landscape is when alternative news channels which do raise critical viewpoints and insights on propaganda narratives are then accused of being “imbalanced” and “in breach of broadcasting rules”.

In response to Britain’s Ofcom regulator condemning Russia’s RT and Sputnik, Moscow is now saying that its own state regulator is considering filing a case against the BBC and how it operates in Russia. Given how the BBC tried to tie Russia to instigating the Yellow Vest protests in France and how it recently ran an article accusing the Kremlin of “weaponizing satire”, there seems much more credibility to Russian claims that the “British state-backed outlet” is in breach of journalistic standards.

The broader background of how the BBC serves British state propaganda is panoramic in its scope. But such is official British hypocrisy, the authorities attack critical news outlets that happen to expose their propaganda service posing as “news you can trust”.

Free speech in Britain? Yes, as long as you freely speak in the service of British state propaganda.

December 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Fiasco In Islington, Part 2

Gilad Atzmon
By Richard Hugus | December 26, 2018

More facts have come to light in the case of Gilad Atzmon and his banning by the Islington Town Council from performing at a jazz concert on December 21, 2018. The original scenario was that one  e-mail from one person calling Atzmon an antisemite somehow persuaded the Islington council to take the drastic step of removing Atzmon from a town-owned venue. Many who heard the story felt this was a rash decision which would surely be reversed when the facts were brought to light. But the Council voted to uphold its decision and Atzmon was indeed not allowed to play.

Now it appears that the single complainant – Martin Rankoff –  was not just an anonymous fan of Israel but the UK director of Likud-Herut. Herut (or ‘freedom’) was Israel’s founding nationalist party from 1948 until it later merged with Likud. It is a militant and extreme Zionist organization whose roots go in a straight line from Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin up to Benjamin Netanyahu today. Jabotinsky and Begin helped form the Irgun terrorists in 1937. Irgun committed notorious massacres in Palestine leading up to and during the Nakba (or ‘catastrophe’) of 1947-1948. These include the bombing of the King David Hotel  in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 people, and the massacre at Deir Yassin  in 1948 in which 254 unarmed Palestinian villagers were brutally murdered as an incentive for other Palestinians to leave. On its web site Likud-Herut UK lists Jabotinsky and Begin as “visionaries.” Likud-Herut is a member of the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Federation of the UK  who believe in “the inalienable right of all Jews to live and settle in all parts of the Land of Israel.”

In a letter to the New York Times in 1948 Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others compared Herut to the Nazis and Fascists who had just been defeated in World War II. Referring to this letter, Ramzy Baroud recently wrote, “the ‘Nazi and Fascist’ mentality that defined Herut in 1948 now defines the most powerful ruling class in Israel. Israel’s leaders speak openly of genocide and murder, yet they celebrate and promote Israel as if an icon of civilization, democracy and human rights.”
–
The history of Herut and Likud tells us a great deal about who the people are who complained about Atzmon to Islington Town Council. When Atzmon moved to appeal his being banned, formidable opponents again appeared in the form of the Simkins Law firm, one of the most expensive law practices in Britain, with  not one but two partners at Simkins being put on the case. These are Gideon Benaim and Tom Iverson. Benaim recently became well known in Britain for winning an invasion of privacy suit against the BBC on behalf of pop singer Cliff Richard, who said he spent ￡3.4m ($4.3 million) on the case. Clearly, representation by Simkins doesn’t come cheap. Also listed in Benaim’s resumé as a client is the Las Vegas Sands Corporation which likely has no problem with Simkins’ fees either. The Sands casino is owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who, as it happens, is a primary sponsor of the Likud Party in Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Adelson owns the newspaper Israel Hayom, a mouthpiece for Netanyahu and Likud.

American businessman and investor Sheldon Adelson with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the ceremony of a laying of a cornerstone for new Medicine Faculty buildings at the Ariel University in the West Bank, on June 28, 2017. Photo by Ben Dori/Flash90

It now appears that Atzmon’s banning was not the result of a casual complaint; it was an intentional attack on a well-respected supporter of Palestinian human rights by the Likud organization, directly represented by Martin Rankoff. The attack was followed up by the hiring of a lawyer who has worked for Likud godfather Sheldon Adelson. The connection to these powerful forces may explain why Islington Town Council leader Richard Watts, without any delay or attempt at negotiation, took the step of going straight to a decision to hire an expensive law firm. This is while Islington is facing serious austerity and shortage of funds in its own operating budget. Islington has a population of about 206,000 people. This very month, 43 of those people were counted in one survey as homeless and sleeping on the streets.

