Crowd-funded propaganda? Ummm…no thanks
OffGuardian | July 1, 2016
“The last few days have been seismic and historic for Britain, the greatest political crisis since the second world war with reverberations felt around the world,” wrote Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner in the Graun yesterday, in what amounts to a begging letter to her diminishing readership, imploring them to throw money the Guardian’s way. She goes on to say:
We’ve been working non-stop to try to make sure that the journalism you find in the Guardian and the Observer properly reflects these extraordinary and complicated times.
Let’s note her choice of words – “properly reflects these extraordinary and complicated times.”
Properly.
Not ‘accurately’. Not ‘honestly’. Not ‘responsibly’. Not even ‘fairly’. In fact she notably doesn’t invoke any of these supposedly essential aspects of good journalism anywhere. Instead we get “fast, well-sourced, calm, accessible and intelligent” journalism, that “provide[s] the answers that people desperately need at this time of anxiety and confusion.” Not questions, which can be open-ended and scary. Answers. Packaged and provided for you courtesy of the Graun. Safe, secure, on message, and of course “properly reflect[ing] these …complicated times.”
So, the proper way to reflect Corbyn’s speech on anti-semitism was to grossly misrepresent both the meaning and content? The proper way to reflect the coup against the Labour leadership was to give unlimited space to only one side of the debate? The proper pursuit of journalistic excellence lies in forming unholy alliances with unashamed propaganda outlets such as Interpreter Magazine and the CIA-created Radio Free Europe, and to run an endless and often ignorantly racist smear campaign against the Russian government and nation? The proper position for a serious news outlet is to publish fan write-ups and apologies for avowedly neo-nazi militias? To advocate for illegal wars, and solicit the opinions of a war criminal on the desirability of further war crimes?
This, presumably, is how they sleep at night. Reassuring themselves that answers are more important than questions and “proper” trumps “true” in terms of real journalism. This is fine, I suppose, if that’s their personal choice, but isn’t it a little rich to ask us to fund them to tell us lies? Still, at least there’s one sentence in Viner’s embarrassing begging letter that I think most of us can agree with.
Producing in-depth, thoughtful, well-reported journalism is difficult and expensive. But supporting us isn’t
Good of you to make the distinction, Kath. Saves us the trouble.
Guardian sinks into gutter on Corbyn – again
By Jonathon Cook | June 30, 2016
This is way beyond a face-palm moment.
Jeremy Corbyn today launched a review into the Labour party’s supposed “anti-semitism crisis” – in fact, a crisis entirely confected by a toxic mix of the right, Israel supporters and the media. I have repeatedly pointed out that misleading claims of anti-semitism (along with much else) are being thrown at Corbyn to discredit him. You can read my criticisms of this campaign and Labour’s reponse here, here and here.
In his speech, Corbyn made an entirely fair point that Jews should not be blamed for the behaviour of Israel any more than Muslims should be for the behaviour of states that are Islamic. He said:
Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.
But no matter what he said, the usual suspects are now accusing him of comparing Israel with Islamic State, even though that is clearly not what he said – not even close.
First, even if he had said “Islamic State”, which he didn’t, that would not have meant he made a comparison with Israel. He was comparing the assumptions some people make that Jews and Muslims have tribal allegiances based on their religious or ethnic background. He was saying it was unfair to make such assumptions of either Jews or Muslims.
In fact, such an assumption (which Corbyn does not share) would be more unfair to Muslims than to Jews. It would suggest that some Muslims easily feel an affinity with a terror organisation, while some Jews feel an affinity with a recognised state (which may or may not include their support for the occupation). That assumption is far uglier towards Muslims than it is towards Jews.
But, of course, all of this is irrelevant because Corbyn did not make any such comparison. He clearly referred to “various self-styled Islamic states or organisations”. A spokesman later clarified that he meant “Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran or Hamas in Gaza”. In other words, “various self-styled Islamic states and organisations” – just as he said in the speech.
Surprise, surprise, the supposedly liberal Guardian’s coverage of this incident is as appalling as that found in the rightwing Telegraph. The Guardian has an article, quoting rabbis and others, pointing out the irony that Corbyn made an anti-semitic comment at the launch of an anti-semitism review – except, of course, that he didn’t.
In fact, contrary to all normal journalism, you have to read the Guardian story from bottom-up. The last paragraph states:
This story was amended on 30 June to correct the quotation in the second paragraph. An earlier version quoted Corbyn as saying: “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Islamic friends are responsible for Islamic State.”
Or in other words, the Guardian reporter did not even bother to listen to the video of the speech posted alongside her report on the Guardian’s own website. Instead she and her editors jumped on the same bandwagon as everyone else, spreading the same malicious rumours and misinformation.
When it later emerged that the story was a complete fabrication – one they could have proved for themselves had they listened to what Corbyn really said – they simply appended at the bottom a one-pargraph mea culpa that almost no one will read. The Guardian has continued to publish the same defamatory article, one based on a deception from start to finish.
This is the very definition of gutter journalism. And it comes as the Guardian editor, Kath Viner, asks (begs?) readers to dig deep in their pockets to support the Guardian. She writes:
The Guardian’s role in producing fast, well-sourced, calm, accessible and intelligent journalism is more important than ever.
Well, it would be if that is what they were doing. Instead, this story confirms that the paper is producing the same shop-soiled disinformation as everyone else.
Save your money and invest it in supporting real independent journalism.
How the News Agenda is Set
By Craig Murray | June 26, 2016
David Cameron gets heckled every day of his life. The media never bother to report the names of the hecklers or the gist of what they say.
Yet a single heckler shouts at Jeremy Corbyn at Gay Pride, and not only is that front page news in the Guardian, it is on BBC, ITN and Sky News.
What makes a single individual heckling a politician newsworthy? There are dozens such examples every single day that are not newsworthy.
The answer is simple. Normally the hecklers are promoting an anti-establishment view, so it does not get reported. Whereas this heckler was promoting the number one priority of the establishment and mainstream media, to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. So this heckler, uniquely, is front page news and his words are repeated at great length in the Guardian and throughout the broadcast media.
The impression is deliberately given that he reflects general disgust from young people, and particularly gay young people, at Corbyn over the EU referendum. The very enthusiastic reception for Corbyn at Gay Pride is not reported.
Nor is the fact that the incident was not a chance one. The “heckler” is Tom Mauchline, a PR professional for PR firm Portland Communications, a dedicated Blairite (he describes himself as Gouldian) formerly working on the Liz Kendall leadership campaign. Portland Communications’ “strategic counsel” is Alastair Campbell.
