Thursday, February 27, 2025

Common Dreams:
" 'Unconscionable' for EU to Roll Out Red Carpet for Israeli Foreign Minister, Says Amnesty. 'Discussions on the E.U.'s future relationship with Israel should above all be premised on an insistence that Netanyahu and Gallant face justice at the ICC for the crimes they are alleged to have committed.'

Amnesty International is calling out the European Union for planning to welcome Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar to Belgium next Monday even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant face arrest warrants for Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The human rights group joined historians, political leaders, and United Nations experts in condemning Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide in December—just two weeks after the International Criminal Court (ICC) formally issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gideon-saar

-->Where is the NYT when it comes to reporting on criticisms of the EU for its allegiance to Israel? In fact, The NYT often hides the strength of the Israel Lobby, both here and in the EU.

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Common Dreams:
"After addressing more than 3,400 Nebraska residents in Omaha Friday evening, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday made his second stop on his National Tour to Fight Oligarchy—telling Iowa City, Iowa residents that 'Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway.'

'For better or worse, that is not going to happen,' said the Vermont Independent senator, whose broadly popular policy proposals have long been dismissed by Democratic leaders as unrealistic and radical while President Donald Trump has increasingly captured the attention of the working class Americans who would benefit most from Sanders' ideas.

'It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country, who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts to programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country,' said Sanders."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-donald-trump

-->The NYT carried this story, but from a very different perspective. Bernie's first quote is 'I am 83 years old. I do not think I’m going to be running for president [in 2028]." The graphic used in the Common Dreams story is of thousands of people crowding into an enormous room, waving their arms in support. The NYT? A picture of Bernie alone in a row of tall shrubbery, with his head pointed down. For social change is the last thing our newspaper of record ever wants, even when faced with a real fascist takeover.  
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/us/politics/bernie-sanders-iowa-trump.html

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Intercept:
"Larry Ellison has been at Donald Trump’s side since he took office last month. The man Trump referred to as 'one of the most serious players in the world' was front row at the inauguration, and then watched as the president signed an executive order on artificial intelligence — a major business interest for tech giant Oracle.

And Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire co-founder, was sitting next to Rupert Murdoch in early February when Trump created a fund to facilitate the purchase of TikTok. His presence was no accident.

Last month, after the Supreme Court upheld a law banning TikTok, Oracle emerged as a leader in the race to take control of the Chinese-owned short-form video platform. While the campaign against TikTok was led by China hawks in Washington, it was the ire of pro-Israel activists that perhaps best explains why Oracle is such a natural choice to take over the social media app."
https://theintercept.com/2025/02/18/oracle-tiktok-israel-palestine-gaza/

-->The NYT didn't think this story was newsworthy. Was it the strength of the pro-Israel Lobby that moved Larry Ellison and Trump? Put down that capitalist rag and read the Intercept!

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Aljazeera:
"The Israeli military forced an 80-year-old Palestinian man to act as a human shield in Gaza by tying an explosive cord around his neck and threatening to have his head blown off, an investigation by the Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell has found.

A senior officer from the army’s Nahal Brigade tied the explosive cord around the man’s neck before he was ordered to scout houses. After eight hours, soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife from their home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood in May, said +972 magazine, which reported the piece. ...

The man was forced to act as a human shield for eight hours, before he was ordered, along with his wife, to walk towards the so-called 'humanitarian zone' in southern Gaza. But the soldiers did not care to tell nearby Israeli divisions that the couple was going to pass through the area, according to the testimonies. ... [W]hen another Israeli battalion spotted the elderly couple on the street, they were shot dead on the spot, according to Israeli soldiers present at the scene."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/16/israeli-soldiers-used-80-year-old-palestinian-as-gaza-human-shield-report

-->The utter depravity of the IDF comes through when stories like this are reported. But you won't find these stories from our mainstream media, like the NYT. This is not a story that makes the Empire look very good.

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The Times of India:
"Did the US government actively work to destabilize Bangladesh using taxpayer-funded programs? Former US State Department official Mike Benz has made explosive claims that USAID and affiliated organizations orchestrated efforts to undermine the Bangladeshi government in a bid to secure American strategic interests. [Was it] regime change for a military base?

Speaking about US foreign policy planning, Benz laid out a hypothetical—but eerily specific—scenario: 'Let’s say it is vital to US national interest to build a military base in Bangladesh to counter China, but the Bangladeshi Prime Minister refuses. Our foreign policy planners then decide that regime change is necessary.'

