Rainbow of Death—THE PROBLEM WITH THE HOLLYWOOD DIVERSITY MOVEMENT
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Garland Nixon
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From the all-white 1950s/60s TV to the all-BUT-white programming in the age of wokery, the propaganda pendulum has swung 100%, and the stupid and shameless manipulators expect us to swallow this repulsive switch. As usual, just like in the "Eisenhower years", when everyone was white and middle class, to our new age in which whites are hard to find even in TV commercials, poverty and the homeless are nowhere to be seen, and everyone is blissfully "diverse", the pretension is that America is a model of fairness and the world's foremost bastion of human rights. Garland is justifiably nauseated by the hypocrisy, the relentless virtue signalling, while the same influential crowd seems deaf and blind to the sickening depravity of Israeli crimes in Gaza and the proliferation of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine and beyond, not to mention the US-led global slide toward nuclear war.
RAINBOW OF DEATH - THE PROBLEM WITH THE HOLLYWOOD DIVERSITY MOVEMENT
Garland Nixon Social and geopolitical critic Garland Nixon dissects the many levels of hypocrisy and unrelenting virtue signaling permeating US culture at present, with the political class, Hollywood and the rest of the media trying to convince the world that America is a land of impeccable non-racist "diversity" and a robust bastion of human rights and democracy—all of this while Biden is busy propping up the Empire by shoveling ghastly weapons and money to Neonazi Ukraine and the depraved Israeli regime.
Lili News 029
In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.
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Salome Zourabichvili with Pelosi. The proud desdendant of an old Georgian gusano family, she might soon conveniently become a US citizen, too.
GEORGIA ON MY MIND
18 May 2024
Yes, I will post Ray Charles, but I am not thinking about Ray’s Georgia. Nope. I am thinking about the frantic Western effort to launch a color revolution in Georgia, because that country’s legislature has the audacity to believe that domestic political groups should report if they are receiving at least 20% of their funding from foreigners. This is just one more example of the stinking hypocrisy I described in my previous article.
The spectacle unfolding in Tbilisi is reminiscent of a Monty Python skit, only this one includes real violence and bloodshed. We have seen the Foreign Ministers of Lithuania, Estonia and Iceland show up in Tbilisi and join the protests, by giving speeches to seething crowds, denouncing the actions of the Georgian legislature. Can you imagine the freakout in Washington if Russia’s Lavrov, China’s Wang Yi, and Hungary’s Szijjártó showed up at a Trump rally to denounce Biden’s policy in Ukraine? Exactly. The United States would not tolerate that shit for one minute. Talk about double standards.
Salome with the EU's Charles Michel. EU meddlers are welcome.
Then you have the Georgian President, who was born in France and is a French citizen. Salome Zourabichvili, if she had the same pedigree (i.e., born in France but granted U.S. citizenship) in the United States, she would be banned by the Constitution from serving as President. Yet, here she is, [ethnically Georgian 100%] shamelessly promoting foreign interests over those of the people she was elected to serve. And the majority of the European governments, as well as the Biden Administration, are vowing to impose sanctions if the legislature dares to override Zourabichvili’s veto.
It may be that the West, stupidly in my view, sees this as a baited trap to lure Russia to intervene if the color revolution picks up steam. I believe that Russia, in light of its failure to respond to the Maidan revolution in 2014, is not going to sit passively and see how things work out. At a minimum, Russia’s intelligence service is probably passing information to its intelligence counterparts in Tbilisi about the identities of foreign operators working to manufacture chaos and the source of the funds pouring into Georgia.
The obsession* of the West to meddle in other governments and foment regime change must end. I think Russia and China, as a result of their latest summit, are committed to achieving that goal. The weaker nations of the world, especially in the Global South, are awakened to this threat. That’s one of the reasons that the nations in the African Sahel have given the French and the United States the boot. I personally hope that marks the beginning of a welcome turn in world affairs.
* It's actually not an obsession, Larry. It's worse than that. It's merely the ineluctable course followed by all imperialist nations, and the US is the Summum malum of all imperialisms.
SELECT COMMENTS
Michael56
3 days ago
Angelo Giuliano put an interesting post on Twitter/X about her:
“She started as French ambassador to Georgia. She became president of Georgia after getting Georgian passport… seriously.
