A MESSAGE FROM GAZA.......

 

“Can we testify to repeated crimes? »

Can we describe a crime in the ruins? Or rather, can we survive under such a deluge of fire in Gaza? As a Palestinian citizen of Gaza, I am accustomed to witnessing the atrocities of the occupation. However, a week after the ceasefire, it is a difficult task to describe the darkness of these three dark days and the degree of devastation that befell civilians during this umpteenth Israeli military aggression in early August 2022.

A large-scale military assault from August 5-7, 2022, with airstrikes and artillery fire against residential homes, farmland and civilian infrastructure. As a result, 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 4 women were murdered, and 360 others were injured.

Our calamity has known causes, but the international community lets it grow and drink the blood of women and children plunged into darkness for three days. Let everyone know that our resistance for our survival and our desire to take back the reins of our freedom confirm our devotion to this magical and beautiful land, which the lies of Israel and certain foreign media complicit in crimes cannot shake.

Distressing, terrifying these three days of deluge of fire on women and children  ! Their blood would not be enough to write the slow agony of a civilian population in its survival. Despite the ceasefire, this population remains traumatized, the psychological shock of the deafening noise of the bombardments is etched in our memories, how is this possible?  ? It was a real carnage, no one was safe, everyone was waiting under this deluge of Israeli fire for death to come and snatch them.

Personally, I did not expect this surge of bombs. But, for the Israeli apartheid regime, nothing is sacred. These criminals stalk the Gaza Strip with force and violence at all times.

During this aggression, the Israeli occupation army has sown chaos, terror and horror in a region which has already suffered an inhuman and illegal blockade for more than fifteen years, and which is surviving in an unprecedented economic crisis. The real Israeli objective was to break the remarkable will of this civilian population which, despite the blockade, four previous offensives and the humanitarian crisis, continues to resist and to exist.

Like all the population, I lived in anguish under the fire of bombardments every three to four minutes, deprived of electricity 20 hours a day, with a minimum of water to survive, few medicines and food products. Despite the lack of means, overwhelmed and under pressure, I gave priority to my duty to write a daily report of the assessment of the aggression, which I sent every day, via the Internet and social networks, to all the solidarity in the world and to associations supporting Palestine.  

A very difficult task in these times of blitzkrieg , due to the permanent power cuts. I testified every day, even every hour, thanks to a generator that provides some electricity. I intervened on several radio and television channels, in newspapers and on various French-speaking sites which solicited me unceasingly, without counting the daily telephone calls coming from French-speaking countries.

I can say that, during this aggression, I was filled with joy at each return of the electric current, if only for two hours a day, to send the balance sheets and to charge the batteries which gave me two or three hours of current in more.

The transmission abroad of the daily assessment of the Israeli aggression was for me essential, because I am very keen on popular solidarity towards our cause, in particular to reveal the extreme brutality of the Israeli bombardments and the silences of the complicit countries.

As soon as the power returned to my house, at any time of the day or night, it was the commotion at home. I decreed a “ state of emergency ”, with a formal ban on speaking to me or asking me anything .

I am convinced of the importance of this international solidarity. I wanted to inform of the sacrifice of all my obligations as father and husband, I had to inform the foreign media of the daily toll of the killing of women and children with total impunity by the Israeli army. By taking maximum advantage of the electric current, I gathered information from several local sites, photos and medical sources, to transmit them abroad.

During the three days of Israeli bombardment, I managed to send my daily report to thousands of people. And even though I didn't have time to read and respond to all the messages they sent to me, oh how!, I was comforted by all the support of the peace and justice activists who spoke tirelessly for the Palestinian cause all over the world.

My daily life during this attack was very trying. Just shopping at the market every day to feed my family, or visiting neighbors to check on them, carried major risks of dying. No matter where you were in the Gaza Strip, death hung in the sky. The rest of the time, I remained locked up at home to follow the information of the foreign media, which discovered that the Palestinian people were martyred, whereas this has been going on for 73 year !

As soon as the electric current came back, I applied myself to doing my duty as a Palestinian citizen in front of my computer by my reports, to counteract the disinformation of certain French-speaking media with great listening. I did my duty to inform, so that the sacrifice of our martyrs, men, women and children, would not be stifled by the media echo chambers in the pay of the occupation. I was doing my duty to inform for Palestine martyred by an army of criminals, which has defiled our land to its roots. I was doing my duty to inform, because information is part of the Palestinian struggle and resistance.

