Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is

IT WAS THE U.S. THAT SUGGESTED TO THE ISRAELIS THAT A U.S. SHIP IS ATTACKED IN ORDER TO GET AMERICA ON THE ISRAELIS SIDE IN 1967

2012-01-26T10:46:00.001+10:30

In a revealing article in the New York Times magazine yesterday, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman disclosed that in June 2007 he was given a top secret document by former director of Mossad, Meir Amit, that contained a transcript of a conversation between Amit and the then CIA Tel Aviv chief John Hadden.

According to Bergman, part of the transcript read thus:

Amit: “We are approaching a turning point that is more important for you than it is for us. After all, you people know everything. We are in a grave situation, and I believe we have reached it, because we have not acted yet. . . . Personally, I am sorry that we did not react immediately. It is possible that we may have broken some rules if we had, but the outcome would have been to your benefit. I was in favor of acting. We should have struck before the build-up.”

Hadden: “That would have brought Russia and the United States against you.”

Amit: “You are wrong. . . . We have now reached a new stage, after the expulsion of the U.N. inspectors. You should know that it’s your problem, not ours.”

Hadden: “Help us by giving us a good reason to come in on your side. Get them to fire at something, a ship, for example.”

Amit: “That is not the point.”

Hadden: “If you attack, the United States will land forces to help the attacked state protect itself.”

Amit: “I can’t believe what I am hearing.”

Hadden: “Do not surprise us.”

Amit: “Surprise is one of the secrets of success.”

Hadden: “I don’t know what the significance of American aid is for you.”

Amit: “It isn’t aid for us, it is for yourselves.”

While Hadden didn’t actually suggest that the Israelis themselves attack an American ship, it is clear that he did indicate that it should be Israel that manipulates affairs in such a way as to provide a casus belli for the US to enter the war on Israel’s side.

Bergman’s story is revealing for two reasons; firstly, it provides even more credibility to the story of the USS Liberty affair in which the Israel Air Force deliberately attacked a US warship in order to attract the US into their war against the Egyptians by making it look like the attack was carried out by the Egyptians.

Secondly, it is revealing inasmuch that a senior and well respected Israeli journalist should expose the details of the conversation held back in 1967 as Israel was planning to attack Egypt at a time when today Israel is considering its options with regards to attacking Iran and when the US has a considerable armada of warships close to the Iranian shore in the Persian Gulf and Straights of Hamuz. It begs the question: Is Bergman warning the world that what happened forty-five years ago could happen again today?

Time, as usual, will tell.

NEOCONSERVATIVES IN COMPLETE DISARRAY OVER FINDING A REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE

2012-01-25T16:02:00.003+10:30

The only thing certain within the neoconservative ranks at the moment is the fact that they don’t seem to think any of the current crop of candidates are really suitable for their particular needs.

The editors of neocon blog National Review Online reckon ‘Mitt is lacklustre, but Newt is risky’.

Jennifer Rubin, herself a neoconservative, writing in the Washington Post is just plain confused and is not sure which way to turn. The only reason I can think of for her feeling the need to write this particular piece was that she is frustrated. Why else would you write something that showed little more than how confused one can be? But Jennifer at the end of her piece resorts to fatalism; ‘whoever wins, wins’.

Indiana State Governor Mitch Daniels has all the charisma of a patch of neatly mown lawn while at the same time having absolutely no idea about Middle Eastern foreign policy. Yet, for some reason, top neocon commentator William Kristol is almost pleading for Daniels to throw his hat into the Republican Presidential race.

But, if Daniels is so lack-lustre in everything neocons are usually looking for in a Republican president, why is Kristol is so intent on getting Daniels in to the race?

Short of Kristol knowing something about Daniels that no other commentator knows about – except, perhaps, the full knowledge that Daniels entering the race just isn’t likely to happen – I can only think that Kristol hopes that some other candidate, the one he and fellow neocon Artur Davis, would really like to see run, Jeb Bush, put his hand up and hop into the race instead.

For all the neocons bluster about domestic politics, one needs to remember that the neoconservatives primary concerns are for the well-being of Israel and their cause of creating a Greater Israel. Their interest in American politics exists primarily and ultimately to serve Israeli interests and the well-being of the state of Israel.

Not unsurprisingly, Gingrich, who has sensed over the last few days that neocon support has been slipping away, has realised this and, desperate for the neocons support, has opted to voice just the hawkish kind of rhetoric the neocons like to hear with regards to Iran but this is unlikely now to be enough to appease the neocons.

As for Ron Paul; the neocons barely venture to mention his name such is their fear of his popularity in both Democrat and Republican ranks.

The coming and passing of the Florida race may well reveal all.

Or not!

It’s easy for commentators – left and right alike – to say there are interesting times ahead as events unfold, but we should all bear in mind what terrible consequences there will be if the wrong choices are made.

NEOCONS GET DESPERATE: DID NEOCON FABRICATE DOCUMENT TO GET MITCH DANIELS TO RUN FOR REPUBLICAN NOMINATION?

2012-01-21T10:40:00.002+10:30

Yesterday I wrote of William Kristol’s ‘exclusive’ article in The Weekly Standard claiming that his office had ‘mysteriously’ received a document that claimed to be a part of the text of the forthcoming Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union Address to be delivered next Tuesday. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is down to deliver the Republican response. In the mysterious document it is claimed that Daniels will announce his intention to enter the Republican race if enough Republicans asked him.

It now seems that this whole story was just a desperate attempt by Kristol to lure Daniels into the fray. While Daniels himself is yet to deny that the document is genuine, his office, according to Indychannel.com, has said that “Kristol's piece does not reflect the speech the governor intends to give Tuesday night”.

In other words, it’s a fabrication – regardless of how nicely Daniels’ office phrases it.

Apart from what is fast being exposed as a deliberate deceit from one of neoconservatism’s most senior and influential commentators, the affair highlights how desperate the neoconservatives have become about the current crop of frontrunners for the Republican candidacy both in terms of their right-wing credentials as well as their moral attributes, and also over the influence that Ron Paul is having on the race.

The deceit is one thing but, importantly, the desperation that has caused such a senior neocon to resort to such deceit indicates at the very least that their hopes for a reliably neocon- friendly Republican president at the next election are fading rapidly.

NEOCONS GET THEIR HOPES UP WITH POSSIBLE LATE ENTRY OF MITCH DANIELS AS REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

2012-01-20T15:26:00.002+10:30

According to William Kristol at The Weekly Standard, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels may consider putting his hat in the ring for Republican presidential nomination if he can muster enough support.

Back in the beginning of December last year I wrote that it was clear that the neoconservatives were unhappy with the current crop of candidates. Kristol gave a list of other potential runners that he would prefer to see run and Mitch Daniels figured well on the list but, as I wrote then: “Mitch Daniels? In May, Kristol was wondering if Daniels might run, but by October his hopes were dashed and they are unlikely to be re-awakened”. Now, it seems, Daniel’s might just be reconsidering his options if what Kristol is telling us is true about a ‘leaked’ document that was mysteriously delivered to Kristol’s offices.

Certainly, the current crop of runners have little going for them from the Republicans point of view. Many have already fallen by the wayside and those that remain are either blighted with something unacceptable in their past or, as in the case of Ron Paul, are completely unacceptable to mainstream Republicans yet popular with many on both sides of the political divide who are fed up with America’s endless wars and threats of war and the outrageous amounts of money that have been wasted on them.

Ron Paul, at first dismissed as being just a radical isolationist and libertarian, has become a real threat to the neocons and their agenda for war against Iran, a war that they hope will bring Israel a little closer to their dream of creating a Greater Israel. The neocons might see Mitch Daniels as a possible alternative to bring the running back to their side of table.

Time will tell.

ISRAEL RESORTS TO MURDER IN ATTEMPT TO CONVINCE WORLD OF IRAN’S SO-CALLED ‘NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM’

2012-01-12T09:41:00.004+10:30

Israel is so desperate to convince the world that any attack it launches against Iran will be because of its ‘nuclear weapons program’ that it has resorted to a program of murdering Iran’s nuclear scientists in order to bring world public opinion on side to support such an attack.

Yesterday, another of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was murdered by Israel’s Mossad via the use of a magnetic bomb attached to the door of the car the scientist, 32 year old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was travelling in. Roshan is the fifth Iranian scientist since 2007 to be murdered by Israeli terrorists.

Prior to this latest series of murders, (Israel had murdered Egyptian nuclear scientists in the past when Egypt was beginning to develop a nuclear program), Israel and her allies in the West were relying on intense propaganda to convince the West to support an attack against Iran. However, over the last few years, particularly since the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 assessed that Iran had abandoned it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003, the people of the world aren’t quite so convinced that Iran has any ‘nuclear weapons program’. Subsequent reports from both the US’s NIE’s and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while stating that Iran is likely to have a ‘nuclear weapons program’, have not been able to produce any actual hard evidence of such a program. All of the NIE’s and IAEA reports since 2007 to date have been based purely on supposition and reports from dissidents and defectors and highly suspect circumstantial evidence.

Israel’s hope is that it will be able to convince the West to attack Iran because of its ‘nuclear weapons program’. Israel knows full well, however, that simply attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is only likely to delay Iran’s nuclear program – weapon or otherwise – and that the real motive behind such an attack is not so much to destroy Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ but to bring about regime change by destroying Iran’s defence forces and government institutions to the point where the Iranian government is forced to capitulate to Western demands for regime change.

Any attack against Iran will be accompanied by an Israeli attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon – and this, of course, is the real motivation for war against Iran.

Israel will go to any lengths to eventually see the fulfillment of their dream of a Greater Israel, a dream that can only be realised without Hezbollah and Hamas to resist them. And to rid themselves of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel must eliminate Iran’s support of the two Arab organisations.

NEOCON DEMANDS U.S. ENCOURAGE ISRAEL TO ANNEX WHOLE OF ‘BIBLICAL ISRAEL’ TO CREATE GREATER ISRAEL

2012-01-07T12:50:00.000+10:30

In a recent article in National Review Online, Barbara Lerner, an Islamophobic American Zionist and neoconservative writer, has laid it out on the line what the neoconservative goal really is as far as what they want for Israel – and that is nothing less than the annexation by Israel of all of the so-called ‘Biblical Lands’ in order to create a Greater Israel. She writes:

We must end the mindless repetition of enemy propaganda about “occupied land,” and encourage our Israeli allies to annex the whole of Biblical Israel…

Clearly, there are no longer any pretensions about ‘negotiations’ aimed at establishing a ‘Palestinian State’; the Zionists do not want a Palestinian state of any kind. They never have. Endless talk about talks has been aimed at playing for more time while the Zionists and the Israeli right-wing wait for an appropriate moment to find an excuse to launch a war against their enemies Hamas in the Gaza and the West Bank and Hezbollah in south Lebanon; a war so devastating that it will provide Israel with the casus belli to invade and then ultimately annex the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and even south Lebanon up to the Litani River.

Since such a devastating war can only be achieved off the back of a war with Iran who supports both Hamas and Hezbollah, one can now clearly see why the neoconservatives and the Israeli Zionists are so anxious to launch an attack against Iran.

Barbara Lerner has now made it abundantly clear what she and her neoconservative colleagues want – a Greater Israel that exists at the expense of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for a Palestinian State.

SELECTIVE ‘DEMOCRACY’: NEOCONS WANT TO DICTATE TO ARAB NATIONS WHICH TYPE OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ THEY CAN AND CAN’T HAVE

2012-01-05T16:25:00.001+10:30

A recent article in Commentary by Jonathan Tobin summed up how arrogant neoconservatives can be when it comes to sticking their noses into the business of other sovereign nations – and, of course, especially Arab nations that are problematic to Israel.

The neoconservative’s greatest fear is that the series of revolutions that last year rolled across North Africa and into the Middle East will bring to power Islamist governments that will not be able to be contained by the US. Never mind that the vast majority of the people of these nations are Muslims and ignoring the fact that elections in Egypt have overwhelmingly favoured theocratic parties and, in particular, the Muslim Brotherhood, the neoconservatives are insisting that the Obama government do not support the interim government that allows the Muslim Brotherhood the opportunity to become a government.

Tobin says that the Obama administration in trying to establish a working relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood is a mistake “not just because it is based on a misperception of the Islamists’ goals regarding democracy and willingness to keep the peace with Israel. It is also a slap in the face of the country’s military government that remains the only obstacle between the Brotherhood and the creation of another Islamic republic”.

For all the neocons talk of ‘democracy’ being allowed to prevail, it seems that a military dictatorship in this case is more preferable – and, indeed, should be supported by the US – if it seems the people are likely to elect a government that is unacceptable to the neoconservatives.

This is not the first time this has happened; as we saw in the 26 January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections when Hamas won government by a handsome majority, the US and Israel, together with their Western allies, simply refused to recognise the elected government. Since they held the purse strings, the Hamas government was unable to function.

Egypt, however, is a different matter. If the Muslim Brotherhood ultimately win government fair and square in the current election series, then the US and their Western allies are going to have a tough time explaining why they can’t support a government that has been democratically elected.

The same is likely to happen in Syria once Assad is gone. The Muslim Brotherhood there is an also very strong and any democratic election held in Syria post-Assad is likely to see an Islamist government formed. And it’s not likely to be any friendlier toward Israel than the current one is. They’ll still be demanding the return of the Golan Heights.

Hypocrisy and arrogance are the values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’.

Who can blame them?

It’s a good job that the neocons have the likes of Jonathan Tobin on their books to show us how transparent their policies actually are and in which nation their real interests really lay.

RICK SANTORUM GETS THE NOD AS THE NEOCONS’ MAN

2012-01-03T22:22:00.001+10:30

No sooner had Rupert Murdoch anointed Rick Santorum last night as the man he will support for the presidency then William Kristol quickly posted a last minute tid-bit at The Weekly Standard website before heading off to bed saying what a ‘good omen’ it was for him to bump into Santorum in the lobby of the hotel that they both just happen to be staying at.

Neocons don’t do ‘omens’. They carefully plan stuff.

They’ve been hanging out in the wings for weeks waiting and watching how each of the candidates are performing, paying particular attention to their foreign policy attributes. It’s odd, however, that Kristol barely even mentioned Santorum as a possibility when he was rummaging around in an article that clearly demonstrated that they were very disappointed with the then field. As I said in my article at the time, Kristol’s list of possibilities then was Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, but I doubt – apart from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – that he took any of them seriously.

But now the man with the most influence has come down on the side of Santorum, all we can do now is sit back and watch how all the neocons follow their master’s words.

ANDREW BOLT BECOMES A FULLY-FLEDGED NEOCON – WITH A TRIP TO ISRAEL

2012-01-03T17:32:00.000+10:30

After his recent visit to Israel, Andrew Bolt, one of Australia’s most notorious Islamophobic racists, has taken the final step required to become a fully-fledged neoconservative. As Bolt himself says, Israel “makes you seem so neoconservative”. And there’s nothing like a trip to Israel to affirm ones aspiration.

The question now, however, is; who paid for it?

Most neocon journos – particularly those in the pay of Murdoch – usually get their trips bought and paid for by some right-wing Zionist lobby organisation or another; its how they keep control of what’s being said in the media about Israel.

It’ll be interesting to see what Bolt will be up to over the coming month as a result of his ‘elevation’ to the ranks of the fully-fledged neocon. Will he still be working for Murdoch? More than likely – despite last month’s wishful thinking on my part. Will he carry on with his column at the Herald-Sun? It’s hard to tell looking at it just at the moment. He’s clearly taken on a column at the UK Spectator but whether or not it’s going to be a regular column isn’t clear. The Spectator is a British neocon monthly owned by the Barclay brothers who also own the UK Daily Telegraph group of publications.

The Spectator audience is a little more upmarket than the redneck knuckle-dragging morons that usually infest his blog at the Herald-Sun, so who know who he’ll be writing for next year. Whoever it is, though, it’ll be interesting to read how he and his mob are going to justify the up-coming war against Iran.

IS CATACLYSMIC WAR AGAINST IRAN ONLY A DISTRACTION TO COVER ISRAEL’S ULTIMATE WAR AIMS?

2011-12-28T14:56:00.005+10:30

Any strike on Iran by either the US or Israel or both is likely to be cataclysmic in scale yet for the Zionists of Israel such a war will serve only to distract the people of the West from the real aims of instigating such a horrific war which is to provide both the opportunity and the cover for Israel to realise its ultimate regional endgame of creating a Greater Israel. The Zionist’s dream of a Greater Israel includes occupying, and eventually annexing, south Lebanon up to at least the Litani River and possibly beyond, and also the full occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the eventual deportation of the Palestinians living in these places to the Sinai and Jordan.

Iran is a geographically large country with a well educated and cultured population that has, since the revolution in 1979 that threw out the US-supported Shah, mainly supported its theocratic hierarchy. It does have its own internal problems that are largely over domestic issues. The Iranian people clearly would like to have their government pay more attention to their welfare needs. Unemployment is high; inflation is high; wages could be better; the health system needs improvement; infrastructure needs upgrading, especially with regard to the processing of its own natural resources. For sure there is a demand for a more liberalised legislation that relies less on Sharia law and more on natural justice. But, for all of Iran’s internal short-comings, the Iranian people are essentially united when it comes to supporting its government’s nuclear power ambitions and also the defence of their country against US and Israeli aggression, threatened or otherwise.

The moment that the West thought it might be able to influence and exploit Iran’s internal divisions in order to create an environment that might bring about revolution leading to regime change has now long passed. The disputed elections of June 2009 created violence in the streets which clearly were aggravated by agents provocateurs supported and financed by Israel and the US. However, the rather feeble attempts to create conditions that might lead to some sort of ‘regime change’ favourable to the US and Israel failed miserably.

As a result of these failures, the West, particularly the US and Israel, have returned to the rhetoric and propaganda of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ that is designed to induce Western public opinion to support a military strike against Iran ostensibly to eliminate the so-called Iranian ‘nuclear threat’. In order to overcome the total lack of any evidence to support the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ meme, the US and Israel have adopted a ‘pull out all the stops’ propaganda strategy to the point now that they have said it so often, so loudly and so relentlessly that many now take it as read that Iran really does have a nuclear weapons program despite there still being no actual evidence to support the assertion.

The ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ meme originated as public rhetoric by Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative supporters in the United States soon after the Shah was deposed and the Islamic Revolutionary government took control. It has reached a crescendo today after years of continuous and increasingly relentless propaganda from Israeli Zionists and neoconservatives. The propaganda existed long before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran’s president, but once becoming president, Ahmadinejad’s own rhetoric about Israel has served only to reinforce the twisted propaganda from the Zionists and neoconservatives about Iran being an existential threat to Israel based on Iran’s continued so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Recently, the Israelis and their neoconservative supporters have changed gear in their propaganda about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’. The call at first was supposedly about finding a diplomatic solution to the perceived problem of a nuclear Iran. Sanctions, as part of finding a ‘diplomatic solution’, are an absolutely necessary step in the path to war against Iran; world public opinion would not support a direct attack against Iran without going via the sanctions route first. UN endorsed sanctions are now in place and, just as the Israelis and the neoconservatives had hoped, they are not having any effect on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As a result, the Israelis and neoconservatives have shifted up a gear and are now demanding quite openly and in unison that the US attack Iran.

Some commentators have suggested that President Obama is hesitant about attacking Iran and that because of this Israel may take it upon themselves to attack unilaterally. The well publicised recent article by Jeffery Goldberg in Atlantic magazine suggests that there is a ‘50/50 chance’ that Israel will do just that. Well known neoconservative and former CIA officer, Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in The Weekly Standard also recently suggested that Israel may launch a unilateral strike against Iran. George Will, writing in the Washington Post has said, after lamenting the lack of action against Iran by the US; “If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned”. Other far-right neoconservatives on the other hand, like Michael Barone writing in National Review Online, are saying that Obama just might instigate an attack against Iran. Meanwhile, another neoconservative, Jonathan S. Tobin, writing in the neoconservative flagship intellectual magazine Commentary this month, goes as far as calling upon and encouraging Obama to “emulate Truman’s example of decisive leadership”, eluding to Truman’s use of nuclear weapons on Japan in an effort to end a war that was as good as already over anyway.

The rhetoric of Israel launching a unilateral strike against Iran is designed not so much to garner public opinion against Iran, but more to promote sympathy for Israel from a US Congress that may be otherwise hesitant to support a US strike against Iran. The idea is to get Congress to push Obama to support an Israel that feels so desperate about their situation that they may take it upon themselves to go it alone despite the risks involved. In the process, the rhetoric also attempts to garner public opinion that supports the notion that Israel is a ‘small embattled nation’ struggling to survive in a hostile region.

Pushing the ‘we might need to strike unilaterally’ propaganda as portrayed by the Israeli Zionists and the neoconservatives, however, does not stand up to close scrutiny and even the most cursory analysis reveals that it is, indeed, nothing more than propaganda.

The reality is; Israel is so reliant on the US that it would be utterly impossible for Israel to strike Iran ’unilaterally’. Israel will need the full support of the US to launch any attack against Iran even if the initial attack is carried out solely using current Israeli air force aircraft and personnel in order for such an attack to appear unilateral. The logistics of obtaining the fuel and ordnance alone that would be required for such a strike will necessitate the full connivance of the US; and the follow-up support of an America apparently coming to Israel’s aid to prevent retaliatory attacks by Iran would require meticulous advance planning and is not something that can be spontaneously set in motion at a moments notice.

The notion that Israel could act ‘unilaterally’ against Iran is one designed purely for propaganda purposes only.

Neither Israel nor the US will be attacking Iran for the exclusive purpose of eliminating Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to destroy its so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’; the US and the neoconservatives have made it quite clear that their aim is to bring about regime change in Iran and nothing less. The idea that either or both will attack in order to destroy Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ will merely be the stated casus belli to justify such an attack.And there are other realities that also need to be considered. Despite the now almost deafening rhetoric of Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’, there is still the not unimportant matter of evidence proving that Iran actually has a ‘nuclear weapons program’. To date not a single skerrick of any hard evidence has been produced to support any of the US or Israeli claims. The UN’s nuclear watchdog organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has not been able to find any evidence and the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 stated quite categorically that Iran had discarded its nuclear weapon program in 2003. While the 2010 NIE (which this year is entitled ‘The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community’) has suggested that Iran “is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that bring it closer to being able to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so”, no actual hard evidence was offered to support the idea that Iran actually had a ‘nuclear weapons program’. The 2010 NIE also noted tellingly that: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons”. Surely, if Iran hasn’t yet decided to build nuclear weapons how would it have a nuclear weapons program? And if they ‘do not know’ then what evidence can they possibly have to even assume that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’?

As the threat of UN sanctions against Iran loomed yet again in mid-May, 2010, Turkey, Brazil and Iran came up with a plan that they thought would allay the West’s apprehensions about Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’. The plan was actually in response to the West’s demands that Iran send its Low Enriched (LE) uranium to a third country for enrichment to Medium Enriched level (ME) for use in producing isotopes for cancer treatment. The product returned to Iran for use would not then be able to be further enriched to the High Enriched level (HE) required to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran arranged through Turkey and Brazil to send half of its 2400kgs of LE uranium off to France and/or Russia for conversion to ME uranium suitable for producing isotopes.

Not entirely unexpectedly, the US rejected the plan saying that this would still leave Iran with 1200kgs of uranium – enough, once enriched, to build one bomb – which was not acceptable to the US. The irony, of course, is that Iran is now left with enough uranium which, once enriched, is enough to build not just one bomb but two; a point seemingly lost on the US and their allies – or was it?

In rejecting the plan, (which conveniently left Iran with nearly two and a half tonnes of uranium) the way was immediately left open for the US to continue its pursuit of sanctions against Iran through the UN. It was by now quite clear where the US, Israel and their Western allies were heading with this strategy. If Russia and China vetoed further sanctions, the way would then be clear for the US and Israel to claim that Iran’s ‘pursuit of nuclear weapons’ could not now be stopped which would provide a pretext for either or both to then attack Iran. In order to avoid, or at least delay, war against Iran, Russia and China reluctantly agreed on 9 June 2010 to expand the already existing UN sanctions but not before the US agreed to water the new proposals down. Later, the US in partnership with the European Union, adopted further much stronger sanctions against Iran outside of UN oversight.

These latest sanctions, however, are doing nothing to deter Iran from continuing what it is actually legally entitled to do under international law with regards to uranium enrichment within the terms of the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory. It is this lack of deterrence which has now brought on the upsurge in threats from Israel and the neoconservatives. The Israelis and the neoconservatives, continuing to ignore entirely the total lack of any evidence, believe that they have now provided Iran every opportunity to give up their quest for ‘nuclear weapons’ and the only option now is to take military action.

By ignoring the fact that there is no evidence to suggest Iran has a nuclear weapons program and continuing to insist that Iran gives up its lawful peaceful quest for nuclear generated electrical power and to be able to produce isotopes to treat cancer, Israel and the neoconservative have demonstrated that, regardless of anything else Iran might do to allay the West’s fears, the Israelis and the neoconservatives want nothing less than war against Iran.

And now we get down to the reason why war, and only war, is so necessary for the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters.

Israel knows full well that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. They also know that, even if Iran did manage to obtain a nuclear weapon or two, it would still be utterly impotent. To be sure, two nuclear devices, or even one, detonated in Israel would likely destroy Israel, but if Iran were to commit such a horrendous crime, Iran knows it in turn would be destroyed in retaliation by Israel’s comparatively massive arsenal of nuclear weapons that are undoubtedly dispersed throughout Israel and on board Israel’s submarine fleet.

Despite this, however, the Zionists and neoconservatives, like George Will for example, argue that Iran has some kind of death wish whereby it is willing to ‘martyr’ itself in the cause of destroying Israel. To actually believe that Iran would be willing to sacrifice itself just to get at Israel in this way demonstrates only Zionism’s sense of monumental self-importance – or, more realistically, their desire to portray themselves as the perennial victim where Islam is out to get them no matter the cost.

All of this serves the Zionist purpose. Without war with Iran there would be nothing to distract the world’s attention away from an Israeli attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza Strip. However, the benefit of war with Iran provides a multitude of perceived advantages.

Both the US and Israel have gone to great lengths over the years to emphasise Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ links to Iran portraying them as Iran’s ‘proxies’ on Israel’s doorstep. Building these connections to Iran has been essential to the Zionist’s strategy. From the propaganda point of view, the Zionists use of the word ‘proxy’ in describing Hezbollah and Hamas has been important; for the Zionists and neoconservatives to say that Hezbollah and Hamas are Iran’s ‘proxies’ is to imply that Iran is the main enemy and that Iran had developed Hezbollah and Hamas specifically to provide a means of getting closer to Israel. Presented as proof of this is the supply of arms and finance that flows from Iran.

The reality is somewhat different. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are organisations that resist Israel’s expansionist ambitions and, despite being of two different sects of Islam (Hezbollah is Shiite, as is Iran; while Hamas is Sunni) the two organisations have very common interests inasmuch as both are enemies of expansionist Zionism.

The Zionist dream of a Greater Israel is well known and its history and ideology are well documented. The original idea of a Greater Israel that stretched “from the Nile to the Euphrates” is now truly just a dream. But the Zionists haven’t given up entirely on their dream of a Greater Israel. The Zionists of today firmly believe that the dream of creating a Greater Israel that includes the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and south Lebanon up to the Litani River or even beyond, can be become a feasible reality.

Israel’s past attempts at occupying the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon have failed miserably due to resistance from the Palestinians and the Arabs respectively. Israel’s attempts to spread itself into the West Bank via ever-growing ‘settlements’ have had some success since the 1967 invasion and military occupation but nowhere near as successful as Israel’s invasion, occupation and eventual colonisation of the Golan Heights that occurred at the same time.

Recent attempts by Israel to eliminate Hezbollah and Hamas have failed. The 2006 attacks and invasion of south Lebanon ended in defeat for Israel despite the horrendous loss of lives inflicted on the civilian population by the Israelis. Likewise, the 2008/09 attacks on Hamas in the Gaza which slaughtered over 1300 innocent civilians and all but destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure was also to no avail. Both wars failed to draw in the US and Iran directly and succeeded only in gaining for Israel the condemnation of the world for what many saw as deliberate war crimes committed against civilian populations.

The Zionist leaders of Israel have learnt their lesson; in the future they will not attempt to get what they want while the eyes of the world are upon them. Before attacking Hezbollah and Hamas again the Zionists of Israel need to ensure that the eyes of world are looking elsewhere. They will also need to ensure that their casus belli for attacking Hezbollah and Hamas and invading Lebanon and the Gaza Strip is credible – and what more credible or plausible an excuse could the Israelis have for attacking Hezbollah and Hamas than pre-empting strikes by them in retaliation for Israel having attacked Iran in order to eliminate an ‘existential and imminent nuclear threat’.

While the eyes of the world are watching the turmoil and carnage being wrought on Iran, initiated possibly by Israel and then followed up with the full force of the US, the Israelis will feel free to smash all resistance to them as they attack and then invade Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and launch a full take-over of the West Bank on the grounds that the Palestinians there will launch a full-on third Intafada against the Israelis and the Zionist settlers.

For the war against Iran, the aim will be to bring the government to its knees by use of massive and overwhelming air power against Iran’s governmental and military institutions forcing the Iranians to capitulate and sue for peace at the UN. There is unlikely to be any kind of occupation; only the threat of more force if the government of Iran does not concede to US demands. The major demand will be for a change in government to one that is friendly to the US, Israel and the West; in other words; regime change.

Meanwhile, the Israelis will consolidate their positions in the areas they occupy by ruthlessly liquidating Hezbollah and Hamas during the fighting. The occupation of south Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank eventually will give way to annexation, even in the face of opposition from most of the world, and the peoples of those places will be forced out and relocated. The Palestinian people will be forced in to the Sinai or Jordan while the Arabs of south Lebanon will be forced north of the Litani River.

Overall, once the war begins, the US and Israel will be relying on their overwhelming military might, especially their air-power, in order to prevail. The US are far too overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan to be able to invade and occupy such a vast country as Iran and would rely on its air-power to maintain its domination. In Lebanon and the Gaza Strip Israel would rely initially on its air-power and then ground mechanised and infantry forces to launch an invasion and maintain an occupation. The same would apply in the West Bank.

There will be nothing spontaneous or ‘unilateral’ about the coming confrontation; it has been in the planning for decades by the Zionists and their neoconservative supporters. Regime change in Iran will be the war aim for the US while the defeat of Hezbollah and Hamas and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon with a view to eventual annexation will be Israel’s war aims while creating a Greater Israel will be their ultimate goal. In all theatres the war will devastate the civilian populations leading to massive upheavals and deaths.

