January 11, 2024

Articles for This Issue:

DWF NEWS

January 11, 2024

Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works

John Pilger

How Corporate Media Whitewash Israeli Crimes: A Personal Narrative

Mnar Adley

All CNN Gaza Coverage Seen by Bureau Monitored by IDF Before Publication

Sharon Zhang

Israel 'Owns' the US Congress & President, UN Falls Short 

Roger Kotila 

Will the American Psychological Association Ever Join the Ceasefire Call?

Roy Eidelson*

South Africa Emerges as Moral Giant on Gaza

John Wight

Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works

John Pilger

EXCERPTS

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Führer. She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

... do we in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?

The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top 10 media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries.  It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. 

The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.

In our systems of corporate democracy, war is an economic necessity, the perfect marriage of public subsidy and private profit: socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The day after 9/11 the stock prices of the war industry soared. More bloodshed was coming, which is great for business.

Today, the most profitable wars have their own brand. They are called “forever wars” — Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and now Ukraine.

All are based on a pack of lies.

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How Corporate Media Whitewash Israeli Crimes: A Personal Narrative

Mnar Adley

EXCERPTS:  

 ... Israel is spending millions on propaganda, but it’s also systematically targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Over 100 journalists have been killed so far in less than 70 days. ...In most parts of the world, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” gives you protection. But right now in Palestine, it may as well be a target, as Israel has turned Gaza into what the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has called a “cemetery for journalists.”

... it’s become evident that Western corporate media are biased towards Israeli apartheid, pushing atrocity propaganda about October 7th to justify Israel’s genocide… Western media leave out the context that Israel is occupying Palestinian land and fail to mention the many crimes against humanity Israel is committing every single day ...

...The NYT also cooperates with Israeli officials by receiving and obeying gag orders from the Israeli government. The New York Times Israel bureau chiefs Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner, and David Brooks had their adult children enlisted in the Israeli army while they were actively covering Israel and Palestine for the newspaper. The so-called paper of record never made this public to its readers, raising serious questions of bias and a conflict of interest. ... CNN and others who are embedded with the Israeli military have to get their footage approved by Israel before publishing it.



These are minor examples that don’t even scratch the surface of how other media outlets work directly with Israel to control the narrative on Palestine or even how BIG Tech works with NATO and Israeli-funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the ADL to crack down on alternative information on social media platforms...

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All CNN Gaza Coverage Seen by Bureau Monitored by IDF Before Publication

Sharon Zhang

CNN has for years maintained a policy of running all of its coverage on Israel and Palestine, including its recent Gaza coverage, past its bureau in Jerusalem, where it is subject to the censorship policies set by Israel’s military, damning new reporting by The Intercept has revealed.

The Jerusalem CNN staff who review the reporting do so under the watchful eye of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which, as The Intercept has previously reported, is maintaining strict media bans around the genocide in Gaza, including censorship of topics and stories that may be embarrassing to the IDF. All reporters in Israel must sign an agreement to abide by such rules set by the IDF, and Israel has reportedly censored thousands of news stories since the beginning of the current massacre in Gaza.

In practice, this means that coverage of Israel and Palestine have a strong pro-Israel bias, as one anonymous staff member explained to The Intercept.

“‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the worker said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility.

Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.” 

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Israel 'Owns' the US Congress & President, UN Falls Short 

Roger Kotila 

The undemocratic United Nations is unable to protect the Palestinians from Israeli Zionist mass murder unfortunately also supported by the U.S. Congress and the President. Gaza genocide is ongoing in full view. South Africa is asking the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have Israel cease and desist. Israel will most likely ignore the ICJ -- which will illustrate why the UN Charter is too flawed to get the job done.

We need a "new UN" equipped to deal with world crimes committed by leaders of rogue nations. The UN Charter needs to be reviewed and replaced by utilizing the Earth Constitution which provides a well designed World Judiciary System with Enforcement as well as a democratic World Parliament.   

