On December 6, it was announced with much fanfare that the 10/7 Project, a new “centralized communications operation to promote continued US bipartisan support for Israel; push for accurate, complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” and achieve a “stronger” media “focus” on the victims of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood would be launched, by a quintet of the largest Israeli lobby groups on U.S. soil.

Who and what is funding the 10/7 Project isn’t at all clear. Publicity material spoke vaguely of an unnamed “coterie of philanthropists” and the organization’s interest in sourcing “more philanthropic support” moving forward. Future formal financial disclosures may make for fascinating reading, but its founders offer some clues.

The five comprise the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This is quite the rogue’s gallery of Zionist entities, several of which have deplorable track records of actively whitewashing, if not outright facilitating, Israeli apartheid propaganda activities that have become turbocharged since October 7.

As such, the 10/7 Project’s professed mission of countering “disinformation” about October 7 and “Israel’s response” to the events can only be considered highly disquieting, especially given its target audience is “key media and government influencers.” In reality, of course, the organization is just the latest salvo in the Zionist state’s long-running information war against Palestinians and the Western world. This pitched battle has recently become ever more treacherous, specifically due to Tel Aviv’s genocidal “response” to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

One could be forgiven for thinking the 10/7 Project had already floundered in its objectives. After an initial ripple of mainstream interest, primarily from Israeli outlets and Zionist news platforms, the organization has seemingly vanished without a trace from the media landscape – or at least, its name has. As we shall see, though, it’s evident that in the manner of an iceberg, the 10/7 Project’s public footprint represents but the visible tip of something far larger and considerably more destructive.

‘Stranglehold on Congress’

While the 10/7 Project may not be directly making headlines daily, its parent organizations certainly are. The ADL has since October 7 published a steady stream of reports, lapped up by the media largely without question, testifying to an explosion of “anti-Semitic incidents” across the Western world in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Read the fine print to discover 45% of these “2,031 antisemitic incidents” were actually “anti-Israel rallies” https://t.co/dYjxH1dReM pic.twitter.com/g4yyFkY7mu

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 12, 2023

Shocking stuff, one might think. Yet, as an investigation by MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod revealed, the ADL is producing such staggering figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants at both as individual “anti-Semitic incidents.” Despite the exposure of its embarrassing, Enron-style accounting, the League continues to pump out the same bogus “research” at regular intervals. On December 12, it claimed “anti-Semitism” in the US was now up 337% in the wake of October 7, “an all-time record.”

It is far from the first time ADL definitions of anti-Semitism have failed to pass muster. For example, in December 2022, The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein revealed that the League did not categorize Ukraine’s openly Neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion to be the “far right group it once was.” This, despite the fact that Azov’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” as articulated by founder Andriy Biletsky, remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, the infamous AIPAC – accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress” – has made clear its significantly intensified mission to rid Washington DC of any elected official possessed of even vaguely anti-war, pro-Palestinian views, by declaring war on lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

When AIPAC moves against, or in favor, of particular politicians, they mean business – and depressingly, the organization usually wins. Annually, the organization publishes a report on its “policy and political achievements” that year. Its 2022 installment boasts, among other things, of bagging $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and having gifted $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” 98% of whom won their elections, in the process defeating 13 anti-Israel challengers.

Conflicts of Interest

The official website of the 10/7 Project is spartan in the extreme. Visitors are offered a “contact us” form, a link to subscribe to its regular newsletter, and a “what we do” section listing purported activities. This includes informing the public “with credible, real-time information about events in Israel and Gaza,” highlighting “excellent reporting,” calling out “biased coverage,” holding “biased media accountable,” and offering “expert spokespeople for press and broadcast outlets.”

Unmentioned anywhere is that the 10/7 Project is represented by a trio of notorious PR and political consultancies – CKR Solutions, OnMessage Public Strategies, and SKDK. Together, they move in the shadows to advance the organization’s interests and messaging publicly and on Capitol Hill. SKDK’s contribution will inevitably be the most insidious and impactful.

Since its founding in 2004, the company has careened from damaging scandal to damaging scandal yet consistently secures major, big-ticket clients. The reason for this is clear. SKDK was founded by and employs a retinue of high-ranking, well-connected Democratic operatives. Among them is Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s White. House Communications Director, credited as the “mastermind” of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and widely regarded as a key member of the President’s “inner circle.”

