Eamon Loingsigh's Blog

Dead Catting A Ceasefire

In Systems Analysis, the objective of a system is deduced by its behavior and its actions, not by rhetoric, or what a representative attempts to persuade of its purpose and objectives. 

So when the US government allocates its tax revenue for weapons to fund a foreign government’s ethnic cleansing, we can deduce that ethnic cleansing is the US government’s objective. And that its objective is not what its representatives say it wants, a ceasefire. 

Antony Blinken is, in fact, lying. 

Political scientist and international relations scholar John Mearsheimer contradicts Blinken’s claim that only Hamas stands in the way of a ceasefire when he said, “there is no evidence that Israel has agreed to (a) deal the way Blinken describes it. It does not sound like Blinken is telling a true story.”  

US foreign policy in the Middle East is involved in “a campaign of deception that Blinken has spearheaded,” according to Mondoweiss, by using Dead Cat strategy, which diverts focus away from Americans’ ability to factually deduce the objectives of their government’s policy, and ensures that all ceasefire deals fail so that Israel’s ethnic cleansing may continue.  

Dead Catting can be considered a rhetorical technique that relies on logical fallacies, which are prevalent in both public relations and politics. In order for an engineered, top-down narrative to succeed, public opinion must be redirected when a logical conclusion that is contrary to the engineered narrative gains traction.

It kind of goes like this:
Wife: Did you cheat on me?
Husband: Holy shit, look, there’s a dead cat.

This raises an important question. What is Blinken’s primary allegiance? Is it to the US? Or to Israel? If his objective is ethnic cleansing in greater Israel, as we have deduced, then pondering his primary allegiance is a valid follow-up question. 

The fact that we even wonder about Blinken’s allegiance is reason enough for US citizens to demand the Biden administration remove him. 

61% of American voters have said they are in favor of a ceasefire. That figure climbs to 76% of Democratic voters, Biden’s supposed constituents. And yet discussion of removing Blinken has yet to even be breached, while dead catting a ceasefire continues unabated.

A logical conclusion concerning where Blinken’s primary allegiance stands, considering the evidence outlined, and the fact that he comes from a Zionist family, is that Blinken is diverting American resources for the benefit of Israel. 

In short, Blinken is a spy.   

Eamon Loingsigh

Israeli Censorship of Americans, a database

Suppression of American voices by a foreign country is where I draw a line. If Americans are called to action when Russia and China interfere in our politics, then in order to avoid a double standard, we need to call it out when Israel does it too. Since Oct. 7, a foreign government’s interests within the United States has coordinated with the Israel lobby and prominent Jewish Americans to silence perceived anti-Israeli speech and remove Americans from their jobs either as journalists, actors, humanitarians, singers and university presidents. These examples are an affront to the fundamental freedoms outlined in the First Amendment, as well as against American democratic values, this database is dedicated to exposing them all.

But artofneed requires crowd-sourced help. Please email us (artofneed@gmail.com) other instances where American voices of dissent relating to the Israel-Hamas War have been silenced, or people getting fired from their jobs, doxxed or intimidated.

Mehdi Hasan, a vocal critic of Israel, had his show canceled on MSNBC after an interview in which he confronted Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, who denied Israel had killed any Palestinian children. Hasan was offered a smaller role at the cable news channel, but resigned instead.

Claudine Gay was forced to resign as Harvard University President following accusations of plagiarism. Gay was put under a microscope after she testified before the House Committee on Education. She outlined the university’s initial Oct. 7 response, explained disciplinary policies without commenting on specific cases, and discussed Harvard’s commitment to free speech.

Liz Magill, President of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned just days after her congressional testimony on antisemitism. Magill came under intense scrutiny due to her answering the question of whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the university’s code of conduct. Magill chose to support free speech in place of agreeing with legislators that claimed with weak evidence that anti-semitism was rampant on Penn.

Asna Tabassum‘s valedictorian speech was canceled by the University of Southern California, who called off its mainstage ceremony to silence her. USC then announced it was not holding its typical commencement ceremony amid a national backlash for canceling Tabassum’s speech after she was subjected to an online hate campaign for expressing solidarity with Palestine.

