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Gaza and the Threat of World War
“There is a taboo,” said the visionary Edward Said, “on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free.”
For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can’t look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australia, in this epic crime.
The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.
When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine “the greatest moral issue of our time”, he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them.
[…]
Understanding the sophistry and power of liberal propaganda is key to understanding why Israel’s outrages endure; why the world looks on; why sanctions are never applied to Israel; and why nothing less than a total boycott of everything Israeli is now a measure of basic human decency.
The most incessant propaganda says Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. Khaled Hroub, the Cambridge University scholar considered a world leading authority on Hamas, says this phrase is “never used or adopted by Hamas, even in its most radical statements”. The oft-quoted “anti-Jewish” 1988 Charter was the work of “one individual and made public without appropriate Hamas consensus …. The author was one of the ‘old guard’ “; the document is regarded as an embarrassment and never cited.
Hamas has repeatedly offered a 10-year truce with Israel and has long settled for a two-state solution. When Medea Benjamin, the fearless Jewish American activist, was in Gaza, she carried a letter from Hamas leaders to President Obama that made clear the government of Gaza wanted peace with Israel. It was ignored. I personally know of many such letters carried in good faith, ignored or dismissed.
The unforgivable crime of Hamas is a distinction almost never reported: it is the only Arab government to have been freely and democratically elected by its people. Worse, it has now formed a government of unity with the Palestinian Authority. A single, resolute Palestinian voice – in the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court – is the most feared threat.
[…]
Resistance is humanity at its bravest and most noble. The resistance in Gaza is rightly compared with the 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto – which also dug tunnels and deployed tactics of subterfuge and surprise against an overpowering military machine. The last surviving leader of the Warsaw uprising, Marek Edelman, wrote a letter of solidarity to the Palestinian resistance, comparing it with the ZOB, his ghetto fighters. The letter began: “Commanders of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations – and to all soldiers [of Palestine].”
Dr. Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor renowned for his heroic work in Gaza. On 8 August, Dr. Gilbert returned to his hometown, Tronso in Norway which, as he pointed out, the Nazis had occupied for seven years. He said, “Imagine being back in 1945 and we in Norway did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades, and banishing us to the leanest areas, and taking the fish in the sea and the water beneath us, then bombing our hospitals, our ambulance workers, our schools, our homes.
“Would we have given up and waved the white flag? No, we would not! And this is the situation in Gaza. This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist. It is the Palestinian people’s dignity that they will not accept this.
“In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews Untermenschen – subhuman. Today, Palestinians are treated as a subhuman people who can be slaughtered without any in power reacting.
“So I have returned to Norway, a free country, and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons – it’s stated in international law. And the Palestinian people’s resistance in Gaza is admirable: a struggle for us all.”
[…]
The jargon is “controlling the narrative”. In his seminal Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the western media machine was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of humanity with a “wiring” as influential as that of the imperial navies of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by media.
Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does exist; and a second superpower is emerging – the power of public opinion, fuelled by the internet and social media.
The false reality created by false news delivered by media gatekeepers may prevent some of us knowing that this new superpower is stirring in country after country: from the Americas to Europe, Asia to Africa. It is a moral insurrection, exemplified by the whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. The question begs: will we break our silence while there is time?
[Source:John Pilger’s Web Site]
Let it be said up front that this cranky second waver bears no animus with regards to hamsters, electric vehicles, or dancing. Yet, once these elements are mixed into the toxic soup of everyone’s favourite capitalistic patriarchal construct – better known as ‘our society’ – hilarity is bound to ensue.
The advertisement in whole, before we begin.
This commercial is about selling cars. (Duh!) But who is the target audience? (if you thought hamsters, please leave now there are places better suited for your attentions). Let’s break this down and take a look at the characters.
Science Hamster #1 – Red bow-tie, suspenders.
Science Hamster#2 – Red bow-tie, red glasses and polka dot shirt.
Science Hamster#3 – Rasta hat, white shirt.
Because not all dudes are not into science! Bonus marks for catching the racial commentary this characterization is making.
Female Hamster in Ball – Brown and cute. Context wise we don’t know the ball hamster is female, but with time spent on establishing a connection one could assume.
Small, helpless, and cute. Thematic material anyone?
We’re 10 seconds into the commercial and what do we have here – 3 male represented characters creating, designing, and actively teching out with all sorts of futuristic displays and machinery. The female role, to smiled and waved at; the unsurprising passive receptacle for male attentions.
Audio note – “Baby I’m preying on you tonight. Hunt you down eat you alive,. Just like animals (x2). Ah yes because the predator/prey relationship is so sexy, and filled with equality too!
