Ken Klippenstein. Leaked Document: Iran War Meets Little Brother

Leaked Document: Iran War Meets Little Brother

Info about the war is being censored — with the help of private companies

Ken Klippenstein March 24

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth poses next to Jeff Bezos

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The Pentagon has quietly dictated to spy satellite companies what to say about the Iran war, exercising censorship over what the American public is allowed to know.

Military sources tell me that the level of secrecy surrounding the specifics of the Iran war is unprecedented, with barely any data being released about the level of bombing, the targets being attacked, or the assessed effects. Now the Trump administration is trying to further control what private companies say in a behind-the-scenes effort not been previously reported.

As the American and Israeli bombing of Iran commenced on February 28, the military promptly issued guidance to satellite operators of what “language and terms to avoid” when describing Iranian damage caused at American bases in the Middle East, according to a copy of the guidance leaked to me.

“Avoid language that implies battle damage assessment (BDA) or operational conclusions,” one slide produced by U.S. Space Force says. It goes on to warn against using phrases like “Target destroyed,” “Target eliminated,” and “Structure rendered inoperable.” 

The guidance includes the following examples of what to say and what not to say.

Incorrect Example: “Strike successfully destroyed the facility.”

Correct Example: “Imagery shows the structure largely collapsed with debris covering the building footprint.”

Leaked Space Force guidance

About 100 American companies are licensed by the U.S. government to operate their own reconnaissance satellites, a $6-7 billion a year industry that serves military and commercial customers with everything from methane detection to bomb damage assessments. Most of the revenue of these companies comes from the military services and the federal government. The “big four” — Maxar Intelligence, Planet Labs, BlackSky Technology, and Spire Global — operate some 350 imaging and interception satellites.

While the Pentagon “guidance” to the commercial companies is framed as an advisory, the companies comply because their contracting relationships with the government make them afraid to bite the hand that feeds them. As a result, private companies are increasingly becoming a controlled and auxiliary Little Brother to the U.S. intelligence machine, a trend I reported on last year.

Space Force has issued the guidance I obtained to virtually all commercial satellite companies in the form of written requests, sources say. This includes not just companies in the classified space but even those that work on the collection and dissemination of public or “open source” materials that inform the news media, academia, think tanks, and other groups.

“While there’s a case to be made that they [the companies] should fight it, almost everyone makes the vast majority of their revenue from government contracts in this industry and after Anthropic, nobody is interested in putting up a fight,” a source familiar with the guidance told me. “I think it’s also another layer of trying to make things [about the war] seem less bad than they are.”

Since February, Anthropic has refused to allow its AI model, Claude, to be used for certain missions involving mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Pentagon in response has threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company’s cooperation.

Pentagon pressure has already yielded results.

Planet Labs, one of the largest commercial satellite imaging companies in the world, has blocked public access to high-resolution imagery of the entire Iran war theater by imposing a 96-hour delay on February 28, then extending it to a 14-day blackout on March 10. The company claims the decision was its own, made after consulting military and intelligence experts. 

This kind of soft censorship is not unique to the Trump administration, nor is it a partisan phenomenon. When I first reported on the rise of Little Brother as articulated in a little-noticed intelligence community directive on coordinating with “Non-State Entities,” it was Biden’s Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines who signed it. 

The directive ordered spy agencies to “routinize” and “expand” their partnerships with private companies, and even authorized these relationships in cases of greater “risk” to the government due to security or legal concerns.

Whether it is in artificial intelligence, cyber security, unmanned vehicles, and now remote sensing by satellites, corporations have grown so powerful that they are starting to rival nation states in terms of resources. But Little Brother is happy to cooperate with Big Brother.

Sources: Market caps from Motley Fool (data as of March 23, 2026, citing company earnings filings); GDP figures from IMF World Economic Outlook.

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Derry Rally Defends Palestine Action and the Right to Protest

Eamonn McCann

 

"Veterans of the civil rights movement have called on Derry people to return to the streets this Saturday 19th July to defend the right to protest and to demand an end to the proscription of Palestine Action. This is an issue of freedom of speech. Back in the 1960s, the Special Powers Act limited freedom of speech and thousands came onto the streets of this city to oppose that, and sectarian discrimination across the North. The same issues arise today.