Regarding the financial problems of his borough and others around London, Richard Watts, told The Independent in October 2018 :

“unprecedented” funding pressures and demand for adult and children’s social care and homelessness services was “pushing councils to the limit”.

“As a result less money is being spent on the other services that keep our communities running such as libraries, local roads, early intervention and local welfare support,” he added.

Yet, to Watts and his fellow councilors in Islington, backing partisans for a foreign country -Israel- took precedence over the pressing needs of the people whom they are supposed to represent. Either Watts was inexcusably careless with scarce town funds or a deal was made and he knew that he could depend on Likud-Herut to back him. Or, like politicians all across Europe and the US facing the power of the Israel lobby, he knew he couldn’t afford to say no.

According to Simkin’s web site, Gideon Benaim “has extensive expertise in the areas of defamation, privacy, harassment and copyright.” Perhaps it is not a coincidence that immediately after Islington brought in Simkins, identical statements from an unnamed Labour spokesman describing Atzmon as “a vile antisemite” appeared in both the BBC and The Guardian. Perhaps a lawyer experienced in defending people against defamation and harassment would also know how to perpetrate these things. Perhaps this was Benaim’s opening move. Character assassination is a common tactic in cases that have a weak legal foundation, such as this one, as it goes a long way to convicting the accused before their case ever reaches a courtroom.

The involvement of Likud-Herut in the attack on Gilad Atzmon, and Islington’s official backing of that attack, constitutes a monumental scandal. This wasn’t just a stupid mistake; it was a hit. It is an affront to reason that an an arch-racist organization like Likud, who from the beginning have stood for the removal of the people of Palestine from their own land by means of terror, murder, and forced expulsion, could possibly claim they they were defamed by someone pointing out these very crimes. There is a case of defamation here for sure – the defamation of Gilad Atzmon. For Zionists, defamation is nothing more than a tool to destroy opponents who can’t be dealt with by other means. We are long since tired of truth tellers being accused of antisemitism. We’re tired of national and local resources being used to prop up the criminal state of Israel. Coercion by advocates for Israel is at the center of this issue in Islington, as it is in many other towns and many other countries. For the sake of Palestine and our own sovereignty, it has to be called out and stopped.

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

Email: assemblyhall@islington.gov.uk

Contact the Council: +4420 7527 2000

To support Gilad’s legal battles:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support

Fiasco In Islington

December 26, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Removes Memorial Honoring Famed Palestinian Writer Ghassan Kanafani

Ghassan Kanafani. (Photo: File)
Palestine Chronicle | December 22, 2018

Israel removed a memorial statue in the city of Acre this week dedicated to Palestinian intellectual and writer Ghassan Kanafani.

The statue was set up in a cemetery by Palestinians in the northern Israeli city to honor the iconic intellectual and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member.

The local Waqf (Endowment) in Acre was contacted shortly after the memorial was erected and pressured to remove it immediately by Israel’s Interior Ministry.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said earlier this week that “we will not allow memorials in honor of terrorists in Israel”.

A relative of Kanafani said the memorial would be moved to a garden of another relative in Acre.

Ahmad Odeh, a Palestinian member of Acre’s city council, said Kanafani was a “symbol for the entire Palestinian people” and denounced the Israeli decision.

Despite being a civilian who did not bear arms, Kanafani, born in Acre in 1936, was assassinated in Beirut in 1972 by a car bomb believed to have been orchestrated by Israeli Mossad agents.

Kanafani’s obituary in Lebanon famously said:

“He was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages.”

His family was forcibly displaced from the city in 1948 during the mass exodus of Palestinians known as the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.

Acre was historically a mixed city of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Baha’i, but around 75 percent of the population was displaced during fighting surrounding the creation of the Israeli state.

December 22, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Fiasco In Islington

By Richard Hugus | December 21, 2018

Jazz saxophonist and writer Gilad Atzmon was recently banned from playing at an assembly hall in Islington, a borough of London, by order of the Islington Town Council. This came about as a result of an e-mail from one person — Martin Rankoff  — saying nothing more than that if Atzmon was going to be at the venue on December 21 he would give a ticket that was given to him to someone else. Rankoff wrote, “Mr Atzmon’s news and beliefs I personally find repulsive and do not wish to be in the same place as him, let alone listen to his music.” Rankoff included links to ADL and Israeli news outlets accusing Atzmon of antisemitism. Incredibly, on the basis of this letter alone, the Islington Council went way out of its way and contacted the show’s promoter to get Atzmon banned — something Rankoff didn’t even ask for.

