NATO leaders have known since 2001 that Russia would “take appropriate steps” against further expansion of the alliance, according to documents recently declassified by the UK and reported by The Times.
A year into Putin’s presidency, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told his NATO counterparts that the alliance’s continued expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact would be a major political error, the newspaper stated on Friday. Sergeyev warned that Moscow would “take appropriate steps” to respond to this enlargement, the article continued.
The largest expansion of the alliance to date would take place three years later, with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joining the US-led military bloc.
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin described this expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust,” although the leaders of NATO insisted that their alliance was defensive in nature. After Ukraine refused to abandon its aspirations of joining – which Moscow viewed as an unacceptable security threat – and NATO insisted that Kiev would one day become a member, Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.
During the dying days of the USSR, Western leaders promised their Soviet counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe. As recently as this year, the US denied that this promise was ever made, and insisted that NATO’s membership books must remain open – even for states bordering Russia.
The UK also dismissed Russia’s warnings up until the start of the Ukraine conflict. “Russia has expressed concerns about potential NATO aggression, but we have been clear that those concerns are fundamentally unfounded as NATO is a defensive alliance at its heart,” a spokesman for then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared in January.
NATO has since accepted membership applications from Finland and Sweden, and Ukraine formally submitted its own application in September.
Imagine that you and your spouse have a 14-month-old baby in excellent health. Your child is perfectly responsive to mother and father. His cognitive and social development has hit all milestones. He then receives an MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) combination vaccine. A few hours later he is struck with high fever, seizures, and severe gastrointestinal distress.
You call your pediatrician, who explains that, per the CDC, “There is a small increased risk for febrile seizures after MMR vaccines.” The pediatrician assures you the seizures will soon pass and your baby will be fine. However, following this initial attack, the baby becomes withdrawn and unresponsive to his mother. Instead of his characteristic bright-eyed smile, cheerful babble, and exclamations of delight, his facial affect becomes either blank or highly distressed. He ceases playing interactive games and showing interest in objects that had previously grabbed his attention.
You hope his condition is a passing aberration, but it’s not. Weeks and months go by, but the cheerful and responsive 14-month-old toddler you knew never returns.
As the child grows bigger and stronger, his condition becomes more frightening. He is easily upset at minor changes, throws tantrums, and reacts strangely to the way things look, taste, and smell. At night you and your spouse are tormented by his agonized shrieks and the thudding of his head against the headboard.
You are referred to a developmental pediatrician who diagnoses your child as suffering from autism. Immediately you wonder: Why was our healthy baby suddenly afflicted with this catastrophic social and cognitive impairment?
The pediatrician has no answer. “The cause of autism remains unknown,” he says.
“What about the MMR vaccine administered right before the trouble began?” you ask.
“We know the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism?” the pediatrician replies.
“But you just said we don’t know what causes autism?” you say.
“We don’t know what causes autism; we just know that it isn’t caused by the MMR vaccine,” he proclaims.
Your heart sinks with the suspicion that only a moron would dare utter such a patent logical fallacy. And yet, upon further investigation, you learn that your pediatrician is simply parroting the public health agency orthodoxy on MMR vaccines—an orthodoxy established without any comparative study of autism among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children.
You observe mainstream media pundits parroting the same “safe and effective” mantra. CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, asserts on national television, “We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know it’s not caused by the MMR vaccine.”
The situation is analogous to a missing child last seen getting into a brown 1976 Pontiac Firebird. The parents go to the local police station and are told by the missing persons investigator: “We don’t know what happened to your child; we only know his disappearance is not connected with the driver of the brown 1976 Pontiac Firebird, whose identity we don’t know.”
You turn on the television and see Microsoft monopolist Bill Gates aggressively proclaiming there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. You wonder why Gates is widely regarded as an authority on MMR vaccines and autism, but no explanation is forthcoming. And so, like Captain John Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, you ask yourself: “Am I insane, or is everyone else insane?”
