As Israel Openly Declares Starvation as a Weapon, Media Still Hesitate to Blame It for Famine
this is a genocide, after all—even if the corporate media refuse to say the word—and starvation is part and parcel of that.
Belén Fernández, April 25, 2025, https://fair.org/home/as-israel-openly-declares-starvation-as-a-weapon-media-still-hesitate-to-blame-it-for-famine/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The announcement regarding the total halt of humanitarian aid amounted to yet another explicit declaration of the starvation policy that Israel is pursuing in the Gaza Strip, a territory that—thanks in large part to 17 consecutive years of Israeli blockade—has long been largely dependent on such aid for survival.
Of course, this was not the first time that senior Israeli officials had advertised their reliance on the war crime of forced starvation in the current genocidal assault on Gaza. On October 9, 2023, two days after the most recent launch of hostilities, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Two days after that, Foreign Minister Israel Katz boasted of cutting off “water, electricity and fuel” to the territory.
And just this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaimed that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.” Following an April 22 dinner held in his honor in Florida at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Ben-Gvir reported that US Republicans had
expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.
Never mind that the hostages would have been brought home safely as scheduled had Israel chosen to comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas that was implemented in January, rather than definitively annihilating the agreement on March 18.
It is no doubt illustrative of Israel’s modus operandi that the March 2 decision to block the entry of all food and other items necessary for human existence took place in the middle of an ostensible ceasefire.
‘Starved, bombed, strangled’
While Ben-Gvir’s most recent comments have thus far eluded commentary in the US corporate media, the roundabout media approach to the whole starvation theme has been illuminating in its own right. It has not, obviously, been possible to avoid reporting on the subject altogether, as the United Nations and other organizations have pretty much been warning from the get-go of Israel’s actions causing widespread famine in Gaza.
In December 2023, for example, just two months after the onset of Israel’s blood-drenched campaign, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC scale, determined that “over 90% of the population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.08 million people) was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse).” The assessment went on: “Among these, over 40% of the population (939,000 people) were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 15% (378,000 people) were in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5).”
A full year ago, in April 2024, even Samantha Power—then the administrator of the US Agency for International Development—conceded that it was “credible” that famine was already well underway in parts of the Gaza Strip. And the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs now warns that Gaza is “likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023”—its population being “starved, bombed, strangled” and subjected to “deprivation by design.”
Disappearance of agency
None of these details have escaped the pages and websites of corporate media outlets, although the media’s frequent reliance on ambiguous wordiness tends to distract readers from what is actually going on—and who is responsible for it. Take, for instance, the New York Times headline “Gaza Famine Warning Spurs Calls to Remove Restrictions on Food Shipments” (6/25/24), or the CBS video “Hunger Spreads Virtually Everywhere in Gaza Amid Israel/Hamas War” (12/5/24). Even news outlets that intermittently undertake to spotlight the human plight of, inter alia, individual parents in Gaza losing their children to starvation remain susceptible to long-winded efforts to disperse blame. (As of April of last year, Save the Children confirmed that 27 children in northern Gaza had already died of starvation and disease.)
In an era in which news consumption often consists of skimming headlines, the phrasing of article titles is of utmost import. And yet many headlines manage to entirely excise the role of Israel in Gaza’s “hunger crisis”—as in CNN’s report (2/24): “‘We Are Dying Slowly:’ Palestinians Are Eating Grass and Drinking Polluted Water as Famine Looms Across Gaza.” Or take the Reuters headline (3/24/24): “Gaza’s Catastrophic Food Shortage Means Mass Death Is Imminent, Monitor Says.” Or this one from ABC News (11/15/24): “Famine ‘Occurring or Imminent’ in Parts of Northern Gaza, Experts Warn UN Security Council.”
It’s not that these headlines are devoid of sympathy for Palestinian suffering. The issue, rather, is the dilution—and even disappearance—of agency, such that the “catastrophic food shortage” is rendered as transpiring in a sort of vacuum and thereby letting the criminals perpetrating it off the hook. Imagine if a Hamas rocket from Gaza killed an infant in Israel and the media reported the event as follows: “Israeli Baby Perishes as Rocket Completes Airborne Trajectory.”
‘No shortage of aid’
Then there is the matter of the media’s incurable habit of ceding Israeli officials a platform to spout demonstrable lies, as in the April 17 NBC News headline “Aid Groups Describe Dire Conditions in Gaza as Israel Says There Is No Shortage of Aid.” The fact that Israel is permitted to make such claims is particularly perplexing, given Israeli officials’ own announcements that no aid whatsoever may enter the territory, while the “dire conditions” are made abundantly clear in the text of the article itself: “The Global Nutrition Cluster, a coalition of humanitarian groups, has warned that in March alone, 3,696 children were newly admitted for care for acute malnutrition” in Gaza.
Among numerous other damning statistics conveyed in the dispatch, we learn that all Gaza bakeries supported by the UN World Food Programme closed down on March 31, “after wheat flour ran out.” Meanwhile, the WFP calculated that Israel’s closure of border crossings into Gaza caused prices of basic goods “to soar between 150% and 700% compared with prewar levels, and by 29% to as much as 1,400% above prices during the ceasefire.”
Against such a backdrop, it’s fairly ludicrous to allow Israeli officials to “maintain there is ‘no shortage’ of aid in Gaza and accuse Hamas of withholding supplies.” If the press provides Israel with space to spout whatever nonsense it wants—reality be damned—where is the line ultimately drawn? If Israel decides Hamas is using wheat flour to build rockets, will that also be reported with a straight face?
Lest anyone think that thwarting the entry of food into the Gaza Strip is a new thing, recall that Israel’s blockade of Gaza long predated the present war—although the details of said blockade are generally glossed over in the media in favor of the myth that Israel unilaterally “withdrew” from the territory in 2005. In 2010, the BBC (6/21/10) listed some basic foodstuffs—pardon, potential “dual-use items”—that Israel had at different times in recent history blocked from entering Gaza, including pasta, coffee, tea, nuts and chocolate. In 2006, just a year after the so-called “withdrawal,” Israeli government adviser Dov Weissglas outlined the logic behind Israel’s restriction of food imports into Gaza: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Fast forward almost two decades, and it’s safe to say that the “idea” has evolved; this is a genocide, after all—even if the corporate media refuse to say the word—and starvation is part and parcel of that. But on account of Israel’s extra-special relationship with the United States, US media have institutionalized the practice of beating around the bush when it comes to documenting Israeli crimes. This is how we end up with the aforementioned long-winded headlines instead of, say, the far more straightforward “Israel is starving Gaza,” a Google search of which terms produces not a single corporate media dispatch, but does lead to a January 2024 report by that very name, courtesy of none other than the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.
‘Starving as negotiation tactic’
That said, there have been a few surprises. The New York Times (3/13/25), for example, took a short break from its longstanding tradition of unabashed apologetics for Israeli atrocities in allowing the following sentence to appear in a March opinion article by Megan Stack: “Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic.” In the very least, this was a vast improvement, in terms of syntactic clarity and assignation of blame, over previous descriptions of Israeli behavior immortalized on the pages of the US newspaper of record—like that time the Israeli military slaughtered four kids playing by the sea in Gaza, and the Times editors (7/16/14) went with the headline “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife.”
In the end, Israel’s starvation of the Gaza Strip is multifaceted. It’s not just about physically blocking the entry of food into the besieged enclave. It’s also about Israel’s near-total decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system: the bombardment of hospitals, the targeting of ambulances, the massacres of medical personnel (FAIR.org, 4/11/25). It’s about Israeli military attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and workers, including the April 2024 massacre of seven international employees of the food organization World Central Kitchen.