Imagine the situation in reverse: Gilad Atzmon writes a letter to the Council saying he is uncomfortable with Martin Rankoff appearing in the audience at Islington assembly hall. He refers to Mr. Rankoff’s pro-Israel Twitter page where Rankoff calls Jeremy Corbyn “A F***ing Antisemite and Racist” and where Corbyn is pictured on a bike with a comment suggesting Corbyn should be rammed by a car. Atzmon says that he doesn’t feel safe with Rankoff in the audience. He finds Mr. Rankoff’s support for Israel repulsive because Israel was founded on genocide against the people of Palestine. As proof he provides links to news reports on the slaughter of unarmed protestors in Gaza since  March 30, 2018, and a story on the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948.

This imaginary second complaint would have been scorned as an abridgement of Rankoff’s rights. Indeed, since the Islington Council has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, in which criticism of Israel is deemed antisemitic, the Council would probably feel obliged to forward the letter to the authorities as evidence of hate speech.

The Council provided a statement on the banning in which it says: “under the Equality Act 2010, the Council must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to foster good relations between different races and religions within the borough. The Council took account of the fact that Mr Atzmon’s presence at the Hall, and knowledge of his presence among residents of the borough, might harm such relationships, as well as the Council’s duty to tackle prejudice and promote understanding within the borough.”

This begs the question — in what way would either the “presence” of Gilad Atzmon or “knowledge of his presence among residents” harm the relationship between different races and religions in the borough? Atzmon was to appear at the venue as a saxophone player in a jazz group. It’s hard to imagine a more severe inversion of the concept of discrimination. On the basis of the feelings of one complainant, the right of a musician to work or even be present in Islington is taken away.

What lies behind this is a familiar tactic. Zionists have no argument to counter critics of Israel, so they try to shut them up by attacking their character and robbing them of their livelihood. Now AIPAC and other lobbies are working to make it illegal to criticize Israel, as we see in the recent case of a Texas speech therapist whose yearly contract was denied because she refused to sign a pledge not to support a boycott of Israel. One might ask, what does a teaching position in Pflugerville, Texas have to do with one’s opinions about a country seven thousand miles away? And why does that country have the right to compel anyone in the US to sign a loyalty oath?

If the BDS movement doesn’t do it, zealotry and fanatacism will be the undoing of the Zionist project. People don’t like being told what they are allowed to think and say. When our words and thoughts are policed, it makes us question all the more. What were once decent leftist positions against racism and discrimination have been twisted into a new kind of totalitarianism, one in which it is racist to question the racist, and discriminatory to question discrimination; one in which we are told to think something doesn’t exist when we can see with our own eyes that it does. The self-righteous members of the Islington Town Council have set a very dangerous precedent, and have been used as fools on top of it.

December 21, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Be Offensive and Be Damned: The Cases of Peter Ridd and Tim Anderson

By Binoy Kampmark | Dissident Voice | December 20, 2018

It has been an ordinary year for universities in Australia. While the National Tertiary Education Union pats itself on the back for supposedly advancing the rights and pay of academics, several face removal and castigation at the hands of university management. Consumerism and pay are the sort of quotidian matters that interest the NTEU. Less interesting is the realm of academic ideas and how they clash with the bureaucratic prisons that have been built into universities.

At James Cook University, Peter Ridd was sacked on “code of conduct” grounds applied with a delightful elasticity. He claimed that it was for holding views on climate change out of step with his colleagues, and attacking the credibility of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. (The pettiness of such institutions knows no bounds: Ridd’s knuckles were rapped, for instance, for satirising, trivialising or parodying the university.)

At the University of Sydney, Tim Anderson, a full time critic of Western interventions in the Middle East and acquitted for ordering the 1978 Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing, has been suspended pending what would seem to be imminent sacking. Causing “offense” was what mattered.

A cardinal rule applies in this case: Be suspicious of those who use good behaviour as a criterion of policing, notably in an environment where bad behaviour and dangerous ideas should hold sway over meek bumbling and submissiveness. Be wary of the demands to be vanilla and beige – behind them lies administrative venality and the dictates of compliance.

