#the intercept

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

BY: GILEAD INI

Before looking at specific examples of disinformation by the “critics,” as the Times and NPR calls them, we should address a few broader points.

Despite evidence of rape, those defending Hamas from charges of sexual violence point to a lack of forensic evidence — the kind that might be revealed at the denouement of a television crime show. Indeed, Israel’s frontier with Gaza on and after Oct 7 was less untouched crime scene and more battlefield and disaster zone.

But this is neither exonerating nor unusual. “There is very much what’s known as the CSI effect, where there is a perception that without forensic evidence or DNA, then you don’t have a case,” an expert on sexual violence in conflict zones told NPR. “And that’s just patently not true.”

In this case, the full CSI treatment was impracticable. “As is common in war, collection of physical evidence was hindered by ongoing combat and a large, chaotic crime scene,” NPR reported.

With limited resources and such a large-scale attack, compromises were necessary, journalist Carrie Keller-Lynn explained. “Instead of going through CSI, which would make it possible to produce evidence of crimes, the bodies are being processed through the disaster victim identification (DVI) track, as is common for mass casualty events,” she reported. Or as the UN mission put it, there was a “prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification, and burial of the deceased in accordance with religious practices, over the collection of forensic evidence.” (The mission noted additional factors, too, that hindered the collection of forensic examination. See paragraph 46 of its report.)

The deniers had also pointed to lack of testimony by victims — a puzzling defense in the context of this story, where survivors describe women raped then murdered; where recovery workers noted naked and bound corpses; and where released hostages say those still in captivity had said they were sexually assaulted. Which category of those victims, exactly, would the deniers expect to have heard from? (When a hostage did eventually speak out about being sexually assaulted, the self-appointed investigators were not particularly interested, or worse, dismissed her account.)

None of this means every testimony is beyond reproach. Just as the record of 9/11 was contaminated by multiple false accounts and fake survivors, likewise after 10/7 false accounts were reported by pretenders, and some unfounded atrocity charges were shared, believed, and repeated. The “critics” did not miss the opportunity to capitalize on these inaccurate accounts in order to push the idea, through innuendo or explicit denial, that every witness of rape and every first responder account of sexually abused bodies are fake.

The Critics

NPR’s story about “critics” of a New York Times piece on sexual violence repeatedly cites The Intercept.

Once of many acknowledgements by The Intercept that its claims come from the further fringes.

And across The Intercept’s incessant efforts to discredit those shining a light on Palestinian sexual violence, its reporters cite Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, and Max Blumenthal of Grayzone.

It is an echo chamber of Hamas apologia — invariably, one story links to identical accusations by the others, which link back to similar pieces by the rest. The common theme, other then denial, is the extremism of its participants.

Consider, most relevantly, their response to the Oct 7 massacre:

A writer for the Intercept, at least, grants that the attack was “horrifying” — though this was in a post whose argument was that we shouldn’t view it as horrifying.

Others are less subtle. Denier Ali Abunimah, for example, was self-evidently delighted by the slaughter of civilians in Israel. He not only defended the attack, calling it “just”; not only insisted we shouldn’t feel bad about it (this just minutes after he posted video of elderly female hostage paraded and taunted on video); but also viciously attacked those — including critics of Israel — who would dare share any sympathy for the victims of the mass slaughter of Jews.

Mondoweiss summarized the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust with an announcement that “Gazans have broken out of their open air prison imposed by Israel and launched an elaborate surprise attack on their occupier,” while pooh-poohing the idea that Hamas had started a war. As the extent of the atrocities became apparent, Mondoweiss’s defenses of the assault grew more emphatic. On Oct. 8, its culture editor Muhammed El-Kurd insisted the attack was a cause for “celebration.” On Oct. 9, it published a piece insisting we “must shout our support for the resistance from our rooftops.”

Max Blumenthal minimized Hamas’s slaughter as ”guerrilla bands bursting out of a besieged ghetto with homemade weapons.” In response to a Twitter post noting that at its attack on a music festival Hamas “began shooting those in attendance,” Blumenthal mocked the victims and justified their slaughter.

The motivation for their leap to action at the first accusation of rape, then, is as simple as it seems: It is born of sympathy for Hamas.

