This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Because our current regime remains laser-focused on the vital issues of these dark and baleful times, the House just had a hearing on a bill by inimitable Klan Mom MTG to retool the Gulf of Mexico into a glorious new Gulf of America. Irked Democrats took to trolling with some creative alternative names, but MapQuest and the Internet are way ahead of them. Like, Gulf of Covfefe, Gulf of Putin's Bitch, Gulf of Wu-Tang, Gulf of End Times ahead of them.

On Day One of his new presidency and revenge tour, the orange guy revealed his Very Serious Priorities by signing a Very Serious executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, because. Despite MAGA's lackadaisical approach to properly using other names - COVID, Native, undocumented, preferred pronouns - they were so pissed when the AP wire service, read by over 4 billion people in 100 countries, declined to update its widely used Stylebook with the new name that the regime banned its journalists from White House briefings. This week, a Trump-appointed judge effectively overturned the ban, ruling officials must restore press access "untainted by an impermissible viewpoint-based exclusion" to the AP - see First Amendment - noting, "If there is a benign explanation for the government's (ban), it has not been presented here." But the injunction is preliminary, and Trump is so obsessed he's already said he'll appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, Equally Serious MAGA Rep. Marjorie Tacky Greene, who's griped about other countries and even uppity Americans refusing to use the shiny, pointless, jingoistic new name, wrote a shiny, pointless, jingoistic new bill to show them all. The Gulf of America Act swaps out names and "directs federal agencies to update their documents and maps to incorporate the new name." Wednesday, the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing for majority House Republicans to ratify it. But Dems, irked by the calamitous state of the union and the resulting, inane things they've had to spend their time on, weren't that into it. Instead, they forced votes on multiple amendments by launching a barrage of new names: Gulf of Ignorance, Gulf of Helene, Gulf of American Should Rejoin The Paris Accord. Rep. Jared Huffman went further - "Let's skate to where the puck is going" - by seeking to rename the whole damn planet "Donald Trump." His move failed; MTG's bill passed, 24-17.

Still, resistance has lingered. As companies, colleges, fat cats and yes Dems bend to kiss the ring and obey in advance, MapQuest has stood firm. "MapQuest is NOT renaming the Gulf of Mexico," they posted. "Our maps are like Grandma's Thanksgiving recipes - once they're printed, they're not changing." Then they did one better. "Because you TOTALLY asked for this, and MapQuest has NOTHING better to do, we've granted you exclusive access to a place very dear to our heart," they wrote. Then they set up a site, gulfof.mapquest.com, to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to whatever you want, and told people to go for it: "Name your own gulf: Gulf of anything." And, gleefully, exuberantly, people did. They created the Gulf of Chevron, BP, Exxon Mobil and Shell. The Gulf of Fragile Masculinity. The Gulf of Antifa, Gulf of Lower Canada, Gulf of Fucktrump, Gulf of Where America's Dignity Died, Gulf of Hamberders, "but I prefer cheeseberders."

Some get furiously wordy: The Gulf of LimpDick Wannabe Alpha-Males Who Need Viagra to Overcome Their Adderall Addictions and the Gulf of a string of insults that move from inbred and heartless to snake-licking, four-flushing, worm-headed. Some are succinct: Gulf of Despair, Gulf of Dumbfuckistan, Gulf of Gulf, Gulf of Cuba: "Let's give it to the other guy." Many are brilliant: Gulf of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Gulf of America Is Fucked, Gulf of the Dude Abides, Gulf of the Dread Is No Longer Existential, Gulf of Infrastructure Week Again, Gulf of Most of Us Didn't Vote For Him, Gulf of Eggs Which Broke Democracy, Gulf of I Could Do This All Day. Also, raging: Gulf of Very Insecure Tiny-Handed Fascists, Gulf of Incalculable Horrors, Gulf of Vacuum Between Trump's Ears, Gulf of Dumbest Timelines.

