Is there anything worse than a 63 year military occupation?

Perhaps there is?

More from Palestine Think Tank TV here.

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First, imagine a scholarly and widely respected Christian leader gave a sermon last week-end, referring to Moslems as “our enemies and haters” and intoning “May they vanish from the world, may God smite them with the plague!”

The story might well have made today’s New York Times. The western media would be chattering happily about this latest nasty turn in Christian-Islamic relations. Another ‘sign of the times’, TV talking heads would be saying to each other, shaking their wise heads. Sad – but understandable given the ongoing ‘War on Terror’…

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Next, imagine a leading and widely respected Islamic scholar had given a sermon last week-end, referring to Jews as “our enemies and haters” and exclaiming  “May they vanish from the world, may Allah smite them with the plague!”

If the Imam in question lived in the ‘free world’, it’s not hard to imagine he might already be in jail. He could certainly expect ‘hate crimes’ charges and a massive media campaign against him, with all and sundry deploring his outrageous remarks. If he lived in a Moslem nation such as Iran, it would be grist to the western mass media mill… yet another ‘proof’ that Moslem societies are barely civilized.

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Finally… imagine a leading and widely respected Jewish scholar giving a lecture last week-end.

Unlike the two hypothetical cases above, this actually happened.

Even in the ill-informed western world, we don’t have to get all our news through the distorting prism of Zionist bias.

But it does take a little effort to get a more complete and accurate view of the world.

Reviewing the western mass media’s reportage of the globally-publicized spike of ‘Islamophobia’ currently surging through the USA, one encounters various flavours of opinion.

They range from well-intentioned bleating about the need to protect the rights of innocent Moslems – to the most extraordinary, extremist vilification of Islam and its adherents. A wide range of views are given expression… in true democratic style.

Well, almost all views. Absent is the analysis of authentic anti-Zionist commentators.

You won’t, for instance, hear Mark Glenn interviewed by the mainstream western media anytime soon. His message jars.

Heretically, he suggests Islamophobia is a deliberately manufactured phenomenon.

Mark believes it’s the product of some very illiberal and sectarian forces, but not Christian or ‘western’ interests in any meaningful sense.

On the contrary, he sees Islmophobia as the handiwork of Zionists, working to advance the interests of an expansionist State of Israel.

It would be nice if the western media allowed such opinions free expression. On the other hand, one can understand why they don’t. A marketeer doesn’t promote alternative brands.

Fortunately, the Iranian media doesn’t suffer such strict censorship.

Even though Mr Glenn’s views irritate the western plutocracy, Iran’s English-language news service Press TV featured him quite recently.

It takes a lot to silence the Israel Lobby, but a well-chosen question can do the trick.

Al Jazeera should be complemented on assigning independently-minded journalist Clayton Swisher to cover the recent AIPAC Policy Conference. Nice work all round.

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With a persistance that does him credit, veteran investigative journalist and founder of Consortium News Robert Parry has been nibbling away at the 1980 ‘October Surprise’ story for a long time.

Each time he revisits the saga, Parry bites another chunk off the cookie.

His latest article – The CIA/Likud Sinking of Jimmy Carter – draws more confident and far-reaching  conclusions than before.

Parry makes a solid case that Jimmy Carter’s Administration was brought down by a conspiracy involving elements of the CIA and the far-right Israeli Government of the day. The former were ultimately answerable to George Bush senior, Vice Presidential candidate for the Republicans in the 1980 election. The latter were presumably under the control of Israel’s Prime Minister Menachim Begin, a former Irgun terrorist.

The Israeli connection helps explain how this story has taken so long to break. Parry relates (emphasis added):

As the Official Story of the 1980 October Surprise case crumbles – with new revelations that key evidence was hidden from investigators of a congressional task force and that internal doubts were suppressed – history must finally confront the troubling impression that remains: that disgruntled elements of the CIA and Israel’s Likud hardliners teamed up to remove a U.S. president from office.

Indeed, it is this disturbing conclusion – perhaps even more than the idea of a Republican dirty trick – that may explain the longstanding and determined cover-up of this political scandal.

The relationship between the journalistic profession and the elusive but still attractive ideal of ‘democracy’ is problematic.

As long as we live in societies with a vast disparity in wealth, journalists will tend to reflect the interests of the few who are wealthy rather than the many who are not. Someone has to pay their wages, after all.

