Showing posts with label press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label press. Show all posts

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Suppressed by The Press



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 19 -- May 9, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #114, May 11:

Suppressed by
The Press

January 3, 2006: The press got the story right, apart from one small
detail: the vitality of the trapped miners. The venerable Rocky
Mountain News (right column) is no longer alive, either. Credit to the
Boston Globe, though (left column), for refusing to treat unconfirmed
assertion as fact. (Note the "reportedly" in the headline.)

In brief

The commercial press continues its tailspin descent--a problem largely of its own making (and also of Wall Street's making). While commercial newspapers (to say nothing of TV news) have served the public poorly, when they're gone, whatever good they did provide will be missed.

Following a brief rant by me, I read Robert Freeman's interesting essay, "The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade"--none of which received much honest press coverage. I'll supplement Freeman's tragicomic catalogue with Robert Parry's expose', "Gore's Victory"--story #1 on Freeman's list.

By any sane criterion of ballot inclusion or exclusion, the majority of voters in the state of Florida voted for Albert Gore in 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court prematurely halted the State-Supreme-Court-ordered recount of Florida's ballots. That effectively gave Florida to Bush, hence a majority of Electoral votes, hence the Presidency. The major news media know who won the popular vote because they paid the Roper Organization to do a thorough recount of Florida's ballots. The commercial press either suppressed the story or else grossly misrepresented Roper's results.

Freeman's list of uncovered crucial stories includes the failure of "the free market" to sustain properity, ... the collapse of the media, ... Bush's prior knowledge of 9/11, ... the destruction of civil liberties, ... the meaninglessness of elections (notably 2008's), and others.

We end with a few words by Australian filmmaker and media critic John Pilger on professional journalism as propaganda.


Notes and credits

This week's song: David Rovics, Evening News

John Pilger's remarks courtesy of democracynow.org

Robert Freeman's "The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade" from Common Dreams, January 1, 2010. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0

Robert Parry's "Gore's Victory" is from consortiumnews.com, November 12, 2001.

Fun Web page: "25 Weirdest Newspaper Headlines" -- http://www.masalatime.com/?p=501 . These are photos of newspaper clippings, with headline and at least part of the story. My favorite: "Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons" (see below).

New World Notes installments from #10 are archived at A-Infos Radio Project/radio4all.net. Installments beginning with #90 are archived also at The Internet Archive, in a variety of file formats. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "bad influence") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Free weekly NWN email newsletter on request.

Series Overview -- Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut date shown:

  • May 18 -- Chris Hedges on the Empire of Illusion


Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Independent Journalism (I): Jeremy Scahill




New World Notes News

Volume 2, Number 14 -- April 14, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #58 -- April 14 &17:

At every opportunity, we have given the corporate-controlled media all the brickbats and spitballs we had available. But in keeping with the show's new Corporate Motto--Always Look On the Bright Side of Life (see last issue)--this week we let a smile be our umbrella. As my auto mechanic keeps advising, Positive to positive, and negative to ground! Cheerful chap, wot?

Some fine print-journalism and fine photojournalism are being done today, especially by "independent journalists." The term is hard to define. As a very rough definition, consider the category to include all journalists who don't receive a regular paycheck from a mainstream, corporate-owned "news-gathering organization."


Jeremy Scahill at work: abroad and at home.


New York Times reporters are Out. Veteran correspondents Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn are In (Britain's Independent being owned by a nonprofit foundation). Seymour Hersh is In (works for Conde' Nast). Anyone on network TV is decidedly OUT.

Needless to say, In are many talented young journalists who are freelancers or practically so. Notable among these many talented people are three award-winners who have done some fine reporting on (and in) the Middle East: Dahr Jamail, Mohammed Omer, and--our focus this week--Jeremy Scahill.

Scahill--author of the recent book, Blackwater--is a very good reporter and a perceptive and often funny storyteller. I'll read aloud his fine story about a police riot in Miami that the mainstream media pretended not to notice.

