Tag Archives: Israel

The American exceptionalism myth and the selling of U.S. domination

I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. – Barack Obama, 2015.
America is a nation with a mission. Our aim is a democratic peace—a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman on this earth. – George W. Bush, 2001
America remains the indispensable nation, and there are times when America and only America, can make a difference between war and peace, between freedom and oppression. – Bill Clinton, 1996
May 27, 2018

By Geoffrey O’Neill (Special to Truth and Shadows)

Americans are expected from birth to believe in the notion of U.S. superiority over other peoples in other nations. The daily school ritual of pledging allegiance to the flag and playing the national anthem at sporting events—whether the Super Bowl or a neighborhood swim meet—is a given. Americans are taught that they are intellectually, socially, economically, and morally superior to Continue reading →

Academic freedom and thought crime policing: Hall sues University of Lethbridge administration

Banned in New York! This paper was prepared for the “Thought Crimes” panel cancelled by the organizers of the Left Forum

This is the text of the presentation given today, June 4, 2017, at the “Left Out Forum,” which is made up of four panel discussions that were censored by the Left Forum because of supposed “complaints.” This text was submitted for publication by its author, Prof. Anthony James Hall. The details of the censorship of the Left Forum can be found in my article of May 29, 2017 here. You can read my original article about Prof. Hall’s suspension from the University of Lethbridge here.

By Anthony James Hall (Special to Truth and Shadows)

How ironic to be speaking on a panel devoted to the subject of “Thought Crimes” at an event whose original Left Forum hosts have shown themselves to be repressive thought crime cops disguised as progressive public intellectuals. As I understand it, this panel was initially conceived as a venue where all the presenters were to reflect on the recriminations we are facing due to our attempts to articulate interpretations of fundamental truths inconvenient to power.
Dr. Joy Karega originally agreed to be a member of this panel. Responding, however, to the first round of Left Forum thought policing, Dr. Karega chose to withdraw from this year’s extension of Continue reading →

B’nai Brith smear campaign against Anthony Hall reflects worsening threat to academic freedom

Hall on the campus of the University of Lethbridge shortly after learning of his suspension.

October 12, 2016

By Craig McKee

Over his long and impressive academic career, Professor Anthony Hall has helped us all better understand how crises can be manufactured to manipulate public perception of narratives that serve the interests of established power.
Now, he is the victim of one of those contrived crises.
In the latest of a growing list of glaring assaults on academic freedom, Hall has been suspended without pay from his tenured teaching position at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada where he has taught for 26 years. As the result of an obviously faked and planted Facebook post, he has become the focus of a Continue reading →

What we should have learned from Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty

This article, posted originally on Truth and Shadows in June 2016, has been updated for the 50th anniversary of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty (June 8, 2017).

By Craig McKee

It is one of the greatest lies that most Americans – in fact most people around the world – have never heard of. And it reveals much about the true relationship between the United States and one of its “closest allies,” the State of Israel.
This was an act of war — a false flag attack, a mass execution, a war crime, a gross betrayal, and the beginning of an exercise in deception and propaganda that continues to this day.
It was 50 years ago that Israel launched a shocking and brutal attack on an American intelligence ship, the USS Liberty, as it cruised in international waters Continue reading →

Cutting off the head of the snake: Ken O’Keefe on beating the bankers, Israeli brutality, and the 9/11 ‘gift’

“We don’t want war. But we have war – all the time. Why? Because the bankers run the world, and war is the best thing for them.” – Ken O’Keefe

By Craig McKee

He is passionate, fearless, charismatic, and very blunt.
To be sure, human rights activist and former U.S. Marine Ken O’Keefe says things some people don’t want to hear, things that jolt them from their complacency about the tyranny and deceptions that pervert our world. The message he has to offer is not an easy one to accept for so many who have had their perceptions molded by the mainstream media, mainstream entertainment, and mainstream politics.
Recently, O’Keefe concluded a North American speaking tour with appearances in Montreal (April 23) and Toronto (April 28 and 29) that both I and fellow Truth and Shadows contributor Barrie Zwicker attended. We also had the Continue reading →

Dismantle Gaza and relocate 'non-belligerent Arabs': Israel Institute for Strategic Studies

This photo comes from newsobserver.com.

By Craig McKee
Israel is losing the war.
I don’t mean the one being fought with missiles, bombs and bullets in Gaza. (That’s not a war anyway – it’s a massacre with 1,800 Palestinians killed so far). I mean the propaganda war – the worldwide fight over public opinion.
Thanks to the Internet and social media, people around the world, especially younger people, are coming to understand better than ever what is being done to the Palestinian people in Israel and the occupied territories. This latest slaughter is causing people to seek out more information about the history of the region and the history of this conflict.
Salon.com’s David Palumbo-Liu put it this way: “Israel is in fact risking losing the narrative war altogether, as more and more of the global Continue reading →

Lie becomes truth: Palestinians blamed for being oppressed, killed, and robbed of their land

By Craig McKee
Orwellian.
That’s how I can best describe in a single word the perpetual propaganda war that accompanies the oppression and repeated slaughters of Palestinian civilians by Israel. The victims are painted as terrorists; the oppressors are painted as victims who are just defending themselves.
Yes, I get it: Hamas is firing homemade rockets into Israel. This practice has killed 28 Israeli civilians since 2001. But how many Palestinians have the Israeli armed forces killed over those 13 years? How about the past 13 days?
Each Israeli death is a tragedy for those killed and their families. And I feel for those who are traumatized by the rocket attacks – however unlikely it is that they’ll actually be hurt by them. But stress felt by Israelis over these rockets is hardly comparable to massacres unleashed on the Palestinians in Gaza three times in the past five years not to mention the theft of land and denial of basic rights they have endured for the Continue reading →