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Chile Judge Jails 106 Ex-Agents of Pinochet Dictatorship

teleSUR | June 3, 2017

Over 100 former members of the secretive National Intelligence Directorate, DINA, under Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet are facing jail time for the kidnapping and murder of 16 people belonging to dissident left-wing movements.

The sentence was issued early Friday against 106 secret police officers belong to “Operation Colombo” during the years that followed the 1973 overthrow of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, when Pinochet was consolidating his U.S.-backed military government.

Judge Hernan Cristoso ruled that the 16 killed belonged either to the socialist party or leftist groups like the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR. Those killed had been abducted before being transferred to torture centers in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

The 16 are among over 3,000 people who faced enforced disappearances and murder by the Pinochet government, which acted in league with neighboring governments in Argentina, Brazil and other South American nations through Operation Condor, a Cold War-era campaign across Latin America that resulted in tens of thousands of activist deaths.

The United States supported the right-wing governments during its competition with the Soviet Union, which it feared was undermining U.S. interests in the region through its own support for left-wing groups.

Chile has been attempting to grapple with its authoritarian past as judges and government figures increase convictions of Pinochet-era officials found to have committed human rights violations.

The 106 former agents have been sentenced to between 541 days and 20 years in jail, where they will be joining other former state security personnel that are serving time for other cases.

The Chilean government has also been ordered to pay the equivalent of US$7.5 million to the families of the deceased activists.

June 5, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Daughters of Argentine Dirty War Perpetrators March for Justice

teleSUR | June 4, 2017

Argentine women whose fathers were condemned for human rights abuses during the Dirty War (1974-1983) marched for the first time in the country’s history to defend “memory, truth and justice,” along with the national march against gender violence Saturday.

“Histories of disobedience. 30,000 reasons. Sons and daughters of people responsible for genocide support memory, truth and justice,” read a banner held by a group of seven women in the middle of the crowd.

The women, between 40 and 60 years old, decided to take part in the massive march against femicides known as #NiUnaMenos as the first public appearance of their recently-created organization.

“They are very brave. As much for their personal history than their awareness of the genocide,” Martina Mirabelles, a teacher, who applauded the women according to AFP.

Patricia Isasa, who was tortured and raped in three concentration camps when she was 16 years old, called the “huge efforts” of daughters of torturers against their fathers and the patriarchal society,“historical”. “They are all victims of these cruel men,” she said.

Erika Lederer is the daughter of Ricardo, an obstetrician who participated in the coup against Salvador Allende and headed the illegal maternity unit of a military hospital at Campo de Mayo, stealing the prisoners’ babies. He killed himself when an investigation was opened against him.

His daughter said she suspected what her father was doing since she was a child, asking him “uneasy questions.” She became a lawyer because her father prohibited her from studying philosophy as she wanted, arguing it was for “lefties.”

“At home, there was a lot of domestic violence, to the point that I’d think: if he can do this to me, he can do even worse to unknown people,” she recalled, mentioning her “solitude” as well as the “shame” she could not share with anyone else.

She used to ask her father if he regretted anything, but he never admitted any wrongdoing, she added.

June 5, 2017 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Remembering the Naksa

Image of Israeli soldiers interrogating Palestinians during the 1967 Gaza war [Miren Edurne/facebook]
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 5, 2017

Fifty years ago this month, Israel launched a war against its neighbours and took control of the parts of Palestine which it had failed to capture during its 1948 “War of Independence”.

What: The Palestinian Naksa (“Setback”)

When: 5 June 1967

Where: Palestine

What Happened?

On 5 June 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria. After knocking out the air defences of these countries, it occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Thus, it had taken control of the final 22 per cent of historic Palestine that it wasn’t able to occupy in 1948.

Nearly 400,000 Palestinians were added to the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced in 1948 and their homes and villages were razed to the ground by the Israelis. Around half were being displaced for the second time in less than 20 years. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine was ongoing (as it is to this day).

