This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Europe was burning. Or so I had heard in many media outlets before I boarded a flight to Europe. According to various hysterical outlets in the West, philistines were surging up through Gibraltar and other southbound nodes of ingress to destabilize European culture, that high-flown redoubt of wine and song and literature and art. Lisbon, as I discovered somewhat disappointedly, was serene. No flaming cathedrals. No barricades on the boulevards. Only the prosaic reproduction of daily life, at work in a thousand pastelerias and padarias. Hordes of tourists, like arctic ice floes, coursed through the cobblestone streets with a practiced regularity.
Echoes
These first-world problems felt embarrassingly inconsequential when I turned on the television and saw, with the tiresome predictably of political failure, the latest urgent update on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The airwaves had been crammed with urgent reports from Gaza for some four months now. Hamas had attacked and killed ___. The IDF had attacked and killed ___. All the usual suspects lined up, waiting their cue to go before the cameras. The reporters, always posing as impartial journalists who were deeply concerned for the safety of civilians in the conflict zone, found perches with skyline views where they could point to bombed buildings and streets (hopefully still smoking from the latest attack). Aid workers were summoned to issue urgent appeals for humanitarian assistance and an immediate ceasefire, a demand that felt as feckless as it was rote. Various intellectuals were brought on to gravely explain the roots of the conflict. Several spoke of heartbreak. And lastly the political actors, tiresome in their strident assurances of a just and fierce response. Their singular purpose appeared to be maintaining a posture and position that brooked no dissent, no counterpoint, and yielded to no mitigating circumstances.
The television flickers with images of aftermath. These crises emerged semi-annually for as long as I could remember. Violence was met with violence. Human madness was as strong as ever. The Israeli-Palestine war was the longest running drama in the theater of hate. The principled college freshman I had seen accusing Starbucks of facilitating genocide did not know the weariness of talking truth for years to no effect.
Veteran independent journalist Chris Hedges put it best, bitterly noting: “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?”
Assigning blame is the ne plus ultra of Middle East politics. Lately the fault lies with the settler colonial regimes. Here the Israelis take after the Americans, of course, with their unexampled template of having exterminated an entire population in order to claim a continent. They also follow the National Socialists of Hitler’s Germany, which waged a devastating and fatal war on Russia because, according to some accounts, the Nazis too wanted their lebensraum, a backyard, to put it plainly. A resource rich hinterland that all empires surely require (United States and Latin America; the Brits and India; France and North Africa). Everyone needs a backyard. An “inevitable expansion” was the birthright of all imperial powers and superior races, as der fuhrer put it. In this case, Israel says it is reclaiming lost territory.
The historian Samuel Huntington put it like this:
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
The numbers suggest as much: 26,000 dead; 63,000 injured; 360,000 housing units destroyed; 1.7M people displaced; 93 percent of the population face a hunger crisis.
Meanwhile, the U.S. vetoes UN Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire and the resumption of aid deliveries to defenseless civilians, including food, water, medical supplies, electricity, communications technology, and so on.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a fairly damning if disappointingly opaque ruling last month. The ruling on the case nobly introduced by South Africa, which knows about the deprivations of apartheid, established that Israeli actions against Palestinians could reasonably fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention.
Israel argued self-defense. But as most ambitious nations learn, often too late, as the collapse of their empires bury their ambitions, force does not ensure the security of a people, as the erstwhile French Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin said not long after the October surprise. He went on. Neither force nor vengeance ensures peace and security; what ensures peace and security is justice. Of course this astute if not self-evident statement will be scrupulously ignored as Netanyahu and his radical minions feverishly advance the razing of Gaza. Hamas, elected by Palestinians years ago, will plot their next furious attacks, and scurry through underground tunnels as the bombs rattle the air above them.
A Failed Media Strategy
The coverage of the atrocity weighs in the balance against the essential construct of the occupation, and the dysfunctional relationship between occupier and the occupied. The former is forbidden by international law to attack those it has brutally colonized; the latter conversely has the legal right to resist the occupation, even violently. This fact changes the conversation; it changes the understanding of Palestinian violence; it reduces the condemnatory impulse in sympathizers. Even if to understand is not to forgive and to forgive is not to forget.
Israel and Western media have attempted to elide the wider context from the discussion with a range of tactics. Principally, the “conflict” always seems to begin when Palestinians attack, not when Israel attacks, or oppresses, or suppresses. This conveniently establishes the chronological timeline of the present conflict with Palestinian violence, nicely bookending the story with timestamps that remove the historical backdrop from sight. It is as Theodor Adorno said in another context, “The violence done to them makes us forget the violence they did.” Other tactics include tarring critics with the broad brush of antisemitism; narratives that make Palestinians out to be irrational death cult aggressors and Israel as innocent victims; and a raft of disingenuous vocabulary such as the use of “conflict” for “occupation” and “atrocity” for “resistance.” While both terms may be true the former terms elide the crucial context.
The ICJ ruling will predictably receive scant attention in the mainstream. At best coverage will be diversionary, like that of The Economist. Another story has taken its place. An accusation by Israel that a small group of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) employees helped plan the October 7th attacks on Israel. This claim, having been made by Israel for months, evidence having been obtained via military interrogations of prisoners, supplied by a country with a vested interest in limiting exposure of the ICJ ruling, commands the headlines. The Biden administration immediately cut funding to the UNRWA, which is the main UN organ of Palestinian aid, an act that violates collective punishment strictures in the Geneva Conventions which model international humanitarian law. But this media misdirection does its job of giving the media something else to talk about aside from the ICJ.
This framing reflects the imperial ambitions of the West. The state of Israel was founded most likely not to establish a homeland for Jews but rather to establish a foothold in the Middle East controllable by Washington. Perhaps this is too cynical, but the amount of intolerable behavior countenanced and enabled by Washington suggests as much.
As such, the mainstream media presents the perspective of its owners, elite capital interests that are the true rulers of society. The ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class. It is the corporate media that disseminates the ideas. You can be sure the storylines will flatter the owners and protect their interests, locating them neatly beneath an umbrella of moral piety.
But it is not working. The rise of social media has expanded the world’s understanding of the situation: the original ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, the brutal occupation, a mix of apartheid reservations and furious efforts to drive Palestinians into Egypt, cruelty and deprivation the common feature. The world population knows enough now about the settler colonial ambitions of Israel and the concentration camp conditions it imposes on a group of people that appear, quite rightly, to have a clear grievance. The weight of this emerging social consciousness—driven by non-mainstream reportage—is changing the debate in the West. But it has not yet been enough to stop the carnage.
I saw a quote in Lisbon from Nietzsche scrawled on a white tile in a neighborhood bar that said, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The quote is truncated; the “a why to live for” and “almost any how” are shortened; the meaning is changed. But it made me think of Israel-Palestine. The religious zealotry; the intra-semite enmity; the blood in the soil; the whys make some appalling hows bearable.
The post Echoes of Conflict first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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The toll of four months of war in Gaza on journalism is “nothing short of horrifying” — Palestinian journalists killed, wounded, and prevented from working without any possibility of safe refuge, reports the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
RSF has strongly condemned the “eradication of journalism and the right to information” in Gaza by the Israeli army, and has called on states and international organisations to increase pressure on Israel to “immediately cease this carnage”.
In 124 days of conflict, at least 84 journalists have been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 in the course of their journalistic work or in connection with it, according to RSF statistics.
- READ MORE: Fiji human rights activists pay tribute to slain Gaza journalists, but shunned by local media
- RSF condemns Israel over ‘silencing of media’ – 31 Palestinian journalists in jail, 80 plus killed
- Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
- Other Gaza media reports
Journalists are being decimated as the days of this interminable war go by, through incessant Israeli strikes from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the watchdog said.
Journalists who had survived these four months were “living a daily hell” — in inhumane conditions, they suffered shortages of all kinds, particularly of equipment, as well as regular media blackouts, RSF said.
“In four months of conflict, Palestinian journalism has been decimated by Israeli armed forces with complete impunity, with a staggering death toll of more than 84 journalists killed — at least 20 in the line of duty,” said RSF’s Middle East desk in their statement.
“After filing two complaints with the International Criminal Court and making repeated appeals to States and international organisations, RSF is once again urging the UN Security Council to immediately enforce Resolution 2222 (2015) on the protection of journalists.
Journalists trapped in Rafah
Journalists in Gaza have no way out or any place of safe refuge. Forced to flee to the south of the enclave since October 7, the vast majority have taken refuge in Rafah, where the crossing point with Egypt is still closed and where an invasion of the city could lead to a new bloodbath.Rafah was described by Israel as a “security zone” at the start of the conflict. Despite RSF’s calls for the Rafah gate to be opened, the Israeli authorities continue to prevent Gazan journalists from leaving and to block access to the enclave for foreign journalists.
As Gaza killings rise, so does the toll on Palestinian journalists. Video: Al JazeeraA chilling toll
According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), about 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza have been totally or partially destroyed by the Israeli army since October 7, in addition to the appalling death toll.RSF filed two complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 31 October and 22 December 2023 in connection with the killings of journalists and the destruction of media outlets.
In the aftermath of the killings of independent videographer Moustafa Thuraya and Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh on January 7, RSF obtained a decision from the ICC prosecutor to include crimes against journalists in its investigation into the situation in Palestine.
Two days later, RSF called on the UN Security Council to urgently address Israel’s violations of Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists.
The struggle of journalists in the field
Against this terrifying backdrop, Palestinian reporters in Gaza are showing untold courage in continuing to report on the war.Most have lost loved ones. Forced to move, they live in tents, with no electricity and very little food or water.
Wounded journalists have very limited access to medical care. In partnership with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), RSF has been providing grants to Gazan journalists since the start of the war to support their reporting work.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
A man visits the spot where Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli snipers on 11 May 2022 while covering an Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank. Image: AJ/RSF Al Jazeera rejects Israeli forces’ attempt to justify crimes against journalists
Al Jazeera Media Network has rejected the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.
In a statement this week, the network has condemned the accusations against its journalists and recalled Israel’s “long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes”.
The statement continued:
“At a time when its correspondents and field crews are making great sacrifices to cover what is happening in Gaza, Al Jazeera’s employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism, and to adhere to the controls and directives contained in the Network’s code of ethics and code of conduct.
“Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.
“The network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes:
- the bombing of its office in Gaza twice,
- the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh,
- the killing of colleagues Samer Abu Daqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh,
- the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members, and
- the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.
“Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) has joined media freedom groups supporting Julian Assange, an Australian citizen whose unjust prosecution continues to undermine press freedoms and human rights.
In light of recent developments and mounting concerns over Assange’s deteriorating health, JERAA said in a statement it had urged the United States to drop all charges against Assange and facilitate his immediate return to Australia.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been the subject of relentless persecution by the US government for his efforts to expose war crimes and government misconduct.
Assange received a Walkley Award in 2011 for outstanding contribution to journalism through Wikileaks, which included the release of the 2010 “collateral murder” video and the publication of classified US diplomatic cables, shedding light on atrocities committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It is concerning that Assange faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty of espionage charges — a sentence that would effectively silence whistle-blowers and journalists worldwide,” JERAA said.
The association said it believed that Assange’s indictment set a dangerous precedent and posed a grave threat to the fundamental principles of press freedom and freedom of expression.
‘Enough is enough’
JERAA commended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his support in calling for Assange’s release and said it echoed his sentiment that “enough is enough.”PM Albanese’s recent vote in the federal Parliament for a motion demanding Assange’s return to Australia underscores the legitimacy of our demand. The motion, which received overwhelming support, leaves no room for ambiguity — it is time to bring Assange home.
The WikiLeaks 2010 “collateral damage” video. Video: Al JazeeraAs the UK High Court prepares to rule on Assange’s appeal against extradition in a two-day hearing next week (February 20-21), and with Prime Minister Albanese’s continued efforts to advocate for Assange’s release, JERAA has urged the US to heed the calls for justice and drop all charges against Assange.
It is imperative that Assange’s rights as an Australian citizen be respected, and that he be afforded the opportunity to return home.
