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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/

By Yanis Varoufakis

All the happy talk about impending “debt relief” and a “clean exit” from Greece’s third “bailout” obscures an uglier truth: the country’s debt bondage is being extended to 2060. Worse, by ossifying Greece’s insolvency, while pretending to have overcome it, Europe’s establishment is demonstrating its refusal to fix the eurozone’s flaws.

ATHENS – Greece’s never-ending public-debt saga has come to signify the European Union’s inept handling of its inevitable eurozone crisis. Eight years after its bankruptcy, the Greek state’s persistent insolvency remains an embarrassment for Europe’s officialdom. That seems to be why, after having declared the euro crisis over in the rest of Europe, the authorities seem determined to declare final victory on the Greek front, too.

The big moment, it is said, will come in August, when Greece will be pronounced a “normal” European country again. Recently, in preparation for the government’s return to the money markets – from which it has been effectively excluded since 2010 – Greece’s public-debt authority has been testing the waters with a long-term bond issue.

Unfortunately, all the happy talk about impending “debt relief” and a “clean exit” from Greece’s third “bailout” obscures an uglier truth: the country’s debt bondage is being extended to 2060. And, by ossifying Greece’s insolvency, while pretending to have overcome it, Europe’s establishment is demonstrating its dogged refusal to address the eurozone’s underlying fault lines. This augurs ill for all Europeans.

For an EU country to be considered “normal,” it should be subject to the scrutiny facing countries that were never bailed out. That means the standard twice-yearly checks of compliance with the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, as performed by the European Commission under the so-called European Semester procedure. Nevertheless, for countries like Ireland or Portugal, a tougher “post-program surveillance” procedure was designed following their bailouts: quarterly checks conducted not only by the European Commission but also by the European Central Bank.

It is plain to see why Greece’s road will be much bumpier than Ireland’s or Portugal’s. The ECB had already begun purchasing Irish and Portuguese debt in the secondary markets well before these countries’ bailout exit, as part of its “quantitative easing” program. This enabled the Irish and Portuguese governments to issue large quantities of new debt at low interest rates.

Greece was never included the ECB’s quantitative easing program, for two reasons: its debt burden was too large to service in the long term, even with the help of ECB-sponsored low interest rates, and the ECB was under pressure, mainly from Germany, to wind down the program. Moreover, the post-program surveillance procedure does not give the “troika” of official creditors – the European Commission, the ECB, and the International Monetary Fund – the leverage over Greece that they desire.

In celebrating Greece’s “clean exit,” while retaining its iron grip on the Greek government and withholding debt restructuring, Europe’s establishment is once again displaying its skill at inventing neologisms. Until 75% of Greece’s public debt is repaid – in 2060, at the earliest – the country, we are told, will be subject to “enhanced surveillance” (a term with unfortunate echoes of “enhanced interrogation”).

In practice, this means 42 years of quarterly reviews, during which the European Commission and the ECB “in collaboration with the IMF” may impose new “measures” on Greece (such as austerity, fire sales of public property, and restrictions on organized labor). In short, the next two generations of Greeks will grow up with the troika and its “process” (perhaps under a different name) as a permanent fixture of life.

The celebration of Greece’s return to normality began a few weeks ago with the government’s oversubscribed €3 billion ($3.7 billion) issue of its first seven-year bond in years. What the revelers failed to note, however, was that, to borrow that €3 billion on behalf of its creditors, the Greek state added €816 million in interest payments to its debt repayments for 2025. Germany’s cost for rolling over the same sum, on the same day, was a mere €63 million. Will Greece’s income rise by a similar amount between now and 2025 to make this sustainable?

The official answer is that debt relief will come soon, paving the way for Greece’s smooth return to the money markets. But European officials have ruled out restructuring debt that cannot be repaid. What debt relief really means is that repayment will be shifted from 2022-2035 to 2035-2060, with interest added. In other words, Greece will gain easier medium-term repayments in exchange of 40 years of debt serfdom.