It’s about Israel razing agricultural areas, wiping out food production, devastating the fishing industry and depleting livestock. It’s about Israel bombing water infrastructure in Gaza. And it’s about Israeli troops slaughtering at least 112 desperate Palestinians queuing for flour on February 29, 2024 (FAIR.org, 3/22/24)—which was at least a quicker way of killing starving people than waiting for them to starve.
In his 2017 London Review of Books essay (6/15/17) on the use of famine as a weapon of war, Alex de Waal referenced the “physical debilitation of groups as a technique of genocide,” noting that “forced starvation was one of the instruments of the Holocaust.” It’s worth reflecting on the essay’s opening paragraph:
In its primary use, the verb “to starve” is transitive: It’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder. Mass starvation as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: Today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase “man-made famine” as if such events were unusual.
As for the current case of the Gaza Strip, US establishment journalists appear to be doing their best to avoid the transitive nature of the verb in question—or any subject-verb-object construction that might too overtly expose Israeli savagery. And by treating famine in Gaza as a subject unto itself, rather than a “technique of genocide,” to borrow de Waal’s words, the media assist in obscuring the bigger picture about this very man-made famine—which is that Israel is not just starving Gaza. Israel is exterminating Gaza.
Be wary of Google Search, especially on nuclear matters.
24 Apr 25 https://theaimn.net/be-wary-of-google-search-especially-on-nuclear-matters/
I’ve been meaning for a long time, to write about Google’s very pro-nuclear stance.
Then today, I found something that was both amusing and a wake-up call.
I have, for the past 16 years, run an anti-nuclear website – nuclear-news.net. Today, I typed into Google Search:
“who owns nuclear-news.net?”
And here is Google’s answer:
The online news service at nuclear-news.net, also known as World Nuclear News (WNN), is supported by the World Nuclear Association. WNN is based within the Association’s London Secretariat. The Association is an international industry organization with a global mandate to communicate about nuclear energy.
Well fancy that! I had no idea that WNN promoted the nuclear-free cause. Well of course, it doesn’t. Interestingly one does not “own” a website name, -one licenses it from a domain names company. Even if you make up the name yourself, as I did. And I still have the license. So – poo to the WNN.
And to Google. What a sad decline in morality! They started out with that noble motto: “Don’t Be Evil”
Back in 2008, if you typed “nuclear news” into Google Search – my website would come up at or very near the top. Google’s system then prioritised its list according to two considerations:
- That the website title accurately indicated its content.
- The number of viewings the website receives.
That system’s gone long ago, and Google has at least had the grace to abandon its former motto. Its now motto is “Do the right thing”.
Now isn’t that an interesting motto? Sounds similar to “Don’t Be Evil” – and yet, and yet ……. it’s not really the same. You see “the right thing” depends on who decides between right and wrong.
For a start, in today’s zeitgeist – the culture of economic growth – the right thing is what makes the most money. Therefore, Google correctly prioritises the websites that pay Google the most in sponsorship.
But that priority leads on to other considerations. For a company like Google, well, it’s essential to keep the most powerful economic interests onside. So, the weapons companies, Western militarism, the nuclear industry, and the other polluting industries get priority. And the Gazans and other impoverished communities don’t matter much.
Anyway, as I don’t pay Google any sponsorship money, my website comes up at something like page 154 on Google search , when looking for “nuclear news”.
I’m not writing this to get you to go to my website. And quite a healthy number of viewers do go there each day.
The thing is – be aware of Google’s priorities. They are not interested in the facts. We all knows that economic progress is more important than the truth, don’t we?
And at the same time, you might fairly accuse me of hypocrisy. I use Google Search all the time. It is tremendously useful . One just needs to be aware of the sources of information, and of Google keeping its nose clean by not too much offending the powerful and wealthy.
Pope Francis’ Obituaries Omit Focus on Palestine
rather than criticizing Francis’ attention to Gaza, the lengthy obituaries in the most prominent US newspapers ignored his advocacy for Palestinian rights entirely.
By relegating Francis’ compassion for Palestine to sidebars, as though it were only of transient interest, US outlets eliminated a central aspect of his papacy from that record.
Fair, Ari Paul, April 23, 2025
The obituaries for Pope Francis in the leading US newspapers ignored the late pontiff’s commitment to the Palestinian people and the acute suffering in Gaza in the last years of his life. Many of them ran separate pieces that highlighted Francis’ concern for Gaza and the response of Palestinians to his death, but they failed to mention these aspects of his papacy in the lengthy obituaries that summed up his life.
……………………………………………..regarding his outspoken concern for Gaza, the Times found room for not a word.
Obituaries at other major US newspapers also failed to include Francis’ Palestine focus.
……………………… Toward the end of Francis’ life, the head of the Catholic Church focused his attention on ongoing genocide in Gaza. “He used to call us at 7 p.m. every night. No matter how busy he was, no matter where he was, he always called,” George Anton, spokesperson for the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, told NPR (4/22/25). Reuters (4/22/25) ran the headline, “Gaza’s Christians ‘Heartbroken’ for Pope Who Phoned Them Nightly.” AP (4/21/25) called these communications his “frequent evening ritual,” noting that this “small act of compassion made a big impression on Gaza’s tiny Christian community.”
Francis was generally sympathetic to addressing political and human rights for Palestinians, and under his watch the Vatican recognized the state of Palestine (BBC, 5/13/15). He “suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people” (Reuters, 11/17/24). In his final Easter message, issued the day before his death, he called for a ceasefire in Gaza to end a conflict that “continues to cause death and destruction, and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation” (Truthout, 4/21/25).
‘Privileged a politicized version’
Not everyone in the press approved of this act of compassion when recalling his life and church leadership. In an editorial, the New York Post (4/21/25) criticized the “leftist” positions of the “deservedly beloved figure,” complaining that Francis “even went so far as to call for an investigation of Israel over its nonexistent genocide in Gaza.”
When it came to Francis’ support for Middle East peace generally, the Jerusalem Post (4/22/25) said in an editorial, “Time and again, Israel expressed dismay at the Vatican’s tendency to elevate Palestinian narratives while brushing aside Israeli concerns.” It complained that “the Vatican’s posture under Francis consistently privileged a politicized version of the Palestinian story over the complex reality on the ground.”
But rather than criticizing Francis’ attention to Gaza, the lengthy obituaries in the most prominent US newspapers ignored his advocacy for Palestinian rights entirely…………………………………………………………………..
regarding his outspoken concern for Gaza, the Times found room for not a word.
Obituaries at other major US newspapers also failed to include Francis’ Palestine focus.
………………………………………………The Wall Street Journal’s obituary (4/21/25) didn’t say anything about the topic either, though it said that Francis
made a priority of improving ties with the Islamic world, washing the feet of Muslims on Holy Thursday, visiting nine Muslim-majority countries and insisting that Islam was, like Christianity, a religion of peace.
The same is true with AP‘s obituary (4/21/25), which likewise commented instead that he “charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.” USA Today’s obituary (4/21/25) said Francis “sometimes took progressive or controversial stances on pressing issues, such as same-sex couples and climate change,” but it didn’t bring up Gaza.
