Mass graves discovered at Gaza hospital after retreat of "most moral army in the world"

Most moral army in the world? That pungent flower of PR supremacy is wilting fast. Most of us who follow these things are so relieved the face-off between Iran and Israel has been tamped down, at least for now, that we’ve almost forgotten Gaza. But the genocide continues. The death toll has passed 34,000. Gazans, especially the youngest and most vulnerable, are starving to death - if they live long enough. And let’s not be deluded about why they are starving. The food that would prevent their starvation rots in tractor-trailers that sit at the gates of Gaza, while Israel slow-walks aid via 1001 petty obstructions. Al Jazeera is the only major news source available in the West that reports out of Gaza without Israeli censorship. That’s why you can’t hope to be reliably informed if you limit yourself to BBC/CBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox. The “mighty Wurlitzer” of American Empire propaganda ensures we see only the side of the story that is convenient to the Empire. The story we were treated to today was that Israel’s retaliation against Iran demonstrated Israel’s strategic dominance. The Iranians were cowed into standing down, and global nuclear war was averted. Whew! Here’s a more plausible scenario. While we were told the first Iranian direct attack on Israel in history was an abject failure, the reality seems to be somewhat different. We were told 99% of incoming was taken down by a combination of Israel and its allies. We now know some missiles got through the various defences and hit at least three strategic military targets. That was a wake-up call for at least some of the senior IDF guys who don’t pull their strategies out of 3,000 year old religious texts. That’s why Israel’s response was, in the words of Itmar Ben Givr, Minister of National Security and far-right religious nutter, “lame.” It’s comforting that their are some sane folks left at the top of the IDF. Whether they can prevent the Greatest Leader since Moses taking the country into the abyss remains to be seen.

Russia Warcrimes House

I was catching up on the news at Al Jazeera, and the top story was about how Zelensky addressed the opening plenum at the Davos confab. Well, of course he did! What doesn’t he address these days? He’s the most successful media pop-tart darling since Greta Thunberg! Then Al Jazeera goes to its local dude on the ground, who has a special guest to explain some shit to us dumbfucks. The expert is from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He explains the whole nine yards about Putin’s megalomania etc. and how he is losing this totally unprovoked war he started. Did a five minute Google on the International Institute for Strategic Studies and noticed former CIA director John Brennan is on the board of trustees. That pretty much tells you all you have to know! Then our intrepid journalist takes us to downtown Davos to point out that the vacant Russia House, where the Russian delegation normally stays, has been re-christened the Russia Warcrimes House. That’s a propaganda project funded by non other than Victor Pinchuk, a Jewish Ukrainian oligarch. (As an aside, how can Ukraine harbour fascists if they have Jewish oligarchs?) Victor’s big break came when he married the daughter of the Ukrainian President back before Joe Biden cleaned up corruption in that country. The nuptials were barely concluded before Pinchuk was the proud owner of Ukraine’s premier specialty steel concern. Some guys have all the luck! Oddly enough, in her book “Plutocrats,” author Chrystia Freeland names Pinchuk as number three on the list of plutocrats who have become her personal friends, right after George Soros and Google’s Eric Schmidt. And that was way before she became deputy PM of Canada in addition to Ambassador at Large for Ukraine. Even more oddly than that, his Wikipedia page informs me that in 2016 he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal calling on Ukraine to make serious compromises to ensure peace with Russia. Now he’s funding Russia Warcrimes House. Who says Chrystia doesn’t have schlep!

The future is sand, my friends

I had no idea. Been so consumed by the impending WWIII and the global famine that’s just around the corner, not to mention that lingering pandemic, the climate emergency, or, God forbid, a Trump comeback, it was inconceivable that we could be made even more depressed. But I was watching Al Jazeera for a spell, and by golly, apparently we are on the brink of a global sand shortage. Don’t laugh. Apparently sand is the most-utilized commodity on earth after water. You can’t build a road or an apartment block without it. Anywhere. Now that I think of it, I remember being on holiday in Myrtle Beach, thirty years ago, and reading something in the local paper about sand being barged in from Florida or somewhere. So I guess the problem has metastasised. Seems to me this isn’t so much a matter of an absolute sand shortage, but rather, there’s lots of sand, but no easy way to get it where it’s needed. I’m guessing Goldman Sachs has field teams staking out the vast expanses of desert in Saharan Africa and the Gobi desert. Sand merchants will corner the market and become the new billionaire class. The future is sand, my friends.

