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ProPublica Exposed: A Pseudo Alternative with $26 Million Dollars in Secret Mega-Donors Funding

By Sibel Edmonds | Boiling Frogs | September 8, 2013

On September 7, 2013, the daring website, Cryptome, published and publicized the tax reports filed by one of the dime-a-dozen pseudo alternative online publications-ProPublica. The stunning IRS 990 forms filed by this new flashy tax-exempt online news organization expose a secretive operation funded by millions of dollars received from secret entities:

ProPublica Tax Report for 2011 lists $10,000,000 (Ten Million Dollars) private funding from Anonymous (Secret) Donors: Click Here

ProPublica Tax Report for 2010 lists $10,000,000 (Ten Million Dollars) private funding from Anonymous (Secret) Donors: Click Here

ProPublica Tax Report for 2009 lists $ 6,000,000 (Six Millions Dollars) private funding from Anonymous (Secret) Donors: Click Here

That is correct. ProPublica, in the first three years of its existence and operation, has received $26,000,000 (26 Million Dollars) funding from secret donors.

The tax-exempt, 501 (C) (3) NGO was established and began operation in June 2008. When you look at the established date of their operation, and their first 990 tax form filed in 2009, you see that, right from the start, before even establishing any track record, their founders-operators were able to collect $6,000,000.

Well, if you look at ProPublica’s founders and operators the above facts will start making sense:

  • ProPublica was founded by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal
  • Propublica is managed and led by Stephen Engelberg, the former investigative editor of The New York Times
  • Propublica is run and directed by Richard Tofel, the former assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal

Let’s sum it up: Three individuals, major participants and players from the US mainstream media, from entities long known as intimate propaganda arms of the US government, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, got together and said: The alternative media is taking off with the public, so let’s set up shop and pose as one. After all, the establishment is smart enough to not put all its eggs in one basket-in this case, the mainstream outlet.

With their established record as mainstream players who understood the importance of government-imposed propaganda and the role of controlled opposition fronts, the trio set up shop with window-dressing that distorted them and made them look like a Watch-Dog Independent Alternative media outlet – in a posh office with an Uber Expensive Manhattan address.

Right from the start, with the government and the establishment’s backing they positioned them in the forefront as a major player by: 1-quickly securing $6,000,000 upfront seed money from secret donors; 2-smoothly establishing  their shop-business as a tax-exempt 501 (C) (3) NGO with the US government

Isn’t it amazing how a supposedly alternative watchdog that is supposedly working to expose dark secret deals for greater transparency and public awareness happens to be a mega-funded business with secret mega-donors?!

I tried my best to comb through their site, hoping to get a glimpse of these generous funders who have given ProPublica $26,000,000. But, no such luck. If I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on the same-o-same-o mega corporate foundations- the 1%: Soros, Rockefellers, Carnegie, Ford … You know who we’re looking at and talking about here, no?

I would say that even more appalling than having $26,000,000 from secret donors is the fact that ProPublica wants much more: They want uninformed and gullible individuals, our average hard-working Janes & Johns, to dish out donations and recurring subscriptions, and enrich the already very rich operators of this so-called alternative business. How bold and daring of ProPublica !

Think about it, during these tough economic times, while even the mainstream is struggling to make ends meet (despite backing from billionaires, government and corporate advertisers), ProPublica has received $26, 000,000 and more from its secret admirers within the mega-billionaire circle. Why? Since when do the Uber Corporate players and their foundations have a desire for transparency-seeking and Pro-Public media sources? Obviously, they don’t want any transparency when it comes to their money and where their mega-dollars go. Otherwise, why remain so very anonymous and secret? Right?

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Aletho News adds that ProPublica seems to have a thing about Iran and Hezbollah:

Salting “public interest” news and commentary with warmongering pieces furthering Israel’s aggressive aims deserves exposure and LobeLog has done just that. In July, Jim Lobe deconstructed the ProPublica piece, The Terror Threat and Iran’s Inroads in Latin America. His take on ProPublica’s smear Iran pieces:

What virtually all of them have in common is the heavy reliance on anonymous intelligence sources; a mixture of limited original reporting combined with lots of recycled news; a proclivity for citing highly ideological, often staunchly hawkish neoconservative “experts” on Middle East issues from such think tanks as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) without identifying them as such; a surprising deference (considering his status as an investigative reporter) toward “official” accounts or reports by friendly security agencies, some of which work very closely with their Israeli counterpart…

Lobe’s article, ProPublica and the Fear Campaign Against Iran is worth reading in its entirety.

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BFP Update #1

In less than an hour after our report on ProPublica tax forms, their $26 Million-dollar budget and untraceable (at least not easily traceable) corporates and foundations funders, we received a threatening e-mail from their  President Richard Tofel asking us to retract since somewhere, out there, they have a list of some of their major donors. They sure made that info hard to find!

Now we have more documents, including the list of some of their major donors and a more exact dollar number for their operating budget. We are more than happy to release these documents and the links. You know what: This information proves every single point we made in our report and more! Here we go:

1- We had listed ProPublica’s funding at $26,000,000. Well, it happens to be much higher than that: ProPublica, during their first four years, received $37,000,000 in funding. They received $11,000,000 in 2012, and that brings the total for their four years in operation to $37,000,000 Million: Click Here

2- They have listed some of their big foundations- make that corporate-foundations, under a vague ‘Supporters’ page. Well, again, I was right: Ford, Soros, Rockefeller and Carnegie are there, but there are more …Hewlett Foundation, Lisa & Douglas Goldman Fund , Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge … and check this, even NBC4New York!! To read the list filled with mega billionaires and millionaires check out ProPublica’s list of Sugar Daddies here

Let me give you a couple of examples: Sandler Foundation gave ProPublica $4,000,000 in 2012, and Knight Foundation gave them $2,000,000 only in 2012 (for one year). Check them out here

3-ProPublica also lists its partners. Ladies and gentleman if we had to summarize the list it would read: The Entire US Mainstream Media. ProPublica partners list include: CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, NPR, CNBC, Fortune, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New York Times, NewsWeek … Basically, the entire charlatan and propaganda machine called the US Mainstream Media. Not only that, they are also partner with Amazon! Please help yourself to this truly stinky list of ProPublica partners: Click Here

All right. I now have provided you with additional information related to ProPublica funding and partners, as I promised Mr. Tofel. And with all this, what have we got? Let’s recap:

An almost brand new business posing as a nonprofit alternative online publication received $37,000,000 since its operation began 4 years ago. This hefty $37,000,000 comes from all the nasty corporate moguls such as Rockefellers, George Soros, Ford, Carnegie Family, Hewlett Packard, Goldman, and  the like. ProPublica is also proud to announce the entire dirty despicable US mainstream media, outlets such as CNN, NBC, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, as its dear partners in its operations.

