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Category: Propaganda

  • Language, Mind Control, and 9/11

    An example that shows the radical devaluation of thought is the transformation of words in propaganda; there, language, the instrument of the mind, become ‘pure sound,’ a symbol directly evoking feelings and reflexes.

    – Jacques Ellul, Propaganda

    A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is the master of the current situation.

    – Walter Lippman, Public Opinion

    Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me. I was home in Massachusetts when the phone rang at 9 A.M. It was my daughter who lived and worked in New York City and was on a week’s vacation with her future husband. “Turn on the TV,” she said. “Why?” I asked.  “Haven’t you heard?  A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”

    I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower. I said, “They just showed a replay.” She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.” And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South Tower this time.

    Sitting next to my daughter was my future son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year. He had finally taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape Cod. He worked on the 100th floor of the South Tower. By chance, he had escaped the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers. My father’s good friend, retired from a NYC job and living in Pennsylvania, had a one-day-a-month consultancy job at the Twin Tower. Tuesday the 11th was his day to die in the North Tower.

    That was my introduction to the attacks. Twenty-four years have disappeared behind us, yet it seems like yesterday.  And yet again, it seems like long, long ago. But long ago is today when the repercussions of what happened then “lie” behind today’s terrible events, as they do because Bush, Jr.’s Global War on Terror continues on its mad and doleful way under three more presidents and different linguistic mind control narratives.

    As I type these words, I look down on my desk at my grandfather’s gold badge: Deputy Chief of the New York City Fire Department. Two of his brothers, my great-uncles, were members of the Fire Department and another a NYC cop, a sister a public school teacher. My other grandfather, my cousins, niece and her husband were NYC Police Officers. My grandfather’s nightstick hangs on a nail in another room. A great-great grandfather owned a popular tavern in the West 40s and another a livery stable on the West Side. Having grown up in the Bronx, gone to high school and graduate school in Manhattan, I have long and deep family roots in NYC. My Irish immigrant ancestors were sandhogs who dug the tunnels for the subways, the tunnels bringing water down to the city, and the foundations for the skyscrapers. This history goes deep and high, for my niece was a detective and her husband an anti-terrorism detective who flew over the Twin Towers in a helicopter on that fateful morning, taking so many of the famous photographs of the devastation below.

    I tell you this to emphasize how the city, where my family goes back 175 years, is in my blood, and the news my daughter conveyed to me affected me deeply. No matter where you roam in later life, as many native New Yorkers will attest, such bonds tie you back to what we call The City, and when its foundations are shaken as they were on September 11, 2001, so are you at a very deep level.

    Thus the truth of how and why these tragic events happened on a glorious September morning became my quest. It began emotionally but soon turned logical and objective as I followed my academic training in the sociology of knowledge and propaganda.

    Over the next few days, as the government and the media accused Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t believable; the official story as reported by the media was full of holes. It was a reaction that I couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a search for the truth. I proceeded in fits and starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the extraordinary work of David Ray Griffin and other early skeptics, I could articulate the reasons for my initial intuition. My specialty throughout my long university teaching career has been propaganda, so I set about creating and teaching a college course on what had come to be called 9/11, on what I had learned.

    But I no longer refer to the events of that day by those numbers – 9/11. 

    Let me explain why.

    By 2004 I was convinced that the U.S. government’s claims (and The 9/11 Commission Report) were fictitious.  After meticulous study and research, they seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were an intelligence operation led by the neoconservatives – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. – who had become central elements within the George W. Bush administration and whose purpose was to initiate a national state of emergency (that is still in effect in 2025) to justify wars of aggression, known euphemistically as “the war on terror.”  The sophistication of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered real evidence except hyperbolic empty accusations for the government’s claims, suggested that a great deal of planning had been involved and a coverup was underway.

    Yet I was chagrined and amazed by so many people’s insouciant lack of interest in researching arguably the most important world event since the assassination of President Kennedy. I understood the various psychological dimensions of this denial, the fear, cognitive dissonance, etc., but I sensed something else as well.  For so many people their minds seemed to have been “made up” from the start. I found that many young people were the exceptions, while most of their elders dared not question the official narrative. This included many prominent leftist critics of American foreign policy. Now that twenty-four years have elapsed, this seems truer than ever.

    So with the promptings of people like Graeme MacQueen, Lance de Haven-Smith, T.H. Meyer, Jacques Ellul, et al., I have concluded that a process of linguistic mind-control was in place before, during, and after the attacks. As with all good propaganda, the language had to be insinuated over time and introduced through intermediaries. It had to seem “natural” and to flow out of events, not to precede them. And it had to be repeated over and over again. All of this was carried out by the corporate mainstream media.

    In summary form, I will list the language I believe “made up the minds” of those who have refused to examine the government’s claims about the September 11th attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks.

    1. Pearl Harbor. As pointed out by David Ray Griffin and others, this term was used in September 2000 in The Project for the New American Century’s report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (p.51).  Its neo-con authors argued that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to attack Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan, etc. “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event –  like a new Pearl Harbor.”  Coincidentally or not, the film Pearl Harbor, made with Pentagon assistance and a massive budget, was released on May 25, 2001 and was a box office hit. It was in the theaters throughout the summer. The thought of the attack on Pearl Harbor (not a surprise to the U.S. government, but presented as such) was in the air despite the fact that the 60th anniversary of that attack was not until December 7, 2001, a more likely release date. Once the September 11th attacks occurred, the Pearl Harbor comparison was “plucked out” of the social atmosphere and used innumerable times, beginning immediately. Even George W. Bush was reported to have had the time to allegedly use it in his diary that night. The examples of this comparison are manifold, but I am summarizing, so I will skip giving them.  Any casual researcher can confirm this.
    2. Homeland. This strange un-American term, another WW II word associated with another enemy – Nazi Germany – was also used (in a Freudian Slip faux pas) many times by the neo-con authors of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”  I doubt any average American referred to this country by that term before.  Of course it became the moniker for The Department of Homeland Security, marrying home with security to form a comforting name that simultaneously and unconsciously suggests a defense against Hitler-like evil coming from the outside.  Not coincidentally, Hitler introduced it into the Nazi propaganda vernacular at the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Both usages conjured up images of a home besieged by alien forces intent on its destruction; thus preemptive action was in order.
    3. Ground Zero. This is a third WWII (“the good war”) term first used at 11:55 A.M. on September 11 by Mark Walsh (aka “the Harley Guy” because he was wearing a Harley-Davidson tee shirt) in an interview on the street by a Fox News reporter, Rick Leventhal. Identified as a Fox free-lancer, Walsh also explained the Twin Towers collapse in a precise, well-rehearsed manner that would be the same illogical explanation later given by the government: “mostly due to structural failure because the fire was too intense.” Ground zero – a nuclear bomb term first used by U.S. scientists to refer to the spot where they exploded the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945 – became another meme adopted by the media that suggested a nuclear attack had occurred or might in the future if the U.S. didn’t act. The nuclear scare was raised again and again by George W. Bush and U.S. officials in the days and months following the attacks, although nuclear weapons were beside the point. But the conjoining of “nuclear” with “ground zero” served to raise the fear factor dramatically. Ironically, the project to develop the nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project and was headquartered at 270 Broadway, NYC, a few short blocks north of the World Trade Center.
    4. The Unthinkable. This is another nuclear term whose usage as linguistic mind control and propaganda is analyzed by Graeme MacQueen in the penultimate chapter of The 2001 Anthrax Deception.  He notes the patterned use of this term before and after September 11, while saying “the pattern may not signify a grand plan …. It deserves investigation and contemplation.” He then presents a convincing case that the use of this term couldn’t be accidental. He notes how George W. Bush, in a major foreign policy speech on May 1, 2001, “gave informal public notice that the United States intended to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty”; Bush said the U.S. must be willing to “rethink the unthinkable.” This was necessary because of terrorism and rogue states with “weapons of mass destruction.” PNAC also argued that the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty. A signatory to the treaty could only withdraw after giving six months’ notice and because of “extraordinary events” that “jeopardized its supreme interests.” Once the September 11 attacks occurred, Bush rethought the unthinkable and officially gave formal notice on December 13 to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty.  MacQueen specifies the many times different media used the term “unthinkable” in October 2001 in reference to the anthrax attacks.  He explicates its usage in one of the anthrax letters – “The Unthinkabel” [sic].  He explains how the media that used the term so often were at the time unaware of its usage in the anthrax letter since that letter’s content had not yet been revealed, and how the letter writer had mailed the letter before the media started using the word.  He makes a rock solid case showing the U.S. government’s complicity in the anthrax attacks and therefore in those of 11 September  While calling the use of the term “unthinkable” in all its iterations “problematic,” he writes, “The truth is that the employment of ‘the unthinkable’ in this letter, when weight is given both to the meaning of this term in U.S. strategic circles and to the other relevant uses of the term in 2001, points us in the direction of the U.S. military and intelligence communities.” I am reminded of Orwell’s point in 1984: “a heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.”  Thus the government and media’s use of “unthinkable” becomes a classic case of “doublethink.”  The unthinkable is unthinkable.
    5. 9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous numerical designation with no precedent applied to an historical event, and obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical appellation for an important event in American history. The future editor of the New York Times and Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced this connection the following morning in a NY Times op-ed piece, “America’s Emergency Line: 9/11.” The linkage of the attacks to a permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: “An Israeli response to America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be, ‘Now you know.’”  By referring to September 11th as 9/11, an endless national emergency became wedded to an endless war on “terror” aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best. Even those who dissent from the official narrative continue to use the term that has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless repetition.  As George W. Bush would later put it as he connected Saddam Hussein to “9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”  All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had been blended.

    I have concluded – and this is impossible to prove definitively at this time because of the nature of such propagandistic techniques and documents that take many decades to be discovered and perhaps released – that the use of all these words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge. It is why I don’t speak of “9/11” any more. I refer to those events as the attacks of September 11, 2001. But I am not sure how to undo the damage.

    Lance de Haven-Smith puts it well in Conspiracy Theory in America:

    The rapidity with which the new language of the war on terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms and their mutual connections to WW II nomenclatures; and above all the connections between many terms and the emergency motif of “9/11” and “9-1-1” – any one of these factors alone, but certainly all of them together – raise the possibility that work on this linguistic construct began long before 9/11….It turns out that elite political crime, even treason, may actually be official policy.

    Needless to say, his use of the words “possibility” and “may” are in order when one sticks to strict empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is apparent to me that he considers these “coincidences” part of a government conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put in his underappreciated humorous way, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

    The evidence for linguistic mind control, while the subject of this essay, does not stand alone, of course. It underpins the actual attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that are linked. The official explanations for these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic and are patently false, as proven by thousands of well-respected professional researchers  from all walks of life – i.e. engineers, pilots, architects, and scholars from many disciplines. To paraphrase the prescient Philadelphia lawyer Vince Salandria, who said it long ago concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of 2001 are “a false mystery concealing state crimes.”

    If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks together with the language adopted to explain and preserve them in social memory, the “mystery” emerges from the realm of the unthinkable and becomes unutterable. “There is no mystery.” How to communicate this when the corporate mainstream media serve the function of the government’s mockingbird (as in Operation Mockingbird) repeating and repeating the same narrative in the same language; that is the difficult task we are faced with.

    The anthrax attacks that followed those of 9/11 have disappeared from public memory in ways analogous to the pulverization of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center Building 7. For the towers, at least, ghostly afterimages persist, albeit fading like last night’s nightmare. But the anthrax attacks, clearly linked to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, are like lost letters, sent, but long forgotten. Such disappearing acts are a staple of American life these days. Memory has come upon hard times in amnesiac nation.

    With The 2001 Anthrax Deception, Graeme MacQueen, founding Director of the Center for Peace Studies at McMaster University, calls us back to a careful reconsideration of the anthrax attacks. It is an eloquent and pellucid lesson in inductive reasoning and deserves to stand with David Ray Griffin’s brilliant multi-volume dissection of the truth of that tragic September 11 day and its consequences. MacQueen makes a powerful case for the linkage of both events, a tie that binds both to insider elements deep within the U.S. government, perhaps in coordination with foreign elements. His book should be required reading.

    MacQueen’s thesis is as follows: The criminal anthrax attacks were conducted by a group of conspirators deep within the U.S. government who are linked to, or identical with, the 9/11 perpetrators. Their purpose was to redefine the Cold War into the Global War on Terror and in doing so weaken civil liberties in the United States and attack other nations.

    Words have a power to enchant and mesmerize. Linguistic mind-control – language as sorcery – especially when linked to traumatic events such as the September 11 and anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb and blind. It often makes some subjects “unthinkable” and “unspeakable” (to quote James W. Douglass quoting the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in JFK and the Unspeakable: the unspeakable “is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience …”).

    We need a new vocabulary to speak of these terrible things.

    The post Language, Mind Control, and 9/11 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Propaganda 101: The Illusion Of Truth

    The Israeli crimes perpetrated AFTER October 7th 2023 represent the reason why the October 7th events unfolded. 

    You read that correctly, but I’ll say it again: the Israeli crimes perpetrated AFTER October 7th are why the heroic Palestinian resistance (i.e. Hamas) attacked the Nazi Zionist apartheid terrorist entity to begin with.

    But what happened on October 7th? 

    This is something that’s been discussed extensively; discussed honestly only in rare cases, but distorted, misinterpreted and lied about the vast majority of the time. 

    This is because the doctrine/policy of (pro-)Israeli propagandists and their allies – the prostitutes of propaganda- such as CNN, the BBC, Fox News, Talk TV and countless others, conforms to the Nazi practices of Hitler and his minister Joseph Goebbels. 

    The post Propaganda 101: The Illusion Of Truth appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Propaganda 101: The Illusion Of Truth

    The Israeli crimes perpetrated AFTER October 7th 2023 represent the reason why the October 7th events unfolded. 

    You read that correctly, but I’ll say it again: the Israeli crimes perpetrated AFTER October 7th are why the heroic Palestinian resistance (i.e. Hamas) attacked the Nazi Zionist apartheid terrorist entity to begin with.

    But what happened on October 7th? 

    This is something that’s been discussed extensively; discussed honestly only in rare cases, but distorted, misinterpreted and lied about the vast majority of the time. 

    This is because the doctrine/policy of (pro-)Israeli propagandists and their allies – the prostitutes of propaganda- such as CNN, the BBC, Fox News, Talk TV and countless others, conforms to the Nazi practices of Hitler and his minister Joseph Goebbels. 

    The post Propaganda 101: The Illusion Of Truth appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Department of War

    Restoring the original and non-Orwellian name to the U.S. Department of War ought to have a positive impact on people’s speech and understanding.

    Yes, of course, Trump did it in order to celebrate the sadistic malevolence associated with the word “war.” He did it while pursuing horrific wars in Palestine and Ukraine, threatening (and beginning) wars on Venezuela and Iran, and moving massive resources from human and environmental needs into war preparations in the U.S. and its vassal NATO members. He immediately threatened to invade Chicago and show it the meaning of the newly restored name.