Well nothing new here under the sun so far, but as with most patriarchal adventures it gets worse the farther you go. Our intrepid female hamster gets herself into a jam by wheeling her ball into the experimental area and is zapped along with the vehicle by the transmogrifying beams of science.
Oh, silly female! Caution be thrown to the wind cause she doesn’t get Science!
Our first glimpse of her portents much of what is to come. Disembodied woman parts with feminine signifiers for the winz!
The body parts of women – sexy!
The requisite Male gaze.
To quote Keanu Reeves: Whoa…
And after a full body pan, we as viewers to get to experience the male gaze. Just some reinforcement in case you missed the objectification the first time around.
Audience gets to objectify her to, as women should be judged by the quality of their tuckus.
Now that we have primed the audience for sexual objectification, lets use it to sell the damn car!
Inviting female = inviting car?
Where is the female empowerment (do tell my Third Wave friends)?!? Oh wait the power of love. How charmingly original for a female character (do contrast this with the creator, the scientist, the engineer).
Empowerful stuff going on here.
Oh, dudes like their technology more than any single vampy female. Let’s get a shot of her looking flummoxed so we can reiterate the “female body selling car” angle again. We do remember the advertising truism – the sexual objectification of women sells.
Damn, they picked me over a car, what could they possibly after?
Our intrepid dudes roll to the nearest pet store to ‘pick up some chicks’. Consider the perceived power differential – the dudes looming over a cage of helpless females – and of course the anvilicious buying of women for happy fun sexy times.
Write your own snark about how empowering prostitution is…
So cue more science and boom! Let the female empowerment roar while striking sexy poses for dudes (science and/or otherwise)!
Huh, because vamping for dudes is approved female behaviour!
Recently bough females remarkable receptive to their buyers, with nuzzling and other overt signs of female powah affection.
Oh, we like you dudes and our role as eye-sex-candy and everything is awesome, see how much fun are having?
Cue the formation dancing with of course, our protagonists front and centre, we must never forget the centrality of the man and his power.
Never forget who is the subject and who is the object.
And thus endeth the analysis.
Going through this post made me think of all the conversations, mostly with men, about how we don’t need feminism anymore because we are an equal society now thus there is no use for feminism or feminist analysis. This was a cute commercial until you actually look at the underlying patriarchal messages that surprisingly happen to dovetail nicely how society perceives, and thus, how society treats women in 2014.
You could knock me over with a feather given how surprised I am about the level of misogyny present in our media.
As always, IBTP.
Just ask Mystro about designing logos. A great deal of time and effort is involved in making a clean, presentable logo. The next step, making the *right* logo for the task at hand… it could be the definition of time-sink.
Some of the logos hidden designs are not particularly mysterious, but there were a few I didn’t even notice until they were pointed out.
Corporate ‘responsibility’ is put on display in this fine segment from John Oliver.
The US is doing it again.
“In February, the US mounted one of its “colour” coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama’s national security adviser Victoria Nuland personally selected the leader of an “interim government”. She nicknamed him “Yats”. Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.
For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler’s invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called “vermin”. The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum”, including gays, feminists and those on the political left.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand “one inch to the east”, Nato has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato’s expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.
A Nato Membership Action Plan is Washington’s gift to the coup-regime in Kiev. In August, “Operation Rapid Trident” will put American and British troops on Ukraine’s Russian border and “Sea Breeze” will send US warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America’s borders.”
Go read the full article on counterpunch.org.
One video, sixteen minutes equals deep insight into how American society runs. (Hint: Most likely not for your benefit.)
I grow tired of hearing arch-conservatives rail on about the evils of regulation and how it stifles industry. People die because of deregulation and lax standards – but somehow the profit motive trumps all that human welfare shit, almost every time.
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons.
If I listened and believed what I was supposed to believe I would be afraid that the Russians are provoking the West into military conflict in Ukraine. The problem is that I’m more of afraid of what We are doing to destabilize the situation. John Pilger is with me on this one.
“Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the west are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with “special units” from the CIA and FBI setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by. A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate … I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.”
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that the attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation”, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” following the Odessa massacre. Illegal and fascist-dominated, the junta is described by Obama as “duly elected”. What matters is not truth, Henry Kissinger once said, but “but what is perceived to be true.”
(Source)
I’m certainly glad that Canada is soundly backing the fascist junta in the Ukraine, I’d hate to think what would happen if we let those people decide for themselves what is best for their country. We most definitely need to
serve our interestsprotect the people of Ukraine during this conflict.
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons…
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…