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Who needs hasbara when you have AP 'analysis'?
DetainThis
"Israelis . . . see themselves as a besieged nation surrounded by enemies who want them dead. Given the rocket attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas — and the suicide bombing campaigns that killed hundreds of Israelis — their fears are not misplaced.
"Many Israelis believe Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas can never be diverted from their stated goal of eliminating the Jewish state no matter how much goodwill Israel might show." [1]
To a vast majority of readers, that excerpt is just a typical analysis from one of the world's largest, oldest, and most trusted news organizations. But to any honest person adequately versed in the contemporary history of Israel-Palestine, those two paragraphs are typical hasbara, a.k.a., Israeli propaganda. But it's actually both: it's the Israeli-centric analysis of Steve Gutkin, West Jerusalem bureau chief for The Associated Press.
Gutkin, like any hasbaranik, omits the most vital and basic facts: that Israel illegally and belligerently occupies and colonizes Palestinian land; that Israel has practically "eliminated" any chance for Palestinian self-determination; and that Israel is the regional superpower subsidized by the world's superpower and, thus, it is ridiculous to even entertain the notion of its being eliminated by army-less, navy-less groups. Under international law, the first fact legitimates violent Palestinian resistance. But AP is not bothered by legal and moral restraints — at least not the ones that restrain the allegedly-Jewish state.
Today in Solidarity We're All Palestinians
Stephen Lendman
World outrage continues over Israeli war crimes and Washington's complicity. Gazans are now immortalized. Hamas is more popular than ever and remains resolute despite everything the IDF threw against it.
Democrats and Republicans share equal guilt. They fund Israeli state terror, are partnered in its aggression, and have collaboratively planned, supported, and/or agreed to it for the past 41 years. Continuity under Obama is assured. The current Gaza carnage is the worst since 1967. In spite of its "unilateral" ceasefire, sporadic Israeli attacks continue. The IDF merely redeployed. Gaza remains under siege, and human suffering is overwhelming and unrelieved.
Big Party, Small Change: Baby, We Were Born to Run...the Empire
Chris Floyd
I understand there's a big party going on in Washington this week, where hundreds of thousands of people are gathering to celebrate Bob Gates' retention as Pentagon chief. I mean, that is what this shindig is all about, isn't it? Hope and.... continuity? [See Arthur Silber for more.]
We've got Bush's man still driving the war machine, we've got Bush's generals still waging the "War on Terror" all over the world. We've got a president who is eager to spend his "political capital" on slashing "entitlements," because everyone must sacrifice, everybody's "going to have to have some skin in this game" -- everyone, that is, except for the president's Wall Street backers, who are about to receive yet another tranche of billions of taxpayer dollars in what they are now calling openly -- and rightly -- "opportunity funding." We've got a president honoring homophobic right-wing preachers who urge their followers to imitate the mindless zeal of Nazis and Bolsheviks in doing "whatever it takes" to establish Christianist dominion. We've got a president whose education chief believes in turning over the teaching of America's children to corporations -- and the military. We've even got a president who follows Dick Cheney's "good advice" on interrogating Terror War captives.
Is the war really over?!
Najwa Shiekh Ahmed Nusierat Camp-Gaza Strip
They said that the war on Gaza has finished, how amazing, that a war can be started in one single meeting, and finishes in one single sitting, neglecting all the pains, sorrows, fears and worries a war can leave in the souls and minds of those who attend it's woes, and pain.
Palestinians in Gaza have witnessed many wars against them by the Israelis from the first Intifada, to the second one, the regular invasions, the closure imposed on my people, a closure that doesn’t have any mercy on the people harvesting their lives without any regret, or consideration to any thing to finally the great war against innocent people, children, elders, houses, lands, every thing that is Palestinian.
The Lessons of Gaza in a Time of Collapse and Rebirth: Apocalypse No! part 8
Juan Santos
In loving memory of the late Mayan priestess Jo’b No’j Chomiha (Rosa Maria Cabrera)
It can no longer be hidden. What is happening in Gaza is, transparently, ethnic cleansing - genocide.
That genocide has been ongoing for sixty years, sometimes in intense, rapid, and explosive junctures, sometimes more slowly, routinely – but always, it has been executed methodically.
To see clearly the historical and cultural trajectories toward genocide in Palestine or elsewhere, one has only to map the intersection of the stated intentions of the perpetrators and their actions over time – or experience a sudden revelation or flash of deep insight.