JERAA president Associate Professor Alexandra Wake said that while some members might not agree with all Assange has done in his life, it was clear that his work was central to our “understanding of press freedoms and human rights”.
“JERAA upholds the principles of a free and independent press. It is time to end the trial of global media freedom,” she said.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The relentless campaign promoting the inevitability of a direct war with Russia is proceeding without challenge. That does not mean that war could erupt at any moment, or it could never happen. First, war is not based on a timetable. Second, war has no deterministic quality of any sort—it can be avoided. Third, but most important, war is contingent upon deliberation and subsequent decision—without decision, there is no war. For the record, neither the United States nor Russia has ever publically declared that they intend to go to war at some point in the future. So far, we only hear dire threats flying around.
When American think tanks, opinion-makers, and the omnipresent “experts” talk about going to war with Russia, they often disclose the inner workings of the system. Of importance are the ideological processes used to implement agendas and related tactics. World domination themes (our leadership, our national interests, our allies, free world, our values, our democracy, our resolve, state sponsor of terrorism, our sanctions, defending liberty, our this and our that, and all that empty jargon) appear at every turn.
Processes need avenues to formulate. The climax is reached when those avenues become both overlapped and interconnected. As a result, propaganda, fake diplomacy, false reporting, exaggeration, naked lies, vilification, accusation, crocodile tears for Ukraine, and military “assessments” move in unison with the plans of U.S. ruling circles.
As stated early on, since the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, the sole remaining superpower (as the United States likes to call itself) has been obsessively pursuing the goal for world control by any means—including war. The countless wars that the United States has been launching against any country that actively dares pursuing its own policie are testimony. War, of course, is easy on paper. Among powerful nuclear states, war is terra incognita. This fact alone, confirms the reasons why the United States, Britain, and other imperialist states treat the project for war with Russia in theatrical ways while depending on rhetorical bravados, sanctions, seizing of assets, and the arming of Ukraine to elicit concessions.
Now that Russia’s limited military operation in Ukraine has transformed into a wider war involving NATO countries indirectly, what comes next? First, that transformation begs an old-new argument. Do wars have any validity? Posing this argument brings to mind the anti-colonialist wars in the period 1950-1975. Second, although the scope of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine differs from those wars, the basics are the same. Explanation: the struggle for independence, sovereignty, and security can take many forms and transcends time and circumstances. This applies to Russia to a tee. How so?
Discussion: the charge that the anti-colonialist struggle posed challenge to and imperiled peace (as Petra Goedde opined, retrospectively, in her book, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History) is bogus. Discussion: what peace are we debating? Is it peace of mind for occupiers, colonizers, and imperialists or is it pacification by sanctions, blockades, and death and destruction to the occupied and the threatened? By analogy, the argument that Russia should not have disturbed the peace with its intervention in Ukraine is bogus too. For instance, considering that Ukraine has become a powerful American tool to destabilize and attack Russia, was it feasible for Russia to assure its survival from U.S. nuclear encirclement without intervening in Ukraine?
About the principle of armed struggle against all forms of neocolonialism and imperialism: how if not by war could have Algeria, Viet Nam (before U.S. intervention), and Angola, for examples, ended French and Portuguese colonialisms in their respective lands? About Viet Nam: does anyone think that the United States would have left South Viet Nam without being defeated in battle first? Further, because the U.S. and vassals are effectively waging war on Russia while pretending to be defending peace and principles, should Russia smile and wave its arms in jubilation?
The wider argument: The United States and satellites couch their wars under the rubric, “just and unjust wars”. They deem their wars just and wars by others unjust. U.S. think tanks go further by invoking the concept of legality as if the lawless hyper‑empire is the guardian and depositary of legality. On such think tank is the Brookings Institution, the voice of Zionist academia. The hyper-imperialist Michael O’Hanlon (director of research and senior fellow of the foreign policy program at Brookings) wrote a specious article full with inaccuracies and distorted facts on the American invasion of Iraq, and named it as such: “Why the War Wasn’t Illegal”.
O’Hanlon starts his article as follows, “United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was wrong in recently terming the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq “illegal”. So, now we know that the warmongering Zionist O’Hanlon thinks that he knows what is right and what is wrong! Aside from that, not only did he distort facts, but also erased the entire body of evidence confirming that Iraq had been abiding by all so-called U.N. resolutions on the matter of disarmament.
Setting the Record Straight on War and Peace
At present, only one concept can pass the test of rationality thus it is irrefutable. Wars can be either legitimate or illegitimate based on the tenets of the Natural Law, not the laws of the imperialist west and its institutions. The statement leads to an implacable consequence that could never be ignored or dismissed. Opposing legitimate wars (e.g., Russia’s in Ukraine, and the Palestine people resistance’s against the Zionist settler state of Israel, or the improbable but potential war by China for Taiwan) just because we advocate peace is antithetical to the anti-imperialist cause.
For one, wars fought to defend national independence from imperialist or occupying powers are an exclusive category. Consequently, the implication of selling antiwar agendas to aggressed, squeezed, occupied, or threatened states in the name of western-defined peace and goodwill could not be more obvious. It means that the collective chauvinist west would continue trampling on the natural rights of all nations resisting subjugation. Seeing the magnitude of restrictions, sanctions, and destruction heaped upon them, those nations are left with no choice but to resist and fight back to preserve their very existence.
In sum, and as far as it concerns Ukraine, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, it does not matter if the U.S. and European imperialisms define their ongoing wars in any context. The fact remains, no matter what contexts and laws they invent in support of their aims, the targeted countries would not acknowledge them—effectively they have no validity. The implication resulting from rejecting western rules of domination is unambiguous. Legitimate states (not installed by colonialist powers) threatened by marauding imperialists have every right to resort to any form of resistance to preserve their security, improve social welfare, and defend their freedom from the fascist clique that is ruling the world today.
Discussion
The western intelligentsia obliquely calls it the “Suez Crisis”. It wasn’t. By all attributes, it was a standard colonialist war. Briefly, Britain and France (in collusion with the then 8-year old Zionist settler state (Israel) attacked Egypt in July 1956 because it nationalized the Suez Canal Company—English, French, and other European shareholders owned the operating enterprise; Egypt owned the waterway itself. Remark: during that time, no one suggested that war with Britain, France, and Israel had become inevitable because of their war against Egypt.
When the United States intervened in Somalia, then invaded and occupied Afghanistan, Iraq, and then attacked Libya, Syria, and Yemen, no one suggested that going to war with the United States is inevitable to stop its Zionist wars. Pay attention: but when Russia intervened in Ukraine, the uproar reached the moon. The United States and major western powers repeatedly spoke of the inevitability of war with Russia. Are we missing something?
These few facts are enough to corroborate an important assertion. The notion positing the inevitability of war with this or that country is a U.S. stratagem to intimidate all independent nations. Manifest intent: to enforce or induce compliance under the threat of violence. At this stage, do we need to prove that the U.S. obsession for war with Russia goes beyond “Russophobia”, “Russophrenia”, and similar hazy terms? Said obsession is now an ideologically and objectively developed strategic purpose meant as a mechanism to impose the American order on Russia.
Observation: the old paradigm that governed the relation between capitalist America and communist Russia fell in disuse today. Although vanished in its old form, that paradigm (U.S. ideological enmity toward Russia) morphed into something new: strategic hostility. The core of this new anti-Russian stance is not the intervention in Ukraine, but a set of revamped U.S. geostrategic objectives. Accordingly, something very big has pushed the U.S. into chaotic frenzy. This cannot be but the U.S. certainty that Russia had come out into the open, re-asserted its role on the international arena, and challenged the American plan for world domination.
Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, stated the fixed purpose of the American empire unequivocally. He declared, “The United States must remain the most powerful nation on Earth if peace is to continue between the U.S., China, and Russia.” In other words, the United States is opposing to maintaining peace—meaning it would go to war—with Russia and China should it conclude that either country or both pose threat to its military domination over the planet. By stating that, Milley has implicitly confirmed that war with Russia and China is inevitable under the condition he outlined.
The British Sky News of Rupert Murdock is a gigantic factory of lies, tabloid news, and journalistic prostitution. Armed with such “credentials”, Sky News joins the American crowds in discussing the inevitability of war with Russia. Pretending serious journalism, the online tabloid asks, “Are we heading for World War Three?”
Sky News then provides “verdicts” by its so-called panel of experts. Not surprising was that such experts recycled superficial opinions spread by the American media. Of interest, is the view presented by Sky News’ “military analysist”, Simon Diggins. Using shallow “analysis” and language, Diggins reproduced simplistic clichés taken from Fox News of Murdoch and from worthless stories taken from Microsoft Network (MSN) of Bill Gates.
I’m not going to comment on Diggins’ quote (below) except for putting the “important” stuff in Italics. Purpose: to stress that the italicized text is nearly identical to the phraseology and lingo employed by American imperialists and Zionists in their daily shows. He writes,
In one sense, we are always in a ‘pre-war’ world, as wars can start from miscalculation, from hubris, or misunderstandings as well as deliberate design.
However, the last months have seen some loud rumblings, and the sense that the inevitable tensions of a complex world may only be resolvable by war.
Nothing is inevitable, but the Ukraine invasion in particular has shown that Russia sees war as an instrument of policy, as a tool to change the world order in its favour, and not simply as a means of defence.”
China likewise seeks reunification with Taiwan, and Iran, in its region, wants its ‘place in the sun’.
Josep Borrell, European Union foreign policy chief, never ceases to amaze. His colonialist mindset is closed for reformation, and the bizarre statements he often makes keep getting worse from one to the next. Claiming that Russian influence causing dilemma in Africa’s Sahel, he stated,
Russia’s “very strong” influence in Ouagadougou, Bamako, and Niamey “creates a new geopolitical configuration” in the Sahel. France has had to leave; we have left our military mission – an incipient military mission – in Niger. We have now been invited to abandon Niger with our civilian mission,” he said, adding that EU member states “will have to decide if they want to stay” and extend Mali’s EUTM [European Union Trade Mark], which is set to expire in May. [Italics added]
Comment: Can Borrell explain to us why Russia’s influence on Africa’s Sahel is bad, but the European influence on the same is good? Another issue: does he think that war with Russia has become inevitable because Russia is breaking the “sacred” European colonialist legacy in Africa?
Commenting on article written by the anti-Russian British journalist Gideon Rachman (Financial Times: “How to stop a war between America and China“), American economist Scott B. Sumner made this important remark. He said, “Unfortunately, the article doesn’t tell us how to stop a war between the US and China. …” In fact, all what Rachman tried to do is upholding the U.S. notion of deterrence against China’s legitimate claims on Taiwan. (Before I forget, Rachman won a few prizes and awards for his superficial analyses.)
The Zionist-controlled publication of The Atlantic published an article written by Eric Schmidt and Robert O. Work. The title is intriguing: “How to Stop the Next World War.” You would expect a convincing proposal, or at least a generic idea as how to stop the U.S. mad race for war with everyone. After attentively reading the article, I realized that the authors had already “suggested” how to stop the next war in the subtitle: “A strategy to restore America’s military deterrence”. So, now we know the answer to their question: in order to stop the next world war, the United States should not engage in negotiation or something like that, but it must protect and expand its imperialistic spheres of influence through increased military deterrence.
Comment: U.S. and British imperialist and Zionists are not in the business of stopping wars. On the contrary, they incite for wars and justify them. Their favorite methods are open belligerency and swamping verbosity. In both cases (Rachman’s article and the Atlantic piece), the march toward the inevitable wars with Russia and China was not only hypothesized and marketed, but also rationalized to give the impression of unarguable conclusion.
To sum it up, western governments (especially the U.S. government) and legions of war promotors have been tirelessly theorizing on the inevitability of war with Russia. Conspicuously absent from their coordinated scripts, however, is the postscript—the aftermath of war. That absence is neither lapsus nor negligence. It is a calculated strategy to advance the abstract notion of war without addressing its concrete consequences on their societies.
