Tag Archives: genocide

The setting changes

That is at times a rule, but to call it the massive rule to measure things to is not the greatest rule to live by (you might have to think that sentence over a little while before it makes sense). You see, there is a story that bugs me and I was almost willing to let it go. But Yesterday in ‘Name Calling’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/09/17/name-calling/) I started down a rabbit hole, a hole that smothers and makes it hard to breath. You see the press to a much larger degree has become a populist media, they do not check sources (as shown yesterday) The media is losing credibility in massive waves. The problem is that I thought I was alone. When you are the only one shouting at a wall, is there a case that you yourself might have lost the focus? 

That was my premise (at first).

So when you start looking at the wall, not being a wall, but a sea the dimension changes. It is no longer the height, but the amount of water that becomes an issue (it makes sense after a little while) and when you start looking into the water and you realise that water is transparent, you start looking for things. As such I found several sources (I already had a few) and these sources are a lot more focussed on the sham that is the International Association of Genocide Scholars. There was the simplest setting that “a member in good standing—a status achieved simply by paying an annual fee of 30 dollars. No academic credentials are required” and this comes with the added quote “Dr. Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee in San Diego and a scholar who has served on the IAGS advisory board, told The Media Line: “I was silenced. And the resolution was forced through. What really troubled me was the way that it was presented to mainstream media, that 86 percent of the association had unanimously agreed to condemn Israel for genocide. That’s inaccurate. And to be perfectly honest, it lacks academic integrity, basic integrity to falsely represent the association and falsely cite statistics.”” (source: the media line) The France24 news (added in yesterday’s blog) had a few other settings that were weird, but the overbearing setting was that the media didn’t care, they preferred to not do their job. They became (as I personally see it) as courtesans towards the digital dollar. 

The medicine also gives us “Only 28 percent of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) cast a ballot in the resolution declaring Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza. Of those who voted, 108 supported the measure—less than a quarter of the association’s total membership. Yet international outlets, including The Guardian, AP, Reuters, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times reported the outcome as if it were a sweeping consensus of the world’s foremost genocide experts. Critics inside and outside the association now argue that the process was unrepresentative and that the coverage misled the public into believing in unanimity where none existed.” Now I wanted to have a setting that if people like Amal Clooney (a revered British lawyer and human rights activist) was part of that list, you get a mixed setting, but that is as I see it less of a case. The doughty street chambers adds this to her name “Amal Clooney is a barrister who specializes in international law and human rights. She is ranked in the legal directories Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners  as a leading barrister in international human rights law, public international law, and international criminal law. She is described as ‘a brilliant legal mind’ who is ‘in a league of her own at the Bar’. The directories spotlight her ‘commanding presence before courts’ and describe her as ‘a dream performer before international tribunals’ with ‘superb advocacy’ that is ‘crystal clear in focus and highly persuasive’. The rankings emphasize her ability to galvanize ‘heads of state, foreign ministers and business … in a way that is very effective’ for victims of human rights abuses.” That would be a legal mind to say ‘wow’ to, but when you see the feedback from the IAGS (in the France24 story) stating that it goes through a “rigorous peer reviewing process” and that it went through three separate committees. Now here is the crunch, there are 500 members, did they came from that pool? Where is the paperwork on that? And that happens before the vote. So how was the voting set? What was the minimum amount of votes? Only 28% voted as other sources gave its (the France24 article never brought that out) the article also ‘pressed’ of those who voted. As I see it, Melanie O’Brien never gave the details and more over France24 never pushed anything on this. And she skipped over the report being a three page document. That alone should have halted the press. They didn’t. The joke about the journalist no one cares about was 106 pages (the UN document). One person, so how come that the ‘genocide’ setting that players like Hamas feed us can be summarized in three pages? So how is ‘extensive’ research done in three pages? And who are these reliable and extensive sources? That entire sham (about 4 minutes of it) was swallowed whole by the audience.

