COMEDY ITEM: the Kathy Burke cloning incident.
Words have effectively no value
the mind is mightier than the pen
18/3/24 https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/18/caitlin-johnstone-blaming-it-all-on-bibi/
"Saying TikTok must be suppressing pro-Israel content because pro-Palestine content is more popular is like saying they're suppressing flat earth content because round earth content is more popular. Pro-Israel content is just less popular in general, which is why the gap is the same on Facebook and Instagram."
18/3/24 https://sputnikglobe.com/20240314/houthis-go-hypersonic-how-ansar-allahs-advance-in-missile-tech-could-trigger-us-defeat-in-mideast-1117334551.html
"If the Houthis really have managed to accelerate a missile to Mach 8, that will mean that the ship-based air defense systems of the American naval group will be powerless."
17/3/24 https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/17/violating-intimacies-israeli-soldiers-flaunt-photos-with-lingerie-of-palestinian-women-theyve-killed-or-displaced/
"Israeli soldiers have photographed themselves posing with the lingerie of Palestinian women they have displaced or killed in Gaza. They join a long line of conquest images, from Abu Ghraib images to the spectacle of Jim Crow-era lynchings."
17/3/24 https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/17/failed-icj-case-against-russia-backfires-paves-way-for-genocide-charges-against-ukraine/
"The ICJ ruled that the Donbas and Lugansk People's Republics were not 'terrorist' entities, Russia did not discriminate based on ethnicity of residents of Crimea and found that the Ukrainian military engaged in torture and inhumane treatment of Eastern Ukrainian detainees."
17/3/24 https://sputnikglobe.com/20240316/niger-breaks-military-agreement-with-us---reports-1117373862.html
"The Nigerien government terminated the military agreement with the United States, which allows US troops to remain on the territory of the African country, Reuters reported, citing the spokesman for the military transitional government of Niger, Amadou Abdramane."
16/3/24 https://www.mintpressnews.com/so-it-goes/
"Uh-oh"
16/3/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kzHfyc2hso
"Israel's short for this world, if we're not gonna allow terror states."
16/3/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=172xsVydGuI
"from the river to the sea"
15/3/24 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/dear-techno-savages-leave-us-alone/
"No formal government represents us, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which wilderness always speaks. We are proud members of the ancient tribe, joyous in its unenclosed riot of spontaneous diversity. I hereby declare that the exquisite ecologies of Nature, of which we are a part, be independent of the tyrannical disruption you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us through ideology or algorithmic pseudo-science nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear."
15/3/24 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/greenland-cascading-30-million-tons-per-hour/
"In rough numbers, sometime between 2030-40 it would surpass the IPCC highest estimate for 2100. That's a big-time headache for every coastal city, right around the corner. Hopefully, a magic potion drops into Earth's atmosphere and makes this go away like a bad dream."
15/3/24 https://thecradle.co/articles/will-brics-launch-a-new-world-in-2024
"And that on top of seizing Euroclear's assets in Russia - which amount to roughly 33 billion euros. With Euroclear running out of capital, the Belgian Central Bank will have to revoke its license, causing a massive financial crisis."
15/3/24 https://rumble.com/v4jg099-live-why-ceasefire-is-not-enough-and-much-more.html
"It's still horrific but it's not this gruesome attack on children."
15/3/24 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/smoke-mirrors-how-israeli-agitprop-lies-become-fact/
"Draw your own conclusions."
15/3/24 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/claims-of-mass-rape-by-hamas-unravel-upon-investigation/
"That leaves only two people who claimed they witnessed rape. The government of Israel's entire case for mass rape is built on two allegations: a source known as 'Witness S.,' or Sapir, put forward by the police, and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) special forces soldier, Raz Cohen. The soldier has changed his story numerous times, making it suspect, while Sapir's account is so fantastical as to defy belief"
15/3/24 https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/15/if-israel-wants-to-be-an-independent-nation-let-it-be/
"The reason Israel cannot exist without nonstop violence is because it is an artificial nation that was simply dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization whose inhabitants and neighbors had a deeply-rooted way of living which was massively disrupted by the sudden imposition of a newly created ethnostate ruled by people who'd never lived there before."
14/3/24 https://thecradle.co/articles/bp-uae-back-out-of-2bn-gas-deal-with-israeli-firm
"UK oil company British Petroleum (BP) and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) have suspended talks on a billion-dollar deal to buy a stake in the owner of a gas field off the coast of occupied Haifa"
14/3/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9nfGK73K9o
"It is obviously true that this is part of a Culture War wallpaper that's being created for the General Election soon to come."
14/3/24 https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/03/transgender-the-inability-to-distinguish-facts-from-wishes.html
"The intentional denial of reality, as it is currently practiced in the West, is not a new phenomenon. It is the basis of neo-conservatism from where it has crept over to the progressive side."
14/3/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0tM63695E
"The IDF is very sloppy [..] the Israelis are not a very good military. [..] Hezbollah will outclass them in every way. [..] Hamas when they attacked on October 7th captured the computer servers containing Israeli intelligence about their assets inside Gaza, so Israel went blind in terms of human resources. They attacked the unit A200 signals intelligence platforms. Israel went blind in terms of intercepting communications. So what Israel thought they knew about Gaza changed overnight."