However, like my people during this attack, I was overwhelmed by several feelings: pride, confidence, strength, courage, fear, anger, indignation, concern and relief. Despite the blood, the tears and the pain, I gained a great number of new friends, I discovered extraordinary people from several countries with whom I keep in touch, united people who want to support Gaza and Palestine.

Defenders of the Palestinian cause who have been deeply concerned about the evil fate that this occupation and its complicit allies have been inflicting on Palestine, and Gaza in particular, for several decades. I had the chance to speak live at several demonstrations in French-speaking countries during and after the Israeli aggression. Their slogans (“Palestine will live, Palestine will conquer”) overwhelm us with courage and resistance, because we know that behind us there are millions of people in the world who express their anger against the despicable crimes committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

I am proud of the volunteer team of the French-speaking channel "Gaza La Vie", and the site "Gaza en français", these motivated young people who, at the risk of their lives, informed the French-speaking world to denounce the horrors of Israeli aggression, by posting videos and photos on their social networks.

Two days after the ceasefire, I accompanied these young people to organize animation and psychological support activities to reassure deeply traumatized children. It is imperative, during these dark hours, to bring love and humanity to these little angels, who were already deprived of everything before this new carnage.

Despite these three days of terror during which Gaza endured the unbearable, the two elements that reassure me are, on the one hand, the prodigious will and the exemplary patience of our civilian population despite the scale of the genocide, and, on the other hand, international mobilization and popular support all over the world. Our population appreciated this solidarity which helped to put pressure on the governments.

To bend civil society in Gaza, the Israeli apartheid regime relied on three objectives :

– military objective by bombardments without distinction of targets ;

– psychological objective by sowing terror ;

– economic objective with the reinforcement of the closure of the sea, land and air crossings of Gaza, which has been under blockade for more than fifteen years, in order to deprive civilians of food and medicine ;

But the Gaza Strip has never yielded and it will not yield if the Israeli army attacks it again, because this army of criminals has never respected the human rights of the Palestinians. Especially since ten days after the interruption of this new aggression, nothing has changed in Gaza, which is still suffering from the inhuman blockade imposed by this apartheid regime.

Fundamental questions remain : occupation, colonization, blockade, and apartheid. So that as long as the Israeli crimes are not judged and as long as the impunity of this colonial regime lasts, a new genocide is preparing.

The strong mobilization for Gaza all over the world, during and after the recent Israeli aggression, is highly appreciated by our people. It must be continued because, before and after this attack, the situation is still marked by the absence of prospects.

Despite the appalling human losses and massive destruction, despite these three days of terror, I am more than ever determined to continue the resistance through writing, information, education and work with young people for an opening on the world, with the unwavering support of sympathizers abroad who campaign tirelessly for a Palestine of freedom and lasting peace, a peace that will come first and foremost through justice.

I'm sorry as I couldn't find the author's name or proper address, but I'm sure it's authentic,  as always my profound thanks to all my good readers, stay safe and well. 

UNITING PROPAGANDA MACHINES .........

  

Putin’s Propaganda Machine Is What America’s Right Wants

“National security leaders“ must fight it at home

Kevin Baron

March 11, 2022

Take a good look at the propaganda machine. The total control of information and messages from the airwaves to the internet, the fawning over the infallible leader—it’s all quite impressive.I’m not talking about Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. I’m talking about America’s right-wing media, on display at two conferences in Orlando last week, and every night on cable TV. 

It’s hard to watch Russia's version of journalism and not think of the American right-wing version of it. Indeed, the connections are both direct and philosophical—and of import to national security leaders. But there’s a deeper connection as well. America’s right-wing partisans wish they had what Putin has: control of the information and messages that flow to the body politic. That’s not an accusation; it is their goal. 

In the past few months, we’ve seen just how closely related the two are, Putin’s propaganda and our own. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America’s right-wing denied the looming threat as a wag-the-dog conspiracy concocted by deep-state Democrats and centrist Republicans, or tried to blame Joe Biden. Russian propaganda outlets gleefully put those clips into heavy rotation. 

