When a Mench becomes the enemy of the State and the recent 19th-century political ideology overlaps Judaism in less than 4 generations
Tag: Informed Comment
Like Rats Deserting a Sinking Ship, Freedland, Aaronovitch, Baddiel & Freeman Took Their 30 Pieces of Silver Whilst the JC Celebrated the Slaughter of Gaza’s Children– But when Scandal Broke They Fled
It is no surprise that Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch, David Baddiel and Hadley Freeman have, at last, said goodbye to the JC. Like rats deserting a sinking ship they left the captain Jake Wallis-Simons to drown in his own disgrace.
Wallis-Simons has faithfully defended the murder of Palestinian civilians, children included, in Gaza whilst denying that what was happening was genocide. This is the Zionist version of holocaust denial.
The Jewish Chronicle has been on Life-Support for Years – Will They Now Turn It Off & Allow it to Die?
The far right of a special type is emerging in a period defined by hyper-imperialism to mask the actuality of hideous power and pretend that it cares about the isolated individuals that it instead harms. It knows human folly well and preys on it.
The richly violent musings of Ben-Gvir and his circle of sanctified terror have even proven indigestible for some members of the war cabinet. Defence Minister Gallant, not immune from the urge to dehumanise the residents of Gaza, accused his national security counterpart of being a “pyromaniac”. On the X platform, he declared his opposition against “any negotiations to bring him into the war cabinet – it would allow him to implement his plans.” The same Gallant, however, was also in celebratory mood about the assassinations.
Even outside the war cabinet, the views of Ben-Gvir, not to mention his overall influence, travel with toxic rapture. In the background, incandescently inspiring, is Rabbi Dov Lior, a figure of glowing nationalist fury. It was he who incited members of the Jewish Underground to conduct various terrorist attacks in the 1980s against Palestinians. (The same group also unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the Dome on the Rock.)
This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel. He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”. For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog.
A MUST-WATCH 29-minute interview in which Jeffrey Sachs tells it like it is and as few others dare to tell it.
To date, Israel is on the best of diplomatic relations with Australia. Zero sanctions have been applied to Israel over any of their actions in Gaza, ambassadors are chummy and huggy, and pathetic expressions of concern, or grave concern, are the sternest we’ve gone. If the West, Australia included, continues to support Israel’s countless crimes against humanity, international law will become meaningless, and the hypocrisy will come back to haunt us all. The blood of the Palestinian people is a stain Israel and all of its allies will never wash away.
Geoffrey Robertson
Human rights barrister
Let’s be clear, Peter Dutton: prosecuting Netanyahu is not antisemitism
As everyone who uses the word should know, antisemitism means hatred of Jewish people in general, and it is the vilest and most destructive form of race hatred. It is not constituted by condemning the policy or the war tactics of the Israeli government. Dutton’s attempt to conflate the two, and his call on the Australian government to withhold support from an independent international justice process, is shameful.
And history would note the irony that a law forged at Nuremberg to prevent repetition of the sufferings of millions of Jewish people was, 77 years later, dodged and despised by none other than the leader of Israel.
As Israel pursues its genocidal and ethnic cleansing agenda in Rafah the United States is show to be morally naked before the world. All it can do is repeat ‘anti-Semitism’ as if it were an incantation. You’d have to be brain dead to fail to understand that ‘anti-Semitism’ has been weaponised against those with a conscience.
US National Security spokesman John Kirby has said there is no evidence of “deliberate” Israeli war crimes in Gaza. To paraphrase Paul Simon’s The Boxer the man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
US National Security spokesman John Kirby has said there is no evidence of “deliberate” Israeli war crimes in Gaza. To paraphrase Paul Simon’s The Boxer the man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
The Murder of 6 Year Old Hind– a War Crime that Genocide Joe, Slimy Sunak & Dodgy Dave Cameron armed and supported
On April 18, the Israeli police, in all its intimidating glory, entered the home of Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian in the Old City of Jerusalem. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who holds the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and a post at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was subsequently detained for comments made the previous month on the Makdisi Street podcast.
