RELEASE OF ZARQAWI TAPE IS DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO REINFORCE THE MYTH OF HIS EXISTENCE.

Releasing a video of the mythical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with Zarqawi calling President George W. Bush a liar is an obvious and transparent piece of psychological propaganda. It kills, as it were, a number of birds with one stone. First, of course, we see a clear and reasonably high definition image of an unmasked person who we are told is Zarqawi – ‘he exists!’ the propagandists are shouting, ‘Here he is in all his glory’ they implore us to believe. This is expected to dispel any myths surrounding his existence and the doubts that surround the myths – especially after having been told that some of the claims made by the US military about Zarqawi had been ‘exaggerated’.[1] Well, now he’s done it. Now everybody knows exactly what he looks like. And with tens of millions of dollars bounty on his head, how’s he going to get away? He’s certainly made it difficult for himself to hide anywhere. Could he really be that stupid? Or could it be that the propagandists simply hadn’t fully thought through the implications of such exposure.

As for calling Bush a liar[2], now that is clever. If such an ‘evil killer’ as Zarqawi calls Bush a liar it can only mean that Bush actually isn’t. In the minds of the dumb and gullible only the opposite of what Zarqawi claims can be true – after all, is he not the ‘master of evil’?

All this comes just days after the tape of Zarqawi’s boss, Osama bin Laden, re-resurrected yet again from the dead in order to perpetuate yet another myth, is ‘released’ to the world. Like the man said, ‘you can fool some of the people all of the time…’

Are there any people out there really that dumb and gullible or is it just the propagandists themselves that are just so dumb that they expect people out there will actually believe this garbage?





ENDNOTES
[1] Adrian Blomfield, ‘How US fuelled myth of Zarqawi the mastermind’, Telegraph, 4 October 2004. Available online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/04/wirq04.xml Accessed 27 April 2006. See also: Sebastian Rotella, ‘US Casts Fugitive as a Super-Villain: Critics say an accused terrorist’s role in Iraq attacks is exaggerated, noting weak evidence’, Common Dreams New Center, 7 March 2004. Available online: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0307-02.htm Accessed 27 April 2006.
[2] Karen DeYoung, ‘Zarqawi emerges from shadows to call Bush a liar’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/zarqawi-emerges-from-shadows-to-call-bush-a-liar/2006/04/26/1145861419275.html Accessed 27 April 2006.

HAVE THE WARMONGERS, LIARS AND DECEIVERS FROM WEBDIARY REALLY MOVED BLOGS?

Harry Heidelberg, alias David Davis, or is it David Davis alias Harry Heidelberg, is absolutely beside himself with joy – especially after going through a phase recently when he thought he was completely alone in the blogosphere – as his new-found like-thinking warmongering chums flock to his blog after either deserting or having been banned (temporarily?) from Webdiary. This is excellent news for Webdiarists (hopefully) who can now concentrate on debating the stuff that really matters in the world without being distracted by right-wing liar-loving, Howard-hugging, garbage dispensers like Jay White, Geoff Pahoff (though, unfortunately for Webdiarists, Pahoff has threatened to continue hassling the debate with his ludicrous Islamaphobic rubbish) and Will Howard who, even with his first words at Heidelberg’s blog, couldn’t help himself but mention ‘Jews’, ‘Zionists’, etc.

Still, Harry’s now a happy chappie having gathered all these lunatics under the one roof. Now, if Margo can just get rid of that patronising lying brother of hers and allow folks to talk about what’s really happening in the world…

TIME FOR SOME CHANGES AT WEBDIARY?

There seems to be a few problems over at Webdiary. Perhaps Margo herself should step in to resolve the impasse. She could start by getting rid of her brother, the totally discredited and lying manipulator Hamish Alcorn. She should then get a load off her own shoulders and come clean about the threats, including death threats, which were made to her prior to her all but complete withdrawal from public life. She should then stop pandering to the right-wing and allow Webdiarists and potential Webdiarists to be able to discuss those things that the right-wing don’t want discussed but which are slowly coming out into the open anyway and are being discussed now on mainstream media blogs.

Webdiary can well do without the likes of the warmongering lunatic Jay White, and, while they are about it, could well do without the lies and deceit of the likes of Will Howard, the lies and sly cynicism of Chris Parsons, and last but not least the blatant Islamaphobia from the Zionofascist Geoff Pahoff. Apart from Margo Kingston, none of the abovementioned has any credibility left whatsoever.

Goodbye and good riddance to the lot of them. I wouldn’t give these people the time of day let alone the space to peddle their vile warmongering lies and hatred. Bring back the real spirit of Webdiary!

IN HOWARD’S FASCIST AUSTRALIA STUDENTS WILL BE TOLD WHAT LITERATURE THEY MAY STUDY AND HOW THEY STUDY IT

John Howard plans to take the country another step down the road toward his carefully planned New Fascist Australia. As today’s article in The Australian[1] explains, Australian Prime Minister John Howard is considering cutting funding to schools that insist on teaching literature that the Prime Minister says ‘succumbs to political correctness’.

Howard apparently doesn’t understand the way literature is being taught today. He says that it is ‘gobbledegook’ and asks what ‘does it mean to have an outcomes-based education system’. (This, mind you, comes from a man who is unable to read cables, memorandums and reports from his senior public servants and diplomats.)

In June 2004, in an earlier step in Howard’s march toward his New Fascist Australia, Howard took the education system to task over not flying the Australian flag at schools, threatening to cut funding to those schools that continued not to fly the flag. At the same time he demanded that schools ensure that children undertake at least a minimum of two hours of physical activity a week.[2] (Some may ask, ‘what’s wrong with that?’ and, of course the answer is: in itself, nothing. It’s just that it comes from Howard who is not an expert in kidz physical health but is an expert in stick and carrot fascism. In other words, it’s an attitude thing.) Howard stopped short of tying funding to the singing of Australia’s national anthem every morning at school though he did mention that he would prefer it if they did.

And in a piece today, written by Howard and published in the Sydney Morning Herald,[3] Howard makes it clear that he is likely to be around at least for the next election to ensure that Australia continues its march toward his New Fascist Australia.


ENDNOTES
[1] Steve Lewis and Imre Salusinszky, ‘PM canes ‘rubbish’ postmodern literature’, The Australian, 21 April 2006. Available online: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18878087-601,00.html Accessed 21 April 2006.
[2] Aban Contractor, ‘PM unfurls his patriotic schools agenda’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 2004. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/22/1087844943682.html Accessed 21 April 2006.
[3] John Howard, ‘A road map to guide the nation into a bright future’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-road-map-to-guide-the-nation-into-a-bright-future/2006/04/20/1145344214082.html Accessed 21 April 2006.

EXPOSURE OF THE ‘ISRAELI LOBBY’ ALSO EXPOSES MAKE-BELIEVE ANTI-SEMITISM!

Ever since the Mearsheimer and Walt paper on the ‘Israeli Lobby’ hit the streets there has been a discernable decrease in the fear of being called anti-Semite by those that criticise right-wing Israeli politics and right-wing Zionism. The initial reaction from the pro-Zionists and the Israeli-supporting neoconservatives in America was highly predictable – they, of course, called Mearsheimer and Walt ‘anti-Semites’. They did it so loudly and so often that it became clear that it was the Israeli Lobby itself that was doing the name calling. Problem is they went overboard with it. They did it to such an extent that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

It’s got to a point now where people no longer care about being called an anti-Semite because they know that is just a bit of name calling that no longer has any relevance or meaning. People are now very much aware that those that criticise right-wing Israeli politics and right-wing Zionism are going to be labelled by those that are being criticised as anti-Semites, just as a matter of course. It has become expected. But now everyone knows that really they are not anti-Semites but just critics of right-wing Israeli politics and right-wing Zionism. The right-wing Zionists have clearly failed in their attempt to introduce criticism of right-wing Israeli politics and right-wing Zionism as the ‘New anti-Semitism’.

The real anti-Semites are those that have been around for centuries. These are the racists and white supremacists that have always been there. They are the ones that were totally discredited at the end of World War Two as the world realised that their blind hatred had resulted in the systematic deaths of millions of those that they hated. There are a few still around but, thankfully, not in any significant numbers. These people don’t hate because they dislike right-wing Israelis or right-wing Zionists. They just hate Jews because, well, just because they are Jews. The hatred that real anti-Semites have has nothing to do with politics. And the politics of anti-right-wing Israeli Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with race.

NUCLEAR POWER GENERATION DOES NOT MEAN WANTING TO BE A NUCLEAR POWER!

Recently President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran announced that Iranian nuclear scientists had made a breakthrough in enriching uranium to the point where it can be used as fuel for nuclear reactors in power generation.[1] In making the announcement Ahmadinejad made it quite clear that the sole purpose for the enrichment is for power generation, an activity that is entirely legitimate and an activity that Iran has the right to undertake under international law.

