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By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

China has become the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

China replaces Britain in the top five arms-dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, a group dominated by the United States and Russia, which accounted for 30 percent and 26 percent of weapons exports, SIPRI said Monday March 13.

Germany and France ranked third and fourth on the arms exporter list.

“China is establishing itself as a significant arms supplier to a growing number of important recipient states,” Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, said in a statement.

Commenting on the SIPRI report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was a responsible arms exporter which strictly adhered to international law.

“On arms exports, China sticks to three principles. First, that it is conducive to the recipient country’s justifiable self-defense needs. Second, it does not damage regional and global peace, security and stability. Third, it does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

Chinese attack helicopters, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and air defenses were on public show for the first time at the Zhuhai air show in southern China in November 2017.

The SIPRI report showed China delivered major arms to 48 countries in the past five years, with Pakistan topping the list, followed by Bangladesh and Algeria.

“Pakistan – which accounted for 55 percent of Chinese arms exports – is likely to remain the largest recipient of Chinese arms in the coming years due to large outstanding and planned orders for combat aircraft, submarines and frigates,” SIPRI said.

Myanmar received 8 percent of China’s weapons exports. Bangladesh received 7 percent of the arms while Algeria, Venezuela and Morocco have bought Chinese-made frigates, aircraft or armored vehicles in the past several years.

After decades of steep increases in military spending and cash injections into domestic contractors, experts say some Chinese-made equipment is now comparable to Russian or Western counterparts.

Chinese military drones in UAE

Defense analysts believe that the Chinese drone, the Wing Loong II, is now being used by the United Arab Emirates military while the UAE remains barred from buying weaponized drones from the United States, the Associated Press reports.

That purchase, as well as Abu Dhabi hosting the drone exhibition and conference last month in the Emirati capital, shows the power these weapons now hold across the Middle East, the AP said.

Top UAE officials, including Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, were on hand for the drone conference, held last month.

Al-Dhafra Air Base near Abu Dhabi, which hosts some of the 5,000 American troops in the UAE, is also home to some of the US military’s unmanned aircraft that flew missions over Iraq and Syria.

Chief among those aircraft is the Predator, built by San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics. The UAE previously bought some US$200 million worth of surveillance-only Predator drones from General Atomics.

The Obama administration opposed selling the UAE armed versions of the Predator under the Missile Technology Control Regime, a 30-year-old agreement that aims to limit the spread of missile technology.

But that apparently did not stop the UAE from buying weaponized drones. Satellite photographs taken of a mysterious Emirati airbase in the country’s deep south – a desert area known as the in the Empty Quarter – appear to show three Wing Loong IIs there, according to a January article by IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly.

U.S. remains the largest arms exporter

In 2013–17 the USA accounted for 34 per cent of total arms exports, according to SIPRI. Its arms exports increased by 25 per cent between 2008–12 and 2013–17. US arms exports in 2013–17 were 58 per cent higher than those of Russia—the second largest arms exporter in that period.

It may be pointed out that SIPRI presents data for 5-year periods.

The USA supplied major arms to 98 states in 2013–17. Exports to states in the Middle East accounted for 49 per cent of total US arms exports in that period.

Arms exports by Russia decreased by 7.1 per cent between 2008–12 and 2013–17. France increased its arms exports by 27 per cent between the two periods and was the third largest arms exporter in 2013–17. Arms exports by Germany—the fourth largest exporter in 2013–17—fell by 14 per cent between 2008–12 and 2013–17. However, German arms exports to the Middle East increased by 109 per cent.

Despite its continuing tensions with India and ongoing internal conflicts, Pakistan’s arms imports decreased by 36 per cent between 2008–12 and 2013–17. Pakistan accounted for 2.8 per cent of global arms imports in 2013–17. Its arms imports from the USA dropped by 76 per cent in 2013–17 compared with 2008–12.

‘The tensions between India, on the one side, and Pakistan and China, on the other, are fuelling India’s growing demand for major weapons, which it remains unable to produce itself,’ said Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. ‘China, by contrast, is becoming increasingly capable of producing its own weapons and continues to strengthen its relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar through arms supplies.’

European states remain the main arms exporters to the Middle East region and supplied over 98 per cent of weapons imported by Saudi Arabia.’

In 2013–17 Saudi Arabia was the world’s second largest arms importer, with arms imports increasing by 225 per cent compared with 2008–12. Arms imports by Egypt—the third largest importer in 2013–17—grew by 215 per cent between 2008–12 and 2013–17. The United Arab Emirates was the fourth largest importer in 2013–17, while Qatar (the 20th largest arms importer) increased its arms imports and signed several major deals in that period.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net).

14 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/14/china-becomes-worlds-fifth-largest-arms-exporter/

By Dhammika Silva

Since long time Sinhalese Extremists such as Bodhu Bala Sena, Sinhala Ravaya and Sinhala Lay(lion blood) have been very tactfully propagating racism and violence against Sri Lankan Muslims. In that long process recently few clashes between two groups occurred on 22nd February based on a minor traffic accident between a lorry and a three wheeler in Teldeniya near kandy. Due to that accident one Sinhala person called A. G. Kumarasinghe, a lorry driver died in hospital after his fight with four Muslim youth. After a couple of days of that accident and soon after his funeral, organised by unidentified outfits, thousands of people got into the streets against Muslims, rampaging violently causing huge damages in a very well pre-planned manner to Muslims’ properties such as shops, residences and Mosques on 4th and 5th of March in Teldeniya, Dhigana Moragahamula and nearby suburbs.

Following this yet another incident occurred in Ampara on 26th February, this incident was based on an incident which involving an ordinary hotel run by a Muslim. A Sinhalese person had gone to this hotel in the late hours just before that hotel was shutting, and asked for some meals including beef curry which was not available. Anyhow that hotel owner managed to offer him those meals in which that Sinhalese person had found something other than beef which the customer suspected to be a chemical to make men impotent. The said customer went on to accuse the hotel owner that he had deliberately mixed the said “impotency trigger” chemical to make Sinhalese people childless and to reduce Sinhalese population growth rate. Later he has called his supporters who were Sinhalese extremists and they all together have started to attack and set fire that hotel,and some other shops belonging to Muslims, they rampaged vehicles and finally a Mosque close to the Police station there.

These incidents are not isolated it has a history. Likewise, a clash occurred in Gintota of Galle District on 17th November 2017. That incident too was based on another minor motor bike accident whichwas amicably resolved immediately by both parties. But these organised Sinhalese Extremists within few days created a violent situation in that area and assaulted Muslims, set fire, robbed several shops, burnt around 60 houses of Muslims and few Mosques there too.

Sinhalese Extremists purposely and in a well planned tactful manner spread over the violence, terror and hatred among Sinhalese community against Muslims through mass media and social media for a long time, forces such as Bodhu Bala Sena are increasingly using Fascistic methods like their counter parts such RSS and other Hindu extremist outfits in the neighbouring India, to terrorise religious and other minorities.

They propagate despicable rumours among the Sinhalese people that Muslim hotels mix up chemicals in food items sold in their hotels to make Sinhalese men impotent and further they also spread a rumour claiming that the Muslims mix up such so called chemicals as jellies into the women under the dresses to make Sinhalese women unable to have the fortune of having babies. This very unscientific, false, narrow minded, well planned propaganda supported by communal political groups has made common poor Sinhalese very violent, communal and the seed of hatred against Muslims has been sown.

It’s very clear that there are several political forces which have lost power in past years and some Sinhalese businesses community behind all these agendas and evil projects.

These communal minded extreme Sinhalese are supported and funded by small section of the Buddhist cults and some business owners. In the previous government of Mahinda Rajapakshe regime these same groups were well fed and brought up and during that era several established international standard business enterprises in garments industry such as Fashion Bug and NOLIMIT owned by Muslims were set fire and destroyed by these same groups supported by then Mahinda Rajapakshe regime.

In June 2014 too, the Bodhu Bala Sena, with the full knowledge of the former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakshe, created a tense situation, spread violence and set fire to a large number of business places, vehicles and residences in Dargatown in south.

In August 2017, in the so called Good Governance rule of Present President Maithripala Sirisena and Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe, the poor Myanmar Rohingya refugees were brutaly beaten by the same Sinhalese extremists in the presence of the Sri Lankan Police. These 30 refugees including 17 women and children who were under the purview of the UNHCR were assaulted like this under operation of the Sinhalese Extremists – Sihala Ravaya cult.

Present government has failed to take action against these murderous incidents, all these communal clashes occurring in Ampara and Kandy and the attacks that happened to Rohingya refugees must be investigated and fair trials should take place to bring justice to the victims.

Similarly this government has failed to inquire and punish those who have perpetuated several violent activities resulting in killing of three Muslim youth in Beruwala, Dharga Town, and the attacks in Panadura and Gangodawila where Muslims properties were destroyed in the period of the last Government of Mahinda Rajapakshe needs a thorough investigation.

For all these uncivilized, brutal, unjustifiable violence on Muslims that were usually supported by only a small section of Sinhalese Extremist Buddhists and communal minded political leaders and owners some Sinhalese businesses.

These types of violence and violations on Sri Lankan Muslims seem to be continuing without an end in near future. We therefore hereby call upon all including the working class and progressive people to form a broader alliance to defeat these anti-Muslim and anti-social and communal elements. It is very clear that this weak government can never face and defeat these anti social activities aroused with the rise of Mahinda Rajapakshe after the local government election. There is a crucial question as to why this government could not take action to control these Sinhalese Buddhist extremists while they showed all the ethusiasm in brutally beating up and suppress the poor farmers agitation of Thambuththegama near Anuradhapura who were fighting to just for asking drinking water last week. It is important to note the saying of the famous American black liberation fighter Malcolm X said “There is No Capitalism without Racism”.

Therefore we the United Socialist Party hereby call upon the oppressed Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslim people to rise up against this system of capitalists which divides us on the basis of Race, Language and Ethnicity to perpetuate their brutal rule. Let’s unite to change this exploitative capitalist system and establish a Revolutionary Left alternative to defeat these anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim forces and stop the activities of Sinhalese extremists

Dhammika Silva is General Secretary. United Socialist Party, Sri Lanka

10 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/10/sinhala-communalists-on-the-streets-against-sri-lankan-muslims/

By Andre Vltchek

When it comes to Russia or the Soviet Union, reports and historical accounts do get blurry; in the West they do, and consequently in all of its ‘client states’.