U.S. post-WWII foreign and domestic policies need no introduction. Summary: in building consensus and silence for its wars around the world, the imperialist state relied on indoctrination, concealment, deception, and propaganda. Aside from being the pillars of control, these four categories form a specialized school of thought. Accordingly, those who govern the direction of domestic affairs (finance, Congress, weapons manufacturing, legislation, executive orders, etc.) will also govern the conduct of foreign policy and wars.
What did the system do to insure that the American people remain passive toward its wars? It relied on a formidable psychological tool: desensitization. Desensitization such as this leads to emotional inebriation. For some (without quantifying), this type of emotions is rewarding whereby the scenes of mass destruction act as psychedelic narcotic. Arguably, the images of victory over a designated enemy are the experience.
Desensitization has another function. In the hands of warmongers and war planners, it is a contraption to eradicate critical thinking vis-à-vis the plethora of factors and actors pushing for war. The odd thing is that visualizing the destruction of enemy while not contemplating own destruction by retaliatory strikes is not normal and raises myriad questions. For instance, could this behavior equate to sedation? Materially though, it lays the emotional foundation for the acceptance of war by protracted induction.
Consider the Newsweek article, “Nuclear Bomb Map Shows Impact if Biden’s New Weapon Dropped on Russia,” published on November 3, 2023. The Zionist-imperialist weekly reports on “A nuclear bomb being developed by the Biden administration could wreak havoc in Moscow’. Newsweek broadcasts the bomb’s destructiveness by including a visualization map made by NUKEMAP. Newsweek continues by saying that with its “360 kilotons TNT, the bomb is 24 times the explosive power of the 15-kiloton bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.”.
Newsweek editors are cynically leaving to the readers the burden of calculating the human cost to Russia. In the case of Hiroshima, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put the number of dead and injured between (200,000 and 340,000); the average therefore is 270,000. Now, 270,000 x 24 = 6,480,000. Effectively, therefore, the United States is telling Russia that it can and has all means to kill or injure about 6.5 million Russians in one single strike. [Note: those will die— consequent to radiation and other causes related to the blast—in the successive six months to the detonation are not included.] No doubt, the U.S. wants to intimidate Russia as if this is incapable of returning the gift of death to selected U.S. cities.
Pay attention: Newsweek did not give details on who divulged the news about this new bomb. Skepticism is warranted; for example, the whole thing could be fiction to scare Russia. But this is unimportant. At this point, we need to learn how the process of indoctrination to war works.
To start, we know that NUKEMAP was created by Alex Wellerstein. A question: did the Pentagon ask Alex Wellerstein to talk about the 360 kiloton bomb, or did Wellerstein, knowing about it from other sources, decide to open the secret? This hypothesis cannot be true—it is unfathomable that the Pentagon allows its most secret weapons to be known to the enemy. Most likely, the Pentagon ordered the divulgence of information to intimidate Russia. Either way, this whole episode casts light on the multi-pronged interactions between the war apparatuses of the United States and its civilian contributors like Wellerstein.
Expanded Discussion
First, NUKEMAP is visualization software designed to help those who covet seeing real nuclear and missile wars. Second, the Pentagon and Wellerstein well know that the program can be used effectively to garner support for war by prospecting a “joyous” outcome, which is visualizing the incineration of Moscow.
Now, could it be that the Pentagon is offering Wellerstein’s visualization to the public as a form of ideological catharsis to release their “repressed violent emotions”? Can this be true? It implies that the American people at large are addicted to visceral violence. But violence, as philosophy and practice, is acquired. In addition, no nation is uniform in its feelings and reactions to wars initiated by their country. With regard to the U.S. wars on foreign nations in the name of “security” and nominal values, indoctrination targeting the American people has worked on two levels: (a) countless Americans see their foreign wars as patriotic, or (b) they are indifferent to the magnitude of death, destruction, and consequences that their country has been inflicting on foreign nations.
Pay attention: Wellerstein did not create NUKEMAP to warn against nuclear annihilation or to bring attention to its horrors. His article NUKEMAP is explicit. Not even once does he refer to the consequences of his concept. His focus was on the praise of his software and the awards it obtained.
Remarks
- First, Newsweek says that the Pentagon is developing a B61-13 nuclear device to give Biden options to hit large area military target. We understand, therefore, that the Pentagon is actually instigating Biden to consider the option for hitting Russia if he and his associates choose to do so.
- Second: in turn, Newsweek takes upon itself the responsibility to send a message to Russia by showing what this bomb can do by publishing a simulation by NUKEMAP. Meaning, Newsweek is threating Russia directly on behalf of Biden—as if it is seeking an irrational Russian response to the U.S. visual provocation.
- Third: of relevance to the process of desensitization is what Alex Wellerstein has done. He gave online users a tool that “Lets you to detonate nuclear weapons over an interactive map of the world”. In a sense, he created an online army of volunteers ready to push the button and wait to see the simulated cataclysmic result. To close, those who love the idea of war and the annihilation of their perceived enemy are now being geared to the idea of vaporizing Russia, China, and any other nation that stands in the U.S. trajectory for world domination.
To summarize, because the ideological devotion to war with Russia has become a vast cult with unpredictable consequences, how many still remember Russell J. Oakes’ book, The Day After, and how many still recall the eponymous adapted film starring Jason Robards?
Next: Part 5
The post Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 4) first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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When Condé Nast bought the online music publication Pitchfork in 2015, Condé’s Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarpia told the New York Times that the acquisition brought “a very passionate audience of Millennial males into our roster.”
Three years before, in 2012, roughly 88 percent of respondents to Pitchfork’s People’s List, a record of reader-ranked albums from the last fifteen years, identified as male. Pitchfork clarified later that this figure was not “indicative of Pitchfork’s overall demographics.” (To be fair, the characterization was technically accurate, but some things are best left unsaid.)
Pitchfork’s list of 200 albums going back to 1997 was overwhelmingly White and male. Only two Black artists and two albums made by women cracked its top 50. Internally, these trends persisted.
As of 2017, only 11.4 percent of Pitchfork reviews by male authors were of albums by female artists, paling in comparison to female reviewers’ 30.1 percent. In 2019, Pitchfork’s Union cited Pitchfork’s poor labor practices and “lack of diversity across staff” as incompatible with the union’s values.
In January 2024, Condé Nast announced it was folding Pitchfork into men’s magazine GQ, laying off more than half of Pitchfork’s staff, including eight union members. The changes also included the departure of Puja Patel, Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief since 2018, who resharpened Pitchfork’s mission of serving as the “most trusted voice in music.”
Patel not only set out to maintain the integrity of Pitchfork’s signature reviews section but also spearheaded a transformative approach to its features, covering music within the context of social and cultural issues and highlighting underrepresented voices in the music industry, which Pitchfork had dabbled at in the years leading up to the shift.
“After nearly 8 yrs, mass layoffs got me. glad we could spend that time trying to make it a less dude-ish place just for GQ to end up at the helm,” Jill Mapes, former features editor for Pitchfork, shared via Twitter/X.
Music journalism, not unlike the industry it covers, is rife with (primarily White) “dude-ishness.” Jessica Hopper, music critic, former senior editor for Pitchfork, and author of The First Collection of Criticism By a Living Female Rock Critic, wrote about her experiences as a reporter and the “paternalistic scolding” she often received from men (both industry insiders and outsiders) for incorporating a feminist perspective in her work.
In 2015, Hopper asked her followers a (now deleted) question via Twitter, “Gals/other marginalized folk: what was your 1stbrush (in music industry, journalism, scene) w/ idea that you didn’t ‘count’?”
Hundreds of users responded; journalists, sound engineers, producers, artists, and music fans who were made to feel lesser by their peers. The tweet made me recall semi-humiliating moments in my own music career—ones where I felt underestimated and small.
Like the time a male sound engineer asked, as I was loading my gear in from my car, if I was the “groupie” of the guy who was opening for me that night. He talked loudly through my whole set.
Gender and racial disparities are still pervasive in media. An April 2023 Digiday report found that, although major media companies made some progress in terms of diversity and inclusion compared to 2022, they were still primarily hiring white people. And Reuters Institute data compiled by analyzing media companies across twelve countries concluded that only 22 percent of top editors were women.
So, Santarpia’s statement back in 2015 stung not only for its implication that being a thoughtful music listener was somehow distinctly masculine but also because it was a sinister reminder that behind the scenes, at so many different levels, White men were given practically sole power to determine what good music was.
Rolling Stone’s founder Jann Wenner said that he didn’t include women or Black artists in his book The Masters because they don’t “articulate at the level” as the other “philosophers of rock” who were featured in his book.
“You know, just for public relations’ sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism,” Wenner told the New York Times in 2023. “I wish in retrospect I could have interviewed Marvin Gaye. Maybe he’d have been the guy.”
It’s not that a team at GQ is incapable of producing decent music coverage. It’s that when music media suddenly gets absorbed by men’s media, you start to wonder what and who gets left behind.
Many Pitchfork contributors whose diverse perspectives added nuance to Pitchfork’s music coverage have been abruptly dismissed. Newsrooms are shrinking, and online spaces devoted to highlighting underground art are at risk of disappearing.
But women, people of color, queer and non-binary folks, and other marginalized communities have always been innovating, making music, writing about music, and finding ways to introduce new sounds to their circles, even if men like Wenner don’t find those particular histories worthy of exploring.
Brittany Spanos, senior writer at Rolling Stone, said of her colleagues at Rolling Stone following Wenner’s comments, “The most important work we do is creating careers and legacies. And it’s our job to make it clear that those legacies are not reserved just for straight white men.”
- First published at Project Censored.
The post As GQ Absorbs Pitchfork, Music Media Becomes Even More Male-Centric first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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The University of the South Pacific journalism programme is hosting a cohort student journalists from Australia’s Queensland University of Technology this week.
Led by Professor Angela Romano, the 12 students are covering news assignments in Fiji as part of their working trip.
The visitors were given a briefing by USP journalism teaching staff — Associate Professor in Pacific journalism and programme head Dr Shailendra Singh, and student training newspaper supervising editor-in-chief Monika Singh.
PACIFIC MEDIA CONFERENCE 4-6 JULY 2024 The students held lively discussions about the form and state of the media in Fiji and the Pacific, the historic influence of Australian and Western news media and its pros and cons, and the impact of the emergence of China on the Pacific media scene.
Dr Singh said the small and micro-Pacific media systems were “still reeling” from revenue loss due to digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic.
As elsewhere in the world, the “rivers of gold” (classified advertising revenue) had virtually dried up and media in the Pacific were apparently struggling like never before.
Dr Singh said that this was evident from the reduced size of some newspapers in the Pacific, in both classified and display advertising, which had migrated to social media platforms.
Repeal of draconian law
He praised Fiji’s coalition government for repealing the country’s draconian Media Industry Development Act last year, and reviving media self-regulation under the revamped Fiji Media Council.However, Dr Singh added that there was still some way to go to further improve the media landscape, including focus on training and development and working conditions.
“There are major, longstanding challenges in small and micro-Pacific media systems due to small audiences, and marginal profits,” he said. “This makes capital investment and staff development difficult to achieve.”
The QUT students are in Suva this month on a working trip in which students will engage in meetings, interviews and production of journalism. They will meet non-government organisations that have a strong focus on women/gender in development, democracy or peace work.
The students will also visit different media organisations based in Suva and talk to their female journalists on their experiences and their stories.
The USP journalism programme started in Suva in 1988 and it has produced more than 200 graduates serving the Pacific and beyond in various media and communication roles.
The programme has forged partnerships with leading media players in the Pacific and our graduates are shining examples in the fields of journalism, public relations and government/NGO communication.
Asia Pacific Report publishes in partnership with The University of the South Pacific’s newspaper and online Wansolwara News.
- The university is hosting a Pacific Media Conference in partnership with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Suva on 4-6 July 2024.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Wansolwara.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) is working with journalists in the Middle East and Northern Africa to investigate various violations affecting the safety of journalists and their ability to do their work.
