The Balfour Declaration is a letter from the then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The critical part of this short letter said: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This was a prime example of colonial arrogance by which Britain, which was not then in occupation of Palestine, promised the Zionist Federation, which did not represent all Jews, without the consent of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinians, to facilitate the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine. The letter was dated 2 November 1917.
Thus, November 2017 will mark the centenary of Balfour and rumours abound that the British government plans to mark it in some form. Israel’s recently arrived Ambassador Mark Regev claimed: “It’s being taken very seriously at the highest levels. We’re hoping to do a public celebration together with the British government.” The former spokesman for Israel’s prime minister talked up the possible events, saying that “senior leadership from both sides [will be] uniting to celebrate Balfour.”
Former British Prime Minster David Cameron told leaders of the Jewish community, “I want to make sure we mark it together in the most appropriate way.” He said this without any consultation with British Palestinians about whether, and how, they would wish to see the Balfour centenary commemorated. This seems to be at best misguided and, at worst, a demonstration of Britain’s double standards when it comes to the Palestine-Israel issue. Israel was not established on empty land; it has been built on the homeland of the Palestinian people. How then can it be logical for the British government not to consult the Palestinians, either in Palestine or in the UK, about the Balfour centenary?
The notion that Britain should “celebrate” the Balfour Declaration is extremely offensive to every British Palestinian I have talked to and to the Palestinian leadership. Balfour gave the green light to the Zionist movement, which perpetuated the lie that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. The truth is that Jews, like Muslims and Christians, were citizens of many countries, including Syria and Iraq, and Palestine was inhabited by a people, the mainly Muslim but also Christian and Jewish, Palestinians. Had Israel not been created in Palestine, it is quite logical to assume that Palestine would have eventually gained independence and that Arab Jews, just like their Christian and Muslim brethren, would have continued to live in all the Arab countries in which they had thrived for centuries.
The Balfour Declaration and Britain’s League of Nations Mandate rule in Palestine were key reasons for the growth of Jewish migration to Palestine, which accelerated following the Second World War and the Holocaust. The creation of Israel as Britain rushed to abandon Palestine left the Palestinians at the mercy of murderous Zionist terror groups hell-bent on expelling many if not all of them from their homeland. The injustice felt in the Middle East at the creation of Israel also contributed to the tensions that led to Arab Jews leaving their home countries for the nascent Zionist state.
The injustice of the lack of a viable Palestinian state and the continuing refugee catastrophe continues to this day. How can Britain celebrate this? Even if Britain claims that it is not “celebrating” Balfour, but simply “marking” the document’s centenary, that will also offend Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in Palestine, and in the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the diaspora.
If fair minded people read the text of the Balfour Declaration and then look at what happened subsequently, they will surely find it difficult to accept that the conditions implicit in the British government’s “favour” have been fulfilled. Israel brazenly flouts the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” on a daily basis, and has done since its creation in 1948. Its illegal occupation continues to oppress, humiliate and generate hatred. Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip — described by David Cameron as “a prison” — continues unabated. House demolitions in the first half of 2016 are already markedly up on 2015. Settler violence has escalated and Jewish terror has taken the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The fact is that Britain has not even recognised Palestine as a state following the October 2014 Parliamentary vote requesting the government to do so. Add to this that 2017 also marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and other Arab land and Israel’s refusal to end this, and it is obvious that any reasonable person would say that a “celebration” of the Balfour Declaration would be completely inappropriate. If you do something shameful, as Britain did, from a Palestinian perspective, then you would do far better to apologise for it than to mark or celebrate it.
The argument for a celebration of Balfour is that the Jewish community in Britain see the creation of Israel as a major achievement in which the declaration played a major part. However, not all British Jews share this view. Has the government consulted widely even within the Jewish community about possible Balfour events? There is no evidence that it has. If it does mark the centenary in some way then it should know that there will be many Jews in Britain siding with the oppressed Palestinians to mark the Catastrophe (Nakba) that the creation of the state of Israel represents to them. Discussions among Palestinian groups in Britain and supporters of justice for Palestine are ongoing in order to formulate a suitable response to the governments’ intentions.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership has finally stirred itself and threatened to sue Britain for the Balfour Declaration. What that really means and to which court the Palestinians would make a case remains unknown. It may be yet prove to be another example of the Palestinian leadership making grandiose claims which lead to nothing and are then retracted. This, though, remains to be seen.
As we approach 2017 with Israel entrenching its military occupation of Palestine and senior politicians articulating their rejection of a Palestinian state, Britain should avoid inflaming the situation by marking Balfour in any way. A more helpful act would be to establish an inquiry into Britain’s role in the creation of Israel and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Its role would be to establish the facts and to assess how justice can be brought to the Holy Land as the Balfour centenary approaches. This would be far better than “celebrating” what is indeed a dark chapter of Britain’s colonial history.
Building on an over five-year, almost entirely fictional narrative about a popular uprising in Syria, recent developments on the ground in Aleppo have triggered a new propaganda blitz complete with a new set of provable lies. The following are ten facts about Aleppo that must be accepted by any objective, informed and rational observer regardless of one’s political views and opinions regarding Syria.
1) Eastern Aleppo was overrun by a foreign-backed, Al-Qaeda-led terrorist alliance in 2012. At that time, approximately 600,000 Aleppans fled eastern Aleppo for the security and safety of western Aleppo where the Syrian government maintained control.
2) Estimates of how many civilians remained in eastern Aleppo vary widely, but official estimates place the number between 100 and 150 thousand. UN estimates of up to 300,000 are almost certainly inflated and politically motivated.
3) Eighty to eighty-five percent of the armed fighters in eastern Aleppo belong to the Jabhat Al-Nusra, the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that just underwent a rebranding, complete with a new name and logo (see image above, top row, second from the left). The remaining fighters belong to twenty-two (there are constant splits, mergers, and rebranding among them) terrorist groups that all share the same jihadi ideology, methods, and objectives as Al-Qaeda.
4) The overwhelming majority of Syrian fighters in eastern Aleppo are not from Aleppo itself, belying the notion that any part of the city rose up against the government.
5) The terrorist groups in Aleppo include a large number of foreign fighters from eighty-one different countries with significant contingents from Turkey, the Gulf Arab states, North Africa, and Russia’s Chechnya and North Caucasus region.
6) Armed groups in eastern Aleppo have been deliberately shelling civilians in western Aleppo. This has led to angry protests against the Syrian government demanding an end to the shelling and the complete extirpation of the terrorist presence in eastern Aleppo.
7) This past week eastern Aleppo was finally completely encircled by the Syrian Army, effectively cutting off the terrorist groups’ supply routes from Turkey.
8) The Syrian government has offered all Syrian fighters in eastern Aleppo amnesty in exchange for laying down their weapons and surrendering to the Syrian authorities.
9) The Syrian military has also established three humanitarian corridors for civilians to exit eastern Aleppo. The Syrian government had prepared 10,000 habitable apartment units in western Aleppo for civilians fleeing in anticipation of a possible final battle. As dozens of families started to exit armed groups immediately began preventing civilians from leaving, prompting speculation they intend to use them as human shields when and if the Syrian Army begins its final entry into the eastern part of the city.
10) After completing the encirclement of eastern Aleppo the Syrian government, in a joint mission with the Russian Air Force based at Hemeimeem Air Base, began a massive humanitarian airlift into eastern Aleppo. The tragic shoot down of the Russian helicopter this week took place as it was returning from a humanitarian aid delivery.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Fifth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
In his presentation at the Left Forum, Kevin Barrett acknowledged his intellectual debt to the work of Barrie Zwicker, one of Canada’s most accomplished and experienced investigative journalists. Barrett and Zwicker concur that Noam Chomsky’s nonsensical interventions on 9/11 constitute an important part— indeed, perhaps the single most instrumental part— of the 9/11 cover up. If Chomsky’s adoring fans had been treated with respect and truth rather than with duplicity and lies, they might have joined together in a timely and effective way to get to the bottom of the 9/11 deception and to demand some legal and political accountability for the fraud.
The Left’s most influential guru, however, discouraged his obedient flock from trying to sort out 9/11 truth from the instrumentalized fiction embedded in the 9/11 fable. As the Trojan horse within the progressives’ main camps, Chomsky moved decisively and deliberately to discourage independent investigations into a classic hoax of Homeric proportions.
In New York Dr. Barrett underlined the pivotal role of Noam Chomsky as a primary agent of the 9/11 cover up. In making his point the martyred former professor referred to Building 7. WTC 7 is the third World Trade Center skyscraper in New York to be downed on 9/11 in a controlled demolition. Lucky Larry Silverstein’s World Trade Center 7 was not hit by any jet. Nevertheless, this 47-story steel-frame skyscraper collapsed almost instantly into its own footprint late in the afternoon of September 11 twenty minutes after its destruction had been announced on the BBC.