And they go on. After a long legal roller-coaster, hundreds of climate workers at NOAA just got re-fired; critics say their exit means the loss of "decades of expertise and institutional knowledge." But at least we'll still have the Gulf of What Fresh Hell Is This.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

The American crisis is a global struggle between democracy and fascism—one that threatens the entire world. Each of us has a role in defending freedom. If you work in media, use this guide to safeguard your integrity, your liberty, and the values we cherish—before it’s too late. Doing your job well can save lives and democracy.

7. Media Must Thoroughly Cover Media Journalists must cover media attacks, including blocked access to info and censorship (e.g., Ann Telnaes at WaPo). Report on media ecosystem shifts, address bias, and clarify distinctions between reporting, opinion, and lies. Provide context on media ownership.

11. Gilead is Here The media has abandoned calling out Trump’s toxic masculinity regarding reproductive rights and civil rights. Raise awareness of the deadly consequences for women, including trans women, and all nonwhite people.

15. Focus on the 1% Expose extreme wealth inequality—how the 1% dodge taxes and exploit loopholes to preserve their wealth. Put a spotlight on how inequality fuels authoritarianism and is a direct threat to democracy.

An expanded version of the Gaslit Nation Media Guide can be found here: https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/media-guide

For More: Ten Tips for Reporting in an Autocracy American journalists have much to learn from colleagues in countries where democracy has been under siege. https://www.cjr.org/political_press/ten-tips-for-reporting-in-an-autocracy.php

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

Music Credit: "Tafi Maradi no voice" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

The post Trump Demonstrates His Ignorance in Ordering Development of “Golden Dome” Missile Defense appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dave Lindorff.

The U.S. and Ukraine estimate there are between 10,000 and 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, with their focus on Kursk, parts of which Ukrainian forces occupied in August, where they are actively engaged in fighting and are taking casualties.

“North Korean troops are being ‘consumed’ for front-line assaults in an unfamiliar battlefield environment of open fields, and they lack the ability to respond to drone attacks,” said South Korea’s the National Intelligence Service, or NIS, as cited by South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun who was briefed by the agency on Thursday.

Russian troops were complaining about the North Koreans’ ignorance of drones, calling them a “burden,” the agency added, without elaborating.

“Some 11,000 North Korean troops, believed to be deployed in the Kursk region, began to engage in actual combat from December. At least 100 people have been killed, and the number of injured is expected to reach 1,000,” said the NIS.

(8th Separate Special Operations Regiment’s official Facebook page)

South Korea’s confirmation of North Korean casualties came after Ukraine released a video saying that it showed about 50 North Korean soldiers were killed in attacks by Ukrainian drones in Kursk this week.

Sgt. Mykhailo Makaruk, a member of the Ukrainian unit who confirmed to RFA Korean that he had fought against North Koreans in the battle shown on the video, said nearly 200 North Korean soldiers came to the Ukrainian position, and shortly after, the drones began to attack.

“They came and they came and the drones are bombing them,” he said. “I don’t understand how they can come to this war. They look like, you know, real zombies.”

Separately, on Tuesday, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, or DIU, said North Korean forces were taking additional measures to mitigate the threat of drone strikes.

“After serious losses, North Korean units began setting up additional observation posts to detect drones,” the DIU wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel.

(8th Separate Special Operations Regiment’s official Facebook page)

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, posted on his Telegram account that North Korean soldiers were no match for the drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

“The dead DPRK soldiers did not have a visual understanding of the danger from UAVs before the drone strikes, which may indicate that the Russians poorly informed the Koreans about the use of drones at the front,” Kovalenko said, using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kovalenko added that the Russian soldiers were seen trying to quickly recover the bodies of North Korean soldiers killed on the front lines, which was different from the way they treated Russian dead.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces were burning the faces of dead North Korean soldiers to conceal their identities and keep secret their deployment to help Russia, citing a video as evidence.

Earlier, he said that Russia had begun using North Koreans in significant numbers for the first time to assault Ukrainian positions and his forces released images and videos of what it said were the bodies of North Koreans soldiers, among some 200 killed and wounded in Kursk.