The war against Iran is likely to be cataclysmic in scale but for the Israelis such a war will serve only to be the catalyst for the creation of the Zionists dream; Greater Israel. The ultimate costs of the final confrontation, however, in the end may very well be more than any side can bear.

This article was first posted on 21 August 2010.
It's as appropriate today as it was then - maybe even more so!

THE SYRIAN BOMBINGS HAS THE TOUCH OF THE MOSSAD ABOUT IT

2011-12-24T14:44:00.004+10:30

Friday’s bombings in Damascus have all the hallmarks of a Mossad false flag bombing operation about it. Here’s why.

According to a New York Times report, the bombing was a suicide car bomb. Meanwhile, the UK’s Daily Telegraph is reporting that the Syrian government has blamed al Qaeda elements among Syria’s anti-Assad rebels for the attacks, while a dissident claiming inside knowledge is blaming the Assad government itself for the bombings saying that the bodies were of dissidents murdered by the security forces then planted prior to the explosions to make it seem as though they were victims of the bombing (a scenario that some will find has a familiar ring to it).

The first problem with the story is that it is reported as being a suicide bombing. Suicide bombings are usually confined to either Islamic fighters wanting to kill people of other ethnic/religious groups as has been seen in Iraq, or Islamic fighters wanting to kill foreign troops on their lands as has been seen with Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis and Islamic fighters in Iraq wanting to kill American and Western troops. Whilst suicide bombings have been used in violence between secular groupings, as in revolution and civic upheaval, such bombings are very rare and have usually been by individual’s intent on revenge killing and are usually of a more personal nature as in, say, revenge for the killing of a relative. With two huge bombs going off simultaneously, as in Syria on Friday, these are well organised and designed for maximum impact.

As for the notion that the Syrian government would bomb its own security headquarters buildings – a small regional or district office, maybe – just to gain a few Brownie points from the Arab League is ludicrous. And since the opposition has denied being responsible on account of it only operating on a defensive basis, this only leaves one other option – Israel’s Mossad – and it’s not as though Israel hasn’t used car bombs before in Damascus.

Next, one needs to ask why Mossad would do such a thing; what’s in for them? How do they gain?

Mossad have always worked in devious ways and, while it is often difficult to figure out why they have done any specific deed, one can count on it having some kind of desired effect, even if sometimes obscure, for the Israeli government who would have given the authority which initiated the action.

In the case of the Syria bombing, the ultimate aim would be to initiate further violence that might cause escalation to a point that Iran and/or its proxy Hezbollah is drawn in to the fray. This would then trigger the confrontation that Israel for years has been searching for.

NEOCON LUNATICS WANT WAR WITH NORTH KOREA RIGHT NOW!

2011-12-22T12:14:00.001+10:30

The editors of the neoconservative National Review Online are today demanding that the US:

…should conduct military exercises around the peninsula, we should fly over their nuclear sites with stealth aircraft, and we should demonstrate that we can reach out and touch the regime anytime and anywhere. We should freeze the assets of the Kim family wherever they may be. We should shut down Kim’s criminal enterprises by stepping up our patrols of ships that leave the peninsula. We should give our allies in South Korea all the military capability necessary to defend themselves and strike back at the North should they once again be hit.

The editors naively go on to say:

We should do all this before Beijing and Pyongyang have time to hatch a plan that solidifies the status quo. The status quo is dangerous, far more so than patiently and relentlessly working to bring down the Kim regime. For once, instead of waiting to see if a new dictator is “someone we can work with,” we should show the dictator what it will take to work with us. It should be clear that unless the Kim family gets rid of its nuclear weapons and its organs of repression and crime, we will work to remove it from power.

The world is fortunate that Obama is still President of the US and very unlikely to heed the neocons lunatic advice demanding that world war three start right now before Beijing and Pyongyang have time to ‘hatch a plan that solidifies the status quo’.

Do the warmongering lunatics at neocon headquarters really believe that the Chinese and the North Koreans hadn’t thought about what will happen in the event of Kim Jong-Il’s death?

I have little time for any totalitarian government but I have even less for the lunacy of the neoconservatives who believe they are able to project military power without there being horrific consequences. Have they learnt nothing from their wars against the Vietnamese, Afghan and Iraqi people? The neocons misguided belief that the US is now the world’s only superpower is going to get more Americans and their South Korean allies killed when they realise that they are up against the world’s largest standing fanatical army in North Korea and a Chinese military force that is able to match the US.

America is nowhere near as strong as the neocons like to think they are. War after war since the end of the Second World War seems to have taught them nothing.

THE NEOCONS ARE BEGINNING TO WORRY ABOUT RON PAUL

2011-12-18T13:58:00.001+10:30

Until now the neoconservatives had all but ignored Ron Paul as a contender for the Republican nomination. They had focussed their attention instead on those potential candidates that were in the mainstream of Republican politics hoping to find one that goes along with neoconservative ideology, particularly with regard to foreign policy relating to Israel and the Middle East.

As yet, the neoconservatives, as I noted over a week ago, don’t seem to have actually settled on anyone that they are entirely happy to give their full support to. All had flaws that the neoconservatives felt did not quite reflect full neoconservative values and the hint was that others better qualified, at least as far as the neocons were concerned, might yet enter the race even at this late stage. Since then, nobody else has stepped forward and the one potential candidate the neoconservatives would definitely not support, Ron Paul, has consistently been up there in the polling as the various debates unfolded and it seems the grass-root rank and file Republicans are increasingly giving Ron Paul the thumbs up. To what extent this will translate into actual votes that count for the nomination still remains to be seen but certainly the support he is getting now is beginning to worry the neoconservatives who today found it necessary to write a lengthy hit piece against Ron Paul portraying him as a maverick libertarian extremist and an outrageous conspiracy theorist. Up until now, the neocons had barely given him a mention believing him to be a rank outsider with no chance of getting up.

Ron Paul’s popularity comes not so much from his extremist libertarian ideology of no government interference in anything – though this has a certain appeal among the middle classes that have managed to hang on to some of their wealth – but, rather, from his anti-war isolationist views. For the neoconservatives, this translates to ‘anti-Israel’ since Ron Paul’s policies include no more US aid – not just to Israel, but to any nation – and also no more wars especially against Middle East nations that are Israel’s enemies.

Since Obama came to be President on the back of a promise to end the wars – which he then promptly reneged on – those that voted for him are reluctant to give him another go. On the other hand, it is only Ron Paul among the Republican contenders that is anti-war; all of the others seem to have been bought off by the Israel lobby who are champing at the bit for war against Iran in order to save Israel from being ‘wiped off the map’. Ron Paul, therefore, has won the hearts of those disillusioned with Obama’s promises, and also of those who like Ron Paul’s libertarian stance.

It’s going to be an interesting New Year which is very likely to disappoint the neocons if it’s going to be left to the current crop of candidates to look after the neoconservative’s interests. While all of them – except Ron Paul – have taken on neoconservative advisors to help out with their campaigns, none of them can really be considered die-hard neoconservatives who will push along the neocon’s agenda.
Ron Paul’s ‘every man for himself’ stance will leave many unenthralled but his anti-war rhetoric is finding a lot of appeal among conservatives fed up with ten years of non-stop wars with more in the offing.

HAS AUSTRALIAN SUPER RACIST, ANDREW BOLT, BEEN SACKED?

2011-12-14T11:02:00.004+10:30

The Murdoch ‘journalist’ [sic], Andrew Bolt, a columnist at Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper, left a perplexing post at his column yesterday prior to taking leave. He wrote:

It’s customary to thank your readers at the end of each year. Never have I had more cause to do so than this year. Your support ... well, you can imagine how much and why. I’m extremely grateful.

I am off on holidays with my family. Some thinking will also need to be done about what I’ll do next year. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and new year.

‘Some thinking will also need to be done about what I’ll do next year’?

At worst this simply means he’s going to be spending his holidays dreaming up new ways of peddling his extreme racist fearmongering views. At best, however, it may mean that Murdoch’s new chief lackey in Australia, Kim Williams, who recently took over from retiring News Ltd. Australia CEO John Hartigan, has had enough of forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover Bolt’s legal fees after being found guilty of racial discrimination. This, coupled with Murdoch trying to pull back from the image of right-wing extremist journalism after the News of the World fiasco, which ended in Murdoch closing the newspaper down, may well be the reason why Bolt needs to think about what he’ll be doing next year.

Bolt undoubtedly would have had a contract with News Ltd. And it may well be that Bolt has decided to take an offer that’s too good to refuse, hence him going without a fuss – if, indeed, he is going.

Reading through the comments to his post, some of his adoring rednecked fans and supporters are also wondering if he’ll be back. After all, among the extreme right-wing in Australia, Bolt was a hero. But after the court case and what with Murdoch struggling to convince the government that controls on the press aren’t needed, it may well be that Murdoch and Williams have decided that Bolt is too much of a liability and that he should go gracefully without a fuss and with a handsome golden handshake and a well formulated explanation for his departure. Perhaps he could write books for the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins company to publish.

So, the question is: has Bolt gone from the Herald-Sun for good? Let’s hope so. Time will tell. We can but dream.

SO WHO IS THE NEOCON’S MAN FOR THE NOMINATION?

2011-12-08T15:11:00.002+10:30

Over the past few months the neocons haven’t really shown a great deal of enthusiasm for any of the candidates running so far for the Republican ticket for the 2012 Presidential election. Michelle Bachmann simply faded away; Mitt Romney turned out to be wishy-washy on climate change; as for Herman Cain, well let’s face it, his race was over the moment someone mumbled something about ‘sex’. Rick Perry’s race was over when he mumbled ‘Oops’; and, while Newt Gingrich is now top of the charts, he just doesn’t have the support of the neocons who regard him increasingly as a ‘flip-flop’ man who is happy to nod and shake his head in any way any given audience wants him to at the time. And Ron Paul, of course, is loathed by the neocons for his isolationist stance.

William Kristol, one of neoconservatisms most influential pundits, penned a piece in the Weekly Standard earlier this week which, reading between the lines, seemed to despair at the motley crew who are currently vying for the top job. He offers up a list of other vaguely possible contenders who haven’t put their hands up – yet. His list includes Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush – in that order.

Mike Huckabee? But why? He didn’t get to the top of the pile in 2008, so why would Kristol think he might get up this time? The answer is; Kristol doesn’t. Huckabee’s name’s there just to make up the numbers.

Same with Sarah Palin. Even if she did step in at this late stage, one wonders if she’d get any serious support from the neocons after her last bungling blustering efforts last time.

Paul Ryan? Ryan is one potential candidate that the neocons would support – if he were to put himself up. This, though, is unlikely and Kristol knows it. Back in January of this year Kristol was promoting a Ryan for President push with Marco Rubio as vice-President runner. But by August Ryan was suggesting Kristol should find someone else to fantasise about.

Chris Christie? A month later Kristol was pleading for Christie to step up. One couldn’t blame Christie if he felt a bit miffed about being asked by Kristol only after Ryan had declined Kristol’s advances. No one likes being second fiddle.

Mitch Daniels? In May, Kristol was wondering if Daniels might run, but by October his hopes were dashed and they are unlikely to be re-awakened.

Marco Rubio? As already mentioned, Kristol had Rubio behind Ryan on a president/vice-president ticket so why would Rubio now be enthralled by Kristol’s suggestion?

Jeb Bush? When one reads out a list there is a psychological advantage of being the last name on the list; you’re invariably the first one to be remembered and therefore shoved into prominence. Was that Kristol’s intention?

So soon after the detested George W. Bush, Jeb, his brother, would be a hard one to sell to the American people. Fortunately for the American people, however, Jeb Bush ruled himself out of the 2012 race much earlier on but if it seems that those that are currently in the race aren’t going to do the trick for the neocons, then just maybe Jeb Bush might reconsider even at this late date. Certainly, there are a lot on the right in the republican movement who are hoping just that.

Jeb Bush is a far more articulate and more sophisticated person than his brother George will ever be and would superficially have far more appeal. But that doesn’t mean to say that Jeb would be a better President; it just means that he’d be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people more successfully than his brother George did - or not. Jeb Bush became a neoconservative long before his older brother became one and was a signatory to the June 1997 Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles.

If ever Jeb Bush did become president the world could look forward to a very dark future as it feeds on the ideas and ideology of neoconservatives eager to finish what they started when Jeb’s brother was President.

Let's hope Kristol doesn't get his wish. The world will not be a better place.

ON THE MIS-USE OF THE ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’ LABEL BY ZIONISTS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS

2011-12-07T14:46:00.001+10:30

There was a time, back in the last century and before, when the phrase ‘anti-Semitism’ simply meant a hatred of Jewish peoples for no reason other than they were Jews. This unfounded hatred built up over centuries and culminated in the tragedy that occurred during the Second World War when Nazis, their sympathisers and fellow travellers, together with other Jew-haters throughout Europe, jumped on Hitler’s bandwagon of anti-Semitism in an attempt to wipe out European Jewry.

At the end of the war when the full extent of the attempted extermination of European Jewry became known, the world was horrified. But, despite the defeat of Nazism, the punishment of many of those responsible, and the universal condemnation of what had happened, a latent anti-Semitism lingered on into the post-war period not just among the peoples of the nations that carried out and assisted in the atrocities, but even among some peoples that were part of the nations that were Allies who eventually defeated Nazism and brought an end to the war and the atrocities that went with it. White-supremacist neo-Nazi groups flourished during the post-war years and the ‘anti-Semite’ label became synonymous with both those who had hated Jews and those that continued to do so.

To this day, there are still anti-Semites, mostly white-supremacists and neo-Nazis, who continue to hate Jews for no reason other than they are Jews.

However, there has evolved from this an opportunity for some to abuse the anti-Semitic label for nefarious propaganda purposes other than to identify true anti-Semites. It’s rather unfortunate that those that are now misusing the term are themselves Jewish.

Zionists, intent on creating a Greater Israel at the expense of the Arab people by building and farming on their lands, are now attempting to use the ‘anti-Semite’ label against anyone who condemns Israeli Zionists and their supporters for their actions against the Palestinian people as the Zionists attempt to create their Greater Israel. Zionists and their supporters, particularly neoconservatives, are especially adept at mis-using the term as part of their propaganda to demonise their critics and enemies.

The method they use is simple: Instead of identifying specific criticism against Zionism and addressing that criticism, Zionists and their neoconservative supporters simply condemn the criticism – any criticism – as being anti-Semitic, and those that are doing the criticising as being anti-Semitic ‘jew-haters’. In some cases, even other Jews that criticise Zionism are being labelled ‘anti-Semites’ though more often the term ‘self-hating Jew’ is used.

The objective of such mis-labelling by Zionists and their supporters is transparent; it is to paint those that criticise Zionism as the same kind of evil anti-Semites that attempted to destroy European Jewry during the last century. Fortunately, such propaganda devices are indeed transparent and, for the most part, such mis-use of the label has been exposed and dismissed simply as abusive propaganda by right-wing Zionist extremists and their neoconservative supporters.

But while it is easy for most to dismiss the mis-use of the ‘anti-Semite’ label as outrageous propaganda by extremists, it does have an extremely unfortunate side-effect inasmuch that its mis-use devalues the true meaning and use of the label. If the ‘anti-Semite’ label is bandied around inappropriately too often in the way it has been then there will come a time when its true and proper use will become ignored – until, once again, it is too late.
The ‘anti-Semite’ label was once a powerful tool that could be used against those that attempted to resurrect the age-old hatreds that were, and still are, levelled against Jews just because they are Jews. However, Zionists and neocons that abuse the ‘anti-Semite’ label for purely political and propaganda purposes diminish the memory of those that perished at the hands of those that really were anti-Semites.

NEOCONS WELCOME NEW U.S. EMPHASIS ON INFLUENCE IN S.E. ASIA TO COUNTER CHINA GROWTH BUT FEAR NEGLECT OF MIDDLE EAST

2011-11-17T12:42:00.001+10:30

President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s embrace of Obama’s plan to bring US influence and military hegemony to the South East Asian region should not have come as a surprise to observers. It’s been in the offing for some time.

The move is exactly in line with America’s AirSea Battle Concept, a plan that was developed in 2010 by the US think-tank Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). The opening lines of their document titled AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept goes straight to the point:

The US military today faces an emerging major operational challenge, particularly in the Western Pacific Theater of Operations (WPTO). The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ongoing efforts to field robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities are threatening to make US power projection increasingly risky and, in some cases and contexts, prohibitively costly. If this occurs, the United States will find itself effectively locked out of a region that has been declared a vital security interest by every administration in the last sixty years. It will also leave longstanding US allies and partners vulnerable to aggression or, more likely, subtle forms of coercion. Consequently, the United States confronts a strategic choice: either accept this ongoing negative shift in the military balance, or explore options for offsetting it.

This is welcome news for the neoconservatives who have been advocating ever since the demise of the Soviet Union that Chinese power needed to be confronted over the long term.

However, the Middle East, and Israel in particular, have never been far from neoconservative thinking – even when the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union was at its height. Then came 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ which provided the neoconservatives with an opportunity to deal a blow against Israel’s enemies while China simmered very quietly on the back-burner.

Unfortunately for the neoconservatives, their plans for the Middle East didn’t quite work out as they had hoped. A quick decisive victory in Iraq became a protracted insurgency that virtually ended up being a civil war. Relying on the quick decisive victory where jubilant Iraqis were expected to welcome the US forces as liberators was to trigger a domino effect where other Arab nations would rise up and demand to be ‘liberated’ just like Iraq. That way all of Israel’s enemies would be dealt a mortal blow leaving Israel with no resistance to contend with as they created their Greater Israel surrounded by Israeli and US-friendly Arab states. They had eight years to do it in while they had a sympathetic president but their plans were spoilt by the Iraqi’s intransigence and the neocons simply ran out of time with the Bush presidency.

They had hoped a McCain Republican presidency may have followed through after Bush but this too was thwarted when Obama swept in on promises to end the wars. While the wars didn’t end, Obama did run them down, and with the end almost in sight in Iraq as the troops get withdrawn at the end of the year and the US looking for a way out of Afghanistan, Obama seems to think that now is a good time for the US to start looking a new ways to affirm American supremacy in the world. And what better way than easing into a confrontation with China.

However, for the neoconservatives, there is still the unfinished business of the Middle East and an Israel that still has enemies that are inhibiting their dreams of a Greater Israel. Israel and their neoconservative supporters still want to confront Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon but they know they can only do this by taking on Iran in order to isolate Hamas and Hezbollah who are supported by Iran. They had hoped at one point that Obama may oblige but, while he came out with the rhetoric regarding Iran’s supposed ‘nuclear weapons program’, Obama was not quite politically ready to take on Iran over allegations of a nuclear weapons program – especially after the Iraq fiasco when similar claims were made.

Senior neocon warmonger Max Boot writing in Commentary outlines the neocons concerns:

The prosaic reality is that America must commit to both the Middle East and Far East. That means maintaining a healthy level of defense spending and avoiding further cuts on top of the $450 billion that has already been lopped off this year. We must build up the Navy and Air Force without cutting much if any force structure from the Army and Marine Corps. Such a commitment may appear to be costly at a time of skyrocketing federal debt, but the costs of ignoring either region–and letting our enemies have their way–will be higher than we can bear.

Boot also highlights the neoconservative's ability to display their arrogance and also their propensity to see enemies where none exist; since when, for example, has China been an enemy? And the US has let them ‘have their way’?

The new US-China paradigm highlights the stark difference between the two powers. Whereas the US overtly flexes its military muscles coupled with bribes to leaders to ensure its needs are met, China simply writes out a cheque to ensure that its needs are met – and most nations are willing to oblige China by accepting their cheque and shipping whatever China needs directly to them. Why can’t the US do the same? Why the need for confrontation?
The answer is… Well, that’s another essay.

THE I.A.E.A. REPORT ON IRAN: ANOTHER FIZZER – AND NO SMOKING GUN!

2011-11-09T15:22:00.001+10:30

Well, the latest and much anticipated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report has finally been released and, despite all the fanfare about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons intentions, not one skerrick of solid ‘smoking gun’ evidence is contained therein.

Alex Spillius at the UK’s Telegraph wrote of the report, “Never before had it joined the dots of Iran's nuclear research to create the inescapable impression that the regime was on the threshold of nuclear weapons capability”.

The problem with ‘dots’ – and the IAEA had created plenty of them – is that, if there are enough of them, one can create any kind of ‘impression’ you like to suit your propaganda and rhetoric. But, try as hard as they did to suggest otherwise, at the end of the day there is still no hard irrefutable bona fide evidence that says Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

What the IAEA seem to have done is drawn the wrong conclusions about the presence of a ‘container’ that they suspect is being used for experiments testing nuclear bomb trigger devices via complex explosive techniques. In reality the ‘container’ is indeed for use in creating complex explosions, but not for triggering a nuclear explosion but, rather, creating nanodiamonds which are used for chemotherapy purposes treating cancer patients – a pervasive health issue in Iran and one of the reasons why they need to enrich their uranium to 20% which can then be used for the creation of isotopes used also in cancer treatment. (Readers can find abundant material relating to nanodiamonds and cancer therapies in Iran utilising Google Scholar.) The reason the device is kept at a military facility is simply because that’s where the explosives can be safely kept.

As far as the other ‘evidence’ the IAEA report refers to, i.e., the massive amounts of paperwork and computer modelling relating to nuclear technology at universities; that’s what universities are for – research and learning. There isn’t a scientific university on the planet that wouldn’t have a similar amount of paper material or computer modelling data relating to nuclear technology at their university. Nigh on every nuclear physics student and postgrad from universities all over the world would be familiar with this stuff. There’s absolutely nothing new her at all – unless you happen to be a layman who is impressed by the techno jargon and gullible enough to believe politicians that know even less than you do!

It’s time the people got out on the streets once again and demand an end to this nonsense ‘cause if the West and Israel go head to head against Iran it will make the Iraq and Afghanistan thing look like a fun-filled paintball skirmish.

I hate to think where it will end.

THE U.S. AND ISRAEL’S ‘OBSESSION’ WITH IRAN - THE REAL REASONS

2011-11-06T15:15:00.002+10:30

Actually, it’s not so much that the U.S. and Israel are seemingly ‘obsessed’ with Iran, but more that the neoconservative’s of the U.S. and Israel’s right-wing Zionists are. However, this apparent obsession is only a deliberately created illusion. Israel’s real obsession is the creation of a Greater Israel and the destruction of those that prevent Israel’s expansionist dreams; Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of who are supported by Iran.

The stated casus belli for any Israeli/US attack on Iran will be that Iran is building a nuclear weapon with which it intends to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. The ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and the ‘wipe Israel off the map’ are two memes that have gone hand in hand in the propaganda and rhetoric of Israel’s Zionists and their neoconservative allies in the US and, indeed, around the world for years.

There are, however, a range of problems with these allegations. Firstly, there is, despite the constant barrage of assertions to the contrary, no actual physical evidence whatsoever that Iran actually has a ‘nuclear weapons program’. Time and time again, Israel and their allies have made the accusations but have never been able to support their allegations with any hard irrefutable evidence. All of the ‘evidence’ so far has been either vaguely circumstantial, hearsay based on statements from dissidents and defectors, straight out lies or simply conclusions based on wishful thinking and vivid imaginations.

Secondly, the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ meme is a deliberate mistranslation of a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said nothing of the sort. It was the neoconservative organisation MEMRI that was responsible for the deliberate mistranslation of the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ line which has been used extensively by neoconservatives and Israelis ever since to invoke hatred of Iran and to infer an existential threat against Israel from Iran. Still, though, Israel and the US insist that Iran is intent on producing a nuclear weapon that it plans to use against Israel and possibly even against America.

Which brings us to the third problem with the allegations ranged against Iran and that is; why would Iran, even if it did have a nuclear weapon, risk utter and swift destruction by the US and Israeli retaliatory nuclear strikes if it were to ever attack Israel with a nuclear weapon? The answer, of course is; it wouldn’t – and the Israelis and the US are well aware of it. They are also well aware that in reality Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

So why then all the fuss? The hope is that with the aid of a compliant Western mainstream media, the propaganda memes of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ repeated over and over endlessly will eventually so influence public opinion that it will support an attack against Iran.

The ‘Iranian problem’ is presented to the world via the mainstream media in its most simplistic form. It runs thus: ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program with which it wishes to wipe Israel off the map so the answer is to destroy its weapons making capabilities using military action’.

That’s the rhetoric and the propaganda.

The reality is this: Israel and the US have no real interest in Iran’s nuclear program; their real aim as far as Iran is concerned is to destroy the Islamic regime and replace it with one that is US and Israel friendly.

Attacking Iran and affecting regime change kills a number of birds with one stone. It puts an end to what Israel and the US regard as Iran’s influence in the region, but, most important as far as the Israelis and their supporters are concerned, is that an attack against Iran provides, so they hope the world will believe, a legitimate pretext for attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon on the basis that the Israelis are pre-empting a strike by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel in retaliation of Israel’s attack against Iran.

Since the only way the US and Israel will be able to affect ‘regime change’ in Iran without the use of an invasion and occupation – unthinkable considering that Iran is more than three and a half times the size of Iraq and has about two and a half times the population – is by bombing it into capitulation and surrender, one can expect a campaign that will be far more than a load of bunker-buster bombs aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Much more likely is a campaign of significant attacks against Iran’s defence and governmental institutions as well as its nuclear facilities; attacks that will deliberately inflict significant ‘co-lateral damage’ on civilians as the Iranian authorities get accused of using their civilians as ‘human shields’. The hope always with this strategy is that the civilian population will then press their government to end the war by capitulating to their enemies demands.

The only problem with this strategy is that it rarely ever works. Usually when such all-out bombing campaigns are carried out with the view to getting the enemy to sue for peace, rather than suing for peace, a phenomenon known as ‘Kriegssozialismus’ sets in whereby people from all walks of civilian life spontaneously ignore their ordinary class affiliations and come together to help each other out in circumstances where all are suffering equally due to war, and, importantly, collectively stiffen their resolve to resist the enemies actions rather than cave into them. Short of using nuclear weapons to defeat Iran, the US and Israel stand no hope of defeating the people of Iran.

There is also a problem of logistics in attacking Iran. Over the years that the threat of attack has prevailed, there have been reports that have suggested that Israel will ‘go it alone’ if they feel threatened enough by Iran’s ‘nuclear weapon program’. One report recently even suggested that the US is “concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking action against Iran’s nuclear facilities”. This is all rhetorical nonsense dished up for public consumption. The reality is that it would be absolutely impossible for Israel to launch an entirely unilateral attack against Iran without US connivance.

In any attack they mount, Israel will use American aircraft which constantly require spare parts mostly from the US. They will also require ordnance which also mostly comes from the US; they will require vast quantities of military jet fuel, and, if Israel plans to attack Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time, it will also require massive amounts of diesel fuel to power up its ground forces. All of this comes from the US and, as was recorded in August 2010, Israel has already ordered that fuel which would by now have been delivered and stockpiled.

The other major logistic hurdle Israel needs to overcome is the one of getting to and from its target. Israel is separated from Iran by at least two other countries; Syria and Iraq or Jordan and Iraq. Either way, this amounts to a round rip of around 3000kms to bomb Bushehr and/or Qom, Iran’s two main nuclear facilities. The most likely route would be via Syria who would be unlikely to offer any resistance to Israeli overflights – especially if it came under attack itself. Then there is the question of overflying Iraq. The Iraqi government on its own is unlikely to allow Israeli aircraft to overfly their territory. Israel would need to be in cohorts with the US if it wished to get the US to convince the Iraqi government to allow Israeli aircraft into its airspace. And not only would Israel need to have Iraqi permission to pass through its airspace, it would also need to use Iraqi airspace for in-flight refuelling operations which the Israelis would need to utilise since their strike aircraft do not have the range to do the job in one round trip without refuelling.

The question then is; what exactly is Israel’s intended endgame in the event of an attack against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?

Such a massive attack against all of its enemies at once is a huge commitment on Israeli resources and one of very high risk. It will, therefore, need to be decisive in terms of meeting all of its war aims.

Israel will have learnt the lessons of its past failures. After years of attacks against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been able to destroy Hezbollah or Hamas despite its efforts against Hezbollah in 2006 and against Hamas in 2008/2009. In the event of an attack against Iran, Israel is likely to simultaneously mount hitherto unprecedented attacks against both Hamas and Hezbollah. Such a strike will likely be opened up with a massive aerial and artillery barrage and then, since Israel does not have to commit ground forces to attacking Iran, it will be able to invade and occupy the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Latani River. At the same time, Israel is likely to fully occupy all of the West Bank in order to prevent any uprising by Palestinian resistance there and remilitarise the Golan Heights to prevent any backlash there.

In short, for Israel an attack against Iran and Israel’s other enemies on the pretext of pre-empting an immediate threat to its own existence will be the do or die action it will take in order to realise Zionism’s ultimate endgame; the creation of a Greater Israel.

The coming confrontation is not about Iran being a threat; it is about Israel ridding itself of all of its enemies in the places that it would like to annex as part of its realisation of creating a permanent Greater Israel nation abundant with fertile lands, its own water resources, and living space. War is its pretext.

IS THE ‘FINAL CONFRONTATION’ NOW IMMINENT?

2011-11-04T14:28:00.003+10:30

This post is a modified version of a post that I wrote back in June of 2008. What I wrote then is just as valid today as it was then.

Those pushing for war against Iran argue, despite the total lack of any evidence to support their claims, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that they will use their nuclear weapons, once they have them, against Israel. Their allegations are reinforced by what they say, quite falsely, are President Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about ‘wiping Israel off the map’.

All of this is merely propaganda and neither Israel nor the US or even the International Atomic Energy Authority, the UNs nuclear watchdog, can produce any evidence whatsoever to support Israeli and US claims about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. [Update: An imminent report due next week from the IAEA will still not provide any hard actual evidence of Iran having a nuclear weapons program. The ‘evidence’ the IAEA will produce will only be statements fro various dissidents and defectors who claim to have knowledge of a nuclear weapons program, and some vague references to Iran supposedly researching trigger devices for nuclear warheads.]