The entire Columbia Law Review website was taken down when the site’s administrators refused to remove a law review article called Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept. The academic article was written by Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah.

eLife fired its Editor In Chief Michael Eisen after posting on X a link to the onion. “I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of eLife for retweeting a The Onion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” Eisent posted on X.

ArtForum Magazine fired Editor in Chief David Velasco after the magazine published an open letter in support of Palestinian liberation. 

Maha Dakhil, a co-head of the motion picture department with Creative Arts Agency (CAA) faced backlash and is stepping back from leadership roles after reposting an Instagram story on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and has stepped down from the agency’s internal board and will be stepping back from her position at the agency, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Mark Lamont Hill was fired by CNN after a speech the college professor made on Israel and Palestine at the United Nations. On X he said, “Yesterday, I gave a speech. . . which I critiqued Israel’s polices and practices toward Palestinians. It’s baffling how people are not responding to the critique.” Glenn Greenwald responded to Hill by saying, “They’re doing it on purpose. Their goal isn’t to critique what you said. It’s to destroy your character & get you fired as a warning to others who would defend Palestinian rights and condemn Israeli aggression.”

Alex Smith quit his role at the US Agency for International Aid (USAID). Smith said he was given a choice of resigning or being fired after a presentation he was due to deliver on child mortality among Palestinians. He also said that political pressure from the White House was silencing dissent at USAID.  

Briahna Joy Gray was fired from the Washington-based news outlet The Hill. Joy Gray was the co-host of Rising, The Hill’s daily morning show. She was fired following a controversial interview she conducted with the sister of an Israeli woman abducted by Hamas in which Gray supposedly rolled her eyes at a closing comment from her interview subject, when in fact she was merely correcting misinformation stated by the interviewee concerning Hamas rape on Oct. 7. In 2023, The Hill also fired the political commentator Katie Halper after she called Israel an apartheid state.

The Washington Post reported that a WhatsApp group chat which included a collection of billionaires and business interests pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams to silence pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University by deploying the NYC police department. Incentivized by donations to Adams’s campaign in the WhatsApp conversations, Adams promptly sent the police in to disburse the peaceful protestors. This set a precedent to violently shut down other peaceful protests across the country, discouraging free speech.

Singer, songwriter Kehlani has been outspoken in her support for Gaza has had professional consequences with magazine interviews, brand deals, and other opportunities tied to the release of her new album, Crash, falling through. “I have experienced a lot of pushback,” Kehlani said. “I’ve experienced a lot of loss. I’ve experienced a lot of things that were promised and set up for this rollout and album” not happen, she said. She added that even though her record label has been supportive, some of the artists she’d hoped to collaborate with backed out. “There were artists that I did reach out to, and someone on the team was like, ‘We don’t fuck with her.”

Actress Melissa Barrera was fired from the set of Scream 7 by Spyglass Media Group after she posted support for Palestinian liberation and condemned Israel’s ongoing violence in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in neighboring Israeli towns.

2024 Election: Oligarchy’s Mandate

I am having a difficult time this election cycle and debates between the two major candidates won’t resolve it. President Joe Biden says democracy is on the ballot, but Biden’s administration has caved into the demands of a foreign power’s interest group through our own country’s increasingly oligarchic system. Does Donald Trump provide an alternative? No, Trump would most likely enhance the slide toward a more powerful oligarchy, on top of his authoritarian aspirations.

Clearly Trump would be worse for me, but I simply cannot support the Biden administration’s lack of questioning, if not complete subservience to the Israel lobby which has overwhelmingly effected who gets elected, as well as US Middle East policy to the tune of thousands of dead women and children, possible famine, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and according to many, genocide, paid for with my tax dollars.

And as I look at Israel’s motives behind the current war, particularly the Likud party and other cabinet members, I clearly see that their motivation is religious in nature. So when you drill down to the core of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy, it can be exposed as supporting a Messianic, colonialist and rightwing government.

