Tag: Books

Israel, Israel Crimes

Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations

Parliament House 2 Landscape panorama

Australian parliamentarians are responsible for the wellbeing of Australia’s multicultural society but in the last eight months the majority have failed to understand the reaction of those citizens who have experienced colonisation, occupation and war. These Australians are more likely to identify with oppressed people, so they expect their parliamentarians to articulate commitment to international humanitarian law. And of course, as we know many Australians are opposed to militarism as a means to resolve conflict. It is important to recognise those few political representatives who have tried to initiate difficult debate about how Australia should respond when a hitherto trusted ally ignores international law to engage in ethnic cleansing? Australians want to see their representatives and senators engage in informed consideration of complex issues that require sensitivity and courage. Time is running out for many parliamentarians to fulfil their obligations and Australians are watching and waiting for greater responsibility .

Source: Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

The New York Times explains how gangsters now Govern Israel – Pearls and Irritations

Once you get into the text, however, the review is withering, arguing that the lawbreakers have become the law makers:

“Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and the official in Netanyahu’s government with oversight over the West Bank, was arrested in 2005 by the Shin Bet domestic security service for plotting road blockages to halt the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He was released with no charges. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, had been convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organisations and, in front of television cameras in 1995, vaguely threatened the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered weeks later by an Israeli student.”

Subsequently, the writers note that:

“Prime Minister Rabin was murdered after rabbis passed what amounted to a death sentence on him for his support of the Oslo peace process.”

Source: The New York Times explains how gangsters now Govern Israel – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes

Shielding the Nation Starving Gaza

This doesn’t typically happen as a result of any grand monolithic conspiracy; it’s mostly just the natural consequence of having all the major news platforms controlled by wealthy and powerful people who each have a vested interest in manufacturing consent for the status quo upon which their wealth and power are premised. 

The oligarchs control the media, and they hire the executives who run the media, and the executives hire the editors who write the headlines and guide the reporters to report a certain way, and this gives rise to a system where everyone working for the outlet conducts themselves in a way that just so happens to suit the powerful people on top.

Then before you know it you’ve got editors at The New York Times — a paper that’s been published by the same family for over a century — packaging a story about starvation caused by an Israeli siege to look like it’s a story about an innocent crop failure.

Odds are nobody told them to do that; they just learned over the years that that’s how you rise to the top in an outlet like The New York Times.

Source: Shielding the Nation Starving Gaza

Israel, Israel Crimes

Silence over Israeli genocide provokes social media backlash

Descartes “I think therefore I am” However Zionists police your thinking. If they think you’re a terrorist or antisemite you are and any criticism proves you are. The Bethlehem Doctrine allows them to kill on presumption. However not so anybody else. If an action or “doing is being” then I’m free to think you’re a turd “Free” is the operative word and criticise surely? Aren’t the 10 commandments about “doing” isn’t International law about “doing”? Israelis see fit to break all the rules. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a template for honesty. Yet Israel’s Rabbis call for mothers of unborn babies to be killed because of what they might grow to think. Sounds to me like the voice of the guilty or a Fascist rather than the wise

Slow, terrifying months into Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine and every day the moral weakness of our political and cultural systems is discovered.

Source: Silence over Israeli genocide provokes social media backlash

Israel

Biden’s SOTU on Gaza: Israeli Daughter of Freed Hostage & Palestinian American Professor Respond | Democracy Now!

Abdelhadi says that by arming Israel while offering limited aid to the starving population of Gaza, the Biden administration is “effectively holding a gun to Palestinians’ heads, shooting at them with one hand and throwing crumbs at them with the other.” Adding that campaigners plan to hold Biden electorally accountable for his continued support for Israel. “We are going to make sure that the DNC knows where we stand on this issue.”

Neta Heiman Mina, a member of the Israeli chapter of Women Wage Peace, whose 84-year-old mother, Ditza Heiman, was one of the hostages released during the temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in November.  Meanwhile, Mina calls on the Israeli government “to do everything we can” to return the remaining hostages, including an immediate ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners. “This genocide has been going on for 152 days, and it is 100% an American project,”

Source: Biden’s SOTU on Gaza: Israeli Daughter of Freed Hostage & Palestinian American Professor Respond | Democracy Now!

Israel

Former NATO Analyst Jacques Baud on Operation Al-Aqsa Flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher – ScheerPost

How is it NATO supplies a report significantly different to the one Israel produced and the this report is independent of IDF influence.