Said Barrett, “In November of 2001, if Chomsky had not chosen to feed us such a diet of bull shit, but instead had eloquently pushed the whole Left towards just looking at Building 7 and then drawing the obvious conclusions, I think we’d be living in a very different and vastly better world.”
Why did Noam Chomsky intervene so quickly, aggressively and unrelentingly to persuade his admirers, including many teachers, politicians, jurists and journalists, to put aside their own critical faculties in evaluating the substance of what actually transpired in the most transformative event of the twenty-first century? Why did Chomsky rush into print his book of November 2001 to declare “the initial conclusions about 9/11 are presumably correct,” and to reassure that there would be no major “long-term restriction of rights” or “government censorship” flowing from the debacle?
In his 2006 volume entitled, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11, Barrie Zwicker devotes a chapter to “The Shame of Noam Chomsky and the Gatekeepers of the Left.” (pages 179-224) This seminal chapter was accompanied by a series of short documentaries by Snowshoe Productions now published on You Tube by Yoryvrah. Zwicker explains that he was once “a fan, a protégé and a booster” of Noam Chomsky. In these print and video publications, Zwicker describes how prior to 9/11 he voraciously read many of Chomsky’s books. The investigative reporter and teacher included a number of Chomsky’s articles in the curriculum of the journalism courses he taught at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Zwicker corresponded with his former role model on a collegial basis. There exists public acknowledgment of Zwicker’s contribution to the gestation process of Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky’s 1992 co-authored book accompanied by a documentary film project. The Canadian journalist interviewed Chomsky twice, once in the 1990s and the second time in Hamilton Ontario in 2002. In the second interview Chomsky responded dismissively to Zwicker’s questions on 9/11. The visiting scholar referred to critiques of the official narrative of 9/11 as “conspiracy theories.”
Chomsky’s flippant reference to a notoriously engineered meme, namely his mention of “conspiracy theories,” amounts to the purposeful deployment of a tactic aimed at blocking critical and thoughtful exchange. Chomsky’s resort to this overworked cliché caused Zwicker to begin the process of re-evaluating the work of the MIT professor. By using without irony the uncontextualized term “conspiracy theorist”, Chomsky signaled his unwillingness to engage in open-minded dialogue on a difficult yet vital topic. Chomsky’s refusal to engage in honest evidence-based discussion about 9/11 alerted Zwicker that his US guest could sometimes be “intellectually dishonest.” Zwicker would subsequently learn that Chomsky was not above resorting to cheap “put down phrases” and “bizarre non-sequiturs.”
Both Zwicker and Barrett are far from alone in noticing that Chomsky defends both the government narrative of 9/11 as well as the now-discredited government myth that a sole gunman acting independently killed former US President John F. Kennedy. When pressed to provide clarification on both positions Chomsky notoriously resorts to rhetorical dismissals like “Who cares?” or “What does it matter?” Of course it matters a great deal who did 9/11 and who killed Kennedy. A conclusive and honest answer to both questions would reveal much about how we are governed and who is really in control.
In Towers of Deception, Zwicker deals not only with America’s most highly-publicized professor, but also with many foundation-funded alternative media that followed Chomsky’s lead in avoiding honest critical analysis of the originating events of the 9/11 Wars.
Among the Left Gatekeeper institutions Zwicker identifies are Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, Michael Albert’s Z Magazine, David Corn’s The Nation and many other venues including The Progressive, Mother Jones and South End Press. In summing up his commentary on “The Shame of Noam Chomsky,” Zwicker observed, “When he is not appearing to undermine the American Empire, which is the main thing he does, [Chomsky] is buttressing it by undermining the most effective and therefore dangerous foe the Empire faces—the conscious Left.”
Zwicker asks:
How many could imagine that the person warning you is one of the most perilous against whom you’ll need to defend yourself? That he is the fire marshal who wires your house to burn down, the lifeguard who drowns you, the doctor with a disarming bedside manner who administers a fatal injection? If Noam Chomsky did not exist, the diaboligarchy would have to invent him. To the New World Order, he is worth 50 armored divisions. (page 224)
Zwicker’s comparison of Chomsky to a very large grouping of military units is striking and apt given what we now know. Ironically Chomsky made his name and fame drawing attention to the role of propaganda in manufacturing consent for war and contemporary colonization. Disinfo agent Michael Shermer has replicated this strategy of seeming to expose the very tactic he utilizes to advance the interests of power.
A disingenuous TV professor with a penchant for misrepresenting his limited academic credentials, Shermer is editor of the deep-state funded Skeptic Magazine that is anything but skeptical when it comes to addressing the lies and crimes of 9/11.
You will read “Inside Job? Inside What?” in the next part.
On his visit to Hiroshima last May, Obama did not, as some had vainly hoped he might, apologize for the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing of the city. Instead he gave a high-sounding speech against war. He did this as he was waging ongoing drone war against defenseless enemies in faraway countries and approving plans to spend a trillion dollars upgrading the US nuclear arsenal.
An apology would have been as useless as his speech. Empty words don’t change anything. But here was one thing that Obama could have said that would have had a real impact: he could have told the truth.
He could have said:
“The atom bombs were not dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘to save lives by ending the war’. That was an official lie. The bombs were dropped to see how they worked and to show the world that the United States possessed unlimited destructive power.”
There was no chance that Obama would say that. Officially, the bombing “saved lives” and therefore, it was worth it. Like the Vietnamese villages we destroyed in order to save them, like the countless Iraqi children who died as a result of US sanctions, the hundreds of thousands of agonizing women and children in two Japanese cities remain on the debit side of the United States accounts with humanity, unpaid and unpunished.
“It Was Worth It”
The decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a political not a military decision. The targets were not military, the effects were not military. The attacks were carried out against the wishes of all major military leaders. Admiral William Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his memoirs that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” General Eisenhower, General MacArthur, even General Hap Arnold, commander of the Air Force, were opposed. Japan was already devastated by fire bombing, facing mass hunger from the US naval blockade, demoralized by the surrender of its German ally, and fearful of an imminent Russian attack. In reality, the war was over. All top U.S. leaders knew that Japan was defeated and was seeking to surrender.
The decision to use the atom bombs was a purely political decision taken almost solely by two politicians alone: the poker-playing novice President and his mentor, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes.[1]
President Harry S. Truman was meeting with Churchill and Stalin in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam when secret news came that the New Mexico test of the atomic bomb was a success. Observers recall that Truman was “a changed man”, euphoric with the possession of such power. While more profound men shuddered at the implications of this destructive force, to Truman and his “conniving” Secretary of State, James Byrnes, the message was: “Now we can get away with everything.”
They proceeded to act on that assumption – first of all in their relations with Moscow.
In response to months of U.S. urging, Stalin promised to enter the Asian war three months after the defeat of Nazi Germany, which occurred in early May 1945. It was well known that the Japanese occupation forces in China and Manchuria could not resist the Red Army. It was understood that two things could bring about Japan’s immediate surrender: Russia’s entrance into the war and U.S. assurance that the royal family would not be treated as war criminals.
Both these things happened in the days right after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But they were overshadowed by the atom bomb.
And that was the point.
That way, the U.S. atom bombs got full credit for ending the war.
But that is not all.
The demonstrated possession of such a weapon gave Truman and Byrnes such a sense of power that they could abandon previous promises to the Russians and attempt to bully Moscow in Europe. In that sense, the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only gratuitously killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. They also started the Cold War.
Hiroshima and the Cold War
A most significant observation on the effects of the atomic bomb is attributed to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. As his son recounted, he was deeply depressed on learning at the last minute of plans to use the bomb. Shortly after Hiroshima, Eisenhower is reported to have said privately:
“Before the bomb was used, I would have said yes, I was sure we could keep the peace with Russia. Now, I don’t know. Until now I would have said that we three, Britain with her mighty fleet, America with the strongest air force, and Russia with the strongest land force on the continent, we three could have guaranteed the peace of the world for a long, long time to come. But now, I don’t know. People are frightened and disturbed all over. Everyone feels insecure again.”[2]
As supreme allied commander in Europe, Eisenhower had learned that it was possible to work with the Russians. US and USSR domestic economic and political systems were totally different, but on the world stage they could cooperate. As allies, the differences between them were mostly a matter of mistrust, matters that could be patched up.
The victorious Soviet Union was devastated from the war: cities in ruins, some twenty million dead. The Russians wanted help to rebuild. Previously, under Roosevelt, it had been agreed that the Soviet Union would get reparations from Germany, as well as credits from the United States. Suddenly, this was off the agenda. As news came in of the successful New Mexico test, Truman exclaimed: “This will keep the Russians straight.” Because they suddenly felt all-powerful, Truman and Byrnes decided to get tough with the Russians.
