Tag: perpetual war

Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Führer.
She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  “Yes, especially them,” she said. 

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. 

Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected. 

Or do we in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power? 

The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top 10 media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries.  It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. 

The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.

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Ukrainian Tragedy That Might Escalate Into Armaggedon

The war in Ukraine is about to enter its 3rd year with no signs of ending, meaning more deaths and destruction for this unfortunate country. It was provoked by those in the U.S. who decided to use Ukrainians for their geopolitical gains which is sort of innovation in military affairs contrary to the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where American soldiers were sent to the battlefields.

Members of Congress from both parties, for example, Richard Blumenthal,  Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and many other politicians and journalists like Washington Post’s Lee Hockstader applauded American military and financial aid to Ukraine presenting it as a well spent bargain because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost.” None of them obviously cares about hundreds of thousands lost lives of Ukrainians as long as they are dying for the sake of U.S. hegemonic ambitions.  So much for their Western and Judeo-Christian values.

This war was easily avoidable until February 23, 2022 when one phone call from Biden to Putin saying that the U.S. accepts neutral status of Ukraine, no longer insists on its entrance to NATO, and agrees to enter into serious strategic security and negotiations which Moscow proposed in December 2021.

However, Biden and his advisors Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland with the bipartisan congressional backup missed this chance because they were sure about having the most powerful packages of sanctions in their pocket that were capable of inflicting a devastating strategic defeat on Russia and pushing it in the geopolitical corner for good.

Still the war that started on February 24 could end quickly in a month or two when the peace deal between the Russians and Ukrainians was ready for signature. Enter British premier Boris Johnson who obviously with the blessing if not instructions from Biden rushed to Kyiv to disrupt it.  Ukrainian comic turned president Zelensky shamefully obeyed in exchange for promises of money and weapons for “as long as necessary.”  Human costs for all of them were not important but the results for Ukrainians were devastating. Now the future waves of Ukrainian cannon fodder including their women and old or sick men are about to be mobilized and thrown into the meat grinder.

This tragedy shouldn’t have happened. After the collapse of the USSR Ukraine not only could have its land intact, including Crimea, but to become one of the most prosperous European states.  The neutrality status would be a roadmap for peace and prosperity but unfortunately for Ukrainians Washington and the West had other plans for their country, which were to turn it into a strategic anti-Russia beachhead.  Two color revolutions, Orange in 2004 and Maidan in 2014 were openly backed by Washington while Maidan was directly coordinated by Biden, Blinken and Sullivan with Nuland working on the location.

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The Perfidious Unreality of the “New Normal”

So, what’s with all the fake crying?

Rachel Maddow pretended to cry about “kids in cages”. Matt Hancock pretended to cry about Covid vaccines. Sarah Sidner pretended to cry over covid. Anderson Cooper pretended to cry about Israel, so did John Kirby. Van Jones pretended to cry after Biden “won” the 2020 “election”. Adam Schiff and Adam Kinzinger both pretended to cry about January 6th.

Don Lemon pretends to cry about pretty much everything.

They all do it, and they’re all so bad at it.

And speaking of pretending badly, remember those early photos of people in China lying in the street, straight as planks, supposedly killed by “Covid”?

As if this scary new virus just snuffs you out mid-step to topple backwards flat on the ground in a perfect silent movie pratfall.

And it’s not just “Covid”.

During the run-up to the 2020 election “pretending badly” was happening everywhere.

We were told, over and over again, “It’s going to look like Trump won, but then Biden will win at the last minute because of postal ballots”.

And gosh darnit – they were right!

Out of nowhere Joe Biden – ‘Creepy Uncle Joe’ – who in early 2020 was obviously the least popular democratic candidate, and even more obviously going senile – is transmogrified into the most popular presidential candidate

of ALL TIME…

…shattering the popular vote records by over 13 million votes.

Such is the power of bad pretending , when you just don’t give a crap about plausibility or boring details of historical precedent.