Back in 2015, I was pushing for substantive debt restructuring by means of linking the volume of debt and the rate of repayment to the size of Greece’s nominal GDP and its rate of growth, respectively. Now, it seems that the idea of nominal GDP-indexing will be revived, but only to determine the extent to which medium-term repayment is pushed into the future. Moreover, the easier medium-term payments will be made contingent not only on growth, but also on new “conditionalities” (read: austerity measures) imposed by the (renamed) troika.

According to the authorities’ propaganda, Greece’s creditors are linking debt repayments to growth. In reality, the prospect of recovery will be dealt another blow, because long-term investors will be deterred by the combination of prolonged insolvency and protracted austerity.

What accounts for this implacable determination to leave the Greek wound festering under a flimsily applied Band-Aid? The answer lies in France and Germany, where, a decade after the 2008 financial crash exposed the eurozone’s design flaws, there is still no consensus about how to manage the large-scale insolvencies that are inevitable in a currency union lacking any mechanism to temper financial flows and trade imbalances.

Greece remains the litmus test of the European establishment’s capacity to rationalize the eurozone, and its people have been sacrificed on the altar of an impasse whose repercussions have long since spilled over to the fragmenting political scenery of Central Europe.

Something has to give. Will it be the establishment’s determination to stick to business as usual? Or will it be Europe’s integrity?

Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

26 February 2018

Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-debt-relief-enhanced-surveillance-by-yanis-varoufakis-2018-02?utm_source=Project+Syndicate+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c1427ae595-sunday_newsletter_4_3_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_73bad5b7d8-c1427ae595-104996581

By Ishaan Tharoor

Mohammed bin Salman, the youthful and ambitious Saudi crown prince, arrived in London on Wednesday for a three-day visit shrouded in controversy. Critics protested the British government’s close ties to Riyadh, lambasting the kingdom’s human rights record as well its escalation of the war in Yemen, which has led to an unmitigated humanitarian disaster.

Meanwhile, the crown prince’s defenders unleashed a public-relations blitz celebrating the liberalizing reforms being introduced under his watch. Ads in British newspapers and billboards across London hailed how Mohammed was “opening Saudi Arabia to the world.” His supporters blanketed social media with stories of his campaigns to curb corruption and give more freedoms to Saudi women.

Mohammed is indeed shaking things up at home. Recent interviews with prominent Washington Post and New York Times columnists show how eagerly he is styling himself as a millennial reformer steering his nation into 21st-century modernity. But he’s also playing a central role in an international realignment that is perhaps more important.

Before arriving in Britain, Mohammed stopped in Cairo to visit Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, a close Saudi ally. Apart from meeting with Sissi, the crown prince also called on Pope Tawadros II, the head of Egypt’s ancient Coptic Church. It was cast as a sign of Mohammed’s liberal enlightenment: The scion of a regime notorious for embracing and exporting an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam was reaching out to one of the region’s embattled minority faiths.

But the crown prince was also sending a message to his supposed enemies. In remarks reportedly made this week in a meeting with Egyptian newspaper editors, he pointed to a “triangle of evil” in the Middle East made up of Iran — Riyadh’s perennial foe — Islamist extremist groups and Turkey. His rhetoric seemed to echo the notorious “axis of evil” bluster of the George W. Bush administration.

The inclusion of Turkey raised eyebrows and sparked an angry backlash on Turkish social media. There is no love lost between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and leaders in the region, especially in the case of Sissi, who brutally suppressed Islamist factions favored by Erdogan after taking power in a 2013 military coup. To this day, Erdogan and his supporters memorialize a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood activists in Cairo that summer, which saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people killed.

After reports about Mohammed’s comments emerged, Saudi officials moved to placate their critics. “It was alleged that the Saudi Crown prince pointed to Turkey via the words ‘some evil powers in the region,’ ” read a statement from the Saudi Embassy in Ankara. “We would like to state that these ‘evil powers’ are the Muslim Brotherhood and radical groups.”

