The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 7. October 2017 by

The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!

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Shlomo Sand: Why I Cannot be a Zionist: an Open Letter to Emmanuel Macron

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 18. August 2017 by

I stopped being able to understand you when, in the course of your speech, you stated that “Anti-Zionism … is the reinvented form of anti-Semitism.” Was this statement intended to please your guest, or is it purely and simply a marker of a lack of political culture? Has this former student of philosophy, Paul Ricoeur’s assistant, read so few history books that he does not know that many Jews or descendants of Jewish heritage have always opposed Zionism, without this making them anti-Semites? Here I am referring to almost all the old grand rabbis, but also the stances taken by a section of contemporary orthodox Judaism.

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The Washington Post admits huge CIA operation in Syria

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 24. July 2017 by

Run from secret operations centers in Turkey and Jordan, a CIA program pumped many hundreds of millions of dollars to many dozens of militia groups in Syria. This was revealed now by the Washington Post. The rise and fall of the Syria covert action program conveys some useful lessons about this most delicate weapon in the United States’ arsenal, writes the Washington Post, acknowledging the US major role in destabilizing Syria.

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Real Americans Question 9/11

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 17. April 2017 by

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Center for Constitutional Rights described how the Constitution had been shredded based on assumptions about the 9/11 attacks. By then, it had also become clear that the government was actually giving aid and comfort to the enemy (violating Article 3) through arming and training terrorists. One might think it obvious that stopping such actions would be the goal of all Americans but to do so one Congress member has had to spell it out in legislation.

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The corruption of Judaism: Sacralisation of a wall

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 28. February 2017 by

According to police estimates, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 Orthodox high school girls, many of them from schools affiliated with the national religious Bnei Akiva movement, filled up the women’s section of the Western Wall. The girls were bused in by Liba, an extreme right-wing organization behind a new campaign to force the government to repeal its plan to create a new egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall for the Reform and Conservative movements, as well as Women of the Wall.

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Book review: Wayne Madsen’s crank science

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 24. February 2017 by

For experts on 9/11 who read Wayne Madsen’s book, the question is not whether it possesses any evidentiary value. It definitely has little or none. The question is rather whether the author is simply incompetent or whether his book represents deliberate disinformation aimed at maintaining in the mind of a certain public the “red herring” of Israel and/or Saudi responsibility for 9/11. The shabby quality of the book suggests rather the former answer. But I may be wrong.

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The Disturbing Alliance Between Zionists and Anti-Semites

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 20. February 2017 by

The history of the Zionist movement demonstrates that there is no inherent contradiction between Zionism and anti-Semitism. The two ideologies have in fact often worked in concert to achieve their shared goal: concentrating Jews in one place (so as to better avoid them in others). Even before the modern Zionist movement arose in the late 19th century, Christian philosophers and statesmen debated what to do with the “oriental” mass of Jewry in their midst. As the scholar Jonathan Hess of the University of North Carolina has noted, one “solution” popular among Enlightenment figures who harbored anti-Semitic feelings was to deport Jews to a colonial setting where they could be reformed. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, among the founders of German Idealism, noted in 1793 that the most effective protection Europeans could mount against the Jewish menace was to “conquer the holy land for them and send them all there.”

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Gabriel Weimann, Terrorism in Cyberspace (Book Review)

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 3. December 2016 by

The author’s book is presented by Bruce Hoffman, who wrote the introduction, as embodying “the hallmarks of Weimann’s decades of scholarship: presenting a comprehensive, thoughtful, and sober analysis – supported by voluminous empirical evidence and trenchant, revealing examples.” Gabriel Weimann’s book does not deserve such ode. One of the elementary tasks of a scholar is to substantiate the facts he or she is presenting by attaching to factual claims verifiable and trustworthy evidence. Another elementary task of scholarly writing is to refrain from omitting relevant facts. As shown below, Weimann’s book represents a collection of unsubstantiated claims and negligent omissions. His book lacks therefore scholarly value.

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The Anti-Empire Report #147

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 1. December 2016 by

The most frequent comment I’ve read in the mainstream media concerning Fidel Castro’s death is that he was a “dictator”; almost every heading bore that word. Since the 1959 revolution, the American mainstream media has routinely referred to Cuba as a dictatorship. But just what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship?

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Fifteen years of U.S. crimes in Afghanistan

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 8. November 2016 by

Millions of Afghans have had their lives permanently changed by the U.S. war, which marked its 15th anniversary on Oct. 7 — an unpropitious date that came and went with little attention in the media, and virtually no acknowledgment by major American politicians. More than a decade of nonstop war has pushed Afghanistan to the brink of catastrophe. And things are getting worse, not better.

At least 220,000 Afghans were killed in the first 12 years of the war, in a conservative estimate, according to a report by the Nobel Prize-winning organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

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Israel’s sex trade booming

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 1. November 2016 by

The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, headed by Knesset member Zehava Galon of the left-wing Yahad party, commissioned the report in an effort to combat the sex trade in Israel. Findings showed that some 3,000 and 5,000 women are smuggled to Israel annually and sold into the prostitution industry, where they are constantly subjected to violence and abuse.

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Sex Slavery in Israel: Half-Billion-Dollar “Industry” Largely Staffed By Sex Slaves

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 1. November 2016 by

In July 2001, the U.S. State Department placed Israel on a “third tier” list of countries, or worst offenders, of Traffickers in Persons. In the shadows of the “beacon of light” lurks a brutal and inhumane abuse – trafficking of women and children for the sex-slave trade. Israel was on the same list as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Bahrain, Greece, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and 12 others.

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Hillary Laughed ‘I Came He Died’

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 19. October 2016 by

As the news of murder of Libya’s revolutionary leader, Chairman of the African Union and defender of Africa from European neocolonial murderous exploitation was still fresh, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed.
“We came, we saw, he died,” she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.”

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Destroying Syria: a Joint Criminal Enterprise

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 12. October 2016 by

Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, in August 2016:

“The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction… Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys… Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change… The American administration does not appear capable of recognizing the fact that IS can be a useful tool in undermining Tehran’s ambitious plan for domination of the Middle East.”

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Nathan Lean, the Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims (Book Review)

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 12. October 2016 by

I recommend this book for those who wish to know more about the professional Islam-bashers of the United States (although the coverage of this scene is by far not comprehensive). For those who wish to understand the political agenda of Islamophobia, its strategical role for US imperialism and to the role played by government-manufactured “Islamic terrorism”, the book will be of little value.

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U.S. and EU Sanctions Are Punishing Ordinary Syrians and Crippling Aid Work, U.N. Report Reveals

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 4. October 2016 by

Five years of devastating civil war and strict economic sanctions have plunged over 80 percent of Syrians into poverty, up from 28 percent in 2010. Ferdinand Arslanian, a scholar at the Center for Syrian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, says that reduction in living standards and aid dependency is empowering the regime.

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