The reality is this: Israel and their supporters have been carrying on about Iran’s nuclear ambitions for years and threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities were being made long before Ahmadinejad became President of Iran in August, 2005. Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric has merely been a reaction to Israel’s bellicose stance towards Iran and, with a little careful massaging of translations of his speeches by the neoconservative think tank, MEMRI, has provided much fodder for the Israel/neocon propaganda machine. However, the real reason Israel wants to attack Iran is not because of Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ – it simply doesn’t have one – nor is it because Ahmadinejad has said he wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ – he never said any such thing – it is because Iran supports both Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Syria who are seeking to have the Golan Heights returned to them. What Israel and the US and their neoconservative allies really want is ‘regime change’ in Iran. They want an Iran that has an Israel and US friendly government so that Israel can continue in its quest to create a Greater Israel without having to worry about Iran supporting those that are resisting Israeli expansionism.

In the event of Israel and the US attacking Iran, one can expect to see not just Iran’s nuclear facilities destroyed, indeed, that will be just a minor part of the operation, but there will also be major attacks against Iranian military targets including air bases, missile storage areas, barracks, etc. Iran’s communications systems and government buildings will also likely be targeted. In short, the Iranian government would be bombed into capitulation.

One can also expect Israel to launch an attack, probably simultaneously with the assault on Iran, against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel may also attack Syria pre-emptively on the basis that Syria has a mutual assistance treaty with Iran and despite the current domestic problems Syria is experience. The resulting conflict could have a devastating effect both on the region and around the world. As well as bringing death and destruction to countless Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians, many Israelis may also die as Iran launches missiles in a counter attack against Israel, a move that could escalate rapidly if Israel decided to its use nuclear weapons against Iran in retaliation to an Iranian counter attack.

The economic consequences for the rest of the world could also be catastrophic. Oil prices, already at record levels due to the uncertainties prevailing in the region, would play havoc with economies world wide.

Then there are the unknowns. How, for example, will Russia, a supplier of nuclear equipment to Iran, and China, a customer of Iran’s resources, react to such an attack? How will the UN handle a pre-emptive assault against Iran? How will the governments of the other Arab states react? How will the peoples of the other Arab states react? What will happen in Iraq, already destroyed by over half a decade of fighting?

The world, somehow, is not reacting to the prospect of war in the same way as it did during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. The reason for that is; the world knew the invasion of Iraq was coming, but this time around there is no overt preparations for war against Iran in the way that there was against Iraq. There is even a feeling that the US simply wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it again after the disaster of Iraq. The problem is, however, that the extreme right-wing of the US and Israel are convinced of their own self-righteousness and that all will go according to their plans.

It’s a frightening scenario. The Middle East could erupt into catastrophic war at any tick of the clock but the world doesn’t seem to think its going to happen.

Sooner or later it will. Israel’s ultimate endgame is for regime change in Iran which, in turn, will deny Hamas and Hezbollah of its ability to resist Israel’s quest for a Greater Israel. War against Iran is the only way Israel’s Zionists will be able to realise their dream.

The coming confrontation hasn’t got anything to do with Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program; it has everything to do with Israel’s desire to create a Greater Israel and rid itself of its enemies once and for all.

IRAN: THE NEOCONS HAVE BECOME CONFUSED AS THEY PUSH FOR ACTION

2011-10-27T14:05:00.003+10:30

Yesterday, Jonathan Tobin at Commentary wrote:

With the International Atomic Energy Agency set to release a new report next month detailing Iran’s efforts to create a nuclear weapon, Tehran’s main protector in the international community is making a last ditch effort to squelch the watchdog group’s efforts to blow the whistle on this threat.

Russia announced today it opposed the IAEA’s plans to publish a report about the military implications of Iran’s illegal push for nukes.

Tobin goes on to write:

Since the beginning of the last decade, Iran has played Western diplomats for fools with Russian assistance.

While Tobin conceded that “the Russians have as much reason to fear a nuclear Iran as anyone else”, Tobin claimed that Russian support for Iran was because Prime Minister Putin “believes anything that thwarts American foreign policy goals constitutes a win for his government”.

This didn’t seem to make any sense. On the one hand Tobin – as well as other neocons and their allies – is accusing Russia of helping Iran cover up what they think is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, while at the same time saying that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be in Russia’s interest any more than anyone elses. Why would they help Iran cover up their so-called nuclear weapons program?

In order to clarify Tobin’s stance, I emailed him. I wrote:

What you are saying, Jonathan, is tantamount to suggesting that Russia is complicit in aiding Iran to become nuclear armed. I wonder, can you explain how a nuclear armed Iran would be in Russia's interest?And, even if it were in Russia's interest, would it not be easier for Russia to simply supply Iran with the nuclear arms you say it seeks?

His response was even more confusing than his article. He replied:

As I wrote, a nuclear Iran is not in Russia's interest. But its delight in thwarting American policy aims seems to trump common sense in this case. Russia has been Iran's chief enabler in international diplomacy as their effort to suppress the IAEA report shows. While Russia knows better than to give Iran nukes, a Middle East in which Iran displaces the U.S. as a power is one that they may think they can live with.

The response provided more questions than answers. I wrote back to him saying:

May I take this a little further since your reasoning seems to be contradictory. We can agree that a nuclear armed Iran is not in Russia's interest, but how can Iran 'displace the US as a power' without being nuclear armed? And, if it's not in Russia's interest, how is it that Russia could 'live with' that?

I’m still, not unsurprisingly, awaiting his reply.

IRAN: IS CONFRONTATION NEAR AT HAND?

2011-10-13T13:44:00.000+10:30

In recent days America has accused Iran of plotting to commit an act of war on American soil by assassinating a Saudi Arabian diplomat. The first question one would need to ask is: why on earth would Iran commit such a deliberate act of war against the US and Saudi Arabia?

And the answer, of course is: they simply wouldn’t.

Yet, this is exactly the ludicrous scenario that the US administration is hoping the world of will accept. “We’re in the process of uniting world public opinion continuing to isolate and condemn their behavior. Nothing has been taken off the table,” vice–President Joe Biden told ABC News on the ‘Good Morning America’ show.

Robert Baer, an ex-CIA intelligence analyst specializing in Iranian affairs, however, has doubts about the veracity of the report about an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, DC, saying that the plot is “completely out of character” for the Iranians.

Apart from a load of wild accusations and an arrest of one of the so-called plotters, the US has not provided any evidence whatsoever of any plot. It seems to be yet another case of ‘we have said it has happened and, therefore, it has’. The world is then expected to believe it just on that basis despite having been gullible enough to have fallen for this nonsense so many times before.

Two questions remain unanswered. First, my original one: why would Iran do such a thing: and two, why would the US want to accuse Iran of plotting such an outrageous act knowing that it could lead to war?

As readers of my blog will be aware, I have warned for some time of a coming confrontation between Iran and Israel and its allies. For years, the Israelis and the US together with their other Western allies have accused Iran of having a nuclear weapons program. And for just as many years, not a skerrick of evidence has ever been produced to support the claims. Iran has consistently claimed that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only in order to produce electrical energy and for medical purposes. And, contrary to claims by the US, Iran has allowed the IAEA access to all of its facilities and no evidence has ever been found that supports the accusation that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

While the US continues to claim that Iran does have a nuclear weapons program, it does so purely to maintain the propaganda rhetoric; it certainly doesn’t have any hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program that would justify it attacking Iran. It is for this reason that the US has resorted to making other accusations about Iran’s hostility toward the US – and in this case, has also attempted to wedge an already extremely fragile relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran into the bargain.

The reality is that Iran is in no position to provoke a war against either Israel or the US. Both Israel and the US, however, would gain extensively from a war that resulted in regime change in Iran.

If the US attacked Iran, say, on the pretext that Iran threatened to commit an act of war against the US, then Israel would be provided with a pretext to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on the basis that they would be pre-empting a retaliatory strike by Hezbollah and Hamas who are Iran’s allies. And just for good measure, the Israelis would also launch a full scale invasion and full military occupation of the West Bank in order, so they would tell the world, to prevent hostile Palestinian elements taking up arms against Israel and the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. While the American attack against Iran would take the world’s centre stage, the Israeli reaction to an American attack against Iran – attacks against Hezbollah and Hamas – would be seemingly only of minor significance compared to the war against Iran whereas in fact the entire war is really is about Israel’s desire to rid itself of its enemies once and for all and thus go some way to realising their dream of creating a Greater Israel.

The fact is; Iran is not at all a threat to the US and never can be, but while Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran will always be there to thwart Israel’s dreams of a Greater Israel.

Only a full on war against Hezbollah and Hamas and regime change in Iran will give the Zionists of Israel what they have yearned for since 1948. And that can only be achieved by America attacking Iran.

COULD TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS LEGITIMISE TIT-FOR-TAT KILLINGS OF THE LEADERS OF THE BELLIGERENTS?

2011-10-01T11:59:00.001+09:30

I’ve spent much of the day reading a dozen or so newspaper articles, opinion pieces and commentaries on the pros and cons of the killing of American citizen and Jihadist, Anwar al Awlaki, who died in Yemen yesterday after being targeted by a Hellfire missile fired from an American operated drone aircraft.

The left and the civil and human rights folk together with folk from the libertarian right have condemned the killing as illegal and unconstitutional, while the right-wing, led noisily by the neoconservatives, have praised the killing as a victory and argued that in time of war such killings are quite justified.

What’s missing from all of these arguments from both sides is the fact that such extra-judicial killings can work two ways. No matter what the rights and wrongs of these kinds of killings are, it means that if it’s okay for the US and its allies to kill their enemies in this way, then its okay for the enemy to do likewise and kill American leaders and leaders of American allies; and since the President of the United States also happens to be the Commander in Chief of American forces, he now becomes a quite legitimate target by exactly the same virtues and logic that the President viewed al Awlaki to be a legitimate target.

Targeted assassinations, of course, are nothing new; the Israelis have quite famously and openly attempted to legitimise the extra-judicial killing of its non-combatant enemies for years. It could even be argued from an historical point of view that Israel’s long history of not very seriously challenged policy of targeted assassinations has paved the way for the Americans to do likewise. Whilst the practise has caused outrage in the past, that outrage hadn’t stopped the killings – killings which continue almost daily in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere against Islamic militants, both combatant and non-combatant. Today, people have become so war-weary they have become immune to more news about such killings. In the case of the latest killing, the uproar is because al Awlaki was an American citizen but this too will soon become just another killing that will usher in a new era of Americans killing Americans justified solely on the basis that they are a threat to security.

One wonders how long it will be before a militant will be targeted and killed in America itself simply because he represents ‘a threat to security’.

And one wonders how long it will be before American and Israeli leaders are themselves targeted by their enemies.

ANDREW BOLT: GUILTY OF RACISM!

2011-09-28T18:35:00.001+09:30

In a landmark victory for multiculturalism in Australia, a Melbourne court today found Murdoch propagandist Andrew Bolt guilty of breaching the racial discrimination act.

While many, including those who detest Bolt’s ideology and writings, have stated that the decision is a blow against freedom of speech, the reality is that it’s actually more of a blow to those that abuse the freedom of speech in order to peddle their scaremongering extreme right-wing ideology of hate and racism.

People like Bolt and his other racist cohorts at the various Murdoch publications including Tim Blair, Piers Akerman, et al, are going to have to think twice before hitting the keyboards to spout their hatreds.

THE ZIONIST BIG LIE ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN ‘BIG LIE’

2011-09-18T15:07:00.001+09:30

Zionist and neoconservative rhetoric often refer to the Palestinian claim that they were expelled from Palestine in 1948 as the “Big Palestinian Lie”. Instead, the Zionists argue that, rather than being expelled from Palestine, they fled.

It is, of course, classic Zionist Chutzpah. The obvious question is; why then did they flee? It wasn’t just to escape the fighting; it was through fear of what would happen to them if they stayed. The Palestinians that fled had heard of the atrocities that the Israeli fighters had committed on Palestinians elsewhere such as at Deir Yassin, Lydda, Ein al Zeitun, among many others.

The Palestinians that left weren’t refugees from the fighting; they were expelled through fear of being killed by the Palmach, the Irgun or the Haganah forces of Zionist Israel.

The latest lie about the Palestinian expulsion came from Sol Stein writing in the neocon online rag National Review Online. This time, however, Sol Stein has exposed himself as a liar. His lie is so obvious. I have emailed him to let him know that his claims are false and why they are. This is what I said to him:

Hi Sol
In your article “The Palestinian Big Lie: The Palestinians distort the origins of the conflict with Israel” which recently appeared in National Review Online, you wrote:

“Almost immediately, Safed’s Arabs began streaming out toward the Syrian border. There were no expulsions of Arab civilians by Israeli forces.”

Yet Ben Gurion wrote in his diary on 7 June 1948:

“Abraham Hanuki, from Ayelet Hashahar, told me that since there were only 100 old people left in Safed they were expelled to Lebanon.”

How can you say there were no Arab civilians expelled by Israel? You are contradicting, not just a Palestinian claim that, indeed, there were expulsions, but a claim by Ben Gurion himself.

I look forward to your explanation.

Kind regards
Damian Lataan

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response or any form of explanation because any response, other than an apology to the Palestinian people, would simply compound the Big Zionist Lie.

APPLAUDING DEATH? AMERICA’S SICKNESS

2011-09-14T15:19:00.001+09:30

There’s something very 1984-ish about an audience applauding the deaths of others. George Orwell wrote of a society that went to the cinema where part of the ritual was to applaud newsreel film of people being bombed and machine-gunned to death. Of course, they weren’t people from their own society that were being killed; they were people that belonged to another society that supposedly were their enemies. No one in the audience knew who they were. They didn’t care. They were just ‘them’; the enemy.

When Rick Perry was asked recently about the record number of 234 death-row prisoners put to death on his watch the audience vigorously applauded. Later, Perry told his audience that he didn’t care whether the condemned were actually guilty or not. His audience thought that was okay as well.

And America wants the world to be like them.

A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF NEOCONSERVATIVE HYPOCRISY

2011-09-12T12:42:00.003+09:30

There are so many neocons writing daily blogs in their online comic magazine Commentary these days that it’s inevitable that one neocon sooner or later was going to write something that would demonstrate the hypocrisy of their rhetoric when contrasted with something written by another neocon writer. Here’s a classic.

On Sunday, 11 September, Michael Rubin writes:

Many states will vote for unilateral Palestinian statehood at the United Nations on September 20. Let us hope they consider their votes carefully, because they will create a precedent that can impact more than a dozen other countries.

After all, if the Muslim bloc can use its population and oil leverage to extort votes of smaller countries on this issue…

‘Extort votes’??!!

Apparently, however, it’s Muslim bloc bad, but Western bloc good as Jonathan Tobin, also writing in Commentary, explains:

For decades, American aid to Egypt has been a necessary embarrassment. The $2 billion per year paid to the Egyptian dictatorship was more than the price for Cairo to adhere to its peace treaty with Israel. It was also necessary to keep the largest Arab country safely out of the hands of first the Soviet Union and then the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Though the money only enriched the military and the ruling elite, it was still considered something of a bargain.

‘Though the money only enriched the military and the ruling elite’??!!

Now, if that isn’t hypocrisy then I don’t know what is!

And America wants the rest of the world to be like them?

THE USE OF ‘VALUES’ RHETORIC TO POLARISE AND DISGUISE RACISM

2011-09-07T16:02:00.000+09:30

On the Australian ABC’s ‘7.30 Report’ a week ago, ex-Prime Minister John Howard gave an interview about the ‘current state of the political landscape’ in Australia. Toward the end of the interview Howard made some remarks that highlighted and exposed his racism. He said:

There is a realisation, also, that the thing that binds countries together are common values and common beliefs, and the takeout of mine over the last 10 years is that the strongest bonds between nations are shared values and shared attitudes more than anything else.

He then went on to reinforce this notion by saying:

…I believe very strongly that what brings countries more closely together than anything else is our shared values. That is why, despite the economic significance of China - and it is very significant - America and Australia will always be closer than China and Australia because we have shared values. That's not to be critical of China or downplay the importance of the relationship, but just to emphasise that it's values that drives the strength of an alliance more than anything else. [My bold emphasis.]

One has to ask; what are these ‘values’ that Australia shares with America? Apart from speaking English and being generally Judeao-Christian in religious beliefs, there’s actually very little else we have in common. There was a time when we truly did have common values coming basically from the same British stock but those days are long gone as both countries evolved in differing ways that were dominated mainly by successive waves of different kinds of migrants into the two countries. For the US it was the influx of Africans as slaves to America and the earlier influence of the Spanish in the Americas while in Australia our society has become multicultural by virtue of its indigenous population, the influence of continental European migration and then latterly by Asian immigration – including Chinese – and even more recently by Middle Eastern and Central Asian migration.

John Howard lives in the past and refuses to accept that Australia is a truly multicultural nation and that our values have as much in common with China these days as they have with any other nation.

DID AUSTRALIAN P.M. JOHN HOWARD JOIN WITH BUSH AND BLAIR IN AGREEING TO WAR EVEN WITHOUT U.N. RESOLUTION 1441?

2011-08-30T11:36:00.005+09:30

New evidence has emerged which shows that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush agreed to take military action against Iraq even if UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was vetoed.

In the following narrative the dates are important.

A letter dated 17 October 2002 from Matthew Rycroft, Tony Blair’s private secretary, to Mark Sedwill, private secretary to then British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, shows that Blair and Bush had agreed that they would take action against Iraq without a resolution if it were found that Saddam Hussein was in clear breach of the earlier resolutions.

As we now know, there was no further separate UN endorsement for military action but the allies decided to go to war anyway once it became clear that France and Russia were going to veto any further UN Security Council Resolution that specifically permitted military action. The leaders of the Coalition of the Willing eventually argued that Resolution 1441 gave them the right to invade and disarm Iraq and that no further resolution was required.

The letter is extremely significant because it shows that, by at least mid-October 2002, both leaders had already made the decision to invade Iraq even if UNSC Resolution 1441 had been vetoed. As it happened, UNSC Resolution 1441 went through unanimously on the 8 November 2002.

So where does the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, fit into all this?

Howard, of course, was a close ally of both Bush and Blair. Bush had pushed for a UN resolution to force Iraq to comply with the disarmament demands of previous resolutions and that failure to comply with the new proposed resolution should result in Iraq being disarmed by military force. On the 12 September 2002 Bush gave a speech to the UN outlining the US case and proposing the resolution. After intense negotiations that went on for some eight weeks a wording was agreed upon that enabled UNSC Resolution 1441 to go through. The rest, as they say, is history.

The big question now is, did John Howard know of the secret agreement between Blair and Bush, an agreement which more than likely was struck when Blair dined with Bush at Camp David on the evening of 7 September 2002 after Bush had spent most of that day with his national security team ‘finalizing his decision on the resolution’.(1) Is it a coincidence that it was also on this day that Bush had had a telephone conversation with Howard about the forthcoming resolution?(2) A little over two weeks later Howard was in London having talks with Tony Blair. On 25 September 2002, Howard gave a doorstop interview in London just after his meetings with Blair. A reporter asked him:

Prime Minister, the three former prime ministers and the former governor general have come out urging you not to back a US and UK strike without UN sanctions. Do you have a comment on that?

Howard’s reply was this:

Yes, I have got a comment. Right at the moment, Australia is strongly supporting the attempts of the United States and Britain to obtain Security Council support for a resolution on this issue. It is clearly not in Australia's interests for me to speculate as to what this country might do if those attempts fail. The right thing for Australia is for me to support those current attempts and to refrain from any comment as to what might be Australia's attitude if those bona fide attempts are not successful. Thank you.

In retrospect and knowing what we know now, his answer is, at the very least, telling. The phrasing, as always with Howard, is carefully chosen. One has to ask, however, why is it not in Australia’s interests for him “to speculate as to what this country might do if those attempts fail”?

And why was it “the right thing” for him “to refrain from any comment as to what might be Australia's attitude if those bona fide attempts are not successful”? It begs the question, was Howard privy to Blair and Bush’s agreement? And, more importantly, had Howard become a silent partner in that agreement since events, as it transpired, would be in line with such an agreement?

It is significant that Howard did not mention this September 2002 meeting with Blair in his autobiography. The upshot here is: Was this the meeting where Howard committed Australia to war – even if UNSC Resolution 1441 had been defeated? Because, if it was, Howard is very much guilty of misleading the Australian people and the Australia Parliament to whom he had insisted that he had not made a decision about going to war until almost the very eve of the invasion.

History will not be kind to Howard. The evidence so far, while only circumstantial, is fast becoming compelling. It is only a matter of time before the truth will eventually be told.

ENDNOTES

(1) George W. Bush, Decision Points. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.) pp. 238-239.

(2) John Howard, Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography. (Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.) pp. 432-433.

NEOCONS WANT LIBYA TO BE A ‘WESTERN-STYLE DEMOCRACY’ – ENFORCED BY WESTERN BOOTS ON THE GROUND

2011-08-22T21:43:00.000+09:30

Neocon armchair warmonger-in-chief, ‘Mad Max’ Boot, writing in Commentary today has said:

If Libya is to arrive at the destination we would all like to see – if it is to emerge as a liberal, Western-style democracy – much hard work lies ahead.

“…the destination we would all like to see”? What about what the destination the Libyan people would like to see? After looking at the way America has performed over the last couple of centuries and seeing how it has ended up today – broke and with a dog eat dog every man for himself mentality – the last thing the Libyan people would want is a ‘liberal, Western-style democracy’ with all of the hypocrisy and arrogance that goes with it.

Boot goes on to write:

I have been arguing for awhile, it is vitally important NATO be ready to help stabilize the situation, to prevent Qaddafi’s supporters from mounting an insurgency, to keep potent weapons from slipping out of governmental control–in short to ensure Libya does not suffer the fate of Iraq or Afghanistan, which descended into chaos after the collapse of their regimes

The best way to ensure that Libya doesn’t suffer the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were invaded and destroyed by the US and their Western allies, is for the US and the West to keep well out of Libyan affairs and let them sort it out for themselves.

Boot’s idea of ‘helping to stabilise the situation’ is to put around hundred thousand Western troops on the ground in Libya. I can just see the rebels after all they’ve been through getting rid of Gaddafi, letting in a hundred thousand Western troops to ensure that they do what they are told by the US.

He’s not called ‘Mad Max’ Boot for nothing!

NEOCONS NOT SURE YET WHO TO BACK FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION

2011-08-17T14:21:00.002+09:30

It seems pretty clear as one reads through the various articles in neocon online rags such as Commentary, The Weekly Standard and National Review Online, that the neocons still haven’t firmed on backing any particular runner in the race for Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential elections.

They have, however, made it fairly clear who they don’t want - and that’s Ron Paul, the candidate who ran an extremely close second to Michelle Bachmann in the recent Ames straw poll. While Paul’s ideas about ending the wars goes down well with many war-weary Republican – and, indeed, Democrat – voters, it would be a complete anathema for the neocons who see the wars against Islam as essential for the long-term objective of Israel’s expansionist aspirations into the occupied territories and elsewhere.

Paul Ryan, who hasn’t said he’d run yet, apparently doesn’t cut it with the neocons either. In this case, it’s Ryan’s domestic policies that seem to be at odds with what the neocons advocate.

For the neocons – and also much of the commentariat of the mainstream media as well as at least one poll – the three main contenders at this stage of the game are Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

There does seem to be a distinct trend toward favouring Rick Perry inasmuch that there is nothing being said by neocons that is critical of him – though, having said that, most comments about him are more simple observations about him rather than open support.

It may be that the neocons are still holding their cards close to their chest in case someone more favourable decides to throw their hat into the ring or they may think that it’s simply too early to put all their weight behind one candidate just to find that he or she later backs out.

One thing’s for sure; right now there is no one in the running who has really impressed the neocons. There is no George W. Bush or Dick Cheney combo anywhere on the horizon and, certainly, none of the current frontrunners could be framed as ‘neoconservative’, though all support certain aspects of neoconservative ideolgy and all have taken advise from neoconservatives. They still all have to fully prove their foreign policy credentials, particularly in relation to the Middle East and Israel, before the get the full unconditional support of the neoconservative movement.

NEOCONSERVATIVES AND THEIR GRAND DELUSIONS

2011-08-16T14:50:00.002+09:30

The neoconservative’s ability to delude themselves knows no bounds. Thomas Donnelly writing in the neoconservative’s comic The Weekly Standard says in his latest article:

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

The ‘world’s sole superpower’? ‘Guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace’? ‘Widespread prosperity’? ‘Unprecedented human liberty’?

Who’s Donnelly trying to convince?

Ever since the downfall of the Soviet Union the US has fancied itself as the ‘world’s sole superpower’ but in reality of course, it is nothing of the sort. It forgets that China is also a ‘superpower’ with the ability to destroy the US, and it forgets that Russia, if push ever came to shove, could also still destroy the US. If it took five hundred nuclear warheads to destroy the planet, having a thousand of them when your two main potential enemies has only six hundred each doesn’t make you a superpower. The US, China and Russia all have Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) capability. How does that make the US the ‘sole superpower’? Perhaps the neocons think that the US propensity to throw their weight around gives them rights to such title but, again, reality shows us differently. In October 2001 the full technological might of the ‘world’s sole superpower’ was thrown against a rag-tag army of poorly armed Islamists and insurgents. Ten years later and the ‘world’s sole superpower’ still hasn’t anywhere near defeated the rag-tag army of Islamists and insurgents – and, after ten years of fighting, it’s unlikely that they ever will.

In March 2003 the ‘world’s sole superpower’ unleashed that same technological might against the people of Iraq. Just over nine years and four months later, on 15 August 2011, a series of bomb explosions across Iraq killed some 60 people and injured another 100.

So much for having ‘created a generation of great-power peace’.

And ‘widespread prosperity’!? The country is on the verge of bankruptcy. The American people are at breaking point with almost an entire middle and working class facing ruin. The only people who have prospered are the bankers and the Military Industrial Complex.

And, as for ‘unprecedented human liberty’; all this ‘liberty’ has ever given the American people is the freedom to hate each other and to exploit and manipulate each other. The wealthy have been free to enslave and fleece the gullible. The power hungry have been free to lie and trick the people in to sacrificing their lives for the cause of a nation that’s not theirs. While they talk of ‘human liberty’ they have imprisoned and tortured thousands who have had no trial or justice.

So much for ‘unprecedented human liberty’.

It is the grand delusions of the neoconservatives that will keep America from ever becoming a real superpower. Arrogance and military might do not a superpower make.

THE ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ CHUTZPAH OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES

2011-08-14T11:43:00.000+09:30

Jonathan Tobin, a neoconservative Zionist writer at Commentary magazine seems to think that Jews will be ‘ethnically cleansed’ from a new Palestinian state. However, as I have explained in a letter to him, his argument is flawed. Here’s what I wrote to him:

Jonathan

Your argument in your article “Abbas’ Vision of an Ethnically Cleansed Palestinian State” is flawed. You write “…that any Israeli who would call for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel is rightly branded as an extremist whose views are out of touch with the democratic values of the nation.”

The problem with this is that Arabs living in Israel are subject to Israeli law and jurisdiction whereas Jewish settlers living in the West Bank want to remain subject to Israeli laws and jurisdiction if and when there is ever a Palestinian state. Settlers remaining in the West Bank after the creation of a Palestinian state would not be prepared to subject themselves to the laws and jurisdiction of a Palestinian state if the settlements were included within the new Palestinian state.

It’s not so much a case of ‘ethnically cleansing’ the new Palestinian state but, rather, Jews living in the settlements not wanting to subject themselves to the laws and jurisdiction of the new Palestinian state and, therefore, leaving and returning to Israel or from wherever they originally came from.

Neoconservatives and Zionists have consistently argued when discussing Israel’s history that the Palestinians were never ‘ethnically cleansed’ from modern Israel – with all that that implies – but left as the state was being created. Now you are arguing that, when the state of Palestine gets created, Jews living within it are somehow going to be ‘ethnically cleansed’ when in reality they will simply prefer not to live under Palestinian laws and jurisdiction.

Unlike most Palestinians that fled to become refugees at the creation of Israel, Jews in the new state of Palestine will not be chased out at the point of a gun amidst threats of death. In fact there will be no ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jews from a Palestinian state, only an orderly departure of those Jews that live in the West Bank who would prefer to remain Israeli and not become Palestinians.

Damian Lataan

THE UK RIOTS: A PRELUDE FOR ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ BY ENGLISH RACISTS AND ISLAMOPHOBES?

2011-08-10T16:54:00.005+09:30

It was only a matter of time before the Islamophobic extreme right-wing English Defense League (EDL) used the riots that originated in London but have since spread to other areas in the UK as an excuse to take to the streets themselves “to stop the riots”. According to a report in the UK Daily Telegraph, EDL leader Stephen Lennon has said that “up to 1,000 members would take to the streets in areas of unrest to stop the riots”. Lennon added that the “police obviously can’t handle it”.

One wonders how the EDL plan to “stop the riots” and, if they choose to use violence, who exactly will their violence be perpetrated against.

We were told at the beginning that these riots were race related. Later, however, it became obvious that it was much more about disenfranchisement of youth, caused by unemployment, poor living conditions, lack of opportunity, etc., than with race though there is certainly an element of racial tension involved and, indeed, the shooting that set it all off seems to have had racial connotations.

The question now is; if the unrest continues and the EDL do take to the streets to “stop the riots”, will they use it as an excuse to go after the Islamic youth in those areas that are affected and, if they do, where will it end?

Those that have spread hatred against Islam have a lot to answer for.

See here for more on this as seen through the eyes of an Australian Murdoch Islamophobic journalist.

UPDATE

Three Muslim men guarding their properties have been murdered in Birmingham by being run over. One man has been arrested.

MURDOCH JOURNO, ANDREW BOLT, DEFENDS THE ‘CREED’ THAT MOTIVATED ANDERS BREIVIK

2011-07-25T11:37:00.002+09:30

In his column today, Murdoch journalist Andrew Bolt defends the creed of hate that motivated the killing of more than 90 people in Norway.

In his article, which he titles ‘Look not at his creed but at his wounds’, Bolt attempts to excuse the actions of Breivik by portraying him as being deeply frustrated by a sense of “powerlessness” which Bolt suggests is bought on by being engulfed by Islam, and “rejection” because of coming from a broken family.

While Bolt has used various superlatives to describe what Breivik had done including ‘murder’ and ‘atrocity’, etc., Bolt has consistently failed to wholeheartedly condemn the crime or the ‘creed’ that motivated it.

Fortunately, apart from a few of Bolt’s regular far-right Islamophobic supporters, most comments, even from some who often support Bolt, are critical of him for taking this stance.

