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Tag Archives: dictatorship

FTAC: Ocasio-Cortez: Re. The “Closed” Meeting

18 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, democracy, dictatorship, disingenuous conservative press, Fox News, medieval v modern, socialism

Reference: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/17/ocasio-cortez-bans-press-from-covering-campaign-event.html

Stimulus: a Facebook-based accusation to the effect that Ocasio-Cortez will come to resemble Castro and other socialist dictators.

Baloney.


The event in question appears to have been designed for partisan listening and not for open public discourse:

——
She said the journalist ban “was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.”

“We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press,” she said. “Future ones are open.”
——

I think all political organizations have the prerogative to determine their meeting doors open or closed to facilitate policy planning and research. To amplify the decision to avoid the media circus and actually listen to the underserved or, in some ways, people with problems that are nonetheless a part of our communities seems to me execrable — but if that’s the way Fox wants to operate, well that says a lot about Fox News.


Additionally, with this town hall non-story: it was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.

We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press. Future ones are open.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 17, 2018

BackChannels agrees with the explanation.

Dictators, not “isms”, have killed millions, and therefore having a look at the psychology of dictatorship — and the nature of disingenuous news personalities, lol, may be more helpful than the demonizing of a young American politician.

–33–

Yarmouk, Syria: Mutually Accomplished Destruction

23 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

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confused battlespace, dictatorship, flag disorientation, Liwa al-Quds, medieval v modern, middle east conflict, Palestine Hospital Bombing, Phantoms of the Soviet, political chaos, Syria, Yarmouk Camp

Assad regime forces destroyed the Palestine Hospital in the Yarmouk Camp. Body parts are strewn in the streets & many civilians are trapped under the rubble – intense regime bombardment prevents their rescue https://t.co/MDJuLn25Mq

— Elizabeth Tsurkov🌻 (@Elizrael) April 22, 2018

The compressed link leads to this apparently unedited or particularly grim header:

“Human Appeal: Bodies and body parts in Yarmouk camp are alive under the rubble” (Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, April 22, 2018).

BackChannels requested additional information, and this came in:

https://twitter.com/BloodyRain111/status/988320431722688512

Most important info missing, the Yarmouk camp is under ISIS. The offensive to liberate the Palestinian Yarmouk camp is led by Palestinian militias, most notably Liwa al-Quds.

4/23/2018

Liwa al-Quds is an Assad-aligned Sunni Palestinian fighting organization.

WikLiwa-al-Quds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liwa_al-Quds

In the Soviet / post-Soviet medieval time bubble, the spectacle attending the bombing of a Palestinian hospital in the Palestinian enclave of Yarmouk in Syria appears that of a Palestinian Sunni force pitted against independent Sunni extremist forces to which, for enmity as viewed by Liwa al-Quds, the western-leaning Free Syrian Army appears appears to have been attached, although western alignment would seem also pitched against ISIS and other Sunni (and Shiite) extremists.

Among Liwa al-Quds allies, the Phantoms of the Soviet Era align: Ba’ath Brigades, Hezbollah, (Syrian) National Defence Forces, Russia, Syrian Armed Forces, Syrian Armed Forces, each defending “political absolutism”, the survival of dictatorship itself — and of dictatorships, BackChannels has long remarked, “Different talks — same walk!”

The walk seems to be that of a march toward the accumulating of wealth and power without end, without limit, and without purpose other than the experience of it (in the political psychology, the malign narcissistic process may begin with “narcissistic mortification” and end with “narcissistic supply”).

How bad can that malign narcissistic itch become: read about one man’s demons in relation to the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”.

Among Liwa al-Quds opponents: minus the Free Syrian Army, defenders of the very same thing!

Missing from the picture: family, financial, and personal relationships.  The interlocking details involving persons and personal interests would be another and more granular level down in public reporting, and such investigative work might be unwelcome where it would be gathered.


Related on BackChannels

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

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/syria-the-horror-2011/


https://twitter.com/MusaabBalchi/status/987366991366410240


–33–

 

 

FTAC: The Wisdom of Holocaust Remembrance

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by commart in A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

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dictatorship, genocide, Holocaust Remembrance, political psychology, wisdom

We remember Pharaoh. We remember Haman. We should remember what Hitler did and with the greater wisdom that should come of traumatic experience. We have something today that earlier generations could not have imagined grasping and incorporating in their survival: we have ventured into the psychology attending evil; we have made ourselves deeply cognizant of the nuts and bolts associated with dictatorships and anti-Semitism (and we know how those two travel together — and are traveling together now). We are aware of dangers and done with denial. We should have greater foresight. If that’s not a blessing, I don’t what is.


–33–

FTAC: Hamas’s Latest KGB-Style Theater: “Palestinian Killer”

31 Saturday Mar 2018

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

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dictatorship, Gaza, Hamas, kleptocracy, MEC, Medieval Political Absolutism, medieval v modern, middle east conflict, Soviet / post-Soviet politics, unfreedom

“On the streets of Gaza people have a sense of security – except when Israel attacks” — In defensive modes, preventive, responsive, retributive.