At no time has Iran even hinted at a desire to have nuclear weapons. On the contrary, Iran has always made efforts to make it abundantly clear that, despite the insistence of the US and Israel that Iran’s intention has been otherwise, their only interest has, as Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the US explains, been the pursuit of fuel for its nuclear energy generation program.[2]

Without any evidence whatsoever, the US and Israel have been accusing Iran for well over a decade of being in pursuit of nuclear weapons technology.[3] In the latest outburst from the US and Israel the Iranians are apparently intent on “confronting the West” by announcing that they now intend to expand its nuclear enrichment abilities to “produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale”.[4] This is grossly misleading. Because the mainstream media have been pushing the idea that Iran is in pursuit of nuclear weapons, readers associate the idea that Iran now wishes to ‘produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale’ as Iran wanting now to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons whereas in reality, despite Iran’s breakthrough in enrichment technology, it is still some years away to being able to producing enough fuel for power generation and even more years away from producing weapons grade enriched uranium.[5]

In the light of this one has to wonder who is confronting who. All Iran has done is achieve something that all along it has said it wanted to achieve and for no other reason than to produce fuel for nuclear power generation. For some reason the world has gone into panic mode in an effort to appease the US. Despite all the rhetoric, there is still not one skerrick of evidence to suggest that is in pursuit of nuclear weapons.[6]

The real reason for the intensity of US and Israeli lies about, and condemnation of, Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to create a climate in which Iran may be attacked in order to effect regime change – in other words, for exactly the same reason as the US and Israel accused Saddam Hussein of pursuing non-existent nuclear weapons. The irony, of course, is that it seems the world is falling for the same old lies yet again. Back in September of 2003 the IAEA found tiny traces of enriched weapons grade uranium at two sites in Iran, one of them Nantanz, Iran’s major nuclear facility.[7] The US government seized on the discovery as proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.[8] As it turns out, the tiny particles were found on equipment the Iranians had purchased second hand.

The nuclear issue with Iran, just as it was with Iraq, is simply an excuse for the US and Israel to confront Iraq with a view to regime change. Perhaps there are enough dumb and gullible people in the world still to fall for those lies – again.


ENDNOTES
[1] Nazila Fathi, David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘Iran Says It Is Making Nuclear Fuel, Defying U.N.’, New York Times, 12 April 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Accessed 13 April 2006.
[2] Javad Zarif, ‘We Do Not Have a Nuclear Weapons Program’, New York Times, 6 April 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/opinion/06zarif.html Accessed 13 April 2006.
[3] Chris Hedges, ‘Nuclear Trail – A special report; A Vast Smuggling Network Feeds Irans Arms Program’, New York Times, 15 March 1995. Available online: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F60610FF355B0C768DDDAA0894DD494D81 Accessed 13 April 2006.
[4] Nazila Fathi and Christine Hauser, ‘Iran Details Nuclear Ambitions; Rice Urges ‘Strong Steps’’, New York Times, 12 April 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iran.html?hp&ex=1144900800&en=95109157285477d5&ei=5094&partner=homepage Accessed 13 April 2006.
[5] Tony Karon, ‘Nuclear ‘Breakthrough’ May Help Iran to Compromise’, Time, 12 April 2006. Available online: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1183187,00.html Accessed 13 April 2006.
[6] Atul Aneja, ‘IAEA says no evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons plan’, Globalresearch, 2 March 2006. Available online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ANE20060302&articleId=2055 Accessed 13 April 2006.
[7] Felicity Barringer, ‘Inspectors in Iran Find Highly Enriched Uranium at an Electrical Plant’, New York Times, 26 September 2003. Available online: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F7071EFE39590C758EDDA00894DB404482 Accessed 13 April 2006.
[8] ‘IAEA Find Uranium Traces in Iran’, Fox News, 23 September 2003. Available online: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98292,00.html Accessed 13 April 2006.

ARE AUSTRALIAN SAS TROOPS ALREADY ON THE GROUND IN IRAN?

Seymour Hersh in his bombshell New Yorker article has revealed that “the administration has stepped up clandestine activities in Iran”. Considering how close the relationship between President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard is and how unstintingly Howard has supported Bush in all of his ventures in both Afghanistan and Iraq by allowing the services of Australia’s elite Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) to be put at the disposal of the US government, one needs to ask: ‘Where are Australia’s SAS troops now?’

The skills of Australia’s special operations forces have in the past been highly praised by the American special forces that have worked closely with them in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also common knowledge that Australian SAS troops were involved in collecting intelligence inside Iraq before Howard officially threw Australia’s hand in with the US in its invasion of Iraq in March 2003.[1] In January of 2006 Richard Hill, the then Australian Minister for Defence, sent another contingent of SAS troops to Afghanistan as part of “Australia's broader contribution to the war against terrorism.”[2]

Part of that ‘broader contribution’ would undoubtedly be the Australian SAS’s proven ability to gather intelligence in Iran as it has in Iraq. One wonders when the fascist John Howard is going to tell the people of Australia that Australia will be involved in yet another of Bush’s illegal pre-emptive wars. When will Australia’s compliant media ask the questions, indeed, more to the point, when will Australia’s pathetic government opposition ask the question?



ENDNOTES
[1] Rafael Epstein, ‘Reports of SAS troops in Kuwait’, 13 March 2003. Australian ABC Radio National transcript. Available online: http://abc.net.au/am/content/s805790.htm Accessed 10 April 2006.
[2] ‘Afghan deployment ‘aids anti-terrorism effort’’, 10 January 2006. Australian ABC Newsonline. Available online: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1545067.htm Accessed 10 April 2006.

DON’T THE BUSH AND NEOCONSERVATIVE ZIONOFASCISTS EVER LEARN?

It seems the US is now set for a strike, possibly using a tactical nuclear weapon, against Iran’s nuclear facilities at Nantanz.[1] Apparently, the White House is pinning its hopes for ‘regime change’ in Iran on “…a sustained bombing campaign against Iran [that] will humiliate the leadership and lead the Iranian public to overthrow it’ – in much the same way, one would imagine, that the neocons were optimistic that the Iraqi people would line the highway up to Baghdad throwing roses petals at the feet of the ‘liberating’ US soldiers as they marched up it. Iran should be a ‘cakewalk’ too!

Of course, a nuclear strike against Iran is all conjecture at the moment but, nonetheless, a very frightening prospect, not just for the Iranian people but for the entire world. The Seymour Hirsh article[2] that the SMH piece refers to also suggests that hitting just Iran’s nuclear facilities is not all that should be considered as targets; after all, if one is going to attack another country to such an extent then one may as well take it a few stages further and attack that country’s ability to strike back or, as is heavily suggested and hoped for, at least hit targets that would also help any internal insurgency to rise up, or, of course, both.

Of more immediate local (Australia) concern is that part of the SMH report that says “…the administration has stepped up clandestine activities in Iran…” One wonders if Australian special forces are involved in these activities. Did the last lot of SAS troopers that we were told went to Afghanistan really go to Afghanistan? They probably did – you know John Howard wouldn’t lie to us – but where did they go to from there? Has Howard involved Australian troops in this madness with Iran as well?

Apart from the disgusting likelihood of many, many innocent lives being lost as a result of such an attack, the real stupidity is in the fact that the world is about to be taken for a fool yet again. Once more the world will allow the warmongering crazies in the White House and their neoconservative and fascist allies, respectively the UK’s Tony Blair and Australia’s John Howard, to lie yet again to us in exactly the same way as they lied to us prior to attacking Iraq.

Has no one learnt anything?



ENDNOTES
[1]‘US considering air strikes on Iran – report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-considering-air-strikes-on-iran--report/2006/04/09/1144521196583.html Accessed 9 April 2006.
[2] Seymour M. Hersh, ‘The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?’, The New Yorker, 10 April 2006. Available online: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact Accessed 10 April 2006.

MORE FAKE ‘AL QAEDA’ IN GAZA TO JUSTIFY INCREASED ISRAELI ATTACKS ON PALESTINIANS?

The pro-Zionofascist newspaper The Australian[1], owned by the Israel Lobby’s publisher and neoconservative supporter Rupert Murdoch, today spewed more of its hate filled propaganda by trying to tell readers that ‘al Qaeda’ men are now infiltrating the Gaza strip ready to launch ‘terrorist attacks’ against Israel.

One wonders if these ‘al Qaeda’ men are sourced from the same place as these ‘al Qaeda’ men were in 2002. Apparently “…"The Palestinian Authority arrested a group of collaborators who confessed they were working for Israel, posing as al-Qaeda operatives in the Palestinian territories,” according to this report cached from the Sydney Morning Herald in December 2002. [2] Or maybe it’s Shin Bet, the Israeli internal intelligence organisation, that’s doing the recruiting.[3] Or even Mossad itself according to an article from larouchepub.com in December 2002.[4]

The myth of al Qaeda is being milked for all it’s worth by Israel and her neocon/fascist allies in the West. Stand by for some more ‘terrorist’ acts against Israel – acts that no doubt will justify even more deadly attacks on the Gaza or perhaps a reoccupation of Gaza by IDF in which case be prepared to see even more deaths of innocent Palestinians and Jews.


ENDNOTES

[1] Abraham Rabinovich, ‘Israelis uncover al-Qa'ida in Gaza’, The Australian, 8 April 2006. Available online: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18726050-31477,00.html 8 April 2006.

[2] ‘Palestinians arrest al-Qaeda 'poseurs'’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 2002. Available online:
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/palestinians_arrest_al_qaeda_poseurs.htm Accessed 8 April 2006.

[3] Danny Rubinstein, ‘Ibrahim, the Shin Bet wants you to join Qaida’, Ha’aretz, December 2002. Available online: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=241042&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=241042 Accessed 8 April 2006.

