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BackChannels

Category Archives: Epistemology

FTAC: Essential Truth and the Palestinians

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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dictatorship, magical thinking, malignant narcissism, middle east conflict, Palestinians, political absolutism, political psychology

Prompt: the host had assigned a loose title about “ethnic cleansing” to historian Benny Morris.  “Thought leaders” on the web will either traffic in earnest speech (when earnest) or make themselves worthless with disingenuous and false claims.


Cultures engage in “magical thinking” in their fairy tales, legends, and myths. They are part of the spirit of the place. Engaging in the same in the context of study produces only “revisionism” favorable either to the narcissist in the mirror or the one in power. Differentiation between what is true — and what a joy it would be for Palestinians to know what is true! — and what seems (!) flattering and patronizing plays a major part in the installation and maintenance of the world’s dictatorships. Among the _malign_, the narcissist can never be wrong.


From other and prior portions of the same conversation:

_The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine_ was authored by Ilan Pappe — this represents his reputation today:

https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian

***

Benny Morris, by comparison, has been a tough “New Historian”. This is his page on Amazon (USA): https://www.amazon.com/Benny-Morris/e/B001IQX8V8/

I have been through _1948_, not the others, but even so it mentions the Jewish neighbors who begged Arabs to stay home while Arab forces encouraged flight before their own onslaught.

Efraim Karsh — _Palestine Betrayed_ — may be worth a mention as well.

Again, the Russo-Arabian “framing” of the conflict would seem after 70 years of insistent repetition on the way to being . . . found out.


Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

In the same ballpark

” . . . to hate and resist occupation and occupiers . . .” would be to hate and resist Fatah and Hamas who insist on their own power while depriving Palestinians of their vote, their right to assemble in opposition to either, and of their right to speak freely, openly, without fear.

–33–

Inter-Generational Recap: Curtis’s ‘HyperNormalisation’

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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:), modern political history, modernity, perceptual control, political manipulation, political meditation, political philosophy, unrealpolitik


A quick note while watching (halfway through with the feed paused as I type): the Curtis documentary is one helluva time capsule hitting all the keys for the ‘Boomers’ now in the process of passing the western torch to perhaps drug-addled or money-crazed (or both) next population of inhabitants of the democracies.  Of course, things are not going so well, at least depending on one’s perspective and the sources of experience and observation that produces it.  Modern?  Hypermodern?  Post-modern? Or not modern at all but a grinding mechanical Orwellian nightmare?  Who knows?  Who would know?  Anyone?


–33–

Pravda — Real To the Marrow

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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against "active measures", authenticity in speech, freedom of speech, honesty, information space, integrity, journalism, totalitarianism

In the New Age of Active Measures, the countermeasure is the conveyance of truth — not “alternative truth” or multiple possibilities derived from promoted fantasia — supported by great curiosity and integrity as married to equally great journalism and scholarship.


A friend promoted the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty project as focused against deceptive and disingenuous political cant designed to whip up extremist emotion and stupidity in Asia as well as in its older domains.

In regard to information and integrity in speech online, BackChannels has published a few related posts that may convey an image about Potemkinism in political speech: there are those who project through language the way they might wish their followers would see the world and themselves.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/23/fake-news-genuine-fake-news-the-real-fake-news-get-your-fake-news-here/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

BackChannels really hasn’t an issue with political presentation and “show business” in general but rather with a depth in totalitarianism in which accusation (especially “reflection in the mirror“) and conflict (and related barbarism) would seem to have no point but of the completely artificial conveyance of image.

–33–

FTAC: Middle East Conflict: The Absurd Preoccupation

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia

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Arab apartheid, middle east conflict, Palestinian Authoritarianism, Palestinian cause, Palestinian Democracy, Palestinian Indoctrination, Revolutionary Cadre

While the Laws of War may apply to contested space and recognize the division between the “occupier” and the “occupied” — and the “stronger” and the “weaker” for that matter — there’s something now absurd about the preoccupation with an occupation that treats the “occupied” better than their own leaders.

