Tel Aviv hiding evidence of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from public: Israeli media
The Cradle | August 22, 2022
According to a report by Hebrew newspaper Haaretz released on 22 August, Tel Aviv has been working through its defense ministry to hide historical documents related to the founding of the state of Israel, from the Israeli public.
The founding of Israel in 1948, known throughout the Arab world as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, involved the ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land by ultra-nationalist Jewish gangs.
These gangs were later integrated into the Israeli military.
The documents contain details on Israel’s killing of civilians, as well as the erasure of entire Palestinian villages. Israel is undergoing “a systematic process to conceal evidence of the Nakba,” Haaretz reveals.
The report states that efforts to hide these documents have been carried out by the Directorate of Security of the Defense Establishment, a secret department in the Israeli Defense Ministry known as the Malmab, “whose work and budget are secret.”
Members of the Malmab reportedly “worked without any legal authority, even in some cases [hiding] documents that the military censor had previously allowed to be published,” Haaretz revealed.
The report also details that government officials, including members of the Israeli Knesset, who by law are allowed access to such archives, were barred from viewing the documents in question.
A settlement was reached in which the Israeli Treasury would send requests in order for archived documents to be examined for disclosure. The Malmab apparatus would then search through them thoroughly to determine if they can be published alongside Israel’s accessible archives, despite already being accessible by Israeli law.
Haaretz reported that the Malmab were also working to hide documents relating to Tel Aviv’s nuclear program.
“If the state admitted … that the documents were hidden without authority, why did it not insist on their immediate disclosure?” the report asks.
The report concludes by saying that Israel has to “get rid of the twisted habit it has adopted of concealing its past from the public … the public has the right to know the history of the country in which it lives, and also to discover its less pleasant aspects.”
Despite the events of the Nakba being common historical knowledge, Israel’s attempt to hide these documents represents its policy of trying to control the perception of the Israeli public.
Israel is known to have attempted hiding the atrocities of its past.
On 8 July, Hebrew media revealed the existence of a mass grave under the parking lot of a tourist attraction in Israel, where the bodies of dozens of Egyptian soldiers burned alive by Israeli forces were buried during the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the Six-Day War.
For over five decades, Tel Aviv kept the secret of the mass grave, never attempting to return the bodies to their homeland.
Additionally, Israel has been secretly building a nuclear arsenal for several decades – owning around 40 to 800 nuclear warheads which it denies having – while criticizing Tehran over its nuclear program.
Occupation raids, attacks Palestinian organizations: EU, US and Canada are complicit!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | August 21, 2022
In the early morning hours of Thursday, 18 August, armed Israeli occupation forces invaded the offices of seven prominent Palestinian NGOs, civil society organizations and human rights defenders: the Health Work Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Centre, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. These organizations have all been designated by the Israeli occupation as “terrorist” in retaliation for their advocacy and community organizing work for Palestine, and then labeled “illegal organizations” in a military order covering the occupied West Bank of Palestine.
The invading forces ransacked the offices, confiscating computers, legal client files, documentation, printers and monitors and leaving clutter behind — as documented by the organizations’ surveillance cameras, recording the occupation forces’ invasion. The doors of the organizations were welded shut and a paper military order affixed to the door declaring their operation “illegal” under the occupation’s (illegal) military orders.
The organizations declared that they would not be silenced by these attacks, holding press conferences and returning to the offices to reopen them and continue their work. The attacks received widespread condemnation not only from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces but even from European governments whose policies and practices consistently target the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights.
Now, on Sunday, 21 August, occupation intelligence authorities — the Shin Bet — phoned Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin to threaten him with interrogation and arrest if the organization’s work continues, while Defence for Children International – Palestine director Khaled Quzmar was summoned to and held under interrogation.
“Terror” Designations and Political Control
The invasions, interrogations, ransacking and attacks on these organizations reflect the failure of the occupation’s regime of “terror” designations to undermine their work. In 2021, not only did the regime designate Al-Haq, Addameer, DCI, Bisan, the UPWC and the UAWC as “terrorist” organizations — quickly followed by the military orders banning their work in the occupied West Bank of Palestine — it earlier in the year designated Samidoun (on 21 February 2021), followed by three more organizations. Previously and in a similar pretext, the occupation had issued a similar designation against the Health Work Committees along with designations of groups including the Arab Organization for Human Rights UK, the Palestinian Return Centre and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
As we noted at the time, this
“indicates just how meaningless the term ‘terrorist’ is in the hands of the Israeli regime. It means precisely any organization, activist, or freedom fighter that challenges Zionist colonialism through any method or means of resistance at all. The flurry of ‘terrorist’ designations for organizations working to expose Israel’s crimes and organize Palestinians underlines this reality….These designations are not attacks on individual organizations but against Palestinian human rights defenders and those around the world who stand up for Palestinian liberation — and, fundamentally, the Palestinian people as a whole, especially the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. They attempt to repress growing support for the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and confrontation of imperialism and Zionism.”
Further, it is clear that the use of such designations is intended to further political control over Palestinian society. These designations hinge on the allegation that organizations are close to one or another Palestinian resistance organizations, most commonly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Hamas. Israeli officials have shopped around “evidence” to various governments that is so weak so as to be ludicrous, consisting almost entirely of unsubstantiated statements or on the idea that employing a person who supports a political organization (or, in some cases, relatives of people in political organizations “designated” by the occupation) is “funding” that organization by paying employees a salary for doing their job.
