Hands Off Uhuru:
"Tampa, FL—The first week of the free speech trial of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel left observers shaking their heads and asking how the government has dedicated 30 FBI agents over the course of 3 years, conducted military raids on peaceful U.S. residents, offered a $10 million reward for information and still has no case.

With only one witness left, the prosecution has failed to present any actual knowledge or evidence of the government’s baseless charges that the Uhuru 3 are 'secret pawns in a Russian government conspiracy to sow political discord and interfere in elections'.

The government has made the outlandish accusation that Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party, as well as two leaders in the organization’s solidarity component Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, were paid and under the control by the Russian government when they took a petition to the U.N. charging the U.S. with genocide, testified at U.N. hearings for reparations to African people, published an article opposing the ban on Russian athletes in the Olympics, ran for public office on a reparations platform and spoke out against the U.S./NATO proxy war using Ukraine against Russia.
https://handsoffuhuru.org/day-three-fbi-lies-hearsay-and-speculation/

-->With 30 FBI agents on the case, and three years worth of investigation, the government has failed spectacularly in proving that Uhuru is a Russian agent. But this case was about harassing and threatening Black activists in the US. It's the same thing that the FBI has always done. And we the people have put up with it all these years. Part of the failure is the fact that the NYT never covers a story like this.

=====

Common Dreams:
"UN Expert Fears 'Almost the Entire Population' of Gaza Exterminated If Israel Not Stopped. The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15 and 20% of the population already by the end of this year,' said U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

Reviewing a global public health expert's analysis of the probable ultimate death toll in Gaza from Israel's relentless assault, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories said Friday that without a cease-fire, the Israel Defense Forces 'could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years.' ...

United Nations experts warned in July that Israel's 'targeted starvation campaign' has 'resulted in famine across all of Gaza,' with at least 34 Palestinians dying of malnutrition as hundreds of aid delivery trucks were stranded in Egypt, unable to cross into the enclave. "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-2669142495

 
-->Why should this be a surprise to the people of the United States? We have read about the genocide, and we have watched it on any number of flat screens. Will we ever admit to backing and arming this genocide? Is that who we really are, white racist warmongers dedicated to seeking war and carnage for profit. As long as the victims are always Black, that is.

The Intercept: 

"In early August, Columbia University told Congress that most of the students arrested in the past year for protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza would be allowed to return to campus for the fall.

Then a congressional inquiry applied pressure. Last week, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been conducting an inquiry into Columbia’s handling of the protests since this spring, published a letter blasting the school for not punishing students harshly enough and issued a subpoena for internal records.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C, accused the university of having “waved the white flag in surrender while offering up a get-out-of-jail-free card” to student protesters. She further blamed 'radical students and faculty' for interrupting the disciplinary process, and called protesters 'antisemites.' (Students are facing accusations of violating the school’s policies on protest, and not harassment or bias against Jewish students.) Foxx then subpoenaed the university later in the week for records related to the protests, including communication among administrators in handling of encampments, meeting minutes from the board of trustees, and documentation of alleged antisemitic incidents on campus."  
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/29/columbia-campus-protests-gaza-subpoena

-->The NYT didn't print this story. Maybe it was just too pathetic, with another top university caving into crude attacks by Republican lawmakers. But shouldn't readers be made aware of how freedom of speech is under attack on US campuses?

=====

FAIR:
"I was a senior producer on Phil’s short-lived MSNBC primetime show in 2002 and 2003. It was frustrating for us to have to deal with the men Phil called 'the suits'—NBC and MSNBC executives who were intimidated by the Bush administration, and resisted any efforts by NBC/MSNBC to practice journalism and ask tough questions of Washington before our young people were sent to Iraq to kill or be killed. Ultimately, Phil was fired because—as the leaked internal memo said—Donahue represented 'a difficult public face for NBC at a time of war.' ...

But 'the suits' ruined our show when they took control and actually mandated a quota system favoring the right wing: If we had booked one guest who was antiwar, we needed to book two that were pro-war. If we had two guests on the left, we needed three on the right. When a producer suggested booking Michael Moore—known to oppose the pending Iraq War—she was told she’d need to book three right-wingers for political balance.

Three weeks before the Iraq war started, and after some of the biggest antiwar mobilizations the world had ever seen (which were barely covered on mainstream TV), the suits at NBC/MSNBC terminated our show."
https://fair.org/home/phil-donahue-changed-my-life-and-millions-of-others/

-->This quote by Jeff Cohen was hardly our mainstream media's take on Phil Donahue. In fact, the NYT used its obituary to tell one more lie about Donahue's career, that he was fired for bad ratings. But internal memos have long ago pointed out why MSNBC let him go right before the Iraq invasion. General Electric, one of the owners of the station, stood to make huge profits from this war. Donahue was fired because he questioned all the war lies, and the NYT can't get it right twenty years later.

=====

Aljazeera:
"The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has accused the Israeli government of 'buying ads on Google to block users from giving donations' to the agency. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X that Israel’s attempts to defame the agency both harm its reputation and put the lives of its staff at risk.

'These deliberate efforts to spread misinformation should stop and be investigated,' Lazzarini wrote on Saturday, calling for more regulations for companies, including social media platforms, to combat disinformation and hate speech.

Israel has campaigned for years against UNRWA, the main organisation delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory and providing services for Palestinian refugees in other countries since 1949, claiming it has connections with 'terrorists' and lobbying for its closure."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/unrwa-head-accuses-israel-of-buying-google-ads-to-block-donations-to-agency

-->Israel is attacking the major relief effort for Palestine. All part of the planned genocide, and all kept out of the NYT news coverage.

Common Dreams:

"Human rights defenders are calling out Western news outlets and political leaders for their conspicuous lack of coverage and vocalized condemnation after leaked video footage appeared to show Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian detainee in the notorious Sde Teiman prison and the release of a new report documenting systematic torture of prisoners held by Israel.

Earlier this week, Israel's Channel 12 aired a video showing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists assaulting a Palestinian man at Sde Teiman, which is often called 'Israel's Guantánamo.' The victim was reportedly hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage. In addition to torture, former Sde Teiman detainees have described rampant rape and sexual abuse, allegedly often committed by female soldiers.  

Instead of avoiding the Sde Teiman rape story, Israeli media have aired an interview with one of the IDF suspects—who are being hailed as 'heroes' by far-right Israelis including multiple Cabinet ministers—and panel discussions including one in which a journalist called for 'institutionalized' rape of Palestinian prisoners. This, as Israeli leaders demanded an investigation of the rape video to find and punish whoever leaked the footage, and as Israeli lawmakers argue that it's permissible to rape Palestinian prisoners."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/u-s-media-coverage-of-israel-palestinian-conflict

-->Any story that reveals the state supported war crimes of the Israeli government is bound to be censured in the US media. Let's face it, our media is often just propaganda when it comes to Israel.

=====

Common Dreams:

"US Among Nations 'Brazenly' Flouting Arms Trade Treaty, 10 Years On: Amnesty 

As a treaty conference began, the human rights group called for an end to arms transfers to Israel and said that unlawful deals have led to 'devastating loss of life' in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar. 

Amnesty International on Monday called for an end to arms transfers to countries including Israel, Sudan, and Myanmar, saying they cause "devastating loss of life" and contravene the Arms Trade Treaty, the parties to which are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland this week. 

