Palestinians Establish a new Village, Bab Alshams, in Area E1
PSCC | January 11th, 2013
Bab Alshams, Occupied Palestine – 250 men and women from across Palestine establish this morning a new Palestinian village named “Bab Alshams” (Gate of the Sun). Tents were built in what Israel refers to as area E1 and equipment for long-term living was brought.
The group released the following statement:
We, the sons and daughters of Palestine from all throughout the land, announce the establishment of Bab Alshams Village (Gate of the Sun). We the people, without permits from the occupation, without permission from anyone, sit here today because this is our land and it is our right to inhabit it.
A few months ago the Israeli government announced its intention to build about 4000 settlement housing units in the area Israel refers to as E1. E1 block is an area of about 13 prayer in Bab AlShamssquare km that falls on confiscated Palestinian land East of Jerusalem between Ma’ale Adumim settlement, which lies on occupied West Bank Palestinian land, and Jerusalem. We will not remain silent as settlement expansion and confiscation of our land continues. Therefore we hereby establish the village of Bab Alshams to proclaim our faith in direct action and popular resistance. We declare that the village will stand steadfast until the owners of this land will get their right to build on their land.
The village’s name is taken from the novel, “Bab Alshams,” by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury. The book depicts the history of Palestine through a love story between a Palestinian man, Younis, and his wife Nahila. Younis leaves his wife to join the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon while Nahila remains steadfast in what remains of their village in the Galilee. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Younis smuggles through Lebanon and back to the Galilee to meet his wife in the “Bab Alshams” cave, where she gives birth to their children. Younis returns to the resistance in Lebanon as his wife remains in Bab Al Shams.
Bab Alshams is the gate to our freedom and steadfastness. Bab Alshams is our gate to Jerusalem. Bab Alshams is the gate to our to our return.
For decades, Israel has established facts on the ground as the International community remained silent in response to these violations. The time has come now to change the rules of the game, for us to establish facts on the ground – our own land. This action involving women and men from the north to the south is a form of popular resistance. In the coming days we will hold various discussion groups, educational and artistic presentations, as well as film screenings on the lands of this village. The residents of Bab Al Shams invite all the sons and daughters of our people to participate and join the village in supporting our resilience.
Israeli army dogs attack elderly Palestinian, two-year-old child injured in the head in Jewish settlers’ attack
Al Akhbar | January 3, 2013
Israeli army dogs attacked a 93-year-old Palestinian woman as an undercover unit raided the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday morning, according to Ma’an news agency.
The agents were dressed as Palestinians and backed up by the army when they staged an incursion into the city’s industrial zone.
The raid is the latest in a string of Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns in the West Bank. On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers disguised as vegetable vendors invaded the northern West Bank town of Tamoun and fired ammunition at residents.
Amneh Hisnawi was alone in her house when soldiers stormed her home and dogs belonging to security personnel attacked her. She was sent to an Israeli hospital for treatment.
An army spokesman said the raid on Jenin was conducted to arrest a Palestinian suspected of ‘terror activity’, but that the suspect was not at home.
Around 500 Palestinians hurled rocks, firebombs, and burned tires, according to the spokesman.
Fadi Ijawi, 23, was wounded in the leg by a a live bullet and taken to a Palestinian hospital, a Ma’an reporter said. Dozens also suffered from tear gas inhalation, the reporter added.
Israeli settlers hit two-year-old Palestinian on the head
Several Palestinians, including one toddler, were injured when dozens of illegal Israeli settlers attacked a northern West Bank village on Wednesday, according to Palestine’s Ma’an news agency.
Two-year-old Farah Nanseem was hit on the head during the assault on Jalud village, south of Nablus. Israelis from the Esh Kodesh settlement had staged a sit-in in Jalud earlier in the day to prevent Palestinians from working in the fields.
Several villagers were sent to hospitals to treat light to moderate wounds; houses and a car were also damaged, settlement monitoring official Ghassan Daghlas said.
Another Nablus village, Qusra, was attacked by settlers two days ago. More than 150 olive trees were uprooted.
The assailants were only briefly detained by village security guards.
