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June 2025

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

How the Media Manufactured a ‘Genocide’ A data-driven investigation into the way coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza surpasses actual genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, and beyond by Zach Goldberg

By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-manufactured-genocide-gaza

Concept creep describes the phenomenon in which morally potent terms expand beyond their original definitions into ever broader applications. As these terms become more diluted, they also become politically weaponized, shifting public perceptions, priorities, and policy.

In August 2020, I illustrated in these pages how terms like racism, white supremacy, and privilege saw a dramatic surge in media usage, significantly reshaping public and political perceptions and discourse. The same dynamic, I feared, was beginning to reshape another crucial term: genocide.

Genocide is going the way of racism and white supremacy, I observed on Oct. 19, 2023. Israel hadn’t yet invaded Gaza, but the mainstream media template for response to Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7 attacks was already set. Sure enough, by 2024, mentions of genocide in The New York Times (1.43% of all articles) had eclipsed the paper’s earlier peak for white supremacy (1.41% in 2020) and, though not matching the peak for racism/racist(s) (7.2% in 2020), still reflected a similar pattern of conceptual escalation.

Upon closer examination, however, much like the widespread surge in race-related terminology during the “Great Awokening,” The New York Times was far from alone, as references to genocide reached unprecedented highs across numerous major news outlets, including The Guardian and the Associated Press.

To confirm that these recent spikes were driven primarily by the Israel-Gaza conflict—and to place them in historical context—I analyzed how frequently each of the six outlets paired genocide with countries or groups historically associated with genocide allegations or acts. Using Nexis Uni, I tracked annual coverage associating genocide with well-documented historical cases, including Rwanda (1994), Darfur (2003-2008), Bosnia (1995), Myanmar (2017-present), and the Yazidis (2014-2017).

The results were striking and unambiguous: Coverage linking Israel with genocide has surged far beyond every other agreed-upon historical case of genocide across all examined outlets. In The New York Times, for example, articles pairing Israel and genocide reached levels more than nine times higher than the peak for Rwanda and nearly six times greater than for Darfur. Similarly, in The Guardian, more than 1 percent of all articles now reference both Israel and genocide—a frequency unmatched by any other pairing in recent decades.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment by David Mamet

By on June 9th, 2025

One of America’s greatest living literary legends invites you think for yourself in this compelling narrative of manipulation, power, and the human condition.

“Government, like Circe, turns men into swine,” David Mamet writes in his latest political tour de force. Prepare to be challenged, enlightened, and entertained by The Disenlightenment as Mamet dissects the modern world with enthusiasm, wisdom, and lots of references to movies about the mafia.

Once a stalwart of liberal thought, Mamet now turns his penetrating gaze on the cultural milieu that nurtured his artistic growth, revealing how America’s elites have twisted our institutions into tools of manipulation. With his one-of-a-kind wit, he exposes the intricate dance between power and myth, unmasking how the elites manipulate media and culture to maintain control.

The Disenlightenment fearlessly tackles topics from war to love, success to death, offering a fresh perspective on the human condition. His observations, ranging from the carnival-like nature of politics to the power of language, reflect a society where traditional values are under siege.

This book is an opportunity to engage with one of the most provocative and insightful writers of the modern era. Whether you’re a long-time Mamet aficionado or new to his work, The Disenlightenment promises to challenge your perceptions, stimulate your mind, and perhaps change how you view the world.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gavin Newsom and His Cruel Notion of ‘Cruel’ Gavin Newsom calls law enforcement “cruel,” while presiding over chaos, crime, and policies that punish Californians just trying to survive his idea of compassion. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 9th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/09/gavin-newsom-and-his-cruel-notion-of-cruel/

Recently, Gov. Newsom weighed in on the Trump administration’s efforts to undo the last four years of border destruction, when an estimated 10-12 million illegal aliens entered the U.S. unlawfully—among them thousands with criminal records.

Of the recent Los Angeles efforts of ICE to detain those who entered and reside here illegally, the governor proclaimed:

“Continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”

Dissect that statement, and almost everything Newsom said was either not factual or misleading.