The number of Palestinian refugees in the camps operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon grew.

The Naksa commemorates this tragic setback in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination.

What Happened Next?

The outcome of the war launched by Israel was, for many of its citizens and supporters, the fulfilment of God’s promise. Adding 44 per cent of the territory allocated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan for a Palestinian state, to the 56 per cent set aside for a Jewish state, marked a new beginning for both Israel and stateless Palestinians.

Within 20 years of being recognised as an independent state, Israel began an occupation that would become the longest in modern history, at 50 years and counting. Palestinians in the “occupied Palestinian territories” were subjected to a brutal Israeli military occupation as well as the activities of armed, right-wing Jewish settlers, for whom Israel’s victory was God’s handiwork and a licence to colonise the land which they believed was promised to them and them alone.

Israel’s already repressive military rule over Palestinians living within its undeclared borders was transferred to the West Bank and Gaza. Very soon, a matrix of control and domination, that included checkpoints, permits and home demolitions, was imposed on the lives of millions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

For the Palestinians, the combination of the Arab defeat during the “Six-Day War”, the repeated failure of the international community to protect their human rights, and Israel’s total colonisation of Palestine, prompted a serious re-evaluation of their situation. Having witnessed the futility of relying on others to end the indignity from which they had suffered for decades, they began to organise politically in an attempt to reverse the losses of 1948 and end their misery and statelessness.

In the years following the Naksa, Palestinian communities in the refugee camps and diaspora began to organise themselves politically and socially. A number of setbacks against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) did not deter them. Such civil society activities led to the formation of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the late eighties; the popular uprising now known as the First Intifada; and the PLO under the control of the secular Fatah movement gaining recognition by Israel and its allies as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people”. This phase of the political process ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, providing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with “interim self-governing arrangements”.

June 5, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Rescued US from ‘Disastrous’ Paris Climate Accord Obligations

Sputnik – 03.06.2017

President Donald Trump saved the US economy from disastrous economic consequences in terms of soaring energy costs by repudiating the obligations his predecessor Barack Obama made in the Paris Climate Accords, analysts told Sputnik.

“The treaty itself would have been a disaster for the United States — Trump made an excellent case explaining why,” Ohio Northern University Assistant Professor of History Robert Waters said.

Trump announced on Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords signed in December 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat global warming.

As well as forcing domestic energy costs to dramatically rise, the commitments Obama made in the Paris Accords would have badly hurt small US businesses at the expense of huge corporations, Waters noted.

“It was impressive that Trump decided to kill [the accords] because most of his big business friends supported them because smaller business competitors would have been driven out of business by the expense of implementing them. He also had to stand against the establishments of both parties,” he said.

By using executive authority to pull out of the treaty, Trump had frustrated his liberal opponents in the US federal judiciary who would have been determined to rule in favor of implementing all the most economically damaging and repressive of Obama’s commitments under it, Waters added.

“Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty was huge… If Trump had not repudiated the climate treaty, there is no doubt that a judge would have tried to force him to implement the treaty,” Waters said.

Trump also pleased his supporters by carrying out his repeated promise during the 2016 presidential election campaign to pull out of the Paris Accords, Waters observed.

“It was very important that Trump kept this promise and killed US participation in the treaty,” he said.

Trump had begun to disillusion some of his populist supporters because he has not pushed Congress for money to build the border wall with Mexico and has not proposed a significant infrastructure program, Waters recalled.

However, Trump had redeemed his credibility with his political base by his withdrawal from the Paris accords, Waters maintained.

“This was a big issue for populist voters and he came through. Combined with his [NATO] speech… Trump has done a good job of showing that he is looking out for the American people’s interests and will not be cowed by foreign policy elites and their shibboleths,” he said.

Retired Canadian diplomat Patrick Armstrong expressed skepticism at the scientific theories claiming greenhouse gas emissions were generating global warming and agreed that Trump’s withdrawal from the climate accords would benefit the US economy.

