Fraudulent Reporting

Ali Abunimah explains that two reporters with zero reporting experience, and related to each other, became star co-authors in the New York Times stories about rapes that allegedly occurred on October 7, rapes for which there is still no material evidence (despite a massive effort including, yes, DNA testing hundreds of bodies), only very unbelievable stories from claimed witnesses (not actual victims).

Much of this reporting has now been debunked, and New York Times is ending it's association with one of the authors after their very racist "likes" on social media were discovered (in violation of Times policies).  But it still has not described how two people from Israel rose to become star co-authors in the paper of record so quickly.

Here's the Grayzone article which first discussed the fraudulent reporting in the NYTimes.  (The fraudulency of the rape allegations themselves were discussed in previous articles.)

Here's The Intercept article which builds upon the Grayzone article (but fails to acknowledge the Grayzone's earlier and pioneering reporting on the issue).

Genocidal Statements

Israel supporters often say that genocidal intent must precede genocide, thereby Israel is absolved because Israel only has beneficial-for-all intent.  (They must be under some rock.  I've heard many such statements even in pro-Israel US mainstream media, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu invoking Amalek.)

Here is the database of often very explicit statements expressing genocidal intent made by Israeli officials of all kinds.

I found this in a long X/Twitter thread debunking a recent NYTimes oped denying a genocide is being conducted by Israel and calling these claims "The New Antisemitism."

Films on Palestine

https://palestinecampaign.org/resources/films-about-palestine/

(BTW, following Tony Greenstein's critique of them as not-very-radical cowards, I am not endorsing PSC as such, but it seems like their list of movies is good--though perhaps incomplete.  I checked them out with other sources to be sure, and ended up selecting the most recent and popular movie, Farha, for my movie party.  I had previously seen Where Should the Birds Fly which is an excellent film.  PSC is not radical so anything they suggest should not be considered as such--though Israel supporters have been trying to get Netflix to take down Farha,  which is in the set of Palestine films that Netflix decided to show for balance with their pro-Israel films which Palestine supporters have been protesting.)

Here are films from the most recent London festival of Palestine films:

https://www.palestinefilm.org.uk/lpff-2023

More on Navalny

https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2023/02/navalny-documentary-nominated-for-march-12-oscar-is-crude-disinformation/

Olive oil sandwich

First put one corn tortilla on a plate.  Spread 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Apply second corn tortilla on top.  Cook in microwave at 1000W for 39 seconds.  (Too long will make it tough.)

Eat with fork, like a waffle.  It's oily and slightly sweet.  

Makes a great hard snack in combination with a low carb protein drink.  (Mine is 1 scoop whey isolate, 1 tsp chocolate powder, 1/2 tsp sugar, 2/3 cup water, heated in microwave for 39 seconds, stirred, cooled with 2 ice cubes, then poured over a glass of ice, with 1 tablespoon cream.)

Why corn tortillas?  Corn tortillas have negligible sodium.  Wheat tortillas, like most wheat products, are loaded with sodium.  A single wheat tortilla can have as much sodium as a serving of luncheon meat.  I now use wheat tortillas very sparingly.

Wheat needs sodium for leavening, preserving, and covering up the inherent taste, which is slightly bitter.  Corn is sweet and needs nothing like that, salt would only get in the way of its natural sweetness.  Corn tortillas are simply pressed corn flour, which pulls right apart until cooked somehow (usually in oven).

And unlike most oils and fats, olive oil is positively beneficial.

To add more protein to the "sandwich," spread 100% peanut butter after cooking.

Latest letter to Congress

It is unacceptable and disgusting that the Biden Administration has now vetoed 3 UN Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza.  For supporting and continuing to arm Israel during an ongoing genocide of Palestinians is making the US more a pariah state than Trump ever did.  I will not vote for Joe Biden and I know others who feel the same.  The excuses are lame: ignoring all the Hamas offers for releasing hostages in coordination with releasing prisoners in the west bank.  The US, like Israel, simply refuses to recognize such offers.  In the minds of many, this is not because Israel has any burning desire to get their hostages back (in fact, they seem to have none) but of their true aim of finishing the job of ethnically cleansing Palestinians out of the last bit of ancient Palestine, so Israel can rule with only a token and submissive number of Palestinians from the River to the Sea and erase the independent minded Palestinian identity forever.  In fact, Israel will not erase the Palestinian identity, they will never do it, and all their apartheid structures and genocidal vengeance will only hasten the end of the days of the the discriminatory apartheid and genocidal State of Israel, which should and must be dismantled at the soonest opportunity, driven by international sanctions.