(Volodymyr Zelenskiyy’s official Telegram channel)

‘Normal cooperation’

North Korea once again declined to deny or confirm that it had sent troops to Russia to help it with its war against Ukraine but its foreign ministry called its cooperation with Russia “normal.”

Responding to a joint statement from the European Union, South Korea and the U.S. criticizing North Korea’s deployment to Russia, the North’s ministry of foreign affairs said it “distorted and slandered” the essence of a normal partnership between two nations.

“[The joint statement] is a grave threat to international peace and security that goes beyond political provocation that violently infringes on the sovereignty of sovereign states,” said the ministry on Thursday, calling its partnership with Russia a “legitimate” way to counter external threats, including the U.S.

RELATED STORIES

Ukraine drones kill 50 North Koreans in battle in Kursk region

Russians ‘burning faces’ of dead North Koreans to keep them secret: Zelenskyy

Ukraine military releases images of North Korean casualties in Kursk

Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has confirmed that North Korean soldiers are aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine, which began with Putin’s invasion in February 2022. However, emerging reports suggest that such collaboration is developing rapidly, with mounting evidence pointing to North Korea’s increasing involvement.

Ukraine’s Security Service said on Tuesday it had intercepted a phone call between a nurse at a hospital near Moscow and her husband, a soldier on the front lines.

According to the nurse, more than 200 wounded North Korean servicemen were brought to the hospital near Moscow over two days.

(Magyar’s Birds)

In the recording, the nurse asked, “Are they elite, these Koreans?” and mentioned that certain wards were being cleared for them. Radio Free Asia has not been able to independently verify the recording.

The deployment of the North Koreans comes after more than two years of deepening ties with Russia. North Korea has sent large volumes of arms and ammunition to Russia, including missiles and artillery shells, to support its war.

This week, the U.S., European Union, and South Korea imposed sanctions on individuals and entities accused of facilitating North Korea’s military assistance to Russia.

Edited by RFA Staff.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

– Malcolm X

Bearing witness is a crucial marker of a responsible press and media. It brings to light the unnecessary suffering and hardship of those rendered voiceless and disposable, as well as the underlying forces that produce such conditions. It also serves to challenge those who “wallow in willful ignorance.”[1] Shattering the lies concealed by claims of innocence is a powerful weapon for holding power accountable, making it visible and subject to exposure and resistance. Bearing witness does not guarantee justice, but it provides the awareness necessary to turn propaganda against itself and mobilize people to function as a collective force of resistance.

The corporate media undermines moral witnessing by often prioritizing the discredited notion of balance over the more crucial goal of seeking truth in the service of accountability and democracy. This retreat from holding power accountable not only discredits the pursuit of truth in the service of justice and the strengthening of democracy but also tends to fall prey to the seductions of corruption, political theater and entertainment.[2]

The dialectic within journalism encompasses what could be termed, on one hand, a politics of erasure and distortion, and on the other, a politics of moral witnessing. The politics of erasure is apparent in how corporate mainstream media disproportionately covers Israel’s aggressive actions in Gaza and portrays Trump as a conventional political candidate rather than an authoritarian threat to democracy both domestically and internationally. This erasure is also evident in how far-right journalism consistently distorts the truth when reporting on issues that conflict with reactionary conservative politics.

Conversely, the pursuit of truth and moral witnessing is exemplified by journalists from sources such as The Intercept, CounterPunch, Truthout, LA Progressive, and other alternative media platforms. These journalists engage deeply with critical social issues and consistently hold power accountable. Despite their commitment to journalistic integrity, these outlets are often marginalized within the media landscape dominated by corporate control.[3]

In what follows, I will comment briefly on how these two modes of journalism operate. First, I will briefly focus on the reporting of Scahill and Grim in The Intercept, which exposed how The New York Times and several other major newspapers underplayed the despair, suffering, and death that Israel is brutally imposing on Palestinians. On the other hand, I will examine how corporate-controlled media failed to address historically, contextually, and critically both Trump’s delusional ramblings and his clear and dangerous threats to democracy.