14/3/24 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202403/1308862.shtml
"The British side made the absurd accusation against Chinese nationals out of nothing but "fear," without showing any evidence. Some British politicians have fallen into severe anti-China paranoia, and their unfounded slander against China is intended to cover up their own incompetence and failure in solving political, economic and social problems in the UK."
13/3/24 https://thecradle.co/articles/on-israel-and-rape
"shocking domestic sexual violence crisis, in which 260 Israeli women and minors are raped each day"
12/3/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGCtyISRcRw
"Everything that is being said by the leader of the opposition, by the shadow chancellor of the exchequer accepts the economic orthodoxies of the conservative government"
11/3/24 https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/11/patrick-lawrence-old-man-shouting/
"One question that is shared on both sides of the Atlantic implies the greatest task the Western world has faced in a long time - maybe centuries, depending on how one counts. I have already suggested it. It is the task of surrendering those claims to superiority from which the Western consciousness has drawn its identity for the past half a millennium. ∞ To do this would be an immense positive for the West and everyone living in it. It would mean not defeat but an immense unburdening; it would open up many true possibilities - these as against that 'land of possibilities' Biden conjured of thin air Thursday evening. ∞ But the West's leaders, America's above all, have no clue of the surrender this moment asks of them. To surrender, as I mean this term, will require leadership of a kind Western nations have rarely before seen, and there is none in sight."
11/3/24 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/11/a-play-for-our-time-ionescos-rhinoceros/
"the play is not so much about the horrors of fascism as it is about the vulnerability of people to its seductions"
6/3/24 https://www.mintpressnews.com/foreign-fighters-from-us-france-india-fighting-israel-war-gaza/286985/
"Currently, 45% of the Israeli army's 'lone soldiers,' those who serve but don't have family in Israel, are new immigrants. The current 'lone soldier' program has troops from over 60 countries, with approximately 35% from the U.S. It's important to note, though, that individuals part of Israel's 'lone soldier' program are not considered mercenaries, who are professionals hired by a country's government to fight in its war and aren't citizens of said country."
29/2/24 https://www.iraqbodycount.org
"Thursday 29 February: 1 killed. Kirkuk: 1 man killed by gunmen."
28/2/24 https://www.mintpressnews.com/strategic-escalation-yemen-military-operations-signal-new-phase-in-red-sea/286923/
"American and British aircraft dropped bombs on an insecticide manufacturer in a dense residential neighborhood. In the wake of the airstrikes, MintPress News reporter Ahmed AbdulKareem went to the Al-Nahda neighborhood in the center of the city, where a fire rising dozens of meters into the air illuminated nearby homes. ∞ There, he found a chaotic scene eerily reminiscent of those now regularly seen in Gaza in the wake of Israeli raids. Rubble, broken windows, scattered and burned furniture, and women and children fleeing their homes to no particular place. 'Bomb us more... we still won't let any Israeli ship cross,' an angry resident shouted as the press descended upon the scene."
16/2/24 https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/16/caitlin-johnstone-israel-needs-to-be-hated/
"Perceived anti-semitism is cited as evidence for why Israel needs to be even more violent, militaristic and tyrannical than it already was, and why its brutal treatment of Palestinians is justified and correct."
15/2/24 https://rumble.com/v4djt3l-russias-fight-against-globalism-12.html, https://rumble.com/v4dylyx-slaying-the-dragon-of-globalism-pt.-22.html
"The end of Western-centered world domination is being made now in the Donbass"
18/1/24 https://www.unz.com/mhudson/russia-iran-and-the-red-sea-natos-war-economy-collapses/
"In the United States, what did the Americans do? The White people came, the Anglo-Saxons and the other Europeans, and they killed 90% of the Indians, drove them out, isolated them, put them in basically concentration camps. And then when they found out that there was oil under these concentration camps, they essentially murdered the Indians there or drove them out to grab the oil."
4/1/24 https://thecradle.co/articles/gaza-destroys-western-divide-and-rule-narratives
"Decades of western-led narratives crafted to exploit differences throughout West Asia, create strife amid the region's myriad communities, and advance western foreign policy objectives over the heads of bickering natives are now in ruins."
4/1/24 https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/04/us-scolds-israeli-officials-for-saying-quiet-part-aloud/
"You will note, probably without surprise, that the statement contains nothing but empty scolding. No mention is made of the faintest possibility of any consequence of any kind being brought to bear should Israeli officials continue to openly advocate for eliminating the Palestinian population of Gaza and replacing it with Jewish settlements. This is because the U.S. has no intention of actually doing anything to hinder Israel's ethnic cleansing agendas."
21/12/23 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/21/caitlin-johnstone-gaza-atrocities-are-western-values/
"What we see in Gaza is a much better representation of what Western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned in school."
3/11/23 https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/11/nazrallah-speech-on-gaza.html
"The Israeli army [..] destroys thousands of houses and kills thousands of civilians. Is that what an invincible army would do?"
3/11/23 https://sonar21.com/lord-bertrand-russells-on-israels-miscalculation/
"The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate."