Meet Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili – Born French citizen, later she got her Georgian citizenship – She previously worked in NATO Brussels. – Worked at French Embassy in Washington – She is an ex-student of Zbigniew Brzezinski – She worked as Foreign minister for US/EU agent Mikheil Saakashvili.
She is clearly a foreign agent acting now as Georgian president.
Now you know why she wants to veto the “foreign agent bill”
I don’t think foreign interference gets more blatant than that.
It shows that when you control the media and you can inject millions of USD into a relatively poor country it is easy to capture people who are struggling to survive. They see these phony groups and associations saying IF only you become EU or NATO you will become wealthy. Yes, it is a pipe dream but they fall for it every single time. The US has done this over and over, even though it is a bankrupt country and more of its own people live in poverty than in many of the countries who fall for the trap.
Generally true but with the present Georgian relationship with Russia Georgia’s economy is booming. This may be poorly understood by the protesters or perhaps buying rioters with Western dollars is just too tempting, but as in the past joining with the West was not a pleasant history as Russians were being shelled in the south.and Russia did react. It will be proactive again.
They should hang her. In public. Then bury the body in an unmarked grave.
Victor 3 days ago
The fact that the USA, UK, Australia and others (the EU is currently considering such a law, along with its hypocritical total ban on Russian media in Europe) all have exactly the same laws in place requiring foreign agent registration just highlights the incredible hypocrisy at work here.
Julianne
3 days ago
The Georgian government backed by Russia will do what China did with HK unrest fomented by the West. Allow it to run to gain maximum information about the dissident forces and then crack down on it…. conclusively. If the West wants a tide of Georgian refugees it can give them passports and take them in…. Or send them where the West needs bodies- on the Russian front. They can fight and die gloriously for their ideals.
There are not going to be any more pushover revolutions.
Winchcombe
3 days ago
Larry you are absolutely right to focus on Georgia. It is becoming clear to me that Ukraine is far from the only game in town for our globalist masters. They are determined to take down (or rather over) Russia and pinch its resources and don’t care who they sacrifice in the process. It’s easy to buy up/blackmail/intimidate most Western leaders. If all else fails they will try to kill them (Fico). Rent-a-mobs are also relatively easy to conjure up with the right resources. As for the presstitute media, they are the worst type of lying scum.
When Ukraine has had enough, Georgia, Moldova, and Lithuania (think Kalingrad) are in the wings. Think of a top professional boxer up against inferior sparring partners. Throw enough of them at him, he’ll eventually be beaten. That’s their thinking, I imagine. They are not going to give up until and unless the mugs being thrown into the fight wake up. I hope and pray that the wretched Ukrainian population – at least those that remain – will soon realize they’ve been suckered by their western supposed allies. Ditto the populations of those countries who’ve been impoverished by their deeply corrupt ‘leaders’. The upcoming European elections are critical. I also think Trump’s choice of Vice President is equally important. I fear he’ll be talked into appointing another Establishment shill like Pence was. I fear the UK – my own country – is beyond redemption. (Incidentally, if someone can explain to me why our Indian Prime Minister with his Indian wife and her billionaire father-in-law, will decamp to the US, where he’s already a citizen, the moment he’s booted out of Downing Street), cares so strongly about Ukraine, I would be most grateful? It can’t be money, which easily explains Buffoon Boris)
“We have seen the Foreign Ministers of Lithuania, Estonia and Iceland show up in Tbilisi and join the protests, by giving speeches to seething crowds, denouncing the actions of the Georgian legislature.”
I’d suggest the only “president” that needs to be called is sitting in Columbia University. S/he has a delinquent recidivist in the international “Home Science” department cooking up hate-cookies again. If V. Nuland is not behind this, I’ll eat my hat (figuratively speaking).
Based on the other comments (herein) this Salome Zourabichvili seems like a slippery eel to deal with. She’s unlikely to call for help (from Russia). And the Russians have plenty on their plate to deal with at the moment. But hopefully they act swiftly — as they did in Kazakhstan (2022?) once help was requested. I think one seemingly eternal ongoing “cat playing with a soon to be dead mouse” game in the Ukraine is enough for the public bloodlust moment (neocons exempted).