“Chaotic?” What is chaotic is allowing 12 million unaudited migrants into the U.S. ahead of those waiting years for background checks and legal permission.

The current antidote to a truly chaotic, nonexistent border was to bring some legality and order back to immigration—and not to perpetuate a wild-west border, drug smuggling, cartel profiteering, and child trafficking and abandonment, which were the Biden-era norms.

Chaotic is 1,000 rioters in southern California swarming ICE officers, endangering their safety and lives—and then being contextualized, excused, or even supported by the governor of the state, who supposedly is an upholder of our laws and their enforcement.

Each time Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom side with violent protests and the intimidation of ICE officers, the greater the chance that an officer will be seriously injured or killed—and the violence will spike. Apparently, both think they are riding a wave of public support, when in fact the latest CBS poll found 54 percent of Americans support such deportations.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arab Elites’ Racial Slavery Against Africans in Mauritania Why the silence? by Uzay Bulut

By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/arab-elites-racial-slavery-against-africans-in-mauritania/

“Over the years, the global focus and discourse on slavery has concentrated on the Trans-Atlantic trade that featured American and European merchants. One other trade has however remained largely ignored, and at times has even been treated as a taboo subject, despite being a key component of African history owing to the devastating impact it has had on the continent, its generations and its people’s way of life,” writes the Kenyan journalist Bob Koigi.

The Arab Muslim slave trade, also known as the trans-Saharan trade or Eastern slave trade, is noted as the longest slave trade, having occurred for more than 1,300 years while taking millions of Africans away from their continent to work in foreign lands in the most inhumane conditions.

Koigi further explains:

Male slaves would work as field workers or guards at the harems. To ensure that they never reproduced in case they got intimate with their fellow female slaves, the men and boys were castrated and made eunuchs in a brutal operation by which the majority would lose their lives in the process.

When Muslims conquered much of Africa, indigenous blacks were converted to Islam, either by sword or persuasion. Tragically, the Arab Islamic slavery of Africans is not a thing of the past. It is an ongoing human rights abuse prevalent in some African nations. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa, is one of the most pressing cases where racial slavery of Africans is widespread.

The Arabo-Berber rulers of Mauritania still enslave Africans. Blacks are wholly owned, may be given as wedding gifts or loaned out to friends.

Since its independence from France in 1960, Mauritania has been an Islamic republic. The Constitutional Charter of 1985 declares that Islam is the state religion and Sharia is the law of the land.

“Mauritania is consistently ranked as the worst place in the world for slavery, with tens of thousands still trapped in total servitude across the country,” reports Minority Rights Group.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Simone Biles Hits Riley Gaines for Wanting to Save Women’s Sports Biles would rather deluded men in pigtails win all the women’s competitions. Robert Spencer

By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/simone-biles-hits-riley-gaines-for-wanting-to-save-womens-sports/

Gymnast Simone Biles, who has won seven Olympic gold medals, is enraged at Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer who has become a warrior in the fight to preserve women’s sports from the incursions of big lunkheads who claim to be women and win all the competitions. Biles think the fake women should be allowed to win all the women’s sports competitions, and that Gaines is an awful person for thinking otherwise. Yes, the world has become this absurd.

Fox News reported Saturday that Gaines “took to X on Friday to call out the Minnesota State High School League for posting a picture of the new state champions, Champlin Park High School. The school has made headlines because its dominant performance on the way to the title game was led by junior pitcher Marissa Rothenberger, a transgender athlete competing on the team.” Gaines noted that when it posted a photo of Champlin Park’s championship softball team, the Minnesota State High School League turned off comments, and remarked: “Comments off lol. To be expected when your star player is a boy.”

This drew a heated response not from Rothenberger or his teammates at Champlin Park High, but from Biles, who seemed to have been driven into a wild rage by Gaines thinking it improper for a guy like Rothenberger to be pitching for a girl’s team. Biles wrote: ” You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser.” That was a reference to Gaines finishing in a tie with a man, Lia Thomas, in the 2022 NCAA championships.