Benz explained that once such a decision is made, 'all options to destabilize the country' come into play. These range from backing opposition forces to orchestrating a color revolution, a reference to past US-backed uprisings where leaders have been ousted, sometimes fleeing in helicopters."
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/how-usaid-was-used-for-regime-change-in-bangladesh-former-us-state-dept-official-mike-benz-reveals/articleshow/118118878.cms

-->Is USAID used for CIA undercover operations in the Third World? Of course it is, but the US media is so lockstep that you will never read about it in the US. Now that is some control of the media! A whole week of talking about the USAID, but nothing said about its role is supporting the Empire.

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Common Dreams:
"U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Europeans on Saturday to 'stand tall against right-wing extremism' after the American vice president scolded the continent's leaders for not accommodating parties like the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany, which appears poised for a strong performance in the approaching general election.
 
'European friends: Do not accept lectures on democracy and freedom of speech from an administration that denies the 2020 election results and is now suing and intimidating news outlets whose reporting they don't like,' Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a social media post after U.S. Vice President JD Vance used his address at the Munich Security Conference to blast Germany's 'firewall' against Alternative for Germany, also known as AfD.

Vance's speech was praised by AfD leader Alice Weidel—with whom the vice president met on Friday—and U.S. President Donald Trump, who called his second-in-command's remarks 'very brilliant' as they sparked revulsion and open condemnation from European leaders."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-germany-far-right

-->Bernie Sanders, like Noam Chomsky, lives in perpetual censorship when it comes to the NYT. The best minds of our nation are are always kept from our corporate controlled media.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

The Intercept:
"Forensics Experts Challenged the FBI. So the FBI Tried to Censor Their Conference. ... Within the world of forensic science, the FBI’s laboratory has enjoyed an elevated status as a premiere facility — even though it has simultaneously endured criticism, as past practices in some forensic disciplines have been pilloried in the criminal legal system. In short, the FBI lab is not immune to the issues that have long plagued forensic science writ large. To date, false or misleading forensic evidence has been implicated in nearly 30 percent of the nation’s wrongful convictions.

Many consider standard forensic practices — like fingerprint examinations, ballistics and toolmarks comparisons, or blood pattern analysis — to be foolproof. But these practices were developed by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement, and not by scientists first subjecting them to standard, rigorous testing processes designed to ensure they stand on a solid scientific foundation.

That was the dirty little open secret of forensics in the criminal legal system until 2009, when a groundbreaking report from the National Academy of Sciences laid it bare: With the exception of standard DNA analysis, the report read, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”
https://theintercept.com/2025/02/06/fbi-academy-forensic-science-law-enforcement/

-->The FBI is still trying to hide this valid criticism, and has recently tried to suppress the evidence. Still, this is a story that interested very few national media outlets.  

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The Electronic Intifada:
"Israeli troops were ordered to shoot and kill captive Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, Israel’s then defense minister admitted this week. The order to carry out Israel’s so-called Hannibal Directive was issued 'tactically' and 'in various places' next to Gaza, Yoav Gallant told Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday. ...

Contrary to Gallant’s statement that the Hannibal Directive was unevenly applied in different areas, Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported in January 2024 that at midday on 7 October, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military to invoke the Hannibal Directive across the entire region.
Israel’s response [to the attack] was to reactivate and unleash the Hannibal doctrine, extending it to Israeli civilians, as well as soldiers. Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately unleashed, in a failed attempt to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who would then be later exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. Roughly 1,100 Israelis were killed. It is still unclear exactly how many of these were killed by Israelis and how many by Palestinians. One year on, an investigation by The Electronic Intifada found that at least 'hundreds' were killed by Israel."
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/army-was-ordered-kill-israelis-7-october-defense-minister-confirms

-->This was not a popular story in the US media, which still does its best to make Hamas look bad and Israel look innocent.

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Middleeasteye:
In April 2024, 13 members of the Princeton University community, including 12 students and one post-doctoral researcher, were arrested for participating in a pro-Palestine sit-in at a building on the main campus in Princeton, New Jersey.
At the time, a wave of pro-Palestine protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza was sweeping university campuses across the US, including at Princeton, where hundreds of students had set up an encampment to call on the university to cut ties with companies profiting from Israel's occupation of Palestine and its war on Gaza.