For me, the Democratic candidate is untenable. I understand this is a single issue, but it is a symptom of an oligarchic system. For many years, the value system of neoliberalism has accumulated power, which has slowly eroded the traditional democratic values outlined in the Constitution.

Symptoms of Oligarchy:
~ Citizens United case which allows the highest bidders to control elections
~ Lobbyist's increasing power and influence over political system
~Trend of privatizing media / education / prisons / military etc.
~ Bailout of banks after the 2009 recession
~ Insider trading by Legislative representatives
~ Supreme Court Normalization of corruption, loss of independence
~ Wealth inequality or widening disparities of income
The list could go on.

It was John Adams who was most concerned about “the few” accumulating too much power within the US government with their wealth. Adams argued that a powerful executive branch should stifle the interests of the aristocratic class by working together with the citizenry. But looking at the Biden administration today I find that is very clearly not the case. The oligarchy (big business, the wealthy, aristocrats, the few etc.) have subordinated the executive branch, as well as the judicial and legislative.

For me, a vote for either Biden or Trump is a vote in favor of oligarchy’s mandate. This election does not provide a clear choice between democratic and authoritarian values, as Biden suggests. For me it is a call to empower third party candidates.

Eamon Loingsigh

Democracy Jones (Lost Chapter)

As the second book of the Democracy Jones series is currently on hold, I am happy to offer a free “Lost Chapter,” from the audiobook which reveals what happened to the President of the United States of America on 7/13/2040, the day a rightwing military coup overthrew a radical leftwing administration.

For more information about Democracy Jones, check out the 7/13 Bible.

Run For Your Life

Narrated by Journalist Chris Hedges. Stand up for human rights now.

Strategic Coercion

Polls have revealed a stark divide among Americans; Boomers and GenX tend to support US policy in the Middle East, while most Millennials and almost all of GenZ overwhelmingly find it illegitimate. The difference appears to be in narrative exposure. Older Americans were subjected to many years of mainstream coercive messaging without much of a counter opinion, while younger Americans see through the Israel lobby’s strategic targeting of the narrative, even AI-sock puppet accounts on social media.

Philosopher and Social Theorist Jurgen Habermas argued that power structures like governments that communicate rationally with the public in a deliberative manner, provide a basis for the legitimacy of policy. 

But when they communicate in a coercive or strategic way, they lack support and therefore lose legitimacy, which is a basic condition for the use of power by a legally constituted government.

It is a mystery to no one why TikTok is being targeted, as it provides a counter to the dominant narrative.

The Biden administration has forthrightly attempted to communicate with the American people rationally in order to clothe their Middle East policy in legitimacy, such as when Secretary of State Antony Blinker recently stated (with a straight face), “What separates Israel, the US and other democracies when it comes to incredibly difficult situations like this, is our respect for international law.”

But then funnels American taxpayer dollars to support what Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem all describe as an apartheid government.  

According to polls, GenZ sees right through Biden and Blinken’s Communicative Rationality to the naked truth that the administration’s messaging of policies in the Middle East is in fact coercive and strategically communicated. 

In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas contends that there are two rationalities we want to look at concerning how we communicate with each other.  

Communicative Rationality focuses on social sincerity
in the attempt to resolve a problem.
It is inclusive and open-minded, resolution-oriented. 

Strategic Rationality is more akin to strategic messaging,
or public relations that speaks past people.
It is focused on persuasion and is coercive in nature. 

Think of Strategic Rationality as the type of communication that a car salesman has when you are considering a purchase. His communication of the features and benefits for the consumer is motivated by the commission he will earn if you buy, not the pursuit of truth or consensus problem-solving. 

But when people feel coerced by Strategic Communication, legitimacy falters.

We recognize Biden and Blinken’s salesmanship motives as being antithetical, even offensive, and in the eyes of GenZ, US Middle East policy is viewed as illegitimate.   

Other legal organizations such as the International Criminal Court, which focuses on Communicative Rationality through painstakingly detailed research and discovery, tend to agree with GenZ. 

Even some Israeli newspapers have said that the road to The Hague is paved with comments by its own coercive leaders. 