[4] Michele Steinberg and Hussein Askary, ‘Mossad Exposed in Phoney `Palestinian Al-Qaeda' Caper’, 20 December 2002. Available online: http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2949idf_qaeda.html Accessed 8 April 2006.

THE RIGHT-WING ZIONISTS AND NEOCONS PROTESTETH TOO MUCH!

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer must have touched a raw nerve with their paper ‘The Israel Lobby’ judging by the amount of totally predictable garbage coming from the neoconservative Zionist’s response to the paper.

The Australian published a couple of extracts of pieces from two of Israel/America’s leading neoconservative writers. The liar Eliot Cohen insists that both Walt and Mearsheimer are anti-Semitic and the demented Michael Ledeen insists that the universities Walt and Mearsheimer work at should be punished! Cohen’s piece appears in the Washington Post while Ledeen writes in the National Review Online. The irony is that both of these writers are themselves part of the very ‘Israeli Lobby’ that they say is a figment of Walt and Mearsheimer’s imagination thus foisting themselves by their own petard! I mean, how many writers representing lobbies have this kind of access to the mainstream international press to push their cause? Does it not prove Walt and Mearsheimer’s point?

The Israeli Lobby very much exists; indeed, many of the members of the Israeli Lobby are cross connected. The same names keep turning up in the myriad of different organisations and publications that go to make up and represent the Israeli Lobby from the American Enterprise Institute to the Project for the New American Century to the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies to the Centre for Security Policy to the writers at Commentary magazine and the editors of the Weekly Standard to the ex-Office of Special Plans at the Defence Department. Same old names, same old faces – mostly Jewish-American neoconservatives and their gentile fundamentalist Christian and assorted corporatist cohorts.

The more they deny the more they prove the point!

WARMONGERING LUNATIC, FRANK GAFFNEY, EXPOSES THE MADNESS OF NEOCONSERVATISM

Frank Gaffney, the American neoconservative commentator, appeared on the ABCs ‘Lateline’ program[1] with Tony Jones on Monday evening with the end result being Gaffney making a complete fool of himself as he exposed himself for the warmongering lunatic that he is. I’m sure even some of Gaffney’s fellow travellers must have been cringing at some of the stuff he was coming out with.

At one point Gaffney told Tony Jones: “And, by the way, he [Saddam Hussein] had plans once the sanctions were lifted to put those weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons and biological agents into aerosol cans and perfume sprayers for shipment to the United States and Europe.”

Tony Jones responded with: “Except for the fact as it turns out - I'm sorry to interrupt you there - except for the fact as it turns out, he didn't have any?”

Gaffney: “No, it doesn't turn out at all that he didn't have any. It turns out we haven't found what he had. But what we did find, what the Iraq Survey Group did find, is plans to use the in place dual-use manufacturing facilities once sanctions were lifted to put chemical and biological agents in aerosol cans and perfume sprayers to be shipped to the United States and Europe. That was the plan for terrorist activity that we have confirmed was in place under Saddam Hussein's regime. You haven't heard a great deal about it. Perhaps it has not been reported adequately enough to the Australian people or, for that matter, to the American people. But it's true.”

A very confused man who clearly is delusional. Chemical and biological weapons in aerosol cans and perfume sprayers to be shipped to the US and Europe? As you say, we haven’t heard a great deal about it, Frank. In fact, we haven’t heard anything about it and I’m not sure that anybody else has either – not even the Iraqi Survey Group.

I might remind readers that Frank Gaffney is a senior neoconservative commentator who wields significant influence in Bush administration circles. His views and beliefs are not only his but are shared with many other equally influential people at the top of Bush politics. These lunatics are in charge of the ‘world’s most powerful nation’! And Howard has unequivocally aligned Australia with them!


ENDNOTE
[1] Tony Jones, ‘Pressure mounts on Iraqi PM’, Lateline, 3 April 2006. Available online:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1607592.htm Accessed 4 April 2006.

DEFINING JOHN HOWARD’S NEW FASCIST AUSTRALIA.

Howard’s New Fascist Australia is seeking to become a ‘new’ kind of fascism. In pursuit of this ‘new’ fascism Howard cleverly transcends the stereotyped images of the ‘old’ discredited fascism of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

The ‘new’ fascism denies emphatically that it is ‘fascist’, an association which would immediately discredit it. The right-wing Howard-supporting media therefore, attempt to deflect fascist name-calling from the Left by belittling the notion using various countering techniques, including pointing out that fascism had its roots in the ideology of the Left, an argument that the commentator Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun in November 2005 used to counter the increasing observation that, indeed, Howard was becoming ‘fascist’. He wrote: “Calling Prime Minister John Howard a fascist has become quite chic…” and then went on to demean Bob Brown, Gough Whitlam, and Paul Keating, accusing them of all having ‘fascist’-like tendencies after having pointed out that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s beginnings were, as Bolt asserts, ‘socialist’.[1] Other right-wing Howard-supporting commentators use other forms of rhetorical countering techniques.

Gerard Henderson, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, uses the simple device of comparison, whereby he infers that Australia is not becoming ‘fascist’ because, “Real fascist societies, as in Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler, had authoritarian regimes which possessed a state ideology enforced by terror or the threat of terror.”[2]

In a similar article over a year earlier, Henderson attacked the notion of Australia becoming a fascist state from a slightly different perspective which included the patronising invocation of the memory of those that suffered under fascism. In his August 2004 article ‘Fascist Australia’ he writes, “To suggest Australia… today [is] fascist is just, well, nuts. The use of such a label in a modern context indicates a total misunderstanding of both democracy and fascism – and has the unintended consequence of diminishing the memory of fascism’s many victims.”[3]

Keith Windschuttle, the rightwing historian, attacks the accusations that Australia is heading toward fascism from yet another perspective – comparison to that of the overt kind of fascism often seen in Europe. In the 2005 Earle Page Memorial Oration, delivered at Parliament House, Sydney, on 22 June 2005, he told his audience:

"Australia in recent dec­ades has never experienced skinheads or any other right- wing hoodlums intimidating political opponents with violence. In­deed, the only political meetings broken up have been those of the populist nationalist Pauline Hanson, where the perpetrators were not skinheads but long-haired, left-wing university stu­dents. To portray Howard as a neo-fascist is not only factually inaccurate but literally absurd."[4]

Windschuttle’s reluctance to mention that Pauline Hanson’s ‘populist nationalism’ was in itself a form of fascism merely exposes Windschuttle’s own polemics.

Since it denies actually being fascist is also the reason why it does not have the trappings, at least not overtly, of what one might usually associate with fascism. For example, there are no massed parades of black uniformed soldiers, no grossly oversized flags hanging vertically in neat rows from government buildings, there are no brown leather-coated men at every railway station, bus depot and airport asking to see ‘your papers please’ – or at least not yet there isn’t.

Howard’s New Fascism doesn’t revolve around himself; he has no desire to be a ‘dictator’ per se. He does, however, wish to establish on a permanent basis, a political structure coexisting in and hybridising our existing system, within which the vision of his New Fascist Australia can be perpetuated. As commentator Tony Kevin observes: “His [Howard’s] rule is steadily degrading the values of our society and corrupting its political institutions. The longer he stays in power, the more the checks and balances of our society will crumble. We will continue our slow slide towards an Australian model of fascism”.[5]

Howard’s vision is for a regionally strong and influential antipodean, essentially white-European Christian dominated nation that predominately is corporatist in economic structure and where its inhabitants are strongly encouraged to participate in the machinations of that corporatist economic structure. A nation where those that, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to participate are both marginalised from the system and demonised as being somehow inadequate and of little worth and therefore only worthy of being kept at barely subsistence levels.

Part of the process of creating the New Fascist Australia involves projecting the notion of a primarily white-European Christian dominant society where non-Christian values, particularly and especially those of Islam, are demonised in order to create a climate of fear within which a compliant population is nurtured and polarised toward a pro-Christian value that sees other religious and/or cultural values as being abhorrent or, at least, marginalised.

As the process evolves toward his New Fascist Australia, Howard seeks to strengthen Australia’s armed forces not just in order to defend Australia’s shores but also with weapons and equipment that will allow him to project Australia’s power and assert hegemony well beyond Australia’s shores and into, when deemed necessary, other nations within Australia’s region.

Part of this process also includes the mythologising of Australia’s military heritage and the cultivation of a militarist attitude among Australia’s youth via the promise of a career in its armed forces which could follow on from an armed forces cadetship.

Howard’s close relationship with President Bush in the light of the events of and after 9/11 has served Howard’s purpose well in terms of providing closer ties in trade and defence with a nation that has a similar predominantly European heritage and political outlook.

Australians and our neighbours, quite rightly, should be aware of Howard’s drive toward fascism and recognise it for what it is before it is too late to reverse the process. Howard’s march toward a New Fascist Australia is slow but insidious. Only last week new laws were introduced to allow ASIO and the police unfettered powers to tap innocent Australians’ phones, email and text messages.[6] Following this is the push to have an ID card issued to Australians, ostensibly for the purposes of Medicare and welfare, but clearly a back-door attempt, yet again, to introduce a form of universal Aussiecard designed to keep tabs on the Australian people. The treasurer, Peter Costello, has put his support behind the push arguing, quite blatantly, “…that anti-terrorism security measures had made people more tolerant of intrusions into their privacy,”[7] demonstrating clearly how the New Fascism’s creation of fear via the so-called ‘War against Terrorism’ then, in turn, allows them to dismantle even more of our rights, in this case, to privacy.

