Category: Propaganda

  • The world’s peoples recoil in shock over the previously unimaginable barbarity of the US-Zionist assault on Palestine. The European Parliament is not impervious to what is transpiring. On the contrary, the body normalizes the cruelty by awarding its highest human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, to dissident Venezuelan genocide supporters.

    This is an example of how Western “democracies” fail to respect democracy in the Global South. “Human rights” are weaponized and used to repudiate Venezuela’s right to choose its own leaders, while rewarding those who sell out their country. The US-aligned camp has a clear double standard on when and where upholding “democratic institutions” apply, considering their stances on Venezuela compared to Israel, described below.

    The European Union functions as a factotum of the US empire, as is evident regarding its treatment of Venezuela. The European Parliament is a legislative body of the European Union (EU). Of the 27 member states, 23 are also members of the empire’s praetorian guard, aka NATO. The EU and NATO are official “partners” with integrated planning capabilities, closely linking security to the dictates of the US.

    EU’s relationship with Venezuela

    The EU is Venezuela’s fourth largest trading partner, but the relationship is abusive. The EU punishes Venezuela for being independent of the US empire when they are unwilling to do so themselves.

    In 2019, the EU recognized the unelected and US-selected “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. In the same resolution, they imposed additional sanctions on Venezuela, hypocritically lamenting the “need of humanitarian assistance,” while making it more difficult for Venezuela to receive vital food, fuel, and medicines.

    Following earlier extensions, in November 2023, the EU further extended its sanctions on Venezuela through May 2024. Then, a day before those sanctions were to expire and two months before the Venezuelan presidential election, the EU again extended their sanctions until January 2025.

    The implicit message to the Venezuelan people was that they had better vote for the right candidate. Otherwise, when the new president is inaugurated on January 10, 2025, the sanctions would be extended yet again if not enhanced.

    Defying foreign intervention, Venezuelans reelected incumbent President Nicolás Maduro on July 28. But from the EU’s perspective, the only possible explanation for the Venezuelans making what they viewed as the wrong choice is fraud. The EU consequently recognized the runner-up in the election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, as the “legitimate president” of Venezuela. That individual was then awarded the EU’s Sakharov Prize. The Venezuelan opposition had itself renounced the corrupt Guaidó, who had been the EU’s earlier designated president of Venezuela.

    A week later, the EU plus 33 individual countries signed a US-led “joint statement” expressing “grave concerns about the urgent situation in Venezuela” and calling for a political “transition” in Venezuela.

    The Sakharov Prize

    Gonzalez and his co-awardee Maria Corina Machado are typical recipients of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Such folks are usually dissidents from countries that are targeted for regime change by US – and by default echoed by the European Parliament – such as Venezuela, but also Russia, Syria, Belarus, Cuba, and China.

    Previously, the “democratic opposition of Venezuela” received the award in 2017. Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace commented on this “bizarre example of the reactionary nature of the European left [awarding]…a group that has openly attacked journalists and burned alive two dozen people of primarily Black or dark complexions who they assumed were probably government supporters because they were poor and Black.”

    This year, beating out semi-finalist Elon Musk (I’m not making this up), the award again went to Venezuelan dissidents. Machado and Gonzalez were honored as fighters for “freedom and democracy.”

    Machado’s “democracy” credentials include signing the infamous Carmona Decree, which shuttered Venezuela’s parliament, courts, and executive in a short-lived US-backed coup in 2002. After President Hugo Chávez was returned to his elected post by a popular uprising, he pardoned the coup plotters, including Machado.

    Gonzalez’s “freedom” credentials include being implicated in the US-backed death squads in the 1980s when he was a Venezuelan diplomat in El Salvador. TeleSUR reported on Gonzalez’s “past of crimes against humanity.”

    According to the EU’s announcement: “Machado won primary elections in 2023 to run as the candidate of the democratic opposition (Unitary Platform) in the 2024 presidential elections, but after she was arbitrarily disqualified by the Venezuelan regime, González became the candidate.”

    Machado did in fact win a primary election, but not one conducted by the official Venezuelan electoral authority, the CNE. Rather, it was a private affair administered by the NGO Súmate, a recipient of funds from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA-cutout.

    As Washington’s prechosen candidate, Machado won in a crowded field of 13 candidates with an incredulous 92%. When some of the other candidates called fraud, Machado had the ballots destroyed. She could do so because Súmate is her personal organization.

    True, Machado had been barred from running, but that was back in 2015; the disqualification was reconfirmed by the Venezuelan supreme court this year. Far from “arbitrary,” she had accepted a diplomatic post with a foreign power in order to testify against her own country while serving in the Venezuelan parliament. Such treason is constitutionally prohibited in Venezuela as it is in many other countries.

    For the US and its junior partner, the EU, Machado’s disbarment was a bonus. They could claim that their candidate was unfairly disqualified, when that was a given to begin with. Their intent was not to encourage a free and fair democratic process, but to delegitimize the one already in place.

    Sakharov winners’ “strategic alliance” with Zionists

    Venezuela’s far-right opposition, along with their international counterparts, support the US/Zionist campaign of extermination and regional domination in the Middle East.

    Literally nothing is known about the political positions of Sakharov-winner Edmundo Gonzalez. Long retired, Gonzalez was personally chosen to run for the presidency by the other Sakharov winner, Maria Corina Machado. While the infirm “grandpa,” as the press dubbed him, convalesced in Caracas, Machado campaigned around Venezuela as his surrogate. After he lost the election, the EU’s designated president of Venezuela voluntarily left Venezuela for Spain.

    In comparison, Machado is a well-known scion of one of the wealthiest families in Venezuela. Fluent in English, the photogenic Machado was first vetted for the Venezuelan presidency before the US Congress and given a bipartisan nod before running in her ersatz “opposition primary.”

    Machado is a darling of the international far-right with close ties to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. In a leaked document signed by her, Machado requested military support from Netanyahu to overthrow the Venezuelan government in December 2018.

    A month later, after Juan Guaidó self-appointed himself “interim president” of Venezuela, Machado publicly thanked Netanyahu for recognizing the US puppet and specifically called on Jews who had left Venezuela to return and help overthrow the elected government.

    Machado gushed: “Prime Minister Netanyahu joins our many allies…We certainly have a common enemy with Israel: the criminal forces that undermine freedom and peace in the world.”

    Later that year in an interview with the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, Machado appealed for help from Israel in “our goal of dismantling” Venezuela.

    Machado’s Vente Venezuela and Netanyahu’s Likud parties publicly signed a cooperative agreement in 2020 to collude on “political, ideological and social issues.”

    Venezuelan government supports Palestine

     In contrast to the dissidents, the elected Venezuelan government is distinguished as a recognized world leader for, in President Maduro’s words, “unconditional support to the Palestinian cause.” Hugo Chávez cut diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 in response to response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza back then.

    The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Venezuela, perhaps more than in any other region have expressed their solidarity with Palestine. Quite the reverse, on September 18, thirteen EU countries either abstained or voted against the UN General Assembly resolution demanding Israel end its “unlawful” occupation of Palestine. Meanwhile, the preponderance of humanity, 124 countries, voted to condemn the Zionist state.

    The post Venezuelan Dissidents Supporting Israel Receive Human Rights Award: European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize Goes to US-backed Opposition first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bangkok, October 31–A court in Hanoi sentenced Duong Van Thai, an independent Vietnamese blogger who went missing in Thailand and was later in Vietnamese custody in April 2023, to 12 years in prison and three years’ probation on Wednesday on charges of anti-state propaganda.

    “Vietnam’s harsh sentencing of blogger Duong Van Thai is grotesque and an outrage, particularly amid allegations he was kidnapped in Thailand and forcibly sent back to Vietnam for wrongful prosecution,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “The real criminal in this instance is the Vietnamese state. Thai should be released immediately and allowed to leave Vietnam.” 

    Thai was convicted October 30 in a one-day, closed-door trial at the Hanoi People’s Court, of “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s penal code, according to multiple reports.

    In 2019, Thai fled to Thailand, fearing persecution for his journalism, and was given refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok. He was interviewing for third-country resettlement at the time of his apparent abduction and deportation to Vietnam, according to multiple reports.

    Thai posts political commentary, critical of government policies and leaders, to his around 119,000 followers on his Tin Tuc 24H YouTube channel, which has been disabled. He previously ran the Servant’s Tent online news platform, which reported critically on the ruling Communist Party and its top members, and is a member of the banned Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam.

    CPJ’s email to Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security about Thai’s conviction did not immediately receive a response. Vietnam was the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 19 reporters behind bars on December 1, 2023, at the time of CPJ’s latest prison census


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • If you believe, as I do, that the war of ideas is a critical front in political struggle, then clarity and logic become a necessity in that war. Indeed, the war of ideas can often become a war of words or phrases. When we allow or accept phrases like “the axis of evil” or words like “deplorables” to uncritically enter popular discourse, we have lost a skirmish in the ideological struggle.

    This project is not the same as the language-policing so popular with liberals. It is not an excuse for shaming, embarrassing, or demeaning people because they are ignorant or dismissive of liberal etiquette.

    Instead, it’s a search for focus and rigor, an attempt to sharpen our tools in the war of ideas. Therefore, it’s time to call out words or expressions that mislead, distort, or poison our discourse. Below, I nominate several candidates for retirement, restraint, or caution.

    ●Terrorism: Those holding power have persistently labeled their weaker opponents who rise up as “terrorists.” Virtually every anti-colonial movement in the post-war period has been called “terrorist,” regardless of the tactics employed in their struggle or whether those tactics were defensive or offensive. From the Indian National Congress to the Mau Mau movement, to the Palestine Liberation Organization, to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, to the African National Congress, oppressors have denounced the oppressed as terrorists. The term lost any even minimal credence with the US government’s blatant and blatantly inconsistent use as a slander against socialist Cuba. Retirement of the term is obligatory.

    ●Middle Class: There is no middle class except in the clouded minds of those who dispute that the US and other advanced capitalist societies are class societies. Of course, there is a statistical middle when incomes and wealth are divided into three, five, seven, or more parts. But those divisions are arbitrary and virtually meaningless. We can speak loosely of a middle stratum, provided we understand that there is no significant social boundary with the strata on either side. “Middle” itself identifies no useful socio-economic category.

    Of course, there are classes and significant strata identifiable by socio-economic criteria. One such criterion that has stood the test of time is the Marxist class distinction between those who own and control the wealth-producing assets and those who must secure employment from them. This remains a clear and rigorous divide with vast social, political, and economic consequences.

    When politicians and labor leaders refer to the “middle class,” we can be sure that they have no intention of challenging real, existing class society and its inevitable inequality, oppression, and destruction.

    ●Authoritarianism: When the Soviet Union fell, capitalist ruling classes reserved the shop-worn Cold War term “totalitarianism” for People’s China and the remaining countries ruled by Communist Parties. Yet there were many countries that structurally embraced the institutions of bourgeois democracy — regular elections, representative bodies, legal institutions, and constitutions — though earning the ire of the Euromerican ruling classes and their media and academic lapdogs. A new term was appropriated to condemn the dissenters for allegedly abusing, corrupting, or influencing those institutions: authoritarianism.

    Countries like Russia, Venezuela, or Iran — while sharing look-alike institutions with the “liberal” democracies — are condemned as authoritarian, even though their institutions function similarly, or sometimes better than their accusing critics. US critics depicting other countries as authoritarian are particularly hypocritical, coming from a country where political outcomes are determined by money or power to a greater extent than any other place on the planet. International polling (here and here) consistently shows that the people in supposedly authoritarian-ruled countries have greater trust in their governments than their Euromerican counterparts, a finding that surely sends the word “authoritarianism” to the historical dustbin.

    ●Fascism: The word “fascism” has a legitimate use to refer to a specific historical period, its essential features, and the common conditions that generate its arrival. Its twentieth-century rise in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, from the volatility in the wake of a global war, and coincident with severe economic instability, is no mere accident, but is vital to our understanding. Just as the conditions of its development were unprecedented, fascism was unprecedented, generated by a profound challenge to the capitalist order. Fascism was a desperate reaction to a powerful, emergent revolutionary working-class movement, growing political illegitimacy, and economic collapse. The word’s rigorous use requires that these conditions be met.

    Instead, the word has come to be used by unprincipled political operatives in the way that the charge of Communism has been used so often by unscrupulous red-baiters, trading on emotions. Bereft of a telling argument for a policy or strategy, philistines fall back on fascist-baiting, to paint their opponents with an association with Blackshirts, Stormtroopers, and the Gestapo. Weaponizing “fascism” distracts from revealing the actual obstacles to change and devising real answers to those obstacles.

    ●Neoliberalism: The era — beginning in the 1970s — identified with policies first associated with Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US– has often been called “neoliberalism.” There is some logic to labeling the period accordingly, drawing attention to its similarity to an earlier period of laissez faire capitalism before the Keynesian revolution and before intensified government oversight of the capitalist economy. Academic writers David Harvey and Gary Gerstle have understood the term in a more precise way: as an effort to “restore and consolidate class power,” in Harvey’s words.

    But “neoliberalism” has come to connote a rightwing-imposed deviation from the benign, social democratic, social safety-net regime of the heralded thirty glorious post-war years. With this interpretation, capitalism with a humane, happy face was interrupted by a far-right counter-revolution, leading to massive deregulation, privatization, commodification, market fetishism, and rabid individualism.

    Omitted from this tale is the harsh and telling fact that the post-war social democratic consensus was rapidly collapsing before intensified global competition, pressure on profits, inflation mutating into stagflation, and unemployment. That deviation from classical economic liberalism left its own scars on working people. The crisis of the New Deal model– widely followed internationally — opened the door to options, quickly filled by the far-right zealots of market fundamentalism.

    Neoliberalism, understood as the disease and not a symptom, deflects attention from diagnosing the real disease: capitalism.

    ●Deep State: The idea that there is a highly visible, superficial state that is widely believed to be the governing body, but merely a facade for a far deeper, secret apparatus, is an attractive alternative to the official, widely circulated myths of popular sovereignty. From various perspectives, that apparatus is the CIA, Freemasons, followers of Lyndon Larouche, George Soros, or zombies.

    And therein lies the problem: the deep state is whatever the latest schemer, plotter, or crackpot says it is. The vague idea of a wizard (of Oz?) pulling strings behind the scenes is the genesis of conspiracy theories, and should be seen as such.

    There is a far more robust, time-tested, and scientific concept to describe the bogus high-school-civics-class picture of transparent, democratic, and representative governance uniquely practiced by the advanced capitalist countries. That well-founded concept is the notion of a ruling class, developed by — but not exclusive to — Marxists. A ruling class has both shallow and deep features — overt and covert aspects — that work together to maintain class rule. While elements of the ruling class may differ on how best to guarantee the interests of the elites — typically the employer class — they all agree that they will promote and protect those interests.

    Where the so-called “deep state” conjures a picture of puppeteers hidden in the shadows manipulating and distorting a benign government structure, the ruling class concept offers a robust and rational picture of the existing asymmetry of power and wealth generating a governing body that operates to preserve and protect that asymmetry. Absent a countervailing force organized to wrest the power away, one would expect no less from a social order constructed on inequality of wealth and income.

    It is not plotting or conspiracies or intrigues that shape how we are ruled, but the social composition of our states. “Deep State” leads us away from that understanding.

    ●Microaggressions and Safe Spaces: The “social justice” industry — academics, NGOs, non-profits, and consultants– creates its own language of social advancement. Certainly, many engaged in the industry are well meaning, but they are also transactional. They believe that their services are best commodified and paid for with promotions, donations, grants, and direct compensation. Accordingly, they have an interest in creating new justice-rendering commodities, new social-justice services. Microaggressions and Safe Spaces are the basis for such new commodities.

    In a just society, all spaces should be safe. Short of a commitment to making all public spaces safe, designating certain spaces as safe is necessarily supporting privilege for those with access to such spaces, whether determined by lot, by merit, or by special characteristics. Safety, like health, is not something merited by a specific time, place, or group. Safe Spaces invokes the logic of a gated community.

    Microaggressions become relevant in a world without war, poverty, genocide, and exploitation. Until those gross aggressions are gone, microaggressions — the bruising of individual sentiments — remain matters of etiquette. Hurt feelings, slights, and discomforting words or body language belong in the realm of interpersonal misfortunes and not in the realm of social injustice.

    The “social justice” industry fails us because it is caught between sponsors, donors, and administrators heavily invested in the existing order and the radical needs of the victims of that order. Too often they offer the victims empty or useless words as salve for deep wounds.

    Again, the point sought here is not to shame, accuse, or denigrate, but to sharpen language to better advance the struggle for social justice, to win the battle of ideas. Those who oppose social change benefit when words are chosen for their emotive power, when they subtly reflect class bias, or when they distort a real insight.

    Words have power. We should use them carefully.

    The post Cringeworthy Words in the Battle of Ideas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie in Taipei

    It was a heady week for the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — celebration of seven years of its Taipei office, presenting a raft of proposals to the Taiwan government, and hosting its Asia-Pacific network of correspondents.

    Director general Thibaut Bruttin and the Taipei bureau chief Cedric Alviani primed the Taipei media scene before last week’s RSF initiatives with an op-ed in the Taiwan Times by acknowledging the country’s media freedom advances in the face of Chinese propaganda.

    Taiwan rose eight places to 27th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index this year – second only to Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region.

    But the co-authors also warned over the credibility damage caused by media “too often neglect[ing] journalistic ethics for political or commercial reasons”.

    As a result, only three in 10 Taiwanese said they trusted the news media, according to a Reuters Institute survey conducted in 2022, one of the lowest percentages among democracies.

    “This climate of distrust gives disproportionate influence to platforms, in particular Facebook and Line, despite them being a major vector of false or biased information,” Bruttin and Alviani wrote.

    “This credibility deficit for traditional media, a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy, puts it at risk of being exploited for malicious purposes, with potentially dramatic consequences.”

    Press freedom programme
    At a meeting with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and senior foreign affairs officials, Bruttin and his colleagues presented RSF’s innovative programme for improving press freedom, including the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), the first ISO-certified media quality standard; the Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence and Journalism; and the Propaganda Monitor, a project aimed at combating propaganda and disinformation worldwide.

    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin speaking at the reception celebrating seven years of Taipei's Asia Pacific office
    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin speaking at the reception celebrating seven years of Taipei’s Asia Pacific office. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    The week also highlighted concerns over the export of the China’s “New World Media Order”, which is making inroads in some parts of the Asia-Pacific region, including the Pacific.

    At the opening session of the Asia-Pacific correspondents’ seminar, delegates referenced the Chinese disinformation and assaults on media freedom strategies that have been characterised as the “great leap backwards for journalism” in China.

    “Disinformation — the deliberate spreading of false or biased news to manipulate minds — is gaining ground around the world,” Bruttin and Alviani warned in their article.

    “As China and Russia sink into authoritarianism and export their methods of censorship and media control, democracies find themselves overwhelmed by an incessant flow of propaganda that threatens the integrity of their institutions.”

    Both Bruttin and Alviani spoke of these issues too at the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the Asia-Pacific office in Taipei.

    Why Taipei? Hongkong had been an “likely choice, but not safe legally”, admitted Bruttin when they were choosing their location, so the RSF team are happy with the choice of Taiwan.

    Hub for human rights activists
    “I think we were among the first NGOs to have established a presence here. We kind of made a bet that Taipei would be a hub for human rights activists, and we were right.”

    About 200 journalists, media workers and press freedom and human rights advocates attended the birthday bash in the iconic Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. So it wasn’t surprising that there was a lot of media coverage raising the issues.

    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin (centre) with correspondents Dr David Robie and Dr Joseph Fernandez
    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin (centre) with correspondents Dr David Robie and Dr Joseph Fernandez in Taipei. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    In an interview with Voice of America’s Joyce Huang, Bruttin was more specific about the “insane” political propaganda threats from China faced by Taiwan.

    However, Taiwan “has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world”.

    Referencing China as the world’s “biggest jailer of journalists”, Bruttin said: “We’re very worried, obviously.” He added about some specific cases: “We’ve had very troublesome reports about the situation of Zhang Zhan, for example, who was the laureate of the RSF’s [2021 press freedom] awards [in the courage category] and had been just released from jail, now is sent back to jail.

    “We know the lack of treatment if you have a medical condition in the Chinese prisons.

    “Another example is Jimmy Lai, the Hongkong press freedom mogul, he’s very likely to die in jail if nothing happens. He’s over 70.

    “And there is very little reason to believe that, despite his dual citizenship, the British government will be able to get him a safe passage to Europe.”

    Problem for Chinese public
    Bruttin also expressed concern about the problem for the general public, especially in China where he said a lot of people had been deprived of the right to information “worthy of that name”.

    “And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And it’s totally scandalous to see how bad information is treated in the People’s Republic of China.”

    Seventeen countries in the Asia-Pacific region were represented in the network seminar.

    Representatives of Australia, Cambodia, Hongkog, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Korea, Tibet, Thailand and Vietnam were present. However, three correspondents (Malaysia, Singapore and Timor-Leste) were unable to be personally present.

    Discussion and workshop topics included the RSF Global Strategy; the Asia-Pacific network and the challenges being faced; best practice as correspondents; “innovative solutions” against disinformation; public advocacy (for authoritarian regimes; emerging democracies, and “leading” democracies); “psychological support” – one of the best sessions; and the RSF Crisis Response.

    RSF Oceania colleagues Dr David Robie (left) and Dr Joseph Fernandez
    RSF Oceania colleagues Dr David Robie (left) and Dr Joseph Fernandez . . . mounting challenges. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    What about Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) and its issues? Fortunately, the countries being represented have correspondents who can speak our publicly, unlike some in the region facing authoritarian responses.

    Australia
    Australian correspondent Dr Joseph M Fernandez, visiting associate professor at Curtin University and author of the book Journalists and Confidential Sources: Colliding Public Interests in the Age of the Leak, notes that Australia sits at 39th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index — a drop of 12 places from the previous year.

    “While this puts Australia in the top one quarter globally, it does not reflect well on a country that supposedly espouses democratic values. It ranks behind New Zealand, Taiwan, Timor-Leste and Bhutan,” he says.

    “Australia’s press freedom challenges are manifold and include deep-seated factors, including the influence of oligarchs whose own interests often collide with that of citizens.

    “While in opposition the current Australian federal government promised reforms that would have improved the conditions for press freedom, but it has failed to deliver while in government.

    “Much needs to be done in clawing back the over-reach of national security laws, and in freeing up information flow, for example, through improved whistleblower law, FOI law, source protection law, and defamation law.”

    Dr Fernandez criticises the government’s continuing culture of secrecy and says there has been little progress towards improving transparency and accountability.

    “The media’s attacks upon itself are not helping either given the constant moves by some media and their backers to undermine the efforts of some journalists and some media organisations, directly or indirectly.”

    A proposal for a “journalist register” has also stirred controversy.

    Dr Fernandez also says the war on Gaza has “highlighted the near paralysis” of many governments of the so-called established democracies in “bringing the full weight of their influence to end the loss of lives and human suffering”.

    “They have also failed to demonstrate strong support for journalists’ ability to tell important stories.”


    An English-language version of this tribute to the late RSF director-general Christophe Deloire, who died from cancer on 8 June 2024, was screened at the RSF Taipei reception. He was 53. Video: RSF

    Aotearoa New Zealand
    In New Zealand (19th in the RSF Index), although journalists work in an environment free from violence and intimidation, they have increasingly faced online harassment. Working conditions became tougher in early 2022 when, during protests against covid-19 vaccinations and restrictions and a month-long “siege” of Parliament, journalists were subjected to violence, insults and death threats, which are otherwise extremely rare in the country.

    Research published in December 2023 revealed that high rates of abuse and threats directed at journalists put the country at risk of “mob censorship” – citizen vigilantism seeking to “discipline” journalism. Women journalists bore the brunt of the online abuse with one respondent describing her inbox as a “festering heap of toxicity”.

    While New Zealand society is wholeheartedly multicultural, with mutual recognition between the Māori and European populations enshrined in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, this balance is under threat from a draft Treaty Principles Bill.

    The nation’s bicultural dimension is not entirely reflected in the media, still dominated by the English-language press. A rebalancing is taking place, as seen in the success of the Māori Television network and many Māori-language programmes in mass media, such as Te Karere, The Hui and Te Ao Māori News.

    Media plurality and democracy is under growing threat with massive media industry cuts this year.

    New Zealand media also play an important role as a regional communications centre for other South Pacific nations, via Tagata Pasifika, Pacific Media Network and others.

    Papua New Guinea's Belinda Kora (left) and RSF colleagues
    Papua New Guinea’s Belinda Kora (left) and RSF colleagues . . . “collaborating in our Pacific efforts in seeking the truth”. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    Papua New Guinea
    The Papua New Guinea correspondent, Belinda Kora, who is secretary of the revised PNG Media Council and an ABC correspondent in Port Moresby, succeeded former South Pacific Post Ltd chief executive Bob Howarth, the indefatigable media freedom defender of both PNG and Timor-Leste.

    Currently PNG (91st in the RSF Index) is locked in a debate over a controversial draft government media policy – now in its fifth version – that critics regard as a potential tool to crack down on media freedom. But Kora is optimistic about RSF’s role.

    “I am excited about what RSF is able and willing to bring to a young Pacific region — full of challenges against the press,” she says.

    “But more importantly, I guess, is that the biggest threat in PNG would be itself, if it continues to go down the path of not being able to adhere to simple media ethics and guidelines.

    “It must hold itself accountable before it is able to hold others in the same way.

    “We have a small number of media houses in PNG but if we are able to stand together as one and speak with one voice against the threats of ownership and influence, we can achieve better things in future for this industry.

    “We need to protect our reporters if they are to speak for themselves and their experiences as well. We need to better provide for their everyday needs before we can write the stories that need to be told.

    “And this lies with each media house.

    The biggest threat for the Pacific as a whole? “I guess the most obvious one would be being able to remain self-regulated BUT not being accountable for breaching our individual code of ethics.

    “Building public trust remains vital if we are to move forward. The lack of media awareness also contributes to the lack of ensuring media is given the attention it deserves in performing its role — no matter how big or small our islands are,” Kora says.

    “The press should remain free from government influence, which is a huge challenge for many island industries, despite state ownership.

    Kora believes that although Pacific countries are “scattered in the region”, they are able to help each other more, to better enhance capacity building and learning from their mistakes with collaboration.

    “By collaborating in our efforts in seeking the truth behind many of our big stories that is affecting our people. This I believe will enable us to improve our performance and accountability.”

    Example to the region
    Meanwhile, back in Taiwan on the day that RSF’s Thibaut Bruttin flew out, he gave a final breakfast interview to China News Agency (CNA) reporter Teng Pei-ju who wrote about the country building up its free press model as an example to the region.

    “Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world,” added Bruttin, reflecting on the country’s transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.

    Dr David Robie, convenor of the Asia Pacific Media Network’s Pacific Media Watch project and author of several media and politics books, including Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been an RSF correspondent since 1996.

    RSF Asia Pacific correspondents and staff
    RSF Asia Pacific correspondents and staff pictured at the Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. Image: RSF

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The post What Some People Will Believe first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Western colonialism and imperialism are the roots of the Palestinian struggle. A common characteristic of western powers is their shared history of colonization and oppression of indigenous populations. This distinction is important because it is clear that there is heavy bias against Palestinians in both western political policy and western mainstream media. The United States and Israel share similar histories and politics as settler colonialist nations, each established through the violent dispossession of indigenous populations. Both countries utilized dehumanization of the indigenous populations they displaced to obtain the land they have settled upon. Native Americans were called “merciless Indian savages,” while Palestinians are called “animals” and “terrorists.” Examining relevant histories with a broader view will demonstrate how western interpretations of Palestine are biased. The prevailing western standard has been nonobjective and heavily promotes dishonest and biased narratives, omitting relevant histories and current event considerations. This biased narrative reads as a prejudiced tale meticulously designed to promote the interests of the more powerful side, an oppressive colonial regime and its imperial supporters.

    Framing as a Tool of Erasure

    The Palestinian struggle and foundations of Israel are a matter of modern-day colonialism achieved through atrocities. Israel is widely supported by the west over their imperialist interests and maintained by political and media propaganda. Criticism of a brutal occupying force is often harshly censored. The matter is frequently mischaracterized as a religious matter, labeled as complicated, or described as a conflict. Framing the Palestinian struggle as a “religious matter” generally encourages people to reduce politics to faith-based tensions. Dismissing something as “complicated” deters any type of engagement because the implicit message is that the issue is too difficult for most people to understand. Referring to the matter as a “conflict” implies symmetry, leaving no conceptual room for the disparity of power that defines a colonial struggle. It is none of those things. At its core, this is an ongoing process of colonization, resulting in the displacement of the Palestinian people and the violent military occupation of Palestinian land.

    The strategic framing of Palestine has been used to support zionism for over 76 years. During a 1970 interview with renowned Palestinian activist and author Ghassan Kanafani, Australian media correspondent Richard Carleton referred to the matter of Palestine as a conflict. Kanafani countered that it is not a conflict, but a liberation movement fighting for justice, continuing, “This is where the problem starts. Because this is what makes you ask all your questions. This is exactly where the problem starts. This is a people who are discriminated against fighting for their rights. This is the story.” Fifty-four years later, these same issues about the framing language persist.

    Foreign Policy and Domestic Repression

    There are several elements to consider when examining the western distortion of the Palestinian struggle. First, we must look at United States foreign policy as it pertains to Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim-majority nations. Interconnected to these foreign policies are United States domestic policies designed to target American citizens of MENA and/or Muslim backgrounds. These policies are rooted in the Palestinian struggle. Secondly, we must take a closer look at zionism, a western colonial project supported by the US in large part due to its imperialist goals and American interests in the MENA region. Interconnected to the matter of zionism is the strategy of intentional false conflation of antisemitism to criticism of zionism or Israel intended to suppress and silence criticism so that zionism can continue without accountability. These propagandist tactics are supported and reinforced by the United States over their imperialist goals in the MENA region. Third, we must look at the state of Israel more closely, the brutality in which it was created and maintains itself, and Israel’s influence on American politics and media. Interconnected to the matter of Israeli influence, we must look at lobby and special interest groups such as AIPAC and the ADL. These powerful groups use large sums of money to influence media organizations and exert influence and control over American elections and US policy both foreign and domestic.