    Yes, of course, 78 years of propaganda will not be undone quickly. All or most of the governments around the world that copied the U.S. in renaming their militaries “defense” will fervently resist switching back. Even peace activists relentlessly talk about “the Defense Department,” “the defense industry,” “defense contractors,” etc. If decades of passionate advocacy by some of us for not parroting the very propaganda we work against has had virtually no impact, it can be expected to take at least a few weeks before people flip their linguistic habits in obedience to a fascist buffoon.

    But flipping those linguistic habits, for whatever reason, remains something that would benefit us all. Words shape our thinking as much as communicate it. We shouldn’t applaud Trump for dropping the pretense that wars are waged for something other than sadism, power, and profit, because he’s trying to normalize the glorification of sadism, power, and profit. But if those who oppose evil were to drop the pretense that the greatest evil in the world is “defensive” and “humanitarian,” we’d be much better off.

    If Congress had to pass National War Authorization and Appropriations Acts instead of so-called Nation “Defense” Acts, it might suddenly be possible to nudge the gears in a Congressional head or three into motion. The U.S. Constitution allows Congress to raise and support armies for no longer than two years at a time. It does not envision the permanent Military Industrial Congressional “Intelligence” Media Academic Think Tank Complex. Endless massive, ever-growing War Authorization Acts could make Congress stop and notice the absence during the past 84 years of any Declaration of War, or of any moment in which the U.S. War Department was not at war, or of any war that could be said to have accomplished anything useful.

    Trump believes that restoring the name “War Department” will restore an imaginary age in which the United States “won” wars — a powerful admission that for 78 years, the U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars killing millions of people, destroying societies, ripping down the rule of law, causing horrific and lasting environmental damage, fueling bigotry, restricting civil liberties, corroding culture, and depriving positive initiatives of resources that could have transformed the world for the better. But — in the words of Jeanette Rankin, who voted in the U.S. Congress against both of the “beautiful” world wars — you can no more win a war than a hurricane. The U.S. “won” imperialist and coalition wars in the days of the Department of War by committing genocidal slaughters of a sort deemed grotesquely unacceptable in the age leading up to the current livestreamed genocide in Gaza, and by allowing allies like the Soviet Union to do most of the killing and dying (rather like Ukrainians today) before producing countless Hollywood movies suggesting a different story.

    Restoring the acceptability of genocides, carpet bombings, and nuclear bombings doesn’t flow inevitably from restoring the name of the institution responsible. If we choose, the unconscionable horror of such things can instead mean that admitting what the Pentagon is, and stamping that disgusting, barbarous title over its front door could allow the development of a significant anti-war contingent in the United States. Such a contingent should not be simply anti-Trump. We should not be bothered by what he calls the war machine, but by the war machine itself — even when the name change is resisted or reversed.

    One way to help this along would be to conscientiously remove from our speech and our thoughts, not just “defense” but all variety of insidious war propaganda terms. We might try also giving honest names to every governmental department. We might consider alternatives to war, and the case for war abolition.

    The post The Department of War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NPR Slants The Case Against Mumia Abu-Jamal

    After attacks from police groups, National Public Radio quickly backed away from its plan to air commentaries by Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal, an African-American journalist, received a death sentence after being convicted in the December 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner—in a trial marred by gross procedural errors.

    NPR vice president Bill Buzenberg explained the 1994 decision not to air Abu-Jamal by saying it was “not appropriate to use someone in the commentator’s role who is the focal point of a highly polarized and political controversy without at the same time providing the context of the controversy and without other voices involved in that controversy.”

    The post NPR Slants The Case Against Mumia Abu-Jamal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Great Hoax Against Venezuela: Oil Geopolitics Disguised As ‘War On Drugs’

    During my time as head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), I frequently travelled to Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, but never to Venezuela. There was simply no need.

    The Venezuelan government’s collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best in South America, rivalled only by Cuba’s impeccable record. This makes Trump’s narrative of a “narco-state” in Venezuela sound like geopolitically motivated slander.

    The 2025 World Drug Report tells a story that is the opposite of the narrative peddled by the Trump administration. Piece by piece, the report dismantles the geopolitical lie built around the “Cartel de los Soles”, an entity as mythical as the Loch Ness Monster, but which is useful for justifying sanctions, blockades and threats of military intervention against a country which, incidentally, sits on one of the planet’s largest oil reserves.

    The post The Great Hoax Against Venezuela: Oil Geopolitics Disguised As ‘War On Drugs’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • On The Ethics Of Embedding With Génocidaires

    On Sunday, August 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a dramatic announcement: After 674 days of barring foreign media from Gaza, Israel was planning to begin staging guided tours, under Israeli military control, for embedded members of the foreign press.

    “We have decided, and have ordered, directed the military, to bring in foreign journalists—more foreign journalists, a lot,” said Israel’s premier, in a rambling, paranoid half-hour press conference—staged, he said, to dispel “the global campaign of lies” against Israel. “There’s a problem with assuring security, but I think it can be done in a way that is responsible and careful to preserve your own safety.

    The post On The Ethics Of Embedding With Génocidaires appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Case for Palestine

    The best reference for understanding the Palestine-Israel crisis is a book by Dan Kovalik. The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care is a carefully researched, meticulously documented, scholarly analysis of the longstanding confrontation, presenting a detailed account of the conflict’s history.
    I confront the bottomless depths of despair and uncontrollable weeping when I think about the horrors currently unfolding in Gaza. Therefore, I’ll try to keep this brief, without avoiding the ugly realities of the barbaric campaign by Israel to ethnically cleanse “Greater Israel” of the Palestinian people.

    Zionist propaganda — which is all we get from mainstream Western media — would have us believe that the Israeli destruction of Gaza is a reaction to the terrorist acts of Hamas on October 7, 2023. History didn’t start on that date. The Hamas attack on Israel was a reaction to the brutality and oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel without pause for 75 years.

    It began in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the ‘Nakba’. Translation: the Catastrophe. For decades prior to 1948, Zionists had been buying up land in Palestine. “[But] by 1948, the Jewish settlers constituted only one-third of the population of Palestine (and the vast majority of these were European settlers who were newcomers immigrating after 1917) and owned less than 6 percent of the land. And yet, the United Nations, in General Assembly Resolution 181 — the result of the intense lobbying by the Zionists as well as the guilt the Europeans rightly felt from the Holocaust — allocated 56 percent of the land, and the very best land, for the creation of the new Jewish state.”

    Now it was time for the settlers to get serious about taking over the region. The Nakba was the way. Palestinians were thrown off the land they had owned and occupied for centuries. 800,000 were quickly uprooted, and 532 Palestinian villages were destroyed. The indigenous population was sent packing. Killings and rape occurred not infrequently. This was the beginning of the terror campaign by Israel with the explicit intention of cleansing Palestine of its native population.

    What has happened since, including the October 7 reaction by Hamas, is the direct consequence of this policy. Israel’s intent to drive the Palestinians from their homeland and create a purely Jewish Greater Israel has now expanded into a full-blown genocide.

    Gaza Destruction_120_.jpg
    It is very difficult to determine the exact number of casualties — which include women and children — resulting from Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, and the military operation daily unfolding there. Official numbers of dead are compiled from those delivered to the morgue. But tens of thousands are buried under the rubble, unaccounted for. Additionally, people are dying every day from starvation and lack of medical treatment. Israel has barred food and other aid from entering the conflict zone.
    But the official number of deaths, as I’m writing this, exceeds 58,000.

    The real death toll, by some estimates, is more than three times that, or nearly 8 percent of Gaza’s pre-October 7th population.

    A substantial number of Israeli citizens make no secret of the fact that they consider the Palestinians sub-human, insects, mere animals, and their presence in Greater Israel is not welcome. They are to be eliminated by whatever method is required. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have herded Palestinians into “safe” tent encampments, then bombed them in their tents. The IDF attacks schools, mosques, and has destroyed every hospital in Gaza. Hundreds of videos are circulating social media showing children mangled, mutilated, or in advanced stages of starvation; whole families killed by the bombing; horrifying scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust which Jews are so fond of citing as evidence of their own victimhood, of people being burned alive, victims of incendiary weaponry dropped on the homes and apartments of innocent civilians; journalists, doctors and other medical professionals, and aid workers, have been targeted for assassination.

    None of this is rumor or propaganda. Hundreds of credible eyewitnesses have fully corroborated it — many of them working for humanitarian organizations and human rights groups, including UNICEF, WHO, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the World Food Programme, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, and Amnesty International.
    Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has spoken out, and her message is loud and clear: Israel’s assault on Gaza is the “shame of the century”.

    The latest Israeli gambit is to announce the availability of food, drive the food truck to a designated spot, and, when emaciated, desperate Palestinians show up for what scraps they can get, to gun them down in cold blood. Mercenaries from the U.S. are participating in this.

    The horror show in Gaza is being referred to as the first genocide in history to be televised. Just a few clicks on a computer mouse or swipes on your smartphone, and you can watch the slaughter unfold as it happens.

    As a relevant aside, Israelis are at the same time continuing their longstanding efforts to rid the West Bank of Palestinians, demolishing homes and entire communities, evicting Palestinians from property they’ve owned for generations. Forcing Palestinians to leave and stealing their land has always been the official policy of Israel, though it has for decades been hidden under a shroud of hypocritical blather. The apartheid state established by Israel in the West Bank has made life miserable, often completely intolerable for Palestinians.

    Make no mistake about it …

    The U.S. is fully complicit in this savagery. The pro-Zionist Congress, administration, and mainstream media all parrot the Israeli propaganda claim that the slaughter of the Palestinian people and wholesale destruction of Gaza reflect Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Anyone who has the integrity and basic decency to object to the carnage inflicted by the IDF is subject to penalties and prosecution. The U.S. is providing all the weaponry Israel is using in its genocidal campaign. From October 7, the date of Hamas’ attack on Israel, till January of this year, $22 billion in military equipment and ordnance has been given to Israel by America. The U.S. military also provides logistical support, conducts rigorous surveillance, and shares intelligence data, which facilitates identifying targets for bombing and Israeli troop assaults.

    President Trump has even explicitly stated his full, unwavering support for the entirety of Israel’s agenda, specifically stipulating relocating the Palestinians from Gaza.

    This is by far the cruelest, sickest, most inhumane, barbaric, and criminal official action by state actors — in this case, Israel and the U.S. — I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. That the U.S. is not fully, unhesitatingly, forcefully condemning it is disheartening and distressing. That, in fact, our tax dollars as U.S. citizens are being used literally to pay for a campaign engineered to uproot and destroy a people is appalling and unconscionable.

    As U.S. citizens, we’re paying the tab for a genocide.

    As U.S. citizens, we all bear the shame for this new holocaust.

    As U.S. citizens, it’s our duty to remove from power any individual who supports such heinous war crimes and any foreign entity or leader who is responsible for this monstrous slaughter.

    As U.S. citizens, it’s up to us to reclaim our country and demand America return to the values we believe reflect the true goodness, courage, and moral character of everyday citizens.

    [ This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “America’s Hijacked Peace Dividend”, available late October or November at fine bookstores across the globe. ]

    The post The Case for Palestine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Cartel Of The Suns: Leftovers That Were Never Edible

    The US narratives about the Cartel of the Suns and the alleged connection of President Nicolás Maduro with drug trafficking are nothing more than a reheated dish that was never edible, not even when it was first cooked.

    However, the poor quality of this stew does not make it any less dangerous. The imperial power has used even more rotten pots as excuses to invade countries, bomb cities, and exterminate entire pueblos.

    In fact, just days after US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the doubling of the reward Washington is offering for Maduro’s capture, military forces were deployed in the Caribbean under the pretext of repressing drug trafficking by “Latin American cartels.”

    The Venezuelan government and the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB), with their long experience confronting all kinds of aggressions—military, paramilitary, mercenary—from abroad, have remained on high alert.

    The post The Cartel Of The Suns: Leftovers That Were Never Edible appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Cartel Of The Suns: Leftovers That Were Never Edible

    The US narratives about the Cartel of the Suns and the alleged connection of President Nicolás Maduro with drug trafficking are nothing more than a reheated dish that was never edible, not even when it was first cooked.

    However, the poor quality of this stew does not make it any less dangerous. The imperial power has used even more rotten pots as excuses to invade countries, bomb cities, and exterminate entire pueblos.

    In fact, just days after US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the doubling of the reward Washington is offering for Maduro’s capture, military forces were deployed in the Caribbean under the pretext of repressing drug trafficking by “Latin American cartels.”

    The Venezuelan government and the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB), with their long experience confronting all kinds of aggressions—military, paramilitary, mercenary—from abroad, have remained on high alert.

    The post The Cartel Of The Suns: Leftovers That Were Never Edible appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • UN And EU Confirm Venezuela Far From Being A Narco-Country

    Last June, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its World Drug Report 2025, a key document that illustrates the findings of the UN’s global information system regarding the drug problem.

    This report is the most important of its kind in the world because it compiles information from governments and security agencies. It is used by governments to develop their policies and coordinate efforts in their fight against drug trafficking.

    The document was referenced by President Nicolás Maduro, who cited some of its mentions of Venezuela.

    According to the UNODC, Venezuela has consolidated its position over the past 15 years as a territory free of coca leaf cultivation, marijuana and cocaine processing, the president said, citing the report. This figure is particularly relevant given that global cocaine production has increased significantly to 3,708 tons per year, according to the agency.

    The post UN And EU Confirm Venezuela Far From Being A Narco-Country appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test

    The US State Department’s latest Human Rights Report condemns Venezuela for serious abuses. Weaponizing human rights, accusations are selectively applied to serve a destabilization campaign. In this article, a mirror is held up to Uncle Sam to see how well “America the beautiful” holds up to the same charges, while also exposing the role of sanctions, compliant NGOs, and military threats in Washington’s hybrid war on Venezuela.

    The carceral state

    The US report indicts Venezuela for “arbitrary or unlawful killings.” Meanwhile, in the land of the free, police killings hit a record high in 2024. Impunity is high with charges brought against offending officers in fewer than 3% of cases. The FBI itself admits that transparency is hampered.

    Prolonged solitary confinement, recognized as torturous, is widespread in US prisons and ICE detention centers, affecting over 122,000 people daily. A US Senate report on torture documented CIA abuses, yet meaningful accountability has failed. Hundreds of political prisoners languish in penitentiaries in the US and in Guantánamo, the majority of whom are people of color. Roughly 70% of local jail inmates are held in pretrial detention, often pressured with coercive plea deals, undermining equality before the law.

    The US has the largest prison population in the world (about 1.8 to 2 million) and an incarceration rate over 2.5 times greater than Venezuela’s. Even after release, about four million citizens remain disenfranchised due to felony convictions, disproportionately affecting Black communities.