It is this insidiousness that is the most illusory aspect of Howard’s New Fascist Australia. It is foisted on us a piece at a time and we are lied to about the reasons or necessity for the new law or changes. Sometimes it is so insidious that even those that profess to be leftish are unable to see what is going on before their eyes. There are even some elements within the Labor party that now support many of the steps that Howard has taken having been deluded into believing that these measures are, indeed, ‘for your protection’.[8]



END NOTES
[1] Andrew Bolt, ‘Fascism puts Left foot forward’, Herald Sun, 25 November 2005. Available online: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,17360614,00.html Accessed 15 February 2006.
[2] Gerard Henderson, ‘The Rise of Fascism as an Easy Insult’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 2005. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-rise-of-fascism-as-an-easy-insult/2005/12/05/1133631200859.html Accessed 15 February 2006.
[3] Gerard Henderson, ‘Fascist Australia’, The Age, 24 August 2004. Available online: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/23/1093246439313.html?oneclick=true Accessed 15 February 2006.
[4] Keith Windschuttle, ‘Vilifying Australia: The perverse ideology of our adversary culture’, 2005 Earle Page Memorial Oration, delivered at Parliament House, Sydney, on 22 June 2005. Available online: http://www.sydneyline.com/Vilifying%20Australia.htm Accessed 15 February 2006.
[5] Tony Kevin, ‘Howard’s 10 years – An alternative political analysis’, 2 March 2006. Available online:
http://www.tonykevin.com/Howards10Years.html Accessed 21 March 2006.
[6] ‘New phone tap powers passed’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 2006. Available online:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/new-phonetap-powers-passed/2006/03/30/1143441264268.html Accessed 3 April 2006.
[7] Mark Metherell, ‘ID cards an issue of tolerance: Costello’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/id-cards-an-issue-of-tolerance-costello/2006/03/29/1143441215877.html Accessed 3 April 2006.
[8] ‘For your protection’ is a slogan that can be seen on the back of a police van in the recently released film “V for Vendetta” depicting life in a futuristic fascist Britain.

‘THE AUSTRALIAN’ ACTUALLY EXPECTS YOU TO BELIEVE THIS RUBBISH!

More garbage from the garbage providers today. The Australian newspaper reckons bin Laden will ‘never be caught alive’. There is a reason for this. It’s because he is already dead and has been for some considerable time. The reality is Osama bin Laden was a very ill man suffering from renal failure. Without treatment on a very regular basis, including dialysis, he would have soon died anyway.

The Australian’s story about bin Laden having a ‘special gun’ with which he is to be shot in the event of pending capture is pure nonsense designed to perpetuate his myth for the consumption by the dumb and gullible, who, I might add, are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes on and the people start to wake up to the fact that they’ve been conned.

Bin Laden is now a myth. The ‘War on Terrorism’ is a myth. The ‘War for Democracy’ is a myth. These myths are designed to cower and subdue a dumb and gullible people while powerful people create more power and wealth for themselves.

Wake up Australia! The road to Fascism is not that long!

AUSTRALIA TAKES YET ANOTHER STEP DOWN THE ROAD TO HOWARD’S FASCIST STATE.

Australian spy agencies and the police will now be able to tap the phones, email and text messages of any innocent Australian civilian without that person knowing that their phone/internet is being tapped.

Howard continues to whittle away at our basic freedoms and privacy as he steadfastly continues his drive to create a New Fascist Australia. The slow insidious erosion of our rights and freedoms are going barely noticed by the vast majority of Australians as they blissfully accept the myriad of laws that have fundamentally enslaved us to the will of the government and its big business corporatist sponsors.

As yet Howard has not had reason to use his new found powers. This has led to the Australian people being lulled in to a false sense of exclusion from the laws. No one yet has been locked up, for example, for contravening the sedition laws. Nor has anyone I know been whisked off the streets and disappeared into the bowels of ASIO headquarters. While this has not happened yet – and the right-wing commentators have pointedly already gone into ‘we told you so mode’ – the point remains that all of these options are now in place ready to be used whenever Howard and his fascist thugs choose to act against dissidents if and when they become a threat to him and his regime.

Australians, beware. Don’t disregard yet another step down the road to Howard’s New Fascist Australia.

IS BEING A ‘NEOCONSERVATIVE’ REALLY SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF?

There was a time in the 1930s that Fascists and Nazis were proud to call themselves ‘Fascists’ and ‘Nazis’. Today, however, if someone calls you a ‘Fascist’ or ‘Nazi’ they are insulting you. There will come a time, if, indeed, it hasn’t already come, when being called a ‘neoconservative’ will be just as insulting.

Today’s neoconservatism will forever be linked with the West’s war against the Iraqi, Palestinian and Afghan people and Islam generally. The folly of this war will one day be seen for what it really is – a blatant attempt by neoconservatism to brutally force American style ‘democracy’ on to a world, the Islamic world, that does not want it.

Neoconservatism’s opportunity came on 11 September 2001. The events of what has since become known the world over as ‘9/11’ became the signal for neoconservatives to launch their attack on the world of Islam. For the American neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish-Americans with extremely strong ties to right-wing Israeli politics, the enemy was, and is, most of the Middle East nations that are around them, particularly Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

For American neoconservatives a war against Iraq would serve many purposes. It would finish something that they considered was never completed during the First Gulf War – the removal of their arch-enemy Saddam Hussein, an evil dictator for sure but not in any way a threat, particularly by the end of the Gulf War, to the US or to any one else. It would also secure the world’s second largest reserves of oil under American control, and, finally, it would remove the monkey of Saddam’s support for the Palestinian cause from Israel’s back.

At first most of the world sympathised with America’s loss on 9/11. The graphic footage of the aircraft slamming into the Twin Towers and their subsequent collapse will likely remain the most potent images of the Twenty-First Century. The finger of blame was quickly pointed at Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda movement and the world just as quickly joined the US in condemning him and his movement for what had happened. Within a few weeks the US attacked him and the Taliban regime that supported him in Afghanistan. The Taliban government was overwhelmed by the US and a puppet government soon put in place with its leader quickly endorsed by a sham of an election which was portrayed as real ‘democracy’ at work. But no sign of Osama bin Laden.

Even before the final defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan the world was beginning to hear about the evils of Saddam Hussein and how he had been involved in the events of 9/11. (One would have thought, after all the allegations by the neoconservatives and the Bush administration, that once Saddam had been caught the first thing they would do is whip him off to the US to face charges relating to 9/11 rather than have him stand trial in Iraq for crimes committed there.)

Some leaders of the Western world, including the UK’s Tony Blair, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar in Europe and John Howard in Australia, who happened to be in the US on 11 September 2001, were all quick to jump on Bush’s bandwagon of ‘regime change’ in Iraq. The propaganda machine began to churn out the most lurid stories imaginable of life under the Saddam regime. The world was told of Saddam’s desire to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons all of which, we were told, he’d gladly hand over to al Qaeda ‘terrorists’ for use against the US, the UK, Italy, Spain and, oddly enough via their branch office in Indonesia, Australia.

We now know, of course, that all of this was lies designed to garner support for their attack on an otherwise innocent nation that happened to be led by just another of the world’s dime a dozen tin-pot dictators. So, why Iraq? As I’ve said many times in the past it was for three reasons; hegemony, oil and Israel – and not necessarily in that order.

Iraq today is now in complete and utter chaos and in the first stages of what could easily become, and is showing all the signs of becoming, a very bloody civil war that could engulf the entire region.

The neoconservatives’agenda has failed miserably both in Afghanistan and Iraq. ‘Democracy’ has failed completely in both countries. In a show of pure irony the Iraqi people turned out in their millions using their first taste of democratic freedom to tell the world they are not interested in the West’s secular American-style of governmental ‘democracy’. In Iran the Iranian people also showed the West what they thought of Western-style secular ‘democracy’ and, just to demonstrate how arrogant the neoconservatives really are, they actually expressed genuine shock when the Palestinian people voted for the religious Hamas organisation in yet another show of rejection of American-style ‘democracy’.

Throughout all of this the neoconservatives have continued with their rhetoric of the ‘war on global terrorism’ and their futile quest to bring ‘democracy’ to the Middle East. Those main leaders that jumped on to the neoconservative bandwagon of attacking Iraq are still with us. Bush, Blair and Howard, whose lies have brought nothing but misery and death to hundreds of thousands of innocent people, are still lying to justify their crimes. Blair and Howard still insist that neoconservatism and an alliance with America is the answer to the world’s woes. They do not realise that, far from being the answer to the world’s woes, they are indeed, the cause of them.

Whereas neoconservatism started life as a peculiarly American phenomenon it has, like Fascism and Nazism, spread its influence and tentacles elsewhere. Neoconservatism has, as we now know, nothing to offer the world except war, death, destruction, lies, hypocrisy and an arrogant self-righteousness that is filled with hatred and an Islamaphobia that borders on paranoia. Yet those that have become neoconservatives are unable and unwilling to see the evil that neoconservatism has become – just as the Fascists and Nazis of yesteryear failed to see the evil they were perpetrating on the world – until it was too late.