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim reported in The Intercept that an internal memo from the New York Times “instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land…The memo also instructed] reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars.”[4]

Scahill and Grim also note that major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times“reserved terms like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.”[5]

This is more than mere style guidelines; it is censorship in service of partisan reporting and moral irresponsibility. Instances of war crimes, the horror of genocide, and the reality of Israel’s violence against Palestinians are being distorted and erased. Critical of the babble of balance, Scahill and Grim highlight the importance of reporting on Israel’s savage war against Palestinians while making clear that the mainstream press represses such reporting, enabling the slaughter to continue.

 Rather than “hating the people who are oppressed,” CounterPunch is another truth-seeking media source that has covered the war on Gaza in great detail, providing both personal accounts of the suffering while placing the conflict in a broader history and political narrative.

The punishing state now wraps itself in censorship, propaganda, and cruel invective parading as a mix between political theater and both sides journalism. Americans are bombarded with the babble of liberals who are too cowardly to name Trump as a budding fascist or as a racist, treating him as either a normal candidate or a bullying clown rather than as a symptom of a deeper malaise of fascism, echoing a pernicious and frightening past. Corporate media normalcy bias treats Trump as simply another choice in the run for the presidency. Under the false insistence on balance, Trump and Biden are treated as two candidates with simply different views, rather than treating Trump as a dangerous and unbalanced threat to democracy itself.

Meanwhile, the corporate-controlled press focuses on the release of thankfully freed hostages and the unfounded charges of antisemitic politicians, who use the guise of antisemitism to undermine free speech and transform higher education into centers of indoctrination. Almost no coverage is given to the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.”[6]  Bombs explode, and blood flows freely over the bodies of more than 37,000 Palestinians, including thousands of women and children in Gaza. Ten children in Gaza lose a limb daily to war; according to the World Health Organization some “citizens in Gaza are now reduced to drinking sewage water and eating animal feed.”[7] These horrors disappear from mainstream news in their cycle of erasure, misrepresentation, and politics of balance.

It is truly alarming to see and hear how Trump’s frequent lapses into babble and gibberish are either ignored, barely commented on in a serious way, or treated as normal. It has become uneventful in the eyes of the corporate media to acknowledge critically that at his rallies Trump substitutes meaningful discourse with oratory that suggests he has “fallen off one verbal cliff after another, with barely a ripple in national consciousness.”[8] He has spoken incoherently about sharks and electric boats in the same sentence. He rants about Taylor Swift, claiming she is beautiful, but liberal and that he is “more popular” than her. He has made cruel remarks about Nancy Pelosi’s husband, joking about the violent attack he suffered at the hands of a right-wing conspiracy theorist. He has attacked Jack Smith and his wife. In a “bizarre, moment. Trump called Pelosi’s daughter a ‘wacko,’” and referred to the Department of Justice as “dirty no-good bastards.”[9] Rarely do these comments get the coverage they deserve in the mainstream media. There is little commentary about how unfit he is emotionally and what the consequence for the country might be if he is elected to the presidency. As Tim Nichols noted in The Atlantic, Trump’s delusional behavior should “terrify any American voter, because this behavior in anyone else would be an instant disqualification for any political office, let alone the presidency.” He further adds:

I am not a psychiatrist, and I am not diagnosing Trump with anything. I am, however, a man who has lived on this Earth for more than 60 years, and I know someone who has serious emotional problems when I see them played out in front of me, over and over. The 45th president is a disturbed person. He cannot be trusted with any position of responsibility—and especially not with a nuclear arsenal of more than 1,500 weapons. One wrong move could lead to global incineration.[10]