“What are the likely consequences of pulling out of the Paris accords? If you believe in anthropomorphic climate change, catastrophic; if you don’t, advantageous,” he said.

Armstrong suggested that scientific theories, when found not to be supported by empirical evidence, should be abandoned or modified.

June 3, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

European Parliament calls on members to adopt Israel-related definition of antisemitism

If Americans Knew | June 2, 2017

The European Jewish Press reports that the European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling on all member states to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that contains Israel-centric items.

The resolution was adopted at its plenary session in Brussels and officially endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition consists of a synopsis followed by guidelines that include Israel related items originally created by an Israeli governmental minister in 2003. This formulation has since been disseminated around the world.

For more information see: International campaign is criminalizing criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’

June 2, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

VIDEO: The Naylor Report – Tories Plan to Sell the NHS

OffGuardian | June 1, 2017

YouTuber Chris Holden’s video on the Naylor Report and Theresa May’s plans for the NHS has gone viral in the last week. Deservedly so, he’s done the hard yards – reading an interminably dull report – so we don’t have to. His summary is concise, revealing, and very worrying.

“In an interview with Andrew Neil, Theresa May slipped out a single line about the NHS; she’s made the 2017 election all about her, strength and stability and Brexit. In half an hour, this was all she had to say about her plans on the NHS – “we support the Naylor Report”. It sounded so tediously dull, it couldn’t possibly be of any interest.”

June 1, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Beyond the binary: Two states, one state, failed state, no state

 Al-Shabaka | May 30, 2017

Though the international community has hailed the two-state solution since the early 1990s, it has become clear that Israel’s fragmentation of Palestinian people and territory over the past 50 years aims to make a sovereign Palestinian state impossible. While politicians explain this as a result of misunderstandings or missed opportunities between the two parties, the accurate explanation is that Israel does not, in fact, desire two states. This outcome would undermine its goal of conserving preferential rights for Israeli Jews in the territory under its control. Numerous progressives now argue that one state with equal rights for all is the logical alternative. While such a binational state may be just, it is highly unlikely, especially in the short to medium term.

A number of more cynical alternatives are more probable:

– A prolonged and intensified status quo would see continued Israeli management of a non-sovereign and dependent Palestinian entity in the West Bank, as Al-Shabaka analyst Asem Khalil has pointed out. A temporary solution for Gaza could be reached with Egypt, with limited movement of goods and people. The Palestinian Authority (PA) would remain a group of elite intermediaries to the Palestinian population, and the Palestinian entity’s lack of fiscal or developmental capacity would help render it a failed state.

– Over time, this scenario could become more deeply institutionalized through a permanent no-state solution, as my own analysis shows, whereby Israel perpetually controls the Palestinians while assigning some domains of governance to a non-sovereign local authority.

– A similar outcome would involve three states comprising Israel, a demilitarized mini-state in the Gaza Strip contained by Egypt, and a (settler) “State of the West Bank.”

The potential chaos of a post-Abbas era amplifies the likelihood of these scenarios. Any violent struggle for power within Fatah would lead to further fragmentation, and would strengthen Israel’s ability to promote statehood for Palestinians in Gaza while entrenching its presence in the West Bank. If the PA were to collapse, a wave of migration toward the East Bank could further increase the possibility of these outcomes.

Policy recommendations

1. Those serious about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must move beyond the one or two-state binary and discuss the implications of a no-state solution for Palestinian self-determination.

2. Palestinians must recognize the potential for the status quo to become a permanent erosion of their rights in the absence of successful resistance strategies.

3. The international community must relinquish its assumption that the status quo is a post-Oslo transitional period, along with its “wait and see” approach. It must admit the failure of this policy and establish enforcement mechanisms, including regarding breaches of international law, that threaten to ossify the condition of apartheid.

Al-Shabaka is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law. This brief is written by Al-Shabaka policy member Amal Ahmad.

May 31, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

End the Greedy Silence – Enough Already!