Stalin was told that Russia could take reparations only from the largely agricultural eastern part of Germany under Red Army occupation. This was the first step in the division of Germany, which Moscow actually opposed.
Since several of the Eastern European countries had been allied to Nazi Germany, and contained strong anti-Russian elements, Stalin’s only condition for those countries (then occupied by the Red Army) was that their governments should not be actively hostile to the USSR. For that, Moscow favored the formula “People’s Democracies” meaning coalitions excluding extreme right parties.
Feeling all-powerful, the United States sharpened its demands for “free elections” in hope of installing anti-communist governments. This backfired. Instead of giving in to the implicit atomic threat, the Soviet Union dug in its heels. Instead of loosening political control of Eastern Europe, Moscow imposed Communist Party regimes – and accelerated its own atomic bomb program. The nuclear arms race was on.
“Have Our Cake and Eat It”
John J. McCloy, labeled by his biographer Kai Bird as the informal “chairman of the U.S. establishment”, told Secretary of War Henry Stimson at the time that: “I’ve been taking the position that we ought to have our cake and eat it too; that we ought to be free to operate under this regional arrangement in South America, at the same time intervene promptly in Europe; that we oughtn’t to give away either asset…”[3] Stimson replied, “I think so, decidedly.”
In short, the United States was to retain its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, claimed by the Monroe Doctrine, while depriving Russia of its own buffer zone.
It is necessary to recognize the sharp distinction between domestic policy and foreign policy. The nature of the Soviet internal regime may have been as bad as it is portrayed, but when it came to foreign policy, Stalin scrupulously respected deals made with the Western allies – abandoning, for instance, the Greek Communists as they were crushed by the Anglo-Americans after the war. It was the United States that reneged on the deals made at Yalta, which were then stigmatized as sellouts to “communist aggression”. Stalin had absolutely no desire to promote communist revolution in Western Europe, much less to invade those countries. In fact his failure to promote world revolution was precisely the basis of the campaign against “Stalinism” by Trotskyists – including Trotskyists whose devotion to world revolution has now shifted to promotion of US “regime change” wars.
There is a prevailing Western doctrine that dictatorships make war, and democracies make peace. There is no proof of that whatsoever. Dictatorships (think of Franco Spain) may be conservative and inward-looking. The major imperialist powers, Britain and France, were democracies. Democratic America is far from peaceful.
As the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear arsenal, the United States was unable to interfere effectively in Eastern Europe and fell back on lesser enemies, overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala, getting bogged down in Vietnam, on the theory that these were surrogates for the Soviet communist enemy. But now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, abandoning Russia’s buffer zone in Eastern Europe, there appears to be a resurgence of the sort of confidence that overcame Truman: a euphoria of limitless power. Why else would the Pentagon undertake a trillion dollar program to renew America’s nuclear arsenal, while stationing troops and aggressive military equipment as close as possible to the Russian border?
In his 1974 book about his relations with his brother Dwight, The President Is Calling, Milton Eisenhower wrote: “Our employment of this new force at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a supreme provocation to other nations, especially the Soviet Union.” And he added, “Certainly what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki will forever be on the conscience of the American people.”
Alas, the evidence so far is all to the contrary. Concerned critics have been marginalized. Systematic official lies about the “necessity to save American lives” have left the collective American conscience perfectly clear, while the power of the Bomb has created a lasting sense of self-righteous “exceptionalism” in the nation’s leaders. We Americans alone can do what others cannot, because we are “free” and “democratic” and they – if we so decide – are not. Other countries, not being “democracies”, can be destroyed in order to liberate them. Or simply destroyed. This is the bottom line of the “exceptionalism” that substitutes in Washington for the “conscience of the American people” which was not aroused by Hiroshima, but asphyxiated.
The Moral Sleep
As a guest in Hiroshima, Obama pontificated skillfully:
“The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.”
Well yes, but no such moral revolution has taken place.
“… the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.”
“Change” is an Obama specialty. But he did nothing to change our nuclear arms policy, except to beef it up. No sign of a “moral imagination” imagining the devastation that this policy is leading us toward. No imaginative ideas to bring about nuclear disarmament. Just promises not to let the bad guys get a hold of them. They belong to us.
“And since that fateful day,” Obama continued, “we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war.”
This is sinister. As a matter of fact, it was precisely through war that the U.S. forged this alliance and this friendship – which the United States is now trying to militarize in its “Asian pivot”. It means that we can wipe out two of a country’s cities with nuclear weapons and end up with “not only an alliance but a friendship”. So why stop now? Why not make more such “friends” in the same way, for instance in Iran, which Hillary Clinton has expressed willingness to “obliterate” if the circumstances are right.
“That is a future we can choose,” said Obama, “a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.”
But so far, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very far from marking the “start of our own moral awakening”. On the contrary. The illusion of possessing limitless power removed any need for critical self-examination, any need to make a real effort to understand others who are not like us and don’t want to be like us, but could share the planet peacefully if we would leave them alone.
Since we are all-powerful, we must be a force for good. In reality, we are neither. But we seem incapable of recognizing the limits of our “exceptionalism”.
The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki plunged the United States leadership into a moral sleep from which it has yet to awaken.
Notes.
[1] All of that is known to experts. The documentary proofs were all laid out by Gar Alperovitz in the 800 pages of his 1995 book, The Decision to Use the Atom Bomb. However, official lies outlive documented refutation.
Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia has repeatedly apologized for his remarks on Israeli settlements, remarks in which he likened settlements popping up all over the West Bank to a termite infestation.
Yet even so, the Zionists are still piling on him.
“The ripple effect continues for U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson a week after the Lithonia Democrat was quoted comparing Jewish settlement policy in the disputed West Bank to termites,” reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an article published August 3.
This of course is what passes for US mainstream media coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict. Tamar Hallerman, the author of the piece, demonstrates what would seem to be a rather pronounced lack of journalistic integrity in her reference to the West Bank as “disputed,” rather than occupied. The word “disputed” has for years been a hasbara talking point. The West Bank is viewed by virtually the entire world as rightfully belonging to the Palestinians and regarded as a vital ingredient to implementation of the so-called two-state solution.
And as such, the settlements are regarded as illegal under international law–something which Hallerman also fails to mention in her report. Virtually no one, other than Zionists and media flunkies like Hallerman, refer to the West Bank as “disputed.” The proper term is “occupied.”
At any rate, the main focus of her article is an editorial “blasting” Johnson which appeared at the Atlanta Jewish Times on Monday and which is quoted extensively.
“The editorial argues that if Johnson wants to receive votes from the pro-Israel community in the future, he’ll need to answer questions about what he was doing speaking at an event sponsored by a pro-Israeli-boycott group in the first place,” Hallerman reports.
“Meanwhile, Johnson’s apology tour continues. He met with the Atlanta chapter of the advocacy group the American Jewish Committee on Tuesday,” she adds.
Don’t you just love the term “apology tour”? It kind of falls into the same category as Philip Weiss’ comment about Jews dominating the American media–“and so what if we do?” It is of course imperative for Jews to try and downplay their political power, yet as we see every so often one or another will succumb to the temptation to boast about it.
So yes, Johnson is on a “tour” visiting various Jews and Jewish organizations, apologizing for his remarks. Here he is in an August 2 meeting with members of the American Jewish Committee, whose website urges visitors to “stop BDS in its tracks” by signing onto a form letter to Congress members:
The letter, by the way, describes BDS as a “virulent movement,” and following his meeting with the group, Johnson tweeted amicably, “Appreciate meeting w/ @AJCGlobal today to open important dialogue — especially w/ #ATL director @DovWilker. Thanks!”
Johnson’s initial remarks about termites were made at an event in Philadelphia on July 25. If you have not read my article, Termites and Israeli Settlers: A US Congressman’s Analogy, you might consider doing so. As I noted, the congressman’s critics seem to have little to say about racist rabbis in Israel who have articulated things far worse and who have even called for the murder of Palestinians.
The editorial at the Atlanta Jewish Times, cited by Hallerman, makes mention of the fact that Johnson holds the same congressional seat once held by Cynthia McKinney, and while the opinion piece seems to give him credit for being less of an “anti-Semite” than his predecessor, it doesn’t seem to cut him much else in the way of slack.
Unlike McKinney, the woman he defeated 10 years ago to win his seat in Congress, Johnson doesn’t hate Jews, many of whom have been crucial supporters, and he doesn’t spout conspiracy theories accusing Jews or Israelis of carrying out false-flag terrorist attacks.
But his attitude toward Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed in recent years, and he spoke July 25 as someone who has earned a reputation as a leading congressional critic of Israel.