While it is obvious that these are false claims, the objective of this type of attack goes beyond simply lobbing allegations. Indeed, the European governments that have criticized the attacks and designations have also repeatedly affirmed their willingness to “examine evidence” and “act” if the Israeli regime “proves” that popular organizations, civil society groups and human rights advocates are in some way “tied” to Palestinian resistance movements. Not only are the organizations “innocent” of the Israeli claims, the claims themselves are fundamentally repugnant. The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation and to be a part of political, social and armed movements in that resistance; this is not “terrorism” but an essential right of people under occupation and colonization.
Rather than affirming the right of Palestinians to resist and to organize themselves to achieve those goals, these European governments instead use these attacks to impose even greater political scrutiny and conditions. In many cases (such as the Netherlands), these governments recommend or require that all employees of these organizations must not be associated with any “banned” Palestinian political organization. If Palestinians are part of a political party or movement, they must be unemployable and impoverished: this is both the argument of the occupation and of the European states providing a meager “defense” of Palestinian civil society.
For the European funding agencies and many large foundations, supporting Palestinian NGOs has never been primarily about empowering or supporting the Palestinian people to achieve their liberation but rather about redirecting Palestinian energies into “state-building” and/or “reform” projects that exist within the confines of Oslo. Time and time again, these forces have introduced new conditional funding mechanisms and restrictions on everything from the political affiliation of individual employees to the names of buildings and schools.
European Union: Partners in Colonialism and Apartheid
This is borne out once again by the statement of nine European states — Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden — which invokes the promotion of “democratic values and the two-state solution,” a fundamental contradiction as the so-called “two-state solution” itself is the legitimization of the colonization and occupation of 78% of Palestine and no solution at all for the Palestinian people. This brief comment lays bare the real political motivation for European involvement in funding Palestinian organizations, which is to limit rather than to achieve rights, justice and liberation. Further, the statement notes that “should convincing evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”
Here, the “evidence” being referred to would be any “links” between these NGOs and the Palestinian resistance. By including this statement in their alleged defense of the organizations, these European states actually encourage the occupation to continue its raids and ransacking, confiscation of files, arrests and interrogations, in an attempt to manufacture such “evidence”.
Of course, the position of these states themselves — members of the aggressive NATO alliance, defenders of the Israeli occupation in international arenas — is all too clear. The European Union, while rejecting the designation of advocacy and civil society organizations, continues to designate Palestinian resistance organizations as “terrorists.”
France continues to imprison Georges Ibrahim Abdallah while doing almost nothing to advocate for its citizen Salah Hamouri, jailed without charge or trial under Israeli administrative detention, as the government attempts to criminalize Palestinian activism, such as the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. Germany not only engages in weapons deals with the occupation, it also engages in severely repressive practices against Palestine organizing, particularly Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora, from the expulsion of Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat and Palestinian torture survivor and feminist Rasmea Odeh to the ban on 15 May Nakba demonstrations in Berlin. This is not to mention the links between Zionism and European colonialism from the very beginning of the Zionist project.
Now, Israeli prime minister and war criminal Yair Lapid is scheduled to come to Brussels on 6 October to convene the “Association Council” with all EU member states’ foreign ministers, for the first time in 10 years. This is the council under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the agreement that provides for free trade for occupation products inside the EU and allows for occupation institutions to receive European grants for research and development.
Ending the EU-Israel Association Agreement is a long-time demand of the Palestine solidarity movement, but despite their expressed “concerns” about the violent repression imposed on Palestinians, these European states are planning to welcome Lapid and convene the Association Council after a long hiatus, celebrating their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Canadian government has refused to make any meaningful statement about these attacks, despite posing as a defender of “human rights.” U.S. officials stated their “concern,” while continuing to provide $3.8 billion in military support to the occupier.
**
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that these attacks are part and parcel of the ongoing war on Palestinian existence and organization, carried out by the Zionist state and supported by the imperialist powers that ally with the Israeli occupation, as well as Arab reactionary regimes engaged in “normalization” and the Palestinian Authority. While PA officials declare their public support for the targeted organizations, the PA continues to engage in security coordination with the occupation, declined the use of its security forces to defend the organizations, and has even previously detained leaders, directors and staff of these organizations challenging its repression at the behest of the occupier.
We reaffirm that the primary way that we can confront these designations is by intensifying our organizing, action, mobilization and resistance to bring down the structures of colonialism, implement the right to return for Palestinian refugees, and support the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine, from the river to the sea. This includes campaigning to bring an end to the so-called “terrorist lists” used to terrify Palestinian communities and Palestine solidarity organizers, which only provide a weapon in the hands of the occupation and encourages it to engage in further specious designations.
We also urge all to take action to confront Lapid’s visit on 6 October in Brussels and to bring down the “EU-Israel Association Agreement,” an agreement built on the colonization of Palestine and the massacres targeting the Palestinian people. It is incumbent upon all institutions and organizations concerned about these raids and about the Palestinian people to adopt and implement the boycott and international isolation of Israel, including at the United Nations and its bodies.
Further, we urge all to join us in organizing to march in Brussels on 29 October for the March for Return and Liberation to the European Parliament, to demand an end to European complicity, involvement in and support for the colonization of Palestine, the siege on Gaza, the imprisonment of Palestinians and the denial of millions of Palestinians’ right to return home.
Israeli soldiers raid, occupy Episcopal Church in West Bank
By Francis Martin – Church Times – August 19, 2022
The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East has condemned a “flagrant” raid on the premises of its church in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in the early hours of Thursday morning.
In a statement released by the diocese of Jerusalem later on Thursday, the actions of the Israeli forces involved in the incident are described as “a violation of international law and a terroristic act against the entire community”.