So far from representing a popular mood, Mauchlyne was this morning on twitter urging people to sign a 38 Degrees petition supporting the no confidence motion against Corbyn. Ten hours later that petition has gained 65 signatures, compared to 120,000 for a petition supporting Corbyn. Mauchline formerly worked for 38 Degrees, unsurprising given their disgraceful behaviour over the Kuenssberg petition. I am waiting for the circle to be squared and Kuenssberg to report on the significance of Mauchline’s lone heckle.
I find it incredible that the mainstream media are all carrying this faked incident while not one single mainstream journalist has reported who Mauchline really is.
Brexit and the Diseased Liberal Mind
By Jonathan Cook | June 26, 2016
The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The anger is pathological – and helps to shed light on why a majority of Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
A few years ago the American writer Chris Hedges wrote a book he titled the Death of the Liberal Class. His argument was not so much that liberals had disappeared, but that they had become so co-opted by the right wing and its goals – from the subversion of progressive economic and social ideals by neoliberalism, to the enthusiastic embrace of neonservative doctrine in prosecuting aggressive and expansionist wars overseas in the guise of “humanitarian intervention” – that liberalism had been hollowed out of all substance.
Liberal pundits sensitively agonise over, but invariably end up backing, policies designed to benefit the bankers and arms manufacturers, and ones that wreak havoc domestically and abroad. They are the “useful idiots” of modern western societies.
Reading this piece on the fallout from Brexit by Zoe Williams, a columnist who ranks as left wing by the current standards of the deeply diminished Guardian, one can isolate this liberal pathology in all its sordid glory.
Here is a revealing section, written by a mind so befuddled by decades of neoliberal orthodoxy that it has lost all sense of the values it claims to espouse:
There is a reason why, when Marine le Pen and Donald Trump congratulated us on our decision, it was like being punched in the face – because they are racists, authoritarian, small-minded and backward-looking. They embody the energy of hatred. The principles that underpin internationalism – cooperation, solidarity, unity, empathy, openness – these are all just elements of love.
One wonders where in the corridors of the EU bureaucracy Williams identifies that “love” she so admires. Did she see it when the Greeks were being crushed into submission after they rebelled against austerity policies that were themselves a legacy of European economic policies that had required Greece to sell off the last of its family silver?
Is she enamoured of this internationalism when the World Bank and IMF go into Africa and force developing nations into debt-slavery, typically after a dictator has trashed the country decades after being installed and propped up with arms and military advisers from the US and European nations?
What about the love-filled internationalism of NATO, which has relied on the EU to help spread its military tentacles across Europe close to the throat of the Russian bear? Is that the kind of cooperation, solidarity and unity she was thinking of?
Williams then does what a lot of liberals are doing at the moment. She calls for subversion of the democratic will:
The anger of the progressive remain side, however, has somewhere to go: always suckers for optimism, we now have the impetus to put aside ambiguity in the service of clarity, put aside differences in the service of creativity. Out of embarrassment or ironic detachment, we’ve backed away from this fight for too long.
That includes seeking the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn, of course. “Progressive” Remainers, it seems, have had enough of him. His crime is that he hails from “leftwing aristocracy” – his parents were lefties too, apparently, and even had such strong internationalist principles that they first met at a committee on the Spanish civil war.
But Corbyn’s greater crime, according to Williams, is that “he is not in favour of the EU”. It would be too much trouble for her to try and untangle the knotty problem of how a supreme internationalist like Corbyn, or Tony Benn before him, could be so against the love-filled EU. So she doesn’t bother.
We will never know from Williams how a leader who supports oppressed and under-privileged people around the world is cut from the same cloth as racists like Le Pen and Trump. That would require the kind of “agile thinking” she accuses Corbyn of being incapable of. It might hint that there is a left wing case quite separate from the racist one – even if Corbyn was not allowed by his party to advocate it – for abandoning the EU.
But no, Williams assures us, Labour needs someone with much more recent left wing heritage, someone who can tailor his or her sails to the prevailing winds of orthodoxy. And what’s even better, there is a Labour party stuffed full of Blairities to chose from. After all, their international credentials have been proven repeatedly, including in the killing fields of Iraq and Libya.
And here, wrapped into a single paragraph, is a golden nugget of liberal pathology from Williams. Her furious liberal plea is to rip up the foundations of democracy: get rid of the democratically elected Corbyn and find a way, any way, to block the wrong referendum outcome. No love, solidarity, unity or empathy for those who betrayed her and her class.
There hasn’t been a more fertile time for a Labour leader since the 1990s. The case for a snap general election, already strong, will only intensify over the coming weeks. As the sheer mendacity of the leave argument becomes clear – it never intended to curb immigration, there will be no extra money for the NHS, there was no plan for making up EU spending in deprived areas – there will be a powerful argument for framing the general election as a rematch. Not another referendum, but a brake on article 50 and the next move determined by the new government. If you still want to leave the EU, vote Conservative. If you’ve realised or knew already what an act of vandalism that was, vote Labour.
Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).
Nick Cohen: Brexiteers are fascists, liars and charlatans whose only recourse is name-calling
OffGuardian | June 19, 2016
Mere days after the Guardian published no less than four different editorials criticising the tone of the debate, the poisoning of the atmosphere, and the contempt we have for our elected officials, Nick Cohen has bravely waded into the debate. Roundly condemning the modern wave of what he calls “paranoid populism”, a term he evidently thinks is catchy:
Paranoid populism’s defining principle can be summarised in a paragraph. No one contradicts me in good faith. My opponents must be lying. They must be corrupt. They are more than merely mistaken, they are degenerate.
“Paranoid populism” – and by this Cohen means anyone who doesn’t like politicians, anyone who doesn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, anyone who wants to leave Europe, “conspiracy theorists” and anyone who voted for Jeremy Corbyn – relies on ad hominem attacks, baseless accusations, assumptions of corruption and the assertion of moral authority. Now, with this in mind, you may think Mr Cohen’s column is then based on objective data and reasoned arguments, and is highly respectful in tone, right? Let’s take a look at the highlights:
The Leave campaign has captured the worst of England and channelled it into a know-nothing movement of loud mouths and closed minds.
You get a measure of the unashamed charlatanry of the men who ask for your votes…
Paranoid populism is a general sickness, as common on the left as the right. You hear it when audiences on Question Time scream that all politicians are liars and crooks, then sit back expecting to be applauded as heartily as they applaud themselves.
…you cannot deny that the Leave campaign has had to head into the sewers of conspiracy theory and race politics because it had nowhere else to go.