That day he criticized Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while lamenting the condition of the Palestinians. He portrayed Israelis as the villains and Palestinians as the victims, ignoring Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, incitement by Palestinian leaders and rocket fire from Gaza.
The editorial doesn’t divulge that Jewish donors hostile to McKinney funded Johnson’s campaign in a deliberate effort to unseat her. This, however, is indeed what took place. So of course the “many Jews” the editorial does allude to, i.e. those who have been Johnson’s “crucial supporters” in the past, obviously have plenty of reason to be irked!
Israeli Apartheid Explained with Humor
“He (Rep. Hank Johnson) portrayed Israelis as the villains and Palestinians as the victims, ignoring Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, incitement by Palestinian leaders and rocket fire from Gaza.” – Atlanta Jewish Times
Moreover, the specter of McKinney apparently looms rather sinisterly in the anonymous editorial writer’s imagination. “Short of going full Cynthia McKinney, Congressman Hank Johnson couldn’t have done much more to anger the Jewish community than unleash a comparison between termites and Israelis living on the West Bank,” the person writes in what is essentially an unintended tribute to the former Georgia congresswoman.
Thankfully Johnson doesn’t “spout conspiracy theories accusing Jews or Israelis of carrying out false-flag terrorist attacks.” That would certainly be to his detriment and lead to an extended, much-prolonged apology tour–and of course as we all know, Jews don’t celebrate in parking lots while “documenting the event,” take out insurance policies on asbestos-filled buildings, or get themselves appointed to oversee commissions investigating what happened on a day that “changed the world” and that led to a series of wars against Israel’s enemies and a flood of refugees pouring into Europe. Jews don’t do any of these things! So repeat after me: It’s all just a coincidence… just a coincidence… just a coincidence…
The editorial also invokes the Nazis (you wouldn’t expect otherwise), calls Johnson’s termite comment “a particularly vile association,” and quotes one of his more contrite apologies:
“The language I used was not only unacceptable but it was hurtful,” he wrote in a message to constituents. “I deeply regret using this terrible metaphor. It was not only nonconstructive, it was wrong.”
I’m just guessing here, but I suspect a lot of people in Johnson’s congressional district are supporters of the Black Lives Matters movement, and of course a good many activists in that movement have openly expressed solidarity with Palestinians. Could that have anything to do with why Johnson accepted the invitation to speak at the event in Philadelphia?
A number of Johnson’s critics have attacked him not only for his comments about termites, but also for speaking at what they view as an anti-Semitic event. The event at which he spoke was not anti-Semitic, but it has been portrayed as such. “Progressive for Palestine: Is the US Ready to Rethink Policy on Israel?”–this was the title of the program. It was sponsored jointly by the American Friends Service Committee and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The latter group should change its name to the “US Campaign to End the Israeli Disputation” or else prepare to go on being accused of anti-Semitism. At any rate, the main point I’m making is that not only were Johnson’s words criticized, but the program itself.
“Why was Johnson speaking to such an anti-Israel gathering at all?” asks the Atlanta Jewish Times editorial, in what is perhaps typical of some of the jabs. “That’s the question he must answer if wants to receive any more votes from the pro-Israel community.”
“Any more votes” from a group that makes up roughly two percent of the population is of course of scant consideration. The real question is whether Johnson will undergo savage media attacks in conjunction with buckets of money funneled to the campaign of some possible future opponent. Clearly the congressman has been warned.
UPDATE:
For those who think it worth the effort, an online petition has been started to urge Johnson to “please keep speaking out about West Bank settlements.”
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Fourth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question” Read the third part here.
Back in 2006 all but a prescient few, such as Christopher Bollyn, perceived it as premature to try to identify and bring to justice the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. There was still some residue of confidence that responsible officials in government, law enforcement, media and the universities could and would respond in good faith to multiple revelations that great frauds had occurred in interpreting 9/11 for the public.
Accordingly, the main methodology of public intellectuals like Dr. Kevin Barrett or, for instance, Professors David Ray Griffin, Steven E. Jones, Peter Dale Scott, Graeme MacQueen, John McMurtry, Michael Keefer, Richard B. Lee, A.K. Dewdney, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, and Michel Chossudovsky, was to marshal evidence demonstrating that the official narrative of 9/11 could not be true.
The marshaling of evidence was spurred on by observations coming from government insiders like Eckehardt Wertherbach, a former head of Germany’s intelligence service. In a meeting in Germany with Christopher Bollyn and Dr. Andreas von Bülow, Wertherbach pointed out that, “an attack of this magnitude and precision would have required years of planning. Such a sophisticated operation would require the fixed frame of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a loose group like the one led by the student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg.”
Andreas von Bülow was a German parliamentarian and Defense Ministry official. He confirmed this assessment in his book on the CIA and 9/11. In the text von Bülow remarked that the execution of the 9/11 plan “would have been unthinkable without backing from secret apparatuses of state and industry.” The author spoke of the “invented story of 19 Muslims working with Osama bin Laden in order the hide the truth” of the real perpetrators’ identity.
In the early years the pioneer researchers and organizers of the 9/11 Truth Movement began the process of marshaling evidence that demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that the original narrative of the 9/11 crimes could not be true. From this it followed that the public was entitled to a credible and true explanation, from the responsible authorities, about what really transpired on 9/11. To arrive at this outcome the Bush administration’s now-thoroughly-discredited 9/11 Commission Report, sometimes also known as the Kean-Hamilton report, would have to be put aside.
Released in 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report was drafted primarily by the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow. Zelikow is a history professor who was a well-known political operative active in the Bush White House. Zelikow was a prominent member of the Israeli First network in and around the war cabinet and staff of US President George W. Bush. Zelikow is recognized for his professional expertise in studying, creating and deploying public mythology as a tool for the shaping of public attitudes and behavior.
The chairs of the 9/11 Commission failed to stop Zelikow from drawing on counterfeit evidence obtained illegally through torture. Zelikow deployed this tainted testimony to embed, in the conscious and subconscious minds of the trusting public, the religious fable of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report entrenched in public mythology the imagery of demonic Islamic extremists motivated exclusively by their theocratic zealotry.
The new investigation called for by many prominent members of the 9/11 Truth Movement would have to transcend the realm of partisan politics; it would have had to be staffed by neutral parties of high esteem capable of rendering genuine third-party adjudication that goes to the very roots and origins of the 9/11 crime. To this day no such honest investigation has taken place. Meanwhile the citizens’ investigation of 9/11 has continued to bring forward more and more evidence that proves conclusively that from September 11, 2001 until this day, authorities are lying to the public about 9/11 and many related topics. Thus the lies of 9/11 continue to form the basis of public policy, the basis of decisions made everyday about who lives and who dies.
The scope and depth of the citizens’ investigation on 9/11 is hard to fathom in terms of the number of researchers involved, the diversity of specific topics covered, and the array of various types of expert knowledge brought to the project of separating fact from fiction. As one observer has noted, “In the annals of history, no event has ever been so thoroughly dissected by as many disparate humans as the 9/11/01 Massacre.”
Of course the quality of the work being developed in the field of 9/11 studies spans the spectrum from excellent to poor. This variation has resulted in the evolution of improvised versions of peer review that developed among experts both inside and outside the halls of academia. Some, like Noam Chomsky, choose to mock and demean these people’s process of distinguishing empirically demonstrable truth from the lies of corrupt officialdom. Why would Chomsky show such contempt and to what end?
What must always be born in mind is that the citizens’ investigation into 9/11 is first and foremost a public service done because the responsible authorities have failed to do their jobs. The authorities have acted criminally at worst, contrary to the public interest at best. Our compromised and discredited officials have failed almost uniformly to provide citizens with a credible explanation for a major event that has significantly transformed all our lives decidedly for the worse. So far the negative fallout has rained down with particular severity on Muslims. Millions of them have been killed, maimed, poisoned, displaced, and tortured in a series of wars all originating in a specious interpretation of what transpired on 9/11.
There is still no end in sight to the murder and mayhem. The failure to address the crimes of 9/11 with truth rather than with the constant resort to the 9/11 fable has become a major factor in the delegitimization of government. Never has public confidence been lower in our most basic institutions of governance, finance, policing, education, and media of mass communications.
In the decade since 2006 the realization has grown that there is little chance that those in charge of our core institutions would dare press for a genuine investigation to identify the real nature and perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. The elaborate 9/11 operation itself and the subsequent cover up implicate too many powerful agencies, groups and individuals.
Understanding the deep corruption permeating the system over which the 9/11 culprits still rule, is changing the attitudes of many of those who have taken the time to study 9/11 for themselves. Given the unwillingness of officialdom to protect the public interest, those leading the citizens’ investigation into 9/11 are increasingly inclined to name and shame the most credibly accused suspects who so far have been able to evade accountability by framing, blaming, manipulating and smearing Muslims.