Shutterstock
“I find myself wishing there was more protection [for investigative journalists], a sense of safety and even simply just hope. I watch in awe as they investigate crimes that they unfortunately know they could well be victims of in the future, or in some cases already have been.“ Zaynab Al-Khawaja, GCHR’s Journalists Protection Coordinator, working with journalists conducting the investigations
Supported by the Global Media Defence Fund, GCHR’s project Investigating impunity for crimes against journalists in the Arab States, while providing protection has identified a range of threats journalists face, such as arbitrary detentions and gendered threats.
With a strong gender focus, the GCHR ensures that the majority of the investigations are carried out by women, empowering them and shedding light on cases involving women.
One investigation highlights the story of an anonymous woman journalist who quit her job and relocated due to sexual harassment. She writes:
A large proportion of society is aware of widespread harassment in the streets, resulting from an exacerbated hypermasculinity. However, statements by several Iraqi women journalists confirm that this phenomenon did not spare women in press and media outlets, forcing a considerable number of them to quit journalism for good.
The investigation also reported that 41% of women journalists in Iraq have been victims of harassment, forcing 15% to leave their jobs and 5% to quit their profession for good.
This data aligns with UNESCO’s Chilling report, revealing increasing offline and online attacks against women journalists, including stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape and murder.
Another investigation looked into the imprisonment and silencing of journalists, some facing fabricated allegations of sexual harassment. GCHR collaborates with the NGO Vigilance and 40 partners on a joint appeal to end the persecution and detention of journalists and human rights defenders exercising their right to freedom of expression. GCHR also supported a journalist in the Middle East investigating the case of a disappeared journalist in Syria.
Since 2022, GCHR and UNESCO have joined forces to support investigative journalism, reducing impunity for crimes against journalists and enhancing their safety through the Global Media Defence Fund. Established in 2019, this fund has supported over 120 projects globally, directly benefiting over 5,000 journalists, 1,200 lawyers and 200 non-governmental organizations.
In 2022, UNESCO published recommendations on addressing violence against women journalists, based on The Chilling, a global research project by UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). All reports related to this project are available here on UNESCO’s website.
see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/journalist/
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
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By Karishma Kumari in Suva
The University of Fiji will be offering its journalism and media studies programme at its Samabula campus from this semester.
UniFiji vice-chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem said the programme started at the Saweni campus in Lautoka in 2022 with only five students and had been growing since then.
She said there would now be more students registering for the programme as it was positioned closer to the court and Parliament for better news coverage.
Professor Shameem said the programme was drafted and written with the help of senior journalists and news media people in Fiji including Communications Fiji Limited chairman William Parkinson, Sitiveni Halofaki from Fiji TV, former Fiji Sun managing editor Nemani Delaibatiki, Matai Akauola, Anish Chand from The Fiji Times and Stanley Simpson of Mai TV.
The vice-chancellor said the programme was different from the other universities and student journalists were sent for training in newsrooms during their first year of study so that they could become well known with their bylines.
She said the university also has a newspaper, known as UniFiji Watch, and a radio station, Vox Populi, which had won an international award for college radio.
Industry teachers
The vice-chancellor said that most of the courses were taught by people in the journalism industry and veteran journalists, including Communications Fiji Limited news director Vijay Narayan, Vimal Madhavan and Matai Akoula.She said the university also wanted to add film and a documentary course to the programme.
Head of department Dr Kamala Naiker said journalism students needed opportunities for innovation. The first lot of student journalists would be graduating next year.
Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, a U.S. commentator who has made a name for himself by spreading conspiracy theories and has questioned Washington’s support for Kyiv in its fight against invading Russian troops, has been widely criticized for giving the Russian leader a propaganda platform in his first interview with an American journalist since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
In the more than two-hour interview, released on Carlson’s website early on February 9, Putin again claimed Ukraine was a threat to Russia because the West was drawing the country into NATO — an assertion the military alliance has called false — while avoiding topics such as his brutal crackdown at home on civil society and free speech.
Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
The interview took place as Putin hopes that Western support for Kyiv will wane and morale among Ukrainians will flag to the point where his war aims are achievable. It also comes as U.S. military support for Kyiv is in question as Republican lawmakers block a $60 billion aid package proposed by President Joe Biden, and a reshuffle of Ukraine’s dismissal of the top commander of the armed forces after a counteroffensive fell far short of its goals.
Putin urged the United States to press Kyiv to stop fighting and cut a deal with Russia, which occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine.
Carlson rarely challenged Putin, who gave a long and rambling lecture on the history of Russia and Ukraine, failing to bring up credible accusations from international rights groups that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine — Putin himself has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the conflict — or the imprisonment of opposition figures such as Aleksei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza on trumped up charges that appear politically motivated.
“Putin got his message out the way he wanted to,” said Ian Bremmer, a New York-based political scientist and president of Eurasiagroup.
Even before the meeting was published, Carlson faced criticism for interviewing Putin when his government is holding Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and another U.S. journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva of RFE/RL, in jail on charges related to their reporting that both vehemently deny.
Kurmasheva’s case was not even mentioned in the interview, while Carlson angered the Wall Street Journal by suggesting that Putin should release the 33-year-old journalist even if “maybe he was breaking your law in some way.”
The U.S. State Department has officially designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia.
“Evan is a journalist and journalism is not a crime. Any portrayal to the contrary is total fiction,” the newspaper said in reaction to the interview.
“Evan was unjustly arrested and has been wrongfully detained by Russia for nearly a year for doing his job, and we continue to demand his immediate release.”
Putin said “an agreement can be reached” to free Gershkovich and appeared to suggest that a swap for a “patriotic” Russian national currently serving out a life sentence for murder in Germany — an apparent reference to Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from Russia’s domestic spy organization convicted of assassinating a former Chechen fighter in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019.
“There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it, but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached,” Putin told Carlson.
Carlson, a former Fox News host, has made a name for himself by spreading conspiracy theories and has questioned U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against invading Russian troops. The interview was Putin’s first with a Western media figure since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin said during the interview Russia has no interest in invading NATO member Poland and could only see one case where he would: “If Poland attacks Russia.”
“We have no interest in Poland, Latvia, or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. It’s just threat mongering. It is absolutely out of the question,” he added.
Describing his decision to interview Putin in an announcement posted on X on February 6, Carlson asserted that U.S. media outlets focus fawningly on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but that Putin’s voice is not heard in the United States because Western journalists have not “bothered” to interview him since the full-scale invasion.
Carlson has gained a reputation for defending the Russian leader, once claiming that “hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy.”
Numerous Western journalists rejected the claim, saying they have consistently sought to interview Putin but have been turned away. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later confirmed that, saying his office receives “numerous requests for interviews with the president” but that most of the Western outlets asking are “traditional TV channels and large newspapers that don’t even attempt to appear impartial in their coverage. Of course, there’s no desire to communicate with this kind of media.”
Carlson’s credentials as an independent journalist have been questioned, and in 2020 Fox News won a defamation case against him, with the judge saying in her verdict that when presenting stories, Carlson is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “‘nonliteral commentary.”
Carlson was one of Fox News’ top-rated hosts before he abruptly left the network last year after Fox settled a separate defamation lawsuit over its reporting of the 2020 presidential election. Fox agreed to pay $787 million to voting machine company Dominion after the company filed a lawsuit alleging the network spread false claims that its machines were rigged against former President Donald Trump.
Carlson has had a rocky relationship at times with the former president, but during Trump’s presidency he had Carlson’s full backing and he has endorsed Trump in his 2024 run to regain the White House.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Social media companies have been operating with little oversight and virtually no regulations for far too long, and it is past time that we start holding them accountable for what they do both on their sites and behind the scenes. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so […]
The post Billionaires Are Running Social Media Companies Like The ‘Wild West’ appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
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Every year, millions of viewers tune in to watch the Super Bowl, making it one of the most-watched television events in the world. And this year, thanks to a certain romance (ahem, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce), the viewing figures are likely to be bigger than ever. And because of all that reach from the sporting event, advertising is, of course, a big deal. Brands usually spare no expense with their Super Bowl commercials, and most of them feature major celebrities and unique, creative angles, all in the hope of generating buzz (and a heck of a lot of sales). This year is no different.
Below, we’ve listed four advertisements from vegan-friendly brands that you can expect to see during the big game this weekend. There’s also one bonus entry that you definitely won’t see, but it’s still worth watching all the same.
Silk1 Silk
Last year, actor Jeremy Renner was involved in a life-threatening snowplow accident, but this year, he’s showing the world via the Super Bowl commercial break that he’s back and better than ever. In a spot for popular almond milk brand Silk, which also stars his daughter, Ava, Renner is seen kicking, twisting, dancing, and singing to James Brown’s “I Feel Good.”
The actor told CNN that he’s “so glad” to be alive and to be able to “spend time on wellness.” The Silk ad, he indicated, was a signal of a new beginning after a difficult year. “To look back on this, not look back on the accident, but look back on like how far that we’ve come. It meant a lot to us,” he said.
Watch it here
Oreo
2 OreoMajor cookie brand Oreo (which, yes, you’ll be pleased to know has many vegan flavors) teamed up with Kardashian-Jenner matriarch Kris Jenner to give a new “twist” to its Super Bowl commercial. The ad travels throughout the past showing major history-defining moments decided by twisting an Oreo. One of them is, of course, Jenner (dressed in her 2007 blazer) deciding on whether to go ahead with Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
“I come from a generation where it was all about the commercials for some of us,” Jenner told the Independent regarding her decision to do the ad. “I love football, but I’m not as into football as maybe some of my male friends or my kids. So it’s always so exciting to wait for the commercials to come on and see what the brands would come up with. That was always embedded in my brain.”
“The concept was so playful, fun, and really captured my quirky sense of humor,” she added.
Watch it here
Pringles
3 PringlesPringles (yep, it’s another vegan-friendly snack brand!) teamed up with Chris Pratt to film its Super Bowl commercial, which sees the actor (sporting a curly mustache) go viral for his resemblance to Julius Pringles, aka Mr.P, aka the man on the Pringles can.
According to Pratt, he started growing the mustache during the recent Hollywood strikes. “I grew it out and shaved down the sides, and it curled up,” Pratt told Variety. “[My wife said] ‘That’s actually a good look for a character. Have you ever played a character with that type of mustache?’” he continued. “I kept it.”
Watch it here
E.l.f
4 E.l.f. CosmeticsVegan and cruelty-free beauty brand E.l.f. Cosmetics teamed up with Judy Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy), Megan Trainor, and Suits stars Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman, and Sarah Rafferty for its second-ever Super Bowl commercial. In the ad, Torres is on trial for spending too much on makeup. Judge Judy, of course, sentences her to use E.l.f. Cosmetics’ Halo Glow Liquid Filter foundation for “$14 glowy skin.”
“We knew early on that we’d need to show up with a veteran attitude and outdo ourselves,” Brian Vaughan, partner and executive creative director of E.l.f. Beauty’s creative marketing and communications agency Shadow, told Adweek. “We wanted the campy daytime TV courtroom vibe, with a super eclectic cast of characters to achieve that silly, unrestrained, over-the-top Super Bowl sensibility.”
Watch it here
PETA
5 PETAThis year, PETA’s Super Bowl ad sees Edie Falco (who famously played mob wife Carmela Soprano on The Sopranos) break down and scream after a block of cheese is stolen from her. The clip then cuts to a mother cow chasing after its calf, who is being taken away on a truck. “Kidnapping and violence may be everyday things for fictional mob wife Carmela Soprano, but did you know that they’re horrifyingly real for mother cows?” PETA says of the new ad.
As you may have guessed, this is one Super Bowl commercial you likely won’t see in the middle of the game. According to PETA, its ads are usually deemed to be too controversial or provocative to air by the National Football League.
Watch it hereThis post was originally published on VegNews.com.
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America’s Lawyer E85: If you want to know why politicians never do anything to help you, all you have to do is follow the money. A new report has found that lobbyists spent a record amount of money last year to stop progress on the issues that matter to you. Social media companies have gotten […]
The post Lobbyists Break New Record Buying Lawmakers appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
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The 2023-2024 Gaza Massacre has continued now for nearly 4 months while the World looks on. The Zionist-subverted and US lackey Australian Labor Government has fervently assisted Apartheid Israel diplomatically, with key arms supplies, intelligence, weapons targeting and now with cessation of support for UNRWA – racist Labor is complicit in the US-Israeli massacre of Palestinian children. Zionist-subverted Australian Mainstream media are complicit by lying for Apartheid Israel.