So, here I am digesting several matters. As such it is time to call in some assistance and (at https://www.thefp.com/p/another-reason-not-to-trust-the-experts) wee see that the Free Press gives us ‘Another Reason Not to Trust the ‘Experts’’ and it starts by giving us “The International Association of Genocide Scholars calls itself a body of experts, but joining requires only a form and a fee. Members include parody accounts like ‘Mo Cookie’ and ‘Emperor Palpatine.’” And the story start of in a most interesting way. “This week, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) voted on a resolution that accused Israel of committing genocide in its war against Hamas. Like moths to a flame, the mainstream press ran wild with the story of the organization’s declaration. “Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Leading Scholars’ Association Says,” ran the headline in The Washington Post.

And in continuation we get “The Guardian quoted the president of the association, Melanie O’Brien, declaring that the resolution represented “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide.” In another interview with ABC News Australia, O’Brien boasted that the resolution passed with nearly 90 percent support. The BBC’s headline read: “Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza, World’s Leading Experts Say.” The problem for these publications is that if you kick the tires—even slightly—it becomes obvious that the resolution is a sham, top to bottom.” And the press is not waking up? You have gotta be joking me. With the source that according to most started the wave of looking into this setting we are given “On Tuesday evening, Salo Aizenberg, a board member of HonestReporting and contributor to NGO Monitor, tested that proposition. After exploring the IAGS website, he found that he could become a member of the organization with just a $30 contribution. “This organization that purports to be a leading organization of scholars is open to anyone who is interested,” he told The Free Press.” I got alerted to this setting by the Javier Bardem (who told us all on the red carpet in the Emmy event) and someone who went to town on this in LinkedIn. That was my trigger to give you yesterday’s blog and I found out most of what I know in under an hour of investigation. As such what did the Guardian, the Washington Post and ABC News Australia do? Is it weird that I call the ‘Courtesans of the digital dollar’? (I considered that calling them greed driven whores was too crass a statement to make). We then get “IAGS’s open membership is important because as Aizenberg learned in his research on the website, 80 of the 500 members of IAGS all claim to be based in Iraq—a country not known for universities with robust genocide scholarship. But it’s even worse than that. Only 108 out of the organization’s 500 members actually voted for the resolution. So contra O’Brien, only 21.6 percent of the IAGS supported it, not nearly 90 percent. That figure represents 108 out of the 129 people who bothered voting for the resolution at all.” As well as “One IAGS member, Sara Brown, the author of Gender and Genocide in Rwanda, posted on X that the leadership of the organization prevented members from filing comments criticizing the resolution before the vote. “We were promised a town hall, which is a common practice for controversial resolutions,” she wrote, “but the president of the association reversed that. The association has also refused to disclose who were the authors of the resolution.” After reading through the resolution, it’s easy to understand why the identities of the authors were shielded from the other members of the group. It’s riddled with inaccuracies and deceptive language. For example, the first paragraph asserts that Israel has killed “59,000 adults and children in Gaza,” without distinguishing between civilians and Hamas fighters.” You need to read the rest in the Free Press article (link above) And there is more to ‘convict’ the IAGS of, they make a sham of several settings and the press has no other recourse but to convict them as well, because if they do not, the press will have proven themselves to be biased and unworthy to call themselves news media. There is of course the funny setting that all these papers will have to be charged VAT from now on as most hide behind the zero VAT setting for being news sources. When that stops their advertisers go the way of the Dodo really fast.

The media line also gave us “For her, the flaws went beyond procedure. “They cite U.N. sources … and if you look at the citation, it says data that has not yet been verified by the United Nations, and then in footnote five it says Ministry of Health Gaza—the Hamas-run Ministry of Health,” she pointed out. “The fact that those are the statistics that they had to cite and it’s in the first paragraph immediately speaks to a lack of academic integrity … It’s not even academically lazy. It’s reckless. And the harm is real.”

The article can be seen (at https://themedialine.org/top-stories/only-28-of-scholars-associations-members-voted-on-gaza-genocide-resolution-but-global-media-missed-the-story/) and that part gives us that The Media line as ‘trusted news’ is a lot more trustworthy than the mainstream media at present. 