Of particular interest to the authorities were comments purportedly calling for the abolition of Zionism and the uncontroversial call to halt the genocidal actions in Gaza. She was strip-searched, handcuffed and interrogated, and denied access to such necessities as food, water and medication for a number of hours. Her frigid cell also lacked blankets, while she was inadequately clothed. Her release on bail precipitated further interrogation sessions, with the police keen to tease out incriminating matters from previously published academic papers.
From targeting academics, activists and students, to drawing the covers over a network of renown, the Israeli state has made a vulgar statement against the role of free speech. Such creeping authoritarianism, however, shows itself to be one-eyed and, eventually, self-defeating. Ultimately, in the gallop, it is bound to fall over itself.
My conclusion: While protest movements are often ignited by many different things, and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people — most of them women and children — in Gaza.
To interpret these protests as anything else — as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian — is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.
Source: What’s Really Motivating the Protests? | The Smirking Chimp
Even the most relative right-wing elements in the ALP should be relatively Left on the broader spectrum. We all need to see ourselves as part of a ‘broad Left’, and in this sense having common cause. Once we agree on this perhaps we can truly ‘move forward together’.
Source: The ALP – Arguing for a Minimum Program – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Instead of issuing a correction, the Times simply updated its “Screams Without Words” with the bracketed revelation that an entire section of its article was incorrect.
Source: New York Times Brass Moves to Staunch Leaks Over Gaza Coverage
For decades, Israel has struck targets in sovereign countries with impunity, using expansive doctrines of pre-emption and self-defence. In doing so, the state always hoped that the understanding of tolerable violence would prevail. Any retaliation, if any, would be modest, with “deterrence” assured. With the war in Gaza and the fanning out of conflict, the equation has changed. To some degree, Ben Gvir is right that concepts of restraint and proportionality have been banished to the mortuary. But such banishment, to a preponderant degree, was initiated by Israel. The Israel-Gaza War is now, effectively, a global conflict, waged in regional miniature.
A rally held in Melbourne saw speakers unite against the political system that has imprisoned Julian Assange and crippled free speech, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Every religion is rooted in core beliefs or dogmas but is judged or weighed by the character it espouses and the values with which it identifies. Belief is verified or condemned by the way life is lived. Christianity is known to espouse “love your neighbour as yourself” or, “do to others as you would have them do to you”, or, “do not judge”, or “forgive others” etc. By those critical of any value in religious expression it is rightly weighed by the lived quality of these characteristics. Often, Judaism has shamefully been characterised in the negative, such prejudicial characterisation rightly called ‘antisemitism’. I wish to do the reverse, to speak of the essential virtue of Judaism which has clearly been abandoned by the State of Israel.
Source: Israel and Judaism part company – Pearls and Irritations
The border fetishists also make a crucial omission. The people smugglers, who are of all stripes of opportunism and exploitation rather than some monolithic bloc, are merely facilitating the provisions of the United Nations Refugee Convention. All who arrive should not be discriminated against on the basis of how they arrive or their backgrounds – the articles of the Convention state as much – yet Australia’s border policy remains persistently cruel and defiant. Whenever a boat appears with a small cargo full of desperate individuals who make it to land, the fantasies of invasion, unwarranted intrusion and unwanted infiltration catch alight. It was high time they were snuffed out.
Source: Border Paranoia in Fortress Australia – » The Australian Independent Media Network
In the meantime, Lazzarini has been scrambling to fill the funding void, making visits to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait. The dying and starvation in Gaza continue with the prospect of even more horror as Israel’s armed forces prepare their offensive on Rafah. A fine thing, then, to see donor countries for UNRWA, some of whom continue funding Israel’s military efforts, to moralise about terrorists and the agency.
Source: Absence of Evidence: Israel’s Case Against UNRWA – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Prof Juan Cole Informed Comment talks with Robert Scheer
European-spawned-Holocaust fueled the migration of European Jews to Palestine and the ouster of the inhabitants there who had nothing to do with the German-led barbarism against the Jewish people.
The Vulgar God botherer who spoke in tongues and denied everything. Was he paid forward for AUKUS?