The United Nations treaty was signed by well over 100 countries in 2013 and went into effect in 2014, though 27 signatories, including the United States, the world's largest arms exporter, still haven't ratified the deal, which regulates the trade of conventional weapons including non-nuclear bombs, shells, and missiles. 

'Numerous governments continue to brazenly flout the rules, leading to a huge loss of life in conflict zones,' Patrick Wilcken, an Amnesty researcher, said in a statement. 'It is time for state parties to live up to their legal obligations and fully implement the Arms Trade Treaty, to prohibit the flow of arms to countries when it is known they would be used for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or if it could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.' "

https://www.commondreams.org/news/arms-treaty-us-israel

-->US involvement in this genocide is never on the US media agenda.

=====

Common Dreams:

"Oil Change International on Tuesday released a report detailing fossil fuel transfers to Israel since its siege of Gaza began in October, arguing that the countries and companies responsible, which include the United States and U.S.-based multinationals, could be held liable for contributing to 'acts of genocide' under international law. 

Azerbaijan, Kazahstan, and Gabon are major suppliers of crude oil to Israel, as are Big Oil companies such as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell, according to the report, which comes from data that the U.S.-based advocacy group commissioned from Data Desk, an investigative consultancy. 

... More than half were sent after the International Court of Justice ruled on January 26 that Israel must take steps to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and that some of Israel's acts 'appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention'—part of an ongoing judicial process. 

'Corporations supplying jet fuel and oil to Israel may be providing material support to the military, aware of its foreseeable harmful effects, and therefore risk complicity in war crimes, genocide, and other crimes under international law,' Irene Pietropaoli, a fellow in business and human rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, said in a statement."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/energy-oil-israel-complicit

-->Very little US coverage of this story. 

Common Dreams:
"Maduro Victory Shows Democratic Bolivarian Socialism Continues in Venezuela. The faith of the president's supporters in the Bolivarian project is a testament to the real achievements of the socialist government in weathering the 936 sanctions placed on the country by western governments and turning adversity into opportunity.

Shortly before midnight on 28 July, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that — with 80 percent of the over 20 million votes counted — the trend was irreversible: Nicolás Maduro had been re-elected president of Venezuela.
According to the CNE, Maduro received 51.2 percent of the vote, while his primary opponent, the little-known Edmundo Gonzales, received 44.02 percent. With that result, it was clear that the Venezuelan majority chose to continue the project of Bolivarian socialism introduced by Hugo Chavez at the end of the nineties. Recognizing the economic turn-around of the last two years and proud of their achievements in building 5.1 million housing units, securing food sovereignty, and deepening communal democracy, Venezuelans re-elected Maduro for a third six-year term.

A former ambassador to Argentina, the opposition candidate Gonzales replaced far-right leader Maria Corina Machado as the candidate of the Unity Platform after Machado was disqualified from running. Machado has long been an outspoken critic of Chavismo, supporting US sanctions and advocating foreign intervention in the country. In 2018, she asked Benjamin Netanyahu for military assistance in dismantling the Maduro government. Machado has close ties in the United States. In 2009, she was a Yale World Fellow. On June 23, 2024 she spoke at a National Endowment for Democracy awards ceremony in Washington, DC. She has been nicknamed the new 'iron lady' after her idol Margaret Thatcher."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/venezuela-election-results-2024

-->Coverage of the recent elections had a winner, Democratic Bolivarian Socialism, and one loser, the free press in the United States. It is laughable that the entire American media would have the same opinion on Maduro. Our media standards are so low, that enemies of the US Empire are never given a fair break.

=====

The Guardian UK
"In August 2023, an executive at Israel Bonds – an organization that sells Israeli bonds to fund that nation’s government and buttress its military – emailed the Ohio state treasurer’s office a sales pitch: could the state of Ohio buy a batch of Israeli bonds for $5m? In less than 40 minutes, the treasurer’s office approved the purchase, bringing Ohio’s Israeli bond purchases to a total of $35m for that year.

The fast deal was made between parties that were on exceptionally friendly terms, according to a trove of emails and other records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). And it was not the only matter being discussed with Israel Bonds. At the same time that the Ohio treasurer, Republican Robert Sprague, allocated millions in state funds to the bond purchases, he was also making arrangements with the bond seller’s business development team to join an exclusive guided trip to Israel, scheduled for later that year. ...

The more than 2,000 pages of emails and other records obtained by the ICIJ, largely through records requests, offer an unprecedented glimpse inside Israel Bonds’ extensive efforts to court public officials in the US while delivering highly personalized sales pitches in a stream of pro-Israel messaging. The documents show how some officials who buy these bonds have gained access to an often-glitzy world that includes gala dinners, cocktail celebrations and private meetings with top Israeli leaders and senior military officials – and how these dealings with Israel Bonds sometimes blurred the lines between private life and official business."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/25/us-officials-israel-bonds-ethics

-->How deeply the Israel Lobby is involved in our financial sector. And all these bribes make sure that US retirement funds are paying for the genocide in Gaza. No national coverage of this scam in our nation's media.

=====

The Guardian UK:
"Israeli airstrikes hit two schools and a hospital complex in Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 30 people, amid reports of heated disagreements between US and Israeli leaders about a possible ceasefire deal. Inside Israel, a Palestinian stabbed two people to death in a city near Tel Aviv, adding to tensions as the country braces for Iran’s response to the assassinations of key allies this week. ...

Israeli airstrikes on two schools in Gaza City killed at least 25 people sheltering there on Sunday, and another attack on the courtyard of al-Aqsa hospital killed at least five people and set the tents of displaced people on fire.

The hospital is the main medical facility in the central city of Deir al-Balah, but its grounds have become an informal settlement for people who have fled their homes, many of them displaced various times as Israeli troops have moved across the strip during 10 months of war. Video from the Associated Press showed men trying to put out fierce flames in the early morning dark and rescue the injured. A second strike on a nearby home killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/04/gaza-hospital-strike-tel-aviv-stabbing-us-israel-ceasefire-talks

-->The steady genocide of the Palestinians goes on and on. The NYT doesn't even think it is newsworthy enough to report. So holocausts happen, especially when our nation's media is so closely controlled by the Military Industrial Complex.

The New York Times:
"Venezuela’s Autocrat Is Declared Winner in Tainted Election. The result, which would give Nicolás Maduro six more years as president, was disputed by the opposition, and the United States said it had 'serious concerns.'

Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, was declared the winner of the country’s tumultuous presidential election early Monday, despite enormous momentum from an opposition movement that had been convinced this was the year it would oust Mr. Maduro’s socialist-inspired party.

The vote was riddled with irregularities, and citizens were angrily protesting the government’s actions at voting centers even as the results were announced. ... Mr. Maduro’s government has invented election results before, and this tally was immediately called into question by the opposition and by several officials in the region."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/americas/venezuela-election-results.html

-->How many times can our newspaper of record express its distrust in the Venezuela's recent election? And what better example do we have of the NYT being the newspaper of the US Empire. Venezuela has the oil the Empire wants, and the effect this has on our free press is almost laughable. Any proof offered of all these accusations? Certainly not! The NYT doesn't even bother.

=====

The Guardian UK:
"The G20 group of the world’s most powerful countries is exploring plans for a global minimum tax on the world’s 3,000 billionaires, aiming to end a 'race to the bottom' that has enabled the super-rich to pay less than the rest of the population.