    United States foreign policy in the Middle East has always been in the absolute interest of western imperialism. This has continuously come at the cost of the suffering of MENA nations and their civilians for over a century. President Joe Biden, while serving as a United States Senator, gave a speech on the Senate floor on June 5, 1986, speaking to US foreign policy in the Middle East. He stated that the US should “operate and move in the naked self-interest of the United States of America.” Referring to Israel, he said, “It is the best three-billion-dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region.”  His current position and statements regarding Israel and the Middle East remain unchanged thirty-eight years later. Biden has openly referred to himself as a zionist to the media on numerous occasions for several decades. He has made repeated statements of support for Israel, even as Israel has been accused of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, and after several decades of its numerous violations of international law. In December of 2023, Biden stated, “I got in trouble many times for saying you don’t have to be a Jew to be a zionist, and I am a zionist. I make no apologies for that. That’s a reality.” The statements then-Senator Biden made on the Senate floor in 1986 speak volumes to the reasons behind the United States’ predisposition to show favorable bias towards Israel and, therefore, against Palestinians.

    The matter of Palestine has always been at the core of United States antiterrorism laws. Palestinian liberation efforts continue to be a central target of both foreign policies and domestic laws oppressive to Arab Americans. The idea of the Arab or Muslim terrorist was introduced to the west by Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in 1979. Netanyahu used the term in Washington, DC, in 1984 at the “Second Conference on International Terrorism” he organized where he pushed this label and agenda into American politics. On December 22, 1987, he achieved his goal as the Palestinian Liberation Organization was formally declared a terrorist organization by the United States. This was the “first and only time” Congress designated a group as a terrorist organization. These series of events are directly related to escalations that led to the first intifada in 1987. It was also during these conditions that Hamas, a resistance organization, had formed. The region endured continuous turmoil, and heightened escalations continued until the Oslo Accords in 1993.

    Journalism vs. Propaganda: A Brief History

    While the media is a very influential source in shaping views on important matters, the United States mainstream media has long ago lost its journalistic integrity.  Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that uses exaggerated and sensationalist reporting often based on false accounts of events to boost sales and attract readers. The peak of early-stage yellow journalism began as a competition between the publications of two major newspaper publishers in the late 1800s, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. To drive public appeal, the two pushed out sensationalist newspapers, which prominently featured political coverage. In 1898, both Pulitzer and Hearst published misleading newspapers pushing a rumor that Cuba had sank a US battleship when, in fact, a coal fire aboard the ship led to an explosion. The US Maine sinking in the Havana Harbor contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Propagandist publications have tainted American journalism to this day and continue to incite both conflicts and hate.

    The New York Times’ publishing controversies began in the 1800s and include numerous instances pertaining to significant events from the Russian Revolution to the Iraq War. In more recent times, the New York Times has been cited for publishing articles based on misinformation leading to incitement. In 2003, the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics found that “the New York Times is more favorable toward the Israelis than the Palestinians, and the partiality has become more pronounced with time.” This trend continues today and is an ongoing ethical and moral problem. During the current genocide in Gaza that began in 2023, The New York Times has been cited multiple times for publishing false accounts of events, from false claims of rapes to disproven accounts of beheaded babies. In April of 2024, The Intercept obtained an internal New York Times memo that instructed journalists to avoid “use of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and to ‘avoid’ using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when describing Palestinian land.” They were additionally instructed to avoid the use of “Palestine” or terms such as “refugee camps.” Numerous other mainstream media outlets have also been accused of both biased and inaccurate reporting on Palestine. This trend is commonplace and has persisted for over a century.

    A Definitive Bias

    The issue of Palestine is deeply intertwined with the rise of anti-Arab hate, contributing to the dehumanization and stereotyping of Arabs. The Middle East and North Africa have rich cultural variances and diverse ethnicities, but there is a strong cultural ignorance in the west about the geography and geopolitics of the MENA region. To many, “an Arab is an Arab” without any thought or attention to regional or political distinctions. The mainstream media promotes this cultural ignorance, flattening public understandings of MENA communities and struggles as a result. Media bias is not only harmful to the populations they target but is a catalyst driving discriminatory hate within their audience here in the United States as well. Media bias plays a role in contributing to harmful stereotypes toward people of Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African ethnic backgrounds, regardless of their religion. Media bias has also contributed to the western racialization of Muslim Americans and has played a destructive role by inciting Islamophobia, giving rise to hate crimes against individuals from these ethnic groups in the US. Natalie Khazaal, associate professor of Arabic and Arab Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, published an article for The Conversation, an independent news organization, highlighting anti-Palestinian bias in US corporate media: “Reporting can prime audiences to see a Palestinian fighter in a mask as either an icon of terrorism or a hero resisting occupation, depending on how the news is presented.” This one sentence encapsulates the issue Palestinians face in the west. Media portrayals are often biased and tend to leave out crucial histories and background information of events they report on, often totally omitting decades of Palestinian suffering at the hands of an oppressive military colonial settler regime. A definitive bias controls the narrative and information available to the public, leading to a widespread impact and sway on public perception. The media bias infects public viewers and drives large-scale public prejudice against Palestinians.

    The convenient western amnesia of Palestinians’ history of suffering must end. We cannot only look to condemn Palestinians, who are blamed for their own suffering. We are now over a year into Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Media disinformation has played a significant role in justifying Israel’s criminal actions. Media bias has grave consequences. The Palestinian fight for liberation will persist as long as Palestinians continue to be dehumanized by mainstream western media and imperialist political agendas. The ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation remains in a state of great peril. There is no true peace process without taking a more critical look at histories and current event considerations through a more honest lens.

  • First published at Project Censored.
  • The post Western Distortions of the Palestinian Struggle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable…

    — H.L. Mencken, “Le Contrat Social” in Prejudices: Third Series (1922)

    If the three-ring circus that is the looming presidential election proves anything, it is that the Deep State’s plot to destabilize the nation is working.

    The danger is real.

    Caught up in the heavily dramatized electoral showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Americans have become oblivious to the multitude of ways in which the government is goosestepping all over our freedoms on a daily basis.

    Especially alarming is the extent to which those on both sides are allowing themselves to be gaslighted by both Trump and Harris about critical issues of the day, selectively choosing to hear only what they want to hear when it casts the opposition in a negative light.

    This is true whether you’re talking about immigration and border control, health care, national security, the nation’s endless wars, protections for free speech, or the militarization of the U.S. government.

    For starters, there’s the free speech double standard, what my good friend Nat Hentoff used to refer to as the “free speech for me but not for thee” phenomenon in which the First Amendment’s protections only apply to those with whom we might agree.

    Despite her claims to being a champion for the rule of law, which in our case is the U.S. Constitution, Harris isn’t averse to policing so-called “hate” speech. In this, Harris is not unlike those on both the Right and the Left who continue to express a distaste for unregulated, free speech online, especially when it comes to speech with which they might disagree.

    Then there’s Trump, never a fan of free speech protections for his critics, who has been particularly vocal about his desire to see the military vanquish “radical left lunatics,” which he has dubbed “the enemy from within.”

    If it were only about muzzling free speech activities, that would be concerning enough.

    But Trump’s enthusiasm for using the military to target domestic enemies of the state should send off warning bells, especially coinciding as it does with the Department of Defense’s recent re-issuance of Directive 5240.01, which empowers the military to assist law enforcement “in situations where a confrontation between civilian law enforcement and civilian individuals or groups is reasonably anticipated.”

    This is what martial law looks like—a government of force that relies on the military to enforce its authority—and it’s exactly what America’s founders feared, which is why they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

    Responding to concerns that the military would be used for domestic policing, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities normally handled by a civilian police force.

    The increasing militarization of the police, the use of sophisticated weaponry against Americans and the government’s increasing tendency to employ military personnel domestically have all but eviscerated historic prohibitions such as the Posse Comitatus Act.

    Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

    Unfortunately, most Americans seem relatively untroubled by the fact that our constitutional republic is being transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

    The seeds of chaos that have been sown in recent years are all part of the Deep State’s plans to usher in martial law.

    Observe for yourself what has been happening right before our eyes.

    Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

    This is no conspiracy theory.

    There’s trouble brewing, and the government is masterminding a response using the military.

    Just take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

    The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

    Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

    The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030, but the future is here ahead of schedule.

    We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

    By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.

    The danger signs are screaming out a message

    The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

    According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

    What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

    The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

    And then comes the kicker.

    Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

    Drain the swamps.

    Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?

    Ah yes.

    Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.

    Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”

    And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?

    They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”

    They are “threats.”

    They are the “enemy.”

    They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

    In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

    In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

    If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

    Suddenly it all begins to make sense.

    The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

    The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

    This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.

    Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

    Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.

    It’s happening already.

    The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

    Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.

    The Deep State’s tactics are working.

    We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

    Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.

    Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

    In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

    Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

    Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

    All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.

    And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.

    Are you getting the picture yet?

    The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

    The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

    Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.

    Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

    Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.

    We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

    Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

    I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

    Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

    For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

    What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re already enemies of the state.

    It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by Deep State propaganda.

    The post The Deep State’s Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is Working first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • International Relations (IR) theory fails to deliver on one of its key promises, specifically to produce positivist, value free analysis. What we encounter in the vast majority of international theory is the provincial or parochial normative purpose of defending and celebrating the ideal of the West in world politics. IR theory can no longer be represented as positivist, objective or value free.
    ~ John M. Hobson

    Orientation

    In 1981, Eric Jones wrote a very powerful book called The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. He was not alone in claiming there was something unique about Europe compared to the rest of the world. Though I doubt it was his intention, his work perhaps unintentionally supported a Eurocentric, paternalistic, racist orientation of a Wren theory which claimed to explain world politics. This is called International Relations Theory which claimed to be positivist, objective and value free. International relations theory is so deeply embedded in Western triumphalism that it has failed to notice that the West has been losing to China, Russia and Iran for the last 20 to 30 years. International  relations theory barely understands that this has happened and it has no theory to explain it. What we are witnessing today is a “Eurasian Miracle.”

    In my article “Neocon Realists and Global Neoliberals Dead on Arrival,” I identify five international relation theories: Neocon Realists; Neoliberal Globalists; Liberal Institutionalists; Constructivists and World-Systems Theorists. Most of my criticism in that article was leveled at the first three theories for their inability to account for the rise of China, Russia and Iran and the whole multipolar world. In this article, following the work of John A. Hobson in his book “The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics,” I point out a good reason for this is because of the Eurocentric nature of Neocon Realists, Neoliberal Globalists and Liberal Institutionalists theory. However, Hobson’s criticism of Eurocentrism does not stop there. He argues that even left-wing theories like constructionism and world-systems theory are guilty of Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism, not only because it takes different forms, but that some of these are even anti-imperialist. The conventional contrast of a Eurocentric or racist conception of imperialism from a constructivist and Marxist point of view is too simple and Eurocentrism is too deep.

    What is Eurocentrism?
    Hobson’s claim that there two steps in Eurocentric big-bang theory of world politics:

    • Europeans single-handedly created a European capitalist international state system through their pioneering and exceptional institutional genius.
    • They export their civilization to remake the world in their own image through globalization, imperialism or hegemony.
      To add to this, Eurocentrism claims the Eastern and Southern part of the world had no independent status. There was no East or South big bang. In the West the various movements of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation the scientific revolution, capitalism, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution or socialism were purely Western. The East and South either helped out or they were left behind. With rare exceptions. Eastern and Southern parts of the world system never led Western development.

    What is paternalism?
    Historians of the modern West sought to explain social evolution. In doing so, they divided societies into three stages:

    • savagery (hunter-gatherers);
    • barbarism (horticultural and agricultural states) and
    • civilization—industrial capitalist societies

    Supposedly Europeans hoped that all societies would want to become civilized. But when societies of the East and South did not aspire to this, they were labelled either savages or barbarians. However, some historians and anthropologist thought it was their duty (white man’s burden) for the savages and barbarians to see the light. This led to paternalism.

    An example of well-intentioned paternalist Eurocentrism: Rawls
    John Rawls believed that his liberal vision has genuinely universalist criteria that do not offend cultural sensibilities of non-Western people. He was interested in culturally converting Eastern people rather than containing them as in Western liberal realism.

    Yet there are five key Eurocentric dimensions of his theory:

    • All well-ordered hierarchical societies must exhibit a separation of church and state (this will not work for Muslims).
    • Imposition of free trade (free trade can only work with wealthy societies).
    • Governed by a liberal law of peoples (teaching Eastern women to have less babies won’t work if they are being blocked by the IMF and the World bank from industrializing.
    • Eastern states receive only conditional sovereignty because they are classified as despotic states and “failed” states are deemed uncivilized.
    • Developed societies have a duty to assist burdened societies (paternalism).

    Hobson’s claims

    Hobson’s explicit claims are first that International Relations Theory contains six myths:

    • the noble identity and foundational myth of the discipline;
    • the positive myth of International Relations Theory;
    • the great debates myth and reconceptualizing the clash of IR theories;
    • the sovereignty or anarchy myth;
    • the globalization myth; and
    • the theoretical great traditions myth.

    Hobson’s 2nd claim is there are six types of imperialism which are laid out over 250 years. His third claim is that Western racism was not always triumphant but was based on fear of what would become of Europe if Easterners and Southerners of the world  got the upper hand. Lastly, I close out with theories that are exceptions to the rule and are not Eurocentric or paternalistic and with a minimum of racism.

    Hobson’s implicit claim is that without “the rest” there might be no West. The West was not an early, but a latedevelopment. This topic will be covered in my future article based on another of Hobson’s books, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization.

    Six Eurocentric Myths of International Relations Theory
    Hobson tells us the conscious or unconscious moral purpose of IR is to be a defender and promoter of Western Civilization. The key of disciplinary assumptions that are presently revered as self-evident truths really are largely Eurocentric myths. As stated above, these include the above myths.

    The noble identity foundation myth: Whig and progress theory of history
    International Relations Theory has embedded in a Whig an interpretation of its intellectual history. Whiggish means that the past is reorganized to make it seem that the present was the only possible passage that could have led to contemporary life. The Whig theory of history has the theory of progress embedded in it. The theory of progress claims that the later in time we go in social evolution the better societies get in material wealth, less labor, higher morality and happiness.

    It is a now conventional assumption that the discipline of International Relations was born in 1919. Supposedly, it had a moral purpose to finding ways to solve the universal problem of war. This now conventional view was originally constructed by E.H. Carr in his classical text The Twenty Year’s Crisis (1946).

    Contrary to this convention, IR theory did not appear all of a sudden after WW I out of the head of Zeus. It continued from its pre-1914 roots which were neither positive, objective nor value free. Rather they were paternalist, Eurocentric and intentionally or unintentionally racist. There are deep continuities that the 1919-1945 period of international theory has with the pre-1914 period of international theory. The Eurocentric racism and paternalism that underpinned it had been forged in the previous century. In addition, there is a continuum of imperialism that goes all the way back to the middle of the 18th century. Thirdly, there was an explosion of anti-colonial resistance. What were colonists resisting – those noble Western powers that colonialized them. In this larger scheme of things, the end of World War I was not the only game in town. As positivists, what Neocon realists and liberal globalists ignore is that the noble identity myth can also be a ideological justification for Eurocentrism, capitalism, racism and imperialism. The four stages are of Hobsons history if International relations include:

    • 1760-1914 Manifest Eurocentrism and scientific racism
    • 1914-1945 Manifest Eurocentrism and scientific racism
    • 1945-1989 Subliminal Eurocentrism
    • 1989-2010 Manifest Eurocentrism

    The positive myth of IR of theory of liberalism as emerging between the wars

    This myth was that the between the wars IR theory was dominated by liberal globalists who searched for a new cooperative global order as a reaction to the Neocon realism of World War I. It was characterized as a harmonious and optimistic theory because it stands for peace. But as Hobson points out, interwar international theory was not monopolized by idealism or liberalism because it also exhibited a vibrant racism realist stream that emerged after 1889, especially in the world of geopolitical theorists, Ratzel, Mackinder, Mahan and others.

    IR claims to be positivist with a value free epistemological base. This has been challenged by African-American Marxists Ralph Bunche, WEB Dubois and CLR James. They say that when viewed through a non-European lens, the vast majority of international theory produces a parochial or provincial analysis of the West that can masquerade as if it were universal. Further, the imperialist aspect of interwar idealist theory has not been widely noticed among modern IR scholars. Realist and so-called Liberal Idealists were united by the concern to restore the mandate of Western civilizational hegemony in one guise of another.

    The great debate myth and reconceptualizing the idea of the clash of IR theories

    These debates include the controversy between realism and idealism in the interwar period between history and scientism in the 1960s and between positivists and post-positivists in the 1990s. The first two appear as if these were great qualitative struggles, but like with Republicans and Democrats in Mordor, all parties have far more in common than they have in differences. The struggle between positivists and post-positivists are real but it are presented in too stark a manner. There were post-positivists as far back as the 1960s and those political scientists who were more statistical and quantitative also go back to the 50s and 60s. In other words that debate did not begin in the 1990s as IR theorists claim but thirty years earlier. In spite of these differences, there is consensus of virtually all parties concerning the politics of defending and celebrating Western civilization in world politics. These theories supported the Western powers. Their differences were small compared to the paternalism, racism and imperialism that they all shared.

    Sovereignty vs anarchy myth
    The sovereignty vs anarchy myth claims that in International Relations Theory all states are sovereign. But because there is no world-state the relations between nation-states are characterized as anarchistic. In the first place, IR theory limits which nation-states are considered sovereign to European countries. Eastern and Southern states are not considered sovereign because they lack the proper Western European credentials such as voting systems, more than one party, and capitalism. The school of Realism operates with universalist analytical principles that supposedly apply to all states regardless of how 2nd class some states are treated in practice. The problem for IR theorists is that the post the 1648 era there had been a proliferation of international imperial hierarchies, which were comprised of a series of single sovereign colonial powers, many of which were not nation-states. Its supposedly universal and ideologically unbiased principles of state-centrism sovereignty directly contradict its practice. For example, in 1878 the conference in Berlin divided Africa between European imperial powers. These sovereign states had colonies.

    Furthermore if by anarchy they mean disorder, the relationship between sovereign states without a world state is by no means disorderly. There are shifting alliances between states rather than a Hobbesian war of all single states against each other. Secondly, to characterize this disorder as “anarchy” reveals either complete political bias or ignorance of anarchism as a respectable political tendency on the socialist left. Anarchism has involved thousands of people in many countries around the world since the late 1840s. It has had some success in the Paris Commune, the Russian and especially the Spanish revolutions. To characterize this as disorderly is an unforgivable omission from theorists who claim to be political scientists.

    The globalization myth
    The myth is that globalization has only recently (the last century) become an issue for international theorists. But to Hobson’s own surprise in his initial research, in many areas including some though not all realists, international theorists since 1760 have placed considerable emphasis on globalization. In his book The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization,Hobson points out that there were globalizing trade networks of, Africa, West Asia, India and China as far back as 500 CE.

    The theoretical great traditions myth
    IR theorists are no different than those who initiate artistic or spiritual movements in their search for origins. All political, artistic or spiritual movements seek to find their origins in the deep past rather than the recent past. In the IR traditional textbooks realism is claimed to go back to Thucydides in the ancient world and then forward to Hobbes and Machiavelli to culminate in Waltz, Gilpin and Mearsheimer via Carr and Morgenthau. But each of these theories are not air-tight. In fact IR theories mix with other theories within a given moment in time and each theory changes internally due to  changes in history.

    Defining Imperialism and Anti-imperialism International Theory
    Hobson claims that the vast literature on imperialism and anti-imperialism generally lacks conceptual precision. Here Hobson confront two broad definitional approaches:

    • Narrow Eurocentric
    • Expansive postcolonial

    Most of modern Eurocentric international theory embraces a narrow definition and allows for considerable wiggle room when confronted with a charge of imperialism. It sees Eurocentrism and imperialism as distinct. You can be Eurocentric and not imperialist and conversely imperialist without being Eurocentric. At the other extreme, by contrast, post-colonial theorists seek to completely shut down this wiggle room by assuming that being Eurocentric is inherently imperialist and imperialism is always Eurocentric.

    In table 1 I have a divided a spectrum of imperialism throughout history into 6 types. The three types on the left accept that they are imperialists and don’t apologize for it. The theories on the right deny they are imperialists. The theories on the left are formal empires, while the theories on the right are informal liberal empires. The people in the last cell are the theorists of various types of imperialism. The cell above it include the nature and justification of their mission. The names of the theorists are not important for now, but some of the more famous ones might be familiar to you. The importance of this table are not the theorists but rather the systems of justification, none of which are value free, universal and objective.

    Table 1 The Definitional Continuum of Imperialism, Past and Present

    Definitional Consensus
    Most coercive definition
    Accept they are imperialists
    Definitional Controversy
    Least coercive definition
    Deny they are imperialists
    Formal Empire Informal liberal empire
    Tributary relations, political containment conquest of barbarism National civilizing mission/cultural
    conversion
    Civilizing mission, via international government
    protectorates
    Anglo-Saxon hegemony To protect, duty to prevent, duty to assist concept of democracies Universalization

    of Western civilization and global empire of liberal democratic peace

    Gumplowicz, Ward, Mahan
    Mackinder,
    K. Pearson, Hitler, Von Treitschke, Kidd, Spykman
    Haushofer
    Cobden, Bright, Angell, Mill, Marx, Reinsch,
    W.Wilson
    Hobson, Buell, Woolf
    Krasner, Fukuyama
    Gilpin
    Kindleberger Kagan, Brzezinski,
    Cooper, Ignatieff
    Slaughter, Ikenberry, Wheeler, Risse, Finnermore Rawls, Held
    Nussbaum
    Friedman, Wolf, Russet, Owen

    Eurocentric Imperialism: Liberal and Marxism

    In Table 2 below, one interesting but expected difference between liberalism and Marxism is that liberals see imperialism as benign. J. A. Hobson and John Stuart Mill see imperialism is benign at an international level, but Cobden, Bright and Angell see imperialism as benign at a national level. The fact that Marxists thinks imperialism as coerced rather than benign should not come as a surprise to anyone. Traditional International Relations Theory sees liberal internationalism and classical Marxism as the antithesis of imperialism. However, John Hobson’s main point is what Marxism and liberals have in common. They all agree that:

    • The East can be characterized as “barbaric oriental despotism”
    • The capitalist peripheral countries (Third world) are savage, anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature
    • Western agency is always pioneering, learning nothing from the rest of the world
    • Eastern agency even at its best is conditional, always learning from the West

    It is these four points that show how deep Eurocentrism of all Western theories, even Marxism. These are the type of deep assumptions, hundreds of years old the keep Western theorists of world politics that the BRICS world of the East is bypassing them.

    Table 2 Paternalistic, Eurocentric. Institutional Imperial Concepts of World Politics

    Marxism Left Liberal Liberal
    Marx Mill and Hobson Cobden, Bright, Angell
    Coerced national civilizing mission Benign international mission Benign national mission
    East as barbaric Oriental Despotism East as barbaric Oriental Despotism East as barbaric Oriental Despotism
    South as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature South as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature South as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature
    Pioneering Western agency Pioneering Western agency Pioneering Western agency
    Conditional Eastern agency Conditional Eastern agency Conditional Eastern agency

    Here are some further examples of Eurocentrism. In the 19th century, even when IR theory was sensitive to interdependence, it wasn’t world interdependence. Rather it was interdependence among the civilized states of Europe. Outside of Europe there was no recognition of interdependence. Eastern societies only got recognition once they became colonies or only if these countries were at war with Europe. It is something like calling the ultimate baseball playoffs “the World Series” even when it only includes the United States.

    At the same time, the Eurocentrists had no problem imagining war with the East if it was profitable. But when it came to the civilized states of Europe, war was seen as unprofitable. Also, as we shall see later, racist theories bemoaned Europeans fighting because this would result in the depletion of the white race. Colonial annexation was entirely appropriate when it come to Europe’s relation with the East. The East has  conditional agency, such as Japan during World War II. However, the East cannot take the lead in historical development without being predator (as in the Yellow Peril).

    As for the Global South, (Africa) for it  to be a respectable civilized state, Western core countries took a page out of Calvinism and insisted that these “savage societies” have a duty to develop their land productivity (meaning agriculturally) and abandon their primitivism (hunting and gathering). Non-Western politics, whether they be monarchies without constitutions or the egalitarian political consensus societies of hunting and gathering, are not recognized as sovereign. It was representative bourgeois state politics that was the “civilized” norm. As late as 1993 Paul Johnson said most African states are not fit to govern themselves. Their continued existence and the violence of human degradation they bring are a threat to the stability and peace as well as an affront to our moral sense. As of today Zionist Israel has massacred over 200,000 Palestinians. Yet there is no call from the United Nations (controlled by the West) to intervene in this “failed state”.

    European imperialists hide their protectionist policies. As Friedrich List remarked, once imperialists have attained their summit of greatness, they kick away the ladder by which they climbed up in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up afterwards behind them.

    Both the US and Britain industrialized on the back of extremely protectionist regimes and only turned to free trade once they arrived at the top of the global economic hierarchy. Thus, the imposition of free trade on developing countries by Britain after 1846 and the US after 1945 prevents Third World states from using tariffs to protect the infant industries. The projection of “free trade” by Americans…constitute an economic containment strategy to keep the Third World down.

    A Century of Marxist Eurocentrism

    Karl Marx’s paternal Eurocentrism and the political necessity of the Western civilizing mission
    Marx appears to have had little appreciation for the complexity of ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations. For him China and India were the home of “Oriental Despotism”. The East could only be emancipated from its backwardness by the British colonialists. India stands outside world history and China was understood as a rotting semi-civilization. Believe it or not, for Marx, opium wars were emancipatory for China. Without British intervention there would be no future emancipatory socialist revolution. Imperialism was an instrument for both political progress and a requirement of global primitive accumulation. Was the result of British colonization Chinese emancipation? No, it was a century of Chinese humiliation (1839-1949). The imperialist engagement with China did not lead to order but to massive social-dislocation. The various Chinese revolutions were in part stimulated by a reaction against the encounter with the West.

    For Marx and Engels, the East could belatedly jump aboard the Western developmental plane as Hobson says as “The Oriental Express”. It could participate in the construction of world history. But they could never lead the train in a progressive direction. They only had conditional agency. The Western states on the other hand had hyper-sovereignty. Sadly, Hobson says there hasn’t been much effort to reconstruct Marx’s theory along non-Eurocentric lines in traditional Marxism.

    Lenin has no theory of Eastern emancipation
    According to Hobson, Lenin says the East is inherently incapable of self-development. Lenin discusses how the period of free competition within Europe was succeeded after 1873 with the rise of cartels which intensified after 1903 into full-fledged monopoly capital and finance capital. But the causes of the crisis lay in the West whether underconsumption (Hobson) or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Marx and Engels). There was no mention of resistance in the colonies. Lenin discussed the right of self-determination of nations, but those nations would never influence the West or provide leadership.

    World-systems theory
    Wallerstein
    Immanuel Wallerstein was heavily criticized by Robert Brenner and other classical Marxists for overstating the interdependence of trade and hierarchy between societies and understating the class struggle within societies. But he maintains his traditional Marxian orientation in emphasizing the dynamics for the evolution of the world-system clearly in the Western part of the world. The West represents the civilized world, the core countries. The second division in the world is occupied by the regressive redistributive world empires in Asia. Division three of the world system is occupied by primitive reciprocal mini-systems found in North America, parts of Africa and Australasia (savage societies in the 19thcentury parlance).

    World-empires mainly in Asia saw their state structures weakened while their boundaries underwent a forced contraction and the surviving mini-systems of North American, Caribbean and Australia underwent wholesale destruction. 

    Arrighi and Chase-Dunn

    Other world-systems theorists like Giovanni Arrighi and Christopher Chase Dunn suggested that the world-system didn’t consist of just a core and a periphery but consisted of a semi-periphery which may or may not be Western. They argued that when core Western countries experienced crisis and decline, it was the semi-periphery countries that provided a new resource which allowed them to become a new core.

    Exceptions to the rule Gunder Frank, Abu-Lughod

    To be fair, both a sympathizer and an arch-critic of World-Systems theory, Andre Gunder Frank accused Wallerstein of Eurocentrism in his writings culminating in hisbook Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. The work of Janet Anu-Lughod Before European Hegemony was so very powerful in showing the advanced state of non-Western trade networks  between 1250 and 1350 CE.

    Exceptions to the Rule Outside of Marxism: James Watson

    Watson’s analysis starts out with typical Eurocentrism with the Westphalian origins of European international society. He emphasizes the uniqueness of European restlessness and exceptional turbulence. Dynamic and enterprising as it is, it is  contrasted to the closed or isolated world of Asian cultures. The rise of the West is located in Weberian liberalism, neorealism and Marxism. Watson’s unusually explorative book The Evolution of International Society moves from the Italian city-state system and then proceeds with the emergence of sovereignly at the Westphalia conference by way of the Renaissance and the Reformation to arrive at the balance of power in 1713 at Utrecht. Yet he does talk about Eastern developments as reacting back on Europe as in a dialectical way. What the East contributed from the West included:

    • the Italian city-state system was dependent on Eastern trade;
    • financially cheques, bills of exchange, banks and commercial partnerships which had been pioneered in the Islamic and pre-Islamic Middle-East;
    • overseas expansion which began in 1492 was only possible with the navigational and nautical techniques that were pioneered by Chinese and especially Muslims; and
    • Industrialization, centerpiece of “British genius” was significantly enabled by Chinese innovations that stem back several millenniums.

    Further, Watson analyzes in considerable detail many non-Western political formations prior to 1648.

    Western Fear of Eastern and Southern Power

    Most interesting is that many anti-imperialist racists argue against imperialism because it brings the white race in racially fatal conflict with the contaminating influences of non-white races. The impossibility of Eastern progressive development renders the Western civilizing mission all but futile.

    Charles Henry Pearson: the decline of white supremacy and the barbaric rise of the yellow peril
    Charles Henry Pearson (1830-1894) achieved immediate fame with the dire prophesy that he issued for the  white race in his book National Life and Character, a ForecastHe argued that white racial supremacy was being superseded by very high levels of predatory Eastern agency. But in Pearson’s racist imagination it is the white West that has been fated to remain within its stationary limits while the yellow races are destined to expand and triumph over the higher whites. The barbaric threat also came from within as a result of the socialist states’ preference to prop up the unfit white working classes and from without via the Yellow Peril were all leading to deterioration.

