Antony Loewenstein

Fear of a Brown Planet speak:

This is worth sharing from today’s Sydney Morning Herald. Little needs to be said except how it shows the growing hysteria of Jews against anybody who dares say anything about Israeli crimes.”Anti-Semitism” has lost its meaning with such frivolous and desperate tactics (which are increasingly failing):

The Australian Press Council has considered a complaint by Judy Maynard about two items in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 12 and 19, 2010, by the columnist Mike Carlton. Both related to the encounter between Israeli forces and a number of vessels attempting to reach Gaza (the ”Gaza flotilla”) in May. They followed a column by Mr Carlton on June 5, which was highly critical of the Israeli conduct in the encounter.

In the column on June 12 Mr Carlton said that the previous column had led to ”hundreds of Jewish emailers” responding to him. He added: ”It is a ferocious beast, the Jewish lobby. Write just one sentence even mildly critical of Israel and it lunges from its lair, fangs bared.” And: ”The Israel lobby, worldwide, is orchestrated in Jerusalem by a department in the Prime Minister’s office.” In the item on June 19, Mr Carlton wrote: ”With bottomless irony, the Jewish lobby spent much of last week assuring anybody who would listen that there is no such thing as the Jewish lobby.”

Ms Maynard complained about the first item to Mr Carlton and to the newspaper on June 12. Having had no response, she complained on June 14 to the council and also wrote a letter to the newspaper that was not published. On June 16 the newspaper responded saying her comments had been brought to the attention of relevant senior editors and inviting her to consider sending a letter for publication. On June 19 the second item was published and Ms Maynard wrote another letter to the newspaper that also was not published.

In her complaint to the council, Ms Maynard firmly acknowledged that Mr Carlton had the right to express his opinion and that, for example, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel. But, she said, the two items contained ”anti-Semitic elements and bring opprobrium on Jews through the use of racist imagery [and] factually incorrect statements”. She referred in particular to what she called the ”bestial” imagery and the implication that all critics of Mr Carlton must be, in her words, ”tools in an orchestrated campaign” by the Israeli government. She complained about use of the term ”Jewish lobby” as depicting advocates for that cause as being ”sinister”.

The Sydney Morning Herald replied by emphasising that the writers of opinion articles are entitled to express their views and to do so in a forceful manner. It referred to ”hundreds of emails, some of them crude and racist”, being received by Mr Carlton and to his use of ”strong and colourful language … to describe the ferocity of those who wrote”. It denied the allegations of anti-Semitism but said that Mr Carlton believed many of the email responses showed very clear evidence of co-ordination and that ”there is such a thing as a ‘Jewish lobby’ ”. It provided details on a department in the Israeli government it said was the originator of many of the arguments used in emails to him. The newspaper provided the council with some quotations from emails and press releases supporting his assertions about co-ordination of responses, and also with copies of the 12 letters that it had published, many of them critical of Mr Carlton, in which the issues raised by Ms Maynard were canvassed.

In relation to Ms Maynard’s complaints of anti-Semitism, the council considered that the columns did not breach its principle that material should avoid placing gratuitous emphasis on a particular ethnicity, religion or nationality. The council acknowledged that the columns were strongly critical, and that some readers would have been offended, but it emphasised that causing offence does not, in itself, justify a complaint being upheld.

The council’s principles require that, although individual articles need not always be balanced, publications should seek to provide reasonable balance in their overall coverage of the issues in question. It was satisfied that the newspaper had done so in this general area, including through its publication in this instance of letters critical of Mr Carlton.

In relation to the question of accuracy, the council did not consider that Mr Carlton’s reference to co-ordination of a ”Jewish lobby” or an ”Israel lobby” had been an assertion of fact about all critics of his views, and it did not consider that his claims of co-ordination on a more limited scale, which he had made, had been shown to be incorrect.

For these reasons, the council dismissed the complaint.

Communism is dead. Islamism is the new threat. And the same radical Zionists who once fought (from their bedrooms, of course) against the Evil Empire are now focusing on Islam and Iran.

Richard Silverstein uncovers the role of neo-conservatives Jews who once again want to be defined solely through war.

An unnamed leading American politician tells Johan Galtung, founder of peace and conflict studies:

Our instinctive reaction whenever there’s a problem is to send the Marines and not to try to solve the problem. We have done that too many times.

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill continues his seemingly never-ending investigation of Blackwater:

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater’s work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater’s owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

How the internet is slowly but significantly changing the face of China, bringing to the public the massive social issues caused by Beijing’s oppressive policies:

The photo was taken on September 3 in Beijing. In the photo, Professor Yang Zhizhu from China Youth University for Political Sciences is holding a placard to sell himself as a slave in order to pay the penalty for violating the one child policy:

“My name is Yang Zhizhu and I was originally an assistant professor at the China Youth University for Political Sciences. My wife got pregnant by accident and did not have the heart to get an abortion. On December 21, 2009 she gave birth to our second daughter. In April this year, I was laid off by the university. My monthly salary should be 960 yuan, but I now only get 368 yuan. Two months later, they deducted another 960 yuan. Moreover, the Haidian district family planning committee have asked me to pay 240,000 yuan “Social Upbringing Fee”. I don’t have money and I can only pay the bill by getting myself sold. Since I won’t be able to take care of my children after being sold, I want to mark my price higher to 640,000 yuan. Whoever decides to buy me, I will become their slave and serve them until I die. I reject donations as I don’t want to become a parasite for the sake of my child.”

This story in today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph says one thing; most refugees who come to Australia are legitimate and deserve sanctuary:

The Federal Government has been forced to reveal figures showing of 6310 asylum seekers to arrive in Australia in the past two years only 75 have been rejected and returned to their country of origin.

American crimes at Guantanamo Bay continue day in day out and yet the corporate press largely ignores it. Independent journalist Andy Worthington is a notable exception.

So which prisoners are left at the prison camp? Worthington has collated an invaluable list, explaining how they got there and very often it was through the paying of bounties. The list is exhausting.

This abomination, held for years without trial, is a real instigator of anti-Western hatred and we shouldn’t be surprised why.

The $60 billion arms deal between the US and fundamentalist Saudi Arabia is the largest single foreign arms deal in history.

Democracy promotion at work.

Noam Chomsky:

The term “stability” has a technical meaning in discourse on international affairs: domination by the US.

Yitzhak Laor in Haaretz:

Recognition of an exclusive Jewish nationality for our country, which Netanyahu is demanding from the Palestinians now, is nothing but a demand to recognize the legitimacy of racist discrimination against the Arab minority in Israel. If this minority had been awarded equal rights, including water rights for agriculture, equality in education and health care, and equal employment opportunities, there would be no need to go back to the Nakba. It would become a wound like other past wounds, like the partial extinction of other national minorities (and after all, there is room to provide compensation for disasters, as per tort law. )

But the State of Israel does not want to recognize the Palestinian minority within its borders because it seeks to continue to grant privileges to Israeli Jews and to Diaspora Jews, at the expense of the cheap labor, land and water of its Palestinian citizens. All this is in order to say that recognition of Israel will come only if we recognize the equality of the minority in our midst. They are not settlers. They were living here before we were.

Naomi Klein:

We have to build that independent left. It has to be so strong and so radical and so militant and so powerful that it becomes irresistible.