Reality Privileged: Orwell/Huxley/McLuhan on Steroids

metaverse, global brain, social impact, your digital self

by Paul Haeder / May 10th, 2022

You can go through life with a thousand epigrams or deep quotes that you might come back to over two, four, six decades. Then, the disrupters pop up, those techno fascists, the tinkers and culture blasters.

These sociopaths who get the limelight then become part of a new set of epigrams, but not grand ones, but totally emblematic of a new normal of Triple Speak, Capitalism Porn, and the Stiff Arm to the Coders and their Masters.

It’s sad, really. Here, quality ones of very different and varied origins:

• Timothy 6:10 “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
• Pierre Joseph-Proudhon: “Property is Theft.”
• Karl Marx: “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital.”
• “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
  ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
• “It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.”
  ― Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right

We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactons with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.
― Fred Hampton (source: “Fred Hampton Speech Transcript on Revolution and Racism” ) 

“Only from a capitalist viewpoint being productive is a moral virtue, if not a moral imperative. From the viewpoint of the working class, being productive simply means being exploited.”
― Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

One might wake up after two decades of capitalist slumber and feel like Rip Van Winkle while observing how deep the slide into those circles of capitalist hell we have all ended up. Exhumed from the grave all the felons, high and midddling, and then see that the world is still valorizing . . . Kissinger, Albright, Bush, Trump, Biden, Obama, et al. Shocks to the system every nano second. Capitalism with a gun, with a drug, with a bank.

Here, McLuhan:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. (Marshall McLuhan rocketed from an unknown academic to rockstar with the publication of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Manin 1964.)

Concentrated power — information age, and now, it’s even so much worse, 60 years later.

Get these people’s aims and goals. These are the powerful, work with the powerful, are armies unto themselves, and they take no prisoners. We are all Luddites if we resist their machinations, their totalitarianism in skinny jeans, on the spectrum, vegan and all.

I’ll let the guy’s words flow here, longish. Monsters, really:

Marc Andreessen (“The Internet King on why the Internet is a force for good, on media conformity, the inevitable triumph of the WEIRD, Crypto, ‘Retards,’ etc. — Source) breaks down Reality Privilege:

Your question is a great example of what I call Reality Privilege. This is a paraphrase of a concept articulated by Beau Cronin: “Consider the possibility that a visceral defense of the physical, and an accompanying dismissal of the virtual as inferior or escapist, is a result of superuser privileges.” A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. These are also *all* of the people who get to ask probing questions like yours. Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.

The Reality Privileged, of course, call this conclusion dystopian, and demand that we prioritize improvements in reality over improvements in virtuality. To which I say: reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don’t think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build—and we are building—online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in.

Here’s a thought experiment for the counterfactual. Suppose we had all just spent the last 15 months of COVID lockdowns *without* the Internet, without the virtual world. As bad as the lockdowns have been for people’s well-being—and they’ve been bad—how much worse would they have been without the Internet? I think the answer is clear: profoundly, terribly worse. (Of course, pandemic lockdowns are not the norm—for that, we’ll have to wait for the climate lockdowns.)

Is this an easy target? Am I just poking fun at culture, the new masters of the metaverse? Are we speaking two very “man who fell to earth” languages? Or, is this fellow above, misanthrope on a very pathetic scale? We know he’s got hundreds of millions, and he is the guru, and governments and the Titans of Media all have his ear.

Oh, I have old people whispering how they feel for today’s kids, how they feel for the young adults who are stuck in this bubble inside a bubble. I hear them while they have grand machinations of flipping a home into a bank account and some smaller home. Too expensive in Pacific Northwest or California? Then, sell sell sell, and end up in Appalachia. Lewisburg. Get a home and two acres for $250K, and bank the rest, and be damned, the rest of the world.

Me-myself-I, that’s the reptilian brain angle these Titans of the Screen/Black Mirror in the Hand have going for them (not a great term, really, repitilian, but you get the picture — food, sex, water, fight or flight, flash, rest, run, jump, gobble, hump).

Get these stats, mom and pop, uncle and aunt, cuz:

In Chain Reactions, he writes about how stunning the scale of the internet has become; every minute on the internet:

• Netflix users stream 404,444 hours of video
• Instagram users post 347,222 stories
• YouTube users upload 500 hours of video
• Consumers spend $1,000,000 online
• LinkedIn users apply for 69,444 jobs
• TikTok is installed 2,704 times
• Venmo users send $239,196 worth of payments
• Spotify adds 28 tracks to its music library
• Amazon ships 6,659 packages
• WhatsApp users send 41,666,667 messages
• And 1,388,889 people make video and voice calls

Every minute. American adults spend over 11 hours interacting with digital media every day. Daily media consumption on mobile has grown 6x from 45 minutes in 2011 to 4 hours and 12 minutes in 2021.

The “entire world is a stage” is played out minute by minute, in Ukraine by the Zionist Comic Nazi-loving Jew (not-not), or the charades of Biden and the gang (media). Now? Every man, woman, child is an island — connected to the WWW — unto him-her-them SELF:

This is it, while the crocodile tears are spewing for the poor Ukrainians, and the trillion$ soon for guns, nukes, these idiots try a Jon Leibowitz Stewart thing: White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night. The dinner was shunned by Trump and canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But then, they all are misanthropes, and again, the optics, man, the optics of the USA decaying while Biden shits his pants: “I’m really excited to be here with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden joked to the Washington, DC crowd, referring to his own sub-40% polling and to surveys showing just 36% of Americans trust the mass media.