I agree about not voting as some wag said “it only encourages them”. I haven’t voted in UK national elections for thirty years. Tweedle dum and Tweeedle Dee. Don’t give them legitimacy – not that they care, but true freedom is being able to think for oneself. I’d lay odds that Trump will surround himself with as many Neocons if he’s elected as he did last time, with son-in-law Jared still skulking in the background.
Sounds like it’s time for some counter-riots at the US Embassy. Not to mention arrest, expulsion and lifetime bans of all foreigners involved in the protests. The ‘president,’ herself an obvious foreign agent, should be deported back to France and have her Georgian passport revoked.
Lili News 029
In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
All of us—and we are legion across the world must keep our eyes on the genocide in Gaza, as well as on the vicious pogroms underway in the West Bank. A recent statement by James Elder of UNICEF reports that in Rafah, “The European hospital is crammed with severely injured and dying children. A military offensive here will be catastrophic.”
Despite the police and pro-Israeli thugs' violence, the protests against the Zionist crimes in Gaza continue in many campuses. Similar protests are now sprouting in Europe, where repression is also ferocious.
At the same time, throughout the West Bank, mobs of fascist settlers torch homes, steal possessions including livestock, kill Palestinians and drive them off their land. All of this has been enabled by President Joseph Biden, who has sent fulsome amounts of aid to Israel to carry out its genocidal and ethnic cleansing assaults on the Palestinian people. A holocaust, underwritten by the greatest military power in the world, is underway in both occupied territories.
Promoting the savageries Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said, “Whoever perpetrates against the Jewish people like these evil ones have perpetrated on us, will be destroyed, they will be annihilated, and it will echo for decades and decades onwards.” In another statement he declared: “Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, total and utter destruction that will erase the memory of the Amalek from under the skies.”
This is the fulfillment of Israel’s dream of inhabiting all of what was once historic Palestine, making it a land unencumbered by its indigenous Arab population. Israel’s ongoing efforts since 1948 to kill or expel all Palestinians from what was historic Palestine have triggered student sit-ins and demonstrations on some 120 American college campuses.
Israel has become a country with powerful fascistic tendencies, headed by fanatics and demagogues catering to a population so filled with hatred of Arabs that it welcomes the genocide. In a recent article, “Dead on Arrival: Israel’s Blowback Genocide,” Ellen recalls visiting the West Bank city of Hebron in the 1980s and seeing graffiti on walls that proclaimed, “Arabs to the Gas Chambers.” At that time renowned Israeli public intellectual Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that Israel was turning its soldiers into Judeonazis. Recent YouTube videos of soldiers mocking their victims bear out his prophecy. This hatred is pervasive in Israel. There are courageous exceptions like journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy who write for the newspaper Haaretz and the group Combatants for Peace. But all too many Israelis have supported their country’s assault on Gaza, or even wanted something worse.
The student protests that for weeks have been under public scrutiny have been peaceful mass gatherings of citizens outraged at Biden’s unconditional support for Israel's relentless campaign in Gaza. Yet early on, riot police were summoned to Columbia’s campus as well as that of the City College of New York, the University of Texas-Austin, UCLA, and others, to dismantle the encampments, arrest, and sometimes beat up students and supporting faculty. Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC last week showed images of a mob hurling fireworks at the UCLA protesters, spraying them with pepper spray, and beating them with sticks and other weapons.
In tandem with the police actions, cries of “antisemitism” have arisen about the protests. When interviewed in print or on television, the Jewish student activists have said unanimously that these protests are neither antisemitic nor hate-filled. Moreover, the antisemitism claims are irreconcilable with the fact that thousands of Jewish students nationwide are participating. Two leading protest organizations, Jewish Voices for Peace and If Not Now, are Jewish, proclaiming that never again may genocide take place against any people, not just Jews.
Both of us writers of this article have experienced real antisemitism. Ellen remembers, in her early childhood, around 1945, her mother saying that the local grocer, a Mr. McGonigle, was glad Hitler was “mopping up all the kikes.” She remembers the child in her third-grade class who called her “a kike.” Jennifer remembers being pelted with spitballs by classmates shouting “Jew!” at her for making a Star of David design in her art class. Meanwhile, her father recalled being chased around the block by a neighborhood bully holding a knife saying, “You killed Christ!”
