The US political commentator Michael Parenti once observed that:
Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.
Back in the 1950s, the US intelligence community coined a term: “blowback”. It referred to the unintended consequences of a covert operation that ended up damaging one’s own cause.
There are mounting indications that the intensifying campaign by the Israel lobby in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, is starting to have precisely such self-harming repercussions.
A campaign of smears
Every notion of progress is refuted by the existence of the Iliad.
— Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, February 8, 1994
The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967
The Trump administration’s decision to scrap all future aid payments to the main agency helping Palestinian refugees marks a new – and most likely disastrous – chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US State Department said on Friday it would no longer continue its $360 million annual contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), depriving it of a third of its budget. US officials described the organisation as “irredeemably flawed”.
After four months of violence, peace may be breaking out in Nicaragua, which has gotten those North American partisans opposed to Nicaraguan President Ortega worried. But they have one last hope.
Western media has described the unrest and violence in Nicaragua as a “campaign of terror” by government police and paramilitary. This has also been asserted by large non governmental organizations (NGOs). In May, for example, Amnesty International issued a report titled “Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua’s Strategy to Repress Protest”.
Since taking office a year-and-a-half ago, the allegations of ‘collusion’ between U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government have buried nearly all other substantive issues in regards to his administration. This hasn’t been limited to marginalizing reportage of destructive domestic legislation or the escalation of endless war abroad. It has successfully diverted attention away from other foreign governments shaping U.S. policy and elections.
The ‘anti-Semitism’ rumpus engulfing Jeremy Corbyn and tearing the Labour Party apart comes at the very moment when the country needs an alert and dynamic Opposition to Theresa May’s shambolic administration. The campaign, so obviously orchestrated by powerful pro-Israel interest groups to bring down Corbyn, threatens to derail all prospect of worthwhile change at the next election, which could be called anytime given the chaos over Brexit. This would be a calamity not just for Labour but the whole country.
One of the poorest countries in the Middle East, Yemen’s war has pushed it to the brink of famine. A Saudi blockade has slowed the flow of food and helped push prices up. Markets and businesses are ruined from airstrikes. Millions are destitute. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson smuggled herself across front lines to report on what’s happening inside the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
— PBS NewsHour summary, July 2, 2018
You have to give it to him: President Donald Trump loathes the Fourth Estate with a dedication verging on caricature. He splutters at the members and rails at their observations with adolescent rage. He sees some of its members, not without a few solid reasons, as enemies of his vision. (The Gray Lady is formidable in that regard.)