You assume your predicament must be rare, but then you ask around and discover there are tens of thousands of couples who have experienced the same disaster. And yet, virtually no one in the medical science establishment will even acknowledge the connection between your child receiving the MMR injection, his febrile seizures, and the onset of autistic symptoms.
A notable exception is the British gastroenterologist, Andrew Wakefield, who has long been interested in examining this link. Dr. Wakefield is so concerned that he directed the documentary film, VAXXED: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. Released in 2016 and initially scheduled to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, it was cancelled after the organizer, Robert De Niro, came under heavy pressure to ax it. Then as now, those who questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines were heavily censored and censured.
A major character in the film is senior CDC scientist, William W. Thompson, who, in 2014, contacted the biologist and autism researcher, Dr. Brian Hooker, as well as US Congressmen Bill Posey (R-FL). Thompson stated that his colleagues at the CDC had, in fact, documented evidence of a link between the early administration of the MMR vaccine and autism—especially in African American boys—but had chosen to destroy the evidence. Instead of publishing their true findings, they presented a paper with an altered dataset that concealed the link. Thompson, who was listed as one of the authors, claimed his bad conscience had spurred him to become a whistleblower.
As I watched VAXXED, I was most struck by the parents’ testimony. As producer Del Bigtree pointed out, many of these parents are intelligent and reasonable people who are acutely aware of sudden changes in their children. Mothers are exquisitely sensitive to what is going on with their infants. It is therefore the height of arrogant obtuseness to dismiss their testimony out of hand.
The outcome data was grim, showing pervasive inability to live independently, hold a job, or manage money. Few became independent, with 99% unable to live independently. Of those, 70% lived at home with relatives, 21% lived in disability homes in the community, and 8% in residential facilities.
Given these dire findings, one would think that our public health agencies would regard the high incidence of this terrible syndrome as an emergency and invest billions to investigate ANY and ALL possible causes. And yet, given that these agencies refuse to acknowledge the testimony of tens of thousands of parents, it appears that no serious research is being conducted to examine the possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Title captures it – please share so that people understand how insane this vaggs thing has become!
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Covid-related school closures caused a drastic drop in test scores, and students affected could see their lifetime income prospects drop by nearly 10%, a recent Stanford University study claimed. According to the research, the shutdowns stand to cost the US $28 trillion over this century.
The study linked declining eighth-grade math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022 with students’ lifetime earning potential, concluding that these scores – which dropped in every single US state since the pandemic hit – will reduce students’ projected income by between 2% and 9% depending on their home state.
This shortfall will cost the states themselves between 0.6% and 2.9% of their gross domestic product (GDP) every year for the rest of this century, the paper continued. Oklahoma (2.9%), Delaware (2.85%), and West Virginia (2.75%) will see the greatest percentage drop in GDP, it claimed, with California suffering the greatest overall loss at $1.3 trillion.
“The pandemic has had devastating effects in many areas, but none are as potentially severe as those on education,” author Eric Hanushek wrote in the study’s conclusion. “There is overwhelming evidence that students in school during the closure period and during the subsequent adjustments to the pandemic are achieving at significantly lower levels than would have been expected without the pandemic.”
US schools from kindergarten to 12th grade closed for in-person learning in March 2020, with individual states or school boards then deciding when to reopen. Republican-run Florida ordered all school boards to open again that August, for example, while Montana schools only shut their doors for a month. In the Democratic stronghold of California, only around half of all schools had returned to in-person learning by the end of the following school year.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten supported school closures, urging teachers to strike if forced to do their jobs in person in the fall of 2020.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress found in October that students’ math and English scores nationwide suffered the greatest year-on-year decline in history in 2022, erasing steady gains since 2000.
Two years ago, Morocco and Israel signed the US-brokered “Joint Declaration”, thus officially recognising Israel and instating diplomatic ties. Though other Arab countries had already done the same, the Moroccan official recognition of Apartheid Israel was particularly devastating for Palestinians.
Years ago, a close Moroccan friend told me that the ‘first time’ he was arrested was during a solidarity protest for Palestine in Rabat which took place many years ago.
