COULD THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ LEAD TO AN ATTACK ON IRAN?

The al Sadr-led insurgency seems to have gained momentum. Iraqi puppet government forces are changing sides and fighting for the insurgency, while others are simply refusing to fight against al Sadr’s Mahdi army. Some are abandoning their uniforms but keeping their weapons to join in the fast growing insurgency against the US and the collaborative Iraq government.

To appreciate the importance of this development one should consider the consequences that these men that have switched sides will suffer if they are captured by the US/Iraqi government army or police. Once having switched sides there is no going back, yet, according to the Timesonline article, these men have made the switch without a seconds thought. They must be fully confident of success, a confidence that could only be gained from having some knowledge of the strength and ability of the government forces and police relative to the insurgents, and, more importantly, the extent to which the insurgency is likely to grow and spread. In photographs of the insurgents that are appearing in the mainstream western press, many of the insurgent fighters have thrown caution to the wind by not covering their faces when being photographed, another sign of a growing confidence in the insurgency.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi puppet government forces have had to call in US and British air support to help them dislodge insurgent fighters. The problem with this tactic is that, one; it kills more civilians than it does fighters which, in turn, creates even more resentment from the local population against the government who are now seen to be killing their own people and, two; while such attacks may be successful in killing a few insurgents, it achieves absolutely nothing in terms of regaining lost ground, a fundamental mistake the US and Britain and their allies have been making throughout the entire war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But what of the Iran connection in all of this? Moktada al Sadr, of course, is supported by Iran; indeed, al Sadr himself lives in Tehran and is studying at one of Shiite Islam’s most revered seminaries at Qom. So far we have heard little from the US propaganda machine about Iran’s role in the renewed insurgency which, in itself, is a worry. Already there are rumours that the lull in propaganda against Iran right at this time is a lull before what many consider to be the coming storm. Lew Rockwell has even written of rumours abounding in Russia of a pending attack by the Americans against Iran on April 4 or 6. Whether or not this happens is something that only time will be able to tell us, but one thing is for sure and that is; the final confrontation between Israel/US and Iran will happen sooner or later and what is now happening in Iraq may well see it happening sooner rather than later – especially if the insurgency in Iraq looks like getting a more permanent grip throughout Iraq.

ARE WE SEEING THE BEGINNING OF THE END IN IRAQ AS AN ALLIANCE OF SHIITE INSURGENTS JOIN FORCES AGAINST THE U.S.?

Last October, 2007, Moktada al Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, two of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, agreed to put their differences aside in an effort to confront their common enemy, the US occupation. For a while the two groups pulled their heads in while they reconfigured their approach to the problem.

It seems now that they are ready to take on the US and the Iraqi puppet government. With the support of Iran, who are backing and supplying the insurgent Shiite forces opposed to the US occupation and the Quisling-style Iraqi government, Shiite fighters have launched attacks against the Iraqi Army and US and allied forces in Basra and Baghdad.

Contrary to the obfuscating nonsense that some right-wing propagandists are saying, Iran has not given the go-ahead to the Iraqi puppet government led by Nouri al-Maliki to attack al Sadr and his Mahdi Army but, rather, is actually supporting the coalition between Moktada al Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and their fight against the US occupation.

The situation is rapidly beginning to resemble a Vietnam-style civil war where, one might recall, a US-backed puppet government tried to fight off a concerted insurgency using a US-trained Vietnamese army – and lost. Like Vietnam, where the insurgents were supported by North Vietnam, the Shiite insurgents in Iraq are being supported by their Iranian Shiite comrades. The only difference here, however, is that it is unlikely that Iranian regular troops will be directly helping out Iraqi insurgents on the battlefield; that would be exactly the kind of excuse the US are looking for to attack Iran.

Iraqi puppet government leader, al Maliki, at first promised to crush the militia insurgents once and for all but has since found that this is easier said than done, even with air support from the US and Britain, and that this is unlikely to happen and so instead is now offering cash to insurgents that hand in their weapons. Insurgents, however, have dug in rather than give in and are now regrouping after having beaten back the initial US-backed Iraqi forces attacks against them.