The university's refusal to negotiate with students spurred 13 activists on 29 April to collectively occupy Clio Hall, home to the graduate centre, and force administrators to the table. The Clio 13 - as they became known - were immediately arrested and temporarily banned from campus. Those living in university housing were reportedly evicted and stripped of access to medical care. They were also slapped with a four-year academic probation, which will leave a permanent stain on their academic records. ...

'Within the last year, Princeton’s administration has restricted free speech and increased surveillance on campus, including monitoring cell phone calls and summoning students for arbitrary interrogations with campus police.' Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest said in a statement."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-princeton-university-tried-scapegoat-phd-student-over-pro-palestine-protest

-->Campuses across the country are playing 1984 with their students. This is the final takeover of the Israel Lobby, whose millions of dollars in bribes have bought off most college administrators. Don't bother looking for this story in our mainstream media.

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Common Dreams:
"Students and professors across the country are being witch-hunted for their position on Palestine, in a serious threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist authoritarianism.

For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.
New York University suspended 11 students who were part of a peaceful flyer distribution and sit-in, including students who simply sat in the library lobby in solidarity. Eleven students at Swarthmore College faced expulsion on assault charges for using a bullhorn. Emerson College laid off 10 staff members, blaming protests for Palestine as a cause for low enrollment, and then using layoffs to target pro-Palestine employees. Emerson also put four students on probation for leafleting on a public sidewalk. Thirteen students at Princeton are being criminalized for 'trespassing' on their own campus after they participated in a sit-in. Seven students and faculty at Duke have been called before a University Judicial Board, and without notice or due process are facing termination for participating in nonviolent protest. Tenured professors at Emory are facing similar trials. MIT demoted a tenured professor after he proposed a course entitled Decolonization & Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, & Israel. Professors at Muhlenberg College, Columbia, John Jay College, City University of New York, NYU, and more, have been fired or forced out for advocating for Palestinian rights.

I [author Andrea Brower] have spoken with a university librarian fired after teaching a workshop in which they discussed 'scholasticide' in Gaza, a K-12 teacher fired for a social media post critical of Israel and the U.S., and scores of K-12 teachers who have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for speaking about the suffering of Palestinians. An avalanche of Title VI Civil Rights Act complaints are being weaponized against educators, many of them filed by individuals or organizations with absolutely no connection to the school in question."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/attack-pro-palestinian-speech

-->Where is the US media when it comes to the new McCarthy era? Is our media afraid to even refer to these mass firings, which are direct violations of our First Amendment rights for freedom of speech? A look at our national media reveals that the story isn't really being covered.

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Politico:
"A writer who recently published an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times that warned of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary says the paper gave the piece a misleading headline and omitted portions of his argument in order to promote Kennedy.

The paper’s billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, posted the piece on social media, which was headlined 'Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off — if he pushes real reform.' Soon-Shiong added his own commentary as part of a string of pro-Kennedy posts, saying the president’s pick 'is our best chance of doing so.'

The author of the piece, Eric Reinhart, said in an interview with POLITICO that he was advocating for a 'populist' approach to health care — but clearly not arguing for Kennedy’s confirmation. He added that late changes to the piece — in particular the choice of headline and photo, which he said he did not see or approve prior to publication — happened 'in such a way that it distorts and changes the intended meaning' of his story."
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/la-times-rfk-jr-opinion-patrick-soon-shiong-010210

-->Another billionaire newspaper owner substitutes his own opinion for his newspaper's recommendations. Bill Clinton is certainly to blame for letting our media be bought up by a few oligarchs. But were is the reporting of this travesty? Certainly not in the NYT.

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Haaretz: Israel
"Trump's executive order promises to fight 'post-October 7 campus antisemitism.' But what is really does is to establish an authoritarian army of informers targeting Muslims, foreign students and the left under the guise of combating hate.

In the former USSR, as it was flailing into the 1980's, General Secretary of the Communist Party Yuri Andropov aimed to revive a practice from the Stalinist era: the informer. Police and volunteer militias encouraged citizens to flag neighbors to be punished for 'antisocial' behaviors and dissidence.

President Donald Trump's executive order on antisemitism, which includes provisions to deport pro-Palestinian protesters, operates on the same dangerous premise. Before the order was officially signed, the administration published this 'explanatory' fact sheet: 'To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.' "
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-01-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-will-deport-you-why-trumps-executive-order-on-antisemitism-is-so-dangerous/00000194-b825-dee1-a5dc-fcf5ad990000

-->The weaponization of antisemitism. Why do we have to read about this in Israel?