Please refuse to vote for any more weapons for Israel.

Isolationism Reconfigured

A review of a book by Nordlinger, a political science professor who sadly passed away in 1994.

 

A long article

 Here's a long article about Zionism.

Notably it has two links to academic papers on genetics showing that Palestinians are the descendants of Canaanites while Jews as a whole have less such descent.  And that's only one out of 100 topics.

I think it tries to be fair to Zionism and Israel perhaps slightly too much for my taste.

For example, it describes the October 7 attacks by Hamas as a war crime.  While it attributes some deaths to Israeli forces, it does not go as far as those I follow who attribute the majority of civilian deaths to Israeli forces--which makes sense because they had a zillion times more firepower and they've long been known to have the Hannibal Directive which demands that hostage taking be prevented by any method even if it results in the death of Israeli civilians.

(Meanwhile, supporters of Israel define the October 7 attack as genocide and therefore apparently worth killing 100 times or more as many Palestinian civilians as well as leveling their cities and even pushing them out into other countries, which Israelis describe as self defense, and of course their forces are the most moral army on earth*, and Israeli forces have lawyers to make sure this is so.)

That just one paragraph out of 30 pages of fair minded and potentially useful material in arguing with a Zionist, and most useful of all it includes references.  (Not that I'm saying you should do this.  There's hardly a more futile thing to do.)

(*Terms and Conditions may apply.)

The Brits did it

International Relations analyst Gilbert Doctorow believes that Navalny was ultimately poisoned to death by...the British.

The Brits are more deeply involved in the war in Ukraine than most people realize.  Recently, for example, Ukraine was in the midst of exchanging hostages with Russia, but someone shot down the plane of Russians soldiers for Russia.  Russia honored the deal anyway, returning Ukrainian soldiers.  Why did Russia do that???  Because the Ukrainians convinced the Russians that the shooting down of the plane was not caused by them...but by the Brits.

And then there was Boris Johnson, who scuttled the first peace deal in 2022.

How could the Brits have done it?  They have Russian speaking spies in Russia who could easily have bribed someone in the prison.

The One State Solution

 A single state, with equal rights for all and no discrimination regardless of religion.

That's the preferred outcome in the Hamas Charter of 2017.

(There's not a single word about pushing Jews into the Sea, etc.)

However, Hamas also accepts a true two state solution as an interim measure.

Most Zionists in Israel, including Netanyahu, insist there will never be a Palestinian State.

Hamas Charter of 2017.  I find it to be very reasonable and well written.

Here is Tony Greenstein discussing why the Two State Solution is simply a continuation of fascism.

One state was the demand of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Only far-right White racists wanted a White state. The two-state solution in Palestine, which the West supports, is an apartheid neo-colonial solution. It leaves a racist Jewish state intact.

 Tony also claims this is view of the widest majority of Palestinians, which I believe is true.

Even more ubiquitously, the "two state solution" is views as an excuse for doing nothing.  Everything about the second state will need to be endlessly negotiated.  The result of an earlier round was the widely denounced Palestinian Authority, which operates more like a corrupt security contractor for Israel than an actual state.  Israel will never accept an actual sovereign Palestinian state, as such a state would be able to buy arms openly and defend itself.  Israel wants a puppet it can control.

Navalny: A US intelligence asset

 Navalny, trained in a special international leadership program at Yale, was a US intelligence asset, often used to smear Putin.

His popularity never got above 3% in Russia.

He was basically to the right of Putin ("except" as he would fully cooperate with the west).

He was a fascist and Islamophobe.