    Freedom to protest

    Washington faults Venezuela for limiting freedom of expression. Yet, numerous US states have passed or considered anti-protest laws (e.g., “critical infrastructure” bills) that civil-liberties groups warn chill peaceful assembly.

    Reporters without Borders (RSF) observes, “the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history.” This accusation is particularly notable because RSF is strongly biased in support of the US and receives funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Arrests and detentions of journalists surged in 2024; schoolbook bans spiked across 29 states. In April 2024, Congress reauthorized and expanded FISA §702, enabling warrantless surveillance according to legal scholars.

    As the US-based Black Alliance for Peace observes, “domestic repression in the US colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad.”

    This coupling of domestic subjugation with the international is painfully evident with the US imperialist/Israeli zionist aggression abroad in Gaza, while pro-Palestine advocates are suppressed at home. Zionist curricula are being imposed at all levels of education; at least half of the US states now require so-called “Holocaust education.” Pro-Palestine faculty, students, and staff are being purged.

    Washington’s accusation of Venezuelan antisemitism cites President Nicolás Maduro calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “the most brutal genocide” since Hitler. Its charge of antisemitism conflates Venezuela’s political criticism of the zionist state with hatred of the Jewish religion. If “antisemitism” includes Muslim Arabs, US culpability is so blatant that it requires no additional documentation.

    Meanwhile, the US accuses Venezuela of failing to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This projection does not deserve any rebuttal other than to mention that the US has a documented history of family separation of migrants and deaths in custody.

    Likewise, the world’s rogue nation does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and similar institutions, while reproaching Caracas for attempting to “misuse international law.” If anything, the Maduro government has gone out of its way to defend international law with initiatives upholding the UN Charter.

    Social welfare

    The US report scolds Venezuela for a minimum wage “under the poverty line.” Yet, its own federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009; insufficient to lift a full-time worker out of poverty.

    A UN special rapporteur for human rights estimated that sanctions – more properly “unilateral coercive measures” – by the US and allies have caused over 100,000 excess deaths in Venezuela. Yet purported human rights NGOs Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRC), and the Washington Office on Latin American (WOLA) omit this glaring human toll in their reports on human rights in Venezuela.

    Predictably, they make nearly identical evaluations of the Venezuelan human rights situation as does the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and the US State Department itself.  Their reports (AI, HRW, WOLA, US, OAS) either ignore or, at best, make passing references to the sanctions. No mention is made of the illegality of sanctions under international law – they are a form of collective punishment.

    In other contexts, the NGOs have acknowledged the horrific human impact of sanctions. Regardless, they were in a panic that the Trump administration might ease sanctions over the Chevron license, thus rewarding bad behavior. For these soft power apparatchiks of the US imperial project, the pain endured by the Venezuelans is worth it. WOLA has been particularly vocal about counseling against direct US military intervention, when sanctions afford an equally lethal but less obvious form of coercion.

    Hybrid war on Venezuela

    In his first term, Donald Trump levied a $15m bounty on Maduro, framing the Venezuela government as a transnational criminal enterprise tied to terrorism. This lowered the potential threshold for extraordinary US measures. Joe Biden seamlessly upped the bounty to $25m, which Trump then doubled on August 7.

    Evidence-free allegations linking the Venezuelan president to the dismantled Tren de Aragua drug cartel, the fictitious Cartel of the Suns criminal organization, and the actual Sinaloa Cartel (which is in Mexico) were conveniently used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is supposed to be a wartime measure. This is coupled with the designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and periodic threats of US military intervention.

    This is from the country that is the world’s biggest launderer of illicit drug money and the largest consumer of illicit drugs. Even US agencies recognize that very few of these US-bound drugs move through Venezuela.

    Most recently, the US deployed an additional 4,000 troops and warships to the Caribbean and around Latin America. Venezuela responded by mobilizing its navy in its territorial waters.

    Leading Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado expressed her “immense gratitude” for the imperialist measures against her country. In contrast, thousands of her compatriots took the opposite stance and marched in protest. Venezuela-American Michelle Ellner calls the US policy “a green light for open-ended US military action abroad, bypassing congressional approval, sidestepping international law.”

    Weaponizing human rights for regime change

    Venezuela is caught in a hybrid war that is as deadly as if it were being bombed. Washington’s strangling of its economy, making wild accusations against its leaders, sponsoring opponents, and threatening armed interventions are all designed to provoke and destabilize. Venezuela’s response is best seen as self-defense against an immensely powerful foreign bully that exploits any weakness, imperfection, or lapse in vigilance.

    The US weaponizes human rights to overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Its exaggerated or outright fabricated allegations are echoed by the “human rights industry.” Where problems exist, they must be viewed in the context of US economic warfare, which has strained Venezuelan institutions. North Americans genuinely concerned about Venezuelan human rights should be highly skeptical of corporate media reports and recognize the need to end US interference. Escalating provocations will only necessitate Venezuela’s greater defensiveness.

    The post US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test

    The US State Department’s latest Human Rights Report condemns Venezuela for serious abuses. Weaponizing human rights, accusations are selectively applied to serve a destabilization campaign. In this article, a mirror is held up to Uncle Sam to see how well “America the beautiful” holds up to the same charges, while also exposing the role of sanctions, compliant NGOs, and military threats in Washington’s hybrid war on Venezuela.

    The carceral state

    The US report indicts Venezuela for “arbitrary or unlawful killings.” Meanwhile, in the land of the free, police killings hit a record high in 2024. Impunity is high with charges brought against offending officers in fewer than 3% of cases. The FBI itself admits that transparency is hampered.

    Prolonged solitary confinement, recognized as torturous, is widespread in US prisons and ICE detention centers, affecting over 122,000 people daily. A US Senate report on torture documented CIA abuses, yet meaningful accountability has failed. Hundreds of political prisoners languish in penitentiaries in the US and in Guantánamo, the majority of whom are people of color. Roughly 70% of local jail inmates are held in pretrial detention, often pressured with coercive plea deals, undermining equality before the law.

    The US has the largest prison population in the world (about 1.8 to 2 million) and an incarceration rate over 2.5 times greater than Venezuela’s. Even after release, about four million citizens remain disenfranchised due to felony convictions, disproportionately affecting Black communities.

    Freedom to protest

    Washington faults Venezuela for limiting freedom of expression. Yet, numerous US states have passed or considered anti-protest laws (e.g., “critical infrastructure” bills) that civil-liberties groups warn chill peaceful assembly.

    Reporters without Borders (RSF) observes, “the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history.” This accusation is particularly notable because RSF is strongly biased in support of the US and receives funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Arrests and detentions of journalists surged in 2024; schoolbook bans spiked across 29 states. In April 2024, Congress reauthorized and expanded FISA §702, enabling warrantless surveillance according to legal scholars.

    As the US-based Black Alliance for Peace observes, “domestic repression in the US colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad.”

    This coupling of domestic subjugation with the international is painfully evident with the US imperialist/Israeli zionist aggression abroad in Gaza, while pro-Palestine advocates are suppressed at home. Zionist curricula are being imposed at all levels of education; at least half of the US states now require so-called “Holocaust education.” Pro-Palestine faculty, students, and staff are being purged.

    Washington’s accusation of Venezuelan antisemitism cites President Nicolás Maduro calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “the most brutal genocide” since Hitler. Its charge of antisemitism conflates Venezuela’s political criticism of the zionist state with hatred of the Jewish religion. If “antisemitism” includes Muslim Arabs, US culpability is so blatant that it requires no additional documentation.

    Meanwhile, the US accuses Venezuela of failing to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This projection does not deserve any rebuttal other than to mention that the US has a documented history of family separation of migrants and deaths in custody.

    Likewise, the world’s rogue nation does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and similar institutions, while reproaching Caracas for attempting to “misuse international law.” If anything, the Maduro government has gone out of its way to defend international law with initiatives upholding the UN Charter.

    Social welfare

    The US report scolds Venezuela for a minimum wage “under the poverty line.” Yet, its own federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009; insufficient to lift a full-time worker out of poverty.

    A UN special rapporteur for human rights estimated that sanctions – more properly “unilateral coercive measures” – by the US and allies have caused over 100,000 excess deaths in Venezuela. Yet purported human rights NGOs Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRC), and the Washington Office on Latin American (WOLA) omit this glaring human toll in their reports on human rights in Venezuela.

    Predictably, they make nearly identical evaluations of the Venezuelan human rights situation as does the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and the US State Department itself.  Their reports (AI, HRW, WOLA, US, OAS) either ignore or, at best, make passing references to the sanctions. No mention is made of the illegality of sanctions under international law – they are a form of collective punishment.

    In other contexts, the NGOs have acknowledged the horrific human impact of sanctions. Regardless, they were in a panic that the Trump administration might ease sanctions over the Chevron license, thus rewarding bad behavior. For these soft power apparatchiks of the US imperial project, the pain endured by the Venezuelans is worth it. WOLA has been particularly vocal about counseling against direct US military intervention, when sanctions afford an equally lethal but less obvious form of coercion.

    Hybrid war on Venezuela

    In his first term, Donald Trump levied a $15m bounty on Maduro, framing the Venezuela government as a transnational criminal enterprise tied to terrorism. This lowered the potential threshold for extraordinary US measures. Joe Biden seamlessly upped the bounty to $25m, which Trump then doubled on August 7.

    Evidence-free allegations linking the Venezuelan president to the dismantled Tren de Aragua drug cartel, the fictitious Cartel of the Suns criminal organization, and the actual Sinaloa Cartel (which is in Mexico) were conveniently used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is supposed to be a wartime measure. This is coupled with the designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and periodic threats of US military intervention.

    This is from the country that is the world’s biggest launderer of illicit drug money and the largest consumer of illicit drugs. Even US agencies recognize that very few of these US-bound drugs move through Venezuela.

    Most recently, the US deployed an additional 4,000 troops and warships to the Caribbean and around Latin America. Venezuela responded by mobilizing its navy in its territorial waters.

    Leading Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado expressed her “immense gratitude” for the imperialist measures against her country. In contrast, thousands of her compatriots took the opposite stance and marched in protest. Venezuela-American Michelle Ellner calls the US policy “a green light for open-ended US military action abroad, bypassing congressional approval, sidestepping international law.”

    Weaponizing human rights for regime change

    Venezuela is caught in a hybrid war that is as deadly as if it were being bombed. Washington’s strangling of its economy, making wild accusations against its leaders, sponsoring opponents, and threatening armed interventions are all designed to provoke and destabilize. Venezuela’s response is best seen as self-defense against an immensely powerful foreign bully that exploits any weakness, imperfection, or lapse in vigilance.

    The US weaponizes human rights to overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Its exaggerated or outright fabricated allegations are echoed by the “human rights industry.” Where problems exist, they must be viewed in the context of US economic warfare, which has strained Venezuelan institutions. North Americans genuinely concerned about Venezuelan human rights should be highly skeptical of corporate media reports and recognize the need to end US interference. Escalating provocations will only necessitate Venezuela’s greater defensiveness.

    The post US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • MSM Lies

    The post MSM Lies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Report: Israeli Military Has Unit That Exists to Justify Targeting Journalists

    The Israeli military operates a special unit known as the “Legitimization Cell” that exists to create propaganda justifying the military’s targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilians, particularly journalists, in order to ensure that Israel maintains its legitimacy on the world stage, an investigation finds. According to a +972 Magazine and Local Call investigation published Thursday…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Understanding The Plot To Break Ghana And Destroy The AES Countries

    There’s a storm brewing over Ghana, and it didn’t start yesterday. The tragedy is layered, the signs are familiar, and for those who have lived through history’s brutal cycles of foreign meddling and orchestrated collapse, it’s déjà vu all over again.

    Since President John D. Mahama came to power, Ghana has been quietly strengthening ties with Sahel countries, especially Burkina Faso and Mali, who have rejected French and American military presence and charted new Pan-African courses.

    The AES alliance threatens Western hegemony. It signals a post-FRANCOPHONE, post-NATO Africa. Ghana’s collaboration with these countries raised alarm bells in London, Paris, and Washington.

    The post Understanding The Plot To Break Ghana And Destroy The AES Countries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Understanding The Plot To Break Ghana And Destroy The AES Countries

    There’s a storm brewing over Ghana, and it didn’t start yesterday. The tragedy is layered, the signs are familiar, and for those who have lived through history’s brutal cycles of foreign meddling and orchestrated collapse, it’s déjà vu all over again.

    Since President John D. Mahama came to power, Ghana has been quietly strengthening ties with Sahel countries, especially Burkina Faso and Mali, who have rejected French and American military presence and charted new Pan-African courses.

    The AES alliance threatens Western hegemony. It signals a post-FRANCOPHONE, post-NATO Africa. Ghana’s collaboration with these countries raised alarm bells in London, Paris, and Washington.

    The post Understanding The Plot To Break Ghana And Destroy The AES Countries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • How the Taliban’s propaganda empire consumed Afghan media

    New York, 13 August 13, 2025—In four years, the Taliban have annihilated Afghanistan’s independent media sector and supplanted it with their own propaganda empire and sophisticated digital bots that flood social media with pro-Taliban content.

    CPJ interviewed 10 Afghan journalists, inside and outside the country, who said that  independent media, which used to reach millions of people, have largely been banned, suspended, or shuttered while key outlets have been taken over by the Taliban. None would publish their names, citing fear of reprisals.

    The Taliban now run about 15 major television and radio stations, newspapers, and digital platforms, including on YouTube, X, and Telegram — tightly aligned with their radical Islamist ideology.

    “The ruling authority enforces a monolithic media policy, rejecting any news, narrative, or voice that deviates from what they deem the truth. Even personal opinions expressed on platforms like Facebook are treated as propaganda and punished accordingly,” Ahmad Quraishi, director of the exiled Afghanistan Journalists Center, told CPJ.

    Exiled journalists offer one of the last remaining sources of independent information broadcast into Afghanistan. But even they face safety concerns and hardships, as well as job losses and potential forced return due to the U.S. funding cuts to the Congress-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) outlets.

    Turning fearful journalists into spies

    In September 2020, a year before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, a radio presenter reads the news during a broadcast at the Merman radio station in Kandahar.
    In September 2020, a year before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, a radio presenter reads the news during a broadcast at the Merman radio station in Kandahar. Women journalists have been largely sidelined by the Taliban. (Photo: AFP/ Wakil Kohsar)

    As Afghanistan marks the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s August 15, 2021, takeover, most journalists who spoke with CPJ said they were fearful, and either jobless or heavily censored. Several described the relentless surveillance, control, and intimidation as living under a “media police state.”

    “Taliban intelligence agents have launched a policing system where every journalist is expected to spy on others,” a media executive who led a TV station in eastern Afghanistan told CPJ.

    “They demand complete personal information on all staff: names, fathers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, WhatsApp numbers … We must report everything.”

    Intelligence agents monitor and detain reporters over their social media content, while the morality police arrest those who violate their stringent interpretation of Sharia law, which includes a ban on music, soap operas, and programs co-hosted by male and female presenters.