With no end to the Biden administration’s illegitimate Middle East policy in sight, and Trump’s authoritarian nature as the only other realistic option, the greatest minds of GenZ should forsake American politics altogether, join the great humanitarian cause and make it an international power structure by their retirement. 

Eamon Loingsigh

Panopticon

A nurse at a New York City hospital was fired for using the word genocide at a ceremony where she was receiving an award for her compassion. 

When philosopher Michel Foucault wrote a history of prison systems, he studied the evolution of human-made power structures disciplining and punishing other humans who didn’t behave in the interest of the powerful. 

Over time the ability to control inmates within prisons improved to the point that a new and incredibly efficient system was created; the panopticon. 

Geometrically arranged so the inmates are constantly watched while they are unable to see who watches them, the panopticon allows a single guard to watch over hundreds of cells unseen.  

The inmates are objectified by power, and never the subject of it.  

The inmate can still be punished for things they thought went

 unseen inside the privacy of their cell. Eventually, it was found, inmates regulate their own behavior in order to avoid punishment.   

Foucault’s study necessarily causes the mind to project the panopticon onto society in general, as I’m sure you already have done so while listening to this.  

Another philosophical study found that entertainment was being used as a framework that could define what society talks about, and how it talks about it. 

Critical theorists Adorno and Horkheimer called it a Culture Industry.

Specific types of actors are elevated to fame and fortune because they not only represent the values of the prevailing power structure, but do so in an attractive way. 

These rhetoricians, or what we call celebrities, are so convincing that the audience willingly, if not unconsciously, adjust their own behavior to conform to the attractive and popular standards presented to them. 

Noam Chomsky was once asked a question about his book Manufacturing Consent.
A journalist condescendingly asked Chomsky if he thought media ownership colluded with each other to spike some stories or fire journalists who didn’t conform. Chomsky responded that nonconforming journalists are filtered out by the power structures and that other journalists are elevated for their obedience and subordination.  

Compassionate nurses fired for caring about victims, inmates who regulate their own behavior, audiences cowed by celebrities, and journalists filtered for their subordination. 
The panopticon punishes you for disobedience. Elevates you for obedience. The stakes couldn’t be any higher. It is your livelihood that it threatens. 

Its greatest asset is popular opinion. Which is also its greatest weakness. 

Eamon Loingsigh

The Pulitzer Dies for Journalism

The Staff of the New York Times has won a Pulitzer Prize for “its wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7.”

It was awarded the prestigious journalism prize despite the extraordinary revelations unearthed by The Intercept that one of the authors of a story called Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7 was an Israeli soldier who had never previously written as a journalist. Her reporting was overtly biased. Parts of the story were entirely made up. Most egregiously that on Oct. 7, Hamas had shown a pattern of weaponized rape. The editorial process behind the article was criticized for an over-reliance on witness testimony, weak corroboration, and a lack of supporting forensic evidence.

The New York Times, however, refused to run a correction. Now, its biased reportage has been justified by winning a prestigious journalism award for its coverage of Oct. 7.

The Pulitzer Prize‘s website does not mention that particular article in the award. Though it does mention the work of another former Israeli intelligence officer and IDF soldier, Ronan Bergman.

Mondoweiss, which covers American foreign policy in the Middle East from a progressive Jewish perspective, said this, “Ronen Bergman is hardly a neutral journalist. He has bragged that he has ‘been all over the U.S.‘ with the rightwing Israel lobby group AIPAC. At one such appearance, closed to the media, Bergman heaped praise on the lobby group: ‘You need to. . . explain to Israelis how much they owe AIPAC,” Bergman said. “I know that you’ve got our backs. It’s such a great feeling.’”

You might not be surprised to find out that the Pulitzer Prize is administered by none other than Columbia University, and includes President Minouche Shafik, who recently cowered to donors and Congress and called the NYPD in to break up pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.

Per the Pulitzer Prize‘s website submission guidelines, “The Board is committed to honoring work that exemplifies the longstanding ethics of the journalistic profession. These include a commitment to honesty with both readers and the subjects of our work.”