His record as a bungling advertisement of malice also included his time as immigration minister, when he became Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s attack dog in the “turn back the boats” policy. Refugees and asylum seekers arriving by sea were demonised, lacerated and condemned, to be towed out, made to disappear in watery depths or – much the same thing – taken to Pacific Island concentration camps (Nauru, Manus Island) to be sadistically tortured, sexually molested and left to moulder. When the New York Times interviewed Morrison on becoming prime minister, the paper noticed something grotesque: “His office features a model migrant boat bearing the proud declaration ‘I Stopped These’.”
Pity, then, that the man himself has not been stopped, a vulgar reminder about where Australian politics went grossly wrong, and where its vulnerable, already trimmed sovereignty went.
Source: Scott Morrison: A blight on Australian politics – Pearls and Irritations
The Sword of Damocles Mr Fish
IS REALITY
There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.” Clinics, along with ambulances – 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank – have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016. Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers.
The dehumanization of Palestinians is lifted from the playbook of all settler colonial projects, including our own. This racism, where people of color are branded as “human animals,” is coded within the DNA of our institutions. It infects those chosen to lead these institutions. It lies at the core of our national identity. It is why the two ruling parties and the institutions that sustain them side with Israel. It feeds the perverted logic of funneling weapons and billions of dollars in support to sustain Israel’s occupation and genocide.
History will not judge us kindly. But it will revere those who, under siege, found the courage to say no.
Source: Chris Hedges: The Silence of the Damned – ScheerPost
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.
Australian Greens Senator and defence spokesman, Senator David Shoebridge, also picked up on the grotesque twist the latest stifling of aid to the beleaguered residents of Gaza entailed. “The one temporary pause [Senator Wong] has been able to achieve is not the bombing or killing, or even weapons exports, it’s providing aid to [Palestinians].”
Residents of al-Dahra forced to evacuate by Israeli army and then fired on, as Khan Younis relentlessly targeted by Israeli strikes and snipers shoot at Palestinians leaving al-Amal Hospital.
At least 26,083 people have been killed and 64,487 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
“This is the case with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the Convention.”
It is clear from the ruling that the court is fully aware of the magnitude of Israel’s crimes. This makes the decision not to call for the immediate suspension of Israeli military activity in and against Gaza all the more distressing.
But the court did deliver a devastating blow to the mystique Israel has used since its founding to carry out its settler colonial project against the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. It made the word genocide, when applied to Israel, credible.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) refused to implement the most crucial demand made by South African jurists: “the State of Israel shall immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.” But at the same time, it delivered a devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the “crime of crimes.” A people, once in need of protection from genocide, are now potentially committing it. The court’s ruling questions the very raison d’être of the “Jewish State” and challenges the impunity Israel has enjoyed since its founding 75 years ago.
Source: Chris Hedges – It May be Genocide, But it Won’t Be Stopped – Brave New Europe
For decades, administrations in Washington have fantasised about castles in the skies, the outlandish notion that Palestinians and Israelis might exist in cosy accord upon lands stolen and manured by brutal death. Washington, playing the Hegemonic Father, could then perch above the fray, gaze paternally upon the scrapping disputants, and suggest what was best for both. But the two-state solution was always encumbered and heavily conditioned to take place on Israeli terms, leaving all mediation and interventions by outsiders flitting gestures lacking substance.
Now, no one can claim otherwise that Palestinian statehood is anything other than spectral, fantastic, and doomed – at least under the current warring regime. Netanyahu’s own political survival, profanely linked to Israel’s own existence, depends on not just stifling pregnancies in Gaza but preventing the birth of a nationally recognised Palestinian state.
The genocidal violence unleashed by Israel in Occupied Palestine since October 7 has produced unspeakable tragedy and suffering for the Palestinian people. Such barbaric behaviour places the State of Israel outside the bounds of a civilized world. Israel has become a pariah state, and must be treated as such by the international community.
Data for 2023 shows gun violence increasing as former president Donald Trump campaigns for the top job again. Alan Austin reports.