These experiences mirror what until now has been the guiding definition of antisemitism, that of The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA): “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
SIDEBAR
Student Protester SCHOOLS Media on SOLIDARITY and Civil Disobedience
Yet the campaign against alleged “antisemitism” has gone forward, adding criticism of Israel to the definition of the term. In Congress, the House of Representatives [date] passed a bill entitled “The Antisemitism Awareness Act.” It makes speech seemingly threatening the existence of Israel newly “antisemitic,” citing, for example, the cry, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a call for the annihilation of the Jewish state and of the Jews in it. It makes no difference that Jewish students and people like the writers of this article have chanted that slogan, intending its meaning to be that Palestinians should be free within a redefined state.
Europe, which is even more extreme in its subservience to the Israeli lobby than America, has cracked down on protesters with singular ferocity.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a longtime supporter of Israel and a Zionist, has criticized the bill: “While there is much in the bill that I agree with,” he said, “its core provision would put a thumb on the scale in favor of one particular definition of antisemitism to the exclusion of all others to be used when the Department of Education assesses claims of antisemitism on campus.” He continued that the new definition includes “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” adding: “The problem is that these examples may include protected speech, in some contexts, particularly with respect to criticism of the State of Israel.”
Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide, is the author of an article entitled, “Weaponizing Language: Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Never Again Syndrome.” In a recent dialogue with the Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, the two discussed antisemitism and “the perils of antisemitism and its current weaponization.”
In an April 30 interview on Democracy Now!, Bartov noted the peaceful nature of the University of Pennsylvania demonstration as well as the one at Brown University. Of antisemitism he said that it “is a vile sentiment, it’s an old sentiment, it has been used for bloodshed, for violence, and for genocide. But it has also become a tool to silence speech about Israel. And that, too, has quite a history, and numerous governments under Benjamin Netanyahu have been pushing this agenda of arguing that any criticism of Israeli policy, not least, of Israeli occupation policies, is antisemitic.” He added that there are Jewish students who feel threatened, for instance by the term “Intifada,” which literally means “shaking off,” as in the shaking off of the 57-year-long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. “But there’s nothing threatening about opposing occupation and oppression.”
The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which indeed weaponizes antisemitism against those protesting Israel’s savagery in Gaza and the cruelty of its overall occupation policies, is soon to be voted upon by the Senate. Its enactment would mark a giant step towards degrading the U.S. Constitution, in particular its protection of freedom of speech, assembly, and a free press. It also threatens the status of academia as a realm in which the free exchange of ideas can flourish.
[THE THREAT TO THE REMNANTS OF DEMOCRACY IS FULLY BIPARTISAN]
Fascism threatens American democracy embodied in a Republican Party that has long ceased to be a political party and is rather, according to Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of The American Enterprise Institute, “an insurrection.” The reelection of Donald Trump would import an Israeli-style fascism embodied by Netanyahu and Smotrich, while the reelection of Joe Biden will allow these smoldering tendencies to ignite the flames of that ideology within the U.S. If the Antisemitism Awareness Act is passed by the Senate, the erosion of civil liberties long anchored in the Constitution seems all but certain.
Like all forms of prejudice and ethnocentrism, antisemitism has no place in an enlightened society. But what about genocide? Is that an acceptable manifestation of a modern society? Are those denouncing protests against Israel’s genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions OK knowing that over 100,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed, wounded, and maimed in indiscriminate bombing raids across the Strip since Oct. 7th?
News of atrocities within this holocaust continues. Recently, UN Special Rapporteur of the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanesestated, “I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at #alshifa_hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces in the Ofer military prison. While I acquire more information, I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with CONCRETE MEASURES to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today.”
Israel is neither a democratic nor a peace-loving society. It is an arm of US regional hegemony and a US client state that receives $3.8 billion annually in military aid and that has received over $30 billion additional military aid since October 7th. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received $158 billion in military support, making it the greatest recipient of US military aid in history.Israel has nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons the only such power in the Middle East to have this kind of arsenal. [We] suggest the next time someone complains that “little Israel” is “surrounded by enemies” (a false statement to begin with), people consider these facts. We need look no further than Tel Aviv to determine which nation is the real destabilizing force in the region.