Fairytales getintermingled with reality, while fabrications are masterfully injected into sub consciousness of billions of people worldwide. Russia is an enormous country, in fact the largest country on Earth in terms of territory. It is scarcely inhabited. It is deep, and as a classic once wrote: “It is impossible to understand Russia with one’s brain. One could only believe in it.”

The Western mind generally doesn’t like things unknown, spiritual and complex. Since the ‘old days’, especially since the crusades and monstrous colonialist expeditions to all corners of the world, the Westerners were told fables about their own “noble deeds”performed in the plundered lands. Everything had to be clear and simple:“Virtuous Europeans were civilizing savages and spreading Christianity, therefore, in fact, saving those dark poorprimitive souls.”

Of course, tens of millions were dying in the process, while further tens of millions were shackled and brought to the “New Worlds” as slaves. Gold, silver, and other loot, as well as slave labor had been (and still are) paying for all those European palaces, railroads, universities and theatres, but that did not matter, as the bloodshed was most of the timesomething abstract and far away from thoseover-sensitive eyes of the Western public.

Westerners like simplicity, particularly when it comes to moral definitions of “good and evil”. It matters nothing if the truth getssystematically ‘massaged’, or even if the reality is fully fabricated.What matters is that there is no deep guilt and no soul-searching. Western rulers and their opinion makers know their people – their ‘subjects’ – perfectly well, and most of the time, they give them what they are asking for. The rulers and the reigned are generally living in symbiosis. They keep bitching about each other, but mostly they have similar goals: to live well, to live extremely well, as long as the others are forced to pay for it; with their riches, with their labor and often with their blood.

Culturally, most of the citizens of Europe and North America hate to pay the bill for their highlife; they even detest to admit that their life is extremely ‘high’. They like to feel like victims. They like to feel that they are ‘used’. They like to imagine that they are sacrificing themselves for the rest of the world.

And above all, they hate real victims: those they have been murdering, raping, plundering and insulting, for decades and centuries.

Recent ‘refugee crises’ showed the spite Europeans feel for their prey. People who made them rich and who lost everything in the process are humiliated, despised and insulted. Be they Afghans or Africans, the Middle Easterners or South Asians. Or Russians, although Russians are falling to its own, unique category.

*

Many Russians look white. Most of them eat with knife and fork, they drink alcohol, excel at Western classical music, poetry, literature, science and philosophy.

To Western eyes they look ‘normal’, but actually, they are not.

Russians always want ‘something else’; they refuse to play by Western rules.

They are stubbornly demanding to remain different, and to be left alone.

When confronted, when attacked, they fight.

They rarely strike first, almost never invade.

But when threatened, when assaulted, they fight with tremendous determination and force, and they never lose. Villages and cities get converted into invader’s graves. Millions die while defending their Motherland, but the country survives. And it happens again and again and again, as the Western hordes have been, for centuries, assaulting and burning Russian lands, never learning the lesson and never giving up on their sinister dream of conquering and controlling that proud and determinedcolossus.

In the West, they don’t like those who defend themselves, who fight against them, and especially those who win.

*

It gets much worse than that.

Russia has this terrible habit… not only it defends itself and its people, but it also fights for the others, protecting colonized and pillaged nations, as well as those that are unjustly assaulted.

It saved the world from Nazism. It did it at a horrific price of 25 million men, women and children, but it did it; courageously, proudly and altruistically. The West never forgave theSoviet Union for this epic victory either, because all that is unselfish and self-sacrificing, is always in direct conflict with its own principles, and therefore ‘extremely dangerous’.

The Russian people had risen; had fought and won in the 1917 Revolution; an event which terrified the West more than anything else in history, as it had attempted to create a fully egalitarian, classless and racially color-blind society. It also gave birth to Internationalism, an occurrence that I recently described in my book The Great October Socialist Revolution: Impact on the World and the Birth of Internationalism.

Soviet Internationalism, right after the victory in WWII, helped greatly, directly and indirectly, dozens of countries on all continents, to stand up and to confront the European colonialism and the North American imperialism. The West and especially Europe never forgave the Soviet people in general and Russians in particular, for helping to liberate its slaves.

That is when the greatest wave of propaganda in human history really began to roll. From London to New York, from Paris to Toronto, an elaborate web of anti-Soviet and covertly anti-Russian hysteria was unleashed with monstrously destructive force. Tens of thousands of ‘journalists’, intelligence officers, psychologists, historians, as well as academics, were employed. Nothing Soviet, nothing Russian (except those glorified and often ‘manufactured’ Russian dissidents) was spared.

The excesses of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the pre-WWII era were systematically fabricated, exaggerated, and then engraved into the Western history textbooks and mass media narrative. In those tales, there was nothing about the vicious invasions and attacks coming from the West, aimed at destroying young Bolshevik state. Naturally, there was no space for mentioning the British, French, U.S., Czech, Polish, Japanese, German and other’s monstrous cruelties.

Soviet and Russian views were hardly ever allowed to penetrate the monolithic and one-sided Western propaganda narrative.

Like obedient sheep, the Western public accepted the disinformation it was fed with. Eventually, many people living in the Western colonies and ‘client states’, did the same.A great number of colonized people were taught how to blame themselves for their misery.

The most absurd but somehow logical occurrence then took place: many men, women and even children living in the USSR, succumbed to Western propaganda. Instead of trying to reform their imperfect but still greatly progressive country, they gave up, became cynical, aggressively ‘disillusioned’, corrupt and naively but staunchly pro-Western.

*

It was the first and most likely the last time in the history, Russia got defeated by the West. It happened through deceit, through shameless lies, through Western propaganda.

What followed could be easily described as genocide.

The Soviet Union was first lulled into Afghanistan, thenit was mortally injured by the war there, by an arms race with the United States, and by the final stage of propaganda that was literally flowing like lava from various hostile Western state-sponsored radio stations. Of course, local ‘dissidents’ also played an important role.

Under Gorbachev, a ‘useful idiot’ of the West, things got extremely bizarre. I don’t believe that he was paid to ruin his own country, but he did almost everything to run it into the ground; precisely what Washington wanted him to do. Then, in front of the entire world, a mighty and proud Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics suddenly shook in agony, then uttered a loud cry, and collapsed; died painfully but swiftly.

A new turbo-capitalist, bandit, pro-oligarch and confusedly pro-Western Russia was born. Russia which was governed by an alcoholic Boris Yeltsin; a man loved and supported by Washington, London and other Western centers of power.

It was a totally unnatural, sick Russia – cynical and compassionless, built with someone else’s ideas – Russia of Radio Liberty and Voice of America, of the BBC, of black marketers, of oligarchs and multi-national corporations.

Is the West now daring to say that Russians are ‘interfering’ in something in Washington? Are they out of their minds?

Washington and other Western capitals did not only ‘interfere’, they openly broke the Soviet Union into pieces and then they began kicking Russia which was at that point half-alive. Is it all forgotten, or is Western public again fully ‘unaware’ of what took place during those dark days?

The West kept spitting at the impoverished and injured country, refused to honor international agreements and treaties. It offered no help. Multi-nationals were unleashed, and began ‘privatizing’ Russian state companies, basically stealing what was built by the sweat and blood of Soviet workers, during long decades.

Interference? Let me repeat: it was direct intervention, invasion, a grab of resources, shameless theft! I want to read and write about it, but we don’t hear much about it, anymore, do we?

Now we are told that Russia is paranoid, that its President is paranoid! With straight face, the West is lying; pretending that it has not been trying to murder Russia.

Those years… Those pro-Western years when Russia became a semi-client state of the West, or call it a semi-colony! There was no mercy, no compassion coming from abroad. Many of those idiots – kitchen intellectuals from Moscow and provinces – suddenly woke up but it was too late. Many of them had suddenly nothing to eat. They got what they were told to ask for: their Western ‘freedom and democracy’, and Western-style capitalism or in summary: total collapse.

I remember well how it was ‘then’. I began returning to Russia, horrified, working in Moscow, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Leningrad. Academics from Akadem Gorodok outside Novosibirsk were selling their libraries in the bitter cold, in dark metro underpasses of Novosibirsk… Runs on the banks… Old retired people dying from hunger and cold behind massive doors of concrete blocks… unpaid salaries and starving miners, teachers…

Russia under the deadly embrace of the West, for the first and hopefully last time! Russia whose life expectancy suddenly dropped to African Sub-Saharan levels. Russia humiliated, wild, in terrible pain.

*

But that nightmare did not last long.

And what happened – those short but horrible years under both Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but above all under the Western diktat – will never be forgotten, not forgiven.

Russians know perfectly well what they do not want, anymore!

Russia stood up again. Huge, indignant and determined to live its own life, its own way. Froman impoverished, humiliated and robbed nation, subservient to the West, the country evolved and within a few years, the free and independent Russia once again joined ranks of the most developed and powerful countries on Earth.

And as before Gorbachev, Russia is once again able to help those nations which are under unjust and vicious attacks of the Western empire.

A man who is leading this renaissance, President Vladimir Putin, is tough, but Russia is under great threat and so is the world – this is no time for weaklings.

President Putin is not perfect (who is, really?), but he is a true patriot, and I dare say, an internationalist.

Now the West, once again, hates both Russia and its leader. No wonder; undefeated, strong and free Russia is the worst imaginable foe of Washington and its lieutenants.

That’s how the West feels, not Russia. Despite all that was done to it, despite tens of millions of lost and ruined lives, Russia has always been ready to compromise, even to forgive, if not forget.

*

There is something deeply pathological in the psyche of the West. It cannot accept anything less than full and unconditional submission. It has to control, to be in charge, and on top of everything; it hasto feel exceptional. Even when it murders and ruins the entire Planet, it insists onfeeling superior to the rest of the world.

This faith in exceptionalism is the true Western religion, much more than even Christianity, which for decades has not really played any important role there. Exceptionalism is fanatical, it is fundamentalist and unquestionable.

It also insists that its narrative is the only one available anywhere in the World. That the West is seen as a moral leader, as a beacon of progress, as the only competent judge and guru.

Lies are piling on top of lies. As in all religions, the more absurd the pseudo-realityis, the more brutal and extreme are the methods used to uphold it. The more laughable the fabricationsare, the more powerful the techniques used to suppress the truth are.

Today, hundreds of thousands of ‘academics’, teachers, journalists, artists, psychologists and other highly paid professionals, in all parts of the world, are employed by the Empire, for two goals only – to glorify the Western narrative and to discredit all that is standing in its way; daring to challenge it.

Russia is the most hated adversary of the West, with China, Russia’s close ally being near second.

