MODERN MANIPULATING TACTICS .....

I will borrow a thought from J. Bisnoff's insightful book "Fake Politics", In these turbulent times, two of the great threats to our democracy are money in politics and a certain weakening of the power of truth. At it's very essence a democratic system is reliant on the will of the people being the catalyzing force for the direction of the republic, so when there is a price tag on creating a "will of the people" that foundation requirement is eroded.

The fake news machine throughout the world, and more so in the U.S. is becoming a very serious hand, playing several sides of business, politics, elections, even enhancing personal and small town's images for a multitude of benefits and reasons. These are combined networks of 30 or 40 sites that publish fake-news stories. WTOE 5, news in America is a good example.

Some are smaller some are very large like Facebook, but they all share the same tactics for their own profits from two sources, either they get paid from direct ads, or get paid directly from from PR agencies serving big interests, like the tobacco industries, the Canadian oil-pipe line, the oil industries, armament manufacturers coal industries, political sides and big and smaller names ranging from presidents to congress members. Even state local politicians.

Some of these schemes, and even one time stories register over 100.000 comments, and some other did reach the 1 million mark, i.e. The Pope endorsement of D.Trump, or other similar stories on Facebook. More interference with fake-news during election campaigns paid by supporters or the candidates themselves, and or rich big interests and lobbies. That's when these sites peak in numbers while still being connected by shared bank accounts, or owned by one operator. Would we believe that some of these sites including Facebook reached a 16 billion hits !!! 

Before Donald Trump embraced the term "Fake news", it was used to describe downright false stories, from actually fake websites, like the Pope endorsement of Trump for president, but now it's definitely taking new proportions in election interference whereby some big and very big players are in the game.Those shady websites are alive and well, and mushrooming locally and across the world.  They continue to spread total garbage across Facebook and others, to the unsuspecting public.

When we see a Mark Zuckerberg owner of Facebook, several times in private visits to Mr. Trump within the last few months, we suspect something of the sort, or the story targeting Nancy Pelosy diverting 2.4 million $ from social security to cover impeachment costs, Again on Facebook. It received a staggering 24.6 million views on Facebook. Most of these stories are disguised as news, but they're false. It's counterfeit news.

Everywhere in the world, and America as well, people used to live by a shared set of facts, people may disagree on certain policies or their prescriptions, but the facts they could at least agree on. Now in the social media age, disinformation campaigns are specializing in distorting the facts that a society accepts as truth. Russian interference with disinformation campaign in the 2016 presidential election giving a big boost to candidate Trump, was clearly identified and condemned .

The Middle-East nowadays is using lots of these tactics, Lebanon is a very fertile spot to all different sites producing and manipulating fake-news to further divide the population and stop the popular uprising. Israel's Netanyahu several attempts to cling to power, Turkey's Erdogan and British Brexit and lately the election of not too funny B. Johnson, are all well expressed examples of these tactics.

Not one spot in the world will have a fair election or an honest uprising, or fight selfish enrichment by politicians and greedy business conglomerates and the merchants of wars, if these sites big and small are not regulated and better monitored, they are misleading posts period. Using any version suiting their clients and fooling the electoral body by any means possible.We used to call them cheap  rumors, but now it's a serious scientific business, aiming to push rumors on the internet, and make it sound like truth and reality.
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REALITIES OF OUR TIMES ......

Following the surprising and saddening decision of the Trump administration and his State Department secretary's simplistic and naive justifications and explanations, about the Jewish settlements, their illegality according to international law,  plus the ever going apartheid and brutal mistreatment of non Jews in Israel itself and its under illegal occupation territories, and their neighbors in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, one has to look into the Zionist movement and its strategies, tactics and goals.

In today's Israel, Christianity and Islam have disappeared, Arabs and foreign nationals are not welcome to stay, live or work under any form. Blacks and Asians are totally unwanted and mistreated systematically. Only Jews are considered the legal inheritors of the lands everyone new and called   Palestine, all as promised by Elohim or whoever it was.

Since the latest Israeli major wars in 1967 and 73, Israel like most of its Western ardent defenders faces no real existential threat from anyone, surely not from any Arab state, not from Iran or Saudi or Turkey or any Islamic state. the scene was blown out of proportion by the Israeli war machine led by Zionists. But in Israel there is always this strong attraction to be magnetized to distant, even historical military glory and total supremacy, they stuck themselves with wars, brutality and their machines.

Richard Dawkins introduced one of his books with; "The God of the old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious malevolent bully. These words could have been said by any of the Old Testament prophets. But unfortunately this old God lives, prospers and thrives fully in today's Zionist Israel. Among its politicians, soldiers, snipers and policemen, secret services, settlers, judiciary, youths and zealots, they all share this old and ugly God .... all venerate, idolize and adore him, all strive to be him.