If the Antisemitism Awareness Act passes the Senate, what will befall student protests? Will they all become acts of civil disobedience? What about the alternative press, whose independent organs have become invaluable given the corporate media’s pussyfooting or downright ignoring of the Gaza holocaust and West Bank atrocities? Will it be shuttered by the Federal government on the grounds of banned “hate speech”? Will what we write be rejected by publications that fear for their survival?
“As a Jewish person who stands hand-in-hand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters and works daily against anti-Arab hate, I find this weaponization of my identity particularly disgusting,” states Arab-American Antidiscrimination Committee staff attorney Chris Godshall-Bennet. “Criticism of Zionism and of the Israeli government is not antisemitic, and conflating the two only serves to provide cover for Israel’s numerous, ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law, as well as its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Declares Palestinian poet Mohammad Al Kurd, “I am asked to have patience for these kinds of debates that tell me that words are genocidal. The Israeli regime is engaging in a war of attrition against the Palestinian people and yet we are asked to talk about chants and slogans… But this is about our moral obligation as human beings to reject genocide, the real genocide that is happening in real-time.”
Pro-Palestine Encampment on UW-Madison Library Mall, May 1, 2024
All people of conscience must keep this in mind. And we must maintain our focus on the agonies of Gaza and the West Bank, denouncing them and calling for an end to Israel’s assaults, to settler violence, and ultimately to the occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza.
We must honor the student demonstrators and all who champion them as the heroes they are, cease the opportunistic abuse of the term ‘antisemitism,’ and urge them to continue their protests.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(s)
Ellen Cantarow, a Boston-based journalist, first wrote from Israel and the West Bank in 1979. Cantarow has written on women in the labor force, social activism, and the Middle East. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Grand Street, and Mother Jones, among other publications, and was anthologized by the South End Press. More recently, her writing has appeared at Counterpunch, ZNet, TomDispatch and Common Dreams.
Jennifer Loewenstein is an American activist. She is politically active in Madison, Wisconsin, and writes as a freelance journalist. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as The Journal of Palestine Studies, and she is a regular contributor to leading left and alternative publications. Loewenstein lived in Israel in 1963 as a child when her father played first trumpet in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. She returned in 1981 as a junior in college, and later as an adult. Loewenstein has lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and traveled in the Palestinian Territories, where she worked for five months in 2002 at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City. She has returned to Gaza several times since then.
Lili News 029
In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
On Campus Gaza Protests, Media Let Police Tell the Story—Even When They’re Wrong
During the summer of protests that followed the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020, journalists and readers alike began taking a hard look at how much news reporting relied on police sources. In particular, the standard use of “police said” articles—where the main or only source of information came from law enforcement—was leading the media to publish information that was outright wrong.
Journalists learned some lessons from the Black Lives Matter protests (Washington Post, 6/30/20)—and promptly forgot them.
5/26/20). To many, it was all too familiar a pattern: Five years earlier, the Baltimore Sun (4/24/15) had based its reporting on the police killing of Freddie Gray almost entirely on official police statements, downplaying eyewitness reports that officers had thrown Gray headfirst into a van shortly before he died of neck injuries.
“What the police tell you initially is a rumor,” Mel Reeves, an editor at the then-86-year-old African-American newspaper the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder told the Washington Post (6/30/20). “And a lot of the times it’s not accurate.” CNN (6/6/20), in a report on how camera footage often ended up disproving police claims, went further: “Videos from several recent incidents, and countless others from over the years, have shown what many Black Americans have long maintained: that police officers lie.”
Yet four years later, when protests broke out on college campuses calling for universities to divest from companies that support the Israeli government’s campaign of killing civilians in Gaza, US media forgot those lessons—and ended up repeatedly misinforming readers as a result.
‘Trying to radicalize our children’
Nahla Al-Arian could more accurately be described as a retired elementary teacher visiting the campus that her journalist daughter graduated from.
The morning after the New York Police Department arrested 282 people at Columbia University and the City College of New York during protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, MSNBC’s Morning Joe (5/1/24) welcomed New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD deputy commissioner of public information Tarik Sheppard as its sole guests. “At what point was it known to you that this was something more [than students] and that there were people who maybe had plans for worse than what some of the students were up to?” MSNBC anchor Willie Geist asked Adams. The mayor replied:
We were able to actually confirm that with our intelligence division and one of the individual’s husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level…. These were professionals that were here. I just want to send a clear message out that there are people who are harmful and are trying to radicalize our children.
Co-anchor Mika Brzezinski nodded in approval. When Adams added, “I don’t know if they’re international, we need to look into that as well,” Brzezinski softly said, “Yes.”
widely screenshotted), that “City Hall sources tell @CBSNewYorkevidence that the wife of a known terrorist is with protestors on Columbia University campus.” At 1:47 am, CNN (5/1/24) issued a “breaking news” alert identifying the couple, Nahla and Sami Al-Arian, and showing a photo of Nahla on campus that Sami had posted to Twitter.
The next morning, Jake Offenhartz of the Associated Press (5/1/24) tracked down this “professional” agitator: Nahla Al-Arian was a retired elementary school teacher, and Sami a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida. He had been arrested in 2003 at the behest of then–US Attorney General John Ashcroft and charged with supporting the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After spending two years in jail awaiting trial, he was acquitted on all but one charge (a jury was deadlocked on the remaining count), and eventually agreed to a plea deal in which he and his wife moved to Turkey.
Nahla Al-Arian had visited the protests a week earlier with her daughters, both TV journalists, one a Columbia Journalism School graduate. Nahla stayed for about an hour, she told the Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill (5/3/24), listening to part of a teach-in and sharing some hummus with students, then returned to Virginia, where she was visiting her grandchildren, when Columbia students occupied a university building and police moved in to make arrests.
‘Look at the tents’
“Look at the tents,” NYPD official Kaz Daughtry told Fox 5 (4/23/24). “They all were the same color, the same ones that we saw at NYU, the same ones that we see at Columbia.”
This wasn’t the first time the NYPD had alleged that outsiders were behind the campus protests. A week earlier, after the Columbia encampment had resulted in an earlier round of arrests at the behest of university president Minouche Shafik, Fox 5 Good Day New York ( 4/23/24) brought on Sheppard and NYPD Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry as its guests. “The mayor is describing some of the people there as professional agitators,” said anchor Rosanna Scotto. “Are these just students?”
“Look at the tents,” replied Daughtry. “They all were the same color, the same ones that we saw at NYU, the same ones that we see at Columbia. To me, I think someone is funding this.”
After an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (4/24/24) asserted that “Rockefeller and Soros grants are subsidizing those who disrupt college campuses”— actually, one protestor at Yale and one at the University of California, Berkeley, were former fellows at a nonprofit funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—the New York Post (4/26/24) wrote that “copycat tent cities have been set up at colleges including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, the Ohio State University and Emory in Georgia—all of them organized by branches of the Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine.”
At the same time, as Wired (4/25/24) reported, dozens of Facebook and Twitter accounts had posted identical messages about the tents, saying: “Almost all the tents are identical—same design, same size, same fresh-out-of-the-box appearance. I know that college students are not that rich or coordinated.”
Snopes (4/29/24) later investigated the Post’s claims, and found no evidence that Soros had funded Students for Justice in Palestine. Meanwhile, Hell Gate (4/24/24) had checked Daughtry’s theory of a secret tent-funder through advanced data gathering: They googled it. As it turned out, there was a simpler explanation for why students across the city were using similar tents—they were the cheapest ones available online, for as little as $15. “My God,” reported the news site, “looks like what we’ve got on our hands is a classic case of college students buying something cheap and disposable.”
‘This is what professionals bring’
NYPD’s Tarik Sheppard presented as evidence of “outside agitators” a bike lock with the same Kryptonite logo as the locks sold by Columbia (photo: Christopher Robbins/Hell Gate).
The same Morning Joe appearance by Adams and Sheppard introduced another household item that, police claimed, was a clear sign of outsiders being behind the protests. “You brought in a pretty staggering visual,” Brzezinski said to Sheppard. After he spoke about how “outside agitators” wanted to “create discord,” she prodded him, “Tell us about this chain.”
Sheppard lifted up a heavy metal chain, which clattered noisily against his desk. “This is not what students bring to school,” he declared. (“Don’t think so!” replied Brzezinski.) “This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities…. And this is what we encountered on every door inside of Hamilton Hall.”