The reference to the ‘first time’ indicated that he was arrested again, though mostly for other political activities, suggesting that Palestine, in many ways, has become a local struggle for many Moroccans.
Whenever Moroccans protest for Palestine, they would do so in large numbers, sometimes in their millions. Such solidarity has historically served as the foundation of regional and global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Though ordinary Arabs have always considered Palestine a core struggle, the relationship between North Africans and Palestine is, in many ways, unique and rooted.
Despite a strong push for normalisation between Arab countries and Israel, countries like Algeria and Tunisia made it clear that no diplomatic ties between their respective capitals and Israel would be declared anytime soon.
Credit for this goes mostly to the Algerian and Tunisian peoples who have made their rejection of Israeli racism, and support for Palestinian freedom akin to local or national struggles. Palestinian flags have always accompanied flags of these countries during any large gathering, be it a political protest or a sports event.
Morocco is no exception. Solidarity with Palestine in this country goes back generations, and hundreds of activists have paid a price for confronting their government on its failure to stand up to Israel or to challenge Washington for its support for Tel Aviv.
The normalisation agreement between Rabat and Tel Aviv in 2020 was falsely assumed to be an end to popular solidarity with Palestine. In fact, such acts of normalisation, rightly considered a betrayal by Palestinians, were also meant to be the final delinking of Palestine from its Arab and regional environs.
However, this was not the case. Normalisation with Apartheid Israel is still strongly rejected by the vast majority of Arabs, as opinion polls indicate. Moreover, the pouring of love for Palestine during the Qatar World Cup demonstrated, beyond doubt, that Israel cannot possibly be accepted by Arabs while still an occupying power and a racist apartheid regime.
The little political gains achieved by the Moroccan government in exchange for sacrificing the rights of Palestinians shall prove irrelevant in coming years. In fact, signs of this are already on display.
The Moroccan government, led by the Development and Justice Party of Saadeddine Othmani, which had taken part in the normalisation efforts, was rejected en masse in the September 2021 elections. Only nine months earlier, Othmani was signing the “Joint Declaration” with Israel’s National Security Advisor, Meir Ben-Shabbat.
The US recognition of Rabat’s claim over Western Sahara as the political barter between Rabat and Washington, which led to the normalisation with Tel Aviv, shall eventually prove meaningless.
The US and Western superiority is increasingly being challenged throughout the African continent, especially in West and Central African regions. Powerful new players, like Russia and China, are gaining geopolitical ground, in some regions entirely replacing the West’s dominance. Thus, the US support for any country’s territorial ambitions is no longer a guarantor of political gains, especially as the African geopolitical spaces have become greatly contested.
When Morocco normalised with Israel, many Moroccans were taken by surprise. The assumption was that Morocco, like other Arab nations, was too consumed by their own problems to notice their government’s foreign policy shifts, whether regarding Palestine or anywhere else.
Whether that was the case or not, it matters little now. On the second anniversary of the “Joint Declaration” agreement, tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against normalisation in 30 different cities, including Rabat, Agadir, Tangier and Meknes. The protests were mobilised by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalisation.
The Front is reportedly a network that includes ‘over a dozen political and human rights organizations,’ the New Arab reported. Their chants included “The people want to bring down normalization”, a slogan that is reminiscent of the pan-Arab popular slogan of a decade ago, ‘The people want to change the regime’. The latter resonated throughout many Arab capitals during the years of political upheaval in 2011 and upward.
This popular movement and its chants indicate that Palestine remains a local and national struggle in Morocco, as well as other Arab countries.
But why Morocco, and why now?
The popular association of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags throughout the World Cup had an invigorating effect on the collective psyche of Moroccans, who were empowered by their national team’s impressive showing against legendary teams such as Belgium, Spain and Portugal. It was a matter of time before this confidence translated to actual solidarity on the streets of Rabat and other major Moroccan cities.
The fact that Moroccans are mobilising in large numbers against their country’s normalisation with Israel only two years after the agreement is a sign of things to come.
2022 was a particularly bloody year in Palestine, according to UN Mideast Envoy, Tor Wennesland, who said that it was “on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since … 2005.”