    Two media owners from northern and eastern Afghanistan told CPJ that they had been subjected to invasive revenue audits and administrative delays because they were perceived as insufficiently compliant.

    “Taliban agents reach out to journalists privately, pressuring them to spy on their colleagues or push specific narratives,” one of the owners said. “If someone refuses, they call the media manager and demand the journalist be fired. We comply, or we face licensing issues from the Ministry of Information and Culture or financial penalties from the Ministry of Finance.”

    In May, a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had held over 1,000 meetings with the media over the last year to “coordinate in promoting Islamic Sharia values” — a term understood locally to mean morality police enforcement meetings.

    Two female journalists from western Afghanistan said they were each summoned over 10 times in the past two years.

     “Once they interrogated me for three hours in the office of the Directorate of Virtue and Vice, asking why I worked instead of staying home,” one woman told CPJ, referring to the ministry’s provincial office.

    “They said that if I were found working with exiled media, it would be wajib al-qatl [permissible to kill me]. One official said, ‘We forgive you this time, you thank God for this. But under Sharia, we could bring any calamity upon you.’ Another time, they said they could detain me for a week just to extract a confession, and no one would even know.”

    Inside the Taliban’s media empire

    The Taliban flag flutters over a provincial branch building of National Radio Television of Takhar (RTA) in Taloqan, in northeastern Takhar province in 2024. (Photo: AFP)

    Three active, independent Kabul-based journalists explained the Taliban’s new media landscape to CPJ:

    With over 500 staff nationwide and a budget of about 600 million Afghanis (US$8.8 million), RTA reports often promote Taliban achievements, such as supporting refugees and diplomacy.

    • Bakhtar News Agency, founded in 1939, employs around 60 staff in Kabul and four reporters in each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Run by the information ministry, it is the Taliban’s official news source and publishes in eight languages, including Mandarin and Turkish.
    • The information ministry also runs several daily newspapers, including Dari-language Anis, Pashto-language Hewad, and English-language The Kabul Times in print and online. These newspapers were founded several decades ago.

    The three journalists said security agencies operate three radio stations:

    Reporting focuses on regional rivalries and Taliban military successes, particularly against the Afghan-based Islamic State-Khorasan, which continues to kill civilians and Taliban leaders.

    Hurriyat Radio was launched in 2022 by the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) — the Taliban’s notorious intelligence agency behind a series of media crackdowns — and is managed by the agency’s directorate of media and publications.

    • Radio Omid, started in 2023 by the defense ministry, employs 45 staff in Kabul and provincial reporters, and reports on the ministry’s achievements. The radio station is managed by the office of spokesperson of the defense ministry.
    • Radio Police, relaunched in 2021 by the interior ministry, broadcasts news about police activities across key provinces like Kabul and southern Kandahar.

    The Taliban has four news sites, at least three of which are run by the intelligence agency:

    It is funded and operated by the GDI’s directorate of media and publications and its senior managers are linked to the interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani.

    • YouTube-based Maihan discredits the Taliban’s opponents, with 12 staff, led by Jawad Sargar, former deputy director of the GDI’s directorate of media and publication.

    When contacted via messaging app, Sargar asked CPJ to stop contacting him, adding, “These matters are not related to you.”

    • The multi-lingual Alemarah news site, active before 2021, is the Taliban’s official outlet, run by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.

    Disinformation campaign

    Intelligence officials have four offices from which they direct disinformation campaigns. Dozens of creators are paid 6,000 to 10,000 Afghanis (US$88 to 146) a month to run fake social media accounts that troll critics, smear activists, and simulate grassroots support, two Afghan journalists told CPJ.

    The project is led by senior GDI figures like deputy director of media and publication, Jabir Nomani, former GDI spokespeople Jawad Amin and Sargar – who runs Maihan – and Kabul-based political analyst Fazlur Rahman Orya, the journalists said.

    Orya, who is also director of the Sahar Discourse Center, which advises the Taliban on policy, denied that he was involved in disinformation, telling CPJ via messaging app, “You make a big mistake about me.”

    Nomani did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment via messaging app.

    Qais Alamdar, exiled founder of the open source investigative platform IntelFocus, has documented the activities of these bots, which often post near-identical tweets within minutes of each other to bolster the government’s legitimacy or prevent internet users finding other news, such as an attack on the Taliban.

    “Only someone with consistent access to electricity, internet, and time could maintain that kind of operation in Afghanistan,” he told CPJ.

    Traffic accidents are only news allowed

    A destroyed bus is lifted after it plunged off a road north of Kabul in 2010.
    A destroyed bus is lifted after it plunged off a road north of Kabul in 2010. (Photo: Reuters/stringer)

    As a result of these repressive measures, many media outlets have shut down or have been banned entirely.

    In the northeastern Panjshir Valley, once the heart of resistance to the Taliban, no media outlets remain active, Ahmad Hanayesh, who used to own two radio stations in the province, told CPJ from exile.

    Four journalists from Herat, Nangarhar, Faryab, and Bamiyan told CPJ that aside from education and health stories, the only serious news they were permitted to cover was traffic accidents. Even crime reporting was banned.

    GDI’s media and publications director Khalil Hamraz and Taliban spokesperson Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment via messaging app.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Waliullah Rahmani.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A Shield of Lies: Netanyahu’s Battle Against the World

    It was a sign of someone desperate that his message has failed to take wing and make its way to better lands. With the strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Gaza Strip sundered and falling over, leaving only a thick butcher’s bill (over 60,000 deaths for starters), extraordinary suffering and humanitarian catastrophe, he thought it wise to confront foreign press outlets on a late Sunday in the hope that the tide might turn away from his exemplary viciousness. There had been, he moaned like a wounded starlet, a “global campaign of lies” about Israel’s war in Gaza. In doing so, he merely inflated the arguments against him with boisterous credit and almost irrefutable plausibility.

    The conference, which gave “an opportunity to puncture the lies and tell the truth,” involved the following points: Hamas still has thousands of fighters in Gaza; it vowed to repeat what it had done on October 7, 2023; it continued to expound the goal of wishing to destroy Israel even as it subjugated Gazans, stole their precious food, and shot those seeking to move to safe zones, the latter term being itself a monstrosity in the context of this conflict. Paternally, Netanyahu, as the punishing father figure, thought he had deciphered the true desire of those in Gaza, which presumably would not have entailed the killing of Palestinians by the tens of thousands and starving the rest.  Everything could be blamed on a militant organisation he had done so much to praise as a countering force against Fatah in the West Bank.  As things stood now, Gazans seemed to be suffering from a highly developed sense of Stockholm syndrome, “begging us, and they’re begging the world: ‘Free us, Free us, and free Gaza from Hamas’.”

    With a solid body of mendacity to work with, Netanyahu proceeded to build an edifice of fantasy few others outside Israel could contend with: that the same Israeli forces who starve, kill, and maim the civilian populace of the Strip have no wish to impose an occupation but “free it from Hamas terrorists. The war can end tomorrow if Gaza, or rather if Hamas, lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.” Israeli policy was not one of starving the Palestinians into famine, wrecks, skeletal ruin, and physiological malfunction. That hideous criminal pursuit fell to Hamas, apparently responsible for the violent looting of aid trucks and the deliberate creation of “a shortage of supply.” Fantastically, Netanyahu blamed the United Nations for refusing “to distribute the thousands of trucks that we let into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing,” a delightful complaint given his government’s overt hatred for a body he always wished to be rid of from the occupied territories. The synapses in Netanyahu-Land seemed frailer than ever, if not altogether snapped.

    He then belted out the now-familiar five-point vision of the Strip once Hamas is defeated. This elusive “day after” includes the following objectives: the disarming of Hamas, the freeing of all hostages, the demilitarising of the Gaza Strip, granting Israel “overriding security control”, the creation of a non-Israeli administration that will not “educate its children for terror, doesn’t pay terrorists and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel.” Unlike other proposals advanced by France, the UK, and Canada, the Palestinian Authority is also excluded from the arrangements, since no Palestinian politician is worth the Israeli PM’s time. Netanyahu’s idea of a politically viable Palestinian is one manacled to the security regime of other powers.

    The stage for the next slaughter is set, namely, the dismantling of “the two remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the Central Camps. Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war, and the best way to end it speedily.” Netanyahu feigns a humanitarian streak in stating that the civilian population will be allowed to “leave the combat areas to designated safe zones.” The process of ethnic cleansing, or simply cleansing of the population, is to continue.

    Oblivious to Netanyahu’s fortified wall of prejudice is the fact that much of the groundwork for precisely those outcomes he hopes to avoid has already been laid. Whether it be Hamas or any other militant organisation, the notion of pacifist subordinate figures content with their status in any territory where Israel has the last word on everything is absurdly unrealistic.

    Doing everything to make his case even less convincing, Netanyahu then told Israeli journalists after seeing the foreign scribblers off that he had never halted all humanitarian aid to Gaza. Even the patriotic Times of Israel found this a bit rich, noting that “his government had enacted that policy earlier this year.” The paper went on to quote the announcement from the premier’s office on March 2: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease.”

    Netanyahu also refused to accept the proposition that Gaza’s population was starving. Shortages in supply, yes; starvation, no. “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.” The same could be said about the supreme crime of all: “if we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.” A wise head might have told him that few who commit genocide or engineer circumstances of mass murder ever make the intention that obvious.

    The post A Shield of Lies: Netanyahu’s Battle Against the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Quartet Of Nicaragua Critics Sings From Washington’s Songbook

    In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.

    Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda.

    The post A Quartet Of Nicaragua Critics Sings From Washington’s Songbook appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Quartet of Nicaragua Critics Sings from Washington’s Songbook

    In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.

    Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda. Jaden Hong tells “Gen Z” in The Teen Magazine that Nicaragua’s democracy is fading. Jared O. Bell, who lost his USAID job in Managua when Trump shuttered the agency, complains in Peace Voice about the country’s “stolen democracy.” Barb Arland-Fye, in The Catholic Messenger, writes glowingly about a key organizer of the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Novelist Gioconda Belli is given a guest essay in the New York Times to lament her “country’s dictator.”

    Belli, born in Nicaragua but living abroad since the 1980s, has been a critic of the Sandinista government since it first regained power through the ballot box in 2007. Her status as a novelist ensures that the NYT, the Guardian, Spain’s El Pais and other mainstream outlets give her space to vent her anger against a revolution which she supported initially but has since labeled a “farse.”

    Many of Nicaragua’s liberal intellectuals opposed the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, but their commitment faded as the initial glamour of the revolution turned into the hard work of tackling the needs of the country’s poor and working people. As ordinary Nicaraguans were given greater voice, and taxes were raised to pay for new schools and hospitals (60% of the country’s budget goes to social programs), they maligned people’s power as an emerging “dictatorship.”

    The list of privileged critics of the Sandinista government, whose status gives them access to the New York Times and other corporate outlets, include Belli and her brother Humberto, along with Sergio Ramirez (a “novelist betrayed by the revolution”), journalist Carlos Chamorro and many more. Some work directly for mainstream media, such as Wilfredo Miranda (El Pais) and Gabriela Selser (Reuters). Supposedly revolutionary in their youth, they are now part of Washington’s soft power apparatus and help feed its imperialist agenda.

    Of the lies in Belli’s recent NYT article, one stands out: that “peaceful protesters were shot” during the coup attempt against Nicaragua’s elected government in 2018. This falsehood is repeated in the other three articles. Bell says that “student-led protests… were met with brutal, deadly repression.” Hong says that “lethal force” led to “355 dead and hundreds injured.” For Arland-Fye, it was a “deadly crackdown.” That the protestors were far from “peaceful” is obvious from the fact that 22 police officers were killed and over 400 injured in attacks launched from the hundreds of roadblocks erected by the coup-mongers throughout the country.

    Arland-Fye’s sycophantic piece is about opposition figure Bishop Silvio José Báez Ortega. The cleric had called the coup roadblocks “a wonderful idea” and said he hoped to see President Daniel Ortega in front of a firing squad. The Iowa bishopric, for which Arland-Fye writes, has just awarded Baez a “peace prize.”

    The suggestion that Trump is following an Ortega “playbook” appears in two of the articles: it could hardly be more absurd. Unlike Ortega, Trump is not building public hospitals, he’s dismantling Medicare. Also unlike Ortega, he isn’t presiding over a country which is championing the shift to renewable energy; nor is he building 7,000 affordable homes each year. Trump, instead, is drastically cutting federal spending for social needs.

    Rather than following a Nicaraguan “playbook” of peaceful cooperation with its neighbors, both Trump administrations (and Biden’s, both echoing Reagan in 1985) have incredulously declared Nicaragua an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the US. But it is Nicaragua’s remarkable battle against poverty, unmentioned in the articles, that is seen by Washington as the real “threat,” because it challenges the neoliberal order.

    The article by Bell, a former USAID worker, is perhaps unintentionally the most revealing. Prior to the 2018 coup attempt, USAID spent millions of dollars creating Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. After the coup attempt failed, the Sandinista government justifiably closed NGOs and media outlets funded by USAID or its auxiliary body, the National Endowment for Democracy. They did so based on legislation patterned after the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless this funding continues – going to anti-Sandinista outfits in Costa Rica and in the US itself.

    USAID had maintained a Nicaraguan presence by having staffers like Bell in the US embassy in Managua. Their role, as his article makes clear, was not to assist the government in fighting poverty but to engage with “exiled civil society leaders and independent [sic] journalists” opposed to the revolution. The ”independence” of US government-funded journalists goes unquestioned.

    Meanwhile, the USAID, while formally independent, now operates under the direction of the State Department. But its clandestine work assuredly continues.

    The saddest of the four articles is by teenager Jaden Hong. If he were to visit Nicaragua, he would see for himself how young people have free, good quality education right through to university level and beyond. He would see how the government has addressed malnutrition in youngsters by providing all of them with free school meals. He would note that parks, playgrounds and sports facilities have sprung up around the country.

    Above all, if he took part in one of the frequent mass demonstrations in support of the government, he might wonder at the fact that most of those around him are other young people. Unlike Gioconda Belli, they are too young to recall the revolutionary years of the 1980s. But they are old enough to recognize the revolution’s achievements and to be determined to protect them from Washington’s attacks.

    The post A Quartet of Nicaragua Critics Sings from Washington’s Songbook first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Quartet of Nicaragua Critics Sings from Washington’s Songbook

    In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.

    Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda. Jaden Hong tells “Gen Z” in The Teen Magazine that Nicaragua’s democracy is fading. Jared O. Bell, who lost his USAID job in Managua when Trump shuttered the agency, complains in Peace Voice about the country’s “stolen democracy.” Barb Arland-Fye, in The Catholic Messenger, writes glowingly about a key organizer of the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Novelist Gioconda Belli is given a guest essay in the New York Times to lament her “country’s dictator.”