That night, Fox News (5/1/24) ran the clip of Sheppard brandishing the chain, with anchor Sean Hannity calling the situation “a recipe for disaster.” The New York Daily News (5/1/24) quoted Sheppard’s “not what students bring to school” statement as well, without any attempt to check its accuracy.
Almost immediately, the “professional” chain story began to unravel. Less than 20 minutes after the Morning Joe segment, New York Times visual investigations reporter Aric Toler (5/1/24) tweeted that the exact same chain was not only used by Columbia students, it was in fact sold by the university’s own public safety department, under its “Crime Prevention Discount Bike, Locker and Laptop Lock Program.” At an NYPD press conference later that morning, The City reporter Katie Honan then showed the school’s listing to Sheppard, who insisted, “This is not the chain.”
Toler later tweeted a photo comparing the two, which appeared almost identical. Hell Gateeditor Christopher Robbins, who was at the press conference, provided FAIR with a still frame from a video showing that the chain presented by Sheppard was attached to a lock with the same Kryptonite logo as is advertised on the Columbia site.
‘Mastermind behind the scenes’
The NYPD’s Daughtry went on Newsmax (5/3/24) to hold up a copy of an Oxford University Press book as evidence that an unspecified “they” is “radicalizing our students.” Daughtry’s copy appears to be a facsimile; the actual book is four inches by six inches (Screengrab: Independent, 5/4/24).
Two days after Adams and Sheppard appeared on Morning Joe, Daughtry tweeted photos of items he said were found inside Hamilton Hall after the arrests, writing:
Gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes and a book on TERRORISM. These are not the tools of students protesting, these are the tools of agitators, of people who were working on something nefarious.
5/4/24) and held up the cover of the book in question, Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction. “There is somebody—whether it’s paid or not paid—but they are radicalizing our students,” he declared. Police, he said, were investigating the “mastermind behind the scenes.” Right-wing news organizations like the National Desk (5/3/24) and the Center Square (5/6/24) immediately picked up on the report of the “disturbing” items, without speaking to either protestors or university officials.
The Terrorism book, it turned out, was part of an Oxford University Press series of short books—think “For Dummies,” but with a more academic bent—that was carried by Columbia itself at its libraries (Daily News, 5/4/24). Its author, leading British historian Charles Townshend, told the Daily News that he was disappointed the NYPD was implying that “people should not write about the subject at all.” The Independent (5/4/24) quoted a tweet from Timothy Kaldes, the deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy: “How do you think we train professionals to work on these issues? No one at NYPD has books on terrorism? You all just study Die Hard?”
Media covering campus protests in the rest of the US similarly relied heavily on “police said” reporting, especially in the wake of the arrests of student protestors. CNN was an especially frequent perpetrator: Its report on mass arrests of protestors at Indiana University (4/25/24) ran online with the headline “At Least 33 People Detained on Indiana University’s Campus During Protests, Police Say,” and led with a police statement that students had been warned “numerous times” to leave their encampment, with the network stating blandly that “individuals who refused were detained and removed from the area.” Students later told reporters that they had been hit, kicked and placed in chokeholds by police during their arrests, and an Indiana State Police official confirmed that one officer had been placed on a rooftop with a sniper rifle (WFIU, 4/29/24).
The following week, CNN (5/1/24) reported on “violent clashes ongoing at UCLA” by citing a tweet from the Los Angeles Police Department that “due to multiple acts of violence,” police were responding “to restore order.” In fact, the incident turned out to be an attack by a violent pro-Israel mob on the student encampment (LA Times, 5/1/24). News outlets have a history of using terms like “clashes” to blur who instigated violence, whether by right-wingers or by the police themselves.
‘”Police said” not shorthand for truth’
Student journalists have largely been able to cover the encampments without relying on police forces to tell them what reality is (New York Focus, 5/2/24).
Law enforcement agencies, it’s been clear for decades, are unreliable narrators: It’s why journalism groups like Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation (10/27/22) have called for news outlets to stop treating police statements as “neutral sources of information.”
Following the murder of George Floyd, the Washington Post (6/30/20) wrote that “with fewer reporters handling more stories, the reliance on official sourcing may be increasing.” It quoted Marshall Project editor-in-chief Susan Chira as saying that police should be treated with “the same degree of skepticism as you treat any other source…. ‘Police said’ is not a shorthand for truth.”