This is insane, of course, on many levels. It is the inside joke, and the giant overt joke. This is the spokesperson for the free world, and these are the minutes they spend in their spare time. All puppets, all wind-up dolls, and the media, they are the lever pullers. Behind the media? Oh, man, you don’t need a recap on who the monster men (a few women, too) are?

Okay, now down the other rabbit hole: Go to Alison McDowell’s work (Wrench in the Gears (dot) com) recently in Salt Lake City, following the LDS/Mormons capitalization of transhumanism, blockchain, social impact investing, cyber everything, internet of bodies, brains, babies. Slide show/stack here, Ignorance is Bliss?

Check out 36 videos looking into this dispicable system of mind-matter-money control: Transhumanism, CIA Enslavement, Faith and Technology, Digital Education. YouTube.

I have those discussions now, with former students, who want to know from me, what I think of Zoom Doom Rooms, or where I think education, both K12 and higher (sic), is going. Of course, the language we use is not always in synch, since I think the systems of education were flawed from the beginning, and that capitalism and fascism as it is delineated by GloboCap, set people up to accept lies, and the systems of oppression are about getting people to learn how to lie to themselves.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

I talked recently with a teacher who knew me, and wondered where I was, in the substitute teacher stable. I informed her that this county, the school district, has banned me for pushing high school students to think about their own lives tied to stories like Of Mice and Men and Animal Farm, two books the teacher of record was having me, the substitute of record, work with. Amazing, I was frog marched out of the classroom and school, and there was zero recourse, no audience to be gained, and alas, I couldn’t defend myself: this is how one system of oppression works.

This fourth grade teacher went on and on about how oppressive it is to be that elementary grade teacher in this district, and how the higher ups, the school board, they have scorn for the teachers, the paraeducators, the staff.

Hell, I was teaching a community education class, and it took me more than a month and a half to be paid by the community college. This is the new normal, but not so new. This is the mentality whichruns the world. And, more and more people want to be their own boss, but their options are limited — really, a cinnamon roll shop, beads, candles, more deep fried oysters?

Capitalism is lovely, so creative, open, available for smart small and tiny entrepeneurs. Wrong!

Disdain, just like the fellow announcing that Reality Privilege is dead. The world of games, the world of on-line shopping, dating, hunting, driving, hiking, that is it for the world from here on in. Get on the phone, six hours a day, at least. Plug in.

Zoom Zelensky from Britain or Poland. Watch Sean Penn or Pelosi fly into some staged area, then, long-live the ZioLenksy Nazi, and then, more dialing for dollars. Stage left, masks on, start themusic, do the edits, cut cut cut, and then let the lies fly.

Reality. Here, from Farnam Street Articles!

“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts,” wrote McLuhan. Rather they “alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.”

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan proffered,

“A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.”

We see this today as newspapers transition to a digital world and how the medium—the internet—remakes the papers to fit its own standards. Not only have newspapers moved from physical to virtual but now they are hyperlinked, chunked, and embedded within noise. If he were alive (and healthy) McLuhan would argue these changes impact the way we understand the content.

McLuhan foresaw how all mass media would eventually be used for commercialization and consumerism:

 “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.”

Carry on:

And, finally, reality is reality, all those down-home chemicals, cancers, catastrophies. A new outfit with the Environmental Working Group, The New Lede.   PFAS, Monsanto, other pesticides, all covered by investigative journalists. You can attempt to “virtual reality” away the reality world. These are freaks!  However, a hero like Carey Gillam has spent more than 25 years reporting on corporate America. She is the managing editor at The New Lede. Watch her over at RFK Jr’s site!

Reality for Us, the Unprivileged.

For a visitor to this rural part of eastern Nebraska, the crisp air, blue skies and stretch of seemingly endless farm fields appear as unspoiled landscape. For the people who live here, however, there is no denying that they are immersed in an environmental catastrophe researchers fear may impact the area for generations to come.

The signs of a silent poisoning are everywhere: A farmhouse has been abandoned by its owners after their young children experienced health problems; a pond once filled with fish and frogs is now barren of all life; university researchers are collecting blood and urine from residents to analyze them for contaminants; and a local family now drinks water only from plastic bottles because tests show chemical contamination of their drinking well.  — Source, Carey Gillam

No matter how many hours you might be connected to a gamefied world, virtual and augemented, the chemicals will still bore their toxins into your cells until no amount of AI-VR-AR can save you!

Listen to these monsters . . .

And then, four hours learning about this global brain mentality. Good work by Wrench In the Gears:

And how many people are willing to go down these blockchain, decentralized technologies, social impact and reality priviledge and digital ID and crypo-funding? The Church of LDS is into Transhumanism. Keep your eye close on these folk, synthetic biology eugenics freaks.

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Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2022 at 9:16pm and is filed under Agrochemicals, Cancel Culture, Capitalism, Corporate Media, Culture, Democracy, Digitalization, Environment, General, Global Capitalism, Imperialism, Media, Media Bias, Social media.

In Pictures
Gallery

Thousands march in London in solidarity with Palestinians

About 10,000 protesters rally a day ahead of Nakba, the day marking 1948 Palestinian exodus, to express anger over the killing of Al Jazeera journalist.

