Delightful to read at Christmas time – Chavez nails Obama, figurehead of the neolib US plutocracy behemoth, as a miserly fraud.
The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, replied to statements said by his counterpart from the United States, Barack Obama, who criticized the sovereign relationship between Venezuela and Cuba, among others.
Chavez asked Obama to take care of poor people in his own country, who since the arrival of winter have endured cuts in social assistance to pay for in home heating.
“Obama is a total fraud. He cut social assistance for home heating oil for the poor,” Chavez said during a cabinet meeting at the Miraflores Presidential Palace.
Given that situation, President Chavez said he had held a conversation with Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez so as to increase the support of Venezuela’s CITGO to poor people who endure temperatures below zero during the winter in the United States.
According to Chavez, Obama is just looking for votes by criticising others and Chavez called on him to work with “the good people” of the United States.
“Obama is just about to lose the elections and with these criticisms [of Venezuela] he just wants to win some votes. You are a fraud, a total fraud. If I could be a candidate in the United States, I would beat you. I would win 80-20, I would beat you with [the votes] of all the good people you have there,” Chavez said.
Referring way back to Trotsky, it may be worthwhile to consider the relevance of his thoughts to the Occupy movement, which has as yet not produced a revolutionary party capable of leading it to victory.
‘We must not identify war dictatorship — the dictatorship of the military machine, of the staff, of finance capital — with a fascist dictatorship. For the latter, there is first necessary a feeling of desperation of large masses of the people. When the revolutionary parties betray them, when the vanguard of workers shows it incapacity to lead the people to victory — then the farmers, the small business men, the unemployed, the soldiers, etc., become capable of supporting a fascist movement, but only then.
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‘We may set it down as a historical law: fascism was able to conquer only in those countries where the conservative labor parties prevented the proletariat from utilizing the revolutionary situation and seizing power.”
from Leon Trotsky’s FASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It
Today Al Mezan releases ‘Children in the Gaza Strip’s Access to Medical Care’ a factsheet published under the Save the Children UK funded project ‘Child Rights at the Centre: Enhancing National Capacities to Monitor, Document, and Report on Child Rights Issues in the oPt.’ The factsheet documents Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip which result in children being denied the right to access proper medical care.
The ongoing siege on Gaza which stops essential medical equipment and drugs from entering and causes sporadic fuel and electricity cuts combined with the closure system which prevents medical professionals from travelling abroad to access advanced training outside Gaza. These policies have resulted in a medical system in Gaza which cannot provide care and procedures for many patients. Children requiring care that is unavailable have to go outside Gaza, usually to hospitals in Israel, Jerusalem or the West Bank (as well as to Egypt and Jordan). In order to access these hospitals children require a permit from the Israeli authorities. The process for acquiring a permit is long and complex and often results in denials. Since January 2008, 4 children have died because their application was denied or took too long to be approved.
Israel also denies children’s access to medical care when it prevents ambulances from accessing the Buffer Zone. Ambulances require prior coordination with the Israeli military authorities before they can access the sick or injured in the Buffer Zone. 173 children have died because ambulances have been denied access to reach them (throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in the Buffer Zone).
The policies outlined in this factsheet result in serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law which Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip, has an obligation to uphold.
“Children in the Gaza Strip are deprived from receiving quality medical treatment and access to procedures that can save their lives. The right to access medical treatment and to enjoy the highest attainable physical and psychological health is one of the Israeli systematic violations of children’s rights in the Gaza Strip,” Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan’s fieldwork coordinator, states. “This has particularly been the case in the last five years since Israel tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to the polices outlined in this factsheet which directly affect access to medical care Samir Zaqout says that “the Israeli siege has caused a deterioration in the health of children due to increasing poverty levels and diseases among children such as anemia. Israeli military attacks have also injured thousands of children, hundreds of them sustaining permanent physical disabilities.”
the UN General Assembly has adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishing a complaints procedure for violations of children’s rights.
The new treaty will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights have been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they have not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries. A coalition of over 80 international and national NGOs, coordinated by the NGO Group for the CRC, which has been actively campaigning for the treaty since 2006, welcomed the news.
‘Israeli children are educated to see the Palestinians as a problem that must be solved and as a threat that must be eliminated. They can go through life, as I did growing up in Jerusalem, without ever meeting a Palestinian child. They know nothing of the life or culture of Palestinians who quite often live only several hundred meters from them.’