The law and the thinking behind it have become absurd as the conflict becomes redefined. I think I’ve done my part to harp on the Soviet / post-Soviet engineering of the conflict and get in the way of the memorization of political cant and disinformation that keeps the darned thing — and the Arab apartheid of the Palestinians and related exploitation of the main base by the leadership elite — cycling.

Maybe the cadre who most genuinely care about the Palestinian main base are figuring out the true history of the conflict — that would be a better preoccupation than the one to which too many have been and are still indoctrinated.


Related on BackChannels for Palestinian Cadre – A Module

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/16/excerpt-first-political-terrorist-organization-in-history/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/anti-semitism/
–33–

FTAC: Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Back In

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in Also in Media, Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Psychology

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fear, intellectual environment, life online, media immersion, political manipulation, political psychology, power, threat

Shared inspiration:

Response:

More than “eyeballs” are involved in the stimulation of our defenses and imagination: there are tens upon tens of thousands of jobs created to deal with threat as fielded by various industries, and there are governments for which the installation of fear produces political power. Putin, for example, ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition. He knew how to produce and use war, and there’s great suffering for that today along the spine of Moscow’s favored relationships and colonial or chaos-inducing ambitions.  I suppose for the west, we now have a super counterterrorism industry, much needed, but one also begging the question, “How broad, how large, how institutionalized?”

That’s life.

Rob Dial offers an interesting view of the media-saturated mind.

Indeed, some of us used to do other and more pleasant things than share in the watching of the world’s great issues and tragedies for days, weeks, months, and years on end.

My own answer to that: try to get into retreat! 🙂

And narrow the scope of personal mission dimensions and project: “Tune Out; Turn Off: Drop Back In!”

That today is Counterculture!


In-Line Reference Added

Putin ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition.

Back Story Reference on a Facet of the Real Counterculture of the 1960s: “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_On,Tune_In,_Drop_Out(album).

Timothy Leary speaking the message (short documentary video).

Visual interpretation of Timothy Leary’s 1967 album, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”.

Leary, Timothy.  Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.  Via Amazon, USA.

The 18- to 21-year-olds of 1967 would today be 68 to 71 in age, and, oh my, how the once “hippy” world of “recreational drugs” has morphed into the world’s most lucrative scourge — and it’s not the “high”(ness) that makes it so, but in relation the lives thrown into associated industrial control — from manufacture to shipping to sales, related industrial-scale warfare across every continent, and that’s on one side, for on the other comes the policing, and that too would seem a rough business —  and for the end-users, often enough wrecked lives — careers, jobs, homes, ordinary relationships — habituated and racked health, and, also and still, accidental death.

Related affected and infected states and larger regions have stories too in relation to their own “monkey” — there’s another phrase signaled by that metonym — and their own yards and backyards, but BackChannels will here reserve comment on that.

–33–

FTAC: The PLO Remembered

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

middle east conflict, PLO, Soviet Disinformation, Soviet Era, Soviet Political Manipulation, terrorism, Yasser Arafat

Source of inspiration:

Younis, Rami.  “Looted from Beirut 35 years ago, now on display in Tel Aviv.”  +972 Magazine, December 4, 2017.


“Similar to the destruction of Palestinian urbanization in 1948, the theft of Palestinian visual culture is another attempt by Israel to control the historical narrative and erase Palestinian history. “

And yet the authors of both the documentary and the gushing +972 promotion launch their criticisms from Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University with the help, frankly, of the IDF that could as well have kept its information out of the public sphere.

Palestinians may wish to revisit the real history behind Yasser Arafat —
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/ — who survived his repeatedly defeated troops and impoverished people to die himself with upwards of $100 million in loot (and about the same may be said of the living Abbas who has also built a remarkable system of patronage on the suffering of the Palestinian main base).