Disregarding the honest and “respectful” debate that Guardian has been calling for, Cohen chooses instead to pretend the only issue ever discussed in terms of the EU debate has been immigration – a complete lie. The truth is the only issue the MEDIA has discussed has been immigration – but that has been a deliberate limiting of the debate, in order that well-paid virtue-signallers like Cohen, Toynbee and Freedland can lament the rise of xenophobia in this country, whilst never having to deal with an actual argument.
The anti-EU arguments, and there are many, are about economics and democracy. Can the UK be truly democratic if the unelected bureaucrats from the EC can enforce laws on our government? How will the NHS fare under TTIP? A bill which will destroy the NHS and remove the ability of sovereign governments to outlaw additives, or label GMOs. These questions don’t deserve answers, according to Cohen, and if you ask them…you’re a racist.
Early on in the piece Cohen accuses the Leave campaign of peddling fear:
With a cynicism, which again I can find no historical parallel for, it has now decided to fan fear….
Always one to oppose the political fear-mongering Cohen ends his piece with:
In the name of defending Britain, Brexit will start a rolling economic, constitutional and diplomatic crisis, which its authors do not have the smallest idea how to solve.
No fear-mongering here.
If this article was intended as a complex satire on media hysteria and hypocrisy, I would hail it as a triumph. Unfortunately I know the Guardian, and Nick Cohen, too well for that.
Corporate Media Backing Clinton Exploits Orlando Shooting for Passive Holocaust Denial
By Robert Barsocchini | Empire Slayer | June 16, 2016
Within hours of the mass shooting in Orlando, the corporate media backing neoconservative favorite Hillary Clinton began, almost unanimously, to exploit the opportunity to passively promote holocaust and genocide denial.
Outlets including the NY Times, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, and so on, all referred to the Orlando massacre unequivocally as the worst shooting and/or worst act of gun violence in US history. (CBS News, at the time it was accessed for this piece, was running a large “I’m With Her” ad for Hillary Clinton at the top of its page.) A useful comparison to the corporate assessment might be to imagine if a German civilian gassed a group of people to death and the German press reported it as the worst gassing in German history. After the Paris shooting, the Western press likewise reported that as the worst shooting in recent Parisian history, despite that the Parisian police not long ago massacred some 300 peaceful marchers protesting the French dictatorship in Algeria and dumped their bodies in the river that runs through the city (more info in previous piece).
Native News Online quickly pointed out that the corporate media was almost completely whitewashing “mass killings of American Indians in its reporting” on Orlando. It gave two well-known (as far as these go) examples of worse gun-violence and mass-shootings: some 300 Native men, women, and children, were massacred at Wounded Knee, and 70 to 180 were massacred at Sand Creek.
One commenter on the Native News piece shared that she “wrote to every single news outlet yesterday from the New York Times, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Salon to CNN, NBC, and the BBC. I have yet to receive a reply from any of them with the exception of the Oregonian, who changed its language immediately. They also informed me that the Associated Press has just begun to change its language. I’m hoping the Guardian and BBC begin to do the same too.”
Another commenter on the Native News piece gave a short list of some acts of gun-violence, mass-shootings, or mass killings perpetrated in US history, by US forces:
1864 – 300 Yana in California
1863 – 280 Shoshone in Idaho
1861 – 240 Wilakis in California
1860 – 250 Wiyot in California
1859 – 150 Yuki in California
1853 – 450 Tolowa in California
1852 – 150 Wintu in California
1851 – 300 Wintu in California
1850 – 100 Pomo in California
1840 – 140 Comanches in Colorado
1833 – 150 Kiowa in Oklahoma
1813 – 200 Creek in Alabama
1813 – 200 Creek in Alabama
1782 – 100 Lanape in Pennsylvania
1730 – 500 Fox in Illinois
1713 – 1000 Tuscarora in North Carolina
1712 – 1000 Fox in Michigan
1712 – 300 Tuscarora in North Carolina
1704 – 1000 Apalachee killed & 2000 sold into slavery in North Carolina
1676 – 100 Algonquian and Nipmuc in Massachusetts.
1676 – 100 Occaneechi in Virginia
1675 – 340 Narragansett in Rhode Island
1644 – 500 Lanape in New York
1640 – 129 Massapeag in New York
1637 – 700 Pequot in Connecticut
1623 – 200 Powhatan & Pamunkey in Virginia with “poison wine”
Professor David E. Stannard describes one such massacre, wherein US forces weakened a Delaware group of Native men, women, children, and elders through starvation, convinced them it would be in their best interest to disarm, then tied them up and exterminated them and mutilated their dead bodies. Stannard notes that such massacres by US forces “were so numerous and routine that recording them eventually becomes numbing”. (American Holocaust, pp. 125/6)
A couple of corporate news outlets used somewhat more precise language to describe the Orlando massacre, editorializing (while again presenting it as fact) that it was the ‘worst shooting in modern US history’.
However, this still leaves unstated the writer’s opinion of what constitutes ‘modern’. The wounded knee massacre took place in 1898, and the Black Wall Street massacre, for example, in which 55-400 people were murdered and a wealthy black community in Oklahoma ethnically cleansed, took place in 1921. (More examples.)
And, of course, the US has massacred millions of people, many of them with rifles and other types of guns, but also in far worse ways, outside the territory it officially claims, and continues to do so. Obama recently massacred almost a hundred people at one time with what could be viewed as an AR-15 on steroids. Is any of this part of ‘modern US history’? Why or why not? The qualifications are unstated and thus subjective. The vague language from the neoliberal, government-linked corporate outlets may lead readers to believe that all of US history is included in their ‘factual’ statements, and that the US has never massacred more than fifty people anywhere.
In some cases, this impression will have been intentional on the part of the oligarch mouthpiece outlets, which have an interest in fostering a benevolent image of the US to help elites further capture global markets . In others, it will have been a result of conveniently self-aggrandizing ignorance on behalf of the writers and editors – an ignorance that makes an important contribution to their job security.
As some of them partially or belatedly demonstrated, all of the corporate outlets could have easily avoided any holocaust/genocide-denial by calling the shooting the worst by a single civilian on US territory in at least the last thirty years, or any number of other obvious, simple, direct phrasings, which are supposed to be integral to journalism, anyway.
But as John Ralston Saul points out, the neoliberal/neoconservative ideology relies on the ‘whitewashing of memory’. That doesn’t always work, though, especially on survivors of US and Western genocides, which is why, as Ralston Saul further notes, the West and its proxies are behind most of the global murders of writers, who may try to expose facts and evidence that interfere with the West’s historical whitewashing.
Since the Orlando massacre, both Clinton and Trump have called for further escalation of Western aggression in the Middle East.
Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter.