In The Australian today Greg Sheridan, Howard’s chief apologist and propagandist, is almost swooning with platitudes for Tony Blair but one wonders if he would ever thank Greg Sheridan for calling him a ‘neoconservative’.

BLAIR CONTINUES HIS LIES ABOUT THE WAR ON IRAQ!

Tony Blair, visiting Australia this week, is still hanging on to the illusions that allowed him to cast in his lot with President Bush in the criminal invasion, occupation and plundering of Iraq. He continues, like John Howard, to see, even after three years of worsening bloodshed, the failures of what the peoples of the world were told were the aims of the war.

According to The Australian today Blair still says “…the struggle in Iraq is pivotal to the defeat of global terrorism.” The reality is that the ‘struggle in Iraq’ has absolutely nothing to do with ‘global terrorism’. The war that is raging in Iraq today was caused by the Coalition of the Killing. The vast majority of deaths that have occurred in Iraq thus far have been caused by the Coalition of the Killing. It started as they launched their illegal invasion and continued during the subsequent occupation of Iraq.

Blair says: “Whatever people thought about the original decision to go to war, for the last 2 1/2 to three years we have been there with a United Nations resolution and with the consent of an elected government.” What complete rubbish! The UN never passed any resolution sanctioning the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Coalition of the Killing. Nor has there been any ‘democratically elected’ government in Iraq that has given them consent to continue to kill and plunder in Iraq. There have been plenty of US appointed Iraqi lackeys that have ‘asked’ the Coalition of the Killing to stay on in Iraq in order to murder their enemies but there has never been any ‘democratically elected’ government that has given consent to stay on and continue the killing of innocents and destroying the homes of those that would prefer that the Coalition of the Killing leave Iraq. Iraq is in the mess it is in today because of the invasion. The only ‘terrorists’ in Iraq are the US and their Coalition of the Killing allies.

Blair goes on to say: “…if democracy takes root in Iraq and Afghanistan then I think, after that, global terrorism is on a downward path because their key weapon of propaganda - namely, that it is the desire of America and its allies to punish Muslim countries - will be shown to be false.” Blair actually believes that a couple of chaotic elections of US-endorsed candidates constitutes ‘democracy’ in Afghanistan and a resounding vote for the religious parties, as against the secular parties the Coalition of the Killing in Iraq had hoped for in Iraq and the subsequent civil war, are all part of the ‘success story’ of post-Saddam Iraq. Tony Blair is totally delusional!

Elsewhere in The Australian Blair asks: “Do you think the Middle East would be safer if Saddam Hussein was still there today?” Frankly, the way things are going at the moment, the answer has to be a resounding ‘Yes’! The old ‘Well, at least we got rid of Saddam’ rhetoric just doesn’t cut it anymore. The world knows the Coalition of the Killing went to Iraq based on a lie. The world knows that the Coalition of the Killing is continuing to stay in Iraq based on a lie. There is no ‘global war against terrorism’. There is no ‘terrorist threat’. There is only the terror that the US and its Coalition of the Killing allies has brought to the world of Islam that is a threat to world peace. The rest are lies told in pursuit of oil, hegemony and power for consumption by a diminishing number of dumb and gullible Western peoples.

History will be the judge of the lies and crimes of Bush, Blair and Howard – and the sooner the better!

DENNIS SHANAHAN HAS FINALLY WOKEN UP!

It seems Dennis Shanahan at The Australian has finally woken up. He asks: “Why is it that the drama over the AWB does not seem to interest the Australian public?” That’s easy Dennis. It’s the same reason that the Australian public aren’t interested in the fact that Howard lied about the reasons we went to war against Iraq. It’s the same reason that the Australian public aren’t interested in the lie about kid’s overboard. It’s the same reason that the Australian public couldn’t give a toss about Howard’s refugee policies

It’s because the only thing the Australian public are interested in is their hip pocket!

As far as the Australian public are concerned Howard can do whatever he likes, including start wars and lie through his teeth, as long as he’s not perceived to have put up interest rates or caused house prices to drop – or worse, both!

COULD GREG SHERIDAN BE A WAR-CRIMINAL TOGETHER WITH BUSH, BLAIR AND HOWARD?

Just about everyone that was in favour of going to war against Iraq three years ago from Bush down to Blair down to Howard and even down to Greg Sheridan at the Australian are still (with a few notable exceptions) denying they were wrong and saying that everything will come out in the wash very soon, and they are still coming out with the pathetic ‘but isn’t it great that we got rid of Saddam’ rhetoric.

Greg Sheridan seems to think that: “George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard deserve praise for their courage,” then adds, “The coalition soldiers, overall, have performed magnificently.” That is, of course, if one chooses to ignore such trifling matters such as the deaths of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children killed by those ‘coalition soldiers’, and if one chooses to ignore the deaths and torture of those in custody at the hands of those ‘coalition soldiers’, and if one chooses to ignore the criminal executions of entire Iraqi families by those ‘coalition soldiers’.

The only people the likes of Bush, Blair, Howard and Greg Sheridan are kidding nowadays are themselves! When their terms in office are over, Bush especially, together with Blair and Howard should be dragged before the ICC to face war-crime charges. And if Greg Sheridan has ever accepted one blood-sodden dollar from the government to write what he writes then he too should be hauled before the ICC as an accomplice to Howard’s war-crimes. Sounds a bit drastic? Look at it this way; had Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, survived the war, would he not have found himself in the dock at Nuremburg with the rest of the war-criminals?

SO NOW THE COALITION OF THE KILLING ARE EXECUTING IRAQI CIVILIANS?!

After reading this report in yesterdays Guardian one really has to wonder who is doing the execution style killings in Iraq. Whole families, it seems, are being wiped out in revenge attacks by coalition, mainly American, forces.

I wonder now who did the killings the aftermath of which was so graphically shown around the world last week where the only survivor seems to have been a five year-old boy. Sunnis and Shiites are undoubtedly at each others throats but one wonders who would have been blamed for the execution of the 11 Iraqis mentioned in the Guardian report had the evidence indicating that US soldiers were responsible not come to light. One then needs to ask how many other executions that have been blamed on either Sunnis or Shiites, depending on which group the victims belonged to, were actually the work of US death squads.

In another incident on 19 November last year 15 civilians belonging to two families were massacred by US troops in their homes in what was clearly a revenge killing for a roadside blast that killed a US marine at Haditha in the country’s west. Initially the authorities issued a statement saying the civilians had also been the victims of the blasts says this article in the Adelaide Advertiser. We now know differently. In the light of these revelations questions need to be asked about all of killings of civilians that have occurred since the Coalition of the Killing first invaded Iraq. Is what has been revealed thus far simply the tip of the iceberg? How many execution style civilian deaths have the Coalition really been responsible for?

MORE LIES AND DISINFORMATION RELEASED IN EFFORT TO PROVE LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA

It’s taken over three years but it seems the US has now completed the production of the elaborate forgeries that will be used to attempt to prove to the world once and for all that Saddam Hussein really did have links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Murdoch correspondent Sarah Baxter of Britain’s Sunday Times reports in today’s The Australian that the US Director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has been directed by President George W. Bush to release “…the contents of 48,000 boxes of untranslated papers and tapes relating to the workings of Saddam Hussein's regime.” Among the documents, so we are told, are “…tantalising clues to possible Iraqi contacts with al-Qa'ida.” Baxter goes on to report that among the documents is an “…Iraqi intelligence report dated September 15, 2001 -- four days after the attacks on the US – [that] says Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were in contact with Iraq, and al-Qa'ida members had visited the country.” Baxter, however, does go on to mention that much of the sources for these documents are “questionable”.

Desperate stuff from a desperate President and, of course, there will be the Liar Lovers and Bush, Blair and Howard Huggers around the world that will seize on the documents to justify their arguments about the invasion, occupation and plundering of Iraq despite their dwindling numbers. It’ll be interesting to see how the neoconservative commentators react to the news of the documents release; they’ll be looking for anything at the moment that is likely to save them a bit of face – especially since Francis Fukuyama, one of their high profile intellectual leaders, has defected from their cause.

Personally, I don’t think this story has anything going for it. It’s too little and too late as far as Bush and his cronies are concerned – the world simply doesn’t believe the administration anymore no matter what they come up with. They’ve simply cried ‘Wolf’ far too many times already.

DOES SS-RANTENFUEHRER JANET ALBRECHTSEN THINK JULIA GILLARD MAY MAKE IT TO PRIME MINISTERSHIP?

It seems SS-Rantenfuehrer Janet Albrechtsen thinks Julia Gillard may have something going for her in the Labor leadership and future Prime Minister stakes after all. Why else would Albrechtsen so enthusiastically denounce such a possibility?

Gillard, according to Albrechtsen, is not fit to be leader of the Labor Party and is unlikely to become Prime Minister because she is “…a woman with none of the usual aspirations such as settling down, getting married, having children.” Albrechtsen, in her somewhat narrowed mind, is unable to accept that Gillard, rather than aspire to being a wife and mother, instead aspires to be a party leader and possibly a Prime Minister. Furthermore, according to Albrechtsen, Gillard lacks other attributes that in Albrechtsen’s view would also preclude Gillard from being a Prime Minister; Gillard’s kitchen is apparently bare and – and this is the real clincher – she struggles with tongs at the barbie.

