The NYT: Objective Reporting or a Bit of a Whitewash?

The NYT is trying to look objective but this story is a bit of whitewash of the Israeli military. There is no balance between the two sides in the following quote: "To the Palestinians, she was an innocent martyr killed in cold blood, an example of Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life. To the Israelis, she was part of a violent protest aimed at destroying their country, to which lethal force is a legitimate response as a last resort." Here is why: 1. She was an innocent (an unarmed medic in a white coat); 2. She was murdered in cold blood (shooting at unarmed civilians is a war crime); 3. the protest was against the blockade of Gaza not for the destruction of Israel (fat chance of unarmed Palestinians taking on the Israeli military!); 4. Israel is using lethal force as a choice of first resort not as a last resort. 

Any fair reading of the article should convince you that the Israeli military does disregard Palestinian life (just as the US does by its wholehearted support of the Israeli policies of oppression, occupation and ethnic cleansing.) There is no threat to the existence of Israel and both Israel and a Palestinian state should be able to coexist in the Middle East and that will only happen when the UN and the world community force the US and the ultra-right Israeli government to agree to allow the Palestinians to be free -- unfortunately this doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon so this needless bloodshed will continue.

NYTIMES.COM

A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident? When an Israeli soldier killed Rouzan al-Najjar, Palestinians called her an innocent martyr and Israel portrayed her as a threat. The truth is more complicated.

Government Sponsored Youth Beatings

This report highlights the fact that these young prisoners were treated exactly like our movies and TV portray the treatment of prisoners in NAZI and Communist prisons -- and this in a state effectively run by the Democrats and Republicans -- both of whom are portrayed as representing the USA as a freedom loving country which would never act like the NAZI or Communist enemies. Meanwhile, our police and correction officers and populated more and more by white supremacists and neo-Nazis who are actively seeking to infiltrate these state agencies. This type of brutality is portrayed as SOP in countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, etc., but as the result of rogue individuals acting on their own in the US or our allies. President Trump even condones the bloodthirsty murder and dismembering of a journalist by the Saudi Government on the orders of its de facto leader Prince Salman as the action of rogue elements acting behind his back. In NY both the mayor of NYC and the state's governor are aware of the brutality carried out against young offenders by ordinary as well as some of the highest ranking officers and we shall see if any officials are fired, let alone prosecuted as the criminals they are. Kudos as well for the NYT which everyone in a while exposes the bare bones reality behind the surface of bourgeois democracy (when advertising revenue isn't threatened).

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NYTIMES.COM

Young Inmates Say They Were Shipped Upstate, Held in Isolation and BeatenThe abuse was designed for inmates from Rikers Island who had been accused of assaulting correction officers, according to a lawsuit.

Identity Politics vs Class Consciousness

The distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is continually being abused and/or ignored. Also, some of the comments made by the disputants in this article about "all Jews" and all white people should remind us of the perilous terrain we enter when we start talking about "all" of an ethnic, religious, or national group (all Black people, the Chinese are such and such, the Irish, etc.,) this is the soil in which the seeds of racism are sown. The greatest confusion of all is the lack of understanding about class as opposed to ethnicity. Jewish bankers and Jewish factory workers have little in common in their living standards and lifestyles and have more in common with Black Bankers and Black factory workers respectively, and working-class women have more in common with working-class men than either has with upper-class bourgeois capitalist men or women. Identity politics is, in fact, a ruling class invention to tamper down and prevent the development of class consciousness by dividing the oppressed along "racial," gender, ethnic and religious lines as they know full well that once class consciousness is fully developed it marks the beginning of the end of their oppressive rule. Let's not help them in this by playing by their rule book.

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NYTIMES.COM

Women’s March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-SemitismAs the second anniversary of the Women’s March approaches, charges of anti-Semitism are overshadowing the movement and plans for more marches.