The Agenda is Set: Elect the War-Hawk for the Sake of “Progress”
Hillary Clinton is the most qualified person to “rule the world”, if she can get around the “insane” US Constitution
OffGuardian | June 11, 2016
With the democratic nomination now officially all but certain (Sanders, quite obviously, never had a chance), the Guardian has thrown their full editorial weight – such as it is – into a pre-emptive defence of Hillary’s record and an hysterical celebration of the “progress” that the election of this particular bank-backed, corporate-bought, war-hawk would (apparently) demonstrate.
First there was Jonathan Freedland’s anaemic plea that Sanders’ voters get in line and stand with Clinton against the “true enemy”, Jill Abramson followed with gushing sentiment and simpering praise. And then? Then came Polly Toynbee, going full Guardian. Never go full Guardian.
The headline:
Those out to demonise Hillary Clinton should be careful what they wish for”
“Demonise”, in this instance, seems to mean “accurately describe her political career and possible criminal activities”. If you can demonise someone by holding a mirror up to their face, chances are that person is a demon.
“The choice of the next US president is now so stark that it’s time the left put aside its sneers and pray that this strong woman will get to rule the world”
“Rule the world?” Does the US president rule the world? I think I missed that particular UN resolution. As I recall, the POTUS doesn’t even wield supreme executive power within their own nation, the US constitution prevents that… but we’ll get to that later.
As for the starkness of the electoral field – I have to say I agree with Toynbee there. The choice between a bombastic orange billionaire, who sometimes seems to be running for president as an elaborate prank, and a proven corrupt and dangerous war-hawk, backed by lunatics like Victoria Nuland is indeed a stark one. Nuclear winter type stark. Perhaps literally.
This is a time to celebrate. At last, a woman leads a major US party to fight for the presidency.
Yes. At last, a woman. It doesn’t matter who the woman is, what she has done, how much she cheats to get there. Irrelevancies used to “demonise” her. Hillary is a woman, and thus her being president is A Good Thing… because progress. This is going to be key to Clinton’s campaign, and you will hear it a lot. It’s one of only 2 real tactics the Clinton camp have at their disposal. “What’s the other”, you ask? Simple: Lying. A lot of lying.
… as the first woman to enter the White House, she will also step through the door as by far the most qualified and experienced arrival there for generations…”
Now, this isn’t technically a lie… but only because we don’t know what Toynbee means by “qualified”. If being a shambolic Secretary of State and highly unpopular first lady makes you qualified then sure. If being proven to lie for your own benefit, time and time again, makes you “qualified”, or being firmly behind every American military intervention for the past 25 years… then I guess Hillary has qualifications to spare.
… a searing firestorm of abuse… Why so fierce, so unreasonable, so vitriolic?”
This is called a strawman. Having made a statement, one which is not backed up by any citations or quotes, she will attempt to “explain” this fictional phenomenon with some cloying cod psychology:
If you are naturally left of centre, especially if you are a woman, yet you find you instinctively dislike her, ask yourself why. There may be some good reasons…
So, liberal traitors – especially the female liberal traitors – why do you “instinctively” dislike Hillary Clinton? I mean there may be some good reasons, for example:
… she’s not as radical as Sanders; she is not a natural rabble-rouser at rallies; she is the wife of a past president; she’s called “robotic” in her careful choice of words; and as a flesh-presser she warms the cockles of few hearts.
To rephrase: You may not like her because she has no principles, is a bad public speaker, her election reeks of nepotism or she comes off as cold and sociopathic. Toynbee volunteers these facts – and we should note that these are the qualities the media list when they are trying to make her look good.
There are others: You MAY not like her because she planned and executed an illegal coup in Honduras, the destruction of Libya and execution of its head of state, she backed the Afghan and Iraq wars, she lied to cover up for a pedophile by blaming his 12 year old victim, the many alleged crimes, or any of the other callous and dreadful instances of dishonesty and self-aggrandisation she has taken part in.
These are the reasons you MAY think justify your “instinctive” hatred of this woman. But Toynbee knows better. She knows why you REALLY don’t like her – It’s because you’re a misogynist who doesn’t understand how tough it is for a woman:
If women of the left do break into the bastions of power, the sisters often view them as sell-outs to the establishment, as if permanent outsiderdom and victimhood is the only true mark of feminism.
You see? You “instinctively” dislike her, because you assume she must be a member of the establishment. That is the burden of the female “liberal”. You start a few wars, attend a few Bilderberg conferences, get a few million dollars donated to you from the most powerful banks in America, speak at the Council of Foreign Relations a few times and suddenly – BOOM – you’re viewed, unfairly, as part of the establishment.
But, putting aside the forced gendercentric argument and massive intellectual dishonesty, there’s some far more worrying agenda being whispered subliminally into the minds of Guardian readers here – Hillary’s greatest opponent is not the Republicans, it’s not the patriarchy, it’s not the other women who so resent her rise to power.
No, it is the law itself:
Unlike most, she knows how to wield the power levers, insofar as the insane US constitution allows any president to carry out their manifesto.
The United States Constitution is insane folks. I’m not sure which specific part of the most important egalitarian legal document of all time Toynbee has taken issue with – and she declined to answer when I asked her on twitter. But there’s a lot of good places to start.
For one thing: Limiting the power of the chief executive, making them answerable to the legislative body in order to prevent tyranny? That is obviously stupid when your head of state is a WOMAN who only wants to be nice. No, that has to go. The three separate branches of government should obviously be reshaped into a supreme executive with control over both legislative and judicial bodies. After all, how can you expect to implement a “manifesto” when you don’t have absolute power?
Free speech? Well, this is an antiquated notion, from a time before “progress” when people didn’t understand what was definitively correct. Now that we have reached consensus on what is “right” and what is “wrong” there is no need for freedom of speech – and in fact it is a hindrance, as people will only abuse their “right to free speech” by spreading propaganda, or broadcasting opinions which we have all agreed are wrong. As the Guardian has made clear many times, free speech is meaningless if people use it to bully and disenfranchise minorities. If free speech is being used to inflict hatred and tyranny on women, ethnic minorities or the trans community, then what use is it? Free speech doesn’t mean hate speech… but unfortunately banning hate speech DOES mean banning free speech sooo…. yeah.
Right to bear arms? Absolutely crazy. The very idea that civilians having access to firearms is important as a general principle in guarding against tyranny is foolish. There isn’t going to BE any tyranny anymore, because we’ve handed absolute power over to a woman who has banned the “tyranny” of “free speech”.
This frightening statement gives us a flash of the future – of the agenda already set in place. The US constitution has been largely ignored and misinterpreted for years to excuse totalitarian laws, such as the Patriot Act. But when Clinton is president, it will come under full-blown attack. Make no mistake: Clinton will be president, there’s no doubt about that. The election will be fixed, either literally like in 2000 and 2004, or more subtly by simply making the alternative bizarre and unelectable – as in 2008 and 2012. The latter possibility even explains the rise of Trump.