L to R: Print journalist Dahr Jamail (U.S.), documentary
filmmaker John Pilger (Australia), print journalist and
photojournalist Mohammed Omer (Palestine)--in London,
June 2008, where Jamail and Omer shared the year's
prestigious Martha Gellhorn Award. On his way home to
Rafah (Gaza Strip), Omer was detained, beaten and seriously
injured by Israeli security forces in the Occupied West Bank.


Then Scahill will talk about how he stumbled into the "Alternative" press, about what happened when he appeared on cable news shows and began condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and--less amusingly--about the U.S.'s decade-long unreported war against the people if Iraq (throughout the 1990s).

Yes, Clinton killed nearly as many Iraqi civilians as both Bushes combined. Scahill and Kathy Kelly (NWN #39, December 2, 2008) were both reporting from the scene, trying to get Americans to see what was happening.

Alas, a black former football player was charged with killing a pretty white woman.

Amateurs like Scahill and Kelly can waste their time however they like. Serious, professional corporate journalists know the real Story of the Decade when it comes down the pike in a white SUV!


Top: Seymour Hersh (U.S.). Bottom: Robert Fisk (Lebanon & U.K.)


So you might have missed the story about the million Iraqi civilian deaths. our "leaders" caused. Deaths from malnutrition. Deaths from diseases that should have been prevented and could have been treated, but for the US-UN "embargo." Deaths from the bombing that never stopped between the two official Gulf wars. Deaths ordered by Clinton--whom we eventually impeached for ejaculating without a license.

Song played: David Rovics, Miami

Soon to Come -- Date of first scheduled broadcast [on WWUH] listed:

  • April 21 -- Men and War
  • April 28 -- The Things They Don't Tell You! (Lies, distortions, and propaganda in your American History courses and textbooks. No wonder you hated History class!)

The late, great I. F. Stone (right).


Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern) . . .


Top illustration: The antithesis (and possibly Antichrist): corporate hack Roland Hedley.

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Friday, March 6, 2009

Oppressed by the Press



New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 10 -- March 10, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #54 -- March 10 & 13:

The good news is that the corporate-controlled press is in an apparently uncontrollable death-spiral. The bad news is that the corporate-controlled press is in an apparently uncontrollable death-spiral.

Yes, the entire staff of New World Notes is not unfamiliar with ambivalence.

Newspapers are not dying; they are being killed. They are being killed not by the Internet but by their corporate owners. The owners are killing them not out of unconcern or greed or incompetence--though there is plenty of all three among them--but by their bondage to Finance Capital. Finance Capital is requiring a rate of return much higher than newspapers have ever produced, effective immediately.

And/or the new corporate owner borrowed so much (from Finance Capital) to finance its purchase of a newspaper chain--like the chain that owned the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and New Haven Register--that it has to destroy the papers in order to make the loan payments.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out what my fellow ultra-Leftist, Commie-sympathizing Progressive-Populists at Forbes magazine have to say about it: http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/08/tribune-zell-newspapers-biz-media-cz_sf_1208zell.html

Policy-Making

Here, Sam Zell’s proposed highly-leveraged purchase of the Tribune
chain is debated at the Federal Trade Commission, which must grant
approval for the deal to be--you should pardon the expression--
consummated. Yes, at last it can be told: Juan Valdez smokes Camel
Filters! After admiring David Weinholtz’s painting as a whole, please
click to enlarge it & admire the painterly textures. [This seems to have
stopped working. You can do it in the version in the next blog entry
(above). --KD] That's nothing: you should see the 4-Megabyte
version! OK, I'll email you the 4-MB'er, on request.


Rocky Mountain News stayed in business for just short of 150 years. Until last week, it was the oldest continuously-operating business--not just newspaper--in the state of Colorado. If it is typical of major metropolitan dailies, it had been returning a profit in the range of eight to 15 percent per annum. Wall Street doesn't want 12 percent annual profit for another 150 years. It wants at least 25 percent profit for each of the next six quarters. After that, who cares? Find a way to do it, Mr. Editor.

R.I.P., Rocky Mountain News.

Farther to the east, well down the same tubes are the Inquirer and the Register. I used to read the Inquirer, back when Pulitzer prizes were still a recent memory.