Twitter and Facebook incite hatred

Will Smith’s slap heard round the world was more than a gift to racist stereotypes.

The fact that after his physical assault on a person who used hurtful words, he was applauded by the elite of American popular culture, has more sinister implications.

Smith has a lot of support in some circles. Facebook and Twitter are waiving their hate speech policies and allowing rampant hate mongering against other comedians who have offended those same circles.

Tweaking algorithms in such a way as to incite hatred is not a new development. Twitter sidelined its hate-speech policies to allow anti-Russia hate to blossom.

It’s not just social media, it’s news as well. Just a few weeks ago the nabobs at CBC were determined to find connections between the truckers’ protest and far-right extremism. Now the same “journalists” are working even harder trying not to see fascists in Ukraine. After all, they are fighting Russians, and every decent person of sound mind must surely hate Putin and Russia by now, and if Nazis are fighting Russia, we need to support them.

I tune in Al Jazeera a couple of times a day. You can’t watch half an hour of their Ukraine coverage without multiple anti-Russian slurs; “Russians are animals,” for example.

The Al Thani clan, Qatar’s “royal family,” fund Al Jazeera. They play a tidy double game. On the one hand they host US military bases and provide a steady stream of anti-Russian propaganda. Their correspondent Assed Baig is particularly fun to watch.

On the other, they are relentlessly pro-Palestinian, and declined participation in the Judas Accords. Nor are they in any rush to join in those Russia sanctions Uncle Sam is demanding, because they continue to maintain cordial relations, not only with Russia, but with Iran as well.

Like many of America’s supposed allies, the Qatari’s remain on the fence, waiting to see which way the winds of change are blowing.

When the time comes, they may have to change the target of their hate-mongering.

And that’s when we’ll have to reap what we’ve sown.

What is "real time?"

Spent most of the evening sitting in front of the fire, with the hound curled up by my side.

I am grateful that I can have a fire to sit in front of, and I love my dog, but instead of taking the time to appreciate these blessings, I've got one eye on Al Jazeera on the flat screen and the other on Redd Foxx on the laptop.

After considerable ponderation, I have concluded that your time isn't really real unless you get your face out of the screens.

Stepped out for a breath of fresh air just a few minutes ago. Lo and behold, the night sky is clear, and there are more stars than you could ever count. Standing dumbfounded staring at the sky isn't widely considered a productive use of one's time, but it does help you put things in perspective.

How many of those distant stars have planets whirling around them?

In an infinite sky, there are infinite possibilities.

But rather than considering those possibilities, we would rather retreat to our screens.  

Somali refugee says living in Canada "like torture"

Here's a Canadian story that doesn't seem to get much publicity in Canada. I'd not heard of this until I stumbled upon it at Al Jazeera today.

Maybe that's because it doesn't jive with what we might call the Canadian consensus, namely that we are an unimpeachable font of virtue on the world stage. The idea that an affordable community in the nation's capital, a mostly immigrant community which happens to be 90% non-white, would be bulldozed to make way for more profitable housing just doesn't square with our smug sense of superiority.

So we ignore it.


A heads-up to the Border Patrol office in Champlain; keep an eye on Roxham Road. If too many people find out what it's really like to be a refugee in Canada, the traffic will soon be heading the other way.

Al Jazeera on press freedom in Canada

I don't really follow the goings on at the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression NGO. I blithely assume that as Canadians we are privileged to enjoy one of the free-est media environments on the planet.

Sure, it's obvious that the big media platforms are all singing out of the same hymnal, but we've long enjoyed a healthy sub-culture of counter-mainstream media, from The Tyee and Rabble on the left to Ezra Levant's rancid Rebel Media at the other end of the spectrum.

It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise to learn, via Al Jazeera of all things, that Kevin Metcalf, the communications officer for CJFE, was recently canned for having the temerity to call out our government for its failure to censure Israel for the murder of unarmed protesters in Gaza. Oddly enough, the think tank here at Falling Downs had just made the same observation.