Moroccans, like other Arab nations, are following the news with alarm, especially following the swearing-in of Israel’s new extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right fascist ilk – the likes of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
These two individuals’ constant targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, has a great emotional impact on Moroccans, especially since Morocco serves as the Chair of the Al-Quds Committee of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which is tasked with the protection of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel wants to normalise with the Arabs and tap into their massive markets and economic largesse without having, in return, to relinquish its military Occupation or grant Palestinians basic freedoms. Politically engaged Arab masses understand this well, and are growingly mobilising against their governments’ betrayal of Palestine.
The self-serving and limited gains of normalisation are likely to turn into a political liability in coming years. It is time for Morocco and others to reconsider their ties with Israel, as they risk political isolation and social instability, a far greater price to pay than the empty promises of Washington and Tel Aviv.
The end of World War II resulted in a stand off with the Soviet Union. The practical solution was to rebuild and rearm West Germany to deter a Soviet invasion, but keep that nation under American rule.
After World War II, Germany remained occupied by a million foreign troops during the Cold war. After that ended in 1990, the Russians returned home and the Warsaw Pact alliance disbanded. There was no threat to the west and NATO troops returned home, except the Americans, who insisted on keeping several large bases in Germany.
Billions of dollars were spent on new military facilities to include a massive spy center at a newly expanded Wiesbaden base.
You do not have to look very hard to find historical information revealing that the CIA has been spying inside Germany for more than seventy years to bribe and blackmail political leaders and journalists.
In 2022, the United States destroyed the Nordstream pipelines and thus the German economy. This was the third time in a century the United States destroyed Germany. The innovative and productive German industry was shut down in 1919, 1945, and 2022. Germany is not a true democratic state, but a colony of the United States.
Reproducibility is the most fundamental yardstick in science. If a result can’t be replicated, it doesn’t count as science.
Yet in recent years, there has been much talk of a ‘replication crisis’. Many results that we assumed were robust simply cannot be replicated. The term is typically used in the context of psychology and medicine, though it may apply to other fields as well.
So how much of science is reproducible? One way of tackling this question is to select a large number of studies from a particular field and then attempt to replicate them. This has been done several times.
A 2012 paper was only able to replicate 11% of 53 studies from pre-clinical cancer. A 2015 paper was only able to replicate 36% of 97 studies from psychology. A 2018 paper did slightly better, replicating 54% of 28 studies from that field. A 2016 paper was able to replicate 60% of 60% of 100 economics experiments. Another 2018 paper was able to replicate 62% of 21 social science experiments.
These numbers are sobering. But there’s an important caveat: the ‘studies to be replicated’ were selected somewhat arbitrarily, so the corresponding percentage can’t be taken as representative of the entire field.
Another way of tackling the question above is to simply ask researchers what percentage of the studies in your field can be replicated – a sort of ‘wisdom of the crowds’ approach.
This was done in a 2016 survey by the journalNature. They got 1,500 responses – the vast majority from currently-working scientists. Respondents were asked, “In your opinion, what proportion of published work in your field is reproducible?”
The highest figure – 72% – was found in physics. The lowest figure – 52% – was found in “other” (which I suspect is mostly social scientists). Environmental science and medicine had intermediate figures – both 58%. Chemistry was a little higher at 65%. (Answers did not differ substantially between students and working scientists.)
These figures are again sobering. According to researchers themselves, close to half of published work in medicine, social science and environmental science cannot be replicated. Unsurprisingly, more ‘objective’ fields like physics and chemistry are perceived to have higher rates of replicability.
Overall, the two methods yield similar findings: a large percentage of results in more ‘subjective’ – dare one say ‘politicized’ – fields are not reproducible.
We did not die last year in the “Winter of Illness and Death for the Unvaccinated.”
We did not die of overheating, starvation, dust bowl, and massive ocean flooding that was supposed to kill or displace us by 2019.
Let’s talk about the last point: a 1989 AP article explains that the UN predicted a global climate disaster that was supposed to happen within 30 years, so by 2019.