While the situation provides an excuse for the US to remain in Iraq, the US is unlikely to find the insurgents easy to beat. They are well armed and well trained, and have been around longer than US-backed Iraqi army. Sending in US troops to deal with the insurgency will be an embarrassment for the Iraqi puppet government and a slap in Bush’s face after he told the world that everything is under control in Iraq and that the Iraqis are able to look after themselves.

Apparently not but some interesting days ahead.

THE PROPAGANDA AND LIES OF AUSSIE NEOCON GREG SHERIDAN.

I’m fairly certain that Greg Sheridan actually believes his own propaganda and rhetoric. He’s certainly fallen for the Hamas propaganda about Jews generally and Israelis in particular or at least thinks others have, but has ignored entirely the propaganda that the Israeli Zionist extremists put out about Arabs generally and Hamas in particular, all stuff, incidentally that can also be found easily on the net.

The bottom line, however, is not the propaganda and rhetoric of either side, no matter how virulent and violent the hatreds towards each other appear to be, but rather, the geopolitical reality of what the intentions of the Zionist extremists are. Their goal is simple; to have the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank removed (transferred) from these places to the Sinai and/or Jordan so that eventually the Israelis can colonise them and ultimately annex them to Israel in pursuit of their aspirations for a Greater Israel, just as they did to the Golan Heights. Hamas on behalf of all of the Palestinian peoples, on the other hand, simply want all of the lands back that have been taken by the Israelis.

For all of Greg Sheridan’s propaganda and rhetorical nonsense about Hamas, the reality is this; firstly, it is Israel that is on land that does not belong to them, not the other way round, and the Palestinians are fighting to get it back. Secondly, it is Israelis that are doing the killing. Thousands of Palestinians have been murdered over the years by Israelis and thousands more have been kidnapped and imprisoned in Israel, many of them without trial, simply for resisting Israeli aggression. Hamas rocket attacks against Israelis are both in retaliation to Israeli attacks against the Palestinians and in an effort to get their lands back from the Israelis.

The people of the Gaza and the people of the West Bank are the same people – they’re all Palestinians. The Israeli assertion that the Gazans had been given back their lands when the Israeli settlements were withdrawn and that therefore the Gazan people should now have no cause to fight the Israelis is a complete nonsense. The withdrawal of the settlers by Ariel Sharon was merely a tactical move dressed up in propaganda to make it look as though the Israelis were making concessions to the Gazans. In fact Sharon pulled out the settlements simply because they were over stretching the Israeli Defence Forces who were defending them. He knew that one day that the Israelis would force the Gazan Palestinians out and that the settlers would then return to the Gaza Strip which would eventually become part of Greater Israel just as he hoped the West Bank and the south of Lebanon up to the Litani River would also be.

The people of the world should ignore the propaganda of the extremists, including the likes of Greg Sheridan, and support the founding of a binational one-state solution whereby Palestinians and Israelis live peacefully together in one democratic secular state.
There is no other way. The quicker the world wakes up to this simple fact the better!

ONE VERY SICK RABBI. BUT WHAT’S EVEN SICKER IS THE FACT THAT HE PROBABLY HAS SUPPORTERS AMONG THE LOONY FRINGE ZIONISTS!

I doubt very much if Jews throughout the Diaspora will be much impressed by a call by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, for the Israeli state to execute the children of the perpetrator of the attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in revenge of that attack.

One would have thought that, having once been on the receiving end of such crimes toward the middle of the last century, that such nonsense is not something that any Jewish person, regardless of their extremism, would tolerate.

After all that European Jewry went through, the world has to put up with this stuff? And this bloke calls himself a rabbi?

WAR AGAINST ‘TERRORISM’ RUNNING OUT OF PUFF? YOU CAN COUNT ON ‘BIN LADEN’ TO BRING IT BACK TO LIFE – OR, AT LEAST, YOU USED TO!

Bush’s ‘Global War Against Terrorism’ seems to be running out of steam. The administration needs to justify its continued presence in Iraq so have resurrected ‘Osama bin Laden’ from the grave in order for him to summon up a bit of action in Iraq by calling on Palestinians frustrated at the way things are going in Palestine to go and fight the Americans in Iraq by joining ‘al Qaeda’.