Interesting to see Doug Saunders tweet referenced in the AJ story. Doug is Canada's Tom Friedman. As the most high-profile prognosticator at Canada's newspaper of record, Doug has a lot of schlep, and Doug was "disturbed" to see CJFE trying to influence our government's position on Israel.

I guess if you're gonna disturb Doug, your career is at risk.

Well Doug, our department of Global Affairs routinely expresses our outrage over perceived transgressions against fundamental human rights all over the world on a near daily basis.

Perhaps you could explain why criticism of Israel is out of bounds.

How to fight terrorism while sponsoring terrorists

This Mohammad bin Salman dude who is now boss of Saudi Arabia has quite a track record for such a youthful world leader.

He's the architect of the collapse in world oil prices, a strategy that has been an epic fail. It has hurt Saudi Arabia more than any of the intended targets.

He's also the architect of the Yemen war, which is an unmitigated disaster and also an epic fail.

And as of this week, he's also the heir apparent to the leadership of the sclerotic state of Saudi Arabia.

Ya, Saudi Arabia is fucked.

Oddly enough, President Trump wasted no time offering congrats to this incorrigible youngster. He sees an eager vassal keen to do the bidding of Uncle Sam, and that's true to a point.

There are any number of policy initiatives taken by this imbecile that threaten catastrophic blow-back not only to Saudi Arabia but to the Middle East in general.

Sucking up to Israel will never fly in the Arab street. Perhaps it's a valid concept among the princelings in the Kingdom, but it will never find favour among the masses.

The Trump initiated quarantine of Qatar is another goose on its way to being cooked. If you've read this far you already know the hilarious demands that MBS and his Arab acolytes (all US vassal states, by the way) have made of Qatar.

Shut down Al Jazeera. Theoretically this should raise the hackles of freedom of speech advocates worldwide, but thus far the condemnation of this initiative has been muted.

Break commercial ties with Iran. After all, as Trump and the entire upper echelon of US power-brokers never tire of reminding us, Iran is the mother ship of terror networks world-wide.

Stop supporting terrorism. There's no question that Qatar has supported terrorism... in Syria. A far bigger sponsor of terrorism has been the very state that MBS is now the putative and temporary head of. The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Hezbollah are only "terror" entities in countries where Israeli lobbying has succeeded in rendering them as such.

How many 9/11 terrorists hailed from Qatar?

How many from Saudi Arabia?

Kick Turkey out of their base in Qatar. This could get interesting. The US has a far larger base in Qatar. The US and Turkey are NATO allies. Turkey is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood hood. That won't change anytime soon. Read up on Erdogan's approval ratings. He's doing much better than Trump.

Interesting times indeed!

The wily Erdogan outflanks team Trump in Qatar

For the first couple of days after Saudi Arabia announced the excommunication of Qatar from the community of US vassal states in the Gulf, the punditocracy was unanimous that Qatar's goose was cooked. They'd have no choice but to deep-six their civil relationship with Iran. They'd have no choice but to drastically rein in their pain-in-the-ass Al Jazeera network. In fact, there was widespread talk that regime change wouldn't be long in coming.

What's coming instead is the Turkish military, and they're not coming to expedite the removal of the Emir. Quite to the contrary. Qatar and Turkey are two of the main sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thanks mainly to Israeli lobbying efforts, the MB have long been a listed terrorist outfit in much of the West, and also in Saudi Arabia. I would hazard a guess that if and when push comes to shove, an Erdogan-led Turkey would have more loyalty to the MB than to NATO.

Israel's main problem with the MB is that it's the backbone of the democratically elected government in Gaza. There was a time when Israel happily nurtured the fledgling Hamas to undercut the PLO. Those days are long gone. Today, the PLO/PA are generally seen as Israel's bum-boys, while Hamas are considered Palestinian patriots.

This unfolding shitstorm was unleashed by Trump's bombastic rhetoric on the occasion of his visit to Riyadh last week, when he demanded that his audience stand with America in the war to exterminate "terrorism" once and for all. Even in mainstream American media it's widely acknowledged that it's the Saudis who are the primary enablers of this thing we call terrorism.

Not that the Qatari's have clean hands, but after the putative leader of the free world put things so baldly, it was just a matter of time before the finger-pointing got serious.

So here we are. The Saudis are doing way more to keep the order books of Lockheed and Raytheon and Boeing plumped up than Qatar is, which is why they've got more cred in the West, at least for now. But with Erdogan throwing this spanner into the works and Washington in chaos, it's impossible to predict what's next.

Interesting times indeed!

Yes, Virginia, there is a black working class

I find it truly abominable that mainstream media pretend there isn't and never was a black working class. Stories about the travails of the white working class such as the one at CNN referred to in the previous post ignore the black working class altogether. In CNN's world, blacks are either social activists, entertainment industry bigs, welfare layabouts, gangstas, or in prison.

Here's a story from Al Jazeera back in February that you may find a little discombobulating if you're accustomed to reading the piffle on view at CNN. You get background, context, depth... all those things J-schools supposedly teach but which their few graduates who find paid employment in America's mainstream media seem totally unaware of.

Who knew that sixty years ago the very county that CNN focused on to explain and exploit the demise of the white working class had a population that was one quarter black? Nobody who gets their news from CNN, that's for sure.

It's an excellent read. You'll meet black folks, men and women, who are to this day employed in the West Virginia coal industry. You'll meet black folks who counted white co-workers among their best friends (class solidarity forever!) You'll even meet employed blacks who are contemplating, God forbid, a vote for the uber-racist Donald J. Trump!

Highly recommended.

Is Al Jazeera embarrassed to recycle Heritage Foundation propaganda?

I see where Luke Coffey has another of his drearily predictable anti-Putin diatribes featured at Al Jazeera today. Given the astonishing frequency with which AJ permits him to restate the same opinion, they must like him a lot.

What puzzles me is why they are so coy about identifying who he works for, offering up only that Mr. Coffey is employed at "a Washington DC based think tank." It's hardly a secret that Coffey works for the Heritage Foundation, only the richest and most influential by far of the hundreds of far-right think tanks in DC. Referring to the Heritage Foundation as a Washington based think tank is like calling the USA a country in North America; true, but a tad disingenuous.

As for Coffey's latest insight, we are told (for the umpteenth time) that Putin's aggression is an existential threat to the Baltic states and to the free world at large. Russian concerns about NATO's "pre-positioning" of US military hardware in Eastern Europe is "nonsense," because as everybody knows, NATO is strictly a defensive organization.

There might be some folks in Serbia who would disagree...

Or Libya...

Or Afghanistan...

Ahmed Mansour case a test of German sovereignty

Everybody knows that the ascent of Generalissimo al-Sisi to the big chair in Egypt could never have happened without the connivance of the Nations of Virtue, and especially the US.

For all the clap-trap about "democracy" that spews non-stop out of Washington, it was clear that the election of Morsi was one of those aberrations of democracy that could not be countenanced by the West.

Democracy is great so long as the right people are elected.

Electing the Muslim Brotherhood was not what we expected.

Democracy in Egypt has been effectively rejected.

And der Fuhrer Herr al-Sisi is by the West protected...

We shall see now how far Frau Merkel will push against the wishes of Washington. Honouring an Egyptian arrest warrant in Germany dishonours German sovereignty and independence, especially when that warrant comes from an illegitimate regime steeped in everything antithetical to the supposed virtues of the Nations of Virtue.

Freedom of expression.

Democracy.

The rule of law.

Good luck tomorrow, Mr. Mansour... much hangs in the balance.

The stupidity of having losers provide combat training

The Al Jazeera network has a story on view that questions the efficacy of the billions of dollars the US taxpayer has spent in "training" foreign forces.

Well, that's a no-brainer. If you x out Grenada and Panama, the US military hasn't actually won anything since the 1940's, and even that is debatable. After all, any serious student of the WW 2 will readily acknowledge that it was the Red Army that won that one, not the US of A.

Somehow the US military-industrial complex is able to maintain the illusion of being the go-to guys for global dominance.

I don't know... sounds lame to me.

On 9-11, 19 towellers breached every bulwark of the most powerful nation on earth to bring down the twin towers... and that other tower, that was never hit by anything, a few hours later.

Then the most powerful nation on earth invaded Afghanistan, and left ten years later, declaring victory and pleading with the locals to let them stay a while longer, because there were more hearts and minds to be won, and a premature withdrawal would just hand the country to the towelheads who actually live there and own the place.

And then there was Iraq, the cradle of civilization, completely rubbished by the greatest democracy in the history of history... another great successful failure for the Washington warmongers.

But yet, we continue with the imbecilic charade of having to mobilize resistance to those who are resisting our tender ministrations of freedom and democracy...

Apparently all that our bum-boys need is a little more "training" from the guys who have lost every war they've started since 1945.

Al Jazeera now tithes the same corporate Gods as Wapo and NYT, so why should their stories diverge?

Why indeed? And they don't!

The Gulf protectorates that have thrown their lot in with this latest assault on Islam have nothing to lose. They are fake states, propped up by US military power, for the simple reason that they have oil and use their oil money to buy weapons from the US military-industrial complex.

All of them face seething discontent within their own populace.

None of them are even remotely "democratic."

These are America's latest allies in this war on the latest evil...

Here's Al Jazeera's latest take on this crisis; ISIL crisis, everyone's a winner.

Writer James Denselow informs us that everybody hates ISIS. Yes indeed, that is no doubt the reason ISIS has enjoyed exponential growth over the past year. Everybody hates it.

This is not journalism; it is seriously delusional propaganda.

Al Jazeera's relentless anti-Putin fear-mongering

I like Al Jazeera because it's a reliable if somewhat slanted news source. Once you can reliably discern the slant you know what to look for and what to discard.

The Qatar-funded news platform certainly has a degree of anti-American and anti-Israel cred. Otherwise you wouldn't see Israel's inveterate hate-monger FM Lieberman lobbying to have them kicked out of Israel. After all, they are among the prime proliferationists in that proliferation of "telegenic" dead baby pictures coming out of Gaza.

Nor would you have seen "the Shrub" plot to bomb them ten years ago.

While their anti-Israel and anti-USA bona fides may have a wiff of legitimacy, the guy they really hate is Russia's Putin.

Witness this spot of anti-Putin fear-mongering; Moldova, under the influence.

Yup, Moldova could be next... could be over-run in a matter of hours...

Well, it could be, just like Canada could be over-run by the US in a matter of hours, or Monaco could be over-run by France in a few hours, or Liechtenstein could be over-run by Austria in a matter of hours...

But there is utterly no reason to expect that such a thing would happen. These stories are fabrications of NATO PR hacks who constantly need to find more imaginary threats to justify the continued existence of a bureaucratic behemoth that has long outlived its mandate.

If Mohamed Fahmy was in an Iranian jail, would John Baird be "working behind the scenes", or would he reach for his bullhorn?

Foreign Minister John Baird's cowardly claim that Canada is "working behind the scenes" for the release of Mohamed Fahmy, as quoted in the National Post today, belies the truth behind Canada's efforts on behalf of citizens who run afoul of the law in foreign countries.

Can anyone have any doubt that Baird's bullhorn would be going off at full volume were Fahmy incarcerated in Iran or Russia? The denunciations and condemnations would be flying loudly and often. No "working behind the scenes" nonsense from Baird when he's got a quibble with those empires of evil.

But when al-Sisi overthrows a democratically elected government we applaud him for returning hope to the people of Egypt.

When he wins an election in which the main opposition party is banned from participating, we congratulate him on his triumph.

When hundreds of leaders in that opposition are sentenced to death in show trials, we say nothing...

Or is Baird "working behind the scenes" for them too?

US has lavished at least $66 billion on Egypt army but pretends it has no influence

Six weeks after the military coup that deposed a democratically elected government in Egypt, the US trained generals have unleashed the full fury of their armed forces on the Morsi supporters who have been demonstrating in the streets.

Marwan Bishara called the Americans on their rampant hypocrisy in an op-ed at Al Jazeera today. That's nice, but where American hypocrisy needs to be called is in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

America's acolytes in Cairo are now slaughtering their own people, which is an accusation oft leveled at supposed enemies of the US when the hypocrites in Washington are trying to rally support for interventions in Libya or Syria.

So where is the outrage today?

France in Mali; liberation or reign of terror?

Here's the latest Mali news from Al Jazeera.

The Qatar news source is generally pro Western, pro France, pro intervention.