Darn, I forgot to shine the limelight on Microsoft again (my personal behemoth) and in that same setting I now wish you a good day and consider trusting the news media a lot less than before. So to all of you, have a great day today and don’t forget to question your news vendor at some point.

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Name calling

That is the uncertain certainty we all face. We talk about rats, we call people turncoats, but how many people are aware of the term ‘Dicky Dick’? That is what I saw evolve last night. You see, there is a stage of misinformation that I found repulsive. In this I am calling towards the Emmy’s and in particular the quote by Javier Bardem, he made mention of the IAGS.

As such I offer the video (at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BDPoQ273RmU) that will give you a considerable jolt. Whilst on the other side we get (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUXCU6_mjI) France24 with the IAGS talking on air. So here is the setting and the first one is important as it gives the issues we tend to ‘ignore’ Who are these scholars. How many voted, how many members? In another video I saw member names like Adolf Hitler and a few more hilarious settings, like a canola Jedi. Then we get to a publication called Quillette (I have never heard of them) giving us (at https://quillette.com/2025/09/11/the-genocide-scholars-who-cant-define-genocide-iags-israel/) ‘The Genocide Scholars Who Can’t Define Genocide’ giving us “The International Association of Genocide Scholars (“IAGS”) recently announced that 86 percent of their members had concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. This was extremely misleading. First of all, only around 28 percent of their members voted on the resolution and a mere twenty percent of total members approved it. And this was not the only problem with the resolution. It also misrepresented the crime of genocide.” As I see it, this should wake you up and it is just another slap n the face of the media, not vetting the sources they have. It gives us the supporting setting of “Genocide is an act undertaken with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such. If you cannot establish a specific intent to commit this crime (such an intent is known in legal parlance as dolus specialis), you cannot establish genocide.” As well as “The IAGS resolution did not even attempt to establish such an intent, relying instead on statements made by other entities and by extrapolating from what the organisation B’Tselem has described as a “broader analytical framework.” However, legally, genocide requires a fully conclusive finding, meaning that no other explanation exists for the event or events in question other than the intent to commit the crime of genocide. This does not apply here, as there are alternative explanations for the casualties in Gaza that the IAGS fails to recognise.” And then we get to the report of France24. Can anyone tell me why Gaza’s cannot escape to Egypt? It borders Egypt on one side. As such they aren’t “boxed in” so why isn’t the press asking clarification from the government of Egypt? I am certain that at least a dozen media channels haven’t done that. Has anti-Israel grown that much in the western media?

And the Quillette article is showing us a lot more and shows the media to be at fault for ever relying on the IAGS. The article was written by Elliot Malin is apparently an attorney and policy advocate. I am using the word apparently as in this instance I am confronted with a whole heap of sources I never heard before and as such there are issues. Oh, and before you sign off on anything. When has anyone mentioned the setting of Hamas in all of this, because THEY started this. And whilst their ‘leaders’ are hiding in Qatar (were until recently, before the Israeli air force made short work of them). Now there are further escalations and no one is wondering why Qatar was keeping Hamas leaders in the first place. 

This setting has all the works of misdirection. So now the setting of a Dicky Dick. That is a legal professional who knowingly and willingly works for organized crime. As such, what do you call a person who knowingly and willingly is calling himself an expert in (for example) ‘Genocide’ whilst having no legal or military expertise in the matter? Something to consider and what do you call the media who is optionally intentionally using such sources for painting an anti-semitic image?

Another part to consider. I am not an expert (even though I have some military expertise) and this setting is turning my stomach and when people like Javier Bardem take stage to elevate these non-experts. Questions need to be asked. I am very willing to state that the intentions of Javier Bardem were good. After all the media is the bigger culprit, how big? That remains the question.

Have a great day.

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Time Magazine as a comedian

There are days when things go pear shaped, we all have them. Some go pear shaped in the best of ways, others less so. Now, I am not a big fan of Time magazine. I have nothing against them and the pictures tend to be pretty awesome. Yet, until today I had no idea that they had an interesting sense of humour. So, let’s take a look at ‘This Is What the U.S. Can Do to Help End It‘ in regards to the Syrian war (at http://time.com/5195442/eastern-ghouta-syria-civil-war-anniversary/).