Israeli settlers, who are considered illegal by international law, routinely assault Palestinians in the West Bank, damaging property and livelihoods, and often targeting the elderly and children.
They face little to no punishment from Israeli authorities for their crimes.
(Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)
Related articles
- Settlers raid Nablus village homes and a tractor. Uproot 190 olive trees and burn Hebron car (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
- Israeli settler attacks on the rise in West Bank (bikyamasr.com)
- Three Palestinians Injured By Israeli Settlers Near Nablus (imemc.org)
Israeli Offer to Palestinian Families: Take $500,000 and Leave West Bank
Al-Manar | January 2, 2013
A Zionist Likud hardliner suggested paying Palestinian families $500,000 each to emigrate from the West Bank to the West.
Moshe Feiglin, who earlier on Tuesday was detained by Israeli police after trying to pray at the so-called Temple Mount, proposed paying Palestinians to leave West Bank.
“The State of Israel is paying 10% of its GNP every year for the two-state solution and the Oslo Accords. It’s paying for separation fences, Iron Domes and a guard at every café. Soon we’ll have to place Iron Domes in every school in Tel Aviv.
“With this budget we can give every Arab family in Judea and Samaria $500,000 to encourage it to immigrate to a place with a better future.
“You may say, ‘But no one will have them.’ That’s not true because the Western nations are shrinking due to low birth rates. The question is whether the world will have Sudanese migrants who can’t build or migrants from Judea and Samaria who do know how to build.”
Related articles
- Israel forces Jordan Valley Palestinians from homes ahead of war drill (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Local activist detained in Hebron
International Solidarity Movement | January 2, 2013
West Bank – Israeli soldiers in Hebron tied up and blindfolded a Palestinian activist this afternoon because he walked on the ‘Jewish side’ of the road.
Issa Amro, coordinator for Youth Against Settlements, was detained on Shuhada Street, sections of which are segregated with the majority reserved for the illegal Israeli settlers and Israeli military, leaving only a tiny portion open for Palestinian use.
Issa claimed he wasn’t walking in the Israeli only section of the road and that the soldier became infuriated when he told him to check the rules with a commanding officer. The soldier then told Issa he would be detained for 2 hours, however, he was released after 20 minutes. Issa believes that one of the illegal settlers had instructed the soldier to harass him.
Locals, members of the press and international activists turned up and the soldiers refused to answer questions about why he was being detained, or let anyone bring him water. One soldier then forced the crowd to stay 25 metres away.
Palestinians, Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers are always in close proximity in Shuhada Street and as a result it is an extremely volatile area of the city. On Sunday, Israeli soldiers extended a section of the apartheid road near the Ibrahimi Mosque. The newly constructed barrier runs past a Palestinian home due to be rebuilt meaning that when it is finished, Palestinians will have only half a metre to walk on.
Local activist Issa Amro detained in Shuhada Street in Hebron
Related articles
- Israeli forces kill teenager on his 17th birthday in Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Army Kidnaps Four Palestinians In Hebron (imemc.org)
- Israeli military conducts illegal operations in Tel Rumeida, Hebron (palsolidarity.org)
- Second group of journalists beaten in Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Settlers raid Nablus village homes and a tractor. Uproot 190 olive trees and burn Hebron car (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Israeli Army Fails To Evict Illegal Outpost Near Ramallah
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | December 29, 2012
Israeli soldiers tried to evict an illegal settlement outpost, erected by extremist Israeli settlers near the Bet EI illegal settlement, north of the central West Bank city of Ramallah; the settlers attacked the soldiers who left the scene without evicting the structures.
Israeli sources reported that five Israeli policemen were injured during the clashes with the settlers, and were treated by field medics.
Political sources in Tel Aviv claimed that the army decided to stop the eviction and leave the area due to pressures practiced by a number of government officials.
It is worth mentioning that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has several coalition members who are settlers, including Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, head of the extreme right-wing “Israel Our Home” party.
Israeli Yedioth Aharonoth reported that hundreds of settlers clashed with the army and the police, and hurled stones at them after the army ordered them to disperse.