By contrast, it was not hard to find references to Gaza in Francis’ obituaries in major non-US English-language outlets. The British Guardian (4/21/25) noted, “During his recent period in hospital, he kept up his telephone calls to the Holy Family church in Gaza, a nightly routine since 9 October 2023.” The Toronto-based Globe and Mail (4/21/25) included Palestine in a list of war-ravaged places Francis prayed for, and devoted most of a paragraph to his nightly Gaza calls. Reuters (4/21/25), headquartered in London and owned by Canada’s Thomson family, noted that Francis’ last Easter Sunday message “reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza—a conflict he had long railed against.”
Though the major US obituaries all ignored Gaza, the same outlets published separate articles on Francis and Gaza. USA Today (4/21/25) ran “Pope Francis Used Final Easter Address to Call for Gaza Ceasefire.” The Wall Street Journal (4/23/25) had “Pope Francis Kept Up Routine of Calling Gaza Until the End.” For the New York Times (4/22/25), it was “Even in Sickness, Pope Francis Reached Out to Gaza’s Christians.” AP (4/21/25) offered “Pope’s Frequent Calls to a Catholic Church Made Him a Revered Figure in War-Battered Gaza,” an article that appeared on the Washington Post‘s website (4/21/25).
These stand-alone pieces are welcome, and spotlight the importance of the Gaza crisis to Francis. But the official obituaries in these major outlets are meant to stand as a permanent record of Francis’ life and career. By relegating Francis’ compassion for Palestine to sidebars, as though it were only of transient interest, US outlets eliminated a central aspect of his papacy from that record.
Reuters not only had a stand-alone story (4/22/25) about Palestinians’ response to Francis’ death, but included his advocacy for Gaza in its main obituary (4/21/25) https://fair.org/home/pope-francis-obits-omit-focus-on-palestine/
Why Is The BBC Middle East Desk Run By A Mossad Collaborator?
Dorset Eye, 14th April 2025
A senior figure at the BBC’s Middle East desk, Raffi Berg, has been exposed as a former employee of a CIA propaganda division and a collaborator with Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, according to a detailed investigation by MintPress News.
Berg, who currently heads the BBC’s Middle East coverage, is facing growing internal criticism. At least thirteen BBC journalists have reportedly accused him of holding an overt bias in favour of Israel. Staff allege that Berg’s influence is so extensive that his role essentially revolves around “watering down” any reporting that might be overly critical of Israel. One source described him as wielding a “wild” degree of power within the newsroom.
A separate investigation published by Drop Site News in December disclosed that an atmosphere of “extreme fear” prevails at the BBC when it comes to covering stories critical of Israel, with Berg allegedly playing a central role in steering the network’s output towards what has been described as “systematic Israeli propaganda”.
Links to U.S. Intelligence
Before joining the BBC in 2001 as a writer and producer on the world news desk, Berg worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), according to MintPress News, which cited his LinkedIn profile and other corroborating sources.
The FBIS was part of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, tasked with monitoring, translating, and distributing open-source international news and information for U.S. government consumption. According to its publicly available profile, the FBIS played a key role in U.S. intelligence gathering.
Berg himself confirmed his association with the CIA during a 2020 interview with The Jewish Telegraph. Recounting his time at the FBIS, he revealed, “One day, I was taken to one side and told, ‘You may or may not know that we are part of the CIA, but don’t go telling people.’” I was absolutely thrilled. It wasn’t too much of a surprise because the application process was enormous — it took 10 months. They scrutinised my character and background meticulously, even asking whether I had visited communist countries and, if so, whether I had formed any relationships there.”
Mossad Collaboration
The revelations do not stop with Berg’s past ties to the CIA. The MintPress News investigation uncovered a significant professional entanglement between Berg and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. This relationship emerged during his work on Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort — a book recounting Mossad’s covert mission to smuggle Ethiopian Jews into Israel.
Berg openly acknowledged that the book was written “in collaboration” with Mossad commander Dani Limor…………………..
A Pattern of Pro-Israel Editorial Bias
According to MintPress News, Berg has consistently demonstrated overt sympathies towards Israel since the beginning of his tenure at the BBC. He was elevated to head of the Middle East desk shortly after instructing colleagues during Israel’s 2012 “Operation Cast Lead” to avoid language that could place “undue emphasis” on Israel’s role in the violence.
Operation Cast Lead saw Israel accused of widespread human rights violations, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the use of Palestinians as human shields, and the deployment of prohibited munitions such as white phosphorus.
Leaked emails revealed that Berg encouraged reporters to present the military assault as a response to rocket fire from Gaza, thus framing Hamas as the primary aggressor. MintPress noted this editorial slant as a clear effort to deflect blame from Israel.
More recently, during Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza — described by critics as a genocidal campaign — Berg is said to have transformed the BBC’s coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda”, according to a journalist cited by the Drop Site investigation.
“Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one journalist revealed. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [management] just ignore it.”
Berg has also been accused of making extensive editorial changes to reporters’ work before publication, frequently reframing narratives to downplay Israel’s culpability. A stark example involved the killing of Mohammed Bhar, a Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome who was fatally attacked by Israeli military dogs and denied medical assistance as he bled to death.
Under Berg’s direction, the BBC originally ran the headline: “The Lonely Death of Gaza Man with Down’s Syndrome”. Only after significant international backlash did the broadcaster amend the headline to acknowledge the circumstances of Bhar’s death.
Despite repeated internal grievances highlighting Berg’s bias and unprofessional conduct, the BBC has “offered unequivocal support for him and his work,” according to the MintPress report.
Media Whitewashing of Israeli Atrocities
The controversy surrounding Berg comes amid broader criticism of Western media outlets for whitewashing or downplaying Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The BBC is not alone in facing scrutiny; other networks have been accused of propagating misleading narratives supplied by Israeli officials.
An investigation by Al Jazeera in October last year revealed that CNN broadcast false claims that Hamas fighters had hidden captives inside Gaza’s al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital — claims that were based on documents presented by the Israeli military. In reality, the documents turned out to be an ordinary calendar showing the days of the week in Arabic, a fact that CNN’s own Palestinian producer had flagged internally.
Nevertheless, CNN aired the footage, with correspondent Nic Robertson uncritically accepting the Israeli army’s account.
For more info: Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator https://dorseteye.com/why-is-the-bbc-middle-east-desk-run-by-a-mossad-collaborator/
Documentary – “Atomic Secrets”
Dmitry Kalmykov is a Ukrainian scientist who has dedicated his life to eliminating environmental disasters, first at Chornobyl and now in Semipalatinsk, in Kazakhstan – formerly the Soviet Union’s primary nuclear weapons testing site. He teaches schoolchildren about how bombs were tested, and how – more than 30 years after the site was decommissioned – the community is only really beginning to understand radiation’s powerfully harmful effects. Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and the long shadow of a nuclear conflict across the region, Dmitry debates Kazakhstan’s nuclear future with its next generation
When will progressive media acknowledge and condemn US enabled genocide in Gaza?
April 14, 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL
When will the progressive media – namely the popular Rachael Maddow, Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell – acknowledge and condemn US enabled genocide in Gaza?
Every night millions of progressives and folks of good will tune in to these three MSNBC progressive stalwarts thirsting for moral clarity on the critical issues America, indeed humanity faces.
And every night for the past 560 days, Maddow, Hayes and O’Donnell have blotted out discussion of the most critical issue that should be Story One every night: the US enabled Israeli genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.
It commenced the day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel which provided Netanyahu the perfect casus belli to implement his long-sought goal: extending Greater Israel. It has destroyed every semblance of life for the remaining two million Palestinians not among the likely hundred thousand already dead.
