How To Use Corporate Media In The Struggle To End Genocide In Gaza

Wissam Nassar, photojournalist, being a dad in Gaza

I dedicate this post to the fathers of Palestine who have shown the world a stellar example of male parenting in a time of genocide. May their suffering and that of their loved ones cease!

Debate rages in my circles over whether or when to use the corporate media to get the word out. My letter to the editor in the Maine Sunday Telegram today is a case study of the issues involved.

First, the Telegram published an op-ed by Nicholas Fuller Googins, "We are not powerless in the face of Gaza horror." In it he explained why he and other teachers passed a divestment resolution at their union's Representative Assembly. Like nearly any truly democratic body these days, Maine teachers by and large don't want to help fund Israel's genocide which has killed more than 16,000 children so far in Gaza. 

So, they instructed their pension fund MainePERS to divest from any entities causing harm to Palestinians or violating their human rights. (My blog post about the union president's response to this outbreak of the people's will can be seen here.)

Next I noticed a letter bashing Googins and insisting that Jewish parents pull their children out of schools in the district where he teaches in Saco. Here is that letter in its entirety:

Jewish parents should pull their children out of Saco schools if Nick Fuller Googins is the representative of teachers in that district. Mr. Googins, a fourth grade teacher at CK Burns School, penned an opinion piece in the June 2 Press Herald calling for a boycott and divestment of Israel. But nowhere in Mr. Googins’ shallow repetition of today’s liberal cause celebré does he mention the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas.

How can anyone entrusted to teach our children fail to acknowledge the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust when terrorists slaughtered 1,200 innocent civilians? Where is Mr. Googins’ outrage over the use of rape and sexual torture on innocent young girls? Where is Mr. Googins’ outrage over the beheading of babies and the taking of children, younger than those he teaches, as hostages?

A supposed educator should not be repeating debunked propaganda from a heinous terrorist organization. Look no further than the stats Mr. Googins cites for the Gaza death toll, which now even the U.N. has acknowledged was inflated twofold because it relied on faulty Hamas numbers.

Nobody wants more innocent civilians to die. But if a teacher cannot put the current conflict into proper context and cannot even acknowledge the atrocities committed by Palestinians against Jews, then that teacher should not be allowed anywhere near our children.

Steven Silver

South Portland

Finally, the letter I wrote responding to Silver's letter was published this morning. Great, right? Actually, not so great.

First of all they chose a catchy phrase from my letter for the headline, which served to eliminate any reference to genocide, Gaza, or Palestine, Israel, or Zionism. 

Letter: Teaching children how to think, not what to think 

I’m writing in response to a letter from Steven Silver, of South Portland, bashing the teacher who wrote the op-ed “We are not powerless in the face of Gaza horror.” As a retired teacher, I can assure Mr. Silver that our goal as educators is to teach children how to think, not what to think.

Since Mr. Silver suggests that Jewish parents should pull their children out of Saco schools if other teachers share Nick Fuller Googins’ views on divesting from Israel over their genocide of Palestinians, I can see that he’s not a very clear thinker himself.

Jewish does not equal Zionist; I have scores of Jewish friends and acquaintances who are opposed to Israel’s violent occupation and land theft in Palestine.

Also, in what school district would teachers all hold the same political views? It is absurd to suggest this might be the case.

Lisa Savage
Solon

 But what was far worse was that they cut my final paragraph:

Finally, Mr. Silver repeats lies about the use of sexual violence by Hamas, lies that were spread early on but have now been debunked due to a total lack of evidence. The New York Times, BBC, and other mainstream media have affirmed this and a little reading will confirm it.

And this is precisely how corporate media work to spread vicious lies and deadly propaganda about the struggle for liberation in Palestine. They repeat lies and then suppress the refutation of those lies, allowing the mass of fairly ignorant corporate media consumers to continue believing the original propaganda trope.

I'm not going to go into the details of the debunking of this particularly malicious lie because you can read the research and reporting others have done on this topic here and here.

My subject today is earned media. In other words, media you don't pay for. I could have taken out an ad or rented a digital billboard truck or hired an airplane to fly over the beach today with messages. But as a retired teacher with limited financial means I instead used the platform of letters to the editor to reach tens of thousands of readers who will likely never see this blog post.