Now, I invite you to find one qualification here, whether in funding, or the background of its operators, or its partners, that makes this phony an Independent Alternative Media with only the public interest in mind. When ProPublica says, alternative, ask them exactly alternative to what?!

BFP Update #2

Today, after spending hours analyzing ProPublica’s tax forms, which list their enterprise’s expenses for 2012 (Click Here ), we have more shocking items to report. For this report we are concentrating mainly on the incredibly extravagant salaries listed for this newly created NGO enterprise, since the level of money they receive would even raise the eyebrows of the highest paid reporters-managers in mainstream media publications.

The average salary earned by Presidents-CFOs/CEOs within the NGO industry is $97,000 a year

The President and Editor in Chief for ProPublica, Paul E. Steiger (Position in 2012), made $570,000 + $14,914 = $584,914

The 2012 average salary for managing editors for major publications is $65,000

The Managing Editor for ProPublica, Stephen Engelberg, made $360,000 + $31, 758 = $391,758

The average salary for NGO general managers is around $60,000 a year

The General Manger for ProPublica (Position in 2012), Richard Tofel, made $335,000 + $28,600 = $363,600

The average salary for Vice President (VP) positions within the NGO community is $70,000

The average salary for editors for major publications in New York is $61,000

The Editor for ProPublica, Mark Schoofs, made $184,000 + $7918 = $191,918

The 2012 average salary for reporters in major publications in New York is around $67,000

A Senior Reporter for ProPublica (Position in 2012), Jesse Eisinger, made $218,500 + $29,682 = $248,182

Another Senior Reporter, for ProPublica, Dafna Linzer, made $212,000 + $18,534 = $230,534

Another ProPublica Senior Reporter, Charles Ornstein, made $192,500 + $$25,984 = $218,484

And yet another Propublica Senior Reporter, Tracy Weber, made $192,500 + $20,270 = $212,770

The last we heard (and read) journalists were crying out loud on the issue of shrinking and even disappearing already-meager salaries.  Well, the industry’s report on average salaries justifies them, since even within the major publications in New York many senior reporters are collecting less than $60,000. What do you know! They should be lining up for jobs with the NGO online publications!! ProPublica reporters are making quarter million dollars annual salaries and benefits ($248,000).

Same with managers and mid-level editors. The private publication business industry seems nothing compared to some start-up NGOs. Look, the general managers and mid-level VPs at ProPublica are raking hundreds of thousands of dollars ($363,600 & $260,135).

And check out the Wall Street man who had the nose to smell where the real money was going to come from: Mr. Paul E. Steiger with $584,914. And whoever said you can’t make millions of dollars within a couple of years using NGO models and dirty sugar daddies has been proven wrong!

September 8, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Mainstream Media in America and Britain Repeat the Same Mistakes in Covering Iran That They Made on Iraq

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Going to Tehran | May 13, 2013

In an excellent report released last month, the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) offered a thoroughly documented—and devastating—critique of mainstream media coverage of the Iranian nuclear issue.  Authored by Jonas Siegel and Saranaz Barforoush, Media Coverage of Iran’s Nuclear Program:  An Analysis of U.S. and U.K. Coverage, 2009-2012, see here, reviews coverage of Iran’s nuclear activities and the international controversy surrounding those activities in six major English-language newspapers:  the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Independent.

To quote from the report’s executive summary (with emphasis added), the authors found that

“–Newspaper coverage focused on the ‘he said/she said’ aspects of the policy debate, without adequately explaining the fundamental issues that should have been informing assessments—such as Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions, the influence of U.S., European, Iranian, and Israeli security strategies, and the impact of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

–When newspaper coverage did address Iranian nuclear intentions and capabilities, it did so in a manner that lacked precision, was inconsistent over time, and failed to provide adequate sourcing and context for claims.  This led to an inaccurate picture of the choices facing policy makers.

–Government officials, particularly U.S. government officials, were the most frequently quoted or relied-on sources in coverage of Iran’s nuclear program.  This tendency focused attention on a narrow set of policy options and deemphasized other potential approaches to the dispute.

–Newspaper coverage generally adopted the tendency of U.S., European, and Israeli officials to place on Iran the burden to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, failing to acknowledge the roles of these other countries in the dispute…

–Coverage of Iran’s nuclear program reflected and reinforced the negative sentiments about Iran that are broadly shared by U.S., European, and Israeli publics.  This contributed to misunderstandings about the interests involved and narrowed the range of acceptable outcomes.

In general, these characteristics led newspapers to frame their coverage of Iran’s nuclear program in a manner that emphasized official narratives of the dispute and a relatively narrow range of policy choices available to officials.  By not consistently describing the complex web of international relationships, security concerns, and intervening political factors in sufficient detail, newspaper coverage further privileged official narratives and policy preferences.  This makes it likely that the policies enacted and under consideration by policy makers—coercive diplomacy and war—remain the most likely outcome of the dispute.  In this way, news coverage of Iran’s nuclear program is reminiscent of news coverage of the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  News coverage has the potential to play a significant, constructive role in finding a lasting resolution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, but journalists and editors first need to address the tendencies present in their current coverage of the topic.”

We encourage all to read and ponder, hard, this important new report.

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May 14, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Argentina vs. the Vultures: What You Need to Know

By Arthur Phillips and Jake Johnston | cepr Americas Blog | April 2, 2013

Just ahead of the midnight deadline set out by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel, Argentina’s government submitted a letter (view document here) describing how it would go about paying holders of defaulted bonds. The payments would be for creditors who refused to take part in two previous debt exchanges, including the so-called “vulture fund” plaintiffs in this ongoing case, NML Capital, Ltd. V. Republic of Argentina.

Following the letter’s submission, a number of financial analysts quoted in the major media were unimpressed by Argentina’s latest move. The Wall Street Journal noted that one portfolio manager said “There was some hope they would have a more rational approach to this exercise, but that’s definitely not the Argentina way.” Financial analyst Josh Rosner predicted to an AP reporter that “Monday morning is going to be a disaster.” He also asked, “What if somebody took that new bond, and the Argentine government defaulted the next day?” Rosner may have momentarily forgotten that the South American government has made timely payments on all the bonds issued in the 2005 and 2010 settlements. The gist of the response in the media was “more shenanigans from Argentina.”

But what was lost in most reactions in the media is that Argentina has made significant concessions to creditors that until recently it had vowed, on principle, not to offer. (The plaintiffs, for their part, have shown no willingness to compromise.) Furthermore, the terms offered to NML would represent a sizeable return on the fund’s original investments in 2008 and would satisfy the requirement under the pari passu clause—which is at the heart of the case— that all bondholders are treated equally. Indeed, to offer a sweeter deal would appear to violate that clause at the expense of bondholders who took part in the 2005 and 2010 exchanges and accepted restructured bonds worth between 25 and 29 cents on the dollar.