The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.
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This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.
Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).
If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.
If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?
Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.
UPDATE 5th January, 2012 Dysch publishes in the JC a story full of dire innuendo, sinisterly entitled “Performers deny ‘dark art’ funding”.
Dysch insinuates misdoing with the frightening news that ‘At least 34 artists (out of 150) who supported it [the cultural boycott campaign] have received funding to help pay for tours, running costs or fund individual projects’ and refers to Raymond Deane.
Composer Raymond Deane, a founding member of the IPSC, has received around £76,000 from the council during the past five years.
He said: “Neither I, nor the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, receives a penny from the Irish government for our activities in defence of Palestinian rights.”
Well, I hope that clears up Dysch’s confusion.
UPDATE 28th December: Raymond Deane is contacted by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle, Marcus Dysch.
“Mr Deane – I’d like to speak to you about reports in the Israeli media which name you and others involved in the IPSC and claim you are receiving Irish government funding for your pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activities. We are likely to run a story in our newspaper this week which includes Israeli officials suggesting you are knowingly using funds from the Arts Council for these activities. I’d like to speak to you about this and hear your reaction. Please let me know if we can speak in the next 24 hours.
Marcus Dysch
Reporter
Jewish Chronicle
Tel: 020 7415 1665
You can email them back at:
You can also tweet Marcus at @MarcusDysch
@MarcusDysch
Been in office 25 minutes and already had three emails accusing me of being an Israeli government agent. (I’m not, if you were wondering.) #
Ilan Pappe draws attention to the campaign of intimidation conducted by the zionist lobby in his article today in the Electronic Intifada, noting
“What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.”
UPDATE 25th December: Recently, zionists made hacking threats against BDS activists. The Amnesty International UK site was compromised on or before December 16th. According to Paul Royal of Barracuda Labs,
So, if you have visited the website anytime between and has out-dated Java software, there’s a good chance that your computer is infected. In that case, run a complete system scan using your updated anti-virus. It is also a good idea to change the passwords of your online accounts.
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This exploit will not affect you if you had already installed the latest Java updates or if you don’t have Java installed.
Paul also says:
The working theory for this anomaly relates to Amnesty International as a human rights non-governmental organization. To explain, certain countries use zero day exploits and other techniques to gain electronic information about the activities of human rights activists. Of course, a subset of these activists are too smart to click on links in even well-worded spearphishing emails. But what if you compromised a website frequented by these activists (e.g., Amnesty International)? Then your targets come to you. The context-specific damage potential is significant.
Amnesty International is currently being asked to disassociate itself with Arch Enemy lead singer Angela Gossow’s claim that they will accompany the band in Israel. Amnesty International withdrew its support from a boycott breaking Leonard Cohen concert in 2009.
UPDATE 23rd December: On Ynet, world-renowned Irish composer Raymond Deane is “price-tagged” at the mammoth sum of $119 million (now amended to $119,000) over the past 5 years, which he has, according to the shameless libeller Itamar Eichner, received from the Irish government (are oil companies involved here as well?) to ‘subject to verbal attacks and letters of incitement’ ‘Irish elements interested in sustaining ties with Israel’, and ‘in a bid to free him from the need to work for a living so that he could devote his time and energy to the creation of music.’ For zionist propagandists, music isn’t considered a “real job”, at least if the targeted musician has private activities which include solidarity in campaigns for Palestinian human rights. And here’s the zionist veiled threats against a musician’s livelihood for daring to exercise conscience to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions from apartheid, colonial Israel:
The Foreign Ministry report also reveals that although the Irish foreign minister has voiced his objection to any type of boycott against Israeli culture, Deane is still receiving government funding.
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“The ongoing funding of a person who has been conducting a hostile, public and aggressive campaign against Israel from Irish taxpayers’ money raises very difficult questions,” says a source in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
The propagandist ends on a softened tone which only serves to highlight the previous attempt at intimidation of an individual of conscience in a foreign country:
“Nonetheless, an artist’s breach of trust toward Ireland’s authorities is an internal Irish matter which we cannot and do not wish to intervene in, despite its harsh implications on us.”