That was, of course, following Biden’s “miracle turnaround” in the primaries, where massive defeats in the Iowa and New Hampshire left his campaign “teetering on the abyss”.

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Two reports debunk New York Times ‘investigative report’ of mass rape on October 7th

On December 28, the New York Times published an “investigative” report on gender-based violence allegedly committed by Palestinians during the October 7 attack. The newspaper says the story was based on over 150 interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, along with Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella. The story concludes that Hamas fighters engaged in systematic rape and sexual violence against Israeli women.

The story itself repeats October 7 testimonies that have been previously published and already debunked and discredited, but the Times investigation hinges predominantly on one central story, the story of the rape of “Gal Abdush,” who is described by the Times as “The Woman in the Black Dress.”

Although claiming its story proves that “the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7,” the veracity of the New York Times story was undermined almost as soon as it was published, including from the Abdush family itself who says there is no proof Gal Abdush was raped and that the New York Times interviewed them under false pretenses.

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CNN RUNS GAZA COVERAGE PAST JERUSALEM TEAM OPERATING UNDER SHADOW OF IDF CENSOR

WHETHER REPORTING FROM the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy. While CNN says the policy is meant to ensure accuracy in reporting on a polarizing subject, it means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor. 

Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor.

CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war. 

“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” a CNN spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”

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US Warns Military Action Being Prepared Against Houthis in Red Sea

The U.S and allies have given a final warning to Yemen’s Houthi movement to halt attacks on international shipping lanes in the Red Sea or face imminent military action as U.S. officials said that planning for air strikes and special operations is underway.

The Houthis control about half of Yemen’s coastline along the Red Sea’s congested sea lanes after a years-long civil war in Yemen that the Iranian-backed group largely won.

Since the fighting in Gaza began in October, the Houthis conducted at least 25 attacks from missile launches to hijackings in response to Israel’s ongoing military operation in the Gaza Strip targeting their key allies in Hamas. The Houthis have also occasionally fired long-range missiles and drones at Israel itself throughout the conflict that began on Oct. 7 of last year after Hamas and its allies killed more than 1200 Israelis and kidnapped over 200. 

The statement from 13 countries including the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and multiple EU countries came as the Danish shipping behemoth Maersk said it would mostly suspend using Red Sea routes because of the threat.

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Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust

Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear.

Destroy infrastructure, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. 

Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary.

The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland.

There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation — for those who want to live — will be the only option.

Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.”

“We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” 

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October 7: A Turning Point for Free Speech?

Two hundred and forty-seven years ago last week, General George Washington rallied his beleaguered troops at Valley Forge with a public reading of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, which reminded them, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.” Where is Paine now when we need him?

Freedom of speech on American college campuses is now facing great challenges in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. According to some, the outpouring of ugly, inexplicable, and vituperative speech unleashed by these events means that now is the time to abandon the concept of free speech at our universities. Apparently, to these “sunshine constitutional scholars,” speech can only be free if it is polite and unchallenging.

Without a doubt, the past two and a half months have been a complete shitshow: clueless students excusing butchery and war crimes; feckless university presidents whose past records exhibit little concern for First Amendment limits now invoking the need to protect free expression; and opportunistic politicians who seemingly lack any understanding of constitutional constraints grandstanding their way through the misery and trying to impose plainly unconstitutional restrictions on student speech.

The campus reactions were kicked off with an October open letter from the Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which began: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” That opening salvo presaged a tsunami of impassioned rhetoric from all sides of the conflict, with some pro-Palestinian groups praising the October 7 invaders as “martyrs” and chanting slogans like “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” and “by any means necessary.” Others, justifiably horrified at the hostage taking and the atrocities committed in the October attack, responded with harsh rhetoric of their own, sometimes blurring the distinction between condemning the terrorist organization Hamas and attacking all Palestinians. 