Leaders gathering in São Paulo for a key G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors are preparing to discuss an internationally agreed backstop on the taxation of hypermobile wealthy individuals, amid increasing global cooperation to tackle tax avoidance.

Aiming to build on the cooperation that resulted in a 15% global minimum tax on multinational companies, which came into effect in January, the plan is being promoted under Brazil’s presidency of the G20 before a summit of world leaders in Rio de Janeiro in autumn. ... 'Currently the richest people can avoid paying the same level of tax as other people who are less rich. We want to avoid such tax optimization,” Bruno Le Maire [France’s finance minister] told Reuters news agency before the meeting."
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/29/taxation-worlds-billionaires-super-rich-g20-brazil

-->I don't see this story in the NYT, the favorite newspaper of the filthy rich. The very rich are the people our newspaper of record caters to. Why make them angry with all this socialist rhetoric?

=====

Capitol Hill Citizen:
"In April 2024 Congress overwhelmingly passed and President Biden signed a military aid bill that provides $95 billion in war aid – including $61 billion to Ukraine, $8 billion to Taiwan and $26 billion to Israel in effect a genocide tax on the American people. ...

Out of the ashes of the Gaza slaughter and ongoing war in Ukraine is growing a new anti-war movement, with a special focus on the most powerful political force driving the U.S. support of the Gaza genocide – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The new anti-AIPAC movement is building on increasing discontent in the American electorate with Israel’s assault on Gaza and its people. A March Gallup poll found that after narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin.
https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CHC9.Page1Web.pdf

-->The NYT coverage of Gaza is way down, despite the fact that the slaughter in Gaza is going on unabated. So the NYT wouldn't and didn't run a story like this, outlining the change in support for Israel's genocide.

Electronic Intifada:
"In her acceptance speech at the award ceremony, which by chance fell on Jabr’s birthday, she talked about the thousands of Palestinian mothers whose children have been killed in Israel’s genocidal military onslaught on the Gaza Strip, suggesting to her audience that they try to feel their pain as they do the pain of grieving mothers in New York.

She closed her speech by saying: 'Even though I can’t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide, I hope to keep making them proud as I keep representing them here at NYU.'

These were words that would come back to bite her. At her next shift at the hospital, instead of getting to work with her patients, she was summoned to the office of the hospital’s president and vice president of nursing. Right away, she told The Electronic Intifada, they scolded her about 'ruining the ceremony' and 'putting others at risk' and 'offending people.'

'It’s because you mentioned genocide,' she said they told her. 'It’s bringing up Palestine. It’s fine you mentioned your mother and your grandmother. You should’ve stopped there.' And that is how Jabr’s exemplary, award-winning nursing career at NYU Langone ended: a plainclothes police officer removed her from the hospital. Not for getting caught stealing narcotics or harming a patient or coming to work intoxicated or punching a supervisor, but for raising her voice against Israel’s continuing slaughter of Palestinian babies."
https://electronicintifada.net/content/hesen-jabr-paid-price-conscience/47736

-->Although the NYT did cover this story, it was written with a number of qualifications, beginning with an Israeli spokesperson who said that her use of the word "genocide" was not warranted. The NYT also insinuated that she had been an activist ever since fifth grade, when she was part of a Civil Liberties Union complaint against her school. In fact, at least half of the newspaper's story was about doubts the newspaper had about her story.

=====

Ynet:
"Japanese hotel cancels reservation of Israeli tourist over IDF 'war crimes' in Gaza.
Jeronimo Gehres, the manager of Material Hotel in Kyoto, told the Israeli tourist that he is not able to accept reservations from persons he believes might have ties to the Israeli army

An Israeli tourist named Alex, who had booked a room at a hotel in Kyoto, received a message from the hotel manager informing him that he could not accommodate him due to reports of war crimes allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza war.

Gehres further explained: 'Offering lodging to persons who might have assisted or might be assisting in the execution of warfare activities forbidden by international humanitarian law based on the Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols could put us at risk of being considered accomplices and/or accessories to a person who could be facing prosecution for war crimes as soon as the conflict is over.'

'We hope you understand that we cannot take such a risk and that this is the reason why we are not able to offer you one of our rooms. We would appreciate if you could accept the cancellation request I have sent you yesterday,' Gehres wrote."
https://www.ynetnews.com/travel/article/bjjt8p6ra

-->Only one US newspaper covered this story. It is an important one, however, as it points to the awakening of the rest of the world to Israel's crimes against humanity.

=====

Haaretz:
"From a hotel in Kyoto to a sandwich joint in Edinburgh, the world is becoming hostile toward Israelis who are learning that a vacation won't shield them from the Gaza war.

During the nine months of war the Israeli tourist experience abroad has been marked by fears of antisemitism and efforts to avoid pro-Palestinian demonstrations. According to reports by Israeli media and posts online, some of those worries have recently turned real for a number of Israeli tourists.

Anecdotal incidents at touristic locations around the world are making it clear that even though there is no official policy of excluding Israelis, that is sometimes the situation on the ground. ...

Greek island affair
But the next day the steady drip continued, this time on the Greek island of Kefalonia, when an Israeli tried to book a trip with the company Sea Kayaking Kefalonia. The company asked her to attach photos from her Facebook account, and she received an email stating that Sea Kayaking Kefalonia wouldn't serve her 'due to the situation.' "
https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da59-d42c-afff-dffbb82e0000

-->It was years before white South Africans started to pay for their apartheid treatment of Black citizens. But BDS is is finally here, even though our mainstream media has so far declined to cover it.

Common Dreams:
The global humanitarian group Oxfam condemned the Israeli military on Thursday for attempting to force hundreds of thousands of Gaza civilians out of the eastern part of Khan Younis and into overcrowded parts of the besieged territory with no guarantee of safety or humanitarian assistance.

'Pushing hundreds of thousands more people into what is essentially a death trap, devoid of any facilities, is barbaric and a breach of International Humanitarian Law,' said Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam's Middle East director. 'Yet again, we are seeing vast numbers of people being forced to flee under Israeli military orders, with no heed for their safety or dignity.' ...

'None of the declared safe routes in Gaza are actually safe,' the group said. 'Israel's military has also systematically attacked civilians and aid workers, including in those clearly marked 'safe zones' and 'evacuation routes.' Israel has repeatedly failed to comply with international law, which compels it to take all possible measures to ensure satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety, and nutrition, and that family members are not separated."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/khan-younis-gaza

-->American audiences don't get these nitty gritty tails of Israel's genocide of men, women, and children. Very few US media outlets carried Oxfam's story.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Former Officials Say US Has 'Undeniable Complicity' in Israeli Killing, Forced Starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

Former Biden administration officials on Tuesday sharply criticized its Gaza policy, arguing that the continued supply of weapons to Israel is not only 'morally reprehensible' but also a violation of U.S. and international law.

In a joint statement, 12 officials who've resigned in protest in the last nine months set forth a list of recommendations and urged their former colleagues in the administration to use American leverage to help bring an end to the assault on Gaza.

'The administration's policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security,' the statement says. 'America's diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/officials-say-us-complicit-gaza

-->Another story that points to the US role in Genocide. Again, the US media has avoided this story, preferring to obscure the war crimes being done to Palestinians. Does that mean our country is responsible for Genocide as much as Israel is? Why, that is exactly what it means.

=====

Common Dreams:
"The US, Isolated on Ukraine and Gaza. Turns to Allies That Speak Its Language.