After a careful read of Bolt’s post one can only conclude that Bolt is actually supportive of the reason why Breivik committed this crime. Certainly Andrew Bolt and his Islamophobic supporters in Australia are on exactly the same wavelength as Breivik. It was only a matter of time before Bolt's influence manifested itself in this type of violence.We have Murdoch to thank for the part Bolt has played in bringing the kind of hate-filled thinking Breivik has displayed to Australia.

Murdoch should immediately sack this hate-monger before his Islamophobic nonsense gains a foothold in Australia and culminates in the same kind of tragedy that happened in Norway.

MURDOCH’S AUSTRALIAN HATE MERCHANTS

2011-07-24T13:45:00.000+09:30

Whereas in Britain Murdoch’s journalists revel in tabloid sensationalism utilising various nefarious methods of gaining material for their non-stories, Murdoch’s Australian journalists tend more to specialise in ultra right-wing racism. This includes cultural and religious racism directed mainly toward Islam, as well as blood and colour racism which is directed particularly toward Australia’s own Aboriginal people and also toward black Africans that have sought refuge in Australia.

At Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, the ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, almost daily lays bare his racist credentials for all his followers to see. Today, for example, he tells us that the ‘underclass are stirring’. For Bolt the underclass are the whites of Australia who are lashing out against African migrants. In a futile effort to distance himself from the activities and violence of the underclass that he has stirred up by writing articles designed specifically to influence such perpetrators of violence and hatred, Bolt calls his post about the stirred underclass; ‘White trash’.

Meanwhile, at Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper, The Telegraph, another ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, Tim Blair, showed his Islamophobic colours when he made the same knee-jerk call as Bolt when the Norwegian atrocity story broke; he blamed Muslims.

The other blogger-columnist at The Telegraph is the all round racist Piers Akerman. Writing, thankfully, only intermittently these days, Akerman’s latest offering, ‘What a pack of Burqas’, was apparently written in France where he has been touring. The article covers the whole gamut of Akerman’s lunatic rantings (he once actually attempted to blame Muslims for causing the 2009 Black Sunday fires in Victoria) ranging from protecting what’s left of Murdoch’s credibility in the UK to Muslim immigration in Europe and back again.

The propaganda at Murdoch’s – and Australia’s – only national newspaper, The Australian, is only marginally more sophisticated than his regional tabloids. Greg Sheridan, Dennis Shanahan and Janet Albrechtsen, the Ann Coulter of the Australian loony right, are among the most prominent racist ultra right-wingers that Murdoch employs. Naturally, they all also happen to be climate change denialists and supporters of pollutionists. Currently, most of them are busy trying to isolate Murdoch’s Australian propaganda machine from the fallout from the misdeeds of his UK propaganda machine.

The aims of the two arms of his propaganda empire, the UK and Australia, are the same; its just that the UK arm tends more toward using underhand means of pushing their message while the Australian arm uses blatant fear-mongering racism and lies about climate change to get to its objectives of ‘regime change’ in Australia.

Murdoch’s merchants of hate in Australia have played down the events that occurred in Norway two days ago. Few have condemned the atrocity and have only reported the facts. Nor have Murdoch’s propagandists properly condemned the reactionary violence against African immigrants by racist white youths who clearly have been influenced by the likes of Murdoch’s Australian propagandists.

MURDOCH JOURNO ANDREW BOLT FAILS TO CONDEMN FAR-RIGHT KILLINGS AND BOMBING IN NORWAY

2011-07-23T11:25:00.001+09:30

Murdoch journalist and extreme right-wing Australian racist, Andrew Bolt, is always quick to condemn Islamic terrorism wherever it may occur. Of course, all terrorism needs to be condemned but for Bolt, such condemnation is also seen as an opportunity to push his hate spiel against Islam for his racist followers to feed on.

Yesterday, as news came in that bombing and shooting atrocities had occurred in Norway, Bolt was quick off the mark to blame Islamist extremists saying “Once the identity of the attackers becomes known, the consequences for Norway’s immigration policies could be profound”.

Well, the identity of the attackers did become known and it seems at least one of them, who has been arrested, is actually just like Bolt and his crew of haters – an Islamophobic far-right racist.

Once Bolt realised that the attack had not been perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, he began to report only the bare facts in a series of updates to his original post. All of the updates were noticeably devoid of any condemnation. To date there have been no further posts on the attacks at Bolt’s blog.

This is part of the Murdoch style of journalism in Australia. Whether or not there is phone hacking going on in Australia is as yet unknown, but certainly there is a distinct pattern of anti-Islamic and anti non-white racism running through most of Murdoch’s publications in Australia particularly in Sydney where another Murdoch racist, Tim Blair, operates, and in Melbourne which is Bolt’s hate base.

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, IT’S ABOUT RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE

2011-07-19T15:18:00.005+09:30

The climate change debate has caused us to lose sight of the real issue at stake.

The right-wing media that support the polluters are contesting the Greens argument that continued use of the earths non-renewable resources as a fuel will eventually lead to a rise in temperatures that will ultimately see many of the planets low lying areas become engulfed by and lost to rising sea levels. The right-wing media argues simply that this just won’t happen and that there’s no proof to support it. The Greens, in turn, say there is ample proof and that we should take immediate steps to do something about it.

To help the pollutionists argument, the right-wing have arranged an assortment of so-called experts to travel around the planet in an attempt to persuade the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘not convinced’ into their camp. One of the most prolific pro-pollutionist speakers, an ‘expert’ with no formal qualifications in the field, is a certain Lord Christopher Monckton. As part of his rhetoric, Monckton actually claims to be a member of Britain’s House of Lords while knowing that he is not. So serious is the matter that the House of Lords have had to ask Monckton to refrain from claiming that he is a member. ‘Lord’ Monckton, thus, has no credibility yet the pro-pollutionists continue to pay for his services. While there are far more pro-climate change scientists around than there are denialist scientists – most of whom seem to have various vested interests in supporting the pollutionists – the denialist scientists have the support of a massive right-wing media controlled mainly by the now much troubled Murdoch group of companies.

In the pro-polluters camp there are two distinct groups. One group are the polluters themselves who are currently making a lot of money out of polluting and so don’t want to stop polluting; and then there is a second more complex group that support the polluters cause but for their own nefarious reasons. Together they have formed an alliance that is determined to stop the world from stopping the polluters polluting it.

The second group that support the polluters do so only because their primary concern is that they don’t want to have to pay the polluters compensation to stop polluting us which is what some of the world’s governments are proposing. They are also concerned that the polluters will more than likely not stop polluting us and far more likely make even more money by trading in the complex government-sponsored ‘carbon credits’ scheme. They argue simply that a ‘carbon tax’ will cost the planet in jobs and money and do little or nothing to stop climate change – if, indeed, it’s actually changing anyway.

Within the second group there is a small group who think, possibly rightly, that the ‘carbon tax’ is just another government rip off from the ordinary working class world that will achieve nothing except enrich further those that are already rich. This group aren’t so much for the pollutionists but, rather, against the impost of a tax. In nations like Australia where a ‘carbon tax’ is being proposed, this group are politically important because they may well be the group that decide who will next govern Australia because, the way things are going at the moment, the next election could revolve almost entirely around this issue.

My argument, however, is not so much about whether or not there is climate change occurring – I happen to think there is - but more about the future of resources for a world that our children, grand-children and great grand-children will inherit; a future which should concern all of us whether we are believers or not.

Our world is populating at an exponential rate; it has more than tripled in just the last 90 years. Advances in medicine and health care have ensured a generally longer life. Fertility treatment, higher birth survival rates and post-natal care practices also play a part in increasing the world’s population. Although wars, unfortunately, are still a part of human existence on the planet, they are nowhere near as devastating in terms of numbers dead as the wars that dominated the twentieth century and this fact too has increased the planets population. As a result, in 50 years time we can expect a world population of some 10-12 billion people from the 6.93 billion we have now. Providing energy for such large numbers of people from non-renewable resources is likely to deplete the known resources very quickly.

Pro-pollutionists argue that there are still plenty of resources left in the ground that has not yet been discovered. The obvious retort to such an argument is; if it has not yet been discovered, how can anyone say that there's plenty left? While it is true that man has over the past several decades since the Second World War discovered vast deposits of energy resources, we have quickly used much of these up, and the areas where man can now look have been all but exhausted. The pro-pollutionists, however, insist on continuing to search for these resources knowing that the chances of finding them become less likely as each day goes by.

We need to ask ourselves a number of questions; first, are we willing to take a punt on there actually being vast amounts of resources left and, even if there are, how much longer will it last before we need to start another desperate search for more? Second, if we do find the extra reserves the planet needs, are we willing to take a punt on the climate change scientists being wrong by going ahead and burning it in the hope that it will have no ill effects? And when those reserves do run out; what then?

Our planet’s engineers now have the technology to produce energy from solar, lunar and geothermal resources. We can produce power directly from the sun via photo-voltaic (PV) cells, direct radiation on absorber panels (solar hot water systems), wind energy (which comes via the sun heating air masses which causes air to expand and move), and other devices that use mirrors and lenses. We can produce power by harnessing the moon’s gravitational pull on the worlds oceans (tidal and wave power); and we have an abundant source of geothermal power locked up beneath the earths surface which we are only just beginning to understand and use though some countries, like Iceland, have been using geothermal power for years for various applications including heating water and living spaces as well as generating electricity.

For sure, much of this technology is still in its infancy and a lot of research and development still needs to be done before it can be used universally and in enough numbers where a point can be reached that we no longer need to worry about our future energy needs even if we knew there was no more non-renewable resources left to use, but we are moving along fairly rapidly. Just recently there has been a tremendous surge in the use of PV energy generation. PV panels are now the most common form of renewable energy generation used in private homes. Advances in PV efficiency both in terms of power generation and cost have allowed them to become a very practical alternative to ever-increasing power bills for many households. If the PV technology advances follows anything like the way computer technology advanced then we could very quickly see rapid universal use of them everywhere.

Wind power generation has also seen huge advances in use in less than a decade. In South Australia, for example, more than 14% of the states power needs are generated from wind turbines with more on the way. And, again, wind turbine technology is also seeing this form of power generation come into rapidly increasing usage.

Advances in energy storage systems, especially in lithium battery design, is bringing the electric car concept closer to reality. Once the volume-mass problems associated with energy storage systems have been solved, so we will be a step closer to using all-electric transport systems of all types.

We do still have a long way to go but the time it takes to get there can be drastically shortened if the energy providers of the world can be given incentives to increase their research and development to providing renewable energy resources rather than using up what’s left of the worlds non-renewable resources. There is far more at stake here than the loss of a few coalminers jobs or the non-renewable energy providers profits. We need to look forward to a world that doesn’t rely on fuels that will run out; a world where its inhabitants don’t have to fight over the pickings of what reserves are left; a world that stops consuming itself and instead uses what our solar system can provide – abundant energy that will increase the quality of life for everyone on the planet.

The choice is simple. You can have this (above) which the likes of Andrew Bolt, a notorious pro-pollutionist, thinks is a “rotten thing” because, he says, it has ruined one of his “favourite views in Victoria”, or we can have this (below).
The so-called ‘carbon tax’, which will pay for the research and development of renewable resources, is a small price to pay, both now and for our future.

AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER, KEVIN RUDD: MAN OF DECEIT

2011-07-15T10:01:00.004+09:30

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ex-Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister, is either nowhere near as bright as he likes to think he is or he is being deliberately deceitful.

Yesterday, while visiting Melbourne, Rudd stopped off at a café in one of Melbourne’s shopping plazas. Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported that his choice of cafe was deliberate. Rudd was quoted as saying: ''As an individual citizen - that is me, K. Rudd - I am here because I object to the boycotting of Jewish businesses”.

If Rudd had said he was there because he objected to the boycotting of Israeli businesses then that would have been fine – but he didn’t. He specifically and deliberately said ‘Jewish’ businesses. It was deliberate because he went on to emphasise the point by saying that “anyone with historical memory should deplore boycotts of Jewish businesses”. Rudd, of course, was referring to the way Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses in Germany during the 1930s.

Rudd’s inference here is quite clear; boycotting Jewish businesses is anti-Semitic – and if the businesses were being boycotted simply because they were Jewish, it would indeed be anti-Semitic.

The problem is; this particular business, a Max Brenner Chocolate Bar, was targeted for boycotting recently by pro-Palestinian activists, not because it was a Jewish-owned business, but because it was an Israeli-owned business. The fact that the business also happens to be Jewish-owned is incidental. There are many Jewish-owned businesses all over Australia and not one of them is being boycotted solely because it is Jewish-owned.

There also happens to be another aspect to this story that Rudd hadn’t considered when setting out to take this action.

The Max Brenner chain of businesses is owned by the Israeli-based company the Strauss Group. The Strauss Group is headed up by Michael Strauss. Michael Strauss also happens to be a strong supporter of an Israeli centrist think-tank called the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).

Recently the extreme right-wing Zionist government led by Benjamin Netanyahu introduced laws in Israel that would ban Israelis from supporting calls for boycotts of Israeli goods and businesses. There has been a backlash against the anti-boycotting law proposal on the grounds that such a move is undemocratic – and the IDI has come out very strongly in support of the move to defeat the new anti-boycotting laws.

Rudd’s attempt at invoking Nazi era anti-Semitism in order to promote Zionism is transparently inappropriate and utterly deceitful – not to mention as in this case, totally misplaced considering that the head of the company that owns the cafe Rudd stopped at effectively supports the right to boycott.

BOLT THE RACIST, BOLT THE HYPOCRITE.

2011-07-14T11:49:00.000+09:30

In his rush to demonise Islam, the racist Islamophobe Andrew Bolt forgets how similar Islam is to Judaism in many of its practices. In his column today he does his usual lazy journalist stunt of cutting and pasting other people’s work to create a post that is totally bereft of any of his own words. In this case he cites fellow Islamophobe Mark Steyn from his blog in order to project his own view.

Basically, the piece attempts to belittle Islam by highlighting the Islamic practice of not allowing menstruating women to worship in their mosque and being made to sit at the back of the place of worship during this time. Bolt and Steyn infer that the practice is both sexist and archaic. Another Islamophobe, Kathy Shaidle, reinforces this notion in her article which Steyn and then Bolt quote: “…and the year is 2011” implying that this sort of practice isn’t appropriate in this day and age.

The problem is that all of these Islamophobes have been so busy trying to demonise Islam in this way that they’ve not realised that some sects within Judaism have very similar laws about menstruating women with some synagogues not even allowing menstruating women into the synagogue let alone make them sit at the back.

All Bolt, Steyn and Shaidle have demonstrated with this piece of attempted hate-spiel is their own hypocrisy and utter ignorance – not to mention their Islamophobic racism and contempt for the Islamic religion. Their hate-spiel goes to the heart of Islamic religious practices, practices which also happen to be shared by other religions, and has absolutely nothing to do with Islamic extremism which they claim is their only objection to Islam.

Freedom of speech is one thing; Bolt’s brand of hate-speech is something else. The quicker this sick racist is shut down the better for Australia and the better for the planet.

REUEL MARC GERECHT: THE DECEITFUL NEOCONSERVATIVE EXPOSED

2011-07-13T18:07:00.002+09:30

Reuel Marc Gerecht is one of neoconservatisms most diehard ideologues. In his latest piece of neocon rhetoric in The Weekly Standard Gerecht writes:

“…the uncertainties of the Arab Spring and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war in Libya have spooked the administration. Its ‘realist’ tendencies are well known, and ‘realism’ powerfully comes to the fore when a president doesn’t know what to do—or believes that the United States can do little. The safest and easiest bet then is to do nothing—the essence of most ‘realist’ policy.

Such ‘prudence’, ‘restraint’, and ‘patience’—the administration is fond of these words—can be commendable when a situation is messy or murky. But neither applies in Syria. This is an easy call: We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region—the linchpin of Iran’s alliances and terrorist apparatus. We have a chance to traumatize Tehran: The world will look a lot more precarious to supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a lot more hopeful to the millions behind Iran’s pro-democracy Green Movement if Bashar al-Assad goes down. The importance of Syria to Iranian foreign policy and internal politics cannot be overstated.”

Now, Gerecht has been around spouting the neocon cause for a very long time and while in his latest article he comes across all concerned about America’s dwindling power, the reality is that his primary concerns are not so much for America but far more for Israel.

Gerecht accuses Obama of either not knowing ‘what to do’ about Syria or believing there is little that can be done. There is another option that Gerecht doesn’t mention but which is far more likely to be the case as far as Obama is concerned and that is it’s simply not practical to go in boots and all as Gerecht would like him to do.

One has to ask oneself; how come Gerecht and all his neocon buddies are so deadset obsessed with Syria and Iran? Neither nation is a threat to America. Gerecht says; “We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region…” but how is Syria an enemy? In what way is it a threat?

What Gerecht really means to say is: “We have a chance to eliminate one of Israel’s worst enemies in the region”. Syria, of course, is an enemy of Israel because Israel invaded, occupied and then annexed Syria’s Golan Heights. Syria also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

And Gerecht’s interest in Israel doesn’t stop at Syria. For Israel the real enemy is Iran. Iran has the weapons to supply to those that are resisting Israel’s expansionist ambitions whereas Syria is the means by which those weapons can be supplied. And it is Iran who Gerecht has been encouraging, not just the US, but Israel to attack regardless of what the consequences might be.

Gerecht, as part of his rhetoric, has a penchant for exaggerating threats, particularly the Iranian threat, to Israel. In an article last year in The Atlantic magazine Gerecht, writing about a possible Israeli attack on Iran, said:

“Israeli calculations for a preventive strike don't have to be conclusive to be successful. If the Israelis do nothing, they know that they would eventually be staring at an internally unstable, virulently anti-Semitic, terrorist-fond regime with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Simply imagining the probable hair-trigger scenarios in which Israel will have to play atomic-bluff with Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps -- the organization that oversees Iran's nuclear program -- ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder.”

“…ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder”? Indeed it would, but not in the way Gerecht imagines. Gerecht paints a picture or Iran that is totally unreal. Even if Iran did have a nuclear weapon, it would hardly be likely to use it against Israel. The fact is; Israel just isn’t so important a nation that Iran is ready destroy itself over no matter how much Iran despises Zionism.

The neocons are making a concerted effort to destroy Syria’s Assad regime and wants to get Obama to hasten Assad’s demise, but what the neocons don’t seem to realise is that once Assad is gone there is not suddenly going to be some Israeli-friendly, or even US-friendly government, taking his place. The people of Syria object to Israel taking the Golan Heights and they support the Palestinians and their cause. The revolt against Assad is purely an internal matter No matter how it is ultimately resolved; it is unlikely to change the Syrian people’s view of Israel or even Syria’s support of Hezbollah.

Gerecht and his fellow neocons, as usual, are practising deceit – again. Gerecht is motivated by Israeli interests and not America’s. He just wants the US to do the dirty work for Israel. Surely the American people have woken up to this deceit by now. Look what happened in Iraq. How many Americans died there?

And how many Israelis?

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH?

2011-07-13T11:34:00.001+09:30

It’s tempting to suggest that the scandal enveloping the Murdoch media empire may well see the demise of the world’s largest political propaganda machine. Unfortunately, the very fact that it is such a massive propaganda machine will likely ensure that his empire does survive – albeit needing some considerable time to recover.

Apart from being a massive world-wide propaganda machine, Murdoch himself wields much personal and political influence. There are many leaders around the world, past and present, who owe much of their success to Murdoch and his media empire. Even the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, arguably, may not have got into power without Murdoch’s backing. And Tony Blair too might not have enjoyed such a large victory at the polls as he did in May 1997 without the last minute support of Rupert Murdoch. In the US, Murdoch’s long string of media enterprises, in particular Fox News, helped George W. Bush gain American support for the war against Iraq. Around the world, Murdoch’s newspapers and media served Bush’s cause and those of his allies including Tony Blair; Australia’s Prime Minister of the time, John Howard; Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, all of whom benefited from Murdoch’s unwavering support for the war. Aznar even went on to become a senior member of the board of directors for News Corporation.

In the current crisis, Cameron initially supported Murdoch in the hope that it would all be just a flash in the pan and, after a few smaller heads were made to roll, all would be well again. Cameron supported Murdoch’s push to buy up all of Britain’s BSkyB media company but, in the wake of the growing crisis and the now obvious fact that it isn’t simply going to go away, Cameron has now joined the political call from Britain’s other major parties for Murdoch to abandon his plans to take over BSkyB which will be a major blow for Murdoch.

As the crisis deepens and it’s becoming apparent that the practice of phone hacking was far more widespread than initially thought, many are wondering how far the practice did extend and to what extent were senior and top managers aware of what was going on or even approved or, worse still, had instigated the practice. Did Murdoch himself know or approve of it? He’s hardly likely to admit it if he did though if he’s hauled up to front an inquiry and denies it and then is subsequently found to be a part of the practice then that surely would be the end of him.

Whether it comes to the demise of Murdoch himself remains to be seen. Murdoch has enough personal wealth to ensure that he will be very comfortable for the rest of his days; however, doing business is his obsession and he wouldn’t last very long without the fix of doing deals so I’d suggest that he’ll fight this all the way – even if it’s just for the thrill of it. Whether he wins or not is another matter.

In Australia, where it all started for Murdoch, his newspapers are relatively safe. His flagship paper, the nationwide The Australian, has all but ignored the crisis on the other side of the world, as have his regional and city papers. All of them seem to be reporting only the bare facts of what’s happened with very little comment or opinion being aired.

For his rival newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and The Age in Melbourne, it’s a different matter. Both have been giving the emerging stories full headlines though the intensity of reporting and commentary has now dropped off a little – at least for now.

A world without Murdoch’s propagandists in it, however, is still some way away though the next few months will likely see some interesting developments that will see them pull their horns in.

Heads will roll; it’s going to be interesting to see whose.

NEOCONS, ZIONISTS AND THE ‘FREEDOM FLOTILLA’ – 2

2011-07-05T15:07:00.003+09:30

Last week I wrote about how neocons and Zionists don’t understand why the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’. Of course, it’s not really that they don’t understand, it’s more that they would like to continue to use the original reason for having a flotilla in the first place – to bring relief and humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip – for propaganda purposes. They think that if they can show there is no longer a need for humanitarian aid then there is no reason for a flotilla. They now argue that, because they think there is now no need to bring aid to the Gaza, then the flotilla must only be to provoke Israel.

The reality is far from what the Zionists and neocons would like us to believe. First, there is still a need for aid. Despite the sporadic opening of the Gaza-Egypt border and even a slight increase in the amount of goods passing into the Gaza from Israel, there is still nowhere near enough coming in to service all of the Gazan people's needs. As for ‘provoking Israel’, the reality is the complete opposite; it is Israel that is deliberately provoking Hamas.

Michael Rubin, a neocon writer for Commentary, sums it up thus:

It’s about time the international media drop the fiction the Gaza flotilla is motivated by humanitarian concerns. It is not about resolving conflict; its aim is to create conflict.

The fact is, the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is motivated by nothing else other than humanitarian concerns – even if it were not bringing actual aid to the Palestinian people. Just by coming to the Gaza Strip is a form of humanitarian relief. It comes in the form of breaking a psychological barrier as well as a literal one. It shows that there are people all over the world that care about their plight. By breaking the blockade, humanitarian relief comes in the form of being free to trade with whom ever the Palestinian people want without having to go cap in hand to the Israelis. Humanitarian relief is more than just a ship-load of bandages and bags of cement; it’s about freedom and the right to trade without harassment and with any one they wish – including Israelis.

What the neoconservatives and the Zionists need to do is drop the fiction that their aim of blockading the Gaza flotilla is to prevent arms and weapons reaching Hamas. They know full well that there are no arms or weapons on board any of the vessels. The world knows that the Zionists' true aims are not about preventing arms reaching the Palestinians but about creating conflict in order find an excuse to subdue and crush the Palestinian people and stop them from having their own sovereign state which, in turn, will prevent the Zionists from ever realising their ultimate dream of creating a Greater Israel.

The ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ for a reason. It’s something the neocons and Zionists refuse to understand.

BRITAIN JOINS U.S. AND ISREALI HYPE OVER IRAN

2011-06-30T13:56:00.000+09:30

In a speech to the UK parliament yesterday British Foreign Secretary William Hague joined the US and Israel in rhetoric designed specifically to induce fear over Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Hague told parliament that the Iranians had tested missiles during their recent military exercises that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He also told parliament that Iran was enriching uranium beyond that which was required electricity generation. Hague reportedly told parliament that Iran "has announced that it intends to triple its capacity to produce 20% enriched uranium. And that "these are enrichment levels far greater than is needed for peaceful nuclear energy”.

William Hague is deliberately practicing deceit with these statements. He has ignored telling the parliament that having a medium range missiles does not mean that nuclear warheads are available for them. All medium range missiles are capable of being adapted to carrying a nuclear warhead. Modern nuclear weapons are now so small that they can be fitted to most missiles. The US has even tested nuclear weapons in artillery shells.

Hague also attempts to deceive with his statement about Iran’s desire to enrich uranium to 20%. The fact is, Iran has been quite open about its enrichment of uranium to 20%; they’re not doing it covertly as Hague has tried to infer. Uranium enriched to 20% is required in order to manufacture medical isotopes for the treatment of cancer. Iran announced their intention to do this a long time ago yet Hague tells the British people about as though it has just been announced. Iran announced ages ago that it had an urgent need for isotopes and that it would be expediting enrichment to 20%.

Hague has joined with the US and Israel in their fearmongering just as both are upping the propaganda and rhetoric over Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Why?

ARE THE TALIBAN REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL OF THE LATEST ROUND OF ATROCITIES IN AFGHANISTAN?

2011-06-29T16:28:00.001+09:30

Two recent atrocities in Afghanistan have been blamed on the Taliban. On Saturday last at least 25 people were killed when a suicide bomber drove an explosive filled vehicle into a rural clinic. The next day an eight year old girl died after she was duped into carrying a bomb which was remotely detonated close to a parked police vehicle. However, on both accounts, the Taliban have denied responsibility.

Of course, in the West, the Taliban’s denials are ignored except inasmuch that the media will mention that the Taliban has denied responsibility. This, though, does not stop the Western mainstream media, especially the conservative, and particularly the neoconservative media, from continuing to blame the Taliban anyway.

During the same period, other suicide attacks have been made against the puppet Afghan police, the army, government offices and, as in the most recent attacks against foreigners, the Taliban have had no compunctions at all about putting their hands up claiming responsibility for such attacks.

The Taliban has nothing at all to gain from suicide bombing attacks on Afghan civilians or using children for bombing attacks.

So, when the Taliban deny responsibility for an attack or bombing, who else would have a vested interest in carrying out such attacks?

Last Wednesday on 22 June 2011, President Obama announced a drawdown of some 33,000 troops from Afghanistan. A number of senior US military officers have said that this is far in excess of the numbers the US military top brass had recommended with at least one having said so to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Clearly, there are some senior elements in America’s armed forces that are unhappy at the prospect of a drawdown. Certainly, the right-wing, particularly neoconservative commentators, is extremely vocal about what they consider to be an inappropriate withdrawal of troops. One might wonder, then; since the right-wing and the senior military are so anti-Obama and against drawdown plans, could it be conceivable, given the marked increase in atrocities that the Taliban have denied responsibility for, that rogue forces are at work here being paid for by irregular US back channels? Afghan warlords are notorious for switching sides and operating covertly for the highest bidder.

It just seems that this sudden upsurge in atrocities that have been denied by the Taliban should take place so soon after the announcement of the troop drawdown is just too much of a coincidence especially when there seems to be certain senior US military brass so against it. How hard would it be for those involved in the complex covert world of Afghan double-dealing to arrange for these kinds of false flag operations to take place with a view of trying to get Obama to change his mind at least about the second two-thirds of the drawdown due next year?

And, of course, talk of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban hasn’t helped the situation as far as the neoconservatives are concerned who want nothing less than the complete destruction of the Taliban and their associate groups.

All things considered, you have to wonder what’s really going on as far as these denied atrocities are concerned.

NEOCONS, ZIONISTS AND THE ‘FREEDOM FLOTILLA’

2011-06-27T14:20:00.000+09:30

The Zionists of Israel and their neocon supporters just don’t get it. They think that the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is only about bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that it’s called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ for a reason.

Neocon pundit Alana Goodman writing in Commentary, says that, because the Gaza Strip now has a lot of stuff coming and going, especially since Egypt opened up the border between the Sinai and the Gaza, that the flotilla to Gaza “is completely unnecessary”.

On 10 May 2011 the Israeli ambassador to the European Union, Ran Curiel, told a news conference in Strasbourg that the flotilla is a “clear political provocation” adding that “there's no need for a flotilla to aid Gaza. You can pass whatever you want to Gaza through normal channels.” The glaringly obvious is missed entirely by the ambassador; if whatever the Gazans want can pass through normal channels then why the naval blockade?

What both the neocons and the Israelis fail to see is the desire for the Palestinians to be free of being dictated to by the Israelis. It is up to the Palestinian people of the Gaza to decide how stuff can come and go to and from the Gaza Strip, not the Israelis or anyone else. The waters off Gaza are not Israeli waters. The Israelis have no more right to dictate who or what may come and go via Gazan ports than the Palestinians have over deciding who or what can come and go via Israeli ports.

The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are indeed slowly being relieved of the suffering the blockade brought to them but it is no thanks to the Israelis that that relief is happening. The tunnels have had an enormously positive effect on Gazan life despite Israel’s efforts to close them down, often killing tunnel workers in the process, and the recent opening of the Gazan-Egyptian border has helped even further but, like any other nation that has a sea as part of its border, the Gazan people demand access to it in order to fully realise their trading potential. They want the freedom to be able to use what is rightfully theirs.

The political provocation comes not from the Palestinians and their supporters; rather, it comes from the Israelis themselves together with their neocon supporters who arrogantly and immorally want to deny the Palestinians in the Gaza the right to use what is theirs. The Palestinians in the Gaza want to be the judge of whether it’s ‘completely unnecessary’ or not, not the Israelis.

And that’s what the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is really all about. It’s about freedom.

THE WEST AND HOW IT PERPETUATES ITS OWN ENEMIES

2011-06-25T15:35:00.003+09:30

In an article for National Review Online today, neocon writer Clifford May imagines that he can read the mind of Osama bin Laden’s so-called ‘successor’, Ayman Zawahiri. As if he is Zawahiri, May writes:

Now the duty is entrusted to me. Now I am the amir of al-Qaeda’t al-Jihad, better known — indeed, known everywhere on earth — as al-Qaeda.