Alexandra Kollontai Meets Hillary Clinton

Is Hillary Clinton a perfect example of the bourgeois pseudo-feminist described in this quote from Alexandra Kollontai?* It seems the corporate wing of the Democratic Party that she (along with Schumer, Biden, Pelosi and their allies) represents is utterly incapable of truly representing the interests of working-class women (let alone men) [excuse the binary classification]. The working class vote for Trump is mainly due to the underdeveloped understanding of class consciousness amongst working people [which it is the duty of Marxists to try to correct, and not by uncritically supporting right wing and "moderate" Democrats in the name of defeating Republicans]. Unless Marxists can find a way to radicalize the consciousness of the working class, without compromising opportunistic short-term tactics, the capitalist 1% will continue its rule by playing musical chairs with the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties while Communists and other progressives will continue to play second fiddle to the bourgeoisie.

*"Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of “above-class” politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their [proletarian] “younger sisters” are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the “rights of all women” become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some “general women’s” principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful.
— Alexandra Kollontai (1909), The Social Basis of the Woman Question,"

Reeducation Camps in Xinjiang

Actually, we don't really know what is going on in Xinjiang and are basically only getting one side of the story -- the anti-Chinese Communist version. The Chinese have openly stated they are building a new kind of civilization different from the capitalist West and one based on Marxism with a heavy dose of traditional Chinese cultural values originating in Confucianism and one in which a collective consciousness is valued over the Western concepts of egotism and individualism and one not based on values due to religious beliefs which are seen as backwards and divisive. This new civilization, which seems progressive and valuable to the Chinese, appears threatening and distasteful to people in the West who have been conditioned to a different set of values, and especially distasteful to many Americans who think the values of our racially unjust, poverty infected and war addicted society reflect some sort of model that others should find attractive. With one of the largest prison populations in the world parts of which are used for slave labor under the guise of "rehabilitation," the negative comments of Americans addressed to the Chinese will likely fall on deaf ears.

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NYTIMES.COM

China’s Detention Camps for Muslims Turn to Forced LaborMounting evidence suggests ethnic minorities caught in the mass internment drive in Xinjiang are being assigned to new factories making clothes.

Trump & Kushner : Accessories After the Fact in Khashoggi Murder?

Wm. Blackstone in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (still cited by the US Supreme Court) says the following: "An accessory after the fact may be, where a person, knowing a felony to have been committed, receives, relieves, comforts, or assists the felon. Therefore, to make an accessory ex post facto, it is in the first place requisite that he knows of the felony committed.18 In the next place, he must receive, relieve, comfort, or assist him. And, generally, any assistance whatever given to a felon, to hinder his being apprehended, tried, or suffering punishment, makes the assistor an accessory." According to this Guardian article, Jared Kushner has been advising Prince Salman on how to escape taking the blame for the murder of Khashoggi and we have all heard Trump trying to justify taking no action to see the prince facing any criminal charges as a consequence of his actions. Any reasonable person would consider them as accomplices ("any assistance whatever") after the fact in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

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THEGUARDIAN.COM

Saudis reject extradition as alleged last moments of Jamal Khashoggi detailed

Kingdom hits back at Turkey’s handling of investigation into death of journalist

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Li

Nancy Pelosi and the Progressive Agenda

This article will tell you most of what you need to know about Nancy Pelosi and also why, despite good works in the past, her paygo rule and another new rule for a 3/5's supermajority proposal re tax increases on the bottom 80% are veiled attacks on the working class. Ponder this quote: "Yet headed into 2019, she has already begun handcuffing a populist agenda and has proposed a rule — called paygo — that any new spending would need to be offset by tax hikes or spending cuts ...

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THEINTERCEPT.COM

Nancy Pelosi’s Fight: How She Revived Obamacare After Democrats Left it for Dead

Nancy Pelosi, a complicated political figure, saved the Affordable Care Act from Democratic destruction.

Leave the Sentinelese to Themselves

The Indian government is correct in protecting the Sentinelese people from the rest of us. It's "their" island [India) "owns" it according to the outside world]. Allowing these aboriginal people to live unmolested and in peace is an enlightened policy unlike most of the world where they are attacked and killed and driven off their native lands by "civilization" (Africa, Brazil, Central America, etc.). India isn't treating its mainland aboriginal people any different from the way Europeans usually treat non Europeans so this is a welcome exception. The Sentinelese will hopefully be left alone until capitalist induced climate change leads to their island sinking beneath the waves or we discover oil deposits.