#rape #rape deniers #hamas #gaza #mondoweiss #the intercept #npr #electronic intifada #max blumenthal

[eretzyisrael]

by Chaim Lax

Concurrent with the attempt to delegitimize the case that there was a rash of sexual abuse and rape is an attempt to absolve Hamas of any wrongdoing.

For these observers, even if sexual abuse did take place during the massacre, it was certainly not perpetrated by Hamas, the noble Palestinian resistance movement dedicated to fighting the evil Jewish state.

Both freelance British journalist and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Cook and The Intercept seem to largely absolve Hamas of any guilt in this regard and re-focus it on the deluge of Palestinian civilians that followed the initial wave of Hamas terrorists into southern Israel.

The Grayzone and Mondoweiss even go one step further, using the opportunity to not only call into question the use of sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists, but also to seemingly glorify those who took part in the October 7 invasion.

In its questioning of The New York Times, The Grayzone ponders whether it’s “plausible that a group of hardened Hamas commandos suddenly paused their surprise attack, which was focused on taking as many captives as quickly as possible, stood in a circle and gang raped a woman, one after another, while Israeli forces mobilized to attack them?”

For The Grayzone, it appears to be inconceivable that these “hardened Hamas commandos,” who also engaged in the butchering of 1,200 people and the war crime of kidnapping roughly 250 others, would engage in the demeaning tactic of sexual abuse. While sex crimes are not uncommon in wartime, The Grayzone judges it to be absurd that Hamas terrorists would stoop to such a level.

For its part, Mondoweiss claims that not only did Hamas members not engage in sexual abuse, but the Islamist terrorist organization is known to treat women properly, based on the calm comportment of those hostages who were freed in November 2023 as they were released to the care of the Red Cross.

While there have been published videos of captured Hamas terrorists admitting to sexual abuse and rape, and there has been testimony that the released hostages were sedated prior to their release (along with the fact that many still have relatives in Hamas captivity), Mondoweiss disregards these pieces of evidence as “absurd” and discounts their validity.

For a publication that seems intent on attaining the facts regarding October 7, it seems that it only cares for the facts that are convenient to its narrative and disregards the rest.

It should be noted that these Western media outlets are echoing the same sentiments expressed by Hamas itself, alleging that Hamas members can’t have engaged in these acts as they are against “Islamic values and culture.” At the same time, Hamas also regarded the October 7 massacre as “glorious.”

For those who seek to invalidate the claim that sexual abuse occurred on October 7 and “debunk” The New York Times’ in-depth profile, the allegations of abuse and rape are part of a campaign by the Israeli government to validate its military actions in Gaza.

#hamas #gaza #rape #rape denial new york times #the intercept #greyzone #mondoweiss #electronic intifada #Youtube

[news4dzhozhar]

Watch the full conversation with Jeremy Scahill here

#unrwafunding #israeli lies #propaganda kills #democracy now #jeremy scahill #propaganda and lies #no evidence #unrwa has done nothing wrong #israel lies as easily as they breathe #seek truth #spread awareness #watch and share #financials times #sky news #the intercept #apartheid #save palestine #ethnic cleansing #israel is an apartheid state #free palestine 🇵🇸 #genocide #illegal occupation #israel is committing genocide #israeli war crimes #the US is complicit in genocide and war crimes #history will remember #lessons never learned #israel is a terrorist state #iof terrorism #stand with palestine

[liberationbeat]

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.” While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

#The Intercept #Jeremy Scahill #Ryan Grim #The New York Times #NYT #Gaza #Palestine

[readingsquotes]

“Slaughter” of Israelis, Not Palestinians

Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around. (When the terms appeared in quotes rather than the editorial voice of the publication, they were omitted from the analysis.)

The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. “Horrific” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4. 

Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows

A quantitative analysis shows major newspapers skewed their coverage toward Israeli narratives in the first six weeks of the assault on Gaza.

Adam Johnson, Othman Ali

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #isreal #genocide #the intercept

[hussyknee]

Israel is well aware that if the White House truly wanted Israel to stop, it could do so by withholding all additional military assistanceOpens in a new tab until the carnage ends. But the rationale for Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire, which a firm majorityOpens in a new tab of Democrats want him to do, is not just born of total disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians who are cannon fodder for the big lie about this being an Israeli act of “self-defense.” Though the U.S. is likely to frame any “winding down” or temporary pause in the Israeli attempt to erase Gaza as a humanitarian endeavor, the reality is more complicated.