2/11/23 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/02/without-hamas-gaza-would-still-not-be-free/
"None of that has anything to do with Hamas. The most one can say is that Hamas' resistance has forced Israel's hand. It has had to abandon its siege-apartheid model - the long-term imprisonment of a population with no resources, no freedom of movement, no clean water, no jobs. Instead, it has returned to the tried-and-tested formulas of genocide and ethnic cleansing."
24/10/23 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/24/scientists-pursue-climate-activism-despite-violent-threats/
"The climate movement as a whole, including its increasing numbers of scientists, is collectively brushing off online hatred and turning instead to vigorous confrontation with the sources of ecological breakdown. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a press release announcing a frightening new IPCC report last year, 'Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.'"
20/10/23 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/20/are-muslims-second-class-citizens-in-the-west/
"It is simply unsustainable to deny such a large group the right to free political expression and speech. They must be heard and heeded."
14/10/23 https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2023/10/14/von-der-leyen-does-not-speak-for-eu-on-israel-hamas-conflict-foreign-policy-chief-says/
"Mr Borrell said he shared the view of Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi that the only lasting solution to the conflict lay in a two-state solution but that the situation in Gaza called for a more urgent response. During a joint press conference with Mr Borrell on Friday, Mr Wang said that the root of the issue lay in the fact that the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people had not been rectified."
22/9/23 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/22/us-sees-highest-ever-increase-in-poverty/
"between 2021 and 2022 the people of the U.S. experienced the highest one-year increase in poverty on record"
12/9/23 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/09/12/second-and-third-stage-consequences-of-fossil-fueled-climate-disruptions-emerging-fast/
"Faster and faster, the second, third and fourth waves of after-effects of these man-made natural disasters will become all-enveloping punishers of societies that are failing to head off the looming dangers, now maturing into evermore desperate states of living."
31/7/23 https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco
"Heated tobacco products (HTPs) are tobacco products that produce aerosols containing nicotine and toxic chemicals upon heating of the tobacco, or activation of a device containing the tobacco. They contain the highly addictive substance nicotine, non-tobacco additives and are often flavoured. Despite claims of 'risk reduction', there is no evidence to demonstrate that HTPs are less harmful than conventional tobacco products."
17/3/23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvSHD_n3Lyg
"Efficacy of the mRNA covid-19 booster"
9/3/23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuY7ZZuSUYY
"What a dramatic change in the government's position."
27/10/22 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2022-10-27/cheerleaders-us-imperialism/
"Monbiot holds as a cherished piety what should be two entirely inconsistent positions: that British and Western elites are pillaging the planet for corporate gain, immune to the catastrophe they are wreaking on the environment and oblivious to the lives they are destroying at home and abroad; and that these same elites are fighting good, humanitarian wars to protect the interests of poor and oppressed peoples overseas, from Syria and Libya to Ukraine, peoples who coincidentally just happen to live in areas of geostrategic significance"
16/10/22 https://scheerpost.com/2022/10/16/patrick-lawrence-the-non-west-coalesces/
"Nations representing more than 80 percent of the global population and a like percentage of global gross domestic product are perfectly capable of seeing the Biden administration's pointed provocations and do not approve."
3/8/22 https://chomsky.info/20220803/
"Destroying one of the world's poorest countries to 'sleep a little sounder' may sound a harsh enough indictment, but Malkasian is wrong. If the Bush administration had wanted to 'defend Americans from another terrorist attack,' it would have pursued the criminal network responsible for the original attack. Instead, it wanted vengeance, and launched an illegal war that killed thousands of innocent people. As ugly as a 'trade-off' between Afghan lives and American safety would have been, there was no such tradeoff. Bush rapidly lost interest in bin Laden, American muscle having successfully been flexed. The destruction was not 'inadvertent'-armed drones do not spontaneously deploy of their own volition. The U.S. was simply indifferent to the humanity of our victims."
18/5/22 https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/18/the-new-iron-curtain/
"The West wants to divide the world once again, and it is building high, thick walls to get this done. If we can't continue to subjugate them, the policy cliques appear to reason, let's at least isolate them. It will be interesting - bitterly amusing, even - to see who turns out to be isolated as the West insists once again the twain must not meet."
18/2/22 https://chomsky.info/20220218/
"The worst humanitarian catastrophe on earth is unfolding before our eyes. Afghanistan's healthcare infrastructure is collapsing, poverty has drastically increased, and nearly nine million Afghans are on the brink of starvation - including one million children."
16/12/21 https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/putin-xi-running-circles-around-bidens-hybrid-war/
"Lavrov had to meticulously explain the consequences of NATO expansion; the Minsk agreement; and how Berlin should exercise its right to pressure Kiev to respect Minsk."
4/9/21 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-09-04/vaccine-children-science/
"the current orthodoxy preferring vaccines has turned reality on its head"
15/2/21 https://scheerpost.com/2021/02/15/hedges-cancel-culture-where-liberalism-goes-to-die/ "Elites and their courtiers who trumpet their moral superiority by damning and silencing those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech are the new Jacobins."
31/1/21 https://scheerpost.com/2021/01/31/fossil-fuel-companies-fuel-american-fascism/
"The oil, gas, and coal industries all support and fund white supremacy and far-right politics."