With this in mind, the offer that Argentina presented on Friday followed the terms of the 2010 exchange. Plaintiffs could choose between “Par” and “Discount” options. The former would be worth the face value of the original bonds and would pay interest rates rising from 2.5 percent to 5.25 percent until they came due in 2038. Plaintiffs would also receive an immediate payment of interest past due since 2003, the same period offered to participants in the 2010 exchange, and would receive “GDP units” that would pay them whenever Argentina’s GDP growth exceeds 3 percent per year. The “Par” option, meant for small-holders of Argentina bonds, is limited to $50,000 per series of bonds.

The second option offers discounted bonds, meant for the larger institutional investors, with interest rates of 8.25 percent, part of which would be added to the principal (and therefore accrues a greater total payout). Plaintiffs would also receive an upfront payment of past due interest, but at a higher (8.75 percent) rate than under the Par option, and GDP Units for when the economy grows beyond 3 percent.

As Argentina argues in its letter, the proposal “provides for a fair return going forward, and also gives an upside in the form of annual payments if Argentina’s economy grows.” This worked out for those who took part in previous exchanges, as the Argentine economy grew by 94 percent in real terms in the 10 years after default. Argentina goes on to make the argument that the plaintiffs cannot use the equal treatment clause—the case’s linchpin—to “compel payment on terms better than those received by the vast majority of creditors who experienced precisely the same default as plaintiffs, and whose restructured debt obligations arose out of, and served as consideration for the surrender of, the very same defaulted debt held by plaintiffs.”

In its letter to the court, Argentina provides a breakdown of what it is offering to “vulture funds” versus what the payment formula from the original district court decision, of which the current proceedings are an appeal, would imply. The results can be seen in the following table.

Argentina 3

The key point here is that the lead plaintiff, NML Capital, as well as the other “vulture funds,” bought most of this debt for just cents on the dollar after Argentina’s default. NML purchased the majority of their holdings from June-November 2008, paying an estimated $48.7 million for over $220 million in defaulted bonds, a price of just over 20 cents on the dollar. The Argentine offer, far from forcing NML to take a loss, would imply a 148 percent aggregate return in terms of current market value, and would become more valuable over time. This compares to the payment formula proposed by the district court, which would imply a 1,380 percent return for NML.

Despite what many reporters have written, Argentina—not the district court or NML Capital—appears to enjoy broad support in this case and on this particular legal matter. The list of institutions that have explicitly disagreed with the court’s ruling is formidable: the Bank of New York Mellon, the American Bankers Association, and the U.S. government, for starters. Given Washington’s recent relationship with Buenos Aires, it is striking to see the government so strenuously argue Argentina’s case, as it did in an amicus brief: “the district court’s interpretation of the pari passu provision could enable a single creditor to thwart the implementation of an internationally supported restructuring plan, and thereby undermine the decades of effort the United States has expended to encourage a system of cooperative resolution of sovereign debt crises.” It is even more striking given the expensive lobbying campaign on behalf of the “vulture funds.”

Argentina’s offer has fueled speculation among financial analysts that Argentina “is now much more likely” to default, as they do not expect the court to accept the offer. Yet unlike most cases of default, where a government either cannot or will not pay, a default for Argentina this time would be because the district court bars the government from making payments to bondholders who took part in previous exchanges. Argentine Vice President Amado Boudou stated over the weekend that “it would be a judicial absurdity to block payments by a country that has the capacity and willingness to pay.” He added, “one way or another, Argentina will pay.” If the court rules against Argentina and prevents the U.S.-based financial institution that makes payments on behalf of the government from paying bondholders, Argentina could use a different financial institution outside the jurisdiction of the New York courts to continue making payments.

What the case really boils down to, and what is often missing from discussions about NML or the court’s ruling, is that the court is siding with the vulture funds in a case in which they have no legitimate claim.  The Argentine debt restructuring was not a choice—the government could not pay its debts after the economic collapse of 1998-2002. As a result, an agreement was reached between the creditors and the government.  Of course, the debt in question is also arguably illegitimate—racked up by a military dictatorship working with international financiers, along with an economic collapse for which the international community, represented by the IMF, had a major responsibility.  But even aside from these questions of legitimacy of the original debt, to give in to the vulture funds’ claim would be to deny the validity of any sovereign debt restructuring, for the enrichment of a few hedge fund managers. This is something that the world cannot afford, and it is indefensible.  As the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of civil society and faith-based organizations, said in a statement responding to Argentina’s recent letter, “the behavior of these vulture funds is morally bankrupt.”

April 3, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vast New Spying Program Was Started in Secret on a Bogus Pretext

By Chris Calabrese | ACLU | December 13, 2012

The Wall Street Journal today published (alternate link) an in-depth review of a new, relatively unknown program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Although we have been warning about the dangers of the program for months, and I testified before Congress about the issue in July, the Journal’s story conveys how controversial the program was even inside the government. It also describes the broad scope of new authority the government is granting itself.

As the Journal reports, under new guidelines issued by the Attorney General back in March,

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

The program is striking in so many ways. Innocent people can be investigated and their data kept for years. It can be shared with foreign governments. All of this in service of not just terrorism investigations but also investigations of future crimes. In effect, the U.S. government is using information it gathers for its ordinary business to turn its own citizens into the subjects of terrorism investigations.

Meanwhile, all of this is supposed to be against the law. The Privacy Act of 1974 says that information collected by the federal government for one purpose is not supposed to be used for another. However, agencies are attempting to circumvent these rules by publishing boilerplate notices in the Federal Register. Sadly, that practice has become far too common.

Government officials who have a firsthand look at how the program works are stunned by it:

“It’s breathtaking” in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

And from Mary Ellen Callahan, then the Chief Privacy Officer at the Department of Homeland Security:

the rules would constitute a “sea change” because, whenever citizens interact with the government, the first question asked will be, are they a terrorist?

Worse, all of this happened in secret, approved by National Security Advisor John Brennan and signed off on by Attorney General Eric Holder. No public debate or comment and suddenly, every citizen can be put under the terrorism microscope.

Ironically, all of these changes to the rules came in response to an attempted attack that had nothing to do with information collection or a U.S. citizen. The government cites the attempted 2009 Christmas bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as the impetus for the changes. However, as the Journal story makes clear, Abdulmutallab wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and collecting information on him wasn’t a problem. Instead, his own father had identified him to the U.S. government as a potential terrorist. In short, an attack by a known foreign terror suspect was used to justify changes to rules about collecting information on U.S. citizens.