Clearly, the aim was not to kill civilians, but rather to obtain a bargaining chip for the release of some 5,300 prisoners held by Israel. Eyewitness accounts in the Israeli press suggest that the original idea was to take only military prisoners (who are “more valuable” than civilians for an exchange). These same accounts show that the Palestinians were surprised to find so few military personnel on site, which can be explained by the fact that part of the garrisons had been redeployed to the West Bank a few weeks earlier. Yasmin Porat’s testimony, mentioned above, shows that Hamas fighters stayed with civilians in their homes, waiting for the security forces to intervene. The testimonies indicate that the Palestinian fighters left with civilian prisoners only after the Israeli military had intervened, firing indiscriminately into the houses with their tanks. It therefore appears that the capture of civilians was more the result of a combination of circumstances than a decision taken in advance.

The death of civilians was therefore not an objective, and the fact that the freed hostages declared that they had been treated with respect, and even in a friendly manner, tends to confirm that this was not a “pogrom” against the Israeli population.

Source: Former NATO Analyst Jacques Baud on Operation Al-Aqsa Flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher – ScheerPost

Israel

Heartbroken by Israel – CounterPunch.org

Long ago, I came to believe that being a Jew, even a secular one like me, entailed certain responsibilities. A people who had suffered so much yet survived were obligated, if not honored, to serve as witnesses and supporters of other oppressed people and to live in the public interest, to model ethical lives. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Sandy Koufax all made me proud, while I felt ashamed of Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.

I accepted his offer to meet and talk. We became friends. Over more than 40 years he’s joined Rabbi Landman as my spiritual advisor, officiating at my wedding, while offering rational possibilities in chaotic times. Of course, given the world we’re in, we’ve been talking far more urgently of late. Yes, Hamas are thugs and vandals, but how is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any different in his behavior?

The truth is we shouldn’t have to choose between them. It’s important to get rid of them both, while, at least in our thinking, separating two power-mad and murderous ruling bodies from their people, most of whom just want peace. How can we use the “ethical monotheism” of Judaism to find common ground and a country for each? We don’t have that answer and don’t even know if it’s possible, but at least we should know what the only true goal is: to end the present horror. And that would be good for the Jews, with or without God.

Source: Heartbroken by Israel – CounterPunch.org

Israel

Human Rights? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The Declaration of Human Rights was written as a response to the inhumanity of the Holocaust which saw the killing of 13 million people because of their race, their religion, their ideologies were not acceptable to the Nazi regime in Germany. The races targeted were Jews and Gypsies, two marginalised groups, marginalised not just in Germany, but in much of Europe, and marginalised for centuries, Jews for their religious beliefs, Gypsies were ‘the wandering spirits of the earth’. On ideologies, these included homosexuals and people with disabilities.

Palestinians are marginalised in Israel, but not just in Israel, also in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt where they are placed in Refugee camps, denied employment, treated as second class people and have really nowhere to go.

It seems those who ignore history are likely to repeat it while those who know history can only look on in wondrous amazement.

Source: Human Rights? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Israel

Gov. Hochul’s Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812

There are many things wrong with Hochul’s remark. First, Gaza is recognized by the UN and most countries in the world as an occupied territory over which Israel is the occupying power. It isn’t an independent country. It has no port, airport, or heavy armaments. It is almost completely surrounded by Israel, including from the sea and the skies, and even the Egyptian checkpoint of Gaza is de facto controlled by Israeli policy. Israel has the basic right of self-defense, as do all United Nations member states under its charter. But it doesn’t have the right to wage a total war, to wipe out 30,000 people in Gaza, the bulk of them innocent non-combatants, or to ethnically cleanse 1.9 million people. It has a right to defend itself from the Hamas organization, but not to destroy Gaza. As an occupying power it has a special responsibility to ensure the welfare of the Palestinian non-combatants of Gaza, a responsibility it has abandoned with glee.

Source: Gov. Hochul’s Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812

Rupert Murdoch

Australia vs. Rupert Murdoch – Mother Jones

The East India Company was a System built and put in place in the 1600s and supposedly dissolved in 1874. It was an English and later British joint stock company. It established the foundations of a system that changed and became far more sophisticated and complex on a global and multinational level It has remained and changed the world so much so a handful of companies control the global economy allowing for Billionaires and Trillionaires and have overrun and determined global and domestic politics of nations. Murdoch was a media colonizer.