The article is terrifying to read. Actual quotes:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees.”
Ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.
The most conservative scientific estimate is that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.
You may be relieved to find out that the actual temperature change between 1989 and 2021, if you believe the official temperature numbers, is 0.85-0.27 degrees, or 0.58 degrees.
The 1989 UNEP report deals with degrees in CELSIUS, as does the chart above.
What about the global sea level that was supposed to inundate entire countries and turn people into eco-refugees? The NOAA ocean level chart helps us see what happened since 1989:
Instead of 3 feet, the sea level rose by 3 inches!
Some of my critically-thinking readers may ask: what if the dire prediction failed to materialize because of a success in curbing CO2 emissions? The helpful official carbon dioxide chart shows a continued rise of CO2 — so there was no real curbing of emissions.
But Climate Change is Real Now!
This RECENT photo illustrates that climate change is real and threatening. Please find the difference between these two pictures!
In the 2022 report, like the UN 30 years ago, the WEF is also warning us that in 30 years, we will have to deal with 200 million climate refugees:
Information continues to roll out about how Twitter knowingly became a conduit for US propaganda efforts abroad that only serve to produce more violence and chaos. Sadly, this news has seemingly been greeted with a collective yawn by both the US corporate press and the American public.
A recent article by The Intercept details how Twitter facilitated efforts by US Central Command, or CENTCOM, a division of the US Defense Department, to spread propaganda, particularly in and about the Middle East using fake accounts posing as private individuals in the region. These accounts were given special treatment by Twitter, which accorded them the same privileges as ‘blue-checked’ verified accounts, which, as The Intercept article describes, “would have bestowed a number of advantages, such as invulnerability to algorithmic bots that flag accounts for spam or abuse, as well as other strikes that lead to decreased visibility or suspension.” And, of course, this was being done at a time when Twitter was deleting hundreds of accounts it viewed as associated with the Russian government and designating other such accounts as “Russian-state affiliated media” even when, as in the case of some of my friends, such as Fiorella Isabel, these accounts were of private individuals writing in their own, personal capacity.
One example of an account given “priority service” by Twitter was @yemencurrent (now deleted), which, among other things, “had emphasized that U.S. drone strikes were ‘accurate’ and killed terrorists, not civilians, and promoted the U.S. and Saudi-backed assault on Houthi rebels in that country.” Such a whitewashing of the US-Saudi war on Yemen – a war barely covered in the US press and therefore barely known to most Americans – is especially infuriating given that that war has been marked by the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure on a colossal scale and by the US government’s willful failure to even properly account for civilian casualties.
The US’ own Government Accountability Office has, in a restricted-access document reported upon by the New York Times in June, concluded that, since the war began in 2015, “[t]he State Department and the Defense Department have failed to assess civilian casualties caused by a Saudi-led coalition in the catastrophic war in Yemen and the use of American-made weapons in the killings . . . .” The NYT also reported that earlier, “in August 2020, the State Department inspector general issued a report that said the department had failed to take proper measures to reduce civilian deaths.” The result has been an estimated 150,000+ deaths, including nearly 15,000 civilians, and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in history.
And yet, Twitter aided and abetted CENTCOM’s misinformation campaign through fake accounts claiming that civilians were somehow not being harmed by US-manufactured weapons – claims that deceive American taxpayers about the war they are bankrolling, and which are designed to prime the government pumps for more aid to this unholy conflict that President Biden had promised to stop funding.
According to The Intercept article, other fake CENTCOM accounts given priority by Twitter “focused on promoting U.S.-supported militias in Syria and anti-Iran messages in Iraq.” Again, few Americans are aware that many of these militia groups the US has backed in Syria, while claiming to be “moderate rebels,” have themselves carried out terrible atrocities against civilians in that country. Fake Twitter accounts promoting such militia groups only further obfuscate this subject.