It was revealed later that the focus of the raid was the offices of Palestinian NGOs that rent space in the church compound, including the human-rights organisation Al-Haq. [NOTE: read more about the raids here.] In October last year, Al-Haq was classified as a terrorist organisation by the Israeli government, a move that was criticised by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
A spokesperson for the US State Department has also expressed “concern” about the raid on the NGOs.
The Rector of St Andrew’s, Ramallah, the Revd Fadi Diab, told Agence France-Press : “The soldiers came into the premises around 3 a.m. and we started hearing shots and banging on the doors.”
The diocesan statement details how the door to the church complex was smashed, and the entire building — including the sanctuary and rectory — occupied for two hours. “The sound of gunshots, stun grenades, and the smashing of doors caused terror among the families living inside the compound,” the statement says.
The Guardian reports that the Israeli forces took equipment from the offices and sealed the doors, leaving a notice saying that they had been closed for “security reasons”. But later on Thursday, staff from Al-Haq removed the barriers and vowed to continue its work.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Al-Haq urged the international community to “take concrete measures, such as trade restrictions and arms embargoes, to ensure that Israel is held internationally responsible for its ongoing systematic inhumane acts of apartheid, including the persecution of Palestinian human rights defenders.”
Also on Thursday, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship Palestine/Israel Network condemned the attack as “illegal”. Under international law, Israeli forces require the permission of the Palestinian Authority to operate in Ramallah.
The diocese of Jerusalem asserts: “Places of worship and church compounds should be sanctuaries for communities to feel safe to practice their faith and ministry.” It is calling for a “speedy and impartial investigation into this incident, followed by serious disciplinary action against the offenders”.
Israel ‘yields to Lebanon’s maritime demands’ as Hezbollah-set deadline approaches
Press TV – August 19, 2022
Israel has reportedly yielded to Lebanon’s full maritime demands over the disputed waters and gas fields, asking the Arab country for extra time to finalize a deal.
According to a report by Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on August 19, the regime sent a message to Hezbollah through diplomatic channels, saying it accepts Lebanon’s full demands.
Israel has pledged to acknowledge that Line 23 and the Qana prospect field are in Lebanese territory while also pleading with Hezbollah to set aside potential plans to attack Israeli gas fields in case of a delayed deal, the report added.
Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has already rejected any delays in the case as Lebanon is going through dire economic conditions. “Time is short, and depending on the [Israeli] response, we will surely act,” he said in a speech during Ashura mourning procession.
Hezbollah had set a deadline for Lebanon to secure its rights over the disputed areas, which will expire on September 15.
Meanwhile, Israeli media reported an Israeli official is set to make a trip to the United States to discuss the dispute in the hopes of achieving an agreement.
According to Al-Akhbar, some firms have warned Israel they would withdraw their employees and facilities in case the regime fails to guarantee their safety.
Nasrallah had earlier said the Israeli regime would not be allowed to conduct drilling operations for oil and natural gas in the disputed area in the Mediterranean Sea until Lebanon gets what it deserves.
“Lebanon is facing a historic and golden opportunity to get out of its financial crisis. If we fail to take advantage of it, we would not be able to extract oil within the next 100 years. We are not looking for moral gains out of extraction in the Karish natural gas field. We rather want to tap into our oil reserves. There would, therefore, be no room for oil or gas extraction in the entire region if Lebanon does not get its right,” Nasrallah said at a local event in Beirut on July 19.
Lebanese politicians hope commercially viable hydrocarbon resources off Lebanon’s coast could help the debt-ridden country out of its worst economic crisis in decades.
In February 2018, Lebanon signed its first contract for drilling in two blocks in the Mediterranean with a consortium comprising energy giants Total, Eni, and Novatek.
Lebanon and Israel took part in indirect talks to discuss demarcation in 2020. But the talks stalled after Lebanon demanded a larger area, including part of the Karish gas field, where Israel has given exploration rights to a Greek firm.
The talks were supposed to discuss a Lebanese demand for 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of territory in the disputed maritime area, according to a map sent to the United Nations in 2011. However, Lebanon then said the map was based on erroneous calculations and demanded 1,430 square kilometers (552 square miles) more further south, including part of Karish.
Israeli Forces Storm, Seal Offices of Seven Palestinian Human Rights and Humanitarian Organizations in Ramallah
Al-Manar – August 18, 2022
The United Nations Human Rights Office today expressed alarm at Israel’s arbitrary closure of seven Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organizations and called on Israel to immediately reverse these decisions, reiterating the High Commissioner’s call to revoke the designations of the organizations as “terrorist” and “unlawful.”
At dawn today, Israeli occupation forces broke into, searched and sealed the offices of seven Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organizations in Ramallah. Their property was confiscated and destroyed. Israeli forces left copies of military orders to close the offices of the organizations.
“The closure orders are a step to enforce previous Israeli declarations of these organizations as “unlawful” and as “terror organizations” in 2021,” said the Human Rights Office in a statement. “Despite offers to do so, Israeli authorities have not presented to the United Nations any credible evidence to justify these declarations. Several Member States have also stated that the evidence shared with them does not justify the designations. As such, the closures appear totally arbitrary.”
The UN office said the shutting down of the organizations represents the latest in a series of attacks that are further drastically shrinking space for human rights and humanitarian work in the occupied Palestinian territory, affecting all institutions working on human rights, including the UN Human Rights Office. “Human rights defenders must be immediately protected from these unjustified attacks,” it said.