A dangerous right-wing firewall protects Trump and his delusional ramblings and reactionary policies from being identified as a dangerous authoritarian who poses a serious threat to democracy at home and abroad. The cowardly politics of normalization shield him from the criticism and exposure the public deserves. Additionally, he is protected by a right-wing echo chamber that legitimizes, propagates, and celebrates his lies, corruption, and criminal convictions. They also lie for profit. But there is more at work here than a politics of disappearance, there is also a relentless barrage of lies and distortions. Thom Hartman refers to the dominant right-wing echo chamber as “The GOP’s MAGA lie machine,” one that represents “dark side of politics.”[11]  False claims by mainstream conservative media became more visible with Fox News’s nearly $800 million dollar settlement with Dominion for lying about the 2020 presidential election. Unfortunately, the distortion machine continues with impunity. For instance,  Judd Legum recently reported that the Sinclair Broadcast Group is engaged in a systemic campaign of presenting misleading stories about President, which are then distributed on a range of social media. He writes:

This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.[12]

 Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a cult of morally vacuous and politically maligned sycophants who are complicit in his actions and cover for him. Trump and his followers live in a bubble of deceit, hidden through a powerful and expansive culture of ignorance and hatred. This is a party that spreads false and deranged stories about Jewish space lasers, voting machines corrupted by alleged Venezuelan communists, and Democrats who drink the blood of kidnaped children, among other insane conspiracy theories.

The mainstream and right-wing media have emptied language of any substantive meaning, turning it into a poisonous cacophony of lies, bigotry, and deranged conspiracy theories. One crucial caveat must be made. While Trump’s bizarre ramblings rightly suggest an unstable and unhinged mind, this criticism should not but used to overshadow his fascist politics and the conditions that have given rise to Trumpism. The latter is a historical and political issue that cannot be reduced to psychological language.

More to the point. There is more at play here than Trump’s delusional ramblings. There is also his attack on the justice system, his lies about the election, his role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, his history as a sexual predator, his support for Project 2025 and its planned subversion of democracy, and his history leading up to his thirty-four felony convictions. While these events receive critical commentary, they are rarely analyzed as part of a larger program that supports an upgraded fascism. Deceit, ignorance, and the death of civic responsibility now function as the perfect storm enabling fascist politics. America is no longer ashamed of its ignorance; it is now a matter of fondness, provides a sense of community, and serves as a measure of loyalty.[13] What does it take under these circumstances for struggling to prevent democracies from dying? What questions do we need to ask to rethink the meaning of politics, struggle, and collective resistance?

How do we account for this dramatic refusal by liberals and others to name and recognize the ongoing threat of fascism in the U.S.? What institutions under the regime of gangster capitalism have surrendered their educative, political, cultural, and economic responsibilities? How has white supremacy, with its logic and politics of hate, exclusion, and violence once again been able to define who counts as a citizen in the United States? What conditions have allowed the collapse of civic culture into a culture of commodification, surveillance, and punishment? What will it take to develop a world where democracy can breathe again? Where are the public spaces calling for a revolution of values that challenge the war machines and expansive militarized propagandistic cultural apparatuses? What kind of mass movement is necessary to shift public consciousness and the centers of corrupt politics in American society? How can these questions be answered within a broader understanding of the connection between neoliberal capitalism and fascism?

Where is the language we need to bear witness to resist the country’s death drive while affirming the need for justice? How can the language of compassion and solidarity overcome the discourse of institutionalized neoliberalism, rancid individualism, greed, and self-interest? Where are the spaces,  emerging institutions and social movements that will create the conditions to say yes to justice and no to cruelty, systemic racism, mass ignorance, and unfettered greed? What will it take to cultivate a willingness to say no, and the energy necessary to put our minds and bodies on the line for a future in which our children can experience dignity, justice, and joy? What might it mean to inhabit what James Baldwin called a “despairing witness” and, at the same time, to be prepared to lose everything in order to struggle for a world in which economic, political, and social rights are guaranteed for everyone?