Two weeks into the invasion, far-right leaders continue to sow doubt on war reporting, claiming or implying there is an elite conspiracy to keep Americans uninformed, and often parroting Russian propagandists’ distortions and lies. “We have to question everything we’re told,” said a recent chryon on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show. Steve Bannon, who ran Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, declared on his own show that Americans should not support U.S. aid for Ukraine “until we get a full briefing of what is going on, with facts.”

So, while commentators and security legends by now have called the Ukraine war a wake-up call to Americans for many reasons, allow me to add one more: If you look upon Russia’s loyalist media with horror, then it’s time to wake up with equal concern toward America’s own rising partisan propaganda machines. There have already been calls for security professionals to add America’s right-wing extremism to their portfolios. It’s time to do the same for domestic right propaganda. 

Even Bad Propaganda Can Work

These Russian media messages are resonating with the American right-wing, whose media personalities are happily carrying Moscow’s water. On Wednesday, for example, former Trump campaign spokeswoman A.J. Delgado, said the news that Russian bombs have targeted civilians was “probably bullshit.”The American right, is trying to undermine public trust in institutions and sources that challenge their power, so it has turned its sights on the world’s journalists.The American right-wing also has tried to put a leash on social media platforms.

A disheartening number of Russians are cheering on Putin’s war. The painted letter “Z” symbol on Russia’s military hardware in Ukraine has fast become a nationalist virtue signal. Others compare the “Z” to the Nazi swastika, but to us it has echoes of the “Punisher” logo that has become a totem of right-wing militia who thought they’d overthrow the U.S. government with the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

To be sure, plenty of Americans are confused already. On Monday, Tucker Carlson used a clip of a mixed-martial-arts fighter to deliver a dose of his contention that Republicans who support Biden’s decision to help Ukraine fight off Putin’s invasion are guilty of “lunacy.”

“You know, here’s my first thought: I’m not going nowhere to fight none of these wars for these politicians,” Bryce Mitchell says in the clip. “I’m staying at home and when the war comes to Arkansas, I will dig my boots into the ground and I will die for everything I love and I will not retreat.” He added, “I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest, brother. I really don’t. There’s been so much stuff, and I don’t think anyone knows…” before drifting off into a tirade about Hunter Biden, tax dollars to “bribe” Ukraine, and homeless veterans.

The Fox host put words into the fighter’s mouth to say that Mitchell’s folksy opposition to Biden’s intervention in Ukraine is correct because the U.S. military is supposed to “defend” only America. “That’s why we call it the Defense Department. It is not called the Department of Nation-Building or the Bureau of Trans-Evangelism,” Carlson said, throwing in another far-right culture war non sequitur.

Carlson is the right’s most popular messenger, watched by an average of 15 million American each night, which is sometimes twenty times as many as, say CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Tucker Carlson is the only person on TV talking any sense about Russia / Ukraine. Our leaders ignore him at their (and our) peril,” tweeted one rightist pundit who used to work for Carlson’s Daily Caller.

Yet national security elites seem determined to do so. Search some of the top U.S. think tanks websites: Carlson is mentioned just seven times by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, nowhere by the Center for a New American Security, but 85 times by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. At the Council on Foreign Relations’s website, he is mentioned 42 times—but only eight since 2020. It’s almost as if some never learned their lesson from 2015, when the "national security establishment" hoped they could make Trump go away by ignoring him.

Or when everyone ignored the right’s openly-stated plans for the Jan. 6 insurrection, perhaps the most troubling national security incident on American soil since the 9/11 attacks. That day was made possible by 40 years’ worth of right-wing, anti-government propaganda.

State media watch

How can Putin think he can get away with blatant propaganda, in today’s world? It wasn’t long ago that Trump thought he could. By installing loyalists to run Voice of America and its sister overseas news services, Trump briefly turned the United States’ information organizations into his own personal PR shop. One Trump-era broadcast into Cuba called George Soros “a nonbelieving Jew of flexible morals.” 

Fearing that Trump would order these organizations to target Americans with propaganda, security experts at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice urged lawmakers to act. Congress failed to do so. The only thing that stopped Trump was losing re-election. If he hadn’t, would VOA and Radio Free Europe now be partnered up with Putin’s TASS? 

The First Amendment limits what the U.S. government can do to the free press. U.S. troops are not going to invade 30 Rockefeller Center and take over NBC News. But they don’t have to as long as the rightist propaganda machine is able to chip away at trust in American journalism—and as long as Americans fall for it, and elect politicians who love to do it.