Set out below is a quantitative view of the Gaza Genocide from truthful reportage (notably from some prize-winning Western journalists) but which is overwhelmingly ignored by Zionist-subverted Mainstream Western and Australian media:
(1) Apartheid Israel allowed the 7 October (10/7) event to happen (like the US re 9/11).
(2) The 10/7 Breakout by lightly armed Palestinians from the Gaza Concentration Camp was to get hundreds of Israeli hostages to trade for 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli military prisons and indeed for 5.6 million highly abusively confined Occupied Palestinians.
(3) The IDF response with high explosive tank shelling and helicopter missiles was responsible for a substantial proportion of the 1,200 Israelis killed – if deaths were proportional to firepower then most of the Israeli deaths on 7-8 October were due to the IDF.
(4) 97.5% (1,170) of the Israelis killed (1,200) were adults involved militarily in the 56 year Occupation because of Israeli compulsory military service. 2.5% (30) were children).
(5) 84.2% (1,010) of the Israeli dead were present serving Israeli military responsible for violently maintaining the 56-year Occupation and hermetically sealing the bombed and blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp.
(6) The Israeli-complicit 10/7 carnage (like the US-complicit 9/11 carnage from massive intelligence failure as adverted by both former US president Donald Trump and former US Vice President Al Gore) provided the “excuse” for disproportionate violence with genocidal intent.
(7). As of mid-January 2024, after 100 days of the Gaza Massacre 100,000 Palestinians were killed, missing or wounded, and 31,497 Palestinians had been killed including 12,345 children, 6,471 women and 245 health workers. 1,500 Palestinian fighters were killed in Israel on 7-8 October for a total of 33,000 Palestinians killed.
(8) In the present Gaza Massacre there is an Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio of 33,000/1,200 = 27.5 (55 if the IDF killed 50% of the Israeli victims) versus the 10 ordered by Nazi leader Hitler in 1944 (and effected in the Ardeatine Massacre), and 30,000,000/3,000 = 10,000 in the post-9/11 US War on Terror (this including avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in 20 countries violated by the US Alliance).
(9). International Law expert Professor Francesca Albanese states that under International Law subjugated Occupied people (the Occupied Palestinians) have the right to defend themselves but the war criminal Occupiers (the genocidally racist Israelis) in an occupied territory do not.
(10). US, UK and Australian Mainstream media reportage is overwhelmingly dominated by lying Israeli propaganda. Thus a Google Search for “Hamas massacre” yields 500,000 results whereas that for “IDF massacre” yields 1,400 results.
(11). Most of 2.3 million Gazans (nearly half of them children, nearly three quarters women and children) are living in tents, denied requisite water, food, sanitation, medicine and medical care, and facing an existential catastrophe due to deprivation and disease.
(12). The forced displacement of Gazans to the south is a Third major mass population expulsion after the 1948 Nakba (800,000 expelled) and the 1967 Naksa (400,000 expelled), with a feared Fourth mass population expulsion of 2.3 million Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai desert. Genocidally racist, settler-colonialist Apartheid Israel wants all the land of Palestine (plus neighbouring lands) but not the Indigenous inhabitants.
The civilized World is utterly horrified but must translate that horror into urgent action as summarized below:
(1). Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
(2). Dump the US dollar.
(3). UNSC, UNGA and other action over genocidal Israeli violation of the South Africa-requested ICJ ruling on the Gaza Genocide.
(4). Young-impelled decent Third Parties (e.g. Greens) to urgently replace war criminal and climate criminal Western duopolies (e.g. the US Republican/ Democrat, UK Conservative/Labour and Australian Coalition/Labor political duopolies).
(5). Decent voter backlash in the US, UK, and US Alliance e.g. Australians voting for either the unforgivable, Apartheid Israel-supporting Australian Labor Government or the even worse Coalition are complicit in genocidal Apartheid Israeli crimes.
(6). Unexceptional and immediate granting of equal rights and all Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)-specified human rights for 15 million sorely oppressed Palestinians.
(7). In relation to the present horrifying, Israel-imposed Gaza circumstances the Indigenous Palestinians should at the very least be immediately given the rights accorded in law to pets and livestock in the West.
(8). If Palestinians are to continue to be denied life without foreign occupation the World should immediately insist on occupation by a decent non-Invader country (e.g. Switzerland, Ireland, Fiji).
(9). Immediate ceasefire with war criminal Apartheid Israel out of Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories immediately to permit entry of life-saving security, humanitarian aid, health workers, reconstruction teams, and forensic teams to examine all the dead (Israel was a world leader in illegal organ trading).
(10). Action now – if the US Alliance-, UK- and Australia-backed US and Apartheid Israel continue to get away with mass murder of children in Gaza then we are all existentially threatened.
The post Western Media and Politician Complicity in US-Israeli Massacre of Palestinian Children first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Albert Einstein argued,
[P]rivate capital tends to become concentrated in few hands”, resulting in “an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society.
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).
It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. [May 1949 edition of socialist magazine Monthly Review]
Thomas Jefferson wrote of Newspapers Lies:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time;… General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn of the great facts, and the details are all false.1
Chronologically,
– vested interests journalism made the killing, capturing, transporting and slavery of Africans acceptable in colonial times and during the early United States of America.
– corrupted journalists drummed up hate against Indigenous peoples and the later desire for war and the pillage of Mexico.
- Hearst newspapers’ journalists convinced enough Americas to war on Spain, Cuba and the Filipinos
- journalists working for President Wilson’s established Committee on Public Information created a public desire for entering the First World War.
– journalists made U.S. corporations arming of Hitler’s poor Nazi Germany acceptable as a ‘bulwark’ against Communist Soviet Russia.2
– Julius Streicher, Nazi newspaper publisher was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and was executed by hanging on October 16, 1946
- cooperating journalists made a U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia appear necessary as was war in Korea before, and neo-colonial U.S. wars in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East thereafter.
- Journalists reported non-existent popular demonstrations fired upon in Libya, which the UN had cited for its higher standard of living than 9 European countries. Journalists hail US/NATO bombing and terrorist army, slander Gaddafi – did not cover a near million Libyans wildly demonstrating in support of their wealthy and democratic Green Book Arab Socialist government.3
– All mainstream journalists ridiculed Gaddafi’s wonderful address to the UN General Assembly in which he, as no one had done before, described how the UN has sanctified US-NATO invasions and bombings in falsification of its charter from its very beginning, and labeled the UN Security Council correctly, a ‘council of terror.’
- The CIA currently maintains a network of journalists around the world, who influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda, and provide direct access to a large amount of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”4
WAR BY MEDIA
At London’s Trafalgar Square, on October 8, 2011 during the U.S. U.K. genocide in Iraq, Australian editor, publisher, activist and founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange spoke encouragingly about how “peace can be started by truth”:
“. . . and that is something I want to talk about. What can we do with our values, what can we do at all in relation to this (Iraq) war? Because the reality is Margaret Thatcher had it right; there is no society any more. What there is is a transnational security elite that is busy carving up the world using your tax money.
To combat that elite we must not petition; we must take it over.
We must form our own networks of strength and mutual value which can challenge those strengths and self-interested values of the warmongers in this country and in others that have formed hand in hand an alliance to take money from the United States, from every NATO country, from Australia and launder it through Afghanistan, launder it through Iraq, lander it through Somalia , launder it through Yemen, launder it through Pakistan and wash that money in peoples blood.
I don’t need to tell you the depravity of war, you are all too familiar with its images, with the refugees of war, with information that we have revealed showing the everyday squalor and barbarity of war.
Information such as the individual deaths of over 130,000 people in Iraq. Individual deaths that were kept secret by the US military who denied that they ever counted the deaths of civilians.
“Wars Can Be Undone!”
Instead I want to tell you what I think is the way that wars come to be and that wars can be undone.
“Wars Are a Result of Lies.”
In democracies, or the pseudo-democracies that we are evolving into, wars are a result of lies. The Vietnam War and the push for US involvement was the result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . a lie. The Iraq War famously is the result of lies. Wars in Somalia are a result of lies. The Second World War and the German invasion of Poland was the result of carefully constructed lies.
“Average death count attributed to each journalist?”
That is war by media. Let us ask ourselves of the complicit media, which is the majority of the mainstream press, what is the average death count attributed to each journalist?
When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies peddled to the British public and the American public and the publics all over Europe and other countries then who are the war criminals?
“Journalists Are War Criminals!”
It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists; journalists are war criminals. And while one might think that that should lead us to a state of despair, that the reality that is constructed around us is constructed by liars, is constructed by people who are close to those that they are meant to be policing, it should lead us also to an optimistic understanding because if wars can be started by lies, truth can be started, peace can be started by truth. So that is our task and it is your task, go and get the truth, get into the ballpark and get the ball and give it to us and we’ll spread it all over the world.” [War By Media: “Journalists Are War Criminals,” Julian Assange “The Reality That Is Constructed Around Us Is Constructed By Liars.” Celia Farber, The Truth Barrier, Oct. 10, 2023]
Julian Assange spoke succinctly about those media journalists who read us selected, bent and twisted news to disinform, blind or trick the public to support, accept or ignore ongoing atrocity wars even when massive amount of lives are being taken.
Gaza as a flagrant example:
First,
a Description of An Ongoing Unmitigated Glaringly Obvious Horrific Criminal Unbearably Cruel Genocide in Gaza and the October 7 Lethal Hamas Attack (Julian Assange said “truth can be started, peace can be started by truth.”)
Is followed by
The Reconstructed ‘Reality’ of Gaza Reconstructed by Western Media’ Wars Enabling Liars as ‘Acceptable,’ ‘Excusable,’ and/or a ‘Reasonable and ‘Proportionate’ ‘Necessary’ Defensive Reaction,’ and Not Seen as Genocide. Also a ‘Reconstructed October 7 ‘Reality’
(“Wars Are a Result of Lies,” and wars kept going by lies)
First,
A basic reality never mentioned in Western media is that Israel has been killing its own imprisoned Palestinians, imprisoned in its generations long, UN declared illegal, military occupation, while international law regarding military occupation has the occupying power responsible for the well being of its militarily occupied population. Also, Israel’s settling half a million Israelis in occupied Palestinian territory displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.
Since October 7, In Israeli militarily occupied and blockaded Gaza, more than 27,000 Palestinians,5 mostly women and children, have already been killed by Israeli Air Force bombings with U.S. supplied warplanes and bombs. Over 66,000 have been wounded,[8] Thirty percent of the homes and buildings in the cities of Gaza have been destroyed completely or in part, and thousands are believed to be still buried in the ruble. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the thousands of maimed and crippled children, hundreds have suffered amputations of limbs, many without anaesthesia. Since October 7, Israeli attacks have killed 11,500 children in the Gaza Strip.6 Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.
This grim toll means that one Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes, or that about one child out of every 100 in Gaza has perished, leading the UN to say that the Gaza Strip is a “graveyard for children.”