The organizations affected are Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Al Haq; Bisan Center for Research and Development; Defense for Children International – Palestine; Health Work Committees (HWC); Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC); the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC).
The Timing Behind the Atttack on Salman Rushdie
BY E. MICHAEL JONES • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 16, 2022
On Friday, August 12, a 24-year-old New Jersey resident by the name of Hadi Matar stormed the stage in western New York where the Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie was scheduled to speak and stabbed him 15 times before he was subdued by a security guard and members of the audience.[1] The assault was immediately labeled “an assault on freedom of thought and speech”[2] after Rushdie was praised as “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world.”[3]
Missing from this and other news accounts was the role which Rushdie played as an agent provocateur in a campaign that was designed to provoke violent responses from the Islamic world, which would be then turned around to demonize them. No one would know who Salman Rushdie was if he hadn’t written The Satanic Verses as the inauguration of in an ongoing assault on Muslim culture which has continued to this day and has been revived by Matar’s assault for further weaponization.
The Satanic Verses paved the way for the Danish cartoon crisis which unfolded on September 30, 2005, after the Danish periodical Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons ridiculing the prophet Muhammad.[4] Then as now the assault on Islamic sensibilities was justified in the name of “freedom of thought and speech.” But in the light of subsequent events it became clear that the point of these intentionally reckless and provocative acts was the Islamic reaction, which included protests around the world, “including violence and riots in some Muslim countries.”[5]
In September 2012, the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, aping Jyllands-Posten, published a series of cartoons which were deliberately calculated to offend the sensibilities of Muslims, including a cartoon which “depicted Muhammad as a nude man on all fours with a star covering his anus.”[6] What followed was so predictable that one had to conclude that provoking violent reaction was part of the plan from the beginning. On January 7, 2015, two Muslim gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve staff members and wounding 11. During the attack, the gunmen shouted Allahu Akbar and “The Prophet is avenged.” Eager to cash in on the unprecedented publicity the attack afforded them, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo upped the print run for the following week’s edition from 60,000 to one million, then to three million and then to five million copies.
Eventually, every European head of state showed up at a march sporting “Je suis Charlie” buttons celebrating what was a deliberate attempt to provoke violence for political ends. Since then, ridicule of Islamic culture has become institutionalized not only in journalistic outlets but on internet platforms like Twitter, whose seemingly innocent entry #hijab is actually a portal to hardcore pornography depicting women wearing the hijab but otherwise naked engaging in various forms of perverted sexual activity. Twitter also has an entry #Mitpachat, which is the name for the orthodox Jewish head covering for women that is equivalent to the hijab, but no porn is allowed on this site. As anyone who is familiar with the Israelis’ use of pornography against Palestinians in Ramallah in 2004 already knows, pornography is a weapon which, like blasphemous cartoons, is itself a form of violence and often creates violence.
Journalism played a crucial role in this psychological warfare campaign against Islam. Nothing epitomized the wretched state of journalism in the UK and the US better than the recent article by Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph condemning the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. “Stephen Pollard,” according to one observer, “is a rabid Zionist, an unprincipled propagandist and liar,” but nevertheless in good standing with the British media and Establishment, despite the many rulings against the Jewish Chronicle, which he edits. Pollard has written for all of Britain’s mainstream media outlets, including the Evening Standard, the Daily Express, The Times, the Daily Mail, The Independent and the Sunday Telegraph in spite of the risk of libel suits he poses for any newspaper which hires him as a writer.
In September 2010, the Spectator had to pay damages and costs to the organizers of the Islam Expo resulting from a defamation case involving a blog post written by Pollard and published in July 2008. During his tenure as editor of The Jewish Chronicle, the Press Complaints Commission handed down 14 rulings against the paper forcing it to pay damages for libel on several occasions throughout his tenure. The effect those damages had on the paper’s bottom line became apparent in April 2020 when the Jewish Chronicle announced that it was going into voluntary liquidation despite a planned merger with the Jewish News because of Pollard’s reckless disregard of the truth. In spite of this dismal journalistic track record, Pollard is still the go to guy when the mainstream media want opinions on topics vital to Jewish interests, which is how he sees the Rushdie affair.
Pollard claims that “Tehran never rescinded the fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie” because “It’s incapable of change.”[7] Pollard ends his article by claiming that “the fatwa on Sir Salman Rushdie is not an aberration. It is how this monstrous criminal regime operates.”[8]
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed that Iran had been inciting violence, ignoring the fact that the Iranian government denied any involvement with the man who attempted to kill Rushdie.[9] The same government spokesman who denied any involvement between Iran and Matar went on to add that “Freedom of speech does not justify Salman Rushdie’s insults on religion.” The fatwa has never formally been rescinded.
As someone who has earned his living by writing for over 40 years, I can sincerely say that no writer should be condemned to death in absentia for something that he has written. As a writer, I am against fatwas of this sort, but I mean all fatwas even if they do not go by that name. This includes Jewish fatwas of the sort issued by Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have been given carte blanche to confer the equivalent of the death sentence on anyone by denouncing their enemies as Nazis and anti-Semites. This is precisely what happened to the Canadian trucker protest when Ya’ara Sachs, a member of the Canadian parliament, told the world that “Honk Honk” equals “Heil Hitler.” As soon as she stripped the truckers of their real identity, Finance Minister Christia Freeland was able to freeze their bank accounts in an act of violence that was more effective in silencing freedom of speech than anything that Hadi Matar did to Sir Salman.