Albrechtsen also seems to think that ten years (with a few more to come, so she hopes) of a Liar-Loving Howard-Hugging Australia will be enough to put off Middle Australia from ever voting for Gillard to be Prime Minister.

It may well be true that Middle Australia has never had it so good but the fact that it has happened while Howard has been at the helm is purely coincidental. Just wait until interest rates start creeping up, as they inevitably will, and house values start to fall, as they already have begun to, and banks start calling in loans that are too tightly levered. Just watch how quickly then Middle Australia points its collective finger at Howard and his government. Watch how quickly, while Middle Australia begins to blame Howard for the mess that they are beginning to find themselves in, they start to take an interest in, and no longer ignore, the countless lies he’s told.

While Middle Australia has been prepared to ignore Howard’s lies while the road for them has been smooth they will soon remind him of them as their financial dream world unravels into reality.

Does Albrechtsen really think that Condoleeza Rice’s rise to leadership in the Bush administration is governed by her ability to wield tongs at the barbie? Is Albrechtsen in reality frightened that Gillard may just well be a Prime Minister one day?

BOTH WEBDIARY AND RIGHT-WING BLOGS HAVE NO TASTE FOR THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.

The on-again-off-again blog of the compulsive and obsessively disturbed David Davis, (aka Harry Heidelberg, a blogger who seems to have a somewhat irrational and rather unhealthy love/hate relationship with Webdiary and its management) together with his foul-mouthed Liar-loving Howard-hugging fascist supporters, Geoff Pahoff and Jay White, et al, has resurrected itself (just as ‘Harry’ was on a bit of a downer over some pathetic argument he’s having with one of the Webdiary management and about to close down his own blog because of it) just in time to have a stoush with the indomitable Sid Walker.

Sid has taken up the challenge of debating with these lunatics the minutiae of historic reality for which they, in turn, have no argument other than to resort to foul language and hints that they too, like Webdiary, simply will not publish any more of Sid’s posts!

For what it’s worth Sid, you can post your thoughts here – as, indeed, you already have – anytime.

HAS WEBDIARY BEEN THREATENED BY ZIONISTS OR NOT?

by Sid Walker


On Jan 16th 2006, Hamish Alcorn, Editor of Webdiary, a popular independent Australian weblog posted a clarification on the site in response to a direct challenge from Geoff Pahoff, one of the regular posters on Webdiary - a contributor with a strong commitment to the Zionist cause. Geoff’s first sentence was a direct quotation from an earlier post I had made on Webdiary.
(See http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1134 for all the relevant exchanges.)

The form of Hamish’s reply was to quote Geoff Pahoff’s post, then reply in bold text. It ran as follows:


Those Bloody Zionist Threats Again
Submitted by Geoff Pahoff on January 16, 2006 - 8:41pm.
Then threats by Zionists against WD might subside -
Hamish, has WD received what in any way could be described as threats and that could be said to be from "Zionists”? Even if we used the, shall we say, very broad definition of the term Zionists obviously intended by the author [Sid Walker] of this charming little allegation?
Hamish: no.
Is your editorial policy on Holocaust denial the result of threats or pressure from Zionists?
Hamish: no.
If so, could you please provide details of this? If not could you say so please? Otherwise this allegation is left hanging in the air unanswered. Perhaps we should consider the pernicious consequences of allowing these things to pass by in silence.


So, Hamish 'clarified' the matter for Webdiary readers. No Zionist threats. No intimidation. My allegation must have its origins in my fetid imagination and had no basis in fact. Nothing to see here, folks! Move along!

And yet.... here's an extract from an email I received from Hamish, dated 12th September 2005:

"Particularly on holocaust / Zionist stuff, Webdiary has gone there before, and for her trouble Margo received death-threats and extraordinary harassment. Note that no other media will touch it. It certainly does say something about our society."

Here's another extract from an email I received from Hamish on 29th September 2005:

"Yes, we’re in a fucked up society and can’t say whatever we want. Do you want us to lose any voice we have? My sister is being accused of bullshit NOW for what is already said by VERY POWERFUL PEOPLE. Some would say an indication she’s doing something right..."

One doesn't need an IQ of 200 to figure out there's 100% inconsistency between Hamish's personal emails to me and the 'clarification' he posted on Webdiary. Both cannot be true. At least one of his statements must be untrue. There is a three-letter word for this: Hamish has been caught out telling a... fib.

If, as I suspect, Hamish was truthful when he described the ugly pressure brought to bear against Margo and Webdiary, then he is foolish to deny it so publicly.

Death threats should be reported to the police (don't we have an 'anti-terror' squad these days?). The last thing one should do, in the face of death threats, is to deny they ever happened. It encourages this thuggish, illegal type of behaviour.

Of course, my suspicion might be wrong. Hamish may be telling Webdiary readers the unvarnished truth, while amusing himself by occasionally spinning entirely fallacious horror stories in private emails.

Either way, it's not behaviour one expects from the Editor of a publication whose motto is "Webdiary - Independent, Ethical, Accountable and Transparent"

Margo Kingston, Hamish's sister who founded Webdiary but has since retired, was more laconic and not so unsubtle when applying WD's bizarre censorship rules.

Here are Webdiary's 'no-go' topics again:
http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/4
1. Denial of the existence of the Holocaust.
2. Allegations that a Western power or powers were behind at the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001
3. "False flag" theories.

In the Garden of Eden, there was but one forbidden fruit.

These days we have a bunch of three :-)

WEBDIARY’S PRO-ZIONIST LUNATICS WILL HOWARD AND GEOFF PAHOFF ATTEMPT FURTHER DECEITS.

I notice over at Webdiary that the arch-deceiver and liar Will Howard is up to his usual conniving tricks trying to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. He writes, “…the attribution of some sort of "cosmic evil" to Jews”, then adds in parentheses; “(or "Zionists" in the modern ‘non-racist’ version of this form of hatred).” He seems to think that all Jews are Zionists. He exposes himself when he writes, for example: “The ideas that a small number or Jews (or Zionists) run the media, world banking, have introduced AIDS, are the "real" power pulling the strings…” and so on. His not so subtle effort to create the illusion that ‘Jews’ and ‘Zionists’ are one and the same is quite transparent. Here Will Howard attempts to cynically decry the non-racist aspect of the description ‘Zionist’.

The much less subtle right-wing frothing-at-the-mouth pro-Zionist Geoff Pahoff also chimes into the debate by equating anti-right wing Israeli rhetoric as being anti-Semitic. Pahoff seems to think that it’s OK to invade and occupy other people’s real estate. He justifies this by saying that Israel was being ‘threatened’ by its neighbours and was, therefore, justified in conquering and occupying Palestinian lands. Never mind that this was nearly forty years ago and that they are still there extra-judicially murdering those that strike back to defend themselves against Zionist atrocities. Never mind that the Israeli’s are still killing innocent women and children. Never mind that thousands have been made homeless by Zionist policies of illegal collective punishment.

Several Jews and Israelis that I keep in touch with seem to think that Israel and the Jewish Diaspora generally would be far better off without the sort of garbage that these two raving lunatics carry on with.

HAS RUMSFELD ANY IDEA AT ALL? DOES ISRAEL REALLY CARE ABOUT PEACE?

There seems to be a total lack of understanding between what the US and Israel wants for the Middle East and what the people of the Middle East need to have.

The US has little or no understanding at all of how to cope with the situation that currently exists in Iraq. They also seem hell bent on going to war with Iran, and they blindly support Israel’s demands in matters relating to Palestine and Hamas.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld displays both his arrogance and ignorance by telling
the Senate Appropriations Committee that he would “…count on Iraqi security forces to quell an all-out civil war in their country.” He added, almost as an afterthought, a habit that has become something of a Rumsfeld trait, “…that America's paramount goal is to prevent such a conflict in the first place.”

First, the civil war is already underway and talk of ‘prevention’ is at the very least a year and a half too late. The US government, however, refuse to see the situation as a civil war because it concedes failure. Secondly, it is the Iraqi security forces themselves that are often the main protagonists in the existing civil war using their uniforms, intelligence and command structure for their covert and often deadly participation in the civil war that Rumsfeld is hoping to stop by using them. Rumsfeld actually wants Congress to give him more money to give to the Iraqi security forces so that they can continue to do what they are doing. Utter stupidity.

And the Israeli government are showing their complete contempt of the Palestinian people and the elected Hamas government by declaring that if they retain power at the forthcoming Israeli elections they will be setting their borders unilaterally by 2010 following roughly along the current barrier line, which takes in huge chunks of Palestinian land, much of which will end up in Israeli settlers hands, and will include east Jerusalem. Hamas are unlikely to be impressed, to put it mildly, which prompts one to ask whether or not the Israeli’s are deliberately trying to provoke Hamas in order to make even more permanent gains into Palestinian territory by way of retaliatory strikes against Hamas strongholds in the event of Hamas actions against Israeli unilateral border setting, including the Gaza Strip which Israel may see fit to reinvade and even permanently occupy. The Israeli’s fail entirely to recognise the fact that neither side in this conflict will recognise each other while Israel occupies any of the pre-1967 Palestinian lands resulting in complete stalemate. This can only lead to the cycle of violence that has plagued Israeli-Palestinian relations since Israel was created.

When will these people ever learn?

