Occasional glimpses of Ukrainian and NATO-EU realities amidst long stretches of raging Russophobic delusionary psychosis from guest (quangoworld American Milakovsky), but more disturbingly from hosts Sean Guillory and Rusana Novikova. In any case, skip the useless banter from start of audio to 4:23 and likewise the useless/commercial outro from 53:08 to end of audio.
Guest: Brian Milakovsky with a grim update on Ukraine, the war, and the shrinking prospects of even a lousy peace.
Erfreuliches aus der Österreichers (maybe valid German, too lazy to webtranslate)
This week Nick sits down with returning guest Adam Baltner to discuss the recent surprise successes of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and how many more Ws are possibly on the horizon.
EXCELLENT, just too short (~14 min). We know Jazz Emu as a God of Musical Comedy, but here he proves himself also master of fast-paced jokes and wordplay. BBC Radio 4 Comedy at its best.
Jazz Emu sets out to write his friends the most romantic song ever created, in order to save their crumbling relationship and make everything in his friendship group nice again. Digging back into his alternative musical archives, Jazz takes inspiration from Barry White, George Michael and ACDC in order to learn about what makes a song romantic. Armed with misguided understanding and unerring confidence, Jazz is ready to blow some minds. If music be the food of love, it’s lunchtime. Or something like that?
Jazz Emu: musician, 70s lothario-type, ex-Hollywood foley artist and internationally renowned idiot. After a long career in (and often out) of the spotlight, he has decided to present a radio show in order to connect with the average Joes (and Janes, and other boring names) and bestow his expert knowledge of Sound upon the universe.
Written by Archie Henderson and Adrian Gray
Starring: Archie Henderson, Adrian Gray, Emmanuel Sonubi, Lorna Rose Treen, Cody Dahler
Produced by Sasha Bobak
A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4
Khalek EXCELLENT as usual. Note answers to question from ep notes (slightly edited--whether it’s useful to make comparisons between Israel/Zionazi apartheid, genocide, and aggression and that of the original Nazis) are YES and LEBENSRAUM.
Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany and associate professor at Koc University in Istanbul, to discuss Israel’s descent into genocidal fascism. Prof. Amar addresses whether it’s useful to make Holocaust and Nazi comparisons and the real reason behind the West’s unshakeable loyalty attitude when it comes to Israel’s barbarism.
VERY EXCELLENT, essential for understanding the place of Israel in US geopolitics, just - wish they'd post link to episode#=1 (but one can parse the URL from the player page) - am waiting for episode#=3 to get unpaywalled
Features Daniel Hummel, director of the Lumen Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Upper House.
Explores the pre-WWII roots of the movement, Evangelical Christians’ relations with Muslims of the region in the early days of the State of Israel, the theological basis of Christian Zionism, figures like Douglas Young and Billy Graham, the concept of Judeo-Christianity, the effect of the 1967 War on the relationship, and more until the Nixon Administration.
Picks up with the rise of the new Christian right in the 1970s and the role of Zionism therein, dispensationalism and its notion of Jews and Israel, the Israeli right’s concurrent rise to power, Jimmy Carter as a non-Zionist evangelical, the Camp David Accords, Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Christian Zionism, and where the movement stood on the eve of the Oslo Accords.
Picks up in the 1990s with the Oslo Accords, the push for a “Great Israel”, the Left Behind books and the rise of apocalypticism, Christians United for Israel, and more until the Obama Administration.
Daniel Hummel, director for university engagement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Upper House, returns to continue the discussion on Christian Zionism in the United States since 1948. In this episode, the group picks up with the rise of the new Christian right in the 1970s and the role of Zionism therein, dispensationalism and its notion of Jews and Israel, the Israeli right’s concurrent rise to power, Jimmy Carter as a non-Zionist evangelical, the Camp David Accords, Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Christian Zionism, and where the movement stood on the eve of the Oslo Accords.