Both Biden and Netanyahu know what they dare not say in public: On a military level, things are not going well. Israel, a nuclear-armed nation state with modern weapons systems and intelligence capabilities and fully backed by the most powerful nation on Earth, is desperately struggling to achieve a meaningful tactical victory over the armed Palestinian guerrilla forces in Gaza.

Despite the vast resources Israel has dedicated to its propaganda effort, it is also flailing in its effort to defeat Hamas on that front. On a daily, sometimes hourly, basis, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, and their allies in arms release videos showing successful attacks on Israeli armored vehicles and troop positions. The short films offer a glimpse into another side of this war, the one that Israel and the U.S. do not want the public to see. And the picture that emerges stands in stark contrast to the official Israeli narrative. Fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are engaged in urban combat and close-quarters firefights with Israeli forces, and they are inflicting heavy losses on them. They have also published a close-up videoOpens in a new tab of Israeli soldiers in a makeshift tent camp inside Gaza that Hamas fighters filmed by discreetly popping up from tunnel hatches.

The Israeli military recently published a video that purportedly depicts the work of a Hamas engineering team’s construction of a 4-kilometer section of underground tunnel near the Erez Crossing. It also published a videoOpens in a new tab of what it said was Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Hamas’s leader, driving in a car through the tunnel network. While Israel clearly released the videos in an effort to unmask the devious evil of Hamas, it actually revealed a level of tactical sophistication and preparedness seldom seen since the days of the Viet Cong. The IDF-published videosOpens in a new tab also inadvertently dramatized the dubiousness of Israel’s claims that it can flush with seawater hundreds of kilometers of tunnels equipped with massive water-sealed and blast-proof doors — not to mention the viability of engaging in close-combat tunnel warfare with Hamas.

[...]

There is no doubt that both Washington and Tel Aviv underestimated the military capacity of the Hamas-led armed resistance. It is one thing to snatch Palestinians off the streets of the West Bank and disappear them into a military court system, a practice Israel has perfected over the decades. It is quite another to defeat a well-armed insurgency that has spent decades building vast underground infrastructure beneath its own territory and training for this very moment.

[...]

Killing or capturing Hamas leader Yehia Sinwar or the head of the Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, may give Israel political cover to declare a false victory, scenarios the Biden administration is eager to seize upon. Last week, a senior U.S. official hintedOpens in a new tab that the U.S. is actively participating in the hunt for these high-value targets, declaring that it is “safe to say” that Sinwar’s “days are numbered.” But the idea that armed resistance will be extinguished by killing top leaders of Hamas betrays the same pattern of wishful thinking that has permeated U.S. strategic thinking since 9/11. All of this suggests that rather than trying to end the suffering of Gazans, Biden is instead looking for an off-ramp that avoids solidifying the image of Israel as waging a gratuitous war that utterly failed to achieve its stated objectives.

Me irl:

#you motherfuckers #you wastrel useless murderous cunts #death is too good for you #genocide joe #satanyahu #death to israel #death to america #fuck joe biden #glory to the resistance #glory to the martyrs #IOF #israeli war crimes #al qassam brigades #gaza genocide #war on terror #knee of huss #the intercept

[xtruss]

Leaked New (Jew) York Times, The Hub of Yellow Journalism, Gaza Memo Tells Journalists To Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” And “Occupied Territoty”

Amid the Internal Battle over the New York Times’s Coverage of Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier and War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell’s War, Top Editors Handed Down a Set of Directives.

— Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim | April 15 2024 | The Intercept

Pro-Palestine protesters flood the lobby of the New York Times offices and block the security entrances during a demonstration against the newspaper’s coverage of Israel's war on Gaza on March 14, 2024, in New York City. Photo: Michael Nigro/Sipa via AP Images

The New York Times OR The Jew York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

“It’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”

First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months. It presents an internal window into the thinking of Times international editors as they have faced upheaval within the newsroom surrounding the paper’s Gaza war coverage.

“Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.”