In an incident that was eerily reminiscent of Matar’s attack on Rushdie, the SPLC, the other Jewish domestic terrorist organization, issued a fatwa on the Family Research Council in Washington by placing that organization on its “hate map” because of its opposition to gay rights. Inspired by the SPLC’s fatwa, Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council’s headquarters on August 15, 2012 and opened fire on the staff. Corkins eventually “pleaded guilty to three charges, including a charge of committing an act of terrorism” after telling the FBI that “he wanted to kill anti-gay targets and went to the [Southern Poverty] law center’s website for ideas.”[10] Faced with this evidence, FRC’s director Tony Perkins demanded that the SPLC “take responsibility for the shooting and take down their hate map.” Corkins, according to Perkins “had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group.’” Perkins’ comments, however, had no impact on the SPLC or their “hate map,” which still exists and still refers to the FRC as a hate group.[11]
Five years later, James Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Republican Congressmen who were practicing for a charity baseball game, wounding then U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capital police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika.[12] According to a report by the Washington Examiner, “The shooter blamed for Wednesday’s bloody attack on a Republican congressional baseball team shared a tie with the 2012 gunman who attacked the conservative Family Research Council in Washington. Both were fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”[13] When asked about how he got the idea of shooting Republican Congressmen, Hodgkinson told the FBI, “The Southern Poverty Law [Center] lists anti-gay groups,” After finding the SPLC’s hate map on line, Hodgkinson also “liked” the SPLC on his Facebook page.
So what constitutes a “monstrous criminal regime”? Is a regime monstrous because it issues fatwas? Or because it carries them out without announcing them? As I said, I am against fatwas, but on the other hand, I recognize that the fatwa is a warning in advance, which is more that General Qasem Suleimani got when the United States murdered him in a drone attack in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. If Donald Trump had issued a fatwa against General Suleimani, Suleimani might still be alive today. Instead, he was lured to Baghdad under the false pretense that he was taking part in a peace mission.
Similarly, Israel routinely murders Iranian nuclear scientists, but it never issues fatwas as a warning that they have been targeted. Between 2010 and 2012, Israel assassinated Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Razaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, all of whom were Iranian nuclear scientists. On November 27, 2020, the Israeli government assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “in a road ambush using an innovative autonomous satellite-operated gun,” according to the BBC, which invariably focused on the James Bond-like technological gadgets the Israelis use to eliminate anyone they don’t like rather than the suffering and death of their victims.[14] Similarly, American politicians who were recipients of money from the Israel lobby, praised the killings. “Former speaker of House Newt Gingrich supported ‘taking out [Iranian] scientists,’ and presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the killings ‘a wonderful thing.’”[15]
The only difference between Israel and the “monstrous criminal regime” in Iran is that Iran warns you that you’ve been targeted. If the Israelis had issued a fatwa against Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American reporter for Al Jazeera who was covering a gun battle in Gaza, she might have stayed in her office that day. Instead, she was killed by an Israeli sniper, in what the Israelis claimed was an accident. The Palestinians, for their part, claim that Shireen was targeted deliberately as she tried to flee.
Pollard is a professional liar. Pollard’s article is full of lies, but even liars have a way of telling the truth in spite of themselves. Thanks to Pollard’s article we now know that the real point of the attack on Rushdie is the looming revival of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Pollard sets the stage for this revelation by creating a chronology of events:
On Monday, the EU put forward what it described as the “final” proposed text of a revived nuclear deal with Iran, a deal which has been under negotiation in Vienna since the arrival of Joe Biden in the Oval Office. On Friday morning, the Iranian state news agency reported that the EU’s proposed text “can be acceptable if it provides assurances” to Tehran over its key demands, quoting a senior Iranian diplomat.
Then he makes this remarkable statement:
The timing could hardly have been more instructive. Within hours of that report, Sir Salman Rushdie had been brutally attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.[16]
Pollard’s statement is capable of being interpreted in two ways: one obvious, the other absurd. If he is telling us that the Iranians deliberately sabotaged their own nuclear agreement, the idea is absurd. If he is telling us that he has insider knowledge of Israeli intelligence, that is completely plausible, which means it is also plausible to claim that the Israelis played a role in when the attack happened, as one more attempt at sabotaging peace with Iran. This is precisely what Mohammad Morandi, one of the Iranian officials negotiating the new version of the JCPOA claimed when he reacted to the news of the attack on Rushdie.[17] “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam. A pawn of empire who poses as a Postcolonial novelist,” Marandi tweeted. “But, isn’t it odd that as we near a potential nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton… and then this happens?,” he added.[18] Timing played a crucial role in Fahkrizadeh’s assassination as well. According to Robert Malley, who served as an advisor to President Barack Obama on Iran, the assassination of Mohsen Fahkrizadeh “was deliberately timed in order to make Biden’s attempts to negotiate with Iran more difficult.”[19]
Matar is now in custody , and according to Nathaniel Barone, his public defender, is “very cooperative.”[20] If so, Mr. Barone should ask his client if anyone contacted him after he posted his pictures on Facebook and encouraged him. Then Mr. Barone should ask the FBI if they knew about Matar’s Facebook page. If they didn’t, then why are we paying them to spy on people they deem to be potential terrorists. If they did, how did they follow up on what they discovered? Did they contact Matar? The FBI has a well-earned reputation as the main promoter of domestic terrorism through its notorious entrapment schemes which place weapons in the hands of people who otherwise would have never gone beyond hot air and crazy talk. Their collaboration with Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Jewish lesbian attorney general, who claimed she exposed with FBI help a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, just blew up in their face. This failed plot is an indication that the first thing Mr. Barone should do after talking to his client is subpoena FBI records. Merrick Garland’s raid on President Trump’s home in Mar a Largo is only the latest instance of Jewish meddling in American politics. For decades now, Americans have allowed the Jews to drag them into one war after another, all of which were fought with Israel’s interests in mind. The Israelis and their Jewish supporters are eager to hold America’s coat while we beat up Israel’s enemies. Now, thanks to Stephen Pollard, we can see how the attack on Salman Rushdie fits into that pattern and act accordingly.