Daniel Hummel, director of the Lumen Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Upper House, is back to discuss Christian Zionism in the United States since 1948. This episode picks up in the 1990s with the Oslo Accords, the push for a “Greater Israel”, the Left Behind books and the rise of apocalypticism, Christians United for Israel, and more unt…
3 segments, each ~20 min and excellent, each sandwiched between a few minutes of ads. Well worth your time, but use that fast-forward function.
Spencer Snyder looks at how Billionaire funded Sports Stadiums are killing cities, James Li speaks with a real estate expert about what he calls the 'Death of the American Dream', and Max Alvarez speaks to an ER Doctor who worked in Gaza.
"Teachers Unions: Still a Huge Obstacle to Reform." "Countering Iran's Menacing Persian Gulf Navy." "Open Everything: The time to end pandemic restrictions is now." "The Good Republicans' Last Stand"
Each of these headlines comes from the same magazine: The Atlantic. For 167 years, the publication has enjoyed elite stature in the American literary and journalistic worlds, publishing such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Barack Obama, and serving as a coveted professional destination for writers throughout the country. Founded by a number of esteemed 19th century authors, the magazine has long prided itself on its cultural and political depth.
But beneath all of its high-minded rhetoric about democracy, free expression, fearlessness, and American ideals is a vehicle of center-right pablum, designed to launder reactionary opinions for a liberal-leaning audience. As the employer of warmongers like Jeffrey Goldberg, Anne Applebaum, and David Frum, under the ownership of a Silicon Valley-tied investment firm hellbent on destroying teachers' unions, The Atlantic, time and time again, proves a far cry from the truth-pursuing, consensus-disrupting outlet it claims to be. On this episode, we dive into the history and ideology of The Atlantic, examining the currents of middlebrow conservatism, left-punching, and deference to boring business owners that have run through the magazine throughout its nearly 17 decades of operation.
VERY EXCELLENT: rather than a deepdive into Haiti's current unrest, Johnson provides a broad-if-necessarily-shallow history 2000-2024 focusing on local actors fighting for and against US control, including
- Micky Martelly and the Obama/HRC regime's rigging of the 2010 election - Guy Philippe, esp his role in the W. Bush regime's 2000 coup fail and 2004 coup vs Aristide - Jovenel Moïse from quangoworld construct to Martelly crony to 2021 assassination - Jimmy Chérizier from Barbecue to police to front for G9 (in which Johnson suggests the real power is Izo) - ... and local police, militias/gangs, and vigilantes seeking to control violence in the absence of a hegemonic state
The main problem with this episode: ~0 economic analysis. Johnson briefly alludes to that being 'in the book', while noting Haitian elites are 'extremely litigious' (quotes from memory, discussion is toward end of ep) ... net, 'material basis' is not stated here.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been compelled to resign as armed gangs tighten their grip on the nation's capital, seizing control of police stations, the main international airport, and freeing thousands of prisoners. This week on Deconstructed, researcher and writer Jake Johnston, who has spent more than a decade reporting on Haiti, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the latest wave of violence hitting the country and the events that led to it. Johnston’s new book, “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti,” details how U.S. and European goals have continuously undermined the nation’s governance and economy. Johnston is also the senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research where he leads Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch.
If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give, where your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.
And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com.
In 1991, over 100 of the the most famous singers, movie stars, an athletes in America got together to record a song for the troops in the first Gulf War. We take a visit to the consent-manufacturing factory and discuss the "apolitical" James Woods-hosted TV special VOICES THAT CARE: STAND TALL, STAND PROUD (1991).
Watch the special here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ1S_UNaWps&ab_channel=LeapingTrout
Join us on Patreon for an extra episode every week - https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus
Enlarge / Harvard's got a lawsuit on its hands. (credit: Glowimages)
Accusations of research misconduct often trigger extensive investigations, typically performed by the institution where the misconduct allegedly took place. These investigations are internal employment matters, and false accusations have the potential to wreck someone's career needlessly. As a result, most of these investigations are kept completely confidential, even after their completion.