This could mean that Lachlan is taking over at exactly the right time. So long as the success and influence of the Murdoch empire was tied to fear of his father, there remained a question: Lachlan could inherit the assets, but what about the terrifying myth? This turns out not to matter as much as it once did. Rupert has already stepped back, and one day he will be gone—but the machine he began building so many years ago will continue to do its work.

Source: Australia vs. Rupert Murdoch – Mother Jones

Israel

Orthodoxies or Humanity? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Israel, where the Orthodox Religious Zionists are the most powerful political group, although a minority, they hold politically privileged positions. The rise of Zionism in the late 19th century and the beginning of immigration to Eretz Yisrael, coming home as it were to the land God promised to Abraham in Genesis, if the timeline is correct some 4000 years ago, to retake the land at first little bit by little bit but since 1948 laying claim to it exclusively for God’s Chosen Ones. Using the communication tools of orthodoxy, to dumb down the argument, refuse to recognise that the people who have lived there for as long as time can be recorded are not defined as a people, but as terrorists, empty slogans which are never explained to denigrate and dehumanise. That was reminiscent of when Nazis tattooed a number of their prisoners, their names were obliterated, they were dehumanised, made a number.

An important question which deserves an answer is which takes precedence, Orthodoxy or humanity? A brief run through history it appears unfortunately that orthodoxy takes precedence.

Source: Orthodoxies or Humanity? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Israel

How to Create an Unlivable Hellscape in Gaza | The Smirking Chimp

Weapons Of Mass Destruction were originally designed and promised to be a defensive deterrent never to be used. We invaded Iraq on a suspicion that proved to be a lie and not just a myth that they were going to use them. We know Israel has them. We are witness to the fact that they are prepared to use them. They are currently demonstrating it with their illegal use of white phosphorus and the tonnage being dropped on the postage stamp known as Gaza. Bush invaded Iraq and now the worm has turned and Biden says it’s all OK why? Oil, oil tankers, and that Gas field off the coast of Gaza are far more important than any Palestinians

The violence inflicted on Palestinians by an Israel backed so strikingly by President Biden and his foreign policy team is unlike anything we had previously witnessed in more or less real-time in the media and on social media. Gaza, its people, and the lands that have sustained them for centuries are being desecrated and transformed into an all too unlivable hellscape, the impact of which will be felt — it’s a guarantee — for generations to come.

Source: How to Create an Unlivable Hellscape in Gaza | The Smirking Chimp

Alan Jones

How alleged paedophile Alan Jones has been protected by the old media for decadesKangaroo Court of Australia

Alan Jones

He’s been walking free in Dutton’s and Cash’s world for years. They never said a word

Former radio host Alan Jones has been accused by The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), in an article written by journalist Kate McClymont titled “‘He’d go the grope’: Alan Jones accused of indecently assaulting young men”, of sexual assaulting 4 males which includes staff at radio station 2gb and other men.

Source: How alleged paedophile Alan Jones has been protected by the old media for decadesKangaroo Court of Australia

Banned

The Bible Told Me So – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The Right-Wing wants books banned but children taught about the sex, violence, and criminal behavior in the Bible

A recent candidate for congress in Colorado Springs, Rob Rogers, offered school board officials and superintendents the insight that there is more sex and violence in the bible than any of the books ASD 20 has marked for banning. Rogers, who is an Air Force veteran and data scientist, argued that the bible meets or exceeds what the district’s protesting parents are using as a legal definition of obscenity, and it, too, needed to be removed. Rogers ran for congress in Colorado’s 14th District and was defeated, but his children attend an ASD 20 school. His request to remove the bible was not immediately answered, though he insists the demands from parents to take other books off the shelves happened quickly after they complained their standards of decency were offended.

Source: The Bible Told Me So – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thought- Culture Wars the LNP effort. To disengage us from economic reality
May be a cartoon

Fighting Fake News with REAL 1/12/21; Religious Discrimination; Morrison Attending a Democracy Summit; Journalism;

Banned

‘Write no more’: 10 books that were banned | Books | The Guardian

Love’s labour’s lost … Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Beloved was declared too sexually explicit for schools.

via ‘Write no more’: 10 books that were banned | Books | The Guardian

Islam

‘Jihadists were going to burn it all’: the amazing story of Timbuktu’s book smugglers | World news | The Guardian

In 2012, ​tens of ​thousands of ​artefacts from the golden age of Timbuktu were at risk in Mali’s civil war. This exclusive extract describes the race to save them​ from the flames – and how lethal attacks could still threaten the town’s treasures

Source: ‘Jihadists were going to burn it all’: the amazing story of Timbuktu’s book smugglers | World news | The Guardian