Issues over style guidance have been among a bevy of internal rifts at the Times over its Gaza coverage. In January, The Intercept reported on disputes in the Times newsroom over issues with an investigative story on systematic sexual violence on October 7. The leak gave rise to a highly unusual internal probe. The company faced harsh criticism for allegedly targeting Times workers of Middle East and North African descent, which Times brass denied. On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff that the leak investigation had been concluded unsuccessfully.

WhatsApp Debates

Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.

The debates between reporters on the Jerusalem bureau-led WhatsApp group, which at one point included 90 reporters and editors, became so intense that Pan, the international editor, interceded.

“We need to do a better job communicating with each other as we report the news, so our discussions are more productive and our disagreements less distracting,” Pan wrote in a November 28 WhatsApp message viewed by The Intercept and first reported by the Wall Street Journal. “At its best, this channel has been a quick, transparent and productive space to collaborate on a complex, fast-moving story. At its worst, it’s a tense forum where the questions and comments can feel accusatory and personal.”

Pan bluntly stated: “Do not use this channel for raising concerns about coverage.”

Among the topics of debate in the Jerusalem bureau WhatsApp group and exchanges on Slack, reviewed by The Intercept and verified with multiple newsroom sources, were Israeli attacks on Al-Shifa Hospital, statistics on Palestinian civilian deaths, the allegations of genocidal conduct by Israel, and President Joe Biden’s pattern of promoting unverified allegations from the Israeli government as fact. (Pan did not respond to a request for comment.)

“It’s not unusual for news companies to set style guidelines. But there are unique standards applied to violence perpetrated by Israel.”

Many of the same debates were addressed in the Times’s Gaza-specific style guidance and have been the subject of intense public scrutiny.

“It’s not unusual for news companies to set style guidelines,” said another Times newsroom source, who also asked for anonymity. “But there are unique standards applied to violence perpetrated by Israel. Readers have noticed and I understand their frustration.”

“Words Like ‘Slaughter’”

The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says.

“Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.”

Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.

In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.

The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.

The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months.

Touchy Debates

The Times memo touches on some of the most highly charged — and disputed — language around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The guidance spells out, for instance, usage of the word “terrorist,” which The Intercept previously reported was at the center of a spirited newsroom debate.

“It is accurate to use ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in describing the attacks of Oct. 7, which included the deliberate targeting of civilians in killings and kidnappings,” according to the leaked Times memo. “We should not shy away from that description of the events or the attackers, particularly when we provide context and explanation.”

The guidance also instructs journalists to “Avoid ‘fighters’ when referring to the Oct. 7 attack; the term suggests a conventional war rather than a deliberate attack on civilians. And be cautious in using ‘militants,’ which is interpreted in different ways and may be confusing to readers.”

In the memo, the editors tell Times journalists: “We do not need to assign a single label or to refer to the Oct. 7 assault as a ‘terrorist attack’ in every reference; the word is best used when specifically describing attacks on civilians. We should exercise restraint and can vary the language with other accurate terms and descriptions: an attack, an assault, an incursion, the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, etc. Similarly, in addition to ‘terrorists,’ we can vary the terms used to describe the Hamas members who carried out the assault: attackers, assailants, gunmen.”

The Times does not characterize Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinian civilians as “terrorism,” even when civilians have been targeted. This is also true of Israel’s assaults on protected civilian sites, including hospitals.

In a section with the headline “‘Genocide’ and Other Incendiary Language,” the guidance says, “‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law. In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”

Regarding “ethnic cleansing,” the document calls it “another historically charged term,” instructing reporters: “If someone is making such an accusation, we should press for specifics or supply proper context.”

Bucking International Norms

In the cases of describing “occupied territory” and the status of refugees in Gaza, the Times style guidelines run counter to norms established by the United Nations and international humanitarian law.

On the term “Palestine” — a widely used name for both the territory and the U.N.-recognized state — the Times memo contains blunt instructions: “Do not use in datelines, routine text or headlines, except in very rare cases such as when the United Nations General Assembly elevated Palestine to a nonmember observer state, or references to historic Palestine.” The Times guidance resembles that of the Associated Press Stylebook.

The memo directs journalists not to use the phrase “refugee camps” to describe long-standing refugee settlements in Gaza. “While termed refugee camps, the refugee centers in Gaza are developed and densely populated neighborhoods dating to the 1948 war. Refer to them as neighborhoods, or areas, and if further context is necessary, explain how they have historically been called refugee camps.”