It’s entering its final phase since Israel broke the temporary ceasefire to resume relentless bombing. Over 5,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded in the three weeks since. An average of 100 Palestinian children are obliterated daily. Israel has blocked all food, humanitarian aid and electricity to Gaza. Its military has seized half of Gaza and made two thirds “no go” zones for Palestinians seeking refuge. Soon all the Palestinians in Gaza will be dead or gone.
None of this could occur without America’s tens of billions in weapons, and US vetoes of UN resolutions to end the genocide, and the US’s refusal to support the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Netanyahu among other unrelenting support.
Instead of arresting indicted war criminal Netanyahu at the White House, Trump welcomed him to cooperate on plans to remove every Palestinian from Gaza, sending them to Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Somaliland or whatever dumping ground they can secure. It’s the most grisly genocidal ethnic cleansing since WWII.
Yet, night after night, while the slaughter goes on, Maddow, Hayes and O’Donnell and every pretend decent journalist on mainstream news turns away from the genocide occurring right before their eyes.
When will Maddow, Hayes, O’Donnell and the others acknowledge and condemn the US enabled genocide in Gaza? Likely never, for reasons they demur to offer.
Any journalist who ignores what is happening in Gaza might one day be haunted by their decision to keep their eyes wide shut.
Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics
Belén Fernández, April 11, 2025, https://fair.org/home/media-find-ways-to-minimize-israels-murder-of-paramedics/
Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond to a lethal Israeli attack on another ambulance, which had itself been attempting to rescue victims of an Israeli airstrike.
Eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense workers and one UN staff member were murdered by Israeli gunfire. Their mutilated bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave, their vehicles crushed and buried as well.
The initial Israeli narrative was that nine of the emergency responders were militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously…without headlights or emergency signals.”
As it turns out, however, all headlights and emergency signals were very much on—not that it’s fine to massacre people for driving with no lights, of course. When, after a week of negotiations with Israeli occupying forces, another convoy was finally permitted to access the mass grave and unearth the bodies, the mobile phone of massacre victim Rifat Radwan was found to contain footage of the lead-up to the assault, which shows the clearly marked rescue vehicles advancing with emergency lights on. A barrage of Israeli gunfire then persists for more than five minutes, as Radwan’s screen goes black and he bids farewell to his mother.
Following the release of the video footage, Israel conceded that perhaps its version of events had been partially “mistaken”—but only the claim about the headlights being off. The number of alleged “terrorists” on board was furthermore downgraded from nine to six, the other fatalities naturally being labeled human shields and therefore fundamentally the fault of Hamas.
Anyway, no one committing a genocide really cares about the precise identities of 15 people; mass indiscriminate killing is, after all, the whole point of the undertaking. Since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on March 18, the United Nations calculates that more than 100 children per day have been killed or injured in Gaza.
Ludicrous headlines
Notwithstanding reality, the Western corporate media somehow could not bring itself to report this particular massacre of medics without beating around the bush. The New York Times (4/4/25), for example, ran the following ludicrous headline: “Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On.” There was no room, apparently, to mention the role of Israel in said gunfire barrage, although the syntax implies that the ambulance lights may have perpetrated the killing.
The article’s subheadline specifies that “the UN has said Israel killed the workers”—and yet the singular attribution of this opinion to the United Nations is entirely confounding, given that the very first paragraph of the article itself states that the video “shows that the ambulances and fire truck… were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.”
For its part, NPR (4/5/25) went with its own similarly diplomatic headline: “Palestinian Medics Say a Video of Gaza Rescue Crews Under Fire Refutes Israeli Claims.” CNN (4/6/25) opted for: “Video Showing Final Moments of Gaza Emergency Workers Casts Doubt on Israeli Account of Killings.”
NBC News (4/7/25) reported that the Israeli military had “walked back its account of its killing of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in southern Gaza last month after video emerged that called into question its version of events”; the Washington Post (4/6/25) concurred that that Israel had “backtracked on its account…after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on.”
The Guardian (4/5/25), meanwhile, went as far as to assert that the cell phone footage, which “appears to contradict the version of events put forward” by the Israeli military, “appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle” and features “a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.” Imagine if all news reports were written in such roundabout fashion, e.g., “State officials say that what appears to be a bridge collapsed on Thursday into what appears to be a river.”
April 11, 2025
Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics
NBC (4/7/25) presented evidence that killed 15 aid workers and buried their bodies along with their vehicles as an IDF “mistake.”
Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond to a lethal Israeli attack on another ambulance, which had itself been attempting to rescue victims of an Israeli airstrike.
Eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense workers and one UN staff member were murdered by Israeli gunfire. Their mutilated bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave, their vehicles crushed and buried as well.
The initial Israeli narrative was that nine of the emergency responders were militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously…without headlights or emergency signals.”
As it turns out, however, all headlights and emergency signals were very much on—not that it’s fine to massacre people for driving with no lights, of course. When, after a week of negotiations with Israeli occupying forces, another convoy was finally permitted to access the mass grave and unearth the bodies, the mobile phone of massacre victim Rifat Radwan was found to contain footage of the lead-up to the assault, which shows the clearly marked rescue vehicles advancing with emergency lights on. A barrage of Israeli gunfire then persists for more than five minutes, as Radwan’s screen goes black and he bids farewell to his mother.
Following the release of the video footage, Israel conceded that perhaps its version of events had been partially “mistaken”—but only the claim about the headlights being off. The number of alleged “terrorists” on board was furthermore downgraded from nine to six, the other fatalities naturally being labeled human shields and therefore fundamentally the fault of Hamas.
Anyway, no one committing a genocide really cares about the precise identities of 15 people; mass indiscriminate killing is, after all, the whole point of the undertaking. Since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on March 18, the United Nations calculates that more than 100 children per day have been killed or injured in Gaza.
Ludicrous headlines
The New York Times‘ lead (4/4/25) says the aid workers were killed “when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire”—but the headline omits Israel altogether, and the subhead treats Israel’s responsibility as a UN accusation.
Notwithstanding reality, the Western corporate media somehow could not bring itself to report this particular massacre of medics without beating around the bush. The New York Times (4/4/25), for example, ran the following ludicrous headline: “Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On.” There was no room, apparently, to mention the role of Israel in said gunfire barrage, although the syntax implies that the ambulance lights may have perpetrated the killing.
The article’s subheadline specifies that “the UN has said Israel killed the workers”—and yet the singular attribution of this opinion to the United Nations is entirely confounding, given that the very first paragraph of the article itself states that the video “shows that the ambulances and fire truck… were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.”
For its part, NPR (4/5/25) went with its own similarly diplomatic headline: “Palestinian Medics Say a Video of Gaza Rescue Crews Under Fire Refutes Israeli Claims.” CNN (4/6/25) opted for: “Video Showing Final Moments of Gaza Emergency Workers Casts Doubt on Israeli Account of Killings.”
NBC News (4/7/25) reported that the Israeli military had “walked back its account of its killing of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in southern Gaza last month after video emerged that called into question its version of events”; the Washington Post (4/6/25) concurred that that Israel had “backtracked on its account…after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on.”
The Guardian (4/5/25), meanwhile, went as far as to assert that the cell phone footage, which “appears to contradict the version of events put forward” by the Israeli military, “appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle” and features “a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.” Imagine if all news reports were written in such roundabout fashion, e.g., “State officials say that what appears to be a bridge collapsed on Thursday into what appears to be a river.”
The New York Times on April 7 produced its own follow-up headline, “Video Shows Search for Missing Gaza Paramedics Before Israelis Shoot Rescuers”—thanks to which readers were presumably too busy trying to parse the grammar to think about anything else.