The neocons and Israeli Zionists couldn’t have hoped for anything better. By the simple expediency of invoking the ‘voice’ of bin Laden and hoping that the Palestinians will do what’s asked of them, the Israelis get a whole load of angry young Palestinian men off of their backs and into Iraq where they can be killed by Americans who can then justify their continued presence in Iraq. The whole story, of course, also has the added benefit of perpetuating the myth of ‘bin Laden’ and ‘al Qaeda’ and ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ as it gets a mention throughout western mainstream media – just in case people had started to forget what it was all about.

The sad thing is that there are still a few people around that actually believe this nonsense. However, their numbers seem to be diminishing and this is reflected in the way some of the reports of bin Laden’s resurrection are worded. For example; a few years ago CNN would have worded such a headline thus: ‘Bin Laden message: Iraq is perfect base’. Today though, there is a subtle qualifier to the headline and it reads: ‘Purported bin Laden message: Iraq is perfect base’. The first paragraph of a Reuters report ran: “The CIA is confident the voice in a message purported to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is genuine, a US intelligence official says,” as if there was any doubt. A few years ago there would have been no such qualifier; we would simply been told that it was bin Laden and no ifs or buts.

It doesn’t demonstrate that most people are dumb and gullible enough to still believe this stuff; it does, however, demonstrate that Bush and the neocons are dumb and gullible enough to believe that most people will.

Their ‘Global War Against Terrorism’ is even more transparent than ever it was before.

SENSATIONAL NEWS – THE PALESTINE AUTHORITY ABANDONS THE ‘TWO-STATE SOLUTION’ IN FAVOUR OF THE ‘ONE-STATE BINATIONAL SOLUTION’!

In what could be a significant change of policy from the Palestinian Authority, a plan entitled “The Initiative of Return and Coexistence” has been launched by the PA to call for the return of all Palestinians from the Diaspora to their homelands in what is now Israel in order to comply with United Nations Resolution 194 which says that “…refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible”.

If true, then this is sensational news for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people. The plan has been drawn up by Fatah operative and Deputy Minister for Prisoners Affairs of the Palestinian Authority, Ziad Abu Ein.

More as the story develops.

CHENEY RECKONS IRAQ INVASION ‘A SUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOUR’ – BUT SUCCESSFUL FOR WHO?

Just as Vice-resident Dick Cheney was telling American and Iraqi leaders in Baghdad how ‘phenomenal’ the security improvements in Iraq had been, a massive suicide bomb went off killing some 42 people.

Cheney also spoke of how the invasion of Iraq had been a ‘successful endeavour’ that had ‘been well worth the effort’. One needs to ask, however; who has it been ‘successful’ for?

It certainly hasn’t been successful for the nearly 4,300 allied soldiers killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands that have been wounded, many of them so badly that they will need care for the rest of their lives.

It certainly hasn’t been successful for the hundreds of thousands, possibly even a million or more Iraqis that have died or the 4.5 million refugees that have fled their homes because of the ‘successful endeavour’.

It certainly hasn’t been successful for the millions of remaining Iraqis who now have to contend with unemployment which runs at 60-70% across Iraq and who have to endure the breakdown of health and other basic utility services which have been falling into ruin since sanctions in Iraq began after the first Gulf War.

It certainly hasn’t been successful for the victims of the rampaging and highly organised criminal gangs with connections to the corrupt Iraqi government that go around murdering, threatening, kidnapping and bombing for control of neighbourhoods that are awash with American taxpayer’s dollars.

So, who has the ‘endeavour’ been ‘successful’ for? Well, for a start, it’s been highly successful for the Israelis who wanted to be rid of Saddam and for who the war was instigated for in the first place by the neoconservatives in the Bush administration.

Not only were they able to take full advantage of the tragedy of 9/11 in order to get an American public behind the invasion of Iraq, but now, in the light of the many anomalies that have appeared in the official story of what happened on that fateful Pearl Harbor-like day, one must question if and to what extent those same neoconservatives and allies in Israel may have been involved in the planning and perpetration of that crime. It does seem, after all, that it is they, the Israelis and neoconservatives, which have benefited most from the disaster.

