The Essence Of Propaganda Is Repetition

Raining Rockets

Tom Are: Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. said on CNN,  “We have thousands of rockets raining down on our citizens.” In fact, we hear over and over again, “rockets are raining” down on Israel.  It makes a strong impression. 

Advertisers will tell you that the essence of propaganda is repetition.  So, we hear on FOX News, repeated reports of “rockets raining” down on Israel.  It is such an important image that Israel will do anything to keep it alive, even when rockets stop. In the summer of 2008, Palestinian sources reported 8 rockets in June, 12 in July, 11 in August, 4 in September and 2 in October.  An Israeli Intelligence Report issued by the Israeli government to international journalists  states, “Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire.” There were no deaths by rockets because there were no rockets.[1] 
Not the image of “rockets raining” that Israel wants.  An average of four drops per month hardly qualifies as a rain.  When I look out on my front drive and see four drops, I hardly expect to read in the paper that we had a rainy day.  If there are not enough drops to wet the street or water my hedges, I don’t expect my neighbor to say, “Wow! What a rainy day.”

THE END OF CANKLES + GOLDMAN TRUMP - WB7

Does Science Support Male Infant Ritual Genital Mutilation AKA Circumcision? (Brian D Earp Paper)

By Mike Buchanan [J4MB]: Brian D Earp is a highly respected scientist and ethicist, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. We regularly cite his paper Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and male circumcision: should there be a separate ethical discourse? 
Some brief details on Brian Earp, from the paper we’re about to link to:

Brian D. Earp is a scientist and ethicist who holds degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge universities; the last of these degrees was in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and medicine, focusing on male and female genital surgeries. Brian has served as a Guest Editor for the Journal of Medical Ethics, editing a special issue on the topic of infant circumcision, and has published widely in the leading journals in his field.

A new paper by Brian (and Robert Darby, an independent researcher at the University of News South Wales) has come to our attention – Does science support infant circumcision? It’s 26 pages long, the following extracts from the start and end of the paper should give you the essence of it:

Interview With Alternative US Economist Paul Craig Roberts

Interview by Culture on the Offensive: Dr Paul Craig Roberts is a well-known economist who received his PhD from the University of Virginia. He was, in the early 1980s, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan. He has been the associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has been a columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns at www.paulcraigroberts.org have attracted a following worldwide. Do check out his website!

But none of this explains why we are interviewing him over at CULTURE ON THE OFFENSIVE. The reason is that Dr Roberts has proven himself to be a critical and free thinker. Despite being appointed by Ronald Reagan in the 80s and working for various right-wing news outlets, Dr Roberts quickly distanced himself from the presidency of George W. Bush. Further, unlike most republicans of today he does not accept laissez faire capitalism and he is anti-war. We also reject laissez faire capitalism and see war as a last resort. But most of all, we are interviewing Dr Roberts because, like us, he is difficult to classify in the standard political taxonomies. He is not right-wing, he is not left-wing, he is not a libertarian, and he is also not an authoritarian. He is his own man.
Our interview will concentrate on what Dr Roberts knows best, Economics. The reader should see this as one Economist’s alternative perspective on the United States economy and the world’s economy. He does not paint a happy picture. But it is better to be right. We would always prefer the red pill.

Misogyny And Bachelorhood

By Tim Patten:

Misogyny and Bachelorhood
Early on during the 2016 Republican presidential primary campaign, Donald Trump took umbrage at aggressive questioning by Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly at one of the debates. In addition to characterizing her as “not very good or professional,” Mr. Trump said, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”[i] That latter remark triggered a firestorm, with the outspoken candidate being widely accused of misogyny—hating or disliking girls or women.[ii] [iii]
Unfortunately, as with many of the words and phrases that are being carelessly thrown around in these days, they are not necessarily being used to make a rational or coherent point. They are being deployed as weapons of gender manipulation and hate, coopted and maligned by radical feminists and other man-hating ideologues in a quest to undermine male influence and advance selfish agendas.
The notion of “misogyny” dates back to ancient times, when Hesiod, the Greek poet believed to be active between 750 and 650 BC, described women in largely unflattering terms. That said, the term actually had a different meaning back then. According to Hans Licht, author of History of Greek Life and Customs, the pejorative “woman hater” expression was applied mostly to gay men.^[iv]

Introducing The London Kleptocracy Bus Tour

The City is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimised by the Privy Council. Britain’s financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.
Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drug gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever so civilised mafia state.
– From last year’s post: Guardian Op-Ed – The City of London Has Turned Britain Into a “Civilized Mafia State”
This is too good not to cover.

Water Pollution Reaches Catastrophic Levels In Gaza

By Isra Saleh el-Namey: The 34-year-old had started to do the laundry but the supply of water at her home ran out.

And though he had spent a long day at school, her son Ahmad, 11, went back and forth nearly half a kilometer a dozen times to fetch buckets of water from a truck near the municipality building in Khan Younis, where the family lives. The laundry had to be done. 
Mother and child have gotten used to this routine. “The norm is not to have water during the day,” Abeer told The Electronic Intifada. “It is very tiring for my child to fill a bucket and carry it at least 400 meters like this.”
Frequent power cuts in Gaza have made it impossible to provide homes with running water all day. With summer approaching, moreover, Gaza is threatened with a water scarcity crisis that has been compounded by successive Israeli military assaults and a nearly 10-year-old blockade.
Muhammad Abu Shamala, an official at the Khan Younis water plant, describes the situation as “catastrophic.”
“Pollution of our water resources has reached alarming proportions and the salinity of the underground aquifer continues to increase,” Abu Shamala said.