The army later apprehended several settlers but left the scene without evicting the illegal outpost.
Related articles
St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee Statement on Pending City Contract with Veolia Water
STL-PSC Blog | December 17th, 2012
We are a diverse group of Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Jews, Christians, students, professors, artists, writers, environmental activists, union organizers, bakers, grandparents, and others in St. Louis united by a commitment to a lasting peace in Israel/Palestine based on freedom, justice, and equality, as part of a larger commitment to global justice.
We were shocked to learn about private city negotiations with Veolia Water on a contract to guide cost-cutting for the St. Louis Water Division. Veolia Water – North America is a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement (VE), a Paris-based multinational corporation and the largest water privatization business in the world. It is infamous for poor environmental standards, anti-labor practices, privatizing public resources, mismanagement, corruption, bribery, embezzlement, fraud, and illegal activities in Israel/Palestine. Worldwide, consumers report that Veolia consistently charges high rates, provides poor service, causes staff turnover, discourages water conservation, and fails to implement promised improvements. Its history reveals consistent prioritization of private profit at the expense of the environment and public welfare.
In Israel/Palestine, VE is involved in a myriad of ways with Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestinian land and its systematic ethnic discrimination against the Palestinian people.
VE’s Israeli subsidiary, Veolia Water – Israel, operates a wastewater treatment plant located in an illegal Jewish-only settlement called Modiin Ilit, built on internationally-recognized Palestinian land in the West Bank. The Palestinian owners of the land on which this settlement was built have been violently driven out. Two unarmed Palestinians from Bil’in, a Palestinian village on which Modiin Ilit was built, have been killed by the Israeli army as they protested nonviolently against the ongoing confiscation of their land and resources. Leaders and people of conscience from around the world, including the South African anti-Apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have visited Bil’in to stand in solidarity with the dispossessed villagers, yet Veolia continues to service the settlement and others like it.
An Israeli subsidiary of Veolia Transdev, named Connex – Israel, operates settler buses on segregated roads through the occupied West Bank, including two bus lines that use road 443, which is built partially on confiscated land with portions closed entirely to Palestinians. A separate but unequal Palestinian road system is made up of low grade roads cut by checkpoints and physical barriers restricting Palestinian freedom of movement. Last year, a group of Palestinian Freedom Riders attempted to board buses operating on their own land and were violently removed and arrested. Veolia is not only profiting from segregation in Israel/Palestine; they are enforcing it.
Another VE Israeli subsidiary, Veolia Environmental Services – Israel, supervises, consults for, and operates the Tovlan Landfill in the occupied Jordan Valley, collecting refuse from illegal settlements. Israel renders it almost impossible for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley to gain permits to build homes, toilets, wells, animal pens, or other vital infrastructure for local communities, which has forced almost all Palestinian families out, with those remaining living in dire conditions. Some are left with no alternative but to work on settlements that have taken their families’ land, for pay far below the minimum wage, unable to take bathroom breaks, and denied any rights to unionize. Veolia takes captured Palestinian land and natural resources to service the settlements exploiting or driving out Palestinians.
Finally, VE has also been involved in the construction and operation of a tramway linking illegal settlements in East Jerusalem with Israel. The tramway not only institutionalizes the occupation, but it is a settlement in itself, given that it is settler infrastructure built on occupied land.
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk recently recommended that Veolia “should be boycotted, until they bring their operations into line with international human rights and humanitarian law and standards.” VE’s immoral practices and extensive profiting from Israel’s illegal discriminatory practices have provoked global outcry and made the company a target for boycott and divestment campaigns around the world — costing it $16 billion to date in lost contracts. Recently, the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, which handles investments for hundreds of U.S. Quaker institutions, divested from VE following advocacy from Palestine solidarity groups. Now, VE is bringing its risky and immoral business to our backyard.
Veolia Water is the U.S. arm of VE. As St. Louisans, we do not feel that our tax dollars and water payments should go toward supporting a company profiting from environmental destruction, unfair labor practices, and the bloodshed of and systematic ethnic discrimination against the Palestinian people.