A recent illustration of the depth of this scam is exposed in the machinations of the kangaroo court at the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Along with four supporting actors, the supposed “mastermind of 9/11,” the oft tortured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is subject to the travesty of a psychological operation going forward under the guise of a legal proceeding.
The Guantanamo Military Commission has been ordered to direct ultimate blame for the 9/11 debacle on a manipulated cast of patsies performing parodies of Islamic extremism. This farce of litigation, this betrayal of due process, forms a telling illustration of the degradation of our criminal justice systems. Like many other institutions essential to the survival of free and democratic societies, our criminal justice systems are being trashed to protect the real culprits responsible for the lies and crimes of 9/11.
Prominent among those that should be put on trial, including for the 9/11 cover up, are Michael Chertoff, Larry Silverstein, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle, Benjamin Netanyahu, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Shalom Yoran, Arnon Milchan, Jules Kroll, Philip Zelikow, Ash Carter, Robert Gates, Ronald Lauder, William Kristol, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, Judge Michael Mukasey, Jonathan Kay, Michael Shermer, David Frum, Karl Rove, General Richard Myers, David Aaronovitch, Rupert Murdoch, Rita Katz, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, Paul Godfrey, and, as we shall see, Noam Chomsky.
As years pass, the 9/11 cover up is becoming the central element of the 9/11 crime. The logistics of the cover up involve the manipulation of the mainstream media and other strategic institutions including our courts, schools and universities. As Howard Baker observed when reflecting on the abbreviated presidency of Richard Nixon, “it is almost always the cover up rather than the event that causes trouble.” It is difficult to fathom the enormity of the enterprise of keeping alive the absurd Islamophobia-inducing fable of 9/11, let alone the smaller scale sequels of false flag terror events required to keep large portions of the public in constant states of fear, confusion, uncertainty, disorientation and angst.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has authorized the B61-12 warhead life-extension program (LEP) to enter the production-engineering phase – the final one prior to actual production.
Established by Congress in 2000, the NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. While the Defense Department manages the delivery systems of the nuclear force, the agency has oversight over the development, maintenance and disposal of nuclear warheads.
The first production unit of the weapon is planned for fiscal year 2020. The LEP – a joint NNSA and United States Air Force (USAF) program – will add at least an additional 20 years to the life of the system.
The decision is part of the plan to modernize the US nuclear forces, which could cost $350-$450 billion over the next decade.
The $8 billion B61-12 LEP is probably the most expensive nuclear bomb program in US history.
On July 29, the Air Force released requests for proposals for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), which replaces the 1960s-era Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon, which will replace the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile.
It comes at a time when members of Congress have begun to question the modernization plan, in particular over the LRSO.
Both programs have come under fire from lawmakers and analysts who assert that the weapons are too costly, duplicative and could add to global instability.
The B61-12 LEP refurbishes both nuclear and non-nuclear components to extend the bomb’s service life while significantly improving the weapon’s characteristics. The modernization includes a new tail fin assembly for greater accuracy and would allow a lower nuclear yield in attacking targets. The B61-12 will have both air- and ground-burst capability. The capability to penetrate below the surface has significant implications for the types of targets that can be held at risk with the bomb.
A nuclear weapon that detonates after penetrating the earth more efficiently transmits its explosive energy to the ground, thus is more effective at destroying deeply buried targets for a given nuclear yield. The B61-12 is designed to have four selectable explosive yields: 0.3 kilotons (kt), 1.5 kt, 10 kt and 50 kt. According to the US National Academies’ study, the maximum destructive potential of the B61-12 against underground targets is equivalent to the capability of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 750 kt to 1,250 kt.
The yield can be lowered as needed for any particular mission. In fact, the bomb’s explosive force can be reduced electronically through a dial-a-yield system accessed by a hatch on the bomb’s body.
Even at the lowest selective yield setting of only 0.3 kt, the ground-shock coupling of a B61-12 exploding a few meters underground would be equivalent to a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 4.5 kt to 7.5 kt.
Existing US nuclear bombs have circular error probabilities (CEP) of between 110-170 meters. The B61-12’s CEP is just 30 meters.
A combination of its accuracy and low-yield makes the B61-12 the most dangerous nuclear warhead in America’s arsenal.
The smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use – even to use first, rather than in retaliation, knowing the radioactive fallout and collateral damage would be limited.
The B61-12 will initially be integrated with B-2, F-15E, F-16, and Tornado aircraft. From the 2020s, the weapon will also be integrated with, first, the F-35A bomber-fighter F-35, built on the technology of «stealth» (replacing the F-16) and later the LRS-B next-generation long-range bomber. The combination of a guided standoff nuclear bomb and a fifth-generation stealthy fighter-bomber will significantly enhance the military capability of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe. The B61-12 will replace the existing B61-3, -4, -7, and -10 bomb designs. It is thought that approximately 480 B61-12s will be produced through the mid-2020s.
The implementation of the program runs contrary to President Obama’s stated pledge not to create any new nuclear weapons or ones with new military capabilities.
«The United States will not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military mission or new capabilities for nuclear weapons», he said on the release of Nuclear Posture Review, which, in turn, reads, «The United States will not develop new nuclear warheads. Life Extension Programs (LEPs) will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities».
American leading experts believe it to be nothing else but a new weapon.
Currently around 200 B61 bombs are deployed in underground vaults inside around 90 protective aircraft shelters at six bases in five NATO countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey). About half of the munitions are earmarked for delivery by national aircraft of these non-nuclear states, although they all are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968.
Article I of the treaty prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons from nuclear-weapons states to other countries. Its Article II requires non-nuclear weapons states not to receive nuclear weapons.
Engaged in this nuclear sharing activity which completely destroyed the spirit of the treaty, the US and its NATO allies have no moral authority to convince other countries not to proliferate.
The shared deployment of these weapons is in large part designed to lock NATO allies into a nuclear weapon posture and weakens the credibility of their claims in international disarmament negotiations to be working towards disarmament.
The modernization of the US nuclear tactical weapons competes with resources needed for more important conventional forces and operations. Conventional forces are much more credible than tactical nuclear weapons in the fight against terrorists.
Deployment of B61-12 in Europe is comparable to a time bomb which may one day explode. The decision will inevitably spike tensions in the already strained relationship between NATO and Russia.
Moscow has already called the B61 program «irresponsible» and «openly provocative».
Russia considers US forward-based tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe to be an addition to the US strategic arsenal that is capable of striking deep into its territory. It will greatly complicate further arms control efforts with New Start Treaty expiring in 2021. The withdrawal of these weapons is a prerequisite for starting talks on reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. The US decision to implement the LEP makes such prospects dim at least.
NATO members to host the new weapon on their soil should realize that the move will automatically make them targets for possible pre-emptive or retaliatory attack. Countries that host foreign nuclear weapons don’t enhance their security. Withdrawing nuclear munitions would be a serious contribution to strategic stability and security in Europe.
An astonishing piece appeared in the New York Times (NYT) recently. It reported a fierce bias in the Times’s coverage of politics and current affairs, most notably when it comes to Donald Trump. The bias turns up not just in the opinion pages but in the News, reports Liz Spayd, the new “public editor,” a position once called the ombudsman.
But the surprise does not end there. Spayd’s report is based on letters from liberal readers, which are filling her inbox to overflowing. Here are some examples that she cites:
“You’ve lost a subscriber because of your relentless bias against Trump — and I’m not even a Republican,” writes an Arizonan.
“I never thought I’d see the day when I, as a liberal, would start getting so frustrated with the one-sided reporting that I would start hopping over to the Fox News webpage to read an article and get the rest of the story that the NYT refused to publish,” writes a woman from California.
“The NY Times is alienating its independent and open-minded readers, and in doing so, limiting the reach of their message and its possible influence,” writes a Manhattanite.
Since these examples are all letters from liberals, the public editor comments:
“You can imagine what the letters from actual conservatives sound like….
“Emails like these stream into this office every day. A perception that The Times is biased prompts some of the most frequent complaints from readers. Only they arrive so frequently, and have for so long, that the objections no longer land with much heft.”
Of course, this is nothing new for the Times. The bias in favor of the latest project of the American Imperium has been true for my entire lifetime. But it used to be subtler, and it used to include some real information, albeit buried away somewhere deep within an article. Noam Chomsky was once fond of reminding us that it was better to read the Times articles backwards, because some truth was buried in the last couple paragraphs.
But in the last few decades since the end of the Cold War and the rise of NATO Expansion and American Exceptionalism in the Clinton “co-presidency,” the situation has grown much worse. The age of American Triumphalism has caused more rot in the mainstream media. Not only with the Times but with other major outlets like the Washington Post, the Wall St. Journal and National Public Radio.