Biles continued: “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!” For good measure, Biles added: “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Conservative Colombian Presidential Candidate Shot in the Head Matt Vespa

By on June 9th, 2025

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/06/08/conservative-colombian-presidential-candidate-shot-in-the-head-n2658373

As if this weekend couldn’t get more chaotic as Los Angeles descends into a pro-illegal alien rager that’s required the deployment of National Guard units, in Colombia, conservative presidential candidate Miguel Uribe is reportedly in stable but critical condition after being shot in the head during a campaign event in Bogota (via Bloomberg):

Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot at a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday in an act reminiscent of the drug-fueled political violence that roiled the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s. 

The 39-year old senator from the opposition Democratic Center party was rushed to a medical center. He was stabilized there before being moved to a major hospital in north Bogota, according to the Attorney General’s office. 

Footage posted by local media showed Uribe’s head and back covered in blood.

The gunman has been detained, Bogota Mayor Carlos Galan said on X. Attorney General Luz Camargo said that a 15-year-old youth was arrested, after being beaten up by members of the public, and that authorities captured a 9mm gun. The minor is currently in a medical center, she said. 

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

As Rioters Burn Cars and Clash With Cops, CNN Cites ‘Lawful Protests’ and Broadcasts Broadway Play CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem, who called to slash tires of truckers protesting COVID-19 restrictions, now downplays LA unrest

By on June 9th, 2025

https://freebeacon.com/media/as-rioters-burn-cars-and-clash-with-cops-cnn-cites-lawful-protests-and-broadcasts-broadway-play/

As anti-ICE rioters torched cars and clashed with police in Los Angeles on Saturday, CNN described the chaos as “lawful protests” with “some unrest.” The comments came after the network cut away from its broadcast coverage of the violent protests to air George Clooney’s journalism-themed Broadway musical.

“So there’s unrest. Let’s start with, there’s protests, lawful protests, which is allowed in this country,” said CNN senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem, who is also a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “There is some unrest, generally dealt with by local law enforcement and if there needs to be state support through state police, and sometimes even national guard under a governor’s authority.”

Kayyem’s comments came after CNN turned its focus away from Los Angeles and toward Manhattan’s theater district, where it aired a “special” live broadcast of Good Night, and Good Luck, Clooney’s Broadway adaptation of the 2005 film chronicling former CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow.

CNN ran a segment on Los Angeles around 6 p.m. eastern time before cutting to interviews with Clooney and the play’s director, a Washington Free Beacon review found. A “pre-show” special then aired from 6:30 to 7 p.m. before the play aired uninterrupted from 7 to 9 p.m. CNN also aired a post-show panel hosted by Anderson Cooper, cutting away from it at one point to detail the clashes in California and break the network’s roughly three-hour gap in coverage. Kayyem then joined for much of the 10 p.m. hour.

The violence in Los Angeles unfolded as protesters attempted to impede ICE raids taking place in the city. They burned an American flag, vandalized cars, setting one on fire, and pelted rocks at law enforcement officials, injuring one. Dozens were arrested throughout the day for “imped[ing] agents in their ability to conduct law enforcement operations.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Voters Keen On Cutting Deficits, But Disagree How Best To Do It: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on June 9th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/09/voters-keen-on-cutting-deficits-but-disagree-how-best-to-do-it-ii-tipp-poll/

If Congress thinks it can once again kick the can down the road when it comes to federal debt and deficits, it might be surprised if it thinks voters really won’t pay much attention. They will, and yes they care about the future danger posed by soaring deficits and debt, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Congress’ current debate over how much spending to cut, whether to extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and whether to increase the current $36 trillion debt ceiling by $4 trillion, will all depend on how voters view those moves – and whether they view them as cynical or good-faith efforts to rein in debts, deficits and spending.

