Those who were outraged about the bombing of Aleppo: how come they are not outraged about leveling of Raqqa by US bombs?

Gulf regimes discovered this method: they hire former US officials to puke their propaganda for them

Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng)

10/21/17, 2:00 AM

VIDEO: #SaudiArabia made extraordinary strides combating terror financing @FranTownsend says. pic.twitter.com/UQapQcjmCS

I wish Western correspondents in Beirut care more--or as much--about Israeli mines all over South Lebanon than about dog poops

Western correspondents doing their important journalism work in Beirut.  Israeli officials are threatening Lebanon AND ITS civilians and infra structure with total destruction, but there was not ONE story about that in any US newspaper.

Susan Jacoby on Golda Meir: even her cheating on her husband was seen as virtuous

Look how this sentence is phrased: "Golda’s marriage fell apart in Israel in the 1920s, and although she had many lovers, she and her husband never divorced legally."  So if a man cheats on his wife but never divorces her legally it is praiseworthy? Anything for Zionism in the US.  

How dare right-wing anti-communist invoke the memory of the Kronstadt Rebellion?

Kronstadt Rebellion played a big role in my intellectual formation and in my disillusionment with Leninism and travel to anarchism.  Yet, I hate when right-wingers like Josef Joffe in the Times--of all places--mentions it as if the sailors were rightwing anti-communists like him: "Where the system was heading, shattering all “hopes and dreams for freedom under the revolution,” became cruelly obvious as early as 1921, when sailors revolted at the Kronstadt naval base."

sexual harassment and assault in the US military

"The Army is grappling with a resurgence of cases in which troops responsible for preventing sexual assault have been accused of rape and related crimes, undercutting the Pentagon’s claims that it is making progress against sexual violence in the ranks."

Susan Jacoby on Golda Meir, the notorious anti-feminist and war criminal

Notice that: 1) there are no references to her war criminal career and the bombing of unarmed refugees in camps in Lebanon and in Palestine.  2) notice how her anti-feminism is glossed over.  

Robert Mugabe as goodwill ambassador

Notice the outrage about his appointment in Western media.  If this was the Saudi king, there would not have bene such an outrage although the Saudi regime is far more oppressive than Zimbabwe.  

According to the New York times Africans complain about Chinese NOT US colonialism

"In Southeast Asia and Africa, there are complaints about a new era of Chinese colonialism."

Jimmy Carter: on the confederacy

Read this interview with Carter.  He remains a southern white conservative.  Read his views about confederate statues.  He also still misses Anwar Sadat.

Lenin in the New York Times: Josef Joffe on Lenin

The US has not been cured of the anti-communist disease.  It would be fair to say that the intellectual and media class has not been cured of the rabid anti-communist disease.  You can't read any fair assessment about communism in US papers, still to this very day.  Look at this ignorant and fanatic review of a book on Lenin by Josef Joffe.  There is no sense of reason in it at all.  Historian E.H.Carr pointed out something important about Lenin: that he was in fact a moderate, all the Western media and academic account to the contrary notwithstanding.  Notice that the people who were killed in Russia due to the European AND US military invasion and intervention of Russia are also blamed on Lenin and counted as victims of communism: this is like counting the victims of US war on Iraq as victims of Ba`thism.  But you can't read anything reasonable about communism and its leaders in US media.  I could not believe the bad quality of this article.  

Israeli Lt-Col & Intel officer who selectively translates and mistranslates Arabic for propaganda wars

"Halevi’s writings and statements suggest that he sees himself as a soldier in the information wars — particularly when it comes to allegations against Israel, which he challenges by using “continuous, intensive and thorough” research, according to a profile on the Economic Club of Canada’s website. This work includes counting “Gaza fatalities in his free time,” according to a 2009 NPR article that described his “macabre hobby.” During the first Gaza war, NPR wrote, Halevi suspected Palestinians of exaggerating their civilian fatalities and spent six months scrutinizing 1,400 deaths listed by a human rights group — checking each name against a terrorist database he personally compiled and “whatever he finds on the internet.” Halevi has also written extensively about Islam and Muslim Canadians on CIJ News, where his Arabic translations have drawn praise from the “anti-Islamist” blog Point de Bascule." (thanks Amir)