    James Blair and David Jordan

    Jordan’s defensive social Darwinist racism was a pacifist’s eugenics. It had three components:

    • The white race cannot survive in the topics.

    It serves to affect a degeneration of the physical and intellectual energy of the Europeans. He gives an example of that as the Philippines lie in the heat of the torrid zone which he called natures asylum for degeneration. Benjamin Kidd argued though we in Europe have the greatest food-producing regions of the earth, we want to administer the tropic from a distance. The white races needed to wake up because the topics will lure them to their death. Kidd wanted to absolve the West of its home-grown liberal imperial guilt syndrome. His key concern about colonizing the tropics was the degenerative impact that the climate would have on white imperialists.

    • The second anti-imperialist argument concerned the perils of immigration.

    The Oriental is of the past. They have not progressed for centuries. The Easterner hates progress. He contends that the constitution of China is said to not have been changed for thousands of years. One the other hand, the West is progressive, energetic and intolerant of the very thing which is the East’s most marked characteristic, indolence. The two races should never amalgamate.

    • Anti-war because the fittest white people would get kille

    Jordan argues that warfare selects the best or fittest elements of the civilized white race to go out and fight, but in so doing leads to a reduction in the numbers of the fittest element as they lose their lives in futile colonial wars. Meanwhile the infirm and cowardly and feckless stay home, away from the battlefield. Some defensive racists were against the war between white countries so they could preserve white unity.

    To summarize the threat from the East:

    • Domestic white barbaric threat – unfit working class
    • Racist interbreeding threat – contamination
    • Tropical climatic threat
    • Threat of European wars depleting the white race

    The crisis of Western self-doubting and deep anxiety was reflected in a host of books which included:

    • Spengler’s Decline of the West (European Institutionalist) (1919,1932)
    • Madison Grant’s the Passing of the White Race (1918)
    • Lothrop Stoddard The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)
    • Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

     Stoddard

    Eurocentrism and racism do not always deny non-white race’s agency. The climax of eugenics reflected not the moment of supreme white confidence but an acute  sense of anxiety regardless the future hegemony of the white race. For Stoddard, globalization is a real threat. The greatest threat to white racial existence lies

    • in colored immigration problem
    • a demographic explosion

    The white races are under siege and disunited within their inner sanctum excavated by the Trojan horse of Western liberalism. Stoddard takes the notion of predatory Eastern agency beyond Mahan and Mackinder. He wants to call out the hubris of the white race. He is nervous and panicked about the Japanese victory over the white Russians in 1905. Further, rise of communism dealt a cruel blow to white racial unity. He is afraid of the white wars in which the best white stock would be lost on the battlefields. The white need to retreat from their imperial bases in Asia and leave the land to yellow and brown rule.

    Madison Grant
    Grant claimed colonialism weakens the white races. The Nordic race is unable to survive south of the line of latitude on white Virginia because of the detrimental impact of the hot climate. Nordics must keep away from the native population for fear of racial contamination from the sun’s actinic rays. Grant says the rapid decline in the birthrate of native white Americans is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which they once conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out.

    Patrick Moynihan
    In Patrick Moynihan book Pandemonium, he explores a  Malthusian logic in predicting the demographic doomsday scenario at the hands of the Eastern Hordes as does Paul Kennedy in his book Preparing for the 21st Century. For them, the greatest challenge to world order in the coming century is the rising relative demographic gap between West and East. Western civilizations will have stable or declining populations and would be swamped by the East and the South. While Malthus in his day did not prevent a rising demographic to Europe from the East, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries these became a staple of much of racist Western thought.

    Huntington and Lind on demographics
    In the work of Huntington and Lind a close parallel can be drawn between their work and the racist imperialist thinker Mahan. But an even closer link can be found with CH Pearson’s National Life and Character, a Forecast; Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920);  Clashing Tides of Color (1935).  In Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations (1996). The roots of the barbaric threat that the Chinese and Muslims pose for the Western Civilization are located within a neo-Malthusian framework. It begins with the Eastern population explosion. This surplus population is problematic because it will seek to flood into the heartlands of the West.

    For Huntington and Lind, non-Western societies were increasingly becoming the movers and shakers of their own history and of Western history. This meant in their ability to economically develop as well as resist imperialism. Lind writes that with the break-up of the Soviet “empire” the West’s great right flank will almost certainly be endangered as the Islamic republics will seek to join their Muslim brothers. Islam will be at the gates of Vienna as either immigrants or terrorists. Domestically multiculturalism in the West today is a “political virus” for it serves to boost the vitality of foreign cultures within the West.

    Conclusion
    The purpose of this article is to expose the theoretical blockages to the West’s understanding that they are being left beyond by the multipolar world of BRICS.

    First, their Western International Relations Theory history has hardly been a positivist value free theory. It oozes Eurocentrism, paternalism, racism and imperialism. Secondly International Relations Theory only dimly perceives that these theories are not 100 years deep, starting after World War I, but have a 250 year history as Table 3 below shows. Thirdly, table 3 shows over 50 theorists over that 250 years, thus cementing a deep ideological commitment to “the rise of the West”. Those international theorists who have really understood that the East and the South are not merely passive recipients of the wisdom of the West but are themselves innovators. These theorists are isolated and could be counted on two hands.

    Table 3 Eurocentrism, Paternalism and Racism  in International Theory 1760-2010

    1760-1914
    Manifest Eurocentrism
    Paternalism
    Cobden/ Bright, Angell, Hobson, Mill, Marx
    Ant-paternalism
    Smith, Kant
    Scientific racism Offensive racism
    Ward, Reinsch, Kidd, Mahan, Mackinder and von Treitschke
    Defensive Racism Spencer, Sumner, Blair, Jordan, CH Pearson, Ripley, Brinton
    1914-1945
    Manifest Eurocentrism
    Paternalism
    Wolff, Zimmern, Murray, Angell
    Anti-paternalism
    Subliminal Eurocentrism
    Laski/ Brailsford, Lenin, Bukharin
    Scientific racism Offensive Racism Defensive racism
      Wilson, Buell, Kjellen, Spykman, Haushofer, Hitler Stoddard, Grant,
    E. Huntington
    1945-1989
    Subliminal Eurocentrism
    Paternalism
    Gilpin, Keohane
    Walz, Bull, Watson
    Anti-Paternalism
    Carr, Morgenthau
    1989-2010
    Manifest Eurocentrism
    Paternalist
    Rawls, Held, Nussbaum, Fukuyama
    Anti-paternalist
    World-system theory, Cox
      Offensive Eurocentrism
    Kagan, Cooper, Ferguson
    Defensive Eurocentrism
    SP Huntington, Lind

     

    Below is the Conventional linear narrative of Liberal great tradition:

    • From 1760 to 1816 there is classical liberal internationalism of Smith, Kant and Ricardo.
    • From 1830 to 1913 classical liberal internationalism continues in the work of Cobden, Bright, JS Mill and Angell.
    • Between 1900 to 1945 the emphasis switches to interdependence theory of liberal institutionalism of Hobson, Wilson, Zimmerman and Murray.
    • Between 1989 and 2010 liberal cosmopolitanism is embodied in the theories of Fukuyama, Held and Rawls.

    The Table 4 below shows Hobson’s very different breakdown of liberalism, calling it “paternalistic imperial liberalism”.

    See Table 4 Hobson’s history in international Liberalism on Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    Table 5 shows that history of realism has also been filled with political activity about as far from positivism as one can imagine.

    See Table 5 Hobson’s history of international realism on Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    Lastly Hobson charts the history of Marxism from 1840 to post 1989.

    • With classical Marxism of Marx and Engels between 1840-1895. Hobson calls it explicit imperialism which is paternalist Eurocentrism.
    • Between 1910 and the 1920s classical Marxism continues with the work of Lenin, Luxemburg, Hilferding and Bukharin which Hobson characterizes as anti-imperialist, but a subliminal anti-paternalist Eurocentrism.
    • Between 1967 and 1989 although World-Systems Theory differs from classical Marxism with its emphasis on conflicts between states more than class struggles within states, it shares the same combination of anti-imperialist, subliminal, anti-paternalist Eurocentrism of the Marxists of 1910-1920. The same is true for Robert Cox’s Gramscian hegemony theory.
    • In the post 1989 period we find in the work of Giovanni Arrighi and Christopher Chase-Dunn a continuation of anti-imperialist, anti-paternalist emphasis on Europe, but both are more willing to grant autonomy to non-Western countries. If Eastern or Southern countries  occupy what both call the capitalist  semi-periphery of the world system. Arrighi’s last book was called Adam Smith in Beijing, showing his interest in China as the new global hegemon
    • In the same period It is in the work of Andre Gunder Frank and Janet Abu-Lughod that we finally theories that challenge any Eurocentrism or paternalism. Gunder Frank has always contended that World Systems Theory is Eurocentric and claims, as Hobson argues in another book that Europe only surpassed China after 1800. His book Re-Orient claims, correctly I think that the new Asian Age is on the horizon.
    The post The Myopia of Anglo-American Rulers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Down at my grocer’s for half a dozen eggs and some melon, I answered the usual question about my well being openly as accustomed. My neighbour is a friend and his query is sincere. After recounting local concerns he expresses his frustration, one more people certainly share, that they can witness audio-visual depictions of the rampage in the Gaza concentration camp of occupied Palestine on television and hear the words of the ostensible leaders of the great states in the United Nations assembled say little and do less to stop the carnage. Of course neither of us is in a position to raise more than private outrage. I add, however, that this performance of mass murder has been escalating since the end of the Great War when the great states of British Empire, the French Republic and the United States agreed to the European colonization of a strategic prize from the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

    Neither of us was alive at the time. Nor were we contemporary with the declaration of statehood by those colonizers on 14 May 1948. The stories we were told to explain and justify European colonization at the same time when those states had proclaimed in San Francisco the universal rights to self-government even for brown people, were that the Europeans concerned had been so punished by the Great Powers through the centuries, especially most recently by the two-time loser among the Great Powers—Germany, that as an act of contrition the population of Palestine had been chosen for collective retribution. That is to say, the brown inhabitants of Palestine in the British Mandate were chosen as a people to be punished, deprived of life, liberty and property, as a penalty for the evils inflicted upon a mass of Europeans whose most important characteristic was that they had been identified as Jews. In the case of Germany under the NSDAP many of the Europeans in question had been deprived of their citizenship as Germans and defined as Jewish by nationality. Thus, under the NSDAP tyranny they were deprived of all their rights as citizens of the state in which they had been born and to whom they had owed allegiance, by operation of law and administrative procedure. One of the principles formalized in the conventions adopted with the United Nations Charter stipulated that no one could be deprived of their nationality against their will. Thus, it would seem the acts of the German regime were declared retroactively violations of human rights. Unfortunately, this principle, like so many others adopted by the Great Powers, was not taken very seriously when skin complexions or geographical locations differed from those of the charter members of the League of Nations successor club. Very little in the stories we were told addressed the obvious inconsistencies between the expressed prohibitions, e.g. collective punishment and deprivation of nationality, when applied to skin colours.

    Moreover the stories we were told conflated the victims of the NSDAP regime, a tyranny that enjoyed massive financial and covert political support from the commanding heights of Western industry and finance, with an established settler-colonial movement about which so little was said as possible. While we were entertained by Hollywood productions—beginning with the show trials in Nuremberg and their later film adaptation cast with famous stars of American stage and screen— and continuing with the Leon Uris’s pulp fiction, also adapted for propaganda cinema—the settler-colonial movement was busy practicing what they had no doubt learned from seminars with experts like Adolf Eichmann behind a screen of genuine NSDAP victims and displaced persons manipulated to lend legitimacy to the crimes it continues to perpetrate, live on TV as this is being written. All of this was known to representatives, high and low, of the Great Powers that gave license to this invasion. Where reports of the crimes were not suppressed, the amazing control over mass media and brutal assassinations silenced them quickly.

    It has often been said that those methodical Germans were so disciplined that they kept careful records, which could be used to incriminate them later. Thomas Suárez (State of Terror, 2016) found he could reconstruct enough of the criminal history of Zionist occupation of Palestine from the perpetrators records to suggest that not only the NSDAP regime was proud of its attention to detail. As we have seen over the past four years, one of the principal functions of mass media is to inoculate the population at large so as to make them resistant to facts. The details Suárez relates based on research in the National Archives (Kew, UK) cover the period until the declaration of statehood by the settler-colonial regime in Tel Aviv: in other words the behaviour of the founders before we were told that Tel Aviv was the only “democracy” in the Middle East with “the most moral army” on the planet. The book is worth reading if only as a corrective to the amnesiac shock suffered by millions who only discovered that there was “savage and relentless killing in Gaza” a year ago.

    Suárez’s story is full of aid workers and UN officials being abused, attacked and murdered. The archives showed that meticulous account was taken of how many Palestinians the invaders were able to rape, torture, kill or otherwise violate and eliminate from the country in which they had been born. Deep intelligence operations throughout the West combined with well-funded and effective mass media campaigns in the US and Britain were as prevalent then as they are today. Innovations in lethality and terror accompanied every effort leading to statehood—and as can be seen beyond. Nobel Peace laureate Menachem Begin, a proud veteran of that era, could justifiably claim—as he indeed once did (in a January 1974 television interview when Russell Warren Howe asked Begin: “How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East? “In the Middle East”, Begin bellowed, “in all the world”)—that they (Irgun et al.) had invented terrorism. Striking is the account of youth cadres, some as young as 13, who had been trained as terrorists within the trinity of Zionist paramilitary organisations (Hagana, Irgun and Lehi). Innumerable operations were performed by these highly indoctrinated cadres disguised in the attire typical of the natives (dressed as Arabs). Chronologically it becomes obvious that the methods of terrorism attributed in the West to Muslims were in fact all standard operating procedures for Zionist paramilitary death squads—long before there was any armed resistance to the Zionist invasion and occupation of Palestine.

    None of this historical context was part of our history lessons. Nor is it part of the ranting that counts for reporting now. I have heard enough said about my compatriots and their supposed affinity for fascism or natural racism—all based on the interminable repetition of increasingly bizarre films about the NSDAP era in Germany. That all ended in 1945. The insinuations have not stopped, although their application in the past four years defies coherent explanation. However the same regime has been in power in Palestine, de facto since the establishment of the Jewish Agency and de jure since statehood was declared.

    It is worth noting that settler-colonialism was still high fashion in 1948 since the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia (also under British rule with a close relationship to Cecil Rhodes’ principal financial advisor) also proclaimed their nationalist version of white supremacy, apartheid. Despite many predictions to the contrary, they have not survived as long as the regime in Tel Aviv. The Afrikaner nationalist attempt to establish a racial-ethnic state with its own language (Afrikaans) and culture also failed. (see also Church Clothes: Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid, 2024) Decades of National Party rule were predicated on the potential onslaught awaiting whites on the continent if a strong white government did not defend them. There was no onslaught. In 1991, the feared horror of Bantu/ Black/ African communism had disappeared. Even the Afrikaner nationalist attempt to support its racial-ethnic state with a “white African” language and culture failed. Although Afrikaans remains one of South Africa’s nine official languages, there is no longer a single Afrikaans-medium university in the country since the apartheid constitution was abolished. The “Cape Dutch” had been established in South Africa since the 1600s and within a mere decade the whole edifice was gone.

    That leaves us with the question; especially if one dares to take the absurd woke ideology currently propagated in the West at its word, why settler-colonialism can prevail in Palestine in forms that even heads of state are now likening to those of the NSDAP tyranny? While all manner of institutions, monuments, and artefacts are being renamed, removed or vandalized because of their imputed relationship to racism, colonialism, slavery or some other grave injustice (mainly in Britain and the US), the uninterrupted century of settler-colonial terror in Palestine barely caused a ripple. Is it ignorance, hypocrisy, or plain stupidity? What seems long ago now, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (The Manufacturing of Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, 1988) nearly popularized the distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims”. In their propaganda model the mass media—and those who own it—decide which victims are worthy and hence treated as victims whose suffering is acknowledged and which victims are unworthy and whose suffering can be and is dismissed. This distinction is certainly helpful in calling attention to the silence and invisibility of a century of mass murder and terrorism, after 1948 state terrorism. In order to understand the source of silence, obfuscation, and mendacity, it is necessary to ask the questions how the “worthy victims” are chosen and also by whom?

    What we say we know about the past is a construct. Even in the course of a conversation develops as a construct by which the exchange continues on the assumptions of two speakers as to the appropriate way to respond to what was just uttered. Each of us is unwittingly a small scale amateur historian when confronted with utterances, like “what did you mean?” or “what I meant to say was.” There is no way to know definitively what someone was thinking in the past. One can only judge the utterance, either as memory (covertly) or as recording (written or audio), to have some chronological significance and respond to it as one deems appropriate. We have all heard people respond with statements like, “when I said that I did not mean what you think” or “the situation was different then” or “I can change my mind, can’t I? (When someone refuses or denies the interpretation of an utterance assigned to the past). We all know people whom we say are unreliable because in our judgement statements “in the past” do not permit predictions of future behaviour. “Oh he never comes on time” or “he always says one thing and does another”. In all these cases the purpose of our assessment is to control our own behaviour, our reaction to others. We can call it prediction if it means that it controls what we will do (it cannot control what we already have done.) At the same time we have certainly all heard “Oh you are being unfair. He is not always like that” or “He is never like that with me”. In other words the judgement that “he never does what he says he is going to do” is judged by someone else to be an inappropriate explanation and prediction for that person’s behaviour. At the same time it is certainly reasonable to reply, “maybe he does not behave that way with you but he does with me. I cannot rely on him.” At this point, one is acknowledging that although it may be inappropriate to claim that “he is universally unreliable”, it is reasonable to say that “he is unreliable for me”—and it is my interest in reliability that is important here. My interest is another way of saying, reliability is a category of personal conduct which I value and which controls my interaction with others.

    Explanations are unavoidable. Whether they are good explanations or bad explanations depends on the judgement of someone and on the interests controlling that judgement. Those interests may also include rendering no judgement that deviates from those others consider appropriate. So in more explicitly historical research, reflection and debate, the interests of the investigator may be controlled by the desire to be treated as a “serious historian” or “serious scholar”, another way of saying that investigation will be governed not only by one’s personal judgement but by what one perceives as the judgement of others as to the appropriateness of one’s work. Academic institutions and other venues where history (often conflated with the past) are the focus of human activity are not only repositories of data but organizations for structuring the use of that data. Structuring the use is another way of saying controlling the way those who are engaged in historical research or study respond to the artefacts and the utterances of other investigators or members of the research institution. There is data, e.g. documents, and utterances and redundancies in response to the data. In that sense historical research is no different from the activity in a chemistry laboratory. It is impossible to separate the utterances and redundancies of response that form an institution from the research product. There is no pure objective fact in the test tube or the archive that is self-evident. Explanations arise from attempts to respond to data in meaningful ways, for instance to control or predict our responses to other data. Even the most abstract forms of research constitute controls on the researcher, what he sees; what he may discover; what he discards or ignores.

    A historical explanation, regardless of the volume and nature of the data available (whether known or unknown in scope), will always be a selection of data and its organization. It will always be governed by interests of the researcher or of other researchers or those on whose behalf the research is selected and performed or even of those to whom the researcher addresses his work, e.g. readership, students, public policy, etc.

    The armistice of 1918 ended the open hostilities between the regular forces of the alliance (the British Empire, the French Republic and the United States) against those of Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, the so-called Central Powers. However, it by no means ended the organized military operations on the Continent or the non-military warfare, as might have been expected by anyone who took the Wilsonian rhetoric at face value. War continued in Eastern Europe. The United States fought with Czech legions, Japanese troops and White Russians against the new Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union until 1922. Economic warfare continued throughout the interwar period despite negotiations and the conclusion of a plethora of treaties known under the rubric of Versailles. The Allies fought overtly or covertly to capture and allocate the extinguished empires among themselves while reinforcing their hold on the empires with which they began the war.

    If war aims are not defined by what is announced in declarations but are ascertained by examining forensically the results, then such imputed war aims can be said to constitute a pattern. In other words, a sequence of distinguishable outcomes can form the basis for interpretation of belligerent conduct, specifying general aims or attitudes to explain present and future wars. Such patterns may be classified as instructions by which belligerents chose to wage war or analysis can identify the latent or implicit culture that drives the behaviour. The forensic examination serves to identify redundancies that must be practiced in order to sustain the institutional behaviour underlying the belligerence.

    None of the foregoing would have been practically relevant in the 19th century. However, the adoption and ratification of the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy aka Kellogg – Briand Pact (1928) which declared war illegal as a means of resolving international disputes; a violation of international law also known as the law of nations. This pact has yet to be renounced by any of its principal signatories. Thus the prohibition stands. Therefore the determination of war aims and the causes attributed to such wars by those who wage them becomes highly relevant.

    If the aims of a given war are not clearly understood, neither the appropriate defence nor a realistic negotiating position to end hostilities can be found, let alone pursued.

    In battle, the assailing force seeks to magnify its impact by concealing the actual targets or objectives from the defender. In waging war itself the aggressor is obliged to justify the use of force within the rhetorical framework of the law of nations as commonly understood. Rhetorical legitimacy is no trivial weapon in the aggressor’s arsenal, especially under the League of Nations/ United Nations framework. The more intensely the claims are asserted, the more difficult it becomes to ascertain the effective aims. This is a peculiar aspect of modern ideological warfare. Silencing the defender in public opinion and international fora relies on domination of the totality of communications channels.

    The history of modern warfare actually begins with the Crusades. These centuries of assaults against the declared enemies of Christendom always comprised both psychological and physical orders of battle. The papal-rabbinical infrastructure under the command of the Roman pontiff “preached” the Crusades. The military force unleashed through the vassals of the Latin Church wielded the swords and other instruments of death. The pulpit and ecclesiastical apparatus mustered the support needed to drain manpower and other resources for the campaigns of slaughter, demolition and plunder. Prospects of plunder and intangible wealth (salvation) have been essential to convince all those who sacrifice that they will be rewarded on Earth as it is in Heaven, or at least compensated for the material and bodily losses they have to bear.

    This is no less true in the 21st century than it was in the 11th.

    It is really quite remarkable that while the NSDAP era has been an almost obsessive target of historical research for as long as I can remember, the era in which the settler-colony in Palestine was established receives so little attention although its ostensible legitimation is derived from (retroactively) and enhanced by the very existence of the German fascist regime from 1936 until 1945. Although the ideological roots of Afrikaner nationalism and its close relationship to the doctrinal authors of German National Socialism have been investigated and publicly debated. The relationship between Zionism and Nazism has been given more muted attention. When Zionism and Nazism are discussed generally then there is a tendentious context, which fosters the conflation of Herzl’s ambitions with the campaign to funnel all displaced Jews from Europe into Mandatory Palestine under administration of the Jewish Agency. The implication is that Zionism anticipated the Nuremberg laws, the deprivation of Germans once classified as Jewish of their German nationality and their relocation – disposal, including enslavement and murder. However, any attempt to examine the practices of the Tel Aviv regime over the past century in historical context, including comparison of those practices with practices under other regimes, has been vigorously discouraged.

    While it is understandable that the practitioners in the “only democracy” with the “most moral army” may be reluctant to discuss their conduct and utterances in comparative context, it ought to be asked why this reluctance is so widespread beyond the 1967 borders? The most obvious, if somewhat superficial, reason is that the regime in Tel Aviv is the state incarnation of “worthy victims” whose every suffering, real or imagined, must be smothered in sympathy and adoration. Whatever its misdeeds, these are the understandable errors of a distraught, somewhat paranoiac victim for whom at least pity but not punishment is appropriate. The traumatized maiden amidst the bearded, brown-skinned hordes must be forgiven for every act taken in defence of her purity. The mythological, cinematic clichés that can be applied are innumerable. Like cinema, they also distract from serious observation and assessment of the utterances current and past, i.e. the documentary evidence.

     (Americans do not realize) the extent to which partition was refused acceptance as a final settlement by the Zionists in Palestine, (nor the conviction among Zionists that) they cannot be satisfied with Palestine alone, that they must have not only all of Palestine but Trans-Jordan, parts of Syria and Lebanon, parts of Iraq and Egypt as well…” Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., CIA officer who led Operation Ajax (TPAJAX) to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953. He was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. From a lecture to the US National War College in 1948.

    Comparison of practices across countries and periods presents theoretical and methodological problems. These are in part due to the aforementioned institutional constraints. For example, there are material incentives and penalties within academic as well as general research that reward or punish investigation and publication according to the degree of conformity with official, i.e. establishment opinion. A scholar who is successful at promoting established views on any subject would be rewarded with grants, promotions, publication, lecture fees and other favourable attention to his works. The reverse applies. A well-rewarded scholar serves as a model for correct scholarship and indirectly a monitor against deviance. The capacity to reward, also known as patronage, is also the ability to propagate views, defined questions and types of research product desired. It implies the capacity to suppress other views, if only by the stampede for patronage, which a generous investor triggers. This is often called “soft power” in contrast to exile, imprisonment or assassination of dissidents—hard power.

    Caroll Quigley argued forcefully (The Anglo-American Establishment From Rhodes to Cliveden, 1981) that one of the principal accomplishments of the Round Table/ Milner Group was to dominate the institutions that wrote and disseminated the history of the British Empire. From fellowships at All Souls and other Oxford colleges in their gift to ownership or control of the newspapers of record and the major publishing houses, members of what would become the Royal Institute for International Affairs (and its imperial franchises in the US — the Council on Foreign Relations — and Commonwealth), “legitimate” history could be propagated and alternative histories excluded. The revolving doors between government and academia also gave the mouthpieces of the Empire the additional credibility lent by access to decision-makers and the official record, both public and confidential. Herbert Hoover, in his capacity as head of the private-public partnership Commission for Relief in Belgium and later the US Food Administration, contributed to this effort after the Great War by confiscating untold volumes of government archives wherever he dispensed “aid” to the distressed countries after the war had ended. The Hoover Institution at Stanford received his loot by bequest thus assuring that this data remained in private hands. After World War II the occupation forces repeated the procedure by capturing the archives of the Axis wherever they went. Access to this treasure has remained subject to the control of friendly agents to this day. Hence the evidence of what conquered nations actually intended or did can be selectively disclosed in ways that are consistent with the established history. Alternative research is largely derived from either accidental discovery or inference. Such alternatives can always be attacked because they necessarily rely on interpretive methodologies at odds with the published record where no “smoking guns” are available. Moreover, the sheer volume of redundant accounts of the official history propagated by those same leading publishing houses and academic institutions effectively buries the alternative publication landscape.

    No later than with the inception of the Manhattan Project, the leading sciences were captured by the national security state. The largesse expended to produce atomic weapons and other vile instruments of death created a scholarly and scientific cartel of enviable wealth. Those who did not benefit directly by participation in death and destruction science were induced to shape their work so that it would qualify for funding at the various troughs the national security state had built. The comprehensive focus of all scholarship and scientific research on classified development projects included the imposition of an extensive security system including loyalty tests and secrecy oaths. In short, participation in funded research required membership or at least submission to the rules of the national security cult, not unlike the induction practices for the infamous NSDAP paramilitary organisations.

    Britain, as a monarchy, constitutionalism notwithstanding, retained a long tradition of regulated scholarship and research inherited from the Latin Church where the Crown assumed the authority of the Papacy and Episcopate. The extension of this system and practice to North America was a logical consequence of the Round Table project. Cecil Rhodes, and presumably his executor Lord Rothschild, was determined to modernize and thus preserve the British Empire, especially by “recovering” the United States as a member of the English-speaking commonwealth. The intention behind Winston Churchill’s propaganda, A History of English-speaking Peoples (started in 1937 and published in 1956-58 in four volumes), aside from earning money to redeem his chronic indebtedness, was to popularize the idea that America and the Empire (to be renamed more innocuously the Commonwealth) were one race destined to rule the world for the usual benefits its acolytes ascribed to it—democracy, free trade, etc. The meanwhile infamous CIA “Mockingbird” operation emerged from established British intelligence (covert action) practice.

    The ability to wage psychological warfare or promote criminal enterprise was centralized in the US very early, despite the republican and federal structure of the State, because its ruling elite had the benefit of treating the country as terra nulla, exterminating the indigenous culture and brainwashing those it selectively admitted to its shores. Despite all claims to diversity today, the “melting pot” myth was a 20th century invention by its propagandists, i.e., the advertising and public relations industry. That machine grew from the massive economic concentration that accelerated after the 1893 depression. Although the Standard Oil trust was dissolved by enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), cartels continued to be formed. Rothschild agent JP Morgan negotiated the merger that resulted in US Steel. General Electric, General Motors and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and other conglomerates gained control over the US economy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gave control over the country’s fiscal and economic policy to an Anglo-American banking cartel functioning through a parastatal “system” which preserved the illusion of a de-centralized economy while consolidating the foundations for the permanent war economy that the US became. The necessity to sell the output of these massive industrial enterprises promoted warmongering and consumerism. The advertising and public relations industry became the American version of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

    After the Great War, the Volstead Act (1919) that enforced the 18th Amendment that introduced prohibition also made crime ripe for national organization. Prohibition of alcoholic beverages was depicted as an anti-drug measure when in fact it was part of a variety of anti-immigrant political legislation. Wine and beer consumption was common in the social venues of Germans (socialists) and Italians (anarchists) and other politically threatening working class elements. Their meeting places could be closed and social events circumscribed on the pretext that illegal alcoholic beverages were consumed, thus disrupting unwanted political activism. “Organized crime has traditionally made its profit from providing goods and services people are not supposed to want… Prohibition was responsible for the organization of crime on a national scale and it was the genius of Al Capone to realize that the way to proceed was to organize crime on the model of national business organizations or corporations.” Thus organized crime as “counter-business” is primarily concerned with control over people. (Peckham, 1995). In fact, contrary to the Hollywood history, organized crime owes its effectiveness not to Sicilians but to the crime cartel led discretely by Meyer Lansky. It was far more dramatic and politically advantageous to put Italians in the limelight, initiating a standing tradition by which the term “Mafia” is applied almost exclusively to undesirable immigrants. At no time was there a serious decrease in alcohol consumption. However the federal and state police forces together with their counter-enforcers could protect the development of the legal and illegal drug cartels.