By Ralph Nader | May 30, 2017

It is time Americans rise up against the corruption, inefficiency, and cruelty of our healthcare system and tell its corporate captors and Congress – Enough Already!

For decades other countries have guaranteed universal health insurance for all their people, at lower costs and better outcomes (President Truman proposed it 72 years ago in the US). When are we going to break out of this taxpayer-subsidized prison built by the giant insurance companies, drug goliaths and monopolizing hospital chains?

How long is Uncle Sucker going to pay through the nose for gouging drug prices, patient-denying health insurance companies and all the brutal fine print rules in consumer contracts whose trap doors are maddening tens of millions of Americans?

Deductibles, exclusions, waivers, co-pays, corporate immunities from injured patients, disqualifying changes in patients’ status and just plain stonewalling are just some examples of this cruel madness.

Not to mention the endless electronic bills with their inscrutable codes and unchallengeable charges – that is if you can get anyone on the phone to answer your questions. Billing fraud and abuses alone cost us up to $330 billion a year!

Why do we put up with “pay or die” drug prices? Why do we tolerate our fellow Americans dying in the tens of thousands each year because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time?

Do we know that the profiteering drug companies regularly are given a slew of handouts, including huge tax breaks, free drugs developed by our National Institutes of Health, and few restraints on their high pressure sales of dangerous and addictive drugs (eg opioids) or, together with their corporate middlemen, return the favor by charging Americans the highest prices in the world? Other countries put limits on such blatant greed and exploitation.

Groping for ever more profits, the big drug companies offshore production to less regulated labs in China and India, which amount to 60% of the drugs we buy and 80% of the active ingredients in all medicines sold in the US. Unpatriotic in the extreme!

Compounding these inhumane practices is a supine Congress, with few exceptions like Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D, TX), and state legislatures, misusing the power we entrusted to them. These legislators see large pharmaceutical companies as honey pots for campaign cash that work as hush money paid by hordes of drug industry lobbyists. So craven was the majority in Congress in 2003 that, when the drug benefits bill was passed, it prohibited Medicare from negotiating volume discounts for this lucrative corporate sales bonanza (Past Congresses authorized the Pentagon and Veterans Administration to bargain and they get lower prices as a result).

Despite the fact that these healthcare challenges have been dealt with more humanely and economically by other Western countries in the world, Americans are consistently told to tolerate an aggravating status quo. Scores of books, articles and television exposés highlight all the ways we’re pushed around, denied, excluded, harmed, overcharged and deceived, yet so many of these authors still maintain that our system of health insurance/healthcare can’t be replaced with a much better one? So these writers continue to advise us how to duck, slide and swivel our escape from a few of these commercials chains and scams.

In all the fine articles written to help consumers navigate Obamacare, Medicare, and private health plans, the authors trap themselves in this vast corporate cul-de-sac by never mentioning the way out.

That way is Single Payer or Full Medicare for all, everybody in, nobody out, with free choice of doctors and hospitals – at far lower costs, mortality and morbidity. These narrow reformers can’t escape their “it ain’t going to happen here” syndrome.

Really? Don’t they know that the public has long viewed Single Payer favorably (including a majority of doctors and nurses), even without political leaders standing up for it or mass media reporting this proven safe path.

The surrender to corporate tyranny infects the 112 members of the House of Representatives who have co-signed HR 676 to create full Medicare for all. They signed, but then gave in to a silent resignation by not fighting for it in Congress and back home.

When the companies and their apologists argue for a “free market” approach to healthcare, you can retort – what free market? Half the money coming to these companies is from the federal, state and local governments. Taxpayers also pay tens of billions of dollars for much of the discovery and testing of drugs. Tax breaks and loopholes in patent laws block generic drugs and distort the free market.

Drug patents are by definition monopolies. Concentration by mergers and acquisitions of hospitals, clinics and physician practices (note dwindling independent cardiology practices) raise serious anti-trust issues. Fine print contract peonage takes away the consumers’ freedom of contract, as do the daily buy and sell equations, so often rendered by third parties for patients. Corporate billing and other crimes are endemic. What free market?