Half a million residents are starving with very little food and water and no electricity and most humanitarian aid blocked from being imported.[New York Times Jan. 31] Tens of thousands trying to escape the indiscriminate bombings have been forced into intensely crowded together refuge with little toilet facilities now rampant with disease. Report: Israel burns down hundreds of homes in Gaza:
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports it has obtained exclusive information saying that Israeli army commanders have been ordering their troops to destroy unoccupied Gaza homes. The commanders have been doing this without obtaining proper legal approval, the report says. “After the structure is set on fire along with everything inside it, it is allowed to burn out until it is rendered useless,” Haaretz wrote. The newspaper cited three Israeli army officials who have been “spearheading” Gaza operations, who confirmed that this is common practice.7 The UN Court of Justice is still hearing the great amount of evidence of Israeli committed genocide. US State Dept said “not seeing acts of genocide” in Gaza.8 Some Israeli leaders and rabbis have engaged in genocidal talk praised ethnic cleansing operations, one minister suggesting nuclear bombing of Gaza. Western media keeps quoting Isreal’s right to defend itself. All the above mentioned death, suffering and destruction is continually excused by Isreal to be necessary because Israel must kill Hamas to defend itself from future Hamas attack.9 Western media never questions why Israel could not just defend itself with it vast arsenal of U.S. supplied weapons instead of claiming It has had to kill 10,000 children among more than 27,000 Palestinians in order protect Israel from Hamas (an acronym of its official name), the Islamic Resistance Movement, an elected Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organisation governing the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
The Oct. 7 Hamas Attack
It has been widely reported that at the end of a Jewish holiday on October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters, and other militants, broke through Gaza’s militarised border, crossed into Israel by land, air and sea and reportedly (with some amount of documentation), killed civilians in the streets, in their homes and at an outdoor rave party.
Israel’s latest official estimated death toll of soldiers and civilians during the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion is 1,200.10
UN Secretary General Guterres stated on October 25.
It was important to acknowledge that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify those appalling attacks, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Hamas issued on Jan. 21, an 18-page document explaining its official explanation for why it launched its attack on Israel October 7, saying that it was aimed at stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements and bringing an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
In its report titled “Our Narrative” Hamas, which is also the elected government of Gaza, said it wanted to “clarify” the background and dynamics of its surprise attack. The group said that avoiding harming civilians “is a religious and moral commitment” by fighters of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. “If there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.” Hamas said in the report. “Many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.” [19] Hamas’ describes its October 7th goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages in order to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges. To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.
Western media journalists keep citing the hostages Palestinian Hamas is holding as one of the reasons for war. But the thousands of Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons are never mentioned. And how many of them are children? First the figure mentioned was 7,000, a month later 9,000. (Since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians, the United Nations reported last summer. One in every five Palestinians has been arrested and charged under the 1,600 military orders that control every aspect of the lives of Palestinians living under the Israeli military occupation. That incarceration rate doubles for Palestinian men — two in every five have been arrested.)
Forces of five other militant groups, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, Al-Azsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Omar Al-Qasim Forces, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mujahideen Brigades also invaded on Oct. 7, and three groups – PIJ, the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades – claim to have seized Israeli hostages, alongside Hamas, on that day.Hamas says its October 7 attacks in southern Israel were a “necessary step” against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. But the Islamist group admitted in its 16-page report justifying the attack that “some faults happened” due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.” The Palestinian source said through the memorandum, Hamas was sending a message to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Hamas should not be judged solely by the events of October 7 without examining Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza over the past decades.
Hamas pointed to the historical origins of the conflict, saying “the battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation.”
The group said it wanted to “hold the Israeli occupation legally accountable” for the suffering it had inflicted on the Palestinian people. Hamas said the attack was “to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people.” The militant group urged “the immediate halt of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the crimes and ethnic cleansing committed against the entire Gaza population.”
The group blames Israeli helicopters for killing “many” of the 364 civilians massacred at the Nova music festival, saying that Hamas “had no prior knowledge of it.” The document alleges hypocrisy on the part of those who would accept civilian casualties as collateral damage in Gaza while condemning Hamas’s actions during its massacres on October 7.
The document calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court to look at “the broader context” of the October 7 attack as part of the “struggle against colonialism, as a “national liberation and resistance movement.” The document refers to several clauses in Hamas’s updated charter from 2017, alleging that the conflict is not with the Jews, but rather with Zionism. The section condemns “what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany and praises Muslim nations for having provided Jews a “safe haven” for centuries.
The document says that Hamas receives their legitimacy from the “Palestinian right to self-defence, liberation and self-determination,” claiming that according to “all norms, divine religions and international laws,” as well as the Geneva convention, parties are granted the right to resist when facing “the longest and brutalist colonial occupation,” as well as “massacres” and “oppression.”
Calls on all countries around the world to back “Palestinian resistance” and support the Palestinians’ “struggle for liberation.” Calls on its allies to “support… the Palestinian resistance,” to charge Israel with crimes, to mobilise against “Israeli aggression” on Gaza, and to stop governments from providing further aid or arms to Israel.
“Israel has destroyed our ability to create a Palestinian state by accelerating the settlement enterprise,” Hamas said, blaming the United Nations for failing to stop the process. “Were we supposed to continue waiting and relying on the helpless UN institutions?” the document asked. The organisation claimed that the Gaza had “been turned into the world’s largest open-air prison” and that the war “was necessary to end the blockade.
And it said it rejected any international and Israeli efforts to decide Gaza’s post-war future. “We stress that the Palestinian people have the capacity to decide their future and to arrange their internal affairs,” the report said, adding that “no party in the world” had the right to decide on their behalf.
Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel’s own military in many of the killings attributed to Hamas. A police investigation shows Israeli Apache helicopters opened fire on attendees of the Nova music festival during the 7 October Hamas attack. [25] Israeli resent investigations have found that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles, Kalashnikov rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many if not most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots.
At Kampala, Uganda, on Jan 17, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressing a summit of the Group of 77 (G-77) and China, with more than 130 countries– the largest grouping of the global South, representing 80 per cent of the planet’s population, denounced Israel for the “heartbreaking” deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and called it unacceptable to resist statehood for the Palestinian people.[Reuters]
(Julian Assange said “truth can be started, peace can be started by truth.”)
Now
The Reconstructed ‘Reality’ of Gaza Reconstructed by Western Media’ Wars Enabling Liars to portray the annihilation in Gaza as ‘Acceptable,’ ‘Excusable,’ and/or a ‘Reasonable and ‘Proportionate’ ‘Necessary’ Defensive Reaction,’ and Not Seen as Genocide.
(“,wars can be started by lies,” – then kept going by lies)
Hamas “beheading 40 babies” – headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. U.S. President Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies,” and that “Israeli women were raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”
This is journalism that projects thinking the wholesale destruction of Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified.
Hamas is pictured as bloodthirsty savages. Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.
An Israeli first responder to the October 7 terror attack has claimed that Hamas terrorists roasted a baby in an oven in shocking video testimony. Asher Moskowitz, of the United Hatzalah first responder group, published a video of himself speaking to a camera, delivering his witness account.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even describing in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.Then their executioners sat down and had a meal.” Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.
Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims being obstructed by Israel go unreported.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, set the tone as he spoke about October 7. “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime.”
In different ways, the sentiment that the Palestinians are collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas in killing of about 1,200 Israelis and abduction of over 200 – and therefore deserve what is coming to them – has been echoed far beyond Israel’s borders. In the US, Senator Lindsey Graham called for the wholesale destruction of Gaza.
Worldwide reaching colonial media journalism will not report the truth that Israel admits Apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival – even when Tel Aviv Ynet reports it to Israelis.11
Western media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place.
“Israel has the right to defend itself!” Israel has the right to defend itself!” Each and every time Western media conglomerates consider it necessary to report the number of thousands killed in Gaza, media journalists repeat words to the effect that this is “a response to October 7 attack by Hamas — considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.” Hamas is a terrorist group!
Blacking 0ut from Unfavourable News Indicting U.S. led West
This section regarding criminal journalism’s reconstructed “reality” of Gaza and Hamas is perforce quite short, brief because simply not reporting reality is the most major crime in Western entertainment/news conglomerate journalism in hiding 90% of reality. Never mentioning for example, the reality of the immense and deadly suffering of the Palestinians, which is the motive for the very existence of the Hamas militant group. Recently, many news hours have been begun simply covering other world and local events to the exclusion of any mention of the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza
In Conclusion
White supremacy colonisers always getting away with mass
murder both in real time and for generations thereafter has been for some time the accomplishment of the war investor controlled CIA overseen journalists of giant entertainment/news conglomerates, which have been allowed to usurp the use of public owned broadcasting frequencies. This is a government collaboration with war investors, which can and must be challenged, at the same time as taking down the credibility of the war enabling journalists of criminal mainstream media.
Fortunately, there is declining trust in mainstream news outlets, pushing people toward alternative online sources and social media for information.
Do journalists feel the shame when they pass on deceptive info? Yes, of course some do on occasion, and there is always a segment of the citizenry of varying size that feels responsible for the crimes of its government.
The more info the public has makes it more difficult to pursue policies of war on innocent populations, so the public is a threat that needs to be countered. So whenever an invasion is planned, a huge public relations campaign goes into gear.12
An Advisory Based on Julian Assange’s Counsel
“So that is our task and it is your task, go and get the truth, get into the ballpark and get the ball and give it to us and we’ll spread it all over the world.”
Countering the CIA-overseen giant entertainment/news/information conglomerates wars enabling deceptive journalism with truth can be more effective than attacking the wars ordering high government officials, both those elected and those appointed, who in reality must take orders form the ‘deep state’ Financial-Military-Industrial-
Complex ‘deep pocket’ war investors.13 Julian Assange has brought to our attention the pleasant-looking evening news anchor who captivates TV audiences with alternating joviality and gravitas, asking whether they should be seen as insidiously evil as they generate support for horrific suffering, death, maiming and destruction.
Assange seems to have tasked us to awaken a critical number of decent but unwary citizens to the realisation that a trusted prime time personality of theirs is in fact a war criminal?
ENDNOTES
The post The “Reality” around Us is Constructed by Liars: “Journalists are War Criminals” first appeared on Dissident Voice.1 In a 14 June 1807 letter to John Norvell. The Founders’ Constitution, Volume 5, Amendment I (Speech and Press), Document 29, The University of Chicago Press.2 Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony Cyril Sutton British-American writer, researcher, economist, and Stanford U. professor.3 There exists not one photo or video of a peaceful protest (CNN reported peaceful protests being fired upon by Libyan soldiers and police.) “There Was No Libyan Peaceful Protest, Just Murderous Gangs and Nic Robertson,” Information Clearing House, June 20, 2011 . Long time Italian Prime Minister says Libyans love Gaddafi as Italians P. Nearly one million Libyans, out of a total population of six million, wildly demonstrated in favor of their nation’s government with a mile long green flag while listening to Gaddafi’s voice even as NATO warplanes were bombing nearby in Tripoli.4 “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times.5 Reports Gaza Ministry of Health and UN6 Aljazeera, Feb. 2.7 Report: “Israel burns down hundreds of homes in Gaza” Aljazeera, Feb. 1.8 US ‘not seeing acts of genocide’ in Gaza, State Dept says, Reuters, Jan. 3, 202410 Israel-Hamas War Israel Lowers Oct. 7 Death Toll Estimate to 1,200, New York Times, Nov 10, 2023.11 Israeli Apache helicopters killed own soldiers, civilians on …New footage corroborates previous reports that say the Israeli military is responsible for many of the Israeli casualties.12 See “The War You Don’t See,” John Pilger Documentary, YouTube.13 The awful crimes against humanity ordered by President Eisenhower in Laos, Guatemala, Congo and other places indicate that the president was under the thumb of the Military Industrial Complex he warned of on the day he left office.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Vince McMahon has resigned from his position as the head of the entertainment group that oversees most of professional wresting after a former staffer accused him of sexual assault and sex trafficking. Also, lawmakers in Florida are advancing legislation that would ban children under the age of 16 from using social media. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. […]
The post Texts Reveal Vince McMahon’s Disturbing Behavior & FL Lawmakers Want To Ban Addictive Social Media appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
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The National in Port Moresby
The Papua New Guinea government plans to introduce laws to curb free speech and freedom of the press, former prime minister Peter O’Neill says.
In a statement, O’Neill said the same law would jail any journalist or person who published anything the government deemed to be “misreporting”.
O’Neill described the government’s proposal as “deeply concerning and needs to be vehemently opposed every way possible”.
He said: “Today we learn government is preparing to crack down on journalists with new media laws being urgently prepared and to be presented to Parliament very soon.
“They plan to curb free speech and freedom of the press to report by being able to jail any journalist or person who publishes anything they deem is misreporting.”