In this toxic atmosphere, clashes on campus and in the streets have brought to the surface many repulsive ideas, and some actions that go beyond the “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate which “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks” that the First Amendment protects. For example, police arrested a Cornell University student for allegedly authoring online posts threatening Jewish students that included the claim he would “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.” Some pro-Palestinian activists ripped down posters with pictures of hostages held by Hamas. In November, three young Palestinian men were shot and injured near the University of Vermont, an incident federal authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime.

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Tensions in the Red Sea Setting the Stage for WWIII

In recent weeks, there have been 15 attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea as the Houthis of northern Yemen threatened to attack any vessel heading to the Israeli port city of Eilat.

These attacks caused imports to the port to drop 85% and prompted the formation of a 10-nation coalition led by the US to secure maritime trade. News reports surfaced that Spain and France pulled out of the naval task force, stating they would protect their ships and only accept orders from NATO, not CENTCOM.

On December 23, an Indian-flagged cargo ship was struck in the Arabian Sea 200 nautical miles from the Indian port city of Veraval, and less than an hour later, the Israeli and US governments were claiming they had intelligence the drone was fired from Iran.

The US, EU, and Israel have all accused Iran of having a command ship disguised as a cargo vessel anchored in the Red Sea off Yemen’s northwest coast named the MV Saviz that is identifying ships linked to Israel and handing that information off to the Houthis. In 2021, it was reported that Israeli commandos bombed the Saviz using limpet mines. Iran claims the Saviz is a logistical ship to help protect the region from piracy.

The USS Laboon, a guided missile Destroyer, patrolled the waters around Yemen as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian over the weekend. Meanwhile, the country exploded in a planned protest to show support for Gaza, where an estimated 2.2 million Yemenis marched through Sanaa.

Many people waved Palestinian flags and banners that read, “Your coalition does not intimidate us!” The Supreme Leader of the Sanaa government, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, addressed the crowd via a large screen and loudspeakers, stating that if the US or the UK interrupted their operations on Israeli-linked ships, they would directly target “American and British ships in the region.”

Hours later, CENTCOM announced that the USS Laboon shot down four drones fired from Houthi-controlled northern Yemen that were “inbound to the USS Laboon.” The USS Laboon reported no damage or injuries and continued its mission, guiding a US cargo ship through the Bel el Mandeb Strait to the Suez Canal. Reports then began to surface about a secret plan between the US and the UK to attack Houthi missile sites in northern Yemen with Reaper drones from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.

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Iran Dispatches Warship To Red Sea, Houthis Warn Of “Repercussions” After US Forces Kill Rebels During Maersk Ship Attack

Regional instability risks mount in the Red Sea following the Iran-backed Houthi attack on a Maersk container ship on Sunday. US Forces responded with attack helicopters that eliminated three small boats and ten rebels.

After the skirmish, a spokesperson for the Yemeni militia group warned of “consequences and repercussions” for the US aggression. 

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea confirmed on the Yemeni TV channel Al-Masirah that US forces killed ten of its fighters. 

“US enemy forces attacked three boats belonging to the Yemeni Naval Forces, which led to the martyrdom and the loss of ten people from the Naval Forces,” Sarea said.

The spokesman said its fighters were “performing their humanitarian and moral duty” to deter Israel-related commercial vessels from transiting the Red Sea “in solidarity and support for the Palestinian people.”

He said the US “bears the consequences” for attacking and killing ten of its fighters, adding that the “military movements in the Red Sea to protect Israeli ships will not prevent Yemen (Houthi militia) from performing its humanitarian duty in support of Palestine and Gaza.”

Perhaps even more problematically from a global escalation perspective, Iran dispatched a warship to the Red Sea.

The Alborz destroyer traversed the Bab El-Mandeb strait, a narrow choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, on Monday, Iranian state media said, adding that Iran’s naval fleet has been operating in the area “to secure shipping lanes, repel pirates, among other purposes since 2009.”

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