‘Not seen as fully human’
In the case of Israel, corporate media have institutionalized the practice of dancing around the straightforward statement of fact, which is why we never see headlines like “Israel Massacres 15 Palestinian Medics in Rafah,” or, obviously, any acknowledgement that Israel is currently perpetrating a genocide in Gaza (FAIR.org, 12/12/24). Thanks in large part to Israel’s oh-so-special relationship with the US, which happily bankrolls its crimes against humanity, the media have long grotesquely skewed reporting in Israel’s favor in order to validate the whole arrangement.
As Palestinian political analyst and playwright Ahmed Najar writes in a recent op-ed for Al Jazeera (4/6/25), the slaughter of the 15 medics and rescuers in Gaza matters because “their story is not just about one atrocity.” It’s about an entire system
in which Palestinians are presumed guilty. A system in which hospitals must prove they are hospitals, schools must prove they are schools and children must prove they are not human shields.
A system in which, “when Palestinians die, their families have to prove they weren’t terrorists first.” Najar concludes: “When Palestinians are not seen as fully human, then their killers are not seen as fully responsible.”
Western media insistence on giving ample space to Israel’s patently absurd arguments naturally doesn’t help matters—as when the Associated Press (4/6/25) allows an anonymous Israeli military official to contend that there was “no mistreatment” in the killing of the 15 medics. How could there ever be “mistreatment” in a genocide?
In its dispatch on how Israel “walked back” its account of the killing, NBC (4/7/25) quoted the Israeli military as saying that soldiers weren’t trying to “hide anything” by burying the 15 corpses, which is kind of like allowing someone caught holding up a bank with an AK-47 the opportunity to state that they weren’t trying to “steal anything.” From a journalistic standpoint, it makes no sense to grant credibility to a clearly disingenuous narrative. From a propaganda perspective, unfortunately, it does.
‘Good reason to be anxious’
In the end, the slaughter of these 15 men should come as no surprise; as of January, Israel had already killed more than 1,000 health workers in Gaza in a little over a year, while engaging in repeated attacks on hospitals and an obscene decimation of medical infrastructure. On April 1, the UN reported that 408 aid workers had also been killed since October 2023, including 280 UN staff.
Killing medical personnel and emergency responders has long been Israel’s modus operandi. Recall Razan al-Najjar, the 21-year-old Palestinian nurse fatally shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2018, when Israel claimed that unarmed Palestinian protesters were conducting “kite and balloon terrorism.”
Or recall Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which kicked off in Gaza in December 2008 and killed 1,400 Palestinians over a span of 22 days, among them 300 children. The brief assault left 16 medics dead and damaged more than half of Gaza’s hospitals. The Guardian (3/24/09) quoted the Israeli army as reasoning that “medics who operate in the area take the risk upon themselves”—to hell with the Geneva Conventions.
To be sure, war crimes are all in a day’s work for Israel—and covering them up is, it seems, all in a day’s work for the corporate media. In a dispatch about how Israel “acknowledged flaws” in its “mistaken” account of its killing of the rescue workers, the New York Times‘ Isabel Kershner (4/6/25) cited Israeli military affairs analyst Amos Harel on how the Israeli soldiers who did the killing “had ‘good reason to be anxious,’ and that it would be wrong to assume immediately that the case was one of ‘murder in cold blood.’”
Naturally, it would be inhumane to assume that any aspect of genocide might transpire in cold blood. And as Israel continues its quest to normalize total depravity, Western journalism is becoming ever more cold-blooded, too.
Canada supplied uranium for atomic bombs in WWII — 80 years later, the cleanup continues
Gordon Edwards, 6 Apr 25
Atomic Reaction is a documentary feature film dealing with the radioactive history and contamination of the town of Port Hope Ontario, located on the North shore of Lake Ontario just east of Toronto.
Here is a YouTube of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jC1DPOYoQ0
Canada played a key role in chemically refining uranium from Canada and the Congo for use in the first two atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Canada then became the largest supplier and exporter of uranium in the world, in the post-war period, most of it sold for tens of thousands of nuclear warheads during the Cold War, until the sale of Canadian uranium for nuclear weapons was ended by Prime Miniister Pearson in 1965.
In the process, the town of Port Hope (where all this refining took place until 1980) became thoroughly contaminated with radioactive wastes that were carelessly discarded and dispersed all about town – dumped into the harbour and into open ravines about town, used in roadways and mingled with the sandy beach, and used in huge quantities as construction material and as fill for up to a thousand buildings – homes, schools, offices, throughout town – requiring a massive radioactive cleanup costing over two billion dollars, resulting in two surface mounds of about a million tons each which will remain highly radiotoxic for many thousands of years to come. The cleanup is stlll ongoing today.
A similarly sized mound of radioactive waste is currently planned for the cleanup of the Chalk River Laboratories, created near the end of World War 2 as a secret site for producing plutonium for the US bomb program among other things. Canada sold plutonium to the US military for weapons purposes.
For 20 years after the end of World War 2. The Chalk River megadump has been approved by Canada’s Nuclear regulator, but two of three court challenges have been successful in delaying the implementation pending legally required consultations with the Algonquin peoples on whose traditional land the megadump would be located, and pending the careful evaluation of alternative sites or waste management options that will not destroy the habitat of several endangered species.
The US hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons must stop
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
By Victor Gilinsky, Leonard Weiss | March 21, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/the-us-hypocrisy-about-israels-nuclear-weapons-must-stop/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel%20s%20nuclear%20weapons&utm_campaign=20250324%20Monday%20Newsletter
An extraordinary three-part series on Israeli television, The Atom and Me, lays out how the country got its nuclear weapons. It takes for granted what anyone who pays attention has known for years. But the series goes well beyond a general discussion about Israel’s nuclear weapons. It shows the country’s single-minded determination to get the bomb no matter what it took, including stealing nuclear explosives and bomb components from the United States and violating a major nuclear arms control treaty to which Israel is a party—and lying about it.
As the Trump administration is in serious discussion about joining Israel in attacks on Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons, it is useful to shed illusions about Israel’s modus operandi.
US officials stay mute. A thread running through the three episodes is a continuing conversation, before he died in 2018, with Benjamin Blumberg, the head of Lakam, the Israeli scientific intelligence agency responsible for the nuclear missions that led to the Israeli bomb, some so secret they were kept from the Mossad. (Mossad is the Israeli agency that handles foreign intelligence collection and covert action.) Blumberg was in failing health and agreed to talk so long as the interview was not aired until after his death.
That conversation is mixed with archival material and recent interviews. The significance of the series lies not in showing what was not previously known—although there are details in that category—but in the admissions on Israeli public television, with the approval of the Israeli censors, about events that have been denied by Israel’s supporters in the United States, including the US government.
Several events discussed in the television series deal directly with the United States: the theft in the 1960s of bomb quantities of uranium 235 from the NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania, where the leaders of the Israeli team that spirited Eichmann out of Argentina appeared inexplicably in 1968 with false identities; the illicit purchase of hundreds of high-speed switches (krytrons) for triggering nuclear weapons, and spiriting them out of the country in the 1980s by Israeli spy and arms dealer, and by then Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan; and, most significantly at this point, Israel’s 1979 nuclear test in the seas off South Africa of what appears to be the initial fission stage for a thermonuclear weapon. The nuclear test violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to which Israel is a party.
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Not since John Kennedy has any US president tried to rein in Israel’s nuclear program. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not challenge the Israelis on nuclear issues (and covered up Israel’s attempt during the 1967 six-day war to sink the US spy ship Liberty). Such has been Israel’s political clout in the United States.