But all the details of a misconduct investigation performed by Harvard University became public this week through an unusual route. The professor accused of misconduct, Francesca Gino, had filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit, targeting both Harvard and a team of external researchers who had accused her of misconduct. Harvard submitted its investigator's report as part of its attempt to have part of the suit dismissed, and the judge overseeing the case made it public.
We covered one of the studies at issue at the time of its publication. It has since been retracted, and we'll be updating our original coverage accordingly.
Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It's responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary component of dietary fiber, so it's hard to overstate its importance to humanity.
Given its ubiquity and the fact that it's composed of a bunch of sugar molecules linked together, its toughness makes it very difficult to use as a food source. The animals that manage to extract significant calories from cellulose typically do so via specialized digestive tracts that provide a home for symbiotic bacteria—think of the extra stomachs of cows and other ruminants.
Amazingly, humans also play host to bacteria that can break down cellulose—something that wasn't confirmed until 2003 (long after I'd wrapped up my education). Now, a new study indicates that we're host to a mix of cellulose-eating bacteria, some via our primate ancestry, and others through our domestication of herbivores such as cows. But urban living has caused the number of these bacteria to shrink dramatically.
another EXCELLENT global Week in Review from Davison and Bessner
Derek and Danny are back, the latter without any rubles. This week: Russian kicks off its presidential election (1:47); a Gaza humanitarian update (4:29) and Biden speaks on a Rafah invasion (11:24); more Israeli strikes in Lebanon (15:30); U.S. policy potentially shifts on DPRK/North Korea (17:17); in Sudan, the military makes gains in Omdurman (20:20); Ukraine attacks Russian oil facilities (24:26) and receives a U.S. stopgap aid package (26:54); the right surges in Portugal’s election (29:37); PM Ariel Henry resigns as chaos ensues in Haiti (32:20); and the U.S. expands its lead in global arms sales (35:17).
Danny and Derek welcome writer and co-executive producer John Orloff to the pod to discuss Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air miniseries. They go into John’s background, his work on HBO’s seminal Band of Brothers, the distinct horror of WWII aerial warfare, how MOTA tackled the POW experience, the challenge of writing and shooting such a massive production, and how a WWII-era drama is informed by the current global climate.
Alex Ptak and Jeremy Kaplowitz of the Quorators podcast join the pod today. We take a moment looking at the house bill to ban TikTok, then Alex and Jeremy take us on a tour of the world of political Quora. What would happen if two ex-presidents fist fought each other? Can goths be MAGA? Can you call the cops on Satan? We explore the answers to these questions and more importantly, what’s up with the people who asked them.
Find Quorators:
Wherever you get podcast: https://pod.link/1646130232
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Quorators
Patreon :https://www.patreon.com/Quorators
The Jacques/Chapo/Seeking Derangements show at the Lodge Room in LA, Thursday April 4:
pushquote (slightly edited): > [to find] the proper time zone [string] for the city you’re interested in[, just websearch] for “iana time zone ” For example, if I wanted to add Glasgow [which Irreal actually misspells in original] to the list, I would search for “iana time zone glasgow” and discover that the proper time zone is “Europe/London” [which must annoy the hell outta Glaswegians :-]
As I’ve written before, Emacs has a world clock. Well, it’s not really a clock: just a list of times in various cities but it’s great for today’s remote work place. If your colleagues are stationed all over the world, it’s really useful to know what time it is where they are so you don’t try to contact them at 3 in the morning their time.
As the above linked post says, it’s possible to edit the list of cities listed. The method that Choi uses (in the above link) to configure them is the custom interface but others may prefer a more Lispy way of configuring it.
Bozhidar Batsov also addresses the world clock function and shows us how to configure it in, say, our init.el file. It’s easy to do except for knowing what the proper time zone is for the city you’re interested in. It’s easy to find that out by searching for “iana time zone <city>” For example, if I wanted to add Glasgow to the list, I would search for “iana time zone glasgow” and discover that the proper time zone is “Europe/London”. There’s also a database that you can download that contains all the supported places but it’s definitely overkill for this application.