Notes
[1] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-on-ventilator-after-new-york-stabbing-5ea54212d71b95569ed85df7b0fb5fea
[2] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a
[3] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo#2012_cartoons_depicting_Muhammad
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
[8] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
[9] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGqPzDqZlHpGNWHtdPplVThjnGf?projector=1
[10] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting
[11] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
[13] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/support-for-southern-poverty-law-center-links-scalise-family-research-council-shooters
[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970
[15] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970
[16] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
[17] https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before
[18] https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsen_Fakhrizadeh
[20] https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/13/us/salman-rushdie-attacked-saturday/index.html
Washington’s Assassination Bureau
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 16, 2022
I often complain that Washington’s heavily lopsided relationship with Israel is an arrangement that brings absolutely no benefit to the American people, and even less to our national security as it has involved the US in an endless series of completely avoidable conflicts. But there is one exception to that generalization, though one hesitates to call it a benefit, consisting of the White House’s adoption of the Israel practice of referring to opponents as “terrorists.” Israel uses it as a generic cover designation to denigrate and humiliate the Palestinians while also delegitimizing their resistance, permitting them to torture and kill Arabs at will, destroy their homes, and bomb them mercilessly. Washington, which claims to be the font of a “rules based international order” as well as the defender of global “democracy” and “freedom,” has developed since 9/11 an unfortunate tendency to do the same thing as the Israelis to justify its attacks on civilians and its brutal assassination policies.
In fact, the US and Israel are generally speaking the only two countries that openly use “targeted assassination” as a political tool without even bothering to fall back on “plausible denial” to conceal their actions. Israel only last week, initiated a politically motivated bombing attack on Gaza, which killed 45 civilians, including seventeen children and destroyed numerous homes. No Israelis were killed or even injured when the Gazans struck back with their home-made rockets. Both the White House and leaders in the US Congress congratulated the Israelis for “exercising their right to defend themselves.”
The principal targets of the Israeli onslaught were two Islamic Jihad leaders whom both Israel and the international media have described as “terrorists” and “militants.” The Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid described the operation as successful as the two men were reported killed. A retired Israeli general went so far as to describe the massacre as “really clean, very nice” and an “exceptional achievement.”
The Israeli action recalls the recent assassination of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The media coverage described how the Agency relentlessly stalked al-Zawahiri, described as the mastermind of 9/11, eventually learning that the 71-year-old was living in a house in an upscale Kabul neighborhood. It was also determined that he spent most days sitting on a terrace at the top of the house. The hellfire drone that killed him targeted the terrace at the time of day when he was normally sitting outside. Taliban sources report that his body was torn apart and incinerated by the two missiles that apparently struck him.
The White House is, of course, framing the assassination as a great success, a major blow in the war against terror. Joe Biden is hoping that it will improve the administration’s dismal approval ratings in the lead-up to the November elections, but the information given to the media regarding the incident praising the CIA’s tenacity and professional expertise is perhaps a bit over the top. Alternative reports from Afghanistan suggest that al-Zawahiri was living quite openly in Kabul and that he has not been active in any presumably radical activities for many, many years beyond making a number of “conspiracy theory” videos. Both al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden were, at the times when they were assassinated by the US, leading quiet lives with little protection even though they allegedly continued to be nominal leaders of al-Qaeda, an organization that had lost its raison d’etre years before.
Al-Zawahiri’s record as a terrorist comes largely from US and UK intelligence sources as well as media innuendo, which should be automatically considered unreliable. Recall for a moment the lying that the George W. Bush administration engaged in to go to war with Iraq, with folks like Condoleezza Rice speaking of mushroom clouds spewing radiation over the US and a shop in the Pentagon run by a group of neocons producing fabricated intelligence reports. What has been confirmed from independent sources is that al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian medical doctor, was savagely tortured by the secret police during a crackdown on political dissidents initiated by US puppet President Hosni Mubarak. The torture reportedly radicalized him, and he joined Osama bin Laden’s underground group, later apparently becoming its nominal leader after bin Laden was himself killed in May 2011 by US Navy Seals. Much of the rest of al-Zawahiri’s presumed biography relies on little in the way of actual evidence.
What actually happened on 9/11 and who was behind it remains somewhat a mystery as all the apparent perpetrators of which might have occurred are dead. Consider for a moment that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri never actually admitted that their group al-Qaeda was the perpetrator of the attack. In fact they denied it, sometimes attributing it to other radicalized Saudi Arabian underground groups. Nor is there any actual evidence that they planned the attack. They were accused because they had the claimed track record, resources, motive and possible access to carry out the incident, not because there was any real evidence that they had done the deed. When the US approached the Taliban government of Afghanistan in late 2001 and demanded that bin Laden be turned over to American law enforcement, the Afghans responded that bin Laden was a guest in their country, but they would surrender him if Washington could demonstrate that he had organized and ordered the attacks. George W. Bush’s Pentagon and the CIA apparently could not make that case based on actual evidence, leading to the decision to go to war instead.