Each of you can help the Single Payer movement build momentum. Ask your members of Congress in writing if they support HR 676 and, if not, demand their appearance in person at a town meeting arranged by people like you to answer why. If they refuse, peacefully picket their local offices.

Ask the newspapers, radio and television stations, including the culpable public radio and public television, when are they going to cover the basic full Medicare reform supported by tens of millions of their listeners and viewers?

Finally, go to the website SinglePayerAction.org to find out what other people are doing and what more you can do with your friends and co-workers.

One percent of you, together with popular backing, can make it happen, through a persistent civic hobby. Remember, you only have to turn around less than 450 members of Congress.

Enough Already?

May 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

Israel arrests hundreds of Palestinians over Facebook posts

MEMO | May 30, 2017

The Israeli occupation authorities have arrested and prosecuted hundreds of Palestinians since 2015 after analysing data on their Facebook pages and judging that they are potential terrorists, Haaretz revealed on Monday.

An investigation by the Israeli journalists Orr Hirschauge and Hagar Shezaf found that Israel has violated its own and international laws regarding the detention of Palestinian youths. The domestic intelligence agency Shabak, apparently, has decided that Palestinians are terrorists if they mention the world “martyr” on Facebook.

They cited the example of a 29-year-old Palestinian woman from Hebron, whose husband was killed in a car accident in Israel in 2010. She was arrested on 2 December, 2015 and said that the Israeli interrogators handed her a screenshot of a Facebook post in which there is a picture of her husband with a caption written by her, “May God unite us in heaven”.

The woman also said that she mentioned the word shahada — “martyrdom” — on Facebook, noting that this worried her interrogators. “I told them it is a word we use regularly,” she said. “The fact that I wrote it on Facebook does not mean I will do anything. Even when someone dies in a car accident we call him shahid (martyr).”

It seems that this was an unacceptable explanation for the Israelis as she was imprisoned under administrative detention for four months with neither charge nor trial. When this term ended, it was renewed. According to the Israeli journalists, when such interrogators fail to obtain the confessions they want from Palestinians over their Facebook posts, they keep them under administrative detention or turn them over to the military courts to be sentenced.

Prior to the launch of Facebook, Israel used to arrest Palestinians on other pretexts, such as contacting organisations hostile to Israel, without specifying the identities of the organisations in question. The Haaretz investigation noted that this woman was arrested in 2008 and spent time in prison over charges of contacting an organisation hostile to Israel.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian women’s center to keep name despite pressure from UN, Norway

Poster of Dalal al-Mughrabi, published by Al-Asifah in 1978 (Source: The Palestine Poster Project Archives)
Ma’an – May 30, 2017

BETHLEHEM – Days after Norway pulled its sponsorship from an occupied West Bank women’s community center and demanded a refund for construction costs from the Palestinian Authority (PA), with the United Nations (UN) promptly pulling its backing as well, the center has reportedly said it will not change its name, which the UN said “glorifies terrorism.”

The Dalal al-Mughrabi Women’s Community Center — named after a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) who played a role in a 1978 attack that left over 30 Israelis and 12 Palestinian fighters dead, including al-Mughrabi herself — was built in the Nablus-area village of Burqa in the northern West Bank.

The center was sponsored by both the UN and the Norwegian government, who provided partial financial support for the construction of the center, which had remained nameless until it was officially inaugurated earlier this month.

Official PA-owned Wafa news agency reported Tuesday that the head of the Burqa village council, Sami Daghlas, said “the center has no intention of caving in to the pressure and changing its name.”

Daghlas told Wafa that the center was built “to serve and empower young women in the village and to help them develop to become active members in society.”

According to Daghlas, the name Dalal al-Mughrabi was chosen by the villagers “to commemorate a Palestinian hero who sacrificed herself for her country and therefore they have no intention to change its name, regardless of the price.”