But the Israelis and their neoconservative supporters in the US are not the only ones that can concur with Cheney’s assertion that the invasion of Iraq was a ‘successful endeavour’. America’s vast and cripplingly expensive Military and Industrial Complex has benefited enormously from both the Iraq war and America’s invasion of Afghanistan. Companies that have been given massive contracts to supply the troops with everything from a packed lunch to a hospital bed have also benefited greatly – especially those companies that Cheney himself had once been CEO of, KBR and its parent company Haliburton, which have made billions from contracts awarded to them from a government that didn’t bother to even look at other suppliers.

The private security companies in Iraq would also be inclined to go along with Cheney’s remarks about the invasion being a ‘successful endeavour’. They too have been given billions of dollars worth of contracts to provide security, curiously enough, for the US troops in Iraq. (There’s something odd about an invading army that needs to be protected by a private army of mercenaries.)

Then, of course, there is the oil. It’s not yet fully in the hands of the American oil barons but at least it’s not in the hands of Saddam anymore. The Americans do have some semblance of control over Iraq’s oil and the invasion and general uncertainty about security in the region caused by America’s wars has managed to push the price of oil up to levels where oil companies are now making unprecedented profits, all at the expense of the average person on the street – literally.

So, from his point of view, Cheney is right; the invasion has been a ‘successful endeavour’, and one that they won’t be walking away from any time soon.

For the Iraqi people, however, the invasion was a monumental disaster which has left them in a state of total despair. The forty two people that died as Cheney spoke, I'm sure, were not thinking that the invasion was a 'successful endeavour' just before they died. Nor, I suspect, are their relatives and friends who now have to pick up the pieces and try to get on with their lives wondering if its really worth it.

For the American people too, Iraq has been a poisoned chalice which has ruined their nation both economically and morally. For the rest of the world one hopes that the lesson of Iraq has been learnt but, of course, we’ve heard all that before. The world never seems to learn.

And judging by the noises still coming from the likes of Cheney, the neocons that are left, and the Israelis, it isn’t over yet.

THE BOOTY IS ON THE OTHER FOOT!

I had to smile when I saw this headline in the New York Times today: ‘Iraq’s insurgency is running on stolen oil profits’.

Well, why not? It makes sweet sense. After all, didn’t Paul Wolfowitz tell the world that the invasion and occupation of Iraq could be paid for by stolen oil profits?

I’d say the Iraqis are putting the ‘profits’ to good use.

NEOCONS STILL CLUTCH AT STRAWS OVER SADDAM CONNECTIONS TO AL QAEDA DESPITE OFFICIAL REPORT AND TOTAL LACK OF ANY EVIDENCE.

Die-hard neoconservative lunatic and warmonger William Kristol is insisting that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda despite the recent release of a Pentagon report that says there were no links. Kristol quotes directly from the executive summary of the report which says: "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda.”

‘NO DIRECT CONNECTION’ is the operative words here. Yet Kristol, as part of his argument to demonstrate a link, then cites page 42 of the report which says: “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

There’s a big gap between ‘No direct connection’ and ‘supported groups that associated with’ or ‘generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives’. The warmongering liar Kristol is attempting still to directly link Saddam Hussein to the events of 9/11.

Kristol goes on to say: “The president has a responsibility to help the American people understand the nature of the threat we faced in 2003…” The President could indeed enlighten the American people – he could tell them the truth and come clean about the fact there was no threat whatsoever from Saddam Hussein in 2003 and that the war was based exclusively on deliberate lies and falsehoods designed specifically to con the American people into supporting the neocons war against Iraq for the benefit Israel.

And its not just Kristol at the Weekly Standard trying to perpetuate the propaganda lie about Saddam’s links to al Qaeda; Stephen F. Hayes, another Weekly Standard neocon writer, has also tried to push the continued lie. He goes to even greater lengths to try and pick holes in the report than Kristol does as he desperately gropes about for some pedantic use of a word that proves their otherwise non-existent argument.

The very simple bottom line is this: The US did have direct links to al Qaeda; Saddam did not have direct links to al Qaeda.

Needless to say, America’s direct links to al Qaeda don’t rate a mention by the neocons.

A SOLUTION TO THE ‘ONE-STATE OR TWO-STATE SOLUTION’ DEBATE?