The Palestinians have long surrendered their dreams to propaganda, the PLO/PA, and Hamas as well as the corruption attending such governments that hold themselves beyond criticism.

From what sense of ethics, integrity, or justice were the greenhouses and synagogues of Gaza destroyed after departure in 2005?

Such rage would seem to have been set loose by officially and socially approved, promoted, and popular anti-Semitic incitement, the same that had Hamas in 2006 proclaiming to Palestinians that Hitler admired them as ideal revolutionaries (PMW: “Hamas: Hitler praised the Palestinians as models”).

Perhaps Israel should treat as poison the disinformation fed to the Palestinians and see the same receive an antidote in an honest telling, for Hamas fairy tales have only enslaved the Palestinians and gotten them to get themselves killed for show.


Posted to YouTube March 30, 2018.  Ten more Palestinians were to draw fire and die, and the cause should be clear through what the cameras recorded in the way of “peaceful” demonstration.


One may marvel at the power of bad ideas and failed dreams to continue placing the innocent in harm’s way — and for the global press, the more souls corralled and misled into martyrdom, the better for sympathy and “understanding”, never mind the squandering of billions of dollars intended for Palestinian practical betterment going into the pockets of corrupt and venal leaders and their systems of patronage.

The Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy about 26 years, and yet the scenes remain much as Yuri Andropov must have seen them when promoting dictatorship beneath the cover of Popular Liberation Movements.

The peace camps of the west may have to soon decide whether they wish to remain in business by doing their part to sustain the middle east conflict on bogus claims; and Mr. Putin may soon have to decide whether he will take KGB and more general historic Russian barbarism forward with the cynical manipulation and destruction of every space in which Moscow has chosen to play.

Related on BackChannels

Set: “Palestinian KGB” and Other BackChannels Observations Related to the Middle East Conflict.”  February 6, 2018.

Related Online

Algemeiner Staff.  “As IDF Thwarts Gun Attack on Gaza Border, Israel Warns that Palestinian ‘Return’ Protests are ‘Cover for Terror’.”  The Algemeiner, March 30, 2018.

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  The Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Menachem, Yoni Ben.  “Corruption in the Palestinian Authority.”  Jewish News Syndicate, March 10, 2018.

“Palestinians destroy synagogues in Gaza”.  The Telegraph, September 12, 2005.

Palestinian Media Watch.  “Hamas: Hitler praised the Palestinians as models.”  May 18, 2006.

The Tower Staff.  “Hamas Leads Violent March, Using Human Shields, at Israeli-Gaza Border.”  The Tower, March 30, 2018.

Wikipedia.  “Israeli disengagement from Gaza”.

–33–

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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–

Syria: The Horror: Around 2012

24 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, Assad, dictatorship, impunity, Political Crime, remembrance, Syria, war crimes

Putin-Assad-Khamenei

Bashar al-Assad By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44378508 | Vladimir Putiin By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60759727 | Ali Khameini By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57953266


Houla, 2012

Posted to YouTube June 27, 2012.

Related:

Ryskulova, Nargiza and agencies.  “Syria: war crimes committed by regime in Houla, UN finds.”  The Telegraph, August 15, 2012.

“The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and the Shabbiha had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property,” said the 102-page report by the independent investigators led by Paulo Pinheiro.

Torture

Human Rights Watch.  “Torture Archipelago”.  July 3, 2012.

Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian authorities have subjected tens of thousands of people to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment, and torture using an extensive network of detention facilities, an archipelago of torture centers, scattered throughout Syria.


Hell of a title —

Bond, Anthony.  “We took their fingernails out with pliers and we made them eat them. We made them suck their own blood off the floor’: Grisly accounts from inside Syria’s ’27 torture centres'”.  Daily Mail, July 3, 2012.

Related:


Posted to YouTube May 16, 2013.


18+ torture video — “Syrian Police Torture Protester” — posted to YouTube September 1, 2011

BackChannels experience suggests that if it’s called what it is — “war p___n” — it will attract a lot of viewers, such are the low desires of the world when it comes to deliberately seeking artless depictions of sex and violence.  the above URL links to a video of a young man who wears a tire around his chest while receiving a beating.

Related

Black, Ian.  “Bashar al-Assad implicated in Syria war crimes, says UN.”  The Guardian, December 2, 2013.

A UN inquiry has found “massive evidence” that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is implicated in war crimes as the latest reported death toll in the country’s civil war reached 126,000.

Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, said a commission of inquiry into human rights violations in Syria “has produced massive evidence … [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity” and that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state.”


Posted to YouTube Dec. 2, 2013.


Cumming-Bruce, Nick and Rick Gladstone.  “U.N. Says Execution Video from Syria Shows Apparent War Crime.”  The New York Times, November 2, 2012.