27/1/21 https://scheerpost.com/2021/01/27/billionaires-gone-wild-pandemic-profiteering-by-the-numbers/
"The combined fortune of the nation's 660 billionaires as of Monday, January 18, 2021 was $4.1 trillion, up 38.6% from their collective net worth of just under $3 trillion on March 18, 2020"
19/12/20 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/19/home-office-report-grooming-gangs-not-muslim
"A new Home Office report admits grooming gangs are not a 'Muslim problem'"
21/5/20 http://newsjunkiepost.com/2020/05/21/the-giant-virus-in-the-room-corporate-vaccine-makers-need-more-pandemics-to-grow/
"But this approach is also potentially dangerous, because it involves the introduction of viral mRNA into cells, and this alone might start an adverse immune reaction."
5/7/19 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/chomsky-speaks-out-against-the-attacks-on-chris-williamson
"The 90-year-old Jewish academic told media watchdog Media Lens last year that 'the charges of anti-semitism against Corbyn are without merit' and were part of 'disgraceful efforts to fend off ... a political party ... that is actually committed to the interests and just demands of its popular constituency ... while also authentically concerned with the rights of suffering and oppressed people throughout the world. Plainly an intolerable threat to order.'"
13/4/19 https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/04/article/you-have-the-right-to-always-remain-silent/
"US corporate media routinely publishes illegal leaks of classified information. Manning offered the documents he had already downloaded to both the New York Times and the Washington Post - and he was rejected. Only then did he approach WikiLeaks."
28/10/18 https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/10/28/members-of-netanyahus-likud-blame-victims-of-pittsburgh-pogrom-and-echo-the-killers-rhetoric/
"Yoav Eliasi, aka The Shadow - a prominent Israeli hate rapper and Likud Party member in good standing - portrayed the massacre as a legitimate response to HIAC's progressive agenda"
13/2/18 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/taxpayers-still-paying-british-slave-12019829
"Just three years ago, taxpayers were still paying off government debt borrowed to pay millions in 'compensation' to wealthy slave owners."
24/11/17 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/antibiotics-us-farmers-brexit_uk_5a12ae25e4b045cf43725e51
"British food and farming industries have started to take action on the critically important issue of overuse of antibiotics in farming. We simply cannot afford to let our trade negotiators sweep such progress aside by flooding our market with cut-price US chicken raised with routine antibiotic use."
17/10/17 https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3443-communication-from-moshe-machover-to-the-legal-queries-unit
"I reserve all my legal rights against the Party in respect of the decisions that have been taken to exclude me from the Party and to find anything I have written or said to be 'apparently antisemitic.'"
28/7/17 https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/28/whats-missing-from-dunkirk/
"'Even were we to obtain permission to withdraw all the Jews,' he {{Winston Churchill} wrote in reply to one pleading letter, 'transport alone presents a problem which will be difficult of solution.' Not enough shipping and transport? Two years earlier, the British had evacuated nearly 340,000 men from the beaches of Dunkirk in just nine days. The U.S. Air Force had many thousands of new planes. During even a brief armistice, the Allies could have airlifted and transported refugees in very large numbers out of the German sphere." In other words, the story of Dunkirk, the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, is a story of how the Allies treated people they had some use for, and a demonstration of how they could have treated other people if they had had any use for them."
10/7/17 https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/10/grenfell-tower-all-fall-down/
"In addition, the Grenfell affair demonstrates that the United States is not alone in its tolerance for actions that should be a national disgrace but are slighted by a political class incapable of feeling shame."
3/7/17 https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3306-the-colonial-logic-of-grenfell
"We are living in Britain at a time of extreme hostility towards people racialised as non-white. As Home Secretary, Theresa May said explicitly that her Immigration Law reforms of 2014 and 2016 were designed to create a hostile environment' for migrants. Brexit since both amplified and legitimised racist hatred in Britain. The Leave campaign won on a mandate of 'taking back control', and making the country a better place to live for Britons, conceived in large part, as white."
5/4/17 https://truepublica.org.uk/contributor-news/andre-vltchek-love-western-nihilism-revolutionary-optimism/
"Purposelessness is intertwined with passivity. In the West, it is increasingly hard to find someone that is truly committed: politically, intellectually or even emotionally. Big feelings are now seen as frightening; both men and women reject them. Grand gestures are increasingly looked down upon, or even ridiculed. Dreams are becoming tiny, shy and always 'down to earth', and even those are lately extremely well concealed. Even to daydream is seen as something 'irrational' and outdated."
4/4/17 https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/04/roger-the-liberated/
"This freedom has become the key to his recent success. Roger the Liberated has become a different player. Behind the joy is a self-assurance and grace that comes from knowing who you are. He is no longer afraid of striking his backhand at crucial moments. He is striking the ball with boundless confidence, not reckless abandon."