‘Known everywhere on earth’?! Al Qaeda is, indeed, known everywhere on earth – and, to be sure, the Western media, led by neocon writers just like Clifford May, have made a huge effort to ensure that al Qaeda has become a household name throughout the entire planet.

Osama bin Laden became the quintessential anti-hero figure – the Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell’s famous novel, 1984 – for the West to hate. Al Qaeda became the enemy he led. Both gave the West, the US and Israel in particular, the justification needed to pursue their respective interests in the world.

For Israel, al Qaeda represented the Islamic forces that surround them in the Middle East, and Israel has worked hard, but with little success, to associate al Qaeda with Palestinian fighters in the Gaza and the West Bank, and Arab fighters in Lebanon. And for the US, bin Laden and al Qaeda were the ideal scapegoats to blame for 9/11, the Pearl Harbor needed for America and its allies to attack those nations that stood in the way of US hegemony in the resource-rich Central Asian and Middle East region, Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, the US and the West have killed several birds with one stone. In Iraq, not only have they got the Saddam Hussein monkey of the backs of the Israelis but they also now control one of the regions most resource-rich nations, one which also happens to be right next to another of Israel’s arch enemies, Iran. The US and their allies by blaming bin Laden and his al Qaeda group for 9/11, were also provided with a casus belli for attacking Afghanistan which, while having few resources of its own, is geographically located at the heart of a resource-rich region which also happens to be not only strategically placed close to Russia and China but also is a neighbour of Iran. Iran is now effectively surrounded by US-led Western dominated countries.

The problem for the neocon-dominated warhawks of the West was basically that their plans went awry from the very start.

9/11, of course, was the trigger that was to set everything in motion. By blaming bin Laden and al Qaeda, the US had an excuse to invade Afghanistan. They quickly overwhelmed the Taliban government and installed a puppet government in its place. The plan then was to completely destroy the Taliban and then build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian Basin to Karachi in Pakistan to pump gas to a global market controlled by the West. However, the US and their allies didn’t reckon on the tenacious spirit of the Taliban fighters and their resistance allies including those in Pakistan. Militarily overwhelmed, there was no way they could militarily defeat the US and their allies, but they could, using their intimate knowledge of the land and with just a few weapons, resist the US and their allies and wear them into the ground, a feat that is now, almost ten years after the invasion, almost accomplished.

But Afghanistan was not the only country that the neocons had in their sights. As soon as 9/11 happened, they began their propaganda war against Iraq accusing Saddam Hussein of being somehow complicit. Being told that bin Laden and his al Qaeda group who were responsible for 9/11 and were holed up in Afghanistan ensured that there would be no public opinion backlash against invading and occupying Afghanistan especially if it was done quickly while feelings were running hot. However, Iraq was a lot different. While the people of the West were aware of Saddam Hussein’s support of the Palestinians and their Intifada against the Israelis, and were aware that he was a particularly brutal dictator, there was absolutely no evidence at all that he actually had any part to play in the events of 9/11 or was in any way a threat to the US. And so began the propaganda campaign to gain public support for an all-out invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The George W. Bush administration led by the neocons found it difficult to convince the people in the West that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 – though it wasn’t for the lack of trying; they did try hard and, indeed, persist to this day in trying to tell the world that Saddam was complicit – they pushed, instead, the notion that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction and suggested that they were an “immediate threat” to the US and the world.

The neocons spent the nineteen months between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 trying to convince the West that Iraq was a threat to world while at the same time convincing themselves that an invasion, occupation and the establishment of a stable Israel-friendly puppet government could be achieved in just a few months and that the American forces and their allies would be welcomed by the Iraqi people as great liberators. Eight years and three months later, bombs were still killing civilians and police in Iraqi streets.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the ‘war on terror’ still rages. ‘Al Qaeda’ has become a brand name that has been foisted on all those – regardless of their cause or allegiances – that have had the temerity to take up arms against the West and their allies. The ‘al Qaeda’ brand name has become well known ‘everywhere on earth’, not because of the efforts of Osama bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri, but by the deeds and actions of the US, Israel and their supporters throughout the West.

Your average 20 to 25 year-old Muslim fighter doing battle against the US and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere today were only ten or fifteen when 9/11 happened. They are now fighting an army that invaded their respective nations. It’s not about ‘Osama bin Laden’ or ‘al Qaeda’; it never has been. For the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, and anywhere else that the US, Israel and the West threaten, it’s about resisting invasion, occupation, persecution, tyranny, brutality and torture. It’s about freedom and the desire to determine their own destiny.

The US, Israel and their allies have created enemies as a result of their own actions. By creating the myth of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and ascribing to them a status that the West are supposed to see as enemies succeeds only in giving the West’s enemies a cause to fight for. Taliban fighters today are not the die-hard al Qaeda-like Islamic fundamentalists the propagandists told us were responsible for 9/11. Most fighters today merely want rid their country of the invader and those that support the invaders. Many have been driven to their cause as result of the invaders actions. Many innocent civilians, including women and children, have been killed at the hands of the West over the years and in doing so the West have assured themselves of an enemy to always be at war with while they occupy any country they have invaded.

In short, the West perpetuate its own enemies.

ANDREW BOLT: THE ‘JULIUS STREICHER’ OF THE AUSTRALIAN EXTREME RIGHT

2011-06-24T14:15:00.003+09:30

Andrew Bolt, Australia’s most notorious racist and Islamophobe, like the Nazi Jew-baiter Julius Streicher before him, continues to relentlessly pursue his program of hate against Islamic and non-European immigrants to Australia.

His almost daily attacks (here’s yesterday’s) against Islam at his on-line column at Rupert Murdoch’s Herald-Sun newspaper are designed to demonise the entire Islamic community. Bolt does this by cherry-picking the misdeeds of a very few and inferring that whatever offence has been committed by an Islamic person was done because they are Muslims and that they are representative of what the whole Islamic community are like. In other words, Bolt misrepresents the values of the Islamic community claiming that Western values are different and, therefore, are better than those of Muslims. It is exactly the same propaganda technique that Julius Streicher used in his Der Stürmer newspaper in Germany during the Nazi era to demonise the Jews of Germany and later throughout Europe.

Like Streicher, Bolt hopes that his relentless propaganda demonising Muslims and Islam will influence public opinion to the extent that the Australian people will eventually hate Islam and Muslims as much as he does and that the government will then deport those that are here or, at least, not allow any further Muslim immigration to Australia.

The problem is; it never just ends there. Streicher started his hate campaign against Jews in much the same way. At first he demanded that Jews should be expelled from Germany. Over time, as the Nazis and other extreme right-wing groups coalesced and became increasingly more influential politically, so the persecution against Jews went beyond mere words. Eventually, as the Nazis moved into power, so the persecution of Jews increased. They were shunned by their fellow Germans and then excluded from certain professions. As Hitler’s expansionist dreams became reality so the persecution of Jews was taken a step further and they were put in camps and then later deported, mostly to Poland. As Hitler marched further east into Russia so the final plans that became the ‘final solution to the Jewish problem’ were put into effect. The rest of the story is all too well known.

Yet there are some among us that never learn and others that seem to have forgotten about the horrors of the last century. In more recent history, as we have seen in Bosnia-Herzegovina where over 7000 Muslims were murdered simply because they were Muslims, history does repeat.

The Jews of Germany and Europe, whilst aware of the anti-Semitism that was pervasive, not just in Germany, but throughout Europe and the US during that period, never in their worst nightmares as the war approached imagined that Germany would actually attempt the wholesale slaughter of every one of Europe’s Jews. But in just a very short time it went from abusive harassment in Streicher’s Der Stürmer newspaper to what ended up being the deaths of millions. And one of the reasons so many did die was because they simply did not believe that such hatreds could lead to slaughter on such a massive scale.

We should not allow the abusive harassment against Muslims that we see in Bolt’s column of hate to continue. While Bolt continues to claim his rights to ‘freedom of speech’, his abuse of those rights to harass and demonise Muslims should be stopped in its tracks. His column of hate should be shut down. This meme about ‘freedom of speech being a cornerstone of democracy’ is simply being used by people like Bolt as an excuse to pedal their hatreds.

Freedom of speech is one thing; the abuse of it in order to pedal hatred is something else.

This article is cross-posted at:
http://bolttheracist.blogspot.com/

TITLE AND SOVEREIGNTY: A SUBTLE DIFFERENCE THAT ZIONISTS WHO BUY LAND IN THE WEST BANK DON’T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND

2011-06-23T13:59:00.000+09:30

If an immigrant community of, say, Papua New Guineans settled in Australia buying up large tracts of land, would they then be able to demand that the land they have bought title to be turned over to Papua New Guinean sovereignty subject to PNG laws, government and judiciary?

If the Papua New Guineans (or whoever) were to follow neocon Zionist Daniel Pipes’ logic then the answer is ‘yes’ they would be able to – not, of course, that the Australian government would accede to such demands.

In a recent article in National Review Online titled Not stealing Palestine, But Purchasing Israel, Pipes argues that Israel has been created as much as a result of Zionists purchasing land before the UN partitioned Palestine to create Israel in 1948, as was by occupation after a period of war.

Pipes argues that during the war of 1948/49 most Arabs fled their lands” and that “exceedingly few were forced off”. This is typical Pipes chutzpah. Why did they flee their lands? They fled because they feared being killed as the Israelis moved in, which in many places, as historians like Illan Pappe documents, is exactly what happened to many Palestinians. Fleeing before an advancing enemy with no right of return is the same as being ‘forced out’.

Pipes confines his argument to the purchase of lands prior to the creation of Israel when those lands did indeed revert to Israeli sovereignty. But he frames his argument in a somewhat deceitful way. He infers that Zionists bought all of the lands that became Israel in 1948 “acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house”. This is complete nonsense. In reality only a small proportion of the land was purchased by Zionists. The rest was acquired by intimidation and force of arms. In short, it was the Arab states that attempted to put a hold on Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people rather than the Israelis being attacked by them. Right-wing Zionists have been pushing the lie that Israel was ‘attacked’ by the Arab states around them for years but, as Pappe shows, history and the facts tell an entirely different story.

During the period since the 1967 war, the Israeli government, through the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the Israeli Lands Administration, purchased land in the Occupied Territories. At first, private purchasers were not allowed to purchase land in the Territories in order to avoid speculation but by 1979 these rules were relaxed and Israeli and Jewish developers were allowed to purchase land in the Occupied Territories. Many cases of trickery and outright intimidation as a means of purchasing land have been reported since. However, by far the greatest amount of land ceded to Israeli hands is that which Israel has acquired by simple expropriation and by military requisition.

The question now is: Does Israel intend at some stage in the future, possibly just prior to the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to get Palestine unilaterally recognised as a sovereign state at the UN, to annex all of the West Bank settlements to Israeli sovereignty based on title ownership or will the Israelis invade and fully occupy the West Bank under Israeli military governance, or will they do both.

The point here is; regardless of how much land people from one nation own elsewhere in other nations, title to that land does not, as Pipes and other Zionists suggest, confer sovereignty to the nation that the owners of that title are nationalities of.

Many Paua New Guineans live in communities in Australia but they live here either as permanent residents retaining their own nationality or as Australian citizens; either way they are subject to Australian sovereignty and Papua New Guinean.

One wonders what makes Zionists think that they are exempt from these norms?

Note

Folks interested in reading further on this subject should read George E. Bisharat’s in-depth scholarly article: Land, Law and Legitimacy in Israel and the Occupied Territories linked to above and here.

THE ARAB SPRING: ISRAELI AND WESTERN HYPOCRISY

2011-06-22T10:14:00.003+09:30

In Israeli online newspaper Ha’aretz today is a report that a senior Israeli official says that “Iran is involved in the suppressing of the anti-regime demonstrations in Syria. Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the Al-Quds force, commanded by Gen. Qassem Suleimani”, and that they “are operating throughout the country”. The Israeli official goes on to say:

…there is clear information on Iran's involvement in the crushing of the protests, as well as the participation of Hezbollah. Their role is not limited to shootings; Iran has also supplied equipment to the Syrian army, including sniper rifles…

Similarly, the US is complaining of the same thing and, even more hypocritically, so is the UK.

If true, then such activity of course cannot be condoned. However, statements like this coming from Israel, the US and the UK demonstrate only gross hypocrisy.

Where were Israel, the US and the UK when the world learnt that Saudi Arabia sent tanks and troops to Bahrain to suppress the democracy movement there? Israel and the US talk about Iran sending sniper rifles to Syria and it’s headline news in Israel and the US yet when it is learnt that the UK are training snipers in Saudi Arabia who are then deployed to Bahrain to shoot at demonstrators, no one says anything.

TALKS WITH THE TALIBAN? NOW THERE’S A NOVEL IDEA!

2011-06-20T11:03:00.001+09:30

Over the last few days there has been unconfirmed reports that the US have initiated talks with the Taliban with a view to ending the war that’s been going on in Afghanistan for the last ten years. Yesterday, Defence Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that, indeed, such talks have been taking place.

Was it not inevitable that this was the only way it was ever going to end anyway? Various professionals had said all along that the allies could never win their war against the Taliban. In October of last year, Australian ex-Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, an extreme right-wing conservative, said that a military victory would be “impossible”. In July 2009, British soldier, diplomat, academic and Afghanistan scholar, Rory Stewart, writing in the UKs Daily Telegraph told his readers that essentially the war is unwinable and negotiating is the only way to resolve the crisis. Back in October 2008 senior British commander, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith who had served in Afghanistan with the British 16th Air Assault Brigade had said quite emphatically that “we are not going to win this war”.

The allies have known the war was unwinable since at least 2008 yet did nothing. Since then more than 1600 allied soldiers have been killed, while it is conservatively estimated that some 7307 civilians have been killed, and untold numbers of Taliban and insurgent fighters, certainly numbering in their thousands and possibly tens of thousands, have also been killed.

Experts have been urging that the parties negotiate an end to the war for years but the warmongering neocons influenced allied governments never listened. How many more have to die before these loonies learn that they can’t win?

There’s nothing new about the idea of having talks with the Taliban; it’s just that the longer they are held off, then the more people from all sides will continue dying.

NEOCON WARMONGERS RATCHET UP THE PROPAGANDA ON IRAN’S ‘NUCLEAR WEAPONS’

2011-06-16T12:15:00.000+09:30

Early last month the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) published on their gerdab.ir website a satirical puff-piece that imagined the reaction of the world-wide and domestic press after the Iranians had actually achieved what the West are accusing them of doing; building a nuclear bomb and testing it. The article is designed specifically to both satirise and taunt the West over their propaganda about Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.

The neocons, of course, have fallen for it hook line and sinker and are proclaiming the article to be proof positive of Iran’s intention to build a bomb.

As I reported earlier this week, the neocons are also falling over themselves about the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report on Iran’s nuclear program which the neocons are proclaiming is ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. As I have shown, it actually does nothing of the sort, but the neocons are hoping that you don’t actually read the report to find that out for yourselves.

The neocons aren’t thick; they’re actually a very bright bunch of people. The problem, however, is that, not only are they bright, but that they are also extremely arrogant to the point where they think that the public are thick enough to believe everything that the neocons tell them. While one does have to wonder about the gullibility of some people, generally the neocons deceitful ways are transparent enough for most people to see through them. Then, of course, there are those who, despite knowing what’s really going on, just simply want to believe everything that the neocons and Zionists tell them because it fits in with their own world view.

But when one steps back and takes a look at the bigger picture and then takes the time to think about things, it becomes clear that there is a lot more going on in the neocons heads than a mere paranoid fear of an Iranian existential threat to Israel. Why, when you think about it, would Iran, for example, after having gone to all the effort of building a bomb, then go and destroy it in their own desert when they could let it go off in Israel’s desert if they are so desperate to destroy Israel as the neocons and Zionists would have us believe? The reason they wouldn’t, of course, is because they know that within half an hour of such an event, several of Iran’s cities would likely be turned into sheets of glass in retaliation. One wonders what makes the neocons and Zionists so arrogant that they think the Iranians are willing to sacrifice themselves and many of their fellow Middle Easterners just to get at the Israelis. As I’ve said before, there’s the rhetoric and the propaganda and then there’s the geo-political realities. The more rabid the neocons and Zionists become then the easier it is to distinguish between the two.

As I and many others have said before, there is not a skerrick of any hard evidence whatsoever to even suggest that Iran is building a nuclear weapon or has a nuclear weapons program.

The whole issue of Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ is simply a propaganda ploy by the neocons and Zionists to get world public opinion to support an attack against Iran in order to allow Israel to confront and then destroy Iran’s allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, who stand in the way of the Zionist dream of creating a Greater Israel.

NEOCONS STILL PUSHING THE ‘IRAN HAS A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM’ NONSENSE DESPITE TOTAL LACK OF ANY EVIDENCE

2011-06-14T12:41:00.001+09:30

Paragraph 35 on page 7 of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 2011 report on Iran’s nuclear program, released on 9 June 2011, states:

Based on the Agency’s continued study of information which the Agency has acquired from many Member States and through its own efforts, the Agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Since the last report of the Director General on 25 February 2011, the Agency has received further information related to such possible undisclosed nuclear related activities, which is currently being assessed by the Agency. As previously reported by the Director General, there are indications that certain of these activities may have continued beyond 2004. The following points refer to examples of activities for which clarifications remain necessary in seven particular areas of concern:
• Neutron generator and associated diagnostics: experiments involving the explosive compression of uranium deuteride to produce a short burst of neutrons.
• Uranium conversion and metallurgy: producing uranium metal from fluoride compounds and its manufacture into components relevant to a nuclear device.
• High explosives manufacture and testing: developing, manufacturing and testing of explosive components suitable for the initiation of high explosives in a converging spherical geometry.
• Exploding bridgewire (EBW) detonator studies, particularly involving applications necessitating high simultaneity: possible nuclear significance of the use of EBW detonators.
• Multipoint explosive initiation and hemispherical detonation studies involving highly instrumented experiments: integrating EBW detonators in the development of a system to initiate hemispherical high explosive charges and conducting full scale experiments, work which may have benefited from the assistance of foreign expertise.
• High voltage firing equipment and instrumentation for explosives testing over long distances and possibly underground: conducting tests to confirm that high voltage firing equipment is suitable for the reliable firing of EBW detonators over long distances.
• Missile re-entry vehicle redesign activities for a new payload assessed as being nuclear in nature: conducting design work and modelling studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab-3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.

(The bold emphasis is mine.)

For Jonathan S. Tobin, neocon writer for Commentary magazine, this somehow constitutes ‘overwhelming evidence that Iran is working on building a nuclear bomb’. However, a closer analysis of what the IAEA has actually written reveals quite clearly that not only is the ‘evidence’ not ‘overwhelming’, it does not even exist.

Let’s start with the opening sentence of the paragraph. It talks of basing its conclusions on the study of ‘information it has acquired’ from ‘many member states and through its own efforts’. That’s fine, but ‘information’ is hardly verifiable evidence let alone ‘overwhelming’. And one has to ask; what ‘Member states’ were the source of this ‘information’? The US? Israel? Both of these nations have a proven propensity to manipulate information and a track record of outright lying about other nations so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The information they pass on to the IAEA cannot in any way be credible.

And what exactly was this ‘information’ anyway? Do they relate to the list of ‘seven particular concerns’?

The ‘seven particular areas of concern’ that the IAEA list are actually just a list of stuff that Iran (or anyone else) would need to do if, indeed, they were building a nuclear bomb. The only item in the list that is Iran-specific is the reference to the Shahab-3 missile; otherwise the list could equally apply to anyone or any nation seeking to build a nuclear weapon. In fact, it is a list of things both the US and Israel, and all of the other nations that have nuclear weapons, would have done as their nuclear weapon programs evolved so there is nothing at all original about the list that can be called ‘evidence’ as it is supposed to apply to Iran.

Finally, the use of words in the report like ‘possible’ and ‘may’ and ‘indications’ and ‘clarifications’ as they are used in the context of the report testify to the non-existence of any actual evidence.

Like most documents that Tobin and his fellow neocons refer to as they pedal their warmongering garbage, they hope that their audience don’t actually read them.

HAVE THE NEOCONS READ THE ‘DAMASCUS DECLARATION’ WHICH THEY ARE TOUTING AS A BLUEPRINT FOR ‘DEMOCRACY’ IN SYRIA?

2011-06-13T13:43:00.000+09:30

Two of neoconservatism’s leading ideological lights, John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, and Elliot Abrams of the Council for Foreign Relations, are pushing the so-called ‘Damascus Declaration’ as a blueprint for the transition of Syrian governance from the totalitarian rule of the Assad’s to ‘democracy’ after the imminent fall of the Syrian leader.

Podhoretz writes:

Elliott Abrams, longtime COMMENTARY contributor (and my brother-in-law), has an important post on his blog at the Council on Foreign Relations that ought to offer surprising grounds for hope about the future of Syria following the eventual collapse of the Assad regime—there is a working document that offers a map to a democratic future called the “Damascus Declaration.”

On checking out what Abrams has written one finds:

The bloody war that the Assad regime is waging against the people of Syria will end in the downfall of the regime. Whether that will take months or years is impossible to say; how many peaceful demonstrators and unarmed Syrians the regime will kill is equally uncertain.
But in the end the regime will fall. Then what? Those who think the Muslim Brotherhood will take over and impose a Saudi-style Islamic regime are forgetting the ‘Damascus Declaration’…

One wonders, however, if either of these neocons has actually read the ‘Damascus Declaration’ or is aware of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is actually a party to the Declaration.

Furthermore, if I were a neocon, I’d be worried about some of the aims of the ‘Declaration’ – particularly the bit where it says it is committed to:

the liberation of the occupied territories and regaining the Golan Heights for the homeland, and enabling Syria to carry out an effective and positive Arab and regional role.

I doubt very much if the neocons support the idea of ‘liberating the occupied territories or the Golan Heights’ so you have to wonder what the neocons are thinking by supporting the ‘Damascus Declaration’. Or maybe they know something that the rest of us don’t. What other event in the Middle East could be such a game-changer as to render the ‘Damascus Declaration’ completely academic?

Perhaps the neocons hope that nobody actually reads the ‘Damascus Declaration’ - least of all the Syrian people.

DESMOND TUTU SUPPORTS AUSTRALIAN’S B.D.S. ACTIONS AGAINST APARTHEID ISRAEL

2011-06-08T10:37:00.003+09:30

Click on image to read

Despite the Australian major political parties condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid, and even Bob Brown of the Australian Greens party who, as Antony Loewenstein suggests, has spoken against the BDS campaign for purely political reasons, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has endorsed the campaign by penning a letter of support to the Mayor and Councillors of Marrickville in Australia for their BDS actions. One can only hope that those Greens that have chosen to condemn the BDS movement in order to pander to current political public opinion in Australia – and that includes Bob Brown – will now reconsider their position and support the BDS campaign.

Bob Brown is out of step with the grass roots of the Green movement on this issue. He must get back into step because he will not be gaining any votes by maintaining his current position; indeed, he’ll be losing them!

Thanks to Sonja Karkar of Australian Friends of Palestine for bringing this to our attention.

THE NEOCONS ARE GETTING DESPERATE: NOW THEY’RE TRYING TO BRIBE THE U.N. INTO NOT RECOGNISING PALESTINE.

2011-06-05T11:28:00.002+09:30

And that’s effectively what the neocons are advocating as they support Republican Steve Chabot in his efforts to push a bill in Congress that calls on America to stop giving money to the United Nations “if the General Assembly adopts a resolution in favour of recognizing a state of Palestine outside of or prior to a final status agreement negotiated between, and acceptable to, the State of Israel and the Palestinians”.

Apart from the obvious issue of morality here, there’s also the not insignificant fact that the US is already in debt to the UN to the tune of around $1 billion and has been for years. The neoconservatives are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they feel the need to have to resort to these sorts of tactics in order to try and get what they want.

But it’s hardly likely to work.

I doubt if there is any nation on the planet that would be tempted to make their decision about which way they intend to vote when it comes to an issue like Palestinian statehood based on whether the US decides to pay its debt or not.

America’s right-wing and the neoconservatives demonstrate once again exactly what values it is that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’; arrogance, self-righteousness and the belief that money – money, incidentally, they haven’t actually got – can influence the morality of nations. No wonder the US is in such a mess.

IRAN: A SQUEEZE HERE, A SQUEEZE THERE…

2011-06-03T14:07:00.000+09:30

When Ian Tomlinson, an innocent newsvendor, died on 1 April 2009 after a scuffle with security forces near the Bank of England in London during an anti-G20 protest, did the Iranian government demand that Britain launch an immediate investigation into his death? One might imagine that the British would be more than a bit upset that another nation was poking its nose into its affairs in this way.

When Marine veteran Jose Guerena died in a hail of gunfire in his own home in Tucson, Arizona, when a SWAT team invaded his house on 5 May 2011, did the Iranian government demand that the US launch an immediate investigation into his death? Again, one might imagine that the US would be more than just a little annoyed that Iran was poking its nose into US affairs.

So is there any reason why the British and the US would be demanding that Iran launch an immediate investigation into the death of Haleh Sahabi who recently died of a heart attack in Iran after a scuffle with security forces as she attended her father’s funeral? Is there any reason why Iran should not tell the British and the US where to stick their demands?

As tragic and as pitiful and as unwarranted as all of these deaths are, none of these nations has the right to interfere with the other in this way. It’s tantamount to infringing on the others’ sovereignty. It’s the sort of thing that can actually start wars.

Ah… now I see.

TURNING THE HEAT UP ON IRAN – AGAIN

2011-06-01T17:27:00.001+09:30

Last week I wrote how Iran has been put back on the front burner after having been left to simmer on the back of the stove while the Western right-wing mainstream media dealt with all the other distractions in the Middle East like revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, etc., and, of course, the crisis over Palestinian statehood and Fatah’s reconciliation with Hamas.

At the end of that post I wrote how we should expect the heat on Iran to be turned up even higher over Iran’s nuclear program as the threat of a Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence creeps closer and the Palestinian leaders, both Fatah and Hamas, head to the UN (Fatah literally, Hamas spiritually. I doubt the US will allow any Hamas representative into the country). It seems, however, that I’m not alone in the view that Iran’s undenied pursuit of nuclear energy has been abused by Israel, the US and their allies for political purposes to both demonise Iran in the eyes of Western public opinion and also to alienate Iran from its regional neighbours; Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker (subscription only at this time) also questions the veracity of the claims made about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. Hersh claims simply, as I have for years, that, despite all of the claims the Israelis, the West and their allies make about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program, there is not one single piece of hard evidence whatsoever that is able to support any of these claims.

Now, I don’t have anywhere near the kind of following on my humble blog that Seymour Hersh has at The New Yorker so I don’t expect a massive reaction to my words from the right-wing Zionists and their supporters in the West. But because Seymour Hersh wields a lot more influence that I’m ever likely to, reaction to his words from the Zionists and their neoconservative supporters particularly, is assured. And, sure enough, they couldn’t help themselves. Hersh’s article is barely hot of the press and already there are a couple of articles in the right-wing press screaming desperately that Hersh is wrong and that there is ‘considerable evidence’ of Iran seeking ‘nukes’ though neither article actually points the reader to where that considerable body of evidence is to be seen.

Jonathan Tobin, writing in the neocon comic Commentary says that Iran’s leader “Sayyed Ali Khamenei has claimed no interest in nuclear weapons”, but “the Iranians have made their pursuit of nukes a major source of national pride”. But what Tobin deceitfully neglects to mention is that the ‘major source of national pride’ is not the pursuit of nuclear weapons, as Tobin disingenuously attempts to imply, but rather the pursuit of nuclear energy for the purposes of generating electrical power; a pursuit the Iranians are proud of and have never denied undertaking.

Tobin also arrogantly suggests that Hersh should be presenting “real evidence of Iranian innocence”; but why should he? Is not the US a nation that purports to hold values based on a system of justice where the onus is upon the accuser to provide evidence of guilt rather than the accused needing to provide evidence of their innocence?

There’s also a fearmongering editorial in The Washington Times today. It runs on basically the same lines as Tobin’s piece in Commentary but adds that Iran is not just an existential threat to Israel but also “an existential threat to countries in the Middle East”. Clearly, the editors of The Washington Times is relying on the naivety and ignorance of their audience who, perhaps, are unaware of the fact that Iran has not invaded any nation nor declared war on any other nation and has absolutely no reason to go to war with any nation unless, of course, it is in self defence. The fact is; it is not that Iran is an ‘existential threat’ to Israel or, indeed, anyone else in the region, but that Israel and their Western allies are an existential threat to Iran as Israel seeks to confront Iran in order to then eliminate their other enemies closer to home, Hamas and Hezbollah who Israel and the US regard as Iran’s ‘proxies’, who stand in the way of Israeli territorial ambitions of creating a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people and the people of south Lebanon.

Despite Israel, the US and their allies continual bleating about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’, there is still not one skerrick of hard evidence that Iran has any such program.

Israel on the other hand…

LUNATIC NEOCON WARMONGER CALLS FOR POST-GADDAFI OCCUPATION OF LIBYA

2011-05-28T16:09:00.001+09:30

The neoconservatives’ resident warmongering lunatic, ‘Mad’ Max Boot, writing in Commentary, has called for a ‘Libyan stabilisation force’ to be ready to go in to occupy Libya after Gaddafi falls.

Boot arrogantly seems to think that the Libyan people will not be able to look after their own affairs after they have ousted Gaddafi. Of course, his real concerns are far more about keeping Islamists out of power and ensuring that Libya’s resources don’t fall into the ‘wrong’ hands, i.e., China and/or Russia, than any concern for the future of the Libyan people.

One wonders why Boot didn’t suggest the same for a post-Mubarak Egypt or Tunisia though I’m sure he will if it looks like the Yemen dictator is ousted. And how about Syria?

So far, ‘Mad’ Max is on his own among neocons with this ridiculous idea, but for how long?

SO, NOW WHO ARE THE ‘APPEASERS’?

2011-05-28T15:31:00.001+09:30

Just as Hitler absorbed Austria into the Third Reich in March 1938 as part of his quest to create a Greater Germany, so Israel absorbed the Golan Heights into Greater Israel in 1981, a move condemned by the United Nations Security Council (Resolution 497).