While a genocide is livestreamed to our phones and we see children starving to death in Gaza, the British government has deemed Palestine Action a “terrorist organisation”, expression of support for which could open one to arrest, charged with supporting terrorism. This is precisely what happened in the 1960s when to express support for the civil rights movement meant being denounced by the authorities as supporting “terrorism”. This was said over and over again in the 1960s. It wasn’t true then and it is not true now: what Palestine Action is doing is peaceful, non-violent direct action.

We know better than anyone else in these islands what it is to have civil liberties suspended, that is why we will be back this Saturday afternoon – in Waterloo Place at 3.00pm - to continue this campaign.

We note that Winston “Winkie” Irvine was not charged under the Terrorism Act, despite being found with a carboot load of weapons and with UDA paraphernalia. The double standards are glaring, just as the double standards in relation to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank are glaring.

We call on people to come out again on Saturday to express their opposition to the double standards involved in this and to the proscription of Palestine Action. People in Derry who have a sense of their own history and their own struggle against oppression and for civil rights will feel a relationship with this issue because of their own experience."

 

Derry IPSC, United Against Racism - Derry and North West Derry Anti War Coalition

Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Interrogation at U.S. Airport

 

 Israeli Professor and author Ilan Pappe describes his experience in Detroit airport where he was detained and questioned by federal agents for a few hours after arriving in the United States. He also shares a few brief thoughts about the history of the Zionist project and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people from the land.

Contact-tracing apps and Privacy

Contact-tracing apps: Apple dictating policies to nations won't help its EU anti-trust probe

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘You have an alert.’ DisobeyArt

Greig Paul, University of Strathclyde
There’s a growing problem with Apple’s role in the contact-tracing apps that countries are developing to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. This has been underlined by the UK’s announcement that its long-awaited NHSx app is being parked in favour of a different model recommended by Apple and Google.

Apple is effectively dictating to governments the privacy levels that their contact-tracing apps must meet. Unless apps meet Apple’s requirements, they can’t get access to Bluetooth in the background on users’ phones, which is essential for the apps to work properly (Google takes a more laissez-faire approach, without these restrictions).

Apple’s approach arguably fits a wider narrative about the company being heavy-handed in determining what apps are allowed on iPhones. The company has just been made the subject of an EU antitrust investigation for similar reasons. There are also limitations to the alternative Apple/Google model that could make contact-tracing apps less effective.

What Apple wants …

Contact-tracing apps aim to prevent the spread of the coronavirus by monitoring who a person comes into contact with. If any contact is likely to be infected, the app triggers a warning telling the user to self-isolate and get tested. Such apps have already launched in numerous countries.

The UK’s approach had been to hold the data used by the app to determine who is probably infected in a central database. But this fell foul of Apple’s restrictions, which favour keeping the data on people’s phones instead – the so-called decentralised model.

As UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, the NHSx app might have worked but for Apple’s unwillingness to negotiate on the restrictions. Developers also have to contend with a special addendum to the App Store’s standard legal agreement.

Apple did not reply to requests for comment in time for publication. Google welcomed the UK announcement and said that its approach had been developed “based on consultation with public health experts around the world, including in the UK, to ensure that our efforts are useful to authorities as they build their own apps to limit the spread of COVID-19, while ensuring privacy and security are central to the design”.

Storing up trouble. BigTunaOnline

Apple’s restrictions have meant that the UK’s intended app could only recognise around 4% of iPhones in some circumstances. Google supports the same decentralised approach, but only Apple insists on it by preventing users from installing apps on an iPhone unless they come from the App Store. Absent the same restrictions on Android phones, the app was recognising users around 75% of the time.

Google and Apple have justified their restrictions as being to protect user privacy. And, indeed, privacy advocates favour their model. Privacy is certainly pivotal to user confidence in contact-tracing apps, but it’s less clear where the line should be drawn.

There are important limitations to the Apple/Google approach. For one thing, it doesn’t allow apps to share the type of phone each person uses. The NHSx app used this to more accurately estimate the distance between people, to reduce false-positive alerts. The decentralised system sends alerts only after a user has reported that they have tested positive for the virus. Unlike centralised apps, it can’t base alerts on factors like the modelled risk from an infectious individual, which draws on information about symptoms users have been reporting through the app.

Waiting on a confirmed test result might well be too late to prevent the virus from spreading. The virus is believed to have a median incubation time of around 5.1 days, and scientists believe that people may be contagious from around two days before they experience symptoms, and at their most contagious before symptoms begin.

The bigger picture

For a tech company to be telling a government what to do is an interesting sign of our times. France, too, clashed with the iPhone operating system maker. In the end, it launched a centralised app earlier in June that destroys all information held after 14 days. The French app doesn’t have access to Apple’ background Bluetooth system either, despite their attempts, so we will see how well it performs.