The United Nations recognizes eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. As of last year, before the war started, the areas were home to more than 600,000 registered refugees. Many are descendants of those who fled to Gaza after being forcibly expelled from their homes in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which marked the founding of the Jewish state and mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The Israeli government has long been hostile to the historical fact that Palestinians maintain refugee status, because it signifies that they were displaced from lands they have a right to return to.

“It’s like, ‘Oh let’s not say occupation because it might make it look like we’re justifying a terrorist attack.’”

Since October 7, Israel has repeatedly bombed refugee camps in Gaza, including Jabaliya, Al Shati, Al Maghazi, and Nuseirat.

The memo’s instructions on the use of “occupied territories” says, “When possible, avoid the term and be specific (e.g. Gaza, the West Bank, etc.) as each has a slightly different status.” The United Nations, along with much of the world, considers Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to be occupied Palestinian territories, seized by Israel in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war.

The admonition against the use of the term “occupied territories,” said a Times staffer, obscures the reality of the conflict, feeding into the U.S. and Israeli insistence that the conflict began on October 7.

“You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict,” said the newsroom source. “It’s like, ‘Oh let’s not say occupation because it might make it look like we’re justifying a terrorist attack.’”

#The ​New York Time | The Jew York Times #The Hub of Yellow Journalism #Leaked Gaza Memo 📝 #Journalists #Avoid | Words | Genocide | Ethnic Cleansing | Occupied Territory #New York Times’s Gaza War Coverage #Terrorist Fascist Apartheid Illegal Occupier and War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell #The Intercept #Jeremy Scahill | Ryan Grim

[2bpoliticallycurious]

This article explains why when Reagan was the governor of California, he cut way back on funding for state universities. Heaven forbid, that inexpensive higher education created an “educated proletariat.”

Reagan’s cutbacks in California set off a domino effect among Republican lawmakers until one state after another repeatedly cut funding to state colleges and universities. Consequently, tuitions went up to compensate for lost state financing and many working and middle class young people could not afford to go to college without taking out student loans. 

Consequently, student loan forgiveness is unthinkable to the GOP. In their worldview, high student loan dept discourages working and middle class young adults from attending college.

Given all the above, it isn��t so surprising that today (Feb. 3, 2023) Business Insider reported that:

On Friday, 128 of the 222 House Republicans signed onto an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block student-debt relief.

It came alongside a separate brief filed by 43 GOP senators opposing the relief.

They both argued that Biden doesn't have the authority to cancel student debt using the HEROES Act of 2003.

Republicans: They like their proletariat ignorant. 

That way, the masses are easier to control and manipulate.

#student loan debt forgiveness #biden #reagan #gop #fear of an educated proletariat #the intercept

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

We can thank The Intercept, at least, for recognizing CAMERA’s efforts and successes.  

Their January 2024 article—a polemic that’s one part defense of Hamas, one part rant against CAMERA, and one part insinuation that an editor’s late father pulls the New York Times strings from beyond the grave—is unsubtle in its hostility toward Israel. We’d expect nothing else from The Intercept. The tenor of the piece is conspiratorial. Again, not a surprise considering the source.

And still, authors Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim get some things right. It is true, for example, that CAMERA has “successfully lobbied for hundreds of corrections in major media outlets.” (Hundreds yearly. We cleared the record of 303 published errors in 2023, and another 246 in 2022. But who’s counting.)

And indeed, we’ve pressed the New York Times specifically to get it right, as the authors note.

The Intercept credits CAMERA with (or rather blames us for) a 2021 editors’ note in the Times that admits miscoverage of Refaat Alareer. Guilty as charged. The paper had published a glowing feature on Alareer, an unhinged, antisemitic poetry professor in Gaza, casting him as a bridge-builder who encouraged students to empathize with Israelis. But when CAMERA tracked down video of Alareer teaching his course, it became clear that the man who had argued online that “most Jews [are] evil” was hardly any better in the classroom.

We confronted editors with the video and, after a week with the overwhelming evidence in hand, the Times finally admitted that its feature “did not accurately reflect” the professor’s teachings. (The Intercept, in its Intercept-ish way, spun the story to encourage outrage: “According to CAMERA, the piece … described Alareer in too positive a light. The Times was quick to agree….”)