After Austria, Hitler turned his attention to the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia where a large pocket of ethnic Germans lived. Hitler threatened to march into the Sudetenland and then threatened to go to war with Czechoslovakia if they resisted his move into the Sudetenland. A crisis loomed between Germany and Britain and France but, realising they were in no position to go to war, Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany for face to face talks with Hitler to defuse the situation. The result of these talks and with others and after much resistance from France and even his own cabinet, was that Chamberlain agreed to Hitler annexing the Sudetenland on the condition that Hitler provided assurances that there would be no further territorial claims. Neville Chamberlain was forever after accused of ‘appeasing’ Hitler.

In 2011 President Obama said that peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis should be based on borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories that existed before the 1967 war. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was outraged and refused point blank to have any discussions with anyone that revolved around the pre-1967 borders. Obama backed off saying his suggestion about the 1967 borders was meant really only as a starting point for discussions and qualified himself by saying there would be territorial trade-offs to finalise borders. Then the question of Israeli settlements inside the West Bank came up. Netanyahu cleverly hinted that there was a possibility that some settlements could be discussed knowing full well, however, that there would be no discussions anyway because of Hamas’s involvement with Fatah and the Palestinians insistence on a right of return of the refugees to Israel and East Jerusalem becoming the Palestinian capital. Obama has conceded to Netanyahu’s demands that the 1967 borders are effectively not included in any discussions – if, indeed, there are ever likely to be any – nor any of the other Palestinian demands.

Netanyahu has made it quite clear with the assertions he has made about ‘talks’ that there will never ever be a Palestinian state while he has anything to do with it and that, therefore, the Israeli settlements are there to stay and so will likely become annexed to become part of a Greater Israel.

Obama has shown his true colours. He will appease the Zionists of Israel in the face of a world that will ultimately condemn Israel and the US for appeasing them.

The US and its hanger-on allies are rapidly becoming irrelevant states as most of the world goes ahead and supports the creation of a Palestinian state – with or without UN support and with or without the support of the US who have become the true appeasers of the twenty-first century.

THE U.S. IS BECOMING IRRELEVANT

2011-05-27T14:04:00.001+09:30

As it slowly disappears into a financial black hole of debt from which its ordinary citizens are never likely to recover and the only source of power it has left falls from an aircraft and comes out of the end of a gun, the United States is steadily losing relevancy as an influential power on our planet.

The last ten years have seen the steady erosion of virtually all of its credibility as a ‘super-power’ as its actions have exposed the reality of American values; gross hypocrisy and utter self-righteous arrogance.

As its President struts his stuff around the planet in a fruitless effort to regain lost credence, the rest of the world looks toward itself to find a future. Come September, the Palestinian people will more than likely ask the international community through the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state. The US president has arrogantly told the world that a Palestinian state will not be created this way meaning that the US will veto such a resolution at the UN Security Council. Right now Obama is lobbying European leaders on behalf of Israel asking the Europeans not to support Palestinian statehood. How successful his lobbying will be remains to be seen, but just the fact that the President of the United States has been reduced to lobbying on behalf of a foreign state indicates the extent to which American power has been eroded.

On the economic front, China has shown the way. China’s ability to simply trade with the world rather than threaten and invade nations that don’t cooperate has left the US economy staggering on its feet. When China wants something that it doesn’t have itself or needs more of from elsewhere, it doesn’t spend trillions on raising a military to invade; it simply sends an email asking ‘how much and which bank shall we transfer the money in to?’ Most countries – and Australia is a classic example – are then more than happy to dig up the bits of the country that China wants and ship it to them. China has found that its a lot cheaper to send the email, transfer the cash and let their trading partners like Australia do the work rather than have to raise a massive army and launch an invasion just to get at its resources. Those days are long gone for the Chinese; but not, it seems, for the US.

Soon, as China rapidly increases trade with potentially the world’s biggest markets, India, Pakistan and the rest of Asia, it will rely less and less on the need to sell to and trade with the US – especially as the US can’t pay its bills.

On the domestic front, US values have meant that a ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘every man for himself’ mentality has evolved which has resulted in millions not being able to feed themselves without food stamps and millions more not being able to find enough work to keep themselves and their families provided for. Meanwhile, a progressive deterioration in the nation’s economy has seen hundreds of thousands lose their homes while a few at the big end of town have had massive government handouts that they have corruptly squandered on themselves via huge bonuses and salary increases.

Trillions more have been handed over to arms manufacturers, the military and private military support service contractors in order to perpetuate wars against a media-created world-wide ‘terrorist enemy’ while the nations road systems, education, penal systems and health services erode and fail.

All America has left is the threat of using its military power; but, as the Taliban in Afghanistan and the resistance in Iraq and elsewhere have shown, even that has not been enough to subdue a determined people.

America has nothing left to offer the world. The ordinary folk of America are as disillusioned as the rest of the world has been in the past. And they are confused. ‘Why’, they ask, ‘if we are so exceptional, have we nothing left to show for our exceptionalism?’ They have no one to blame but their leaders who have lusted after personal power and wealth. They have fallen trance-like into the grip of a racist extreme right-wing foreign power and their American supporters who have conned them into believing that their interests and America’s are one and the same but who are now exposed as nothing more than criminals that have taken advantage of, and then expended, all of the sympathy that the world had for them at the end of the Second World War.

Now America is paying the price of their folly of supporting Israel. Not only is Israel a lost cause but it has taken America down the road to irrelevancy with it. The world is no longer impressed by what America has to offer. The world now knows that it is a collective world that looks after the interests of each other that is relevant today.

The US is becoming irrelevant. Its only hope now is that the American people rise up and demand an end to wars and an end to their futile support of the right-wing racist government of Israel.

IRAN’S BACK ON THE FRONT BURNER – AND THE HEAT’S BEING TURNED UP

2011-05-25T20:04:00.001+09:30

After the many references to the arch-enemy of Israel and the US during Netanyahu’s recent visit to the US to meet with Obama, address the AIPAC conference and a joint sitting of the US congress, Iran has quietly been moved on to the front burner of Middle East politics and the heat is now gradually being turned up.

The up-front issue of the visit has been the so-called ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinians but always lurking within the narrative of vitriol against the Palestinians generally, and Hamas and Hezbollah particularly, is the role of Iran and its supposed ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Yesterday the neoconservatives upped the ante against Iran when an influential think-tank paper was released relating not to Israel directly, but to Iraq. Entitled ‘Iraq Threat Assessment’ and written by neocon strategist Frederick Kagan, the paper purports to detail the influence Iran has on Iraq and how that influence might spiral after the US ‘leave’ Iraq at the end of the year. In it Kagan argues that, because of the influence that Iran is likely to wield over Iraqi affairs after the US leaves, that the drawdown should be substantially and indefinitely postponed.

There has been, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency concede, nothing subtle about the way the ‘publics attention has been yanked back to Iran’ after being distracted by the Arab Spring.

Expect the heat on Iran to be turned up even higher as the threat of a unilateral declaration of independence creeps closer and the Palestinian leaders, both Fatah and Hamas, head to the UN in September to ask the rest of the world for the recognition Israel and the US deny them.

AFTER AIPAC, IRAN RE-EMERGES AS L’ENNEMI DU JOUR

2011-05-24T14:33:00.003+09:30

Even the most ardent of American Zionists are prepared to admit that other events in the Middle East have over-shadowed the immediate existential nuclear threat that Iran was to Israel and, indeed, the world up to only a few months ago, though I can’t imagine, if such a threat were real, what could possibly have been occurring in the Middle East that would have been more important than an Iran that was apparently only months away from launching a nuclear weapon at Israel. Yet Eric Cantor in a speech delivered to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention yesterday told delegates “Recent developments in the region have moved Iran out of the headlines…”

So there we have it; the reality of the Palestinians wanting to have their lands back and the Arab peoples getting rid of their dictators is what’s really bothering the Zionists and the Western governments. The immediate ‘existential threat’ of a nuclear bomb being lobbed at them doesn’t really seem to be that important enough to be newsworthy anymore.

But then, as the entire world really knows, it never actually was a threat. Its ‘newsworthiness’ at the time had far more to do with propaganda and rhetoric than actual reality. Cantor’s admission belies that reality.

However, the new threat of a world actually recognising a unilaterally declared independent state of Palestine is bringing pressure to bear on the Zionists to find a way out of this predicament – and what better distraction than to resurrect the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon that, again, is an existential threat to Israel’s existence. Hence Cantor’s continuing remarks that went thus: “…but it is undeniable: the spectre of a nuclear Iran looms larger than ever. We must never take our eye off Iran”, he said.

But it is what Cantor said next that is the real worry for the world: “And that's why Congress will soon pass the bipartisan Iran Threat Reduction Act, making it official U.S. policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability”.

Note what Cantor has said; “…acquiring nuclear weapons capability”. Not ‘nuclear weapons’ but ‘nuclear weapons capability’. This wording is crucial in understanding what is at stake.

The latest proposed Iran Threat Reduction Act gives the appearance of just being a way of tightening sanctions against Iran; however, it does not exclude pre-emptive military action if the US is not satisfied that sanctions are not having the desired effect of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

The word ‘capability’ has been used before in this same context in previous Iran related Acts but what Cantor has done is given it renewed emphasis by mentioning it to AIPAC. By bringing it to the public’s attention via the media in this way, Zionists can point to it as a casus belli for military action against Iran at any time Israel and/or the US decide they have enough justification. Justification might come via a manipulated or provoked event which Iran or its proxies Hezbollah or Hamas could be held responsible for. Israel is now looking for a way out. Provocation is a weapon Israel is adept at using; and it will no doubt be using it again soon.

Expect to hear with renewed vigour much more about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’.

OBAMA MAKES IT CLEAR HE’S WITH THE ZIONISTS OF ISRAEL

2011-05-23T14:14:00.002+09:30

At his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention yesterday President Obama made it abundantly clear that, if ever push comes to shove between the Arabs and Israel, the US will always support Israel no matter what.

The ‘disagreements’ between Obama and Netanyahu over ‘borders’ seem in retrospect to be a put-on show; a political sham. Obama knew all along that Netanyahu would never accept the 1967 borders as even a starter for talks.

If Zionist Israel decides it needs to go to war, then the US will be there to help Israel regardless of the nature of such a war.

Despite all the rhetoric from Obama, the US is still sending, and will continue to send, all the military aid Israel needs to ‘defend’ it self. He told his audience:

…I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map -- face of the Earth.

Because we understand the challenges Israel faces, I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority. It’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels. It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies. It’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing to record levels. And that includes additional support –- beyond regular military aid -– for the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. A powerful example of American-Israeli cooperation -- a powerful example of American-Israeli cooperation which has already intercepted rockets from Gaza and helped saved Israeli lives. So make no mistake, we will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge.

Obama knows that the Palestinians will never agree to Israeli demands over borders and will never abandon the right of return of the refugees to their homes in what is now called Israel. Obama also knows full well that Netanyahu and the Zionists of Israel have absolutely no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state of any kind to exist. In other words; both are just playing for time, a time when the right circumstances arise when Israel will have an excuse to begin a war against the Arabs that will lead to the final confrontation with Iran. This, in turn, will allow Israel, once and for all, to fully occupy all the lands it has thus far coveted including the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Latani River.

All they are waiting for is the right moment to arise that will provide them with a casus belli to strike. They will then quickly find reason to escalate in order to induce a full confrontation.

The world should not be fooled by Obama’s apparent desire to find peace between Israel and the Palestinians; he knows it will never happen. All they are waiting for is the right moment.

FASCISTS NEVER CHANGE THEIR STANCE!

2011-05-21T12:17:00.008+09:30

Benito Mussolni 1940

Benjamin Netanyahu 2011

OBAMA WILL NOT SUPPORT RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE AT THE UNITED NATIONS

2011-05-20T10:18:00.001+09:30

In his speech yesterday outlining his future policy on the Middle East President Obama said:

For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.

With this, Obama makes it abundantly clear that he will veto any attempt by the Palestinians to ask the United Nations to recognise a unilaterally declared independent state of Palestine. Obama also makes it clear that Hamas’ involvement in the so-called ‘peace process’ is not welcome unless Hamas gives up its ability and right to defend itself against Israeli aggression and recognises Israel as a Jewish state. Since Obama well knows that that is simply not going to happen, it must be assumed that Obama has no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian sovereign state to exist despite the rhetoric. All of Obama’s conditions to be met are impossible for the Palestinians – and he knows it.

So now, it’s simply back more of the same – lots of talk but nothing at all ever happening.

The Palestinians now have no option but to take their case to the United Nations and ask that the world recognise a Palestinian state based on complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank back to the 1967 line, including from all of the settlements, the Jordan Valley and from East Jerusalem which would be accepted as the Palestinian capital.

The world now needs to support the creation and recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations – with or without US support and with total disregard to Israeli Zionist demands as to what form the new Palestinian state takes. The only item on the agenda for negotiation between the state of Israel and the new state of Palestine is the return of the refugees to their homelands in those parts of Palestine that are now called Israel.

There is nothing else that needs negotiation.

HOW PATRONISING – AND STINGY – CAN THE U.S. GET?!

2011-05-19T15:22:00.000+09:30

A quick observation for today; in the New York Times today there’s this:

The economic aid package that Mr. Obama will talk about on Thursday is meant to show democracy protesters, and Arab governments, that the United States stands behind the democracy movement and will reward governments that make reforms. Administration officials announced $1 billion in loan guarantees to Egypt, and $1 billion in debt swaps, along with trade and economic development proposals. Administration officials said an unspecified amount would be channelled to economic development help in Tunisia.

Reward governments that make reforms??!!

How arrogant can you get?

They’re going to borrow money from the Chinese – money that the American people are eventually going to have to pay back – and give it to the Egyptians and Tunisians as a reward.

And the administration wonders why the peoples of the world don’t like America. And, if they’re going to borrow money, why don’t they borrow a workable amount instead of a miserly billion? I mean, it’s not like they can’t afford to; after all, they’re spending $10 billion A MONTH on the war in Afghanistan!

IN RESPONSE TO JONATHAN S. TOBIN’S ‘COMMENTARY’ ARTICLE ON NETANYAHU’S KNESSET SPEECH ON A FUTURE PALESTINE.

2011-05-18T12:14:00.001+09:30

Jonathan Tobin is a neoconservative staff writer at ‘Commentary’ magazine whose article in yesterday’s online edition outlined why neoconservatives support Netanyahu’s stance about a future Palestinian state.

The problem with the article is that it’s now too late for Netanyahu to actually be able to do anything to stop there being a Palestinian state that has been ‘negotiated’ with Israel. Let’s take a look at Tobin’s article to see why.

Tobin writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the Knesset today, in which he outlined his conditions for a peace pact with the Palestinians, is already being interpreted as being to “hawkish” to create the proper atmosphere for peace. That’s the word the ‘New York Times’ Ethan Bronner used to describe a speech in which the Israeli leader made it clear that Israel is prepared to give up almost all of the West Bank and recognize a Palestinian state.

Surely it must be obvious to Netanyahu and his neocon supporters in the US and elsewhere that the Palestinians are not interested in ‘conditions for a peace pact’ with Zionist Israel because they know that it will never happen; it is not part of Zionist policy. And besides, the Palestinians want a state of their own, not a ‘peace pact’. It is the reason why the Palestinian people, as represented by the Hamas and Fatah factions, have united and decided to look to the UN for recognition of a state that is unilaterally declared without further ‘negotiations’ with Israel that have always proved futile in the past. Israel does not want to give up their settlements and Israel will not allow the refugees to return to their homelands. Neither side are going to budge on this. The difference now, however, is that Israel’s position has now eroded to the point where Palestinians assuredly have the ultimate moral high ground. This brings us to the second point which is, of course, the fact that none of the West Bank is Israel’s to ‘give up’ in the first place. They might occupy it but they don’t own it.

Tobin goes on to write:

For years, Israel’s critics have chanted that its government had to give up the dream of a “greater Israel.” But now that even the leader of the supposedly hard right-wing Likud has stated that all Israel wants is to retain control of its capital Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs (which take up a tiny portion of the West Bank and which President Bush agreed in 2004 will remain part of Israel), this is still too “hawkish” a position for the Palestinians to be expected to return to the negotiating table.

‘Supposedly hard right-wing Likud’? There’s nothing ‘supposed’ about it at all. The Likud party was founded on a policy that dedicated itself to the founding of a Zionist Greater Israel based on expansionism and annexation into areas of Palestine that were not part of any originally mandated plan for a nation of Israel.

The settlement blocks are hardly a ‘tiny portion’ of the West Bank; they are sprawled all over various hillsides across the West Bank and are connected to each other via highways that ordinary Palestinians are not allowed to use. Massive tracts of buffer zones are also part of the settlements that have illegally been built on Palestinian lands.

And what has George W. Bush got to do with it? Bush had no power or mandate from the Palestinian people to agree what should or shouldn’t remain part of Israel.

Tobin continues with:

Indeed, as Bronner noted, Netanyahu’s program for peace included items that no Palestinian leader has ever stated a willingness to accept. These include: recognition of Israel as the home of the Jewish people; a peace agreement that spells the end of the conflict; and acceptance of the unalterable political fact that the descendants of the 1948 Palestinian Arab refugees must be resettled inside a Palestinian state and not on Israel’s territory. But if, as the Palestinians and many in the cheering section abroad insist, Israel must concede every inch of disputed territory even before peace talks begin, and the Palestinians will not give up the right of return or recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s existence even in the context of peace, then what could Netanyahu possibly do that would make him seem any less “hawkish” to his legion of critics?

While the Zionists of Israel live on and continue to covet the lands of the Palestinian people, why on earth should the Palestinians recognise these places as ‘Israel’ the home of the Jewish people? They are on lands stolen from Palestinians; recognition of ‘Israel’ as the home of the Jewish people would mean giving away their claim to lands stolen from them. The Palestinian people are not likely to do that.

The biggest issue of all, of course, is the question of the right of return of the refugees and their descendants.

Zionist Israelis have always tried to twist the stories that relate to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the creation of Israel. Only yesterday Netanyahu while accusing Abbas of distorting historical facts distorted them himself by saying:

Some Palestinian leaders themselves urged the Palestinians to vacate the land in order to make it easier for the Arab armies to fight for the destruction of Israel.

Palestinian leaders did indeed advise Palestinian civilians to leave certain areas temporarily in order to allow Arab armies to defend against Israeli expansionism but it was Israel that eventually displaced these people into places they didn’t want to be outside of what is now claimed to be Israel. The Palestinian people either fled before a murderous Jewish army intent of cleansing Palestine of Arabs or moved aside in order to allow the Arab defenders to fight the Israelis; they certainly didn’t exile themselves voluntarily in order for the Jewish armies to create an Israel at their expense as some Zionist historians, politicians and commentators often imply.

The reality is that Netanyahu and his Zionist and neoconservative supporters have no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state to exist. Netanyahu’s problem now is how to create a crisis situation that will dwarf his predicament and allow him to crush all Palestinian aspirations of statehood. War against Hamas and Hezbollah is now his only way out of his predicament – and war against Hamas and Hezbollah can only mean a confrontation against Iran. The alternative is a unilateral declaration of independence coupled with UN recognition that will leave Israel isolated and without any hope of ever realising the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel. The only answer now is for there to be one state that includes Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where both Jews and Arabs have equal rights and are free to move and live wherever they please.

PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD

2011-05-17T12:16:00.001+09:30

The Zionists of Israel are deeply concerned. For every day that goes by, Israel loses hope of ever realizing its dream of any form of a Greater Israel. Even the likelihood of hanging on to the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem looks set to vanish if the Palestinian people get the support of the world community via the United Nations next September.

Netanyahu is no longer in a position to make any demands about the nature of a future Palestinian sovereign state. The true face of Zionism has been exposed. The world no longer supports an expansionist and racist Israel that dominates and dictates the form a future Palestinian state should take.

The internet has exposed Zionist Israel’s true face. The world has seen how Israel really behaves as it commits crimes against the Palestinian people and then blames them for having brought it upon themselves. They have behaved like the bullying husband who beats his wife because she stands up for herself and whose husband then says; ‘now see what you’ve made do!’ There was a time when the world accepted it and supported Israel on the basis that the Palestinians deserved what the Israelis meted out to them because the world could only see the story from Israel’s point of view. But after the attacks against the Gaza in 2006 and then against Lebanon when the world witnessed the indiscriminate bombing of thousands of civilians by Israel aircraft and artillery, the world became stunned at the reality of Israel’s brutality. Then there was Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 when, again, Israel indiscriminately bombed the Gaza Strip killing more than a thousand civilians and wounding thousands more as well as destroying much of the Gaza’s infrastructure. Then in May 2010 Israel really showed the world what criminals they were when their armed commandos boarded a civilian ship in international waters and murdered nine people who were defending their ship against the boarders. And now their latest crime has been exposed as they attempt to stop a demonstration from spilling across borders by opening fire with deadly weapons directly into the demonstrators killing some twenty unarmed civilians who could easily have been contained using non-lethal methods.

Zionism’s credibility, if ever it really had any, is fast disappearing and along with it goes any chance of the international community having any likelihood of not supporting the Palestinians request for it to be recognised in its own right and in its entirety to the 1967 borders and including all of the Israeli settlement, including the Jordan Valley and including the right to militarise to defend itself against future Israel aggression. Why should Palestinians ‘negotiate’ with Israel when the world can see that all that Israel has left to ‘negotiate’ with is brute force; a brute force that will no longer be acceptable to the international community. It is no longer in a position to dictate terms to the Palestinians.

It is getting to the stage where the US, a vetoing power in the UN Security Council (UNSC), that in the past has always supported Israel, may in the present circumstances be obliged to at least abstain or possibly vote for the recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. Even in the event of the US vetoing such a move at the Security Council, there are still mechanisms within the UN system that can bypass a vetoed resolution. With enough support in the UN General Assembly (UNGA), Palestine could get its way by invoking UN Resolution 377(v), the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which empowers the UNGA under special circumstances to over-ride a UNSC vetoed resolution.

An internationally recognised unilaterally declared Palestinian state will ultimately spell the end of Israel as a state as we know it today. It could well be the first step towards what is ultimately the only viable solution to the crisis and that is to create a single state where Jews and Arabs live together as equals in freedom.

Netanyahu is getting desperate. He needs a way out – and therein lies the real danger for the world!

BIN LADEN WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ULTIMATE INTELLIGENCE PRIZE – SO WHY KILL HIM?

2011-05-15T11:40:00.001+09:30

The short answer, of course, is they didn’t.

The main drawback to spinning an intricate yarn designed to be presented to the entire world as fact is that sooner or later the story will unravel, and the more intricate the yarn then the more likely it is to come apart sooner rather than later.

The biggest problem with the story the US has told the world about the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden two weeks ago is that it is totally devoid of any evidence whatsoever that supports any of their claims. This is compounded by the very confusing and often contradicting details that surround the story.

In the latest embellishments to the story we are told by some anonymous ‘US official’ that a stash of pornography was found at the location of bin Laden’s ‘death’. Nothing at all was presented to support the allegation; we are simply told that it was so and are therefore expected to believe it. No sooner was this allegation made when it was quickly followed by a series of others. It was ‘revealed’ that Osama bin Laden was obsessed with hatred for President Obama because, so we are led to believe, bin Laden thought that Obama had betrayed Islam and that he should be assassinated. It didn’t occur to the purveyor of these allegations, the ever-present but anonymous ‘official spokesperson’, that a person so religiously imbued that he is driven to such hatred is unlikely to be the same person to have horded a stash of pornography.

The very latest allegation, that, according to ‘documents’ found at bin Laden’s lair, the UK was to be targeted for terrorist attacks, comes hot on the heels of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement of his determination to begin British troop withdrawals telling his defence people he wants to start withdrawals as soon as this summer.

My earlier posts document many of the other inconsistencies in the story of the ‘death’ of bin Laden but the common denominator to all of what we have been told is that there is not one single shred of any independently verifiable evidence to support any aspect of the entire story from beginning to end. But the biggest flaw in the entire story is why they failed to bring in alive and instead destroyed the biggest haul of human intelligence they could ever possibly have hoped to imagine in their so-called war against terrorism and al Qaeda – unless, of course, they knew that he was already long dead and that this ‘death’ had some other more useful purpose.

As the yarn unravels, so all will eventually be revealed.

IF THE WEST THINKS KILLING ISLAMIC LEADERS IS O.K. THEN WHY SHOULD ISLAM NOT THINK KILLING WESTERN LEADERS IS ALSO O.K.?

2011-05-14T10:49:00.002+09:30

Western leaders have for some time taken it upon themselves to extra-judicially murder their enemies’ leaders. Israel has a well-known targeted assassination policy. In most cases it quite openly announces that it is responsible for the targeted killing of their enemies’ leaders particularly when the killing occurs in their enemy’s territory. Just one example of this was the killing of the 67-year old blind and wheelchair bound spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was murdered by the Israelis in March 2004. At other times, usually when the killing takes place in a third country, the killing is undertaken covertly and is usually not admitted to. An example in this case was the killing of another Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed by being drugged and electrocuted in his hotel room in Dubai in January 2010 by people who Dubai police say was Israeli Mossad agents.

Since the so-called ‘killing’ of Osama bin Laden less than two weeks ago, the Israeli Zionists allies in the US, the neoconservatives, have attempted to legitimise such killings arguing such killings are justified since the death of a non-combatant leader may well prevent the deaths of innocent people or the deaths of ones own combatants. However, if that is the case, then there seems to be no reason at all why such an argument cannot be used by either side. Why, for example, should Jihadists not kill senior US or Western military personnel or even political leaders in order to, say, put an end to the operation of US terror drones that kill many innocent people throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Why would it not, by the exact same argument that the neocons use, be legitimate for a covert Jihadist assassination group operating in the US to murder by bombing a CIA drone operator who lives with his wife and family in Washington, DC? And would it not be legitimate, however unfortunate, that the drone operators family also happened to die in the resultant explosion as often happens when either the US or Israel carry out a targeted killing?

Why is the world blind to see where all this is going? Killing will become a free-for-all and who knows who might then become ‘legitimate targets’.

Does the world really want to go to a place where any nation who feels self-righteous enough can simply murder his enemy by virtue of their own ideological legitimacy? Where will it end?

FROM ‘OFFICIAL’ STATEMENT TO ACCEPTED ‘FACT’ IN ONE EASY NEWS REPORT OR HOW LIES CAN PASS INTO THE HISTORY RECORD.

2011-05-12T11:42:00.001+09:30

News media, as we know, merely report what is told to them but all too easily those reports somehow morph into indisputable facts in the public’s generally un-enquiring mind. And from there, if we are not careful, those reports can pass into history as being an accepted fact even if the story is untrue.

Here’s a classic example: The UK Guardian recently published an Associated Press article titled “Osama bin Laden’s diary: ‘Consider Los Angeles, spread out the targets’”. The article goes on to say:

Osama bin Laden kept pressing followers to find new ways to strike at the US while he was in hiding and his terror organisation was becoming battered and fragmented, officials have said, citing his private journal and other documents recovered in last week's raid.

The worrying aspect of this is the almost unnoticed part that runs; ‘officials have said’. In other words, the entire article is based not on what the writers of the article have seen with their own eyes but on what some anonymous officials have told them. What’s disturbing is how the reporters failed to clarify the officials’ statements by demanding to sight and read for themselves the private journals and documents that the ‘officials’ refer to. In most courts of law statements by officials like this would not be acceptable as ‘evidence’ because it would be regarded as ‘hearsay’. It’s not actual evidence; it’s simply a story told by somebody which may or may not be true.

For the historian, the word of an anonymous ‘official’ without evidence to support such a statement would simply not be acceptable as becoming a part of the record of the annals of time. Yet it is likely to become a part of recorded history simply because it was published by a well-known mainstream newspaper whose tens of thousands of readers have either not got the time to check the facts behind the story or who are of a disposition to either reject or accept unequivocally the veracity of the story. Either way, the facts of the story remain unsubstantiated. It is then possible that at sometime in the future the story could be dug up by some research historian taking a look at our era who will then use the story to substantiate some academic thesis which then also passes in to the annals of time and becomes part of history.

The real historical value in this instance is not so much in whether or not bin Laden pressed his followers to find new ways of striking the US but, if it is found that there is no such ‘journal’ or ‘documents’ – and so far there is no hard evidence to say there is other than the officials’ word – and the officials lied, then why did they lie?

The world needs to rely more on real evidence rather than simply the statements of government officials reported in the media all of whom have an appalling record of telling us the most outrageous porkies. Historians cannot allow these stories to become part of the future historical narrative of our times. The reality of ‘facts’ may be unpalatable to the readers of today’s news and not suit the purposes of today’s politicians but ‘facts’ are never unpalatable to the historian; they are a necessity.

WITH OSAMA ‘KILLED OFF’, NETANYAHU CREATES NEW TOP ENEMY FOR ISRAEL.

2011-05-08T10:56:00.000+09:30

Osama bin Laden was never really ever a threat to Israel. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah were inspired by the bin Laden myth. Dead or alive, bin Laden’s influence never affected the functioning or running of these organizations. Both would have existed even if bin Laden never did. For the Zionists of Israel, bin Laden served a far broader purpose. He was someone who 9/11 could be blamed on. He was made into a symbol of Western hatred toward Islam. He was a useful strawman for all the world’s woes. But he’d served his purpose and his official demise will usher in a new enemy.

For the Zionists of Israel and their Western allies, al Qaeda still exists as a useful enemy. Despite having killed off ObL the symbol, they still have al Qaeda the ‘terrorists’ to point the finger at whenever they need to stir up the masses with an explosion somewhere on the planet. But for the Zionists of Israel the new top enemy isn’t al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri who has been strongly tipped to take over the leadership role; no, the new top enemy for Zionist Israel is someone now far more useful as an enemy than ObL and al Qaeda ever was.

Ever since the Iranian people threw out the fascist Shah, the Iranian revolutionary theocracy has been a thorn in the side of both Israel and the US. In recent years the object of Israel’s hatred has been centered on Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the problem with directing ones hatred at Ahmadinejad is the fact that he’s not really the top man in Iran and could be replaced at anytime if the Ayatollahs so chose or if there were an election that chose another President.

Ahmadinejad has been a convenient object of Zionist hatred mainly because of the inflammatory remarks he has made about Israel which they were able to manipulate so that they play into the Zionists hands for propaganda purposes. Lately, however, Ahmadinejad has been getting a hard time from the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over Ahmadinejad’s sacking of his Intelligence Minister who happened to be a close associate of the Ayatollah. It now seems that this bit of internal strife is coming to a head and that Ahmadinejad may be on the way out. As a result of the leadership crisis in Iran, Netanyahu has hedged his bets and now proclaimed that, with Osama bin Laden no out of the picture, the biggest threat to Israel is not so much Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, but the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who Netanyahu says is ‘infused with fanaticism’.