The St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee stands in solidarity with public workers, water and environmental justice activists, and the Palestinian people threatened by this contract. We call on the Board of Estimate & Appointment not to approve this public contract with Veolia.
Click here for more information and documentation on Veolia’s activities in Palestine.
Related articles
- South Africa’s ruling ANC officially endorses Palestine’s boycott movement (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- St. Louis City Board Votes to Investigate Veolia Following Public Outcry! (bdsmovement.net)
- Veolia to end sponsorship of major UK photography exhibition (bdsmovement.net)
- Pro-Palestine campaigners celebrate Veolia’s loss of £40million contract in Canterbury (bdsmovement.net)
Despite US criticism, Israel continues with plan to construct 6,000 new settlement units
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | December 20, 2012
The US State Department issued a statement this week that included a rare criticism of Israeli policy, calling the ongoing construction of settlements on Palestinian land a “pattern of provocative action” that prevented the renewal of peace talks. Despite this critique, the Israeli government announced plans to move ahead with 6,000 new settlement units, mainly in the Jerusalem area.
After the Palestinian Authority pursued, and succeeded in obtaining, a vote for non-member statehood status at the United Nations last month, the Israeli government undertook a number of punitive measures against the Palestinians. These including illegally confiscating Palestinian Authority funds that would pay the salaries of teachers, doctors, pensioners and the disabled, as well as announcing a plan to increase settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces have militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967, and have illegally seized large swaths of Palestinian land in order to transfer Israeli civilians onto this land, in direct violation of its obligations as an Occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Since a peace agreement known as the ‘Oslo Accords’ was signed in 1993, hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers have poured into the West Bank and established colonies. In 2005, around 5,000 settlers were paid by the Israeli government to move out of settlements in the Gaza Strip, although many of them ended up moving to other settlements in the West Bank.
In this week’s statement to the press, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters, “Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution yet these actions put that goal further at risk.”
Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon responded defiantly, “ We will continue to build in accordance with Israel’s strategic interests.”
1,500 units were approved on Monday by Israel’s Interior Ministry, and discussion is continuing throughout this week on the plans for 4,500 additional units, which are expected to receive final approval by the Israeli Interior Ministry early next week.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered to be violations of international law.
Canada’s Palestinian Aid Programme Serving Israel’s Interests
By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | December 14th, 2012
Few aspects of Canadian foreign policy have been mentioned more times over the past two weeks than Ottawa’s 300 million dollar five year aid program to the Palestinians.
Ever since the Globe and Mail reported on November 26 that Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened Mahmoud Abbas that “there will be consequences” if he followed through on his plan to ask the UN General Assembly to upgrade Palestine’s status there has been a great deal of speculation about whether Canadian “aid” would be cut off. A quick Google search brings up hundreds of articles mentioning the 300 million dollars in funding yet none of them mention the highly politicized character of this “aid”.
After Hamas won legislative elections in January 2006 the Conservatives made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. When Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian unity government in June 2007, the Conservatives immediately contributed $8 million “in direct support to the new government.” Then in December 2007 the Conservatives announced a five-year $300 million aid program to the Palestinians, which was largely designed to serve Israel’s interests.
A Saint John Telegraph-Journal headline explained: “Canada’s aid to Palestine benefits Israel, foreign affairs minister says.” In January 2008 foreign minister Maxime Bernier said: “We are doing that [providing aid to the PA] because we want Israel to be able to live in peace and security with its neighbours.”
Most of the Canadian aid money has gone to building up a Palestinian security force overseen by a US general. The immediate impetus of the Canadian aid was to create a Palestinian security force “to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian Ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News. American General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing a 10,000-member Palestinian security force, even admitted that he was strengthening Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah against Hamas, telling a US audience in May 2009 his force was “working against illegal Hamas activities.” According to Al Jazeera, between 2007 and early 2011 PA security forces arrested some 10,000 suspected Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
The broader aim of the US-Canada-Britain initiated Palestinian security reform was to build a force to patrol Israel’s occupied territories. In a 2011 profile of Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Allison, “Dayton’s chief of liaison in the West Bank” for a year, his hometown newspaper reported: “The Dayton team was concerned with enhancing security on the West Bank of Palestine and was all geared towards looking after and ensuring the security of Israel, said Ron.”