5/9/16 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/05/antibiotic-resistant-e-coli-uk-supermarket-chicken-samples-contain
"One in four samples of chicken bought from major supermarket chains contained antibiotic-resistant E coli in a study by the University of Cambridge"
19/8/16 https://www.leighday.co.uk/latest-updates/blog/2016-blogs/structural-racism-at-work-are-britains-employers-racist/
"we have failed to tackle the serious problem with race discrimination which pervades employment"
1/7/16 https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/brexit-let-the-uk-screw-itself/
"We ruined the world. We robbed the world. We are still ruining and robbing it. Because of the West's imperialism, fundamentalism and greed, hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion human lives have been lost. We are not qualified to govern the Planet and we never were. We cannot indefinitely reward ourselves with ridiculously generous benefits and outrageously high standards of living, as they have been financed by many centuries of looting, genocides and holocausts. Our present-day institutions, from NATO to the EU, are helping to sustain such criminal global order. Some of us now want to dismantle them, on strictly ethical grounds, in the name of the humane race. Therefore we are calling for a referendum"
30/1/16 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/30/ethnic-minority-graduates-earn-less-struggle-to-build-careers
"Ethnic minority graduates in Britain are much less likely to be employed than their white peers six months after graduation - and many can expect to earn less for years afterwards."
26/10/15 http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
"The cancer risk related to the consumption of red meat is more difficult to estimate because the evidence that red meat causes cancer is not as strong. However, if the association of red meat and colorectal cancer were proven to be causal, data from the same studies suggest that the risk of colorectal cancer could increase by 17% for every 100 gram portion of red meat eaten daily."
21/9/15 https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/noam-chomsky-on-power-and-ideology-qa-transcript
"Orwell is famous for his searching and sardonic critique of the way thought is controlled by force under totalitarian dystopia. But much less known is his discussion of how similar outcomes are achieved in free societies. He's speaking, of course, of England. And he wrote that although the country is quite free, nevertheless unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Gave a couple of examples, provided a few words of explanation, which were to the point. One particularly pertinent comment was his observation on a quality education in the best schools, where it is instilled into you that there are certain things that it simply wouldn't do to say - or, we may add, even to think. One reason why not much attention is paid to this essay is that it wasn't published. It was found decades later in his unpublished papers. It was intended as the introduction to his famous Animal Farm, bitter satire of Stalinist totalitarianism. Why it wasn't published is apparently unknown, but I think perhaps you can speculate."
17/8/15 http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/17/europes-forgotten-history-from-human-zoos-to-human-trophies-displayed-in-museums-today/
"Global outrage was sparked when the Zimbabwean lion, Cecil was killed as a trophy; but to this day, Britain and America continue to display in museums human remains that are human trophies of their massacres and subjugation of indigenous populations."
9/6/15 https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/09/on-greatness/
"Those whose lives are illuminated by it are not compulsive consumers. They are not petty, envious of neighbors, neurotically fearful of perceived enemies. They support the development of human potential, not retributive systems of justice and endless war."
4/3/15 https://sustainablepulse.com/2015/03/04/jane-goodall-steven-druker-expose-us-government-fraud-gmos/
"the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world's food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science - and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts."
3/12/14 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-hidden-racism-workplace-inequality-has-grown-in-the-last-decade-9898930.html
"Comparison of census data shows ethnic minorities have it worse"
3/11/14 https://chomsky.info/the-leading-terrorist-state/
"Angola was invaded by South Africa, which, according to Washington, was defending itself from one of the world's 'more notorious terrorist groups' - Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. That was 1988. ∞ By then the Reagan administration was virtually alone in its support for the apartheid regime, even violating congressional sanctions to increase trade with its South African ally. ∞ Meanwhile Washington joined South Africa in providing crucial support for Jonas Savimbi's terrorist Unita army in Angola. Washington continued to do so even after Savimbi had been roundly defeated in a carefully monitored free election, and South Africa had withdrawn its support. Savimbi was a 'monster whose lust for power had brought appalling misery to his people,' in the words of Marrack Goulding, British ambassador to Angola."
13/10/14 http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26743-how-much-moral-high-ground-does-the-us-have-over-isis
"according to White House estimates, roughly a fifth of all American women are raped at some point in their lives."
2/10/14 https://chomsky.info/20141002-2/
"For more than 20 years, Israel has been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords it signed in 1993, which declare Gaza and the West Bank to be an inseparable territorial unity."
1/8/14 https://www.salon.com/2014/08/01/
genocide_is_permissible_according_to_
insane_times_of_israel_op_ed/
"The Times of Israel is under fire on Friday after publishing a blog post titled "When Genocide Is Permissible." The post, written by Yochanon Gordon, was quickly removed from the Times' website, but cached and screen-captured versions of the piece quickly proliferated on social media."
29/5/14 http://mgpiety.org/2014/05/29/the-rhetoric-of-entitlement/ "I cannot take any more whiney white people arguing that they are 'victims' of reverse discrimination."
2/5/14 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/29/us-victim-of-own-propaganda-in-ukraine-war/
"One shudders at the memories of the terrible tragedy in Odessa, where peaceful protesters were brutally murdered, burned alive in the House of Trade Unions. The criminals who committed that atrocity have never been punished, and no one is even looking for them."
17/4/14 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n08/seymour-m.-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
"My government can't say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly."
7/2/14 http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/07/where-did-white-people-come-from/
"Maybe there were no 'white people' in Europe as recently as 7000 years ago, during the lifetime of the blue-eyed hunter-gatherer"
1/14 https://chomsky.info/201401__/
"It is commonly believed that Newton showed that the world is a machine, following mechanical principles, and that we can therefore dismiss "the ghost in the machine," the mind, with appropriate ridicule. The facts are the opposite: Newton exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact."