World wide, all human groups, throughout history were defined by their progress, and evolution was the future of man, as long as it was progress and not merely a standstill or a degeneration. The human purpose and visions can only be formulated in terms of their evolution achieved by Sapiens in becoming better humans. The idea of humanism would be; human control by human efforts in accordance with evolving human ideals.

If we accept the conclusions of science, that mankind evolved from lower forms, to reach higher ethics within codes of behavior we all share on the basis of sane reason, law, honor, and an inborn sense of basic decency, even when some ascribe it to God's will. Sapiens evolved upwardly in body and brain size, in feeding and defending themselves, in their behavioral complexities, social organization, way better and farther than their simpler antecedents.

We are, by all rules of existence, to make for better societies for all and each. We should have the abilities to understand, judge and act with our own power of choice how to decide between good and evil. Otherwise and to conserve the rise of the history of life, people have a right and duty to crush, stop and put an end to the wrong and dangerous exceptions, who clearly disturb the progress of civilization and humanity.
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THE CONTRACT ON CORBYN ....

As the British general elections, scheduled for the 12 of December of this year are coming soon, the game is increasingly played in dirtier ways and being manipulated by various sides for different goals. I'm copying an article by a famous and courageous Israeli columnist and political annalist, Gideon Levy, initially published by Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, the article comes at a crucial time in the game of fake news and manipulating the voters, it's self explanatory.

Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. His real sin is to fight against injustice in the world, including the version Israel perpetrates. The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, the contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get.

On Tuesday it reached its climax, in an article by the chief rabbi of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis in the Times, Mirvis decided that the anxiety of British Jews over Corbyn is justified and he is not fit to be prime minister. He called on Jews not to vote for Labor in the coming election on Dec. 12.

Born in South Africa and a graduate of Har Etzion Yeshiva in the settlement of Alon Shvut, Mirvis is the voice of British Jewry. In Capetown, Johannesburg and Har Etzion, he should have learned what apartheid was and why one should fight it, his parents did so, but one doubts that he learned the moral lesson from the regions of disenfranchisement in which he lived in South Africa and the West Bank.

As opposed to the horrid Corbyn, Mirvis sees nothing wrong with the continued occupation; he does not identify with the struggle for Palestinian freedom, and he doesn't sense the similarity between the South Africa of his childhood, Har Etzion of his youth and Israel of 2019. That is the real reason that he rejects Corbyn. The Jews of Britain also want a prime minister who supports Israel, that is who support the occupation. A prime minister who is critical of Israel is to them an exemplar of the new anti-Semitism.

Corbyn is not an anti-semite, he never was. Today any criticism of Israel politics and tactics and brutality is anti-semitism. The Hungarian Victor Orban, the Austrian freedom party and the extreme right in Europe are not the danger to Jews, Corbyn is the enemy. The new and efficient strategy of Israel and the Zionist establishment, brands every seeker of justice as an anti-Semite, and any criticism of Israel as hatred of Jews. Corbyn is a victim of this strategy, which threatens to paralyze and silence Europe with regard to Israel.

British Jewry might not be faking its anxiety, but it is certainly magnifying the danger. There is anti-semitism, though less than what is presented, about half of British Jews are considering fleeing if Corbyn is elected. Let them flee. Are the Jews of Britain conditionally British? to whom is their loyalty. The future of all British Jews is much more secure than the future of any and all Palestinian living under the occupation, and even more secure than that of any Arab living in Israel. Jews are persecuted and are victims of discrimination and racism less so than the Palestinian in Israel. Moreover Islamophobia in Europe is more common than anti-Semitism, but people talk about it less.

Corbyn is indeed a very harsh critic of the occupation, supports the boycott and compares the closure of Gaza with the siege of Stalingrad and Leningrad. These are anti-Israeli positions, but not necessarily anti-Semitic, the Jews of Britain and the entire world are blurring these differences intentionally. One can and should be a harsh critic of Israel without being anti-Semitic.

If the Jews of Britain and their chief rabbi were more honest and courageous, they would ask themselves: Isn't Israel's brutal occupation policy the strongest motive for anti-Semitism today?? There is anti-Semitism, it must be fought, but it must also be recognized that Israel supplies it an abundance of excuses and motives.

The Jews and Israel's true friends should hope that Corbyn is elected. He is a statesman who can change international discourse about the occupation and the struggle against it, he is a ray of hope for a different world and a different Israel, and what more could we want.
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