All of these questions pose challenges that need to be addressed given the historical crisis facing the U.S. Baldwin never despaired of the struggles and potential danger of being a moral witness, and his words offer hope in the ongoing individual and collective efforts to be strong, brave, and willing to continue the fight for a radical democracy. His words are more urgent and powerful than ever:  “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” In the age of emerging fascism, there is no other choice but to begin again to fight the ghosts of a fascist past that have returned with a vengeance.

Notes.

[1] Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons For our Own (New York: Crown, 2020).p.53

[2] This issue has been discussed in great depth by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their landmark Manufacturing Consent. See also the work of  Jason Stanley’s  How Propaganda Works, and Robert McChesney’s Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, and too many other critical sources to mention.

[3] Sonali Kolhatkar, “When Corporate Media Fail, Independent Media Rise Up,” Counterpunch (June 15, 2023). Online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/15/when-corporate-media-fail/

[4] Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, “Leaked NYT Gaza memo tells journalists to avoid words ‘genocide’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘occupied territory.’’ The Intercept (April 15, 2024). Online: https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/nyt-israel-gaza-genocide-palestine-coverage/

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jon Quellay, “93 Nations Back ICC as Israel Faces Charges for War Crimes in Gaza,” Common Dreams (June 15, 2024). Online: https://www.commondreams.org/news/icc-war-cimes-gaza?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=af4dfba027-Weekend+Edition%3A+Sun.+6%2F16%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

[7] Cited in Jeffrey St. Clair, “Whoops, They Did It Again–The Scourging of Gaza: Diary of a Genocidal War,” Counterpunch + (June 8, 2024). Online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/08/whoops-they-did-it-again/

[8] Tom Nichols, “Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish,” The Atlantic (June 12, 2024). Online: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/trump-sharks-las-vegas-rally-speech/678667/

[9] Annie Grayer, Melanie Zanona, Lauren Fox and Kit Maher, “Inside Trump’s gripe-filled meeting with House GOP and his reunion with McConnell,” CNN (June 13, 2024). Online: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/politics/trump-closed-door-meeting-house-gop/index.html

[10] Ibid. Tom Nichols.

[11] Thom Hartman, “The Dark Side of Politics: The GOP’s MAGA Lie Machine,” The Hartmann Report (June 17, 2024). Online: https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-dark-side-of-politics-the-gops-749

[12] Judd Legum, “Sinclair floods local news websites with hundreds of deceptive articles about Biden’s mental fitness,” Popular Information (June 17, 2024). Online: https://popular.info/p/sinclair-floods-local-news-websites?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=f0dw&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[13] Mark Slouka, “A Quibble,” Harper’s Magazine ( February 2009). Online: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/0082362

The post Firewalls of Ignorance and Disappearance: Corporate Media in the Age of Fascist Politics appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Henry Giroux.

Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, left, and the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, right, greet people as they attend an event held to mark the 30th anniversary of Hamas, at Al-Katiba Square on December 14, 2017 in Gaza City, Gaza.

Do the people who run the world know the most basic facts about the world? This urgent question is raised by a recent column on the Israeli attack on Gaza by the British politician Ben Wallace, who, until a few months ago, was the United Kingdom’s defense minister. Terrifyingly enough, the answer appears to be no.

The problem is that Wallace places great significance on Hamas’s original 1988 charter, which is explicitly antisemitic and rejects any coexistence with Israel. But he doesn’t appear to know Hamas issued a new charter in 2017. In it, Hamas affirms that its “conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion.” And, while the revised charter rejects the legitimacy of Zionism, it accepts “the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” This reference to the lines of June 4, 1967 — before Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War — is regarded as accepting the existence of Israel within the borders it had at that time.

This is not some arcane knowledge available to but a few. You could have learned about it by reading any newspaper at the time, such as, for instance, The Telegraph — the publication that ran Wallace’s column.