“We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians,” noted Dayton, “unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it.” For instance, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shin-Bet, vets all of the Palestinian recruits.
The Israelis supported Dayton’s force as a way to keep the West Bank population under control. Like all colonial authorities throughout history Israel looked to compliant locals to take up the occupation’s security burden. In a December 2011 article titled “[Ehud] Barak admires PA security forces for protecting [Israeli] settlers [in the West Bank]” a Palestinian news agency described an interview the Israeli defence minister gave to a Hebrew radio station.
Writing in a July 2011 issue of the London Review of Books Adam Shatz explained: “The PA already uses the American-trained National Security Force to undermine efforts by Palestinians to challenge the occupation. (Hamas, in Gaza, has cracked down on protest even more harshly.) ‘They are the police of the occupation,’ Myassar Atyani, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told me. ‘Their leadership is not Palestinian, it is Israeli.’ On 15 May – the day Palestinians commemorate their Nakba [the 1948 destruction of Palestinian society] – more than a thousand Palestinians, mainly young men, marched to the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem and clashed with Israeli soldiers; but when Atyani tried to lead a group of demonstrators to the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus, PA security forces stopped them. The road from Ramallah to Qalandia is in Area C, which is not controlled by the PA; the road from Nablus to Hawara is in Area A, which is. And protesters who have attempted to march to settlements along PA-controlled roads have also found themselves turned back. It is an extraordinary arrangement: the security forces of a country under occupation are being subcontracted by third parties outside the region to prevent resistance to the occupying power, even as that power continues to grab more land. This is, not surprisingly, a source of considerable anger and shame in the West Bank.”
The Palestinian security force is largely trained in Jordan at the US- built International Police Training Center (created to train Iraqi security after the 2003 invasion). In October 2009 the Wall Street Journal reported: “[Palestinian] recruits are trained in Jordan by Jordanian police, under the supervision of American, Canadian, and British officers.” The number of military trainers in the West Bank varied slightly but in mid-2010 18 Canadian troops worked with six British and ten US soldiers under Dayton’s command. “The Canadian contribution is invaluable,” explained Dayton. Canadians are particularly useful because “US personnel have travel restrictions when operating in the West Bank. But, our British and Canadian members do not.” Calling them his “eyes and ears” Dayton said: “The Canadians … are organized in teams we call road warriors, and they move around the West Bank daily visiting Palestinian security leaders, gauging local conditions.”
Part of the US Security Coordinator office in Jerusalem, the Canadian military mission in the West Bank (dubbed Operation PROTEUS) includes RCMP officers as well as officials from Foreign Affairs, Justice Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency. In a September 2010 interview with the Jerusalem Post then deputy foreign minister Peter Kent said Operation PROTEUS was Canada’s “second largest deployment after Afghanistan” and it receives “most of the money” from the five-year $300 million Canadian “aid” program to the Palestinians. During a visit to Israel in February, foreign minister John Baird told the Globe and Mail he was “incredibly thrilled” by the West Bank security situation, which he said benefited Israel.
In effect, Canada has helped to build a security apparatus to protect a corrupt PA led by Mahmoud Abbas, whose electoral mandate expired in January 2009, but whom the Israeli government prefers over Hamas.
Don’t expect the Conservative government to sever this “aid”.
Second group of journalists beaten in Hebron
Ma’an – December 15, 2012
BETHLEHEM – After Reuters cameramen were assaulted by Israeli forces in Hebron this week, a second group of journalists were beaten by troops in the West Bank city, a press freedom group said Saturday.
On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers punched two Reuters journalists and forced them to strip in the street, before letting off a tear gas canister in front of them, leaving one of them needing hospital treatment.
A freelance reporter and Al-Quds TV correspondent were also beaten during the incident in Hebron, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, MADA, said.
The journalists were covering the aftermath of the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Muhammad Salaymeh by an Israeli border guard in the city.