Batsov also notes that you can edit the time string that gets displayed. Basically, you can specify any format supported by format-time-string. You might find that useful for further automation.
This is just another small example of how Emacs helps smooth your daily workflow. Even if you only occasionally want to know what time it is at Aunt Millie’s, it’s worthwhile looking up her time zone and adding it to the list.
The battles of Verdun, the Somme, and the Brusilov Offensive. Epic, tragic military errors, horrors of trenches, battles that killed hundreds of thousands and changed the course of history.
includes elisp=gnuplot-rectangle for easier data ingestion. TODO: Org integration
GNU Emacs can be used for quick data visualization in combination with Gnuplot. When you have some data and you want to visualize what the correlation looks like, this command comes in handy. No need for any setup - no data file and no Gnuplot script.
The command below uses some sensible defaults for trivial cases.
If the first line contains string label, the same is used as a key label for the value and/or axes' names as appropriate.
If there's a single column of data, it is used as Y value.
If there's more than one column, first column is used as X value and other columns are plotted along Y-axis.
Takes care of comma or whitespace separator.
Note: The latest version of the code is available at the end of the post.
consistently excellent, excepting some mainstream-brainfarts, mostly Jashinsky
Ryan and Emily discuss Robert Hur's explosive Congressional testimony, UAE threatens to cut off Israel economic support over lack of Gaza aid, State Dep Spox confronted on IDF beatings of Gaza medics, CPI report shows inflation rise, Kenya halts troops to Haiti amid gang uprising, Putin says Russia ready to negotiate, leaked French military docs say Ukraine victory is impossible, and Andrew Tate arrested after streamer Adin Ross revealed his escape plans from Romania.
Former Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis discusses his long relationship with Australia, the latest from Greece and Europe as well as the ongoing influence of America on our foreign policy, on Europe and on the Middle East.
Guest: Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and founder of Diem25
VERY EXCELLENT, wide-ranging informative 80 min with Podur and (mostly) Jon Elmer on Palestine and region c1987-2024. (If this has a flaw, it's relative lack of organization) Among the many topics discussed, very roughly in order:
* Gaza siege 2007-2024 ***** prehistory from 1987 1st Intifada to 25 Jan 2006 legislative elections (won by Hamas, across Palestine) * Palestinian bantustans and how Israel walls and roads create them * 7 Oct 2023 war * regional forces including US, Anserallah/Houthis, Egypt, Turkey, PRC * empire corporate-funded media, esp how they do hasbara * Palestinian Authority (PA) as a Judenrat: ghetto governors hired by the Zionazi regime ***** PA and Hamas prehistory 1987 to Oslo Accords ***** how the Arafat-Barghouti 2nd Intifada killed the Oslo fraud ***** how US (esp general Keith Dayton) converted post-Oslo PLO into the PA collaborator Judenrat * Gaza from occupation to siege, and how Egypt and Jordan collaborate with Israel * West Bank resistance vs Israel esp PA renegades esp aft 20231007
The siege on Gaza and the role of the Palestinian Authority are critical context for the Israel’s assault on Gaza. On this episode we take a look at the history of the blockade and how Israel has ghettoized the Palestinian population. Co-production with The Brief.
> “According to sources including Israel’s National Insurance Institute, kibbutz leaders and the police, on October 7 one baby was murdered, 10-month-old Mila Cohen,” the Haaretz article stated. “She was killed with her father, Ohad, on Kibbutz Be’eri.” The child’s mother survived. In addition to a single infant, the social security agency’s list of victims includes only [5] other young children. Haaretz’s reporters were able to determine the circumstances of each of their deaths:
> > According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children aged 6 or under were murdered, including Omer Kedem Siman Tov, 2, and his 6-year-old twin sisters Arbel and Shachar, who were killed on Kibbutz Nir Oz. There was also 5-year-old Yazan Zakaria Abu Jama from Arara in the southern Negev, who was killed in a Hamas rocket strike, and 5-year-old Eitan Kapshetar, who was murdered with his parents and his 8-year-old sister, Aline, near Sderot.