15/11/13 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/military-sexual-assault-facts_b_4281704.html
"More than 70 members of the US Military encounter coerced and abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault or are raped every day. That's three every hour."
26/7/13 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/26/go-home-ad-campaign-court-challenge
"this mobile billboard campaign is a very inappropriate way to discourage illegal immigrants from staying in the UK, not least because the message that is often received is that all immigrants and foreigners are unwelcome in the UK"
21/7/13 https://chomsky.info/20130721/
"For example, in the Winter 2008 issue of the German cultural journal Lettre International, Žižek attributed to me a racist comment on Obama by Silvio Berlusconi. I ignored it. Anyone who strays from ideological orthodoxy is used to this kind of treatment. However, an editor of Harper's magazine, Sam Stark, was interested and followed it up. In the January 2009 issue he reports the result of his investigation. Žižek said he was basing the attribution on something he had read in a Slovenian magazine. A marvelous source, if it even exists. And anyway, he continued, attributing to me a racist comment about Obama is not a criticism, because I should have made such remarks as 'a fully admissible characterization in our political and ideological struggle.' I leave it others to decode. When asked about this by Slovene journalist/activist Igor Vidman, Žižek answered that he had discussed it with me over the phone and I had agreed with him. Of course, sheer fantasy."
21/5/13 https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/21/the-invention-of-the-white-race/
"the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the 'white' identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct"
31/1/13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gq77rOuZck "When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years."
2013? http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/
where_does_racism_come_from.htm
"Sometimes he is ordered to stand at attention as a soldier and even dies a hero's death, because defending these magnificent living conditions can hardly be left up to the small minority who actually benefits from them. And certainly all these conditions result in similarities as well as differences between the individuals involved, based on their respective interests. But it is equally clear that this affiliation with an economically, legally, and politically determined compulsory collective is created neither by a special feeling of "national identity" nor by the need to exclude others from "our own" community. The national idea already requires that one consider the real duties of a capitalist society - which one carries out because one's existence depends on it - as moral duties that one carries out responsibly as a contribution to a general community project.. In any individual case, one may think that one has been personally treated unfairly. But it is beyond doubt that the national community has the task of ensuring an order in which everyone belongs in their place. So it is unnecessary to look at the means that the different types of citizens have available to them and which results in a very peculiar form of dependence: it is all recognized as a social order, which any functioning community needs, with rights and duties, and which its government has to ensure; what's more: as any member of the community, regardless of their status and importance, is entitled to."
23/8/12 https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/23/the-secret-history-of-pussy-riot/
"Even in these dubious pieces of art their role was that of technical staff: the glory went to a Russian-Israeli artist Plucer-Sarno of Mevasseret Zion, who claimed the idea, design and copyright for himself and collected a major Russian prize. The future PR members got nothing and were described by Plucer as 'ambitious provincials on the make', or worse."
8/8/12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw
"Video footage from a U.S. Apache helicopter in 2007 leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Bradley Manning to Wikileaks. The video shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad after they are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred."
11/5/12 https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/11/gay-marriage-it-may-destroy-western-civilization-but-it-sure-is-a-wonderful-fundraiser/
"I think gay marriage is an incredibly boring subject, though I do like to hear right-wingers say that it will bring the whole edifice of western civilization crashing down. It's hard these days to find such messages of good cheer. I don't yearn for such a union, so have no personal stake in the issue. Occasionally my gay friends tell me they'd got married, perhaps remembering my denunciations some years ago of the whole campaign for being essentially conservative. ∞ So the liberal progressives glory in Obama's 'courage' and many a doubting heart about the President's betrayals is lighter and more forgiving. Trashing the constitution, green-lighting torture, claiming the unilateral right to order the execution of anyone, anywhere on the planet... wiped clean off the windscreen."
8/5/12 https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/brave-new-world-brave-new-majority/
"I began to sort things out for the big move to Planet 2. What a mess whitey had made of things! One horrible move after another. What will we Americans {be} handing on to the new majority? The news is not good. At almost exactly the moment we yielded majority status, we - not the people to be sure - but our president and our Congress were putting the finishing touches to our modern system of government, known as fascism. ∞ The mobs who flooded into the streets to revel in the execution of Osama bin Laden were not exulting in America, land of the free and of constitutional propriety. They were lauding brute, lawless, lethal force."
26/3/12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caepDj0udmo
"The mutation that became white skin"
24/11/11 https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/24/back-to-tahrir-square/
"If there was a lesson to be learned from the ousting of Mubarak, it was that when the people's demands are denied, the ceiling of their demands are raised. By the third day of this manufactured confrontation, most political groups, with the exception of the MB, were not only protesting in Tahrir Square, but also across Egypt. The angry demonstrators now demanded the complete dismissal of the government, and the ouster of the military council to be replaced with an interim civilian presidential council."
10/9/10 https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/10/the-koran-at-fahrenheit-451/
"My hope had been that on the other side of the road from Pastor Jones' burn barrels, or on some piece of property volunteered by the mayor of Gainesville, a gay man, there would have been other barrels, into which could be tossed by their opponents the Bible, and kindred sacred texts such as the Talmud, plus Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, and Das Kapital. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature of the crucible, in which ideas and principles survive or die."