Finally, credit must be given to those who fought the program. It’s clear that DHS, especially the Privacy Officer, Mary Ellen Callahan, and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties pushed back hard against this. Nancy Libin, the chief privacy officer at the Department of Justice, also expressed serious reservations and fought an internal battle against the changes. It’s probably not a surprise that none of them are still in government.

If you want to learn more here is a simple guide to the main changes created by the 2012 NCTC guidelines. And here are the Freedom of Information Act documents that we have gathered on NCTC—we will post more as we receive additional records.

December 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Western press distorts Venezuela

By Aaron Benedek | Green Left | October 14, 2012

“Venezuela Elections ‘Free, But Not Fair’”, was Germany’s Spiegel Online headline on a piece about Venezuela’s October 7 presidential poll, won by socialist President Hugo Chavez by more than 55% of the vote. “Chavismo wins, Venezuela loses”, was The Wall Street Journal’s take.

Compared with such headlines, the Sydney Morning Herald’s reprint of a New York Times article “Socialist Chavez hangs onto Power in Venezuela” by William Neuman might seem a reasonably balanced report. It is not.

Note that politicians in Australia or the US get re-elected, but if you’re a socialist in Latin America you “hold onto power”.

Then there is the article’s very first clause, where we learn that Chavez is a “fiery foe of Washington”. Although no doubt a badge of honour for many, this language still paints Chavez as impassioned rather than considered.

This, along with the article’s other main Chavez descriptor of “polarising”,  conveys an image of him being unreasonably confrontational and divisive in a way that the also accurate “a democratic leader who has withstood Washington orchestrated violence and sabotage” does not.

And then there is the assumption that the first thing to mention in an article about a Venezuelan election is Washington. The pitfalls of your reportage coming from the New York Times perhaps.

The article does convey a sense of joy on the street following Chavez’s re-election, but it’s always “his … revolution”, “his version of socialism”.

That a large section of the population feel some kind of ownership over the process of social transformation in Venezuela is never acknowledged. The Venezuelan people have agency in Neuman’s writing only if they’re part of the opposition.

Moreover, in selecting quotes and comments about Chavez “reigning forever”, “guns being fired into the air” and Chavez being a “former soldier”, some sense of violence and dictatorship is still conveyed. This comes straight after Chavez and his supporters once again peacefully won what in any other Western country would be referred to as a landslide electoral victory.

By contrast, we are informed of the opposition’s “democratic temperament” via the one full quote the re-elected president is afforded in the article.

What about a quote interpreting the election result and the future for Venezuela? Well there is one, just not from Chavez. It’s from Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate who was resoundingly defeated.

After the election, we’re told Chavez is “ailing and politically weakened”, despite being re-elected for a fourth presidential term by 11 percentage points and holding a majority in the National Assembly.

It is said the opposition “raised the possibility that an upset victory was within reach”. To what extent the opposition relied on reprints of biased NYT articles about Venezuela to raise this sense of “possibility” is difficult to quantify.

Chavez, we’re told, will now move forward “even more aggressively … although his pledges were short on specifics”. For Neuman, the specifics detailed in the million or so copies of the 39-page plan for deepening popular participation and human-centred development over the next six years that were distributed for mass discussion, amendment and ratification by the Venezuelan National Assembly early next year do not count.

And how specific was the opposition’s plan? Capriles’ pledge to maintain the Chavez government’s social programs ― the same ones the opposition have violently opposed for a decade, but now pledge to improve.

We are informed, as always, that Chavez’s “health is a question mark”. Maybe he is going to die soon! And maybe the mainstream media will start showing some human decency and ease up on the celebrations when an elected leader gets cancer, but I would not hold my breath for either.

“Facing pressure from Mr Capriles,” Neuman says, “[Chavez] pledged to … pay more attention to the quality of government programs such as education.”

In reality, the popularity of the government’s social programs is such that Capriles had to publicly say the opposition was in favour of them, but leaked opposition documents revealed his plan to dismantle them.

Capriles had to pitch himself as a leftist and the opposition was forced to accept the election results due to the painstaking efforts to institute a transparent electoral system with unprecedented international supervision. But we are told it was Capriles who pressured Chavez.

And better still, the same opposition that denigrated the literacy and other mass education campaigns of the past decade is said to have forced the government “to pay attention to quality education”.

We are told Chavez spent much of the year insulting “Capriles and his followers” as “squalid good-for-nothings, little Yankees and fascists”. Left out is the  opposition’s regular jibes about Chavez’s  African facial features, his “common” way of speaking or his hilarious cancer-induced baldness.

And anyway, was it really the “Yankee and fascist” credentials of the opposition (that is, organising a fascist coup and getting funding from Washington) that “represented nearly half the electorate” as Neuman claimed? Or did those that voted for Capriles do so for a range of other reasons, not least among them that the private media sold him as a progressive left-wing candidate?

At any rate, Chavez’s insults, we’re told, “seemed to lose their sting” as the campaign went on (he can’t even insult effectively!) under the weight of the opposition’s growing “momentum”. The Chavez campaign filling Caracas’s seven major avenues with almost certainly the largest demonstration in Venezuela’s history three days before the vote clearly does not constitute momentum worth mentioning for Neuman.

Through selection of evidence, biased language, omission, and unsubstantiated claims, Neuman paints a false picture ― and this is an article that, by comparison with other Western media coverage, is relatively generous towards the Bolivarian process that has halved poverty in Venezuela.

Serious journalism regarding Venezuela requires covering the significant social achievements of the revolution and an informed discussion of its many shortcomings. Unfortunately, if Neuman’s article is anything to go by, the liberal corporate media will not provide you with either.

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October 16, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuela Election Polls by “Respected” Consultores 21 Unreliable

By Erik Sperling | Venezuelanalysis | October 3rd 2012

With the Venezuelan presidential elections looming this Sunday, the U.S. press is dedicating increasing attention to the campaign between Hugo Chavez and opposition challenger Henrique Capriles. While nearly all polling companies, including the opposition-aligned Datanalisis, give double-digit leads for Chavez, many news organizations continue to give the impression that the race is a toss-up. Countless news agencies have focused heavily on polls conducted by Consultores 21, whose latest poll shows Capriles ahead 49.9 percent to 45.7 percent, to demonstrate that the contest is neck-and-neck.

Consultores 21 is “respected,” “reputable,” and “well-regarded,” according to the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, and Washington Post, respectively. Capriles himself has said “personally, I believe in Consultores. I’ve been looking at Consultores’ polls for many years.”

In a meeting with U.S. election monitors on Monday, influential opposition media figure Teodoro Petkoff said that Consultores is one of the only “serious” pollsters in Venezuela today (discounting Datanalisis as corrupt). It is entirely unclear how they come to this conclusion, however, as Consultores has an extremely poor record in previous Venezuelan electoral contests. For example: In the 2004 vote to recall Chavez mid-term, Consultores predicted a tie between those wanting Chavez to finish his term and those voting to recall. But the recall vote failed with Chavez garnering 60 percent of the vote.