> Haaretz also used the social security data to refute allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Biden that Hamas targeted and tortured children:
> > There is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to US President Joe Biden that Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.”
The Washington Post (11/22/23) said it couldn’t make a definitive assessment of whether Biden’s atrocity claims were true. But Israel’s official casualty list (11/11/23) had already debunked them.
In late November, the Washington Post (11/22/23) factchecked President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that babies had been beheaded during Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel.
Biden’s remarks during a November 15 news conference triggered the factcheck:
Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again, like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burning women and children alive.
Despite acknowledging a lack of confirmation of such atrocities, the Post stopped short of branding Biden’s statements false, and declined to dole out any of its iconic Pinocchios.
“It’s too soon in the Israel/Gaza war to make a definitive assessment,” Post Factchecker Glenn Kessler wrote, noting that even the most basic facts weren’t yet known.
“The Israeli prime minister’s office has said about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, down from an initial estimate of 1,400,” he said, “but it’s unclear how many were civilians or soldiers.”
An authoritative count
That statement isn’t true. While the exact number killed amid the extreme violence and chaos of October 7 may never be finalized, an authoritative count of civilian deaths—as well as data that definitively refutes claims babies were beheaded—was available to anyone with access to the internet little more than a month after the attack.
That’s when Bituah Leumi, or National Insurance Institute, Israel’s social security agency, posted a Hebrew-language website (11/9/23) with the name, gender and age of every identified civilian victim and where each had been attacked.
Two days later Bituah Leumi (also transliterated as Bituach Leumi) posted an English-language news release (11/11/23) publicizing the website as a memorial to the civilian victims of the “Iron Swords” war—Israel’s name for Hamas’s attack and Israel Defense Forces’ response. (The news release refers to “695 identified war casualties,” but there are no wounded; all the victims are listed as “killed.”)
The journalistic importance of the memorial website was shown less than a month later, when Haaretz (12/4/23), Israel’s oldest newspaper, used the social security agency’s data to debunk some of the most sensational atrocities blamed on Hamas.
‘Proved untrue’
Haaretz (12/4/23) reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most sensational atrocity claims were “inaccurate.”
Haaretz’s 2,000-word, English-language article was cautious, with allowances for mistaken and exaggerated reports from traumatized observers describing horrific scenes of carnage. But unlike the Washington Post’s factcheck, the Israeli newspaper didn’t pull its punches, flatly concluding that some of the claims of atrocities “have been proved untrue.”
Chief among the claims disproved was that Hamas fighters deliberately slaughtered dozens of babies—beheading some, burning and hanging others.
“According to sources including Israel’s National Insurance Institute, kibbutz leaders and the police, on October 7 one baby was murdered, 10-month-old Mila Cohen,” the Haaretz article stated. “She was killed with her father, Ohad, on Kibbutz Be’eri.” The child’s mother survived.
In addition to a single infant, the social security agency’s list of victims includes only a few other young children. Haaretz’s reporters were able to determine the circumstances of each of their deaths:
According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children aged 6 or under were murdered, including Omer Kedem Siman Tov, 2, and his 6-year-old twin sisters Arbel and Shachar, who were killed on Kibbutz Nir Oz. There was also 5-year-old Yazan Zakaria Abu Jama from Arara in the southern Negev, who was killed in a Hamas rocket strike, and 5-year-old Eitan Kapshetar, who was murdered with his parents and his 8-year-old sister, Aline, near Sderot.
Haaretz also used the social security data to refute allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Biden that Hamas targeted and tortured children:
There is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to US President Joe Biden that Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.”
‘Details still sparse’
The Washington Post (12/4/23) acknowledged the Haaretz story the same day it was published, with a one-paragraph “update” inserted into its November 22 factcheck. While crediting Haaretz with doing a “detailed examination of unverified accounts of alleged atrocities disseminated by Israeli first-responders and army officers,” the Post downgraded the Israeli newspaper’s conclusion, saying only that “no accounts of beheaded or burned babies could be verified.”