The propaganda war unleashed by the West is so insane, so intense, that even some of the European and North American citizens are beginning to question tales coming from Washington, London and elsewhere.

Wherever one turns, there is a tremendous medley of lies, of semi-lies, half-truths; a complex and unnavigable swamp of conspiracy theories. Russia is being attacked for interfering in U.S. domestic affairs, for defending Syria, for standing by defenseless and intimidated nations, for having its own powerful media, for doping its athletes, forstill being Communist, for not being socialist anymore;in brief: for everything imaginable and unimaginable.

Criticism of the country is so thorough and ludicrous, that one begins to ask very legitimate questions: “what about the past? What about the Western narrative regarding the Soviet past, particularly the post-Revolutionary period, and the period between two world wars?”

The more I analyze this present-day Western anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda, the more determined I am to study and write about the Western narrative regarding Soviet history. I’m definitely planning to investigate these matters in the future, together with my friends – Russian and Ukrainian historians.

*

In the eyes of the West, Russians are ‘traitors’.

Instead of joining the looters, they have been standing by the ‘wretched of the world’, in the past, as well as now.They refused to sell their Motherland, and to enslave their own people. Their government is doing all it can to make Russia self-sufficient, fully independent, prosperous, proud and free.

Remember that ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and many other terms, mean totally different things in distinctive parts of the world. What is happening in the West could never be described as ‘freedom’ in Russia or in China, and vice versa.

Frustrated, collapsing, atomized and egotistic societies of Europe and North America do not inspire even their own people, anymore. They are escaping by millions annually, to Asia, Latin America, and even to Africa. Escaping from emptiness, meaninglessness and emotional cold. But it is not Russia’s or China’s business to tell them how to live or not to live!

In the meantime, great cultures like Russia and China do not need, and do not wantto be told by the Westerners, what freedom is, and what democracy is.

They do not attack the West, and expect the same in return.

It is truly embarrassing that the countries responsible for hundreds of genocides, for hundreds of millions of murdered people on all continents, still dare to lecture others.

Many victims are too scared to speak.

Russia is not.

It is composed, gracious, but fully determined to defend itself if necessary; itself as well as many other human beings living on this beautiful but deeply scarred Planet.

Russian culture is enormous: from poetry and literature, to music, ballet, philosophy… Russian hearts are soft, they easily melt when approached with love and kindness. But when millions of lives of innocent people are threatened, both the hearts and muscles of Russians quickly turn to stone and steel. During such moments, when only victory could save the world, Russian fists are hard, and the same is true aboutthe Russian armor.

There is no match to Russian courage in the sadistic but cowardly West.

Irreversibly, both hope and future are moving towards the east.

And that is why Russia is desperately hated by the West.

*
[originally published by New Oriented Outlook]

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.

9 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/09/why-the-west-cannot-stomachy-russians/

By Dr Gideon Polya

While numerous anti-racist  Jewish intellectuals are resolutely  critical  of the  ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Western Mainstream Media variously  censor  or white-wash  the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct of Apartheid Israel.  A part  explanation for this huge moral discrepancy is that the American 60% of the world’s 30 biggest media companies have a disproportionately high  Jewish Board membership. Jews and females represent 2% and 51%, respectively,  of the US population but average 33% and 19%, respectively, of Board members of the top 18 US media companies.

In 2012, the American Jewish population was estimated at between 5.5-8 million, depending on the definition of the term, this constituting between 1.7% to 2.6% or about 2% of the total US population [1].  Of the 113th Congress (2013-2015, 100 Senators  and 435 Representatives) there were 12 Jewish Americans in the Senate (12.0%; 11 Democrats, 1 Independent) and 22 in the House of Representatives (5.1%; 1 Republican, 21 Democrats) or 6.4% overall [2, 3]. This 3-fold higher disproportional Jewish representation in Congress contrasts with a disproportionally 2-fold less representation on a population basis of both African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the US Congress [4-7]. This disproportional  representation is ultimately reflected in US Government policy that, rhetoric aside, continues to be anti-Black in practice (e.g. massive Segregation and voting exclusion) and anti-Hispanic (endless interventionist  threats to Latin America, the Wall, and massive persecution of Latin American immigrants and their children,  the so-called Dreamers).

In stark contrast, the US Congress is almost 100% behind the pro-Zionist  policies of the traitorous Israel Lobby that is exemplified by organizations such as the  pro-Zionist B’Nai Brith, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) (that was created when  the American Zionist Council (AZC) was forced to register as an agent of a foreign power and evaded  the intent of the law by dissolving and renaming itself as AIPAC) [8, 9]. The power of AIPAC has been expertly analysed in the book  “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John Mearsheimer (Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago), and Stephen Walt (Professor of International Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) [9]. The rot set in during the 1960s after John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy failed in their attempts to get the traitorous Zionists listed as agents of a foreign power [8] and with Apartheid Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons [10, 11].

A Zionist-subverted America has become a  neoliberal Kleptocracy, Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy , Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy in which Big Money  purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality, more  political power and hence more private profit. No matter how many appalling school massacres, the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) means that gun control cannot get through Congress. No matter repeated Gaza Massacres and the other awful realities of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, the US Congress is beholden to the traitorous and genocidally racist Zionist Lobby. Indeed 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year but in an appalling fiscal perversion the US has committed $7 trillion to Zionist-promoted, anti-Arab anti-Semitic   wars in the ongoing 21st century US War on Muslims,  and killing millions of Muslims abroad rather than keeping millions of Americans alive at  home [12-16 ]. Thus 28 million Americans  have died preventably since 2001 [ 12, 14], and 32 million Muslims have died from violence (5 million) or from imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 and may well have involved Apartheid Israel  [15, 16]. It is estimated that the long-term accrual cost to Americans of support for Apartheid Israel totals $40 trillion [14].

No matter the appalling magnitude of the statistics, a Zionist-subverted and Zionist-perverted Congress remains almost totally committed to a nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel. This support for Apartheid Israel also comes from Black Congress members, notwithstanding anti-Apartheid hero and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela having famously stated “The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” [17].  Thus  Bruce A. Dixon (managing director of the Black Agenda Report) (2014): “ Israel’s vicious apartheid regime celebrated Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration with the massacre of 1400 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, and the destruction of a great part of the enclave’s infrastructure, down to chicken farms and water systems. The new Congress called it righteous self-defense, with 390 yeas, 5 nays and 22 “present”.  The CBC [Congressional Black Caucus] was 2 of those nays, Gwen Moore (WI) and Maxine Waters (CA), and 7 of the “presents”, Edwards (MD), Ellison (MN), Johnson (GA), Lee (TX), Payne (NJ), Kilpatrick (MI), and Watson (CA). This month, as the civilian death toll in the latest Israeli criminal orgy of collective punishment mounted toward 1,000 [latest: 2,200] , the US House passed a nearly identical resolution, calling this massacre legitimate “self-defense” as well. This time the House vote, including that of the Congressional Black Caucus was unanimous.  Not a single member of the CBC, despite their much heralded brand of standing for civil rights and against apartheid here and around the world, bothered to publicly question the racist ethnocracy that is the Israeli state” [18].

Of course it is not just Zionist  Lobby organizations but individual wealthy pro-Zionists who have contributed to the appalling American and global  moral disaster involved in supporting horrendous Israeli Apartheid and the ongoing Palestinian  Genocide . that has involved 2.0 million Palestinian deaths from violence (0.1 million) or from imposed deprivation (1.9 million) in the last 100 years, 8 million Palestinian refugees, the ethnic cleansing of 90% of the land of Palestine, and  highly abusive,  violent and indefinite confinement of presently 5 million Occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or in West Bank ghettoes (3 million). The horrendous dimensions of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide invite comparisons with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed by violence or imposed deprivation). Of about 14 million Palestinians (half of them children, half of them female), 7 million are forbidden to even step foot in their own country, 5 million are held hostage with zero human rights under Israeli  guns in the Gaza Concentration Camp (2.0 million) or in ever-dwindling West Bank Bantustan ghettoes  (3.0 million),  and 1.8 million live as Third Class citizens as Israeli Palestinians under Nazi-style Apartheid Israeli race laws [19-24]. Of  Apartheid Israel’s now 50% Indigenous Palestinian subjects, 74% cannot vote for the government ruling them  i.e.  egregious Apartheid that is a crime by UN convention [25] .

Jewish and non-Jewish pro-Zionists are well represented in the top One Percent that has accumulated 50% of the wealth of the world.  48% of U.S.  billionaires are Jewish [26] and there are 10 Jews in Forbes top 50 billionaires [27]. According  to the Times of Israel (2013), the World’s 165 Jewish billionaires are worth a combined $812 billion [28]. As evidenced by a large body of anti-racist Jews, many Jews are not Zionists. Anti-Semitism comes in 2 equally repugnant forms,  anti-Jewish anti-Semitism against presently 17 million largely culturally Semitic Jews as compared to anti-Arab anti-Semitism against 300 million ethnically and culturally Arab Semites and, in the form of Islamophobia,  against 1,600 million mostly culturally Semitic Muslims. The Zionists are guilty of both forms of anti-Semitism, namely (1) anti-Arab anti-Semitism  through  the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, or imposed deprivation, 1.9 million, since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1)  and through backing the US War on Muslims (32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries variously invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity) and (2) anti-Jewish anti-Semitism (by falsely conflating all Jews with these appalling crimes). Racist deeds are far worse than racist words but words lead to deeds.  Respect for human rights tends to be inversely related to wealth as exemplified by rich neoliberals  versus  poor socialist activists. However,  as set out below, the pro-Zionism of wealthy Jews is also evidenced by their silence over the crimes of Apartheid Israel.

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. As set out in various detailed compendia [29-32], notably “Jews Against Racist Zionism” [31] and “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism” [32], numerous anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarians vigorously protest the genocidal crimes of Apartheid Israel, but the billionaires, whether Jewish or non-Jewish,  are not be seen in these lists of decent humanity. The obscenely rich, look-the-other-way, multi-millionaire and  billionaire One Percenters  with vast resources to advance human rights are pro-Zionist by omission – silence is complicity. Accordingly, one reasonably supposes that Jewish One Percenters involved in the Mainstream media are  pro-Zionist by omission. However the Zionist domination of all but pro-peace Jewish organizations  strongly suggests that Jewish One Percenters involved in the Mainstream media, notably Board members,  are likely to be fervently pro-Zionist.  Indeed various analyses have been made of the disproportionate Jewish presence on Boards of major  American and UK media [34-38].