No one was ever charged in the disappearance of nuclear material from NUMEC. When the issue of Israel’s involvement arose again in 1976, President Gerald Ford’s attorney general suggested to the president the possibility of charging US officials, presumably in the Atomic Energy Commission, with failing to report a felony. But it was too late. Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter, who let the matter drop. Milchan was never charged for the filching of krytrons even though he later bragged about his arms dealing and spying for Israel. And Carter—and every US president after him—took no enforcement action in response to the illegal 1979 nuclear test.
The United States’ indulgence of Israeli nuclear weapons has not escaped international attention, and the evident hypocrisy has undermined US nonproliferation policy. The US government’s public position continues to be that it does not know anything about Israeli nuclear weapons, and this will apparently continue until Israel releases the United States’ gag. This policy is allegedly enforced by a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel brags about its nukes. Ironically, the Israelis feel free to allude to their nuclear weapons whenever they find it useful. The best example is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2016 speech on receipt of the Rahav, the latest submarine supplied by Germany. The Times of Israel, using the standard “according to foreign reports,” described the submarine as “capable of delivering a nuclear payload.” In his speech, Netanyahu said, “Above all else, our submarine fleet acts as a deterrent to our enemies … They need to know that Israel can attack, with great might, anyone who tries to harm it.” How else, other than with nuclear weapons, can a submarine be a deterrent? The submarines’ long-range cruise missiles could not only hit Iran’s capital, Tehran, Israel’s main security concern, they could also hit any European capital.
Those submarine-based cruise missiles—if they exist—might be tipped with thermonuclear warheads, which are also carried on planes and ground-based rockets. Light-weight thermonuclear weapons allow flexibility in delivery, but the two-stage designs are highly sophisticated. The Israelis logically decided that they had to conduct at least one low-yield fission test—even though they had promised not to do this—to be sure their first stage produced the radiation that would initiate the thermonuclear fuel in the second stage.
In the last episode of the Israeli television series, journalist Meir Doron, who has written on Israel’s security secrets, says: “After the nuclear test, for the first time, the heads of the Israeli nuclear program, Blumberg, Shimon Peres, and all the people from the reactor, could sleep soundly at night. They knew that what they’re building works.”
While Israel did not sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it signed and ratified the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which obligates parties not to explode a nuclear device in the atmosphere or oceans. Such a test also triggers a nonproliferation provision of US law, the 1977 Glenn Amendment (Sec.102 (B) to the Arms Export Control Act), that imposes severe sanctions on any country (other than the five approved in the NPT) that explodes a nuclear device after 1977. Upon learning of such an explosion, the president is supposed to impose the wide-ranging sanctions “forthwith.” That, of course, did not happen.
The nuclear explosion’s characteristic two-hump signal was detected by a US satellite on September 22, 1979, and US intelligence agencies were convinced Israel was the culprit. President Carter did not want to risk his ongoing Middle East policy efforts by blaming Israel. The White House asked a group of scientists whether the detected light flash could somehow have been unconnected with a nuclear explosion. The scientists came up with some ideas that gave the president a public out. At the same time, the White House kept classified Navy reports on ocean sound waves from the explosion that supported the satellite data. And Carter wrote in his diary: “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa.” All this was essentially a cover-up.
The Glenn Amendment allows the president to delay sanctions on national security grounds or waive them entirely with the help of congressional action. The law does not allow the president to ignore it. But that is exactly what all of them have done.
The price of silence. The US government’s silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons has meant silence about them in discussions on Iran’s nuclear program. Public debate is an essential part of US policy development and, in the case of Iran, is hobbled by an inability to have an honest appraisal of the nature and purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
The inability to have honest public discussion allows for the pretense by Israel and its supporters that it faces an existential threat from Iran, which is ready to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv as soon as it gets one. Various aspects of the Iran issue are hidden by an inability to weigh all the elements of policy needed to arrive at an intelligent US policy.
The US government’s silence has also taught the press to avoid the issue. The last time a White House correspondent asked about Israeli nuclear weapons, even then indirectly, was when Helen Thomas asked President Obama in 2009 whether he knew of any nuclear weapons in the Middle East. She got a chilly non-response—Obama said he was not going to speculate.
An exception to the general lack of press interest in the issue is a 2018 New Yorker report by Adam Entous, revealing how US presidents have signed secret letters to the Israelis promising to do nothing to interfere with Israel’s nuclear weapons or acknowledge their existence.
Israel claims this US obligation flows from a “deal” made by Nixon and Golda Meir in their 1969 meeting during the 15 minutes when they were alone. William Quandt, Kissinger’s aide at the time, says in the third episode, “There is no documentary record on the American side to this day. No one else was in the room.” Nor has any Israeli record appeared. Without any record, there can be no enduring obligation.
So why did US presidents go along with the Israeli version of the US obligation, including denying any knowledge about Israeli nuclear weapons, long after it ceased to be in the United States’s interest to do so? Entous reported that when Trump first entered office in 2017 his staff was confronted by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (a former American who switched allegiance to Israel). He is said to have acted “like he owned the place,” but it worked. He got his way.
The single-mindedness of the Israeli establishment—that what it thinks is best for Israel overrides all other considerations—is caught at the end of the third television episode. The conversation with Benjamin Blumberg turns to Israel’s more-than-amicable relations with apartheid-era South Africa, from which it got uranium to fuel the Dimona reactor and later permission to conduct the 1979 nuclear test, and to which Israel provided tritium to upgrade South Africa’s nuclear weapons. He is asked, was not South Africa an oppressive racist regime? “All true,” said Blumberg, “but what do I care. I wanted what was best for Israel.” It’s time to realize that what is “best for Israel” is not necessarily good for the United States.
Editor’s note: Victor Gilinsky was a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the events in question. Leonard Weiss was a long-term aide to Senator Glenn and the author of the first version of the Glenn Amendment. They both appear in the mentioned Israeli TV series.
Book- Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump
Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump. March 2025
World-famous political analyst and editor Thierry Meyssan draws on his last 10 years in the thick of the action in Syria and Libya, where he served personally as an adviser to those governments. In “Before Our Very Eyes,” he shares the inside story of the 21st century regime change wars.
He lays bare the “Arab Spring,” the “revolutions” against Gaddafi and Assad, and the rapid rise of the jihadist monster ISIS, as masked operations of the US empire, “leading from behind.”
In “Before Our Very Eyes” he chronicles the onslaught against Syria and Libya, from the viewpoints of three camps: the foolish ambitions of the French neocolonialists, the fanaticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the lust for world domination of the Anglo-Zionist-American Empire.
We see how the Anglo-American axis (the US, UK, and Israel discreetly behind the scenes) deployed their iron grip on the world’s money and media to propagate a fake scenario of human rights violations. This was the cover story for the real scheme — to utterly disable the Muslim world by bringing it under the sword of fanatics like the Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Vassal regimes like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the Emirates were assigned to do the heavy lifting.
For public relations purposes, the US pretended to fight half-heartedly against ISIS – which in fact it had intentionally created in Iraq, to divide and conquer the insurgency. The US then covertly ferried the terrorists into Libya and Syria. It continues to prop up ISIS by devious means. Thus the wars on Libya and Syria were based on treachery and fakery from start to finish – but the suffering of millions of innocent victims is all too real. A most murderous masquerade!
Memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei: “The Age of Deception”
MEHR 17th March 2025 TEHRAN, Mar. 15 (MNA) – Firouzeh Doroshti has translated the memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei, who served as the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the book titled ‘The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.