The Intercept piece noted CAMERA’s responsibility for another significant New York Times editors note. A story had made the case that, due to Israeli restrictions on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s takeover, the fishing industry there was “devastat[ed],” ”shrinking,” “collaps[ing],” “decreasing,” with boats removed from service and people forced out of the industry. In fact, as CAMERA noted, the number of fishing boats has doubled; the fishing catch has markedly grew; and the number of fishermen has significantly increased since the blockade. (Again, The Intercept minimized the problem in an effort to spin the correction as objectionable overreach: “CAMERA scored an editor’s note for an article on Gaza’s ailing fishing industry in 2022 that omitted certain statistics about the annual catch….”)

#the intercept #hamas #gaza #camera #media bias #new york times #rafaat alareer

[arthropooda]

TWO MONTHS AFTER teaming up with the Indian government to censor a BBC documentary on human rights abuses by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Twitter is yet again collaborating with India to impose an extraordinarily broad crackdown on speech.

Last week, the Indian government imposed an internet blackout across the northern state of Punjab, home to 30 million people, as it conducted a manhunt for a local Sikh nationalist leader, Amritpal Singh. The shutdown paralyzed internet and SMS communications in Punjab (some Indian users told The Intercept that the shutdown was targeted at mobile devices).

While Punjab police detained hundreds of suspected followers of Singh, Twitter accounts from over 100 prominent politicians, activists, and journalists in India and abroad have been blocked in India at the request of the government.

#Twitter #Murtaza hussain #Elon musk #Indian #Modi #Ryan grim #The intercept #Censorship #Bbc #Prime minister #Punjab #Sikh #Amritpal singh #Sms #Government

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

It was the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history. Yet most Republicans still think it was a correct decision (and yes, that's the same Republicans who now oppose helping Ukraine to defend itself without the involvement of US forces). THE U.S. AND its allies invaded Iraq 20 years ago in Operation Iraqi Freedom. President George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer twice accidentally referred to it as Operation Iraqi Liberation, which was definitely not its official name and would have generated an unfortunate acronym. The men and women who launched this catastrophic, criminal war have paid no price over the past two decades. On the contrary, they’ve been showered with promotions and cash. 

There are two ways to look at this. One is that their job was to make the right decisions for America (politicians) and to tell the truth (journalists). This would mean that since then, the system has malfunctioned over and over again, accidentally promoting people who are blatantly incompetent failures.

Another way to look at it is that their job was to start a war that would extend the U.S. empire and be extremely profitable for the U.S. defense establishment and oil industry, with no regard for what’s best for America or telling the truth. This would mean that they were extremely competent, and the system has not been making hundreds of terrible mistakes, but rather has done exactly the right thing by promoting them. You can read this and then decide for yourself which perspective makes the most sense.The following list doesn’t include anything about the Iraqis who’ve died since 2003. Partly, this is because it’s traditional for the U.S. media to pay no attention to the lives of foreigners. Partly, this is because we have no idea how many Iraqis deaths there have been. Various estimates range from 151,000 to over a million. While the U.S. ultimately spent at least $3 trillion on the war and the CIA put down $1 billion just to figure out that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, we’ve allocated exactly zero dollars to learn how many Iraqis have died thanks to us. Come on, we’re not made of money!

George W. Bush: Former president Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are the 21st century’s premier war criminals. In a better world, they’d be sharing a cell at The Hague, playing lots of pinochle and getting up to various mass murderer hijinks. But here in this universe, Bush is gobbling down huge quantities of money on the speaking circuit, where he charges at least $100,000 for an hour of his pensées. He recently condemned “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” Then he said, “I mean, of Ukraine!” and he and his audience all chortled, because you have to admit that’s pretty funny. His time is also devoted to painting and being buddies with the Clintons and the Obamas. In particular, he likes to sneak candy to Michelle Obama at solemn events. “I mean, of Ukraine!” Ha ha ha ha ha, what a scamp.