Kim Ghattas: yet again expresses nostalgia for colonial times

What she does not tell you is that:
1) It was the communists who gave the Afghans the freedom to choose and that US and Western conspiracies in and around Afghanistan who imposed the horrific Islamist order.
2) that most of the places were freedom to choose existed it existed despite what the US supported: the US was supporting an Islamist order in the Cold War.  Secular movements were all opposed to US and Western wars and policies.
3) The freedom to choose ended or diminished because the US was aligned with the fanatical regimes of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the Cold War, that is why.

Odes to Colonialism is now her shtick.  

This is your favorite "democracy" in the Middle East

""Israel Arrests Palestinian Because Facebook Translated 'Good Morning' to 'Attack Them'"

How ME New York Times correspondents lack even basic elementary knowledge of Islam or Arabic: Thomas Erdbrink

Look at this: "But this is not just any company. Khatam-al Anbiya, whose name means “seal of the prophet,”".  This is basic, damn it.  It is "seal"--as in the last in a chain--of all prophets (plural, not singular).  He could not even know that.  How do they hire those people? On what criteria? Just Zionism?

US media worship of the US military

The Washington Post and other media have no problem in referring to lies by Trump.  But when it came to lies uttered by Gen. Kelly, the Post among others only dared to say that he was "not accurate".

Fadlo (AUB president) blocked me

I never once communicated with him and never directed a message to him but he blocked me on Twitter.  Having said that, there is a really long list of people (politicians and singers for some reason) who block me on Twitter without me communicating with them: former president Michel Sulayman, Ashraf Rifi, Joumana Haddad, Salem Zahran, Faris S`ayd, Majda Al-Roumi, UN ambassador in Lebanon (Ms. Sigrid Kaag), NYT correspondent in Jerusalem, Diaa Hadid, Syrian opposition figure Bassam Ja`aaah, among others.  But the block by Fadlo was the worst: it hurts really.  I am inconsolable.  

This is by far the most Islamophobic disgusting thing the New York Times ever published: if a Muslim is accused of rape, what does this have to do with Islam?

Look at this disgusting headline: "Could this be the Harvey Weinstein of Islam?" What does this have to do about Islam.  Now we know that if an individual Muslim commits a terrorist act, his act is blamed on Islam, the religion. But now it got to the point that if an individual Muslim commits a crime of any kind, it will also be blamed on Islam, the religion?  David Duke and other Nazi anti-Semites used the Harvey Weinstein scandal to spew their anti-Semitic trash. But the New York Times is doing the same.  if someone were to relate the Harvey Weinstein scandal to Judaism it would be seen--and rightly so--as anti-Semitism and the Times would be outraged. But the Times with its long history of bigotry and racism against Arabs and Muslims, found no problem in publishing this headline?  I don't know the person in question and the crime of rape should be investigated but why relate it to 1) Harvey Weinstein? and 2) to Islam?  This is a new low for the Times.  So if an individual Muslim were to steal, the New York Times will publish a headline about "Theft in Islam"?

Realism and Democracy: the case of Elliott Abrams

My weekly article in Al-Akhbar: "Realism and Democracy in US foreign policy: The Case of Elliott Abrams (1)".

U.S. actively supported massacres

" “Standing by,” however, is not what the United States did during the Indonesian genocide of 1965–66; rather, it actively supported the massacres, which were applauded at the time by the New York Times."

Neo-Nazi leader praised apartheid Israel as a model for white supremacists

"White nationalist leader Richard Spencer gave Israel as an example of an “ethno-state” he aspires to create in the United States during a controversial speech at the University of Florida on Thursday." (thanks Amir)

How the claim by Syrian director, Muhammad Bayazid, that he survived an assassination attempt fell apart

A long expose by a pro-Syrian opposition paper debunks his claim.