Joe Biden speaks with SKDK’s Anita Dunn ahead of his State of the Union address in February 2023. Adam Schultz | White House

Ever since Obama’s 2008 election win, SKDK has been plausibly accused of selling privileged access to the White House to clients despite failing to register as a lobbying firm. This means major corporations have a direct means of encouraging – and bribing – the Oval Office to offer tax breaks, shred regulations, dump legislation, smash unions, and generally harm the U.S. public interest with total impunity and in absolute secrecy.

SKDK’s expansive Rolodex also helps politicians get out of serious trouble. In 2018-2019,  Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan paid the company $200,000 for “crisis communications” assistance after one of his campaign workers sued him for harming her professionally when she complained of sexual harassment by one of his top aides. Meanwhile, in August 2021, it was revealed a senior SKDK staffer personally intervened to suppress negative media coverage of sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Even more perversely, it’s since been revealed that at the same time, SKDK was advising Madigan on how to navigate his public controversy, the company was also helping his former campaign worker bring a lawsuit against the aide who’d sexually harassed her. A more perfect demonstration of the DC blob’s incestuous nature and SKDK’s total lack of ethical and professional scruples one would be hard-pressed to find. And both are highly competitive categories.

SKDK’s website boasts of its work on some of the Democrat’s top pet projects

SKDK played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, decisively reversing his fortunes after abysmal performances in various caucuses. While the mainstream media primarily praised the miraculous work of the company and Dunn – his de facto campaign director – there has also been fierce controversy surrounding its electioneering activities. For example, SKDK fired off daily “Misinformation Briefings” to major tech and social media firms, including Google, Meta and Twitter, requesting that specific content be suppressed or removed.

In most cases, the recipients complied, meaning SKDK exerted extraordinary influence over what voters did and did not know and could and could not see during the controversial 2020 Presidential election. Which surely at least partially accounts for Biden’s victory. To make matters even worse, the company was simultaneously. reaping a $35 million windfall from the government of California by running the state’s supposedly bipartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaign. The contract, originally to be financed by local taxpayers, was mysteriously awarded to SKDK on a “no-bid” basis.

‘Dictate Terms’

Clearly, the 10/7 Project was intended to be a very public affair. In an early promotional interview, executive director Josh Isay – perhaps unsurprisingly, until August 2022 SKDK’s longtime CEO – boasted about the “widespread enthusiasm” with which the organization’s “efforts to set the record straight and combat misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” had so far been received:

We look forward to continuing to do the critically important work of providing policymakers and the American public with reliable information about Israel and Hamas, and uplifting the stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre.”

Yet, there is no obvious sign of those ambitions bearing fruit to date. A partial explanation for this failure may lie in the 10/7 Project’s wish to transform the “innocent victims” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood into human interest stories and atrocity propaganda while elevating the organization’s eponymous date to the position of 9/11 in the American public’s mind.

In the weeks since the 10/7 Project’s inception, it has become ever-increasingly clear the Zionist narrative of what unfolded when Hamas breached Gaza’s armored concentration camp walls – unquestioningly regurgitated over and again for weeks after that by the Western media – is completely and grotesquely fraudulent.

For example, on December 15, it was reported based on social security data that Tel Aviv’s claim that 1,200 civilians died in the initial assault was greatly exaggerated. In reality, just 695 lost their lives. The previous figure was itself a revision from an initial civilian casualty “estimate” of 1,400.

Every civilian death in a warzone is an extremely grave crime. It is surely for this reason that Tel Aviv on December 12 desperately argued “it would not be morally sound” to investigate “friendly fire” incidents in “kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities” during Operation Al Aqsa Flood – civilians killed by Israeli Occupation Forces. Nonetheless, the numbers involved are avowedly “immense.”

Among the “stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre” selected by the 10/7 Project for public “uplifting” in service of whitewashing and justifying the Gaza genocide will have been a great many individuals slaughtered in cold blood by indiscriminate, excessively violent IDF actions. This is all but inevitable. Urgently casting those victims into obscurity while ensuring the entire issue of Zionist “friendly fire” is not examined is now of paramount importance.

More significantly, though, the exposure – and occasional admission – of Tel Aviv’s brazen lies has fundamentally shifted mainstream narratives and sympathies away from Israel and towards the Palestinians. Audiences of every extraction globally can witness the monstrous reality of the genocide in Gaza and learn of Zionist abuse of the Palestinians even before the colonial entity’s founding in 1948 with their own eyes and ears.

Israeli deceit has been so relentless and so readily exposed that even typically subservient Western news networks and their featured pundits are treating official claims with enormous skepticism. Similarly, Zionist violence is so constantly unremitting and wantonly sadistic that graphic reports of carpet bombs maiming and slaughtering every generation of Palestinians are now commonplace.