But that hardly obscures the ill will between Riyadh and Ankara. The two countries represent opposing visions for the Middle East: Erdogan was a champion of the 2011 Arab Spring and cheered on the democratic victories of Islamist political parties across the region. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, reviled parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood and hated the upheavals that plunged much of the old authoritarian order of the Arab world into crisis.

While Erdogan was championing the Turkish model of democracy as a blueprint for the region, deposed Arab autocrats were finding sanctuary in Saudi Arabia. Now, numerous political Islamists from Egypt and other Arab states are in exile in Turkey, and Erdogan cuts an increasingly isolated figure, raging at both the West and his Arab rivals.

In recent months, Turkey has been fighting a media war with both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which also detests Erdogan’s coziness with Islamists and support of its rival, Qatar. In December, Erdogan and the UAE’s foreign minister traded insults over Ottoman history in the Arabian peninsula. This week, the Saudi crown prince reportedly chided Erdogan’s desire for his own “caliphate” across the Middle East.

This week, a major Middle Eastern satellite network based in the UAE — but believed to be majority Saudi-owned — even stopped airing Turkish soap operas, which are tremendously popular across the Middle East and North Africa. The decision is thought to be an extension of the heated political climate.

In that climate, Erdogan has drawn closer to Iran, particularly in the fitful project to broker some sort of truce in Syria. But that hardly justifies being lumped into the “triangle of evil” by the Saudi crown prince. As we’ve noted in Today’s WorldView, Turkey and Iran find themselves on the opposite sides of the Syrian battlefield in many places. And while Turkey is justifiably criticized for allowing myriad Islamist fighters to slip into Syria in the early years of the war, it has also suffered greatly from Islamic State terrorism attacks at home.

Meanwhile, Shiite Iran is ideologically anathema to Sunni jihadist groups. In linking the two, Mohammed took a page directly out of the playbook of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has insisted repeatedly that the Islamic Republic and Islamic State should be seen in the same light.

That, too, is telling. Mohammed is advancing an agenda that is bringing Riyadh into tighter cooperation not only with a hawkish Trump administration, but with Israel itself. Although the Saudis aren’t publicly admitting it, Israeli officials privately confirm that there is growing strategic cooperation between the two countries, as well as Egypt. Think of it, perhaps, as another triangle in a region where new enmities and rivalries constantly take shape.

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.

8 March 2018

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/08/saudi-crown-prince-sees-a-new-axis-of-evil-in-the-middle-east/?utm_term=.12a43c7fb5f8

By Rachel Blevins

3 Mar 2018 –The Rothschild banking empire will ensure that its control continues to stay within the family for a seventh generation as David de Rothschild, 75, is set to hand the role of chairman over to his son, Alexandre de Rothschild, 37, in June.

The banking dynasty has been passed between generations for the last 200 years. It was started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild as a French railway company, and five of his sons went on to establish banking businesses across Europe. Financial Times reported that the investment bank is currently pushing to “diversify from its core French and British advisory business to help it ride out less buoyant periods in Europe’s mergers and acquisitions market.”

The new chairman joined the bank in 2008, and he has helped to set up and oversee the private equity business. As the group increases its investments in small U.S. operations, the Times noted that the overhaul of the corporate structure that occurred during the elder de Rothschild’s term allowed the family to “tighten control over the group by buying out minority shareholders.”

The Rothschild family has also shown its influence in “U.S. operations” by working closely with political figures such as failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. WikiLeaks revealed that Lynn Forester de Rothschild was working with the Clinton campaign to formulate economic policy as early as January 2015.

“I think this blog overstates what Warren was doing, but we need to craft the economic message for Hillary so that Warren’s common inaccurate conclusions are addressed. Xoxo Lynn,” Lady Rothschild wrote in an email to top Clinton aide, Cheryl Mills.