The march comes a day before the commemoration of the Nakba (the Day of Catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities and towns by Zionist paramilitaries in 1948.

Published On 14 May 2022

Thousands of people have attended a rally in London in solidarity with Palestinians and Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday.

“I met Shireen about 12 years ago in Ramallah and she was a lovely person… She was very knowledgeable,” Kamel Hawwash, chair of the Palestinian solidarity campaign, told Al Jazeera.

“So it was particularly devastating for me as a Palestinian and someone who had met her to see the unbelievably shocking footage of her killing and the callousness of the Israeli security forces when they attacked her funeral, almost dropping her coffin to the ground.”

The march comes a day before the commemoration of the Nakba (the Day of Catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities and towns by Zionist paramilitaries in 1948.

More than 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled from their homeland in 1948, in the year of establishment of the state of Israel.

Abu Akleh, 51, who worked for Al Jazeera’s Arabic television channel, was hit by an Israeli bullet, according to witnesses, as she covered an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Her killing has sparked international condemnation.

People who joined the rally reflected the shock and anger over the killing of the veteran journalist.

“I would estimate the crowd at several thousand, probably in excess of 10,000 at the moment, it’s difficult to judge, I can’t actually see the end of the march here,” Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan, reporting from London, said.

Demonstrators carry 'Justice for Shireen' placards at the rally in central London. [Al Jazeera]

A woman among protesters is carrying a 'Free Palestine' placard at the rally. [Al Jazeera]

Protesters expressing anger over Abu Akleh's killing walk to the All Souls Langham Place. [Al Jazeera]
The rally also commemorated the Nakba, the 1948 Palestinian exodus during the forming of Israel. [Al Jazeera]
Additional police forces have reportedly been deployed to monitor and facilitate the demonstration. [Al Jazeera]

Demonstrators carry Palestinian flags as they commemorate the Nakba at All Souls Langham Place. [Al Jazeera]
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We need to show Israel the time for accountability has arrived

Israel should not be allowed to whitewash the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with yet another sham ‘investigation’.

Hagai El-Ad
Executive Director of B'Tselem
Published On 14 May 2022

Palestinians protest the killing of veteran Al Jazeera journalist

 Shireen Abu Akleh, Gaza City, May 12, 2022

 [Mohammed Abed/AFP] (AFP)

The only possible response to the hasty offer Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid made to the Palestinians to conduct “a joint pathological investigation” into the killing of renowned Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh can be rage.

Such “investigations” conducted by Israel serve not to uncover the truth but to bury it, not to establish accountability but to preserve impunity, not to indict the perpetrators but to protect them.

That the offer for a “joint investigation” into the killing of Abu Akleh came directly from Foreign Minister Lapid – and was later repeated by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – speaks to the magnitude of Israel’s concern about the public relations crisis it is now facing. Such offers for “investigation” and “analysis” are normally left to lower-ranking officials in Israel’s whitewash apparatus.

Indeed, Israel only engages in such high-level whitewash if it believes the killing of a Palestinian can damage the country’s image. Otherwise, it doesn’t even bother with such empty gestures.

B’Tselem tried in good faith to engage Israel’s domestic investigation mechanisms for decades. Over the years, we have made hundreds of applications to relevant authorities for cases of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces to be investigated, but meaningful accountability was never realised. Six years ago, we concluded that what we were dealing with is not merely a dysfunctional investigation mechanism but an organised, systemic whitewash operation. As a result, we made the decision to continue our work on such killings – but without ever engaging in Israel’s so-called “investigations”.

Israel’s investigation mechanism is clearly a charade. Even if an investigation into the killing of a Palestinian at the hands of Israeli forces is opened, it almost never conclude with someone being charged. The entire mechanism is a charade because its flaws are, in fact, its essential features – the ones that enable it to deliver impunity. To begin with, the army is tasked with investigating itself. Soldiers are typically interviewed without being challenged, almost no effort is made to collect external evidence, and “investigations” are drawn out for years. On top of all this, even the sham described above is directed only at low-ranking soldiers – those who make the policies that enable soldiers to pull the trigger on Palestinians never face any scrutiny. All this, despite in many cases fatalities being caused not because of any deviations from the policies of the Israeli military but the criminal policies themselves.

Take, for example, the cases of Israeli snipers shooting at unarmed Palestinians at the Gaza fence during the Great March of Return demonstrations. Israel conducted “investigations” into certain specific cases of shooting by snipers. But no one investigated – and no one in Israel will – the rules of engagement themselves.

Israel’s military advocate general – the very same person in charge of Israel’s military investigations – is tasked with giving the green light for such policies. Thus, obviously, nobody is being held to account for giving snipers those flagrantly illegal orders.

Israel needs impunity to maintain its apartheid regime. It cannot maintain control over a subjugated population without state violence. Thus it is essential for the regime to provide itself with blanket impunity – while performing what looks like investigations, to appease international expectations.

Impunity paves the way for more killings. Don’t fall for Israel’s propaganda, its promises to “investigate”. Israel will not hold itself to account, just like its apartheid regime won’t dismantle itself. International stakeholders who do not call this out simply cast themselves as a cog in Israel’s whitewashing machine. The grotesque US pressure on Palestinians to accept a “joint” investigation and the statement by US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides vaguely “encouraging” an investigation, only demonstrates the extent to which the Biden administration continues to serve as such a cog.