Such rubbery provisions as being “civil” or not causing offense shield the weak, spineless and fraudulent and, most dangerously, create the very same intolerable workplace that managers are supposedly opposed to. Very importantly, such code of conduct regulations are designed to immunise management from questions about their behaviour and often daft directives, letting institutions grow flabby with corruption.  Inoculated, that class thrives in its toxicity.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of JCU, Iain Gordon, has drawn upon the usual stock nonsense defending the decision regarding Ridd. “The issue has never been about Peter’s right to make statements – it’s about how he has continually broken a code of conduct that we would expect all our staff to stick to, to create a safe, respectful professional workplace.” The thrust of this is simple: Never cause offense; be compliantly decent; be cripplingly dull and go back to your homes in your suburbs living a life unexamined. As an academic, you are merely delivering a service mandated by individuals several steps removed from the education process, not performing an ancient duty to educate mankind.

The code of conduct, the product of a corporatized imbecility, assumes the mantle of dogma in such disputes. “All staff members must comply with the Code of Conduct,” goes Gordon’s official statement in May, with its distinct politburo flavour of placing things beyond debate. “This is non-negotiable. It is a fundamental duty and obligation that forms part of their employment.” Ridd, explains Gordon, “sensationalised his comments to attract attention, has criticised and denigrated published work, and has demonstrated a lack of respect for his colleague and institutions in doing so. Academic rebuttal of his scientific views on the reef has been separately published.”

Anderson, having found himself at stages in the University of Sydney’s bad books, has also run the gauntlet of offensiveness. The specific conduct resulting in his suspension featured lecture materials shown to students suggesting the imposition of a swastika upon Israel’s flag. This was deemed “disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the university’s behavioural expectations”. Tut, tut, Anderson.

The Sydney University provost and acting vice-chancellor Stephen Garton followed the line taken at JCU towards Ridd with zombie-like predictability. “The university has, since its inception, supported and encouraged its staff to engage in public debate and it has always accepted that those views might be controversial.” But debate – and here, behavioural fetters were again to be imposed – had to be undertaken “in a civil manner.” Contrarianism should be expressed with a good measure of decency.

The letter of suspension from Garton to Anderson is one-dimensionally authoritarian. Principles of academic freedom were supported by the university, but only in “accordance with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards”. But the all supreme, and trumping document, remained the Code of Conduct, capitalised by the bureaucrats as Mosaic Law. “The inclusion of the altered image of the Israeli flag in your Twitter Posts, Facebook Posts and teaching materials is disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the University’s behavioural expectations and requirements for all staff.”

Some heart can be taken from the protest last Friday on the part of 30 academics who signed an open letter objecting to the treatment meted out to Anderson, stating that academic freedom was “meaningless if it is suspended when its exercise is deemed offensive.” His suspension pending termination of his employment was “an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney”. Reaction to Ridd has been somewhat cooler.

The point with Anderson is that his views are deemed bad for university business, which tolerates no room for the offensive. This, in a place where the most varied, and, at points, tasteless views, should be expressed. But as universities have become shabby entrepreneurial endeavours which see students as obesely delicious milch cows for their existence, the idea is less important than the process.

As is so often the case of free speech, advocates of it always assume it doesn’t apply to others. It is only to be extolled as a mark on paper and university policy. But never, for instance, challenge inane university policy or the hacks who implement it. Never ridicule ideas that deserve it. Never mock the obscene nature of managerialism’s central principle: massaged incompetence and assured decline. University managers and the colourless suits aided by their ill-tutored human resources goon squads tend to hold sway over opinions, taking against anybody who questions certain aspects of their (non)performance.

The Ridd and Anderson cases, coming from separate parts of the academic spectrum, demonstrate the prevalence of toadyism on the part of those who wish to avoid questioning the rationale of a university’s management process. They also suggest an immemorial tendency of authority to savagely oppress those who ignore it; to manifest its existence through punishment. In truth, it is precisely in ignoring those officials long barnacled upon the research and teaching endeavours of the University and drawing revenue best spent on students and scholars that a grave sin is committed. Such officialdom should be ignored, treated as the bureaucratic irrelevance that it is. Time for sit-ins, occupations, boycotts and a retaking of the University.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com.

December 20, 2018 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

MK Zoabi ‘reprimanded’ for saying Israel soldiers ‘murdered’ civilians

MEMO | December 19, 2018

The Knesset’s Ethics Committee decided yesterday to “severely reprimand” MK Haneen Zoabi, over remarks made by the parliamentarian about Israeli forces’ attacks on the occupied Gaza Strip.

According to the report by right-wing Israeli news outlet Arutz Sheva, Zoabi was the subject of a complaint filed by Likud MK Oren Hazan, after the Joint List legislator said that Palestinian civilians in Gaza had been “murdered by [Israeli] soldiers” during a Knesset debate.