    This natural and incestuous relationship was instrumentalized for the establishment of the US national security apparatus. (Douglas Valentine, The Strength of the Wolf, 2004; The Strength of the Pack, 2010)  National crime meant national law enforcement and international crime meant international (extra-territorial) policing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics were the precursors to what is called euphemistically today the “Intelligence Community”.

    National drug cartels needed national control over venues, points of sale as well as marketing vehicles. The wealth generated also had to be laundered. The most natural downstream extension of organized counter-business was the entertainment industry. Not only racetracks, gambling casinos where permitted, bars and houses of prostitution (with the attendant human trafficking) were used. Drug money (alcohol and narcotics profits) created the studio system in the film industry, i.e. Hollywood. The “lifestyle” of the famous and temporarily rich appearing on the silver screen was rightly criticised by the residues of Puritan America—if somewhat hypocritically—as a major source of corruption, both overt and covert. The social managers in Washington and more discrete locations recognized the magnificent power in the Hollywood cartel for instilling whatever tastes or opinions were needed among the entertained public. War Department money enriched Du Pont and other weapons manufacturers. It also filled the coffers of those who produced the thousands of films promoting war against whomever the ruling elite had designated as enemy. As Malcolm X once pointed out the American propaganda machine was able to turn Germans from friends to enemies and back to friends again in a space of time in which no effort was made to alter the perception of Blacks as inferior.

    Just as in Britain, the Anglo-American Establishment controlled most of the print media directly. The entertainment industry and the drug system were managed at arm’s length. The cartel was assisted in its international mission by discriminatory legislation that placed Hollywood product in a highly competitive advantage capable of overwhelming the film industries of all other countries. Winning the Second World War meant that with the exception of France, American movie conglomerates were able to flood the world with the “American Way of Life” as defined by the moguls of Southern California and their financial backers, both licit and illicit.

    The business corporation had evolved into the single most effective means of power projection. Its single-mindedness, reduced rhetorically to the pursuit of profit, made it efficient in regulating the “market” whether for goods, services or ideas. The legality of the business was irrelevant for the organizational form. Legality is merely a criterion for public appearances, not underlying purposes or methods.

    It has been one of the singular deficiencies of common education that attention is devoted to formal rules and government that have little to do with the actual processes of rule. Even those who study the ecclesiastical tradition of business education from the late 19th century are only taught computation. Altogether the strict compartmentalization of what counts as socially relevant knowledge prevents all but a tiny few from ever recognizing how any significant decision is made or executed. Even those who devote their energy to exposing conspiracies, real or imagined, neglect the published and advertised rules and procedures by which Business, that is to say the business corporations, trusts and similar entities are constituted and governed. They do not analyse the principal-agent conflicts that comprise an important part of business litigation. The intricacies and complexities are indeed daunting. Yet even a rudimentary grasp of the allocation of power and authority and its operation would reveal more than a thousand books on political science.

    In the US, millions of people occupy single-family dwellings, which they call their homes while they pay over their lifetimes two to three times the ostensible purchase price to a bank to redeem a mortgage bond before they die. This is called in the vernacular “home ownership”. Peter Drucker, a liberal among the Austro-fascists who came to rationalize modern economic exploitation, argued years ago that Americans were all shareholders since their deductions from their pay, essentially deferred compensation, was invested through pension funds in the nation’s economy. Hence, according to Drucker the mere voter had been elevated to the status of mass capitalist. What he did not say was that these pension funds would be held by cartels of asset managers. The most infamous of those hedge funds, better called plantation funds perhaps, are the big three, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. These corporations, owned and managed by a miniscule clique of financial magnates, control virtually all the economic assets of Drucker’s popular capitalists. John D Rockefeller did not control much of the world’s oil industry by prospecting for oil but by rendering it impossible to pump oil from the ground without paying him for the privilege. His Standard Oil controlled everything, directly or indirectly, before the well and after the well, upstream and downstream. This gave Standard Oil what the US Defense Department calls “full spectrum dominance”, which he shared with what were once six other “sisters”. Although as mentioned above, the trust was dissolved by court order, more than a century later the Standard Oil successors, Exxon and Mobil, are still in the top four worldwide. Most of the world’s media is owned by six corporations, National Amusements, Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, News Corp, and Sony. Whatever one believes the purpose of “media” to be, it is not free and certainly not democratically organized.

    Whatever one believes about the nature of the “market”, “democracy” or even something as banal as consumer choice, we live in a world in which three financial entities, six media corporations and four energy companies exercise effective control over fundamental instruments of power: money, information and fuel. Needless to say they control a lot more. So when the 0.1 or more accurately the 0.01% are mentioned there is no need to be abstract. We can talk about an almost microscopic portion of the human population that decides what is good for themselves and how they get it from us. They may be what Larry Fink and his friends like to call “passive investors”. However they own the State and therefore have the capabilities at their disposal to be exceptionally active to increase the value and power of their investments—value and power that can only come at our expense.

    What we are told we know about the world (what constitutes accepted “knowledge”) and what is deemed important are matters decided under the foregoing conditions. If we do not understand the extent and depth of control we cannot imagine the full meaning of what Stuart Ewen called Captains of Consciousness (1976). He explored the invention of public relations (propaganda or public diplomacy) in his 1986 book PR! A Social History of Spin, which formed the basis of an Adam Curtis film, Century of the Self (2002). The economic concentration that began in the late 19th century continued unabated by war, war against the body, against populations and against the mind.

    Consciousness became an industrial product first by training humans to identify with the consumer goods they did not need but were expected to buy with money they did not have. Thus like the home mortgage, the individual or family invested a lifetime of earnings in constant replacement of things designed to be obsolete or worn out almost as soon as the purchase price had been paid. Thus opportunities for long-term security were compulsively squandered. Excess wages paid to workers in an expanding empire were recovered through artificially high rates of consumption. Once this kind of extraction was exhausted—or in the case of the West rendered ideologically superfluous—the individual himself was converted into a self-consuming product.

    The defeats inflicted upon the post-WWII independence movements, by primarily US wars, were also suffered by those in the industrialized West who had struggled to end historical racial oppression at home. This process was highly selective but no less brutal. The most influential leaders among Black Americans fighting to end racial discrimination and oppression were assassinated, imprisoned or driven into exile. This wave of murders occurred within a relatively short space of time at the end of the 1960s in the US and continued beyond its borders far longer, e.g. Guyana scholar and activist, Walter Rodney was murdered in 1980. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968.

    Norman Finkelstein (The Holocaust Industry, 2000) who is possibly the first American scholar to openly criticize the American Jewish establishment and what has become the central consciousness myth in America and hence in the world of consciousness the US makes and shapes. In order to explain his position, he addresses the relationship of Jews to other groups in US society. The Holocaust is first and foremost an event portrayed as exemplary of Jewish victimhood. Hence Finkelstein asked how Jewish Americans stand as victims along with other victims in the US, in particular the “founding victims”, the African slaves who as James Baldwin said to the Cambridge Union (1965)—built America. The history books and Hollywood films portray American Jews as the allies of Black Americans in their struggle for human rights. (They do not talk about Jewish slave traders or plantation owners.) He observed (that) “the end of Jewish ‘solidarity’ in the US began in the 1960s when Blacks in the North began to challenge the class position of Jews rather than the racial status as in the South… American Jewish elites turned to the Right to defend their class interests—this coincided with increased support for the occupation and colonization of Israel.” Whitney Webb, in her One Nation under Blackmail (2022) documents the intimate personal and political links of organized crime, Jewish “philanthropy” and the espionage business that operates behind and in addition to the “Holocaust Industry”, with many of the same managers.

    Is it a coincidence that between the murder of Malcolm X in 1965 and King’s 1968 assassination lay the Six Day War in 1967? During that war Israel attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding another 171 of the crew in an attempt to sink the vessel. Malcolm X was vilified but only executed after returning from the Hajj, when he declared that Black Americans must abandon their “victim” status and join with the rest of the world’s oppressed in facing the class war. King was not murdered after his Riverside Church sermon against the war in Vietnam but while in Memphis to support striking workers.

    If, as Finkelstein argues, organized Jewry saw reasons to support the civil rights movement in the 1950s because they comprehended them as “race” issues, was this a way of asserting the underlying Zionist argument that Jews constitute a race and also a victim race in a country where race was the most fundamental discriminatory category, e.g., the old “one drop” rule. Calling attention to Jewish race directly would have been counter-productive. However, magnifying the factor race as a trans-historical category for oppression, while ostensibly working to eliminate Blacks from the race of the oppressed could be seen as an intuitive strategy for reserving the race card as a positive political instrument. As explained above, there is no way to know how sincere or pure individual motives for supporting the civil rights movement were among American Jews. However, it is possible to observe the trajectory between 1965 and 1980 when Ronald Reagan was appointed POTUS.

    There are those who assert that the key shift in US policy toward the settler-colonial regime was the assassination of John F. Kennedy, replaced by a POTUS notoriously pro-Israel. Laurent Guyénot and others argue that Kennedy’s determination to prevent the Tel Aviv regime from acquiring atomic weapons capability was a strong incentive for Mossad intervention. Johnson turned a blind eye to the Liberty attack and Dimona.  Taken as a whole one could argue that the wave of political murders that followed Kennedy’s assassination exemplifies the alignment of the ruling elite, which had been fighting decolonization tooth and nail, with the settler-colonial state in Palestine as a vehicle for de-centring the counter-revolution. The category of race oppression would have been cultivated, only to be hijacked by elites who needed a cast for their legitimation through victimhood.

    Finkelstein shows that the great magnification of the Holocaust in American life, and hence in all the means by which it is psychologically and economically managed, coincided with the victory of the IDF in 1967. An event, which had been insignificant in mass American consciousness, along with all but the American participation in the Second World War, was rapidly transformed into something more average Americans could identify than landmarks in its own history. Like “recovered memory” Americans have been taught (as well as all those taught by American mass media) that they were culpable for crimes committed in places even US soldiers had never been during that war. At the same time the crimes actually committed by their own forefathers on American soil were barely mentioned. Thus it seems this magnification not only served the interests of the Jewish elite in concealing class conflict.

    While there is no doubt that some twenty million or more people were killed in Eastern Europe and especially the Soviet Union by the Nazi regime’s war against the Soviet Union, it strains logic and plausibility to assert that the only mass murder was committed only against European Jews. Yet the story of the Holocaust that is taught and force fed everywhere in the West with the round number of six million, conspicuously omitting the elderly and disabled, communists, socialists, Roma and Sinti, and Slavs of every description. As details recorded not only by Finkelstein but also by many other historians show, the consciousness product Holocaust begins to corrode once one examines the claims for the numbers of survivors of the war and the camps. The 1961 film, Judgement at Nuremberg, dramatizes the discrepancy when the defence argument that no other war crimes were tried except the ones committed by the NSDAP regime is belittled rather than answered. Even Justice Jackson, for the prosecution, insinuated that the trials were problematic by warning that the manner in which they were held could be applied to others. The Soviet Union had insisted that war criminals be tried against the resistance of the British and Americans. As in many cases before and since, the Soviet Union was forced to accept the limitations of the trials in order to have any trials at all. Throughout the occupation, the Western allies conspired to prevent favoured persons from being arrested, let alone charged, hiding them or aiding their escape from jurisdiction. In the Asia-Pacific theatre they effectively prevented Soviet participation in war crimes trials against Japan. In other words, even the official proceedings against those accused of seeking to annihilate all Jews were tainted by serious irregularities. Yet this thoroughly corrupted official record has been used to support the claim that Jews were the paramount victims of World War II.

    Though too many people were worked to death, murdered individually and through mass actions by so-called Einsatzkommandos of the regular and Waffen-SS in Eastern Europe. The rescue of whole Waffen-SS divisions from war crimes prosecutions, e.g. the Waffen-SS Division Galizia composed of Ukrainians, further demonstrates the insincerity of the Western Allies in their condemnations. The story, the foundational myth of unique Jewish victimhood, is so riddled with inconsistencies and corruption that its integrity ought to be questioned by any serious historian—not to mention all those in the world who had nothing to do with World War II. Is it possible that the reason is the same as that for the peculiar change in the policy/ attitude of organized Jewish elites with regard to race in the US (and elsewhere)? Could it be that when the US regime defended its leniency and clemency for whole divisions, without even the pretence of criminal investigation in the interest of opposing alleged Soviet communist expansionism, it was expressing the crucial priority of class over any other interest?

    Suárez, Finkelstein, and Brenner (Zionism in the Age of Dictators, 1983 and 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, 2002) supply evidence from the Zionist leadership from the very beginning of the movement’s ascendancy to support such a hypothesis. When today’s regime in Kiev, supported by Zionists too, not only disregards the war crimes committed by Ukrainian Waffen-SS units, but has integrated military and paramilitary formations whose insignia are the same as those notorious divisions, e.g. SS-Leibstandart Adolf Hitler and Waffen-SS division Das Reich (the Azov Battalion) in its regular army in the continued war against Russia, it is hard to ignore the true war aims of the West—then and now. It was the foremost objective of Paul Hausser, one of the last commanders of these Waffen-SS forces (Das Reich, II SS Panzer Corps) after 1945 until his death to rehabilitate the Waffen-SS (which had been declared a criminal organization per se) as a brave, multi-national force defending European values, just like any other Western army. From the high official pronouncements throughout the EU, the Ukrainian Armed Forces with its Waffen-SS legacy fights Russia for everything the West holds dear. Just as do the armed forces of the settler-colonial state in occupied Palestine. Ukraine is a victim, as are those who invaded Palestine and declared their conquest to be the Jewish state of Israel in 1948.

    The campaigns waged to generate the “victims’ immunity” claimed by these regimes are atrocious. They both rely on a patent of racial superiority but unlike that of classical “white supremacy”, this racial superiority is based on alleged victimhood. They are not superior because of their virtue. Instead their superiority derives from the blanket assertion that all others are perpetrators, latent or active, against whom any measure can be justified as pre-emptive and therefore defensive. Every high official must and does use all the power at his or her disposal to defend the aggression by these self-identified victims.

    Self-identification has become a primary instrument of psychological manipulation and warfare. The self-identified not only asserts a whim or personal predilection. He also demands that he is the sole judge of what evidence may be used to support or refute his claims. As a strategy however it must have a mass component. One person alone cannot maintain self-identification against a crowd or against a group with a genuinely recognizable set of features that can be generally classified. Therefore, it is necessary to spread the dogma of self-identification. This is a corollary to the conversion of the individual consumer into a consumed individual, the emergent consciousness strategy of what for want of a better term can be called finance capitalism. That finance capitalism it has been argued above is the contemporary formation of the ruling class, the 0.01%.

    If we are experiencing the climax of a massive reaction in the West, one that has intensified since the French Revolution, then the process by which the latest manifestation of feudal empire, presents us with a kind of global feudalism. The doctrines promulgated for this restoration are studied and preached from such altitudes as the Swiss Alps. However, we can understand them better if we examine the history of the West’s paramount merger of power and consciousness, the Latin Church.

    Before the Holocaust, the spectre of anti-Semitism (a misnomer if one is talking about European Jews) was first raised by the Latin Church. It is the Latin Church that created the legal and ecclesiastical regime by which Jews in Europe were subjected to special laws of all sorts. Practically speaking however the most intense application of these laws and the persecution they entailed coincided with the wars of Aragon (Spain) to conquer then entire Iberian peninsula and Christianize it. That meant expelling Muslims and Jews who together inhabited the southern half of the peninsula. These wars were called the “Reconquista” so as to imply that Christian Aragon was recovering for the Faith what had been lost to the infidels. Missing from that story is the fact that North Africa — from Egypt to Morocco and Iberia had indeed been “Christian” to the extent that the great landowners who ruled the region self-identified as Christians. It was the systematic oppression of the masses in these “Christian” territories that led them to join the armies of Islam to drive this Christian elite out of the country and restore decent living conditions for them. Islam was an organized force for liberation that would scarcely have taken root had the region’s Christians been civilized people with a sense of justice and equity. When Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) went to Rome it was as a leader of a putsch driven by this Christian landowning class. Rome was established as the capital of a schismatic church, one that fundamentally contradicted the ecclesiastical plurality that had been characteristic of Christianity with its several centres, e.g. in Antioch and Constantinople. Augustine’s Roman Catholicism claimed to be the sole centre of Christianity. Moreover, it usurped the de-centralized episcopate and installed an absolutist monarchy. The papacy with its cardinalate rejected the Greek elements of Christianity and adopted a form of government that more closely resembled the Talmudic rabbinate. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Pentateuch would be merged with the New Testament and that later the idea of “Judeo-Christian” culture would emerge. If one examines closely the economic policies and political enforcement measures that evolved as pontifical power grew, the papal persecution of Christians who maintained belief in the real poverty preached by Jesus in the New Testament since this was entirely at odds with the class that had established the Latin rite. It was entirely at odds with the beliefs of the great landowners that Islam had driven from North Africa and Iberia. (Islam once extended all the way to the southern provinces of France.) Just as Christianity had grown out of opposition to the Jewish elite’s abuse of the masses, Islam gained its foothold in the most Christian part of the world because the Christian elite so viciously oppressed the common people (Deschner, Die Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums). The Roman support for Aragon was not for the restoration of Christianity of the common man. Those Christians continued to live along with Muslims and ordinary Jews throughout the two caliphates. The House of Aragon was fighting holy class war as the Latin Church has from its inception. The peoples who have traditionally inhabited North Africa were mainly nomadic except in those areas like the Nile Valley where intensive agriculture was established or in the cities from which crafts and trade were practiced. To call a group of people a diaspora—in some elevated, sacrificial form—is another incomplete depiction of population movements in the African continent. Christians and Muslims practicing their religion in other parts of the world are not considered a diaspora, although both religions originate in the same place as the religion of Jews. The myth of the Reconquista and the suppression of Judaism in Spain are facets of political expansion and territorial conquest, not serial universal anti-Semitism. The myth of the unique diaspora is ahistorical since it actually negates any other genuinely diasporic population, e.g., Africans transported throughout the world by slave traders.

    Henry Lea, in his multi-volume studies of the Inquisition, made it very clear that the driving force behind the Holy and Universal Inquisition was economic enrichment and not matters of faith or heresy. Alexander Herculano, in his history of the Inquisition in Portugal, supplies ample evidence that the question of whether one was considered a “Jew” in the meaning of the act depended on how much one was able and willing to pay to the Portuguese crown or the Roman pontiff for protection. Certainly poor people were persecuted too. However, exile of Jews or heretics also provided the Portuguese crown with bonded labour for its colonial enterprises while selectively manipulating the domestic labour market, as well as for political ends. The historical monochrome by which the history of Europe is reduced to the persecution of Jews, creating an original sin for all Christians for which they must atone, is a serious distortion of a far more complex fabric of class conflict and struggles for power among the ruling elite.

    This supposed blind and irrational persecution of Jews in Europe—there is no evidence to prove it occurred anywhere else—cannot be sustained once the political-economic conditions are seriously examined. What can be said is that ecclesiastical operations and canon law were applied in the same way that anti-communist legislation and repression have been applied—and for the same reasons. At the same time, the realities of political-economic confrontation between merchants, landowners, clergy and military require a sober appraisal of the intra-class conflicts waged just as perniciously and dishonestly then as today. During the US war against Vietnam, the unwritten rule was “if you do not do what you are told (by the Saigon government or any of its officers and beneficiaries), then you are VC (a communist). If you were declared VC, you were an outlaw. (Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 1990) So if someone unaware of this or disregarding this were to examine the National Police records of the era they would no doubt find innumerable “communists”, with no way of knowing if those in the files were communists in fact. Communists have not been able to attain universal victim status, even though the Nazis killed communists before they even thought of killing Jews.

    Yet we still have to consider the question: how did this universal Jewish victimhood become established as a dogma in the West? Naturally it is helpful to consider who is served by it. Clearly it is not only Jews who profit from this status. It has been a source of unending contention whether the benefits that accrue to the settler-colonial state are primary or incidental to the institution of Jewish victimhood. I would argue that Jewish victimhood is not even primarily a benefit enjoyed by the regime in Tel Aviv. Finkelstein has shown how it benefits the organized Jewish elite as a running extortion racket. However, as I have tried to show above, that extortion racket is just one operation in a web of activity driven by the 0.01%, those nameable and unnamed who presently own and operate the world’s drug, weapons, money-laundering, and primary resource cartels. However, more than that the concept of Jewish victimhood stands really for class victimhood. The ruling class itself, from the moment it adopted the Latin rite, has endeavoured to present itself as the victims for whom salvation is intended. Jesus did not die to save the poor. He died to save the rich. That is the literal reading of the Passion and it is the only one that makes sense. Given that the Vulgate is largely a forgery over the ages, it is no wonder that the central document upon which Christianity is supposedly based was prohibited to the masses of the faithful upon pain of death until the Reformation. (Another interpretation of the Reformation is beyond the scope of this discussion.) The Roman Church has devoted centuries of effort proving that poverty and damnation are the wages of sin and that the poor deserve their lot. Every attempt, including the last major effort in Latin American liberation theology, to change this dogma and practice has been viciously suppressed by the hierarchy. The first pontiff to retire rather than die in office (Joseph Ratzinger, a child of the Hitler Youth and the close cooperation between the Vatican and the NSDAP) was the leader of that most recent wave of purges.

    The portion of the world’s population with the most relative wealth to plunder is still concentrated in North America and Western Europe. They have long ceased to pay their tithes or even go to mass or prayers. The Latin Church and its semi-autonomous Protestant sisters are sustained mainly by the unaccounted wealth accumulated in the past or state subsidies. Although the current pontiff still enjoys the professional media attention and due respect among the faithful in all the poor and populous nations, there is no growth potential where there is still cash to be had. The short-lived Soviet Union and with it the Red threat also lost its salvific attraction. Only the professional killers and sadists were willing to drive through desert sands in search of Muslims for the sake of their souls. A return to the 11th century requires the kind of crusades that enriched the Church then. Quo vadis?

    The ruling elite has always been cutthroat and vicious. A major function of their charity is to pay for a better image or assuage opposition when it is impossible or inopportune to exterminate it. So we are constantly served performances that suggest that either there is no ruling elite with shared interests and purposes or that that elite is incapable of overcoming its internal conflicts, thus depriving it of the vast plenitude of power needed to rule us. In fact, the ruling elite constitutes a critical mass of individuals who are born and die but who also reproduce. They reproduce organically like other mammals. However, they also create structures capable of cultivating future members and preserving the class cohesion needed to dominate the rest of us who have no class cohesion, despite regular efforts to instil it. While tyrannicide has its obvious attractions, the hydra-like character of class power means that no sooner is a Rockefeller, Gates or Soros gone, either naturally or assisted, someone else grows into his place. Like the birth and death cycle to which we are all subject, the struggle to deal with the ruling class never ends. There is no salvific moment in which the heavens open to deliver a shower of love, happiness and justice. What class cohesion offers the members of the ruling class are simplifications. With few exceptions if they have to choose between us or one of their own, we will lose. And yet they are also biological individuals whose personal tastes and styles need to be satisfied. The stronger eat the weaker in their homes too.

    That means there are different goals for different members of the ruling class. They harmonize to the extent that class interests prevail. However, the impact of their actions is rarely uniform. The problem is generally solved by betting on both sides of any risk. Thus, the hedge fund is the most natural form for the retrograde process of neo-feudalism. When someone like Klaus Schwab repeats the dogma, “you will own nothing and be happy”, he is as ambiguous as a true oracle can be. The hedge fund “owns” nothing and therefore has no risks of loss, but controls all the essential cash flow and therefore can be happy. The rest of us own nothing because all forms of material title are to be converted to various types of lease or rental agreements where possession is merely a transitional status but payment a permanent obligation. Feudalism in the 11th century was not a popularly chosen societal form. It was the sanctification of theft and extortion, which the Roman pontiff tried to monopolize. It was sustained by the active policing of the feudal gangs led by barons and princes. It was justified by the ideological propaganda operations of the clergy in the Latin Church. Sometimes the priest/ missionary came first and then the armed brigands, sometimes the brigands came first. In the end the indigenous culture was absorbed or destroyed and the people subjugated. Taking their land and whatever religions they may have had were both necessary if the theft was to remain permanent.

    Since the defeat of the Soviet Union, after the decolonization process had been stopped dead in its tracks, the crusade to steal back everything that had been accumulated by ordinary people over the past two centuries began in earnest. There is no longer a cohesive ecclesiastical instrument and sufficient blind faith in traditional modes of belief. Ironically the traditional modes of belief have become a threat to those charged with organizing the restoration. Whether in the Orthodox Church or the conservative Latin congregations, the ruling class finds resistance built around preservation of family and old-fashioned morality. It is no wonder then that these traditional religious communities are under attack from the armed propaganda gangs of Wokism and transhumanism. These ideologies were developed from what could be called cultural reverse engineering.

    When the real social movements were decapitated, they were only partially destroyed. Instead, academically trained cadres were promoted to replace the dead or neutralized activists. They brought with them synthetic ideologies that were made by a kind of recombinant intellectual process, like gene editing. The basic liberation language was dismantled and the dangerous parts replaced with narcissistic code. Self-identification became an individual choice not the recognition of one’s consciousness in a community of real human beings sharing the same material and spiritual conditions. The identity itself becomes the consumable product. In order for this identity to be fully commodified it also had to “perform” like a commodity, i.e. subject to unlimited power of the market. Previously the dissatisfaction or fear induced by the propaganda apparatus was to be satisfied through purchase and consumption of goods and services. Since the body itself—the consumer—is that which is to be consumed a contradiction arises. This contradiction has to be expressed in some material threat or fear. Thus, Wokism achieves its insidious purpose by turning the “woke” person into an individual victim. The model for this chimeric victimhood is the universal Jewish victimhood fuelled by the Holocaust story machine. The total victim is threatened and persecuted by everything and by everyone who does not actively nurture the narcissism upon which this permanent immanent victimhood is based. That is the meaning of all this rhetoric about “safe environments”, “affirming care” and the hysterical chanting of whatever political slogans have been conceived to fuel the internal threat machine. One wears senseless face masks, accepts toxic injections, applauds the injuries to female athletes by male pugilists in skirts, and cheers institutional child abuse and medical mutilation as “affirming care”, while engaged in constant panic reactions to the latest bogus CO2 or pandemic scare. The woke person has established the right to be protected from unpleasant or dissenting utterances or experiences, especially if they could erode the carefully engineered edifice of narcissism. Liberty has been replaced by libertinism. Unwittingly – for most—they are adopting the archaic entertainments of the ruling class, offered as a sensuous reward for all the material well being they will surrender as a result of toxic substances or poisonous propaganda. The traditionalists are attacked for rejecting those poisons and because they support everything these new narcissists have been taught to despise. The woke are constantly threatened by the traditionalists who deprive them of their “safe environment”. On the other hand this gives them another opportunity to exercise victimhood.

    By now the social management strategy ought to be clear. Whereas the medieval crusades offered the poor salvation if they would take the cross and die to conquer the Holy Land, the Woke faith is based on salvation offered to those who take the cross and crucify themselves, surrendering everything to those who not only have taken the Holy Land but are taking everyone else’s land too.

    In order to place the present conflict, most visible in the radical expansion of the mass murder perpetrated by the settler-colonial regime in Palestine as I write, in cultural historical context, I have argued that it is entirely legitimate to deduce the aims of an action, like a war, from the consequences of that action. In fact, such a studied conclusion is the only type of assessment we can ever make since the past is irretrievable. The character of any conclusion is inseparable from the kind of questions that are asked and the actions contemplated depending on the response to those questions. There is a significant relationship between the organized, sustained mass murder by the Tel Aviv regime and wider social-political-economic aims. Naturally there are inconsistencies and deficits in the information, which, were, they resolved, might permit more precise prediction of what can be found in the near or long-term future.  Yet there is a preponderance of consistency between the war waged in Palestine and the aims of those supporting the war in Ukraine against Russia. This consistency can be found on the one hand by examining the facts. On the other hand it can be found by recognising the “overlapping directorates” at work.

    Were the war waged to create Greater Israel the project of a fanatical sect in Tel Aviv, it would be apparent that such mild measures as removing the offending persons to another place, dead or alive, might suffice at least to diffuse the situation. But there is more at stake. Even though Arthur Koestler, who was no enemy of the settler-colonial regime, has been challenged on many points, his The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), draws conclusions from the historical conversion of the Khazars (a people who inhabited the much of the area of today’s Eastern Ukraine) to Judaism. The Soviet era, Russian historian, geographer and ethnologist, Lev Gumilev called it “chimeric”.  By that he meant that a parasitical relationship. He argued that a fanatical Jewish sect, the Radhanites, essentially infiltrated the Khazar ruling class and converted them by decree to Rabbinical Judaism. This turned Khazaria into a “merchant octopus” which extended its commercial power both to the East and West. The power they enjoyed straddled the East-West land routes of international trade at the time. This empire collapsed in 965 after wars with Kieven Rus. If there was any diaspora it was not dispersal from the grounds of a mythical Solomon’s temple but the real dispersal of an empire in Central Eurasia (Guyénot, 2022, From Yahweh to Zion, 2018).

    When Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly that his regime was going to join with its partners to create some channel parallel to China’s new Silk Road and BRI, for which Iran had to be neutralized, could he have meant a restoration of the Khazar Empire and not just the expansion of the settler-colonial regime to the territories Kermit Roosevelt identified as the regime’s ambitions in 1948? In A Jewish State (1904), Theodor Herzl emphasized that Zionism aimed to create what in essence was a commercial empire not unlike Rhodes British South Africa Company (originally seeking to conquer from the Cape to Cairo), religion was the pretext but not the aim. (In fact, contrary to mass media depictions, the pious Jew has traditionally been viewed as a threat to the Zionist colonial project.) Could the man in Kiev who said once that he saw the Tel Aviv regime as a model for Ukraine have been uttering a vision intuitively or instructively underlying the verbosity between bomb explosions in occupied Palestine? Did he mean that Russians in the Donbass were “his Palestinians”? Tel Aviv officials were once routinely cited as telling Americans that the Palestinians are “our Indian problem”.