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NYTIMES.COM

Isolated Tribe Kills American With Bow and Arrow on Remote Indian Island

John Allen Chau had ventured to North Sentinel in the Andaman Sea, where the local tribe has killed outsiders simply for setting foot on their shore.

No Proof Positive!? Who Killed Khaschoggi?

If the officials bending over backward to come up with reasons to exculpate Prince Salman based on not having 100% definite evidence did the same for the charges against Putin interfering in our elections all the sanctions and expulsions and hysteria over the threat to our democracy would never have happened. Prince Charming will no doubt remain welcomed at the White House.

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NYTIMES.COM

‘Tell Your Boss’: Recording Is Seen to Link Saudi Crown Prince More Strongly to Khashoggi Killing

We are all immigrants

Thomas Riggins

3 hrs · 

The New York Times

 · 

So all of us here in the "Americas" have trekked from elsewhere -- can we all get along? It doesn't seem so since some of us want to wall ourselves off and disregard the common humanity we all share. Can we build a 1000 mile wall along land we stole from our Mexican neighbors less than 200 years ago and stop the history of populations moving about and immigration caused social disruptions and climate change? This isn't just ancient prehistory -- its the story of human life all over the Earth since our species appeared 200,000 or so years ago. We are not the only ones who want a wall to protect us from our fellow humans (i.e., from ourselves) -- but all walls eventually fall and only show us that we don't know what we are doing. Plato was right -- we should be ruled by the philosophers (the ones governed by science and logic, i.e, Marxists).

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NYTIMES.COM

Crossing From Asia, the First Americans Rushed Into the Unknown

Three new genetic analyses lend detail, and mystery, to the migration of prehistoric humans throughout the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. Foreign Policy at Work

Khashoggi was just the tip of the iceberg with regard to Saudi Arabia's actions -- Amal and hundreds of thousands like her are the victims of the policies of Bush, Obama, and now Trump all enabling Saudi Arabia and other pro-US dictators to destroy whole countries in pursuit of our desires to dominate the Middle East. This picture of Amal is a picture of our tax dollars at work -- if you want to keep it up be sure to vote Republican next week as all the official talk about stopping this war is just talk to distract us from the billions in arms we are selling the Saudis.

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NYTIMES.COM

Yemen Girl Who Turned World’s Eyes to Famine Is Dead

When a photo of an emaciated Amal Hussain appeared in The Times, many readers were moved to try to help the children of Yemen. For Am

Bulger's World and Ours

Mr. Bulger has no fans in but we should be asking what kind of country allows such a man to thrive in a world of crime, corrupt police and FBI, prisons out of control, and politicians and officials of the state on the take: a country for, by and of criminals (with guns galore) from the various gangs, different "mafias," gangsters and banksters, CEOs of corporations that break the laws all the time (pollution, price fixing, bribes, etc), tax cheats and all sorts of criminals in high places committing sex crimes -- even in the ministry with evangelicals as well as bishops and cardinals covering it up, government violating the rights of minorities and women, putting children in detention camps, illegally suppressing the vote, etc). Our President wants to make "America Great Again" -- a country with more Bulgers and his enablers, big and little, than ever! Who would have thought the Whore of Babylon would turn out to be a man? Well, this stinking rot is the product of capitalism and we have a chance in six days to rally the decent electorate surviving in this swamp and get out the vote, and begin the long process of cleaning the Augean Stables of the effluent left behind by Trump and the GOP and conservative Democrats who created and empowered him, and ponder the creation of a new economic system.

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NYTIMES.COM

Whitey Bulger Is Dead in Prison at 89; Long-Hunted Boston Mob Boss

One of America’s most wanted gangsters for 16 years, he was beaten to death by fellow inmates in West Virginia. His murderous life inspired books and films.