Since the 1960s America became more and more subject to Zionist subversion  to the extent that in 2001  Ariel Sharon (then Israeli Prime Minister) declared at a cabinet meeting:  “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it” [39, 40]. This overt and covert Zionist power complements massive CIA subversion of Mainstream media in America and around the world [41-46]. Thus Professor James F. Tracy (formerly  Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University,  2002 – 2016): “Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis” [41]  . Carl Bernstein (famed Washington Post journalist and  Pullitzer Prize winner for his Watergate revelations) has detailed CIA-media connections [42, 43].  A declassified 1991 document from the CIA states that a CIA task force “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation. This  has helped us turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success” stories,’ and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many instances, we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods” [44].  Arjun Walia has analysed massive CIA subversion of media and academia (2017): “National security” is now an umbrella term used to justify concealing information, but who makes these decisions? …. Not only are countless documents classified every single year in North America, but false information and “fake news” are routinely dispersed, mainly by mainstream media outlets — a reality that is clearly conveyed in this document and has been expressed by multiple mainstream media journalists themselves. And as with the NSA surveillance program that was exposed by Edward Snowden, it’s a global problem… What we seem to have here is an attempt to manipulate public perception of global events through mainstream media and news publications. But what’s perhaps most interesting is the fact that a lot of people are now waking up and seeing through many of these lies and manipulation tactic” [45]. Of course the classic work in this area detailing massive US Government abuse of media is “Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of mass media” by Professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky [46].

In short, there is massive Zionist-, intelligence- and Government-directed   Mainstream media censorship,  lying, and “fake news through lying by omission” [46-60]. Zionist perversion of US media is well documented [8, 9, 55-59]. The Zionist Lobby’s chief agent is AIPAC that according to J.J. Goldberg  “is] the Jewish community’s main foreign-policy lobbying organization … The clout that Jewish Americans exercise in American politics is far incommensurate with their population” [56]. Palestinian Professor Rima Najjar: “AIPAC lobbies for the security of the Zionist Jewish state. The undeniable obverse of that is the continued oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people” [59].

While Jews are 2% of the US population, females are about 51%. Informed by a 2016 analysis by Lara O’Reilly in the Business Insider [33], below in descending order of revenue is the list of the world’s top 30 media companies with details of their media revenue in US dollars  and other key details, together with – for 18 US companies and 1 UK company – the estimated %  Jewish Board members (and hence likely fervently pro-Zionist Board members) and % women on the Board (for comparison) :

1. Alphabet ($59.62 billion revenue; American; Alphabet is the new holding company that owns fervently pro-Zionist Google that “minimizes”  Leftist sites critical of Apartheid Israel [47-49]; 46% of Alphabet  Directors are Jewish or have Jewish spouses but only 23% of Board members are women; Alphabet chairman John Hennessy is anti-BDS and hence pro-Zionist; in addition to minimizing the humane Left, Google provides software to identify targets for  illegal US drone strikes [61])

2. The Walt Disney Company ($22.45 billion; American; Disney owns US national TV network ABC,  owns a 50% stake in digital media company Fusion and has a 33% stake in video streaming platform Hulu; fervently pro-Zionist media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently sold  21st Century Fox and a controlling interest in Sky to Disney for $66 billion; 18% Jewish Board but Board member Fred Langhammer, a former chairman and CEO of pro-Israel Estee Lauder Companies, has invested in Apartheid Israel; 36% of the Board are  women).

3. Comcast ($19.7 billion; American; 15 national cable networks in the US including   USA Network, Syfy, CNBC,  and nine international TV channels,  NBC,  Spanish-language network Telemundo and runs video streaming service Hulu; 30% Jewish Board members but only 10% female Board members).

4. 21st Century Fox ($18.67 billion; American with major Australian links; owns Fox Broadcasting,  Fox Sports television companies, STAR India;  and has a 39% stake in UK Sky; formerly owned by Murdoch who recently sold  21st Century Fox and a controlling interest in Sky to Disney; 8% of the Board are female but possibly none (0%) of the Board are obviously Jewish, although Rupert Murdoch’s maternal grandmother was Jewish [62] and fervently pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James are together on the board, this underscoring Rupert Murdoch’s controversial  tweet : “Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” [63]).

5. Facebook ($11.49 billion; American; 50% of Board members are Jewish, including 2 Jewish Israelis,  presumed pro-Zionists from Facebook’s pro-Zionist censorship activities; 18% female Board; Facebook stands accused of pro-Zionist censorship, having suspended Palestinian Professor Rima Najjar for rightly accusing the fervently pro-Zionist US Hillel organization of being racist [64]. Gazans have protested against Facebook for removing Palestinian accounts [65]).

6. Bertelsmann ($10.04 billion; German; owns TV and radio group RTL, book publishing companies Random House and Penguin, magazine publishing company Gruner + Jahr, music company BMG, marketing company Arvato, The Bertelsmann Education Group, and Bertelsmann Investments; post-1945 de-Nazification under Allied Occupation necessarily meant a pro-American Mainstream media culture; 0% Jewish and 20% female Board).

7. Viacom ($9.61 billion;  250 TV channels worldwide, including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and Channel 5 in the UK; a trust for media mogul Sumner Redstone owns 80% of movie theatre company National Amusements, which owns 80% of the voting rights in both Viacom and CBS; 45% Jewish Board and 45% female Board).

8. CBS ($9.57 billion; American; CBS Television Network broadcasts to more than 200 affiliated stations;  50% stake in The CW Network; joint venture with AMC Networks to run international channels like Horror Channel and CBS Drama in the UK, Ireland, the Middle East, and Africa; owns 117 US radio stations; 57% Jewish Board and 21% female Board).

9. Baidu ($7.895 billion; Chinese; Chinese language search giant with maps, social networking, security, entertainment, e-commerce, and mobile services).

10. News Corp ($6.89 billion; fervently pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal,  The New York Post,  The Times and the Sun in the UK, News America Marketing, Barron’s magazine, and publisher HarperCollins; in 2005 eminent Palestinian American Professor Rashid Khalidi’s participation in a New York City teacher training program was ended by the city’s Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who is presently the only Jewish member of the  News Corp Board which is thus 9% Jewish, noting that fervently pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch had a Jewish grandmother and he and his sons Lachlan and James are together on the board; the Board is 9% Jewish,  at least 45% fervently pro-Zionist and 27% female ).

11. Advance Publications ($6.42 billion; owns the Condé Nast Publications magazines including Glamour, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ, several US newspapers, notably The Plain Dealer and The Times-Picayune, and a 31% stake in Discovery Communications; at least 80% Jewish Board; 0% female Board).

12. iHeartMedia ($6.12 billion; formerly  known as Clear Channel Communications;  owns 861 radio stations in the US, reaching 110 million listeners each week, and has 107,000 display advertising structures in North America and 540,000 across Asia, Australia, and Europe; 11% Jewish Board and 22% female Board).

13. Discovery Communications ($6.14 billion; owns 14 US TV networks ,  including the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, distributes 48 international brands reaching over  2.6 billion subscribers in more than 220 countries worldwide; 27% Jewish Board but 9% female Board).

14. Grupo Globo ($4.83 billion;  Brazilian; Brazilian company that  owns the newspaper O Globo, 12 magazines, 4 radio networks, and TV network TV Globo that had exclusive rights in the 2014 FIFA World Cup).

15. Yahoo ($4.62 billion; American; search advertising and display advertising;  default search option in web browser Firefox; there are to be board changes after Yahoo recently sold its web properties to Verizon in a deal valued at about $4.8 billion; 25% Jewish Board and 25% female Board).

16. Time Warner ($4.57 billion; American; sold  Time Inc. publishing division in 2014; runs Turner Broadcasting System, HBO, and Warner Bros. Entertainment; 22% Jewish Board and 22% female Board).

17. Microsoft ($4.58 billion; advertising revenue via MSN, search engine Bing, Skype, and Xbox Live gaming and media platform; 18% Jewish Board and 18% female Board; Bing Searches reveal humane items hidden by the Zionist-subverted Google Robot).

18. Asahi Shimbun ($4.12 billion; Japanese; Japan’s number 2  newspaper; has a 25% stake in TV Asahi and owns 25 magazine titles  including AERA, Sesame, and Autocar Japan; Japanese media must be seen in the light of the US reorganization of Japan after 1945; Professor Yoshio Sugimoto commenting on press censorship via the “reporters’ clubs” in Japan (1997): “ Japan ‘s mass media tend to be docile because of the way in which information-gathering units are based on government and business-establishments. Government ministries, prefectural and municipal governments, police headquarters, and business and union organizations all provide reporters of major print and electronic media with office space called kisha kurabu (reporters’ clubs). These clubrooms are normally equipped with telephones and other communications machines, service personnel, and other facilities. Media organizations use them free of charge. In almost all cases, club membership is restricted to the reporters of major news organizations and is not open to journalists from minor presses or to foreign journalists.  …By constantly feeding information to reporters in this environment, representatives of the institutions which provide club facilities can obliquely control the way in which it is reported to the public. Reporters cannot risk being excluded from their club because they would  then lose access to this regular flow of information” [53, 66].

19.  China Central Television (CCTV) ($4.08 billion; Chinese; the Chinese state broadcaster; broadcasts 21 free-to-air channels, 19 pay-TV channels, and 10 international channels in the English, French, Spanish, Russian, Korean, and Arabic languages).

20. Hearst ($4.0 billion; American; has  15 daily newspapers, 21 consumer magazines, and 30 TV stations in the US; owns around 300 newspaper and magazine titles internationally; the founder, William Randolph Hearst I notoriously  whipped up public hysteria via his “Morning Journal” newspaper  after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, this leading to the Spanish-American War and US seizure of Spanish territories from the Philippines to Puerto Rico [67, 68] – this was one of many American false flag atrocities leading to war and occupation [67, 68 ], with the Zionist-subverted US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity  being a notable and horrendous example – the subsequent  and ongoing Zionist-promoted US War on Muslims has been associated with 32 million Muslims deaths from violence, 5 million, or deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance [15, 16];  other excuses for US  imperialist wars include the sinking of the arms-laden Lusitania (US entry into WW1), Pearl Harbor (permitted to occur notwithstanding  and US and UK pre-knowledge; US entry into WW2), Korean invasion of their own country (Korean War), the fictional Gulf of Tonkin Incident (US Indo-China War), alleged threat to US students (US invasion of Granada) and  General Noriega’s longstanding CIA-linked drug involvements (US invasion of Panama) [67, 68]; 50% Jewish Board but only 6% female Board).