Privacy is undoubtedly important, but this situation raises wider questions about tech companies in modern life. Much of the EU’s new anti-trust investigation into Apple relates to how the company charges a cut of up to 30% for payments on the App Store to the third-party apps it carries. These compete with apps that Apple itself makes, on the platform whose rules it sets.

Coming crunch? Brilliant Eye

With contact-tracing apps, Apple won’t be charging developers for access or really making any money from them. But like with third-party apps more generally on the App Store, Apple acts as a gatekeeper. If you want to make an app available to the 51% of UK smartphone users with iPhones, you have to do what Apple says. Even if you’re an elected government amid a pandemic.

There has been much discontent among app developers about Apple’s level of control over access to the App Store, and what some perceive as subjective and inconsistent application of the rules. Much recent focus has centred on an email service called Hey, which drew attention to these issues after being threatened with removal from the store.

In the end, the situation has been resolved after Basecamp launched a free “lite” version of Hey on iPhones, which encourages Mac users to download a paid-for version from the company’s website. This chimes with how many providers, notably Spotify and Netflix, get around the Apple payments rule by not allowing customers to either make orders or sign up for paid services on the iPhone app.

Dictating terms to companies is one thing; dictating to countries during a global pandemic is another. Apple’s position may be about preserving users’ privacy, but the timing is unfortunate when some of its restrictions on third-party apps are to be investigated by the EU.

The UK government says it will try to work with Apple and Google to improve their model of tracing, with an app now potentially only coming in winter. But given some of the inherent limitations of the decentralised model compared to the NHSx approach, it remains to be seen how effective this will be – especially if some key advantages are lost through requiring coronavirus tests, and not being able to model the risk to individual users to make alerts more accurate.

Greig Paul, Lead Mobile Networks and Security Engineer, University of Strathclyde

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Government Secrecy Grows With the Pandemic.

Facts For Working People shares this article from The Conversation in  accordance with their guidelines.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration said it would reject all freedom of information requests – and then reversed itself after public outcry. AP/Teresa Crawford

Government secrecy is growing during the coronavirus pandemic

David Cuillier, University of Arizona
Students at the University of Florida who want to know how they are being protected from the COVID-19 pandemic can’t find out.

The university is hiding its emergency response plan under a legal loophole intended to keep terrorists and enemy combatants – not viruses – from exploiting government weaknesses.

Since the spread of coronavirus accelerated in recent weeks, local, state and federal officials throughout the United States have locked down information from the public. Examples include:
The city of Palestine, Texas, banned a news reporter from a city council meeting on March 23, even though fewer than a maximum of 10 people would be in the room, and did not allow the public to listen in on the meeting through a toll-free phone number, as required by state law.

The Council of the District of Columbia decided on March 19 that district employees do not have to respond promptly to public records requests any more.

The FBI no longer accepts requests for information online or by email because of the virus. If anyone wants information they must mail their request, which ironically is more apt to pass along the virus.
Throughout the country, journalists are barred from talking to staff at public hospitals and locations serving the sick. And with administrators limiting access to the hospital itself, journalists are unable to tell the public what is happening. Precautions can be taken to protect the health of everyone concerned and protect the privacy of patients.

Government agencies are closing down or slowing the public’s access to information. FBI

‘Cloudy Week’?

And this is just in the United States. The Philippines threatens journalists with prison time for spreading false news about the virus, and the Committee to Protect Journalists is tracking the arrests of reporters in Venezuela, Niger, India and elsewhere, regarding coronavirus coverage.

Ironically, most of these information crackdowns started in mid-March, during national Sunshine Week, a time when news organizations and others promote citizens’ rights to access government information.

Some agencies are making the case that responding to records requests is not an essential need or function. Research suggests that access to government information is indeed essential for our health and well-being. Studies have shown that making government information open leads to cleaner drinking water, safer restaurant food, less corruption and more confidence in government.

James Hamilton, an economist from Stanford University, found that for every $1 spent by news organizations on public records-based investigative reporting, the public derives $287 in benefits. The free flow of information makes for a better society and a better economy. It’s a smart return on investment.

Indeed, businesses use public information more than anyone else – studies have shown that at some federal agencies three-quarters of Freedom of Information Act requests are submitted by commercial interests. Maintaining a free flow of information actually greases the nation’s economic machine, which could be more important than ever given its state today.