Those who oppose using corporate media make the very good argument that it inevitably distorts our messages. Whether they're covering the shutdown of a bomb factory helping arm Israel, or the disruption of a state level convention of the party currently waging genocide in Palestine, corporate media will tend to omit key information or distort it beyond recognition. Reporters challenged on these points will often blame their editors. As someone who has worked as a journalist, I get this e.g. I did not choose the headline for my published letter.

So why do I still write for them for free, or compose and distribute press releases inviting their coverage of events? In media parlance, I do it for the eyeballs.

If we have really legible, clear messaging at our events this will come through to the audience irrespective of how corporate media workers distort or omit our words and ideas.

Should we also use alternative media to get accurate messaging out? Of course! I mainly write this blog to keep my head from exploding, but a second purpose is to create messaging that  I can control. I follow amazing media workers on social media (another corporate evil that suppresses but also amplifies our messages). I subscribe to multiple publications not on the corporate payroll, and I read or watch and share their content via email and social media. Many of my readers here do the same.

Autonomous as we are, we all make our own choices. If a reporter shows up at an event I'm part of, I'm not going to scold or lecture them. I'm going to thank them for showing up, I'm going to make sure they have a copy of our press release and supporting material, and I'm going to read and share their content unless it is really heinous. 

If there are errors or omissions, I'm going to write them a polite email pointing this out. I have often gotten a correction made to the online version of articles by this method.

Reporters are mostly working class kids trying to make a living. So are many teachers. I'm on their side in the critically important struggle for narrative control.

Notes From An Imperial Outpost Down Under

Bravest woman in Australia, Senator Fatima Payman (scroll down to read more).

Because of my focus on resistance to imperial domination it’s been really interesting to see this from a flipped perspective i.e. from Down Under. Some of my anecdotal impressions may be of interest to readers.

Liberals are the same everywhere, except here they’re called Labor and Liberals are the conservatives (don’t ask). For example, they love to hate bad guys on the other team while making excuses for the bad guys on their team. And most of the focus is on personalities. So, if Trump and former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have a meeting in the U.S., this is of great negative interest. (Morrison is a religious fanatic infamous for vacationing in Hawaii while bush fires swept Australia a few years ago.)

Excuses for bad guys on the Labor team are she’s not so bad, he seems like a decent bloke, he’s a good speaker, etc. Similar to defenses of the UK royal family such as, the former queen was a good sort who really cared about people. 

The royals happened to come up because Charles’ tampon-themed official portrait was unveiled back in the UK while I was here.

Further parallels include a devotion to lobbying elected officials who clearly don’t represent their constituents -- unless you consider the coal mining industry a constituent -- and a consistent failure to connect dots like warfare with climate crisis, or erosion of civil liberties with billionaire-sponsored government. And mum’s the word on the proto-WW3 military alliance AUKUS which I only heard mentioned once on the news in passing when Trump and Morrison were seen together.

You will search in vain for mention of Aussies Julian Assange, or Dan Duggan. There was a little bit on Army whistleblower David McBride being sentenced to 5 years in prison for revealing war crimes in Afghanistan for which no one has been punished.

That said, corporate news in Australia has a much more international focus than in the U.S. where Mark Twain once observed that wars were God’s way of teaching Americans geography. I saw lots about the revolt of the indigenous Kanak community in New Caledonia, one of France’s few remaining colonies, located in the South Pacific region. France is trying to impose new voting rules there such that French residents get a vote in local elections. The Kanak’s aren’t having it and have shut the roads and airport down.

Nightly reports on the color revolution in Georgia and on the Ukraine war depicting victimhood at the hands of the dastardly Russians but without a hint of the fact that Ukraine has already lost and just won’t admit it. We saw Putin received with fanfare by Xi in Beijing, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced in a Kyiv nightclub inexplicably playing “Rockin' in the Free World,” a song he clearly doesn’t understand. (We did not see him eating neo-Nazi pizza.)

Coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza each day interviewed Palestinian refugees but without a whisper of Australia’s role. That is until extensive coverage of the "scandal" of a Labor member of Parliament saying her conscience was bothering her and asking PM Albanese on Nakba Day how many more deaths it would take before he condemned genocide. 

https://youtu.be/fqBFopusBzc?si=yv601M8vuE1Yb8Nt

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” concluded Senator Fatima Payman, an Afghan Muslim immigrant who was the first to wear the hijab in Parliament when her term began in 2022. 

Warmongering Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong joined 55 other senators in condemning the phrase as allegedly “antisemitic.” No one appeared to remember that Zionists coined the phrase back when they still called the land they coveted Palestine. TV news reported one Jewish organization in Australia objected while another organization lauded Payman’s statement (sorry, I cannot remember which was which).

Nightly reporting on students protesting genocide in both Australia and around the globe continued throughout my stay. Actually, protests of all sorts got a lot of coverage including Israelis protesting the Netanyahu government. 

Australian protests receiving coverage demanded more protection for domestic violence survivors, more crackdowns on teenage crime sprees, and reinstatement of a book about same-sex marriage that was removed from a local library.

One person interviewed for that story noted that they don’t want to see U.S.-style culture wars breaking out in Australia. Good luck with that.

Domestically, the high cost of living and related dearth of affordable housing were themes familiar to this USian. How will corporate overlords keep Australia from having the revolution it needs to reorient public policy toward meeting people’s needs? Foment civil strife, probably.

Or they could just let nature take its course and hope to reap the benefits of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Young People In The Empire: This Is Their Vietnam

Still from the livestreamed footage of police pointing a gun at a burning man shouting "Get down on the ground!" repeatedly as others scrambled for a fire extinguisher. Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone described this as, "the most American thing ever."

It has been said -- but I can't recall now who said it -- that Israel's genocide in Gaza is to young people of today what the U.S. war in Vietnam was to my generation.

I think the volume and intensity of protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and to free Palestine gave rise to this interpretation.

Those of us protesting the many, many, many imperial wars since Vietnam may be forgiven for wondering: why this one? Why not the war in Afghanistan, or either of the wars in Iraq (ongoing), Syria, Sudan, Libya, even Korea -- the war that never officially ended?

Young people alive today did not see the carnage of these wars on their television screens the way I once did.

They do see the carnage of Israel's attempt to eradicate Palestinians to finish stealing their land. Despite Israel cutting Gaza off from communications, electricity, food, or even potable water, they see it. Campaigns raise funds to donate esim cards so Gazans can film what is happening to their loved ones. Despite Israel killing a record number of journalists since October 7, the raw videos and testimonies make it onto social media. Youthful reporters Motaz, now in exile, and Bisan are folk heroes for bringing the gruesome facts to our eyes.

Online personalities like Russell Brand and Lee Camp built a following for their comedy but now college students rely on them for current events reporting and analysis.

Even if the evening news were to show a young girl in Gaza vomiting animal feed -- all that's left to eat after weeks of siege -- and then dying, young people would not be watching.

Young people have given up on corporate "news" and have other ways of finding out that a U.S. airman set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.  Young people will learn of Aaron Bushnell's extreme protest crying "Free Palestine!" over and over as he burned and toppled.

But it probably won't be from the sources where I learned of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức who burned himself to death protesting in Saigon in 1963.

Or the other self-immolations here in the U.S. that I and others saw reported in the news: 

In March 1965, an 82-year-old woman, Alice Herz, protested the ongoing Vietnam War by setting herself on fire on a Detroit, Michigan, street corner. Norman Morrison, 31, ignited himself eight months later outside the Pentagon, beneath the office window of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The following week, Roger Allen LaPorte, 22, did the same in front of New York City's United Nations building.

Our imperial managers have decided that such knowledge among the general populace could endanger their hold on power.

They're right about that. Bushnell was intelligent enough to livestream his self-immolation, making it hard to ignore. (For example, what do you know about the person who set themselves on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Atlanta last December? Exactly.)

Spread the word.

Earlier in the day, Bushnell posted a final message on Facebook, alongside a link to a Twitch stream that has since been taken down.

He wrote: "Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

Rest in power, Aaron.

Revolution Needed, So Our Corporate Overlords Are Fanning The Flames For Second Civil War

 One of President Obama's many rewards for enriching banksters at the taxpayers' expense was this summer "cottage" on Martha's Vineyard.