Wallace’s failure to cite Hamas’s prevailing charter is especially irksome because his overall point is completely reasonable. He references the aftermath of 1972’s Bloody Sunday, when British troops in Northern Ireland killed 14 demonstrators, and writes, “As sure as night follows day, history shows us that radicalisation follows oppression.” Now, Wallace says, Israel is on the same path, and its “tactics will fuel the conflict for another 50 years. … All the action will have achieved is the extinction, not of the extremists, but the voice of the moderate Palestinians who do want a two-state solution.” 

However, Wallace adds that “[Hamas’s] charter reads like the constitution of a jihadist Salafi organisation. It is anti-Semitic and anti-democratic. It isn’t interested in peaceful co-existence with Israel, or Egypt, for that matter.” Moreover, “You can’t have a ceasefire with Hamas unless they are prepared to declare one; even then they would have to pledge to modify their charter to do so.”

Given Wallace’s wording, it’s unlikely that he was being consciously deceptive in his failure to note the 2017 revision; he almost certainly does not know that it exists. (Wallace is still in the British Parliament, and his Westminster office passed along questions about this to him, but he did not respond.)

This is significant for two reasons.

First, Hamas’s prevailing charter — i.e., the 2017 one — does not pose some insurmountable barrier to a two-state solution and peace. Moreover, while it’s unpopular to point this out, Hamas leaders have signaled a willingness to accept a two-state solution on many occasions. In 2009, the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank funded by the federal government, concluded that “Hamas has been carefully and consciously adjusting its political program for years and has sent repeated signals that it may be ready to begin a process of coexisting with Israel.” It’s easy to point to the vicious October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and say it was obviously never willing to accept a two-state solution. However, the harsh truth is that the attacks and the Israeli response have increased U.S. interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s possible that parts of Hamas do in fact want a two-state solution, and understand us better than we understand ourselves.

Second, we have to accept that many of the people at the top of the world’s power structures simply have no idea what they’re talking about. Jimmy Carter once wrote that he wished that he had learned the history of U.S. aggression in Central America before he became president; the people of Central America probably wish that too. 

Likewise, Palestinians would be happier if people like Wallace, whose tenure as the U.K.’s defense minister lasted four years, could achieve a Wikipedia-level knowledge of their history. For extra credit, Wallace could even learn the basics of the Likud party, currently chaired by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its original 1977 party platform declares that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

But, of course, there is no pressure on Wallace and his ilk to become acquainted with facts. All the pressure pushes them in the other direction. For instance, for his banal observations of reality about oppression breeding radicalization, Wallace has been accused of potentially “stoking antisemitic hate.”

It’s distressing to have to point out these facts about Hamas, which is, from any secular, progressive perspective, unsavory in the extreme. But while no one has to defend Hamas, it’s important to defend reality. We desperately need the people in charge to understand what it is, so at least they won’t destroy the world by accident.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

Photograph Source: Aude – CC BY-SA 3.0

“When Russia threatened to intervene militarily to protect Egypt during negotiations to end the 1973 war, President Richard M. Nixon, on Henry Kissinger’s advice, ordered U.S. forces to Def-Con 3, a heightened state of alert for possible nuclear conflict.  The message was received.”

– David Ignatius, The Washington Post, October 27, 2023.

During the October War of 1973, I served as a senior Soviet intelligence analyst on the CIA’s task force for providing intelligence to the White House.  As a result, I can authoritatively expose the misinformation and flawed thinking in David Ignatius’s account, which typically for the Washington Post supports Israeli interests.

First and most importantly, no intelligence supported the claim that the Soviets were preparing to intervene militarily in the October War, which would require forces for power projection that the Soviets didn’t possess.  One of the reasons for President Sadat’s decision to invade Israel was his conviction that he would never get Soviet support for a military solution to the Israeli occupation of Egyptian territories.  Second, President Nixon did not order the nuclear alert; he did not even attend the NSC meeting that authorized the declaration of Def-Con 3.  His military aide, General Alexander Haig, told National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger that Nixon was sound asleep and in no condition to attend the meeting even if awake.  Remember that the October War coincided with the worst days of Watergate for Nixon, and he was taking medication for depression and drinking too much alcohol.