16/7/10 https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/07/16/the-fall-of-obama/
"The man who seized the White House by fomenting a mood of irrational expectation is now facing the bitter price exacted by reality. The reality is that there can be no 'good' American president. It's an impossible hand to play. Obama is close to being finished."
18/10/09 http://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism-discrimination-employment-undercover
"The report, to be released tomorrow, concludes that there was no plausible explanation for the difference in treatment found between white British and ethnic minority applicants other than racial discrimination."
4/9/09 https://www.counterpunch.org/2009/09/04/deeper-into-the-tunnel/
"As General Stan McChrystal plans his march on Washington to demand more troops in Afghanistan the antiwar movement lies on the sidewalk, as inert and forlorn as a homeless person in the rain at a street corner, too dejected even to hold up a sign. This is at a time that as Mark Ames has just pointed out, 'Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan with more troops deployed now than the Soviets ever had.' Yes, add up US troops and contractors and you get a US invasion of Afghanistan bigger than the Soviet force at its peak. ∞ Is there any sign of life in a movement that marshaled hundreds of thousands to march in protest against war in Iraq? Ah, but those were the Bush years. Now we have a Democrat in the White House. ∞ One person hasn't tossed aside her peace sign. Cindy Sheehan sees war as war, whether the battle standard is being waved by a white moron from Midland, Texas or an eloquent black man from Chicago."
2/8/09 https://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/02/the-biden-and-clinton-mutinies/
"a direct onslaught on his presidency by a domestic Israeli lobby that is so out of control that it renders ridiculous Obama's puny attempt to stop settlements - or to curb Israeli aggression in any other way. ∞ Take Joe Biden. Three weeks ago he gave Israel the green light to bomb Iran, only to be swiftly corrected by his boss. At the time it seemed yet another, somewhat comical mile marker in a lifetime of gaffes, perpetrated in the cause of self-promotion and personal political advantage. ∞ But Biden's subsequent activities invite a darker construction. In the immediate aftermath of Obama's Moscow visit, the air still soft with honeyed words about a new era of trust and cooperation, Biden headed for Ukraine and Georgia, harshly ridiculing Russia as an economic basket case with no future"
24/10/08 https://davidswanson.org/see-the-warrior/
"The woman on-stage is a veteran of both the 1991 Persian Gulf War and two tours during the current occupation of Iraq. The script brilliantly portrays a story focused on the damage her absence has done to her family, but shaded at all times by the damage war has done to her mental health."
19/9/08 https://chomsky.info/20080919/
"The threat became more severe when the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, thus freeing financial institutions 'to innovate in the new economy,' in Clinton's words - and also 'to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the US banking system,' financial analyst Nomi Prins adds."
19/3/08 https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/19/the-hell-disaster-of-iraq/
"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."
2/4/07 https://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/02/war-of-humiliation/
"The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat - but the Iranian banner floats above it. No one has yet explained, I notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary Guards with more weapons?"
7/11/06 http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/07/11/iraq-raped/
"What is happening in Iraq is a rape of a nation, not just a rape of a 14-year-old girl, and it has to be stopped as soon as possible"
4/7/05 https://chomsky.info/20050704/
"In 2002 the US and United Kingdom proclaimed the right to invade Iraq because it was developing weapons of mass destruction. That was the 'single question,' as stressed constantly by Bush, Prime Minister Blair and associates. It was also the sole basis on which Bush received congressional authorisation to resort to force. ∞ The answer to the 'single question' was given shortly after the invasion, and reluctantly conceded: The WMD didn't exist. Scarcely missing a beat, the government and media doctrinal system concocted new pretexts and justifications for going to war."
27/5/05 https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/05/27/mubarak-s-goon-squads/
"Mubarak has effectively neutered the opposition, thus forcing Egyptians to meet in mosques - and strengthening the hands of the theocrats. Like so many other Arab dictators, he has then been able to frighten the Americans into believing that the only alternative to his rule might be an Islamic republic."
21/5/05 https://davidswanson.org/harry-potter/
"In real life, of course, the good side is whichever side you are on. Currently America is casting the Chinese as the bad people, and rulers in Beijing as the Evil Wizards. After watching at least 30 years of cartoons and movies in which there are Good People and Bad People, it is a rare leader in America who will publicly deny the existence of these entities in real life. But they do not exist. For better or worse, there are only people in this world, no Good ones and no Bad ones. The woman who throws bombs in the '60s and then lives as a peaceful housewife for decades is no more or less Good or Bad than the 12-year-old who kills another child by imitating a TV wrestling show, is locked in prison for decades, and emerges incapable of healthy relationships."
21/5/05 https://davidswanson.org/the-eye-of-a-needle/
"Ten billion dollars is 4 percent of what the world spends each year on cigarettes. It's what the world spends every four days on its militaries."
5/05 https://archive.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/2005/05ukrom.htm
"What are needed are not apologies or expressions of guilt so much as education, acknowledgment, some measure of reparation and an understanding that barbarity is the inevitable consequence of attempts to impose foreign rule on subject peoples. Like most historical controversies, the argument about empire is as much about the future as the past. Those who write colonial cruelty out of 20th-century history want to legitimise the new imperialism, now bogged down in another colonial war in Iraq - just as those who demonise past attempts to build an alternative to capitalist society are determined to prove that there is none. If Brown really wants to champion British fair play, and create a new relationship with Africa, he would do better to celebrate those who campaigned for colonial freedom rather than the racist despotism they fought against."