While the Post noted that Haaretz “could document only one case of a baby being killed in the Hamas attacks,” the update did not explain that the source of that critical fact was an agency of the Israeli government. Nor did the Post alter the factcheck’s inconclusive, mishmashed “Bottom Line”:
Almost two months after the Hamas attack, details are still sparse on claims of beheading of babies. One IDF official says he found a decapitated baby; a first responder says “little kids” were beheaded, though an exact number was not provided. Forensic records that would document the cause of death have not been released. There also are reports of at least two beheadings of adults—a soldier and a Thai worker. First responders say they viewed these bodies.
There is little dispute that many of the civilians killed by militants on October 7 died in especially brutal ways. But caution is still warranted, especially at the presidential level, about statements that babies were beheaded. The available evidence does not need exaggeration.
An unnecessary retraction
PolitiFact (11/21/23) retracted this story (10/20/23) because it didn’t include Israeli claims about mutilated babies that—according to Israel’s official records—didn’t exist.
The Post wasn’t the only factchecker that wavered when judging reports of slaughtered Israeli babies. The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact retracted its story (10/20/23), headlined “How Politicians, Media Outlets Amplified Uncorroborated Report of Beheaded Babies.”
PolitiFact took the embarrassing action after being savaged by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, better known as CAMERA.
CAMERA, which Haaretz (9/5/16) described as “a right-wing media watchdog that routinely attacks news outlets over their coverage of Israel,” blasted PolitiFact as “unethical,” “sloppy and misleading” (11/8/23) for failing to include in its story all reports of mutilated babies made by Israeli military spokespeople, government officials and emergency response workers.
PolitiFact (11/21/23) conceded “our initial story was incomplete,” and published a revised story (11/21/23) that included many of those comments. The new version also quoted an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson stating “that verified testimonies state some people were beheaded, but they could not confirm how many.”
Like the Post’s Factchecker, PolitiFact drew no conclusions about the truth or falsity of those claims, declining to issue a rating on its “Truth-O-Meter.”
‘Details still emerging’
Snopes (10/12/23) says it’s still too soon to say whether babies were beheaded on October 7, thought it promises, “We will update this story once more information comes to light.”
The factchecking website Snopes (10/12/23, last updated 12/18/23) also declined to provide a definite answer to the question posed in its headline: “Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?”
“At present, details are still emerging from communities affected in Israel, the death tolls are still being counted, and the manner of many deaths have not yet been confirmed,” Snopes stated.
In one of eight updates, Snopes cited Haaretz’s December 4 “analysis of child deaths during the October 7 attack.” But, as with the Washington Post’s update, Snopes did not mention that the newspaper had used Israeli social security data in its investigation.
FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, (10/13/23) did find that a Facebook video was correct in saying “that ‘no evidence has been provided’ for the viral claim that ‘40 babies’ were ‘beheaded’ by Hamas.”
But a November 14 update, included in the story, quoted the head of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine saying that “many bodies” of victims he had examined were “without heads.” But he couldn’t determine whether the decapitations were deliberate or the result of explosions.
FactCheck has not published any more on the issue.
The missing proof
FAIR.org (10/20/23): “The claim about beheading babies was…a shocking story that served to turn off logic and critical thinking.”
There’s a reason why the major factchecking organizations hesitate to pass judgment on the widespread claim of slaughtered babies: They rightly conclude that the lack of verifying evidence, such as photos or autopsy reports, does not conclusively prove the claims are false.
FAIR contributor Saurav Sarkar made that precise point in his report (10/20/23) lambasting “corporate media” for “their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.”
“So we have a story, and that story was generated in a grossly irresponsible way, and then repeated over and over,” Sarkar stated. “But what proof do we have that the story is false? After all, even if it was reported badly, and repeated without additional substantiation, it might be true.”
Bituah Leumi, the Israeli social security agency, provided that missing proof when it posted the official list of victims that showed only one infant was killed in the attack.
The mainstream US news media ignored that authoritative evidence.
‘War on truth’
AFP (12/15/23) reported that data from Israel’s social security agency “invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.”