Why do we need a revolution, you say? 

In rough order of priority:

o Global climate crisis driven by capitalism is spiraling out of control and the window to walk us back from catastrophe is rapidly closing.

o Global pandemic has killed millions and appears headed to kill millions more with a system of medical apartheid and for-profit medicine in the U.S. and other non-socialist countries.

o Eviction crisis on top of already galloping homelessness not only creates trauma for millions but is a big factor in the spread of COVID.

o Military spending and weapons systems surging -- including building nuclear weapons, illegal under international law because they could easily end human life if used.

o Incarceration for profit in the U.S. and to impoverish and disenfranchise Black, indigenous, and people of color is growing worse and was already at crisis levels. Racist policing continues at crisis levels but is now more visible due to cell phone videos.

o Student debt continues to depress the prospects of entire generations.

o Minimum wage is now about 1/3 of what an actual living wage should be in 2021, especially because of rapid, ongoing inflation of the cost of housing.

o Child care and public education continue to be underfunded in the face of immense unmet needs.

How are our corporate overlords fanning the flames for a second Civil War?

Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally August, 2017 

In roughly chronological order:

o Propaganda rather than useful information sharing is the norm across the spectrum of corporate-owned "news" outlets, from Fox News to CNN. The steady erosion of reliability in sourcing information is the work of corporate media and corporate social media that censors on behalf of the ruling class.

Carlos Piccata, who says he is a combat vet, to the Shasta, CA county commission: “It’s not going to be peaceful much longer. We’re building, we’re organizing. You won’t stop us when the time comes. This is a warning for what’s coming. There’s a million people just like me.” pic.twitter.com/EF8fjqGb1z

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 14, 2021

o White supremacy is in a desperate fight to remain in control, and numerous militias and other types of organizations have responded to perceived and real threats including the removal of Confederate statues and flags. Also, attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, including killing them by running them down with cars (a practice that a few states have legalized) and targeting them for assassination.

o Law enforcement complicit in white supremacist movement, and armed to the teeth with cast off military equipment shared by the Pentagon.

o Widespread misinformation about public health protocols including vaccines, masking, and distancing and robust media coverage of refuseniks.

o Absence of national leadership on ending the pandemic leaving states, towns, and school boards to fend for themselves in the face of angry mobs. We are entering the third school year in a row pitting neighbors against neighbors and parents against school administration.

What can we in the U.S. do to bring on revolution rather than a second civil war?

In no particular order:

o Don't fall for divisive tactics. For example, consider the possiblity that "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose."

o Look and listen beneath the surface of false dichotomies.

o Don't demonize each other just because we disagree. People with ideas that seem wrong and dangerous may have PTSD from traumas. They may be experiencing hunger, bankruptcy, or lack of medical care. They may only have access to really poor information or outright disinformation. Don't write human beings off even if you loathe their ideas. 

o Free your mind and the rest will follow. Do your own thinking, take in new information, and be willing to rethink your beliefs. Put another way, don't mistake narratives for truth. Even this one.

What Did You Learn in 2020?

Source: NationalPriorities.org Tradeoffs

Some of the things I learned in 2020 were useful and probably will remain so going forward. For example, how to produce videos (and plan for the time suck known as post-production). Others were interesting and useful at the time, but it's unclear how they'll apply to this Boomer's future life. For example, how to win at British parliamentary style debate.

Some things I already knew but received much more evidence for in 2020:

A team of people collaborating with a common goal can accomplish more than any given individual can accomplish.

Distrust for authority will influence people to act against their own (and society's) best interests when it comes to public health.

Pranksters were busy in 2020. Here are designs allegedly for Space Force which turned out to be a hoax (the Nazi-like uniforms, not the Space Force).

All space programs are fundamentally military programs.

Screenshots from Google News on the final day of December, 2020.

The ginning up of support for space programs both public and private is covert militarization of public sentiment. And probably a military recruiting tool as well.

The ginning up of support for nuclear power is also being done with military applications in mind.

Information conveyed by corporate-controlled organizations, including National "Public" Radio, manufactures consent for continued militarism and promotes ignorance about the forces driving our global climate emergency.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And government in the U.S. exists to make sure of it.