Source: America’s political killings surge as Trump’s hate speech intensifies
American Media claims Australia was there to assist. Was that Murdoch?
Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure. Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work. They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping. The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.” The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.” Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities. All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.
Netanyahu insisted that once the war ends, Israel’s IDF will remain in control of Gaza. He said that Israel will have “overall security responsibility” over the Gaza Strip. “IDF forces will remain in control of the Strip, we will not give it to international forces.” In addition, Netanyahu has, in the words of The New York Times, “made clear he has no intention of resigning after the war in Gaza ends.”
Control signifies victory. Such control involves the further “concentration” of a shrinking Palestinian population and habitable land area. Israel may likely be forced to establish a quasi-permanent military presence – an unofficial “occupation force” – in preserve “security.” This also assumes, for example, that the U.S. will not cut a deal with Egypt to absorb the forced displacement of, say, one million Palestinians or those of the West Bank to Jordon.
No free speech at Harvard the Creme del a Creme of Private Institutions in the US shows the very notion of education in America has been severely diminished. If you add to it Alan Dershowitz’s name currently Israel’s choice of defense lawyer attached to a book he put his name to but seems never to have read just plagiarized you get a picture of Israeli education. Norman Finkelstein has shown for years that there has been a war of influence ongoing among America’s wealthy Jewish donors. Many of them have unwittingly been promoting the very antisemitism they claim to be battling
I can understand the frustrations of these donors. But to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power
Yet not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression.
As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors – many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street – could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.
ISIS held Public Executions they were nothing compared to what Israel is currently handing out and calling collateral damage. It’s rabid blindly killing Israelis in its blistering blind revenge. Or does it have another more cold and calculated plan to gain a majority between the river and the sea. Beachside real estate is already on sale online in Gaza. It’s been stepped back and called a joke by embarrassed Israelis
It beggars belief that many strong and wealthy nations let the U.S. and Israel have their way of violence. The US has rampant gun crime, a collapsing social system, homelessness and disillusionment and rife drug epidemics. Israel is a military colonial-settler Occupier with a violent past and present. “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, was Abraham Lincoln’s sage warning. Israel is so divided by racism, history and disputed orthodoxy that it cannot withstand this latest hell hole and still expect to have societal cohesion. There will be the added strain of withstanding anti-Israel (not anti-Semitic) sentiments from the global community.
Are we truly going to let such heartless and internally crumbling nations guide us into the future?
Source: Gloves fall from the blood soaked hands – Pearls and Irritations
On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted 13-1 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unconditional release of all hostages. The U.S. voted against the resolution. The U.K. abstained. The draft resolution was not adopted due to the U.S. veto.
Source: Chris Hedges: The Evil Israel Does is the Evil Israel Gets – ScheerPost
Money walks and talks to silence anti-Israeli Protest
Dylan Saba, an attorney with Palestine Legal, on the censorship of those who defend Palestinian rights and condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Source: Chris Hedges Report: Zionist Anti-Palestine Censorship Is Surging w/ Dylan Saba – scheerpost.com
The Palestinians are human laboratory rats to the Israeli military, intelligence services and arms and technology industries. Israel’s drones, surveillance technology — including spyware, facial recognition software and biometric gathering infrastructure — along with smart fences, experimental bombs and AI-controlled machine guns, are tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results. These weapons and technologies are then certified as “battle tested” and sold around the world.
Source: Chris Hedges: Israel is Shutting Down its Human Laboratory in Gaza – scheerpost.com
According to Peter Jennings head of ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) “Israel is simply defending itself carefully and within international and humanitarian rules”. One needs only look at what Israel’s leaders say to know Jennings is talking BS and doesn’t deserve to be a government advisor of any sort. He is rather pure and simply a lobbyist for the arms industry and a warmonger.
Israel’s allies have claimed that it “is not deliberately trying to kill civilians” (US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby) and is “taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians” (UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak).
Such claims are hard to square with the massive devastation Israel has inflicted. As of 10 November, over 11,000 people in Gaza were reported killed, including more than 4,500 children, and at least 45 percent of housing units were reported damaged or destroyed.