The first major news outlet outside of Israel to use data from the social security agency’s website was the French wire service Agence France-Presse.
The AFP’s 1,000-word, English-language dispatch, headlined “Israel Social Security Data Reveals True Picture of October 7 Deaths,” was picked up by France24 (12/15/23), the Times of India (12/15/23), the financial weekly Barron’s (12/15/23) and a scattering of small newspapers, including the Caledonian (Vermont) Record (12/15/23).
The AFP story covered much the same ground as Haaretz’s analysis, listing the same slain infant—Mila Cohen—and five other young victims under 7 years old in refuting claims of wholesale slaughter of babies.
While Google searches found no US mainstream media reporting on the Israeli social security agency’s data, several independent journalists did.
Gareth Porter, an American historian and journalist whose credentials go back to the Vietnam War, cited the social security data in an article in Consortium News (1/6/24) that argued that the Netanyahu government sought to build support for the invasion of Gaza by “inventing stories about nonexistent atrocities and planting them with credulous US news outlets.”
In February, Jeremy Scahill used that data to make the same case in a 8,000-word article, headlined “Netanyahu’s War on Truth,” in the Intercept (2/7/24), the investigative website he helped found.
Both journalists credit the December 15 AFP dispatch as the source of the Israeli social security data. (Porter’s story provides a link to the Times of India; Scahill links to France24.)
Earlier this week a third independent journalist, Glenn Greenwald (3/3/24), quoted the December 4 Haaretz report, which used the Israeli social security data, in a YouTube video, titled “October 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal & More.”
Emotion-inflaming stories
Media focus on the imaginary beheaded babies helped Israel get away with killing hundreds of actual babies (Al Jazeera, 1/25/24).
In the months since the Haaretz and AFP reports were published, Bituah Leumi has updated its civilian death count to 779, including 76 foreign workers, as more victims are identified (Jewish News Syndicate, 1/15/24.).
But a detailed examination this week of the 16-page list of victims on the memorial website found no additional infants or young children—only those already accounted for by Haaretz and AFP—and a total of 36 children under 18 years old.
Mila Cohen remains the only infant reported killed in the October 7 attack.
US corporate media’s failure to cite the social security agency’s data to forcefully refute claims of butchered babies and other outrages comes at a high cost. Such emotion-inflaming stories continue to foul the public debate over whether Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians (AP, 2/29/24)—two-thirds of those women and children (PBS, 2/19/24)—is a criminally disproportionate response to the Hamas attack.
The ministry said of the 30,035 people killed so far in the conflict, more than 13,000 were children and 8,800 women. At least 70,457 people have been injured, of which more than 11,000 are in critical condition and need to be evacuated.
In January, when the Health Ministry had estimated the number of children killed at 10,000, Al Jazeera (1/25/24) published the names of more than 4,200 Palestinian dead under 18 years old. Of those children named, 502 were under 2 years old—that is, infants.
Unfounded horror stories about Hamas’s infant victims that should have been debunked were still being repeated by Biden (12/12/23) at a campaign fundraiser more than two months after Israel was attacked:
I saw some of the photographs when I was there—tying a mother and her daughter together on a rope and then pouring kerosene on them and then burning them, beheading infants, doing things that are just inhuman—totally, completely inhuman.
This time the Washington Post didn’t factcheck Biden—even though the White House stated months earlier that the president had never seen such photos (CNN, 10/12/23).
We catch up on the biggest winners, losers, snubs and looks of the Illuminati Humiliation Ritual commonly known as the 96th Annual Academy Awards. Then speaking of Humiliation Rituals, we discuss the State of the Union, the response from GOP Senator Katie Britt, Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law being killed by her own Tesla, and how Zionists are having a hard time finding a date on the apps.