False dichotomy and the personification of everything are still the leading errors in thinking used to control the masses. My run for elected office was an attempt to use one to combat the other. Jury is still out on whether this can be done, and whether or not it is a beneficial approach.

Things I did not learn in 2020 but hope to make some progress on in the new year:

How to be most effective as an information worker in a corporatized, capitalized world that rapaciously consumes nature including humans. For example, is my time and energy working for an anti-racist transformation best spent lifting up marginalized voices, working to organize white supremacist-leaning working class, a combination of both, or something else altogether?

How to make my actions as effective as possible in realizing the better world that I know is possible. I've tried protesting, marching, rallying, civil resistance, speaking, writing for mainstream publications, blogging, meeting with elected officials, petitioning, social media posting, street theater, and door knocking. Also running for elected office, also lobbying at the state level and the federal level. I've joined some organizations and helped start others. Also spent some decades teaching for critical thinking which I have National Board Certification in.

Link to buy the book here.

While I ponder all this I'll be promoting my first published book, something I need to learn how to do.

I will also will be facilitating education for a small pod at the preschool level. I could claim I'm doing that because I know for a fact that empowering young learners makes a positive difference in the world. But the truth is, I'm following my bliss.

And, while pondering, I'll take on a local project to improve the community I'm temporarily living in. One I can do safely while observing covid protocols in a state that is telling people EMTs will no longer be able to send cardiac arrest patients to hospitals because California hospitals are maxed out on ICU beds for covid patients.

Something I've spent the end of 2020 doing is taking time to process my grief over the pandemic and its harms. 

I was so busy when it hit that I of necessity made accommodations for it but powered onward through my busy, busy days with taking time to grieve. 

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer "For health-care workers during COVID-19, the burnout is real, and it's getting worse" Dec. 1, 2020  photo by Heather Khalifa

I'll grieve for all the families who've lost someone. Grieve for all the health care workers strained to their breaking point. Grieve the greed that has killed millions forced to work in unsafe conditions without health care or sick leave from their jobs.

2020 has been so difficult that people have yearned for a new year to begin. 

I hope we don't find a future so harsh that we look back on 2020 as the good old days.

Corporate Grip On Media Tightens As I Break My WaPo Boycott For A Moment

I heard from a journalist friend today that her work to bring light to the darkness of corporate government has been noticed, with the result that her local NPR station called and said: turn in your recording equipment -- due to views you have expressed, you are no longer welcome to report for NPR (which my other friends call National Pentagon Radio.) The views this reporter has expressed tend to be critical of the increasing role of corporations in directing the actions of local and state government officials.

That was sad, but what happened next was downright creepy.

The head of a major news organization in her state immediately approached and offered her a job paying $50k to be a full time reporter if she would "tone it down." This was after saying that nobody is doing better reporting than she is.

She turned him down.

Source: The Root "The New Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum Force Us to Bear Witness to Our Whole American Truth -- Dirt taken from the sites of lynching. Some of the victims are named, some will forever remain anonymous."
Photo: Human Images (Equal Justice Initiative)

I was reminded of this story this morning when I temporarily broke my vow to boycott the Washington Post, well known stenographer for corporate government (and owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, by the way). I won't link to stories in the corporate press anymore. Why help them drive up their ad revenues? But a friend who I'm writing a book with sent me a link to a post by the Rev. Traci Blackmon who was on her way to view the lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alambama; it is the first such monument commemorating the many, many black people killed by vigilante violence.


And WaPo had a virtual tour of the chilling installation of hundreds of steel columns hanging from the roof, engraved with the names of victims.

Source: The Root "Lynching memorial, corridor 3" Photo: Human Pictures (EJI)

I was was watching as a videographer walked through the monument, unpeopled, and silent except for her footsteps. It was early morning here in Maine, and birdsong outside my windows provided a sound track for my solemn consideration of white people's history of racial violence.

Imagine my surprise when the loud sound of a jet tore through my quiet morning. WaPo was serving up an ad for Lockheed fighter jets in a probably unintentional juxtaposition of state-sanctioned violence that we are meant to admire even while condemning quasi-historical violence (quasi because black people are killed every day in extrajudicial assassinations, often by police or other state actors).