A few reminders about the PLO and perhaps the principle of evil.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/middle-eastern-history/black-september-group

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer119/dilemma-plo

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=795&x_context=7

For more on the Soviet role in the weaponizing of the Palestinian mind:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring


Referenced

Berlinski, Claire.  “The Cold War’s Arab Spring: How the Soviet’s Created Today’s Middle East.”  Tablet, June 20, 2012:

Two of Bukovsky’s documents appear in English for the first time in Behind the Desert Storm. The first is Yuri Andropov’s memo to Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 detailing a KGB meeting with Palestinian terrorist Wadie Haddad. It recommends that the Soviet government provide material support to Haddad’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The second is the transcript of a 1984 Politburo meeting approving the shipment of 15 million rubles’ worth of weapons and ammunition to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in exchange for a collection of ancient art. The invention of modern terrorism: All credit is due to the Kremlin.

Borden, Sam.  “Long-Hidden Details Reveal Cruelty of 1972 Munich Attackers.”  The New York Times, December 1, 2015.

CAMERA.  “Yasir Arafat’s Timeline of Terror.”  November 13, 2004.

Cobban, Helena.  “The Dilemma of the PLO”.  Middle East Research and Information Project, Winter 2016.

Encyclopedia.com. “Black September”.


Link Modules Related on BackChannels

On the Disingenuous Cruelty of the BDS Movement

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

On the KGB’s Manipulation of Palestinian Politics and Mind

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

On Russia’s Endemic Medieval Anti-Semitic Habits and Related Defamation and the Development of Other Political Disinformation

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

 

–33–

 

 

Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad Tribesmen Protest Threat of Expulsion, Qetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, November 22, 2017

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan, Political Psychology

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Khiliji Qaumi Ittehad, Pakistan, protest against expulsion

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the above slideshow, Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad tribesmen in Quetta, Pakistan protest the threat of expulsion to Afghanistan posed by Pakistan’s government and military, according to BackChannels’ contact in the region.

Source claims that Pashtun tribes have been ordered to produce “proof of locality” before 1976, and toward that end, the state has sent out notices ordering tribesmen to submit national identity cards to the government.  In response, the Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad have undertaken a hunger strike — after four days of that, readers may see that the ambulance had to show up to rescue those who had essentially victimized themselves through that action — and related street protest.

Here follow a few excerpts from correspondence (lightly edited for readability and sense).

Historically all Pakhtoon are Afghans.

There were Indians and Afghans in the region.

Then the so called Durand Line was drawn in1893 that divided the Afghans…After Pakistan csme into being Pakhtoon on their own land were living.  Thus assumed the nationality of Pakistan which they heartedly not accept today.  However with passage of time they merged into Pakistani society.  Now they are seen as alien people .

The Afghan migrated after Soviet invasion is also the factor.

It is hard for Pakistani government to differentiate between immigrants and original Pakistani tribes.

Today, as a whole, they treated like animals

Wars make a mess of cultural and social relationships, and the Durand Line region separating Afghanistan from Pakistan while sitting astride the Pashtun tribal belt has seen more than its fair share of disruption through criminal and martial violence.

Request for National Identity Card Submittal, Quetta, Pakistan,

Above: “This is the form of chic (STET) which requires attestation of two grade 17 govt officers. Which is hard to find two officers.”

Below: “Now despite completing the process they are still denied.”

Rejected Residency Documents, Quetta, Pakistan, November 23, 201

This note comes from earlier in the conversation:

If one marry to lady, the lady also has to prove herself Pakistan and provide the evidence of 1970.

In number of families the male is considered Pakistani but his wife with so many children is declared Afghani.

Most of tribesmen have stopped visiting bazaars or the main cities and remain at hope to avoid the danger of arrest by the state security agencies


A web search for the Khiliji Qaumi Ittehad will show that the tribe has been active in anti-western protests involving drone strikes as well as anger with former General and President Pervez Musharraf, and one may find online images of the same burning American  and British flags.

Source notes the following:

Pakistan still think Taliban is strategic assets for it.  Pakhtoons are so dependent economically that even I can recruit thousands for any ill cause for very less amount.  Most of low rank Taliban fight it as holy war while their high ranks fight for money.