    If we imagine that the war aims are not those declared but quite different ones, then a cultural historical examination might offer another comprehensive interpretation. Namely, the class of people who really own important stuff, like the mass media, the oil channels, the money supply, are closely connected in every way. In a world that has seen the return of manufacturing and much of the world’s productive economy return to Asia, while the West has been de-industrialized and its population reduced to varying degrees of indebtedness and penury, why would not those owners, the great captains of finance capital, see their future power as the foot on the hoses that China and Russia would want between their productive economies and those countries where there is a demand for that output? Wouldn’t it be practical to be the troll at the bridge charging everyone to go across? Isn’t this kind of business something for specialists, like the one banks control? It should not be forgotten that while the outcome of the war with Russia remains uncertain, for many in the West forced to take one of the COVID injections it is their personal future that is uncertain.

    Whether this mass murder eliminates enough or all of the Palestinians the Tel Aviv regime has been trying to destroy for the past century, the flow of refugees of all sorts from this region has been uninterrupted since the US launched its first assault on Iraq in 1991. The secret recruitment of mercenary terrorists under cover of religious radicalism has also continued unchecked since Zbigniew Brzezinski conceived the terrorist war in Afghanistan at the end of the 1970s.  Thus, the IMO will be assured of a continuous flow of displaced persons. These displaced persons are the true “human shields” behind which organized crime and state terrorism are waged. The war against Russia or China, just as Orwell’s 1984 described is first and foremost a war against the civilian populations of the world. These they will transfer to wherever labour is needed at the expense of the indigenous populations where these refugees are injected. As the indigenous of the Ukraine, Middle East and other attractive zones for exploitation are evacuated or eliminated, the underlying land and resources are confiscated by those who have been funding the wars and the migration in the first place. As I have argued elsewhere, global cash flow is to be matched by globally managed human trafficking. These are realities. This business is being conducted in just this manner. Does it mean that the intent of the actions is to create this system of extraction flows? That is the wrong question. We cannot change intent. What we can change is action and the kinds of consequences agreed by the righteous to be inimical to the welfare of real human beings. It helps if we have a grasp of the enormous cultural historical context in which the assessments must be made and courses of response found.

    The same organized criminality that formed the financial and managerial base of the world’s biggest propaganda industry shares power with those who build the weapons of mass depopulation, i.e., the guns and pharmaceuticals sectors. Needless to say interlocking directorates and socialization through exclusive institutions from birth until bodily demise instill the shared values that lead Schwab to preach without the least embarrassment that the World (as property of the elite for whom he speaks) is threatened by the rest of us. When the prelates of the World Economic Forum preach that the “Planet” must be saved, what they really mean is that their world is a victim of popular persecution. By calling this feigned victimhood the threat to the Planet, the mass of ordinary inhabitants is implicated, in fact, vociferously accused, of destroying their world. Their answer to this threat is to destroy us. However, it is more efficient if we can be persuaded to destroy ourselves. So we are commanded to self-identify as threats to “the Planet”. Those who see the Planet as their property also take George Carlin seriously. “The Planet is not going anywhere, we are…” The Zionist war against Palestinians is the ostentatious crucifixion that exemplifies unambiguously the depth of viciousness with which the universal victims represented on Swiss ski slopes and spas wage class war. The evil of communism was used to deny genuine independence and self-government to millions in Africa, East Asia and Latin America. Now the evil of carbon dioxide, a gas essential for human life as well as plant life on Earth as a pretext for continuing to deny and obstruct human development in all those same countries. Their populations are excessive and can only be supplied with energy and food at the expense of “the Planet”—i.e. those victims represented by the annual councils in Davos (and the less publicized or secret meetings). Morse Peckham wrote, “Man does not live by bread alone, but mainly by platitudes.” Victimhood is a part of the rhetoric of power. It has to be repeated in every conceivable form as a means of controlling the range of mass behaviour. The ideology of victimhood does not veil the terrorism and mass murder in Palestine perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime. Instead it sanctifies it, converts it into a holy sacrifice. It is the logical extension of the pectoral cross worn by the Roman pontiff and other prelates who preached the original crusades against the inhabitants of the critical interface between the centre of the world economy and population and the real victims of Western tyranny in Africa.

    The Portuguese and Spanish were the first of the barbarian kingdoms that went to sea to circumvent the bottleneck of the Middle East and the land routes linking a sparsely populated peninsula of the Eurasian continent, impoverished and oppressed by its feudal lords, temporal and spiritual. The recovery of China and the core of human population have meant that the seas are no longer the only channels of communications among the peoples of the world. Captain Mahan’s (The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1890) doctrine is now seriously challenged by the BRI, which could easily link China to Africa as it once was before the Portuguese pirate fleets disrupted the Indian Ocean trade five centuries ago (Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, 1998). This strategic transformation cannot be blocked by direct confrontation; only by annihilation (atomic war) or perpetual war waged by the masters of espionage, covert action, and psychological warfare, in the service of the oligarchic cult of finance capital in the West and their vassals throughout the world. Armed propaganda is the tradition of the Church militant and its descendants in London, Brussels, and New York. The success of the COVID campaign in paralysing the world’s commerce demonstrates the power still held by that 0.01%. This war has only really begun.

    The post Economical Explanations: Reflection on the Aims of Past Wars and Wars to Come first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In late August, a Taiwanese YouTuber named Chang Shao-qun, who goes by “Han Guo Ren”, with more than half a million followers posted a video on YouTube of his tour of a large bazaar in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi, accompanied by two other Taiwanese online celebrities. 

    At around the video’s five-minute mark, Chang abruptly asks one of his guests: “First time in the bazaar? See any ‘extermination’ going on?” 

    Chang’s remark was a sarcastic reference to concerns of some Western governments and international organizations about genocide in Xinjiang, home to many members of the Uyghur Muslim community and other ethnic minorities. 

    The Chinese government has been accused of ethnic genocide there, involving mass detentions, forced labor, and cultural suppression. Beijing denies the accusations, framing its actions as counter-terrorism efforts.

    Chang is not alone in promoting the message that Xinjiang is a safe place to travel with no abuses to be seen.

    AFCL found several other Taiwanese YouTubers who made trips to Xinjiang to promote a message that Xinjiang was a safe place to travel or there were “no concentration camps” there because they didn’t see them.

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    Several Taiwanese YouTubers posted videos walking through Xinjiang. (Graphic/AFCL)

    Who paid for their trips?

    Some of the videos posted by Taiwanese YouTubers sparked online debate among Chinese-speaking users, with many questioning whether the content creators were paid by the Chinese government. Some accused the creators of being a mouthpiece for the state, while others defended the content as independent and genuine.

    In one of the videos, a young man mentioned spending about 66,000 Taiwanese dollars (US$2,094) to join a tour of Xinjiang, but AFCL has not been able to independently verify whether the YouTubers’ trips were self-funded or sponsored by the Chinese government. 

    As of press time, none of the YouTubers had responded to inquiries on  their trips.

    However, AFCL found that the Chinese government has used the  comments and content from those Taiwanese YouTubers to promote its political narratives about Xinjiang and Taiwan on social media and in reports published by state media, as seen here.

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    Both Taiwanese and Chinese media outlets posted coverage supporting the YouTubers’ comments  (Screenshots/CTI YouTube and China Daily’s official X account)

    “Although the [video’s] production is rough and its logic weak, it still gives an air of ‘authenticity’ that attracts many young viewers,” said Su Chiao-ning, an associate professor of journalism at Oakland University, after watching one of the videos. 

    “The videos give the impression that Chinese policies in Xinjiang are doing great,” Su told AFCL, adding that this is meant to make Taiwanese less wary of China, in line with Beijing’s goal of unifying Taiwan with mainland China.

    The overarching goal of Chinese propaganda is to uphold the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party in the face of international criticism, Su said. 

    Narratives about Xinjiang in particular were aimed at portraying it in a positive light to deflect international criticism and accusations of rights abuses, she said.

    China has been accused of cultivating foreign influencers who promote the Communist Party line and counter global narratives.

    A Canberra-based think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute said China had “cultivated” a large pool of foreign influencers and content creators who push the Chinese government’s online propaganda and sell the China dream.

    Beijing has set up multilingual influencer incubator studios, tapped into a  network of international students at Chinese universities, and created competitions among ambitious creators to push the pro- party-state’s narrative and combat global perception of China, the think tank added. 

    No concentration camps?

    A claim made by one of the YouTubers that there are no concentration camps in Xinjiang because he or she didn’t see them is misleading. 

    Evidence and testimonials strongly suggest the existence of concentration camps in Xinjiang, where Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are detained. 

    Former detainees have reported being subjected to forced labor, indoctrination, and severe human rights abuses, including torture. 

    Satellite imagery, leaked government documents, and investigative reports have also provided further proof of these camps, which Beijing describes as “vocational training centers” but are widely seen as part of a broader campaign to suppress and control the Uyghur population.

    ‘Safe’ for travel?

    The claim that Xinjiang is a safe place to travel is also misleading, at least for Taiwanese people. 

    Taiwan raised its travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to the second-highest orange alert in June, advising its citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to those regions due to increasing safety concerns. 

    This came after a set of newly issued guidelines by China, which allows individuals advocating for Taiwanese independence to be sentenced to life imprisonment or even death.

    Taiwan maintains that it is a sovereign state with its own government and democratic system, though it stops short of formally declaring independence to avoid escalating tensions with China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. 

    Figures compiled by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and several other non-government groups showed that 857 Taiwan nationals have been “forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily arrested” in China over the past 10 years. 

    3 (8).png
    Screenshot from one of the vloggers’ trips to Urumqi. (Screenshot/YouTube)

    Uygher language 

    One Taiwanese YouTuber claimed that there was no suppression of the Uyghur language in Xinjiang, citing the fact that the names of Urumqi metro stations were written in both Chinese and Uyghur.

    Chinese law stipulates that signs at public facilities in autonomous regions across China such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia must be written in both Chinese and the local minority language. 

    However, it is flawed reasoning to use this as evidence that the Chinese government is not suppressing the Uyghur language, as there have been clear signs that such suppression is taking place. For instance, in 2017, Radio Free Asia reported that Xinjiang’s Department of Education instructed schools across the region to stop using supplementary teaching materials in Uyghur and Kazakh.

    Mosques

    Some YouTubers claimed to have seen many mosques near the Urumqi metro, using this as evidence to argue that there had been no destruction of religious sites in the region.

    However, they failed to provide enough evidence, such as visual evidence, to back their claim. 

    Multiple media reports have highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on Islam, including a 2023 Financial Times investigation that revealed more than 1,700 mosques had been torn down or “sinicized” between 2018 and 2023. This process involved modifying visible Islamic elements and replacing them with Chinese-style architecture.

    These actions align with an RFA report indicating that, during his second visit to Xinjiang in August 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed officials to “promote the Sinicization of Islam” and “effectively control various illegal religious activities.”

    Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Rita Cheng for Asia Fact Check Lab.

  • Justin Trudeau justified the brutal killing of the leader of a Lebanese political party on the grounds Canada lists his organization as “terrorist”.

    On Friday Israel leveled six large apartment buildings in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut with some 80 bombs weighing 2,000 to 4,000 pounds each. Dropped by US-made F-15 fighter jets, the US-made BLU-109 “bunker-busters” incinerated an unknown number.

    In response to this act of state terror Trudeau posted, “Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed. He was the leader of a terrorist organization that attacked and killed innocent civilians, causing immense suffering across the region.”

    When Israel’s terror campaign in Lebanon started in earnest ten days ago former ambassador to Norway and Communications Security Establishment Director General, Intelligence Operations Artur Wilczynski justified terrorizing Lebanese on the grounds of targeting “a terror group.” After Israel injured thousands by blowing up 3,000 pagers across Lebanon the University of Ottawa’s Special Advisor on Antisemitism posted that the “targeting of Hezbollah operatives was brilliant. t struck a major blow against a terror group.”

    But Hezbollah isn’t classified as a “terrorist” organization by the United Nations or most countries in the world. Nor was an organization that’s long been represented in Lebanon’s parliament defined as a “terrorist” organization by Ottawa for the first half of its existence. In fact, Prime Minister Jean Chretien met Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrallah in Beirut in October 2002.

    In “Selectively Terrified” Mary Foster detailed “how Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada”. Foster wrote that “pressure to list Hezbollah came from the Canadian Alliance Party (a precursor to today’s Conservative Party), senior Liberal politicians Irwin Cotler and Art Eggleton, B’nai Brith (a Jewish human rights organization, staunchly pro-Israel in orientation), and the Canadian Jewish Congress.” The campaign was greatly boosted by fabricated quotes in the National Post claiming Nasrallah encouraged suicide bombing during a speech at a Beirut rally.

    If Hezbollah is a terrorist organization what is the Israeli military or government? Maybe the IOF and Netanyahu’s Likud party could be the first entries on a new Canadian genocidaires list!

    Israel supporters have long argued that that country has the right to terrorize Palestinians because Ottawa (usually at the lobby’s behest) listed some organization with limited means a “terrorist” group. Before Hamas’ October 7 attack Canada’s apartheid lobby argued Israel could terrorize 2.2 million Palestinians living in the open-air Gaza prison because Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad is listed a terrorist group in Canada.

    Over 10 percent of Canada’s terrorist list is made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population. Representing much of Palestinian political life, eight of the oppressed nation’s organizations are listed, ranging from the left secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the elected Hamas ‘government’ in Gaza.

    A dozen years after the terror list was established the first ever Canadian-based group was added. In 2014 the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) was designated a terrorist organization for engaging in the ghastly act of supporting orphans and a hospital in the Gaza Strip through official (Hamas-controlled) channels.

    In recent months the genocide lobby has pushed to add the anti-imperialist group Samidoun to Canada’s terror enabling list. After its international branch “expressed our deepest mourning and our highest salutes” to Nasrallah upon his assassination, Holocaust Housefather opined that “Samidoun needs to be listed as a terrorist organization in Canada and around the world.” Liberal MP and Special Advisor on Jewish Community Relations and Antisemitism, Anthony Housefather added, “it is one of my priorities to get this done and by expressing how much they loved a terrorist leader who caused civilian deaths in Israel and around the world they are proving my point.”

    While Palestinian groups are criminalized, Canada has close ties to the main generator of terror and killing of civilians in historic Palestine. Current Israeli government officials openly boast about their terror as necessary to teach Palestinians a lesson. Yet Canada has been selling weapons to the Israeli military and the two countries’ armed forces work together on various fronts. Additionally, Canadian officials turn a blind eye to illegal recruitment for the IOF while the Canada Revenue Agency takes a soft approach to registered charities that defy its rules by financially assisting the Israeli military.

    Measured by the number maimed or killed, the Israeli army is responsible for far more violence than any Palestinian or Lebanese group (and they are doing so on behalf of a European colonial project). Yet the Israeli military is not a listed terrorist organization.

    Canada’s terrorist list highlights the stark double standard in Ottawa’s treatment of the colonized and colonizer. In fact, events over the past year clearly illustrate how this list enables Israel to terrorize Palestinians and Lebanese. Once again, shame on us.

    The post Time to Face Truth: Canada’s Terrorist List Enables Terrorism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UK TV Producer Collaborated In Chinese Regime Deception On Tibet

    Original Image China Daily – Info Additions @tibettruth

    The Chinese regime invests a lot of effort and resources on its propaganda and disinformation campaigns, especially in regard to Tibet!It wants you to believe that Tibetans are happy and prosperous; that as a consequence of China, life in Tibet is a marvel of economic growth, its people contented and culture flourishing.

    However the world is very aware of China’s record in Tibet, the denial of basic freedoms, human rights violations, mass-surveillance and eradication of Tibetan culture. As a consequence there’s understandable cynicism regarding claims made by the Chinese authorities.

    This is why China places vital importance on the concept of the ‘independent’ observer, a non-Chinese visitor to endorse, affirm and bear witness that all is well in Tibet and its people. In its latest deception a number of Gen Z guests were invited by various Chinese Embassies to take part in a visit to Lhasa and Nyingtri, in U-Tsang and Kongpo regions respectively.

    The four day trip, which took place September 24 to 27, was a staged and cynical illusion which involved a visit to an empty Potala Palace, attendance at an opera; the story of which is a Chinese political re-write of Tibetan history and a trip to a local school. No doubt the children were all super happy to inform their guests what a splendid ‘education’ they were receiving!

    Among those who took part in this clear disinformation exercise was Ms Mimi Templar-Gay an English television producer and director. She is reported, by no less than the China Daily, as regarding the trip as ‘amazing’.

    What ‘s truly is extraordinary however is that people can be so gullible, or wish to actively collaborate in a clear propaganda exercise, designed to conceal the oppression and suffering of Tibetans!

    This post was originally published on Digital Activism In Support Of Tibetan Independence.

  • North Koreans are growing weary of being bombarded by “Friendly Father,” an upbeat propaganda song praising leader Kim Jong Un that has been blanketing the country for months now, sources in the country tell Radio Free Asia.

    People are forced to sing it before every public event and a loudspeaker car drives through cities blaring it, said a resident of Ryanggang province in the north on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

    “He is holding his 10 million children in his arms and taking care of us with all his heart,” go the lyrics.

    “The love you give me is like the sea. The trust you give me is like the sky,” says verse two. “You are always by our side, and make all our wishes come true.”

    The Ryanggang resident said that he has heard the song every day since it was introduced in April, except for a three-day break in early May due to the death of a high-ranking official. 

    “Every factory, company, school, work unit, and neighborhood-watch unit in the province has both children and adults sing this song whenever the opportunity arises.” he said.

    Music video

    The government created a high-quality music video for the song depicting people from all walks of life enthusiastically singing along to it.

    Friendly Father was inspired by an earlier propaganda song called “Friendly Name” that sung the praises of Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il. The melody is different but many of the lyrics in “Friendly Father” are callbacks to the earlier song, which most North Koreans know by heart.

    20240920-NORTH-KOREA-PROPAGANDA-SONG-002.jpg
    North Korean students sing in music class at the Pyongyang Orphans’ Secondary School in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sept. 1, 2016. (Jon Chol Jin/AP)

    The order to promote the song comes from the Central Party of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, the Ryanggang resident said.

    It’s gotten to the point where people actively avoid places where the song is played publicly if they can help it, he said.

    Deserted park

    For example, in the city of Hyesan, on the border with China, there is a park where retired people gather to spend their free time by talking, singing, dancing, playing games or exercising. 

    But when the park turned off their music and began playing “Friendly Father” over the park’s public address system, the senior citizens went home, according to the resident.

    “The manager forced them to stop dancing to a folk song but to dance in praise of the marshal instead,” he said, referring to Kim by his military rank. 


    RELATED RFA CONTENT

    RFA Insider podcast Episode 6 (Timecode 13:50)

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    North Korea bans more than 100 patriotic songs that refer to reunification


    “The elderly people stopped dancing and began to return home. The song … rang out in the empty park where everyone had left one by one … until it was deserted.”

    The park, which used to teem with old folks from sunrise to sunset, is now empty almost every day, he said.

    Respect thy elder

    Another problem with the song stems from Korea’s Confucian culture. 

    Often complete strangers are expected to grant older people a certain amount of respect simply because they are older, with the promise that they will receive the same respect from the young when they reach the same age.

    However, “people in their 70s and 80s are being forced to call Kim Jong Un, who is only in his 40s and is about the same age as their sons, their ‘friendly father,’” the resident said.

    20240920-NORTH-KOREA-PROPAGANDA-SONG-003.jpg
    North Koreans sing at a picnic gathering at a park in Pyongyang, April 18, 2012, a national holiday celebrating the birthday period of the late leader Kim Il Sung.  (Vincent Yu/AP)

    The government’s push of “Friendly Father” is even more aggressive than its efforts to promote songs from the reigns of Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA who also asked not to be identified.

    “Back then, their songs were sometimes played on broadcasting cars, but they did not make people sing at the start of every learning session or lecture session, nor was it forced upon the elderly, as they are doing right now,” he said.

    People scoff at the notion that Kim Jong Un could be their “friendly father,” because they do not trust his leadership abilities, the second resident said.

    “They have no hope in their leader, but they are forced to familiarize their eyes, ears, and mouths with the image of him as their friendly father through the song,” he said.

    It seems that the propaganda efforts are getting bigger and louder as people’s dissatisfaction with society increases, he said.

    Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By mediating between our minds and social reality, the all-encompassing communications media processes such raw social facts into more digestible morsels of factoids, benighted biases, ignorant assumptions, distorted opinions, and alluring pseudo-pleasures.

    But imagine the following scenario: all interactive media break down.  Silence–and a blank, darkened screen.  No more conditioning and intermittent reinforcement and puppeteering–which string us along the information-glutted blind alley with its deafening roar of talktalktalk.

    Cognitive dissonance: one sits alone, or perhaps fetishistically fondles one’s dead smartphone, Aladdin-like.  Panic: what is one to think?  But then, almost imperceptibly… one’s mind enters a state of relaxation, even repose.  Freed from the constant stream of intrusions and distractions, one has time to reflect:

    “What exactly have I been doing–and why?  And where am I going with all this?

    What are the possible negative (unintended) outcomes of all this unremitting effort?

    Will this undeviating path turn into a blind alley–and lead to new problems?  And who decided on the impositions which structure my life?”

    Suddenly liberated from the pseudo-activity of constant re-activity (“messages,” “tweets,” “alerts”), one feels adrift.  Adrift and floating freely, into the rediscovered realm of self-awareness and conscientious reflection.  Coming up for air, so to speak, one may feel the rush of new insights and creative alternatives.  One suddenly recalls: didn’t Socrates himself remind us that “the unexamined life is not worth living”?

    Each individual, even in an emerging totalitarian technocracy, retains a secret treasure: the capacity for inner enlightenment (and the resolve to retain an optimal degree of autonomous self-direction).  Deep in thought, one may resemble Rodin’s brooding sculpture of The Thinker (who is not smiling).

    Drastic measures may be necessary.  Despite the weight of insidious habituation–which over time has normalized a world of nuclear arsenals and melting ice caps–one may fiercely resist the all-encompassing impositions which are falsely presented as desirable choices.  Modern medicine: drugs, drugs, and more drugs.  The “smartphone”: a brazen invasion of one’s privacy, volition–and dignity.  “Democratic” elections: lies, lies, and more lies.  The trivialization of one’s social encounters: excessive chatter and pointless garrulity.  The binary fallacy of two “genders”: rather, simply two sexes with an overwhelmingly shared set of (human) emotional and behavioral predispositions.  A lifelong occupation or “career”: for what, exactly?  The “necessity” of a relationship: personal fulfillment or constant adjustment to the expectations of another?

    It may appear that I am advocating a solipsistic withdrawal from socio-political engagement and  activism.  But, paradoxically, a revolution in values begins in the free thought of each individual.  And it is only in those precious periods of solitude that the individual feels free to transcend what Karl Marx, solitary thinker par excellence, termed the socially prevailing false consciousness.

    Moreover, given the constants of human needs and aspirations, individuals who regain such contemplative awareness are likely to realize the same new values and alternate solutions which can revitalize communal cooperation.  The first step, anticipated by Thoreau and Gandhi, is negative revolt: non-cooperation, non-participation, and, to a large degree, “not-doing(Lao-Tze).  Or, in contrast to the frenzied, pointless activity all around us: “Don’t just do something, sit there.”

    The post Contemplation: Which Values, What Actions? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bangkok, September 10, 2024—A Hanoi court sentenced journalist Nguyen Vu Binh to seven years in prison on Tuesday on charges of propaganda against the state.

    Binh was convicted in connection to comments he made in videos on political, economic, and social topics posted on YouTube channel TNT Media Live in January and March 2022. The channel is owned by U.S.-based broadcasting outlet Tieng Nuoc Toi, or “My Country’s Language.”

    “Journalist Nguyen Vu Binh was arrested and sentenced to seven years for airing independent views, which Vietnamese authorities continue to treat as a criminal offense,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Binh should be released now, along with all the other journalists wrongfully held behind bars in Vietnam.”

    Since 2015, Binh has written regularly for U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service about corruption, land rights, police abuse, the environment, and human rights. Binh’s last article before his arrest criticized the government’s persistent crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

    Binh is a two-time recipient of Human Rights Watch’s Hellman-Hammett Award given to politically persecuted writers and has been in pre-trial detention since he was arrested at his home in the capital, Hanoi, in February.

    CPJ’s email to Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security about Binh’s conviction did not immediately receive a response. 

    Vietnam is the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 19 reporters behind bars on December 1, 2023, at the time of CPJ’s latest prison census


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

    In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

    In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

    And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

    Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

    On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

    In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

    Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

    By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

    This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

    The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

    Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’

    This is the very definition of technofascism.

    Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

    The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

    Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

    As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

    Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

    The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

    Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

    In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

    Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

    This is how it starts.

    First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”

    Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.

    By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

    Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

    Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

    Watch and learn.

    We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

    Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

    Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

    Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

    If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.

    The post Technofascism: The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud heard the Kolkata R G Kar rape and murder case on August 22, 2024. This was the second hearing of the matter in the apex court. During the hearing, several questions were raised about the chronology of events on August 9, when the body of the junior doctor was discovered in the third-floor seminar room of the state-run hospital.

    In this context, the editor-in-chief of Right-wing propaganda website, OpIndia, Nupur J Sharma claimed in a tweet that the Supreme Court said that the crime scene at the R G Kar hospital had been altered.

    The tweet has been viewed close to 2.5 Lakh times and retweeted over 7,200 times.

    Several X (formerly Twitter) users amplified the claim. Among them are handles such as Keh Ke Peheno
    (@coolfunnytshirt), 𝑫𝒓. 𝑲 ✨ (@smilesalotlady_),Ravi Kukreja (@RaviKuk15405190),Bharat Suthar (@bharat_sut78304), AG (@akg7091), कृष्णा (मोदी अंध भक्त) (@MyindianKrishna), 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚 भारतीय 🇮🇳🤝🇮🇱 (@NarendraVictory), Pradeep Jakhar (@PradeepkJakhar) and others.

    Click to view slideshow.

     

    Most of the above tweets, including the one by Nupur J Sharma, were shared in response to a tweet by Kolkata police from August 15, in which they asserted that the vandalism on the previous night had not impacted the seminar room.

    Fact Check

    To verify the claim, we looked at the X timeline of Live Law and Bar and Bench. Both these legal-reporting handles live-tweeted the proceedings from the Supreme Court.

    Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) reported at 11:49 am on August 22 that the CBI counsel, Tushar Mehta, the solicitor general of India (SG), said they did not possess any medical examination report of the accused in the case. He added that they had entered the investigation on the fifth day and everything was altered by then.

    The body of the junior doctor was found on August 9. The Calcutta high court handed over the investigation to the central agency on August 13. The CBI took over on August 14.

    Below is the Live Law tweet:

    The same was live-tweeted by Bar and Bench exactly at the same time (11:49 am).

    The Bar and Bench also published a full report of the Court proceedings. The relevant part is highlighted below.

    The proceedings were also live telecast. We procured the video of the court proceeding from the X handle of media outlet Mirror Now (@MirrorNow), where we located the conversation:

    0.20-seconds onward in the above video, we can hear the SG saying, “My lord, we entered on the fifth day.. Whatever was collected by the local police, my lord was given to us, and our investigation starts.. And that is itself a challenge by itself.. The scene of offence is altered…” (sic)

    We went through the entire proceedings of August 22 but we could not find the CJI or the other members of the Bench stating that the crime scene had been altered.

    All major newspapers carried the comments by the CBI counsel on their August 23 editions. Below are a few examples:

    Click to view slideshow.

    None of them mentioned the court having made the observation.

    Therefore, the claim by OpIndia editor Nupur J Sharma and the others is false. The Supreme Court did not state the crime scene was altered. It was a claim made by CBI counsel Tushar Mehta, the solicitor general of India.

    Interestingly, OpIndia itself published a report on the SC hearing where the headline mentioned that the CBI said in court that the crime scene had been altered.

    Ankita Mahalanobish is an intern at Alt News.

    The post Supreme Court did not say R G Kar crime scene was altered; false claim by editor of propaganda outlet appeared first on Alt News.


    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Ankita Mahalanobish.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

    Our dying republic.

    We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

    In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

    For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

    In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

    We’re in trouble, folks.

    This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

    Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

    Freedom no longer means what it once did.

    This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

    Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

    My friends, we’re being played for fools.

    On paper, we may be technically free.

    In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

    We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

    Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

    With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

    As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

    Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

    In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

    Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

    The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

    This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

    That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

    We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

    By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

    If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

    So, what’s the answer?

    For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

    Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

    Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

    You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

    You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

    So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

    The post The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A total demolition of the previous forms of existence is underway: how one comes into the world, biological sex, education, relationships, the family, even the diet that is about to become synthetic.

    — Silvia Guerini, radical ecologist, in From the ‘Neutral’ Body to the Posthuman Cyborg: A Critique of Gender Ideology (2023)

    We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world. [1]

    The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and big financial institutions, like BlackRock and Vanguard, are also involved, whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland,  pushing biosynthetic (fake) food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating and financing the aims of the mega agri-food corporations. [2]

    The billionaire interests behind this try to portray their techno-solutionism as some kind of humanitarian endeavour: saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, ‘helping farmers’ or ‘feeding the world’. But what it really amounts to is repackaging and greenwashing the dispossessive strategies of imperialism.

    It involves a shift towards a ‘one world agriculture’ under the control of agritech and the data giants, which is to be based on genetically engineered seeds, laboratory created products that resemble food, ‘precision’ and ‘data-driven’ agriculture and farming without farmers, with the entire agrifood chain, from field (or lab) to retail, being governed by monopolistic e-commerce platforms determined by artificial intelligence systems and algorithms.

    Those who are pushing this agenda have a vision not only for farmers but also for humanity in general.

    The elites through their military-digital-financial (Pentagon/Silicon Valley/Big Finance) complex want to use their technologies to reshape the world and redefine what it means to be human. They regard humans, their cultures and their practices, like nature itself, as a problem and deficient.

    Farmers are to be displaced and replaced with drones, machines and cloud-based computing. Food is to be redefined and people are to be fed synthetic, genetically engineered products. Cultures are to be eradicated, and humanity is to be fully urbanised, subservient and disconnected from the natural world.

    What it means to be human is to be radically transformed. But what has it meant to be human until now or at least prior to the (relatively recent) Industrial Revolution and associated mass urbanisation?

    To answer this question, we need to discuss our connection to nature and what most of humanity was involved in prior to industrialisation — cultivating food.