“Instead of fighting a community center that does not exceed 50 square meters in area and works on serving young women in the community, they should be objecting to regular attacks by (Israeli) settlers against the village and its people and to allow farmers to reach their land that was taken away from them,” Daghlas said, as he expressed his surprise at the actions of the UN and Norway, which he said were done “to satisfy Israel.”

The Times of Israel reported last week that the Norwegian Foreign Minister had condemned the PA for the name choice of the center, saying “Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way,” and demanded that the PA reimburse Norway for the costs contributed to the center.

In his interview with Wafa, Daghlas said that the people of Burqa did not object to returning the money to Norway, which he said “was only few thousand dollars used to repair and refurbish the building, and would never capitulate to pressure and blackmail.”

One day after Norway’s move to pull funding from the center, the UN pulled its sponsorship from the center, which it called “offensive.”

“The United Nations disassociated itself from the Center once it learned the offensive name chosen for it and will take measures to ensure that such incidents do not take place in the future,” the Times of Israel said, quoting a statement from Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“The glorification of terrorism, or the perpetrators of heinous terrorist acts, is unacceptable under any circumstances,” the UN statement said, adding that the UN had requested that the logo of UN Women be removed from the building.

According to Wafa, Daghlas said that the UN was responsible for funding some projects put on by the center.

Wafa also quoted Ahmad Majdalani, member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, as saying that “Israel glorifies Jewish terrorists and pays them money and no one objects to that,” referencing the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other Jewish extremists convicted of attacking and killing Palestinians and Israelis, who Majdalani said still receive Israeli government stipends through the national insurance plan.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s visit to Israel: How Palestine disappeared from US media coverage

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 28, 2017

As if he has, overnight, been transformed into a master politician, Donald Trump’s 27-hour trip to Israel has left many analysts mystified.

Quoting former Israeli political adviser, Mitchell Barack, the New York Times referred to Trump as the “Liberace of world leaders”, in reference to flamboyant, piano player, Wladziu Valantino Liberace. The latter, known as “Mr. Showmanship”, was, at times, the highest paid entertainer in the world and his successful career lasted over four decades.

New York Magazine Online quoted former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, too, trying to decipher the supposedly complicated persona of Trump.

“Either Trump’s visit was substance-free – or he ‘is being uncharacteristically subtle’ in planting the seeds for new round of peace negotiations,” NYmag quoted and paraphrased Shapiro’s tweets.

“Liberal” US media, which has stooped to many lows in its attacks on Trump – including his family, his mannerism, his choice of words, even mere body language – became much more sober and quite respectful in the way they attempted to analyze his short trip to Israel, and the very brief detour to Bethlehem, where he met with Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

“Mr. Trump’s speech at the Israeli Museum was so friendly and considerate of Israeli emotions,” reported the New Your Times, “that one right-wing Israeli legislator described it as deeply expressive of the ‘Zionist narrative’.”

Palestinian emotions, however, were of no consequence, neither to the Trump entourage, nor, of course, to the New York Times or others in mainstream media.

The Washington Post, on the other hand, still found faults, but, certainly not because of Trump’s lack of balance and his failure to deride the Israeli occupation and Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.

Despite the fact that Trump has, indeed, fully embraced a “Zionist narrative”, and a rightwing version of it (for example, he made no reference to a Palestinian state), he still fell short. His performance at Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial (Yad Vashem) did not impress.

Max Bearak wrote in the Post : “Trump’s entry in the guest book at Israel’s National Holocaust Memorial was strangely upbeat, self-referential and written in his signature all caps: ‘IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS — SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!’”

Bearak found such choice of words and the style in which it was written sort of offensive, especially if compared with the supposed thoughtfulness of former President Barack Obama.

In contrast, Obama wrote a significantly longer note, which partly read: “At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world.”

Neither then, nor now, did the Washington Post bother to examine the historical context in which this particular sentence was written and find the hypocrisy of the whole endeavour.

If they bothered to ask Palestinians, they would have found a whole different interpretation of Obama’s words.

