Interesting Articles: mid October 2023
What good editors can do; Joe Lauria
[Out of Sight, Out of Mind – by Mr. Fish., borrowed from the Hedges article]
Published: 2023-10-14
Introduction
In Hamas v Israel: A Media Narrative editors who have betrayed their trade received a deserved roasting for publishing tawdry, narrative propaganda and labeling it as analysis. Anger is all well and good for certain purposes. But, lets turn the page and embrace the opportunity which this moment in history offers.
The latest flash of violence by Palestinians resisting the three quarter century long, continuous series of human rights abuses (aka genocide) handed to them, their parents and their grandparent has been spread across the news sheets. The war porn of remote explosions and rubble wander cinematographically across our devices. The narrated language speaks of the horrors suffered by Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas terrorists. This opportunity is taken by the sycophants of the MSM to sell advertising and support their neo-imperial cause.
There are more serious editors out there. For this episode of Interesting Articles, Joe Lauria the Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News is the focus.
Created and edited by the late Robert Parry, Consortium News was his effort to provide an independent space for reporting. In his words:
When we founded Consortium News in 1995 – as the first investigative news magazine based on the Internet – there was already a crisis building in the U.S. news media. The mainstream media was falling into a pattern of groupthink on issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information because it didn’t fit with what all the Important People knew to be true.
Lauria (@unjoe) was handed the reigns for Consortium News by its board, more than 5 years ago, as its founder's as ill health impaired his ability to continue. Under Lauria's leadership and direction CN has not only stuck to its guns of fearless, accurate reporting. CN has innovated with audio-visual media with the aid of Elizabeth Vos and Cathy Vogan for the CN Live! series. CN has doggedly reported on issues of import from the persecution of Julian Assange to the same for Palestinian and Russian Ukrainian peoples, or the first peoples of Ecuador. Similarly for the struggles for labor rights and many other issues both international and domestic for the US.
There are multiple reasons why the type of rubbish written by Pilkington will never be published at Consortium News under Lauria's watch. He is a serious journalist. He takes pride in and honors his profession. He can spot rubbish like that "Iran wins" article instantly. Lauria will never stain the reputation of Consortium News, or waste the time of its readership by publishing such drivel.
Interesting Articles
Instead, in four working days since the outset of the current phase of violence in and around Gaza, Lauria has offered Consortium News' readership the following.
In order of publication date:
Israel's Massive Intelligence Failure, Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 2023-10-08
The Israeli intelligence failure which enabled the success of Hamas' Operation Al-Aqsa Flood enables Ritter to offer a deep dive into Israeli intelligence from his experience as a UN weapons inspector. Included are not only the names of persons and organisations, but methods of approach and conflicts between the CIA and the Israeli counterpart AMAN.
For those interested in either the operations of Israeli intelligence or the period of history between the first and second US Iraq wars this article is invaluable.
During its conclusion Ritter considers the likely cause of the failure of Israel's intelligence apparatus. He attributes it to over reliance on the trained machine-learning (AI) systems which proved so successful in their 2021 Operation Guarding the Walls.
Palestinians Speak Israel's Language, Chris Hedges, Consortium News, 2023-10-09
Hedges lays out the known stark statistics of the state of Israel's oppression of the native population of Palestine, the British protectorate which was carved up to create the nation. He too relies on his person experience of witnessing violence from central America to the Middle East, including Gaza to denounce the current Hamas initiated outbreak.
He relates the story of Marek Edelman, deputy commander of the armed resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising against the Nazi's who "had sealed 400,000 Polish Jews inside". "The trapped Jews died in the thousands, from starvation, disease and indiscriminate violence. When the Nazis began to transport the remaining Jews to the extermination camps the resistance fighters fought back. None expected to survive."
Edelman learned from his experience and "thundered against Israel’s appropriation of the Holocaust to justify its repression of the Palestinian people".
This beautifully written article places the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beside other historical parallels to re-issue a powerful Jewish voice against the Israeli side of the violence.
Mansour: Israel's 'License to Kill', Peoples Dispatch, Consortium News (originally Peoples Dispatch), 2023-10-09
PeoplesDispatch's article provides up-to-date information on representations and actions at and outside the U.N Security Council in response to the crisis, including statements by Palestine's Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour.
Reporting of numbers of causalties, injuries, persons seeking shelter, locations of fighting, the number of Israeli troops assembled to attack and other details are provided from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency), OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), the Palestinian Ministry of Health, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Times of Israel and Al-Jazeera by PeoplesDispatch.
'A Massive War Crime', Jake Johnson (originally CommonDreams), Consortium News, 2023-10-10
Johnson's article quotes the intentions of Israeli leaders and provides responses by legal scholars citing international statues for human rights and war crimes.
The following gives a sense of the detail:
"Gallant is ordering a massive war crime (ICC 8(2)(b)(xxv)) and very likely a crime against humanity (ICC 7(1)(b), 7(2)(b) [extermination] / 7(1)(k) [inhumane acts]),” Dannenbaum wrote. “Presence of combatants within a civilian population does not affect its civilian character (AP I 50(3)). ICC has jurisdiction.”