When rightist freshman congressman and media darling Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina won his seat in November, he boasted that he was focused on rhetorical bomb-throwing, not governing: “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation.” Cawthorn was elected while trumpeting false claims about election fraud, predicting “bloodshed”  and envisioning “having to pick up arms against a fellow American.” Last weekend, he was caught on tape calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug” whose government “has been pushing woke ideologies.” 

Real fake news

While politicians come and go, the lasting damage is in the lingering popularity of Soviet-style agitprop propaganda from loyalist right-wing media operations. These outlets are de facto paid actors, directors, and scriptwriters of a carefully crafted fiction that would make the Kremlin proud. They are reporters that operate in pretend newsrooms like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, Carlson’s Daily Caller, Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and upstarts like One America News Network and Newsmax. They are different from older conservative magazines like the National Review and Weekly Standard, whose writers did not try to impersonate straight newsrooms. 

The new wave of rightist newsrooms is so blatantly troubling that some have questioned whether it crosses legal boundaries for broadcast news. In December, however, Gigi Sohn, Biden’s controversial nominee to head the FCC, promised Congress she would not heed liberal calls to revoke the broadcast licenses of conservative outlets, even though she advocated considering it as a private citizen and has called Fox “state-sponsored propaganda.” FCC rules say it is “illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news.” Newsmax and OANN backed Sohn, who awaits confirmation. (It’s not a new idea. In 2017, Trump suggested  the FCC revoke the broadcast license of NBC News over a news segment he disliked. The FCC commissioner at the time said he did not have that authority.) 

Fox, the cable TV network may have smelled an opportunity to throw caution to the wind. The nation’s most popular network fell off with Trump loyalists but has won many back by shifting even further to the right. Out went several of Fox’s true journalists, notably Chris Wallace, who had seen enough. In came more firebrands and personality hosts, like Jesse Watters. This is how extreme Fox’s rightward shift is. 

Right-wing media is clear about where it’s heading. Two weeks ago, Fox and several of its competitors set up shop on the Orlando expo floor of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Why should national security leaders care? Because they influence Americans. As CPAC leader Matt Schlapp said, “There is no other conference like this in the world. We’re the largest annual conservative conference in the world on politics, and now we do two in this country, and we’re doing them overseas.” 

It was the weekend before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At CPAC, where Trump once hugged the American flag—keynote speakers hammered Biden’s foreign policy as “weak,” many declining to criticize Russia or Putin. Across town, at the even-farther-right’s America First conference, they chanted, “Putin! Putin!” A subsequent poll found Trump voters had a better opinion of Putin than Biden.

What is to be doneThe tricky question is, in a society built on free speech, what can be done?

The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act forbids the U.S. government to use propaganda on Americans at home. But it shouldn’t have to. The answer to bad speech is, as ever, more speech—but focused speech. Defense and national security leaders can use time-tested methods to marginalize extremist messaging. Five years ago, two legal scholars drew upon Cold War lessons to lay out three steps for fighting Russian disinformation: First, the national security community must respond to partisan propaganda with a collective, and preferably nonpartisan voice. Second, it must organize its leading voices to flood the zone with messages that marginalize disinformation. Finally, credible leaders must actively respond to propaganda, countering the lies and calling out those who spew them. These sure sound like they could help at home.

The good news is, this thinking already exists in the U.S. government. The recommendations paraphrased above were written by co-authors Ashley Deeks, a University of Virginia law professor now serving as a White House associate counsel and deputy legal counsel on Biden’s National Security Council, and Sabrina McCubbin, a UVA student who is now a lawyer at the Pentagon. And that’s just one idea. 

 A longer than usual article, depicting a very true and factual situation here in America and the world, intensifying and making full use of the propaganda machines through fake news and very biased systematic brain washing of millions upon millions who show some willingness to listen and be convinced. My many thanks for following . 

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF INFLATION .....

Why the White House

Robert Reich  Feb 19

The Biden White House has decided to stop tying inflation to corporate power. That’s a big mistake. I’ll get to the reason for the White House’s shift in a moment, and why it’s a mistake. First, I want to be clear about the relationship between inflation and corporate power.