Meanwhile, developments such as the revelation that IDF soldiers killed three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag, speaking Hebrew and seeking their assistance have traveled widely, in turn highlighting prior examples of identical “peacetime” atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians. By contrast, there has to date been no “misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” to combat at all.

A Losing Battle

As a result, the 10/7 Project and its founders are placed in the invidious position of having to publicly defend the indefensible – namely, a modern-day genocide unfolding on television screens and front page headlines the world over. In such circumstances, overt and unashamed advocacy work is best conducted behind the scenes. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the 10/7 Project may be most dangerous and potent due to its open-door Oval Office access.

Tireless solidarity efforts by European activists, protesters, citizen journalists, and civil society organizations have produced significant results. Paris went from mulling legislation criminalizing anti-Zionism in November to now leading global pressure for a ceasefire. Multiple governments and opposition leaders are likewise changing their tune. Senior British officials openly warn Netanyahu to drastically rein in his unquenchable bloodlust if he wishes to retain any international support.

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, right, shakes hands with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after a meeting in Tel Aviv, Dec. 18, 2023. Maya Alleruzzo | AP

Stateside, however, while the crusading work of grassroots pro-Palestine voices and groups has been redoubtable, the Biden administration’s commitment to facilitating, encouraging, and exacerbating the Gaza genocide, however it can, remains undimmed. While the President has demanded Netanyahu’s slaughter be wrapped up by the new year, there is no indication material, financial, and diplomatic support upon which the new Nakba depends is being curtailed. On December 18, during an official visit to Tel Aviv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a bloodcurdling oath:

This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support [for] Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change.”

One way greater pressure could be brought to bear against the Biden administration might be for citizens to demand their elected representatives in Washington to disclose what dealings they may have had with the 10/7 Project or its representatives since its launch.

To ascertain whether and how White House policy and public pronouncements are being directly informed, if not explicitly dictated, by the wishes and wills of a shadowy and unaccountable lobbying coalition with indeterminate but no doubt intimate political and financial connections to the perpetrators of a 21st century Holocaust. Perhaps then the President might be sufficiently embarrassed to at last rein in his out-of-control, genocidal proxy.

Feature photo | President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport on Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. Evan Vucci | AP

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

The post Top Democrat-Linked PR Firm Tapped by Pro-Israel Groups to Control Gaza War Narrative appeared first on MintPress News.

In Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn and Forge a Democracy for All, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt consider the institutions and practices of counter-majoritarianism in the United States. The book effectively demonstrates that American democracy is under attack, but the authors’ proposals for constitutional amendments to help end that attack are unlikely to be implemented, writes Larry Patriquin.

Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn and Forge a Democracy for All. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Viking. 2023.

Find this book: 

A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of Donald Trump, the loose cannon who defeated his competitors for the Republican Party nomination in 2016 and then went on to shock the world by winning the presidency. From that point on, almost all Republican politicians offered their support to him, while the few remaining GOP dissidents were effectively silenced. It all ended badly, however, with Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in November 2020 and the ensuing coup attempt, which he encouraged, in January 2021.

As late as the 1960s, the Democrats and Republicans were “big tent” organisations dominated by white Christians. As a result, they had much in common

So, how did we get here? Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that as late as the 1960s, the Democrats and Republicans were “big tent” organisations dominated by white Christians. As a result, they had much in common, so both were able to vote overwhelmingly in favour of important legislation, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But shortly thereafter, the Republicans began to pursue a hardcore “white party” strategy as the best way to win elections, drawing southern white voters away from the Democrats. This process solidified by the time of Richard Nixon’s re-election in 1972 and was mostly complete with the GOP’s embrace of burgeoning Christian fundamentalism in the 1970s and 1980s.

The United States is now a country where electoral minorities, rooted in a mostly white, rural-based party, can consistently rule over and dominate a multiracial, highly urbanised society.

Today, however, the Republicans are trying to scupper democracy. They realise they cannot win elections if they play by the rules, because they have for the most part abandoned the vast majority of non-white citizens, in a society that is becoming more diverse with each passing year. This has had profound effects on American governance. Representative democracies are supposed to ensure that majorities can implement their favoured policies and are able to do so relatively easily and peacefully. But the United States is now a country where electoral minorities, rooted in a mostly white, rural-based party, can consistently rule over and dominate a multiracial, highly urbanised society.

This turn toward authoritarianism has unfolded because of the US’s counter-majoritarian institutions and practices.