Emmanuel Macron, the current French president, is also a former employee of Rothschild. He earned the nickname of “Mozart of Finance” at the company after he played a crucial role in advising Nestlé to invest $12 billion in the acquisition of a Pfizer unit in 2012.

The Rothschild family currently has 58 percent of voting rights and owns 49 percent of the company, and the Times noted that while revenue from its global advisory business fell 8 percent, private wealth and asset management and merchant banking divisions grew by more than 30 percent each and overall revenue rose by 6 percent in 2017.

As The Free Thought Project reported in August 2017, Lord Jacob Rothschild, founder and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, sent ominous signals internationally when he began selling U.S. assets because he viewed them as risky and unstable.

“We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured,” Rothschild wrote in his company’s semi-annual report.

Rothschild also said he believes “The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end,” and that quantitative easing programs employed by central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. will eventually “come to an end.”

The Rothschilds consider themselves to be the “custodians of the Economist magazine’s legacy.” The magazine published an article in 1988 that claimed a centralized “world currency” could be expected by the year 2018—a methodical movement that has played out in many ways over the years.

The Financial Times reported that while Rothschild was affected by a financial crisis in 2016, its share increased by more than 15 percent in 2017. It remains to be seen how Alexandre de Rothschild’s leadership will impact the banking empire.

As The Free Thought Project previously reported, the Rothschild family has been moving its chess pieces around the world for centuries.

The head of the Rothschild banking empire, and staunch supporter of Israel, Lord Jacob Rothschild, recently revealed the critical role of his family in the securing the Balfour Declaration, which “helped pave the way for the creation of Israel.”

The Balfour Declaration, written in 1917, was an official document from the British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the Zionist movement in Britain at the time – and Lord Jacob Rothschild’s uncle.

During the television interview with Rothschild, he revealed new details about the extremely pivotal role his cousin Dorothea de Rothschild played. Rothschild described Dorothea, who was in her teens at the time, as “devoted to Israel,” and said: ‘What she did was crucially important.’”

Rothschild went on to say that Dorothy acted as a conduit between Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and the British political establishment. Dorothy “told Weizmann how to integrate, how to insert himself into British establishment life, which he learned very quickly,” according to Rothschild.

Rothschild explained that the manner in which the declaration was procured was extraordinary.

“It was the most incredible piece of opportunism,” he reasoned.

“[Weizmann] gets to Balfour,” Rothschild described, “and unbelievably, he persuades Lord Balfour, and Lloyd George, the prime minister, and most of the ministers, that this idea of a national home for Jews should be allowed to take place. I mean it’s so, so unlikely.”

This extremely revealing interview with Lord Rothschild was conducted by former Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub as part of the Balfour 100 project, commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The interview took place at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, a manor bequeathed to the nation by the Rothschild family in 1957, where the Declaration is stored.

According to Ambassador Taub, the Balfour Declaration “changed the course of history for the Middle East.”

Rothschild said his family at the time was divided on the idea of Israel, noting that some members “didn’t think it was a good thing that this national home be established there.”

Dorothea’s letters are also stored at Waddesdon, and describe her subsequent dealings with a variety of Zionist leaders, as well as her advice on the organization of the Zionist Conference, according to the Times.

Rothschild said that the Declaration went through five separate drafts before finally being formally issued on November 2, 1917.

In her book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, Alison Weir exposed the fact that numerous drafts of the declaration were presented to Zionists in the United States prior to the document being finalized.

Weir’s book notes that one of the primary inducements offered to British leaders to issue the Balfour Declaration was the Zionist claim that they would bring the U.S. into World War I on Britain’s side if the British would promise to enable the Zionist colonization of Palestine.

Balfour Declaration Text:
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist     aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours,

Arthur James Balfour

The deeply intertwined relationship between modern Zionism and the Rothschild banking empire cannot be overstated. Without the Rothschild family’s vast influence and direct assistance, Israel very well may have never been created.

Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives.

5 March 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/03/rothschild-passing-dynasty-on-to-7th-generation-marking-200-years-of-banker-family-rule/