Finally, claims that Israel is striving to protect civilians in Gaza are most hard to square with how Israeli officials have presented the current onslaught:
- “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” (IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari, 10 October)
Source: Fighting Amalek in Gaza: What Israelis Say and Western Media Ignore
Israel may have survived this phase. It is doubtful whether any Arab state would any longer attack it, although Iran, and some of the Gulf states, continue to fund Palestinian causes. The longer-term threat – one that will persist until Israel makes some peace and accommodation with the Palestinians — is of increasing international disdain from the wider international community, including from nations that supported its establishment in 1948. Despised for the obvious ill-treatment of Palestinians and accused of establishing apartheid. Not hated for being Jewish but for being a continuing threat to the peace from its encouragement of illegal settlements.
No longer a decent and liberal society, forgetting for a moment its treatment of the Palestinians, but threatening to become an intolerant ultra-nationalist theocracy, as backward as its equivalents in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Afghanistan. A nation run by a crook who is in the process of subverting the judiciary.
That’s not what the idea of a Jewish homeland promised. If the state imploded, the risk is not of a new Holocaust or program of extermination, but of a new diaspora, going elsewhere for the educational and intellectual and
Source: Israel’s moral power ebbing away in a human rights catastrophe – Pearls and Irritations
Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.
Source: Chris Hedges: Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians – scheerpost.com
They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss.
Source: The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children – Pearls and Irritations
Whatever did happen to those named in the Panama Papers years ago? Why did the LNO allow tax evaders like News Corp and Mining companies to self-negotiate what they were willing to pay in Tax?
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is punishing some tax cheats, but still has to catch the big players, reports Alan Austin.
Source: Getting away with murder: Time to go after the tax evasion ‘sharks’
Chaos is the same strategy being applied by the opposition LNP to this referendum, Chaos has been based on the avoidance of truth of any kind in order to fragment the minds of the nation. They have the money, the media, and have forgone any obligation to history, context, and truth. It’s the Trump/ Bannon strategy of “flooding the zone with shit”. Since Morrison left the nation in a shambles Albanese has been getting no media credit for doing the job he was appointed to do. To repair the damage done and make Australia a fairer place by returning this country and moving forward once again to the notion of the Common Good rather than protecting the interests of a limited few. Winning isn’t their only priority
Biden is not getting credit — that the public sees and reads mostly about dysfunction and crises, created largely by Republicans and fomented by Trump — is not just politically disadvantageous for Biden and the Democrats.
It is part of an increasingly effective strategy by Trump and his allies to foment public disgust with our democratic system of government. It is an essential component of Trump’s authoritarian agenda.
We can start by supporting the Voice Referendum. Giving our First Nations people input into decisions that affect their lives is logical because we all know that imposing economic solutions hasn’t worked for over 200 years. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next referendum was to revoke the Voice to Parliament because there was essentially equity in lifespans and opportunities between all who choose to live in this country?
We have the means and ability to help people rather than ideology on October 14 – don’t waste it.
Source: Your choice – people or ideology. – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The latest official data confirms the Albanese Government is achieving sound economic outcomes and also fixing entrenched injustices, Alan Austin reports.
Source: Australia rewards its workers and rejoins the growth economies
These are Voices to Parliament listened to. These Donations are seen as real “Money from the Heart Statements”
The business forums of both major parties sell political access to corporate Australia, and they make a pretty penny doing so. Many of Australia’s largest companies are members and their events can raise hundreds of thousands in one night. Zacharias Szumer investigates.
Source: Who’s at the party? The thriving business of corporate access to politicians – Michael West
The poor of India always suffer when any International Circus arrives in town. Modi is no exception in criminalizing the poor at the expense of an International image
As it happens, the G20 Delhi summit was, as so many of these occasions are, much ado about nothing. The absence of China and Russia turned the occasion into a G18 gathering, removing a good deal of flavour that would otherwise have been present. At the very least it provided Modi an excellent excuse to rough up the slum dwellers, using beautification as a strategy to criminalise the poor.
Source: G20 Aesthetics: Modi’s Brutal Delhi Facelift – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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