In November, Palestinian Solidarity activists in Ireland protested the holding of an Israeli film event at Filmbase in Dublin which was sponsored and funded by the Israeli Embassy.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise
“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”
These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event. The opening of the festival, a wet and miserable evening, saw Filmbase “defended” by a force of at least two dozen Gardaí. Members of the IPSC, the Irish Anti-War Movement, Act for Palestine and others demonstrated noisily and peacefully, displaying Palestinian flags and placards with such slogans as “End the Siege of Gaza” and “Boycott Israel”. The arrivals of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister for Defence and Justice Alan Shatter were greeted with particularly vociferous cries of ”shame! shame!”
These state marketing events are mooted by Israeli propagandists (hasbarists) as effective tools to whitewash Israeli crimes of apartheid, colonialism and Occupation and to counter what they cast as “delegitimization”, although through its ongoing crimes against humanity, Israel accomplishes singlehanded its own delegitimization. Attempting to address “the BDS delegitimization network”, the Reut Institute which develops propaganda strategy for Israel crows that ‘it takes a network to fight a network’. What a tawdry network the hasbarist network is! Some elements supportive of Israel of late have taken to using dirty tricks, as evidenced below from Filmbase to the present, fabricating threats supposedly made by BDS activists against venues and performers that are unsubstantiated, despite repeated challenge.
Now the tactic of falsely accusing BDS people of threats has resurfaced on the facebook wall of Joker, who announced his decision not to play Israel a few days ago, following information about racism the last time he played there. Joker has said several times since he is not going to play Israel, while Israel’s hasbarists have continued to claim that he is not cancelling, on twitter and facebook. The Israeli media has also published a misleading and unsubstantiated story about the cancellation claiming Joker and his girlfriend had received threats on their lives. An email was also circulated from CLUTCH – Electronic, claiming that ‘Joker was very frustrated from the situation and said to tell everyone that the decision was very hard for him and was directly because of death threats and his girlfriend lives.’ They accuse BDS supporters, then admit they made massive efforts to convince Joker to play, including direct conversation with Joker and all those around him – euphemisms for bothering his girlfriend and libellous attacks against people who supported Joker’s decision to cancel.
‘Politically savvy and passionate, Noa Tishby is a Member of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) and has traveled to Washington DC to lobby on Capitol Hill. She is also a member of The Israeli Consulate Speakers Bureau, a member of “Summit Series” organization for young entrepreneurs, a member of the ILC (Israeli Leadership Council) and is a mentor for Women In Film.’
Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?
Act for Israel concocts lists of spurious ‘talking points’ for Israel’s hasbara borg hubs to proliferate, while spreading malicious interpretations of BDS activists’ tweets, misspelling Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah’s name and labelling him an ‘antisemite’.
Below is the evidence of the malicious Israeli campaign against activists for Palestinian human rights which ironically attests to the effectiveness of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise these reprobate zionists would be otherwise occupied.
UPDATE 22/6/13
WhatIsrael board member Ido Daniel announces his intention to pricetag BDS supporters. WhatIsreal ‘dialogue’ whilst price-tagging would appear to be mutually contradictory, and such is the nature of propaganda.
On twitter, Daniel reiterates, lies and then insults South African anti-apartheidists.
@Jinjirrie because they're like you: ignorant. No one with common sense will accuse Israel in "apartheid". It's only in your head.
UPDATE 22 December 2011
Angela Gossow @AGossow, the growling specialist lead of Arch Enemy, says on twitter “@neon_black81 Thank you. We will release a joint statement with Amnesty International regarding this subject. AI will be present at our show” and “@neon_black81 I dont support Stand With US btw – that was just a personal tweet reply and they abused that straight away. Politics r dirty!”
In 2009 Amnesty International withdrew their support from a Leonard Cohen Israel concert fundraiser abstaining ‘from any involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert in Tel Aviv” and that they “would not be party to any fund that benefits from the concert’s proceeds.’ It is imperative that for the Arch Enemy concert too, Amnesty does the right thing and removes its support from a boycott-breaking event.
UPDATE December 23, 2011
Angela Gossow may be obtaining a more informed view of Israeli propaganda, confiding to @neon_black81 “It seems a lot of organizations there have hidden agendas and just put up a ‘nice’ front and pretend to support human rights…”
Her tweets which appeared to support Stand With Us have now been erased from her timeline.