It starts with “as it stands today, the U.S. is essentially a bystander. The Trump Administration has on cruise control the same ISIS-centric policies of the Obama Administration. The small contingent of U.S. troops present in eastern Syria only marginally stabilize territory liberated from the Islamic State while preventing Iranian and Syrian government forces from seizing the region. The Trump Administration has ended the CIA’s arm-and-equip program for the Syrian moderate opposition, a program which was created under President Obama, which was never sustainable or substantial“, which is true, there is nothing in opposition of that and in that regard we remain serious. That is, until we see: “Find a way to deliver aid. The U.S. must work with the international community to find an effective means of getting resources to the region. The stream of videos coming out of Ghouta shows a population subjected to the worst conditions imaginable. We should take the lead in enforcing United Nations demands for a real cease-fire to alleviate this brutal suffering. We can save lives now.” Is that so? Perhaps some can remember the ceasefire that was unanimously set in motion at the UN around the 1st of March. So, how did that pan out? Knowing that Russia and Syria hold the US in even less regard than the UN, the chances of the first part becoming reality is not that much of a reality to begin with and re-iterating that point 12 days later is a little bit of a joke at the very least. In eastern Ghouta, according to SBS, the death toll has passed the ‘thousand mark’, implying that the Ghouta region gets depopulated by close to one hundred cadavers every day. One could argue that until the culling stops, it will be too late for humanitarian aid. If the players had only acted 6 years ago, instead of waiting, sitting on ones hands and hoping for diplomatic resolution, or accept the reality that Syrian lives have no counterbalance in oil and let them pass away (it is not humane, but the reality we see here will never ever be near humane). Wasn’t it Friedrich Nietzsche who said: ‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering‘? So how much meaning can we find in Syria at present?

But that was merely their opening act. Getting to the main event we get “Repair relations with Turkey. In the end, U.S. policy in Syria rests on the U.S. and Turkey working together. Turkey is currently engaged in Operation Olive Branch against Syrian Kurds in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, to stabilize its own southern border and to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state“. So, how delusional is that? Turkey only cares about Turkey, which in itself is nothing they can be blamed for, that stance is fair enough. So, how will the US continue in regards to the Armenian genocide? Let’s not forget that we might soon have the situation that Turkey could be blamed for two genocides, at that instance Turkey would in theory surpass Nazi Germany. The entire PKK issue is one that hangs around the necks of both the US and NATO. The headline ‘Kurds threatened with beheading by Turkey’s allies if they don’t convert to extremism‘, which we see in the Independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-assad-regime-turkey-afrin-kurds-eastern-ghouta-us-allies-militia-a8252456.html) also shows “Mr Abdulrahman, who is the leading human rights monitor in Syria with a network of informants throughout the country, says he is worried that international attention is entirely focused on the Syrian army assault on Eastern Ghouta and “nobody is talking about” the potential slaughter of the Kurds and other minorities in Afrin“, with in addition: “as many as one million Kurds may be threatened and adds that it is becoming extremely difficult for them to escape from Afrin because Syrian government checkpoints on the only road leading south to Aleppo “are demanding bribes of up to $4,000 per family to let people through.” Mr Abdulrahman points to growing evidence drawn from videos taken by themselves of militiamen claiming to be members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that the units advancing ahead of regular Turkish troops are extreme jihadis“, the reasoning there is “Isis recruits had been instructed by Turkish trainers not to use their traditional tactics, such as the of extensive use of car bombs, because this would identify them as terrorists. He suspected that Isis fighters would be used as cannon fodder in Turkey’s war against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and then discarded“.