I don’t know if the man is genuine or not, I don’t know if he really believes he can win, but I understand his role. He is there to guarantee a Clinton victory. That’s why the press talks up his “violent” supporters, and balloons any and every tiny comment he makes into “racism” and “sexism”. He exists so that people like Toynbee can say this:
Outside, the world looks on aghast at any possibility America could choose a racist, sexist brute over a feminist with a long track record of standing up for the right causes.”
… and has there be a tiny kernel of truth to it. A very tiny kernel.
Consider professional wrestling. It’s fake, everybody knows that, it only just barely pretends to be otherwise. An elaborate action-based soap opera, with wild stunts and expensive tickets. That is all that American democracy has become. In wrestling it is predetermined who will win, they have labels for their wrestlers. First there is the Face, the hero, the good guy. He fights fair, he has a noble cause. He wears the American flag like a cape. When his music pipes up, we cheer because we’re supposed to. And the other guy? He’s the Heel. He’s obnoxious, he cheats, he’s mean for mean’s sake and smiles when we boo. And when your Face is Hillary Clinton, you need a HELL of a big Heel. Enter Donald Trump. A cartoon character. The caricature of the everything we’re supposed to hate about the GoP.
The fact that Clinton has still somehow contrived to be behind him in the polls tells you all you need to know about the desperate struggle the media face in turning Clinton into a believable hero.
Regardless, Clinton WILL be President. But it won’t be a sign of progress, it will be a neon display highlighting everything that has gone wrong with the American political system. It won’t be because she’s a woman, or a liberal, or an idealist. It will be because she sold her soul to finance her ambition for fleeting prestige and the appearance of power.
Rarely has any candidate so deserved their place.
In this case I tend to agree with Toynbee – never before has a candidate SO obviously worked SO hard to become president. Never before has a candidate so brazenly sold out the values they were (at best) pretending to hold dear. Never before has a candidate so artlessly and obviously lied about so many things. Never before has a candidate been so open and obvious about the Faustian pact they needed to make to get where they want to go, so obviously played the political game of the oligarchs who really run the country, in order to get her pay-off.
Editorials such as Toynbee’s will appear on the regular all through the campaign, all variations on a theme, all attempting to re-write Clinton’s history and hinging on the worst kind of puddle-deep identity politics. The truly tragic part is that they KNOW they are lying, they KNOW they will be called on it, they KNOW what they ARE, and they resent us for telling them. That’s why they say stuff like this:
And if you want a reminder of what women like her are up against, just read the comments that will no doubt follow this.
The comments, as you’d expect, were full of people commenting on her obvious bias, pointing out her half-truths and correcting her glaring factual errors. In the world the Guardian wants Clinton to build, this will be called “demonisation”.
And it will be illegal.
Corbyn rips into BBC over biased coverage
Press TV – June 1, 2016
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has blasted the BBC for being “obsessed” with efforts to damage his leadership and accused some party members of playing into its hands.
Britain’s opposition leader made the comments in an interview with Vice News as part of a documentary about the workings of his office.
The film, which was aired on Wednesday, follows Corbyn over almost two months during the run-up to the May elections and features a series of interviews with Ben Ferguson, a Vice journalist and Labour member who voted for Corbyn.
In response to Ferguson expressing concern about Labour’s performance in May, Corbyn revealed the depth of his feelings about his portrayal in the media, launching a fierce attack against the BBC in particular.
“There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It is obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour party and unfortunately there are people in the Labour party that play into that,” he said.
Corbyn said one of the main lessons of being the leader is “how shallow, facile and ill-informed many of the supposed well-informed major commentators are in our media,” accusing them of shaping a debate that was “baseless and narrow.”
The Labour leader is filmed calling “utterly disgusting” a Guardian column that had accused him and his party of having an anti-Semitism problem.
The anti-Semitism row within the Labour Party became the center of media attention last month after the party suspended a number of its key figures for condemning Israeli crimes.
The latest uproar against Labour flared up when the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was suspended by Corbyn over denouncing Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and arguing that Adolf Hitler, the former leader of Nazi Germany, was a supporter of Zionism.
As the controversy deepened, David Abrahams, a major party donor, called for Corbyn to resign, saying “Labour needs strong leadership.”
However, Corbyn said in a statement that he would propose a new code of conduct banning any forms of racism in his party.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour Party, or anywhere in society,” he said.
Media War Against Venezuela Kicks into High Gear
teleSUR | May 28, 2016
The media war against the democratically elected government of Venezuela kicked into high gear recently.
It is no coincidence that over the past few weeks a series of damning articles have come out touting the allegedly imminent collapse of the Venezuelan government.
These come on the heels of a recent editorial by the Washington Post that resorted to outright lies to justify its effort to promote regime change in Venezuela.
Meanwhile certain heads-of-government, such as Spain’s Mariano Rajoy and Paraguay’s Horacio Cartes who both have strong ties to Washington, have made provocative statements meant to try to isolate Venezuela in the international community.
There is stratagem afoot. Venezuela is passing through a difficult moment and the enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution smell blood.
Those old enough to remember the lead up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq know that these kinds of campaigns always predate foreign intervention.
For those quick to level the charge of conspiracy, one need only look to Brazil where analysts and pundits warned for months that the impeachment of Brazil was actually a Machiavellian coup plot to oust the president.
Many expressed doubt but the coup allegations turned out to be irrefutably true after a leaked conversation by one of the coup-plotters spelled out the plan explicitly.
teleSUR takes a look at three of the worst examples of anti-Venezuelan propaganda masquerading as journalism.
1. The Guardian’s Nick Cohen Equates Solidarity with Sex Tourism
Cohen’s piece literally opens with the line, “Radical tourism is no different from sex tourism.”
He then equates those who seek to learn from the class struggle throughout the world with those who pay for sex in foreign countries.
Cohen then cherry picks information from questionable sources to disparage a government that has consistently won elections and always acknowledged the times they lost.
Cohen talks about Venezuela as if he lived there, when of course he hasn’t. He seeks out Venezuelans like Thor Halvorssen who agree with him and back-up his claims that the true champions of the oppressed are the right-wing politicians who ignored the poor for decades, before the arrival of Hugo Chavez in 1999.
But how much credibility can a man like Cohen — who backed the invasion of Iraq — have when he calls important thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger “half-baked pseudo-left intellectual(s)”?