A special German informer tried to convince refugees and Islamists to commit assassinations in Germany

From Joerg in Berlin: Yesterday there were interesting revelations about last years jihadist attack on a christmas market in Berlin. A radio station and a newspaper said, that before a special agent or informer tried to convince refugees and islamists to commit assassinations in Germany, also by using trucks as a weapon:

Eine wichtige Bezugsperson des Terroristen Anis Amri in der militanten Islamistenszene war ein V-Mann des Landeskriminalamts Nordrhein-Westfalen. Recherchen des rbb und der "Berliner Morgenpost" belegen nun, dass die sogenannte Vertrauensperson VP-01 frühzeitig Islamisten zu Anschlägen in Deutschland angestachelt haben soll. Laut eines Zeugens war dabei auch von einem Anschlag mit einem Lkw die Rede.

Do you notice that when US bombing devastates a Syrian city it does not cause outrage among Western correspondents?

But when Russian and Syrian regime bombing cause devastation, Western correspondents are up in arms. Why not be outraged about all? (this is Raqqa by the way).

Hizbullah's weapons and the UN secretary-general

Now we know that the UN secretary-general is a mere tool of the US appointed Jeffrey Feltman.  But the statement by the secretary-general about Hizbullah's arms was funny: he said that is is an aberration to democracy (or words to that effect as I read it in Arabic).  Basically, he implies that democracy in the Arab world (from the Gulf to Morocco) is blooming and that the only imperfection of Arab democracy is Hizbullah's weapons.  

China wants to combat "erroneous news": but this is like US war on fake news. Not any different

So the Chinese government wants to fight "erroneous news".  US media will now cry: repression and censorship. But how is that different from this Western government war on "fake news".  it is the same thing with different names.

Ignorance and falsehoods by New York Times correspondents in the Middle East in one sentence

"In 2014, he wrote a provision incorporating Shiite volunteer fighters into the Iraqi armed forces, the so-called Iraqi Hezbollah, a reference to the Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon."  1) they conflate Iraqi Hizbullah with the Hashd forces.  2) they confuse Lebanese Hizbullah with Iraqi Hizbullah.  How can anyone rely on New York Times correspondents to learn about the world?  Really.

This is amazing: Washington Post cheers John McCain for insulting a fellow journalist

Read here.

Samantha Power attributes Trump's policies to Karl Marx: imagine the ignorance

How ignorant and intellectually lazy.  All that she knows about Marxism is what the writer in Bloomberg tells her (and Laleh tells me that the writer is an Obama administration appointee on regulation).  Make no mistake about it: the rise of the nutty right in the US is directly due to the lousy US liberal movement.

Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower)

10/19/17, 5:01 AM

Really important & enlightening @CassSunstein piece on Trump’s Marxist ways of sowing division among us bloomberg.com/view/articles/…

 

How Western correspondents in the ME are clueless: missing the biggest story

The speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament (and the Kuwaiti parliament along with the Tunisian and Lebanese parliaments, is one of the few semi-real parliaments in the Arab world) because a hero yesterday for the way he handled the Israeli delegation in the Inter-parliamntary Union conference in Moscow.  His video went viral and his name became the most popular hashtag.  It is the biggest story on Arab social media but you won't see a reference to it in Western media because it is too embarrassing to Israel. This is another example which proves that there are issues which still galvanize Arabs and they revolve around hostility to Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Which has been the biggest blow to ISIS? Certainly not Raqqa

US media coverage of the battle against ISIS has been typically ill-informed and propagandistic.  It has basically hailed the insignificant Syrian Democratic Forces militia as the hero in the fight against ISIS.  SDF basically came late to the game and the US media accorded them the credit for a fight against ISIS in three countries in which they were not even remotely involved.  Even the battle in Raqqa: was not that significant.  Al-Quds Al-Arabic (the Qatari regime mouthpiece which is fanatically pro-Syrian rebels) published an article today in which they argue the same point: that Raqqa was not really the strategic blow to ISIS but Al-Mayadin was.  But US media totally and strictly ignore all the strategic and decisive battles against ISIS which were undertaken by foes of the US and Israel.  Such is the conventional narrative.  