Shireen Abu Akleh once said while it “might not be easy to change reality”, she could at least bring “the voice of the people to the world”. To keep that voice alive, to honour her legacy and to demand justice, please: Say no to Israeli propaganda, view reality with clarity, and demonstrate to Israel that the time of accountability has finally – even if belatedly – arrived.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance

.

Hagai El-Ad
Executive Director of B'Tselem

US outrage grows over Shireen Abu Akleh killing after funeral attack

If international outrage over Shireen Abu Akleh's killing was lacking following her killing on Wednesday, it was unleashed after an Israeli police attack at her funeral.

Brooke Anderson
Washington, D.C.
14 May, 2022

Shireen Abu Akleh's funeral procession was attacked by Israeli police, sparking international outrage [Getty]

Many in the international community, including in the United States, might have been slow or cautious to react to the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as she reported on an Israeli military raid on the occupied West Bank town of Jenin.

Whatever muted responses that existed on Wednesday, the day of her killing, quickly turned to outrage on Friday following an undeniable Israeli police attack on her pallbearers, which almost caused them to drop the coffin and forced at least one to the ground.

While many international observers were shocked, it came as no surprise to many Palestinians who have seen similar incidents, albeit much less publicised. What was being demanded by Palestinians, their allies and progressives around the world – more transparent news coverage as well as an independent investigation – reached the mainstream following the jarring images of the funeral attack.

One of the main criticisms of the establishment media coverage was of the New York Times, whose headline on the day of Abu Akleh’s killing read “Shireen Abu Akleh, Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist, Dies at 51”. US progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace “corrected” the headline in red handwriting in a widely circulated meme that replaced the last clause with “Assassinated by Israeli Sniper While Wearing a Press Vest and Reporting on Israeli Military Violence”.


Other outlets, such as the BBC and the Associated Press, whose office was destroyed by Israeli shelling in Gaza in last year, were also criticised for their coverage of the story. News outlets were also generally criticised for using the term “clashes” to describe Israeli soldiers’ armed attacks on unarmed journalists.

Possibly due to numerous complaints, the NYT changed their headline to “Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist Killed in West Bank”. On Wednesday, its headline about the funeral was a blunt “Israeli Police Attack Mourners at Palestinian Journalist’s Funeral”.

A brave voice: Journalists pay tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh

Society

Rodayna Raydan

Some mainstream publications featured opinion pieces critical of Israel’s actions. Time published a piece entitled “The Problems With Israel's Version of the Killing of Reporter Shireen Abu Akleh”. Meanwhile, a number of opinion pieces in Israeli publications had by Friday acknowledged the power dynamic between armed occupier and unarmed civilian at play, with a growing number of headlines questioning Israel’s initial narrative of a Palestinian gunman being responsible for the killing.

Politicians who had not previously made statements on social media about Abu Akleh's killing did speak out about the attacks on mourners at her funeral.

On Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the attacks on mourners by Israeli forces at her funeral are deeply disturbing. A free press is a cornerstone of democracy and journalists should not be killed for doing their jobs. We need a full independent investigation.”

Some Twitter users replied to Warren saying she should focus on domestic issues, like Roe v Wade. Others hit back at those replies, saying that Abu Akleh’s killing is of domestic concern because she is a US citizen and the American government is Israel's biggest funder.

Democrats cautiously condemn killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

Her progressive colleague, Senator Bernie Sanders, tweeted: “The attack by Israeli forces against mourners at the funeral of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is an outrage. The United States must condemn this, and demand an independent investigation into her killing.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a rare criticism of Israel, also expressed concerns about the funeral attack, tweeting: “We were deeply troubled by the images of Israeli police intruding into the funeral procession of Palestinian American Shireen Abu Akleh. Every family deserves to lay their loved ones to rest in a dignified and unimpeded manner.”

Though many are continuing to promote the idea that a Palestinian gunman is responsible for the killing of Abu Akleh, their voices are increasingly getting drowned out by the growing numbers of those outraged by what they have seen.

Shireen Abu Akleh was executed to send a message to Palestinians

During 20 years of reporting on Israel and Palestine, I learned first-hand that Israel’s version of events around the deaths of Palestinians or foreigners can never be trusted

by Jonathan Cook / May 13th, 2022

The execution of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier in the Palestinian city of Jenin, along with Israel‘s immediate efforts to muddy the waters about who was responsible and the feeble expressions of concern from western capitals, brought memories flooding back from 20 years of reporting from the region.

Unlike Abu Akleh, I found myself far less often on the front lines in the occupied territories. I was not a war correspondent, and when I ended up close to the action it was invariably by accident – such as when, also in Jenin, my Palestinian taxi turned into a street only to find ourselves staring down the barrel of an Israeli tank. Judging by the speed and skill with which my driver navigated in reverse, it was not his first time dealing with that kind of roadblock.

Abu Akleh reported on far too many killings of Palestinians not to have known the risks she faced as a journalist every time she donned a flak jacket. It was a kind of nerve I did not share.

According to a recent report by Reporters Without Borders, at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied territories since 2018. Three, including Abu Akleh, have been killed in the same period.

I spent part of my time in the region visiting the scenes of Palestinian deaths, trying to pick through the conflicting Palestinian and Israeli narratives to get a clearer understanding of what had actually happened. Abu Akleh’s killing, and Israel’s response, fit a pattern consistent with what I discovered when carrying out those investigations.