To gauge current public sentiment, the national online I&I/TIPP Poll (which sampled 1,395 adults from May 28 to May 30) asked voters the following question: “How concerned are you about the federal budget deficit, which is projected to stay above $2 trillion yearly?”

If you thought they wouldn’t care much, you would be wrong. Three-fourths said they were either “very concerned” (41%) or “somewhat concerned” (34%). Only 15% professed to being either “not very concerned” (11%) or “not at all concerned” (4%). Just 9% were “not sure.”

For a change, opinions on this topic were almost uniform across the political spectrum: Democrats (76% concerned, 16% not concerned), Republicans (79% concerned, 15% not concerned) and independent/third-party voters (72% concerned, 14% not concerned) were eerily identical in their responses.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Journalists for Genocide The media constitutes the eighth front in the war to exterminate IsraelMelanie Phillips

By on June 9th, 2025

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

Next month, the London freelance branch of Britain’s National Union of Journalists is to hold a meeting to discuss ”the ethics and realities of reporting genocide when the only journalists on the scene are being slaughtered.”

The meeting is being sponsored by the hard-left Labour MP and former Corbyn apparatchik John McDonnell, who has accused Israel of murder and called for its economic and military isolation.

So a fair, balanced and objective discussion, then.

Accusing Israel of “genocide,” when it’s fighting a just war against genocidal attack, when it’s allowed into Gaza tens of thousands of tons of food and other aid, when it’s repeatedly moved Gaza’s civilians out of harm’s way and has killed a far lower proportion of civilians to combatants than any other military in war, denotes either illiteracy, imbecilism or malice.

As for “the only journalists on the scene being slaughtered,” a number of those individuals have been exposed as terrorists masquerading as journalists.

Yesterday, the Israel Defence Forces said it had killed two Islamic jihadi terrorists who had posed as journalists and who had operated from a command centre in the courtyard of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. So not only were these individuals not journalists but they were terrorists engaged in the war crime of using a hospital as cover for terrorism.

Will the NUJ meeting discuss the “ethics and realities” of that?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Corrupt case: Netanyahu trial politically driven, legal experts say Analysts tell JNS the case has collapsed from an evidentiary point of view. David Isaac

By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/corrupt-case-netanyahu-trial-politically-driven-legal-experts-say/

Now in its fifth year, the cross-examination of Israel’s prime minister began this week with Benjamin Netanyahu taking the stand in the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday.

While the trial continues, legal experts tell JNS the case has collapsed from an evidentiary point of view. Netanyahu had been right, they say, the case is politically driven, something more and more Israelis have begun to understand.

“Having followed the case closely from its initiation until now I have no doubt that Netanyahu’s claim from the outset that this is political persecution is correct,” Talia Einhorn, professor of law and a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, told JNS.

Haim Shain, an attorney and legal lecturer at Shaare Mishpat College in Hod Hasharon, concurred, explaining to JNS that Israel’s political opposition realized it couldn’t win back the parliament so it focused on taking control through non-electoral means, namely the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s Office, the press and academia.

“What they failed to do in elections, they are doing through the judicial system, with the backing of academia and the media. For some time, we have understood that these are phony cases,” he said.

Netanyahu faces corruption charges in three separate cases—Cases 1000 and 2000 (the charge is “breach of trust” in both instances), and Case 4000 (bribery, fraud and breach of trust).

This week’s cross-examination began with Case 1000, led by prosecutor Yehonatan Tadmor. Each case has its own team of prosecutors. (Analysts say the trial will cost the state many millions in legal costs.) Yet despite the resources invested, the prosecution has conducted itself in a negligent and unprofessional manner, experts say.

For instance, in Case 1000, the prime minister is accused of taking valuables over the course of three years, mainly in the form of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cigars and champagne from two wealthy businessmen, Australian James Packer and Israeli Arnon Milchan.

Although cigars and champagne are the items most associated with the Netanyahu trial in the mind of the public, Einhorn said that the charge is based entirely on the word of one witness, Hadas Klein. No evidence, or additional testimony supports her claim and no investigation was undertaken to corroborate it.

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