The debate over the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict continues. One side of the debate calls for a single-state solution whereby Palestinians and Israelis live together in a single secular democratic state with totally equal rights in a multi-cultural society.

The other side to the debate is the so-called two-state solution in which Israelis live separately in their own nation and Palestinians live separately in theirs. Proponents of both arguments are currently debating fiercely over which would be the more acceptable and, more to the point, why the other won’t work.

Those proposing the two-state solution argue that the one-state solution is just a utopian dream that, because of decades of entrenched and pent-up animosities, could never be realised, while those arguing for the one-state solution say that the two-state solution could never work because each side will have large elements of their population that simply will never accept or be satisfied with their lot.

For the right-wing Zionist Israelis there will never be a Palestinian state. Their idea of a ‘one-state solution’ is where Israel has conquered and settled all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, annexed the Shebaa Farms, and, they hope, south Lebanon up to the Latani River, just as they have in the Golan Heights. All the Palestinians in these places will then have been transferred to the Sinai and/or Jordan. Welcome to Greater Israel. Their dream is for Iran and Syria to have had ‘regime change’ and Hamas, Hezbollah and all other Arab and Palestinian enemies destroyed.

The current so-called peace talks between Abbas and Olmert which Condoleeza Rice is trying to broker are a complete waste of time and are designed more as an ego trip for the outgoing Bush administration in order to score a few brownie points for the Republican presidential candidate John McCain – it makes them look like they are doing something toward ‘peace’ which they hope will translate into a few more Jewish-American votes who traditionally vote Democrat.. The hypocrisy is in the fact that the US continues to supply arms and armaments to the IDF so that they can continue to oppress the Palestinian people.

For years successive US Presidents, Israeli Prime Ministers and Palestinians have talked of peace. There has been Camp David Summits, Oslo Accords, the Madrid Conference, Nobel Peace Prizes awarded but after sixty years the two sides are about as far away from peace as they ever were. And the reason is; the right-wing Zionist Israelis do not want peace until every Palestinian has be driven from the lands that they covet for their dream of a Greater Israel – its as simple as that.

There is, however, another way.

Just as the UN created the state of Israel, so the UN could create a state that enforces a one-state solution upon the Palestinians and the existing Israelis.

Of course, the Palestinians would have a clear advantage in this, or indeed any other one-state solution model, by simple virtue of overwhelming numbers in the new State – but hey, that’s democracy for you. It’s also the reason why the Israelis are so dead set against a one-state solution that includes Palestinians.

So, how does one go about enforcing the creation of a bi-national single-state? First, one needs a United Nations that is willing to see the futility of the current situation and understand that the reality is; there will never be a solution unless it is enforced by the rest of the world community. Hell will freeze over before Olmert and Abbas come to anything like an idea that they can even agree on between them, let alone become a permanent solution.

However, while there are still the ridiculous veto powers of the permanent five of the Security Council the UN will always be ham-strung by the US, especially in matters relating to Israel. The veto power should be limited to a majority power of the permanent five where the veto power will exist only when at least three of the five wish to veto. Two permanent members voting against a resolution that otherwise has the full support of the Security Council would, under modified rules, not be enough to overturn any resolution. Under present arrangements, an enforced one-state solution would almost certainly be vetoed by the US.

But let’s assume that the UN is empowered with the ability to enforce a one-state solution; how then would it proceed? Apart from the Zionist extremists that would take to the hills, it would, if it had got to the stage where the world demanded it after listening to all of the objections from the extremists, proceed fairly quietly. It’s not something that would have been decided upon overnight and by the time it was actually about to happen the vast majority would have by then accepted the situation as fait accompli. Palestinians would be more than happy with the idea of being able to return to their own local homelands and there would be many Israelis also willing to want to live in peace with the Palestinians. The extremists would be marginalised and resistance would diminish until entirely disappeared. No doubt many of them would head off to the US where they would set up a mini Israel-in-exile or some such, just as the Cubans did in Miami, where they would live out their days dreaming of what could have been had there been a Greater Israel.

But, just as many Israelis may feel they are unable to live in such a State, there may well be many Jews throughout the Diaspora that would now feel quite comfortable living within the new State and choose to migrate there. So too might many Palestinians that are scattered throughout the world.