In the 2006 presidential election between Chavez and opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, Consultores maintained that Chavez had just a 13% lead over his opponent. Chavez won that contest with a nearly 26 percent margin over Rosales (62.8% to 36.9%).

In the 2009 constitutional referendum to remove term limits for president, Consultores polls a month beforehand showed just 41.8 backing the referendum, with 56.20 opposed. The referendum passed with a 54 percent majority–almost a polar opposite result from the one predicted by Consultores.

Grave errors such as these by a polling company should have been more than enough to put them out of business. The continued existence of Consultores 21, despite their consistent lack of any semblance of accuracy, demonstrates its purpose as a mere campaign tool for opponents of Chavez. News organizations should be able to uncover and identify this type of blatant bias, and now must take steps to correct their misrepresentation of the status of the Venezuelan presidential election.

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October 4, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | 5 Comments

Operation on Syria Successful, but the Patient Died

By Philip Giraldi • The American Conservative • July 16, 2012

Reuel Marc Gerecht, the Wall Street Journal’s always available advocate of “let us reason together before we bomb Iran,” is now urging an immediate US surrogate attack on Syria by “unleashing the CIA.”  Gerecht, a former CIA officer who served in Istanbul and Paris, once described the Agency disparagingly as a mixture of Monty Python and Big Brother, so it is particularly ironic that now he wants to go about unleashing it.  He apparently hopes that the Big Brother component will prevail because Monty Python would no doubt prefer to execute a silly walk.

Gerecht, who currently perches at the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, argues that unless there is a “muscular CIA operation” to arm the rebels with “paralyzing weaponry” and other support that would provide them with a military advantage there will be between 200,000 and 4.5 million deaths in Syria.  The numbers appear to be plucked out of the ethosphere and it should also be noted that Gerecht’s knowledge of paralyzing weapons and their deployment is limited as he never served in the US military.

The call for a humanitarian intervention in Syria comes oddly from Gerecht, who has never hesitated to call for the killing of any Iranian civilians who might get in the way of a US/Israeli assault, using inter alia the argument that Iranians have “terrorism in their DNA.”  It also ignores the dismal record of various US interventions over the past fifty years and conveniently avoids the subject of blowback.  The operation would be eerily reminiscent of the support for insurgents in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, an initiative that drove the Russians out to be sure, but also produced chaos in Afghanistan and created al-Qaeda.  The situation in Syria is somewhat similar, at least in terms of potential downside, as Assad’s departure would create a power vacuum and no one really knows who the rebels are and what they represent.

But perhaps Gerecht is not really thinking about what is good for Syria and the Syrian people at all.  He is a former employee of Doug Feith’s Pentagon Office of Special Plans that produced the disastrous war against Iraq and is also a close friend and associate of Richard Perle, who, together with Feith, drafted the 1996 proposal “A Clean Break”, which recommended specific policies to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  “A Clean Break” endorsed encouraging Arab states hostile to Israel to splinter along tribal and ethnic lines, similar to what has been happening in Iraq.  What could be better than replacing a unified and hostile Syria with a chaotic civil war in which Alawites, Sunnis, and Shia are at each others’ throats while the Christian minority frantically looks for a way out?  The Washington based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), apparently agrees, noting that the disruption caused by the Arab Spring has actually been good for Israel in strategic terms.

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July 17, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When the Respectable Become Extremists The Extremists Become Respectable: Colombia and the Mainstream Media

By James Petras :: 05.20.2012

Introduction: By any historical measure, whether it involves international law, human rights conventions, United Nations protocols, socio-economic indicators, the policies and practices of the United States and European Union regimes can be characterized as extremist. By that we mean that their policies and practices result in large scale long-term systematic destruction of human lives, habitat and likelihood affecting millions of people through the direct application of force and violence. The extremist regimes abhor moderation which implies rejection of total wars in favor of peaceful negotiations. Moderation pursues conflict resolution through diplomacy and compromise and the rejection of state and paramilitary terror, mass dispossession and displacement of civilian populations and the systematic assault on popular sectors of civil society.

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed the West’s embrace of extremism in all of its manifestation both in domestic and foreign policy. Extremism is a common practice by self-styled conservatives, liberals and social-democrats. In the past, conservative implies preserving the status quo and at most tinkering with change at the margins. Today’s ‘conservatives’ demand the wholesale dismantling of entire social welfare systems, the elimination of traditional legal restraints on labor and environmental abuses. Liberals and social democrats who in the past, occasionally, questioned colonial systems have been in the forefront of prolonged multiple colonial wars which have killed and displaced millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

Extremism both in terms of methods, means and goals has obliterated the distinctions between center left, center and rightwing politicians. Moderate opponents to policies subsidizing a dozen major banks and impoverishing tens of millions of workers are called the “hard left”, “extremists” or “radicals”.

In the wake of the extremist policies of public officials, the respectable, prestigious print media have engaged in their own versions of extremism [1]. Colonial wars that devastate civil society and materially and culturally impoverish millions in the colonized country are justified, embellished and made to appear as lawful, humane and furthering secular democratic values. Domestic wars on behalf of oligarchies and against wage and salaried workers, which concentrate wealth and deepen despair of the dispossessed are described as rational, virtuous and necessary. The distinctions between the prudent, balanced, prestigious and serious media and the sensationalist, yellow press have disappeared. The fabrication of facts, blatant omissions and distortions of context are found in one as well as the other.

To illustrate the reign of extremism in officialdom and among the prestigious press, we will examine two case studies: US policies toward and the Financial Times and New York Times reportage on Colombia and Honduras.

Colombia: The “Oldest Democracy in Latin America” versus “the Death squad Capital of the World”

Following on the heels of euphoric eulogies of Colombia’s emergence as a poster boy in an April issue of Time, and in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, the Financial Times ran a series of articles including a special insert on Colombia’s political and economic “miracle”, “Investing in Colombia” [2]. According to the FTs leading Latin American journalist, one John Paul Rathbone, Colombia is the “oldest democracy in the hemisphere” [3]. Rathbone’s rapture for Colombia’s President Santos extends from his role as an “emerging power broker” for the South American continent, to making Colombia safe for foreign investors and “exciting the envy” of other less successful regimes in the region. Rathbone gives prominence to one Colombia business leader who claims that Colombia’s second biggest city “Medellín is living through its best of times” [4]. In line with the opinion of the foreign and business elite, the respectable print media describe Colombia as prosperous, peaceful, business friendly-charging the lowest mining royalty payments in the hemisphere – a model of a stable democracy to be emulated by all forward-looking leaders. Colombia under President Santos, has signed a free trade agreement with President Obama, his closest ally in the hemisphere [5]. Under Bush the trade unions, human rights and church groups and the majority of Congressional Democrats were successful in blocking the agreement on the basis of Colombia’s sustained human rights violations. When Obama embraced the free trade agreement, the AFL-CIO and Democratic opposition evaporated, as President Obama claimed a vast improvement in human rights and the commitment of Santos to ending the murder of trade union leaders and activists [6].