ARE AUSTRALIANS AS CORRUPT AND DISHONEST AS THEIR GOVERNMENT?

One has to wonder sometimes about the Australian people. I mean, why do a people who know that their government is blatantly dishonest, and even corrupt, continue to support it both in public opinion polls and the Big Poll that comes around every few years?

The answer lies within many of the comments from the Howard supporters. Almost all of them have commented about how well off we are now under Howard. The ‘we’ve never had it so good’ cry that is often heard from Howard huggers reflects a typical modern Australian ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude. No matter that Howard has lied and schemed his way into ten years of government, no matter that tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of innocent people have died as a result of his lies, no matter that thousands who have wanted to seek refuge here in our country have had to spend years locked up just so that Howard could demonstrate to other like-minded refugees that they shouldn’t really be trying to come here, no matter that our rights have been slowly eroded away in exchange for protection from an all but non-existent threat to our security, no matter that the rights of ordinary workers to collectively negotiate work agreements have nigh on disappeared; all this matters not an iota provided, it seems, our hip pocket continues to be full and the value of our homes continues to increase so that we can continue to be able afford to indebt ourselves beyond anything most Australians have in the past been able to indebt themselves.

Is this what Australians have become? Being ‘laid back’, which seems to have evolved into complacency, is one thing but supporting a blatantly dishonest, lying and corrupt government in order to pursue personal wealth and to turn a blind eye to the suffering of other peoples who seem alien to us while Howard pursues his own agenda of creating his New Fascist Australia is verging on criminal!

Time to do something?!!

ELEVEN YEARS LATER AND IRAN STILL WANTS ‘NUCLEAR CAPACITY’ ACCORDING TO THE U.S.

While delving deep into the New York Times archives doing a little research for my PhD project I stumbled across this rather interesting article. (Unfortunately, you’ll need to be a subscriber to access it fully but I’ve cut and pasted the relevant bit.)

As I read it I thought to myself ‘this all looks so familiar’. At first I thought there had been a glitch because I had been looking through a specific date range. Then I looked at the date of this particular article and, sure enough, the date was within the period I was looking at and it contained some of the keywords I was searching for. The relevant lines that caught my attention were these:

“…the airport, which because of its size operates largely beyond the scrutiny of the customs authorities, is believed to be one of dozens of transit points used by the Iranian Government to smuggle, from Europe to Iran, weapons parts and advanced technology used to develop nuclear weapons, Western intelligence officials say.
Some intelligence officials say they believe that despite an embargo imposed by the West, Iran may have a nuclear capacity in as little as five years.”

The lines, as well as the headline which ran; ‘Nuclear Trail – A special report; A Vast Smuggling Network Feeds Iran's Arms Program’, could have come right out of yesterday’s New York Times. They did not, however. They were from an article dated 15 March 1995.

Of course, what is really sad is the fact that the dumb and gullible continue to fall for this line of garbage even today. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that, as a result of this garbage, many, many people are likely to die with even the possibility of a catastrophic war resulting as the US and Israel continue to press for an attack against the Iranians.

A United World must resist the warmongering Lying Tyrants.

HAVE HOWARD AND THE AFP DELIBERATELY SENTENCED AUSTRALIAN’S TO DEATH BY PROXY?

It seems fairly clear that it has been the intention all along of both the AFP and the Howard government to deliberately allow the Bali Nine to be arrested, tried and sentenced harshly (including being sentenced to death), for the express purpose of deterring Australian drug smugglers from going to Indonesia in order to bring drugs into Australia.

Now Howard is preparing Australia for what is in all likelihood the inevitable – and that is that at least one of the two that have been sentenced to death will actually be executed. (The other will possibly have his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment). Howard is now saying that even his personal friendship with Indonesia’s President may not be enough to save those that have been condemned to death.

This entire affair now stinks of collusion. Howard’s double standards with regards to the death penalty are already transparent what with his remarks regarding the death sentence of the Bali Bombers and the possibility of Saddam Hussein being sentenced to death on the one hand and his stance against the death penalty of Australians in foreign lands on the other. Howard’s hypocrisy is very well known but now, it seems, he may well be directly responsible for the death of an Australian by firing squad if he is found to have been aware that the AFP deliberately set the Bali Nine up for arrest and possible execution in Indonesia.

WEBDIARY AND THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

Webdiary’s ludicrous decision to invoke their ‘editorial rules’ with regard to comment content has forced me to decline from using this forum in any further debate.

The rules are these:
1. Denial of the existence of the holocaust.
2. Allegations that a Western power or powers were behind at the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001
3. "False flag" theories.

To a certain extent I go along with rule number one and I’ll explain why. But first I should point out here and now that I am not a Holocaust denier. I have personally known over the years far too many Holocaust survivors to even begin to doubt it. I have also over the years personally met far too many anti-Semitic Germans (and not just Germans) who supported the extermination of European Jewry and even some that were actually involved in it.

Since Webdiary is an open forum that invites anyone to comment there can be little control over the quality of argument. Argument on such a sensitive issue as Holocaust denial therefore can be very emotive and detracting from the proper search for truth in history as emotions can run high. Rigorous debate within an academic environment is the best place for this particular matter to be argued. There are too many people in open forums who can be easily be misled, misguided or negatively influenced by the polemics of commentators from both sides to make the subject ‘safe’ for open debate.

Not only do I personally believe that debate on this subject should be confined to academia I also believe that, rather than the subject being brushed under the carpet, it should be bought fully out into the open under academic control and, furthermore, done so immediately while it is still within living memory. This way the argument can be resolved for good. If it is not, then in years to come, after it has passed from living memory, there will always be those that will continue to deny. The quicker it is ‘resolved’ once and for all by demonstrating irrefutably to the deniers that they are wrong, the better for all concerned, and it should be Israel itself that leads the debate with academics taking care to remain apolitical and to ensure that the debate and collection of the evidence also remains apolitical. Right-wing Zionists should simply butt out and let the academics get on with it.

Now to the other two ‘no go’ areas. One simply needs to ask ‘Why?’ What are the folk at Webdiary frightened of? Are they frightened of loosing their right-wing commentators who can’t cope with a reality that is alien to their tidy little make-believe world where the government never lies?

Or is there something more sinister than that? Could it be perhaps, that the powerful right-wing Israeli and Zionist lobby in Australia put pressure on Margo Kingston and Hamish Alcorn? Could these be the dark and ‘very powerful people’ that Hamish Alcorn told me were putting pressure on Margo? Or did Margo simply cave in to right-wing Webdiarists like the lunatic Craig Warton and the rabid warmongering foaming at the mouth ignoramus Jay White?

Webdiary may find eventually its own level to work at and be successful at that level. But I’m afraid, at the rate things are going at the moment, the right-wing loons are winning out. I don’t have a problem shoving it up to these truth-denying idiots on the right and arguing my stuff but I do have a problem with those that cave in to them and not allow me to argue that stuff. To me they are far more of danger to democracy and free speech than the likes Warton and White.

As Craig R infers, I’ll do my stuff elsewhere – here! Stay tuned!


Comments invited. Email lataan@iprimus.com.au

IS WEBDIARY LOSING THE PLOT AS WELL AS THOSE COMMENTATORS ON THE LEFT?

In a discussion at Webdiary about Janet Albrechtsen and ‘free speech’ Jay White, a well known fascist who likes to peddle his disgusting racism at Webdiary, wrote in response to an earlier posting of mine the following:

Damian Lataan: "SS-Rantenfuehrer Janet Albrechtsen seems to think that the vilification of a religious prophet whose adherents are literally willing to die for is simply a joke that Muslims can’t take!
I would have thought somebody linking to revisionist sites such as the one Sid Walker did with David Irving front and center may be more in keeping with a SS-Rantenfuehrer? Perhaps even somebody who sees a Zionist plot around every corner?
Defending free speech now leads to somebody being called a Nazi? I thought they burnt books? I find it most curious that a person willing to defend Sid Walker would accuse others of Nazi sentiments. I bet others do too.
A very curious connection indeed!

In response to that I wrote:

Jay White, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be able to see right through SS-Rantenfuehrer Janet Albrechtsen’s ‘defending free speech’ garbage as simply being a front and opportunity to spew her Islamaphobic racism.

As for what Sid Walker says or does, I’m sure Sid can speak for himself. Oops! …apparently he can’t any more, at least not here. Oh well, so much for free speech! (I wonder when the Lying Tyrant and Fascist Howard is going to implement the sedition laws.)

Webdiary, playing right into the Right-wingers hands, actually censored the second paragraph! This monumental stupidity comes from people who believe in the essence of free speech to the point that they feel they should give the right-wing carte blanche to more or less say what they wish but deny the Left freedom to respond.

At first Margo was fearful that the Left would drive the Right away from Webdiary leaving it high and dry as a Left-wing mutual talk fest club. Then when the Left started talking about conspiracy theories and history revisionism Margo got spooked by ‘powerful’ forces and banned un-supported discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories and all discussion on Holocaust denial. Presumably these ‘powerful’ forces were from the extreme right-wing Zionist lobby groups in Australia and/or the government that had put the hard word on her. From the conspiracy theory angle the pressure came from the right-wing commentators at Webdiary who threatened to leave Webdiary just when Webdiary (just gone independent) was getting off the ground. Margo and Hamish then caved in to the right realising that without the right-wing for the left to argue with there would be no Webdiary. The Holocaust denial ban clearly is as a result of pressure from the ‘powerful’ right-wing Zionist lobby groups which Margo and Hamish have also caved in to.