The City Council of Palestine, Texas, banned a reporter from a city council meeting on March 23 and did not allow the public to listen in on the meeting electronically. City of Palestine, Texas, screenshot

Crisis as opportunity

The recent information closures are reminiscent of actions immediately following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when governments closed massive amounts of information, including records showing the dilapidated conditions of bridges and dams.

Rather than limiting public information, however, agencies can use this crisis as an opportunity to take governance to the next level – making government even more accessible to the public it serves.
A statement signed by 132 nonprofits from a broad spectrum of industries and political persuasions was issued on March 20, urging a measured response that serves the public interest.

“We strongly urge government branches and agencies to recommit to, and not retrench from, their duty to include the public in the policy-making process, including policies relating to COVID-19 as well as the routine ongoing functions of governance,” the organizations wrote.

The National Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit that provides education and research for citizens in acquiring government information, organized the statement. I serve as the coalition’s president, have testified before Congress several times regarding the Freedom of Information Act, teach classes on accessing information and publish research on the state of access in the United States.

Some of the recommendations included:

1. Postpone nonessential government business decisions until after the pandemic has subsided, when the public can once again fully engage.
2. Move necessary decisions online in live-streamed meetings accessible to all, including opportunities for public input and questions. Record the streams and post the recordings so people can view it later.
3. Do not conduct the public’s business via private channels, such as social media, texting and phone calls. (This holds true all the time, but especially now.) All official communications should be preserved and made accessible to the public online.
4. Post documents and data online as a matter of course so people don’t have to request it and government workers don’t have to take the time to retrieve and disseminate them.
5. Officials can provide journalists greater access to hospitals and other health installations, applying safety precautions and protecting the privacy of victims.

Efforts to make government more accessible now can result in permanent improvements in the future, to better serve citizens who are homebound or too busy with work and child-rearing to attend a local government meeting.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to pull together and move forward, as citizens and government working together, fully engaged and well-informed.
Editor’s note: The University of Florida is a funder of The Conversation US.
[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]
David Cuillier, Associate Professor, School of Journalism, University of Arizona
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anthony Bourdain: June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018

Sean O’Torain

“For some, unfortunately, depicting Palestinians as anything other than terrorists is proof positive that you have an agenda, that you have bought in to some sinister propaganda guidelines issuing from some evil central command in charge of interfacing with Western com/symp dupes. A photo of a Palestinian washing their car or playing with their child is, therefore automatically “propaganda.” Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain has been found dead, apparently by suicide. I have watched some of his shows. I found his willingness to meet and showcase and eat with ordinary people, in the countries he visited, rather than the bourgeois types very positive.  What stands out is his obvious respect and admiration for the different cultures of the world

However, you would have a time seeing this in the articles that are now everywhere in the major capitalist media outlets. One quotes the Dalai Lama! This shows their desperation to avoid quoting Bourdain himself. Here are a few more comments from Anthony Bourdain. 

On Kissinger the mass murderer, war criminal and friend of Trump and Clinton, Bourdain wrote in his 2001, book, A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal of his visit to Cambodia: 

"Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.” 

Bourdain was able to say this in his book. But the mass capitalist media would not let him say it on his show. The censorship in the US is horrific. 

As an article in Buzzfeed pointed out:  "Bourdain was also a vigorous supporter of immigrant rights. In 2015, Bourdain attacked then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's comments on illegal immigration, saying "every restaurant in America would shut down" if Trump's immigration plan was successful.

"I walked into restaurants and always, the person who had been there the longest, who took the time to show me how it was done, was always Mexican or Central American. The backbone of the industry — meaning most of the people in my experience cooking, preparing your food," he said.

This Blog has always explained that the struggle against capitalism is the struggle for the consciousness of the working class. The capitalist class knows this. And acting with this foremost in their mind and dealing with the death of Anthony Bourdain they make sure to leave out his criticisms of degenerates like the major capitalist war criminal Kissinger, his criticisms of the Republicans, his support for immigrant rights. 

It is only possible to speculate on the background to Anthony Bourdain’s death. But it has taken place against the background of the devastating catastrophe of capitalism: climate change, pollution, the threat of nuclear war, mass poverty, the destruction of indigenous culture. Along with this the lack of a mass revolutionary alternative from the working class. Everywhere Anthony Bourdain would have gone he would have seen the catastrophic effects of capitalism and especially imperialism. He would also have been very aware of the monster in the White House and how he and US capitalism/imperialism are the main force of destruction in the world today. 