Wherever he travels globally, U.S. President Joe Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the 'rules-based international order' against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. 'We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,' he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6. 'Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.' ...

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: The United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive—and provocative—feature of the Biden presidency."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/u-s-anglophone-allies

-Our national news never questions the Pentagon's alliances, or its war crimes. Maybe some citizens would question the wisdom of this US isolation. That is if they ever heard it on our national news.

Al Jazeera:
"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus, an investigation by the Reuters news agency has found.

Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vaccination campaign, Reuters reported in a story released on Friday. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation. ...

The Pentagon tailored the campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East using a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/14/pentagon-ran-secret-anti-vax-campaign-to-undermine-china-during-pandemic

-->The NYT didn't cover this story, probably because it shows the disregard the Pentagon has for the rest of the world. Its the same mindset that sends 2 ton bombs to the genocide in Gaza.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Israeli prison officials are concealing information about reductions in food rations for Palestinians held in the Gaza Strip, where detainees—who have also reported horrific abuse including alleged rape and deadly torture—have been deliberately driven 'to the point of starvation,' according to a report published Thursday.

Security sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) is intentionally cutting Palestinian prisoners' caloric intake, a move confirmed by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called the policy a 'deterrent.' ...

Former detainees said groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians were allowed to record torture sessions in which the men, stripped nearly naked, were beaten with metal batons, electrocuted, and had hot water poured over their heads. The ex-prisoners said some of the Israelis laughed while filming their torture."  
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-starving-prisoners

-->The NYT and most of the mainstream media wouldn't touch this story either. It shows the depravity of the apartheid state, a lawless killer pretending to be the Jewish religion. In truth, Israel is a failed colonial state being manipulated by the US Pentagon.

=====

The Guardian UK:
"Norway pension fund sells $69m stake in Caterpillar over alleged involvement in Gaza destruction.

Norway’s largest pension fund has cut ties with Caterpillar due to the US bulldozer company’s alleged contribution to the construction of illegal settlements and other human rights violations by Israel’s armed forces in the West Bank and Gaza.

[The pension fund] took the decision to divest its $69m stake in the Texas-based industrial manufacturing group earlier this month after Caterpillar failed to provide satisfactory assurances that it was taking action to reduce the risk of its equipment being used by the Israeli military against Palestinians in violation of international law."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/28/norway-divest-caterpillar-gaza

-->Readers of the NYT will be surprised when the apartheid state of Israel collapses. Our "newspaper of record" didn't report this story, nor did most of the US media. But the divestment against Israel's genocide will keep eating away at this failed state. Some day, it will fall and its leaders moved to the International Criminal Court.

 Aljazeera:
"Happening again: Guantanamo victims say Israel using ‘US-style’ torture. When former Guantanamo detainee Asadullah Haroon looks at pictures of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, the memories of his own abuse and torture in United States detention centres come flooding back.

'This is the worst form of oppression,' he says. 'When you are labelled as a terrorist you cannot defend yourself in any way. Without a doubt it’s the same process; they are torturing the people in the same way. I think the Americans have made this and the Israelis are implementing it.' ...

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and other human rights organisations have called on the United Nations special rapporteur on torture for urgent action to end 'the systematic abuse, torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.' ”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/22/happening-again-guantanamo-victims-say-israel-using-us-style-torture

-->This story can't be read in the US media. The deadly links between US and Israeli torture are to be expected. Neither country has much respect for human dignity or human rights.

=====

Aljazeera:
"Tens of thousands of protesters waving Israeli flags and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday, demanding new elections and the return of captives held in Gaza.

Large protests have occurred in the Israeli city on a weekly basis over Netanyahu’s handling of the nearly nine-month-old war in Gaza started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. Many protesters held signs reading 'Crime Minister' and 'Stop the War' as people poured into the biggest Israeli city’s main thoroughfare. ...

Antigovernment protest organisation Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the rally, calling it the biggest since Israel’s war on Gaza. Some demonstrators lay on the ground covered in red paint in the city’s Democracy Square to protest what they say is the death of the country’s democracy under Netanyahu."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/22/all-of-the-rats-in-the-knesset-mass-anti-war-protest-in-israel

-->No US media seems much interested in this story. The left paints Israel as a genocidal state. The right wants Israel to kill even more Palestinians. But why are demonstrations like this ignored?

=====
Common Dreams:
"'Visible Signs of Wasting': Heat, Forced Malnutrition Strangle People of Gaza. ...

Humanitarian officials at the United Nations warned Wednesday evening that with Israel continuing to block aid deliveries across Gaza, thousands of children are among those facing acute malnutrition as extreme summer heat exacerbates suffering in the besieged enclave.

The Site Management Working Group for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released its latest report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, noting that aid deliveries in recent days have done little to improve the condition of a population that has been under attack by the U.S.-backed Israeli military—and facing an illegal blockade—for more than eight months. ...
 
'No nutrition screenings have been conducted to assess the scale of malnutrition and treat identified cases due to limited capacity,' reported OCHA. Last week, the World Health Organization reported that more than 8,000 children have been diagnosed with and treated for acute malnutrition, including 1,600 with severe wasting."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/malnutrition-gaza

-->There is not that much interest in these stories about starving children. This story in Common Dreams shows the body of a starving four year old. When the NYT can bring itself to print a picture like this, the Gaza genocide will be over. It is only the ignorance of the American people that keeps this slaughter of Palestinians from ending.

Common Dreams:
"Israeli Politician Quotes Hitler to Argue for Resettlement of Gaza. Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a 'Hebrew Gaza.'

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

'We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it...' Feiglin said, adding, 'As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/moshe-feiglin-hitler

-->This story really links Israeli thinking with the mind of Adolf Hitler. Feiglin claims the right to mass murder,and it is clearly in retribution for the Holocaust. The NYT didn't print this story. Maybe because it shows the genocide that the US is supporting.

=====

The Intercept:
"Israel’s New Air War in the West Bank: Nearly Half of the Dead are Children. ... The world’s attention has been on the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 36,000 people — including more than 15,000 children — and prompted accusations of genocide from U.N. officials and at the International Court of Justice. In the name of eliminating Hamas in retaliation for the attacks in October, the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip continues.

But Israel has also transformed its tactics in the West Bank. Since June of last year, and with increasing regularity during the Gaza offensive, the Israel Defense Forces have shown a new willingness to use air power in the West Bank, regardless of the collateral damage to children and other civilians caught in the blasts.

An open-source Intercept investigation documented at least 37 Israeli airstrikes, drone strikes, and attacks by helicopter gunships in the West Bank since June 2023, which have killed 55 Palestinians, according to the United Nations. Most attacks struck densely populated urban areas and refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, all in the northern part of the West Bank."
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/12/israel-west-bank-airstrikes-drones-palestinians-killed-children/

-->The West Bank is turning into a killing field, but our media mostly ignores this fact. The NYT didn't think it was worth printing.

=====

Aljazeera:
"50,000 Gaza children require urgent treatment for malnutrition: UN. ... In a statement on Saturday, the agency noted 'with continued restrictions to humanitarian access, people in Gaza continue to face desperate levels of hunger. UNRWA teams work tirelessly to reach families with aid, but the situation is catastrophic'.

On Wednesday, UNICEF had a mission to drive a truck full of nutritional and medical supplies for 10,000 children, Elder said. Their task was to deliver the aid, which was pre-approved by Israeli authorities, [a 25 mile] round trip.