The interpretation for awarding a journalistic outlet for the coverage of a topic that was proven to be biased is always going to be subjective. But in a profession that prides itself on objectivity, the New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize Board have shown that the power of the established narrative will win out by force, if necessary.

Is there no one else the New York Times can rely on to cover Israeli politics other than Israeli intelligence officers and IDF soldiers? The argument that’s most often given is that Israeli politicians won’t speak to goy-outsiders, underscoring the country’s obvious discriminatory practices.

Even Jefferey Gentleman, another Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New York Times who was the lead writer in the Screams Without Words article, described his reportage to the Institute of Global Politics as, “I don’t want to even use the word evidence because evidence is almost like the legal term that suggests you’re trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court. That’s not my role. . . My role is to document.”

So here is an award winning journalist for the “paper of record,” who openly states that evidence is no longer as important as documentation. Yet the New York Times doesn’t document Palestinian perspectives as well as it does Israeli’s. Most likely because their journalists are biased. Therefore, in not correcting Gettleman, it is openly admitting that the New York Times is no longer a traditional journalistic outlet. It is instead an arm of the Israeli government, when it comes to its Middle East coverage. And the Pulitzer Prize Board justified it by running cover for Israeli war crimes.

Eamon Loingsigh

High Quality Music & Sound Effects for Audiobooks, Podcasts, Movie or Streaming Production

artofneed Productions is a sound studio that records high quality, original music and sound effects at an affordable rate under the direction of sound engineer and composer Eamon Loingsigh.

If you’re an audiobook, podcast, movie or streaming production creator and require personalized, original music for:
~Intro, Outro music
~Sound effects, background music
~Music based on major themes
~An entire score or original soundtrack

artofneed@gmail.com

Support Your Work: We like to work together with creators of visual and audio content in order to support their mission and goals. Music and sound effects are an effective technique to encourage an audience into making an emotional investment in the storyline, themes and transitions.

Process: Usually we set up a Zoom call in order to talk face-to-face, share some links with examples and make adjustments as progress is made. A general contract is agreed upon and signed after the workload and deadlines have been hashed out.

Through artofneed Productions, Eamon Loingsigh has produced some of the most diverse, original and high quality music and sound effects. Click on some of the links examples below.

Orchestral – An orchestral ballad with a piano-intro. Written for an audiobook.

Game of Thrones – Music produced for a Dungeons & Dragons podcast that requested Game of Thrones/Ramin Djawadi-influenced music.

Sound Effects: For the Audible-published novel, Democracy Jones: 7/13, a dystopian scifi-horror. Check out Sound Effects for the Fall of American Democracy.

Electric Pop – Song for the promotional video for YA Novel Chin Music Rhubarb

Soundtrack: The 7/13 Soundtrack is a perfect example of Eamon Loingsigh’s diverse array of styles and ability. It includes ambient, cyberpunk, jazz, blues, marches, punk, dark ambient, electronic, guitar solos, horns, strings and much more.

Guitar – Second, thematic song for the promotional video for YA Novel Chin Music Rhubarb.

Ska & Epic Synth – Two variations on a theme, one being ska the other an epic synth-style.

80s Hair Band – Written for a throwback audiobook that takes place in the 1980s.

Groove Hop Ambient – Chill synths with a beat

80s Synth Pop – Another one for the audiobook that takes place in the 1980s.

Contact: artofneed@gmail.com

A Corporate Oligarchy

Like a lot of people I watched pro-Palestinian protesters get bludgeoned on my work computer. I was in the office with a bunch of others who, with the tension of a horror movie, stayed silent about it. We were at work, of course, where we don’t have a constitutional right to free speech. So we ignore the silent screams.

Thankfully, the student protesters have remained mostly peaceful, even as they are attacked from all angles. In their actions they appeal to the traditional humanitarian in us, which was based on the Enlightenment in the west. But those days might be considered officially behind us now. Again, judging by actions, the United States has finally overcome the democratic value of humanism. Now, to the protesters’ pain and dismay, we all see that the value system of a corporate oligarchy has transformed the American moral doctrine.

In Israel, Palestinians have no rights. Therefore no rights are violated when they are murdered. They are animals, as we have heard Israeli government officials describe them. And American citizens pay for such a value system? And still call themselves humanitarian?

