“Assange Is Not A Journalist!” Yes He Is, Idiot.

By Caitlin Johnstone: As we discussed yesterday, whenever Assange is in the news and people are defending him you always see a bunch of hyper-emotional empire loyalists running around online trying to manage the narrative about him. One of the most common talking points which comes up is that Assange is “not a journalist”.
The reason this talking point comes up, of course, is because the WikiLeaks founder is besieged by powerful forces who are attempting to imprison him for publishing inconvenient facts about them, and his defenders often voice their concerns about what this means for the future of press freedoms. The completely baseless claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is used in an attempt to defuse the argument that his prosecution by the US government could lead to the same fate for any news media outlet which publishes leaks on the US government anywhere in the world. If he’s not a journalist, then his prosecution sets no precedent for real journalists.
This argument, if you can call it that, is fallacious for a number of reasons. For starters, as The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald explained last year, there’s not any legal distinction in the US Constitution between news media outlets like the New York Times and an outlet which solely focuses on publishing leaks. If you set the precedent with any publisher, you’re necessarily setting it for all of them.

Baseline Of A Desecrated Land V: Lower Jordan-Dead Sea

Part 5 of a 12 part series examining the ecological impacts

of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

By Dick Callahan:

The lower Jordan river is a wreck

“The river one hundred twenty feet wide and six feet deep, gravelly bottom; current five knots.” W.F. Lynch, USN, Commander of the Jordan River Expedition, in 1848.

“All our lives we had studied and sung about this stream so we visualized a mighty current with almost magical qualities. We were amazed to find that it was not as large as the small creeks that flow through our own farm.” Former President Jimmy Carter on his 1973 swim in the Jordan River

Lower Jordan

Historically the lower Jordan was a decent size river that discharged 1.4 billion cubic meters per year into the Dead Sea.

Creepy Uncle Joe v The Uncomfortable Women Of #MeToo

By Paul Elam: So finally, after years of Joe Biden making public displays of his lack of personal boundaries, it has come to bite him right in the middle of his aging, white male ass.
And, of course, my knee jerk to his comeuppance is hell yes. Joe Biden being hoisted up in slow, excruciating increments on his own petard is a welcome sight. Biden, the co-author of the stinking barrel of feminist pork known as the Violence Against Women Act, has for decades used his pulpit to shame and control men on behalf of hateful, power hungry women.
When speaking to college audiences he even stoops to addressing the men in the crowd as though they are all potential rapists who need to monitor each other for sexual transgressions and be prepared to intervene any time a man gets ‘out of line.’ In other words, he’s been on a recruitment campaign for brownshirts; thugs to enforce the feminist line on their erstwhile brothers.
But, of course, all that was before he started making noise about running for president again. Once it became clear he was in serious consideration the #MeToo brigade pounced. And like I said, part of me is just #FuckYeah.
But between the lines of convoluted and conflicting media text about this there is a story that they are ignoring.

Why Your Hatred Of Assange Is Completely Irrelevant

By Caitlin Johnstone: By the time I publish this we’ll be at or around the 24-hour mark since WikiLeaks announced that two high level Ecuadorian government insiders had told them that Julian Assange faces eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy within days, which seems to have been further confirmed by the Foreign Minister of Ecuador now tweeting that states have the right to revoke political asylum at any time. Activists are mobilizing everywhere, a round-the-clock presence has been set up outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and a #Unity4J emergency broadcast is currently underway full of many respected dissident voices coming together in defense of the legendary leak publisher.
And, as we should all have come to expect by now, the establishment narrative management patrol has been going out of its way to inform us all that this is a good thing and no cause for alarm. Whenever you voice concerns about the persecution of Julian Assange on any public forum, you will with remarkable predictability encounter empire loyalists calling Assange a stinky Nazi rapist Putin puppet Trump supporter who deserves to be in prison forever.

Feminism Is Killing You

Terrence Popp: The CDC released a report detailing the drastic increase in drug overdoses among women. When you look closer at the facts, things get crazy.

US Democratic Capitulation - Must Watch!

Chuck Schumer (D-NY) & Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with Haim Saban - 2018 Israeli-American Council (IAC) National Conference.

Baseline Of A Desecrated Land IV: Vanishing Biomes

Part 4 of a 12 part series examining the ecological impacts

of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
By Dick Callahan:
Israel’s only major freshwater lake may disappear

“Set sail on the beautiful Sea of Galilee with an inspirational time of praise and worship.” from a brochure for ‘Christians United for Israel’ founder John Hagee’s 2018 tour of the Jewish state.

“The Kinneret will never go back to what it was, and in 20 years it won’t be there at all, it’ll be a swamp.” Israeli water official (who asked to remain anonymous) quoted in Haaretz February 01, 2018

For thousands of years the region’s fresh water heart was Lake Kinneret, (aka the Sea of Galilee) fed by streams from the Syrian and Lebanese mountains to the north, that cross into what is now Israel, then merge to became the short upper Jordan River which discharges into the north end of the lake.

The One Anti-Democratic Jewish State Solution

By Gilad Atzmon: Some of the more advanced Israel/Palestine commentators have agreed amongst themselves that the ‘one-state solution’ amounts to empty talk for the simple reason that Palestine is ‘one-state’ already: It has natural borders, one electric grid and even one international pre-dial number (+972). But this beautiful and historic land, stretched from the river to the sea, is dominated by a foreign and hostile ideology that is racially supremacist and vile towards the indigenous people of the land.

Some of those perceptive analysts have been bewildered following a peculiar shift in Israeli politics: while the so-called Israeli ‘Left’ has been advocating racial and ethnic segregation between Jews and Palestinians by adopting the two-state solution, it is actually the Zionist ultra-right that has been pushing constantly for an integration of the ‘land’ by means of Israeli annexation.
While very few within the Israeli Left joined the call for a one-state solution, it seems as if PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli Right are thrilled by the idea.