And with this Netanyahu ushers in the world’s new figure of hate to demonise.

We’ll be hearing more and more about the Ayatollah in the future as the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative allies in the US and around the world ratchet up the propaganda that they hope will lead to a final confrontation with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

THE FEARMONGERING CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN PREPARATION FOR THE NEW ‘POST-OSAMA BIN LADEN ERA’.

2011-05-07T15:36:00.000+09:30

The latest host of warnings about revenge attacks by Islamists have hit the headlines across the world. But where do these warnings come from and what purpose do they serve? The events lately, if they weren’t so serious in potential consequences, are bordering on farcical and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Less than a week after the announcement of the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden, a man who most of the world knows has been dead for years, the Americans are now warning the world of the potential for a huge, or a series of, ‘terrorist’ events in revenge for his ‘death’. These ‘warnings’, so we are told, come via a ‘Jihadist website’ and which, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney reinforcing the original storyline, also confirms, very conveniently, “the obvious which is that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday night by US forces”.

This story about the threat of revenge attacks is in most major newspapers around the world although none that I’ve read have been able to link to the so-called ‘Jihadist website’. The New York Times is able only to say that the Jihadist warnings and confirmation of bin Laden’s ‘death’ came via a ‘Jihadist’ site monitoring company called SITE Intelligence Group but, again, no link to the actual ‘Jihadist’ website or even the name of it. Adding to the already well stretched credibility of this rapidly developing farce is the fact that the SITE Intelligence Group is run by notorious Israeli-American neoconservative propagandist Rita Katz, well known for her connections to Mossad and the procurement and dissemination of false Osama bin Laden tapes in the past.

In the past, these warnings have amounted to nothing and were clearly designed only to perpetuate the myth of Osama bin Laden and the notion of the ‘Islamist’ as terrorist. This, in turn, justified the continued ‘War against Terror’ that has raged ever since 9/11.

The ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden has clearly been designed to symbolise the end of an era. But, as when all eras end, another is ushered in.

For the West, the ‘War against Terror’ is by no means over. None of its real objectives, despite the humungous loss of life and the constant propaganda about how well the ‘war’ is going, has been reached. Israel still has not realised its dream of creating a Greater Israel – and it hasn’t been for the lack of trying – and the resources of the Middle East and Central Asia are still far from being in the hegemonic hands of the US and their Western allies. Nor, too, have any of their stated aims been accomplished; destroying al Qaeda and their Jihadist allies, or freeing the world of the ‘nuclear threat’ or bringing ‘democracy’ to everyone who hasn’t got it yet. None of either the stated aims or real aims has yet been achieved. Indeed, far from being a ‘safer’ place, the world is in more of a mess today than ever it was since 9/11.

Despite the US and their allies saying they are making progress in Afghanistan, the reality is that they have, after almost ten years of war, reached a stalemate. And, in Iraq, bombs are still going off and the Shia majority government there are slowly heading toward the Iranian sphere of influence. In Israel, despite the best efforts of the Israelis and their Western allies to keep them apart, Hamas and Fatah have reconciled and threatened to ask the UN to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state that precludes the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. To the north of the Israelis, Hezbollah still remains a hindrance to Israeli expansionism into the south of Lebanon for access to the waters of the Litani River. Iran continues to supply increasingly sophisticated weapons to both Hamas and Hezbollah for use in defending themselves from Israel. The prospect of Islamic influence in the new governments that are likely to emerge in both Egypt and possibly Syria, and, indeed, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, is also clearly a perceived threat to Israel’s security. Egypt’s opening up of the border with Gaza is also a perceived threat to Israel.

All in all, nothing at all has been achieved by the ‘War against Terror’. A new era needed to be ushered in with who knows what being planned to bring on the new era.

George W. Bush and the neocons ushered in the mess the world now finds itself in; the neocons can be relied upon to continue their warmongering propaganda and Obama, despite all that the neocons say about him, can be relied upon to usher in the new era with all the horrors that that is likely to bring.

SELF-RIGHTEOUS NEOCONS FULLY SUPPORT TARGETED MURDERS.

2011-05-06T17:16:00.000+09:30

Further to my post last Wednesday about targeted assassinations, it seems that the neoconservatives make no bones about the Americans appointing themselves to, as Victor Davis Hanson says, “routinely act as judge, jury and executioner of suspected terrorists”. Extra-judicially murdering people doesn’t seem to be a problem for people like Hanson and other neoconservatives like Charles Krauthammer.

These people have no qualms about killing their enemies in this way. Justice is not a consideration for them; it’s merely an excuse to justify continued unfettered killing of their enemies. As one reads their nonsense as they attempt to convince everyone else that targeted killings are an acceptable practice, what emerges from their words is an overwhelming sense of their absolute self-righteousness. To kill their enemy is, to them, a god-given right that can’t be given to anyone else. If their enemies started to assassinate American or Israeli senior political and military leaders off the battlefield we would never hear the end of it; but, apparently, it’s OK for them to do it their enemies.

The world should show nothing but contempt for those that have only contempt for the rule of law and the concepts of justice.

THE STORY CHANGES AGAIN: OBAMA’S SECURITY CABINET DIDN’T SEE A THING…

2011-05-05T10:17:00.002+09:30

Despite the picture that was widely circulated throughout the mainstream media purportedly of Obama and his security cabinet intently watching events live as the SEAL team supposedly executed Osama bin Laden, CIA director Leon Panetta is now saying that they actually didn’t see anything on account of a 25 minute blackout of the live feed to the cabinet room.

This means, of course, that, if the security cabinet didn’t see it, then nor will the rest of the world ever get to see it.

How convenient.

Despite all the hype from the President down, there is actually not one single shred of any independently verifiable evidence that proves that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday, 1 May 2011 as claimed by the President. Not one single shred. None.

This is turning out to be one of the biggest propaganda stunts of all time – apart, that is, from 9/11.

FORGET INTERNATIONAL LAW; ISRAEL AND THE U.S. WILL BE JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER OF ANYONE THEY FEEL IS THEIR ENEMY.

2011-05-04T20:34:00.001+09:30

The world has now reached a position where state-sanctioned targeted assassination has become the norm for dealing with enemies and others that offend them. Gone, it seems, is the necessity for International Criminal Courts and the like as nation-states take the law into their own hands.

Government officials and functionaries have now become judges, juries and executioners who have taken it upon themselves to bypass national and international laws and ignore the fundamental principles of justice which are the cornerstone of civilized and moral society. Governments have now succumbed to resorting to acts of savage revenge and have thrown justice and the rule of law to the wind. They have lowered themselves to the standards of those they accuse of being without morals.

Both Israel and the United States, two nations that profess to be the beacons of democracy and justice, now use targeted assassination as a tool to fulfill both their military and political objectives. Since the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden last Monday, the lust for blood by targeted assassination has reached boiling point.

Israeli MK Shaul Mofaz yesterday called for the assassination of Hamas leaders in the Gaza. Neoconservatives in America are also calling for the assassination of Hamas people in the “Gaza, Damascus, Oslo, or Dubai, wherever they may be”. For these neocons, anyone they regard as ‘terrorists’ “deserve death” by virtue of targeted assassination.

Israel has been practicing targeted assassinations for years and the US has certainly been covertly practicing it for as long and openly discussing it since 9/11. Until recently, however, the media has invariably brushed it under the carpet. Most people knew that it was happening but, while they may have tut-tutted it, said little against it. Now, though, it is openly practiced and the ‘bringing the frog slowly to the boil’ analogy seems to be appropriate.

Terror drones are already ranging the skies over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are being used to kill targets without consideration to the civilians they kill in the process. It’s not hard to imagine the next step for the Israelis and the Americans to take. Israel has already used targeted assassinations against political enemies as well as military targets. How long will it be before the US begins to use targeted assassinations against their political enemies at home or elsewhere in the West?

WITH THE PHOTO TECHNOLOGY THAT IS AVAILABLE TODAY, PICTURES PURPORTING TO BE OF BIN LADEN’S DEAD BODY CANNOT BE CONSIDERED PROOF OF DEATH.

2011-05-04T12:32:00.003+09:30

With photo enhancing and photoshop technology advanced as it is today, any photos of Osama bin Laden’s ‘dead’ body, on its own, cannot be proof positive of his death. Already during the course of this fraud we have seen how fake photos have been used in an attempt to prove that bin Laden really is dead.

The only reliable confirmation of death can come from an independently carried out post mortem with several eminent international suitably qualified persons on hand to witness the proceedings. This, of course, has been deliberately rendered impossible since his ‘body’, or at least somebody’s body, has, we have been told, been buried at sea.

No amount of photos or films that are produced by the US government will ever be proof positive that Osama bin Laden was killed in the way described by President Obama and his administration.

The ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden has been an elaborate hoax devised to end one era and usher in another. What that is likely to be we will no doubt know soon enough

THE OFFICIAL BIN LADEN ‘DEATH’ STORY IS ALREADY FALLING APART.

2011-05-04T10:50:00.001+09:30

The White House is furiously back-peddling on their story of how bin Laden was supposed to have died.

The initial story had bin Laden armed and ready to fight. Now it turns out he was unarmed. The initial story said that he had used his wife as a ‘human shield’ and that she was killed as a result. Now it turns out that she wasn’t killed but captured. The initial stories were put out by chief US counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan.

One needs to ask; how could he have got it so wrong?

Yesterday, pictures were released of Obama and his security cabinet supposedly watching the assassination of bin Laden via live feed and as it happened. John Brennan was there – he’s standing behind Hilary Clinton in a white open necked shirt – purportedly watching the assassination, so how could he have got it so wrong if he’d have seen it happen?

If the story was true, the video would have been played and replayed hundreds of times and they would have got their story straight before going public with it.

No doubt, just as soon as Dreamworks has finished the final editing of this fairy story, we’ll be able to see exactly how Brennan got it so wrong.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE REAL WORLD…

2011-05-03T13:27:00.000+09:30

THE ‘DEMOCRACY FASCISTS’ OF THE WEST VERSUS THE ‘TOTALITARIAN FASCISTS’ OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST AND HOW THE ‘DEATH’ OF OSAMA BIN LADEN FITS IN.

If it was not for the fact that a lot of innocent people are dying, it would almost be a laughable situation. What we are witnessing is one bunch of fascists pretending to have the best interests of ‘the people’ at heart – let’s call them ‘democracy fascists’ – using the genuine desire of the ordinary people of North Africa and the Middle East to be able to determine their own future as an excuse to rid Israel of all of its enemies by going to war against the dictators – let’s call them ‘totalitarian fascists’ – of the Arab world. Put simply, it’s fascists versus fascists.

North Africa and the Middle East are full of tin-pot dictators of varying descriptions. They govern their respective nations through fear, intimidation, corruption and nepotism. Some, like Libya’s Gaddafi, literally are straight-out dictators while others, like King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, have elevated themselves to royalty and rule by virtue of being an ‘absolute monarchy’. The rest fall somewhere in between.

The problem for the West, and, particularly, the neoconservatives in the West, is that they have painted themselves into a corner as far as this part of the world is concerned. All of the Arab and Islamic governments of North Africa and the Middle East had fallen into one of basically two categories; pro-US or anti-US. Those that fell into the pro-US camp were, or still are, supported by the US and, while they continued not to give Israel a hard time, they continued to be supported by the US. Those that were or are in the anti-US camp are not so much actually anti-US, but more anti-Israel and, as a result of being anti-Israel, are seen as being anti-US by default. These are the neocons enemies.

The problem for the neocons is this: Their rhetoric and propaganda revolves around the idealistic notion that Israel is a democratic state in the likeness of America and that all of Israel’s problems would go away if the anti-US and anti-Israel Middle Eastern states were democratic like Israel and the US and, once that is achieved, then everyone would be happy.

This, however, is indeed just rhetoric and propaganda.

The reality is far different.

The Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters are interested in creating a Greater Israel state that will ultimately preclude the existence of a Palestinian state and which will dominate the Middle East region by virtue of it being the region’s sole nuclear power. Its close alliance with the US will allow the US to project hegemony to the resource-rich region; a resource that will be shared with a resourceless Israel.

Where the neoconservative plans fall apart is in their arrogance. They somehow believe that governments that are likely to replace the autocratic and dictatorial governments that Arabs have and are currently revolting against, will somehow suddenly become pro-Israel once the dictators have been kicked out of power.

The neoconservatives’ rhetoric about ‘democracy’ has been their own undoing. Initially the rhetoric was used as part of their propaganda when referring to the states that are, or were, anti-Israel and anti-US; particularly Iraq, Iran and Syria. The ‘bringing democracy to Iraq’ propaganda was used extensively in the lead up to and aftermath of the destruction of Iraq by the US and its allies. The same propaganda was then intensified when the neocons turned their attention on Iran to crank up public opinion to support a war against them.

When the people of Tunisia revolted against their rulers, the neoconservatives hailed this as another victory for ‘democracy’. But when the Arab Spring revolt spread into Egypt the neocons were initially quiet about it. The reason for this was that Israel had a deal with Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, which kept the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in their place. But as the revolt looked like actually getting somewhere and it became obvious that Mubarak was not going to be able to quickly put the revolt down, the neocons had no choice but to support the call for democracy from the Egyptian revolutionaries despite it likely leading to a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government and also running contrary to the interests of Israel; a point which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at one point made very clear to the West.

The people of Libya have not enjoyed the same success as their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt as they attempt to rid themselves of their dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Again, the neocons have supported his removal by all means possible. They have called on President Obama to ignore the UN mandate that provides for protection of civilians and go all in to kill Gaddafi and to put US boots on the ground in order to ensure that only the ‘right’ government is formed to replace Gaddafi. So far Obama has resisted these calls and the war continues with neither side making much headway.

Now Syria looks like the next country to fall to the Arab Spring. This, on the surface, is not seemingly a problem for the neocons; Syria is their enemy. But, again, while the neocons want to be rid of Syria’s President Assad, the government that replaces him is likely to be even more anti-Israel than Assad’s government. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is pro-pro-Hamas and Hezbollah, is banned in Syria to the point where membership of the Muslim Brotherhood even attracts the death penalty. So, like in Egypt, the neocons will once again be hoisted by their own petard – it’s either ‘democracy’ or hypocrisy.

One has to wonder what the neocons expect to achieve with their seemingly self-destructive attitude. They have allowed their propaganda ideology to get the better of them so, one needs to ask, why have they?

As I have said, it is the dream of the neoconservatives, all of whom are either Zionists or support Zionism, to see that a Greater Israel is ultimately created. The only way a Greater Israel can ever be created is at the expense of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, which the Israelis already have, and – so they hope – south Lebanon up to the Litani River. None of these places have been or will be given up without a fight. The challenge for the Zionists is and has been how to start a fight without seeming as though they started it.

Israel’s two main direct hindrances to the Israelis dream of a Greater Israel are Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser extent also in the West Bank, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are supported by Syria and Iran. Iran is seen by Israel and their Western allies as by far the most important of their enemies because they are the main suppliers of weapons to both Arab organisations. However, what Israel and her allies need before they can attack Iran is a casus belli giving them a legitimate reason to attack them. Once war against Iran is under way then pre-emptive war against Hamas and Hezbollah can also get under way providing the opportunity for Israel to fully invade and occupy the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in order to defeat Hamas and also south Lebanon in order to destroy Hezbollah.

Getting the casus belli has always proved a problem for Israel. They’ve tried several times before to attack both but they have not been able to develop these attacks into a full scale confrontation with Iran even when they’ve had help from the George W. Bush administration. The recent ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden, however, and the potential for retaliation for his ‘death’ by Islamists from Hezbollah and Hamas may well prove to be the catalyst that provides the casus belli to bring on the confrontation they need.

I, as usual, hope that I’m wrong. Thankfully I have been so far but I fear that eventually it will happen unless a complacent world wakes up and demands that it doesn’t.

Time will tell.

THERE’S NOTHING AT ALL SUBTLE ABOUT THE BIN LADEN ‘DEATH’ PROPAGANDA STORY

2011-05-03T12:25:00.001+09:30

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that every single official word uttered and written about the so-called ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden reeks of lies and total fabrication.

The most significant factor in this very high-powered propaganda puff piece is the fact that the entire story is totally bereft of any evidence whatsoever. The fact that President Obama had been in on this blatantly obvious and transparent piece of propaganda has destroyed what little credibility he and the institution of America had left.

In a world where the internet and computer power reign supreme, lies and fabrications are quickly exposed. A photograph purporting to be the dead bin Laden quickly circulated the mainstream media shortly after the announcement of his ‘death’ only to be proven within less than an hour of it first appearing that it was fake and that it had appeared on the internet at least twice before; once on 29 April 2009 and then again on 8 December 2010.

Next the world was told that DNA testing had proved beyond doubt that it was indeed Osama bin Laden that had been killed. No evidence supporting the statement was given; not even a piece of paper testifying to the test was offered; there were no details on who conducted the test, nor were there any details on how the test was conducted, and nor was there any opportunity or facility offered for an independent test to be carried out to verify the claim.

The ‘DNA proves it’ claim was then quickly followed by news that bin Laden’s body had already very conveniently been disposed of at sea.

The entire sorry saga has been a strictly a ‘made in America’ affair. Not one of any of America’s allies has had any part whatsoever to do with Osama bin Laden’s so-called death.

All that President Obama has achieved, especially by being a part of this blatant attempt to deceive enemies and allies alike, is to demonstrate to the entire world that America has completely lost its way. The perpetration of this fraud shows that America has become a desperate and paranoid nation obsessed with the need to impress the world as America’s influence and power withers away.

Next comes the repercussions.

More on that later.

OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD – YET AGAIN!

2011-05-02T14:33:00.004+09:30

With the US in the doldrums everywhere including at home, Obama and his advisors clearly thought now would be a really good time to bring great and humungous tidings to a hurting American people. A royal marriage seems to have worked for the recession hit British, why not the death of a make believe arch enemy for millions of ordinary American suffering the financial hardships derived – ironically – from the expense of the wars meant, so we were told, to have put an end to the actions of people like bin Laden.

The Western media circus will now play the news of bin Laden’s ‘death’ up to the hilt around the world. Ignored will be the evidence that bin Laden died years ago. Supporters of the bin Laden myth will argue that there was never any concrete evidence that bin Laden was dead ages ago but then nor will they be able to show any concrete independently verifiable evidence that he was killed in Islamabad yesterday despite the Americans saying they have his body.

It was convenient for the Western propaganda machine to keep bin Laden alive all these years since his death probably at the end of 2001, just as it is convenient for the Western propaganda machine to now announce his death.

His death, regardless of when it was, also happens to be convenient in terms of the world now never being able to hear his side of the story had he been captured and tried. Osama bin Laden denied having had anything to do with 9/11 and, since the US was already after his blood anyway, there was no reason at all for him to lie. A later video of a not very good look-alike claiming responsibility appeared and was presented as final proof that he had, indeed, confessed to being responsible for 9/11.

For years the US administration and the West have presented Osama bin Laden as the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Twenty First century in order to perpetuate their ‘War Against Terrorism’ which ended up being nothing more than a war against Islam and the Muslim world, so the big question now is; who will replace him as the object of hate for the West?

UPDATE

According to the LA Times, US officials have said that “DNA tests had confirmed bin Laden’s identity”. One wonders how a DNA test was completed so quickly since even when in a rush (despite what you see on ‘CSI Miami’) they take about 48 hours to do. And the other question is; with what are they comparing his DNA with?

UPDATE 2

This from Abe Greenwood at the neocons comic, Commentary sums it up perfectly:

From the spontaneous revelers at the White House to the celebrants in Times Square, what the country is enjoying now is a sense of faith having delivered the goods. This stands in dramatic contrast to all the pessimism about the U.S.’s supposedly inevitable decline — and it’s as American as it gets.

It certainly is!

THE NEW HAMAS-FATAH ALLIANCE: ITS FULL SIGNIFICANCE NOT YET REALISED.

2011-04-29T13:37:00.001+09:30

The full significance of the reconciliation deal struck between Hamas and Fatah on Wednesday in Egypt has yet to be fully realised.

The deal clearly has not been rushed into by any of the parties and all are fully aware of the consequences the new alliance will bring, not just to the Palestinians, but also to the Egyptians whose borders adjoin both Israel and the Gaza Strip. Indeed, as part of the deal, Egypt has already opened its border with the Gaza Strip to allow free access between the two for trade and travel, a move likely to anger the Israelis who have strived for years to economically and socially strangle the Gaza Strip in their efforts to destroy Hamas.

Egypt’s new relationship with the Palestinians may also be seen as a foretaste of the relationship a post-Mubarak Egypt will likely have with Israel. The new Egyptian mood is sympathetic to the Palestinians plight both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Now that the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been opened allowing trade, it will not be long before the people of the Gaza will actually be better off than the people in the West Bank which for now remains under continued occupation by the Israelis.

Israel’s knee jerk reaction to the reconciliation deal and the opening of the border could well be to formally annex the areas of the West Bank that contain Israeli settlements together with the Jordan Valley with the threat of eventually annexing all of the West Bank, and possibly to invade and occupy the Gaza Strip claiming that they have done so in order to stop weapons being delivered to Hamas. Both of these possible Israeli actions would effectively be a declaration of war against the Palestinians especially if the Israelis were to fully occupy all of the West Bank in order to stop Hamas activity particularly after Fatah have released the Hamas prisoners they are holding.

The problem for Netanyahu is to assess how quickly he needs to act before the West and the rest of the world becomes convinced that the reconciliation has some merit and accepts the new alliance. This would be a disaster for the Zionists of Israel. While the US may suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority as a result of the alliance – a consequence the new alliance would have taken into consideration – there could well be sources of aid from elsewhere that maybe forthcoming. There is no single nation that could afford the kind of aid the US currently provides the Palestinians, which averages about $400 million per year over the last five years, but a group of nations together providing aid either in cash or kind could easily thwart the effect the US cessation of aid will have.

Another big worry for the Zionists of Israel is the possibility that the alliance, once having being accepted by most of the world, could unilaterally declare statehood claiming sovereignty over all of the West Bank, including the settlements and all other occupied areas of the West Bank, back to the pre-1967 line.

The bottom line now is that Israel is in a very tricky spot and has been backed into a corner. So far, all is quiet on the Israel-Palestine front, but it will be interesting to see how long the quiet lasts before the entire region explodes. And, if Israel’s Zionists want to hang on to their dream of a Greater Israel that includes, at least, the West Bank, then the explosion will be very soon.

As I said, the full significance of the reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah is not yet realised.

PALESTINIANS UNITED: IT’S THE LAST THING THE ZIONISTS OF ISRAEL WANT.

2011-04-28T15:13:00.001+09:30

In a historical moment yesterday Hamas and Fatah, Palestine’s two warring factions, signed a peace deal in Cairo brokered by the Egyptians that would unite them in common cause in ending the occupation in the West Bank and the siege of the Gaza Strip. The deal has already angered the Zionist Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has stated that the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas must make a choice between a peace deal with Israel and a peace deal with Hamas adding emphatically that Abbas cannot have both.

The deal has set the stage for a confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians which could include Israeli unilaterally annexing parts of the West Bank and repealing the Oslo Accords, moves which Likud Member of the Knesset (MK) Danny Danon has already set in motion in the Knesset. Such a move is likely to be supported by other right-wing Israeli Zionist parties that make up Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government. Uzi Landau of the extreme right-wing Israel Beiteinu party told an audience on 21 April: “We'll have to protect ourselves. If such a thing happens, I'm going to suggest to my government to extend our sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and over the highly-populated blocs we have in Judea and Samaria”, adding ominously, ”just to start with.”

Ever since Hamas unexpectedly won the Palestinian elections of January 2006, Israel has strived to wedge the two Palestinian factions. Immediately after the result was announced, both the Israelis and the US refused to recognise the new Hamas government-elect threatening to withdraw all financial support to the Palestinians and proclaiming Fatah the only government they would support. As Hamas attempted to exert authority fighting broke out between the two factions in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. With the support of the Israelis who occupy the West Bank, Fatah were able to easily and quickly prevail. However, in the Gaza Strip where there were no Israeli occupation forces to support the Fatah elements in the Gaza, Hamas, despite US and Israeli support by way of weapons being given to Fatah forces, were able to consolidate their control over the Strip and force Fatah out. The Israelis have continued to drive a wedge between the two factions ever since refusing to talk to Hamas under any circumstances.

Netanyahu’s response to yesterday’s deal signals an end to Israel’s relationship with Abbas and his Fatah movement, especially if the deal goes ahead. A number of options are available to Netanyahu, few of which are likely to be acceptable to the US and even less so to world opinion.

While annexation of all of the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Zionists Greater Israel dream has always been the long term aim of right-wing Zionism, efforts by some more extreme Zionists in the Knesset have proven to be premature. As recently as February of this year only four MK’s supported such a motion when it was put forward in the Israeli parliament. However, the latest developments may well cause MK’s to reconsider their stance by voting in favour of annexation of at least parts of the West Bank when MK Danny Danon next brings it up to the vote. There can be no doubt that if a vote is made in favour of annexation that this would change the entire Israeli-Palestinian geo-political situation.

Much also depends on how President Obama reacts to the new situation, though it is very unlikely that the administration will continue to support statehood if Hamas are likely to be part of any new Palestinian government. In order to force a change of heart from Abbas, Obama could threaten sanctions against the Palestinian Authority such as suspending aid, though Abbas would not doubt have already taken that into consideration when entering into the deal.

Clearly, if the deal is going to be on, then it is a real game-changer in the Middle East. How the players react to the new arrangements will determine how dangerous the situation will become.

FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE: NEOCONS STILL TRYING DESPERATELY TO CONNECT SADDAM WITH AL-QAEDA.

2011-04-27T16:30:00.001+09:30

The latest batch of Wikileak releases has provided the neocons with what they think is evidence purporting to link al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein prior to 9/11.

Part of the propaganda that the neoconservatives, many of whom held high positions in the Bush administration, used in the lead up to the US and their allies invasion and destruction of Iraq was the accusation that Saddam Hussein had connections with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and, therefore, must somehow have been complicit in the events of 9/11. Long after it became obvious that Saddam actually had nothing at all to do with bin Laden or al-Qaeda, the neocons continued to insist that he had. Even though President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were vocal about the Saddam-al-Qaeda connection in the run up to the war, both have since conceded that there was no connection.

But, in an article in Weekly Standard today, the neocons once again think they’ve been exonerated by the latest release of 779 US secret documents by Wikileaks. One of the leaked documents, most of which are written assessments by US intelligence analysts on Guantanamo Bay prisoners, accuse one of the prisoners, an Iraqi by the name of Jawad Jabber Sadkhan, of having been an Iraqi intelligence officer who was ‘relocated’ to Afghanistan. According to the assessment, Sadkhan had ‘ties that reached all the way to Osama bin Laden’ and that bin Laden had paid Sadkhan money ‘both before and after the September 11 attacks’. However, a careful read of Sadkhan’s leaked file reveals that all of the accusations made about him were made by other prisoners anxious to please their American captors and keen to co-operate in order to secure release or an easier experience while in detention.

The most damaging of Sadkhan’s accusers was a fellow Iraqi prisoner at Guantanamo named Nashwan Abd Al Razzaq Abd Al Baqi, also referred to as Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi was said to have been a major in Saddam Hussein’s military before also being ‘relocated’ to Afghanistan. Al-Iraqi had told interrogators that Sadkhan had been an Iraqi intelligence officer. According to Sadkhan, however, he had been in Saddam’s military but had gone AWOL and had served time for being AWOL and later fled Iraq to Iran and then to Pakistan in order to avoid arrest for theft.

There were a number of Iraqis in Afghanistan, just as there are a great many of other foreigners from Arab and North African countries, but not all were there to fight jihad. Many Iraqis were there simply to live elsewhere or to get away from Saddam Hussein’s government for whatever reasons.

Nowhere in the released Wikileak files is there any evidence whatsoever to link al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. The neocons are clutching desperately to straws – again to justify the illegal war against Iraq.

Finally, if indeed there were any connections between Iraqi detainees captured in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein, would not the US already have made it known to the world in order to justify their destruction of Iraq? Why would the government leave it to the neocons to exonerate America?

THE NEOCONS ANSWER TO ALL THE WORLDS PROBLEMS: KILL, KILL, KILL!

2011-04-18T12:42:00.001+09:30

A blog item in the neocon rag Commentary today, Michael Rubin wonders why Gaddafi hasn’t been targeted by a ‘Predator’ remote controlled execution drone.

The ‘Predator’ now seems to have emerged as the United States tool of choice to execute people who have been tried in absentia by American officialdom. Not only have neocons taken it upon themselves to demand that certain people be effectively executed by the US without any form of trial, but they are now demanding it of people who, despite being thoroughly despicable criminals, are not actually a threat to the US. Not only have the US taken it upon themselves to be the world’s policemen, the neocons want the US to be the jury, judge and executioner of anyone they don’t like – especially if they happen to be Islamic.

As despicable as Gaddafi is, he is no threat to the US and nor is he any longer a threat to anyone else except his own people. It is clear that Gaddafi has committed warcrimes but it is not up to the US to convict him and then execute him for those crimes. Since the international community through the auspices of the UN decided to protect the civilians of Libya against the murderous dictator Gaddafi, it is up to the international community – not the US – to try and, if found guilty, punish him in accordance with the international communities legal guidelines – which, incidentally, excludes the death penalty.

If Gaddafi is killed leading his forces into battle then that is an entirely different matter, but to target him for assassination will set up all sorts of precedents that world really shouldn’t be going anywhere near. Already there are far too many extra-judicial killings going on. Not only are they legally questionable, they also have a terrible tendency to kill innocent people who have been either mistaken as targets or are ‘collateral damage’ to identified targets.

In the case of Gaddafi, it is up to either the Libyan people, if they are able to capture him alive, to properly try and punish him or, far more preferably, to hand him over to the appropriate international court to be dealt with. In that way other despots and leaders of nations that commit warcrimes against either their own people or people of other nations will get the message that they will not get away with their crimes.

People who kill others extra-judicially are as much criminals in many cases as those they wish to kill. Arrogant self-righteousness is not an excuse to kill others who are killers. Once the world’s governments start becoming unaccountable for extra-judicial killing in this way, there will be no end to it and anyone could end being a target even if one is merely a dissenter.

