Nearing the end of Season II, The Empire Files team expresses our deepest gratitude to so many of you who have followed our reports, written feedback, and shared our work. 2017 was no-doubt a watershed chapter in the advancement of US Empire, and we are honored to have your support telling the stories that were marginalized and distorted by corporate press as weapons of propaganda for US militarism. We’re excited that our reports have been seen on a growing number of countries in Latin America on TeleSUR Spanish as well as across the United States on Free Speech TV. Don’t miss the launch of our new podcast archiving our full episode library.

Below is a summary of our work in 2017––we are looking forward to helping cut through the imperialist propaganda and featuring more untold histories and censored voices in the year to come. 

In a year when so much of the corporate media was hyper-focused on President Trump, Abby Martin and the Empire Files crew sought to cover underrepresented domestic and international issues that affects real people.

Inside the Empire, that meant the ongoing opioid epidemic in a discussion with leading attorney Mike Papantonio, examining why 91 Americans die each day due to opioids, and how Big Pharma’s desperate pursuit of profit is attempted murder upon all injured Americans.

It meant examining the new Administration’s assault on the freedom of assembly in the form of controversial J20 arrests, where more than 200 demonstrators faced decades in prison for conspiracy and other charges.

And it meant examining overarching issues in America, like racism, inequality, the dysfunction of capitalism and the US Empire’s need to prop up the system.

Always connecting struggles in here to the victims of US Empire, Empire Files revealed the censored history of how the US Empire destroyed and subjugated the Philippines, Colombia, Palestine, Venezuela and more.

While the mass media’s most-reported story in 2017 was fear-mongering and aggression towards Russia, Empire Files sought to explore what could happen if this trend continues how the US Empire looted Russia after it led the overthrow of the Soviet Union, and Russia’s own history of defeating the oligarchs a century ago.  

The Places

 In 2017, Abby Martin and the Empire Files crew traveled both domestically and abroad to cover the year’s most important stories: From Houston, Texas a month after Hurricane Harvey to cover the government’s inaction in communities that were affected the most, to Washington, D.C. to dive deep into the protests surrounding the inauguration of President Trump.

Alongside Trump’s major announcement to declare Jerusalem the official capital of Israel, Abby Martin’s interviews with Israelis in Jerusalem, who wished exile and worse upon Palestinians, gave an eye-opening counter-narrative to the corporate media’s depiction of the situation. Martin’s report was so controversial that she became the target of a smear campaign by Israeli organizations.

Amidst a relentless regime-change operation in Venezuela by the Pentagon and Venezuelan oligarchs, Empire Files went into the heat of the battle, producing the only widely-seen coverage countering US propaganda–everything from being tear gassed with opposition protesters, to using hidden cameras to investigate food shortages, to explaining the reality of the country’s economic crisis, to pro-government protests ignored by Western media. 

Most recently Empire Files travelled to Colombia, covering the historic peace deal that ended a 53-year civil war–and went deep into the jungles to investigate a breech of trust that left 8 farmers massacred by police. 

In each location, Abby Martin spoke with victims of violence and colonization funded and perpetrated by the US Empire – points of view never found in the mainstream.

The Voices

Those voices, those marginalized individuals deemed too inconvenient to the Empire’s agenda, were amplified through Empire Files in 2017.

Early in the year, Abby Martin spoke with Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa shortly before he left office after 10 years, as well as top officials in the Venezuelan government, and the rare voice of former Israeli infantryman Eran Efrati.

Profiling academics rarely seen on television, interviews with Dr. Gerald Horne, Rosa Clemente and Chris Hedges gave essential perspective on the resurgence of neo-Nazis and white supremacists under Trump. 

Brining grassroots voices to the forefront, Empire Files was especially honored to interview Filipina domestic workers fighting human trafficking, young radical organizers in the People’s Congress of Resistance, Sikh Americans responding to racism and Islamophobia, poor and working-class Venezuelans fighting US regime change, peasant farmers in Colombia in the wake of a state massacre, and unsung heroes who saved lives in the Hurricane Harvey. 

Without these voices, these stories simply could not have been told.

You can view the full library of Empire Files episodes here, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to see what we have coming in 2018!

teleSUR journalist Abby Martin recently became the target of a smear campaign by Israeli organizations after an appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

On the program, which is one of the biggest and most popular podcasts in the United States, host Joe Rogan has a discussion with Martin about her experiences in Palestine while she was there for her show The Empire Files in 2016.