He would have been very aware of the environment destroying method of food production and agriculture and the McDonald's hamburger, fast food giants that export their methods to the rest of the world, and of Trump and the US meat industry and how all of this was savaging the  great variety of cultures, including the great variety of foods and cooking skills in the world. One of the things being talked about in relation to North Korea is that they will offer to allow a US hamburger chain to open there.

As my mother would have said and as I even as an atheist find myself repeating. "In Under God". That is, to any sane thinking person this is unbelievable. But it is real.  It is capitalism destroying the world as it threshes around in its death throes. Maybe Anthony Bourdain just could not take it anymore. He will be missed. let his death not be in vain. Take up his causes. Support the call for Kissinger to be tried as a war criminal. Support immigrant rights. Support the movement against sexual oppression.  

Book Review: The Ghost of Galway Past

 Kevin Higgins reviews a re-issued fictional classic banned in 1929 by the Irish Free State - 'Stalinist Albania without the sex'.

The re-publication of The House of Gold, perhaps Liam O’Flaherty’s finest novel, goes some small way to ameliorate the atrocious wrong done when the book was banned in 1929 by those charged with protecting the people of Ireland from publications that might lead them to have impure thoughts. Until now, the only publicly available copy of it in Galway City - which is on one level the novel’s subject - rested in the library at NUI Galway. I read it for the first time in 2001 when socialist activist Andy Johnston used his access to said library to obtain the book, and lent it to me. It was a dusty old hardback affair of which I had never previously even heard.

Books were banned, so the official Free State line went, because they were deemed indecent or obscene. The truth is, though, the House of Gold is more about power than it is about what the late Sid James often called rumpy-pumpy. An interesting footnote to the suppression of both The House of Gold and the many other books banned in those decades is that the Justice Minister, my not even slightly liberal near-namesake Kevin O’Higgins, was actually initially opposed to the banning of books.

But concerned citizens campaigned to put that right. In 1926 the snappily named Committee on Evil Literature was set up and did a report on the issue for the Department of Justice. After, that is, spending ten months getting all hot and sweaty reading every ‘filthy book’ they could lay their moist palms upon. Today, such a committee would probably include as members such luminaries as William Binchy, Labhrás O’ Murchú, Breda O’Brien, the ever greasy Senator Ronan Mullen, and the tragic monument that is John Waters. The result was the Censorship of Publications Board which was set up in the generally happy clappy year of 1929. Books by pretty much every major Irish writer of the period were banned by the very active Board. Also banned was all literature giving information about family planning.

The House of Gold is set in a fictional town, Barra, where the big hopes most had for post-independence Ireland have vanished down a pretty ghastly dead end. Almost absolute power rests with the avaricious Ramon Mór Costello, who owns most of the town and operates in alliance with some even grubbier than usual representatives of the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church. Ramon Mór is an early twentieth century Irish version of J.R. Ewing, without the excellent put-downs and charming personality. Ramon’s wife, Nora, is, to quote Eric Idle: “a bit of a goer.” In the first chapter she sneaks off for an occasion of sin with a left wing dissident, a guy who, if he was around today, would probably be found with megaphone and leaflets outside Lynch’s Castle on Shop Street when he wasn’t busy messing up the bed sheets of the bourgeoise. Their relationship is the best possible sort of class collaboration. Nora despises her husband Ramon, but feels at his mercy, which she absolutely is. It’s also clear she sympathises with the political ideas of the aforementioned dissident: “it make me feel like a criminal, every fair day, to see all these half-starved people coming into town with their cattle, selling them and giving all the money to him.”

In his preface, Tomás Mac Síomóin says: “Anyone familiar with Galway, the gaelicisms of its speech and with its people will recognise that O’Flaherty’s Barra is, in fact, Galway. The character profiles that abound are based, undoubtedly, on identifiable inhabitants of that town in the immediate aftermath of the Irish Civil War.” It is widely believed that Ramon Mór Costello is a fictionalised version of Mairtín 'mór' McDonagh, then patriarch of the McDonagh merchant family, who employed much of the town, sold the farmers everything they needed and bought their cattle from them at ungenerous prices set by a ‘free’ market in which the McDonagh’s had a near monopoly for many decades. This book was explosive material when it was first published eighty four years ago.