Third, Kissinger’s decision to heighten the alert for nuclear forces was not legally his to make; in addition, he was opposed by other participants at the NSC meeting, including CIA director William Colby, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Thomas Moorer.  All three confirmed their opposition in interviews with me, which I’ve written about separately.

Fourth, Ignatius states that the “message was received.”  His implication is that, because of Kissinger’s action, the Soviets backed down.  This is wrong because the Soviets had not been preparing to intervene.  It was Kissinger, who “got the message” that he had behaved recklessly.  He canceled the alert the following morning. He wanted to keep the decision secret from the American public, but it leaked within hours.

Fifth, Ignatius fails to mention that the cease-fire in the Middle East in 1973 was negotiated successfully between Moscow and Washington, who were cooperative in dealing with Israeli violations of the cease-fire.  The current war in the Middle East is particularly dangerous because there is no possibility of Russian-American negotiations, let alone cooperation, to head off the possible escalation that current developments portend.  In addition to the Gaza War, there are increased hostilities in the West Bank and along the Israeli-Lebanese border and the Golan Heights; increased U.S. retaliation against the Iran-backed militants who have been harassing U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq;; and even the possibility of a U.S-Iran confrontation.

Ignatius simplistically believes that “when U.S. power has been strong and clearly communicated, wars in the Middle East have been followed by peace agreements that usually lasted.”  The October War led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and diplomatic exchange of relations only because Anwar Sadat was willing to take courageous steps to start a peace process that has lasted fifty years.  Ignatius also simplistically believes that the current “war, for all its horror, should revive Israel’s interest in a two-state solution,” when it is obvious that Israel hasn’t been interested in a two-state solution for several decades and hardly seems likely to move in that direction in the near future.

Ignatius believes that the “same dilemma” that has “recurred with numbing frequency over the decades” is Israel being “attacked by Palestinian or Arab foes.”  He fails to mention the “numbing frequency” of Israeli attacks that include conspiring with Britain and France in the 1956 Suez War; their attacks in the Six-Day War in 1967, which were not preemptive; and the strategic nightmare in Lebanon in 1982 when Israel attacked without cause, leading to the formation of Hezbollah and two decades of Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory.  Ironically, Israel contributed directly to the formation of Hamas and indirectly to the formation of Hezbollah.

Finally, Ignatius credits President Joe Biden as being “among the most skillful practitioners of the art of the impossible” by showing empathy toward Israel and at the same time urging Israel to “avoid a broader conflict and gradually move toward a two-state solution that can provide security.”  In actual fact, Biden—along with Ignatius—has been and continues to be a supporter of the notion that providing Israel with vast amounts of military weaponry will give Israel the security to make the compromises needed to agree to a two-state solution.  In Dennis Ross’ history of U.S.-Israeli relations, he describes Biden as one of those U.S. policymakers who genuinely believes that by “drawing the Israelis close to us,” we will gain greater influence over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and limit the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.  Well, we certainly know how that has worked out.

If one of the deans of U.S. journalism in the field of national security can be so misinformed, what are the chances that the many readers of the Washington Post will understand the complexities of politics and policies in the Middle East?  Meanwhile, politicians and pundits—even President Biden—are cynically questioning the accuracy of the count of civilian deaths in Gaza while thousands of women, children, and old people are being pulled from the rubble.

We are witnessing Israeli acts of genocide against the Palestinian people, depriving them of food, shelter, fuel and even the ability to communicate with the outside world.  While Israel has the right to respond strongly against Hamas, it does not have the right, either morally or legally, to engage in collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The vaccine skeptics are also the people that await the science. How can one “follow the science,” when the vaccines are still being tested?

The vaccine skeptics are the people who follow the science regarding mask wearing. The science is clear that masking does not work. Given that, then what does that reveal about the mask wearers who demand others be compelled to join them in wearing a mask?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The post Australia, China and Fashioned Ignorance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.