    Belli, born in Nicaragua but living abroad since the 1980s, has been a critic of the Sandinista government since it first regained power through the ballot box in 2007. Her status as a novelist ensures that the NYT, the Guardian, Spain’s El Pais and other mainstream outlets give her space to vent her anger against a revolution which she supported initially but has since labeled a “farse.”

    Many of Nicaragua’s liberal intellectuals opposed the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, but their commitment faded as the initial glamour of the revolution turned into the hard work of tackling the needs of the country’s poor and working people. As ordinary Nicaraguans were given greater voice, and taxes were raised to pay for new schools and hospitals (60% of the country’s budget goes to social programs), they maligned people’s power as an emerging “dictatorship.”

    The list of privileged critics of the Sandinista government, whose status gives them access to the New York Times and other corporate outlets, include Belli and her brother Humberto, along with Sergio Ramirez (a “novelist betrayed by the revolution”), journalist Carlos Chamorro and many more. Some work directly for mainstream media, such as Wilfredo Miranda (El Pais) and Gabriela Selser (Reuters). Supposedly revolutionary in their youth, they are now part of Washington’s soft power apparatus and help feed its imperialist agenda.

    Of the lies in Belli’s recent NYT article, one stands out: that “peaceful protesters were shot” during the coup attempt against Nicaragua’s elected government in 2018. This falsehood is repeated in the other three articles. Bell says that “student-led protests… were met with brutal, deadly repression.” Hong says that “lethal force” led to “355 dead and hundreds injured.” For Arland-Fye, it was a “deadly crackdown.” That the protestors were far from “peaceful” is obvious from the fact that 22 police officers were killed and over 400 injured in attacks launched from the hundreds of roadblocks erected by the coup-mongers throughout the country.

    Arland-Fye’s sycophantic piece is about opposition figure Bishop Silvio José Báez Ortega. The cleric had called the coup roadblocks “a wonderful idea” and said he hoped to see President Daniel Ortega in front of a firing squad. The Iowa bishopric, for which Arland-Fye writes, has just awarded Baez a “peace prize.”

    The suggestion that Trump is following an Ortega “playbook” appears in two of the articles: it could hardly be more absurd. Unlike Ortega, Trump is not building public hospitals, he’s dismantling Medicare. Also unlike Ortega, he isn’t presiding over a country which is championing the shift to renewable energy; nor is he building 7,000 affordable homes each year. Trump, instead, is drastically cutting federal spending for social needs.

    Rather than following a Nicaraguan “playbook” of peaceful cooperation with its neighbors, both Trump administrations (and Biden’s, both echoing Reagan in 1985) have incredulously declared Nicaragua an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the US. But it is Nicaragua’s remarkable battle against poverty, unmentioned in the articles, that is seen by Washington as the real “threat,” because it challenges the neoliberal order.

    The article by Bell, a former USAID worker, is perhaps unintentionally the most revealing. Prior to the 2018 coup attempt, USAID spent millions of dollars creating Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. After the coup attempt failed, the Sandinista government justifiably closed NGOs and media outlets funded by USAID or its auxiliary body, the National Endowment for Democracy. They did so based on legislation patterned after the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless this funding continues – going to anti-Sandinista outfits in Costa Rica and in the US itself.

    USAID had maintained a Nicaraguan presence by having staffers like Bell in the US embassy in Managua. Their role, as his article makes clear, was not to assist the government in fighting poverty but to engage with “exiled civil society leaders and independent [sic] journalists” opposed to the revolution. The ”independence” of US government-funded journalists goes unquestioned.

    Meanwhile, the USAID, while formally independent, now operates under the direction of the State Department. But its clandestine work assuredly continues.

    The saddest of the four articles is by teenager Jaden Hong. If he were to visit Nicaragua, he would see for himself how young people have free, good quality education right through to university level and beyond. He would see how the government has addressed malnutrition in youngsters by providing all of them with free school meals. He would note that parks, playgrounds and sports facilities have sprung up around the country.

    Above all, if he took part in one of the frequent mass demonstrations in support of the government, he might wonder at the fact that most of those around him are other young people. Unlike Gioconda Belli, they are too young to recall the revolutionary years of the 1980s. But they are old enough to recognize the revolution’s achievements and to be determined to protect them from Washington’s attacks.

    The post A Quartet of Nicaragua Critics Sings from Washington’s Songbook first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Atomic Bombings At 80: The Enduring Myth Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

    The U.S. atomic destruction of 140,000 people at Hiroshima and 70,000 at Nagasaki was never “necessary” because Japan was already smashed, no land invasion was needed and Japan was suing for peace. The official myth that “the bombs saved lives” by hurrying Japan’s surrender can no longer be believed except by those who love to be fooled.

    The long-standing fiction has been destroyed by the historical record kept in U.S., Soviet, Japanese and British archives — now mostly declassified — and detailed by Ward Wilson in his book Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

    Greg Mitchell’s Atomic Cover-Up (Sinclair Books, 2011) also helps explain the durability of the “saved lives” ruse.

    The post Atomic Bombings At 80: The Enduring Myth Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • No, Nuking Cities Did Not Save Lives

    It’s oddly encouraging that the New York Post had to bring up its kookiest right-wing propagandist on Friday to argue that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives. It’s almost as if the New York Times’ kookiest right-wing propagandist’s claiming that killing Palestinians is not genocide had to be one-upped by the Post. It’s even more encouraging that the Post felt obliged to expand the usual definition of “lives” to include the lives of Japanese people, claiming that nuking people saved not only U.S. lives but also Japanese lives — an argument it would have been very hard to find even being attempted during the early decades of this myth.

    But it isn’t true that claims that nukes saved lives or nukes ended the war are only made by fringe crackpots. Those claims may be fading out among serious historians, but they are basic accepted fact to the general public, even the most educated sections of the general public; so they continue popping up like zombies in books and articles whose authors seem to have no idea they’re even writing anything controversial, much less utterly debunked. (The Post calls it “one of the most controversial historical questions in American history.”)

    The argument in the Post (quoting an author named Richard Frank) is this:

    “Not only has no relevant document been recovered from the wartime period, but none of them,” he writes of Japan’s top leaders, “even as they faced potential death sentences in war-crimes trials, testified that Japan would have surrendered earlier upon an offer of modified terms, coupled to Soviet intervention or some other combination of events, excluding the use of atomic bombs.”

    Well here’s a relevant document. Weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan had sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” President Truman had already been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor. So, the desire to drop the bombs may have lengthened the war. The bombs did not shorten the war.

    It’s odd for the Post to build its case entirely on the absence of a certain type of testimony by proud Japanese defendants facing trials for their lives with zero motivation to admit that the Japanese government had been wanting to surrender, and for the Post to completely omit the testimony of all U.S. authorities.

    Defenders of nuking cities may now claim the nukes saved lives, but at the time the bombs were not even intended to do any such thing. The war ended six days after the second nuke, six days into the Russian invasion of Japan. But the war was going to end anyway, without either of those things. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

    One dissenter who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War and, by his own account, to President Truman, prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower. Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, prior to the bombings, urged that Japan be given a warning. Lewis Strauss, Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, also prior to the bombings, recommended blowing up a forest rather than a city. General George Marshall apparently agreed with that idea. Atomic scientist Leo Szilard organized scientists to petition the president against using the bomb. Atomic scientist James Franck organized scientists who advocated treating atomic weapons as a civilian policy issue, not just a military decision. Another scientist, Joseph Rotblat, demanded an end to the Manhattan Project, and resigned when it was not ended. A poll of the U.S. scientists who had developed the bombs, taken prior to their use, found that 83% wanted a nuclear bomb publicly demonstrated prior to dropping one on Japan. The U.S. military kept that poll secret. General Douglas MacArthur held a press conference on August 6, 1945, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, to announce that Japan was already beaten.

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy said angrily in 1949 that Truman had assured him only military targets would be nuked, not civilians. “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender,” Leahy said. Top military officials who said just after the war that the Japanese would have quickly surrendered without the nuclear bombings included General Douglas MacArthur, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, and Brigadier General Carter Clarke. As Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick summarize, seven of the United States’ eight five-star officers who received their final star in World War II or just after — Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold, and Admirals Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey — in 1945 rejected the idea that the atomic bombs were needed to end the war. “Sadly, though, there is little evidence that they pressed their case with Truman before the fact.”

    On August 6, 1945, President Truman lied on the radio that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on an army base, rather than on a city. And he justified it, not as speeding the end of the war, but as revenge against Japanese offenses. “Mr. Truman was jubilant,” wrote Dorothy Day. We have to remember that in the U.S. media of the time, killing more Japanese people was decidedly preferable to killing fewer, and required no justification of supposedly saving lives or ending wars. Truman, the guy whose action is being defended and whose diary is being carefully ignored, made no such claims, as he was not doing restrospective propaganda.

    So, why then were the bombs dropped?

    Presidential advisor James Byrnes had told Truman that dropping the bombs would allow the United States to “dictate the terms of ending the war.” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wrote in his diary that Byrnes was “most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in.” Truman wrote in his diary that the Soviets were preparing to march against Japan and “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The Soviet invasion was planned prior to the bombs, not decided by them. The United States had no plans to invade for months, and no plans on the scale to risk the numbers of lives that the Post will tell you were saved.

    Truman ordered the bombs dropped, one on Hiroshima on August 6th and another type of bomb, a plutonium bomb, which the military also wanted to test and demonstrate, on Nagasaki on August 9th. The Nagasaki bombing was moved up from the 11th to the 9th to decrease the likelihood of Japan surrendering first. Also on August 9th, the Soviets attacked the Japanese. During the next two weeks, the Soviets killed 84,000 Japanese while losing 12,000 of their own soldiers, and the United States continued bombing Japan with non-nuclear weapons — burning Japanese cities, as it had done to so much of Japan prior to August 6th that, when it had come time to pick two cities to nuke, there hadn’t been many left to choose from.

    Here’s what the Post claims was accomplished by killing a couple of hundred thousand people and commencing the age of apocalyptic nuclear danger:

    “The end of the war made unnecessary a US invasion that could have meant hundreds of thousands of American casualties; saved millions of Japanese lives that would have been lost in combat on the home islands and to starvation; cut short the brief Soviet invasion (that alone accounted for hundreds of thousands of Japanese deaths); and ended the agony that Imperial Japan brought to the region, especially a China that suffered perhaps 20 million casualties.”

    Notice that the Post feels obliged to blame (at the time it would have been credit) the Soviet invasion with killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese people, even while claiming, pace Truman, that it did not influence the Japanese decision to surrender. Notice also that the only alternative to the war ending after the nukes, in this view, would have been the war continuing for a great long time costing millions of Japanese lives. But the facts above do not bear this out. The 2025 propagandist is disagreeing with the consensus of the leaders of his beloved military in 1945.

    Why is he doing that?

    He concludes with his motivation: “This is why President Donald Trump’s vision of a Golden Dome to protect the U.S. from missile attack is so important, and why we need a robust nuclear force to deter our enemies.”

    Here is a different view of what World War II tells us about a Golden Dome.

    Here are things you can do to make the 80th anniversaries of the nuclear bombings without lying about them.

    The post No, Nuking Cities Did Not Save Lives first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Indo-Pak Leaders Should “Have a Nice Dinner Together”

    Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (left) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi IMAGE/PPI/AFP/The News

    Troublemakers

    Many leaders1 are averse to running their countries in a peaceful and progressive manner. Instead of concentrating on the problems the majority of their people face, they create trouble by introducing or undoing things, in order to gain political mileage and divert the public’s attention from important issues requiring government focus. The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one such leader.

    In the Indian Lok Sabha, on August 5, 2019, Modi’s Home Minister Amit Shah announced revocation of Article 370 which had granted limited autonomy to the Indian occupied Kashmir.

    Constitutional expert and eminent scholar A. G. Noorani told Akshay Deshmane what that revocation meant:

    It is utterly and palpably unconstitutional. An unconstitutional deed has been accomplished by deceitful means. For a fortnight, the Governor and other people told a whole load of lies. And I am sorry that the Army Core Commander (Chief) was also enlisted to spread this false thing of inputs from Pakistan. It was all a falsehood. They have undermined the Army’s non-political character. This is patently unconstitutional. Thing is that I had always predicted that they are out to fulfill their Saffron agenda: Uniform Civil Code, Ayodhya and Abrogation of Article 370. It remains to be seen how they accomplish the Ayodhya agenda.

    The Revocation of Article 370 was in complete violation of the 2018 Indian Supreme Court ruling which stated that Article 370 was a permanent part of the Indian Constitution and the only way it could be revoked was through the legislative body that had drafted the Article originally- only they could rescind it. That body, however, stopped functioning in 1957.

    India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Lok Sabha on June 26 and August 7, 1952.

    “I say with all respect to our Constitution that it just does not matter what your Constitution says; if the people of Kashmir do not want it, it will not go there. Because what is the alternative? The alternative is compulsion and coercion…” “We have fought the good fight about Kashmir on the field of battle… (and) …in many a chancellery of the world and in the United Nations, but, above all, we have fought this fight in the hearts and minds of men and women of that State of Jammu and Kashmir. Because, ultimately – I say this with all deference to this Parliament – the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else,”

    — Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 18, p. 418 and vol. 19 pp. 295-6, respectively in A. G. Noorani, “Article 370: Law and politics,” Frontline, September 6, 2000.

    That has never happened. The Kashmiri people have never been given a choice to decide their own destiny. Immediately after revoking Article 370, political leaders and thousands of Kashmiri civilians, including those who want Kashmir to be a part of India, were arrested. Kashmir and Jammu was locked down and all communication was blocked for eighteen months. Kashmir was cut off from the rest of the world.

    Pahalgam

    In September 2024, Kashmir Times’ editor Anuradha Bhasin told Al Jazeera:

    “For the last five years, all Kashmiris have seen is an arrogant bureaucracy and the important missing layers of a local government.”

    Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in parliament, addressing a rally in the Jammu region said:

    “Non-locals are running Jammu and Kashmir.” “Your democratic right was snatched. We have given priority to the demand for restoration of statehood.” “If [Modi’s party BJP] fails to restore statehood after the elections, we will put pressure on them to ensure it.”

    Bhasin painted a gloomy picture:

    “The hands of the clock have never moved back. Whatever has been taken from the people, in terms of their autonomy or democratic rights, has never been given back. I doubt that would change in the near future.”

    In May 2024, Omar Abdullah, prior and the current Chief Minister since October 2024, had warned about presenting a rosy picture:

    “The situation [in Kashmir] is not normal and talk less about tourism being an indicator of normalcy; when they link normalcy with tourism, they put tourists in danger.” “You are making the tourists a target.”

    Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group:

    “New Delhi and its security agencies started buying their own assessment of peace and stability, and they became complacent, assuming that the militants will never attack tourists.” “But if pushed to the wall, all it takes is two men with guns to prove that Kashmir is not normal.”