21. JCDecaux ($3.74 billion; French; largest outdoor advertising company in the world; owns Continental Outdoor Media, Eye Catcher Media, and CEMUSA).

22. Axel Springer ($3.39 billion; German; owns newspapers, magazines, TV channels, radio stations, and websites in 35 countries, notably Business Insider and the newspapers B.Z., Bild, and Die Welt in Germany; see comment for #6 above)

23. Mediaset ($3.39 billion; Italian; largest Italian commercial broadcaster in Italy and has majority ownership  of Spanish TV network MEC; founded by former PM Silvio Berlusconi with major continuing family connection).

24. ITV ($3.33 billion; British; largest UK commercial television network;  more than 15 channels; stakes in digital TV services Freesat,  YouView and ITN; 100% pro-Zionist Board  by commission and omission, possibly 20% Jewish Board, 40% female Board. The ITV Chair, Sir Peter Bazalgette, was member of the UK Commission on the Holocaust and is the chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation supervising the controversial UK Holocaust Memorial involving 23 huge  bronze fin structures, with the spaces between each symbolising the 22 countries where Jewish communities were destroyed during the Jewish Holocaust [69]. The WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed through violence or deprivation) was part of a much greater but “forgotten” WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) killed),and was contemporaneous  with the “forgotten” WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million Poles killed, half of them Jewish), the “forgotten” WW2 Russian Holocaust (20 million Russians killed) [67], the “forgotten” WW2 Indian Holocaust and Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by Churchill with Australian complicity in Bengal and neighbouring provinces) [70-72] , and the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35 million Chinese killed under Japanese occupation 1937-1945) [73]. The UK was complicit in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust through the strategically inept ands disastrous  bombing of German cities and infrastructure [74]  leading to massive food shortages in Nazi Europe towards the end of the war that severely impacted concentration camp inmates [74],  and through exclusion of Jewish refugees from large parts of the British Empire [76], a policy supported by the Zionists who wanted Jewish refugees to only go to Palestine. Pro-Zionist Mainstream media ignore these horrendous realities that are within living memory,  as well as the horrendous realities of the ongoing, Zionist-backed US War on Muslims in a process of continuing   genocide ignoring  and holocaust ignoring that is far, far worse than repugnant genocide denial  and holocaust denial because at least the latter admit the possibilities  refutation and public discussion [77]).

25. Fuji Media Holdings ($3.23 billion; Japanese; is one of Japan’s biggest media owners, runs Fuji Television Network and Nippon Broadcasting System; see comment on item #18).

26. Hubert Burda Media ($3.05 billion; German; owns 93 magazines in Germany  and 320 titles internationally; publishes German editions of Playboy, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, and Burda Style; see comment on item #6).

27. Gannett ($2.95 billion; owns 93 daily newspapers in the US, including USA Today, and 400 other publications; property investment in the UK  via  Newsquest; 18% Jewish Board; 27% female Board; former chairperson Marjorie Magner is Jewish).

28. ProSiebenSat.1 ($2.91 billion; German; owns 15 TV stations across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, reaching around 42 million households; see comment on item #6).

29. Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings ($2.88 billion; Japanese; owns  The Yomiuri Shimbun that has a circulation of more than 9 million, and the English language daily The Japan News,  and has a  stake in the Nippon TV network, publishing group Chukoron-Shinsha, and the Yomiuri Giants baseball team; see comment on item #18).

30. Time Inc. ($2.87 billion; until 2014 was  the magazine division of Time Warner; owns Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, and InStyle; 33% Jewish Board and 22% female Board; Sir Howard Stringer is a fervent pro-Zionist who is on the Time Inc Board, was the honorary chairman of the pro-Zionist American Jewish Committee, and is also a non-executive director of the UK BBC, an organization with an appalling record of  pro-Zionist censorship [78, 79]).

Final comments.

While Jews represent about 2% of the US population, the proportion of Jews on the Boards of the top 18 US companies in the top 30 world media companies ranges from 0%  to 57% with an average of 33%. In contrast, while females  represent about 51% of the US population, the proportion of women on the Boards of the top 18 US companies in the top 30 world media companies ranges from 0%  to 45% with an average of 19%. This huge discrepancy explains in part why US media are overwhelmingly pro-Zionist by commission and omission   and ignore the appalling crimes of Apartheid Israel against the Palestinians of whom  50% of women are women and girls. Gandhi stated that “Poverty is the worst form of violence” and the per capita GDP is a mere  $2,800 for Occupied Palestinians as compared to $39,000 for their genocidally racist occupier, Apartheid Israel [80]. About  5,100 Occupied Palestinians die avoidably annually from violence (500) or from imposed deprivation (4,600)  in a process of active and passive mass murder of Indigenous Palestinians in gross violation of the Geneva Convention  and thence of the  UN Genocide Convention  [81, 82]. Palestinian women and girls, like their vastly more prosperous Anglosphere sisters, may well cry “Me too!”

Like poverty, lying by Zionist-subverted Mainstream media is also deadly. Zionist-subverted, One Percenter-owned US Mainstream media not only hide the deadly realities of life for Occupied Palestinians but also  hide the appalling realities  that 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year, that 28 million Americans have died thus since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity, and that successive Zionist-subverted US Administrations have presided over a fiscal perversion involving committing trillions of dollars  to killing millions of Muslim abroad rather than keeping Americans alive at home.

What can decent informed Americans and indeed all decent, informed people do?  The horrible reality is that  Zionism is egregious, genocidal racism and that racist Zionists and all their supporters should be sidelined from public life, as have been other racists such as the neo-Nazis, Nazis, Apartheiders and the Ku Klux Klan. Decent people around the world will urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions  (BDS) against not only Apartheid Israel but also against all people, politicians, parties, companies, collectives, corporations and countries complicit in these appalling crimes. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Wake up America!

References.

[1]. “American Jews”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews .

[2]. “Jewish Members of Congress”, Jewish Virtual  Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewcong113.html .

[3]. “113th United States Congress”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress .

[4]. Congressional Black Caucus”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Black_Caucus#Senate_members .

[5]. “Congressional Hispanic Conference”,  Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Hispanic_Conference .

[6]. “Congressional  Hispanic Caucus”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Hispanic_Caucus .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Truth & Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Can Overcome Huge Inequities Suffered By African Americans Under American Apartheid”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya290914.htm

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Dual Israeli citizenship & Zionist perversion of America, Australia, India & Humanity”, Countercurrents, 30 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/30/dual-israeli-citizenship-zionist-perversion-of-america-australia-india-humanity/ .

[9]. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

[10]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel buries serial war criminal, genocidal racist and nuclear terrorist Shimon Peres”, Countercurrents, 1 October 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/10/01/apartheid-israel-buries-serial-war-criminal-genocidal-racist-and-nuclear-terrorist-shimon-peres/ .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government’s False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Fundamentalist America Has Trashed Secular Governance, Modernity, Democracy, Women’s Rights And Children’s Rights In The Muslim World”, Countercurrents, 21 May, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210515.htm .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”,  Countercurrents, 27 August, 2013: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[16]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “ Honor anti-Apartheid hero Nelson Mandela’s words: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” , Countercurrents , 8 December,2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya081213.htm .

[18]. Bruce A. Dixon , “US Congressional Black Caucus endorses Israeli Apartheid and current war crimes in Gaza ”, Global Research, 30 July 2014: http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-congressional-black-caucus-endorses-israeli-apartheid-and-current-war-crimes-in-gaza/5394754  .

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal  Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/  .

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents,  9 June  2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .

[22]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Me Too: 140 alphabetically-listed Zionist crimes expose Western complicity & hypocrisy”, Countercurrents, 7 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/07/palestinian-140-alphabetically-listed-zionist-crimes-expose-appalling-western-complicity-hypocrisy/  .

[24]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[25]. John Dugard, “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid”, Audiovisual Library of International Law: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html .

[26]. Michael Epstein,  “48% of U.S.  billionaires are Jewish”, Topix, 19 August 2017: http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TCEL6H6L79C279EVA/48-percent-of-u-s-billionaires-are-jewish .

[27]. Gabe Friedman, “10 Jews in Forbes top 50 billionaires”, Times of Israel, 3 March 2015: https://www.timesofisrael.com/10-jews-in-forbes-top-50-billionaires/ .

[28]. “World’s 165 Jewish billionaires worth a combined $812 billion”, Times of Israel, 19 April 2013: https://www.timesofisrael.com/worlds-jewish-billionaires-worth-combined-812-billion/ .

[29]. “Boycott Apartheid  Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[30]. “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration  .

[31]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[32]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[33]. Lara O’Reilly, “The 30 biggest media companies in the world” , Business Insider, 31 May 2016: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-30-biggest-media-owners-in-the-world-2016-5/?r=AU&IR=T .

[34]. Jason Bayz, “Demographics of the American media elite”, 2 July 2015: https://jasonbayz.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/demographics-of-the-american-media-elite/ .

[35]. Richard C. Rhodes, “The Jewish Juggernaut”, 25 August 2006: http://www.theakurians.com/Info/The%20Jewish%20Juggernaut.htm .

[36].  “List of Jewish American business people”, Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_American_businesspeople .

[37]. George Kanaris re Jewish media figures, Google+: https://plus.google.com/+GeorgeKanaris/posts/janSi5MzEUP .

[38]. “Jewish and Zionist influence at the BBC”, Semitic Controversies: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/jewish-and-zionist-influence-at-bbc.html .

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist quotes reveal genocidal racism”, MWC News, 12 January 2018: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/69955-zionist-quotes-reveal-genocidal-racism.html .

[40]. “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

[41]. James Tracy, “The CIA and the media: 50 facts the world needs to know”, Global Research, 30 January 2018: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956 .

[42]. Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the media”, Rolling Stone, 20 October 1977: http://danwismar.com/uploads/Bernstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20Media.htm .

[43]. “Operation Mockingbird”, Wikipedia: http://danwismar.com/uploads/Bernstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20Media.htm .

[44]. CIA memo, 20 December 1991: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005524009.pdf .

[45]. Arjun Walia, “Declassified CIA documents show agency’s control over mainstream media & academia”, Collective Evolution, 11 May 2017: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/05/11/declassified-cia-documents-shows-agencies-control-over-mainstream-media-academia/ .

[46]. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of mass media”, Pantheon 1988, 2002.