2. Venezuelans Long For Days of Elite Semi-Democracy… in the NY Times
The New York Times, which recently ran an editorial calling for a return of the days when Latin America was considered the “back yard” of the United States, is one of the loudest voices pushing for the ouster of Maduro.
It has featured article after article with one-sided stories that try to paint Venezuela as a failed state. It recently ran an op-ed by Emiliana Duarte, an upper class Venezuelan living in Caracas, which claimed Venezuelans are going hungry.
Duarte writes for the notoriously anti-government Caracas Chronicles, which the Times describes simply as a website for Venezuelan news.
She seems nostalgic for the pre-Chavez Venezuela, saying the country was once “the most stable democracy in South America.” What she doesn’t mention is that so-called stability came as a result of an elite pact between the leading political parties at the time, the Social Christians and Democratic Action.
This pact deliberately excluded leftist parties from having the opportunity to govern and led the elite semi-democracy known as the Fourth Republic. She laments the loss of the Fourth Republic’s institutions, yet fails to recognize that the failure of these same institutions are partly responsible for the rise of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Duarte also talks about how she has to “fill a suitcase with bags of rice and other grains” whenever she travels, leaving out the fact that regular international air travel is a privilege reserved only for the wealthy.
The suggestion that runs throughout is that Venezuelans are suffering through a hunger crisis, when the facts suggest otherwise as Venezuela remains well above the FAO’s minimum food security level.
3. BBC Commits Journalistic Crimes to Make its Case
The BBC’s Wyre Davies dedicated an entire article to downplaying the very real threat of a foreign military intervention in Venezuela, claiming it is nothing but a “spectre.”
It wasn’t that long ago that official U.S. policy was to install dictatorships throughout the region to do the bidding of elites. While Washington now talks about its respect for democracy, it backed recent coups in Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras and Brazil, not to mention the attempted 2002 coup to oust Hugo Chavez — in Venezuela, of course.
But Davies thinks a foreign intervention is a virtual impossibility.
He belittles the recent military exercises conducted by the Venezuelan Armed Forces. He puts scare quotes around the notion of spy planes, when two alleged U.S. planes were recently caught violating Venezuelan air space.
Davies suggests the military exercises are just a cover “to divert attention from what is really happening.”
To back up his assertion, he points to nameless experts, not once but twice. First he says that “many commentators” agree with his claims without quoting a single one.
Then he says the “real reason” behind the exercises is “to create the emergency conditions that would enable the armed forces to deal with internal dissent.”
Once again he attributes the idea to “observers” but doesn’t bother to name any.
Davies also asserts that President Maduro has “vowed to use (the Armed Forces) against opposition protesters.”
This is patently false. Maduro has never said such a thing.
In fact, opposition leader Henrique Capriles is the only one making open calls to the military to act against the people and rebel against Maduro.
Beyond that, the Venezuelan people and their Armed Forces have a special relationship. It was the military that rescued Venezuelan democracy after the short-lived, U.S.-sanctioned coup briefly ousted President Chavez from power in 2002 in the kind of foreign intervention Davies thinks is a mere specter.
RELATED:
Washington Post Lies to Justify Intervention in Venezuela
6 Coups Against Latin America’s Left Since 2000
IN DEPTH:
Guardian Jump On The Extreme Weather Bandwagon Again
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | May 28, 2016
The Guardian have dredged up a US meteorologist, Paul Douglas, to come up with a list of “extreme” weather events, which he then uses to claim that climate change is making worse.
Whatever happened to normal weather? Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods. But lately it seems the treadmill of disruptive weather has been set to fast-forward. God’s grandiose Symphony of the Seasons, the natural ebb and flow of the atmosphere, is playing out of tune, sounding more like a talent-free second grade orchestra, with shrill horns, violins screeching off-key, cymbal crashes coming in at the wrong time. Something has changed.
Let’s start by looking at some of his claims:
A warmer atmosphere is increasing water vapor levels overhead, juicing storms, fueling an increase in flash floods in the summer, and heavier winter snows along the East Coast of the USA. “All storms are 5 to 10 percent stronger in terms of heavy rainfall” explained Dr. Kevin Trenberth, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “It means what was a very rare event is now not quite so rare.”
Yet even the IPCC tell us they can find no evidence that floods are getting bigger or more frequent on a worldwide basis:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/the-ipcc-floods/
And as far as the US is concerned, the USGS say:
Only one of four large regions of the United States showed a significant relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and the size of floods over the last 100 years. This was in the southwestern region, where floods have become smaller as CO2 has increased.
Storms? Surely any US meteorologist worth his salt must know that tornadoes have been getting much less frequent, and, more particularly, less violent since the 1970s.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
He goes on to rehash the thoroughly discredited theory of Jennifer Francis that Arctic warming is making the jet stream more sluggish and wavy, bringing weather blocks.
If he had bothered reading HH Lamb, he might have found out that the same sort of weather was occurring when the world was cooling after the Second World War. This was what Lamb had to say in his volume, “Climate, History and The Modern World”:
ANOTHER TURNING POINT
Over the years since the 1940’s, it has become apparent that many of the tendencies in world climate which marked the previous 50 to 80 years or more have either ceased or changed…. It was only after the Second World War that the benign trend of the climate towards general warming over those previous decades really came in for much scientific discussion and began to attract public notice.
VARIABILITY INCREASES
Such worldwide surveys as have been attempted seem to confirm the increase of variability of temperature and rainfall [since 1950].’’
In Europe, there is a curious change in the pattern of variability: from some time between 1940 and 1960 onwards, the occurrence of extreme seasons – both as regards temperature and rainfall has notably increased.
A worldwide list of the extreme seasons reported since 1960 makes impressive reading. Among the items included:
1960-9 – Driest decade in central Chile since 1770’s and 1790’s.
1962-3 Coldest winter in England since 1740.
1962-5 Driest four-year period in the eastern United States since records began in 1738.
1963-4 Driest winter in England & Wales since 1743; coldest winter over an area from the lower Volga basin and Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf since 1745.
1965-6 Baltic Sea completely ice covered.
1968 Arctic sea ice half surrounded Iceland for the first time since 1888.
1968-73 Severest phase thus far of the prolonged drought in the Sahel, surpassing all 20thC experience.
1971-2 Coldest winter in more than 200 yrs in parts of European Russia and Turkey: River Tigris frozen over.
1972 Greatest heatwave in the long records for north Finland and northern Russia.
1973-4 Floods beyond all previous recorded experience stretching across the central Australian desert.
1974-5 Mildest winter in England since 1834.
1975-6 Great European drought produced the most severe soil moisture deficit that can be established in the London (Kew) records since 1698.
1975-6 Greatest heatwaves in the records for Denmark, Netherlands and England.