The direct, to-the-point article is perhaps best summarized by:
In a statement on Monday, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said that Israeli officials “who now call for killing, destroying, crushing, smashing, and even starving the residents of the Gaza Strip” in the wake of Hamas’ attack “forget that this is already Israeli policy.”
Uprooting the Causes of Violence in Gaza & Israel, Phyllis Bennis, Consortium News (originally CommonDreams), 2023-10-10
Phyllis Bennis' understanding of the history of the conflict and her desire to see its root causes addressed so that the violence will end is plainly written in her carefully cited informative article.
While she uses 'Open Air Prison' as a headline that which she authoritatively describes is an Open Air Concentration Camp. The U.N has been so concerned about that state of abuse of Gazans that they warned that by 2020 Gaza would become unlivable. That date has, she reminds us come and gone.
Bennis also reminds us of the 2018 non-voilent Gazan protests:
In 2018, a series of overwhelmingly non-violent marches, organized by Ahmed Abu Artema, a young Gaza poet, and taking place inside the besieged Strip, called for an end to the blockade and freedom of movement for the Gaza population. They were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and Israeli sharpshooters taking aim at the mostly young protesters.
and the Israeli law of that year which cemented Israel as an Apartheid state. It confers that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”. One cannot be more blatant.
Bennis dispassionately reports the intolerable oppression which the civilians of Gaza suffer in their concentration camp (my phrase, not hers).
A Matter of Justice, Ray McGovern, Consortium News, 2023-10-11
Mr McGovern is not known to mince his words, and words he has with the religious Jewry of Israel, or anywhere for that matter.
He begins by quoting Deutronomy, letting the Bible do his heavy lifting:
Deuteronomy 15:4-5 New International Version:
“4 However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, 5 if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.”
He like Hedges and Ritter before him brings his own experience, this time in Israel, to bear:
I thank God Marine vets Matt Hoh and Mike Hanes were with me when armed settlers attacked a Veterans For Peace delegation in 2017 in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, and later fired tear gas at us in Hebron! I was grateful that the welt on my left breast from a tear-gas cannister, fired at us in Hebron, was gone by the time I got home, so I did not have to tell family members who tend to worry – even when I go off with such sturdy companions.
He also raises one of the darkest chapters in US-Israeli relations, that of the attempted all-hands sinking of GTR 5, aka the non-combatant ship USS Liberty, during the 1967 6 day Israeli war.
He included in his article the video of his presentation to National Press Club on March 7, 2014:
WATCH: CN Live! John Pilger & Ilan Pappé on Palestine, Lauria interviews Pilger and Pappé, Consortium News, 2023-10-09
Lauria interviews legendary Australian journalist and film maker, John Pilger and jewish Professor Ilan Pappé both of whom have been observing the conflict for longer than many of us have been alive.
This, these 7 publications, is what a principled, skilled editor can offer to a curious audience; accurate, current reporting, historical reference points, international law, current international responses, and more than anything else, context.
Long may we and Consortium News benefit from Lauria's work.
Postscript
Bob Scheer, former editor of Ramparts and creator of ScheerPost, and Joe had a wee chat back in May 2022 when Consortium News was receiving the same sort of treatment which had been handed out to the canary in the coal mine, Wikileaks, a decade earlier. This early episode of Scheer Intelligence is unavailable on the podcast distribution platforms now, but the direct URL which I dug up back in the day still works. Enjoy these two reporters become editors discuss the history of media suppression in the US during their lifetimes.
MP3 (there are a few redirects involved, so the download can take a few seconds to begin)
Sources
About, Consortium News
Welcome Consortiumnews.com Editor Joe Lauria!, Consortium for Independent Journalism’s Board of Directors, Consortium News, 2018-04-05
The interesting ‘articles’:
Israel's Massive Intelligence Failure, Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 2023-10-08
Palestinians Speak Israel's Language, Chris Hedges, Consortium News, 2023-10-09
Mansour: Israel's 'License to Kill', Peoples Dispatch, Consortium News (originally Peoples Dispatch), 2023-10-09
Peoples Dispatch is both the "author name" and the name of the website at peoplesdispatch.com. Its a project of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
'A Massive War Crime', Jake Johnson (originally CommonDreams), Consortium News, 2023-10-10
Uprooting the Causes of Violence in Gaza & Israel, Phyllis Bennis, Consortium News (originally CommonDreams), 2023-10-10
A Matter of Justice, Ray McGovern, Consortium News, 2023-10-11
WATCH: CN Live! John Pilger & Ilan Pappé on Palestine, Lauria interviews Pilger and Pappé, Consortium News, 2023-10-09
My Israeli Friends: This is Why I Support Palestinians – ILAN PAPPE, Ilan Pappé, The Palestinie Chronical, 2023-10-10
The Information War: Veteran Journalists Discuss Media Repression, YesXorNo, 2022-05-08
Ramparts Magazine Archives, The Unz Review, (14 Years, 131 Issues, 1,566 Articles, 9,250pp)
The USS Liberty: An Anniversary of Bravery, Determination and Sorrow, YesXorNo, 2022-06-11
Culture
Here's an offering from an Australian rock band on emotional responses to confinement and oppression by colonists on a existing population.
Powderfinger - Like A Dog (Official Music Video), Powderfinger (from their 2000 album, Odyssey Number Five), Powderfinger, uploaded 2008-10-02