We the local see that war is the most costly exercise.  If they are not supported by state, they would never be able to challenge the mighty NETO — by state supported Taliban I mean those fighting in Afghanistan and those killing the Pakhtoons.

Madrassah is main factor for cheap recruitment. in madrassah they r only taught religious text.  They live in a controlled environment.  I live in the area where Taliban are kept and trained.

BackChannels shared David Satter’s coverage of the false-flag Moscow Apartment Bombings with the source, who responded, “Wow Putin and our rulers are so similar in action.”

BackChannels would question the conclusion; however, here is the bottom line as regards a part of Pashtun tribal attitude toward the State of Pakistan:

Sir I’m hopeless here. How would we survive since we r short of basic needs and education.  I know Russia backing Taliban. But the US role in the region is skeptical too. A country spends 700 billion dollar on defense and not able to defeat Taliban?

…

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan sees protest on the part of tribals live on their land even before the emergence of Pakistan.

They in all grounds of life were kept backward by state of Pakistan. They are economically poor and less educated.  Since last ten years they are being deprived of national identity.

Now these tribals receive notice from govt of Pakistan to submit back the identity cards that were issued to them. Give says that the state secret agency has declared them aliens.

Now an organization of these tribes under Tribal leader Nawab Salman Khilji (STET) is observing hunger strike till death. It’s 4th day of the strike but no govt official has contacted the hunger camp. They may turn violent if someone dies in this hunger strike.

Their camp is at door of Quetta Press Club but receives no media coverage . . . because media here is state controlled

While BackChannels may relay the above testimony as regards conditions, it may not — or not yet — from its desktop independently verify all of the source’s claims.  Nonetheless, comments on the depth of poverty in the region, presumptions about the character of the Pakistani State as experienced by “tribals”, and related beliefs about State — and American — culpability for terrorism would seem to ring true with other domestic and xenophobic mistrusts.

The Pashtun have been rudely treated in their remote and semi-autonomous areas, and it may be difficult for the earnest to convey a more accurate state of affairs.

With the Soviet / post-Soviet “toolkit” involving criminal activity, anti-western disinformation campaigns, and false-flag operations designed to channel political perception, it may be especially difficult for remote Pashtun to develop reliable conclusions about the political states of affairs that surround them.

–33–

 

FTAC: Observation – Broad Public Critical Thinking on Politics

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Politics

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citizenship, impractical political research, political philosophy, popular democracy, the tyranny of experts

“Tracking” (in education) aside, there’s a broad overemphasis in the development of “practical” knowledge — so the learner may earn back those student loans! — and an under-emphasis on critical thinking involved with the humanities and spheres in which political philosophy matter indirectly, as with much creative literature, or directly as with “poli-sci / poli-psy. However, appropriate departments (and other intellectual cubbyholes) have not been abandoned but perhaps made a little more elite or special by way of who drifts in at what price and under what terms and with what relationships out ahead.

“Political people” have lives in every state and are certainly not insignificant in numbers.

The greater public media audience suffers the effects of “practical education” and equally dutiful and practical careers, and for so many millions it is questionable what percentage have energy, focus, interest, and discretionary or leisure time for independent political research with some clinical discipline attached. I would bet that percentage of American adults very small or confined to students and retirees.


Here again . . . bloviating.

😦

My apologies (albeit knowing this kind of commentary has become so familiar to me that I may be certain to do it again).

However, the point stands: the more complex an issue and the more publishing (with agenda or hardened stance) about it, the less capable most will be to research and evaluate the same as a citizens.  The talk on most issues has to drift up into specialized circles, and many of those would seem to need to become plainly and industrially incestuous, i.e., de facto cabal of experienced executives cum lobbyists.

Still, oh ye free citizens: choose your field of public interest and . . . dig it up, sift, find the moving parts, and make the make sense!

🙂

Not that anyone online needs the suggestion: be certain to share your findings!

–33–

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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