Even today, it is a dangerous enough book. It wasn’t just neglect that led to it remaining out of print so long. Nor is it a coincidence that it had to go to Spain to find a publisher. The McDonagh’s are still around. Today they are involved in, among other things, property development. Here is a quote from the website of Thomas McDonagh and Sons Limited:

Established over 150 years ago as merchants in Galway, the group of companies operating under the banner of Thomas McDonogh and Sons Limited is now one of Ireland's foremost private companies, with a network of operations and offices throughout the island of Ireland.
It goes on to say:

Throughout its history, the company has played an active role in the local communities in which it is situated. This is particularly evident in Galway, where the company remains actively involved in local business (IBEC, Chamber of Commerce), the arts (Druid Theatre, Galway Arts Centre) and sport (Galway Races, Galway Golf Club).

“An active role”, they most certainly have played. Myself and my wife, Susan, both teach writing workshops at the above mentioned Galway Arts Centre. We may sometimes think we’re classless and clever and free but the truth is otherwise.

The House of Gold is quite beautifully written; the word dark does little justice to how dark it sometimes gets. At the end of Chapter Two, Ramon’s wife Nora is raped by a priest who is one of her husband’s key allies in the greasy till-shivering prayer coalition which rules the town, now the British have gone. Before the rape, in a scene so bizarre it has the absolute ring of truth, the priest shouts a prayer for the willpower not to rape her: “Lord have mercy on me. I am being swallowed in the abyss of lust. My will is weak. Take this apple of evil from my sight.” He then proceeds.

On one level this priest is just another dude with ‘issues’ that make him a serious danger to women.

On another, though, the way he treats sex as if it is something that’s both disgusting and all the woman’s fault is traditional Irish Catholic ideology at its worst. It is a great thing indeed that this near masterpiece is back on our bookshelves. Special credit is due to Jenny and Niall Farrell who played an important role in getting it there. The House of Gold should be force-fed to everyone who misses the good old days and thinks the Iona Institute have a point. It is the story of what life was like in many Irish towns, Galway being no exception, back when the Chamber of Commerce ruled in coalition with the type of rubbish now to be found in Youth Defence. A friend of mine says that Ireland then was like Stalinist Albania without the sex. The House of Gold makes it clear though, that whatever the reality for most of the population, the Catholic clergy always made sure that, by fair means or foul, they themselves did not go wanting in the carnal department.

The House Of Gold by Liam O’Flaherty is published by Nuascéalta (251pp €11.99).

Kevin Higgins is a Galway-based poet, essayist and reviewer, and satirist-in-residence at the alternative literature site The Bogman's Cannon, www.bogmanscannon.com

Support Geroge Ciccariello Maher

As workers, It's important to recognize this for what it is.  The white nationalists and fascists attempt to take a satirical comment and turn it in to some ridiculous racist threat against white people. The author's actual intent was in response to the claim by white nationalists and other racists that there is a genuine threat in this country (the USA) of a genocide against the white population, a real possibility of it. I have heard some Christians make the same claim, that Christianity is the persecuted religion here. An honest white worker would not make such a claim. I know of no white workers who genuinely fear that there is a real threat of genocidal war against them as a group. Maher's employer, Drexel University, has under pressure from Trumps fascist friends like Breitbart, condemned the comment.  The piece below we reprint from Inside Higher Ed.

Drexel Condemns Professor's Tweet

University issues statement on Christmas Day over post that said "all I want for Christmas is white genocide." Update: Professor criticizes response to "satirical" comment.

Scott Jaschik

December 26, 2016

George Ciccariello-Maher

Drexel University issued a statement on Christmas Day to condemn a tweet by one of its professors on Christmas Eve that said that "all I want for Christmas is white genocide."

The tweet went viral quickly Saturday, with conservative websites and many individuals condemning the tweet by George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel.
But others on social media have said that Ciccariello-Maher -- who offers radical critiques of American society and global politics -- was making a political point and was not in fact calling for mass killings of anyone. Ciccariello-Maher has also written of white genocide as a fiction, as something that white nationalists imagine and promote as a real threat in the United States, when it is not in fact a threat.

More than 3,500 people -- including many scholars -- have signed a petition backing Ciccariello-Maher and calling on Drexel to defend him. "Preserve academic freedom (and wit and intelligence and anti-racism) in this nasty new era of living in the United States of internet trolls," the petition says. "Support George. Let Drexel know -- in the midst of the deafening, organized troll-storm -- that racist trolls deserve no platform in dictating academic discourse, let alone the off-duty tweets of academics. They are being VERY noisy; we can't be silent."

Since the controversy broke Ciccariello-Maher has made his Twitter feed private, so the tweets are no longer visible, although screen captures are circulating widely.