    While Modi was in Saudi Arabia, on April 22, 2025, terrorists associated with The Resistance Front killed 26 tourists in Pahalgam, a beautiful hill station and a favorite destination for visitors. The victims were asked about their religion and were killed on communal basis.

    Modi cut short his Saudi Arabia visit and flew back to India’s capital city, Delhi where he didn’t mention Pahalgam at all.

    However, Modi’s divisive inflammatory rhetoric and strategy is well known to the Bihar-based Rashtriya Janata Dal who predicted Modi’s politics:

    “The pyres of the victims of the Pahalgam terrorist attack have not yet been lit, but the country’s Prime Minister will come to Bihar tomorrow to campaign and deliver speeches because Bihar is holding elections this year.”

    Modi, as if on an election campaign in Bihar, the second most populous state (with a large Dalit and Muslim population), gave a fiery speech:

    “Today from the soil of Bihar I say to the whole world. India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the earth.”

    Veteran journalist Jawed Naqvi points out that in foreign countries Modi typically gives his speeches in Hindi but he gave this address using English to Bihar’s Hindi speakers (perhaps, to fully capitalize from the foreign press present.)

    The accusing finger immediately implied Pakistan, rather than question the security lapse of the Indian security forces or trying to determine the perpetrators. Pakistan has been involved in the past but, this time no proof exists of its involvement. The rhetoric reached fever pitch and culminated in India’s attack on its neighbor, and when Pakistan asked for evidence of the accusation, India didn’t provide it.

    Pakistan also offered to join a “neutral and transparent” investigation but India refused the offer.

    India blamed Pakistan’s military chief Asim Munir’s speech of April 15, 2025 for the Pahalgam tragedy.

    It’s a well known fact that Kashmir is the world’s most militarized zone with very numerous Indian check points all over the state. The question: where was Indian security? was not addressed by the government. Two months later, on June 22, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested two persons who provided shelter to three persons involved in the act, according to NIA allegations.

    Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced 5 major decisions taken by the Indian Government in April, 2025:

    1. Suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) with Pakistan.

    2. Immediate closure of the Atari Integrated Checkpost.

    3. Cancellation of all SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme visas for Pakistani nationals.

    4. Expulsion of defense, naval, and air advisors from the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi.

    5. Reduction of staff in both High Commissions from 55 to 30.

    The CCS reaffirmed India’s resolve to bring perpetrators to justice and hold their sponsors accountable.

    These are extreme measures that, if implemented, especially the water treaty suspension, will undoubtedly create more trouble and could result in a bigger war in the future.

    On July 28, Indian government said its security forces killed three persons responsible for the April 22 killing.

    Asim Munir

    On April 15, while addressing the Overseas Pakistanis (OPs), Munir came out as Indian Hindu Modi’s2 Pakistani version: full of hate, divisiveness, and communalism.

    “Our forefathers thought that we are different from the Hindus in every possible aspect of life. Our religion is different. Our customs are different. Our traditions are different. Our thoughts are different. Our ambitions are different.”

    “… we are two nations, we are not one nation.”

    The army, not popular in Pakistan for its constant interference in politics and disappearing critics and people as Balochis, seemingly, feels driven to frequently do something to make itself relevant. Munir’s speech to OPs was one such attempt.

    India blaming Munir for Pahalgam attack does not seem very credible. The oppressed people, Kashmiris in India or Balochis in Pakistan, don’t need any inciting speech to fight back; they’re just waiting for the right time because they don’t have the luxury of attacking at will, like the governments do, in the name of “national security.” The oppressed can’t reach the state so they attack innocent people to communicate their plight.

    In Pakistan, Baloch separatists have stopped buses and killed Punjabis after checking their IDs, perhaps in revenge as Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous and dominant province, and has a strong hold over the central government.

    The attacks are cruel, but these kind of ugly incidents may continually occur if governments involved refuse to negotiate and reach amicable solutions.

    War

    On 29 April, Indian government sources quoted Modi: “They [the Indian army] have complete operational freedom to decide on the mode, targets, and timing of our response,”

    On May 7, India struck some sites in Pakistan, that then counter-struck.

    India’s Israeli Ambassador Reuven Azar posted on X: “Israel supports India’s right for self-defense. Terrorists should know there’s no place to hide from their heinous crimes against the innocent.”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Modi: “Israel stands with India in its fight against terrorism.”

    There can be no better person than Netanyahu, the great terrorist and genocider, to advice another terrorist.

    Trump’s ceasefire

    The four-day-war ended when US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire on his Truth Social media site:

    “I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE.”

    Propaganda

    In 2014, when Modi was to become Prime Minister for the first time, Amit Shah had bragged about BJP having 3.2 million WhatsApp groups who could instantly turn anything into believable stuff. In May 2024, BJP had at least 5 million WhatsApp groups and its infrastructure is so strong that any message relayed from Delhi could circulate all over India within 12 minutes.

    Kiran Garimella of Rutgers University who researches WhatsApp in India, warned that WhatsApp is not an open social media like X or Facebook which is worrying and a cause for concern for many people.

    “It is concerning that such a huge ‘hidden’ infrastructure plays a huge role in how the public consumes information.” “Only the creators of these groups know the extent to which the tentacles of this WhatsApp infrastructure are spread.”

    What is the result?

    War is like a game to the war inciters, war lovers, war media, and common people under the spell of the media frenzy and are most interested in the one question, who won and who lost?

    The winners

    There were two clear winners: Indian news media and the Pakistan army and its Chief of Army Staff: Asim Munir.

    False news stories and AI generated images came from both sides but India was way ahead in fake news:

    • Indian Navy destroyed sea port Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and financial center, with “over ten blasts.”
    • The city of Peshawar was turned to “dust.”
    • Pakistani soldiers were “deserting” and generals were “fleeing” the country,
    • Some channels announced destruction of 5 cities where as another settled for 26 cities
    • India’s fake news-master Arnab Goswami also declared a huge blast was heard outside Pakistan PM’s house and he was taken away to a place “20.5” kilometers (12.74 miles) away. Goswami also said it’s not clear whether it was for a safety reason or was it a coup.
    • Zee News declared a coup happened resulting in the arrest of General Asim Munir.
    • and so on…

    For a very long time now, most Indian media has turned into “Godi Media,” a term used by Ravish Kumar, the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award winner. (Kumar was NDTV India’s Managing Editor but left when it was bought by billionaire Gautam Adani, a Modi supporter and fellow Gujarati.)

    Kumar queried as to who should get an award for riveting fake news?

    • News Nation who gave news of Sharif on the run or,
    • Zee News who located Sharif, who was never missing?

    Sumitra Badrinathan, an assistant professor at the American University, observed in an interview with the New York Times that in India “previously credible journalists and major media news outlets ran straight-up fabricated stories [on the 4 day war].”

    The losers

    The victims of the bombings, dead or wounded, are always the first ones to endure the horrors of war. They are the losers.

    Pakistan said 40 civilians and 13 military personnel were killed. India’s figure was 21 civilians and 8 military and paramilitary personnel died. Hundreds of people on both sides got injured.

    The politicians and generals on both sides claimed victory. The war was of a very short duration, thus politicians and generals didn’t feel populace hostility or face dire consequences like resignations.

    Winner and loser honor

    That honor goes to Modi. He was a winner and also a loser.

    • Modi the winner. To his followers, Modi’s heroism enhanced when the Indian news media falsely started giving way too inflated stories of India beating Pakistan.
    • Modi also succeeded in cutting off whatever little cooperation existed between Indians and Pakistanis through arts and sports. The Indian government ordered all Pakistani songs removed from Spotify. All media streaming services, digital intermediaries, and OTT platforms were ordered to discontinue Pakistani films, web series, songs, etc. Pakistani TV channels and dramas, very popular in India, were banned and still are. Pakistani artists and sportspersons social media accounts were blocked and still are.
    • The extent of Modi’s hatred can be gauged from the following film posters: before and after.

    Indian actor Harshvardhan Rane and Pakistani actress Mawra Hocane in Indian film poster of Sanam Teri Kasam IMAGE/BrandSynario/Duck Duck Go

    In an Orwellian move, Pakistani actress Mawra Hocane was removed from the film poster of Sanam Teri Kasam IMAGE/Hindustan Times/Duck Duck Go

    The original film poster had Mawra Hocane but in the revised one, Hocane disappeared in an Orwellian manner. Shah Rukh Khan‘s movie posters of Raees with Pakistani actress Mahira Khan have faced the same fate.

    • Indian singer, actor, producer Diljit Dosanjh film Sardaar Ji 33 with the Pakistani actress Hania Aamir got banned in India. The Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and Minister of Information & Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw to revoke passports of Daljit Dosanjh, Gunbir Singh Sidhu, Manmord Sidhu and Director Amar Hundal. Just for working with a Pakistani artist, thus displaying the toxic mixture of hate, idiocy, and faulty logic.
    • FWICE’s letter contained many lies about Hania Aamir who had lamented the loss of life: “I don’t have fancy words right now. I just have anger, pain, and a heavy heart. A child is gone. Families are shattered. And for what? This is not how you protect anyone. This is cruelty – plain and simple.

    Mind you, Modi personally may not be giving orders, but, people get emboldened to inflict damage as they know they won’t be stopped.

    Many fields of life, from economics to education and from culture to cricket, have suffered due to rigidity, egotism, and ideology of politicians on both sides. Pakistani military’s control over politicians has never let both countries cooperate and utilize fully the trade, talents, and technology. Hardly a 100 or so Pakistani artists and playback singers have ever worked in Indian films.

    Official trade between both countries has dropped and is routed through Singapore, Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Dubai (UAE), costing more money. Even in peace times, these routes are used for trade due to some or other reason. It’s foolish, but than you can’t make people with power to understand, because the powerful don’t allow discussions or arguments.

    Modi the loser. On May 10, 2025, at 6:55 A.M. Eastern Time (that is 4:55 P.M. Pakistan time and 5:25 P.M. Indian time) on his Truth Social site, Trump announced:

    “After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

    It was sobering news for Modi. Modi has created an image of himself as Indian superman with broad 56-inch chest who is globally famous giving hugs to presidents, prime ministers, billionaires, whether they want it or not. He has made 91 foreign trips till July 2025. He has made India a superpower not in reality but by creating such perception. Modi who likes to control the narrative and who desperately wanted to announce victory had to get a ceasefire order from Trump. Trump is such a character that you can’t argue with him because then you face more humiliation — not because Trump is more vitriolic than Modi but because US is economically much more stronger than India, who is economically heavily interconnected with the US.

    Imbecile

    Then there is Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He got so carried away by Pakistan army’s downing of less than half a dozen Indian fighter planes that he equated it as a victory compensating for the loss of half the country (55% of its population in 1971) when East Pakistan seceded with Indian help to become independent Bangladesh.

    That is clearly just a fictional ego boosting comparison.

    Unpredictable Outcome

    Who could have predicted that Modi’s war would give Pakistan army and Munir a new lease on popularity?

    Avoid war

    Poet Sahir Ludhianvi’s poem O Decent People has a quatrain:

    whether the blood spilled is ours or theirs

    it is the blood of Adam’s progeny, after all

    whether the war is in the east or west

    it is the murder of world peace, after all

    War should be avoided at all cost. All wars between Pakistan and India inflict tremendous cost in lives and finances, and, affect the entire South Asian region.

    Both possess nuclear weapons which if, by mistake or bravado, get deployed in the war, would end in great disaster for the entire world. According to climatologist Alan Robock, 1,000,000,000 to 2 billion people would face starvation worldwide, in such case, there would be immediate climate changes, leading to much colder weather than the Little Ice Age and many other disasters, including destruction of ozone layer.

    Dinner date

    Trump advised Indian and Pakistani leaders to go for a dinner date.

    “Maybe we can even get them together a little bit, Marco [Rubio, the US Secretary of State], where they go out and have a nice dinner together. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

    Improve relations

    The population of South Asia, including Afghanistan, comprises 25% of global population. With China’s 17% added, the percentage shoots up to 42%.

    The World Inequality Lab study observed that income and wealth contrast in Modi’s India is worse, more than it was during the British colonial rule. Other countries in the region are not any better.

    Suggestions:

    • If 42% of people increase trade in way that exchange of dollars is minimized, either through barter trade or using own currencies, this would save them hustle for dollars and foreign exchange.
    • Increased trade also brings people closer and aids in creating more understanding and tolerance.
    • In the best interest of both countries and the entire South Asian region, it would be better if SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) is revived.
    • Visas should be issued to enjoy tourism and appreciate each other’s natural beauty of land, flora and fauna and cultures
    • Exchange student programs should be initiated
    • Joint cultural, artistic, sports, entertainment, and other such events should be organized and promoted.
    • India and Pakistan should avoid competing to get in the good books of US administration and try to sort out their problems themselves.
    • Pakistan feels insecure when Trump is close to Modi and vice versa.
    • India is the most populous country and Pakistan is the fifth most populated nation, both are made of many nations held together with very weak ties. They should concentrate on making that connection stronger by addressing the problems of various ethnic, caste, gender, and religious groups and by improving relations between the countries of SAARC.

    Gur Mehar Kaur, whose father died during one of the Indo-Pak wars when she was 2 year old, wishes peace:

    “… Only mutual cooperation can drive South Asia ahead. A peaceful subcontinent is the greatest gift we can give our families, our soldiers and ourselves.”

    “Hate is the most anti-national force that we face. The worst thing the BJP under Modi did was nurture a mob that can only be satisfied with blood, killings and hate. For 10 years, this mob has been empowered.”

    Notes:

    The post Indo-Pak Leaders Should “Have a Nice Dinner Together” first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    In the Shanghai Communique, 1972, the US declared:

    The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.

    For almost five decades, peace prevailed between China and the United States on the issue of Taiwan. The above policy was maintained without any serious incident. It could have gone on for decades but for some US generals and others who visited Taiwan in March 2022. Author Eve Ottenberg surmised, “to beat the war drums and provoke China.” Same year in August, Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan too, to incite China.

    The “world’s greatest democracy” seems devoid of a peace gene; it follows it’s own motto: “I war, therefore I am.”
    2    In 1924, 1,165 in-person hate speech events took place in India; 259 were openly calling for violence. Many important BJP leaders, including Modi, his Home Minister Amit Shah, and Yogi Adityanath, the rogue governor of largest state Uttar Pradesh, were involved in these events.
    3    The 2016, the Indian film Sanam Teri Kasam had a Pakistani actress Mawra Hocane as the female protagonist. The film was re-released in February and became highest-grossing re-released Indian film. They are making a sequel but now without Hocane because of the war. (VIDEO/Soham Rockstar Entertainment/Youtube)Dosanjh made a great move. He didn’t implore authorities for the film to be released in India but instead had it released worldwide, including Pakistan, where it became the second highest-grossing film in Pakistan’s history. It is also the highest-grossing Punjabi language film internationally. The film has made almost double the money it cost to make the movie. (VIDEO/White Hill Music/Youtube) Dosanjh’s actions will encourage those Indian and Pakistani artists who wants to collaborate to release their work worldwide to cover the cost and make profit internationally, rather than be at the mercy of local politicians’ whims. Indian film Abir Gulaal with Indian actress Vaani Kapoor and Pakistani actor Fawad Khan was to release on May 9 but was postponed indefinitely. The makers should think of forgoing the Indian market and releasing it worldwide if possible and if it won’t hurt them financially.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The CIA Built Hundreds Of Covert Websites

    The CIA didn’t just infiltrate governments; it infiltrated the internet itself. For over a decade, Langley operated a sprawling network of covert websites that served as global spy terminals disguised as harmless blogs, news hubs, and fan pages.

    Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations, including France, Italy, and Spain, showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes.

    The post The CIA Built Hundreds Of Covert Websites appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Much For Mainstream Voices To Start Speaking Up About Gaza

    Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights. The Israeli organizations join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide in their conclusion.

    The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse.

    Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that “starving people to death is a red line.” This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been.

    MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled “Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit.”, featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC employee, has done a 180 and is now raking Israel over the coals on the air for its deliberately engineered starvation campaign. The New York Times finally overcame its phobia of the g-word with an op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”

    We’re now seeing notoriously Zionist swamp monsters in the Democratic Party like Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar changing their tune and attacking Netanyahu and Trump for their joint genocide project in Gaza, with increasingly forceful pushback from some on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.

    As western pundits, politicians, and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.

    People who’ve been staring at this genocide from the beginning have been asking the entire time, what is it going to take? What will it take for our society to stop sleepwalking through inane trivialities and vapid distractions and start opposing the holocaust of our day?

    Raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp packed full of children wasn’t enough.

    Burning children alive wasn’t enough.

    Systematically destroying Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure — up to and including entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment one by one — wasn’t enough.

    Killing more journalists than were killed in both World Wars, plus the US Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine wasn’t enough.

    The systemic rape and torture of prisoners wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1949587236434931921

    IDF soldiers routinely sharing photos and videos of themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children wasn’t enough.

    Israeli officials openly expressing genocidal intent for the people of Gaza wasn’t enough.

    The US president and Israeli prime minister openly declaring their goal of the complete ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian territory wasn’t enough.

    Field testing new weapons of war on Palestinians like they’re guinea pigs in a laboratory wasn’t enough.

    Leaving countless civilians to slowly suffocate or die of dehydration, trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings, wasn’t enough.

    Creating an AI system to ensure that suspected Hamas fighters are bombed when they’re at home with their children and naming it “Where’s Daddy?” wasn’t enough.

    Using Palestinians as human shields wasn’t enough.

    Burying injured civilians alive with bulldozers wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/GozukaraFurkan/status/1949232008216887774

    The IDF admitting to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins,” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces, wasn’t enough.

    IDF snipers routinely shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip wasn’t enough.

    The IDF flying drones, which play the sounds of crying babies at night in order to lure out hiding civilians to murder them, wasn’t enough.

    IDF troops telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians seeking food from aid sites wasn’t enough.

    Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of starving civilians on designated days — leg day, head day, genitals day, etc — wasn’t enough.

    Far right Israeli citizens setting up blockades to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza while they enjoyed parties and barbecues at the blockade sites wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/mamoun_linda/status/1949190406211825696

    Using lies and propaganda to dismantle the aid system for bringing essential food and life-supporting supplies into Gaza, to replace it with a US/Israeli op where aid seekers are massacred every single day, wasn’t enough.

    Using siege warfare to starve Gaza for the previous 22 months deliberately wasn’t enough.

    But now that starvation has hit a critical point and deaths from malnutrition are skyrocketing, now that images of dead skeletal children are filling our screens, now that the damage to organs and brains from starvation will be irreversible in many cases — now it’s enough.

    That was the line, apparently. That’s what mainstream Western consciousness has decided is too much. Everything up until that line was fine, but now it’s not fine anymore.

    And the killing is still going on. The sudden awakening of conscience hasn’t translated into any material actions or changes at all yet. If it had come in October or November 2023, like it should have, we might be seeing that opposition translate into actually saving Gaza by now, but the light has only just been switched on. It’s not even guaranteed that those who are speaking up will continue to do so.

    https://x.com/d_boeckner/status/1949137485776265514

    I’m glad people are waking up to the cruel reality of this nightmare. I’m grateful to each and every influential voice who uses their platform to speak out, even at this late date. I truly am.

    But I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.

    We are not living right. We are not thinking right. We are not feeling right. We are warped and twisted. The information we consume and the norms we’ve been conditioned to accept have corrupted our souls.

    We have been made into something bad. Something ugly. Something shameful. Something we need to do everything in our power to change.

    We need to rescue ourselves from what we have become. We need to transform, deeply and radically, into something that could never again allow something like this to occur.

    https://x.com/BlakPantherBabe/status/1949834226343293339

    The way things are clearly isn’t working. The mainstream worldview is clearly a lie. Everything we’ve been taught to believe about our society, our nation, our government, and our world was clearly false.

    We need to fight our way through the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that our entire way of looking at things as a collective has failed, and we need to find a new way of being.

    Otherwise, we’re going to keep being smashed in the face with increasingly horrifying reminders of what we have allowed ourselves to become.

    The lessons will repeat until they are learned.

    We had better start learning them.

    The post It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Much For Mainstream Voices To Start Speaking Up About Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gamaan: The Polling Op That’s Gaslighting The West About Iran

    The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), an influential Dutch polling group cited by the New York Times, U.S. State Department and U.K. government, claims to capture the true views of everyday Iranians through unconventional online surveys.

    GAMAAN calls itself an “independent” research foundation, a label echoed by news outlets and think tanks covering the group’s headline-grabbing findings, which portray the Iranian public as far more secular and anti-government than data from organizations such as Gallup and Pew Research suggest.

    The post Gamaan: The Polling Op That’s Gaslighting The West About Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Debunking Israeli Propaganda in Times of Genocide

    We live in interesting but brutal times. It is evident that myths are biting the dust with long held narratives dissolving when exposed to the harsh and bloody reality. Nowhere is this more evident than with all the myths that propped up Israel for many decades. Israel was portrayed as a fragile yet resilient little country living in a “bad neighbourhood.” But now, given Israel’s incessant wars, much of this mythology is being jettisoned; it is no longer needed when arrogance, hubris and sadism drive the Israeli ethos. The image of the little David is giving way to a vengeful genocidal creature infused with a dash of the Old Testament….

    Below is a discussion of some of the collapsing myths. Myths are built on narratives which in turn are built on descriptive words. Much of the discussion centres around clarifying the deceptive nature of words, which in turn will expose the false narratives.

    Rabble really

    The army is venerated in Israel, and a lot of effort is put into glorifying the military; there are festivals with singers, balloons, and blue and white pom-poms galore.1 American Jewish girls go giddy when meeting the tanned and smiling soldiers. Of course, if one glorifies the military, then all the units can only be “élite”; even the lowliest soldier is given a sergeant rank; and of course they must be “the most moral ” in the world. It is also known by its incongruous acronym: IDF.

    Contrast the glamorous image of the Israeli military with its actions in Gaza, West Bank and beyond. Israeli snipers are targeting children – extra-points for pregnant women (you can even purchase a T-shirt with “one shot, two kills ” logo on it). Soldiers are cheering when blowing up hospitals, universities, mosques, schools,…. it is no secret, it is all visible in Telegram videos or on Al_Jazeera’s newscasts. To make matters worse, GHF, the so-called Israeli “humanitarian ” group, dispenses food and water in Gaza today in such a way as to concentrate refugees, and then target them.2 Soldiers are looting everywhere, and even one unit has been set up with the express intention of looting areas they’ve conquered. Looting is tolerated throughout, and even made part of its tactics on the ground.3

    The Israeli military is engaged in genocide and doesn’t hide the fact. Groups of soldiers engaged in ecstatic dancing chanting “death to the Amalek ” – a biblical term for the one to be killed en masse; including women and children.4 Early in October 2023, the Israeli military put a 95-year-old veteran of the infamous 1948 massacres on tour to lecture the soldiers. Dressed in a military uniform, he engaged in some motivational speeches: “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live.”5 The pronouncements made by the military official rabbis are even worse. And one cannot forget (former Minister of Defence) Yoav Gallant’s statement: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”6

    The Israeli airforce regularly drops huge bombs in the middle of densely populated refugee camps. According to Euromed, the total number of bombs dropped on Gaza are equivalent to all the bombs dropped on several of the major cities during WWII. And in order not to waste bombs, Israeli warplanes which couldn’t drop their ordnance in Iran during the June 2025 attack were instructed to bomb Gaza. Israelis also never miss an opportunity to profit from such events; Israelis flock to the border area to sit on sofas to witness the bombing spectacle. These war tourists have to pay extra for a cappuccino.

    Israeli sadism only escalates; everyday there must be a new turn of the screw – it is not satisfied with merely bombing or shooting civilians. The latest Israeli military order is that from now on Palestinians will not be allowed to bathe in the sea.7 Israeli snipers, warships… will target civilians entering the sea. One Telegram video shows a gleeful Israeli soldier using mortar bombs to target civilians sitting on a beach.

    The Israeli military used to be well organised and soldiers operated on the basis of strict orders. Today, the ethical rot has set in at all levels. Officers and lower soldiers alike murder, steal, torture everywhere. Soldiers perpetrate heinous crimes in full camera view, yet the perpetrators expect full impunity.

    Simply put: the Israeli military can no longer be referred to as an army, but it must be described for what it actually is: a criminal rabble.

    Israeli way of war

    Israelis like to say that they “live in a bad neighbourhood.” In fact, it is so bad that Israel has bombed most of its neighbouring countries numerous times and attempted to murder most of the leadership in those countries.8 “Decapitation strikes” are deemed a great success and yet another proof of the Israeli cunning and prowess. Another target are the potential or actual negotiators. The Israeli military has murdered several negotiators in Lebanon, Gaza, Tehran (Ismael Haniyeh), and during the June 2025 attack against Iran the lead negotiator with the Americans was also murdered. And then Israel declares “ceasefires ” that impose conditions on the victims, but Israel continues to murder and bomb – there have been over 1,000 violations of the so-called ceasefire in Lebanon. Drones and warplanes fly overhead without regard to any declared ceasefire. Maybe all this is not surprising given the official Israeli (especially Netanyahu’s) disdain for “peace” which is considered to be a dirty word; they prefer “conflict management.” Ceasefires are merely meant to provide time for the Israeli military to reorganise and then bomb and murder in their “business as usual” fashion.

    The Israeli military’s brutality even gets pompous sounding names like the Dahiya Doctrine. This refers to the levelling of the Dahiya neighbourhood in Beirut 2006 – it is a disproportionate level of violence “in response” to Hezbollah daring to resist the Israeli attack. And of course, Israelis justify this by seeking to reestablish “deterrence” which is yet another fraudulent military concept.9 But then the Israeli military applies other fraudulent and morally reprehensible doctrines, e.g., the Hannibal directive. This directive orders the Israeli military to kill Israeli Jews who may have been captured by Palestinians or other enemies. Officials prefer to kill Israelis rather than to have them taken as hostages. In fact, about half of the Israeli civilians killed on 7 October 2023 were killed by the Israeli military.10

    The Israeli military justifies its actions because it is “at war.” The resistance in Gaza has no tanks, airplanes, etc. Thus the best equipped army in the world is attacking a mostly defenceless population; maybe it is a bit of a stretch to call this a “war.” Norman Finkelstein, the great historian, once made the same point and suggested that the Israeli “mowing the lawn ” attacks should be referred to as “massacres.” That is a rather more accurate and succinct descriptor; in the current historical context “genocidal actions” is perhaps more accurate.

    Squatters really

    A mythology surrounding the early Israeli colonists became pervasive early on. The brave sun tanned pioneers were “making the desert bloom”11 conveying the notion that they were just taking over empty and unproductive land. The word that went along with this myth was that the Jewish interlopers were “settlers ” – another rather neutral word that has no association with the native population they came to displace. For some time while communal living had romantic appeal, settlers lived in kibbutzim. Young Europeans would flock to experience this only to find out a less glamorous picture often involving corruption and sexual abuse.12

    After the 1940s, the program of ethnic cleansing saw hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages razed to the ground or simply taken over. Many Israelis took over houses and even helped themselves to furniture, carpets, etc. The takeover of houses is an on-going project with zealot usurpers using advanced mapping technology to target houses, especially in East Jerusalem. While a Palestinian family is out of a house doing normal daily chores, they find upon their return that their house has been taken over, and it is impossible to eject the squatters because the police sides with the latter.

    During the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a wave of land confiscation in the West Bank, and the building of “settlements ” on top of hills. The real zealots went to Al Khalil/Hebron to take over houses, hotels, and other buildings.13 They even set about closing off streets so they could go undisturbed to the Ibrahimi mosque which also had been usurped by the zealots. The zealots’ aim is to constantly steal houses, and to make the life of ordinary Palestinians intolerable.

    Other settlements were built as suburbs of Jerusalem or as cities with all the amenities provided at subsidised rates. Purpose-built “apartheid” roads connected these developments to the main Israeli cities, but also were meant to sever the links between Palestinian communities. And although the residents of such places are portrayed as mere suburbanites, they often clash with Palestinians when they seek to annex more land. Although annexation is such a neutral word, it hides the violence dispensed by the suburbanites to achieve their aims. The Jews recently arrived from Venezuela sought to expand the borders of their development and requested the zealots to do the dirty violent work.14 The condition for this assistance was that new arrivals would also participate in the violent eviction and usurpation of the neighbouring Palestinian land. Even the “suburbanites ” participate in violence; the soldiers are on standby to protect the usurpers.

    It is important to avoid propaganda-tainted language, and to use words that clearly describe a reality and associated power relationships. For this reason many words cry out for an alternative description. The word “settler” demands a more accurate substitution, and the word “squatter” would certainly be a more suitable and accurate descriptor. It is time to stop calling the armed violent young men who harass and brutalise Palestinians in the West Bank “settlers”!

    Where has “proper” gone?

    Israel always has been a country with flexible and expanding borders. Yet, when it suited them, they would make a distinction between “Israel proper” and the occupied areas. The implication was that there could be negotiations regarding the occupied areas, there couldn’t possibly be negotiations about anything in Israel proper – this was conceded land, and there was nothing to talk about. And the “proper” areas expanded! After the wars of 1948, 1967, 2006… the borders of Israel “proper” expanded to incorporate newly stolen land.15 What the current batch of wars have revealed is that there is no more talk about “Israel proper”, and the reason for that is that Israel is expanding at present – stealing land in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank. While the borders keep expanding, the “proper” hasn’t incorporated the newly usurped land.