'It took 13 hours and we spent eight of those around checkpoints, arguing around paperwork – ‘was it a truck or a van’,” he said. 'The reality is this truck was denied access. Those 10,000 children did not get that aid … Israel as the occupying power has the legal responsibility to facilitate that aid'.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/15/over-50000-children-in-gaza-need-treatment-for-malnutrition-un-says

-->In truth, the NYT is the newspaper of the genocide, always playing it down and hiding the dirty little secrets of Israel's mass murder. But truth will out someday, and the terrorist state of Israel will collapse, freeing millions of Palestinians. We the people can work for that day, when Israel's war crimes become visible to the entire world.

Aljazeera:
"Attacks on US-linked businesses rattle Baghdad as anger over Gaza surges.

A dozen masked men jump out of two SUVs and a white pick-up and storm a KFC in Baghdad, smashing everything in sight before fleeing the scene. A few days earlier, similar violence played out at Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken and Chili House – all US brands popular in the Iraqi capital.

Though no one was seriously hurt, the recent attacks – apparently orchestrated by supporters of Iran-backed, anti-US militias in Iraq — reflect surging anger against the United States, Israel’s top ally, over the war in Gaza.

Iraqi governments have for years walked a delicate line between Washington and Tehran, but the eight-month war in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, has critically upped the stakes."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/7/attacks-on-us-linked-businesses-rattle-baghdad-as-anger-over-gaza-surges

-->A worldwide boycott of US products over the genocide in Gaza. It's about time, but you won't read about it in the American media.  

=====

Common Dreams:
"Historic, But So, So Late: Israel Added to UN's Child-Killing 'List of Shame.'

'It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,' said one Palestinian observer.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called 'List of Shame' of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068

-->The NYT covered this story, but stressed that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had also been added. That's better than the rest of the US media, which didn't cover this news at all. Child killing, when it comes to Israel, is almost always censored by the press.

=====

Common Dreams:
U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published Tuesday that he does not believe the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, contradicting the findings of leading human rights organizations that have documented Israel's deliberate obstruction of food aid as Palestinians die of malnutrition. ...

The U.S. Agency for International Development has also determined that Israel has unlawfully impeded the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, leading to a 'deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza [that] is unprecedented in modern history.' ...

'The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention. It is clear as day,' Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at HRW, wrote in response to Biden's TIME interview, pointing to her group's December report that found the Israeli military was 'deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-starving-gaza

-->The US media did not cover this story of Israel's purposeful starvation and Biden's denial. Starvation is almost always described as a byproduct of war, rather than a purposeful act and a crime against humanity. Could the US ever really report this brutal story?

The Intercept:
"The announcement today that prosecutors from the International Criminal Court are seeking arrest warrants against top Israeli officials, alongside senior officials from Hamas, has triggered a political earthquake amid the ongoing expansion of the Israel offensive in the Gaza Strip. ...

The news sparked immediate outrage from the U.S. government. Warrants against Israeli leaders would mark a new era for international humanitarian law where even close allies of the U.S. can be held to account for their actions.

'The prosecutor’s announcement will likely impact assessments of the legal risks for other states which are supporting or aiding Israel’s war in Gaza,' said Sarah Knuckey, an expert on international law and professor at Columbia Law School. 'If there are reasonable grounds to believe that senior Israeli officials are responsible for war crimes, then countries aiding Israel’s war in Gaza are at risk of complicity in those same crimes. We may see accelerated efforts in other countries to stop them from selling weapons or providing military aid to Israel.' ”
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/20/icc-arrest-warrant-israel-hamas/

-->Our official Pentagon publication, the NYT, doesn't really explore the ramifications of the ICC issuing warrants of arrest. Of course, why wouldn't Biden and Blinken be worried; they have aided and abetted the worst crimes against humanity since the Second World War. Don't look to the NYT to explore these issues.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Just months after mega-billionaire Elon Musk launched what he termed a 'thermonuclear lawsuit' against Media Matters for America, the nonprofit media watchdog outfit announced a round of punishing layoffs Thursday which it in part attributed to the financial strain imposed by the legal battle it now faces.

What triggered Musk's initial outrage in November was MMFA reporting about 'pro-Nazi content' on the social media platform X, owned by Musk, appearing alongside ads by prominent corporations in the content stream shown to users.

In his post threatening the lawsuit, which was later filed in Texas, Musk vowed to target 'Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.' Noting the scope of his retribution, Musk then added: 'Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them…' would be included in the suit's scope."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-media-matters-suit

-->The era of billionaires being able to shut down media outlets is upon us. With unlimited funds for lawyers, Musk can almost bring down any news source he wants. But our major media is not paying attention to this story. Afraid that Musk will take them out as well? And can we ever recover our democracy without dealing with the mega criminals that populate our over 800 billionaires?

=====

Codepink:
"In 2019, Dr. Kuhn, a trusted expert on China, worked with award-winning director Peter Getzels to journey across China and document the methods used to bring over 100 million people out of extreme poverty. The film was an exemplary piece of video journalism meant to spread knowledge and awareness of China’s unprecedented accomplishments alleviating poverty. Not only that, but the film marked a beautiful moment of people to people dialogue, displaying the human benefits of local, bottom-up methodologies.

I am appalled by your continued censorship of this innovative documentary and the divergence from your claim that you are a 'Trusted Window to the World.’ Not only are you stifling the truth, but you have taken away easy access to learning about potential solutions to global poverty. Your censorship in no way 'serves the American public [by] using media to educate, inspire, entertain, and express a diversity of perspectives.' It is clear from your actions that you do not care for displaying a diversity of perspectives, and only those that suit your agenda."
https://www.codepink.org/pbs_liberate

-->PBS doing Pentagon propaganda again? Of course it is. The decision to cancel this documentary is just part of the Pentagon's decades long effort to hide what is really happening in the rest of the world. Shame on you, PBS!

The Independent:
"A high-profile group of financiers, billionaires and executives joined a private WhatsApp group to sway public opinion on the Israel-Hamas war, culminating in some members participating in a Zoom call with New York mayor Eric Adams urging him to use police to deal with protests at Columbia.

A section of the powerful pro-Israel group held a video call with Mr Adams on 26 April, in which it was discussed how to get New York City Police Department officers onto the Ivy League campus in Manhattan where one of the most high-profile pro-Gaza encampments was located, according to The Washington Post.

Members of the group included Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund executive Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik, and real estate investor Joseph Sitt, according to a log of chat messages referencing the meeting obtained by the newspaper. ...

The alleged April meeting was part of larger efforts by members of the WhatsApp group, which reportedly included figures from the very upper echelons of business including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and investor Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a former Trump administration official.”
https://nz.news.yahoo.com/finance-business-moguls-held-zoom-164551380.html

-->What are all these billionaires doing? Why, they are spending their fortunes trying to shut down criticism of Israel on our nation's campuses. They are also Jewish, a point carefully avoided by the Washington Post and the Independent. The Post calls this fact an "too familiar antisemitic trope." But isn't that using antisemitism again to cover up what really happened? These are Jewish billionaires deciding to attack protesters on our nation's colleges. Trope or no trope; this is what happened.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Advisers for U.S. President Biden reportedly saw Morehouse College, a historically Black men's college in Atlanta where he gave the commencement address Sunday, as a school where the president was unlikely to face protests over his continued support for Israel's assault on Gaza, which has been the subject of mass demonstrations led by students at universities across the country over the past month.

