It is no coincidence that the greatest number of people who support Israel reside in the United States and Canada. After all, the governments of those two nations are Israel’s most ardent backers and the mainstream media in North America has consistently distorted the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In stark contrast, most of the rest of the world’s population openly sympathizes with the plight of the Palestinians. While the history of Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex, this article seeks to use numbers to present the historical reality in an accessible manner and to highlight the distortions and inaccuracies prevalent in the rhetoric from Washington and Ottawa as well as the propaganda promulgated by the mainstream media. Continue reading
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Informers for a Day
In war-torn Saravena, a town of 30,000 in Arauca department in eastern Colombia, soldiers dressed as clowns befriend local children by offering them candy, rides on armored personnel carriers, and the use of the army’s swimming pool in return for the opportunity to pummel them with pro-army and anti-rebel propaganda. Children have become the focal point of Psychological Warfare Operations (PsyOps) being conducted by the Colombian army in this embattled town that is currently home to 40 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers who arrived in January as part of the Bush administration’s global war on terror. Like the PsyOps used by the U.S. army as part of the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War, these programs are not only geared to winning over the “hearts and minds” of locals, they are also being used to elicit information from the civilian population, especially children, about rebel activities in Saravena.
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“A gripping tale of savagery and terror, but also of tenderness, compassion, and renewal.” —Noam Chomsky
Garry Leech 