If a merciful God did exist, one would think He'd spare at least the Inquirer and end the worldly suffering of the Hartford Courant--sending Connecticut's finest off to its Eternal Reward in that ultimate Gated Community down below--which, while lacking certain amenities, at least provides free heat yearround.

Though major American newspapers generally served the ruling classes well and the people ill, would the people be better off tomorrow if the papers all closed down tonight? As Rene Descartes said, just before vanishing, "I think not!"

If there is any hope for change, it will come from the proles, decided Orwell's Winston Smith. And if there is any hope for the newspaper biz, it will come from the provincial dailies, say I. I celebrate them on this program by reading a few passages from my local one. This is the former Manchester Journal-Inquirer, now just the Journal-Inquirer--its very name suggesting "Nowheresville"! Or is that, rather, "Utopia"? *

This installment of the radio program is mostly monologue, as brilliant and insightful as it is witty. Yes, the ambiguity is intentional. I like the installment, and if your tastes are identical to mine, I guarantee you will too! Besides, where else can you hear, within a span of 20 minutes, two Dave Rovics songs and Spinal Tap’s “Hell Hole”?

Also featured: (Most of) Stephen Colbert's incredible keynote speech at the White House Correspondents Association banquet, May 1, 2006. Here he mocks President Bush--who was seated at the same table as Colbert--and mocks the Washington press corps for their mindless repeating of White House lies and propaganda.

Oddly, all press reports of the banquet somehow neglected to mention the keynote speech. Except (God bless her) Amy Goodman's, on "Democracy Now!" which played the entire speech. Support your local noncommercial "alternative" radio station!

Catch New World Notes . . .
(all times Eastern)

Anyway, as some right-wing radio show on shortwave always used to sign off,
VOICE 1: God Bless America!
VOICE 2: Death to the New World Order!
VOICE 1: We shall prevail!

* Pun in ancient Greek on "not place" (ou-topia) and "good place" (eu-topia). And apologies for the Descartes joke. Couldn't resist.
--K.
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Friday, February 20, 2009

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land -- Part 2



New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 8 -- February 24, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #53 -- February 24 & 27:

"The best, least biased presentation we have of all the
issues involved. A must-see documentary."
-- Chalmers Johnson

"Painstakingly stripping away the myths and inaccuracies
regularly passed off as truth by the U.S. media, this
film not only reveals the motivations and methods of
those responsible for skewing the picture, but also
manages to present the most concise and accurate account
of the history and implications of the Israeli/
Palestinian conflict and the role that the U.S. has played
in the continuation of that conflict that I have seen.

"This is a very important piece of work that challenges the
viewer to think twice before accepting a version of the
world that owes more to the special interests of a
powerful elite than to any notion of freedom of the press."
-- Donna Baillie, filmmaker



New World Notes continues its radio adaptation of this fine documentary film. Although made in 2003, the film is--unfortunately--still timely and relevant 6 years later. (They missed the "Separation Wall"--of which more, below.)

If you missed Part 1 and wish to hear it now, you'll find a link at the top of this page. For a general introduction to the documentary, page back to the blog entry for Part 1.

Not auspicious: militant Zionist Rahm Emanuel--now White House Chief of Staff

Here's a handy outline of the whole shebang. (I was hoping that shebang was an Arabic word, but no such luck.) Original section titles are in boldface.

Part 1 (3 weeks ago):

1. Introduction to the Israel-Palestine conflict (since 1968)

2. American Media: Occupied Territory. The U.S. media's pro-militant-Zionist bias--it's not fair to the Israeli people to call it a pro-Israel bias--has several causes, including the economic interests of the U.S. media owners and the business elite they serve. Another cause is the very effective public-relations machine set up by the Israeli government in the 1980s.

3. P.R. Strategy #1: Hidden Occupation. U.S. news coverage routinely refuses to acknowledge that since 1968, Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank) has been under a harsh and illegal military occupation by Israel. Events in Palestine ought to be seen in that context.

Dalia says: "I drew my house, a tree, a Palestinian flag, Israelis, jeeps, two people,
a martyr and a sun." She wrote: "The sweetest flag is the Palestine flag, we hope
the situation is fixed soon, inshallah" (note by photographer Moomin13,
flickr.com; photo taken June 2006).