But students and faculty made clear at the ceremony that many of them, like others in higher education, are intent on sending Biden a strong message of disapproval over his Israel policy.

A number of faculty members and students wore keffiyehs, the traditional scarves worn in parts of the Middle East including Palestine, and by some supporters of Palestinian rights to show solidarity with civilians in Gaza. Others displayed the Palestinian flag on their graduation gowns. ABC News White House correspondent Selina Wang reported that while most of the alumni present at the graduation stood up when Biden was introduced, all but a few of the students remained seated."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-at-morehouse

-->Our mainstream media was intent on making Biden's speech at Morehouse a victory for US support of Israel. But the truth was quite different, although one has to go to an alternative news source to get it.

=====

The Intercept:
"Many scholars committed to Palestinian liberation can no longer do their jobs. That’s because many of the professors most supportive of Palestine don’t have jobs anymore.

This is nowhere truer than in the Gaza Strip — where all 12 universities have been reduced to rubble, and more than 90 professors have been reported killed during Israel’s assault on the territory. The gravity of what United Nations experts warn could amount to U.S.-backed 'scholasticide' has no equivalent on American soil.

Yet Israel’s attempted eradication of intellectual life in Gaza echoes far beyond the territory, with U.S. universities ensuring that some professors vocal in their support of Palestine can no longer do their jobs either. Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, academics in fields including politics, sociology, Japanese literature, public health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East and African studies, mathematics, education, and more have been fired, suspended, or removed from the classroom for pro-Palestine, anti-Israel speech."
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/16/university-college-professors-israel-palestine-firing/

-->The full extent of this mass attack on academic freedom never reaches our mainstream media. That's how effective the Israel Lobby has been in our country.

The Guardian:
"Since 7 October, commentators have been ringing the alarm that a growing protest movement in solidarity with Palestine signals not just the end of a 'golden age' for American Jews – as Franklin Foer recently put it in the Atlantic – but for American liberal democracy itself. ...

Foer [is] right that American democracy is imperiled. But as the draconian crackdown on non-violent student protests makes clear, accusations of antisemitism are not themselves evidence of liberal decline, but rather the tip of the spear in a frightening illiberal project serving the agenda of an emboldened, autocratic right wing.

The months since 7 October have seen shocking attacks on freedom of expression and assembly on campus. Even before the stunning display of police brutality in recent weeks, campuses have been home to canceled speakers and events, arbitrary disciplinary hearings, and outright censorship. The University of Southern California has canceled its entire commencement ceremony rather than let its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, deliver a message of Palestine solidarity in her speech.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/11/us-university-protests-antisemitism-free-speech

-->This assault against free speech is not really being covered by the US mainstream media. One must go the a foreign press to read what is really happening here at home. Our media is just too corporate owned to report this story.

=====

The Guardian:
"Three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp in the Negev desert offered horrifying accounts of the treatment of Palestinians held there, telling CNN that the facility's doctors have amputated limbs due to handcuffing injuries, allowed detainees' wounds to rot, and carried out vicious beatings.

A medic who worked at Sde Teiman's field hospital said that Palestinian detainees there are stripped 'of anything that resembles human beings' and that the harassment and torture are done not to 'gather intelligence' but 'out of revenge' for the October 7 attacks.

Israel has detained thousands of Gaza residents since October, with many of them held under a recently amended law that empowers Israeli authorities to imprison people indefinitely without charge or due process. Human rights organizations have documented Israeli forces' brutal and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees, including women and children.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-torture-palestine

-->Where is this story in the NYT? CNN first reported this abuse of injured Palestinians, but our Zionist newspaper of record didn't think the story was fit to print.

=====

Common Dreams:
" 'What Israel has done over the last seven months is not just gone to war against Hamas—it has gone to war against the entire Palestinian people, and the results have been absolutely catastrophic,' [Bernie Sanders] told NBC.

Sanders went on to outline some of that catastrophe: a death toll that surpassed 35,000 on Sunday, with two-thirds of the dead women and children; the destruction of around 60% of all housing; the devastation of infrastructure such a as water and sewage as well as the healthcare and education systems; and the fact that hundreds of thousands of children are now at risk of starvation.

Sanders referred to Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act: 'Any country that blocks U.S. humanitarian aid is in violation of law and should not continue to receive military aid from the United States,' Sanders explained. 'That is precisely what Israel has done.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-israel-war-palestinian-people

-->The NYT doesn't do Bernie Sanders. Not what he writes or what he says. That is especially true now that Bernie is expressing what most of us feel, that Israel's cruelty and crimes against humanity have gone off the rails.

Freedomflotilla.org:
"On Thursday afternoon, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition was contacted by the Guinea Bissau International Ships Registry (GBISR), requesting an inspection of our lead ship. This was a highly unusual request as our ship had already passed all required inspections; nevertheless, we agreed. ...

Sadly, Guinea-Bissau has allowed itself to become complicit in Israel’s deliberate starvation, illegal siege and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel is showing the world the extent to which it will go to deny Palestinians the aid they need to stay alive, in direct contravention of International Humanitarian Law, UN Security Council resolutions, and two orders of the International Court of Justice. Israel is only allowed to get away with this because we have an international order where law does not apply equally, where people are not valued the same, and where might equals right.

The US has hijacked international law and is violating its own laws to protect Israel at every turn. A recently-leaked USAID memo states that 'famine in Gaza is inevitable,' and that 'changes could reduce but not stop widespread civilian deaths.' It also states that the government of Israel does not currently demonstrate necessary compliance with U.S. law required to receive U.S. military aid. Nevertheless, last week, the U.S. Congress passed and Biden signed a $26 billion aid package for Israel. It is this kind of naked impunity, over decades, that has brought us to this point where Israel can carry out a genocide, that includes a public declaration by Israel’s leaders that it is going to deliberately starve children, and not only face no consequences, but also involve a majority of world governments in its crimes."
https://freedomflotilla.org/2024/04/27/press-conference-under-israeli-pressure-guinea-bissau-moves-to-withdraw-flotilla-flags/

-->Children are dying, while 100 internationals try to sail a relief ship to Gaza. Of course, the NYT doesn't cover this story. Our "newspaper of record" is a pro Israel, pro genocide rag.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Government aggression and the rise of Big Tech are threatening the rules-based international order and global human rights, Amnesty International warned in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report, released Wednesday.

The organization expressed particular alarm over Israel's war on Gaza and the inability or unwillingness of its allies to rein in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing civilian populations, displacing more than 1.9 million people, and restricting the flow of aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. This and other conflicts, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, had led to a 'near breakdown of international law,' Amnesty said.

'For millions the world over, Gaza now symbolizes utter moral failure by many of the architects of the post-World War Two system; their failure to uphold the absolute commitment to universality, our common humanity, and to our 'never again' commitment,' Amnesty International's secretary-general Agnès Callamard wrote in the preface to the report."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2023-near-breakdown-international-law

-->No major US news source covered this story. When it comes down to reporting, our media comes out in favor of the war criminals, not their Palestinian victims.

=====

Counterpunch:
"Israeli bombs continue to fall on Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians with abandon. Al Jazeera published a story about the destruction of 24 hospitals in Gaza, each of them bombed mercilessly by the Israeli military. Half of the 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel were children, their bodies littering the overwhelmed morgues and mosques of Gaza. The former United Nations assistant secretary-general for human rights Andrew Gilmour told BBC Newsnight that the Palestinians are experiencing 'collective punishment' and that what we are seeing in Gaza is 'probably the highest kill rate of any military, killing anybody, since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.'