Also, of all the hundreds of “terrorist” prisoners that have been recycled through the US military prison at Guantanamo only five have ever been charged with any involvement in 9/11. They are still being held but have never been tried and it is quite possible the case against them can never be made. They might even be completely innocent.
And there is more to the story. Bin Laden could have been arrested and tried but the Barack Obama administration decided to kill him and dump his body at sea, presumably to avoid a courtroom drama that would reveal government malfeasance. And then there are Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman, both of whom were American citizens killed by CIA drones in Yemen, where their family originated. The al-Awlakis may or may not have been actual members of al-Qaeda, but the elder al-Awlaki’s sermons and writings certainly inspired groups that opposed US foreign policy’s hostility towards Muslims. It is widely believed that Anwar al-Awlaki could have been captured and tried in the US if an attempt to do so had been pursued, but instead the Obama Administration again decided that he should be killed.
Finally, there is the death by drone of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January 2000 under President Donald Trump. In a recent book, Trump’s Defense Chief Mark Esper claims that Trump lied after the assassination was criticized by saying that Soleimani was actively preparing “terror” attacks on four American Embassies in the Mideast region. Esper confirms that there was no intelligence to back up that claim, but interestingly goes beyond that to make clear that there was no specific intelligence at all suggesting that such an attack was imminent or even being planned. There were only generic regional security threats that many embassies in the world respond to and make preparations to defend against.
The Esper claim is supported by the Iraqi government itself, which declared that Soleimani, widely regarded as the second most powerful official in Iran after the Ayatollah, was in Baghdad to discuss peace arrangements and that the US Embassy had been informed of his planned trip and had raised no objection to it. Instead, the US used the opportunity to launch an armed drone to kill him and nine Iraqi militia members that were accompanying him from the airport. In other words, there was no imminent threat, nor even a plausible threat, and the US went ahead anyway and killed a senior Iranian government official in a targeted assassination.
So, the United States and Israel have a formula down pat whereby they can kill anyone anywhere without any due process or rule of law, even if they don’t know who you are as in the cases of the “signature” or “profile” executions by drone in Afghanistan. And all the presidents and senior officials know that no matter what they do there will be no accountability. All one has to do is call it terrorism prevention, which might include citing terrorist attacks that can in no way be linked by way of actual evidence to the person being killed. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist, repeat as needed, and the public and media will swoon with pleasure at being so well-protected. And, as the Israeli general described it, the end result will be “really clean, very nice” an “exceptional achievement.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
NEJM: COVID booster significantly delays end of infection
31% boosted people still contagious 10 days post-infection vs. 6% unvaccinated
By Rabinovitz | July 10, 2022
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has demonstrated that people who are triple-vaccinated (boosted) against COVID recover significantly more slowly from COVID infection and remain contagious for longer than people who are not vaccinated at all.
The study did not deal with the severity of illness with or without a vaccine.
Researchers swabbed infected people and cultured the swabs, repeating the process for over two weeks until viral replication was not observed.
At five days post-infection, less than 25 percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious, whereas around 70 percent of boosted people were still carrying viable virus particles. For those partially vaccinated, around 50 percent were still contagious at this point.
Even more strikingly, at ten days post-infection, one-third of boosted people (31 percent) were found to still be carrying live, culturable virus. By contrast, just six percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious at day 10.
In other words, people who have received a booster shot are five times more likely still to be contagious at ten days post-infection than are unvaccinated people.
The findings go a long way to explaining why Paxlovid, Pfizer’s anti-viral medication, is often not effective for people who have been vaccinated against COVID, with many experiencing a recurrence of symptoms along with a positive COVID test after completing the five-day regimen (as recently occurred with quadruple-vaccinated Dr. Anthony Fauci). This phenomenon is known as COVID rebound.
Meanwhile, Israeli Health Ministry data shows that in the older population (those over the age of 60), having submitted to more COVID shots often correlates to a greater likelihood of becoming infected with COVID.
Israel Ministry of Health
The blue line represents the unvaccinated; light-green is the partially-vaccinated; dark-green is those who have received a booster shot within the past six months.
Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | AUGUST 9, 2022
The 4-hour meeting on Friday at Sochi between President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Erdogan promises to be a defining moment in regional politics. The single biggest takeaway from the Sochi meet is, of course, the “win-win” economic partnership between Russia and Turkey that helps Russia, on the one hand, to continue to interact with the world market circumventing Western sanctions, while, on the other hand, is a boon for the Turkish economy.
Turkey is a member of the European Uinion’s Customs Union and it is no secret that there is a lot of Russian money floating around in the wake of the western sanctions. If that money can be turned into investments in Turkey to set up production units with western technology and market access, creating jobs and revving up the country’s economy, it is a “win-win”. This is one thing.
At Sochi, Putin and Erdogan agreed on phasing out the use of dollar in their transactions. Part of Turkey’s purchase of Russian gas will be settled in rubles, which will of course strengthen the Russian currency. Equally, the Sochi meeting tasked 5 Turkish banks to accept Russia’s Mir payment system, which Moscow developed following Russia’s exclusion from the SWIFT.
At its most obvious level, the Mir system enables Russian nationals, especially tourists, to freely visit Turkey. Indeed, the West’s prying eyes can also be kept out. A Bloomberg News report last week suggests that sensitive money transactions that are beyond western scrutiny may already be taking place. Basically, Turkey helps Russia to mitigate the effect of western sanctions while taking care that it won’t face any collateral sanctions either!