–33–

FTAC: Putin, Terrorism, Autocracy, and the New Nationalism

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Hungary, Middle East, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, Turkey, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

authoritarianism, autocracy, autocrats, creation of political chaos, dictatorship, Erdogan, i24, malignant narcissism, New Nationalism, Orban, political narcissism, Putin, Reflexive Control, Ryan Mauro, terrorism, Trump

When Russian jets first overflew Turkish airspace in 2015, Erdogan stood fast in his refusal of apology.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/26/middleeast/syria-turkey-russia-warplane-shot-down/index.html

Six months later, he did what Netanyahu had done in relation to the Mavi Marmara: he apologized.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/27/kremlin-says-erdogan-apologises-russian-jet-turkish

Setting aside the Israeli story a moment, points of leverage may have involved the “Turkish Stream” energy project, a piece of “realpolitik”, and an appeal to the narcissistic concept of cultural leadership and state in which the “Great Leader” is the embodiment of the living state concept _and entitled_ to aggrandizement and glory without limit (or, clinically, “unlimited narcissistic supply). Putin’s vision appears to me to be that of the medieval world sustained with raw power put in place of democracy.

The look of the mode — big palaces, nepotism on a royal scale, confusion in relation to the boundaries of person and state (and the state’s treasury) — marks the medieval mind and related revanche.

Men like Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Erdogan, Orban may consider true popular democratic government as impeding their own authority, sovereignty, and will. While the term “autocrat” sounds quite bureaucratic, similar concepts — caliph, emperor, king, sultan — fit these guys.

Because we know of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings” and that Russia has been arming the Taliban in Afghanistan — and there’s more back there with Zawahiri and others — it may not be too far fetched to suggest that Moscow has manipulated terrorism to induce in struck targets a predictable patriotic new nationalism and that “the terrorists” — ISIS or PKK — now provide a platform for conflict, all against all, and without end. Where Putin has held sway, he has turned back history’s clock.

Our President Trump has had no issues bearing and wearing the mantle of authority, but it would be facile to say he hasn’t had some issues with the “Estates” of a matured democracy.  In that regard, he may fit the world to which Putin has wished to return the world.


Inspiration for the above note:

–33–

Yuri Dmitriev Goes Home, But Trial Remains Open

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

absolute power, dictatorship, fascist nationalism, Joseph Stalin, political criminality, punitive psychiatry, Stalin, Stalin Era, Vladimir Putin, Yuri Dmitriev

Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x-2President Vladimir Putin’s paranoid and punitive Russian state had taken Soviet Era type action against the fellow to the left, Yuri Dmitriev, in apparent retaliation for Dmitriev’s investigations of Stalin Era mass graves, the final evidence of the mass murdering that must have filled them.  The manner of action taken: “kompromat” — pictures of his undressed daughter framed by the regime as illicit for a show trial and consignment, for a while, to a psychiatric facility for evaluation.


Excerpt from the latest press release circulated by human rights advocate Elizabeth Childs:

His attorney, Victor Anufriev, says that Dmitriev is not out of danger yet. The date of the next hearing in the trial has not been announced, and it is not known if the Serbsky Institute also assessed whether nine photographs of Dmitriev’s daughter submitted in evidence should be considered pornographic in nature — a sticking point in the trial, as the prosecution has failed in several attempts to have expert analysts deem them as such. “I am sure that the prosecutor’s office will continue to pursue its goal of imprisoning Dmitriev at any cost and find some grubby organization that will give them the results they want,” Anufriev told the 7×7 news site.


Husband and Father Yuri Dmitriev at Home

DmitrievAtHome

Included with the Childs’ press release: Anna Artemyeva’s photo for Novaya Gazeta, January 27, 2018.


Previously in BackChannels

Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry” (Jan. 11, 2018).


Additional Background and Update

Nechepurenko, Ivan.  “Gulag Historian Ordered to Undergo Psychiatric Testing in Russia.”  The New York Times, January 11, 2018:

At the end of December, an expert group found no pornographic content in the pictures, and the court, in Karelia, a region in northwestern Russia, refused to extend his detention beyond Jan. 28.

But at the same time, the court took a chapter from the Stalinist past, ordering that Mr. Dmitriev be sent to Moscow for psychiatric tests while also asking for a new review of the photographs by other experts.

Reuters.  “Russian Stalin-era Great Terror exposer freed from jail pending trial.”  January 27, 2018.

Memorial Human Rights Center (Old Web):

The Human Rights Center “Memorial” is a self-governed noncommercial civil organization, whose members are united by humanistic and moral principles and the aspiration to assist the defense of human rights and the formation of people’s civil dignity.

Foundation date: April 1st , 1993.

European Network: Remembrance and Solidarity.  “Russian society “Memorial”.  October 16, 2014.


Further Reference Ongoing

English language updates: The Dmitriev Affair 

Faceook: Free Yuri Dmitriev (English)

Twitter: @FreeYuDmitriev


MEMORIAL: An International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society

Related on site: “Yuri Dmitriyev Released from Detention.”  January 1, 2018.


–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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