The peace, security and prosperity eulogized by the oil, mining, banking, and agro-business elite are based on the worst human rights record in Latin America. With regard to the murder of trade unionists Colombia exceeds the entire rest of the world. Between 1986-2011 over 60% of the trade unionists assassinated in the world took place in Colombia, by the combined military-police-paramilitary forces, largely at the behest of foreign and domestic corporate leaders [7]. The “peace” that Rathbone and his cohort at the Financial Times praise is at the cost of over 12,000 assassinations and arrests, injuries, disappearances of trade unionists between January 1, 1986 and October 1, 2010 [8]. In that time span nearly 3,000 trade union leaders and activists were murdered, hundreds were kidnapped or disappeared. President Santos was the Defense Minister under previous President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). In those eight years, 762 trade union leaders and activists were murdered, over 95% by the state or allied paramilitary forces [9].

Under Presidents Uribe Santos 2002 – 2012 over 4 million peasants and rural householders were displaced and dispossessed of their homes and their lands were confiscated and taken over by landlords and narco- traffickers [10]. The terror tactics employed by the regimes counter-insurgency strategy served a dual purpose of repressing dissent and accumulating wealth. The Financial Times journalists ignore this chapter in Colombia’s “resurgent growth”. They are especially enthused by the “security” that ensued because large scale foreign investment, over $6 billion dollars, in 2012 flowed into mining and oil regions that were formerly “troubled” by unrest [11].

Leading drug lords, who were closely linked to the Uribe-Santos regime, and were subsequently jailed and extradited to the US have testified that they financed and elected one-third of the Congress people affiliated with Uribe-Santos party in what Rathbone refers to as Latin America’s “oldest democracy”. According to Salvatore Mancuso, ex-chief of the former 30,000 member United Self-Defense of Colombia paramilitary death squad, he met with then, President Uribe, in different regions of the country and gave him money and logistical support in his re-election campaign of 2006. He also affirmed that many national and multi-national corporations (MNC) financed the growth and expansion of the paramilitary death squads. What Rathbone and his fellow journalists at the FT celebrate as Colombia’s emergence as an investor’s paradise is writ large with the blood and gore of thousands of Colombian peasants, trade unionists and human rights activists. The gory history of the Uribe/Santos reign of terror has been completely omitted from the current account of Colombia’s “success story”. Detailed records of the brutality of the killings and torture by Uribe/Santos sponsored death squads, which describe the use of chain saws to cut limbs from peasants suspected of leftist sympathies, are available to any journalist willing to consult Colombia’s leading human rights organizations [12].

The death squads and military act in concert. The military is trained by by over one thousand US Special Forces advisers. They arrive in a village in a wave of US supplied helicopters, secure the region from guerillas and then allow the AUC terrorists to savage the villages, killing, raping and disemboweling men, women and children suspected of being guerilla sympathizers. The terror tactics have driven millions of peasants out of the countryside.

Allowing the generals and drug lords to seize their land

Human rights advocates (HRA) are frequently targeted by the military and death squads. President Uribe and Santos first accuse them of being active collaborators of the guerillas for exposing the regime’s crimes against humanity. Once they are labeled, the HRA became “legitimate targets” for armed assaults by the death squads and the military who act with complete impunity. Between 2002-2011, 1,470 acts of violence were perpetrated against HRA, with a record number of 239 in 2011, including 49 assassinations during the Presidency of Santos. [13] Over half of the murdered HRA are Indians and Afro-Colombians.

State terrorism was and continues to be the main instrument of rule under Presidents Uribe and Santos. The Colombian “killing fields” according to the Fiscalia General include tens of thousands of homicides , 1,597 massacres and thousands of forced disappearances between 2005 – 2010 [14].

The practice, revealed in the Colombian press, of “false positives” in which the military kidnaps poor young men, dresses them as guerrillas and then assassinates them, comes across in the respectable US print media as evidence of Santos/Uribe’s military successes against the guerrillas. There are 2,472 documented cases of military false positive murders [15].

Honduras: New York Times and State Terrorism

The New York Times featured an article on Honduras, emphasizing the the regime’s “co-operation” with the US drug war. [16] The Times writer Thom Shanker speaks of a “partnership” based on the expansion of three new US military bases and the stationing of US Special Forces in the country. [17]

Shanker describes the successful operation of the Honduras Special Operations forces guided and directed by trainers from the US Special Forces. Shanker mentions a visit by a delegation of Congressional staff members who favorably assessed the local forces respect of human rights, and cites the US ambassador in Honduras as praising the regime as an “eager and capable partners in this joint effort”. [18]

There are insidious parallels between the NY Times white wash of the criminal extremist regime in Honduras and the Financial Times’ crude promotion of Colombia’s death squad democracy.

The current regime headed by “President” Lobos- which invites the Pentagon to expand its military control over swathes of Honduran territory- is a product of a US backed military coup which overthrew an elected liberal President on June 28, 2009, a point Shanker forgets to mention. Lobos, the predator president, retains control by killing, jailing and torturing critics, journalists, human rights defenders and landless rural laborers seeking to reclaim their lands which were violently seized by Lobos’ landlord backers.

Following the military coup, thousands of Honduran pro-democracy demonstrators were killed, beaten and arrested. According to conservative estimates by Human Rights Watch 20 pro-democracy dissidents were murdered by the military and police. [19] Between January 2010 and November 2011 at least 12 journalists critical of the Lobos regime were murdered.

In the countryside, where NY Times reporter Shanker describes a love fest between the US Special Forces and their Honduran counterparts, between January and August 2011, 30 farm workers in northern Honduras Bajo Aguan valley were killed by death squads hired by Lobos backed oligarchs . [20] Nary a single military, police or death squad assassin has been judged and jailed. Coup leader Roberto Micheletti and President Lobos, his successor, have repeatedly assaulted pro-democracy demonstrations, especially those led by school teachers, students and trade unionists and have tortured hundreds of jailed political dissidents. Precisely in the same time span as the NY Times publishes its most euphoric article on the friendly relations between the US and Honduras, the death toll among pro-democracy dissidents rose precipitously: eight journalists and a TV commentator have been killed over the first 4 months of 2012. [21] In late March and early April of 2012 nine farm workers and employees were murdered by pro-Lobos landlords. [22] No arrests, no suspects, impunity reigns in the land of US military bases. The Times follows the Mafia rule of omega-silence and complicity.