    Many of the ancient rituals and celebrations of our forebears were built around stories, myths and rituals that helped them come to terms with some of the most fundamental issues of existence, from death to rebirth and fertility. These culturally embedded beliefs and practices served to sanctify their practical relationship with nature and its role in sustaining human life.

    As agriculture became key to human survival, the planting and harvesting of crops and other seasonal activities associated with food production were central to these customs.

    Humans celebrated nature and the life it gave birth to. Ancient beliefs and rituals were imbued with hope and renewal and people had a necessary and immediate relationship with the sun, seeds, animals, wind, fire, soil and rain and the changing seasons that nourished and brought life. Our cultural and social relationships with agrarian production and associated deities had a sound practical base.

    People’s lives have been tied to planting, harvesting, seeds, soil and the seasons for thousands of years.

    Silvia Guerini, whose quote introduces this article, notes the importance of deep-rooted relationships and the rituals that re-affirm them. She says that through rituals a community recognises itself and its place in the world. They create the spirit of a rooted community by contributing to rooting and making a single existence endure in a time, in a territory, in a community.

    Professor Robert W Nicholls explains that the cults of Woden and Thor were superimposed on far older and better-rooted beliefs related to the sun and the earth, the crops and the animals and the rotation of the seasons between the light and warmth of summer and the cold and dark of winter.

    Humanity’s relationship with farming and food and our connections to land, nature and community has for millennia defined what it means to be human.

    Take India, for example. Environmental scientist Viva Kermani says that Hinduism is the world’s largest nature-based religion that:

    … recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. It views the earth as our Mother and hence advocates that it should not be exploited. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse and the exploitation of the earth and its resources.

    Kermani notes that ancient scriptures instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered. She adds that this understanding of, and reverence towards, the environment is common to all Indic religious and spiritual systems: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

    According to Kermani, the Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes.

    She notes that the Vrikshayurveda, an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees, contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

    Like Nicholls, Kermani provides insight into some of the profound cultural, philosophical and practical aspects of humanity’s connection to nature and food production.

    This connection resonates with agrarianism, a philosophy based on cooperative labour and fellowship, which stands in stark contrast to the values and impacts of urban life, capitalism and technology that are seen as detrimental to independence and dignity. Agrarianism, too, emphasises a spiritual dimension as well as the value of rural society, small farms, widespread property ownership and political decentralisation.

    The prominent proponent of agrarianism Wedell Berry says:

    The revolution which began with machines and chemicals now continues with automation, computers and biotechnology.

    For Berry, agrarianism is not a sentimental longing for a time past. Colonial attitudes, domestic, foreign and now global, have resisted true agrarianism almost from the beginning — there has never been fully sustainable, stable, locally adapted, land-based economies.

    However, Berry provides many examples of small (and larger) farms that have similar output as industrial agriculture with one third of the energy.

    In his poem ‘A Spiritual Journey’, Berry writes the following:

    And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
    no matter how long,
    but only by a spiritual journey,
    a journey of one inch,
    very arduous and humbling and joyful,
    by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
    and learn to be at home.

    But in the cold, centralised, technocratic dystopia that is planned, humanity’s spiritual connection to the countryside, food and agrarian production are to be cast into the dustbin of history.

    Silvia Guerini says [3]:

    The past becomes something to be erased in order to break the thread that binds us to a history, to a tradition, to a belonging, for the transition towards a new uprooted humanity, without past, without memory… a new humanity dehumanised in its essence, totally in the hands of the manipulators of reality and truth.

    This dehumanised humanity severed from the past is part of the wider agenda of transhumanism. For instance, we are not just seeing a push towards a world without farmers and everything that has connected us to the soil but, according to Guerini, also a world without mothers.

    She argues that those behind test-tube babies and surrogate motherhood now have their sights on genetic engineering and artificial wombs, which would cut women out of the reproductive process. Guerini predicts that artificial wombs could eventually be demanded, or rather marketed, as a right for everyone, including transgender people. It is interesting that the language around pregnancy is already contested with the omission of ‘women’ from statements like ‘persons who can get pregnant’.

    Of course, there has long been a blurring of lines between biotechnology, eugenics and genetic engineering. Genetically engineered crops, gene drives and gene editing are now a reality, but the ultimate goal is marrying artificial intelligence, bionanotechnology and genetic engineering to produce the one-world transhuman.

    This is being pushed by powerful interests, who, according to Guerini, are using a rainbow, transgenic left and LGBTQ+ organisations to promote a new synthetic identity and claim to new rights. She says this is an attack on life, on nature, on “what is born, as opposed to artificial” and adds that all ties to the real, natural world must be severed.

    It is interesting that in its report Future of Food, the UK supermarket giant Sainsburys celebrates a future where we are microchipped and tracked and neural laces have the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms that could work out exactly what food (delivered by drone) we need to support us at a particular time in our life. All sold as ‘personal optimisation’.

    Moreover, it is likely, according to the report, that we will be getting key nutrients through implants. Part of these nutrients will come in the form of lab-grown food and insects.

    A neural lace is an ultra-thin mesh that can be implanted in the skull, forming a collection of electrodes capable of monitoring brain function. It creates an interface between the brain and the machine.

    Sainsburys does a pretty good job of trying to promote a dystopian future where AI has taken your job, but, according to the report, you have lots of time to celebrate the wonderful, warped world of ‘food culture’ created by the supermarket and your digital overlords.

    Technofeudalism meets transhumanism — all for your convenience, of course.

    But none of this will happen overnight. And whether the technology will deliver remains to be seen. Those who are promoting this brave new world might have overplayed their hand but will spend the following decades trying to drive their vision forward.

    But arrogance is their Achilles heel.

    There is still time to educate, to organise, to resist and to agitate against this hubris, not least by challenging the industrial food giants and the system that sustains them and by advocating for and creating grass-root food movements and local economies that strengthen food sovereignty.

    NOTES:

    [1] See the author’s open-access e-book Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order here (Academia.edu), here (heyzine.com) or here (Centre for Research on Globalization)

    [2] See the author’s open-access e-book Sickening Profits: The Global Food System’s Poisoned Food and Toxic Wealth here (Academia.edu) , here (heyzine.com) or here (Centre for Research on Globalization)

    [3] A debt of gratitude is owed to Paul Cudenec and his article Truth, reality, tradition and freedom: our resistance to the great uprooting on the Winter Oak website, which provides quotes from and insight into the work of Silvia Guerini.

    The post From Agrarianism to Transhumanism: The Long March to Dystopia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Updated Aug. 15, 2024, 03:36 a.m. ET.

    A court in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi found activist Nguyen Chi Tuyen guilty of “propaganda against the state” on Thursday and jailed him for five years, with no probation, on charges that carry a maximum sentence of 12 years. The judge took just over five hours to hand down the verdict.

    Hanoi police arrested the 50-year-old on Feb. 29 this year. 

    Tuyen is a prominent member of the No-U movement, which protests against China’s so-called nine-dash line, which it uses on its maps to demarcate the territory it claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam also claims some of the territory.

    He was prosecuted under Article 117 of the criminal code, which prohibits “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents and items with fabricated content, causing confusion among the people” and “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents and items causing psychological warfare.”

    “Although my client was given the lowest sentence in the penalty range, I, as well as the two other lawyers, have concluded and presented evidence proving that Nguyen Chi Tuyen is completely innocent, and the sentence imposed on him is inappropriate,” said a member of Tuyen’s defense team, who didn’t want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

    The lawyer said that his client will consider appealing the verdict in the next two weeks.

    Just before the trial international pressure group Human Rights Watch had called for his immediate release.

    “Vietnam’s authorities have targeted Nguyen Chi Tuyen for expressing views they don’t like,” said HRW associate Asia director Patricia Gossman. “The government should stop jailing peaceful critics, repeal its draconian penal laws, and end the systematic violation of basic rights.”

    The New York-based group pointed out that the trial came shortly after former police chief To Lam was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the country’s top job.

    While Lam was minister of public security, police arrested at least 269 people for exercising their basic civil and political rights, the group said.

    “The Vietnamese government will remain mired in oppression so long as it continues to lock up dissidents like Nguyen Chi Tuyen who dare to speak their minds,” Gossman said. “Vietnam’s international donors and trade partners shouldn’t have any illusions when dealing with this rights-abusing government.”

    Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, said Vietnam’s courts hand down stiff sentences to people who dare to speak the truth because leaders see them as a threat to their power.

    “In a politically motivated case like this, there will be no justice, but rather only tears and anger as yet another principled citizen is imprisoned for exercising his rights,” he told RFA Vietnamese.

    “An Chi is widely respected among the people of Vietnam, and nothing that the government and the party does to him will diminish that. 

    “The Vietnamese people recognize persons with moral principles and an ethical backbone who act for the interests of all the people. That’s why the ruling Communist Party is attacking him with these bogus charges because they know they cannot compete with him in terms of virtue.”

    After quitting his publishing job in August 2018, Tuyen created a YouTube channel to share his views on Vietnamese economics, politics and society.

    He was prosecuted for two videos posted in 2021. In the first he talked about a US$200 million donation by VietJet Air chairwoman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao to the U.K.’s Oxford University.

    In the second, he commented on the government’s “blazing furnace” crackdown on corruption, saying that having multiple political parties in Vietnam would limit graft.

    One of Tuyen’s lawyers told RFA his client did not plead guilty, instead asserting that he was only exercising the right to freedom of expression as stated in the Vietnamese Constitution as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Vietnam is a member state.

    The legal team asked the court to summon experts from the Hanoi Department of Information and Communications to question them about their interpretation of the two videos. However, the lawyer said the unnamed experts obtained written permission to be absent.

    Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

    Updated to add comment from one of Tuyen’s lawyers.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

    Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

    The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

    At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

    Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

    As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

    Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

    As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

    Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

    But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

    Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

    The post Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • A guest on Judging Freedom, Dr Gilbert Doctorow, took a contrarian stance to Scott Ritter’s journalism work on Russia, which seemingly aligns Doctorow’s stance with the official government stance.

    Doctorow accused Ritter (starting about 21:30) of stomping across redlines that any person familiar with Russia should have been aware of. Doctorow didn’t specifically state what any of these redlines might be.

    He also accused Ritter of violating FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), albeit he conceded that was not for him to judge.

    Says Doctorow,

    My concern is [that] two generations of Americans have not understood the Cold War and how you behave in circumstances when you are backing the cause or at least sympathetic to the cause or even understanding the cause of an [US] adversary. How do you avoid becoming Tokyo Rose [as English-speaking female radio propagandists for Japan were called]?

    In other words, Doctorow is accusing Ritter of being a (perhaps unwitting) propagandist for Russia as well as not knowing how to behave in certain circumstances. In other words, Doctorow (who has his academic credentials highlighted as “Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.”) comes across as questioning the intellectual rigor of Ritter.

    An additional redline, according to Doctorow,

    And, you do not accept payments of any kind, or of favors, like travel. That is air travel, hotels, and the rest of it. You do not touch that. If it is being offered to you by a country, by a foreign country, particularly a foreign country that is in such hostile relations with the United States. (23:50)

    … Ritter has “exposed himself to [violating FARA] charges by admitting he received money from RT and so forth.” (29:45)

    Such an argument is problematic for many reasons. According to Doctorow, any journalistic work with a hostile country must be unpaid. Journalism, for many, is a paying job. It is a means to be reimbursed for one’s time, effort, training, and skill. Yet Doctorow proffers that in certain circumstances a journalist should forgo payment.

    If US authorities do not explicitly decree that journalism relaying the situation or views of a certain foreign country is prohibited, then how is one to know?

    Besides, do Americans not have an inalienable right to know? Or is knowledge/information/data to be solely the prerogative of the US government to determine what citizens can be exposed to? Is gaining insight to what the other side is saying to be prohibited? Americans will just have to trust that their government knows best; for instance, that Viet Nam had fired missiles at US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, that Iraq had weapons-of-mass-destruction, that Syrian government forces had carried out chemical weapon attacks, that there is no genocide in Palestine.

    Does the First Amendment in the US not protect freedom of speech and the press? Because if one has to pay to fly to Russia, pay for hotels, transportation, and meals in Russia, then only those with the means to self-finance such an endeavor are likely to provide information — with potential for bias from the well-to-do perspective. If reporting on Russia has to be done out of the pocket of a journalist, this sounds like a good way to censor journalism. It is censorship that limits the rights of those who want to work as a journalist and also denies the rights of readers/viewers of such journalism.

    If it wasn’t largely for Ritter then how many people would have known about Iraq having been “fundamentally disarmed”? More recently, if not for Ritter, how many people would have heard that the Bucha massacre of scores of civilians blamed on Russia and reported as such by the stenographers in western monopoly media was a fabrication for killings carried out by Ukrainians?

    People and the interests behind them seek to control information. They want to prevent certain information from reaching an audience and they’d like a certain narrative, even disinformation, to reach that audience.

    If knowledge is power (not a corrupting power, it is hoped), then it should not be controlled by the already powerful, it should be a liberatory force to empower the masses.

    Don’t Be a Yes Man

    There are different types of contrarians depending on whether those who we are talking to are in agreement or disagreement.

    We are encouraged to be critical thinkers. We are taught to value leadership. However, there is a type of person called a Yes Man (or Yes Woman). This is a weak person who always supports whoever is in a position of power, rightly or wrongly. Yes Men are dangerous.

    There are plenty of bad laws on the books. One aphorism holds that laws are meant to be broken. This is too simplistic. But some bad laws should be broken and taken off the books.

    Don’t follow bad leaders or bad laws. Ritter is a contrarian to the fetid state. He has the courage to oppose censorship, bad thinking, and following bad laws.

  • Image from fractal enlightenment.
  • The post Should We Obey Bad Laws? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.

    The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.

    I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell – and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).

    It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.

    The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.

    Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”

    Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

    Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.

    Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football – especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.

    So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?

    Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.

    Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.

    (Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)

    The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months – that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”

    So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.

    A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.

    Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.

    Update:

    Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article – and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).

    Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.

    As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.

    Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly – either through email or via Substack’s app – bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.

    If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.

    The post More dead children: More BBC “news” channelling Israeli propaganda as its own first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a rogue state, according to the world’s highest court.

    For that reason, the judgment will be studiously ignored by the cabal of western states and their medias that for decades have so successfully run cover for Israel.

    Doubters need only watch the reception Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives during his visit to the United States this week.

    Even though he is currently being pursued for war crimes by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the US Congress will give him a hero’s welcome when he addresses its representatives on Wednesday.

    The warm handshakes and standing ovations will be a reminder that Netanyahu has had the full backing of western powers throughout the nine-month slaughter of at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza – with another 21,000 missing, most of them under rubble.

    The welcome will be a reminder that western capitals are fully on board with Israel’s levelling of Gaza and the starvation of its population – in what the same court concluded way back in January amounted to a “plausible genocide”.

    And it will serve as a heavy slap in the face to those like the World Court committed to international law – reminding them that the West and its most favoured client state believe they are untouchable.

    Western politicians and columnists will keep emphasising that the World Court is offering nothing more than an “advisory opinion” and one that is “non-binding”.

    What they won’t point out is that this opinion is the collective view of the world’s most eminent judges on international law, the people best positioned to rule on the occupation’s legality.

    And it is non-binding only because the western powers who control our international bodies plan to do nothing to implement a decision that doesn’t suit them.

    Nonetheless, the ruling will have dramatic consequences for Israel, and its western patrons, even if those consequences will take months, years or even decades to play out.

    ‘Top secret’ warning

    Last week’s judgment is separate from the case accepted in January by the ICJ that put Israel on trial for genocide in Gaza. A decision on that matter may still be many months away.

    This ruling was in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly in December 2022 for advice on the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation.

    That may sound more mundane a deliberation than the one on genocide, but the implications ultimately are likely to be every bit as profound.

    Those not familiar with international law may underestimate the importance of the World Court’s ruling if only because they had already assumed the occupation was illegal.

    But that is not how international law works. A belligerent occupation is permitted so long as it satisfies two conditions.

    First, it must be strictly military, designed to protect the security of the occupying state and safeguard the rights of the occupied people.

    And second, it must be a temporary measure – while negotiations are conducted to restore civilian rule and allow the occupied people self-determination.

    Astonishingly, it has taken 57 years for the world’s highest court to deliver a conclusion that should have been staring it – and everyone else – in the face all that time.

    The military nature of the occupation was subverted almost from the moment Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in June 1967.

    Within months, Israel had chosen to transfer Jewish civilians – mostly extreme religious nationalists – into the occupied Palestinian territories to help colonise them.

    Israel knew that this was a gross violation of international law because its own legal adviser warned it of as much in a “top secret” memo unearthed by the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg some two decades ago.

    In a declaration enlarging on the ICJ’s reasoning, Court President Nawaf Salam specifically referenced the warnings of Theodor Meron, who was the Israeli foreign ministry’s legal expert at the time.

    In September 1967, his memo cautioned that any decision to establish civilian settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. Those provisions, he added, were “aimed at preventing colonization”.

    Nine days later, the Israeli government rode roughshod over Meron’s memo and assisted a group of young Israelis in setting up the first settlement at Kfar Etzion.

    Sham peace-making

    Today, hundreds of illegal settlements – many of them home to what amount to armed militias – control more than half of the West Bank and much of East Jerusalem.

    Rather than protecting the rights of Palestinians under occupation, as international law demands, the Israeli military assists Jewish settlers in terrorising the Palestinians. The aim is to drive them off their land.

    In the words of the Israeli government, the settlements are there to “Judaise” Palestinian territory. In the words of everyone else, they are there to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.

    Which brings us to Israel’s second violation of the laws of occupation. In transferring hundreds of thousands of settlers into the occupied territories, Israel intentionally blocked any chance of a Palestinian state emerging.

    The settlements weren’t makeshift encampments. Some soon developed into small cities, such as Ariel and Maale Adumim, with shopping malls, parks, public pools, synagogues, factories, libraries, schools and colleges.

    There was nothing “temporary” about them. They were there to incrementally annex Palestinian territory under cover of an occupation that Washington and its European allies conspired to pretend was temporary.

    The whole Oslo process initiated in the early 1990s was a switch-and-bait exercise, or a “Palestinian Versailles”, as the Palestinian scholar Edward Said warned at the time.

    Israel was never serious about allowing the Palestinians meaningful statehood – a fact the then-Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, admitted shortly before he was killed by a far-right settler in 1995.

    Oslo’s sham peace-making was designed to buy more time for Israel to expand the settlements – while also binding the Palestinians into endless contractual obligations that were never reciprocated by Israel.

    In his incensed response to the court’s decision last week, Netanyahu gave the game away. He said: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], our historical homeland.”

    His is a bipartisan view in Israel. All the Jewish parties in the Israeli parliament take the same position.

    Last week they voted to reject any possibility of creating a Palestinian state on the grounds it would be an “existential threat” to Israel. Only a handful of legislators – all belonging to Israel’s Palestinian minority – dissented.

    Apartheid rule

    The World Court’s ruling is most significant in that it permanently blows apart western states’ cover story about Israel.

    The judges point out that Israel’s permanent occupation of the territories, and its transfer of Jewish settlers into them, has necessitated the development of two separate and distinct systems of laws.

    One is for the Jewish settlers, enshrining for them the rights enjoyed by Israelis. Palestinians, by contrast, must submit to the whims of an alien and belligerent military regime.

    There is a word for such an arrangement: apartheid.

    Over the past decade, a consensus had already emerged in the world’s human rights community – from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch – that Israel was an apartheid state.

    Now the world’s highest judicial body has declared that it agrees.

    Apartheid is a crime against humanity. This means that Israeli officials are war criminals, quite aside from the crimes they are currently committing in Gaza.

    That was why the Israeli media reported panic inside the Israeli government at the ICJ ruling.

    Officials fear that it will leave the International Criminal Court, its sister court, with no option but to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as already requested by its chief prosecutor.

    It is also likely to strengthen the ICC’s resolve to prosecute more senior Israeli officials for crimes associated with Israel’s settlement programme.

    A former Israeli foreign ministry official told the Haaretz newspaper that the World Court ruling had punctured Israel’s claim to be a western-style state: “The democratic aura is no longer protecting us as it did before.”

    Acts of aggression

    The ICJ has concluded that Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians – as well as the ethnic cleansing policies implemented by its settler militias – are acts of aggression.

    The West’s depiction of a “conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians, with efforts to resolve this “dispute”, is wilfully muddled. Its depiction of Israel’s rampage in Gaza as a “war against Hamas” is a lie too, according to this ruling.

    The ICJ has effectively ridiculed the claim by Israel and its western allies that the occupation of Gaza ended when Israel pulled its soldiers to the perimeter fence and soon afterwards instituted a siege on the enclave by land, sea and air.

    Israel is judged to be fully responsible for the suffering of Palestinians before 7 October as well as after.

    It is Israel that has been permanently attacking the Palestinians – through its illegal occupation, its apartheid rule, its siege of Gaza, and its incremental annexation of territory that should comprise a Palestinian state.

    Palestinian violence is a response, not the inciting cause. It is the Palestinians who are the ones retaliating, the ones resisting, according to the judgment. The western political and media establishments have cause and effect back to front.

    There are further consequences to the ICJ’s ruling. You don’t compromise on apartheid. No one suggested meeting apartheid South Africa halfway.

    The racist foundations of such a state must be eradicated. Apartheid states must be reconstituted from scratch.

    The World Court demands that Israel not only pull its occupation forces out of the Palestinian territories and halt its settlement expansion but also dismantle the settlements in their entirety. The settlers must leave Palestine.

    The judges call too for “reparations” for the Palestinians for the enormous harm done to them by decades of occupation and apartheid.

    That includes allowing those Palestinians who have been ethnically cleansed since 1967 a right to return to their lands, and it requires Israel to pay large-scale financial compensation for the decades-long theft of key resources.

    Complicit in war crimes

    But the implications don’t just apply to Israel.

    In referring the case to the ICJ, the UN General Assembly requested the court advise on how its 192 member states should respond to its findings.

    If Israeli leaders are war criminals, then supporting them – as western capitals have been doing for decades – makes those states complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

    For western powers, the ruling makes their continuing arms sales, diplomatic cover and the preferential trade status they give Israel collusion in the crime of prolonged occupation and apartheid.

    But there’s more. It also means that western states must not only stop harassing, and even jailing, those who seek to penalise Israel for its crimes – supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – but should take up that very cause as their own.

    They are now under an implied legal obligation to join in such actions by imposing sanctions on Israel for being a rogue state.

    Already, Britain’s weaselly new Labour government has tried to shift attention away from the ruling and onto discursive terrain that better suits Israel.

    It responded with a statement that “the UK is strongly opposed to the expansion of illegal settlements and rising settler violence”.

    But as former British ambassador Craig Murray noted, that was not what the ICJ decided. “It is not the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements that is at issue. It is their existence,” he wrote.

    Similarly, the Biden administration bemoaned the court’s ruling. In an act of spectacular mental gymnastics, it argued that ending the occupation would “complicate efforts to resolve the conflict”.

    But as noted previously, according to the ICJ’s judgment, there is no “conflict” except in the self-serving imaginations of Israel and its patrons. There are occupation and apartheid – permanent acts of aggression by Israel towards the Palestinian people.

    Further, the US warned other states not to take “unilateral actions” against Israel, as the ICJ ruling obliges them to do. Washington claims such actions will “deepen divisions”. But a division – between the upholders of international law and lawbreakers such as Israel and Washington – is precisely what is needed.

    The World Court’s ruling upends decades of linguistic slippage by the West whose goal has been to move the ideological dial in favour of Israel’s incremental annexationist agenda.

    It is vitally important that activists, legal and human rights groups keep holding the feet of the British and US governments to the ICJ’s fire.

    The fog clears

    Israel’s supporters will take comfort from the fact that an earlier judgment from the World Court on Israel was roundly ignored by both Israel and its western patrons.

    Asked for an advisory opinion, the judges ruled in 2004 that, under cover of security claims, Israel was illegally annexing swaths of territory by building its 800km-long “separation wall” on Palestinian land.

    Israel did not dismantle the wall, though in response it did re-route parts of it and abandoned construction in other areas.

    But that two-decade-old ICJ ruling was much narrower than the present one. It was restricted to a specific Israeli policy rather than address the entirety of Israel’s rule over Palestinians. It did not impugn Israel’s political character, identifying it as an apartheid state. And there were few obvious implications in the ruling for Israel’s western patrons.

    And perhaps most importantly, Israeli officials were in no danger 20 years ago of being put in the dock by the International Criminal Court charged with war crimes, as they are now.

    The World Court decision tightens the legal noose around Israel’s neck, and makes it hard for the ICC to continue dragging its feet on issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials.

    And that will put multinational corporations, banks and pension funds in an ever harder legal position if they continue to ignore their own complicity with Israel’s criminality.

    They may quickly find themselves paying a price with their customers too.

    Adidas could be one of the first victims of just such a backlash after it caved into Israeli pressure on 19 July to drop the Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid as the face of a new ad campaign – paradoxically, on the same day the World Court announced its ruling.

    There will also be ramifications for domestic courts in the West. It will be hard for judges to ignore the World Court’s opinion when their governments seek to punish Palestinian solidarity activists.

    Those promoting boycotts and sanctions on Israel, or trying to stop companies supplying Israel with weapons, are doing what, according to the World Court, western governments should be doing of their own accord.

    But, maybe most importantly of all, the ruling will decisively disrupt the West’s intentionally deceitful discourse about Israel.

    This ruling strips away the entire basis of the language western powers have been using about Israel. A reality that’s been turned upside down for decades by the West has been put firmly back on its feet by the World Court.

    The occupation – not just the settlements – is illegal.

    Israel is legally defined as an apartheid state, as South Africa was before it, and one engaged in a project of annexation and ethnic cleansing.

    The Palestinians are the victims, not Israel. It’s their security that needs protecting, not Israel’s. They are the ones who are owed financial assistance, in the form of reparations, not Israel.

    As a result, the West’s pretend peace-making stands starkly revealed for the sham it always was. Continuing with this kind of duplicity – as British leader Keir Starmer, for example, appears determined to do – will serve only to highlight the bad faith of those engaged in such exercises.

    On the flip side, western powers that help Israel continue its work of segregating, dispossessing and ethnic cleansing the Palestinians will be exposed as complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

    Words have power. They are our route to understanding reality. And the World Court has just cleared away the fog. It has wiped clean the mist on the window.

    The West will do its level best once again to shroud Israel’s crimes. But the World Court has done the Palestinians and the rest of mankind a service in unmasking Israel for what it is: a rogue, criminal state.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post The World Court has cleared the fog hiding western support for Israel’s crimes first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A picture of former U.S. President Donald Trump appeared in a North Korean propaganda video that suggested the United States is orchestrating plots against Pyongyang, residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.

    Residents said they were confused as to why the video used Trump’s image this way. In the past, his image had been used positively to tout the successes of Kim Jong Un, who became the first North Korean leader to meet with a sitting U.S. president when the two countries held summits in 2018 and 2019. 

    The video, shown during mandatory weekly lectures, likened Trump and other influential Americans to wolves. 

    “The US imperialists and other hierarchical enemies are trying to recreate the bloodshed of the past on this land,” an audio recording of video obtained by RFA Korean said, referring to the carnage of the 1950-53 Korean War. “The only thing that has changed is that the various methods of how they kill and the weapons of murder they used that day are now covered in a sweet and fragrant outer shell, including movies, printed propaganda, superstitions, and drugs.”

    Trump’s appearance in the video shocked a resident from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong.

    “These days, the party’s regular lectures are held by watching recorded videos,” he said on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “This week’s lecture was conducted as a recorded lecture with the message that dreaming about American imperialism leads to self-destruction and death.”

    The title of the lecture was “Guide to the anti-DPRK plot,” according to the resident. The video contained a photo of Trump holding hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during one of the bilateral summits.


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    Trump has alluded to his dealings with Kim during his presidency, saying that the two leaders “fell in love,” but after the summits in Singapore, Hanoi, and a third meeting at the DMZ in 2019 which included then South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Pyongyang and Washington still failed to hammer out any agreements on denuclearization or a lifting of sanctions.

    “The point of this lecture from the beginning to the end was to never to be caught up in the enemy’s persistent anti-DPRK conspiracy strategy,” he said. “The authorities requested that we raise awareness of impure recordings, anti-socialism publications, drugs, religion, and superstitions that the enemy are spreading to destroy our republic from within.”

    The message falls in line with North Korea’s policy to more aggressively root out capitalist influences since passing the Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Culture Law in 2020.

    Under this law, people have been sent to lengthy prison sentences for watching South Korean TV shows and movies, for dressing a certain way, or for acts as arbitrary as “dancing like a capitalist.

    ENG_KOR_TRUMP VIDEO_07252024.2.jpg
    A screen capture shows former President Donald Trump appearing in a recording of a regular lecture for North Korean residents in July, 2024. (Kim Ji Eun/RFA)

    According to the resident, other residents were confused that the video strongly condemned the Kim-Trump summits.

    “They’re out here saying ‘Wasn’t it a great thing that Kim Jong Un and the U.S. president met and joined hands?’” he said. “But now the authorities are saying that former President Trump is headlining an anti-DPRK strategy.”

    The use of Trump in anti-U.S. propaganda seemed puzzling for residents in the northwestern province of North Pyongan, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

    “At the time of the summit in Singapore, The Marshall’s meeting with the president of the United States, a very strong nation, was touted as his great achievement,” she said. “Now the party is criticizing former U.S. President Trump through the recorded lecture with the message that we should fight back against anti-DPRK plots.”

    The North Pyongan resident said the lecture was intended to instill hatred and hostility toward Washington, but most people aren’t buying it.

    “Most residents do not even listen to the authorities’ propaganda that the United States has launched an anti-DPRK plot to destroy our republic from within.”

    Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Ji Eun for RFA Korean.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi era, nor is there any similarity between Nazi Germany and New Normal Germany (i.e., modern-day Germany), and I would never, ever, suggest that there was, as that would be intellectually lazy, and tasteless, and completely inaccurate, and illegal, and … well, let me fill you in on the latest.

    The Berlin Superior Court has set a date for my next thoughtcrime trial. As regular readers will probably recall, my first thoughtcrime trial in January ended with my acquittal. So, the German authorities are putting me on trial again. Yes, they can do that in Germany. But, wait, that’s not the best part.