As for the “anti-Iran messages in Iraq” and elsewhere, The Intercept explains that, as reported earlier by the Stanford Internet Observatory, some of the fake Twitter accounts falsely “accuse Iran of ‘threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth,’ while others promoted allegations that Iran was harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees.” Such propaganda has a dual purpose: to gin up tensions and conflict between nations in the Middle East and to manufacture consent in the US for potential armed conflict between the US itself and Iran.
In other words, Twitter has been aiding and abetting the US Defense Department in war propaganda, an act that was established to be a crime in the post-WWII Nuremberg trials. If we had a fair and working system of international law, Twitter and Defense Department officials involved in such offenses would indeed be investigated. However, we do not have such a system. Therefore, it is up to the American people to act, having learned of such misconduct by their government and by the social media companies they so rely upon to hold them accountable. It is also up to Americans to finally realize that, when it comes to matters of war and peace, they are being lied to constantly, and they must withhold their consent for the wars that our government undertakes with the help of traditional and social media alike.
Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-released No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests.
Twitter has reportedly collaborated with the Pentagon for at least five years to wage a secret “PsyOps campaign” across West Asia, in a scheme to sway public opinion in favor of Washington’s military interests in the region.
According to an investigation of Twitter’s archives, emails, and internal tools by The Intercept, the social media giant created a special “whitelist,” exempting accounts run by US Central Command (CENTCOM) from spam and abuse flags, granting them greater visibility on the platform.
According to the findings of investigative journalist Lee Fang, the Pentagon used this network of bots and US government-generated news portals to shape the discourse regarding the wars in Yemen and Syria, as well as the continued presence of US occupation troops across the region.
In particular, Fang revealed that much of the Pentagon’s covert social media ops focused on promoting the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Washington has recently boosted its military presence in the war-torn country, reportedly in a bid to control its natural resources like they do in Syria.
The investigation of the internal Twitter documents also shows that the PsyOps campaign promoted narratives that specifically demonized Russia, China, and Iran.
PsyOps – the military jargon for psychological operations – is defined as targeting foreign adversaries “to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”
Twitter reportedly introduced the “whitelist” in 2017 after US military officials asked the company to improve the visibility of 52 Arab language accounts used to “amplify certain messages.”
And while Twitter executives claimed for years that the platform did not allow deceptive state-backed influence operations, the social media company was aware of the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign and tolerated the accounts’ presence until at least May 2022.
Over the same period of time, Twitter suspended or outright banned accounts that reported on Israeli war crimes in Palestine, as well as many that were linked to the governments of Iran, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela.
The revelations come as part of the so-called “Twitter files” release, which compiles internal company documents provided for journalists following the purchase of the company by billionaire Elon Musk.
The bombshell report comes at a time when the US army and its proxy militias are accused of illegally occupying vast regions of Syria and Yemen, looting oil from both war-torn countries, just over a year after their brutal occupation of Afghanistan ended.
Just last week, the White House succeeded in stopping the senate from voting on a legislation that would have severely restricted their operations in Yemen.
On top of this, last month, the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice issued a report detailing how the Pentagon has been allowed to covertly deploy troops and wage secret wars over the past two decades in dozens of countries across the globe.
Despite the damning revelations, in the coming days, US President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law the biggest annual defense budget in history, allowing the Pentagon to continue spending trillions of dollars despite being the only branch of the US government to have never passed a financial audit.
The Christmas story as it is told in the West contains timeless elements that have shaped our culture in significant ways. As we tell it, year in and year out, the story conveys to those who listen powerful themes evoking deep feelings.
It is, at its core, the tale of a helpless child born as an outcast whose role became transformative in human history.
Unrecognised at first, the importance of this birth was initially only understood by the lowly of the earth — “the shepherds of the field”. Later “kings from the East” came to pay homage bringing gifts. Their appearance raised the ire of local rulers forcing the baby’s parents to flee in order to save the life of their newborn child.
I want to take a moment to reflect on this story, seeing contemporary realities through its prism.
Two thousand years ago, Palestine was subject to a harsh occupation, much as it is today. In some ways, though, the conditions back then allowed the residents of occupied Palestine greater mobility than the current inhabitants of that land.