Indeed, wherever occupied Palestinians look, they find “man’s potential for great evil”: a 400-mile Israeli Wall being mostly built over their land; hundreds of military checkpoints dotting their landscape; a suffocating military occupation, controlling every aspect of their lives. They see the holiest of their cities, Bethlehem and Al-Quds – occupied East Jerusalem – subdued by a massive military force; thousands of their leaders thrown into prison, many without charge or trial. They see siege; an endless war; daily deaths and senseless destruction.

But since none of this matters to the “Zionist narrative”, it subsequently matters so very little to mainstream American media, as well.

Trump’s trip to Israel, however short, was, indeed, a master stroke by the ever-unpredictable Liberace of world politics, although, it takes no particular genius to figure out why.

From an American mainstream media perspective, to be judged “presidential” enough, all US presidents would have to commit to three main policies. They are, in no particular order: privileging the economic business elites, war at will and unconditionally supporting Israel.

So far, US media, which has been otherwise polarized based on political allegiances, has taken a break from its raging conflict over Trump’s presidency, and rallied behind him on two separate occasions: when he randomly bombed Syria and during his visit to Israel.

Ironically, the man has been often judged for lacking substance on numerous occasions in the past. In fact, his trip to Israel was the most lacking and most divisive. However, the fact that he, time and again, reiterated Israeli priorities was all that the media needed to give the man a chance. Their collective verdict seems to rebrand his lack of substance as his unique “subtle” way of making politics.

Israeli media, which is often more critical of the Israeli government than US media ever dare, needed to keep up with its “democratic” tradition. But Trump’s groveling also gave them little room for criticism. The often-impulsive Trump, this time stuck to the script and followed his repeatedly rehearsed speech and media comments to the letter.

But Josefin Dolsten insisted on finding a way to nitpick, composing for the Times of Israel the “7 awkward moments from Trump’s Israel trip.”

One of these awkward moments, Dolsten wrote was “a White House statement listing Trump’s goals for the trip included a hilarious (and juicy!) typo: ‘Promote the possibility of lasting peach’ between Israel and the Palestinians. Yes, we get it — it meant to say peace, but who’s to say the two sides can’t bond over some delicious fruit?”

For Palestinians, it must not be easy to find the humour in these tough times. Hundreds of their prisoners, including their most popular leader, Marwan Barghouthi, were enduring a prolonged and life-threatening hunger strike in which they were making the most basic demands for better treatment, longer visitation hours with their families and ending of arbitrary detentions.

More telling, on the day Trump, along with rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lectured Palestinians on peace, a 17-year-old Tuqua Hammad was shot for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli military vehicles at the entrance of her village of Silwad, near Ramallah.

Tuqua “was shot in the lower extremities and Israeli troops prevented a Palestinian ambulance from accessing the victim to treat her,” Ma’an news agency reported.

Merely a few miles away, Trump was writing his remarks after visiting Israel’s Holocaust Museum. Regrettably, he failed to meet the expectations of the Washington Post, for unlike Obama, he was not poignant enough in his language and style.

The irony of the whole story is inescapable; but American media cannot see this, for it, too, seems to follow a script, in which Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom are hardly ever mentioned.

May 29, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

First Amendment

By Eve Mykytyn | May 28, 2017

Partially in response to the polarizing presidency of Mr. Trump, and also, I think, in response to a desire to reach the “right” results, there has been an increasing tendency in the United States to try and limit free speech.  In earlier generations, the left was more in favour of free speech and the right was more willing to suppress it (eg, the flag burning and pornography cases).

Now this seems to be a tactic favoured by many without regard to political affiliation, although of course, the speech they would choose to suppress may be quite different. Two recent examples come to mind, the treatment of demonstrators at Trump rallies and the treatment of Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Why listen and engage when you can simply attribute words to the other side and then oppose them?