Part 2 (this week):

1. P.R. Strategy #2: Invisible Colonization. For decades, the government of Israrel has been illegally settling its own citizens in the Occupied Territories. The "settlements" it builds--modern suburban housing developments--claim an inordinate share of Palestine's scarce water and disrupt Palestinians' lives. A huge network of Jews-only roads, connecting the setttlements, destroys farmland, truncates property, and makes life even more difficult for Palestinians. All this is almost never reported in America.

CNN instructed its reporters to cease using the term "settlements" and to use the term "neighborhoods" instead (as in, “a neighborhood near Jerusalem”). When Secretary of State, Colin Powell instructed U.S. diplomats to say “Disputed Territories” instead of “Occupied Territories.” In the West Bank, the occupying authorities (with massive funding from your tax dollars) are imprisoning whole communities of Palestinians behind a huge Berlin-wall replica--later called a "security barrier" and now a "fence" (see photo, below).

2. P.R. Strategy #3: Violence In a Vacuum. A small percentage of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories see violence against Israelis as their only option in fighting oppression. While rightly condemning violent attacks against the innocent, the U.S. media never consider the causes of such behavior. So far as we're ever told, suicide-bombers (for instance) are motivated only by inexplicable neurotic hate laced with “anti-semitism.” (In quotes because Palestinians too are semites.)

Furthermore, the occupying military's frequent gratuitous violence against innocent Palestinians--for instance, killing people in urgent need of medical care by preventing ambulances from reaching hospitals--is never reported in U.S. mass-media. When an occupying soldier shoots--or calls in a rocket-attack upon--a citizen of the territory he is occupying, the event is commonly described as Israeli "self-defense" against Palestinian "aggression." (Noam Chomsky says, "Call it what you will, it's not 'self-defense.'")

Two views of Ramallah. Top: A woman protests. The building in the background
appears to be part of an Israeli settlement. Bottom: A Palestinian neighborhood,
January 2008 (photo by Moomin13). The North-Pole-y cap makes me wonder if
the snowman celebrates Christmas. Americans often express surprise when
informed that a sizable minority of Palestinians are Christians. I don't know where
the hell they imagine Bethlehem is located. Fifty miles east of Rome, maybe.
Maybe we should encourage TV news to report the religious preferences of
casualties. "Israeli warplanes attacked Palestinian targets, killing seven Moslems
and four Christians including a nun." Imagine! One hates to think that the average
U.S. TV viewer values Christian lives more than Muslim. One hates to think of all
sorts of things that are obviously true.

3. P.R. Strategy #4: Defining Who Is Newsworthy. When an Israeli occupying soldier is killed in Palestine, U.S. news often shows his picture; tells his name, age, and home town; shows his funeral; interviews his grieving family; etc. Nothing wrong with that, in itself. Meanwhile, "Israeli warplanes attacked Palestinian targets, killing 11 people" [real U.S. TV news report, from this week's installment]. The weather up next. . . .

At least they said 11 "people"! You gotta admire the astute word-choice, though. “Palestinian targets” sounds much more appropriate than “Palestinian homes, soccer fields, and houses of worship.” And “attacked”--perhaps conjuring images of the charge of the light brigade or of freedom-loving Yanks attacking the beaches of Normandy--sounds much more heroic than “dropped high-explosive bombs upon defenseless . . . ."

Note to “anti-semitism” hunters: The device on the dictionary’s cover represents the
national flag that represents the U.N. member-state of Israel. The balding figure
is a good likeness of that nation-state's former head of government, Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert (resigned September 2008). Next time I criticize Norway's
whaling policies, somebody remind me to patiently explain that--contrary to
appearances--I don't hate either Lutheran Christianity or the Nordic people!


Coming up in Part 3 (3 weeks from now):
1. P.R. Strategy #5: Myth of U.S. Neutrality
2. P.R. Strategy #6: Myth of the Generous Offer
3. P.R. Strategy #7: Marginalized Voices
4. Is Peace Possible?

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern) . . .