Video of Martin’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience—where she recounted her eyewitness account of human rights violations—went viral on social media. The interview garnered over 1.5 Million views on Facebook alone.

This negative press for the Israeli state on such a high-profile platform quickly caught the attention of public relations organizations.

A small YouTube channel called the Israel Advocacy Movement released a 19-minute video response claiming to debunk everything Martin said on the podcast, using baseless accusations of anti-semitism and attempting to refute the well-known fact that Palestinian territories are under Israeli military control.

While the UK-based Israel Advocacy Movement has a meager viewer base of only 3,500 subscribers, the video was then promoted on social media by the well-known organization “StandWithUs,” which exists to cultivate pro-Israel propaganda on social media.

Posting the video, StandWithUs called Martin a “notorious anti-semite” and that “she spewed ridiculous lie after lie in her attempt to smear Israel … Enough is enough.” They engaged Martin in other online attacks.

A campaign was also launched against The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and Rogan himself, including a coordinated email harassment demanding he renounce the interview and host a pro-Israel guest as penance. Such pressure against celebrities and journalists who host views sympathetic to Palestinians is typical, and often fierce.

StandWithUs, which operates on a $9 million annual budget, receives a large amount of funding and direct instructions from the Israeli government itself. In their official funding contract with the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, StandWithUs is employed to manage “interactive media war rooms” to run government messaging.

In response to these “war rooms” now targeting Martin, she released a special episode of The Empire Files on Oct. 1.

In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Martin said “I was getting so many accusations of misrepresenting Israeli society and distorting the treatment of Palestinians, I wanted to let Israelis speak for themselves.”

This shocking episode features a range of people in Jerusalem’s so-called “Tolerance Square.” Each interview shows with striking clarity how much racist, supremacist and even genocidal views are prevalent in Israeli society.

When asked how to deal with the Palestinian population, one man responded “I would carpet bomb them. That’s the only way … I think we have the right to hate them.”

Another says “I think we should give the Arabs a country. Then it can be a war between countries … we can just drop one big one and, ‘pop!’, done!”

A young woman declares plainly “we need to kill Arabs” while she and her friend giggle uncontrollably.

A more merciful man says “Israelis have to take over. We have to kick [Palestinians] away,” then ponders, “it would be better not to kill them, but to send them away to Arab countries.”

These interviews reveal how mainstream the desire for mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians are among Israelis, contradicting the manufactured image of as a liberal, democratic and peace-loving nation. This is reflected in polls across the region, showing that over 70 percent oppose Palestinian statehood or ending the occupation, and 50 percent want to ethnically cleanse the 1.5 million Palestinians living inside Israel as citizens.

Martin told teleSUR how the interviewees were picked from passer-bys in the bustling shopping and restaurant area of Jerusalem, “we did not cherry-pick people in any way. I strived to get a diverse range of opinions, finding people from all ages and backgrounds; religious and secular, self-described leftists and conservatives, Israeli-born and immigrants from abroad. All the interviews I conducted you see in this episode.”

“I asked very vague questions, like ‘what is it like to live here’ and ‘what do you think about the situation?’ Many were quick to share their extreme racism and even calls for mass murder, as if they were totally normal and acceptable views. Keep in mind, they said these things knowing they were speaking on-camera to U.S. media.”

Addressing the accusation that Palestinians share the same attitudes towards Jewish Israelis, Martin explained “I spent nearly a month in the West Bank, asking countless Palestinians the same questions. Never once did I hear a Palestinian express desire to kill Jewish people or to ‘kick them all out.’ But what you see in our new episode is what I found during just three hours in Jerusalem. It was truly shocking.”

Today, most of the remaining Palestinian territory remains under brutal military occupation, and is shrinking from rapidly-expanding illegal settlements. While the Netanyahu government plans big moves with greater freedom from the Trump Administration, this colonial project survives on lavish US funding, a carefully-crafted public image campaign, and threats against public figures who question Israel’s moral supremacy.

While the Israeli state and it’s propaganda arms like StandWithUs wield a massive apparatus to depict itself as a peace-seeking victim, Martin’s new Empire Files offers an irrefutable look behind that curtain.

This is a different version of this item – the previously published piece did not accurately reflect the interview. We regret the error.

Watch Abby Martin’s new episode of The Empire Files and additional reports from Martin’s on-the-ground investigations in Palestine at YouTube.com/TeleSUR English.

by teleSUR