This turn toward authoritarianism has unfolded because of the US’s counter-majoritarian institutions and practices. These include, among others: (1) a politicised Supreme Court, in which six of its nine justices regularly contribute to rulings that are reactionary and antidemocratic; (2) the apportionment of two senators to each state (the same number, for instance, to Wyoming’s 580,000 residents as to California’s 39 million); (3) a constitution that is almost impossible to amend (aside from a minor amendment in 1992 on Congressional salaries, the last successful amendment was in 1971 – that is, more than 50 years ago – when the voting age was lowered to 18); (4) the Electoral College, which enabled Donald Trump to capture the presidency in 2016 even though he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes; and (5) the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes for a bill to proceed to the floor, hence serving as an effective veto of potential legislation by 41 senators.

In sum, “in America majorities do not really rule” (225). In response, Levitsky and Ziblatt make ten general recommendations on how to move forward, including having the government register voters, creating independent redistricting commissions in every state, and abolishing the Senate filibuster. There is a reasonable possibility that most of these reforms could be implemented.

This is not the case, however, for their additional five recommendations, which would necessitate constitutional amendments. They would like to: (1) enshrine the right to vote; (2) abolish the Electoral College; (3) have Senate seats distributed more in line with each state’s population; (4) create term limits for Supreme Court justices; and (5) revise the Constitution’s amendment process by removing the requirement to have three quarters of the states approve each proposed amendment.

They point to the abolition of slavery and the extension of suffrage to women, both of which were forward-looking ideas at one time, but were eventually implemented

Levitsky and Ziblatt anticipate my main objection to their constitutional proposals: that if they “make sense in theory, aren’t they utterly unrealistic in practice?” (236) They argue, though, that while there would be serious obstacles to their passage, these amendments are within the realm of possibility and so should at least be debated. They point to the abolition of slavery and the extension of suffrage to women, both of which were forward-looking ideas at one time, but were eventually implemented, even if they took a century or two to accomplish.

They suggest that the “unrealistic” criticism could come down to the perception that the “reforms we propose might appear radical” (236). They add that the refusal to at least air these reforms is problematic, noting that if “an ambitious idea is ‘unthinkable’,” then “the battle is lost” (238). However, the content of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s proposals is neither ambitious nor radical. As they observe, they are recommending laws and regulations similar to those in place in just about every nation outside the US.

Previous landmark constitutional amendments occurred during and after extended calamities, including the Civil War, World War I, and the massive civil rights movement of the 1960s. I am not sure the successes created in these instances could be replicated today

Still, their proposals are unlikely to pass, at least any time soon. This is because previous landmark constitutional amendments occurred during and after extended calamities, including the Civil War, World War I, and the massive civil rights movement of the 1960s. I am not sure the successes created in these instances could be replicated today, especially given that – as the authors effectively demonstrate over hundreds of pages – the Republican Party and its supporters have detached themselves from democracy, from the law, and even from reality.

The current political climate in the US is much more toxic than it was a half century ago

The current political climate in the US is much more toxic than it was a half century ago, yet throughout the 1970s advocates could not get final approval from enough states to support the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed in Congress in 1972. It would have enabled the following sentence to become part of the Constitution: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” If something so basic, something almost no sentient being would oppose, could not find its way into the Constitution, then none of the authors’ proposed amendments, all of which would significantly reduce the power of Trump-crazed Republicans, seem to have any chance of ratification.

At the time of writing, Donald Trump held a massive lead in polling for the Republican primary – with more support than all other candidates combined – so barring an asteroid hitting the earth, he will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, and he could very well defeat Joe Biden (the two are currently running neck-and-neck in the polls). If that happens, or if Trump loses and he again cheers on his violent sycophants as they rampage through Washington, the US will not be in a position to enact sensible constitutional amendments, even ones that are relatively uncontroversial – even one which, for instance, would declare that women are equal to men.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

Image Credit: tai11 on Shutterstock.

Social security helps millions, but America’s largest anti-poverty program remains vastly misunderstood

Social security has become an issue in the presidential election campaign. Democratic candidate Joe Biden has come under criticism from his competitor, Bernie Sanders, for his past advocacy of cuts to social security benefits. Donald Trump has made headlines for recent comments suggesting he would be open to cutting social security.

There is no doubt that Biden has in the past supported cuts to social security. But there are other reasons, too, that social security should really be a prominent issue in this presidential campaign. Despite the fact that about one-sixth of Americans get a check from social security – and millions more, including poor children, are helped immensely by it – the nation’s largest anti-poverty program remains vastly misunderstood by most of the country.

Continue reading...