[47]. Gideon Polya, “Google censorship & Zionist constraint on effective free speech threaten the Planet”, Countercurrents, 9 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/09/google-censorship-zionist-constraint-on-effective-free-speech-threaten-planet/ .

[48]. WSWS, “Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war sites”, WSWS, 2 August 2017: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/pers-a02.html .

[49]. “Who controls America? Who controls Google?”, The Zog: https://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-google/  .

[50]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission”, MWC News, 1 April 2017: http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/64626-mainstream-media.html .

[51]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission”, Global Research, 1 April 2017: http://www.globalresearch.ca/mainstream-media-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/5582944 .

[52]. “Lying by omission is worse than lying by commission because at least the latter permits refutation and public debate”, Mainstream media lying: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/lying-by-omission .

[53]. “Mainstream media censorship”; https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[54]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[55]. Kenneth E. Bauzon, “Media bias and the Israel Lobby in the United States”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/10/media-bias-and-the-israel-lobby-in-the-united-states/ .

[56]. J.J. Goldberg, “Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment”,

[57]. Paul Findley, “They Dare to Speak Out”, 1985.  (against the pervasive influence of AIPAC) on my shelf. It looked down on me more as a cautionary tale than as an inspiration.

[58]. John Lyons, “Balcony Over Jerusalem”.

[59]. Rima Najjar, “How do I hate thee AIPAC? Let me count the ways”, Countercurrents, 8 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/08/how-do-i-hate-thee-aipac-let-me-count-the-ways/ .

[60]. Gideon Polya, “Australian ABC and UK BBC fake news through lying by omission”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/05/02/australian-abc-and-uk-bbc-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/ .

[61]. Andre Damon, “Google admits collaboration with illegal US drone murder program”, Countercurrents, 8 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/08/google-admits-collaboration-with-illegal-us-drone-murder-program/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+countercurrents%2FeoKx+%28Countercurrents%29 .

[62]. “Is Australian billionaire broadcaster Rupert Murdoch Jewish or Gentile?”, Yahoo Answers:  https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071025102913AAjilr3 .

[63]. Michael Wolff, “Rupert Murdoch and the Jews”, The Guardian, 20 November 2012: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter .

[64]. Rima Najjar, “Hillel and Facebook censorship: conflating Zionism with Judaism”, Countercurrents, 26 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/26/hillel-facebook-censorship-conflating-zionism-judaism/ .

[65]. “Gazans protest against Facebook for removing Palestinian accounts for terror support”, Algemeiner, 8 March 2018: https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/03/08/gazans-protest-against-facebook-for-removing-palestinian-accounts-for-terror-support/ .

[66]. Yoshio Sugimoto “An Introduction to Japanese Society”,  Cambridge University Press, 1997; pages 211-215.

[67]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, this including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[68]. Gideon Polya, “Exposure Of  Neocon American And Zionist Imperialist 9-11 Deception”, Countercurrents, 8 September, 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya080912.htm .

[69]. Soo Kim, “First pictures of the UK’s first Holocaust  memorial planned for London”, The Telegraph, 27 October 2017: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/articles/britain-first-holocaust-memorial-to-open-in-london/ .

[70]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[71]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust

[72].   Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008 that  is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  .

[73]. “Backgrounder: China ’s WWII contributions in figures”, New China, 3 September 2015: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/03/c_134582291.htm .

[74]. C.P. Snow, “Science and Government”.

[75].  Lizzie Collingham, “The Taste of War”, Penguin, 2011.

[76]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1969.

[77]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist Western Genocide Denial”, MWC News, 14 April, 2009: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya140409.htm .

[78]. “Jewish and Zionist influence at the BBC”, Semitic Controversies: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/jewish-and-zionist-influence-at-bbc.html .

[79]. “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .

[80]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[81]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal  Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/ .

[82]. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Me Too: 140 alphabetically-listed Zionist crimes expose Western complicity & hypocrisy”, Countercurrents, 7 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/07/palestinian-140-alphabetically-listed-zionist-crimes-expose-appalling-western-complicity-hypocrisy/  .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).

9 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/09/zionist-subversion-mainstream-media-censorship-disproportionate-jewish-board-membership-of-us-media-companies/

By Moin Qazi

India produces enough food to meet the needs of its entire population yet, it is unable to feed millions of them, especially women and children. India ranks 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017, where it has consistently ranked poorly. Despite the fact that every twelfth Indian has to sleep on an empty stomach, the country wastes food worth a whopping Rs 58,000 crores in a year, about seven percent of its total food production. It is lost   during harvest, or on the journey from farm to markets, that is production, processing, retailing and consumption Lack of cooling facilities is the major reason for crops perishing after harvest.

As you trudge through the mire of any government-run food auction yard, or mandi, piles of supposedly fresh produce lies everywhere, rotting in the sun and competing with mangy dogs and scampering mice for your attention

One of the major ways of enhancing food security in India is by simply controlling wastage. It is the most obvious place to start. India is the second-largest producer of vegetables and fruits but about 25-30 percent of it is wasted due to inadequate logistical support, lack of refrigerated storage, supply chain bottlenecks, poor transport and underdeveloped marketing channels. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) puts this figure at around 40 percent, worth around $8.3 billion.

Twenty-one million metric tonnes of wheat, which is almost equal to Australia’s annual production, rots each year due to improper storage. According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the country experiences a post-harvest loss of Rs 2 lakh crores annually due to a lack of food processing units and storage facilities. Without making urgent improvements to its ‘cold chain’ infrastructure, India’s food problems will remain highly critical.

The World Bank recently stated that nearly 60 percent of the country’s food subsidies do not reach the poor; they are syphoned off by the middlemen. It is high time that the government made some fundamental changes. Reforming the faltering public distribution system or plugging the loopholes in it is overdue.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) was set up in 1964 to offer impetus to price support systems, encourage nationwide distribution and maintain sufficient buffer of staples like wheat and rice but its performance has been woefully inadequate, in comparison to the needs of the country. Around one percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gets shaved off annually in the form of food waste. The FCI has neither a warehouse capacity nor the manpower to manage this humongous stockpile of foodgrains.

Every year, the government purchases millions of tonnes of grain from the farmers to ensure that they get a good price for their produce, for numerous food subsidy programmes and to maintain an emergency buffer. The cruel truth, however, is that most of the produce is left out in the open, vulnerable to rain and attacks by rodents or stored in makeshift spaces, covered by tarpaulin sheets, thus increasing the chances of spoilage. Several countries are now using metal grain silos to guard against fungus attacks on the grain stock.

It is estimated that one million tonnes of onions vanish on their way from farms to markets, as do 2.2 million tonnes of tomatoes. Tomatoes get squished if they are packed into jute sacks. Overall, five million eggs crack or go bad due to lack of cold storage. Just three states of India—Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana—grow most of India’s grains and the food has to be transported to far-flung areas.

A study undertaken by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (2013) highlights that the underlying cause of post-harvest loss in the country is due to the lack of infrastructure for short-term storage, particularly at the farm level, as well as the lack of intermediate processing in the production catchments. If there are no proper roads linking fields to markets, farmers cannot easily sell their surplus produce, which may then spoil before it can be eaten. Improving road and rail capacity enables farmers to reach buyers and likewise, fertilisers and other agricultural inputs to reach farmers.

The Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, has uncovered that only 10 percent of the perishable produce has access to cold storage facilities in India. These are mostly used for potatoes to meet India’s robust demand for chips. This, along with inappropriate supply chain management, has resulted in India becoming a significant contributor to food wastage both at pre and post-harvest levels. The study estimates that India needs storage facilities for another 370 million metric tonnes of perishable produce.

Added to the wastage of food, there is a depletion of precious resources involved in its production. According to the United Nations, India is estimated to use more than 230 cubic kilometres of fresh water annually, for producing food items that will be ultimately wasted. To put this into context, this amount of water is enough to provide drinking water to 100 million people every year. Besides this, nearly 300 million barrels of oil used in the process are also ultimately wasted.

Meeting the food needs of a growing population in India (1.7 billion by 2050) while reducing food loss and waste poses a serious challenge. Wasting a kilogram of wheat and rice would mean wasting 1,500 and 3,500 litres of water, respectively, that is consumed in their production.

Despite being the world’s largest banana producer, it only holds 0.3 percent share of the global banana market. Production is fragmented compared to the large-scale commercial farms of its competitors, with small-hold farmers having little business or technical support. Less than 4 percent of India’s fresh produce is transported by cold-chains, compared to more than 90 percent in the UK. Better cold storage, improved infrastructure and education about food handling could help transform this situation.

The cost of delivering energy to remote, rural regions for running storage facilities is quite steep and this means that even when storage facilities are built, they may not be able to function. A lack of education on post-harvest practices often results in poor quality control and food being damaged during handling.

The government needs to tighten its public distribution system, which mainly supplies subsidised grain to the poor and modernise other areas, such as computerisation of outlets and satellite control over the movement of transport vehicles.

In recent years, numerous initiatives and interventions have been undertaken by the Indian government, and local and international actors to target food loss and wastage across the agricultural value chain. For instance, the Indian government is seeking to streamline and modernise agricultural value chains, through reformation of the PDS to reduce the waste and loss associated with the distribution and storage of foodgrains. The government is also extending support for the setting up of cold chain projects whereby 138 cold chain projects have been installed.

Studies have also indicated that on-farm interventions can also contribute towards reducing food losses and waste. For instance, a pilot study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has revealed food loss reductions of around 60 percent during field trials, testing low-cost storage techniques and handling practices. Another study, undertaken in Punjab, which focused on the harvesting of ‘Kinnow’ (a citrus fruit), demonstrated how on-farm food losses decreased from ten percent to only two percent when a combination of harvesting techniques was used.

India has developed some modern supply chains linked to food processing companies, such as Nestlé, Pepsi, Unilever and Del Monte but these handle only a fraction of the country’s perishable food produce.

India needs to mobilise large-scale investments in cold storage methods, refrigerated transport and other modern logistics to modernise its food supply chain. More than investment, a strong will by the political class and an imaginative thinking on the part of the policy-makers is needed.

Moin Qazi is the author of the bestselling book, Village Diary of a Heretic Banker.

9 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/09/wasting-food-in-a-hungry-world/

By Shashi Tharoor

“History,” Winston Churchill said, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar.

As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. … We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. … We shall never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”)

Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether.

During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result.

In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them.

Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes.

In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”

In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule.

But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians — “a beastly people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.”

Churchill’s beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.”

In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s.

Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.”

Madhusree Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, Churchill’s Secret War,” “documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died.

This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.

Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure — his long darkest hour — was his constant effort to deny us freedom.

Shashi Tharoor is author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

10 March 2018

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/10/in-winston-churchill-hollywood-rewards-a-mass-murderer/?utm_term=.0ff033eab01c

By Robert J. Burrowes

Anyone reading the scientific literature (or the progressive news outlets that truthfully report this literature) knows that homo sapiens sapiens is on the fast track to extinction, most likely some time between 2025 and 2040.

For a taste of the evidence in this regard focusing on the climate, see ‘Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction’, ‘What They Won’t Tell You About Climate Catastrophe’, ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’ and ‘7,000 underground [methane] gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’.

Unfortunately, of course, the climate is not the only imminent threat to human survival. With an insane leadership in the White House in the United States – see ‘Resisting Donald Trump’s Violence Strategically’ – we are faced with the prospect of nuclear war. And even if the climate and nuclear threats to our survival are removed, there is still a substantial range of environmental threats – including rainforest destruction, the ongoing dumping of Fukushima radiation into the Pacific Ocean, extensive contamination from military violence… – that need to be addressed too, given the synergistic impacts of these multiple and interrelated threats.

Can these extinction-threatening problems be effectively addressed?

Well the reality is that most (but not all) of them can be tackled effectively if we are courageous enough to make powerful personal and organizational decisions and then implement them. But we are not even close to doing that yet. And time is obviously running out fast.

Given the evidence, scientific and otherwise, documenting the cause and nature of many of these problems and what is required to fix them, why aren’t these strategies to address the problems implemented?

At the political and economic level, it is usually explained structurally – for example, as an outcome of capitalism, patriarchy and/or the states-system – or, more simply, as an outcome of the powerful vested interests that control governments and the corporate imperative to make profits despite exacerbating the current perilous state of the Earth’s biosphere and its many exploited populations (human and otherwise) by doing so.

But the reality is that these political and economic explanations mask the deeper psychological drivers that generate and maintain these dysfunctional structures and behaviours.

Let me explain why and how this happens using the climate catastrophe to illustrate the process.

While scientific concern about the increase in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere had been raised more than a century ago – see ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ – it wasn’t until the 1980s that this concern started to gain significant traction in public awareness. And despite ongoing agitation by some scientists as well as climate and environment groups, corporate-funded climate deniers were able to stall widespread recognition of, and the start of serious official action on, the climate catastrophe for more than two more decades.

However, as the truth of the climate catastrophe was finally being accepted by most people and the climate deniers were finally forced into full-scale retreat on the issue of whether or not the climate catastrophe was, in fact, so serious that it threatened human extinction, the climate deniers implemented their back-up strategy: they used their corporate media to persuade people that action wasn’t necessary ‘until the end of the [21st] century’ and to exaggerate the argument about the ‘acceptable’ increase above the pre-industrial norm – 2 degrees? 3 degrees? 1.5 degrees? – to obscure the truth that 0.5 degrees was, in fact, the climate science consensus back in 2007.

But, you might ask: ‘Why would anyone prefer to ignore the evidence, given the extinction-threatening nature of this problem?’

Or, to put the question more fully: ‘Why would anyone – whether an “ordinary” worker, academic, lawyer, doctor, businessperson, corporate executive, government leader or anyone else – prefer to live in delusion and believe the mainstream narrative about “the end of the century” (or 1.5 degrees) rather than simply consider the evidence and respond powerfully to it?’

And what is so unattractive about the truth that so many people run from it rather than embrace it?

Obviously, these questions go to the heart of the human (psychological) condition so let me explain why most humans now live in a delusional state whether in relation to the climate, environment issues generally, the ongoing wars and other military violence, the highly exploitative global economy or anything else.

People do not choose to live in delusion nor do they choose their delusion consciously. A delusion is generated by a person’s unconscious mind; that is, the part of their own mind of which the individual is normally unaware. So why does a person’s unconscious mind generate a delusion? What is the purpose of it?

A person’s unconscious mind generates a delusion when the individual is simply too terrified to contemplate and grapple with reality. Instead, the person unconsciously generates a delusion and then lives in accord with that delusion for the (obvious) reason that the delusion does not frighten them.

This unconscious delusional state is the fundamental outcome of the socialization, which I call ‘terrorization’, of the typical child during their childhood.

Endlessly and violently coerced (by a variety of threatened and actual punishments) to obey the will of parents, teachers and religious figures in denial of their own self-will, while simultaneously denied the opportunity to feel the fear, anger, sadness and other feelings that this violence causes, the child has no choice but to suppress their awareness of how they feel and the reality that caused these feelings. As a result, this leaves virtually all children feeling terrified, full of self-hatred and powerless. For brief explanations of how this happens, see ‘Understanding Self-Hatred in World Affairs’ and ‘Why Are Most Human Beings So Powerless?’

However, and this point is important, each of these feelings is extraordinarily unpleasant to feel consciously and the child never gets the listening they need to focus on feeling them. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

As a result, these feelings are suppressed below conscious awareness and this fear, self-hatred and powerlessness become the primary but unconscious psychological drivers of their behaviour and, significantly, results in them participating mindlessly in the widespread ‘socially acceptable’ delusions generated by elites and endlessly promulgated through elite channels such as education systems, the corporate media and entertainment industries.

Hence, as a result of being terrorized during childhood, delusion is the most common state of human individuals, irrespective of their role in society. For a full explanation of why this happens, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

And, as one part of their delusional state, most people must engage in the denial of reality whenever reality (unconsciously) frightens them (or threatens to bring their unconscious self-hatred or powerlessness into their awareness). See ‘The Psychology of Denial’. This, of course, means that they are frightened to take action in response to reality but also deny it is even necessary.

So what can we do about all of this? Well, as always, I would tackle the problem at various levels.

If you are one of those rare people who prefers to research the evidence and to act intelligently and powerfully in response to the truth that emerges from this evidence, I encourage you to do so. One option you have if you find the evidence of near-term human extinction compelling in light of the lacklustre official responses so far, is to join those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Obviously, tokenism on your part – such as rejecting plastic bags or collecting rubbish from public places – is not enough in the face of the profound changes needed.

Of course, if you are self-aware enough to know that you are inclined to avoid unpleasant realities and to take the action that this requires, then perhaps you could tackle this problem at its source by ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you want intelligent, compassionate and powerful children who do not grow up living in delusion and denial, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you want to campaign on the climate, war, rainforest destruction or any other issue that brings us closer to extinction, consider developing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to do so. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you want to participate in the worldwide effort to end violence in all of its manifestations, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

In summary, the primary threat faced by humanity is not the synergistic multitude of complex social, political, economic and technological forces that are precipitating our rush to extinction.

The fundamental threat to our survival is our psychological incapacity (particularly because of our fear, self-hatred and powerlessness) to perceive reality and respond powerfully to it by formulating and implementing appropriate social, political, economic and technological measures that address our multifaceted crisis systematically.

Unless we include addressing this dysfunctional individual and collective psychological state in our strategy to avert human extinction, we will ultimately fail and extinction will indeed be our fate.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981.

9 March 2018

By Rima Najjar

I hate the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC, “the preeminent power in Washington lobbying” today. I hate it with a strong, unadulterated passion that has been burning inside me for decades.

Throughout most of these decades, there was no outlet for me to say these words or to do anything about them (Watch U.S.-Israel Relations and Middle East Policy, Free Speech Panel). I have Paul Findley’s 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out (against the pervasive influence of AIPAC) on my shelf. It looked down on me more as a cautionary tale than as an inspiration.

Today, things are different, although still fraught with taboos and dangers associated with free speech against “delegitimizing” Israel, which is what the Palestinian struggle for liberation aims to achieve.

On the occasion of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2018 address at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, historian Doug Rossinow (University of Oslo) wrote a “perspective” in The Washington post titled “The dark roots of AIPAC, ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby’”

Great piece, but the headline has “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” in quotes. Why the quotes? Is there any doubt about the purpose of this powerful and monied lobby group in DC?

AIPAC used to be called “the Jewish lobby” by some people. Now that was inaccurate for the simple reason that not all groups/individuals in that lobby were/are Jews, though many are.

J.J. Goldberg’s book (titled Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment), which was excerpted in The Washington Post, described AIPAC as

“the Jewish community’s main foreign-policy lobbying organization … The clout that Jewish Americans exercise in American politics is far incommensurate with their population”.

Both anti-Zionist Jewish American groups (example, Jewish Voice for Peace) and Zionist Jewish groups (example J Street) include non-Jews in their organizations.

Splitting hairs without a difference, and still embracing the racist, Apartheid ideology of Zionism, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, refuses to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”, referring to it as a “Jewish democratic home, in the state of Israel.”

Historic Palestine is the homeland of Palestinian Arabs of all religions, not of Jews worldwide.

Justice for Palestinians in a state that is “Jewish and democratic” is an absurdity. Even John Kerry acknowledged that “If the choice is one state [as opposed to a partitioned Palestine with a bit of Palestinian state], Israel can either be Jewish or democratic.”

Speaking out against Israel continues to be dressed in tentative formats. A TRT roundtable discussion, for example, that includes speakers who call a spade a spade, nevertheless approaches Israel’s criminality toward the Palestinian people by describing its egregious actions as Israel “going too far” and posing a “debate” question, “Is Israel’s Jewish nation-state bill discriminatory?”, when a bold positive statement is warranted.

There is absolutely no doubt this bill is discriminatory, as both HuwaidaArraf (a Palestinian American activist, lawyer and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement) and Ben White (British author who has written extensively on Israeli Apartheid) conclusively show in a few sentences.

AIPAC lobbies for the security of the Zionist Jewish state. The undeniable obverse of that is the continued oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Some people believe the words “Jewish state” should be put in quotes, not because Israel is not a Jewish state in character and practice, but because there is a minority of Jews worldwide who are anti-Zionist and do not wish the way they identify as Jews to be associated in any way with Israel’s brand of religious and political Zionism. That number, thankfully, is on the increase, especially among the younger generation of American Jews, according to polls.

And there is hope. RamzyBaroud writes in Arab News:

“Despite the massive sums of money spent to channel public opinion in the United States in favor of Israel, unmistakable trends in opinion polls are attesting to the changing dynamics of Israel’s support among ordinary Americans. …. Netanyahu has shoved Israel into the heart of polarizing American politics and, although he has achieved his short-term goals (for example, obtaining US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel), he has irrevocably damaged the decades-long consensus on Israel among Americans, and in that there is a great source of hope.”