Meanwhile, in the West Bank section of Palestine, Human Rights Watch shows that the Israeli military has participated in the displacement of Palestinians from 20 communities and has uprooted at least seven communities since October 2023. These are established facts.

Yet, these facts—according to a leaked memorandum—cannot be spoken about in the 'newspaper of record' in the United States, the New York Times. Journalists at the paper were asked to avoid the terms 'genocide,' 'ethnic cleansing,' and 'occupied territory.' Indeed, over the past six months, newspapers and television shows in the United States have generally written about the genocidal violence using passive voice: bombs fell, people died. Even on social media, where the terrain is often less controlled, the ax fell on key phrases; for instance, despite his professions of commitment to free speech, Elon Musk said that terms such as 'decolonization' and phrases such as 'from the river to the sea' would be banned on X."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/24/elites-in-the-global-north-are-scared-to-talk-about-palestine/

-->Our major media supports the genocide in Gaza. Not such a surprise because our government is paying for it and even protecting it at the UN.

Common Dreams:
"Leaked Cables Show Biden Pressuring Nations to Oppose Palestine's UN Membership. 'This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk,' said one former Lebanese diplomat.

As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough 'no' votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.

Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs 'Palestinian aspirations for statehood,' one of the cables asserts that 'it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinian-statehood

-->The NYT didn't print this story; nor did our mainstream media. The story exposes the lier our President really is about stopping the genocide. Biden will be forever known as the genocide president.

=====

Common Dreams and ProPublica:
"Blinken Hasn't Ended Aid for Israeli Military Units Tied to Killings, Rapes. 'Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws,' said one critic.

Amid global condemnation of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Biden administration's complicity, ProPublica revealed Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has for months ignored staff recommendations to cut off American aid to Israeli military and police units accused of human rights violations including killings and rapes.

'The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel,' which was the catalyst for the current Israeli escalation in Gaza, reported ProPublica's Brett Murphy. 'They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed, and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/blinken-israel

-->We know about the NYT by now. It is a Zionist rag that has instructed its reporters not to use the words: "occupation" or "ethnic cleansing." Also "slaughter" is off the list, unless it applies to what Hamas has supposedly done. One can only hope that Israel, and its propaganda arm the NYT will someday pay for their war crimes.

=====

Middleeasteye:
"Hundreds of alumni from the prestigious New York University (NYU) in New York City will withhold more than $3m worth of potential contributions from the institution's largest fundraising day on Wednesday over its suppression of students and faculty organising against what they call 'genocide' in Gaza.

NYU Alumni for Palestine, the group that mobilised to deter alumni from donating to the university, told Middle East Eye that the stifling of pro-Palestinian voices and its refusal to condemn Israel's killing of Palestinians in Gaza had compelled them to take action against their alma mater. ...

The group cited an informal tracker created by NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which documented retaliatory actions against an estimated 100 students as well as 25 staff and faculty over the past six months because of their comments or mobilising for Palestine."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hundreds-nyu-alumni-refuse-donate-university-over-palestine-policy

-->Students, parents, and alums are pushing back against their pro genocide campuses. But no coverage from the NYT. Did you expect any?

Middle East Eye:
"Students at Yale University begin a hunger strike after calls for the institution to divest from companies profiting off arms deals with Israel were met with silence. A group of graduate students at Yale University launched a hunger strike on Friday in protest against the institution's investments in companies providing Israel with military weaponry.

Students argue the university is profiting off of what a growing number of Americans say is a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza being carried out by Israel.
The hunger strike was launched after students with the group, Hunger Strikers for Palestine, sent a letter to Yale president Peter Salovey on Wednesday, demanding that the university divest from its investments in companies providing Israel with military technology.

Yale University's Graduate Students for Palestine (GSP), which helped organize the letter and the hunger strike, said this protest is the result of the administration ignoring their protests and demands for months. 'This is the last thing folks are able to give, their bodies,' a member of GSP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MEE. 'In the total nonresponse of any kind from the institution we are speaking to, the final thing we can put on the line really is our health and well-being.' "
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-yale-students-launch-hunger-strike-demand-divestment-israel-war

-->No response from the mainstream media on this, except for Fox News, which suggested that the students have access to food if they want it. I don't think our media wants this story to spread. There are tens of thousands of college students looking for something more powerful as they watch the children of Gaza starve to death.

=====

Truth Out:
"In reality the Biden administration has the power to stop Israel’s offensive in Gaza in its tracks. Though Congress authorizes military aid, the president has the authority under the Arms Export Control Act to withhold (or threaten to withhold) U.S. military aid when the recipient nation violates U.S. or international law.

In terms of the international legal system, Israel is currently violating the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in war time, among a number of other statutes, and it is violating UN Security Council Resolution 2728, which demands an immediate temporary ceasefire. Israel is also in violation of Section 502B(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits aid to countries that prevent access to humanitarian relief supplies; the 1999 Leahy Amendment, which prohibits funding foreign security forces engaged in the commission of gross violations of human rights; and Biden’s own National Security Memorandum 20, which requires U.S. security partners to provide written assurances that they will use U.S. military assistance in accordance with international law and facilitate humanitarian aid.

Instead, Biden has utilized emergency powers to bypass public and congressional oversight in providing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arms from U.S. stockpiles overseas, including Hellfire missiles and bunker-busting bombs which have had a devastating impact on Gaza’s civilian population. At the end of March, his administration approved billions of dollars’ worth of additional bombs and fighter jets to Netanyahu’s forces."
https://truthout.org/articles/biden-has-had-the-power-to-stop-israels-war-crimes-in-gaza-since-day-1/

--The mainstream media does not want it known that Biden could stop the war anytime he wanted to. In this way, our media is aiding the genocide in Gaza. By hiding what Biden could do, our media lets the US escape censure for the charnel house that Gaza has become.   

Common Dreams:
"The U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza – torrents of heavy weaponry, diplomatic and political cover, and vast majorities in Congress swearing fealty to Netanyahu’s extremist regime – is usually attributed to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the powerful domestic pro-Israeli government lobby, organized in every Congressional District, with its abundant campaign cash and its many personal contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch.

This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally – with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires operate in tandem.

Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. The U.S. sends special forces, drones, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, anywhere and anytime it wants – especially the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. National boundaries and sovereignty mean nothing. Similarly, Israel completely dominates the Middle East militarily, bombing, sabotaging, and killing whomever it wants in neighboring countries. It has attacked Lebanon and Syria routinely with its air force, artillery, and invaded Lebanon on the ground, prompting feeble responses it always labels 'terrorism.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-and-u-s

-->Here is the truth about overlapping empires, described in detail by Ralph Nader. You won't find this truth in the US mainstream media, including the NYT. That's why Americans remain so ignorant of the Gaza genocide being conducted in their name.

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The Guardian UK:
"In an earlier interview on This Week, [Chef José Andrés] had said that the IDF attack on his workers is not anymore about the seven men and women of World Central Kitchen that perished on this unfortunate event. 'This is happening for way too long. It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems – moves,' Andrés said.

'This doesn’t seem a war against terror,' Andrés added. 'This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself.'