This is the type of content I have come to expect from NPR: sanctimonious condemnations of historical violence side by side with cheerleading for whichever current expenditure of weaponry is making shareholders wealthy.

So maybe it should properly be called National Propaganda Radio? I've written recently on the tightening grip of corporate control over information, and there is one more example I'll end with today.

At the gathering of people who organized to oppose the state of Maine's corporate welfare tax giveaway to General Dynamics,

Professor Orlando Delogu told us that he had just been denied publication in The Forecaster, a weekly newspaper he's been a contributor to for the last five years.

His content is no longer welcome, for unspecified reasons. Maybe because his interview bashing the corporate welfare bill played widely on Maine's community t.v. stations? Maybe his editors also got a call from General Dynamics or one of their lackeys?

The local daily Times-Record had already cancelled its monthly opinion piece by Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, and rejected a submission from Bruce Gagnon on his hunger strike against the bill.

This after repeated objections by the editor of the opinion page, John Swincoceck, that columns submitted were not local enough in focus i.e. don't write about resistance to military bases despoiling Jeju Island, Korea or Okinawa. Even if Mainers go there to join the local people's efforts to save their coastlines. Only write about things that happen locally.

The fact that five ships built in Bath by General Dynamics were used to launch missiles at Damascus does not make war on Syria a local story. Right?

#SignsYouAreInAHorrorMovie Your Country Is Bombing Damascus

Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh was reportedly hit by U.S. missiles last night Image: Getty/AFP

More bad karma for the evil empire. Syria has been on their list for a long time so it was no surprise but still a shock to wake up this morning to news that the U.S., the UK and France are bombing Damascus.

BREAKING: Civilian casualties are being reported in Damascus as at least 2 residential areas have been struck by the US-led force's missiles. At least 4 dead in one of the strikes. pic.twitter.com/nCjcMZUrKQ

— Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) April 14, 2018

Two peace friends on opposite sides of our failing nation alerted me to the latest war crime via email in the wee hours of our U.S. bomb-free morning. Twitter trending topics for the United States ignored what's really going on (screenshot from 5:30am EDT):

People live in Damascus: babies, toddlers, little kids, big kids, and adults. But since when has the U.S. Air Force cared about civilian casualties they call "collateral damage"?

The false dichotomy propaganda machine will accuse me and others opposed to air strikes on Damascus as being on the side of Assad.

That's because their narrative to justify air strikes is unimaginative and, at this point, monotonous: "___(insert leader of nation we want to bomb here)__ has gassed his own people! We must bomb his people in order to save them."

Because there's "plenty of good money to be made supplying the Army with the tools of the trade" as Country Joe & the Fish so eloquently put it.

Case in point: investigative journalist Alex Nunes posted on my spybook page this morning:

Tomahawk missiles strikes into Syria last night were reportedly launched from a warship built at Bath Iron Works: the USS Donald Cook.

And that's the real story behind why we're bombing Damascus today.

In case you start buying the corporate news narrative just from hearing it repeated one zillion times, political blogger Caitlin Johnstone helps us sort through the bullshit: "The US Empire Has Been Trying To Regime Change Syria Since Long Before 2011" from this week or "Five Reasons To Be Absolutely Certain That The Establishment Is Lying About Syria" from back in February.

Read it, and weep.

Not A Villa In The Jungle -- You're The Jungle In OUR Villa, Say Young Palestinians

Yaser Murtaja, a 30 year old photojournalist in Gaza. “He was killed doing his job: recording his people’s right to protest for their human rights,” commented Karl Schembri of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which hired Murtaja to record video footage of the protests.
Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Perhaps you are contemplating the mowing down of unarmed civilians, including journalists, at the Gaza border last week. Or, perhaps the corporate media blackout of information on those war crimes has kept it out of mind.

The "Great Return March" of the Palestinians confined in Gaza angered Israel mightily by calling international attention to their right as refugees to return. 

Here's how Google is helping to manage the flow of information about one of the victims, Yaser Murtaja, who was gunned down in his flak jacket with the word PRESS on it in big white letters. 