A day later, four journalists went to cover the ensuing clashes, and were blocked and threatened by an Israeli force near Hebron’s Tareq ben Zaid school, MADA said.
Associated Press photographer Hazem Bader was detained for 45 minutes by Israeli soldiers, the journalists told MADA.
“They tied my hands behind my back, beat me on my feet and my back, and cursing me all the time,” Bader said.
“One of the soldiers tried to fabricate a charge against me that I tried to assault him, but my colleagues of photographers documented the arrest.”
He was freed when a press office intervened, he said.
MADA condemned the “escalation of violations” against journalists in Hebron this week.
Related articles
- Israeli forces kill teenager on his 17th birthday in Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Family denies Hebron teen killed by Israel was carrying toy gun (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Reuters accuses Israeli soldiers of assaulting cameramen in Hebron (guardian.co.uk)
Reuters deplores Israeli mistreatment of journalists
Press TV – December 14, 2012
Israeli forces have assaulted two cameramen working for Reuters news agency in the occupied West bank, forcing them to strip on the street.
Yousri Al Jamal and Ma’amoun Wazwaz said on Thursday that an Israeli military patrol stopped them as they were on their way to a checkpoint in the West Bank city of al-Khalil, where a Palestinian youth had been earlier killed by Israeli forces.
The cameramen added that the Israeli troops punched and hit them with the butts of their guns after they made the cameramen get off their vehicle, which was marked as belonging to “TV.”
The two were also wearing blue flak jackets with the word “Press” printed on them.
The soldiers who attacked the Reuters employees accused them of working for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization which documents human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.
However, the cameramen said the forces did not give them the chance to show their identification cards and made them strip and kneel down on the road.
Wazwaz was overcome by the fumes and taken to a hospital after the Israeli forces dropped a tear gas canister and ran away from the scene.
According to the cameramen, two other Palestinian journalists working for local news agencies were also arrested by Israeli soldiers at the same location.
Stephen J. Adler, chief editor of Reuters News said, “We deplore the mistreatment of our journalists and have registered our extreme dismay with the Israeli military authorities.”
The Israeli military has offered no explanation for the attack on the journalists and says it will investigate the issue.
On Thursday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager on his birthday after he allegedly threatened them with a toy gun in the occupied West Bank.
Featured Video
US Blockade on Iran Just Triggered Iran’s HARSHEST Response Yet
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Seyed M. Marandi: US Blockade on Iran Just Triggered Iran’s HARSHEST Response Yet
- The new assault of the Zionist lobby in Brazil
- Italy suspends defense deal with ‘Israel’ over war on Iran, Lebanon
- Indonesia Agrees to Receive Oil, Gas Supplies From Russia – Indonesian Energy Ministry
- Saudi Arabia Urges US Back to Iran Talks as Other Oil Routes Face Risk
- Iran demands reparations from Arab states
- Tankers transit Strait of Hormuz amid US attempt to impose blockade, data shows
- US Strikes Kill Five in Alleged Pacific Anti-drug Campaign
- EU Defense Agency head says compulsory military service could be necessary
- France To Vote On Bill That Would Criminalize Criticism Of Israel
- If Americans Knew
- ‘Not Acceptable’: President of Iran Condemns Trump For His ‘Desecration of Jesus, the Prophet of Peace’
- We Are the Barbarians
- Netanyahu Says the Trump Administration Gives Him Reports on Iran Talks Every Day
- Second Contractor Steps Forward to Blow the Whistle on Israeli Attacks at Gaza Aid Site
- Mighty Israel wants all of its neighbors to be defenseless – Daily Update
- Emergency waivers move arms for Israel, UAE to speed lane
- Caitlin Johnstone: Nobody’s “Obsessed” With Israel — It’s Just A Uniquely Horrible Country
- Israel’s Ben Gvir says he feels like the ‘owner’ of Al-Aqsa Mosque
- History of flotilla campaigns to end Israel’s siege of Gaza
- Humanitarian Scorecard: Six Months In, Gaza Ceasefire is Failing
- No Tricks Zone
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
Aletho News 