Finally, if the trend continues, there will come a time when America and her allies enemies will also find a way to assassinate their enemies remotely in the belief that if it’s good enough for the West then its’ good enough for the West’s enemies too. Prime Ministers and Presidents could then find themselves targets for assassination thus running the risk of not only being killed themselves but their families, as well as other civilians, may end up being killed as ‘collateral damage’.

This ‘Kill, kill, kill!’ by remote control madness needs to end. The world needs to come back to the principles of justice. Killing enemies in this way will only enrage them further as they seek revenge.

Justice is the only way peace.

AS JULIUS STREICHER WAS TO 'DER STÜRMER' SO ANDREW BOLT IS TO THE 'HERALD SUN' AND GREG SHERIDAN IS TO 'THE AUSTRALIAN'

2011-04-08T11:52:00.003+09:30

It’s interesting that historian Robert Manne should liken the Islamophobic racist Greg Sheridan to Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher and his Der Stürmer hate newspaper of the Nazi era. Contrary to the opinion of Gerard Henderson of the right-wing Sydney Institute who thinks such comparisons to Nazi propaganda are inappropriate, considering the circumstances of today’s modern Islamophobic and racist propaganda, such comparisons are very much appropriate. Whereas Streicher’s paper specialised in demonising Jews, Greg Sheridan and Andrew Bolt, as well as others, specialise in demonising both Aboriginal people and Islam in their respective newspapers, The Australian and the Herald Sun – both of which happen to be owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Julius Streicher was a low-life Nazi Jew-hater whose diatribes about Jews were often so disgusting they even offended fellow Nazis. Streicher was eventually hung at Nuremberg after being found guilty of crimes against humanity. But, it seems, extreme right-wing racists have not learnt from the lessons of the Nazi era. Again, racists are using newspapers to spread hatred and fear. And now it’s not just newspapers that are being used; Andrew Bolt has just been given a Sunday morning time slot on Australian Channel Ten TV.

Like Streicher, Andrew Bolt is a low-life Muslim and Aborigine hater whose diatribes about Aborigines and Muslims as well as other non-white Australians generally are also offensive even to other right-wing Australians. Greg Sheridan has come out with his racist agenda and has now also placed himself in the ranks of low-life Muslim haters when he wrote his lengthy diatribe last Saturday in The Australian.

Like the era of anti-Semitism during the last century, so Islamophobia and racism against non-whites is a threat to the future of the world. If the racist and Islamophobic hatreds peddled by the likes of Sheridan and Bolt are not stopped then the world has no more to look forward to than it did in those dark days that culminated in the deaths of millions in the middle of the last century.

These people are using the rhetoric of ‘the right to free speech’ to deprive people of their freedoms and rights – just as the likes of Julius Streicher did back in the 1930s.

MURDOCH JOURNALIST, GREG SHERIDAN, DISPLAYS HIS RACIST CREDENTIALS.

2011-04-05T16:47:00.000+09:30

In a lengthy article last Saturday in The Australian titled ‘How I lost faith in multiculturalism’, Greg Sheridan finally showed himself to be the racist that we always knew he was. Of course, having ranted against Islam in the past, usually when discussing the war against terrorism, we already knew that he was a racist. But in those circumstances he usually denied being racist by saying that his rants were directed against extremist Muslim, not moderate Islam. But now he has finally come out against Islam generally thus displaying his true racist credentials. At one point in his article Sheridan relates how he witnessed a white Australian women being verbally abused and then spat on. He explains that the men who abused this woman were of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ inferring that because they were Middle Eastern they must have been Muslims and so, therefore, were behaving offensively because they were Muslims. As historian Robert Manne pointed out in response to Sheridan’s hate piece, if Sheridan had replaced the words ‘…of Middle Eastern appearance’ with ‘…of Jewish appearance’ then one would have a quote worthy of something that may have been found in Julius Streicher’s Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. With this disclosure of his racist attributes, Sheridan now joins the ranks of those other leading Murdoch racists; Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun in Melbourne, and Tim Blair and Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Andrew Bolt, Australia’s premier racist, couldn’t help himself but pass comment over Sheridan’s racist rant and Manne’s response. Bolt called on Manne, who also happens to be Jewish and who is also Bolt’s arch nemesis, to apologise to Sheridan saying Manne ‘demeans’ both Sheridan and the Holocaust. As it happens, while Sheridan deserves to be ‘demeaned’ on the basis of his declaration of being a racist, Manne actually didn’t mention the Holocaust. In the course of his racist rant, Sheridan mentioned that many of the Right wing parties in Europe that were now anti-Islam had in the past been anti-Semitic but have now changed their stance. He says, for example, the French National Front party had “recently ditched the anti-Semitism and now stands primarily against Muslim immigration and Islamic influence”. The reality is that many of those white European Australians that are now opposed to Islam were once also anti-Semitic themselves like their peers in England. One wonders if the likes of Murdoch’s journos in Australia weren’t once amongst them. Like in Orwell’s 1984, for the likes of Bolt, Sheridan, Blair, Akerman, et al, they occasionally need to change their enemy but they always must have an enemy. The right-wing in the post war years still hated Jews even in Australia but, like leopards, they can never change their spots but the can attempt to hide them. Once a racist, always a racist.

HAS RICHARD GOLDSTONE BEEN ‘NOBBLED’?

2011-04-03T18:11:00.001+09:30

Richard Goldstone, author of the 500 page plus Goldstone Report into the Israeli onslaught against the Gazan people in ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008/2009 has done a complete back flip of his findings as presented in his report. In an op-ed that appeared in Friday 1 April edition of the Washington Post, Goldstone tells readers that he has changed his mind completely about the culpability of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in relation to war crimes the Goldstone Report had accused them of during Operation Cast Lead. He claims that, had he known what he knows now, he would not have made any such accusations against the IDF. It seems, however, that the knowledge he now has which has caused him to change his mind is the reports of the various investigations into Operation Cast Lead that were carried out by the Israelis. The question now is; to what extent can the findings of a government and its various institutions investigating itself be trusted when it comes to making decisions about whether that government and its institutions have committed war crimes. Certainly, it would seem obvious, especially with a nation like Zionist Israel that has a history of not being able to be honest, the credibility of any findings its commissions of inquiry come up with are likely to be highly suspect. So, one needs to ask, why has Goldstone done this complete about face? The tone of his op-ed is a clue. It is no longer neutral as one might expect of a retired senior judge. He almost fawns over the new-found epiphany of Israeli righteousness during Cast Lead while at the same time blatantly proclaims that Hamas are guilty of war crimes through intent. He does this without even considering the possibility that Israel, who knew that their citizens would be in harms way in the event of another attack in that region, made no attempt to move their citizens out of harms way thus effectively using them as human shields without their permission. At the time of publishing his report, Goldstone was equally assertive about the guilt of the Israelis yet now we have this complete one-eighty degree turnaround. Why? Why has his turnaround been so drastic? Could it be that he’s been got at? Has he been paid off? I doubt it but who knows. Has he or his family been threatened? This is far more likely; Israel is historically renowned for its assassination of its enemies. Could that extend to those that upset Israel’s ‘reputation’? I guess we’ll never know but one can rest assured that there is nothing genuine about Goldstone’s turnaround.

LIBYA: AMERICA SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH INTERVENTION – LIBERAL OR NEOCONSERVATIVE

2011-04-03T16:32:00.001+09:30

This post also published at http://lataan.wordpress.com/ David Rieff, writing in neocon online mag The New Republic about liberal interventionists and neoconservative interventionists, says: Both sides think it is America’s duty to reshape the world into a more democratic place. Well, we all know that neoconservatives think America should be ‘intervening’ anywhere that it feels like if it serves America’s or Israel’s interests. And American liberal interventionists may, indeed, well believe that it is America’s duty to reshape the world into a more ‘democratic’ place, but it certainly is not the case at all for international Leftists, many of who have supported the intervention in Libya but for very different reasons. However, the big difference between the so-called ‘liberal interventionists’ and the neoconservatives compared to the international Left is the fact that the international Left would prefer to see America have nothing at all to do with any ‘intervention’ anywhere. In cases like Libya, America should leave the ‘intervening’ to the international community. Better still, as far as Libya is concerned, it would have been far better if it had been the Arab community itself that had ‘intervened’. Libya has two immediate neighbours, Tunisia and Egypt, which have both recently gone down the same path as the Libyan rebels. It’s a pity that the new Egyptian and Tunisian governments didn’t see fit to support the Libyan rebels. Both have the appropriate wherewithal to at least level the playing field in the fight to rid Libya of its fascist dictator and an alliance of Arab nations in this way would also demonstrate to other Arab fascist-led states that such totalitarian behaviour will not be supported by those states that now have power in the hands of their own people. For the neoconservatives the revolutions in the Arab nations have become a conundrum. Their propaganda in the lead up to the Iraq war was full of jingoistic rhetoric about bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq so that the rest of the Arab world would be inspired by Iraq’s new-found freedoms. The pursuit of ‘democracy’ became the cornerstone of their rhetoric – and it also became a millstone around their necks as Arabs nations began to move toward their own style of revolution and democracy. As the January 2006 Palestinian National Authority elections demonstrated, the wrong people, at least as far as the neocons were concerned, were being elected into power. But, too late; the neoconservatives had committed themselves to the rhetoric of ‘democracy’ so when the Egyptian rebellion began the neocons had no alternative but to actually support it despite Israel preferring to have seen Hosni Mubarak continue in power. Their only hope now is that the US is able to wield enough influence in Egyptian post-Mubarak political affairs to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from taking Egypt down the path of Islamic governance. Despite their ongoing rhetoric about wanting to see the downfall of Gaddafi and ‘democracy’ in Libya, the neocons are scared witless over the possibility that Islamic groups will gain political control there as it seems they will eventually in Egypt. Obama is no less concerned about the possibility of Islamic groups gaining political control in all of the counties that have fallen so far and may well fall in the future but Obama has adopted a ‘softly, softly’ approach to diplomacy with these states that have undergone and are undergoing radical change. The neocons on the other hand, would prefer a much more aggressive approach to the changeover of power in these states in order to ensure that Islamist groups do not gain power. What all the rebels are seeking, above anything else, is the right to their own self-determination – which may or may not include a secular democracy which the neocons would prefer, or, alternatively, may involve a theocratic Islamic form of government which would be the last things the neocons would want. Either ways, it’s ultimately up to the people of each of these states. It’s certainly not up to the US nor the neocons.

LATAAN NOW BLOGGING VIA WORDPRESS.COM (click here)

2011-04-02T14:21:00.003+10:30

Blogspot have some real problems since switching to the new format as you can see below. They’ve given me good service for a few years now but, since I’m not a computer expert, I don’t have time to waste sorting out tech problems. Hence the switch. I ask my readers to bear with me while I get to grips with wordpress.com. Meanwhile I’ll just blog on when I can.

NEOCONS STILL THINKING UNILATERALLY.

2011-04-02T13:46:00.001+10:30

Neocon writer Alana Goodman at Commentary writing about America’s involvement in Libya and its role there seems to think that the US should act unilaterally and affect ‘regime change’. She writes: We are already in Libya – so whether or not we should intervene is not up for debate. What should be questioned is whether we need to expand our mission to include regime change. It was a mistake for Obama to rule this option out at the beginning. And based on the situation in Libya right now, the president may end up having to face this very real prospect soon. The demeanour of statements like this demonstrates perfectly neoconservative arrogance. First off, ‘we’ – i.e. the US – are not ‘in’ Libya at all, (unless one includes the CIA that we have now been told are in Libya helping the rebels); the US are, or were, simply part of a UN-sanctioned intervention designed to prevent civilians being killed in a civil war. Goodman uses the word ‘we’ in the context of the US rather than in a context that includes the allies that have undertaken to protect the civilians of Libya, so when she says ‘what should be questioned is whether we need to expand our mission to include regime change’, the ‘we’ she’s referring to is the US, not the UN. This is confirmed by the fact that Goodman goes on to say that it ‘…was a mistake for Obama to rule out this option at the beginning’, as though it was up to Obama to rule in or out when, in fact, it was a UN decision. Indeed, being true to form that the neocons usually are, Goodman doesn’t even mention the UN; she ignores it entirely. Even America’s allies don’t get a mention. They, the UN and America’s allies, might just as well not exist as far as the neocons are concerned.

AUSTRALIAN ULTRA RACIST ANDREW BOLT GOES TO COURT.

2011-03-29T16:47:00.001+10:30

While Australia’s most virulent racist, Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt of Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper, has been brought before the Courts to answer charges relating to articles he has written about Aboriginal people in Australia, it should be realised that his racism doesn’t stop at the vilification of people of colour – or what is in his view, the lack of it.

The particular group of people that are taking Bolt to Court are all Aboriginal people who by virtue of parentage no longer have skin colour by which they may be distinguished. Bolt essentially argues that if a sighted person were to see them then that person could argue that the person they are looking at, based solely on their appearance, are not actually Aboriginal. A non-sighted or sight-impaired person, however, may not have the luxury of coming to a similar conclusion and, if Bolt himself were thus afflicted, he too would not be able to remark as he had in his articles.

Bolt argues simply that because these people lack what is in his view the appropriate amount of skin pigmentation, then they cannot be Aboriginal despite a proven heritage to their Aboriginality.

But, as I said, Bolt’s racism doesn’t stop at vilifying Aboriginal people. Like all racists, Bolt also vilifies other people that are not of European appearance especially if they happen to be sub-continental Asian, black African, Central Asian, Middle Eastern or North African Arab. Surprisingly, for a white supremacist style racist, Bolt claims that he is not an anti-Semite and supports Israeli Zionism. While this may be the case, it should be noted that his Islamophobic peers in Europe who were once dyed-in-the-wool neo-nazi Jew haters also now claim to support Israel. For these European racists, anti-Semitism has been replaced by Islamaphobia. One wonders why it should not be any different for white supremacist Islamophobes in Australia – of which, judging by the audience that are attracted to Bolt’s online blog at the Herald Sun website, there are, thankfully, not too many.

It is unfortunate that there are some Australian’s that support Bolt’s racist world view and it is also unfortunate that a leading media mogul should provide support for his vile hatreds. Australia would be better off by far for not having to tolerate the rabid writings of this particular racist.

THE NEOCONS THINK THE U.S. SHOULD DECIDE THE FUTURE OF LIBYA.

2011-03-29T15:25:00.001+10:30

Neocon Paul Wehner writing in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard says:

The United States, having gone to war against the Libyan regime, now has to decide whether or not to allow Qaddafi to stay in power.

Wehner goes on to say:

Four decades-plus in power have been more than enough. It is time for the Butcher of Tripoli to leave the stage. Whether that exit is accomplished by means of exile or cruise missile or hangman’s noose is irrelevant. In this instance justice may be delayed. But it need not be denied.

These statements represent classic neoconservative thinking and demonstrate clearly the arrogance of neoconservatisms dogma of American exceptionalism.

First off, the United States has not gone to war against the Libyan regime; the international community, through the United Nations, has taken steps to protect the civilian population of Libya from being killed by Gaddafi’s forces and the United States has had a part to play in that role. There is a vast difference. Even President Obama in his speech last night at the National Defense University in Washington took care not use the word ‘war’ but, rather, referred to US action in Libya simply as ‘American military involvement’.

Secondly, contrary to Wehner’s opinion, it is not up to the United States ‘to decide whether or not to allow Gaddafi to stay in power’; it is entirely up to the Libyan people.

With regard to the neoconservative’s notion of ‘justice’, this too is adequately displayed in Wehner’s rhetoric. The kind of ‘justice’ Wehner talks of is not justice; it is violent revenge, exactly the kind of violent revenge that Wehner is accusing Gaddafi of in the first place.

Gaddafi has committed warcrimes and the only proper course of action, if he is not killed in action, would be for him to be arrested for his crimes and tried at the International Criminal Court in Hague. If he is then found guilty, the court would provide the appropriate punishment. This then would show to other totalitarian dictators that the world will not tolerate them abusing their peoples and that when they depart from power either forcibly by revolt or by other means, they too will be arrested and, if found guilty, punished for their crimes. Exile should not be an option for these people except, of course, if it is in a prison after having been found guilty of warcrimes.

DOES EGYPT SEE A ONESTATE SOLUTION?

2011-03-25T10:34:00.004+10:30

It seems that Egypt Air have taken Israel off the map of the Middle East and instead have shown the outline of what a ‘OneState solution’ would look like.

The quicker the better for everyones sake.

LIBYA: THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FORGOTTEN; IT SEEMS THAT ALL THAT MATTERS NOW IS THE PROS AND CONS OF THE LIBYA INTERVENTION DEBATE.

2011-03-24T09:52:00.003+10:30

The political and academic commentariat in the media and blogosphere seemed to have lost interest in what is actually going on in Libya and seem far more intent on turning their attention to the political consequences of intervention and analysis of the differences between ‘liberal interventionists’ and ‘neoconservatives’.

Forgotten is the fact that Gaddafi was a dictator who allowed no dissent and viciously suppressed all opposition. Using the nation’s oil wealth to both enrich himself and his family, and to buy support from those that kept him in power, Gaddafi maintained power for over forty-two years. Not once during that period were the people offered a viable opportunity to choose an alternative government or leader. Gaddafi’s style of ‘popular democracy’ was designed always to ensure an outcome that suited his own ends.

Forgotten also is the fact that today, right now, people – real people, ordinary people – are dying while we in our armchairs argue the pros and cons of what the war is about. The Left seem to have forgotten about internationalism, solidarity and the unity of the common people of the world. Instead, while those who we offer our support to are dying in the streets of their own nation at the hands of a vicious dictator, commentators seem to care not so much about the urgency of action needed to help those that need help, but more about whether or not there is some kind of ulterior motive behind those nations that have offered to help.

The people of Libya must prevail in ridding themselves of their dictator. They need your support. Yes, the intervention has gone too far. Yes, civilians have died at the hands of the allies but we should be demanding that the allied bombing and killing stops; not that the intervention stops. The intent of UN Resolution 1973 was to stop Gaddafi forces killing their own people.

I’m not going to get sucked into the intellectual debate that I’ve just criticised but I will give one example of what I mean.

Last Monday Stephen Walt wrote an article in Foreign Policy titled: “What intervention in Libya tells us about the neocon-liberal alliance”. He writes while discussing the intervention in Libya:

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance.

While I very much respect much of Walt’s past work, I’m surprised that he would write such nonsense. The analysis is both shallow and wrong. It’s shallow because it ignores entirely the deeper motives behind the tight-knit ideology of neoconservatives whose only real concerns are for US-Israeli interests (they have absolutely no real interest in the well being of the Libyan people, and whatever they utter that suggests they do is said only because it suits their rhetoric). It is wrong because ‘liberal-interventionists’, contrary to Walt’s assertion, do not seek to ‘legitimate American dominance’ but seek only to bring an end to war (all wars)and the death of innocents. It is also wrong because real ‘liberal interventionists’ are not just 'American Democrats' or others that are slightly Left of center but are from all over the planet. They are internationalist and seek to minimise ‘American dominance’ rather than ‘legitimate’ it. Walt forgets that this intervention was instigated not by the US but by the demands of the Libyan people themselves and states that are both Western democratic and Islamic/Arab. The US didn’t jump on the interventionist wagon until the last moment. The intervention was then endorsed by the international community via the UN – unlike the invasion of Iraq which was a unilateral neoconservative attack whose purpose was to benefit Israel and project American power into the Middle East and had absolutely nothing to do with ‘humanitarian intervention’ as was claimed at the time.

Walt also says that; “President Obama took the nation to war against Libya”. This is just sloppy thinking. Obama did no such thing. The US is not at war against Libya; it is at war against despotism.

Intellectuals like Walt should know better. This thing isn’t about America ,just by way of a change; it’s about an internationalist attempt to stop a fascist dictator from killing his own people. Simple as that. Why does every Tom, Dick and Harry armchair commentator have to think it’s always about America? Let’s put the rest of the world first and sort out America’s propensity to try and dominate it later.

Meanwhile, the people of Libya are still dying today. Let's get our priorities right.

MORE NEOCON DELUSIONS…

2011-03-23T16:11:00.003+10:30

The neocon comic Commentary magazine today carries an article by Alana Goodman in which she analogises Bush’s exploits in Iraq with Obama and his actions in Libya. She writes:

You would think President Obama’s recent choice to take military action in Libya would have made him slightly more understanding of President Bush’s decision to intervene in Iraq.

Bush intervened in Iraq?

Bush didn’t intervene in Iraq; he invaded it and thus destroyed it!

And therein lays the difference. Obama intervened in Libya in order to prevent a bloodbath, or, at least, that was the UNs intention, whereas Bush invaded Iraq and ended up creating a bloodbath and did so for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of Israel and the policies of the neoconservatives in his administration. Bush had not a skerrick of humanitarian intent when he decided to invade Iraq on 11 September 2001.

Also in Commentary magazine today is this garbage from vocal neocon Max Boot who wants to put a “peacekeeping” force on the ground in Libya if and when Gaddafi goes or is otherwise removed from the equation, in order to “stabilize the situation in Libya after Qaddafi’s eventual downfall”.

Boot goes on to write:

This is an administration that is filled, after all, with critics of the Iraq War where, it is widely conceded, we paid a heavy price for not doing more to prepare for Saddam Hussein’s downfall. Tommy Franks, Donald Rumsfeld, and others later claimed we were wrong-footed by our “catastrophic success,” meaning we were not prepared for the Baathist regime to collapse as quickly or completely as it did. Yet what are we doing to prepare for a similar eventuality in Libya where Qaddafi could be killed in an airstrike tomorrow? Is the coalition now enforcing a no-fly zone prepared to do something on the ground to ease Libya’s transition, or will we just wash our hands of the place and hope for the best?

No, Max; first off, it was the Iraqi people that paid the heavy price. Secondly, once Gaddafi is gone, then that should be the endgame as far as the Americans are concerned; it is for the Libyans. The Libyan people are then quite capable of looking after their own affairs. The last thing they want is anyone from the West looking over their shoulders. The Libyans want self-determination – without interference from the West.

That’s the problem with neocons; they’re so arrogant that they actually believe that the Arab people want them there to hold their hands as they create their own futures.

How delusional can these neocons get?

THE NEOCONS HAVE BECOME DELUSIONAL – AGAIN.

2011-03-23T13:55:00.002+10:30

An article in today’s Weekly Standard, written by neocons Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly, declares in its very first sentence that:

The crisis in Libya provides a useful reminder that the world’s demand for American power is rising.

They clearly haven’t been paying attention to what the world is actually saying – especially in the light of the Libyan crisis. Even Barack Obama is getting the message loud and clear which is effectively, ‘If you can’t do anything in the Middle East without some kind of ulterior motive attached to it, then butt out altogether and let the Arab peoples be the masters of their own destiny’.

The neocons seem to think that the international call to help avert a bloodbath in Libya was an open invitation for America to ‘intervene’ in every Arab state in the Middle East and North Africa by using American power to depose all the leaders that the US didn’t like or deemed a threat to the US and/or Israel. The neocons still think that the UN resolution was a mandate from the international community to effect ‘regime change’ in Libya. Schmitt and Donnelly write:

The administration has also created a credible international coalition. The proof of the effort, however, will be in the willingness and ability to use force to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power.

America’s actions so far in Libya, far from creating ‘a demand for American power’ as the neocons delusionally believe, has created a demand from the rest of the world for America to curb its power and keep out of other peoples business. Humanitarian intervention is one thing, but to abuse ones power to attempt regime change because it suits your foreign policy agenda is something else again.

Next thing you know the neocons will be screaming that ‘the world demands that Iran should be next’.

How delusional can they get?

LIBYA: A POTENTIAL SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF FINDING AN ENDGAME.

2011-03-22T16:38:00.002+10:30

The media is full of hypothesis and debate over how the war in Libya might be resolved. The neocons are saying ‘just go in and finish it’ implying that the US should take the lead and simply kill Gaddafi at the first available opportunity, while others argue over whether or not it is the job of the coalition to fight for the revolutionaries by destroying Gaddafi or to ensure that there is no killing of civilians. The pedantics over the wording of UNSC 1973 is at the center of most debate among the coalition partners while, of course, the neocons have no interest in the role of the UN and would much prefer the US to kick Gaddafi’s arse regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. In short, the powers that be have painted themselves into a corner over the issue of resolving the Libya crisis.

Yet buried beneath all the argument there is one relatively simple solution which resolves the problem for everyone.

On 26 February 2011 the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously in favour of UNSC 1970 to refer the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court (ICC). While the ICC under Article 16 of the Rome Statutes (see p.11) that empowers the ICC is unable to commence an investigation or prosecution for a period 12 months after the UNSC referred the matter to the ICC, there must be a way that a person who is known to have committed crimes prosecutable by the ICC yet remains at large and still able to, and, indeed, has threatened to commit further crimes, can be arrested pending investigation and prosecution at the ICC. Article 58, 1.b.iii, (see p.31 of the Rome Statutes linked to above) which says an arrest warrant may be issued: “Where applicable, to prevent the person from continuing with the commission of that crime or a related crime which is within the jurisdiction of the Court and which arises out of the same circumstances,” may, depending on how the Article as a whole is interpreted, provide a legal avenue by which an arrest warrant can be issued by the ICC for the arrest and detention of Gaddafi. There may also be some avenue open under Article 92 (p.50) of the Rome Statutes which relate to provisional arrest. This may be a way out of the war conundrum. Though it does not actually put an end to the war itself, it does specify the endgame; the arrest of Gaddafi. Once arrested, the war will be all but over.

One way of encouraging his arrest, even by his own immediate subordinates, may be to offer a substantial reward to whoever brings Gaddafi to court for prosecution. A reward of, say, $100 million may well be enough to induce those around him to give him up. A $100 million might sound a lot but when one considers that each cruise missile that has been launched against Gaddafi so far costs around half a million each then a hundred million has already been spent. By offering a huge reward in this way far fewer innocent people are likely to get killed and a criminal is brought to proper justice. It will also have the added benefit of causing other dictators to think twice before they set about murdering their on citizens. For many, the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison rather than dying a martyr to their cause and the prospect of not being able to get away with their crimes by fleeing into exile with their ill-gotten gains may also compel them to think twice before committing their crimes.

Gaddafi, for all his wealth and power, is still nothing more than a criminal. He, and anyone else who commits a criminal act, should not be above the law. They must, like everyone else that commits crime, suffer the consequences of their acts.

Just a thought.

DOES ALLIED INTERVENTION IN LIBYA GO TOO FAR?

2011-03-21T15:38:00.000+10:30

The idea of the UN sponsored intervention in Libya was to essentially stop the slaughter of civilians as a result of the civil war that had evolved from protests by Libyans against their leader Muammar Gaddafi.

At first, as the protests morphed into a civil war and the protestors became rebels, they seemed to be getting the upper hand over Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels seemed on the verge of victory as rumours spread that Gaddafi had fled the country. But then, as Gaddafi’s forces regrouped and recovered from the initial shock of being routed by the rebels in the west and the east, Gaddafi loyalists fought back and retook the central and western part of the country quite quickly and headed toward the east and the rebel’s stronghold based in Benghazi.

The Gaddafi forces advance on the eastern part of the country held by rebel forces was accompanied by threats from Gaddafi and his son that they would annihilate the rebels, ‘showing them no mercy’. Since Gaddafi had already demonstrated his barbarity by having his own security men executed for refusing to open fire on unarmed demonstrators, (warning: this link shows graphic content) it seemed clear that Gaddafi was in no frame of mind to forgive those that had rebelled against his rule so the ‘showing them no mercy’ threat was taken very seriously. The ‘showing them no mercy’ threat was, furthermore, implied to included anyone that was found to have supported the rebels as Gaddafi threatened to hunt them down ‘house by house’ and ‘inch by inch’, This was taken as an implicit threat against civilians that supported the rebels.

All in all, what with Gaddafi’s threats and past history together with the fact that his forces were gaining the upper hand, it seemed a bloodbath was imminent as Gaddafi’s forces were set to make a final thrust on the rebels holed up in Benghazi and in other pockets in eastern Libya.

When the battle was going the rebel’s way, they asked specifically for no foreigners to intervene. However, as the battle began to swing in favour of Gaddafi’s forces with his superior firepower and airpower and Gaddafi increasingly became more threatening, Libyan rebels changed their minds about intervention and asked for a no-fly zone to be established. At first the West were wary of the idea fearing that it would be seen as typical Western interference against an Arab nation that has oil and that any intervention may be seen as a cynical ploy to gain influence in an oil-rich state. But, as the battle quickly seemed to be inevitably lost from the rebel’s point of view and the possibility of a bloodbath seemed increasingly possible, the international community, especially after many of the Arab states also supported the idea after initially being against the idea, relented and authorised intervention.

However, now that intervention has been authorised and participating nations are taking action against Gaddafi’s forces, there are concerns that the allied forces taking part in the ‘intervention’ are going beyond the intended mandate of stopping Gaddafi forces from committing crimes against the Libyan people and the rebels he is fighting. As well as targeting Gaddafi forces that are rolling east to reinforce those attacking the rebels, the international forces are also hitting targets not at the front lines and are targeting Libyan infrastructure that can be used by Gaddafi in his fight against the rebels particularly its air defence facilities. While it is true that hitting Libya’s air defence facilities will deny Gaddafi the ability to hit back at the allies air offence, one also needs to realise that these facilities are not so much Gaddafi’s but Libya’s, and the chances of Gaddafi being able to hit back at the allies air offensive even with his air defence facilities intact are very remote. Many of Gaddafi’s air defence facilities are based in civilian areas and some of these areas have been hit by the allied assault which is said to have killed civilians.

It is clear that the motive now behind the allied assault against Gaddafi is not just to level the playing field in order to ensure there is no massacre of rebels and dissidents in the event of Gaddafi prevailing in this war, but to actually ensure that Gaddafi is defeated and either sent packing to any country that would have him, or killed in the assaults and fighting, or arrested and brought to justice for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

If it is, and always has been the intention, of the allies to be rid of Gaddafi for good, then the international community has been conned. If Gaddafi chooses to stick it out to the bitter end then there will be a lot of people dying on both sides regardless of the strength of the allied assault on Gaddafi – and that means a lot of those dying will be civilians.

Finally, the question that really needs to be asked now is; if Gaddafi is going to be attacked for killing unarmed civilians, will the allies attack those other governments that attack unarmed civilians; like Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and, dare I mention, Israel?