We have been transforming, shedding our old skin. Across many sectors, we are different now. More than ever, we live our lives as if we are at work. Ignoring silent screams under a corporate oligarchy’s value system. Less than ever do we live under the value system outlined in the Constitution, inspired by the Enlightenment.

There is a new doctrine being enforced. A doctrine that no longer occupies a moral high ground. Even its most important figures such as the President of the United States of America no longer pretend that this country’s policy is based on humanism. Modernism is dying off. More and more we live in a postmodern world where there are no universal themes such as humanism. Now there are only collectives. The strongest collectives win. The weaker are bludgeoned, like we see on campuses.

It’s time to accept that the Age of Reason has now passed into history. We have crossed a threshold. And for many, this is a sign of moral decline. As the 2024 election is now in full swing, roughly half of the country supports an authoritarian for a corporate oligarchy. The other half supports a figurehead for a corporate oligarchy. Take your pick. Both are occupied and embrace it.

A corporate oligarchy would have us all fight each other over race, gender, abortion, Taylor Swift, sporting events and other cultural issues. But not money. By acting against Israel, the current student protest movement came to realize that in reality they had bumped into money, the lifeblood of a corporate oligarchy. And the protesters were dealt with brutally.

What does that say about US education? That it too has been subjugated by a corporate oligarchy? Yes, higher education has also been transitioning and is now so thoroughly enveloped in the capitalist value system that its presidents are mere fundraisers since it is now forced to survive in the free market. Not to be run by a bunch of professors who have no business sense. This transition has been long in the making and is now bare naked in front of us.

But the transition of higher education is not an anomaly. Patterns and similarities can be found elsewhere.

Politicians are actors now, playing the part a corporate oligarchy would have them play. Waving in the funds from the country’s valuable tax revenue. Blocking bills that have no value to a corporate oligarchy. Politicians are rhetoricians again, like a barefoot Cicero in Washington. Framing all arguments on stage in front of us as if they were literally implementing Bertrand Russell’s Emotive Conjugation in order to control narratives. Our disagreement among each other being a corporate oligarchy’s opportunity. And when a majority of citizens want reasonable gun laws, it doesn’t happen because of the gun lobby. When a majority of citizens want a ceasefire to stop a genocide with its tax money, it doesn’t happen because of the Israel lobby, pincer moves of a corporate oligarchy.

It’s been many years since the Frankfurt School proclaimed that media and entertainment would turn into a Culture Industry. An industry owned by a corporate oligarchy to spread messages that benefit them. And suppress messages that don’t, before they even get out to see the light of day. And all in the good name of art.

In Citizens United the Supreme Court chose the liberty of corporations over the equality of US citizens. This has weighted the balance of influence in favor of corporate interests by allowing them to control legislators and elections by dangling much-needed blood money for their campaigns to survive. Yes, our representatives too are forced to survive in the free market, which is the value system of a corporate oligarchy.

Media has transitioned too. Ownership has merged and been bought out by the corporate sector over many years to the point that its values no longer are concerned about educating the public, but rather improving ratings with click bait, sensationalism and the framing of arguments that must first serve the interests of a corporate oligarchy. Objectivity, another modern Enlightenment-era backstop against the accumulation of power, has folded to the postmodernist notion that there is no such thing as objectivity. And that there is only individual subjectivity through the perspective of your ethnic, religious or social group.

A coup has taken place and we have barely noticed. A corporate oligarchy owns the media to control narratives. A corporate oligarchy owns the entertainment industry to offset our frustration of having to work in a corporate oligarchy. A corporate oligarchy bombards us with advertisements which promote a morality that benefits it. A corporate oligarchy determines who will represent us and what stance they take on issues. A corporate oligarchy educates us at school. Everywhere a corporate oligarchy influences and enforces its value system. Its brand of morality. And when citizens protest this, the police are called in, the courts are summoned, laws are passed, the media frames the arguments and entertainment is encouraged to divert attention.

All to the benefit of a corporate oligarchy.

Eamon Loingsigh