It was no surprise, then, to hear Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett immediately blame Palestinians for her death. There was, he said, “a considerable chance that armed Palestinians, who fired wildly, were the ones who brought about the journalist’s unfortunate death”.

Settling scores

Abu Akleh was a face familiar not only to the Arab world that devours news from Palestine, but to most of the Israeli combat soldiers who “raid” – a euphemism for attack – Palestinian communities such as Jenin.

The soldiers who shot at her and the group of Palestinian journalists she was with knew they were firing at members of the media. But there also appears to be evidence suggesting one or more of the soldiers identified her specifically as a target.

Palestinians are rightly suspicious that the bullet hole just below the edge of her metal helmet was not a one-in-a-million chance event. It looked like a precision shot intended to kill her – the reason why Palestinian officials are calling her death “deliberate”.

For as long as I can remember, Israel has been trying to find pretexts to shut down Al Jazeera’s coverage, often by banning its reporters or denying them press passes. Infamously, last May, it bombed a tower block in Gaza that housed the station’s offices.

Indeed, Abu Akleh was most likely shot precisely because she was a high-profile Al Jazeera reporter, known for her fearless reporting of Israeli crimes. Both the army and its soldiers bear grudges, and they have lethal weapons with which to settle scores.

‘Friendly fire’

Israel’s suggestion that she was targeted by, or was collateral damage from, Palestinian gunfire should be treated with the disdain it deserves. At least with the advantage of modern GPS and satellite imagery, this kind of standard-issue dissembling is becoming easier to rebut.

The “friendly fire” defence is straight out of the playbook Israel uses whenever it cannot resort to its preferred retrospective rationalisation for killing Palestinians: that they were armed and “posed an immediate danger to soldiers”.

That was a lesson I learned in my first months in the region. I arrived in 2001 to investigate events during the first days of the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, when Israeli police killed 13 protesters. Those killings, unlike parallel events taking place in the occupied territories, targeted members of a large Palestinian minority that lives inside Israel and has a very inferior citizenship.

At the outbreak of the Intifada in late 2000, Palestinian citizens had taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest the Israeli army’s killing of their compatriots in the occupied territories.

They were enraged, in particular, by footage from Gaza captured by France 2 TV. It showed a father desperately trying to shield his 12-year-old son, Muhammad al-Durrah, as they were trapped by Israeli gunfire at a road intersection. Muhammad was killed and his father, Jamal, seriously wounded.

On that occasion too, Israel tried its best to cloud what had happened – and carried on doing so for many years. It variously blamed Palestinians for killing Durrah, claimed the scene had been staged, or suggested the boy was actually alive and unharmed. It did so even over the protests of the French TV crew.

Palestinian children were being killed elsewhere in the occupied territories, but those deaths were rarely captured so viscerally on film. And when they were, it was usually on the primitive personal digital cameras of the time. Israel and its apologists casually dismissed such grainy footage as “Pallywood” – a conflation of Palestinian and Hollywood – to suggest it was faked.

Shot from behind

The Israeli deceptions over al-Durrah’s death echoed what was happening inside Israel. Police there were also shooting recklessly at the large demonstrations erupting, even though protesters were unarmed and had Israeli citizenship. Not only were 13 Palestinians killed, but hundreds more were wounded, with some horrifically maimed.

In one incident, Israeli Jews from Upper Nazareth – some of them armed, off-duty police officers – marched on the neighbouring Palestinian city of Nazareth, where I was based. Mosque loudspeakers called on Nazareth’s residents to come out and protect their homes. There followed a long, tense stand-off between the two sides at a road junction between the communities.

Police stood alongside the invaders, watched over by Israeli snipers positioned atop a tall building in Upper Nazareth, facing Nazareth residents massed below.

The police insisted that the Palestinians leave first. Faced with so many weapons, the crowds from Nazareth eventually relented and headed back home. At that point, police snipers opened fire, shooting several men in the back. Two, who were hit in the head, were killed instantly.

Those executions were witnessed by the hundreds of Palestinians there, as well as by police and by all those who had tried to invade Nazareth. And yet, the official police story ignored the sequence of events. Police said the fact that the two Palestinian men had been shot in the back of the head was proof they had been killed by other Palestinians, not police snipers.

Commanders claimed, without producing any evidence or conducting a forensic investigation, that Palestinian gunmen had been hiding behind the men and shot them by mistake while aiming for police. It was a blatant lie, but one that the authorities held to through a subsequent judicial-led inquiry.

Balance of power

As was the case with Abu Akleh, those two men’s deaths were not – as Israel would like us to believe – an unfortunate incident, with innocents caught in the crossfire.

Like Abu Akleh, those Nazareth men were executed in cold blood by Israel. It was intended as a stark message to all Palestinians about where the balance of power resides, and as a warning to submit, to keep quiet, to know their place.

The people of Nazareth defied those strictures in coming out to protect their city. Abu Akleh did the same by turning up day after day for more than two decades to report on the injustices, crimes and horrors of living under Israeli occupation. Both were acts of peaceful resistance to oppression, and both were viewed by Israel as equivalent to terrorism.

We will never be able to conclude whether Abu Akleh or those two men died because of the actions of a hot-headed Israeli soldier, or because the shooter was given an instruction by senior officers to use an execution as a teaching moment for other Palestinians.