The book “The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times” which includes the memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei from his three terms as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been translated by Firouzeh Doroshti and is now available in bookstores across the country.
This book takes a scrutinizing approach to nuclear diplomacy in a tumultuous phase of modern history.
The book “The Age of Deception” is viewed as a crucial resource for gaining insight into the complicated nature of nuclear diplomacy. ……
Mohammad ElBaradei, an Egyptian-born Lawyer, was the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the longest-serving Director General, who got the honour of becoming Director General Emeritus of the agency towards the end of his service.
The book is a compelling account of chronological events and challenges faced by the IAEA during his tenure.
The book covers three decades of his work on cases including Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Iran, and Pakistan, and exposes double standards adopted by the U.S. and other Western nations.
It sheds light on the behind-the-scenes workings of international organizations and the challenges of maintaining neutrality in a politically charged environment.
The book shows how ElBaradei felt that different standards were being applied to different countries’ nuclear programs.
Arguments in his book revolve around the three underlying principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
These essential facets of the treaty include the pledge by the (non–nuclear) members not to try and obtain or develop nuclear weapons, a sincere effort on the part of all members to lead the world towards complete disarmament, and thirdly to facilitate the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes in all member countries with particular consideration for the needs of developing countries.
Reported by Tohid Mahmoudpour https://en.mehrnews.com/news/229527/Memoirs-of-Mohamed-ElBaradei-The-Age-of-Deception
British journalists are celebrating the lack of opposition to war in parliament.
US Rep. Eric Swalwell let the cat out of the bag when he admitted on CNN that Ukraine was the “greatest return on investment for any military expenditure ever” because it bled the Russian economy and military and didn’t cost a single American life.
We are told this is healthy, but it’s anything but…
Ricky Hale and Council Estate Media, Mar 06, 2025, [Excellent tweet excerpts , references and graphics] https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/british-journalists-are-celebrating?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1336368&post_id=158430860&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
We are seeing consent for World War III being manufactured before our eyes, and even if you think war is unavoidable, even if you’re convinced that Russia is so dangerous, war is the only way to stop it from conquering Europe, you should listen to anti-war voices.
Now more than ever, you should listen to the other side of the argument because if we’re right, it could help avert nuclear catastrophe, and if we’re wrong, well, war happens anyway. The approach of the warmongers guarantees war whereas the approach of the peacemakers is the only way to avoid war. Shouldn’t we at least give peace a try?
We have violated peace agreement after peace agreement with Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, and make no mistake, those violations were not moments of recklessness, they were deliberate provocations. We were seeing what we could get away with.
I’ve seen viral memes bragging about how we expanded NATO to Russia’s doorstep and broke red line after red line and Putin didn’t retaliate so we should bring Ukraine into NATO. This overlooks that NATO expansion was one of the key factors that led to war.
After 30-odd years of inaction from Russia, our encroachment eventually provoked a massive retaliation. So here’s a thought, could we just make a peace deal and honour it and see what happens? Could we try that? What’s the worst that could happen? The deal fails and we end up fighting Russia? We’re fighting Russia anyway!
While Sir Keir Starmer is doing his war is peace thing, mainstream media propagandists are falling over themselves to cheer him on. One of the worst culprits yesterday was Lewis Goodall who couldn’t hide his delight that anti-war voices are being ignored.
For those who don’t know, Goodall is one of the hosts of the News Agents, which I’m told is the number one podcast in the UK. Prior to that, Goodall was political correspondent at Sky News and policy editor of BBC Newsnight. Goodall came out with one of the worst political takes I’ve seen in quite some time, a take that received a huge online backlash.
Goodall was celebrating that there is almost no divergence of thought in our politics on a matter as serious as war. He was celebrating the groupthink and lack of dissenting voices as healthy. He seemed to think only other countries have tyrants while our tyrant has actively participated in the Gaza genocide and stamped out dissent at home.
Goodall’s simplistic takes on Russia and Ukraine explain why he was so successful in the mainstream media: he blindly parrots establishment narratives with no attempt at nuance. If someone like him ever attempted nuance, they would never make it into those positions. Only loyal servants of the empire rise to prominence in the mainstream media, and those who dissent are rarely given the platform to speak.
One of the absurd aspects of Goodall’s post is that clearly not everyone wants to see peace. Sir Keir Starmer could have simply issued a statement pushing for a peace deal, yet he chose to invoke the Iraq war, talk of boots on the ground, and planes in the air, and use the most provocative language possible. Starmer and European leaders were openly hostile to peace negotiations from the start and we’re now pretending they want peace?
Starmer’s supporters say a peace deal would mean the “capitulation” of Ukraine and then they demand the capitulation of Russia! They argue that it’s perfectly reasonable to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, but NATO encroaching on Moscow’s doorstep was precisely why the war started!
A neoliberal’s idea of peace is demanding that Russia surrenders to NATO. They are not remotely interested in compromise because if they wanted a settlement, they would have honoured the Minsk Agreements.
There is no way Starmer’s advisors would not have told him boots on the ground would mean war with Russia. This was not a clumsy use of words, it was a deliberate provocation. The only question is does he intend to go through with it? War with Russia isn’t realistic at present because we don’t have the numbers or the equipment to put up any serious fight.
It is for this reason I don’t expect World War III to happen in the immediate future. As I said in my last article, I think Europe’s neoliberals might wait until the end of Trump’s term and hope for an anti-Russia president. Hopefully, things will have fizzled out by then, but for now, the ruling class does not want us talking World War III down. They want us ready to be their foot soldiers in case they decide to do something crazy.
Have you noticed how we’re not seeing a word of caution from mainstream journalists, not even a “maybe World War III is not such a good idea” or “perhaps our approach is not the best way to avoid it”? There is no caution, simply the narrative that Starmer is looking statesman-like and anyone outside the groupthink is basically a traitor. How is this healthy?
Not only did we see Starmer invoking the illegal invasion of Iraq that killed over a million people, we saw a Tory MP invoking World War 1.
We are not supposed to hear the counter-arguments to Starmer’s position because those arguments would make the public think twice. People have to be convinced there is no alternative to war with Russia before they will go along with it. They have to be convinced that Russia is a supreme evil and Ukraine is noble and pure. This explains the following response from Lewis Goodall: [on original]
This dumbing down of the conversation is very deliberate. Lewis Goodall is far too intelligent to think this is all there is to it, but he talks this way anyway. Putin is ready to negotiate a settlement and it is European leaders who are unwilling. Zelensky knows that if he agrees to peace, the neo-Nazis will probably hang him from a tree.
US Rep. Eric Swalwell let the cat out of the bag when he admitted on CNN that Ukraine was the “greatest return on investment for any military expenditure ever” because it bled the Russian economy and military and didn’t cost a single American life. Who cares that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died? If this was simply a fight for Ukrainian liberation, Swalwell would not have used this framing. Make no mistake, this was always about leading Russia into a trap and Ukrainians were simply our pawns.
John Pilger wrote for the Guardian in 2014 about how our backing of neo-Nazis in Ukraine was leading to war with Russia. Many western officials echoed the sentiments. If anyone echoes those sentiments today, they will be dismissed as a Putin puppet, sacked from their jobs and driven out of public life.
We are not allowed to talk about how concerned the media used to be that we were arming and training the Ukrainian far right. We are not allowed to talk about how they pressured Zelensky into taking a more hostile stance towards Russia. We are not allowed to talk about the things the media used to talk about like the neo-Nazi problem in the Ukrainian military, or the fact Ukraine is Europe’s most corrupt country, or how Kyiv bombed eastern Ukraine for eight years and received widespread criticism for all of these things. We are now told Ukraine is a beacon of “liberal democracy” and ironically it is.
