Disgraceful NYT Op-Eds

Disgraceful NYT Op-Eds

by Stephen Lendman

NYT policy is consistent. It's longstanding. It's deplorable. It's opposite of what readers deserve.

All news and opinions Times editors call fit to print aren't fit to read. Editorial policy endorses establishment values.

Truth and full disclosure are prohibited. They're sacrificed on the alter of wealth, power and privilege. Wrong over right is supported. Scoundrels get feature op-ed space.

Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al Saud is Saudi Arabia's UK ambassador. He's a royal House of Saud member.

He's part of one of the world's most repressive regimes. Last December, Times editors gave him featured op-ed space.

He took full advantage. His notion of peaceful conflict resolution is preventing it. He wants Syria's government forcefully toppled.

He calls doing it a humanitarian priority. Saudi Arabia supports hardcore extremist killers. It funds and arms them. It supplies them with chemical weapons.

It plans sending them anti-aircraft missiles. Perhaps other heavy weapons shipments will follow. Saudi officials want war, not peace.

So do NYT editors. Featuring a Saudi royal family member and likeminded scoundrels reveal it.

On February 13, Naftali Bennett got feature op-ed space. He's an Israeli fascist. He's part of Netanyahu's coalition government.

He heads the hard-right Habayit Yayehudi (The Jewish Home) party. He's Israel's economy minister. He opposes press freedom.

He's against "excessive legalism." He calls it "judicial activism." He wants hardline rule enforced. He favors non-Jews excluded from Israel.

He opposes hiring "foreigners." He calls them "infiltrators." He and disgraced Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are ideological allies. They support military might over right.

They hate Arabs. They want them denied all rights. Ideally they want them gone. Bennett's op-ed lied. He argued for "putting all Israelis to work."

Nearly 1.7 million are Arab citizens. Israel exceeds the worst of apartheid South Africa. Racism is institutionalized.

Fundamental civil and human rights are denied. Arabs are treated like subhumans. Their crime is not being Jews.

Joel Kovel is right. Zionism is a machine for the manufacturing of human rights abuses. Jews come and go freely. Arabs are treated like fifth column threats.

Bennett supports the worst of hardline policies. He claims otherwise. His goal, he says, is freeing Arabs "from the clutches of poverty."

Its granting Arab women "vocational training, small business loans and general business guidance."

He's especially concerned about "the Bedouin community," he claims. "(T)he Israeli economy belongs to both its Jewish and Arab citizens, and the status quo simply cannot continue," he said.

"(I)magine the new Israeli workplace," he added. Arabs and Jews "focused on the same objective - advancing our economy and our country."

Israeli policies are polar opposite what Bennett suggests. Arabs are ruthlessly persecuted. Goyim are consistently denigrated. They're not wanted.

Israel for Jews alone is longstanding policy. Bennett and likeminded hardliners endorse it. David Ben-Gurion once said:

"This is not only a Jewish state, where the majority of the inhabitants are Jews, but a state for all Jews, wherever they are, and for every Jew who wants to be here."

"This right is inherent in being a Jew." It applies to no one else. Israeli children are taught Jewish exceptionalism.

They're taught to hate Arabs. They're indoctrinated from pre-school through higher education.

Arabs are consistently vilified. They're dehumanized. Israel belongs exclusively to Jews, they're told.

Bennett reflects the worst of longstanding hate-mongering. Times editors are complicit in featuring him.

On February 12, they gave former Georgian despot Mikheil Saakashvili prominent op-ed space. He gained power the old-fashioned way.

In 2004, Washington installed him. It did so lawlessly. It did it bloodlessly. It did it by electoral coup d'etat.

US-funded NGOs were involved. The included the Soros foundations, Freedom House, and the anti-democratic National Endowment for Democracy.

Others connected to US intelligence and the Pentagon were involved. Saakashvili was a convenient US stooge.

He headed a pro-Western totalitarian regime. He governed ruthlessly. Georgia became a police state.

Civil liberties were abolished. Heavy-handed repression targeted nonbelievers. Political opponents were eliminated.

Saakashvili maintained close ties to NATO and Israel. Neoliberal harshness became policy.

State enterprises were privatized. Georgia's civil service was gutted. Business-friendly tax cuts were enacted. Widespread corruption gamed the system for personal advantage.

Saakashvili's tenure included suspicious deaths, disappearances, mass arrests, detentions, torture, loss of civil liberties, mass media control, and support for Washington's imperial agenda.

He partnered in Bush's Afghan and Iraq wars. In August 2008, he waged US proxy war on South Ossetia. It's Georgia's breakaway province.

He picked the wrong fight against the wrong adversary. South Ossetia has lots of Russian citizens.

Moscow intervened to protect them. It did so for strategic reasons. It crushed Saakashvili's aggression. It was wrongfully blamed for doing so.

In January 2008, electoral fraud gave Saakashvili a second term. He served from January 2004 to November 2013. He was well rewarded for services rendered.

His departure didn't come a moment too soon. Georgians reviled him. They wanted him gone.

Times editors featured him. He took full advantage. He headlined "Czar Vladimir's Illusions." He turned truth on its head. He called Putin's presidency "oil-fueled authoritarianism."

He called Georgia a good place to do business. He ignored brutally exploitive practices he instituted.

He lied claiming "Georgia (is) the safest and one of the least corrupt countries in the region." He ludicrously called it "an open democracy."

Georgia is rife with corruption. Wealth, power and privilege rule. Ordinary people suffer. Giorgi Margvelashvili replaced Saakashvili.

He's closely tied to Georgian billionaire/former prime minister Bidzi Ivanishvili. He served from October 2012 to November 2013.

He appointed his close associate Irakli Gharibashvili his successor. Some democracy. Business as usual continues.

Putin bashing is longstanding scoundrel media policy. Times editors feature it. The Evil Empire is back.

Putin is public enemy number one. Opposing Washington's imperial agenda draws rebukes. So does his position on wanting international law respected.

It prohibits interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. Self-defense only is permitted provided the Security Council says so. Putin and Obama are geopolitical ideological opposites.

Putin supports peace and stability. Obama wages one war after another. Putin believes nation-state sovereignty is inviolable. Obama endorses lawless aggression.

Syrian sovereignty is inviolable, says Putin. Syrians alone should decide who'll lead them.

"No one is entitled to decide for other nations who will be brought to power and who will be removed, Putin stresses.

"A change of power, if it occurs - and it could only occur by constitutional means - should result in peace and stop the bloodshed."

Sochi geopolitics features Putin bashing. Media scoundrels call him a strongman. Baseless accusations follow.

Saakashvili called Sochi a "Potemkin village...The Games are a one-time propaganda event." They're on the site of a 19th century genocide, he claimed.

Area residents aren't treated as "equal citizens," he added. People are suppressed, he claims.

Russian society is far from perfect. It shames what goes on in Georgia. Saakashvili ruthlessness explains best. Business as usual continues.

Russian democracy is real. Same old, same old, defines Georgia. Saakashvili didn't explain.

Featuring him, Bennett and likeminded scoundrels is longstanding Times policy. Doing the right thing is systematically avoided.

Truth and full disclosure advocates aren't welcome. It bears repeating. All the news and opinions Times editors call fit to print aren't fit to read.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen [at] sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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