But we do not need to know which it is. Because it keeps on happening, and because Israel keeps on doing nothing to stop it, or to identify and punish those responsible.

Because killing Palestinians – unpredictably, even randomly – fits perfectly with the goals of an occupying power intent on eroding any sense of safety or normality for Palestinians, an occupier determined to terrorise them into departure, bit by bit, from their homeland.

Taught a lesson

Abu Akleh was one of a small number of Palestinians from the occupied territories who have American citizenship. That, and her fame in the Arab world, are two reasons why officials in Washington felt duty-bound to express sadness at her killing and issue a formulaic call for a “thorough investigation”.

But Abu Akleh’s US passport was no more able to save her from Israeli retribution than that of Rachel Corrie, murdered in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer driver as she tried to protect Palestinian homes in Gaza. Similarly, Tom Hurndall’s British passport did not stop him from being shot in the head as he tried to protect Palestinian children in Gaza from Israeli gunfire. Nor did filmmaker James Miller’s British passport prevent an Israeli soldier from executing him in 2003 in Gaza, as he documented Israel’s assault on the tiny, overcrowded enclave.

All were seen as having taken a side by acting as witnesses and by refusing to remain quiet as Palestinians suffered – and for that reason, they and those who thought like them had to be taught a lesson.

It worked. Soon, the contingent of foreign volunteers – those who had come to Palestine to record Israel’s atrocities and serve, when necessary, as human shields to protect Palestinians from a trigger-happy Israeli army – were gone. Israel denounced the International Solidarity Movement for supporting terrorism, and given the clear threat to their lives, the pool of volunteers gradually dried up.

The executions – whether committed by hot-headed soldiers or approved by the army – served their purpose once again.

Error of judgment

I was the only journalist to investigate the first in this spate of executions of foreigners early in the Second Intifada. Iain Hook, a Briton working for UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency, was shot dead in late 2002 by an Israeli sniper in Jenin – the same northern West Bank city where Abu Akleh would be executed 20 years later.

Just as with Abu Akleh, the official Israeli story was designed to turn the focus away from what was clearly an Israeli execution to shift the blame to Palestinians.

During yet another of Israel’s “raids” into Jenin, Hook and his staff, along with Palestinian children attending an UNRWA school, had taken shelter inside the sealed compound.

Israel’s story was a concoction of lies that could be easily disproven, though no foreign journalist apart from me ever bothered to go to the site to check. And with more limited opportunities in those days, I struggled to find an outlet willing to publish my investigation.

Israel claimed its sniper, overlooking the compound from a third-floor window, had seen Palestinians break into the compound. According to this version, the sniper mistook the distinctive, tall, pale, red-headed, 54-year-old Hook for a Palestinian gunman, even though the sniper had been watching the UN official through telescopic sights for more than an hour.

To bolster its preposterous story, Israel also claimed the sniper had mistaken Hook’s mobile phone for a hand grenade, and was worried he was about to throw it out of the compound towards the Israeli soldiers on the street outside.

Except, as the sniper would have known, that was impossible. The compound was sealed, with a high concrete wall, a petrol station forecourt-style awning as a roof, and thick chicken wire covering the space between. Had Hook thrown his phone-grenade at the street outside, it would have bounced right back at him. If it were really a grenade, he would have blown himself up.

The truth was that Hook had made an error of judgment. Surrounded by Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters hidden in alleyways nearby, and exasperated by Israel’s refusal to allow his staff and the children safe passage out, he opened the gate and tried to plead with the soldiers outside.

As he did so, a Palestinian gunman emerged from an alley close by and fired towards an Israeli armoured vehicle. No one was hurt. Hook fled back into the compound and sealed it again.

But the Israeli soldiers outside now had a grudge against the UN official. One of them decided to use a bullet to Hook’s head to settle the score.

Bad faith

The UN was obliged to carry out a detailed investigation into Hook’s killing. Abu Akleh’s loved ones will be unlikely to have the same advantage. In fact, Israeli police made a point of “raiding” her home in occupied East Jerusalem to disrupt the family’s mourning, demanding that a Palestinian flag be taken down. Another message sent.

Israel is already insisting on access to the forensic evidence – as though a murderer has a right to be the one to investigate his own crime.

But in fact, even in Hook’s case, the UN investigation was quietly shelved. Accusing Israel of executing a UN official would have forced the international body into a dangerous confrontation both with Israel and with the United States. Hook’s killing was hushed up, and no one was brought to book.

Nothing better can be expected for Abu Akleh. There will be noises about an investigation. Israel will blame the Palestinian Authority for not cooperating, as it is already doing. Washington will express tepid concern but do nothing. Behind the scenes, the US will help Israel block any meaningful investigation.

For the US and Europe, routine statements of “sadness” and calls for investigation are not intended to make sure light is shed on what happened. That could only embarrass a strategic ally needed to project western power into the oil-rich Middle East.

No, these half-hearted declarations from western capitals are meant to defuse and confuse. They are intended to take the wind out any backlash; indicate western impartiality, and save the blushes of complicit Arab regimes; suggest there is a legal process that Israel adheres to; and subvert efforts by Palestinians and the human rights community to refer these war crimes to international bodies, such as the Hague court.

The truth is that a decades-long occupation can only survive through wanton – sometimes random, sometimes carefully calibrated – acts of terror to keep the subject population fearful and subdued. When the occupation is sponsored by the main global superpower, there is absolute impunity for those who oversee that reign of terror.