Oriana Fallaci

This I will tell you about Oriana Fallaci, who is still beloved in the US media.  This is actually a tribute to her in the New York Times.  She was not a journalist: she was a liar and a fabricator.  She is worse than even Barbara Walters.  I know this about her: In 1970, she published an interview with George Habash in Life Magazine: you know what she did? She fabricated a statement by Habash.  This is enough for me to know what kind of a lousy human being she was.  She claimed that Habash said that he supports international operations because he wanted to kill Jews.  If you know anything about Habash, and if you only read Habash in translation, you would know that he would never ever utter words like that.  If Habash never spoke in this anti-Semitic language, he used only for the benefit of this lousy human being?

Terrorism charges are only reserved for Muslims

“ “That fact that the term is being preserved only to describe ‘racially profiled’ violence reveals how deeply embedded racism and Islamophobia has become in our language and disturbingly, even in our legal system,” notes University of Toronto professor Megan M. Boler.”

Learn about parliamentary democracy from Saudi Arabia

Members of the regime-appointed powerless Shura Council calls for public shaming of anyone who criticize the regime.  Kid you not.  

The speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament (the only elected parliament in GCC) expels the Israeli delegation from Inter-paliramentary Union meeting in Moscow

Israeli minister threatens civilian targets in Lebanon and there is no Western media outrage

'Next Time, We Won't Spare Lebanon': Christian Media Hears Doomsday Warning From Senior Israeli Minister: 'Its infrastructure, international airport and government facilities – it’s all game,' Naftali Bennett tells first-of-its-kind Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem".

Can you imagine the uproar if those threats were made by Arabs against Israel?

This Western correspondent is pleading: she wants US occupation to stay forever

Liz Sly‏Verified account @LizSly  16h16 hours ago

Syrian Kurds just retook Raqqa, aided by the US. But Kirkuk raises the question: will the US be sticking around?

US forces and propaganda in Raqqa

Hizbullah expelled ISIS fighters from the Lebanese border and allowed them to evacuate with their families in buses.  The US and its militias in Raqqa reached a similar deal with once difference: US forces would not allow photographers to take pictures of the buses, while Hizbullah did, and its enemies used the pictures against them.

Neo-Nazis find friends in Israel

"Just as in Germany, there are clear indications of ties between Austria’s neo-Nazi far right and Israel’s right wing."

Civilian vs weapons nuclear program

"Over 30 countries have civilian nuclear programs; only a handful—including, of course, the US and Israel—have nuclear weapons programs. One is used to power cities, one is used to level them." (thanks Amir)

US allowed buses of ISIS fighters to leave Raqqa: where are the pictures?

Where there were no pictures of the buses which the US arranged for ISIS fighters in Raqqa?

Fighting ISIS in Dayr Az-Zur

There has been ferocious fighting against ISIS in Dayr Az-Zur by Hizbullah and the Syrian regime forces and other allies and all Western media purposefully ignore this chapter in the history of fighting against ISIS because this does not fit into their bogus and fake narrative of the war on ISIS.  

The US ISIS envoy in Raqqa

What a theatre. The US ISIS envoy visited Raqqa today accompanied with a Saudi minister to basically lay the claim that it was the US (and Saudi Arabia?) who really kicked out the ISIS caliphate.  Those are the least effective elements of the international collection of forces which fought ISIS.

Are Western media for real? Are they serious about their account for the demise of ISIS?

If you read Western media you really get the impression that ISIS was defeated solely by US bombing and by the efforts of Syrian Democratic Forces militia.  Those two parties were probably the least effective and least important in the regional fight against ISIS.  But this is propaganda and not journalism.

"Remembering the massacre of Algerians in Paris"