From RamzyBaroud’s mouth to heaven.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.

8 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/08/how-do-i-hate-thee-aipac-let-me-count-the-ways/

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

“The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!”

Chief East Timorese negotiator, Xanana Gusmão, Feb 28, 2018

In the scheme of things, Australia has deputised as regional bully for imperial powers since it became an outpost of the British empire.  Neighbouring states have been ridiculed, mocked and derided as sub-human and incapable.  The term “failed state” is still used in Canberra’s circles of presupposing power over desperate basket cases.  Little wonder that China smells a wounded reputation.

It is in that spirit that signing of an agreement between Australia and East Timor to demarcate maritime borders took place.  Officially, there were smiles, even a sense of back slapping.  The March 7 press release from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop conveys the moment of false elevation:

“The treaty is a historic agreement that opens a new chapter in our bilateral relationship.  It establishes permanent maritime boundaries between our countries and provides for the joint development and management of the Great Sunrise gas fields.”

The story behind the rubbing and flesh pressing was more questioning.  The countries had, after all, reached this point after allegations of espionage threatened to scupper talks.  Those allegations pertained to efforts on the part of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to spy on East Timorese delegates during negotiations of the 2006 CMATS (Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea).  Where the division of revenue is concerned – in that case, the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea – the spooks will follow.

The central points of historic contention between the states remain traditional: natural resources and how best to harness them.  Neither could quite agree on who should have access to oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.  The political imbroglio had its genesis in the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty signed between Australia and Indonesia when President Suharto’s kleptocracy, not to mention brutal suppression of East Timor, were deemed acceptable matters of realpolitik.

The subsequent liberation of East Timor left the fledgling state in a parlous, near-death state.  Indonesia and Australia continued to share the resources of the Timor Gap in gluttonous merriment till the signing of the Timor Sea Treaty.  The document had one glaring flow: the lack of a determined permanent maritime border.  CMATS, which East Timor duly tore up, permitted an equal division of revenue, but similarly postponed the discussion of a maritime border.

Central to the Timor-Leste strategy was a determination to do it by the international law book.  East Timor argued for a maritime border lying half way between it and Australia; Australia, that it follow its continental shelf.  The Permanent Court of Arbitration, and Conciliation Commissioners, were duly engaged in applying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  Australia subsequently celebrated the outcome as “the first ever conciliation under [UNCLOS].”

While students of international law cheered the result, the political dimension proved uglier.  East Timor’s chief negotiator and all-round resistance figure Xanana Gusmão lashed Australia and the Commissioners in a letter to the Conciliation Commission.

The Commission, he argued, were ignorant on East Timorese matters.  The “chosen technical expert does not have appropriate experience or understanding from working in Timor-Leste or similar developing country contexts.”  Their assessments on “potential benefits to the Timor-Leste population” were “shockingly superficial”, a point that only advantaged Australia.

Gusmão also had another gripe: Australian negotiators had seemingly been gotten to by the extractive industry heavies, Woodside Petroleum and Conoco Philips. “Civil society could potentially perceive this as a ‘form’ of collusion between the Government of Australia and Darwin LNG Partners and/or the Sunrise J.”

That the officials of Timor-Leste should harbour obstinate suspicions is not only understandable but sagacious.  To deal with a repressive, sanguinary Indonesian military was painful enough.  But then came international knowledge about the brutal regime operating in East Timor, knowledge that came precariously close to active complicity.  Fraternal talk tends to be counterfeit in the market of geopolitics.

The 2,500 page Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor, transmitted by Gusmão, then East Timorese president, to the national parliament in November 2005 referenced hundreds of illuminating formerly classified US and British documents.  These showed tacit approval by both the US and UK for the invasion of East Timor in 1975 and the status quo till 1999, during which some 100,000 Timorese died.

There were even open instances of Indonesian officials showing interest, as a National Security Council memorandum to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger states, “in knowing the American attitude regarding Portuguese Timor (and, by implication, our reaction to a possible Indonesian takeover).”  They were not disappointed.

As late as 2014, the Australian government would go to considerable lengths to prevent the release of files pertaining to Canberra’s knowledge of Indonesian troop deployments during the occupation.  Of particular sensitivity were operations conducted in late 1981 and early 1982 which ended in predictable massacre.  In a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal agreeing with the government, President Justice Duncan Kerr claimed with Kafkaesque absurdity that he had to “express conclusions which I am unable to explain”.

What the justice did reveal was a tantalising titbit on the regional bullying East Timor has been subjected to at the hands of murderous and occasionally complicit powers.  Evidence submitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade revealed a certain insistence on the part of US authorities in 2013 wanting “the Australian government to continue to restrict access to… four documents” with “ongoing sensitivities”.

East Timor remains a state on a drip. It is impoverished.  Despite all this, the Australian preference remains determined and exploitative.  The issue on where the oil and gas will be processed continues as a niggling sore point.  Canberra prefers that piping take place through Darwin, with an 80 percent revenue sweetener to East Timor.

That will hardy pass muster for Dili, which sees value in having the processing facility in East Timor, where a “petroleum hub” is being developed. To that end, it is even willing to surrender a revenue cut to Australia.  Power machinations, and Australia’s petroleum lobby, may well yet undo these arrangements. The regional bully remains renascent.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

8 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/08/bullied-relations-australia-east-timor-and-natural-resources/

By Andre Damon

In another milestone in the growing integration between the military-intelligence complex and Silicon Valley, Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program.

Since initiating its drone assassination program in 2009, the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 “combatants” in drone strikes. Internal military documents show that for every one person targeted by a drone strike, nine bystanders are killed, meaning that the true toll of the US military’s airborne terrorism campaign in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq potentially rises to the tens of thousands.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law, under which lethal force may be used outside armed conflict zones only as a last resort.”

Google’s complicity with the drone murder program implicates the company in the criminal activities of the US military, sparking outrage among employees after executives admitted the collaboration in an internal memo last week, according to a report by Gizmodo.

Sensitive to both the potential legal ramifications of its actions and to the hostility to America’s criminal wars both inside and outside the company, Google stressed in a statement that its collaboration “is for non-offensive uses only,” saying “the technology flags images for human review.”

But this absurd and unserious pretense, aimed to provide talking points to an uncritical, state-controlled media, is the equivalent of a Mafia getaway driver claiming he is not an accomplice to murder because he did not pull the trigger.

The US government has claimed the right to use drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world, including within the borders of the United States. In 2011, the Obama administration assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, with a Predator drone strike in Yemen, then murdered his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in another drone strike two weeks later.

Google’s partnership in such nefarious operations threatens it not only with legal sanction around the world, but also with serious commercial repercussions. The company’s decision to proceed despite these dangers points to the increasingly vital role of military contracts in the business operations of the major technology giants.

The Defense Department spent at least $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence programs last year, and is expected to spend even more this year, with much of that amount flowing to corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Nvidia, whose artificial intelligence capacities reportedly outstrip those of in-house Pentagon programs.

Over the past year, Google, Facebook and Twitter have all announced measures to censor the information their services present to users, promoting “authoritative” and “trusted” news outlets over “alternative” viewpoints, which include news outlets that expose and denounce US war crimes. Facebook, which of all the technology companies has been the most unabashed in its determination to censor its platform, has explicitly said it expects user engagement to drop as a result of its demotion of “viral” videos and promotion of “trusted” news sources, such as the New York Times.

As these companies expect some drop-off in consumer demand as they impose increasingly restrictive censorship measures, lucrative defense contracts are a means to pad their bottom line and align their financial interests ever more closely with the war-making and repressive operations of the American state.

The technology giants have moved to impose censorship measures at the same time that the Pentagon has concluded that it has found itself in an “AI arms race,” as the Wall Street Journal put it this month. Facing the rapid economic rise of substantial military powers, such as Russia and China, who are able to develop and implement new technologies without the massive logistical burden of the countless wars, overseas deployments, and destabilization operations engaged in by the United States. US military planners have come to the conclusion that the only way to retain the American military advantage in future conflicts is to integrate Silicon Valley into the warfighting machine.

The Pentagon has devised the so-called “Third offset” strategy to defeat the “pacing threat” from China by focusing on “autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations,” and “networked autonomous weapons” as the Economist recently put it in the cover story of an issue titled “The next war.”

This strategy revolves around the recruitment of the US private technology sector, which remains the most developed in the world. As the Economist put it, the United States “continues to dominate commercial AI funding and has more firms working in the field than any other country.”

Speaking at a conference last year, Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, the head of the so-called “Project Maven” in which Google is a key collaborator, declared the US in the midst of an “AI arms race,” adding, “Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.”

He added, “There is no ‘black box’ that delivers the AI system the government needs… Key elements have to be put together … and the only way to do that is with commercial partners alongside us.”

In order to streamline the reciprocal exchange between the technology giants’ vast computational power, artificial intelligence capabilities, and massive database of sensitive user data and the US military’s virtually limitless budget, the Pentagon has set up a series of partnerships with Silicon Valley. In 2015, the Pentagon set up a private-public funding vehicle known as the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), headquartered just minutes from Google’s main campus in Mountain View, California

In 2016, the Pentagon set up an entity called the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, aiming to “bring the technological innovation and best practice of Silicon Valley to the US Military,” chaired by none other than former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Last fall, Schmidt complained about the reluctance of those working in the technology sector to collaborate with the Pentagon, bemoaning the fact, “There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly.”

But beyond leveraging the tech giants’ artificial intelligence capabilities for guiding missiles and selecting victims, the open secret of the Pentagon’s collaboration with Silicon Valley is that, behind the scenes, vast quantities of sensitive, personal user data is likely being funneled to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies for the purposes of surveillance and targeting.

As Lt. Gen. John Shanahan, who is closely involved in Project Maven put it at a conference last year, “On the far end of the scale, you see Google. They don’t tell us what they have, unless anyone from Google wants to whisper in my ear later.”

The integration of companies like Google into what had previously been known as the military-intelligence apparatus is creating a vast system of state repression previously unknown in human history. Preparing for great-power conflict requires, as the Pentagon’s recently-released National Defense Strategy puts it, “the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and military.”

Censorship and surveillance are the linchpin of this emerging military-technology-intelligence nexus. As the United States prepares to wage “hot” wars against “peer” militaries such as Russia and China, the growth of domestic anti-war sentiment will be combatted through the use of mass censorship, aided by artificial intelligence, with political profiling on the basis of social media communications.

8 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/08/google-admits-collaboration-with-illegal-us-drone-murder-program/