A world federalist colleague, Fritz Pointer, rejects the notion that Israeli Zionists have a sacred, God-given right to the Promised Land. He points out that The Torah (first 5 book in the Bible) "is not proof of a deed to historic Palestine", nor "is it a real estate document thus making God (Yahweh) a real estate agent!"

Netanyahu and his generals (& possibly Biden) may eventually be found to be guilty of war crimes and genocide. However, in the current UN geopolitical system they will never go to jail, even if found guilty as charged. We need a new global system such as possible with the Earth Constitution. -- R. Kotila, PhD, editor, DWF NEWS

Ray McGovern (former analyst with the CIA) ...   "Well, you can’t get elected in the United States if the Israel lobby puts its money for your opponent. ... So, money is getting people elected. It’s getting people removed from Congress. Money is funding what remains of the mainstream media are heavily influenced by Zionism. And of course, if you go to our government, our president brags about being a Zionist. Does he know what that means? ... 

He’s got his head screwed on wrong on this, and it’s not going to be long before there’s a flare up in the Middle East, whether it’s in the Red Sea or whether it’s a false flag attack, blaming the Iranians ... The other people who are in this frame of mind, Secretary Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken. They’re all Zionists, and they’re going to try to persuade Biden well, okay, you said you’d defend Israel.

You got to defend it against Iran. ... What I fear is there will be a false flag attack blamed on Iran against the carrier that we have now still in the area, the USS Eisenhower. That would be blamed on Iran and the impulse will be okay, Joe Biden, you said that you’d support Israel for as long as it takes. Now, we’ve got to go in with ground troops. We got to go in real big and defend Israel because they’re entitled to their own state and blah, blah, blah. ...  

From Ray McGovern: "The Imprisonment of the Palestinian People Was Not an Act of God"  https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/05/ray-mcgovern-the-imprisonment-of-the-palestinian-people-was-not-an-act-of-god/          

Norman Solomon (author, anti-war activist, ran for Congress):  The vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military. Capitol Hill remains a friendly place for the Israeli government as it keeps receiving massive arms shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. ... 

 The impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly does not want a ceasefire. The same can be said of the vast majority of Congress, with silences and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support for the wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend itself.”  From Norman Solomon: "The Abject Failure of Nearly Every Member of Congress on Gaza" 

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Will the American Psychological Association Ever Join the Ceasefire Call?

Roy Eidelson*

[*Dr. Eidelson's outstanding book Doing Harm reveals the APA's failure to condemn CIA torture directed by psychologists in the so-called War on Terror. As a psychologist myself, I was ashamed and dismayed. Our ethics involves striving to "benefit those with whom we work and take care to do no harm." -- R. Kotila, PhD, editor, DWF NEWS]

Roy Eidelson 

2 Jan 2024 – The shocking numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, subjected to unimaginable horrors in Gaza—death, displacement, disease, starvation, and more—grow larger every day. And yet it seems that urgent calls for a humanitarian ceasefire still can’t be heard inside the headquarters of the American Psychological Association (APA), an organization that for years infamously failed to forcefully oppose the degrading abuse of U.S. war-on-terror prisoners and the involvement of psychologists in that abuse.

At this point, the APA has already missed the opportunity to be part of the civil society vanguard calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hundreds of organizations—including Amnesty International,  Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International, Save the Children, UNICEF, the United Nations General Assembly, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, and many other human rights groups, faith-based organizations, and labor unions—have taken that step, weeks ago.

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South Africa Emerges as Moral Giant on Gaza

John Wight

The collective West will forever stand disgraced and exposed due to its blind support of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since Oct. 7. 

What passes for governance in Washington, Berlin, Paris, London et al. has forced us all to bear witness to infanticide, high crimes and war crimes without end these past few months. Said crimes have been committed not in the name of self-defence but rather in the name of ethno-nationalism, settler-colonialism and white supremacy. 

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