1976-7 Severest winter in the temperature records (which began in 1738) for the eastern United States.
1978-9 Severest winter and lowest temperature recorded in 200 yrs in parts of northern Europe, and perhaps in the Moscow region. Snowfalls also extreme in parts of northern Europe.
This shortened list omits most of the notable events reported in the southern hemisphere and other parts of the world where instrument records do not extend so far back. Cases affecting the intermediate seasons, the springs and autumns, have also been omitted.
These variations, perhaps more than any underlying trend to a warmer or colder climate, create difficulties for the planning age in which we live. They may be associated with the increased meridionality of the general wind circulation, the greater frequency of blocking, of stationary high and low pressure systems, giving prolonged northerly winds in one longitude and southerly winds in another longitude sector in middle latitudes.
Over both hemispheres there has been more blocking in these years… The most remarkable feature seems to be the an intensification of the cyclonic activity in high latitudes near 70-90N, all around the northern polar region. And this presumably has to do with the almost equally remarkable cooling of the Arctic since the 1950’s, which has meant an increase in the thermal gradient between high and middle latitudes.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/11646/
He then goes full Guardian !
Pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV to see signs of climate volatility sparking more weather disruption. From the mega-blaze that swept across Fort McMurray, Alberta to repeated flooding of Houston, scorching heat in India, perpetual drought from California to Australia, and a record year for global hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones in 2015, the symptoms of a warming ecosystem are becoming harder to dismiss or deny.
We already know that the so called mega blaze in Alberta is small from a historical perspective, has nothing to do with climate change and would have made little news if man had not built a city in the middle of the wilderness where such things happen all the time.
And what nonsense is this about drought?
There may have been a drought in California recently, one that is certainly not in any way unprecedented, but for the US as a whole, NOAA’s own figures show that droughts are much less common, or severe, in recent decades than they used to be in the past.
And Australia?
Not only are rainfall totals consistently higher than the past, but the percentage of land area in decile1, the driest category, is also sharply down. This indicates that the extra rainfall has been widespread, rather than simply extreme in just a few areas.
And Accumulated Cyclone Energy stats do not support the contention that global warming is making hurricanes worse.
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php#!prettyPhoto
Of course, weather and climate continually change. I have little doubt that in some places and at certain times extreme weather has increased, and no doubt too that in others the reverse is true.
What is sad about these pathetic little attempts to blame everything on global warming is that they stop us having a balanced and objective debate on the subject.
The real reason, however, for this story is revealed when Douglas tells us:
In my upcoming book I interview 11 veteran television meteorologists in the United States. All of them are witnessing symptoms of climate change in their hometowns.
The Web They Want: How a twitter wordsearch justifies internet censorship
Off Guardian | May 26, 2016
Earlier this year the Guardian launched their new campaign – “The Web We Want”. It’s an agenda driven campaign to suppress free speech and protect the ancien media regime from the alt-news revolution, in the name of protecting ethnic minorities, female writers and the LGBT community from the all the hate that pours out of the privileged fingertips of all the white men on the internet.
We have written extensively on what the Guardian really means by “the web they want”. We know their statistics are a farce and can see through their editorial double talk. Their place in a planned roll out of an idea is obvious, coinciding with political climbers from all parties making speeches attacking free speech in the name of freedom. Banning liberty because… won’t somebody please think of the children!
When the Guardian talks about “taking action” against internet abuse, we know what they mean. They mean censorship. There’s nothing more need be said. But this latest story cries out for a response.
Apparently by tracking the number of tweets that use the word “slut” or “whore” you can track the “huge scale” of social media misogyny. Yes, seriously:
The study monitored the use of the words “slut” and “whore” by UK Twitter users over three weeks from the end of April. It found that 6,500 individuals were targeted by 10,000 aggressive and misogynistic tweets in that period.
The study, conveniently published the day before Yvette Cooper launches her “Reclaim the Internet” movement, is rather vague on the details. We don’t know how they collected their data, or what their criteria for inclusion/exclusion were. Bearing that in mind we’re going to have to make some educated guesses: Since rough estimates put the number of twitter users in Britain at between 12 and 20 million people, 6,500 is roughly 1/2000th. You have, apparently, a 1/2000 chance of being “targeted” by a tweet using the word slut or whore. Personally, that is risk I am willing to take.
The study is not clear on how they select “aggressive” tweets, so we’ll have to assume they just collate all the tweets containing the word “slut” and/or “whore”. We don’t know how many of these uses are truly abusive – many may have been jokes – but it does not really matter.
Another interesting caveat:
… more than half of the offenders were women.
Yes. It seems women are the biggest misogynists of all. An interesting fact, buried in the article, made even more interesting with some context. Firstly, women make up considerably less than half of the twitter users in the UK. Less than half of the users, more than half the misogyny. Secondly, over 1/3 twitter users in Britain are between 15-24. With this context you can paint a rather more accurate picture – that the bulk of this “online misogyny” is made up of young women, aged 15-24, calling each other names (possibly in jest).
That this qualifies as a “study” at all is ludicrous, that the Guardian can try to peddle it as “shocking” is, frankly, laughable. The figures are meaningless.
Of course, this is the Guardian, so a poorly done, lazily explained statistical study must be followed by an editorial from whichever member of the Guardian’s insipid, pre-programmed writing staff happens to pull the day shift. In this instance it’s Polly Toynbee. “Why we need a feminist internet”, the headline declares, “feminist” in this instance meaning “controlled”.
She paints a picture of a dank, dark internet. A squalid, David Fincher-directed world, full of unwashed slug-like life-forms crawling over each other in an effort to spread slime and shit to every corner of the civilised world. She has nothing new to say. She repeats tired memes about free speech bullying “victims” into silence, about “trauma” and “safe spaces” and the “need to act.” She explains that women abusing each other on twitter is actually the fault of the Patriarchy, because female anger is all based on being unable to match the ideal woman presented in the media.
Like all Guardian editorials, you can discard the majority. It is designed to seed an idea, and can be reduced down to one key paragraph that pushes its agenda:
The internet has turned all discourse rougher, pushing politics and all views towards extremes. It can make individuals feel inadequate and vulnerable and let them lash out to express their own insecurities. As the Guardian’s the web we want project explores, it is in our hands to shape a civilising internet that serves us well, not one that tears civilisation apart.
There are important questions posed here: What does Toynbee mean by “our hands”? Who will this “reshaped” internet be “serving well”? What does “serves us well” mean? Does she really believe that teenaged name calling on twitter could “tear civilisation apart”? What does she really mean by “civilisation?”
To whom, or what, does a free internet REALLY pose a threat?