    The best part is, at my new thoughtcrime trial — this time in Berlin Superior Court — full-scale Anti-Terrorism Security protocols will be effect in the courtroom. Everyone will be subjected to TSA-style scanning and screening, and will have to surrender all their personal possessions and hats and coats and head coverings to the Security Staff, and completely empty their pockets of all items, before entering the courtroom. No computers, phones, smart-watches, or any other potential recording devices will be allowed in the courtroom. Pencils and sheets of paper will purportedly be provided to members of the press by Security Staff. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35, and, after they have successfully passed their “security screening,” they will be cordoned off in the last five rows of the gallery in the very back of the courtroom, “for security reasons,” and monitored by the armed Security Staff.

    For the benefit of any new readers unfamiliar with me and my case, I am not a terrorist. I’m an award-winning American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. I have lived here in Berlin for 20 years. The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets, so I won’t reiterate every little detail again here. Basically, I am being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda” because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich.

    Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are the recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.”As anyone (even the German authorities) can see, the Spiegel cover artwork uses exactly the same concept as the cover artwork of my book. The only difference is, the Spiegel swastika is covered by the German flag, whereas the swastika on my book is covered by a medical mask.

    Both artworks are obviously intended as warnings of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism. Der Spiegel was warning about the Alternativ für Deutschland party (AfD) — as was Stern with its swastika floating in a champagne glass. I was warning about what I dubbed “The New Normal Reich,” the new nascent form of totalitarianism that emerged during 2020-2023, which is still very much on the rise, and which is thoroughly documented and analyzed in my book (which book was banned by Amazon in Germany at the same time the German authorities launched a criminal investigation of me and instructed Twitter to censor my Tweets, which Twitter did).

    The pretext the Court is citing for ordering these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols at my trial is ridiculous, and infuriating. The Court claims that the courtroom in which my trial is to take place is occasionally used for a certain “high-security” trial. Therefore, according to the Court, my trial must also be subjected to Anti-Terrorism Security protocols. Seriously, the Court sent my attorney a fax setting forth this “explanation,” which is, of course, a load of horseshit. The Berlin Superior Court is a huge building containing multiple courtrooms, one or two which are probably not subject to such Anti-Terrorism Security protocols when “high-security” trials are not taking place within them.

    No, the imposition of these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols is clearly a cynical ploy intended (a) to suppress coverage of the trial, (b) to discourage the press and public from attending, and (c) to intimidate and harass me and my legal counsel, and any members of the press and public who nevertheless attend the trial in spite of the “security procedures” they will be subjected to.

    This cynical tactic — which is not an official press blackout, because journalists can still attend and attempt to scribble notes on their knees with the pencils and sheets of paper provided by the Security Staff — comes as no real surprise. As I mentioned above, my case and my first trial got a fair amount of attention from the international press, enough to put the Court on notice that my prosecution was being watched. So, it’s no mystery why the German authorities would want to discourage any reporting on my “do-over” trial in Superior Court.

    Also, the gallery was filled to capacity at my original trial in January, where I delivered a rather unusual closing Statement to the Court, which was then published and disseminated widely in Germany. So, again, it is no real mystery why the Superior Court wants to discourage members of the public from attending this new trial by threatening to subject them to these humiliating “security” protocols, and why it has limited the gallery size to only 35 seats.

    I assume the German authorities — and by “authorities” I mean the Berlin District Prosecutor’s office, the Berlin Superior Court (Der Kammergericht), and whatever other authorities are intent on punishing me, and making an example of me, for daring to criticize the government’s edicts during 2020-2022, i.e., suspension of the constitutional rights, mask mandates, segregation, the banning of protests, etc. — I assume these authorities are particularly motivated to prevent the press from covering this second trial in Superior Court, because, from what I understand of the German legal system, they are going to “do” me (i.e., convict me) this time.

    The way the German legal system works, if they want to do you, is (1) you are acquitted in the lower Criminal Court, (2) the District Prosecutor appeals the verdict to the Superior Court, (3) the Superior Court overturns your acquittal, and (4) the prosecution goes back to the original Criminal Court, which stages a new trial, at which you will be found guilty, because, once the Superior Court has overruled your acquittal, the Criminal Court will convict you based on the Superior Court’s ruling. At which point you will appeal. And on and on and on it will go, until you are broke, or until you give up fighting because you are just so fucking exhausted.

    I’m not making this up. This is how The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (i.e., the post-Covid German justice system, which, again, bears no resemblance whatsoever to The People’s Court of Berlin in Nazi Germany, or to the courts in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, or any other totalitarian “justice” system) … this is how it works in New Normal Germany if you are a critic of the authorities and refuse to meekly accept whatever punishment they want to summarily dish out for whatever they deem to be your thoughtcrimes.

    But, hey, at least they’re not going to take me out and put me up against a wall and shoot me, like they did with political criminals in Nazi Germany, and the USSR, so I suppose I should be grateful. I’ll have to work on that.

    If you think my case is an aberration, it isn’t. There are many, many other people — critics of the government’s “Covid measures” during 2020-2023 — who are being persecuted and made examples of. Most of these people do not have the financial resources to pay lawyers to fight these prosecutions, so they plead guilty to the charges and pay the fines, which are typically much less than what they would face in attorney’s fees. Being somewhat of a public figure, I thought it was my responsibility not to do that. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has donated to my legal defense fund, which is how I have been able to cover my legal expenses. There’s enough left in that fund to cover this next trial in Superior Court, so I’m OK for now, financially. I mention that because people are already asking how they can send me money.

    What people can do, if they want to do something helpful, is make as much noise as possible about what is happening, not just in Germany, but all throughout the West. Because what is happening is, well, what I tried to capture and analyze in my book. The Powers That Be are going totalitarian on us. They are gradually, and not so gradually, phasing out the so-called “liberal” or “democratic” rights and principles that it was necessary to placate the Western masses with during the Cold War era, which it is no longer necessary to do beyond a certain superficial point.

    I have published three books of essays documenting this transition to a new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, so I’m not going to go on and on about it here. But that’s what all the censorship is about. That’s what all the manufactured hysteria, fomented hatred, fanaticism, the permanent state of “emergency” and “crisis,” the “culture wars,” the cults of personality, the bombardment of our minds with absolutely meaningless nonsense, the naked displays of force, the blatant instrumentalization of the justice system to punish political dissidents, not just here in Germany, but throughout the “democratic” West … that is what all this is about.

    I’ll keep my readers posted on the details of my upcoming trial in Berlin Superior Court. My attorney is objecting to these “security protocols,” of course. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, instead of sending me money this time, maybe try to step back from all the mass hysteria and hatred that we are being inundated with and see the big picture. It isn’t pretty.

    Help spread the word about the new totalitarianism, about the phasing-out of our democratic rights. I don’t care which “side” of whatever you are on — Trump, Biden, Palestine, Israel, the culture wars, the cancel campaigns, Covid, Elon Musk, Russia, whatever — and neither do The Powers That Be. Take a step back and try to see the bigger picture … the forest, instead of just the trees. And then make as much noise about it as you can.

    We are heading somewhere very ugly … somewhere most of us can’t imagine. Some of us will get there first, but all of us will be there, together, eventually. My story is just one example of what it will be like there, in that ugly place. It isn’t really a story about Germany. It is a story about the end of the myth of democracy, and the rule of law, and all that good stuff. As Frank Zappa once so eloquently explained …

    The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

    It’s something to behold, that brick wall is, especially up close and personal. You’ll see when you get here. I’ll save you a seat.

    The post The People’s Court of New Normal Germany first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Orientation

    Leninist and anarchist shortcomings in relation to rhetoric

    A little over three years ago I wrote an article about how bad Mordor Leninists and anarchists are about knowing about, let alone using rhetorical rhetoric. The article is titled Socialist Rhetorical and Dialectical Communication: Overcoming Brainwashing, Propaganda and Entertainment

    These areas of bumbling included:

    • Initiation engagement
    • Holding attention
    • Time and timing
    • Setting the right atmosphere
    • The use of the five canons of rhetoric
    • Importance of charisma
    • Adjusting to neutral and hostile audiences
    • Defining key terms
    • Use of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle
    • Appealing to short-term self-interest in the audience
    • Making predictions
    • Having transition plans
    • Distinguishing competitive as opposed to cooperative argumentation

    Purpose of this article

    The aim of this article is six-fold:

    • First, to challenge the negative associations about what rhetoric is so that its techniques can freely be used by all socialists. To do this I contrast “Light” with “Dark” rhetoric across thirteen categories.
    • Second, to point out that light rhetoric has been undermined by the use of electronic media beginning in the second half of the 19th century.  I will be referring to Kathleen Jameson’s great book Eloquence in the Electronic Age as I pointed out from a previous article.
    • Third, I will point out that at least since the Middle Ages the ruling circles of Europe (whether it be Church, State or capitalists) have used propaganda to influence people. This propaganda has used dark rhetoric for its purposes.
    • Fourth, I emphasize the value of light rhetoric further by contrasting it to propaganda.
    • Lastly, I show how white rhetoric can be criticized using the “ideological” school of criticism developed by Marxists like Terry Eagleton any Raymond Williams.

    Defining rhetoric

    Let me begin with a controversial definition of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the systematic and overt study of the process of how speakers influence public to either convince or persuade an audience on a controversial issue. This is done through the use of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle which consists of logos (facts, reasons), ethos (credible sources) and pathos (use of emotions and imagination). Typically, it is practiced in law courts, political debates (city council meetings, unions, workers co-ops), or scientific conferences.

    Conditions of rhetoric

    First, the issue in contention must be controversial. If the issue is trite, there won’t be any reason for using rhetoric because the answer is more or less decided. On the other hand, if the issue is outlandish not enough of the audience will be interested in being engaged or curious enough about the outcome. Second, the issues must have an urgency. Both the speaker and the audience are interdependent and no one can walk away. Parties also must have a great deal of commonality so the issue can be resolved, even though they might not admit the commonality at first. The third condition of rhetoric is that risks are accepted. The parties in a rhetorical situation know they can be publicly proven wrong and they may have to alter their claim. The fourth characteristic of rhetoric is that the best solution we come up with is probable.Unlike in formal logic, no certainty is possible. The fifth and last condition of rhetoric is that the power bases used cannot be force, economics, politics or sexual seduction. Only competency, legitimacy or dialectic may be used.

    Why is my definition of rhetoric controversial?

    Where does rhetoric take place? Usually, rhetoric is dated back to classical Greek civilization. But George Kennedy has shown that cross-culturally rhetoric is much older. I know from my study of social evolution that rhetoric was practiced all the way back to hunting and gathering societies. Recently some feminists have tried to argue that conversations in the interpersonal world or family life should be included. At the other extreme, thanks to mass communication, some rhetoricians have attempted to do rhetorical analysis based on radio, film and television. For purposes of this article, I am avoiding both the micro and macro attempts to apply rhetoric. The reason is because the places that I hope it is used is in public situations. These include city council meetings, union discussions or in workers co-op’s general assemblies

    As we know, most of human communication is analogical, not digital and many analogical messages occur below the level of consciousness. When a person convinces or persuades someone unconsciously through body language or utterances not intended, does that count as rhetoric? My definition says it should not. Unconscious body language would fit in the field of influence. Influence is a larger category than rhetoric or persuasion. Rhetoric is a specific type of influence.

    What is the range of mediums that should be permissible? I am drawing the line at oral and written. To be sure, the use of the alphabet and the printing press certainly changed oral rhetoric in certain ways, but it is with the medium of mass communication that propaganda overwhelms too many of the original features of rhetoric to be included. It is at this point in history that the field of propaganda begins to merge with or marginalize rhetoric.

    Up until now in all categories I have tried to define rhetoric narrowly as opposed to broadly. But in this last case I would like to define rhetoric more broadly. In all pre-state societies (hunter-gatherers, simple complex horticulture societies and herding societies) rhetoric was used to come to decisions cooperatively.With the rise of agricultural states and social classes cooperative rhetoric was marginalized. At this stage the ruling elites made decisions that were no longer subject to communal debate. The invention of propaganda arose out of the need of the ruling classes to justify why so many people should accept being ruled by so few. But in the time of classical Greece and Rome there were still rulers who propagandized their population. However, rhetoric returned in the form of competitive debates in law courts and in democratic councils. Unfortunately, most of the history of rhetoric has only been presented in the form of competitive debates. It is mostly thanks to feminists that the ancient tradition of cooperative argumentation has returned. So I will argue that rhetoric should be used for both competitive and cooperative goals.

    Light Vs Dark Rhetoric

    Arousing the audience

    “Step right up the Big Top, where seeing is believing. Right over here to the freak show”. This is an example of dark rhetoric in operation. These attention grabbers of dark rhetoric are in the business of creating awe, making thunderstruck or frightening the audience by horror. There is no suspense but plenty of special effects. Whatever their claim, it is hidden and the audience is manipulated to do things without the speaker’s intentions ever being consciously stated

    In light rhetoric, attention is drawn in gradually through questions that are within the range of the audience’s curiosity. A light rhetorical speaker has made a study of his audience’s demographics before the speech itself. In dark rhetoric, audiences are considered as all the same – stupid. In light rhetoric audiences are drawn in and suspense is created so the audience does not quite know what the speaker will conclude. The claim is always made explicit to the audience, but the speaker will determine whether it is best to make the claim in the beginning, middle or end of the argument

    Quality of reasoning

    Dark rhetoricians do not think much of reason or providing evidence. They are notorious for committing reasoning fallacies such as ad hominin (attacking the person), guilt by association, confusing wholes with parts either-or thinking and many faulty appeals to emotions. In white rhetoric speakers are very aware of human fallacies all the way back to Aristotle and do their best to make their arguments be fallacy-free. However, they may still make mistakes but it is not with the intention of tricking the audience

    Use of imagination vs fantasy

    In light rhetoric, the imagination is used to create reasonable alternative futures that are based on science. The method can be though stories, analogies or vivid imagery. In dark rhetoric, fantasies that are impossible in real life are concocted. Their belief about their audience is that what freedom entails is making impossible things possible. It is an appeal to the unnatural.

    Speaker ethos: charisma vs character

    In dark rhetoric a speaker with charisma is essential. Dark rhetoric needs a charmer who has the spirit to inspire people. The speaker appeals to what I call the Darwinian unconscious. In other words, speakers who are tall, have a shape that indicates they have good genes (see Evolutionary Psychology by David Buss), facial symmetry, hair sheen, a sense of theatrics and are articulate and funny. Dark rhetoricians want the audience to be swept away. In light rhetoric, the speaker has to have character. This means the speaker has legitimate authority, has a good reputation, is trustworthy and competent. S/he has to exude good will and be articulate. Humor always helps, but the speaker wants the audience to be grounded, not swept away.

    The relationship between the speaker and the message

    In dark rhetoric, speakers will be engaged in character assassination. The speaker is enmeshed with the message. A good speaker will be claimed to have a good message and a bad speaker a bad message. In light rhetoric, the speaker and the message will be differentiated. It will be acknowledged that a bad speaker might have a good message and a good speaker might have a weak message.

    Competition vs cooperation

    In many of the textbooks on argumentation they show people in competitive debates. One book even showed arguers on the verge of a fist fights. But as I pointed about above, rhetoric can be used cooperatively among union members deciding whether or not to strike or participate in a city council meeting while attempting to persuade the city council to oppose a national war. Cooperative argumentation can also be used in a worker’s co-op on deciding what the ratio in salary should be between managers and workers.

    Short-term vs long-term self-interest

    Dark rhetoric practitioners use demagoguery. They appeal to the worst in people. They are not above spreading gossip, name dropping and meanness at the expense of the weak. They play to people’s pettiness, prejudices, and myopia. They appeal to people wanting to keep up with the Joneses, as well wishing to be superior to others. They appeal to the audience’s infantile wishes like losing weight while eating whatever they want. Dark rhetoric speakers appeal to the audience’s crude superstitions as well as the desire to take the path of least resistance. Their appeal is to short-term self-interest – pleasure, comfort or acquiring wealth without working for it. On the other hand, in the glow of light rhetoric, speakers appeal to depthful emotions, loving the stranger (agape). Emotional appeals include kindness, generosity, foresight, altruism, heroism and hope. They speak of what is good for humanity in the long-run even when it is less than popular.

    Range of audience

    Dark rhetors do not go where the audiences are either neutral or hostile because their cheap tricks will not work there. Trump would not do well against an audience who is neutral or hostile because he is not trained as a politician and knows nothing about how to move an audience who is not already a member of the club. Even as smooth a person as Obama, fully trained in rhetoric as a Harvard lawyer, would not do well against an angry working class crowd because his rhetorical tricks such as telling individual stories of Horatio Alger won’t fly. A practitioner of light rhetoric relishes dealing with a hostile audience and knows what it takes to change a hostile audience. Their success is not to move an audience from a hostile to a sympathetic audience, for that is too much to expect. However, they will modestly hope to influence a cynical audience to became skeptical. That is realistic.

    How is the audience treated?

    Dark rhetoricians treat their audiences as dupes. They will water down a speech to appeal to the lowest common denominator. They will flatter the audience. In light rhetoric, audiences are treated as active participants. The speaker creates a dialectic with the audience giving them some of what they want but also giving them more than they bargained for. In light rhetoric, the very way the audience responds changes the speaker and makes the speaker improvise what they had originally prepared.

    Truth as a means to an end or an end in itself?

    The standard of truth as an end in itself, regardless of time, place and circumstance is an overly idealist aspiration of Plato. Both Aristotle and the Sophists agreed that striving for the truth was admirable but most of the time it has to be parceled out because audiences are often not mature enough for the whole truth. For the Sophists, what matters in an argument is being effective. Winning them over to taking an action matters more than telling them the truth while getting no cooperation. For the Sophists truth was a means to an end, but most of the time the truth was also effective. Dark rhetoric is much more extreme than anything the Sophists did. Dark rhetoric does not care for the truth. They peddle lies, but the lies may work because there are some lies that people want to hear.

    What is the relationship between form and content?

    One of the stereotypical criticisms of rhetoric is that it is all fluff, all smoke and mirrors, all bombast. In other words, form without content. The opposite extreme of this is what Plato aspires to. If the content of a subject is true, the form is irrelevant. Light rhetoricians say form and content are dialectically related. When something is true, it should produce good form and good form is grounded in the truth. For example, evolutionary Darwinists have pointed out that what the human species finds beautiful is connected to outdoor scenes where there is water and landscapes of prospect (being able to see while not being seen). This also serves to increase the chances of survival.

    What are the most important parts of a speech?

    As many of you know, in classical rhetoric there are five cannons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, delivery and memory. In dark rhetoric, all that matters in moving an audience is arrangement of the parts of the argument and style which consists of eloquence, body language and voice tone. In dark rhetoric, the invention part of the argument is irrelevant.  If you have style you can sell anything. In light rhetoric the invention of the argument and the arrangement of the argument is most important. As Aristotle pointed out the invention of a good argument has logos (facts, statistics, reasons) ethos (creditable sources) and pathos (emotion and imagination). Light rhetoricians do care how these reasons are arranged depending on the audience. The other parts of the canon matter, but not as much.

    What is the relationship between the reasoning process and taking action or behaving?

    In dark rhetoric, rhetors don’t care about changing minds (convincing audiences) because it is too difficult and unnecessary. Dark rhetoric is interested in getting people to do things (persuasion) – buy a product or vote. They don’t care if this happens consciously or unconsciously. In dark rhetoric rhetors think the audiences must be entertained to get them to do anything. In light rhetoric, the speaker is committed to engaging and changing the mind. The rhetor wants to persuade his audience but only after the mind is changed. Entertaining may be a byproduct but is not essential. In my teaching I was often complimented, not just being convincing but being entertaining. I never had this as a goal but it was gravy.

    Sophists are our guide for white rhetoric, not Plato

    Going back to the Greeks, Plato was mostly the enemy of rhetoric and thought for the most part the only kind of rhetoric was dark. Aristotle, as usual, occupied a middle position. On one hand he was a very serious formal logician but on the other hand he appreciated rhetoric and even categorized the most common mistakes using rhetoric. Contrary to Plato the rhetoric of the Sophists was middle tone or sometimes even white rhetoric. Plato, with his insistence on Truth regardless of time, place and circumstance gave rhetoric a bad name while  throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Please see my table for a summary of light and dark rhetoric.

    Table 1 Light vs Dark Rhetoric

    Light Rhetoric Category of Comparison Dark Rhetoric
    Moved gradually, with questions w/in the range of curiosity Arousing the audience Aweing, making people feel thunderstruck or in horror
    Creative suspense, avoidance of special effects   No suspense, special effects freak shows
    Always explicit Claims Never stated
    Awareness of history of fallacies
    Makea mistakes but not in the service of tricking the audience
    Quality of reasoning Doesn’t provide evidence
    Commit fallacies of a hominin, guilt by association, confusing wholes and parts; either/or thinking; pathos fallacies
    Imagination in the service of reasonable futures based on science Use of imagination vs fantasy Fantasies that are impossible in real life

    Appeals to the audiences idea of freedom as the impossible becoming possible

    Character – legitimate authority, has a good reputation, trustworthy, competent and appears to have good will Speaking ethos Charisma

    Charm people by appealing to “the Darwinian unconscious”

    Speaker and message are differentiated
    Good speakers can have weak messages
    Weak speakers can have truthful messages
    Relationship of speaker to message Character assassination
    Fuses speaker with message
    Good speakers have good messages; bad speakers have bad messages
    Cooperation or competition
    Win-win is possible. We all learn together
    Process of arguing Competition
    Zero-sum game
    Long term self-interest
    Appeal to depthful emotion, Altruism and humanity at its best
    Range of self-interest Demagogy
    Short-term self-interest
    Gossip, name dropping, pettiness, prejudices, keeping up with the Joneses, desire to feel superior, infantile wishes, superstitions, path of least resistance
    Can move neutral or even hostile audiences Range of audiences Limited to a sympathetic audience
    Active participants – giving audiences partly what they want but giving them more than they bargained for
    Audience has the power to change the speaker’s message
    How audiences are treated Dupes

    Stupid people

    Truth is important but effectiveness may require time, space and circumstance considerations to be effective Truth as means to an end
    or irrelevant
    Truth is irrelevant
    What matters is getting audiences to act
    Form and content are dialectically related

    When something is true, it should have good form
    When something has good form it must be at least partly true

    What is the relationship between form and content Form is what matters – content is not relevant
    Invention, arrangement What are the most important of the five canons of rhetoric Style delivery, arrangement
    Convincing first, then persuading to act What is the relationship between changing the mind and action Persuading them to behave through entertaining and amusement
    Convincing the mind is a waste of time
    A scrupulous lawyer Examples An unscrupulous lawyer
    A union meeting of rank-and- file workers deciding whether or not to strike A barker at a carnival or a side show
    Worker co-op meetings to decide on the ratio of salaries between workers and management A used car dealer
        Radio, magazine, television
    advertisements


    The Decline of Rhetoric in the Electronic Age

    At the end of my article, Fame vs Celebrity: Movies, Music Sports and Politics, I discussed the impact electronic media has on the formation of celebrities as it applied to politics. It was in this age that we can see the decline of rhetoric as applied to politics.

    Oration in Yankeedom before the electronic age

    In politics before the electronic age, Yankee politicians boarded trains and gave speeches in the hot sun for 90 minutes to two hours. The public walked for miles to hear these speeches. These orators wrote their own speeches and went through all five of the canons of rhetoric. They defined their terms and they were loaded with evidence which they arranged carefully in an order that might be conductive to the audience. They laid out all possible positions in an argument to the audience the way a lawyer builds a case before his speech.  The speaker was well-rounded and had command of the great speeches of the past, using poetry at times to make his point. His entire speech was committed to memory. These orators did not have to account to the public for problems in their personal lives. After all, this was politics. Their use of pathos was episodic and used to strike fear at times. They were well trained to create images from words. Lastly, for these politicians their party and their program came first. There was no cult of personality.

    Oration in Yankeedom during the electronic age of television

    For the most part, the use of electronic media, especially television, had a debilitating impact on political rhetoric. The number of outdoor speeches declined as the politician was followed by television cameras inside the studios. The public now had to make much less effort to hear a speech as they could now watch it on television. For various reasons, over the years the attention span of the public got shorter and shorter in part because there was a lot to see on television and also because the pace of life quickened. The owners of television networks were not willing to give a presidential speech 90-minutes to two hours of air time. The speeches of candidates got shorter, often less than thirty minutes.  Gone were the parts of the argument such as defining key terms and presenting 3-5 views on a subject. Argument sides was flattened to two sides. Providing massive evidence to support a claim cost too much time and committing the speech to memory were no longer necessary. Their speech could be read off cue cards.

    The political candidates no longer wrote their own speeches and the content of the speech changed as well. Since it was the nuclear family that gravitated towards television, the speeches themselves were more conversational and homier as the expectation that politicians had to appeal to women in a way they did not have to do in pre-electronic age politics. This is because woman had household responsibilities that would make travelling for hours to hear speeches less likely. The speakers continued to speak about their party but they allowed their personal opinion or personal stories to creep in. Gone was the poetry and the memorization of historical events.

    Summing up the last two sections, we suspect that socialists are critical of rhetoric because they think all rhetoric is dark rhetoric and all political rhetoric is what was on TV. These are good reasons to be skeptical or even cynical.

    Dark Rhetoric in the Service of Propaganda

    Defining propaganda

    Let me begin this section with a qualification. The fact that rhetoric became weaker in the electronic age does not mean it turned into dark rhetoric. What I want to ask and answer now is what is the relationship between rhetoric and propaganda? From my article Socialist Rhetorical and Dialectical Communications: Overcoming Brainwashing, Propaganda and Entertainment “Paraphrasing Jowett and O’Donnell’s book Propaganda and Persuasion, propaganda is the deliberate, systematic and often covert attempt by institutional elites to control perceptions, emotions and behavior cognitions. Who are they controlling? Millions of people through mass media while censoring, hiding, restricting, distorting or exaggerating the claims and evidence of their opposition. Propaganda can be white, gray, or black. Propaganda can be easily found during political election campaigns, inaugural speeches, religious recruiting, news reporting, film and, some say, sports”.

    What was the relationship between rhetoric and propaganda before mass communication?

    As a reminder, there was propaganda in Yankeedom all the way back to the plantation owners since all ruling classes need to justify their dominant existence some way. But before mass communication propaganda and rhetoric existed side by side. Surely the ruling classes of the 17th-19th centuries knew about rhetoric but the lack of access to mass communication made their power limited to the use of monumental architecture and warmed-over religious symbology. More importantly, it was still possible for lawyers and writers to use rhetoric not directly connected to ruling class propaganda. After the electronic age this changed.

    The impact of Black Rhetoric on mass propaganda

    Before beginning this section, I want to clarify the difference between White and Black propaganda. White propaganda presents facts, but it twists the interpretation of facts in its favor. White propaganda works well because it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Black Rhetoric is used when elites are in trouble. It makes up facts because its impact on the subject population is failing. Black Rhetoric of aweing and making people thunderstruck or feeling horrible, using special effects while never stating its claim works beautifully with black propaganda. Black propaganda has the same bad quality of reasoning as Black Rhetoric and is guilty of the same kind of fallacies. While the Black Rhetoric technique of creating fantasies that may be impossible in real life may not be used in black political propaganda, it could be used in entertaining black propaganda such as Walt Disney productions. Both white and black propaganda benefit from having speakers who have charisma. Black political propaganda is right at home with the Black Rhetoric technique of character assassination.

    In Dark Rhetoric there are only winners and losers, determined by competition. This fits very well with the part of capitalist propaganda that promotes competition between capitalists as the only way an economy can be run. The entertainment division of propaganda such as reality television programs works very well with the worst superficial and petty side of the population and their short-term and infantile hopes. The limitations Black Rhetoric has to a sympathetic audience does not apply to propaganda because propaganda has to attempt to reach the entire population even those who are cynical because it has to control them. While advertising propaganda is used to treat people as dupes just as propagandists do, advertising that comes off the internet treats people as having specialized needs.

    The impact of mass propaganda on Black Rhetoric

    Mass propaganda explodes black rhetoric on the scale at which Black Rhetoric can be produced, the times it can be made available to people as well as the number of people it can reach. Black rhetoricians can hide their identity because its sources are elite institutions in which they will be well-protected. Black rhetoricians are much better able to time when their message gets out because it has mass media coordination. While Black Rhetoric is not usually linked to a mythology or ideology under the wing of propaganda it could be harnessed to make it even more powerful. Propaganda has power bases that are linked to political parties, economic systems well beyond the solitary reach of a typical black rhetorician, whether it be a side show barker or used car dealer. The control of some of information flow is less with propaganda than in Black Rhetoric because the Black Rhetoric loses the feedback from performing for a public audience. In Table 2, all the categories beginning with the place of controversy, propaganda doesn’t amplify Black Rhetoric. It just supports it.

                        Table 2 Light Rhetoric vs Propaganda

    Light Rhetoric Category compared Propaganda
    Interpersonal arguments
    (persuading your romantic partner to go to a particular movie)
    Public debate, public talks Face to face
    Scale  of appeal Appeal to larger masses of people who are spatially dispersed
    Usually not backed by power institutions
    Single individual
    Presence of power institutions Backed by large social institutions controlled by elites
    Alternative sources available
    though not always presented fairly
    No censorship
    Are alternative sources of information available Alternative sources of information discouraged
    Either demonized, marginalized or censored
    Usually visible – overt Visibility of source Usually concealed—covert
    No mass media.
    Media is five
    senses or print
    Place of Mass media Use of newspapers, film radio, movies, television
    Open-ended information flow Production and distribution of information Withheld, releasing information at predetermined time
    Manufacturing information, communicating information to selective audiences, distorting information
    New information may contrast message with an audience’s existing body of knowledge Relationship between existing knowledge and new information New information is attempted to be smuggled into the audiences’ existing body of knowledge
    Usually not linked to an ideology or mythology Presence of an ideology or a mythology Linked to a clear institutional ideology or political mythology capitalism/communism
    Charisma, legitimacy,
    Competency, manipulation
    Leading power bases Politics, economics
    charisma, seduction
    legitimacy
    Stated up front Place of controversy Controversy hidden
    Dominated by the speaker but built in opportunity for audience to respond Direction of information flow Lopsided from propagandist to a passive audience
    Attempts to control information flow
    Monitors public opinion with polls, focus groups
    Either friends, acquaintances some strangers Strength of social bonds Large, anonymous masses
    of strangers
    Sought voluntarily Does the audience seek to be influenced Not sought voluntarily—maybe discovered later
    Deliberate Is the communication unintentional or intentional Deliberate
    Monologue, q and a

    Turn taking – dialogue

    Process of communicating One-sided
    Monologue, bombardment
    Slower, time to think, reason, write Speed of interaction Fast, little time to reflect Bypasses opportunity to reason: rapid images;
    arresting symbols
    Sensory bombardment
    Slogans, architecture
    Longer – 30-90 minutes Length of messages Short –30 seconds to 5 minutes
    Convincing (changing minds) and persuading
    (actions)
    Outcomes
    What is each trying to achieve
    Persuasion, control
    Ideally satisfy both speaker and audience needs Whose needs are satisfied? Satisfy needs of propagandist and not necessarily in the interest of the audience
    Typically liberal values Political ideological values Conservatives, fascists
    Socialists

    Left-wing Ideological Criticism of White Rhetoric

    What is Marxian ideological criticism of rhetoric?