Information and Communication Technology Minister (ICT) Timothy Masiu said yesterday that the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) was currently working on the media policy to include holding persons accountable for misreporting.
Masiu said the policy to be presented to Cabinet would still hold its original content but would emphasise that media quality, accessibility and responsibility in information dissemination would be based on facts.
‘We don’t want to tighten up’
“We don’t want to tighten up on media so much but we want to make sure that reporters are responsible for what they report and it’s about time this should be implemented,” Masiu said.Prime Minister James Marape said he supported the move.
“This is our country where you all have the power in your pen but take some responsibility and write correctly and based on facts,” he said.
“You have a responsibility to our county.
“Do not write your own opinion, or if you have an opinion, then find facts to support that opinion.
“Those who are not writing based on fact, I will be holding you accountable,” he said.
O’Neill questioned whether journalists and their editors will be subject to arrest and punishment.
“I am both saddened and alarmed at the proposed way the Marape government is dismantling democracy.
“I am utterly convinced that if we uphold all the principles of a healthy democracy, we as a people will overcome any challenge whether it be economic, social or environmental,” he said.
“We are a strong people with the courage of our convictions and centuries old traditions and customs.”
Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one of the more impressive achievements of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation. As WikiLeaks stated at the time, the hacking component of the agency’s operations had become so sizeable it began to dwarf the operations of the National Security Agency. “The CIA had created, in effect, its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capabilities of a rival agency could be justified.”
The publication ruffled feathers, enraged officials, and stirred the blood of those working in the intelligence community bothered by this “digital Pearl Harbor”. The exercise involved the pilfering of 180 gigabytes of information and constituted, according to the agency, “the largest data loss in CIA history”.
The CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force was charged with investigating the incident and submitted its findings to the director in October 2017. Pompeo should have been grudgingly grateful – WikiLeaks had given the organisation a good excuse for cleaning the cobwebs and removing the creases. The report, for instance, found that the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) had placed greater emphasis on the building of “cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems. Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax.” The cyber weapons were also “not compartmented”, passwords at various administrator levels were shared “and historical data was available to users indefinitely.” In what reads like a vote for the dull and the tedious, the report took issue with “a culture that evolved over years that too often prioritized creativity and collaboration at the expense of security.”
The individual responsible for taking the loot to WikiLeaks was the fractious Joshua Schulte, who worked at the CCI as a software developer and had himself created a number of hacking tools. On February 1, he was sentenced in the New York federal court to 40 years in prison. His list of previous convictions was encyclopaedically colourful: espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and child pornography.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Jesse M. Furman, in that time honoured tradition of judicial vagueness, remarked that, “We will likely never know the full extent of the damage, but I have no doubt it was massive.” This was a silly claim, given that the leaks were, as Axios reported, “largely inconsequential, with most being instruction manuals for old hacking tools”.
The prosecution was similarly imprecise (and disingenuous), as they tend to be when measuring the extent national security is supposedly impaired by information disclosures. “He caused untold damage to our national security in his quest for revenge against the CIA for its response to Schulte’s security breaches while employed there,” stated the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen further added that Schulte had “directly risked the lives of CIA personnel, persisting in his efforts even after his arrest.”
In comments made to the court prior to the sentencing, Schulte touched on the wonderful penal conditions that mark the US penitentiary system. He had, for instance, been denied hot water. He had been extensively exposed to artificial light and constant noise.
He also had – and here, British judges should take note regarding Assange’s own arguments against extradition to the US – been deceived by the prosecutors in a plea deal offer that would have seen him sentenced to 10 years in prison. Instead, he got an additional three decades. “This is not justice the government seeks,” Schulte accurately observed, “but vengeance.”
Schulte proved an important figure in the roistering annals of WikiLeaks. It was his disclosures that signalled the cold and vicious turn in US policy in targeting Assange. The release of the Vault 7 files sent the then director, Mike Pompeo, into a rage. The 2021 Yahoo! report, which famously noted various opinions within the intelligence community on what could be done about the Australian publisher, reports that change of approach. According to one former Trump national security official, the director and CIA officials “were completely detached from reality because they were so detached about Vault 7.”
Soon, Pompeo was publicly tarring WikiLeaks while privately pondering options to kidnap or assassinate Assange. In April 2017, in a speech given to the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, the director hoisted the black flag. “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.” Nonsensically, Pompeo imbues the publishing organisation with dictatorial and mesmeric qualities. “It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information.” (No, it did not.) “And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.” Given the concentration of unstable power at the heart of Washington, and its imperial pretences, Pompeo can hardly be surprised.
The speech is worthy of close analysis. It declares, inevitably, that the CIA is a noble organisation incapable of abuse, a saintly enterprise of patriots who should be treated as such. It takes issue with those who give the game away. And, more fundamentally, it refuses to have any truck with a publisher who aids that cause.
Pompeo, for instance, dismissed Assange’s own justifications for publishing national security material as “sophistry”. He could hardly be compared to Thomas Jefferson or “the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of legitimate news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.”
Dangerously, the strategy behind the bluster becomes clear, and would find itself gorily displayed in the indictment against Assange. It picks and chooses between publishers as sacred and profane, the ennobled and the condemned. It ignores the pointed fact that national security information is almost always pilfered and leaked, sometimes patriotically, sometimes selfishly. Punish Assange, and you are opening the door to punishing any news outlet of any stripe operating anywhere. And that, fundamentally, is the point.
The post Unaccountable Hackers: The CIA, Vengeance, and Joshua Schulte first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Lawmakers in Florida are advancing legislation that would ban children under the age of 16 from using social media. Studies have found that social media use causes chemical reactions in the brain that are similar to drug use, and addiction to social media has become a serious problem for the younger generation. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. […]
The post FL Moves Forward With Legislation To Ban Social Media For Children appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
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New national security legislation will make it harder for detained suspects to meet with their lawyers and could target journalists and media organizations for interviewing them, Hong Kong officials have revealed in recent comments aired by a pro-China broadcaster.
Suspects in national security cases, who are typically people who have opposed the government via their public speech or peaceful actions, could be seeking to stay in touch with “accomplices,” by requesting to see their lawyer, who might also be a member of their “group,” Secretary for Justice Paul Lam told TVB’s “Speak Clearly” talk show at the weekend.
“As a result, they could continue with activities that endanger national security under the guise of seeing a lawyer,” said Lam, whose government launched a public consultation on the new law, which the city is obliged to enact under Article 23 of its Basic Law, its mini-constitution since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
The Article 23 legislation was recently rebooted following a 20-year hiatus in the wake of mass popular protests, and is being billed by the government as a way to close “loopholes” in the already stringent 2020 National Security Law, which was imposed on the city by Beijing in response to the 2019 protest movement.
The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – which will criminalize “treason,” “insurrection,” the theft of “state secrets,” “sabotage” and “external interference,” among other national security offenses – is highly likely to be passed by the Legislative Council now that electoral rules have been changed to allow only “patriots” to run for election.
Lam also warned of tougher penalties for media organizations that interview people wanted by the Hong Kong government.
“They could be seen as providing a platform and aiding and abetting them,” he warned, calling on the media to be “careful.”
Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow, who is now on the city’s wanted list, speaks from Toronto during an online interview with AFP on Dec. 5, 2023. Secretary for Justice Lam has warned of tougher penalties for media organizations that interview people wanted by the government. (Su Xinqi/AFPTV/AFP) Hong Kong has already plummeted in press freedom and overall freedom indexes since launching a post-2019 crackdown on dissent, and has placed a number of high-profile journalists including Next Digital mogul Jimmy Lai on trial for “national security” offenses linked to newspaper articles.
The new legislation could also target people deemed to be using too confrontational a “tone” to criticize the government in public life, Secretary for Security Chris Tang told the show.
“You can criticize the government, but if you keep repeating yourself and spicing it up, using your tone of voice for example to deliberately stir up people’s emotions, that could be regarded as inciting hatred [of the authorities],” Tang warned, but said that would only happen in cases where there was “criminal intent.”
‘Intimidation on a huge scale’
Current affairs commentator Sang Pu, who is also a lawyer, said that such assurances can’t be trusted, however.
“The Hong Kong government, the national security police and the Department of Justice have very loose criteria for determining criminal intent,” Sang said. “Basically, there is criminal intent if they say there is.”
“A lot of people will come under that definition, which will be extended [under this legislation],” he said.
He said the new law could spell the end of independent political commentary about the city, even beyond its borders, as overseas commentators still have friends and family back home who could be put under greater pressure as a result of their comments.
“This is intimidation on a huge scale, and is totally designed to eliminate any voice that tries to provide oversight of the government.”
Secretary for Justice Paul Lam attends a ceremony to mark the beginning of the new legal year in Hong Kong on Jan. 16, 2023. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) To Yiu-ming, a former assistant journalism professor at Hong Kong’s Baptist University, agreed, saying that officials are clearly targeting political commentators, exiled and wanted Hong Kong activists, media organizations and journalists.
“This is clearly about political law enforcement,” To said. “The Hong Kong government doesn’t want the voices of exiles and wanted activists to be heard back in Hong Kong.”
“It’s being done so as to allow law enforcement agencies to have the option, if needed, to cause trouble for certain reporters they don’t like and prevent them from doing their jobs,” he said.
Eric Lai, research fellow at the Asian Law Center at Georgetown University, said that while the consultation document isn’t a final draft, the details revealed so far suggest that the media is a major target of the law.
“The Article 23 legislation incorporates some elements of the [planned] fake news law into its text,” Lai said.
“According to the consultation document, if you interview people wanted [by the authorities], or publish some remarks that are considered to endanger national security, you could be prosecuted,” he said.
“The devil is in the details,” he said. “If all of these provisions are included [in the final draft], it will certainly have a huge impact on press freedom.”
‘More stringent’ than the mainland
Patrick Poon, human rights researcher currently at the University of Tokyo, said that even mainland Chinese law hasn’t banned overseas news organizations from interviewing its dissidents overseas.
“People inside China face the biggest pressures and the highest risks if they give interviews to foreign journalists,” Poon said. “[Now], it could be risky for foreign journalists to interview people in exile, which is even more stringent than some of the practices in mainland China.”
He said the potential restrictions on allowing meetings with a national security detainee’s lawyer is a violation of international law and human rights standards.
He said the Hong Kong authorities wouldn’t be able to guarantee a fair trial to suspects under such an arrangement.
State news agency Xinhua hit out at the criticism of the Article 23 legislation in a Feb. 3 commentary, describing critics of the law as “ants on a hotpot.”
“They’re falling over each other to attack and smear [this] legislation,” the article said. “People who love China and Hong Kong won’t feel the slightest bit worried … [but] will support its completion as soon as possible.”
It accused “anti-China and disruptive elements in Hong Kong” of “seriously undermining Hong Kong’s stability and endangering national security,” warning that they will face prosecution and prison as a result.
“These anti-China disruptors in Hong Kong do not want to be upright Chinese people, but want to be slave-dogs driven by the enemy,” the article said, warning that the new law will make them into “homeless dogs” without “foreign masters” to rely on.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin, Tim Lee for RFA Cantonese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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By Nacanieli Tuilevuka in Suva
Those spooked by the presence of a senior Central Intelligence Agency official in Fiji this week have nothing to fear.
At least, this was the view of Acting Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica as he hinted at the possibility of using the CIA’s “global knowledge and expertise” in the fight against drugs.
He said he met the CIA’s Deputy Director David Cohen on Tuesday in Suva to discuss areas of mutual interest.
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Fiji’s Acting Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica . . . “Expertise will keep the border safe.” Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times They exchanged ideas on how both countries could benefit from each other.
“I’ve met him as the Acting Prime Minister, so it was a broad conversation around the international environment and the fact that we are becoming more and more of a transit point for drugs,” Kamikamica said.
There is a possibility of Fiji working with the CIA in its fight against drugs, said Kamikamica.
The CIA is the US government’s foreign intelligence service that gathers national security information from around the world.