Syria: How the FT Absolves Al Qaeda Terrorists

As western backed terrorists savage Syria, the Western press, especially the Financial Times, continues to absolve the terrorists of setting of car bombs killing and maiming hundreds.of civilians. With crude cynicism their reporters shrug their shoulders and give credence to the claims of the London based terrorists propaganda mongers, that the Assad regime was engaged in destroying its own cities and security forces.[23]

Conclusion

As the Obama regime and its European backers publicly embrace extremism, including state terror, targeted assassinations and the car bombing of crowded cities, the respectable press has followed suit. Extremism takes many forms –from the omission of reports on the use of force and violence in overthrowing adversary regimes to the cover-up of the wholesale murder of tens of thousands of civilians and the dispossession of millions of peasants and farmers. The “educated classes”, the affluent reading public are being indoctrinated by the respectable media to believe that a smiling and pragmatic President Santos and elected President Lobos have succeeded in establishing peace, market based prosperity and securing mutually beneficial free trade and military base concessions with the US—even as the two regimes lead the world in the murder of trade unionists and journalists. Even as I read, on May 15, 2012 that the US Hispanic Congressional caucus has awarded Lobos a leadership in democracy award, the Honduran press reports the murder of the news director of station HMT Alfredo Villatoro, the 25th critical journalist killed between January 27, 2010 and May 15, 2012. [24]

The respectable press’s embrace of extremism, its use of demonological terminology and vitriolic language to describe imperial adversaries is matched by its euphoric and effusive praise of state and pro-western mercenary terrorists. The systematic cover-up practiced by extremist journalism goes far beyond the cases of Colombia and Honduras. The reportage of the Financial Times Michael Peel on the NATO led destruction of Libya, Africa’s most advanced welfare state, and the rise to power of armed gangs of fanatical tribal and Islamic terrorists, is presented as a victory for a democracy over a “brutal dictatorship” [25]. Peel’s mendacity and cant is evident in his outrageous claims that the destruction of the Libyan economy and the mass torture and racial murders which ensued NATOs war, is a victory for the Libyan people.

The totalitarian twist in the respectable press is a direct consequence of its toadying to the extremist policies pursued by the western regimes. Since extremist measures, like the use of force, violence, assassination and torture, have become routine under the incumbent presidents and prime ministers, the reporters have no choice but to fabricate lies to rationalize these crimes, to spit out a constant flow of highly charged adjectives in order to convert victims into executioners and executioners into victims. Extremism in defense of pro-US regimes has led to the most grotesque accounts imaginable: Colombia and Mexico’s Presidents are the leaders of the most thoroughly narcotized economies in the hemisphere yet they are praised for their war on drugs, while Venezuela the most marginal producer is stigmatized as a major narco-pipeline. [26]

Articles with no factual bases, which are worthless as sources of objective information, direct us to seek for an underlying rationale. Colombia has signed a free trade agreement which will benefit US exports over Colombian by over a two to one ratio [27]. Mexico’s free trade policy has benefited US agribusiness and giant retailers by a similar ratio.

Extremism in all of its forms permeates Western regimes and finds its justification and rationalization in the respectable media whose job is to indoctrinate civil society and turn citizens into voluntary accomplices to extremism. By endlessly prefacing “reports” on Russia’s Putin as an authoritarian Soviet era tyrant, the respectable media obviate any discussion of his doubling of living standards and the 60% plus electoral triumph. By magnifying an authoritarian past, Gadhafi’s vast public works, social welfare programs and generous immigration and foreign aid programs to sub-Sahara Africa can be relegated to the memory hole. The respectable press’s praise of death squad Presidents Santos and Lobos is part of a large scale long term systematic shift from the hypocritical pretense of pursuing the virtues of a democratic republic to the open embrace of a virulent, murderous empire. The new journalists’ code reads “extremism in defense of empire is no vice”.

[1] There’s a general consensus that the respectable print media include The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

[2] Financial Times (FT) 5/8/12;See also FT (5/4/12)”Colombia looks to consolidate gainsin country of complexities”

[3] FT 5/8/12 (p. 1)

[4] FT ibid

[5] BBC News , May 5, 2012

[6] ibid

[7] Renan Vega Cantor Sindicalicidio! Uncuento poco imaginativo) de Terroismo Laboral Bogotá, Feb. 25, 2012.

[8] ibid.

[9] ibid.

[10] Inforrme CODHES Novembre 2010.

[11] FT 5/8/12 p. 4.

[12] See the Annual Reports of CODHES, Reiniciar and Human Rights Watch

[13] Claroscuro Informe Aual 2011; Programa Somos Defensores Bogota 2012; Corporacion Colectivo de Abogados. Jan. – March 2012.

[14] Fiscalia General. Informe 2012

[15] http://www.falsos.positivos.blogspot.com

[16] Thom Shanker “Lessons of Iraq Help US Fight a Drug War in Honduras” New York Times, May 6, 2012.6

[17] ibid

[18] ibid

[19] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012

[20] Honduran Human Rights, May 12m, 2012.

[21] ibid

[22] ibid

[23] The notorious cover-up of the car bombing is the handiwork of the FT’s star middle east journalists. See Michael Peel and Abigail Fielding-Smith “At Least 55 Die in two Damascus Explosions: Responsibility for Blasts Disputed”, FT 5/11/12.

[24] Honduras Human Rights, April 24, 2012.

[25] Michael Peel, “The Colonels Last Stand” FT 5/12 – 13/12

[26] One of Colombia’s most notorious paramilitary narco traffickers described the close financial and political ties between the Colombian United Self Defense terrorists and the Uribe-Santos regime. Se La Jornada 5/12/12.

[27] BBC News, 5/15/12. According to the US International Trade Commission estimates the value of US exports to Colombia could rise by $1.1 billion while Colombia’s exports could grow by $487 million.

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May 21, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Israel really treats Christians

By Fida Jiryis | Ma’an | March 15, 2012

In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,” Ambassador Michael Oren presents Israel as a tolerant, dove-like, and peaceful democracy. This is belied by the facts.

I am one of those Palestinian Christians living inside Israel to whom Oren refers. At no time in my life have I ever felt the “respect and appreciation” of the Jewish state, which Oren so glowingly references.

Israel’s Christian minority is marginalized in much the same manner as its Muslim one or, at best, quietly tolerated. We suffer the same discrimination when we try to find a job, when we go to hospitals, when we apply for bank loans, and when we get on the bus — in the same way as Palestinian Muslims.