Abu Akleh is the latest victim. But these executions will continue so long as Israel and its soldiers are shielded from accountability.

• First published in Middle East EyeFacebook

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Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

This article was posted on Friday, May 13th, 2022 at 5:05am and is filed under Assassinations, Israel, Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Media, Palestine.

Letters from Moscow: Education, Health Care, Unions, and Political Parties Across the Class Divide

by HCE / May 14th, 2022

What follows is a series of emails from a comrade, HCE. He is a Russian citizen and has lived and worked in Moscow for many years. He is a Marxist-Leninist. The questions we asked him are in bold.

Dear Bruce:

Before I start answering more of your questions, I would like to make a comment on the very complicated situation concerning access to data which affects both my three previous letters and as well as any future letters.

Rocky times in the political economy and computerized and digital world

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia embarked on an extremely complicated process of switching from one political economy to another. This coincided with another drastic change, the computerization, digitization, and data organization of the whole state apparatus. This includes administration, health, education, defense, and industry. This process was difficult. We went through what I would call a “hybrid” stage in the late 1990s and up to the early 2000s.

A large number of the technical, medical, and administrative state employees were new to computers then and there was an urgent need to digitize a huge amount of data. At the same time, state facilities still had to function. The state cadres by the 1990s – 2000 were no spring chickens. They were around 45 years of age and were slower to learn about the computerized, digital world. I remember the problems of the customs. It was a real headache.  Older doctors had to learn to use computers and databases, and all this did not come easily. Computers had become a necessity that accompanied a person everywhere. Nevertheless, Russia made a leap forward and covered a lot of ground rapidly in the digital world. This was true especially in programming due to the solid mathematical background offered in schools and universities established during Soviet times.

How much does each social class pay to go to grammar school, high school and college in the public and private sector?

The constitution of the Russian Federation clearly states that preschool, primary, high school or vocational schools are free of charge and compulsory. Higher education is also free of charge, and acceptance is on a competitive basis. Parallel to state sponsored education, there is private education that is available from kindergarten until university. The classes that have the luxury to pay for their children’s education are the upper middle-class and the upper-class. Many of the children of the upper-class study abroad in the US and European countries.

In spite of all the advantages and benefits of n facilities and equipment in private schools, their performance is not better than state budget schools. This is because there are still traditions and quality remaining from Soviet times in state budget schools. There is a feature in Russian cultural history that defies elite education. Occasionally from the far regions come working-class nuggets that with their talent and persistence are able to reach the heights of the academic and artistic world.

What about the cost of healthcare for each social class?

The Soviet Union had an immense health care system that included general hospitals, specialized hospitals, hospitals for children and babies, and clinics tied to factories and universities. All this was inherited by Russia. Every Moscow resident is tied to a hospital in his administrative district. There are children’s hospitals, too. According to the constitution, everyone has a right to health protection so medical care in state and municipal health care institutions is free of charge. The cost of healthcare if the patient goes to a state-owned hospital will be one and the same for all classes.

The private health care system is much smaller and cannot be compared to the state system. In my opinion, the private system has carved themselves a niche for upper-middle class and upper-class people. This is because there are no queues, accommodations are better, and for your money the doctor is willing to listen to your complaints not for 10 minutes but for 30 minutes. Otherwise, the doctors are the same.

The problems of the state health care system are more organizational than anything else (as mentioned at the beginning of my letter). There were some attempts to make changes according to western management practices. These were failures and much disliked by the majority of the people trying to innovate, digitize the data base, and streamline the administrative apparatus. Instead of having innovation that would serve the healthcare system you have innovation for its own sake. Gradually the system already in place is adjusting.

Let me give a human face to these dry facts:

“Two months ago, my wife fell ill and was feeling very bad and since we are both elderly (80+ years of age), I called for an ambulance.  It arrived in 10 minutes. Two young men arrived who checked my wife’s blood pressure. They had a portable device for checking her heart after placing sensors on her. They received the result on graph paper. The doctor checked her and called the hospital telling me that tomorrow a specialist would arrive to check her again, but for now she was ok. The next day we got a call from the doctor and asked if that time was ok to come over. When the doctor arrived she carefully checked my wife over and wrote a lengthy prescription.  We declined hospitalization, and I promised the doctor that I would take care of my wife. She agreed but warned me that if my wife did not feel better in two days, they would want to hospitalize her.”  

All of this was free of charge.

What is the status of unions? How militant or not are they? What percentage of working-class people join them?

A couple of words regarding the history of the unions in Russia are necessary in order to understand their present status. Very briefly, unions began to appear with the rise of capitalism in Russia. They were dynamic and revolutionary, and played a big role in the February and Great October revolutions of 1917. After the formation of the USSR, the employers and the employees were both working-class and the unions became part of the state serving the working-class in health, education, recreation, and many other functions. It was called the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) – the central body of trade unions, it functioned from 1918 until 1990.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the switch from socialism back to capitalism, this entity remained in the same role although politically much weakened, but still had significant assets, organizational ties, and funds. The working-class did not have a militant organization. They were not created for organizing and fighting the capitalist employers. The name of this organization is The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR).