The edges of free speech have always been difficult, that is, commercial speech limitations (for instance commercial false advertising or ‘news’ articles that are really advertisements) or free speech that includes or directly incites prohibited actions (throwing a bottle at a policeman conveys speech, but is still prohibited).  But the opposition to free expression I’m trying to get at here is not a within such difficult categories.

My brilliant young friend, who has a PhD in physics, challenged me, “I am outcome driven,” she said. “I don’t want people to preach against vaccines when the outcome may be that children die.” I tend to agree with her about vaccines, but I would not attempt to silence those who disagree.

First. I would have no idea what would be a reasonable way to prohibit speech I don’t like. Should the police track down these people and arrest them? Do our jails need more prisoners who have committed a nonviolent crime? Should we hold internet sites responsible for all speech? This seems to lead inevitably into a discussion of anonymity and government intrusion.

Second.  Who should determine what is ok speech?  The government? Trump? Obama? The FBI? The NSA? Scientists? Or only scientists who opposed using their gifts to create nuclear weapons?

Third. The outliers are sometimes right. Dr Kevorkian forced this country to consider assisted suicide. He earned the name ‘Dr Death’ from his campaign to use death row prisoners as voluntary experiments for various medical procedures. By any standard he was an odd and unappealing character. But he managed to force us to confront a difficult issue and think about how we wanted to handle it.

The anti vaccine people funded scientific research  into vaccines and potential causes of autism and those studies disproved the link. Just because autism manifests itself around the time children are vaccinated does not mean vaccines cause autism, but it was not an unreasonable hypothesis. And the autism studies partially so-provoked found a surprising link to paternal and maternal age that proved more promising. So even if you disagree with them, they ultimately may have helped push us to forward.

Fourth. No reasonable person likes the idea of name calling or so-called hate speech.The problem is that hate speech is difficult to define, even if we knew how to enforce prohibitions. Can a pink person claim to hate all pink people? In a private conversation? In an e mail? On a sign at a demonstration? On the pink people’s website? On his own website? What if the pink person is criticizing other pink people in an attempt to improve them?  Do the same rules apply when a purple person criticizes pink people? Does it matter whether purple or pink people constitute the dominant culture?

This is not purely theoretical. The US government and New York State (among others) have, at various times, tried to prohibit speech against Israel as anti Semitic. (They did this by prohibiting state funding or business with any group thatadvocated boycotting Israel saying that such advocacy was “abusing Jewish students.”) Like many, but perhaps not most Americans, I do not see the two as the same. Israel is a foreign country and Jews are an ethnic group in the United States and elsewhere. In this case, by trying to prohibit constitutionally protected hate speech, New York is clearly denouncing political speech as well. And it does prompt the question, do we now attempt to stop ‘hate’ speech against all groups?  Why this group?

In the Netherlands, a country that attempts to limit ‘hate’ speech, Siegfried Verbeke was convicted for simply publishing Robert Faurisson’s 1978 work questioning the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. 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.” The court did not dispute the truth of the research, the legal problem was the context of hate.

And how can it be otherwise? Speech occurs within a context, and often that context includes advocating a political position. This is different than a clerk who insists she is exercising her freedom by refusing to grant marriage licenses to gay people or election officials who try to make it difficult for Blacks to vote. The clerk and the election officials are free to say what they want (so long as what they say does not impede the ability of others trying to exercise their rights), but they are obliged to obey the laws whether they like them or not, as we all are.

I would hope that ‘the marketplace of ideas’ would ultimately serve to help us discard ideas that are dangerous or wrong. If not, to the extent that we are a democracy, we have agreed to live with the decisions of the majority BUT with the most important of protections, the bill of rights. It is worth reminding ourselves that the bill of rights was specifically designed to protect minorities from the will of majorities. There is a reason freedom of speech appears in the first amendment. There are limits to the extent we are allowed to police each other.

Americans are blessed that we have a first amendment. Although it has been imperfectly and sporadically protected, it is there at least as an aspiration.

“But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  George Orwell, in his brilliant proposed preface to Animal Farm. Sadly, usually omitted from the book.

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment