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Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
“… allegations that are unsupported by factsâ€
We all know what is meant by that. President George W. Bush’s orders to the media are being faithfully carried out. The single one true Orwellian taboo in our society connected to basically all foreign policy and domestic “security†policy will be hedged and cherished also on this site. How shameful.
“Speaking a public language of propaganda,
uninfluenced by the real content of our history
which we only know in a deep and guarded privacy,
we are still in the throes of the paradox…”
‘
Denial and Ignorance are kissing cousins as are the Callousness and Indifference displayed by otherwise highly opinionated commentarians at this site vis-a-vis This Particular Topic posted five days ago:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/18/the-battle-over-dr-kings-message-3/
One persons’ obdurate objection ought not deem the “offending” person a liar, slanderer or author of “slurs”.
Nor should the person of the first run to the “authorities” seeking Banishment of said “offenders”.
What right does the one have above the other? (but that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, right?)
The Utter Silence in the room relative to the Dr. Kings Message thread speaks Loudly relative to sincerity of thought, conviction, sentiment or opinion.
From Editor Robert Parry: At Consortiumnews, we welcome substantive comments about our articles, but comments should avoid abusive language toward other commenters or our writers, racial or religious slurs (including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia), and allegations that are unsupported by facts.
Facts are ambiguous little buggers, aren’t they? It seems a matter of whose ‘facts’ control specific periods of time – whose ‘facts’ remain and whose vanish.
………………………………………….
“This lack is the historical and psychological vacuum in which the Walt Disney version of American history [or world history, for that matter] was not only possible but inevitable. To my mind Disney is nothing more than a slicked-out, commercial version of Mosgrove. As a people, we have been tolled farther and farther away from the facts of what we have [actually] done by the romanticizers, whose bait is nothing more than the wishful insinuation that we have done no harm. Speaking a public language of propaganda, uninfluenced by the real content of our history which we only know in a deep and guarded privacy, we are still in the throes of the paradox…
However conscious it may have been, there is no doubt in my mind that all this moral and verbal obfuscation is intentional.”
Wendell Berry – page 15 in his book The Hidden Wound
media manipulation …
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – Orwell
“Semite” is defined as a term used to indicate a person who speaks one of the Semitic languages. such languages include Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and Phoenician.
“anti-Semitism” would be then defined as anyone who belittles, demeans, or is bigoted towards anyone speaking Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and Phoenician.
that is just plain silly …
I believe that Think Tank has touched on an important problem. It’s not just the term “anti-semitism” that is unclear and, indeed, thoroughly and deliberately obfuscated. We live at a time and in a culture where extensive “intellectual minefields” have been carefully laid around the concepts of Jewishness, the Holocaust, and Israel. This has, as many scholarly papers have explained, produced a very powerful “dampening” or discouraging effect on discussion of those topics and anything related to them.
I am puzzled, for example, by the terms “Jew” and “Jewish”. Is this the only example known to us where a single word is used to denote a (presumed) genetic strain, a nation, a religion, and a culture – all rolled into one? That does not conduce to clear, productive discourse. An American is, in normal parlance, a citizen of the USA; but the name does not tell us anything about genetic origins, religion or culture. Indeed, the USA is notable for the diversity of all those things. A Catholic practices a particular religion, but can be of any genetic origin, culture, and nationality. And so on. But a Jewish person can claim to be genetically Jewish, culturally Jewish, of the Jewish religion, or a citizen of Israel – or indeed not a single one of the above!
Likewise, the government of Israel claims that all Jewish people, wherever in the world they live, have the right to be citizens of Israel. Yet those people are perfectly free – at least in the West – to become senior politicians, members of the armed forces, civil servants, and other vital decision makers. A Russian person could aspire to none of those roles in the USA, because she would be viewed as a citizen of a foreign (potentially hostile) nation.
Furthermore, the government of Israel asserts that Israel is “a Jewish state” – a claim that, I believe, very few other governments could make without being subjected to universal execration and probable sanctions.
In view of all these difficulties – some of which I honestly believe are deliberately exacerbated by some people, for their own ends – it is extremely difficult to discuss any of these issues without “stepping on a mine” and being blown up (in other words, criticized and dismissed as “anti-semitic”). The question is, how far are we prepared to go in pursuing the objective truth? I hope that this Web site is seriously committed to that goal.
Tom Walsh
agreed … this truly deserves serious study …