As a result it now seems it is going the other way. The Left are leaving Webdiary, or at least being discouraged by censorship or outright banning, leaving Webdiary to become a very boring talk fest for the slightly Left and the warmongering and liar-supporting Right.

The Right-wing websites, the ones that Hamish chooses to ignore, are going to be rubbing their hands together saying ‘we told you so – Webdiary won’t last’. And the way it’s going at the moment it looks like they may be right, both literally and metaphorically!

And that would be a great pity because Webdiary has the potential to make a difference in Australia. But it must open up and allow complete freedom of speech regardless of how outrageous. People can make up their own minds about what they like or don’t like and those on both the Left and Right who come up with stuff that goes way over the top will soon get told by their peers!


Comments invited. Email them to lataan@iprimus.com.au

DOES WEBDIARY CONTINUE TO ACQUIESCE TO THE RIGHT-WING?

Only a little over a week ago Hamish Alcorn of Webdiary asked me for my blog address in order to link to it from Webdiary. Now, after only a few days of being linked, it has been removed from the Webdiary link list.

Control it seems is everything, and I imagine criticism of Webdiary for criticism of the way I criticise the right-wing at Webdiary will now lead to me being banned from posting at Webdiary! (They would argue I suspect that since I have my own blog I can write what I wish here.) Not content with censoring some of my postings at Webdiary, they wish to censor my blog by virtue of removing it from their link list. Talk about control freaks!! And so transparent!

It’s a pity Webdiary feels the need to bow, yet again, to the right-wing that are regulars at Webdiary. Sid Walker has been banned because the right-wing Zionist lobby, the ‘powerful forces’ that I suspect got up Margo’s nose and are the real ‘control freaks’ behind Webdiary, continue to get up Hamish’s nose as well. How long will it be, I wonder, before Webdiary degenerates to a middle-of-the-road discussion fest between the slightly Left and slightly Right?

In the spirit of creating a world wide web of alternative news and views, no matter how mundane some sites are likely to become, I shall continue to link to Webdiary as always.

MORE ON WEBDIARY’S DECEIVERS

In view of the fact that a post of mine to Webdiary has been unnecessarily censored by the editor ‘David’ (I don’t know the surname) I republish it here in its entirety. I do this in order to reframe it back into its original context that the Webdiary editor decided to change in order to suit his own argument about why he thought the original comments I made about Will Howard and C. Parsons were abusive. Webdiarists and other readers would no doubt be aware already of some of the deceiving practices of the right-wing at Webdiary and the protection they receive from some elements of the editorial team.


Ed. David, I’m sorry that I have to persist in this matter.

My statements of deceitfulness by other Webdiarists are hardly unsupported and are, indeed, self evident if one cares to review the appropriate posts. The fact of the matter is Will Howard offered documents that were written by ex-Israeli generals, ex-Israeli intelligence experts and Israeli nuclear experts of an Israeli think-tank and then offered them as ‘non-partisan’. Had they been offered as ‘non-biased’ then that would not have been a problem as that could easily have been refuted (or not) on purely technical grounds. But to offer them as ‘non-partisan’ – even if they were unbiased – is deceitful.

With regard to C. Parsons, one need look no further than his post entitled ‘Jaw, Jaw, Jaw. War, War, War.’ to see quite clearly that he has attributed to me in a deceitful and deliberate way a quote that was not mine. He says: Damian Lataan: "Gaza pullout justifies terror campaign, Hamas claims." It stares you right in the face, David. Hardly ‘unsupported’ as you contend.

I am aware that Webdiary editors often do a thankless task and do need to maintain standards that have been set by Margo and developed over this last year or so, but I can assure you that while I often push stuff right up to the edge, I also make a conscious effort to refrain from making personally abusive comments on Webdiary. I believe that my comments about Will Howard’s and C. Parsons were made on the basis of facts that are to the best of my knowledge true. Making such comments that I have made about Messrs. Howard and Parsons were not something I did lightly or without consideration.

I have no problem whatsoever about Webdiarists making personally abusive comments about me – as I have stated several times before, I am not in the slightest bit interested in what people say or think about me personally – but I always will react to comments and statements deliberately aimed at misleading, hoodwinking or flat-out lying to Webdiarists.


For the version that appeared at Webdiary click here.

ANOTHER ISLAMAPHOBIC RACIST EXPOSED AT WEBDIARY

In response to the comments made by a Webdiarist at Webdiary.com I responded with this:


Alan Curran reckons: “You can put all the spin on it you like, but Hamas do not want peace. They would not know what to do if they got it.”

First off, I haven’t put any ‘spin’ on this issue at all. I’m a left-winger, Hamas is right-wing. I’ve got about as much time for Hamas as I have for the right-wing lunatics in Israel and the US. I am merely making observations about the current situation. At the moment it’s very simple: immovable object meets irresistible force. If they continue on their present collision course there will be disaster for both sides and, of course, it will be the peoples of Palestine and Israel that will suffer – again.

The ONLY answer, regardless of whether the Israelis, you or any one else like it or not, is for the Israelis to remove themselves from real estate that isn’t theirs, get back to the pre-1967 line, recognise a Palestinian sovereign state and concede that East Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital. THERE IS NO OTHER ANSWER to this problem.

Curran goes on to ask: “…with the Palestinians' past record would you trust them? They are cold blooded murderers.”

This implies all Palestinians are untrustworthy and that they are all cold blooded murderers. Such nonsense exposes Curran’s blatant Islamaphobic racism. I might remind him that the right-wing of Israel are as much ‘cold-blooded murderers’ as the extremists of Hamas what with their so-called ‘targeted killings’ and killing of innocent Palestinian civilians.

As I have indicated before, the next most likely move will be for the IDF to re-occupy the Gaza Strip to limit Hamas’ power base.

The neoconservatives have been pushing ever since the first Gulf War for ‘democracy at any cost’. Now it has backfired on them. The Middle East is not interested in US-style secular ‘democracy’. For them it represents greed, crime, poverty, materialism, lack of welfare, and an ‘every man for himself’ attitude. It represents hypocrisy and false values. Bush, Blair and Howard have gone on and on about ‘they hate our values’. Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? They have seen US ‘values’ at work in Iraq; aerial bombing, flattening of entire cities, indiscriminate killing, torture, puppet governments led by criminals and murderers, wholesale theft of their resources, blatant corruption, literally billions of dollars meant to rebuild infrastructure (destroyed by the Americans and their allies in the first place) being siphoned off to Allied criminals. The people of the Middle East see all this going on and ask: this is democracy? They want us to be like this? Forget it!! The US is not a good example of real democracy.

Democracy in Palestine has thrown up Hamas. The people of Palestine are fed up with living in poverty and being shoved around by Israel. Hamas is their strength whether we like it or not. The ball is now in Israel’s court. You reap, as they say, what you sow.


I republish my response in its entirety here at my blog because the editor of Webdiary, for some unknown reason, chose to censor a part of my comment that related to Curran’s racism. The response also generally sums up the current situation in the Middle East.

THE DECEITFUL PRACTICES OF WEBDIARY’S RIGHT-WING ISRAELI APOLOGISTS.

I’m compelled to make mention of several commentators that gather at Webdiary that are apologists for extreme right-wing Israeli politics. With varying degrees of intellectual prowess and articulation ability some of these pro-Zionist fanatics, Mike Iyvers for example, delight in accusing those that disagree with Israel’s expansionism and aggression against the Palestinian peoples as anti-Semite. Others, like the deceitful self-proclaimed academic Will Howard, well-practiced in his art of propagating deception, simply try to hoodwink Webdiarists by presenting documents and reports about Iranian so-called nuclear weapons ambitions that he claims are ‘non-partisan’ when in fact they are produced by retired ex-Israeli Defence Force generals-turned-‘academics’, many of whom have ties with Israeli intelligence and with American neoconservative think-tank organisations. Some of these, in turn, were up to there necks in the generation of the lies that were used to invade, occupy and plunder Iraq when, prior to the invasion, they made repeated visits to the Pentagon for meetings with neoconservative staffers of the Office of Special Plans.

There are others but generally they comprise simply of lunatic ignoramuses like the ridiculous warmongering liar C. Parsons and the foul-mouthed fascist Jay White. Jay White is easily dealt with what with his lack of intellectual capacity, general ignorance of history and inability to write coherently which usually sees him being foisted by his own words, much of which can usually be ignored. Jay White enjoys launching himself into any subject on offer and invariably is able to make a complete idiot of himself without any response being required from other Webdiarists.

In the main, Parsons and White are simply harmless and deluded right-wingers that enjoy the sight of their own words and who seem to have nothing better to do than sit at their keyboards all day trying to pick holes in the constructive opinions and commentary that the Left are able to discuss at Webdiary. However, the offerings of the likes of Will Howard should be considered with great care. His fanaticism is subtle and he is clearly practised in the art of deception.

Mike Iyvers is also a pro-Israeli fanatic but he is far less subtle than Howard. He is however, dangerously obsessed with the delusion that all that are anti right-wing Israel are racist anti-Semites.

Webdiarists and Webdiary readers should be aware.