Partly in recognition of this, public broadcasters were established in countries such as Australia, Britain and the USA. But they have been prone to infiltration, subvertion, intimidation and general complacent lethargy.

Then there’s the small but significant ‘independent’ media. In Australia, it has occasionally shown the gumption to cover stories that the corporate mainstream media and largely-tamed ABC and SBS won’t touch. But undoubtedly independent media cop pressure too from powerful vested interests – and it has to pay its own bills.

Al of which is a preamble to introducing a must-read article by Antony Lowenstein, published in the popular independent Australian blog Crikey.com two days ago… but seen so far by all too few, because it’s behind Crikey’s paywall (paid subscribers only).

In my view, this is the most significant article of the entire election campaign.

It should be headine news – and it would be headine news in a real democracy with a genuine free press. Instead of that, the most effective manipulators of the Australian body politic look like they’ll make it home again, with only a handful of grumblers wise to their shenannigans.

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Al Quaeda does not exist – not in the form conjured up by a never-ending succession of TV talking heads and bought-and-paid-for-columninsts.

The western world has been hoaxed by Zionist conspirators, whose power and influence within the western mass media has been crucial in selling a 1984-style nightmare to a credulous general public.

Arguably, the gravest failure of all has been the role of the ‘western intelligensia’. History will record that in the first decade after 9-11, the great majority of the world’s academics favoured their careers and convenience over pursuit of truth. They should be truly ashamed. Their cowardice and conformism puts civilization in jeopardy – and has helped isolate and endanger the honourable exceptions among their ranks.

The great lie of our era – The ‘War on Terror’ along with its bogus rationales – has been perpetuated for nine long years in the western mass media and in mainstream political discourse. Each day, the terror-myth loses potency. Public exposure of the many liars involved in this gigantic hoax draws closer.

The conflict between competing paradigms is not stable. Traditionally, instability of this kind has been broken by a NEW false-flag atrocity and/or a major war: a new state-sponsored weapon of mass distraction, in other words. Yet the purveyors of mass murder and deceit have already stretched the credulity of the western masses to breaking point. It’s far from certain that another 9-11 style-atrocity would con most westerners the next time round.

After another 11 weeks in an Israeli jail, yesterday Mordechai Vanunu walked free once again.

That’s ‘free’ in inverted commas.

In reality, Vanunu remains unfree. Israel has yet to allow him to leave the State he’s grown to revile. He’s still barred from talking to journalists and foreigners – a quarter century since his initial kidnap by Mossad as a nuclear whistleblower.

It would cost the Netanyahu Government nothing to let Vanunu go. He has long ago revealed what he once had to reveal and poses no conceivable threat to the security of the Israeli State.

As long as he remains in Israel, his case will continue to bring shame on Israel. His punishment – as Amnesty International now recorgnizes – is cruel and uncivilized.

Only spite prevents the Israeli Government from letting Vanunu go. Even ‘deterrence’ is no longer a valid argument. 24 years of bondage is surely long enough to scare off imitators?

By holding Vanunu against his will, Israel demonstrates nothing  more than spite and paranoia.

For all its faults, Israeli society can be better than this.

Allowing Vanunu safe passage out of Israel is a great way to show it.

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It’s time for a new worldwide push to free Mordechai Vanunu.

It’s time (way beyond time) for Vanunu to be released from jail in Israel and finally allowed to travel freely and with safety.  He wants to leave Israel and settle in another country. He should be allowed to go.

His illegal kidnap by Mossad as a young nuclear whistleblower back in 1986 and incarceration for 18 years (more than half in solitary confinement) was an outrage.

Equally outrageous is the game of cat and mouse the Israeli Government has played with Vanunu since his ‘release’ in 2004. He’s been denied basic freedoms – the right to travel, meet journalists or talk with foreigners. Cynically using a security regulation dating from the British mandate era, the Israeli Government has continued to toy with his liberty.

In May this year, Mr Vanunu was sent back to jail again for another three months for refusing to be silenced or isolated. He’s currently in solitary confinement once more.

Vanunu has amazing staying power and continues to show quite inspirational courage, but can be forgiven for thinking the ‘democratic world’, organized Christianity and the global ‘peace movement’ have let him down badly.

Baptised John Crossman after his conversion to Christianity, this man has given his adult life to the cause of peace.