Up in the sky! It’s a wall! . . . It’s a separation barrier! . . .
No! . . . it's . . . Superfence! (Poster by Eric Drooker)


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Saturday, February 7, 2009

Radio-Great Revived: Mr. Jean Shepherd



In this week's installment, Shepherd talks a lot about Covington, Kentucky. Here it
is (foreground)--looking northwards toward the Ohio River and Cincinnati, Ohio.
(Click photo for larger image.) Madison Avenue, where Shepherd lived,
runs from the lower-right corner to the river. Shep says he lived two blocks from
the river. Alas, the Wheel Inn diner appears long-gone. The round and surprisingly
gray twin towers of Procter & Gamble's world headquarters can be seen beyond
Cincinnati's red-and-white baseball stadium. Covington is a city of bricks--as are
its fellow river-towns Pittsburgh (upstream) and St. Louis (downstream).


New World Notes News

Volume 2, Number 7 -- February 17, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #52 -- February 17 & 20:

In contrast with George Carlin and Jello Biafra--both heard recently on this show--Jean Shepherd created humorous spoken-word-art that seemed almost devoid of political content. Theoretically, this isn't possible, but darned if I can figure out even what his political assumptions are.

He liked to show the foibles of Americans and of 20th-Century American culture. Did he want to change anything? I dunno. Did Picasso?

Said to be a good book on the subject.

For 21 years, late at night, he'd lean into a microphone at WOR radio in New York and deliver a loosely-structured 45-minute narrative. It sounded like a shaggy-dog story. Later you'd begin to see how every element of the story was beautifully connected. Well, lotsa elements were, anyway . . . including scripts for commercials that he was supposed to read verbatim but never did. I'll always remember a commercial he delivered for the French automobile brand Peugeot. It ended (approximately), "Don't even think of buying a car until you've had a chance to test-drive the new Peugeot. That's spelled P-O-O-J-O-E. Peugeot."

Covington at night. What could be more American than that sign?
Why is education good? Because it gets you money!

Covington night-life: admiring "mullets" at the Blue Moon Cafe.
See mulletsgalore.com for more creative hair-styling ideas.

This week, NWN will play a substantial portion of Shepherd's broadcast of October 28, 1965. I don't want to spoil the story for you, so I'll give only some general listening advice. Two themes are important. The first is ordnance (e.g., hand grenades, guns, and whatnot). The second is that an event as you experience it seldom resembles the same event as the media depict it.

For me, the highlight is Shep's recreation of Covington, Kentucky, in the 1950s. Covington is a poorer, louder, and wilder version of genteel Cincinnati, Ohio--which lies just across the Ohio River. If you understand Covington, you understand America.

What sort of "roscoe" did Claire employ? In the 1950s, revolvers were much
more commonly used than semiautomatics, outside the military. I'm betting on this
period (1953) Smith & Wesson "Military & Police" model chambered in .38 Special.
Full-sized, yet compact enough to fit into a ladies' handbag.

Note: I had to discard about half of Shepherd's monologue. What remains amounts to a good introduction to Jean Shepherd's art; and Shepherd's show works well, as condensed. If you like it, why not try some in their original form? Radio Veronica (U.S.) has restored, and made available for free download, fourteen 45-minute episodes, here: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Jean+Shepherd+Rewound. NWN #52 is taken from Program #2 in this series.

Shepherd (left) visiting the studios of WITR, at the Rochester Institute of
Technology, fall 1968. An interview may be in progress.


A better essay than this one:

Musician Donald Fagen (left: click to enlarge), co-founder of Steely Dan, has written a subtle, complex, and very personal appreciation of Shepherd--who had played as large a role in Fagen's early adolescence as Mad magazine played in mine. It was the same role, too, and with the same qualities: sanity-preserving, reassuring, necessary, and ultimately flawed and inadequate. (Sounds a little similar to New World Notes, no?)