Israel’s fundamental basis is as a racist state built for Jews only, and the majority of the Jewish population doesn’t really care what religion we are if we’re not Jewish. In my daily dealings with the State, all I have felt is rudeness and overt contempt.

Oren’s statement that “The extinction of the Middle East’s Christian communities is an injustice of historic magnitude” is outright shocking to anyone familiar with even the basic history of how Israel was founded.

I would like to remind Oren and others that this founding expelled thousands of Palestinian Christians from their homes in 1948 and displaced them, either forcing them to flee across the border or making them internal refugees. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that comprised the founding of Israel is, too, an injustice of historic magnitude. A man living in a glass house — or a house stolen from Palestinians — should think very carefully before tossing stones.

My cousin’s husband, Maher, is from Iqrith, a village a few miles from mine in the Galilee. His family, and all of Iqrith’s inhabitants, were expelled from their village in 1948 and Iqrith was razed to the ground by Israeli forces on Christmas eve, 1950, in a special “Christmas gift” to its people. The timing of this destruction leaves one to wonder at the intended message.

Maher was born years after his family took shelter in Rama, a village nearby in the Galilee. Today, he struggles with finding a place to build a house to live in with his wife and children. Israeli policies that severely restrict the building zones in Arab towns and villages result in land shortages impeding the population’s natural expansion. Limiting land to residents of the same town or village means that internal Palestinian refugees face severe housing discrimination.

The return of people like Maher has been made impossible by Israel, which refuses to negotiate on the right of refugees to return to their homeland. If Oren is so concerned for Palestinian Christians, would he kindly give the green light for the return of Christian refugees from Iqrith, Birim, Tarshiha, Suhmata, Haifa, Jaffa, and tens of other Palestinian towns and villages that they were expelled from in 1948?

The answer, I assure you, is no. Many of these refugees are living in refugee camps in nearby countries, where Israel and Oren are happy to leave them.

The terrorists referred to in Oren’s statement that “Israel, in spite of its need to safeguard its borders from terrorists, allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians from both the West Bank and Gaza,” are in fact Palestinian Christians living on the land that Israel has occupied — in flagrant opposition to all human rights charters — and from which it is refusing to withdraw its soldiers and illegal settlers.

To applaud Israel for giving people permits to travel across what by law is their own country is the height of hubris.

His claim that “In Jerusalem, the number of Arabs — among them Christians — has tripled since the city’s reunification by Israel in 1967” fails to mention Israel’s relentless policies of cracking down on Jerusalem: building unending settlements; building a separation wall that slices right through the city, severing its families, neighborhoods and businesses and hitting hard at its Arab economy; seizing Arab lands and expelling families that have lived on them for generations; and revoking the citizenship of any Palestinian resident who travels abroad for too long.

Imagine the outcry if an American citizen traveled abroad for two years and upon return discovered that his citizenship was revoked and that he had lost his American ID and passport.

Israeli officials don’t care whether the Palestinians they discriminate against are Christian or Muslim. It is true that inter-religious strife is on the rise in a region long tormented by poor living conditions, for which the West bears significant responsibility having aided the region’s many dictators.

Oren’s faux tolerance and crocodile tears over the plight of Christians fool no one. Were he serious, I would urge him to have a close look at Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination.

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer from the Arab village of Fassuta in the Galilee. She is the author of the forthcoming book, My Return to Galilee, which chronicles her return from the Diaspora to Israel.

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March 15, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

A Palestinian Christian response to Michael Oren

By Faysal Hijazeen – Ma’an – 14/03/2012

As the parish priest of Ramallah, an op-ed by Israel’s envoy to the US gave me pause for thought. Michael Oren’s article spoke volumes of Israel’s unending misrepresentation of Palestinian daily life.

The presence of our 13 Latin Patriarchate Schools throughout the West Bank and Gaza, for over 150 years, is a living witness to the coexistence of Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

We have never faced in our schools or society the supposed persecution of Christians by Muslims to which Mr Oren referred in “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,” published Friday in the Wall Street Journal.

Contrary to Oren’s statements, the persecution of Christians here is caused mainly by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory. This occupation humiliates us, destroys our economy, causes demographic changes and deprives millions of the freedom of movement and their right to decent lives, in addition to the confiscation of land.

These are the main ways Christians are persecuted in Palestine.

As anyone with eyes can see, the wall that Israel has imposed has negatively affected the lives of Palestinians and has confiscated a large amount of what is left of Palestinian land.

Oren claims that Israel “allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians from both the West Bank and Gaza.” In reality, the countless fixed and flying checkpoints have turned our lives into hell.

Israeli obstacles and practices do not differentiate between Muslims and Christians, and are imposed over a whole nation. The bullets that are fired against Palestinians do not differentiate between Christians and Muslims.

But it is these imposed Israeli obstacles which strengthen the ties between Christians and Muslims. Christian students share the same classrooms with Muslim students and all school activities involve both religions.

For example last week at one of our schools, the al-Ahliyya College in Ramallah, we held a concert with peace songs, and 180 pupils of both faiths joined in the event.

The oppression of Christian communities is indeed “an injustice of historic magnitude.”

Israel could begin righting this wrong by setting an example: Offer freedom to the Christian communities under its occupation before criticizing Muslim oppression in other countries in the Middle East.

No such oppression exists in Palestine.

The author is the director-general of the Latin Patriarchate Schools in Palestine and the parish priest of Ramallah.

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March 14, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

NGOs in Egypt: Promoting Democracy or Destabilization?

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | February 9, 2012

In a sneering report on the Egyptian investigation into foreign “democracy-promoting” NGOs, the Wall Street Journal opines:

In describing their evidence, most of which came from raids on the NGO offices in late December, the judges seemed to allude to a well-worn Egyptian conspiracy theory, often peddled by populist politicians, that the U.S. hopes to stoke sectarian conflict in Egypt as a prelude to an armed invasion.

The justices said they had found maps of Egypt marked with four divisions—a thinly veiled reference to supposed American plans to divide the country into competing religious and ethnic fiefdoms.

It appears that the writer is not familiar with the Yinon Plan. Back in 1982, Israeli strategist Oded Yinon wrote “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,” which advocated the dissolution of all existing Arab states along ethnic or sectarian lines:

Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front. Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.

Two of the NGOs — the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute — are affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which also funds a third, the International Center for Journalists. Carl Gershman, the longtime president of the National Endowment for Democracy, formerly worked in the “research department” of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League. The fourth NGO, Freedom House, has no shortage of pro-Israelis on its board of trustees, including its vice-chair, former AIPAC executive director, Thomas Dine.

Perhaps the Egyptians have good reason to be wary of so many Israel partisans “promoting democracy” in their country.

~

See also:

Egyptians oppose US economic aid, says Gallup

February 9, 2012 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 1 Comment

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