There are, in fact, plenty of ways to report on the arrests of protestors without relying on the word of police officials: The Columbia Spectator (5/4/24), the Columbia radio station WKCR-FM and Columbia Journalism School students (New York Focus, 5/2/24) all contributed reporting that ran rings around the officially sourced segments that dominated the professional news media, despite a campus lockdown that at times left them unable to leave classroom buildings to witness events firsthand.
They found that Columbia protestors who occupied Hamilton Hall—described by Fox News(4/30/24) as a “mob of anarchists” — had in fact been organized and nonviolent: “It was very intentional and purposeful, and even what was damaged, like the windows, was all out of functionality,” one photographer eyewitness told the Spectator, describing students telling facilities workers, “Please, we need you to leave. You don’t get paid enough to deal with this.’
Sueda Polat, a Columbia graduate student, told the Spectator:
One officer had the nerve to say, “We’re here to keep you safe.” Moments later, they threw our friends down the stairs. I have images of our friends bleeding. I’ve talked to friends who couldn’t breathe, who were body-slammed, people who were unconscious. That’s keeping us safe?
It was a stark contrast with what cable TV viewers saw on MSNBC, where, as Adams and Sheppard wrapped up their Morning Joe segment, Brzezinski thanked them for joining the program, adding, “We really appreciate everything you’re doing.”
That’s no wonder: If you only talk to one side in a dispute, you’re more likely to end up concluding that they’re the heroes.
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In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
GARLAND NIXON: WARRIOR UPDATE W. SCOTT RITTER / Ukrainian collapse; Life in the Soviet Union; the CIA is reenacting the “Maidan Coup” in Georgia
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WARRIOR UPDATE WITH SCOTT RITTER EPISODE 66 - STUDENT PROTESTS - UKRAINE SLOW MOTION COLLAPSE
Garland Nixon May 1, 2024 Scott Ritter interprets the moves and strategies of Washington in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and other former parts of the Soviet space, and the consequences of such persistent meddling. The "FARA" protests organised by the CIA and its web of accomplices in the vast "soft power" American machinery of infiltration and subversion (NED, USAID), which works in tandem with its EU equivalents, NATO, MI6, etc., are re-enacting the Maidan coup—with barricades and fierce attacks on the police— in Tblisi with the aim of toppling the "Dream Party", which rejects Western influence and seeks an independent line in domestic and foreign policy.
EDITOR—A terrific double feature with analyses by Garland and Scott Ritter on the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern situation, including Scott's interpretation of Washington's maneuvers to infiltrate and "zombify" countries in the former Soviet sphere of influence in order to weaken and defeat Russia, eliminating her as a major player and obstacle to America's hegemonic designs around the globe. Garland and Scott also analyse the spreading wave of student protests hitting US campuses on account of the Gaza genocide, a phenomenon the filthy media and political establishments are trying to crush via clearly anti-constitutional stratagems. In the second video, in an interview with Dmitri Zolotarev, a journalist born and raised in the Soviet Union, he sheds light on what the Soviet system was really like, and how Western propaganda through unrelenting demonisation completely disfigured the truth about that society. Zolotarev notes that Soviet citizens knew much more about life in the West than vice versa. Zolotarev obviously regrets that the Western mind is so crippled and poisoned by shameless lies about Russia, Putin, socialism, etc., as this mountain of disinformation is bringing the world ever closer to a horrendous and totally unnecessary war.
INSIDE RUSSIA - WITH JOURNALIST DMITRI ZOLOTAREV
Garland Nixon Streamed live on Apr 24, 2024 Dmitri Zolotarev is a Russian journalist who lives in Siberia. Living through the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia's rebirth. What was living in Soviet Russia really like? Was the Soviet system morally superior to the West? Were Soviet citizens fooled by Western propaganda?
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Garland Nixon
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It shows that when you control the media and you can inject millions of USD into a relatively poor country it is easy to capture people who are struggling to survive. They see these phony groups and associations saying IF only you become EU or NATO you will become wealthy. Yes, it is a pipe dream but they fall for it every single time. The US has done this over and over, even though it is a bankrupt country and more of its own people live in poverty than in many of the countries who fall for the trap.