Inaugural Inanity
Becky Akers
Ten thousand National Guardsmen, 7,500 active-duty soldiers, 25,000 cops from "99 federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies." A city "honeycombed" with "communication command centers" spying on supposedly free Americans with 5,265 surveillance cameras. And, as if we aren’t already up to our eyeballs in goons, an entire brigade of the US Army on call. The cost for this hyperbolic hysteria? Hundreds of millions at a time when many taxpayers can’t scrape together the next month’s mortgage. All for an inauguration that has attracted no "specific threats."
"Critics" contend that this is overkill. Go figure.
The piranhas swarming the security food-chain beg to differ. After all, they aren’t squandering their own money to guard against every conceivable threat, whether it’s a discarded cigarette igniting Obama’s hot air or the Almighty hurling a meteorite at DC’s massed mountebanks. Michael Chertoff, large intestine at the Department of Homeland Security, pompously assured CNN, "We are literally going to be watching this every minute between now and the conclusion of events on the 20th." Having turned Washington into an armed camp, this twit added, "You don't want to make this like an armed camp because it spoils the event itself."
The Humiliation of America
Paul Craig Roberts
"Early Friday morning the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it." Olmert said. "I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call."[PM: Rice left embarrassed in UN vote, By Yaakov Lappin , Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2009]
"Let me see if I understand this," wrote a friend in response to news reports that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert ordered President Bush from the podium where he was giving a speech to receive Israel’s instructions about how the United States had to vote on the UN resolution. "On September 11th, President Bush is interrupted while reading a story to school children and told the World Trade Center had been hit--and he went on reading. Now, Olmert calls about a UN resolution when Bush is giving a speech and Bush leaves the stage to take the call. There exists no greater example of a master-servant relationship."
The U.S. Economy is being Marched to the Gallows
Andrew Hughes
The upcoming Financial Stimulus package courtesy of the new Economic dream team has left numerous economists and analysts quaking in their boots. We are seeing predictions of hyperinflation, the destruction of the dollar, the flight of U.S. creditors, the prospect of widespread civil unrest and a descent in to a Greater Depression. Small business owners have stood up and discredited the tax incentives that were meant to convince them to ignore market reality and open the door to new employees. The measures that supposedly address the enormous foreclosure problem seem to change from day to day and only work to the advantage of the banks. Obama and Bush have just signed off on an additional $20 Billion in cash and $118 Billion in asset guarantees for Bank of America which already received $25 Billion last year and is now choking on Merrill Lynch's losses. The President Elect and his new Stimulus Czars are not paying attention and are proceeding to continue the same destructive formula adopted by Paulson.
Qahtani and the case against torture
Mary Shaw
When I've argued in the past against the use of torture, it has typically been from an ethical and human rights perspective. Torture is inhumane and morally wrong.
Those are still very valid reasons to oppose the use of torture by anyone, including U.S. agents who deal with suspected terrorists. We're supposed to be above that kind of brutality.
And, from a practical perspective, intelligence experts generally agree that torture simply does not work. It is not a reliable way of producing actionable intelligence. Under torture, a detainee will likely say whatever he thinks his interrogator wants to hear, just to make the pain stop. And so he will confess to things he never did, or provide incorrect names or other data. Ask John McCain, who, when asked under torture in Vietnam to provide his captors with the names of the members of his flight squadron, instead rattled off the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, "knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse."
America is a Jewish Colony: Olmert reveals all.
Bob Finch
On monday january 12, 2009, the leader of the jews-only state in palestine ehud olmert revealed to a jewish audience in ashkelon that he had insisted george bush should tell condoleeza rice to vote against a united nations’ resolution calling for a ceasefire to the jews’ attack on gaza. Olmert did not inadvertently humiliate the president of the united states of america; the secretary of state, condoleeza rice; congress; and the american people, by divulging this information. On the contrary. He was boasting about his power to humiliate the president and thus the american people.
The global Jewish Empire: a global Zionist conspiracy.
There are a handful of commentators in the western world who have been compiling the evidence that america, the world’s greatest democracy and military hyper-power, has been taken over by a jewish elite which acts on behalf of the jews-only state in palestine. America’s ruling jewish elite’s most well known operatives are the jewish lobby and the jewish neocons. These israel-firsters have been corrupting the bush regime into implementing policies which promote the interests of the racist state even though they have become increasing catastrophic, economically, militarily, politically, and morally, for america and the american people. After al qaeda’s attacks on new york and the pentagon, zionists imported the jews’ decades-old war against terrorism into america and ever since the bush regime has been implementing this disastrous zionist doctrine.
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