You’d be forgiven for reading “rougher” as slang for “more honest”, for reading “extreme” as “less controlled”. You might say the “individuals” it makes feel “inadequate”, are the workaday hacks who so consistently have their inaccurate agitprop ridiculed and corrected below the line.
With this paragraph you get the feeling of an organism protecting itself, like watching a pillbug curl in upon itself. The above is a plea for compliance. They want permission to enact a policy that leaves the definitions of “rough discourse” (see:honesty) and “civilisation” (see:establishment) open for interpretation. The repeated patterns and tired prose of the “web we want” sections have an increasing air of desperation. Again and again they wheel out the same faces to sell the same snake oil. Rather like the pillbug, it seems the Guardian’s last line of defense is to stick its head up its ass.
The True Anti-semites, Past and Present
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | May 3, 2016
We are desperately in need of some sanity as the British political and media establishment seek to generate yet another “new anti-semitism” crisis, on this occasion to undermine a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party before the upcoming local elections.
Corbyn and his supporters want to revive Labour as a party of social justice, while Britain’s elites hope that – in a period of unpopular austerity – they can turn the Labour leadership’s support for the Palestinians into its Achilles’ heel. This is nothing more than a class war to pave the way for a return of the Blairites to lead Labour.
Israel and its supporters in the UK are only too willing to help fuel the hysteria, given their own fears that a Corbyn-led government would be bad news for an Israel committed to destroying any hope of justice for the Palestinians.
I have analysed earlier efforts to foment panic about a “new anti-semitism”, including during the early years of the second intifada, when Israel’s popularity plummeted. As now, Israel tried to deflect attention from its increasingly clear abuses of Palestinians – and its lack of interest in peace-making – by suggesting that the problem lay with critics rather than its policies. You can see my articles about this here, here and here.
Then, the chief targets of the “new anti-semitism” smear were supposedly leftist elements in the media who were concealing their true goal – vilification of Jews – behind criticism of Israel. The campaign, despite being patent nonsense, was successful enough that it cowed the few critical voices in the media – and terrorised senior editors at the BBC into supine compliance with Israel’s narrative.
That’s why we should take this current campaign seriously and worry that Corbyn, who is already on the back foot, is in real danger of conferring credibility on this whole confected narrative of an “anti-semitism problem” in Labour simply by giving it house room. The only suitable response is derision.
We should be particularly wary of the wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Guardian’s Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Beaumont, for example, was set the task of bolstering absurd claims against Ken Livingstone for being an anti-semite after he stated – admittedly clumsily – a historical truth that for a period of time Hitler and the Zionist movement shared enough common ground that they held negotiations about transferring Jews to Palestine.
Livingstone said the following on radio:
When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.
There’s a lot of information about this out there – Lenni Brenner even wrote a book on the subject. Livingstone’s mistake was both to express himself slackly in the heat of the moment and to refer to a history that was supposed to have been disappeared down the memory hole. But what he is saying is, in essence, true.
He could have gone further, in fact. A century ago, many European anti-Semites, including most members of the British government that formulated the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to create a “national home” for Jews in Palestine, upheld the same logic as the Zionist movement. They saw the Jews as a race apart. They thought in terms of a “Jewish question”, one that needed solving. And for many, the solution was to export that “problem” far away, out of Europe.
This was not surprising because Zionism emerged both in reaction to Europe’s ugly ethnic nationalisms – where it was normal to speak of “races” – and mirrored these nationalisms’ failings. The Zionists wanted to claim for themselves the same traits as other European “races”: nationhood and territory. And the European anti-Semites were only too happy to oblige – especially if the primary victims were going to be brown people in the colonies, whether in Uganda or Palestine.
Fortunately, there is an antidote to Beaumont’s kind of stenographic journalism, apparently written up after an afternoon at Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, in the form of this interview with Norman Finkelstein. It is full of profound insights.
Finkelstein puts into perspective both Livingstone’s comments and the orginal “offending” Facebook post by Labour MP Naz Shah that triggered the latest hysteria. Finkelstein notes that the post (one dredged up from two years ago), which shows a map of the United States with Israel superimposed, and suggests resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict by relocating Israel to the US, was clearly intended to be humorous rather than anti-Semitic.
I would make a further point. It is also obvious that the true target of the post is the US, not Jews or even Israel – making the anti-Semitic claim even more ridiculous.
The post’s implicit argument is that, if the US government and ordinary Americans are really so committed to the creation of a safe haven for Israeli Jews, then would it not be far wiser to locate them inside the US rather than supporting at great expense a garrison state in the Middle East that will always be at war with its neighbours? This is classic satire, and the fact that almost no one in the British media and political establishment can see this – or, in the case of Corbyn and his allies, afford to admit it – is the real cause for concern.
In addition, Finkelstein concludes with a very powerful argument that the “new anti-Semitism” canard is likely – and possibly intended – to fuel the very anti-Semitism that it claims to be exposing and challenging.
Here is what Finkelstein says:
Our Corbyn is Bernie Sanders. In all the primaries in the US, Bernie has been sweeping the Arab and Muslim vote. It’s been a wondrous moment: the first Jewish presidential candidate in American history has forged a principled alliance with Arabs and Muslims. Meanwhile, what are the Blairite-Israel lobby creeps up to in the UK? They’re fanning the embers of hate and creating new discord between Jews and Muslims by going after Naz Shah, a Muslim woman who has attained public office. They’re making her pass through these rituals of public self-degradation, as she is forced to apologise once, twice, three times over for a tongue-in-cheek cartoon reposted from my website. And it’s not yet over! Because now they say she’s on a ‘journey’. Of course, what they mean is, ‘she’s on a journey of self-revelation, and epiphany, to understanding the inner antisemite at the core of her being’. But do you know on what journey she’s really on? She’s on a journey to becoming an antisemite. Because of these people; because they fill any sane, normal person with revulsion.
Here is this Muslim woman MP who is trying to integrate Muslims into British political life, and to set by her own person an example both to British society at large and to the Muslim community writ small. She is, by all accounts from her constituents, a respected and honourable person. You can only imagine how proud her parents, her siblings, must be. How proud the Muslim community must be. We’re always told how Muslim women are oppressed, repressed and depressed, and now you have this Muslim woman who has attained office. But now she’s being crucified, her career wrecked, her life ruined, her future in tatters, branded an ‘antisemite’ and a closet Nazi, and inflicted with these rituals of self-abasement. It’s not hard to imagine what her Muslim constituents must think now about Jews. These power hungry creeps are creating new hate by their petty machinations.
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Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: Leave No Palestinian or Arab Alive
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017
Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”
There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”
You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue
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