    The field of White Rhetoric makes a separation between communication theory on one hand and politics and economics on the other. Marxians do not accept this separation. Marxian ideological criticism analyzes rhetorical communication messages for their obvious and subtle moves to control relationships in political and economic ways. It examines rhetorical situations and acts for the way in which they can be linked to material conditions of society, like technology, economics or politics. Marxian ideological criticism is bold. For some it is too bold. It claims that all other approaches: liberal, conservative or fascist can be explained by it. It claims that other schools of rhetorical approaches themselves are ideological.

    White Rhetoric takes place in a hegemonic capitalist society

    Liberal rhetoric operates in a system of capitalist hegemony. Hegemony is the process by which the ruling class gained the willing consent of subordinate groups without the use of force, coercion or bribery. Furthermore, once hegemony is attained it must be reproduced. It is here that White Rhetoric is either part of the problem or a small part of a socialist solution. The goal of the Marxist rhetoric critic is to identify rhetorical acts that legitimate the hegemonic views of the ruling or upper classes. Most Marxist rhetoric has focused on studying mass media – film and TV because of their mass impact on working class life. Our criticism is ideological as it evaluates rhetorical activity in order to discover how the powerful vested interests in a society benefit from policies

    The class basis of White Rhetoric 

    Just a reminder that the purpose of this article is to capture white rhetoric for socialists. So it is the traditions of white rhetoric that I attempt to win over though it also must be criticized. Marxist Ideology criticism claims that mainstream rhetoric appeals to middle class and upper middle-class audiences and they generally exclude working class people. This is due to the liberal origins of debating in politics and law. Without necessarily hoping to white rhetoric can create false consciousness in the working class. On top of this we have to face that working class people are complicit in their own subjugation (class-in-itself).

    Questions to use in the analysis of white rhetorical situations

    • Consider all four variables of criticism in the analysis: source-message-environment-critic
    • What is the historical, social, political and economic context in which the rhetorical situation or act exists?
    • How might the rhetorical situation or act reflect the ideology of the dominant class?
    • Does it articulate the ideology directly? In what ways does it legitimize support or sustain it in some way?
    • What evidence of the subjugation or exploitation of the working class does the rhetorical situation or act not show?
    • In what ways, consciously or unconsciously, does the rhetorical situation or act divide the working class in order to fragment it?
    • How might the rhetorical situation or act attempt to create an imaginary unity into the hegemonic ideology?
    • Are there any rhetorical acts which demonstrate class conflict favorable to the working class?
    • Where is the ideology in the criticism of the other rhetorical approaches to the text?

    These questions involve a “critique” that is more than interpretation or evaluation. It is judgment relative to the liberation from the grips of false consciousness of the working class and empowerment, changes in social action and personal identity.

    The shortcomings of Marxian ideological rhetorical criticism

    Ideological criticism is not unique to Marxists. Ideological criticism can come from conservatives as well. The weaknesses of ideological criticism is that we assume we already know how the world really works. For example, time and again capitalists have survived economic crises that Marxists swore would be the last one. Secondly, doing ideological criticism also creates a danger of becoming paranoid and believing rhetorical forces have intended harm when many of the results of circumstances are unintentional. Third, Marxist critics have known to be reductionist, thinking that every single White Rhetoric artifact can be reduced to an ideological criticism. Fourth, the socialist commitment can lead to a lack of objectivity in evaluating White Rhetoric produced by various liberal rhetoricians. Fifth, it fails to consider the ruling classes are not always conscious, cynical manipulators. They may be themselves imprisoned by the same false consciousness. The constant image of hooded puppeteers twisting and turning the masses at will does not do justice to the subtleties of power and control. Finally, the will of the individual tends to get lost in the shuffle of economics and politics structures. The counter to the individualism in a capitalist society is not to ignore the individual but to identify their social identity not just as a product, but as a co-producer. Fortunately, the work of Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall in cultural studies has addressed some of these criticisms.

    Conclusion

    My article began experientially with a list of thirteen ways in which anarchists and Leninists fail to use basic rhetorical skills. In part 2 I’ve explained the left’s lack of interest in rhetoric as originating from the bad reputation the field of rhetoric has. To counter this I compared Light to Dark Rhetoric across fifteen categories and claimed that Light Rhetoric can be successfully implemented by socialists. Then I discussed the weakening of White Rhetoric which came about with the electronic age, especially television.

    All rhetoric traditions black or white have not been very sensitive to the existence of propaganda and how it interacts with rhetoric. In the service of clarifying this, I differentiate the interaction between rhetoric and propaganda before and after mass communication. I show how black rhetoric techniques are amplified when they have propaganda to support it. Further, I show how propaganda can  benefit from the knowledge of Black Rhetoric techniques.

    I close my article by defending the use of White Rhetoric by socialists provided it can withstand Marxian ideological criticism. This includes an awareness that all rhetoric takes place in a capitalist society riddled by class struggles. Nine questions are provided for Marxians to use in criticizing White Rhetoric. I suggest the work of Terry Eagleton and Raymond Williams in carrying out Marxian rhetorical criticism and I close with six criticisms of the Marxian ideological school of rhetorical criticism.

    The post Recapturing White Rhetoric for Socialist Agitating first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Last November, we reported on an incisive and courageous email that had been sent on 24 October 2023 to Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director General, by Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC correspondent. Basing his arguments on considerable evidence and rational analysis, Ruhayem was highly critical of the BBC’s pro-Israel coverage of Gaza since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.

    A former journalist for the Associated Press, Ruhayem has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005. He wrote:

    ‘Words like “massacre”, “slaughter”, and “atrocities” are being used—prominently—in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel.

    ‘When the BBC uses such language selectively, with the standard of selection being the identity of the perpetrators/victims, the BBC is making a statement—albeit implicit. It implies that the lives of one group of people are more valuable than the lives of another.’ (Our emphasis)

    As we pointed out at the time, this is extremely serious. The state-mandated BBC News organisation is essentially channelling Israeli propaganda that excuses its war crimes while demonising Israel’s victims, the Palestinian people.

    Similar points were made in a 2,300-word letter sent in November 2023 to Al Jazeera by eight BBC journalists who, fearing reprisals, requested anonymity. They accused the BBC of:

    ‘failing to tell the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage.’

    They said that the BBC is guilty of a ‘double standard in how civilians are seen’, given that it is ‘unflinching’ in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

    They noted that the BBC’s interviewers regularly asked Palestinians whether they ‘condemn Hamas’, while interviewees putting the Israeli perspective were not asked the same about Israel’s actions, ‘however high the civilian death toll in Gaza.’

    A notorious example was a BBC Newsnight interview on 9 October 2023 with Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom, who had lost several members of his family during the early days of Israel’s bombing campaign.

    He told presenter Kirsty Wark of his emotional pain. He listed the relatives who had been killed, describing them as ‘sitting ducks for the Israeli war machine’.

    Wark replied:

    ‘I am sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear though, you cannot condone the killing of civilians in Israel, can you? Nor the killing of families?’

    No doubt taken aback, Zomlot, who is not a Hamas representative, said:

    ‘No we don’t condone, no we don’t.’

    Wark recently bid farewell to Newsnight after thirty years and was predictably garlanded with praise from across the state-friendly establishment of ‘mainstream’ politics and news.

    Currently, the reported death toll in Gaza is approaching 39,000. But this may be a considerable underestimate, with over 10,000 estimated to be buried under the debris caused by Israeli bombing. A recent study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal points out that there will be many additional indirect deaths caused by destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to Unrwa, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians. The Lancet authors estimate that the total death toll in Gaza may even exceed 186,000. As a result, reports TRT World, Gaza ‘is turning into an open air cemetery’.

    Israel’s attempt to eradicate Unrwa, and the withdrawal of many Western countries’ financial support for the agency on the basis of non-evidenced Israeli claims that Unrwa staff took part in the 7 October attacks, is a major but under-reported scandal. Israel has hit nearly 70 per cent of Unrwa schools in Gaza since 7 October. Over 95 per cent of these schools were being used as shelters when bombed. 539 people sheltering in Unrwa facilities have been killed. The agency said:

    ‘Nowhere is safe. The blatant disregard for UN premises and humanitarian law must stop.’

    On 1 May 2024, Ruhayem sent a follow-up email to the BBC Director General, which was also sent to several departments of BBC News. This email was leaked to the right-wing UK press and reported the following day (see below). It has now been published in full on the Jadaliyya website, hosted by the Arab Studies Institute, a non-profit organisation.

    The essential conclusion about BBC News coverage of Gaza, wrote Ruhayem, is that of:

    ‘a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.’ [Our emphasis]

    Moreover, Ruhayem has revealed that BBC management has failed to respond to ‘a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage’ from members of staff. The implication is that there may well be considerable disquiet among many BBC journalists that the broadcaster has been a largely uncritical conduit for Israeli propaganda.

    Although undoubtedly made more stark over the past nine months, this basic feature of BBC News is nothing new. Over many years, we have pointed out the propaganda function of the BBC in books and media alerts, incorporating valuable work by numerous analysts including the Glasgow Media Group. A major figure here was Greg Philo who died recently and whose books with Mike Berry (‘Bad News From Israel’ and ‘More Bad News From Israel’) are vital reading.

    ‘A Dizzying Pace’

    In his 1 May email to the Director General of the BBC, Ruhayem begins by saying that, since his previous email of 24 October 2023, he has examined more thoroughly the ‘editorial failings’ that have characterized the BBC’s coverage of Gaza, and questions whether management is serious about addressing those failings. The evidence of a collapse in BBC journalism standards, in line with Israel’s propaganda strategy, ‘has been pouring in for months at a dizzying pace’.

    Ruhayem collated some of this evidence of pro-Israel bias in two papers (see below) which he sent to management’s feedback email in February. Other BBC colleagues have documented similar problems and presented them in various ways to senior levels within the BBC. What has been the response?

    Ruhayem wrote:

    ‘Management has recognized that many of us have deep misgivings about coverage, and that these should be heard. That seems to be the implicit logic behind the “Listening Sessions” and the feedback emails. But irrespective of what the intention(s) behind this process may have been, it has amounted to little more than a short-lived venting exercise.’

    He added:

    ‘I have participated keenly in every avenue proposed by management that I managed to involve myself in, and more. Silence has been a common response to a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage. Nothing I sent to “feedback emails” has received a response, except once to say that maybe someone will respond, maybe not. Others have had similar experiences.’

    The BBC correspondent then noted that:

    ‘The exceptions to such silence have usually been worse. In one email chain, a senior figure did not answer a simple question: do BBC presenters not have a duty to interject when serious, unverified claims are made on air? Another, when asked about the reasoning behind editorial decisions, saw fit to inform a group of staff that “editors edit”, seemingly in the belief that this should be enough to brush off everything we’d said.’

    Anyone who has ever submitted a complaint to the BBC about its coverage, whatever the topic, will not be surprised by such dismissive treatment. We have lauded all those brave people who enter the labyrinthine den of the BBC ‘complaints system’. This is a soul-crushing experience that even the former BBC chairman Lord Grade once described as ‘grisly’ due to a system that is ‘absolutely hopeless’. So, what hope for us mere mortals? Anyone who makes the attempt is surely forever disabused of the notion that BBC News engages with, or indeed serves, the public in any meaningful way. Long-time readers may recall that Helen Boaden, then head of BBC News, once joked that she evaded public complaints that were sent to her on email:

    ‘Oh, I just changed my email address.’

    It is noteworthy that the Beirut-based BBC correspondent and his colleagues expressing serious concerns about BBC coverage have also been rebuffed. It is perhaps perversely refreshing to hear that BBC management treats its own journalists with similar disdain as it does viewers and listeners.

    Ruhayem told Davie that senior BBC managers would occasionally offer one or two links as counterexamples to serious bias in its coverage:

    ‘The implicit logic would appear to be that a collapse in standards is ok if there are exceptions. Faced with specific examples, senior managers might say it’s inappropriate to comment on individual stories. Faced with analysis that goes back in time to examine content, they might ask for “specific” examples. One of them once referred a group of us back to the unresponsive “News board” feedback email. Another told me they wouldn’t address issues that had already been raised to the News board.’

    Again, we note the Kafka-esque contortions performed by BBC management to avoid proper accountability even to their own journalists.

    One senior manager replied to a group of staff that all the examples of serious pro-Israel bias provided by Ruhayem and colleagues are the result of ‘decisions taken by editors’. This risible response was seemingly intended to preclude further argument.

    Of course, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky observed in Manufacturing Consent, senior editors and managers in ‘mainstream’ news outlets – which, as we have repeatedly demonstrated, very much includes BBC News – have been selected for conformity to state-corporate ideology. Chomsky made the point succinctly to a young, befuddled, pre-BBC Andrew Marr in a now-famous clip:

    ‘I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.’

    In his email to Davie, Ruhayem asked whether BBC editors:

    ‘gave instructions to drop requirements for applying scrutiny regarding the most serious, unverified claims that were being repeated by propagandists for Israel? Would they be able to explain why, and offer a defence of such decisions based on BBC values and standards? If that is not the case, would the editors be able to explain why – upon observing these standards being repeatedly cast aside – they did not intervene? In any case, would upper management clarify what it thinks its own duties are in such a situation?’

    Media Lens analysis of BBC News since we began in 2001 reveals that ‘BBC values and standards’ is a doctrinal phrase that has little basis in reality. ‘Impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, ‘balance’ and ‘accuracy’ are largely jettisoned when it comes to the brutal truths behind state and corporate power. The myth that ‘we’ are ‘the good guys’ in world affairs must be maintained at all times.

    Ruhayem goes on to say that the latest trend among BBC editors being challenged by their own journalists about biased Gaza coverage is to ask for ‘recent’ examples.

    ‘This is usually in response to questions about the first weeks/months of coverage, during which Israeli claims about the events of October 7 were given an open, uncritical platform by the BBC. This ignores the fact that – in many cases – examples of this kind of thing were flagged as they were happening but not addressed at the time, or at any time. It also ignores the lasting harm such content is likely to have contributed to causing. In any case, many of us have offered – and continue to offer – feedback that covers all these categories; individual examples, systemic issues, recent examples, not-so-recent examples, without receiving a meaningful response in any instance, at any time, whatever the channel we use, and usually without receiving any response at all.’ [Our emphasis]

    These considered revelations are damning. Senior BBC editors and management are simply not willing and/or capable of engaging with serious scrutiny of the broadcaster’s coverage, even when challenged by their own journalists. At this point, we have to recognise the courage and moral integrity of Rami Ruhayem in being prepared to challenge senior BBC figures; no doubt, with considerable animosity from his line management and some colleagues, resulting in personal discomfort and, indeed, significant risk to his continued BBC employment.

    When his 1 May email was leaked to the right-wing press, the reports downplayed the seriousness and extent of his collated evidence and emphasised the ‘outrage’ of ‘Jewish staff’ with the inevitable and insidious deployment of the ‘antisemitism’ card: The Times (‘BBC correspondent questions “facts” of October 7 attacks on Israel’), The Telegraph (‘BBC may be “complicit in Israeli war propaganda” claims Beirut correspondent’), and The Daily Mail (‘BBC correspondent says the broadcaster has a pro-Israel bias and should be questioning the “facts” of October 7 – sparking fury among Jewish colleagues’). No other newspapers reported the leak, including the Guardian and the Independent.

    In short, Ruhayem is adamant that the problems of BBC coverage of Gaza are ‘evident, unmistakable, and ongoing.’

    ‘Israel’s War on Context’

    So, what are the specifics of Ruhayem’s charges against BBC coverage? The first of two papers that he presented in February 2024 to Davie and senior BBC News staff concerned what the Beirut-based correspondent termed, ‘Israel’s war on context’.

    This was elucidated by Ruhayem’s analysis of 22 interviews with Israeli guests – mostly current officials, a few former officials, army officers, politicians, and a ‘human rights activist’. All the interviews were conducted between October 10 and October 25, 2023 on the BBC News channel. They do not necessarily cover every interview with Israeli guests on the channel during that period.

    His main findings were:

    1. There was no challenge about different manifestations of what appears to be the Israeli government’s drive to destroy any chance of Palestinian self-determination, about Israeli officials in positions of power who had incited extreme violence against Palestinians prior to October 7, or what all of that might suggest about the motivations driving Israel’s conduct of the war.
    2. Ruhayem found one single reference by a BBC presenter to one of the statements mentioned above [i.e. the statements summarised in point 1]. It was the only such mention in 22 interviews that took place over a period of 15 days. In that exception to the rule, the issue was framed in terms of the potential legal and reputational harm to Israel.  In other interviews, Israeli guests repeated claims that are at odds with such statements from top Israeli leaders, without the statements being mentioned by presenters.
    3. The Dahiya Doctrine is not mentioned in any of these interviews.

    The so-called Dahiya Doctrine is essentially an Israeli military doctrine that overrides any sense of ‘proportionality’ in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. It was articulated in the wake of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and put into practice later in Gaza. Gadi Eisenkot, at the time head of the Israeli Northern Command and currently a member of the Israeli war cabinet, explained:

    ‘What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases […]. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.’

    Recall that, after the attack by Hamas on 7 October, Israeli leaders, officials and army personnel made boastful statements about how brutally Israel intended to conduct its attacks on Gaza. Defence minister Yoav Gallant said that ‘we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly’ and that he ‘removed every restriction’ on the army. An Israeli army spokesman said that the ‘emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy’.

    The above three findings are, Ruhayem wrote, part of:

    ‘a growing body of evidence indicating that the BBC may have been withholding vital information from the public, contributing to incitement against Palestinians, and spreading and reinforcing Israeli war propaganda.’

    He added:

    ‘There appears to be a ceiling on questioning Israeli officials and propagandists, expressed in the consistent failure of presenters to use crucial evidence to challenge Israel’s west-facing propaganda. Lines of challenge which are obvious to pursue and which would cast doubt on Israel’s west-facing messaging are conspicuously and consistently not pursued by BBC presenters.’

    Ruhayem continued:

    ‘Unfettered by proper challenge, propagandists for Israel can then paint a picture of a peaceful state that has the misfortune of existing alongside pure evil, and present it as the backdrop to the unfolding horror in Gaza.’ [Our emphasis]

    BBC coverage is thus fundamentally compromised, noted Ruhayem:

    ‘The main assumption is that Israel is trying to avoid harming Palestinian civilians as it conducts a war of self-defence. Thus, discussions between BBC presenters and Israeli propagandists are centred on the question of whether Israel is trying hard enough, or acting intelligently enough, to achieve its goal of “crushing” and “dismantling” Hamas without harming civilians – or its reputation. This framework is cemented because evidence to the contrary is erased.’

    Moreover, BBC management have made:

    ‘little meaningful effort to examine our coverage with urgency and transparency in pursuit of evidence-based conclusions.’

    Ruhayem’s second paper sent to senior BBC News staff on 25 February 2024 examined BBC content relating to the events of 7 October. Considerable BBC coverage was devoted to claims of alleged horrific acts carried out by Hamas attackers. These claims included the alleged beheading of babies and the blood-curdling story of a pregnant woman who had her belly cut open, the baby removed from her stomach and beheaded in front of her before she herself was beheaded.

    Ruhayem noted that:

    ‘Claims and testimony that encourage the most extreme portrayals of Israel’s enemies are allowed to be repeated without challenge – regardless of whether or not they’re backed by evidence. Claims and testimony that raise the possibility of Israeli disinformation around the events of October 7 are ignored – despite the evidence.’

    The purpose of Israeli’s repetition of horrific stories, platformed by the BBC and other news media, was clear: to drill into the public ‘the idea that any action Israel sees fit to take is justified’.

    Ruhayem continued:

    ‘By seeking to place Hamas on the most extreme end of the spectrum of evil, propagandists for Israel seemed to believe they’d be able to defend whatever Israel chose to do – and set the stage for more. The seeming suspension of basic standards of scrutiny on the BBC most likely encouraged that strategy.’

    He added:

    ‘Such coverage is likely to have aided Israel’s efforts to ensure political support in the West for its actions, and to intimidate those opposed to them and portray them as supporters of the most hideous atrocities.’

    In summary, the evidence in both papers presented to senior BBC managers and editors by Ruhayem:

    ‘indicates a collapse in editorial standards and values […] which complements, reinforces, and otherwise serves Israel’s messaging. BBC output appears to have aided two pillars of Israeli propaganda: the obliteration of vital context, and incitement against Palestinians.’

    It has, of course, been clear to careful observers since 7 October that BBC News has been, and remains, complicit in Israel’s attempted genocide of the Palestinian people. The particularly noteworthy aspects of the BBC correspondent’s leaked emails is that there is likely significant concern, even dissent, among BBC News staff, and that BBC management refuses to engage in any meaningful way with staff expressing such views.

    Since the full publication of the leaked emails last week by the Jadaliyya website (Part 1 and Part 2), there has been zero coverage in the UK national press, according to our media database searches. The silence sums up the insidious censorship by omission that characterises ‘mainstream’ media when it comes to uncomfortable truths.

    As a closing example of the BBC’s ‘impartiality’, consider the headline of a BBC News online story last week:

    ‘The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome’

    The article, by BBC journalist Fergal Keane, only revealed in the 16th paragraph that Israeli soldiers had set a combat dog on 24-year-old Muhammad Bhar, leaving him to bleed to death. His decomposed body was found a week later by his family who had been ordered to leave their home while Muhammad was locked in a room inside with Israeli soldiers. Muhammad’s brother Jibril said the soldiers likely tried to stop the bleeding, but then left him ‘without stitches or care’.

    After a tsunami of online outrage, the BBC updated its headline to:

    ‘Gaza man with Down’s syndrome attacked by IDF dog and left to die, mother tells BBC’

    Even this headline blunted the horrible truth. Historian and author Assal Rad, who regularly provides more accurate headlines to ‘mainstream’ news stories on Gaza, observed of the updated headline:

    ‘This was one of the worst stories I’ve heard, and this is how the BBC covers it’

    She suggested a more accurate version:

    ‘Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome after setting a dog on him and leaving him to die’

    This is yet another example of how the BBC routinely sanitises Israeli crimes and helps to ‘normalise the unthinkable’, to use the phrase deployed by the late Edward Herman.

    The post “Aligned With Israel’s Propaganda Strategy”: BBC Correspondent Challenges the BBC Director General first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In an enthusiastically received speech on July 10 to the Washington DC 75th Anniversary NATO Summit, U.S. Secretary of Defense and ‘former’ Raytheon Corporation board member Lloyd Austin strung together lies by the U.S. empire in order to reverse the imperialistic guilt of the U.S. Government for starting the Cold War in order to conquer and take over the entire world, and to pretend that instead the Cold War was and remains an ideological communist-versus-capitalist war in which the Soviet Union was the aggressor, but has now become after 2000 a war between nations that Austin calls “democracies” (which today’s America clearly is not), on the one hand, and nations that he simply assumes are not, on the other.

    Appropriately for his lying ‘history’ of this war since 25 July 1945, he twice referred to its creator on 25 July 1945, U.S. President Truman, whose 4 April 1949 “Address on the Occasion of Signing the North Atlantic Treaty” (the NATO Treaty), stated:

    Twice in recent years, nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression. Our peoples, to whom our governments are responsible, demand that these things shall not happen again.

    We are determined that they shall not happen again.

    In taking steps to prevent aggression against our own peoples, we have no purpose of aggression against other peoples. To suggest the contrary is to slander our institutions and defame our ideals and our aspirations.

    According to the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved), in its article “List of wars involving the Soviet Union”, during the entire time-span between “1944-1960s”, that list includes only these wars:

    Anti-communist insurgencies in Central and Eastern Europe[citation needed]

    Guerrilla war in Ukraine (Part of World War II from 1944 to 1945)

    Guerrilla war in the Baltic states

    Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–1953)

    Listed as the aggressors in them were:

    Soviet Union
    East Germany
    Polish People’s Republic
    Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
    Hungarian People’s Republic
    Socialist Republic of Romania
    People’s Republic of Bulgaria
    Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

    Those were the nations that the Soviet Union had liberated from Hitler.

    Listed as the defenders (not the aggressors) in these wars were:

    Ukrainian Insurgents
    Polish Insurgents
    Estonian Insurgents
    Latvian Insurgents
    Lithuanian Insurgents
    Bulgarian Insurgents

    Those ‘insurgents’ (or ‘guerillas’) were predominantly — and in some nations almost entirely — the forces that were fighting on Hitler’s side in his Operation Barbarossa to conquer the Soviet Union.

    When Truman, in his 4 April 1949 “Address on the Occasion of Signing the North Atlantic Treaty”, asserted that “Twice in recent years, nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression,” he never made clear which of those wars by the Soviet Union defending itself against Hitler’s Operation Barbaross invasion constituted those “Twice in recent years, nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression.” It wasn’t Hitler who had done the “unprovoked aggression.” That was America’s President right after the passionate opponent of Hitler, FDR, died.

    Already at the founding of NATO, this creation by the Nazi Truman was an extension from Operation Barbarossa by Truman’s United States Government, in order to take over the world, starting with taking over the Soviet Union, which had been America’s most important ally during WW2 under President FDR.

    Both FDR and Churchill acknowledged that the coming victory against Hitler was more by the Soviet Union than it was by even the entirety of The West. Near the beginning of FDR’s lengthy fireside chat to the nation on 28 April 1942, he said:

    On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies — troops, planes, tanks, and guns — than all the other United Nations [by which he at that time was referring only to the U.S. and the UK’s empire, because he hadn’t yet even met Stalin] put together. (NOTE: He was already using the phrase “United Nations” with the objective in mind for all of the world’s nations to view themselves as having been saved by the U.N. that FDR was intending ultimately to replace all empires and to be the sole source of international laws.)

    Near the War’s end, on 19 September 1944, Churchill telegrammed to Stalin “that it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine and is at the present moment holding by far the larger portion of the enemy on its front.” As the History Channel’s article “Operation Barbarossa” summed-up: “On 22 June 1941, German forces began their invasion of the Soviet Union, … the most powerful invasion force in history, … 80% of the German army … [plus] 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops. … By the time Germany officially surrendered to the Allies on 8 May 1945, 80% of its casualties during WW2 had come on the Eastern Front [the Soviet Union].” Even Wikipedia’s “Operation Barbarossa” said “The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of the Third Reich.[30]” However, on 8 May 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted “On May 8, 1945, America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis! America’s spirit will always win. In the end, that’s what happens.” So goes the myth (which is cited by both Democratic and Republican politicians), but certainly not  the history.

    Furthermore: what was Truman referring to by his “Twice in recent years, nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression”? He never said, but why did he call the Soviet Union’s victories against Hitler “unprovoked aggression”? It had been Hitler — and not Stalin — who invaded in Operation Barbarossa, and Stalin — not Hitler — who were defending there. This is how much of an American Nazi Mr. Truman had become so soon after he had made the decision on 25 July 1945 for the U.S. Government to take over the entire world. If anything is “sickening” in that statement by him, it is Truman himself.

    On that date, 25 July 1945, Truman told the Soviet Union’s leader Joseph Stalin that the U.S. Government would not recognize the legitimacy of its control over the countries that it had conquered from Hitler unless the U.S. Government is granted veto-power over the Soviet Union’s decisions regarding those Governments (both their internal and external affairs); and, in Truman’s letter that night to his wife, Bess, he even gloated over this, by saying:

    Russia and Poland have gobbled up a big hunk of Germany and want Britain and us to agree. I have flatly refused. We have unalterably opposed the recognition of police governments in the Germany Axis countries. I told Stalin that until we had free access to those countries and our nationals had their property rights restored, so far as we were concerned there’d never be recognition. He seems to like it when I hit him with a hammer.

    Suddenly, the amicable relationship between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., which had prevailed throughout FDR’s three terms in office, and which had won WW2 for the Allies, and which FDR had been planning to continue afterward under the U.N. that FDR had been carefully planning during August 1941 till his death on 12 April 1945, ended in a crash of mutual hostility, because Stalin couldn’t accept Truman’s demand, any more than Truman would have accepted a similar demand from Stalin about the nations that America and its colonies such as the UK had conquered in Europe. Stalin (like FDR would have done if he had survived) made no such demand upon Truman or anyone else, and from that date forward Stalin recognized that unless he could change Truman’s mind on this (which never happened), the U.S. Government would be at war against the Soviet Government. It turned out to be (on the American side at least) a war not actually between capitalism versus communism (as Truman propagandized it to be) but instead between the U.S. against the entire world — to take all of it — as was made clear when U.S. President GHW Bush started, on 24 February 1990, secretly instructing his stooge leaders, such as Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand, that their war against the soon-no-longer-communist Russia would secretly continue until it too becomes a part of the U.S. empire.

    Furthermore: whereas there was lots of friction between FDR and Churchill because FDR was an impassioned anti-imperialist and Churchill was an equally impassioned imperialist, FDR’s relationship with Stalin was superb, because both of them were equally impassioned anti-imperialists — about which fact Truman and his followers have been lying constantly.

    The current war inside Ukraine — about which Mr. Austin’s speech largely focuses — started with U.S. President Barack Obama’s coup there in 2014, but had been in preparation ever since the Truman Administration. I detailed that fact here.

    Austin’s speech was loaded with lies, but I will stop here, because that’s enough to demonstrate his propagandistic intent.

    The post U.S. SecDef Lloyd Austin’s NATO Speech Lies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.