Fagen's writing abilities are on a par with his musical abilities. This fine essay should interest anyone who was a bright and alienated suburban kid or who is interested in Jean Shepherd's "word jazz"--as Fagen aptly names it (pace Ken Nordine). The essay is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2207058/pagenum/all/#p2


This week's music:

  • Intro: Fiedler, Boston Pops, Bahn Frei Polka by Eduard Strauss
  • California Ramblers (?) with Jean Shepherd (vocals and kazoo), Sheik of Araby
  • Outro: Warren Zevon with Something Happens, Werewolves of London

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern) . . .

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Friday, January 9, 2009

The Media, Jenin, & the Bloodbath in Gaza




New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 2 -- January 13, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #47 -- January 13 & 16, 2009:

Here's the show in a nutshell:

American news media demonize those who oppose various vicious state policies. At the same time, they whitewash and sanitize gruesome wars the state wages to preserve those policies. Especially wars the State of Israel wages.


Two young Palestinian men. Top: Mahmoud, from Jenin. (Top photo by moomin13, Flickr.com)

A photograph of a young Palestinian man inspires such reflections on the media plus reflections on Israeli operations in Jenin (2002) and now Gaza. Three news reports from Al-Jazeera offer a different--but still inadequate--view of the horrors of our war against the people of Palestine.

Life in Gaza: 3 views.


This week's music:

  • David Rovics, Jenin
  • Tom Smith, from Waterboardin'
  • David Rovics, Occupation

Two civilian casualties

Sometimes it's the little things that really liquid waste you off!

The United States Government--which objected little or not at all to the events in Jenin--compels me to censor one of the words singer David Rovics uses in narrating same . . . at least in the radio broadcast. Smearing excrement on walls before killing the inhabitants is acceptable. Using the word "shit" to identify what's smeared on the walls is offensive.

Hamas rocket lands near kibbutz.

Soldier prays.

Catch New World Notes . . .

Two mosques

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Friday, January 2, 2009

On Gaza and Israel


For January 6 edition of New World Notes News--on George Carlin--
scroll down to December 28, 2008


New World Notes Supplement

Number 2 -- January 2, 2009

Foreword by KD:

I am an American friend of Israel. I'm told that friends don't let friends drive drunk.

The militarists that have wrested control of our country away from the American people--this happened well before 2000--may be great pals with their Likudnik ultra-Zionist counterparts in the Middle East. That doesn't make any of the lot of them friends of Israel--let alone friends of the people of Israel.

We, the people of the United States, are not to blame for the ongoing bloodbath in Gaza, any more than we are to blame for My Lai or Abu Ghraib. Unless we connive in it or condone it. Unless we refuse to see what is happening in front of us. Unless we refuse to affix a suitable name to what we see.

Theologian and distinguished journalist Chris Hedges has been heard on New World Notes two or three times over the past year. Here he suggests a few useful names. And a few that simply won't do.

A way of naming something implies a way of acting in response to it.


Party to Murder

by Chris Hedges

Condensed by Kenneth Dowst

Originally published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by TruthDig.com

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza wonder why we Americans are hated? Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing.

Over 350 Palestinians* have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas in Gaza.

Killed Palestinian policemen

A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights, Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity." Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

The foreign press has been barred by Israel from entering Gaza to report on the destruction.

December 27, 2008

Israel's stated aim of halting homemade rockets fired from Gaza into Israel remains unfulfilled. Gaza militants have fired more than 100 rockets and mortars into Israel, killing four people and wounding nearly two dozen more, since Israel unleashed its air assault. Israel has threatened to launch a ground assault and has called up 6,500 army reservists. It has massed tanks on the Gaza border.

As Falk points out, the rocket attacks by Hamas are also criminal violations of international law. But as Falk notes, "such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a [severe] collective punishment . . . on the people of Gaza."

According to Falk, "A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. About 18 percent of Gaza's children have stunted growth. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."

Most of Gaza is now without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There is little medicine, and no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died.

"It is macabre," Falk said of the blockade. "People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times."

President Abbas' office

The point of the Israeli attack, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel.

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who survive. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a "martyr"?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

© 2008 TruthDig.com

*At 3 PM on Friday, January 2, NPR News gave the death toll as "more than 400" --KD
Addendum: "More than 900," according to other sources, on January 12. That should put us comfortably over 1,000 by Martin Luther King Day. --KD
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