Quite obviously, all this is only possible within a matrix of political understanding. The 4-hour conversation in Sochi was almost entirely conducted in one-on-one mode. Erdogan cryptically remarked later that his talks with Putin would benefit the region. He did not elaborate.
Conceivably, there are three major areas where the matrix will be felt in immediate terms— Syria, Black Sea and Transcaucasia. Turkish and Russian interests crisscross here.
In the Black Sea, Turkey, as the custodian of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits (1936), has a key role to play with regard to the passage of warships in times of war through the the Dardanelles strait, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus strait. The current implications are self-evident.
Again, in Transcaucasia, Turkey can play a stabilising role, which Moscow expects, given Ankara’s influence in Baku. However, when it comes to Syria, a complex tapestry appears. The Turkish press has reported that Erdogan is planning to have a call with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Putin has been encouraging Erdogan to think on these lines as the best way to address Turkey’s border security issues in northern Syria — by directly communicating with Assad instead of launching military incursions.
Putin’s vision is that the moribund Adana Agreement (1998) still has a lot of unused potential, where Damascus had guaranteed the containment of militant Syria-based Kurdish separatist groups. The “Adana spirit” evaporated once the Obama administration lured Erdogan into its regime change project in 2011 to overthrow Assad. Until that time, Erdogan and Assad, including their families, had enjoyed a warm friendship.
However, circumstances today are propitious for a rapprochement between Erdogan and Assad. First, Assad has successfully beaten back — thanks to Russian and Iranian backing — the US-led jihadi project in Syria. Damascus has liberated most of the regions from jihadi groups and the residual issue concerns the US occupation of a third of Syrian territory in the north and east.
Assad has consolidated the government’s staying power for years to come. Second, Assad is steadily gaining regional acceptance too among Syria’s Arab neighbours. Syria is seeking membership of the SCO alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. Third, Turkish-American relations have soured in recent years since the CIA-backed military coup in 2016 to overthrow Erdogan.
One main factor today is the US’ politico-military alliance with the militant Syrian Kurds who are its foot soldiers and aspire to establish a Kurdish homeland in northern Syria bordering Turkey under American protection. Erdogan is deeply suspicious of US intentions.
Fourth, stemming from the above, Turkey sees eye to eye with Moscow and Tehran (and Damascus) in their demand for the vacation of US occupation of Syria (which is neither mandated by the UN nor is at Syrian invitation.) Fifth, Russia and Iran have contacts with Syrian Kurdish groups but a reconciliation between the Kurds and Damascus cannot gain traction so long as the US military presence continues.
Quite obviously, any endeavour to cut this Gordian knot will have to begin with the reconciliation between Erdogan and Assad. It is in Turkish interests to strengthen Damascus and promote a Syrian settlement, which will ultimately make the US occupation of Syria untenable and open the pathway for pacifying the Kurdish regions in northern Syria.
Meanwhile, in a development that has bearing on Syria’s security, Russia today launched an Iranian military satellite from its Baikanur Cosmodrome. It is a Russian-built Kanopus-V Earth-observation satellite that will boost Iran’s capability to conduct continuous surveillance on locations of its choosing, including military facilities in Israel.
Moscow negotiated the satellite deal in secret with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (which is involved in Syria) and experts from Moscow have trained IRGC’s ground crews in the satellite’s operation.
Russia’s ties with Israel have sharply deteriorated lately due to Israel’s involvement in Ukraine as a participant in Pentagon’s “coalition of the willing”. Moscow is probably expelling the hugely influential Jewish Agency, which has kept an office in Moscow since the Gorbachev era.
Moscow’s criticism of Israeli missile strikes against Syria has noticeably sharpened lately. Russian-Israeli relations will languish for the foreseeable future. Israel seems acutely conscious of its growing isolation. President Isaac Herzog reached out to Putin today but it turned out to be an inconclusive conversation. Moscow will be extra-vigilant, given the Biden Administration’s strong nexus with Israeli PM Lapid.
Suffice to say, together with Israel’s fraught ties with Moscow and Ankara and the deep antagonism toward Tehran, a Turkish-Russian-Iranian condominium in Syria is the last thing that Israel wants to see happening at the present juncture. Israel is the odd man out, what with the Abraham Accords losing its gravitas.
Putin’s initiatives to create axis with Turkey and Iran respectively mesh with the broader trend of the region reshaping itself through processes dominated by the countries within the region against the backdrop of the US retrenchment.
Hezbollah warns Israel against targeting Palestinians in Lebanon
MEMO | August 9, 2022
The head of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, today warned against any Israeli attempts to expand their targeting of Palestinian resistance members to Lebanon, Reuters reported.
“Any attack on any human being will not go unpunished or unanswered,” Nasrallah said in a televised address marking Ashura, a commemoration for Shia Muslims of the killing of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)’s grandson Hussein.
The comments came after Israel launched a war against Gaza on Friday, killing 44 Palestinians including 15 children. It also killed senior Islamic Jihad leaders. The bombing was halted late on Sunday under the terms of an Egypt-brokered ceasefire.
On Saturday, Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz hinted at the possible targeting of Islamic Jihad officials abroad, who he said could be seen in “restaurants and hotels in Tehran, Syria and Lebanon”.
“They too will have to pay the price,” Gantz said. Yesterday he said Israel could carry out “pre-emptive strikes” abroad.
“In the future too, if necessary, we will deliver a pre-emptive strike in order to defend Israel’s citizens, sovereignty and infrastructure and this is true for all fronts, from Tehran to Khan Yunis,” he said.
Tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been escalating in recent months over a disputed maritime border between Lebanon and Israel.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
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- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
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