Perhaps you'd like to watch the video banned by YouTube in 28 countries -- mostly in Europe -- due to Israeli pressure on those governments. On this segment of teleSUR's Empire Files, Abby Martin interviews author Max Blumenthal about facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank. His characterization of unrest sometimes called the third intifada (uprising) is that a younger generation coming of age are expressing their rejection of the occupation that began when their grandparents were children. 



Blumenthal makes reference to Israel's steady annexation of lands and destruction of West Bank Palestinian infrastructure to establish what former PM Ehud Barak called "a villa in the jungle." Blumenthal notes that Palestinians coming of age now have grown up in a reality of "separation, exclusion" and "see little opportunity or hope... 

They watched a 51 day assault on the Gaza strip and felt helpless...

Two year old victim of Israeli bomb in Gaza with a fractured skull.

When young Palestinians enter the villa with knives, with rocks, with whatever they have, they are reminding Israelis, You know you're not a villa in the jungle, you're the jungle in our villa...You can't just put up a wall and pretend we're not here."

Corporate media puts up a wall so we can pretend Palestinians aren't there. It's up to us to scale the wall and look over at what they don't want us to see on the other side.

Then, get busy in the struggle for justice. #BDS

Manufacturing Consent: How The Sausage Gets Made

Source: Hyperallergic

There is consent, and then there is manufactured consent. News blackouts are a good way of manufacturing consent. If people don't know about something, or know only a tiny sliver of managed truth, it's easier to get them to go along with official policies they would likely oppose if only they knew. 

A good example is the corporate news coverage of  last summer's attacks on Gaza by Israel. If you were a U.S. corporate news consumer, you would be left with the impression that Hamas started it (untrue, Israel broke the ceasefire). Also that their rockets were a comparable threat to the bombardment unleashed by Israel on hospitals, schools, water treatment plants and other infrastructure -- a ridiculous proposition.

What is an effective response to managed "news" in our day?

Conceptual artist Banksy traveled to Gaza and painted a kitten on one piece of the thousands of pieces of rubble that Gazans have huddled in this winter while trying not to freeze to death. From NBC News: 

Bansky says, "A local man came up and said 'Please - what does this mean?' I explained I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website - but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens."

Here's his video: 

Students at the University of Toronto this week took a different, less aesthetic, yet elegantly simple approach. At a lecture by two prominent deniers of the Armenian Genocide, "WWI 100th Anniversary - Human Suffering in Eastern Anatolia,” students waited until the denial began and then stood and simply turned their backs.

Source: Armenian Weekly

According to the report in Armenian Weekly:

Several racial slurs and discriminatory comments were directed at the protesters as they stood in silence. 

Lecture organizers briefly stopped the event, but after campus police made it clear that the form of protest did not interfere with the event, they were asked to continue. 

Protesters continued standing with their backs to the podium as Fein spoke, then marched out in an organized walk-out, leaving the remaining twenty or so attendees to listen to the rest of the lecture.

The government of Turkey spends quite a bit of money each year to deny that the wealth of its oligarchs is, in many cases, based on the theft of resources the genocide of Armenians made possible. Author Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted by his government for saying in an interview, "Thirty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do."

In the U.S. there is yet another way to manufacture consent, this one also at taxpayers' expense: Rep. Chellie Pingree sent out the following survey to her constituents. (She also sent it to me -- though I live in a different congressional district, I guess I have hounded her enough over the years to be considered an honorary constituent). 

You can see my comments following Pingree's carefully managed, Democratic Party flavored list of possible priorities.

My comments in full:

Stop ignoring the 50+% of budget going to the Pentagon and its contractors each year. None of your priorities will be addressed until that problem is fixed. Continuing to show up at General Dynamics/Bath Iron Works year after year pledging allegiance to the military contracting as a job creation program is disingenuous at best. Fix the bloated military budget, it will pay for everything else. 

And if BIW was building public transportation instead of nuclear-equipped warships that cost billions of my tax dollars, it would be creating far more jobs as well. As you claim you well know. It would also be far better for the environment to build something life sustaining rather than weapons of mass destruction. 

But, since this form is set up so that I have to check one of your pre-selected  issues, I will check "oppose unfair trade agreements" aka the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership. If passed, the TPP will gut Maine jobs on a scale not seen since Bill Clinton passed NAFTA. And make corporate profits more important than state or federal laws. What could go wrong?