The IDF said on Friday that there had been three strikes against the convoy, and confirmed that World Central Kitchen had coordinated their movements correctly with them in advance. ... The strikes, the IDF added, had been 'a grave mistake'.

But Andrés refuted those findings, telling ABC News: 'Every time something happens, we cannot just be bringing Hamas into the equation.' ”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/07/israel-gaza-strike-aid-workers-chef-jose-andres

-->To the NYT, the massacre of foreign aid workers is just another unfortunate mistake. Our newspaper of record failed to print most of Andres' words.

UPDATE: The NYT did print an extended story about Andres on April 8.

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Common Dreams:
"After Months of Progressive Outcry Over Biden Israel Policy, Establishment Dems Pile On. ... U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine on Friday became the latest centrist Democrat to display a shift in tone regarding the Biden administration's continued support for Israel—and despite months of intensifying demands from progressive lawmakers and the international community for President Joe Biden to push for a change in policy from Israel, the newly minted critics have appeared to have more success.

The Virginia Democrat, who serves on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, cited the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers this week in a lengthy statement in which he said Israel's 'current approach is not working' and pushed back against the White House's opposition to an independent investigation into the attack.

'The United States should join in the call for an independent and international investigation into Monday's strike on World Central Kitchen volunteers, in which an American was killed,' said Kaine. The senator also renewed his call for the administration to 'prioritize the transfer of defensive weapons in all arms sales to Israel while withholding bombs and other offensive weapons that can kill and wound civilians and humanitarian aid workers.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/establishment-democrats-gaza

-->US Sen. Tim Kaine's words did not make it into the NYT, which always tries to water down any criticisms of Israel's genocide.

Code Pink:
" 'The sniper put a gun to my head. They asked me to take all my clothes off.' This is just one of the many haunting experiences of sexual violence the women in Gaza faced at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

Despite countless eyewitness testimonies of Israeli rape and sexual violence in Gaza, there is next to no coverage of this in the mainstream media. Publications like the New York Times, which was quick to publish a–now widely debunked–'investigation' of 'mass rape' by Hamas fighters on October 7, have failed to report on the sexual violence Gazans are experiencing. The New York Times’ silence is evidence that it is nothing more than a puppet for spreading Israeli propaganda.

The IOF has used sexual violence against Palestinians for decades, with rape of Palestinians regularly documented in Israeli prisons, as well as sexual harassment and assaults at checkpoints. Sexual violence against Palestinians is built into the structure of Israel. In Gaza, first-hand accounts detail the experiences of Palestinian women being blindfolded and forced to strip naked before being assaulted and raped by Israeli soldiers. There is no shortage of videos, many by Israeli soldiers themselves, of the IOF detaining, blindfolding, and forcing Palestinian men to remove their clothes."
https://www.codepink.org/nytnomore

-->Code Pink gathers evidence and then makes its pronouncements to the world. That is what the NYT should be doing. But our newspaper of record just prints what Israel admits to, so its readers never find out how the IOF abuses Palestinian women.

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Common Dreams:
"The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found 'reasonable grounds to believe' that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.

The advance unedited version of the report—entitled Anatomy of a Genocide—concludes that Israel's far-right government and military 'have intentionally distorted jus in bello [minimizing suffering in war] principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.'

'The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group,' the draft report states, enumerating Israeli actions that violate Article II ... on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: 'Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-genocide-2667597341

-->Hey, it's a genocide, stupid! But not to the NYT, that didn't cover this story. Perhaps the NYT just can't quite believe that their favorite country is an out and out war criminal. Much better to avoid printing what the UN and the rest of the world is saying.

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The Intercept:
"Citing the company’s 'failure to provide answers to important questions,' Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are pressing Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to respond to reports of disproportionate censorship around the Israeli war on Gaza.

'Meta insists that there’s been no discrimination against Palestinian-related content on their platforms, but at the same time, is refusing to provide us with any evidence or data to support that claim,' Warren told The Intercept. 'If its ad-hoc changes and removal of millions of posts didn’t discriminate against Palestinian-related content, then what’s Meta hiding?' ...

The letter was written following widespread reporting in The Intercept and other outlets that detailed how posts on Meta platforms that are sympathetic to Palestinians, or merely depicting the destruction in Gaza, are routinely removed or hidden without explanation."
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/26/meta-gaza-censorship-warren-sanders

-->The NYT doesn't care if META censors pro-Palestinian content. Our newspaper of record does the very same thing. How else could the average middle class American live with themselves, after arming and paying for the killings of tens of thousands in Gaza? They depend on the NYT to keep them in the dark.

Common Dreams:
"Australia Restores UNRWA Funding as Israel Kills Aid Workers, Starving Gazans. 'Restoring UNRWA funding is the bare minimum,' said one Australian Green senator. 'The Labor government must publicly pressure Israel to allow aid into all parts of Gaza.'

Australia said Friday that it would reinstate funding for the United Nations United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in international financing due to unsubstantiated Israeli claims that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

'The best available current advice from agencies and the Australian government lawyers is that UNRWA is not a terrorist organization,' Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in Adelaide while announcing a new funding package for the agency, which works to aid Palestinians forcibly displaced during the Nakba, or 'catastrophe' through which the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, as well as their descendants.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/australia-unrwa

-->The NYT was all over the story of countries defunding UNRWA. But now that the charges look to be more Israeli propaganda, you would think that the NYT would apologize to its readers. But our newspaper of record has no shame when it comes to Palestine.

=====

Common Dreams:
"More than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested Thursday after staging a protest at The New York Times' Midtown Manhattan headquarters, where activists handed out copies of a satirical knockoff of the newspaper that skewered what organizers called its biased coverage of the Gaza genocide.

After surrounding the Times' printing plant in College Point, Queens, members of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), Palestinian Youth Movement, and other groups shut down the paper's Midtown West headquarters, where they chanted, 'New York Times you can't hide, we charge you with genocide,' 'free, free Palestine,' and 'from the river to the sea.'

Around 150 demonstrators occupied the Times building, where they called on passersby to boycott, divest, and unsubscribe. Some passersby confronted the demonstrators. One angry man attempted to steal a large banner from protesters. The New York Police Department said 124 protesters were arrested."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalism-gaza

-->Interesting how The NYT won't even cover the ceasefire demonstrations when they shut down access to the NYT's own printing plant. Hello, NYT, anyone home?

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Aljazeera:
" ‘Massacre’: Israel forces attack crowds waiting for aid in Gaza, killing 21. Palestinian officials call latest assault ‘premeditated’ as people seeking humanitarian supplies increasingly targeted.

At least 21 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people waiting for aid in Gaza City in the same area that was targeted hours earlier, government officials said. The Ministry of Health in Gaza described the late Thursday attack as a 'new, premeditated massacre' and said more than 150 people were wounded.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces had used helicopters, tanks and drones to target thousands of people waiting on food trucks. It was the latest in a string of assaults on people desperately in need of food and other essential supplies as Israel continues to obstruct and severely control the entry of aid into the enclave."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/massacre-israel-forces-attack-crowds-waiting-for-aid-in-gaza-killing-21

-->How did our "newspaper of record" deal with another cold blooded slaughter of starving Palestinians waiting for food? The title of the NYT story says it all: "Israeli and Gazan officials offer diverging accounts of deadly chaos around another aid convoy." Diverging accounts of genocide, and deadly chaos instead of an IDF hail of bullets and tank shells.