“In this case,” the decision read, “most of the members of the committee believed that the use of the expression ‘murdered by the soldiers’ was not worthy of the broad protection that the committee spreads over the freedom of political expression of MKs.”

The committee also rejected a complaint filed by Zoabi herself, alleging that Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Tali Ploskov, who presided over the discussion, “did not defend her while she was speaking”. The committee concluded that “Ploskov’s conduct was not in violation of Knesset rules”.

Zoabi has frequently been targeted for censure by Knesset officials and racist incitement by fellow lawmakers over her outspoken support for Palestinian rights, and criticism of the Israeli army’s violations of international law.

December 20, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Marc Lamont Hill’s Detractors are the True Anti-Semites

Photo Source Flisadam Pointer | CC BY 2.0
By Susan Abulhawa | CounterPunch | December 17, 2018

Temple University’s administration announced the unsurprising news that it has found no grounds to punish or investigate Professor Marc Lamont Hill for his speech at the United Nations on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Yet, the university’s Board of Trustees felt compelled, nonetheless, to issue a statement further maligning Dr Hill, albeit indirectly this time, by quoting the slanderous language of others against him.

Remarkably, the Board’s statement implicitly acknowledges there was nothing inherently offensive in Dr Hill’s speech. Rather, the university’s objection lies in the way “many regard[ed]” it and how it was “widely perceived” or “broadly criticized.” In essence, the university was unable to reasonably rebuke what was ultimately a call for justice and freedom for the Palestinian people, the colonized indigenous nation that has continuously inhabited the land between the River Jordan and Mediterranean Sea for millennia. It is therefore stunning and unprecedented that a university would hold its professor responsible not for his words, but for the ways in which others interpret them.

It is also worth noting that no such statement was issued by the Board of Trustees following the exposure of Temple journalism professor Francesca Viola, who admitted to posting conspiracy theories against Muslims and immigrants. Among other things, her anonymous account posted the word “scum” under a photo of Muslims praying and called to “get rid of them.”

It beggars the imagination to consider why Temple’s Board of Trustees would ignore the abhorrent and overtly racists posts in the account of one professor, while exceeding its mandate in order to rebuke an avowedly anti-racist professor, not for the content of his speech, but for the ways in which that speech was received.

In the second paragraph of the statement, Temple’s Board attempts to divest Dr. Hill from his professional position and identity as a scholar and intellectual using wording crafted to deny his right to academic freedom. The claim that Dr. Hill was speaking as a private citizen and therefore his words simply fall under the purview of the First Amendment belies the reality that his speech as a Temple faculty member is fully protected under the principles of academic freedom. In fact, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is explicit that “freedom of extramural utterance is a constitutive part of the American conception of academic freedom, and the AAUP has investigated and censured many institutions for dismissing faculty members over their extramural utterances.”

The unprincipled way in which members of Temple’s Board have berated and threatened an African American professor for criticizing Israel’s Jim Crow apartheid, while turning a blind eye to the egregious oppression faced by Palestinian students and scholars every day, a reality Dr. Hill described in his U.N. speech, is reprehensible. Comments by individuals on the Board of Trustees, the collective statement by the Board and their failure to defend academic freedom are a testament to the alarmingly corrosive power that defenders of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid exert on the academy.

In a Philadelphia oped, Stephen Cozen, a member of Temple’s Board, proclaimed himself an authority on anti-Semitism before describing Hill’s words as “hate speech.” For good measure, he cast that disparaging net onto TAUP (Temple Association of University Professors), describing them “an association of folks who promote intersectionality, a practice which has fostered anti-Semitism from the left as well as the right.”

Ironically, the true anti-Semitism lies in conflating a 6000-year old faith with a contemporary settler-colonial nation-state that explicitly apportions human rights based on one’s religion. Indeed, it is anti-Semitic, and patently false, to assume that all Jews are of one mind that reflexively takes offense at criticism of Israel.

Marc Lamont Hill’s call for Palestinian freedom from the river to the sea upholds the the noble tenets of justice relevant to all monotheistic religions. It is also an acknowledgement of the basic historic truth that we Palestinians are not merely some miscellaneous Arabs clustered in the West Bank and Gaza, but a native and ancient nation that also comes from Akka, Haifa, Yafa, Nazareth, Jerusalem, the Galilee and all parts of Historic Palestine. This fact, which Israel has long sought to erase, is what Israel’s defenders find objectionable. But it is a fact nonetheless.

Susan Abulhawa is a bestselling novelist and essayist. Her new novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, was released this year and simultaneously published in multiple languages, including German.

December 17, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

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