Drexel's statement, in full, is the following: "Drexel became aware today of Associate Professor George Ciccariello-Maher's inflammatory tweet, which was posted on his personal Twitter account on Dec. 24, 2016. While the university recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, Professor Ciccariello-Maher's comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the university. The university is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail."

Via email, Ciccariello-Maher answered questions about his tweet, which he said was meant to mock the idea of white genocide,

"On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, 'white genocide.' For those who haven't bothered to do their research, 'white genocide' is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance).It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it," Ciccariello-Maher wrote.

"What I am not glad about is that this satirical tweet became fodder for online white supremacists to systematically harass me and my employer, Drexel University. Beginning with Breitbart.com ... and running through the depths of Reddit discussion boards, a coordinated smear campaign was orchestrated to send mass tweets and emails to myself, my employer, and my colleagues. I have received hundreds of death threats."

As for Drexel's statement, he said: "While Drexel has been nothing but supportive in the past, this statement is worrying. While upholding my right to free expression, the statement refers to my (satirical) tweets as 'utterly reprehensible.' What is most unfortunate is that this statement amounts to caving to the truly reprehensible movements and organizations that I was critiquing. On the university level, moreover, this statement -- despite a tepid defense of free speech -- sends a chilling message and sets a frightening precedent. It exposes untenured and temporary faculty not only to internal disciplinary scrutiny, but equally importantly, it encourages harassment as an effective means to impact university policies."

He added: "White supremacy is on the rise, and we must fight it by any means. In that fight, universities will need to choose whether they are on the side of free expression and academic debate, or on the side of the racist mob."

The controversy over Ciccariello-Maher's tweet follows several others in which academics have made comments on social media that were understandable to those in their academic and social circles but that became highly controversial when shared widely.

Not so free speech Charlie Hebdo.

Source

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

We’ve commented a fair bit on the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the incident has proved yet again that Islam is a violent religion to the most ardent Islamophobes.The right to free speech and the need to defend it in the wave of the attack by right wing religious fanatics drew over one million people in to the streets of Paris at a rally that was led by some of the worst enemy’s of free speech and democratic rights.  So many of then have been responsible for the imprisoning and deaths of journalists.

But as readers are most likely aware by now, back in 2008 Maurice Sine a political satirist writing for Charlie Hebdo wrote a column as he had been doing for the past 20 years.  Sine wrote that Jean Sarkozy, the son of the French president was planning to convert too Judaism in order to marry a Jewish heiress of a famous electronics company. “He'll go a long way in life, this lad!” Siné wrote.

According to the Guardian, the piece was published but a few days later a French radio host complained that the piece was anti-Semitic.  The families of the young couple to be were appalled. Philippe Val, who was the editor at the time and was the man who took the decision to publish the Danish cartoons that had previously caused such a stir and were considered extremely insulting to Muslims, told Sine to apologize.  “For Val, there was no doubt. Siné's statements 'could be interpreted as making a link between conversion to Judaism and social success' and that they spread the old stereotype associating Jews and money.”, the Guardian wrote.

Sine, refused to apologize saying he would rather “cut his own nuts off'” and that ended his career at the free speech loving Charlie Hebdo.  Sine won some sort of settlement from the magazine for wrongful termination apparently but as we can see, free speech is an important issue but depends on who is using it and whom it’s directed at.  As far as the Zionists go, and Philippe Val is a pro-Zionist as far as I can tell, any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.  I wrote a piece a while back opposing circumcision as genital mutilation and infringing on the rights of a child. I thought the local Jewish community would jump all over me but they did not, many of them concurring. The local Rabbi did imply this view was anti-Semitic as did others as I was infringing on people’s right to practice their religion. I’m sure if god had said to Abraham all Jewish males at age of 21 should be circumcised there would not be many circumcised Jews around today.

This blog has made its opposition to the terrorist attack quite clear in other commentaries.  But we also believe it has to be seen in context and that is the incredible western bias against Islam led by the US government and it’s corporate backers. Add to this the French support for this war and French colonialism’s brutal history in Africa and we get a glimpse of the historical backdrop to much of this. The influence of the Israeli lobby in US politics is a factor and considerable along with their right wing Christian Zionist allies. Temporary allies as when the Messiah comes, the Jews will have to convert or be sent to rot in hell according to Christian teaching.