They are also playing the double game just like our allies in Turkey. Some al Qaeda are terrorists when you put them in one context, say Qatar, but they are freedom fighters when you  put them in Syria.

Qatar was huge in the fight against the Monster of the Magheb, because the Colonel had for years railed against what he saw as the corrupt regimes of the Gulf statelets.

Obviously Qatar prevailed in that struggle.

Here are some key terms that we can pick out of the Al Jazeera article about Mali;

reprisal killing
collective punishment
executions
targeted killings

None of these references are to anything the "bad guys" have done.

These are the actions of the liberators, Hollande's Crusaders and their allies in the Malian army.

If a pro-Western news source is painting such a picture, what is the real situation on the ground?

We don't know. There is far more information coming out of Syria, where the evil Assad is blocking press access, than out of Mali, where the virtuous French are blocking press access.

But we're the good guys!

About those Syrian Scuds

They are in the news again today. The "desperate" Assad regime "may" have unleashed up to six Scud missiles against the al-Qaeda rebels.

Here's analyst Mark Perry in an interview from Al Jazeera a few days ago discussing Assad's use of the missiles. Note that while Perry refers to the use of Scuds as a "profound escalation" his only reference point is reports in the NYT.

Mark Perry is not a reflexive Arab hater like too many of the "experts" we see on the evening news. In fact, he was once an adviser to Yasser himself. He knows his stuff, but he doesn't actually know anything about Assad's use of Scuds.

And here's Joshua Landis' take on the Syrian Scuds. Like Perry he is well regarded and well connected in the Middle East. Yet all his insights into Assad's use of Scuds seem to come from the New York Times.

All of the Times' info about Assad's Scuds seem to come from unnamed sources in the State Department.

Which is not to say they're not true, but one should certainly not assume that they are.

The bigger question should be why is the State Department promoting this story? If they intend to not support the rebels any more than they already have, what is the point of publicizing this "profound escalation?"

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes that in the absence of verification from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and in-country
sources, the Syrian Scuds story is most likely bogus.

So why is the State Department busy spreading a bogus story?

At this point it is imperative that the US keep its options open. Boots on the ground will mean going head to head with the very rebels that America has winked and nodded into the country. Leaving al Qaeda in charge of Syria is a non-starter both in Washington and in Israel.

It cannot be allowed to happen.

These "last days of a desperate dictator" stories are meant to prepare the public for something the public has absolutely no appetite for.

Another US war in the Muslim world.

Libya a basket case but it's still Gaddafi's fault

A few days ago the New York Times had an op-ed that shows that the editorial writers have moved from their initial cheerleading for the NATO war on Libya, through a period of cautious optimism to their current position, which might be called hedging their bets.

We are told that the NATO-decimated water supply doesn't yet work properly, huge heaps of garbage line the streets, and thousands of heavily-armed young men lounge around with no meaningful work.

All of this, a year after the demise of the dictator, remains his fault, because he never allowed the country to build "strong state institutions or a civil society."

How hard can it be to organize those thousands of unemployed young men to do something about those mountains of rubbish? Does it really take "strong state institutions?"

In a remarkably even-handed report the African Development Bank last June summarized the living standards that had been achieved under Gaddafi's rule. These folks were no friends of the dictator, but nevertheless point out that progress made during the Gaddafi rule was unprecedented on the continent.

Universal health care, universal education for both boys and girls, generous social welfare benefits, subsidized housing. In many respects Libya more closely resembled a European welfare state than anything in Africa.

Today Al Jazeera brings us this story. Seems like we've heard it before; rival militias having it out in Tripoli's city center with small arms and RPGs. And we have heard it before! It's a story available on a weekly or even daily basis for anyone who wants to look for it.

The story quotes locals who claim they called the police but the police never show up. That's because the militias are better armed than they are! As a result, whether law and order are present on any given street on any particular day depends on the whims of the local militia commanders.

A year on it's time to stop making excuses. NATO transformed a stable and prosperous country into a  rudderless shambles. Talking patronizing twaddle about Libya's  "nascent democracy" doesn't excuse NATO's responsibility.

The Times notes that "chaos and corruption will breed widespread cynicism" or worse.

Worse?

The day may yet come when even America's newspaper of record is forced to acknowledge that Libyans were better off under Gaddafi.