Video of Navalny at fascist rallies

Navalny was a joke in Russia.  Putin would gain nothing by assassinating him.  More likely his death was self or CIA inflicted.

And many are pointing out the hypocrisy as no mainstream US journalists recognized the death three weeks ago of an actual US citizen, Gonzalo Lira, who had a bit of social media popularity as a critic of Zelensky and showing the feelings of people in the Donbas.  The ongoing plight and trials of Julian Assange are rarely mentioned.  The 30,000 dead in Gaza, or the millions elsewhere who have died from US wars and sanctions.

A death is only important to mainstream media when it was a person important to the advancement of US geopolitics.  Millions of others aren't mentioned.

Quoting Netanyahu

Netanyahu has always opposed a Palestinian State.  After recent meeting with CIA director Burns (probably the best person in the Biden Administration), Netanyahu stated:

“My positions can be summarized in the following two sentences. Israel categorically rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. Such an arrangement will be reached only through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions.

IOW, never.  Israel will never accept a sovereign Palestinian state, because a sovereign state would be able to openly buy arms and defend themselves.  Israel will only accept a puppet administrator which is "protected" by Israel.  That's what the Palestinian Authority is.

Israel must negotiate with the real representatives of the Palestinian people, not a fake they construct.  At this time, that means Hamas.

The West must accept Hamas as the best political agency of the Palestinian people at this time.  Their support among Palestinians has never been higher.  They have the organization and the credibility. 

The Problem with Signal

 I've long known of Yasha Levine's criticism of Signal: it was funded by the US Government who needs encryption for it's own spy apps, and it needs other people to use them (!!!) or it's obvious that everyone on them is spies.

So, we got Tor, and also Signal.

That doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, does it?

But signal has other issues.  The use of phone number identifiers, the centralization, and the laws of the USA which prohibit any company revealing that they provide info to spy agencies, which you can assume that all telecommunications companies do (and I learned about this years before Snowden, but Snowden confirmed that it was indeed actually true).

So the US government axiomatically has access to all the metadata, the who contacted whom and when.  Which is all they generally need or use.

Here's an article laying out other options, which would include such things as self-hosting (which Signal manages to block).  Top of the list (and I've seen this elsewhere) is Matrix (client name Element), whose identifiers are as secure and non-linkable as you want to make them (so do), and comes with Jitsi a free self hosted video teleconference program.  Briar, XMPP, and SimpleX are interesting alternatives.

I'd be interested in these things if I were organizing.  Otherwise, I simply assume I'm always being watched.  So with that assumption, Signal is fine, heck, even Facebook is fine.  I live electronically, I'm not willing to give that up, and I know what it means.  But I don't much care.

There is of course the fact that if you use any internet protocol, the US government will know where it came from and where it went.  They have people listening to the radio too.  And the more effort you try to put into staying under cover, the more it may be obvious that you are doing so, and raise suspicion for that reason alone.

If I knew the best solution I wouldn't say.  Perhaps resign yourself to futility.  No resistance organization will ever be capable of bringing down the empire.  The best the resistance organization could be is pick up the pieces when it falls apart.  (That's the way I see it as a US citizen.  It may be different as a Palestinian, etc.)

That's what Lenin did, and even with his organized cadres it was pretty difficult to keep it from getting subverted, as ultimately happened with Yeltsin.

More ICJ news

ICJ has made several more rulings which appear to diminish longstanding claims of the US, and which you are unlikely to hear much about on western mainstream media.

Ukraine was suing Russia for terrorism following the Maidan Revolution.  The ICJ ruled that Russia's supplying Donbas militants with weapons was not terrorism, and further than the Donbas militant groups were not terrorists.  This is significant because these were the claims used to justify Ukraine in attacking Donbas which resulted in 10,000 casualties after 2014.

The ICJ also refused to rule that Russia was responsible for the downing of MH17.

And the ICJ refused to hold Russia accountable for ethnic discrimination against Ukrainians and Tartars in Crimea.  (These claims were very rich considering how Ukraine has made the Russian language illegal in Ukraine, waged war on Russian Orthodox churches, shut down pro-Russian and other opposition parties, etc.)