The spokespersons for US capitalism from Obama on down can say there is no war against Islam but it certainly looks like there is and for Muslims, feels like it.  Where were the millions and all the phony heads of state when the Zionists went in to Gaza and slaughtered more than 2000 people.  More than 500 children were killed and there were 11,000 people wounded. The Zionists also bombed the hospitals.  Figures released recently claimed that 145 Gazan families lost three or more family members.  Where are the politicians for this? Apart from that, B'tselem the Israeli NGO reckons that between 2002 and May 2008, at least 387 Palestinians died as a result of Israeli targeted killings, of which 234 were the targets, and the rest collateral casualties. I remember reading about two Gazan children feeding their pigeons on the roof when Israeli snipers took them out. Palestinians warn their children about the rooftops, they are dangerous places for their kids. The killing in Paris, horrible as it is, is small stuff compared to the slaughter of Muslims that has gone on over the past 20 years.

In case we have forgotten I am sure Muslims haven’t, the US imposed sanctions of their old friend Saddam Hussein’s regime cost some 500,000 lives, mostly women and children.  Madeline Albright, the US Secretary of State at the time said the deaths were “worth it”.  No mass rally for these victims, but a big one for the 14 dead in Paris. Do we as Americans not see the balance sheet here?

The Zionists have assassinated thousands of Palestinians and other Muslims all over the world. It is this double standard, this obvious bias that has also strengthened the right wing fundamentalists.  US support for numerous ruthless dictators have also increased hatred of western meddling in Muslim countries. Let’s not forget, Tunisia’s Ben Ali was a US proxy, as were others.  Mubarak the torturer received lots of money and weapons from the US taxpayer.

In an incredible act of arrogance, Netanyahu has said that if the French can’t protect its Jews the Israelis will do it.  Any attack like this is welcomed by the Zionists as they argue that anti-Semitism is inherent in Gentiles and cannot be eradicated.  Like all forms of nationalism, Jewish extremism cannot exist if working class unity prevails.  The Zionists cooperated with Nazis for the same reason.  They refused to help Jews fleeing the Nazis that weren’t leaving for Israel. Anti-Semitism is crucial to Zionism’s survival.

This attack in Paris doesn’t occur in a vacuum, this is important for us to remember and in this age of extremely controlled media, especially in the US, it is important for working people to seek the truth, to question, to check the evidence and most importantly, understand history.

As an aside, I heard part of Michel Chossudovsky’s talk on KPFA today and it was very interesting (his website is Global Research at http://www.globalresearch.ca/) It’s worth checking this site periodically.

Victory Against Police Censorship in Oakland CA

by Jack Gerson*

On November 19, supporters of academic freedom and opponents of police censorship and repression won an important victory when Oakland school district administration announced that access to the Urban Dreams social justice units would be restored to the district's website. Access had been denied for 7 months, after the Fraternal Order of Police lobby and Fox News kicked up a storm over a lesson plan that asked students to compare the mass media's suppression of the facts about the railroading of Mumia Abu Jamal and of his writings and with the suppression of Martin Luther King's radical indictment of corporate power and his organizing against it.

For seven months, the Oakland school district allowed -- indeed, were the executors of -- police censorship of school curricula. A persistent campaign torestore Urban Dreams by several Oakland teachers -- initially, only a few of us were actively organizing -- managed to increasingly gather support from local and state teacher unions and from national figures (Emmy Award winning actor Ed Asner; Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist Alice Walker), and it was this support that got the school district to finally end the censorship and restore the lesson plans.

So if we fight, we can win. But this is only a small part of a much larger fight. The following illustrates both that the impact of the movement is growing, and that our opponents will fight to retain their brutal and haughty power.

St. Louis Rams Players Support Michael Brown

Six St. Louis Rams (NFL) players gave the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" salute yesterday in solidarity with the nationwide protests against the murder of Michael Brown by a Ferguson cop (Ferguson is a St. Louis suburb). This indicates how deeply Brown's murder has been felt, and the scope of the reaction to it. The Rams' action recalls the clenched fist black power solidarity salute by John Carlos and Tommy Smith from the medals stand at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

Predictably, the St. Louis cops 'union' issued a statement demanding that the players be disciplined. Once more, the cops confirm that they are out to suppress dissent -- especially when it's directed at them. The out of control cops insist that they must have full control and the right to crush those who protest their brutal tactics, their criminalization and victimization (especially of young people of color) and even their murders.

Here's a link to the story in today's Guardian online:  http://gu.com/p/43nxn

* Jack Gerson is a retired Oakland Teacher