‘Think about their expertise’
In response to questions from The Fiji Times, Kamikamica did not specify the nature of his discussions with Cohen.“However, think about the security apparatus the Central Intelligence Agency has,” he said.
“The global knowledge and expertise they have.”
Asked why he discussed these areas of mutual interest when they fell under the ambit of the US State Department, Kamikamica said he also met other officials of the US government
“I also met the deputy Secretary of State and Ambassador at Large for cybersecurity separately in my office,” he said.
The developments of the past few days also gave Kamikamica an opportunity to allay potential public fear and disquiet over Cohen’s visit.
In response to concerns raised on social media over the presence of the CIA’s second in command, Kamikamica urged Fijians against what he described as “idle speculation”.
‘We have stable government’
“There is no need to be concerned,” he said. “We have a very stable government, we have a Prime Minister who is in total control of the Coalition.“We are tracking well as a government,” said Kamikamica, adding that the important thing for the country was focusing on “how we work together to rebuild Fiji rather than getting preoccupied with idle speculation”.
“Expertise will keep the border safe, [so we ate] just looking at ways to collaborate.”
On the essence of their discussions on national issues, Kamikamica said “we didn’t really touch on that, more around just having an opportunity to collaborate”.
“When we have expertise like them at our doorstep, it is a very positive development and just to allow, not only Fiji, but the region to benefit.”
Nacanieli Tuilevuka is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
Spies usually work in secrecy and behind the scene- and when the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency @CIA shows up in Suva, why not splash his full picture on the front page of @fijitimes #Fiji #FijiNews pic.twitter.com/u9HZAt6fPK
— Anish Chand (@achandftv) January 31, 2024
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The post Stand Firm in Your Blockheadedness first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet blamed bad foreign press for the abrupt end to a development boom in the coastal resort of Sihanoukville that has left hundreds of derelict buildings in its wake.
“It takes a long time to build a good reputation so that people will want to come to visit Angkor Wat but [this reputation] was destroyed within only six months after a few articles from Al Jazeera,” he said, without elaborating on specifically what the Qatar-based news outlet had reported.
In 2019, Al-Jazeera published a scathing piece about crime-ridden casinos in Sihanoukville, and in 2022 it produced a documentary about cyber slaves–people duped into working as scammers, usually in casinos–after they were promised high-paying jobs.
Hun Manet’s remarks came at a forum to promote investment in Sihanoukville, where according to data by the Ministry of Finance there are 362 so-called “ghost buildings” – hotels, restaurants or casinos funded by Chinese investors who pulled out before construction was completed.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet blames bad foreign press for the abrupt end to a development boom in the coastal resort of Sihanoukville. (RFA) Hun Manet unveiled a plan to deal with the problem, which would allow special visas and tax incentives for investors to purchase the buildings worth more than US$1 million on the condition that they fix and maintain them.
“We will consider tax exemptions [for those who buy the ghost buildings and fix them] but we need to set conditions so that they are actually fixing them instead of sitting on them for resale,” Hun Manet said.
He said the government will also make Sihanoukville more attractive by introducing duty free zones, investing in infrastructure and fostering the creation of resorts and other services for tourists. And to prevent further bad press, Sihanoukville province should do more to prevent crime.
The Cambodian government seeks to promote investment in Sihanoukville, where according to data, there are 362 so-called “ghost buildings” – hotels, restaurants or casinos funded by Chinese investors who pulled out before construction was completed. (RFA) Minister of Finance Aun Pornmoniroth told the forum that Cambodia needed US$1.1 billion to take care of the ghost building problem.
“Back in 2016 investment in Sihanoukville was booming, especially in construction of restaurants, hotels and shops, but since 2019, due to the financial crisis and COVID-19 everything stopped,” he explained.
In addition to the 362 ghost buildings there are an additional 176 buildings that are complete, but are not being used, he said.
Concerning incentives
The new incentives might bring more casinos to Sihanoukville concerns Cheap Sotheary, the provincial coordinator for theCambodian Human Rights and Development Association.
He told RFA Khmer that the province would have to deal with more crime, drugs and human trafficking unless it seeks out other kinds of investment.
“[Casinos] bring in gamblers through and sell drugs, alcohol and sex,” she said. “People don’t want to see this kind of investment.”
Social and political commentator Por Makara said corruption has scared away Western investors.
New economic incentives might bring more casinos to Sihanoukville, which brings concerns about crime that may come along with gambling. (RFA) “The ghost building situation will worsen because only Chinese investors … will be willing to deal with all the corruption,” he said. “European and American investors don’t want to be involved with human rights abuses.”
Political commentator Kim Sok told RFA that the government’s incentives would not attract good businesspeople to invest in the restoration of ghost buildings in Sihanoukville. He said that the main reason why Cambodia lacks good businessmen now is because the legal system is trampled by powerful people, corruption and crime.
“Hun Manet’s incentives won’t help the national or local economy but are only good for money laundering. Good investors won’t invest in those buildings,” he said.
The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said in a report that Cambodia is on a “recovery trajectory post-pandemic.” The country’s GDP grew 5.2% in 2022 and is projected to grow 5.3% in 2023, “fueled by a resurgence in tourism,” which saw gains due to the 2023 South-East Asia Games.
Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet blamed bad foreign press for the abrupt end to a development boom in the coastal resort of Sihanoukville that has left hundreds of derelict buildings in its wake.
“It takes a long time to build a good reputation so that people will want to come to visit Angkor Wat but [this reputation] was destroyed within only six months after a few articles from Al Jazeera,” he said, without elaborating on specifically what the Qatar-based news outlet had reported.
In 2019, Al-Jazeera published a scathing piece about crime-ridden casinos in Sihanoukville, and in 2022 it produced a documentary about cyber slaves–people duped into working as scammers, usually in casinos–after they were promised high-paying jobs.
Hun Manet’s remarks came at a forum to promote investment in Sihanoukville, where according to data by the Ministry of Finance there are 362 so-called “ghost buildings” – hotels, restaurants or casinos funded by Chinese investors who pulled out before construction was completed.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet blames bad foreign press for the abrupt end to a development boom in the coastal resort of Sihanoukville. (RFA) Hun Manet unveiled a plan to deal with the problem, which would allow special visas and tax incentives for investors to purchase the buildings worth more than US$1 million on the condition that they fix and maintain them.
“We will consider tax exemptions [for those who buy the ghost buildings and fix them] but we need to set conditions so that they are actually fixing them instead of sitting on them for resale,” Hun Manet said.
He said the government will also make Sihanoukville more attractive by introducing duty free zones, investing in infrastructure and fostering the creation of resorts and other services for tourists. And to prevent further bad press, Sihanoukville province should do more to prevent crime.
The Cambodian government seeks to promote investment in Sihanoukville, where according to data, there are 362 so-called “ghost buildings” – hotels, restaurants or casinos funded by Chinese investors who pulled out before construction was completed. (RFA) Minister of Finance Aun Pornmoniroth told the forum that Cambodia needed US$1.1 billion to take care of the ghost building problem.
“Back in 2016 investment in Sihanoukville was booming, especially in construction of restaurants, hotels and shops, but since 2019, due to the financial crisis and COVID-19 everything stopped,” he explained.
In addition to the 362 ghost buildings there are an additional 176 buildings that are complete, but are not being used, he said.
Concerning incentives
The new incentives might bring more casinos to Sihanoukville concerns Cheap Sotheary, the provincial coordinator for theCambodian Human Rights and Development Association.
He told RFA Khmer that the province would have to deal with more crime, drugs and human trafficking unless it seeks out other kinds of investment.
“[Casinos] bring in gamblers through and sell drugs, alcohol and sex,” she said. “People don’t want to see this kind of investment.”
Social and political commentator Por Makara said corruption has scared away Western investors.
New economic incentives might bring more casinos to Sihanoukville, which brings concerns about crime that may come along with gambling. (RFA) “The ghost building situation will worsen because only Chinese investors … will be willing to deal with all the corruption,” he said. “European and American investors don’t want to be involved with human rights abuses.”
Political commentator Kim Sok told RFA that the government’s incentives would not attract good businesspeople to invest in the restoration of ghost buildings in Sihanoukville. He said that the main reason why Cambodia lacks good businessmen now is because the legal system is trampled by powerful people, corruption and crime.
“Hun Manet’s incentives won’t help the national or local economy but are only good for money laundering. Good investors won’t invest in those buildings,” he said.
The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said in a report that Cambodia is on a “recovery trajectory post-pandemic.” The country’s GDP grew 5.2% in 2022 and is projected to grow 5.3% in 2023, “fueled by a resurgence in tourism,” which saw gains due to the 2023 South-East Asia Games.
Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In separate incidents in November and December 2023, two politicians in Botswana posted to social media the personal phone numbers of journalists Kabo Ramasia and Kealoboga Dihutso after the reporters sought to interview them.
The unwanted publication of personal information online—known as doxxing—is an increasingly common form of digital harassment of the press.
On November 23, 2023, Botswana’s Assistant Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Beauty Morukana Manake, published screenshots of a WhatsApp conversation with Ramasia, in which the journalist’s phone number was visible, on her Facebook page, which has over 63,000 followers, according to Ramasia, who spoke to CPJ, a statement by the Botswana chapter of the press freedom group Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), and CPJ’s review.
Ramasia is a freelance reporter who covers politics, health, and other news for a variety of local outlets.
On February 1, 2024, the post was still live and contained screenshots of Manake’s conversation with Ramasia, who asked Manake for comment on allegations that she was “abusing” her office, including by arriving late at events.
In the screenshots, Manake said the allegations were baseless and part of a “witch-hunt.” Manake also said that she had been “abused and weaponized by people using the media for their selfish ‘political gains.’”
Ramasia told CPJ that he had called Manake, asking her to conceal his identity or delete the post, and that she had requested an apology, which the journalist declined to give.
Manake told CPJ that she felt unfairly treated by the journalist and accused Ramasia of deliberately attempting to tarnish her image.
On December 19, 2023, Madibelatlhopo, a group that campaigns against election rigging and is affiliated with the opposition party Umbrella for Democratic Change, published Dihutso’s phone number on its Facebook page, which has over 10,000 followers, according to MISA, CPJ’s review, and Dihutso, who spoke to CPJ.
Dihutso’s phone number was included in a series of screenshots showing a WhatsApp exchange in which Dihutso, a reporter with the privately owned Duma FM, sought comment from Madibelatlhopo’s spokesperson, Michael Keakopa, about the group’s registration as a private company and its shareholding.
As of February 1, 2024, the Facebook post was still live, along with commentary suggesting that Dihutso was an intelligence agent and a member of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party. Facebook commentators also accused him of being “naive and malicious” and claimed that Duma FM was founded on the “proceeds of crime.”
MISA said “indiscriminate sharing of [the journalists’] personal data” contravened their right to privacy under Botswana’s constitution and its Data Protection Act, and created “a hostile environment” for reporting.
Under the country’s data protection law, a person who processes sensitive personal data without permission is guilty of an offense and is liable to a fine not exceeding 500,000 pula (USD$36,500) and/or up to nine years imprisonment.
In a statement, the Botswana Editors Forum said Madibelathlopo’s comments were an “attempt to discredit or attack journalists for simply practicing their trade.”
Dihutso told CPJ he had reported the post containing his phone number to Facebook.
In response to CPJ’s request for comment via messaging app in early January, Keakopa accused a CPJ staff member of being connected to Botswana intelligence, said “I’m going to publish this conversation for Batswana to know what I discuss with so called journalists just as I did with that other pseudo,” and told the staff member to “never send me stupid messages again.” Keakopa did not respond to subsequent queries from CPJ.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Sevinc Vaqifgizi is one of 13 independent journalists detained since snap presidential vote announced
In late November last year, the investigative journalist Sevinc Vaqifgizi was arrested upon arrival at Heydar Aliyev international airport in Azerbaijan and accused of smuggling foreign currency.
Shortly before takeoff the 34-year-old editor had learned that her close colleague, Ulvi Hasanli, had been detained hours earlier. The two journalists ran Abzas Media, a small, independent Azerbaijani news outlet known for its investigations. They deny the charges.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