… calls on allies to boycott the Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), which is in fact a complicit propaganda institution seeking to normalize Israeli apartheid and strongarm entertainers into its service. Fearing encroaching pressure from the Palestinian led global BDS movement, CCFP has mobilized to counteract the cultural boycott of Israel, making itself a target of the human rights campaign in the process.
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CCFP wishes to make the claim that “art transcends politics” but is engaged heavily in political propaganda on behalf of an apartheid state. The only artist known to be included in CCFP’s advisory board is Idan Raichel, a self-proclaimed cultural ambassador who stated: “We certainly see ourselves as ambassadors of Israel in the world, cultural ambassadors, hasbara ambassadors, also in regards to the political conflict.”
The IEA’s mandatory Form 990 financial filings to the Internal Revenue Service (available from the website Guidestar) show an organization with $4.2 million in annual revenue and impressive fundraising capacity.
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Hypocrisy doesn’t come much thicker than this. Arch Enemy is currently performing in conjunction with Amnesty International to highlight issues of freedom of expression. The band has consistently deleted any posts on their Facebook wall which are critical of Israel’s crimes against humanity, suppression of freedom of expression and Arch Enemy breaking the principled boycott called by Palestinian people to resist Israel’s oppression and contravention of their rights. Angela Gossow, Arch Enemy’s growling lead singer also has recorded with settler band Amaseffer. It is no wonder that the band is popular with the Israeli far rightwing as their songs include such gems as “Nemesis” with the lyrics ‘eye for an eye’ and ‘slay the Philistines’.
In a shocking display of pro-Israel bias, Arch Enemy’s spokesperson, Angela Gossow, actually THANKS the Israeli group “Stand With Us.”
Stand With Us is infamous for creating the “Captain Israel” comics, especially the ones that portray “BDS” as a venomous snake donning the colors of the Palestinian flag. Stand With Us is well-known to “celebrate” militant Jewish nationalism, at the same time, using the well-funded “pinkwashing” technique to make Israel, Tel Aviv in specific, appear to be very tolerant of gays. Stand With Us is critical of the flotilla, against Palestinian human rights, and has actually launched “Shame On Turkey” to shame Turkey for its involvement in the flotilla. But Stand With Us also works very hard to attack BDS volunteers, which is what Arch Enemy worked hard to do in the past month or so. Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow and colleagues made sure to eliminate all references to the letter to Arch Enemy from the PACBI. Please read the letter here http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1769 It simply asks the band to refrain form playing in Israel. By all indications, Arch Enemy appears to be a pro-Israeli band. Does this seem to fit in well with their anti-fascist persona and progressive reputation?
Propaganda organisation StandWithUs is also integrally involved with the Reut Institute which strategises and develops Israeli propaganda against BDS (the Palestinian-led Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement).
Arch Enemy will go down in metal history as the band which proudly touted fascism in the name of anarchism and a state propaganda machine as a human rights organisation, whilst on a tour for a bona fide human rights organisation promoting freedom of expression. Historically, anarchists are prime opponents of fascism, targeted by fascists first for destruction, yet the band’s approval of Israeli fascism and their support from Israel’s rightwing could be considered a contemporary example of the cosy ideological and historical relationship which political zionism has had with nazism.
Arch Enemy is booked to play Israel on 24th January, 2012.
Previously comments on the band’s Facebook walls in support of Palestinian human rights have been deleted. More comments have been left on Arch Enemy’s and their guitarist’s Michael Amott’s Facebook walls. We await their imminent deletion – all in the name of ‘free expression’ of course. [8 hours after posting, the comments below had all been deleted.]
“We’re thrilled that ARCH ENEMY are supporting our work on freedom of expression. We’re lucky to have the support of musicians and other artists who fully appreciate the value of being able to express their creativity without fear of arrest or worse. In some parts of the world, pursuing a creative goal – or just speaking freely – can lead to harassment, loss of freedom and even torture. I hope that everyone who comes to an ARCH ENEMY gig – not least to witness Arch Enemy’s amazing show – gets involved in supporting Amnesty’s work in this area.”
Anti-apartheidist and supporter of Palestinian rights Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the Occupy movement. ‘In a letter to OWS, Tutu describes Trinity Church, on Wall Street, as an “esteemed and valued old friend” but said it caused him pain to hear of the impasse in negotiations between OWS and the church over the site.’