None of this is to say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was deserved: provoked and deserved are two very different things. The Ukrainian people don’t deserve to be caught in the middle of a conflict between two superpowers that we have deliberately kept going.
We are not allowed any dissenting opinions on war, any acknowledgement of where we might have gone wrong, or any criticism of Ukraine or Zelensky. If you think that NATO and Ukraine and Zelensky have been perfect all the way, you are not a thinking adult. Real life doesn’t work like that and aside from anything else, NATO’s track record of intervention is abysmal. There is no reason to think another intervention would be any better.
If you can’t accept that NATO has been imperfect (to say the least), you must ask why debate is shut down and why those who attempt debate are labelled as Putin puppets and worse. What does the establishment have to fear from debate if it has the correct arguments?
I’m old enough enough to remember when politicians pretended to respect the importance of debate, when it was acknowledged that it was essential to the healthy functioning of society, but propagandists like Goodall are now telling us that lack of debate is actually healthy!
History tells us that whenever there is a lack of debate in our politics, whenever the parties agree on something, it rarely ends well for the working class and often a lot of people end up dying. Everyone should understand that the people who committed a genocide are demanding your blind obedience on their other war. Does this sound like a good idea to you?
Film Review- Special Operation: The Invasion of Chornobyl
Sebastian Zaval, February 17, 2025,
https://loudandclearreviews.com/special-operation-film-review/
Oleksiy Radynski’s Special Operation (Spetsialna Operatsiia) is a chilling experiment in documentary narrative that tries to speak for itself.
Based on 1000 hours of real-life CCTV footage, Oleksiy Radynski’s Special Operation (Spetsialna Operatsiia) manages to show us things “as they were” when Russian troops occupied Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on February 24, 2022.
Just like most documentaries, Special Operation includes a narrative and a point of view, but Radynski’s movie also does make a point of trying to remain as neutral as possible, allowing the viewer to be a spectator of all the things these soldiers and their superiors did during their five weeks stuck at the plant. The result is a fascinating experiment in documentary narrative that’s hard to watch at moments.
Now, the movie tries to be a sort of summary of all that happened when the Russian troops occupied the place, showing the viewer pretty much everything they did. We see as they arrive with tanks and weapons, trying to look as intimidating as possible. But most fascinatingly, we see them as people, not as particularly tough-looking goons. One of the aims of Special Operation is to show the viewer that these Russian invaders weren’t as efficient or intelligent as they were supposed to be, and looked rather lost most of the time.
It’s an interesting prospect, then, having the opportunity to watch the humanisation of an invading force. It’s not the sort of humanisation that turns these soldiers into three-dimensional figures with which one can empathise, but rather the kind that turns them into bumbling, clueless criminals. Special Operation shows the people who were supposed to be smart and powerful as vulnerable; as a force that arrived in a place without knowing what to do or how to do it. The fact that Radynski managed to get 1000 hours of footage of everything they did should tell us all about their efficiency; apparently, they weren’t even able to turn off or destroy most of the CCTV cameras at the plant.
Now, the fact that Special Operation is told exclusively through CCTV footage is quite fascinating. The viewer gets a birds-eye view of everything: the entrance to the plant, the exteriors, even the hallways and rooms. We see the Russian soldiers from afar, but at times, also closely, which means we see their faces and for a bit, even their bodies. Watching Special Operation almost feels like an out-of-body experience, as if we were passively watching something prohibited and dark, without being able to do anything about it.
Additionally, since CCTV cameras usually don’t record sound, Radynski collaborated with top Lithuanian-based sound artist Vladimir Golovnitski, who designed the film’s soundscape. This results in a completely plausible experience, in which the viewer never really notices the sound design – which is, of course, the whole point of Golovnitski’s work. There are footsteps and unintelligible conversations and even explosions in the background, outside the frame. Thus, the movie manages to create quite an oppressive atmosphere without ever feeling manipulative, complementing the realistic visual style and editing with an equally realistic soundscape.
Barely an hour long, Special Operation is short enough to not end up testing the viewer’s patience, but long enough to feel like a precise and largely neutral account of what happened in Chornobyl in 2022. It obviously has an anti-Russian invasion point of view, but it doesn’t try to convey it in an obvious or artless way, instead letting the real-life footage speak for itself as the viewer sees everything the invaders did for five weeks. Special Operation is not a movie for everyone, and it does demand quite a bit of patience and critical analysis from the viewer, but those who give it a chance will find themselves glued to the screen, considering the actions of these war criminals at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.
‘Acres of Clams’- New documentary tells story of the Clamshell Alliance
“Acres of Clams” can be viewed, free of charge, on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPuE9oKh6-I&t=198s.
by Anne Alpert, InDepthNH.org
For two weeks in the spring of 1977, New Hampshire was at the center of national attention. No, it had nothing to do with the first-in-the-nation primary. The matter that grabbed headlines was the arrest of 1415 people who had peacefully taken over the construction site of a proposed nuclear power plant in Seabrook. After being taken away on buses and National Guard trucks and processed at the Portsmouth Armory, the protesters were delivered to four other armories, where, refusing to pay bail, they engaged in a battle of wills with the stubbornly pro-nuclear governor, Meldrim Thomson.
The group behind the protest was a ragtag New England-wide coalition that called itself the Clamshell Alliance, members of which called themselves “Clams.” How it was able to take on a governor and a powerful industry through nonviolent protest, music, and well-deployed humor is the story told in “Acres of Clams,” a new documentary written, produced and narrated by Eric Wolfe.
“You might find this story hard to believe. Hell, I was there, and I hardly believe it myself,” Wolfe says at the outset. He weaves his story from personal memories, archival photos and footage, and a series of oral history videos captured by Steve Thornton at Clamshell reunions held a few decades later. …………………………………………………..
The Clams were deadly serious about the importance of stopping the spread of technology which would threaten to spew radiation across a heavily populated region. But Clamshell was also a good-natured movement, which Wolfe points out stood in marked contrast to angry anti-war protests in which he had participated just a few years earlier.
…………………………………………………………… But this was not a group of terrorists. All of them had been trained in nonviolence and agreed to what were called, “the guidelines,” in essence a code of discipline for participants, including no use of illegal drugs, no weapons, no running, no dogs, and no damage to the property at the construction site. Everyone knew they would probably get arrested.
………………………………………………………………………….“Acres of Clams” is not a documentary about nuclear power, still a controversial way to generate electricity, and one which the Clams I know still passionately oppose. If you’re interested in up-to-date information on why nukes aren’t the answer to climate catastrophe any more than they were the answer to oil imports in the 1970s, check out Beyond Nuclear, a group co-founded by Paul Gunter, who never stopped fighting nukes. And check out ClamshellAlliance.com, a relatively new website created to keep the group’s legacy alive and foster ongoing activism. What Wolfe set out to do, and succeeded, was to tell the story of a movement that flourished for several years and made history.
……………………………………… I think Wolfe has done a great job showing that disciplined nonviolence, humor, cultural expression, smart political judgment, good timing, and a certain amount of luck could produce what might appear to be magic: a grassroots social movement that can take on and defeat a multi-billion-dollar industry backed by the state and federal governments. And that’s a story that’s not just about nuclear dangers.
“Acres of Clams” can be viewed, free of charge, on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPuE9oKh6-I&t=198s.
Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.
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