To date, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia is still the largest public association in Russia. As of January 1, 2020, the FNPR had 122 member organizations, including 40 all-Russian (interregional) trade unions. This included 5 trade unions cooperating with the FNPR on the basis of agreements. It also included 82 territorial associations of trade union organizations. The FNPR unites 19.9 million trade union members.  It has its relations with the government and its party, United Russia, capitalist employers, as well as having its members in the State Duma (Russian Parliament).

The second trade union of importance is The Confederation of Labor of Russia (KTR)  (English version available). It was formed in 1995 and has about 2 million members. It is militant. It has to be said that it faces immense difficulties, and its victories are few and far between. Still, they are developing and learning. The Confederation of Labor of Russia is an independent trade union and does not follow the official government line. Its struggle is not only for purely economic benefits. It has an agreement with the Communist Party since 2008.

Besides the above-mentioned trade unions there are many others, but these two are the most prominent

How many political parties are there? How strong are they? What about the Communist Party there?  

There are fifteen parties in Russia. The results of the last State Duma (Russian Parliament) elections in 2021 resulted in the following top five parties.

United Russia (the government party) – 49.2%

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) – 18.93%

Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) – 7.55%

A Just Russia – Patriots – For Truth – 7.46%

New People – 5.32%

The Communists (CPRF) in Russia came in a very strong second in spite of the harassment, arm twisting, slander, and cheating. The Communists (CPRF) in Russia are not like the communist parties in most parts of Europe and the US.  They are not on the fringes of society. Of all the parties mentioned above, they are the oldest and have deep roots in the people. This was clearly demonstrated in the conflict in the Ukraine, where many soldiers and people raised the red banner besides the official government flag. The parties at the lower end are mainly those that have a strong pro-western ideology and are closer to social democrats and liberals.

I often remember the American saying “When the going gets tough the tough get going”. As soon as the conflict in the Ukraine started the Russian government quickly found out that the baggage they had picked up from the West was useless. It could not consolidate the people, and a big number of the so-called celebrities left Russia. They found out that the Soviet culture, films, and song was what brought the people together and lay in their collective memory. The official media was forced to somewhat change its tune in its negative portrayal of nearly everything related to the Soviet period.

The Communists have a strong presence, and the people see that they have a clear and comprehensive program for the economic development of the country. The Communist ideology has a solution for the problems related to nationalism. In any TV talk show, were they invited (this is not often), they dominate simply by their logic. I find especially encouraging the fact that young people (not older than 45) are occupying important positions in the party’s hierarchy and being given the responsibility to become Duma members and governors. The CPRF has three governors out of the 85. Please note that I am using an approximation here, since the administrative configuration is not one but of several types.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) is a nationalist, right-wing party. Their charismatic leader, Zhirinovsky, on whom the party depended, passed away recently. In my opinion there could be a decline in their influence depending on how the party deals with their loss. A Just Russia – Patriots – For Truth is a coalition of three parties, the biggest is A Just Russia, with socialist-democratic views.

The New People party was formed and is still headed by a businessman, Alexei Nechayev, owner of the cosmetics company Faberlic. This is a party oriented towards the young managerial type. It has a right leaning capitalist ideology that reminds one of Ayn Rand ideas.

In reply to your inquiry of whether there are parties backed by the US, my opinion is that parties that are influenced or backed by the US are not on the right. The right in Russia is most probably nationalistic. The parties that are more likely to be on the “democratic liberal” side, are those that began their career with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and actively participated in the economic upheavals that created the oligarchy. Since those times of the 1990s, they have been steadily declining until in our times they cannot meet the quota for getting in the Duma. They still are present on the political stage due to the support from the West and the way the West exaggerates their presence and influence and the noise they make. By carefully observing the representatives of this phenomenon we notice that they were rubber-stamped by the same hand, from Venezuela, throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia. What gathers the right and the ‘liberal democrats” together is their hatred of socialism, communists and anything related to the Soviet Union. The US and the West directly and aggressively have backed parties or their representatives through NGOs. However, a law has been passed recently declaring any NGO receiving financial or other kind of support from a foreign country to be a foreign agent and will be treated accordingly.

How do each of the social classes line up in terms of religious affiliation?

Dear Bruce,

Allow me to begin this part of my letter with a quotation from no less an authority than historian Edward Gibbon:

“…but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people.”

Orthodox Christianity is the prevailing branch of Christianity and does not depend on class. It is the religion for all classes from the upper-class to the working-class.

There are other religions as well. According to the Levada Centre (not official source):

Christian Orthodox believers — 63%

Atheists — 26%

Muslims — 7%

Protestants — less than 1%

Jews — less than 1%

Catholics — less than 1%

The overwhelming number of Christians are orthodox. Religion had an intensely strong comeback after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This is manifested not only by the number of believers, but by the wealth, opulence, and the close ties between the state and the church. The official point of view is trying to bring back some of the ideology of tsarist Russia, of tying nationalism and religion to the state. The church now is ubiquitous, imposing its presence in education, the army and general public. Churches are built everywhere. However, if immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, religion had a certain appeal to the Russian population, it is now rapidly declining. All of what I have said about Christianity is true for the Muslim regions and republics where Islam schools and mosques are present in large numbers. Laws have been passed to guard the church and religion.

With affection and respect

HCEFacebook

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HCE is a friend from Moscow of Middle Eastern origin and a Marxist Leninist. Read other articles by HCE.

This article was posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2022 at 6:01am and is filed under Education, Health/Medical, Politics, Religion, Russia, The Soviet Union, Ukraine, Unions.