A striking example occurred when the Times lent its front page to a fabricated and now thoroughly discredited story by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in September, 2002 claiming that Iraq had WMD.
That was just weeks before Congress took a vote to “authorize” George W. Bush to launch an invasion of Iraq. I still recall the day I looked at that article and thought it was fact free and source free and that any decent editor would turn it back. It was clear at that moment that the fix was in and that we were on our way to a war which our Elite had decided upon. (Judith Miller eventually was the sacrificial lamb when that story and its origins in Dick Cheney’s office became known. But the co-author, Michael R. Gordon, continues as the “chief military correspondent” for the Times, and the editors in charge have never been punished.)
It seems that the situation has got worse with the rise of Trump who endangers the Imperium’s quest for world domination by seeking to “get along” with Russia and China. Once Trump took that stance, the vitriol and vituperation became a daily feature in the Times. Indeed their columnist Timothy Egan seems to write about little else these days. Only Maureen Dowd provides occasional timid relief, daring to point out that Trump “talks to the press,” a dig at Hillary who does not. (Clinton has not had so much as a single press conference in almost a year.)
I know that many Times readers now seek out Fox, just like the letter writer quoted above. And many also turn to Breitbart and the Drudge Report as well as RT and China Daily. Even when the Times reports some actual facts, it reports only selected ones (A half truth is a full lie.) or buries them in a narrative that neutralizes them.
More Times readers should recognize that they are being taken for a ride. And they should stop being so damned cocksure and snooty about their “knowledge.” They often look more foolish than they might think.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Third part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Over decades Chomsky has moved towards the center of formidable networks of academic associations, publishing enterprises, activist groups, speakers forums and New Media operations. The fact that the senior professor is so well wired into such an effective communication grid of activist interaction has hugely amplified his voice and his influence.
Chomsky’s ideas have been broadcast to the far corners of the world in every conceivable format. His work is translated into many languages as the MIT professor goes from honor to honor, distinction to distinction, all the while seeming to combat the expansionary impulses emanating from some of the world’s leading centers of power including those in Israel. The phenomenal success of Chomsky’s career would seem to prove and illustrate that there is still some substance in the conception of America as the land of the free, home of the brave.
Dr. Barrett’s career path presents a very different picture of the role of the academy in US society. Barrett is the child of a strong Wisconsin family that also embodied many classic elements in the American Dream. Kevin Barrett’s father, Peter, was a lawyer, engineer, finance professor and successful businessman. He also became an Olympic Gold Medalist in sailing in 1968.
In 1964 Barrett’s father would have won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics if he had not disqualified himself at the end of a sailing competition by confessing that (not noticed by anyone else) he had lightly brushed against another boat early in the race.
In 2006 Kevin Barrett is reported to have referred to this episode during the ordeal of his trial by media. This public inquisition came about as a result of Kevin Barrett’s incorporation of views skeptical of the dominant 9/11 narrative into his pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin. Drawing implicit connections between his father’s decision in Tokyo and his own insistence on integrating the quest for 9/11 truth into the broader panorama of his academic work, the young academic commented, “Cheating for strategic advantage is never right. It’s important to follow the truth no matter what.”
Much is revealed by the contrasting treatment delivered on the dissident academic Kevin Barrett and on Leftist superstar Noam Chomsky. Dr. Barrett’s career so far runs against the Hollywood version of how the heroic deeds and revelations of whistle blowers are received. In the Hollywood version of redemption through unrelenting truth telling, the solitary hero often ends up overcoming the deceit of corrupt and ruthless opponents. The honesty of the solitary hero is made to triumph, thereby saving civilization along with innocent civilians from horrific cataclysms.
In real life America, however, this scenario of redemption through truth telling is more the aberration than the rule. Most whistle blowers are met with silence, avoidance and denigration of the type that Noam Chomsky has heaped on Kevin Barrett. The more common scenario of whistle blowing in America is for the truth teller to be sidelined and crushed in a harsh system of institutionalized cover-up hugely biased towards the rule of money and political expediency.
From Operation Gladio to the False Flag Terror Events
Animating the “Global War on Terror”
Dr. Barrett’s talk at the Left Forum in May of 2016 helped break an ideological prohibition at a venue that had previously blocked presentations by investigators that share some of his views. For fourteen years, any and all thinkers that rejected the official narrative of 9/11 were excluded, including those situated intellectually along the left-oriented spectrum of political identification.
The Left Form is an outgrowth of the annual Socialist Scholars’ Conference at City University of New York. In Barrett’s view Chomsky became the virtual Pope of the Left Forum Vatican, a venue peopled by admirers prone to revere their secular Pontiff as sacrosanct and infallible. In helping to break the hold of such an unseemly intellectual exclusion of 9/11 skeptics, Barrett brought to the proceedings his own unique style of Truth jihad. With his struggle to bring truth into the light of public awareness, the Muslim American scholar helped liberate free speech in a forum that during the Cold War was itself infested with the depredations of anti-communist witch hunts.
A convert to Islam since 1992, Dr. Barrett learned Arabic on the way to his writing his Ph.D. thesis on Sufi literature. In 2006 he was ousted from his position as a Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin where he had taught since 1996. Barrett’s alleged crime was to have assigned skeptical as well as orthodox readings on 9/11 in one of his seventeen weeks of classes in an introductory course entitled Islam: Religion and Culture.
In retrospect, Dr. Barrett was adapting his curriculum to a subject with huge ramifications for Muslims in all walks of life the world over. The real academic crime in this situation would have been for an instructor of a survey course on Muslim thought, devotion and experience to have ignored this reality; to have evaded some sort of reckoning with the immense implications of 9/11 for the Islamic world.
Dr. Barrett’s reasonable pedagogical response to major changes in global geopolitics became fraught with controversy of great strategic significance for the future of our academic institutions. The Rupert Murdoch media in the United States, but especially Fox News, became an especially forceful engine of the bandwagon on which many ambitious publicity-seeking politicians jumped. For a time the University of Wisconsin held the sacred ground of academic freedom. Its academic leaders found in an internal investigation that Dr. Kevin Barrett had been conscientious presenting a wide array of competing perspectives on 9/11.
The fact that Dr. Barrett is a Muslim himself formed a significant part of the circumstances that caused him to be singled out. His inquisitors in the media chose to transform him into a symbol of those said to be attacking the American way through the subversion of American youth.
Much evidence supports the view that the most important motivating factor in the planning, implementation and cover up of the ongoing 9/11 operation has been to inject fear of Islamic religion and Muslim people into the minds of non-Muslim populations. The aim of this purposeful contamination of the mental environment is to transform Israel’s regional enemies, but especially the Palestinians, into one part of a larger transnational Muslim enemy said to be hostile to all Western freedoms. As Barrett asserted at the Left Forum in New York, the 9/11 Black Op was to create the basis for a “100 year war on Muslims for Israel.”
The 9/11 culprits delivered the fabricated imagery of global Islamic terror to the proprietors and beneficiaries of America’s permanent war economy. Especially since 9/11, the strategy has been to create patsies and to sponsor covertly the recruiting, organizing, arming, and violent incursions of mercenary soldiers. Whether pictured under the flags of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra or the so-called “Islamic State”, these mercenary forces are paid handsomely to perform the role of vicious Muslim terrorists acting out of no other motivation than their own blood-thirsty religious extremism.
In this fashion the new enemy has been shaped, inflated and deployed as needed in order to justify all sorts of interventions, including aggressive warfare anywhere in the world. Under Israeli direction the core of the US political economy was thus revivified in the name of anti-terrorism. After the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy. Neoconservative activists supplied “the West” with a concocted enemy. They also helped ramp up the activities of the war machine with the necessary political bribes, media propaganda and military directives aimed at transforming the US Armed Forces into an edified instrument for the expansion and further empowerment of Greater Israel.
The alignment of opposing forces in Syria well illustrates the way the core countries and satellites of the Israeli-American juggernaut have integrated mercenary forces fighting under Islamic flags into the machinery of aggressive and psychological warfare. NATO’s program of false flag terrorism in Europe was one of the models for this new round of false flag terrorism aimed at demonizing Muslims. Where the operatives of Operation Gladio engineered violent acts in the 1970s and 80s to blame and thereby demonize both communists and left-leaning progressives, the current round of serial false flag terror events is aimed at inciting Islamophobia. The manufacturing of hatred towards Muslims is a necessary psychological pillar of Likudnik Israel’s agenda of violent expansion.
A key facet of this strategy of tension is the increasingly transnationalized and privatized police state that has become deeply intertwined with a massively augmented surveillance state. Since 9/11 the apparatus of law enforcement has been thoroughly politicized and turned against the human rights, civil liberties and public interests of citizens. Without a doubt the quality of life has declined significantly, as the instruments of Cold War anti-communism have been transformed into agencies supposedly devoted to anti-terrorism. This concocted series of post-9/11 conflicts, starting with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are presented in ways calculated to confuse, deceive, disorient and mislead an anxiety-ridden public. Police and military coercion to hold and expand empire are misrepresented as simple fights for and against “terror.”