Corporate power and rising prices

While most of the price increases now affecting the US and global economy have been the result of global supply chain problems, this doesn’t explain why big and hugely-profitable corporations are passing these cost increases on to their customers in the form of higher prices. They don’t need to do so: With corporate profits are at near record levels, they could easily absorb the cost increases. They’re raising prices because they can, and they can because they don’t face meaningful competition. As the White House’s National Economic Council put it in a December report:

Businesses that face meaningful competition can’t do that, because they would lose business to a        competitor that did not hike its margins.

Starbucks is raising its prices to consumers, blaming the rising costs of supplies. But Starbucks is so profitable it could easily absorb these costs (it just reported a 31 percent increase in yearly profits). Why didn’t it just swallow the cost increases?

McDonald’s and Chipotle have increased their prices, also blaming higher food and labor costs. But McDonald’s revenues hit a five-year high in 2021 and Chipotle’s revenues increased by over a third from two years before. Why didn’t they absorb the cost increases?

Procter & Gamble is charging more for consumer staples, citing “rising costs for raw materials, such as resin and pulp, and higher expenses to transport goods.” But P&G continues to rake in record profits. It’s even been spending billions buying back its own stock. Why didn’t it just absorb the cost increases?

And on it goes. America’s largest and most profitable retailers -- Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Costco, and Target -- say they must raise their prices because the products they’re selling cost more. But these retailers are so profitable they could absorb much of the cost increases and be profitable with smaller markups. Why didn’t they?

The answer in all these cases is they didn’t absorb the costs — and instead passed them on to consumers in the form of higher prices — because they face so little competition. Market power allows them to keep high profit margins even in the face of rising costs. As Chipotle’s chief financial officer said, “our ultimate goal … is to fully protect our margins.”

Some economists argue that corporate power can’t be driving inflation because any corporation with the market power to raise prices would already have done so. (This reasoning is roughly analogous to the old story about two economists who were walking along a street when one says “look! There’s a ten dollar bill!” and the other says “don’t be silly. If there were a ten dollar bill, someone would have picked it up by now.”) Corporations are raising prices now because their costs are increasing now. They’re using their market power to pass on these rising costs to their customers.

That’s not all. Inflation has given some big corporations cover to increase their prices well above their rising costs

On a recent survey, almost 60 percent of large retailers say inflation has given them the ability to raise prices beyond what’s required to offset higher costs.

Meat prices are soaring because the four giant meat processing corporations that dominate the industry are “using their market power to extract bigger and bigger profit margins for themselves,” according to a recent report from the White House’s National Economic Council (emphasis added).

Not incidentally, that report was dated December 10. Now, the White House is pulling its punches.

So why has the White House stopped explaining this to the public?

According to Thursday’s Washington Post, when the prepared congressional testimony of a senior administration official (Janet Yellen? The President?) was recently circulated inside the White House, it included a passage tying inflation to corporate consolidation and monopoly power. But that language was deleted from the remarks before they were delivered.

According to two people aware of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers raised objections. I don’t know what their objections were but as I've said, some economists argue that since corporations with market power wouldn’t need to wait until the current inflation to raise prices, corporate power can’t be contributing to inflation. This argument ignores the ease by which powerful corporations can pass on their own cost increases to customers in higher prices or use inflation to disguise even higher price increases.

The Council of Economic Advisers is likely being influenced by two Democratic economists from a previous administration. According to the Post, former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers and Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, have been critical of attempts to link corporate market power to inflation.

“Business bashing is terrible economics and not very good politics in my view,” Summers said in an interview. Wrong. Showing the connections between corporate power and inflation is not “business bashing.” It’s holding powerful corporations accountable.

Whether through antitrust enforcement (or the threat of it), a windfall profits tax, or price controls, or all three, it’s important for the administration and Congress to do what they can to prevent hugely-profitable monopolistic corporations from raising their prices. Otherwise, responsibility for controlling inflation falls entirely to the Federal Reserve, which has only one weapon at its disposal — higher interest rates. Higher interest rates will slow the economy and likely cause millions of lower-wage workers to lose their jobs and forfeit long-overdue wage increases.

Robert Reich, is one of the most prominent political thinkers and activist in America nowadays, a great intellectual mind. his articles are very valuable. Again my thanks to all my good readers, stay safe and well.