Dick Cheney: Vice President Cheney told one of the most blatant lies about Iraq during the buildup to the war. In an August 2002 speech, he claimed that when Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected in 1995, he revealed that Iraq was trying to make nuclear weapons again. In reality, Kamel had insisted that Iraq had no unconventional weapons of any kind. This was not a big secret: Kamel said it on CNN in an interview that was available to anyone with an internet connection. America’s crack press corps ripped the lid off Cheney’s obvious deceit by completely missing it. Since leaving office, Cheney has spent his time fishing, endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2016, and not being prosecuted for torture. Also, for a period of time, he had a kind of external mechanical heart that pushed blood through his veins continuously, meaning that he had no heartbeat yet was still alive (?).

Donald Rumsfeld: On the afternoon of 9/11, as the Pentagon was still on fire, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was eagerly asking whether the U.S. could now attack Iraq. Rumsfeld died in 2021, but before then, he got in some quality time at his antebellum vacation home on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The nickname of Rumsfeld’s estate was Mount Misery.

#American History #failing upward #American Foreign Policy #political #The Intercept

[news4dzhozhar]

PLEASE SHARE THIS. In this clip Jeremy Scahill uses Netanyahus own words. It's been known for many years that (as crazy as it may sound to some) Israel has been funneling money to Hamas to ensure a constant instability in Palestine. The IDF is never going to "wipe out" Hamas regardless of what they claim they want. They need them in order to justify endless war and occupation. Investigative journalists even within Israeli have obtained footage over the years of literal suitcases full of cash being transported to be given to Hamas. Listen, research and share this info. It's extremely important to get this out there and disrupt the victim narrative Israel keeps trying to use.

#hamas is a lie #israeli propaganda #israeli lies #israeli funded #jeremy scahill #the intercept #the us is complicit in genocide #genocide #israel is an apartheid state #apartheid #illegal occupation #collective punishment #gaza under siege #free gaza #save palestine #free palestine 🇵🇸 #resistance #protest #military industrial complex

[drsonnet]

OMG: IDF Sent in Handcuffed Prisoner to Evacuate Hospital, Then Killed Him When He Left

Details...

Israel Sent Palestinian Prisoner to Tell Nasser Hospital to Evacuate (theintercept.com)

#GAZA #PALESTINE #IHL #humanity #israel #THE INTERCEPT #free gaza #freedom #euronews #heart #free palestine #funny #politics #pixel #humanitarian #human rights #humanrights #dimension 20 fantasy high fantasy high junior year fhjy d20 #fhjy #d20 #FANTASY #DIMENSION #ART #ARTISTS #UPDATE #TRAN #translation #NEWS #humor #meme

[gilliatt83]

Jeremy Scahill on Israel's "Deliberate Propaganda Campaign"

The United States and more than a dozen other countries quickly moved to suspend funding to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a vital lifeline for millions of people in Gaza, shortly after Israel accused a handful of the agency's staff of taking part in the Hamas attack on October 7. But the U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 obtained the intelligence dossier on UNRWA that Israel shared with allied countries, and found "no evidence to support its explosive new claim."

The Financial Times and Sky News also reviewed the materials and came to the same conclusion. Israel's claims about UNRWA are just the latest example of what journalist Jeremy Scahill says is a "deliberate propaganda campaign" to justify its brutal assault on Gaza. "This is one of the most epic frauds in modern history, reminiscent of the lies told to explain and justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq," says Scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept.

#palestine #israel #war propaganda #jeremy scahill #the intercept #democracy now #Youtube

[readingsquotes]

"Coverage of Hate in the U.S.

Similarly, when it comes to how the Gaza conflict translates to hate in the U.S., the major papers paid more attention to antisemitic attacks than to ones against Muslims. Overall, there was a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such. During the period of The Intercept’s study, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia (549 versus 79) — and this was before the “campus antisemitism” meta-controversy that was contrived by Republicans in CongressOpens in a new tab beginning the week of December 5.

Despite many high-profile instances of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87 percent of mentions of discrimination were about antisemitism, versus 13 percent mentions about Islamophobia, inclusive of related terms. "

#palestine #free palestine #apartheid #genocide #the intercept

[in-sufficientdata]

#disgusting #headlines #the intercept #current events #news #capitalism #economy #bank of america #reposting everything from my twitter feed #i'm about to delete everything so get it while it's hot #tweet: 2022