This phony war on terror originates in the 9/11 deceptions. This phony war draws on a long heritage of duplicity in international banking, where the same financiers loan money to both sides in conflicts. In many core episodes in the so-called Global War on Terror, both sides are subject to the control of the same paymasters, the same high-finance power brokers. In this heavily engineered series of manufactured conflicts, citizens expected to pay the enormous cost of these military operations are plunged into a fog of war. Whole populations are deceived, distracted and mercilessly exploited. We are presented with a barrage of alarming media images constantly signaling to us that our most menacing enemy on earth is the scourge of Islamic terrorism.
One of many intended consequences is to divert our attention away from our growing subjugation to the bondage of compounded debt enslavement. This theft is imposed through the machinations of the world’s centralized private banks. These kleptocratic institutions exploit the indebtedness of nations to privatize the ownership of commonly-held infrastructures and resources, all the while forcing governments to cut back resources for public services like health care, education and social security.
Political developments are often emotionally charged, and even journalists who are expected to maintain an objective approach to reporting can find themselves swept away by sensational headlines and the temptation to wade into controversy without fully analysing background information that might significantly alter established narratives.
Because of this, some journalists find themselves playing the role of commentator rather than investigator, often leaving out critical information in a rush to contribute to one of two sides amid a political divide. In some cases, journalists may appear to be doing their job by “investigating” deeper into news stories, but do so in a transparently one-sided manner, thus negating their role as an objective observer.
In Thailand, this can be clearly seen in English-language coverage, particularly from The Nation and the Bangkok Post. In the rare instance that journalists from either paper “investigates” independently into any given headline, it is generally one-sided and transparently politically-motivated.
And more often than not, these papers appear to be taking their lead from foreign news sources, particularly those in Europe and North America. One would expect newspapers from region to region to develop their own unique angles and perspectives regarding the news, but upon following the money, we will soon see why this more often than not doesn’t happen.
The Industrialised Journalist Mill
Pravit Rojanaphruk, currently a commentator at Thailand’s Khoasod English, is perhaps one of the most transparent examples of just what is wrong with newspapers across Asia. He proudly boasts of his various Western media affiliations and fellowships with his Twitter profile reading as follows:
MSc (Oxon), British Chevening Scholar 2001-2002, Reuter Fellow 97-98, Katherine Fanning Fellow 2009, Salzburg Sem. Fellow.
If these scholarships and fellowships actually cultivated real principles of journalism within recipients, they might actually be noteworthy milestones in a journalist’s career.
However, what they instead represent, is a concerted attempt by the Western media to extend its influence further abroad, and to help align global news coverage uniformly to their perspective and to serve their interests.
Journalists like Pravit, then, serve as an extension of Western media coverage rather than a representation of Thai journalism. Journalism by definition is the reporting of news, and news is by definition noteworthy information.
What Pravit and others like him are prone to do, however, is interweave opinion and commentary into what is often strained, spun or even fabricated information. And this is done to align Thai news with those expectations and norms taught to them during their fellowships abroad in Europe and North America.
The Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme alone has processed hundreds of journalists around the world, putting them through between 1-3 terms at the University of Oxford to undergo a program of stringent indoctrination into the ways of Western journalism. It is virtually impossible for a fellow to undergo this process and leave as an independent journalist.
Attend seminars given by a diverse and high-level range of guest speakers who will share their insights into key industry trends and developments
Work with an experienced supervisor, usually an Oxford academic, to produce a research paper of publishable quality
Visit world-class news organisations and gain insights into how they are approaching industry challenges. Previous visits have included trips to Thomson Reuters, The Financial Times, The BBC, The Economist and The Guardian
Join trips to key UK cultural and political organisations and institutions. Previous destinations have included Oxfam, the House of Commons and Stratford-upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare
Exchange ideas and experiences with a diverse and international peer group. Around 25 Fellows a year join us from high-level media organisations all over the world. Strengthen your network, develop a global set of contacts and gain insights into international trends and developments
Benefit from the extensive learning facilities offered by the University of Oxford, including the world-famous Bodleian Library and access to various seminars and lectures across the university. You are also encouraged to engage with the university’s cutting edge specialist research facilities, including centres for African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Eastern and Western European, Japanese and Chinese studies
Be given visiting scholar status of Green Templeton College
For inexperienced young men and women who aspire to be journalists, to be afforded this opportunity would be both immensely flattering and emotionally as well as professionally transformative. For a young journalist in Thailand to be afforded the opportunity to travel to the UK, to attend one or more terms at the world renowned University of Oxford and to be given an opportunity to see the inner workings of news organisations like the BBC, Thompson Reuters, The Economist and The Guardian would be an overwhelming experience. And it is meant to be.
If Only Real Journalism Was Being Promoted…
The journalists who complete such fellowships and return to their home countries, are forever linked to the institutions and individuals they met and worked with during their time abroad. They take back with them to their home countries not the tools of an objective journalist, but the indoctrination, culture, interests and angles of a Western-centric worldview. To those who have completed the fellowship, they often confuse this Western-centric worldview with being “objective,” but it is most certainly not.
We can look at the Reuters fellowship program and see news organisations like Thompson Reuters, the BBC, The Economist and The Guardian held up as examples of journalism. This is despite their active manipulation of information toward particular political objectives rather than accurately informing the public.
In particular, these news services played crucial roles in promoting wars like the US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003, intentionally obfuscating critical information the public and policymakers required to make an honest assessment of the decision to go to war.
The BBC in particular has been embroiled in impropriety ranging from deceptive news coverage to paid-for documentaries and even criminal conduct committed by individuals, and covered up institutionally.
But news organisations serving special interests is nothing new. One must expect this realistically, to a certain degree, regarding any news organisation operating around the world. It is not a matter of whether or not they are serving special interests, it is a matter of whose interests they are serving.
While Thai-based news organisations would be expected to serve special interests in Thailand, they do not, specifically because of the Wests industrialised ‘journalist mills.’ These fellowship programs, training seminars and campaigns are undertaken to ensure the widest possible consensus globally to Western special interests, regardless of what nation journalists may be from or what nations they are currently operating in.
That is why The Nation and the Bangkok Post feature editorial slants nearly indistinguishable from those of Western news agencies. While Pravit is very open and proud of his indoctrination into this system of mass-produced consensus, others employed across the Thai media are not. Some digging, however, into the backgrounds of journalists who repeatedly and suspiciously repeat talking-points originating from abroad usually reveals a similar and extensive “resume” of foreign fellowships, education and indoctrination.
History is Repeating Itself
Understandably, for people hearing this for the first time, it sounds like an incredible conspiracy theory. However, upon thoughtful examination, it is merely the predictable repetition of history unfolding.
Ancient Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands.
In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain:
His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.
We can easily see how fellowships fill a similar role today, with the West, openly aspiring to construct an international order, “educating” potentially influential foreigners in both English and “the liberal arts,” encouraging a preference for Western culture and perspectives and convincing them that such indoctrination is a novelty of ‘civilisation’ rather than a feature of control and a vector for Western influence into any particular country.
Under the British Empire, similar education and missionary programs were created to replace independent and unique local perspectives and culture with the uniform perspective and culture of Britain, serving British aspirations of global hegemony.
Christian missionary activity was central to the work of European colonialism, providing British missionaries and their supporters with a sense of justice and moral authority. Throughout the history of imperial expansion, missionary proselytising offered the British public a model of ‘civilised’ expansionism and colonial community management, transforming [imperial] projects into moral allegories. Missionary activity was, however, unavoidably implicated in either covert or explicit cultural change. It sought to transform indigenous communities into imperial archetypes of civility and modernity by remodelling the individual, the community, and the state through western, Christian philosophies. In the British Empire, and particularly in what is historically known as the ‘second’ era of British imperialism (approximately 1784–1867), missionary activity was frequently involved with the initial steps of imperial expansion.
It is a bit ironic then that Britain, against which cultural colonialism was first used by the Romans, became a centre of power used then to disseminate cultural colonialism in service of naked imperialism under the British Empire, is now being used to disseminate a “softer” version of it under the guise of journalism and academia.
Like the sons of chiefs in Britannia, foreign journalists like Thailand’s Pravit Rojanaphruk probably have honestly convinced themselves that these features of control and manipulation are instead the “novelties of civilisation.”
What Nations Can Do.
It is important for policymakers and the public alike to understand this aspect of modern journalism to both be aware of how it impacts news coverage, and of what possible measures can be taken to combat modern day cultural colonialism.