Perhaps we should also remember the part that Time Magazine did not give us. “The Turkish military responded with a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign that led to the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, most of them Turkish Kurdish civilians, and the displacement of more than three million Kurds from south eastern Turkey“, which is seen in The Middle East by Ellen Lust. My knowledge of the PKK goes back to the days when we saw Öcalan pleading for an independent Kurdistan. I am not stating that the PKK was innocent, there are questions on both sides, yet as the Americans are so actively ignoring the Armenian issues as well as trying to please Turkey, a nation that has never proven to be a true ally, will the US and NATO remain in denial in regards to the 40,000 dead Kurdish civilians? That would be wrong on a whole new level. In that regard there is one additional part. The claim that ‘the PKK had been accusing Turkey of supporting ISIS at the time when the PKK was part of several offensives against ISIS in Iraq and Syria‘, an issue reported by Al Jazeera in 2015. Was that ever proven or disproven? You see, allowing an ISIS supporter in our midst is one part that should offend everyone, yet that too does not make it to the radar of Time magazine.

And it does not end there, the comedy gets to be better with “Only Turkey has the credibility, resources and geopolitical heft to steward U.S. interests in Northern Syria“, it is Saturday Night Life (SNL) in magazine form. Turkey has not had any credibility for close to a decade; perhaps some Americans remember how Turkey wanted all their debts wiped to allow US planes over Turkey. This happened shortly after 9/11, so when you remember that part, how dicey is their allegiance? And the only resources it clearly has are the ones they have and others pay for. That is seen with “Turkey’s continued membership in NATO means that American taxpayers subsidize the Turkish state in the form of guarantees of military defense in case of military conflict with non-NATO nations”, which implies that at least in part, the US is paying for the conflicts that Turkey is currently in. When was that going to be exposed and in that light, what resources does Turkey actually have, bought and paid for with non US supported funds? I do not know, I am merely asking.

So after the main event we get a small collection of one-liners like “Threaten additional, immediate sanctions of Russia. Putin is directly responsible for the Syrian government’s actions. Options at the U.N. have been exhausted. Accountability mechanisms are non-existent — even investigative mechanisms like the U.N. probe into chemical attacks in Syria have been undermined and curtailed by Russian veto“, sanctions have never worked (so far), Syria will never listen to Russia but will knock on their door for aid (linked to clear profitable agreements that is) and the UN options were never exhausted, in fact none were actually used in the end as none had any chance of working.

It is like me stating that my sex life with Scarlett Johansson is exhausted! That part is absolutely true, yet I never have been with her in the first place and as I never have had any Dangerous Liaisons with the youthful young lady (read: 33 years, 3 months and 21 days at present) and I am merely looking at optional non-existing future endeavours, so for that part I am completely honest (and equally unrealistic), just like the United Nations.

So as the article ends with the truth in the shape of “There will be no winners in the Syrian Civil War, and the reconstruction costs of returning the country to even a minimal level of functioning will be enormous. Neither Russia nor Iran alone can afford to support it, and the Syrians will bear the costs of this debacle for decades to come“, we all agree that this will be the case. So as the EU and US are preparing to make some good will gesture in the shape of 3-4 billion, I wonder how much of that will in the end make it to the people. I personally see it as a path that will invigorate corruption and self-indulgence of the administrations that receive such funds. UN oversight will be close to pointless and in the end a fair bit of that will go towards paying the Russian constructions firms like LLC Priceline, who had the connections to end the war by culling the opposition of President Bashar al-Assad. So in the end it is like watching the UN feeling better about themselves because they added some relief funds. When we set the entire spectre of events into a classical frame, we could be watching the reality of the Divine Comedy. When you consider that in the end well over 500,000 soul ended in eternal torment, the setting of reality is worse than the one Dante Alighieri envisioned, but then the Syrian war was no Time Magazine Comedy, or a classic Italian Poem, which is at present 700 years old. Syria will end up being the damnation of us all, we will end up being damned through our inaction to get anything done because in the end none of us got anything positive done towards the Syrians, not those in Syria and not the millions of refugees, we ended up disappointing them all close to completely.

Yet with the end of the Divine Comedy we got ‘My guide and I did enter, to return To the fair world‘ making it a fairy tale compared to the Syrian reality, the reality of the world we helped create, merely the darkness of caves and the evil we harbour in our midst. I feel certain that is how the refugees feel for generations to come, the eternal curse of inaction and those watching those remain absent of action towards their survival.

 

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