Catch Will, Amber & Felix on stage (and Chris at the bar) along with Girl God and Jacques from Seeking Derangements at the Lodge Room in LA this Thursday, April 4: https://www.lodgeroomhlp.com/shows/show-pig-a-live-comedy-podcast-spectacular-with-seeking-derangements/
NYC people: keep an eye out for a Movie Mindset season 2 kickoff event. Not fully confirmed yet, but I’d keep May 4th open for now.
pullquote (slightly edited): > by [the purchasing-power-parity measure, aka GDP-PPP], China’s economy is already considerably larger than the U.S. economy. It was 22.0 percent larger last year (24.0 percent including Hong Kong). [Given the IMF's] projected growth rate, [the PRC economy] will be 34.0 percent larger [than that of the US] by 2028.
There have been lots of reports in the media about China’s economic problems in recent months. Most of these pieces imply that it is facing some imminent disaster.
I will claim no special expertise on China, and it certainly looks like its government is pursuing some seriously wrongheaded policies, but it’s pretty difficult to see the disaster story in any publicly available data.
At the most basic level, most projections show its economy continuing to grow at a very healthy pace for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, the coverage is almost exclusively negative.
For example, this New York Times piece noted China’s projection for 5.0 percent GDP growth in 2024 with the headline “Xi Sticks to His Vision for China’s Rise Even as Growth Slows.” China’s growth projections, as well as its official statistics, should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, few doubt that the picture shown by government data, of an extremely rapidly growing economy over the last four and half decades, is basically right.
But suppose we don’t want to take China’s projections for 2024 and instead turn to the I.M.F. as a more neutral source. The most recent projections from the I.M.F. show China’s economy growing 4.2 percent in 2024. Its growth is projected to remain above 4.0 percent for the following two years, and then fall somewhat below 4.0 percent for the last two years of its projection period.
Is this an economy in crisis? Well, it is undoubtedly slower than the near double-digit growth rates its economy chalked up for much of the period between 1980 and 2020, but it hardly seems like a crisis.
To see this point, we can compare the projected growth for China with the projected growth over this period for Mexico, a country with a nearly identical level of per capita income. This is shown below.
As can be seen, Mexico is projected to have per capita income growth over this period averaging just over 1.0 percent annually, less than a third of China’s pace. (I have used per capita GDP to adjust for the fact that Mexico still has a growing population whereas China’s is declining slightly. Per capita GDP is a better gauge of living standards.) If we are to believe that China’s economy is facing some sort of crisis, then what do we think about an economy that is growing at less than a third of its pace?
It is also worth noting that, by this purchasing power parity measure, China’s economy is already considerably larger than the U.S. economy. It was 22.0 percent larger last year (24.0 percent including Hong Kong.) With the more rapid projected growth rate, it will be 34.0 percent larger by 2028.
This gap is worth noting when thinking about how best to deal with China. Those who think we can spend the country into the ground with a major military buildup need to check their arithmetic. (The Soviet economy peaked at roughly 60 percent of the size of the U.S. economy.)
The U.S. has differences with China in many areas, but both countries will fare much better if they look for areas for cooperation, like healthcare and climate, rather than confrontation. President Biden seemed to acknowledge this in his State of the Union address. It will be good if he follows through.
Headlines for March 11, 2024; “Empire’s Laboratory”: How 2004 U.S.-Backed Coup Destabilized Haiti & Led to Current Crisis; Guilty: U.S.-Backed Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández Convicted of Drug Trafficking; “The Trauma Is Immeasurable”: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa on Israeli Violence in Gaza
excellent Ciarán+Nick+Uma+guest Lucas Febraro, funny-just-bant including
* "Hasbeen Hotel" and recent controversy * reaction videos as a genre (and economic sector) * (1st main topic) Eurovision, esp ***** 2024 preview ***** Eurovision politics ***** Corner Späti plans (i.e., Ciarán's) plans for Eurovision 2024 * (2nd main topic) Politico.eu listicle on most charismatic pols of 2023 ***** in which our panel debates The Nature Of Rizz, then ... ***** ... runs down (almost literally) the list, the Axel Springer bot which wrote it, EU political culture, etc
Unlocking this episode about normal conversations and we all learn what Rizz means. Expect "Only Mr. God Knows" to return this week