As we are told in the bible story, Joseph had to take his expectant wife from Nazareth, where they were living, to Bethlehem, their ancestral village, in order to fulfill a requirement imposed by the authorities to register as part of a nationwide census. Today, of course, all of that would be impossible.
In the first place, no Palestinian originally from Bethlehem could ever have moved to Nazareth. The occupation and closure of the West Bank makes that sort of movement impossible. Furthermore, Israeli law prohibits an Arab from Nazareth from marrying a Bethlehemite and bringing their spouse across the Green Line to live with them in Israel.
Additionally, while thousands of Palestinians in Bethlehem, both Muslim and Christian, can see Jerusalem from their homes, they cannot go to the Holy City to pray. And Arab Christians from Jerusalem, likewise, cannot easily go the Christmas services in Bethlehem to pray alongside their co-religionists at the seasonal event.
Bethlehem of old was overcrowded and under siege. Today, as well, the city itself is being strangled, hemmed in by settlements that have confiscated the town’s ancestral lands to make way for a 30-foot barrier wall and massive Jewish-only housing colonies that cut the Arab residents off from nearby Jerusalem. The constriction of growth and the lack of economic opportunity have forced Bethlehemites to flee in search of jobs and freedom, with tens of thousands of them and their descendants now living in the US and the Americas. They can return to visit Bethlehem with difficulty but are not permitted by the occupation authorities to take up permanent residency in the town of their origins.
While the kings of old, we are told, were able to travel from afar bearing gifts to honour the newborn child, one can only imagine the difficulties they would encounter today dealing with Israeli soldiers at the Allenby Bridge. Having personally endured their interrogations, I can hear the kings answering hours of questions, such as “Where are you from?” “Who are your parents, grandparents?” “Why are you here?” Who are you visiting?” “What are these gifts for?” The questioning is reminiscent of Herod’s interrogation of the biblical visitors. In today’s Israel/Palestine, it is doubtful whether those hapless “kings from the East” would have gained entry.
That Joseph, Mary and Jesus were able to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s vengeful wrath was possible back then. Today, that option is unlikely. The barrier/wall that encapsulates the West Bank, the hundreds of checkpoints, and the closure of Gaza would make such a life-saving flight impossible.
Finally, as I reflect on the birth of Jesus, I cannot help but think of the almost 400 babies who will be born, this very day, to Palestinian parents in the West Bank and Gaza. I think as well of the number of those who will perish at birth because of inadequate medical services. (Some babies have been put at fatal risk at checkpoints, because Israeli soldiers would not permit their delivering mothers to pass.) And I think of Mary, 2000 years ago, and am grateful that, despite all she endured, there were no checkpoints blocking her way to Bethlehem.
Our traditions tell us that Mary’s joy at the birth of her son was tempered by foresight. She knew her child would grow and endure great suffering. Likewise, the joy that Palestinian parents experience when greeting new life these days must, no doubt, be accompanied by similar concerns. Not only must they question how they will provide for their new child, but they must face down their fears of bringing up a son or daughter under occupation, with its dangers and hardships. From the violence, pressures and humiliation encountered daily by Palestinians in the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers, to the grinding poverty and despair facing those trapped in Gaza, life under hostile foreign rule can drain joy out of even the most blessed events.
There is a traditional Christmas carol that asks the question “What child is this?” — the answer, of course, being “Jesus, the son of Mary”. But given the universal message conveyed by the Christmas story we also understand that the child is for us, a reminder of our responsibility to care for the helpless and the unrecognised. And so, when we think of the vulnerable children born today not only in Palestine, but those born anywhere where life is at risk (including here at home), we are not to ask: “What child is this?” — because we know that they are ours — to acknowledge and protect, like the shepherds and kings, enabling all of these children to grow, receive health care, and be educated so that they can grow and help change our world. Because all these children are ours, we have a responsibility to protect and care for them.
James J. Zogby is a president of Arab American Institute.
I doubt these professors have anything to fear from a food tax
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 19, 2016
A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change. […]
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity. – Read full article
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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• The Genocide Call… 
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