15/2/05 https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/02/15/the-killing-of-mr-lebanon/
"Hariri, I kept repeating. I had sat with him many times, for interviews, at press conferences, at lunches and dinners. He once spoke most movingly about the son he lost in a driving accident in America. He had said he believed in the afterlife. He had many enemies. Political enemies in Lebanon, Syrians who suspected - correctly - that he wanted them out of Lebanon, real estate enemies - for he had personally purchased large areas of Beirut - and media enemies because he owned a newspaper and a television station."
15/7/04 http://www.salon.com/2004/07/15/hersh_7/
"Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape"
7/9/03 https://chomsky.info/20030907/
"From early September, 2002, the Bush administration issued grim warnings about the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, with broad hints that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The propaganda assault helped enable the administration to gain some support from a frightened population for the planned invasion of a country known to be virtually defenceless - and a valuable prize, at the heart of the world's major energy system."
26/4/2003 https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/04/26/did-the-us-murder-journalists/
"Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain-a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed-after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week."
25/3/03 https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/03/25/the-streets-of-cairo/
"The corporate media has provided some minimal reportage on these demonstrations, which have occurred throughout the Arab world, from Rabat and Casablanca to Beirut and Amman. Rarely in citing the numbers do they note that in most parts of the Arab world such demonstrations are illegal and that those who participate are often putting their lives on the line; nor that the U.S. government wants them to be illegal, and applies pressure on Arab governments it subsidizes (notably Egypt) to continue to suppress anti-U.S. dissent."
14/11/02 https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/11/14/the-anti-war-movement-and-its-critics/
"Hitchens and his ilk will continue to have their little debates, all carefully framed in a manner that excludes most of the people they claim to care about and most of the people who actually produce change. It worked at university and it works now. But it has little to do with either America or the left as it really is."
25/9/02 https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/09/25/the-dogs-of-war-the-bears-of-wall-street/
"If the economy continues to slide, Bush and his circle will face a truly desperate gamble, trying to figure whether a $200 billion war on Iraq will save them, or just plunge them into the mother of all messes."
21/9/02 https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/09/21/an-entire-class-of-thieves/
"Given a green light in the late 1970s by the deregulatory binge urged by corporate-funded think tanks and launched legislatively by Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, by the 1990s America's corporate leadership had evolved a simple strategy for criminal self-enrichment."
6/12/01 https://www.counterpunch.org/2001/12/06/how-israel-provoked-hamas/
"In other words Arafat had managed to convince Hamas to curb its suicide bombers. This understanding was shattered by the assassination of Abu Hunud. 'Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hunud,' Fishman continued, 'knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation. Now, the security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted effort to carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made accordingly.'"
12/9/01 https://chomsky.info/20010912/
"The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. ∞ The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom. ∞ The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of ideas about 'missile defense.' As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable."
2/91 https://chomsky.info/199102__02/
"It is child's play to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a major criminal, who would be subjected to the judgment of Nuremberg in a just world. Many others would stand beside him before the bar of justice, among them many of his most passionate accusers, some well within the reach of U.S. law enforcement. The arguments advanced to justify the bombing of Baghdad might be taken seriously if they were put forth by people who had also been calling eloquently for the bombing of Jakarta, Ankara, Tel Aviv, Cape Town, and many other capitals, not excluding Washington. ∞ Returning to the two questions raised at the outset, the answer to the first is straightforward: the response to Saddam Hussein's aggression is unprecedented because he stepped on the wrong toes. The U.S. is upholding no high principle in the Gulf. Nor is any other state. ∞ Let's also be clear about a further point. Since the justifications for war are based on an appeal to principle that is clearly fraudulent, it follows that no reason at all has been given for going to war. None whatsover. Doubtless there are reasons, but not the ones that have been offered, because these plainly cannot be taken seriously."
77 https://chomsky.info/responsibility02/
"It is the mechanism of language acquisition that is innate. In a given linguistic community, children with very different experience arrive at comparable grammars, indeed almost identical ones, so far as we know. That is what requires explanation. Even within a very narrow community - take the elite in Paris - the experiences are varied. Each child has a different experience, each child is confronted by different data - but in the end the system is essentially the same. As a consequence we have to suppose that all children share the same internal constraints which characterize narrowly the grammar they are going to construct."
73 https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Among_the_Dervishes.html?id=VjdBnwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
"How do you view members of political parties, then, who campaign for certain principles? Just the same way as I view any other human being. They are no different because they are members of political movements. This is what people do not understand, and it does not take a Sufi to tell them: people are people. People think that they can campaign for or against something in their capacity as 'ordinary folk'. It is just because they are such 'ordinary folk' that they fall into the hands of politicians who divert everything to different ends. If the 'ordinary folk' would make themselves worthwhile, then they would be able to guide affairs, not just form the cannon-fodder. But this is not easy. It is easier to work on the primitive level, to arrange a mass rally and demonstrate than to improve oneself."
My response to all of this, my way of facing the music, is summed up here: passion.tvhobo.com (Judge not, lest ye be judged). I acknowledge Rachel Corrie.