    A feature of the “Israel proper” concept is that Israel desires to have buffer zones or no-man’s land between its “recognised” borders and its neighbours. But the buffer zones have to be on Lebanese or Syrian soil; the buffer is never on the Israeli side. The Israeli military has created a no-man’s land on the border with Gaza, but all the bulldozed land and acreage sprayed with herbicide is on the Palestinian side of the military-imposed border. And if the UN feels that it needs to conduct some face-saving military patrols, then the UN can defend Israel by sitting in the Lebanese “buffer zone”; UNIFIL shouldn’t even dream of sitting right on the border or having its soldiers cross into Israel for some R&R.

    Never again?

    All western societies have been indoctrinated with holocaust mythology; one constant refrain has been “never again”. Fair enough. But if any lessons were learnt then this slogan should apply to all; it should read Never again for Everybody. The Gazan population certainly should not be the victim of genocide today – yet there is no doubt that that is exactly what is going on. A brief perusal of the so-called “holocaust studies centres” around the world reveal that they have been silent during this period – they are immersed in studying the 1940s; there seem to be no lessons for the current situation. One such centre features a large “Find memory; Find humanity” slogan on its website, yet (July 2025) has absolutely nothing to say about the genocide in Gaza. It is all about selective memory and humanity.

    Pogroms were violent attacks against a religious or ethnic group in the Russian Empire and usually depicted as criminal in nature. Yet today young armed Israeli Jews regularly invade Palestinian villages and towns and brutalise or murder the native population. If violence was deemed intolerable in the past, then why the silence about the ongoing pogroms in the West Bank today?

    Careful what you wish for

    Several so-called influencers, the contemptible creatures appearing on TikTok/Instagram, etc., called for genocide in Gaza. One of the influencers went so far as to state that if there were a button to get rid of all the Palestinians, he would press the button.16The calls for genocide are also commonly found at the podium of the Knesset. The wife of an Israeli soldier, hysterically shouted from podium not to let the sacrifice of her husband’s effort (having to work overtime) be wasted, and thus “don’t stop before…” the Israeli army exterminates all Palestinians.17

    Israeli society is rather warped, and it is constantly polled about all sorts of unusual issues. One of the recent questions was “are Palestinian children in Gaza innocent?” 75% of the respondents said “no.” In one motivational speech given to the soldiers about to invade Gaza, a high ranking officer also stated “the children are not innocent” – this follows Deuteronomy’s edict to kill the women and the children.

    After the first hearing about Gaza was held at the ICJ (26 January 2024) at a demonstration in London, dozens of counter-demonstrators wearing Israeli flag capes were chanting “no ceasefire.” By this time several hospitals and universities had already been destroyed. Is this what the counter-demonstrators wished to continue?

    Maybe a thought experiment will demonstrate the extreme hypocrisy of these influencers and counter-demonstrators. Imagine that a Palestinian influencer were to ask for a button get rid of all Israeli Jews, or that a Palestinian politician were to utter a similar statement. What do you think the reaction would be? The ultimate hypocrisy is for Jews who bow to the mere mention of the holocaust to call for genocide against Palestinians.

    While the London police did nothing to suppress the counter-demonstrators yelling support for the genocide, they do actively suppress pro-Palestinian statements against the genocide! In a recent video, the police in Scotland are even tearing down Palestinian flags.18 And in the US, Trump is actually suppressing all protests and commentary against Israeli brutality by labelling it as antisemitism.

    My holy vs. your holy

    About one thousand mosques and several churches have been obliterated since 2023.19 Some of the mosques/churches were centuries old and could be deemed cultural heritage sites – of course, they didn’t receive a UNESCO label because Israel blocked such designations.20 The media tends to ignore the destruction of mosques or refers to Israeli justifications for their destruction. The few christian churches bombed in Gaza did elicit mention, and after the bombing of a Catholic church even Pope Leo XIV stated that “he was deeply saddened…” by the loss of life.21 What makes the Pope’s comment memorable is the fact that he didn’t mention that it was Israel that bombed the church. Anonymous bombs just seem to fall out of the sky.

    While the intentional destruction of Palestinian holy sites or mosques doesn’t seem to merit any mention, when a synagogue is damaged this elicits a major outcry. But to highlight the double standard, the establishment of a synagogue, or purportedly finding a reference to a Tomb or mere place of sojourn by a well known rabbi, then Israeli Jews consider this to be a claim to the land. Thus an enterprising religious scholar found a reference to a Tomb of Rabbi Ashi in Lebanon, then this became a land claim.22 Israelis grab any justification to steal yet more land however flimsy the claim to the land may be.

    Mind their comfort please

    The many wars that Israel has waged recently have outraged many around the world giving rise to demonstrations and the like. Yet, the frequent media concern is with the “comfort ” of Jews witnessing the demonstrations! Although Israel is conducting a genocide, Jews should feel comfortable and not reminded of sordid events. Even a bake sale meant to raise funds for Gaza was deemed to interfere with Jewish comfort.23 Did white South Africans living in Europe object to anti-apartheid demonstrations on the basis that it made them feel uncomfortable? Fat chance! However, in the current context several governments have appointed “anti-semitism ambassadors ” who will work to ban demonstrations or manifestations of support for the Palestinians. Maybe a case can be made that supporters of the Israeli genocide in Gaza or the unprovoked attack against Iran should be made to feel uncomfortable.

    Western values and Israel

    Much is made of “western values” purportedly freedom of speech, association, respect for the rule of law, and respecting immigrants. These values are what makes Europe a “garden” and everywhere else a “jungle.”24 These values have also been used to justify the continued EU assistance to Ukraine, and thus war. Russia has invariably been castigated for not observing “western norms.” But, when it comes to genocidal Israel and its violent tendencies, the same insufferable politicians are silent or connive to send weapons and assistance to Israel.

    Europe is meant to absorb huge migrant flows, yet Israel imposes a discriminatory migrant policy – only Jews need to apply. Israel’s incessant wars are creating migrant flows that inevitably end in Europe, and no European official seems willing to point this out. What we witness instead is that European officials travel to Egypt to offer enticements for Egypt to absorb Palestinian refugees; a few years ago the same gang offered several billion Euros to Erdogan to reduce the Syrian and Iraqi migrant flows.

    Myopic history

    Reading the mainstream media one would get the impression that Palestinian history started on 7 October 2023. Everything before that doesn’t seem to merit mentioning. All the “mowing the lawn” military operations aren’t a thing of the past, they are in a memory hole. The Goldstone report documenting the mass crimes committed in 2009 is also in the memory hole. Of course, it is too much to expect the mainstream media to even mention relevant history that goes back a few more years. The media don’t report on the caged nature of Gaza, surrounded by razor wire and watchtowers. And as Dov Weissglas, the advisor to Ariel Sharon, stated the residents of Gaza would be kept “on a diet” – that is, Israeli bureaucrats would calculate the minimum caloric intake needed to survive, and they would allow just this amount of aid to trickle into Gaza.

    Watch our words!

    While it is important to use accurate words to describe Israeli state policy, it is also important for pro-Palestinian activists to change the words they use to refer to the current reality. One finds that the word “occupation” is used often to describe the Israeli military, and even to the extent that it is used as a synonym. Similarly, the “apartheid” descriptor is used without much reflection, e.g., apartheid wall, apartheid roads, etc. Both occupation and apartheid indicate a co-existence with the native population. Apartheid meant coexisting economically, but living separately – there was an interaction between blacks and whites. The word occupation suggests that it is temporary, and that interaction is possible. But the genocide in Gaza indicates that Israel prefers erasing the Palestinians, and that way ending the occupation. The three strategists drawing up the path of the wall built in the West Bank were explicit about the temporary nature of the structure. It would remain in place to control the Palestinian population, but they foresaw that the wall will be removed once the Palestinian population has been expelled.

    There is another problem with the word “apartheid.” While much effort was placed to declare that Israel was guilty of the “crime of apartheid,” it only referred to the “occupied territories.” The third class status of Palestinians living in Israel was unmentionable to those drawing up the legal case. Apartheid was deemed a crime on one side of the line, but just fine on the other side (in “Israel proper”).

    Worse than 1960s apartheid in South Africa

    The so-called West slowly adopted some sanctions and divestment of South Africa beginning in the 1970s; the public had engaged in some form of boycott of South African products before that. Ronnie Kasrils, the great anti-apartheid fighter and member of the African National Congress, stated that the situation now for the Palestinians is worse than that experienced by the black population at the height of the oppressive apartheid years. While Western countries grudgingly sanctioned and divested from South Africa, one wonders when will there be some official opposition to Israel’s genocidal actions.

    Tough times for the propagandists

    The Israelis and their supporters spent much effort painting Israel as a valiant little country trying to become a success story surrounded by hostile neighbours. Israelis were portrayed as pioneers thriving despite the odds. The propagandists working for Israel had appropriated victimhood, and justified Israel’s actions as “self defence.” Alas, all this mythology has been ruined because Israeli officialdom chose to wage wars, expel the native population, commit genocide in Gaza, attack Iran, attack Yemen, and steal yet more land from its neighbours. It requires more than lipstick to doll up this pig. Today Israeli propaganda relies on threats, and strong armed techniques to censor and muzzle dissent. Much of this is done by control over the media which seems to work in tandem with Israeli propagandists. Student protestors are threatened and even imprisoned; conscientious journalists are fired….

    For all moral world citizens, the task is to oppose all the ghastly things Israel does every day, to reject their sorry justifications ( “self defence”); reject the portrayal of Israel’s proclaimed enemies (demonising Hamas, and the Palestinians in general); reject the portrayal of the Israeli military (why should anyone want to be an “ally” of this country?), reject Israel as a ethnocracy where rights and status are determined by whether or not one is Jewish (reject “Jewish democracy” if it excludes or discriminates against segment of the population; it is not much different from “white democracy” during South Africa’s apartheid years). In many ways, if one appeals to “western values”, the mantra often repeated by western officialdom, then one must also be willing to judge Israeli’s actions and institutions by the same standard. Just because Israel holds a gay pride parade doesn’t make them a beacon of shared values. Our opposition can start with acts as simple as challenging the manager of our local supermarket why they stock Israeli avocados and oranges; indeed, the boycott against apartheid in South Africa started by boycotting their oranges. But these are small steps when bolder action is needed – it is long overdue.

    Notes:

    The post Debunking Israeli Propaganda in Times of Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen’s Israelism shows this cultural phenomenon.
    2    Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” Haaretz, 27 June 2025.
    3    MEE Staff, “Report reveals vast loot Israeli soldiers took from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria,” Middle East Eye, 28 February 2025. And Oren Ziv, “Rugs, cosmetics, motorbikes: Israeli soldiers are looting Gaza homes en masse,” +972 Magazine, 20 February 2024.
    4    Evidence presented in January 2024 at the ICJ.
    5    Rayhan Uddin, “Israel-Palestine war: Israeli veteran, 95, rallies troops to ‘erase’ Palestinian children”, Middle East Eye, 14 October 2023.
    6    For a collection of genocidal statements made by Israeli officials or members of the Knesset see: “Specific Intent of Genocide: Statements made by Israeli officials indicating their clear intent to exterminate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Euromed, 21 Oct 2024. A much longer list could be obtained by quoting influential rabbis in Israel.
    7    Nagham Zbeedat, “’Are They Going to Ban the Air Next?’ | IDF Reiterates Ban on Gazans Entering the Sea, Last Remaining Source of Relief for Many Palestinians”, Haaretz, 13 July 2025.
    8    At last count ten countries in the area had been bombed; the most recent ones are Iran and Yemen. Imagine if, say, Belgium, didn’t get along with its neighbours, and set about bombing them to the same extent – this would require bombing all of Europe.
    9    The great scientist and organiser of Peace Studies programs, Anatol Rapoport, stated that the notion of deterrence is a sham because it fails due to a fallacy of composition (post hoc, propter ergo hoc). Deterrence is like the talisman effect. That is, a man was wearing a large talisman, and had this exchange with his friend:
    “why are you wearing that talisman?”
    “it is to keep the elephants at bay!”
    “But I see no elephants.”
    “You see, the talisman works!”
    10    Yaniv Kubovich, “IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive”, Haaretz, 7 July 2024. Subtitle: “there was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified information: Documents and testimonies obtained by Haaretz reveal the Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well.”
    11    The “making the desert bloom” sham is wonderfully exposed in Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan’s “Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel”, 2003.
    12     The late Israel Shahak exposed the kibbutz sham. He revealed in one of his lectures the exploitative nature of the kibbutz, the fact Palestinian labourers wouldn’t be hired, and the sexual harassment of the volunteers. Often the kibbutzim were built on stolen Palestinian land.
    13    One should read about rabbi Moshe Levinger and his zealot followers to appreciate the level of brutality involved in stealing Palestinian land.
    14    Article in Haaretz, but unfortunately the link to the article has expired.
    15    When the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war ended, Israeli engineering units moved the razor wire fences several hundred meters into Lebanese territory. A few days later a United Nations surveyor entered the coordinates of the fence to demarcate the newly UN approved border – it is called the Blue Line.
    16    Here is one example, “Two Nice Jewish Boys” advocating for genocide in Gaza.
    18    Craig Murray, “The Big Chill,” Craig Murray’s website, 17 July 2025. View the video at the bottom of the article.
    19    Indlieb Farazi Saber, “A ‘cultural genocide’: Which of Gaza’s heritage sites have been destroyed?”, Al Jazeera, 14 January 2024.
    20    UNESCO members who vote for the heritage site designations must be UN-states, and since the Palestinians aren’t a state, they have no standing at the UNESCO deliberations. There have been appeals to include the Church of the Nativity, Al Aqsa mosque, and a few others, but they all were blocked by the Israelis. Source: UNESCO official talking at SOAS, a university in London.
    21    Ayah El-Khaldi, “Pope Leo under fire for ‘vague’ statement on Israel’s bombing of Gaza Catholic church”, Middle East Eye, 18 July 2025.
    22    “Israeli settlers storm purported rabbi’s shrine in Lebanon”, Middle East Eye, 7 March 2025.
    23    James Crisp, Bake sales for Gaza could stoke Jew hatred, EU warns
    Fundraisers for Gaza make ‘Jews feel uncomfortable’, says Europe’s anti-Semitism tsar, 14 July 2025.
    24    Just to borrow from a statement made by Josep Borrell, the former Foreign Minister of the EU.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • MAGA Going To Israel For Propaganda Training

    The Israel foreign ministry will spend $86,000 to finance a tour of Israel for 16 Americans to get them to use their vast online influence to craft more positive images of a nation openly engaged in genocide.

    The effort is being made as Israel reacts to a significant turn in public opinion against it, especially by Western youth. Tel Aviv realizes its usual methods of propaganda — and apparently its own inhouse troll army — are no longer working as they once did.

    The daily Haaretz reported:

    Foreign Ministry officials say the tour delivers significant media, advocacy, and diplomatic benefits – and represents a strategic shift, as traditional outreach is no longer sufficient to shape public opinion. They aim to leverage the massive followings of young social media influencers to bolster Israel’s standing in the U.S.

    The post MAGA Going To Israel For Propaganda Training appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.