One possible measure could be national programs that attempt to recruit and build up a corps of local journalists who represent their nation’s best interests, culture and perspectives. These journalists can then fill the ranks of local newspapers and TV stations, as well as influence news conferences and seminars both local and international from their own nation’s perspective, rather than merely amplifying those of nations running international “fellowship” programmes.
For Thailand who has large government-funded news organisations like Thai PBS, universities and trusted news professionals, untainted by foreign indoctrination, can develop a truly Thai brand of journalism that is taught to political science and journalist students in school, and reinforced through the same sort of activities conducted by foreign fellowships overseas.
In essence, instead of depending on foreign fellowships and joint news organisation-university programs abroad, Thailand should develop is own domestically, as well as well-funded news organisations for Thai journalists to work at safely, securely and far from the ego-ensnaring temptations extended by foreign interests.
The recent downing of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter and the death of all 5 on board over Al Qaeda-held Idlib province in Syria, represents the unenviable full circle US rhetoric has made surrounding both the Syrian conflict, and the wider “War on Terror.”
It was the United States who first created and used Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s to down Russian aircraft and to fight Russian troops. After successfully pushing Russia out of Afghanistan and plunging it into a sociopolitical dark age, the US went on to claiming to be victimized by the monster they themselves created, perhaps most spectacularly on September 11, 2001. Today, the US finds itself back to now fully using Al Qaeda to fight a proxy war against Russia, this time in Syria.
Russian Helicopter Was on Humanitarian Mission Over Al Qaeda Territory
The Russian Mi-8 helicopter was conducting humanitarian operations. This is not according to only Russian or Syrian sources, but even opposition sources including UK-based anti-Syrian government proponent Rami Abdulrahman who refers to himself as the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (SOHR).
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Syrian government and tracks the conflict from Britain through contacts in Syria, said the helicopter had crashed near the village of Saraqib in Idlib Province.
The aircraft had recently delivered aid to two Shiite villages nearby that have long been surrounded by Sunni rebels, the group said.
Qatari-state media Al Jazeera, also an admittedly pro-militant voice amid the conflict, would admit that Idlib province, Syria, is held by Al Qaeda.
Idlib is held almost entirely by a powerful coalition of hardline rebel groups, including the former al-Nusra Front, now known as the Fateh al-Sham group after renouncing its status as al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.
Despite Al Jazeera’s attempts to qualify Nusra Front as having “renounced” its Al Qaeda affiliations, it is still recognized by the US, Russia and Syria as a terrorist organization.
Justifying & Celebrating Al Qaeda’s Atrocity
In the immediate aftermath of the helicopter’s downing and now ongoing since, pro-militant pundits from both the public and Western policy centers, celebrated the incident.
Former director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, Salman Shaikh, repeatedly retweeted accusations that Russia’s Mi-8 was not in fact on a humanitarian mission, simply because empty rocket pods were found among the wreckage.
With SOHR insisting indeed the Russian helicopter was on a humanitarian mission, the empty rocket pods were most likely empty upon take off. So far, “experts,” including Atlantic Council’s “Digital Forensic Research Lab Senior Non-Resident Fellow” Eliot Higgins, previously an unemployed British social worker and blogger, have insinuated the Mi-8 was on a military mission, but have yet to provide any evidence.
This attempt to leverage supposed “experts” to justify the downing of a helicopter (and subsequent celebrations) engaged in humanitarian operations even in contradiction to media reports coming from both sides of the conflict, indicates just how far departed Western rhetoric has become from the principles it claims to uphold, particularly in regards to its involvement in the Syrian conflict and its backing of militant groups operating in Al Qaeda-held Idlib province.
US Aspired to Down Russian Aircraft in Syria
The downing of Russia’s Mi-8 over Idlib is not the first. Another Russian helicopter was shot down near Palmyra in early July.
Two Russian airmen killed in Syria on Friday were shot down with American weaponry, the Interfax news agency said Sunday, quoting a Russian military source.
It said insurgents from the Islamic State group hit the airmen’s Mi-25 assault helicopter with a U.S.-made TOW heavy anti-tank missile, a weapon that uses guidance from a ground station.
The possibility of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State (IS) ending up with US missiles should be no surprise. It is a “coincidence” it appears many US policymakers wanted to unfold in Syria, if a no-fly zone implemented over Syria by the US directly was not a possibility.
I might do what we did in Afghanistan many years ago, to give those guys the ability to shoot down those planes. That equipment is available.
He would elaborate further by stating:
The Free Syrian Army, just like the Afghans shot down the Russian…
It should be noted that the “guys” Senator McCain is referring to in Afghanistan were Al Qaeda. With the downing of 2 Russian helicopters at the hands of IS and Al Qaeda respectively, it appears very much like Senator McCain has (one way or another) gotten his wish, with Al Qaeda once again serving as the armed intermediary between the US and Russia.
The end result is US foreign policy coming full circle, having created Al Qaeda to fight Russia in the 1980s, then using the terrorist organization as a pretext to extend military interventionism globally, to now once again cheering them on in Syria as they down Russian aircraft amid a struggle to restore peace and stability to both Syria and the wider region.
One wonders if this irony is lost on the American people, who have been asked to sacrifice so much in the name of fighting “terrorism,” only to have those who have done the asking to ally themselves with the very terrorists in a destructive proxy war in the distant lands of the Levant.
According to legend, Otto Frank recovered his daughter’s diary from Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank family during World War II. Frank published the diary under Anne’s name in 1947. In response to skeptics, Otto Frank angrily insisted that he had not authored the diary. He claimed that while he may have edited out a few embarrassing details, the diary was ‘penned’ entirely by his daughter.
In 1980, Otto Frank sued Hamburg resident Ernst Roemer for spreading the accusation that Otto Frank had written his dead daughter’s diary. Relying on the testimony of handwriting experts that all of the diary’s pages had been written by one person, the court upheld the authenticity of the diary. An appeal by Roemer was unsuccessful.
Roemer appealed again, and this time the court asked for the technical services of the official German forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt (BKA) that performed a careful analysis of the original manuscript of the diary with microscope and ultraviolet illumination in order to confirm its authenticity — in particular, to determine when it was written.
The BKA found that large portions of the alleged “diary” were written in ballpoint pen — of a type that was not manufactured prior to 1951. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, summarized the report as follows: some editing postdated 1951; Experts had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus – the entire diary was a postwar fake.
In April 2000, a Dutch court held that while the authenticity of “The Diary of Anne Frank” may be questioned, any such questions must properly respect victims of the Holocaust. In doing so, the court affirmed Siegfried Verbeke’s conviction for publishing Robert Faurisson’s 1978 work questioning the authenticity of the Diary. The court stated that, “By raising doubts as to the authenticity of the diary within the context of REVISIONISM … the brochure far exceeds the limits of what is acceptable within the framework of freedom of expression.”
So, despite proof from Germany that the Diary was written after the war, the state of the law in Holland is that one may not improperly question the veracity of Anne Frank’s Diary, the iconic tome of an innocent victim of World War II.
And then, in November 2015, the Anne Frank Foundation almost lost the European portion of its copyright of the Diary. Most European copyright protections extend for 70 years after the author’s death. Anne Frank famously died in 1945. Otto Frank lived until 1980, and the copyright for his work could continue until 2050.
On its website the foundation claims that Anne had originally written two diaries, one personal and one intended for publication. According to the Foundation, Otto combined the diaries and had done so much work on the most widely published version that he had “earned his own copyright.” The foundation claimed to be protecting “Anne Frank’s original writings, as well as the original in-print versions [that] will remain protected for many decades”.
In the New York Times, French attorney Agnes Tricoire disputes their claim on rationale if not on facts stating: “If you follow their arguments, it means that they have lied for years about the fact that it was only written by Anne Frank.”
Also ignoring the authenticity of the diary, Isabelle Attard, a French MP worries that the foundation’s claim will dilute the impact of the diaries. “Many revisionists, people who want to deny the extermination camps existed, have tried to attack the diary for years. Saying now the book wasn’t written by Anne alone is weakening the weight it has had for decades.”
The Foundation won its copyright claim, but it lost the war and the diary is now widely available online.
My question is, why, after the book has been shown to be a likely forgery is ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ still relevant? In a survey conducted in 1996 at the University of Michigan, The Diary was named as the predominant source of Holocaust education: the text was required reading in high school for over half the students surveyed.
In an interesting piece on The Atlantic, Eleanor Barkhorn argues that the Diary is one of several widely assigned books that are not difficult enough to meet the new common core requirements. There is no shortage of alternative books relating the plight of civilians in World War II. I hope that we can allow Anne Frank to rest in peace and provide our schoolchildren with the best history as we now understand it.
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
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One of those US policymakers is US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who would say in a 2015 interview on Fox News that:
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
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