The new State being nuclear armed would not be acceptable so the nuclear arms that Israeli has now would be removed as would its chemical and biological weapons. The new States sovereignty would then be protected by UN guarantees. Trade and commerce could then function within the normal framework of the global economy with the advantage of not anymore having to expend vast treasure on arms and armaments. After a while the other big nations around the new State will see the merit of not having to compete militarily with each other and want to join in the prosperity that peace would bring while still maintaining their own governmental styles.

While all this may sound as much a dream as what we have now is a nightmare then one needs to wake up the reality that there will only ever be one alternative to the dream and that, of course, is another sixty years of death and misery for both sides.

If the world wants to see peace in that part of the world, then there is only the dream. There is NO alternative.

DESPERATE ZIONONAZI LUNATIC THINKS I.A.E.A. CHIEF IS AN IRANIAN AGENT!

Ultra right-wing Zionist Israelis are so desperate to have Iran bombed that they are now openly accusing Mohamad El Baradei of being an ‘agent of Iran’. Housing Minister Ze’ev Boim (yes, this raving lunatic is actually a minister in a government!) says, "When you examine his behaviour you cannot but reach the conclusion that he is a sort of planted agent ... who has served well the interests of Iran."

Boim, however, was not able to produce any evidence whatsoever to support his claim that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

PHILIP SHENON SAYS ‘THEY KNEW, BUT DID NOTHING’. BUT THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ARE ‘WHAT DID THEY KNOW?’ AND ‘WHY DID THEY DO NOTHING?’

Released at the end of January was Philip Shenon’s latest book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, an extract of which appeared recently in the Sydney Morning Herald. Shenon, a New York Times journalist, describes how the CIA and other US intelligence outfits tried to bring to the administrations attention strong warnings regarding pending ‘al Qaeda terrorist attacks’ with a strong possibility that these attacks may well be on America itself. Shenon describes the frustration George Tenet, then the CIA director, and Richard A. Clarke, then chief counter terrorism advisor to the US National Security Council, experienced in trying to alert senior members of the Bush administration, particularly then National security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and even George Bush himself, of the dangers the ‘intelligence’ were telling them was ahead.

Shenon’s story revolves around the way this anomaly of the Bush administrations apparent disinterest in the intelligence being presented to them was overlooked at the 9/11 Commission. The problem is; the story discusses only conflicts of personalities of some of the major players – and in the case of the Tenet and Bush relationship, the problems of having too close a relationship. Shenon puts these problems forward as the reasons why the intelligence didn’t get through – basically a break-down in communications due to various personality conflicts.

What Shenon ignores entirely, however, is the reasons why Bush, Rice and the others were so disinterested in the new intelligence coming in. Shenon also fails to explain why the intelligence relating to an imminent strike on America should start coming in almost daily at the same time as Bush becomes president in January 2001 and then increases even further when Ariel Sharon gets elected Prime Minister of Israel a couple of months later in March 2001. Could it be that the election of Bush and then Sharon signalled the start of events that culminated in the events of 9/11? Was the ‘chatter’ the likes of Tenet and Clarke were trying to convey to the Bush administration originating from ‘al Qaeda’ or was it as a result of murmurings that originated from sources that had nothing to do with ‘al Qaeda’ and a lot more to do with others with connections and influence within the Bush and Sharon governments that were outside of the normal intelligence institutions of the state? Did Bush, Rice and the others ignore the advice of their intelligence organisations because they knew exactly what was going on anyway and where it was really coming from?

A lot of questions; none of which Philip Shenon is game to answer.

THE ‘MORAL EQUIVALENCE’ ARGUMENT: SELF-RIGHTEOUS PROPAGANDA TOOL OF THE ZIONIST RIGHT-WING.

The right-wing Zionist Israelis and their supporters, particularly among neoconservatives, are always keen to use the ‘moral equivalence’ argument to justify what is otherwise plain hypocrisy as they try to excuse their own criminal activity.

For example, there is this from well known Australian extreme right-wing Zionist Geoff Pahoff who says, “To find moral equivalence between the acts of murderers and defence forces doing their jobs is morally depraved.”

Pahoff, of course, is referring to the Palestinians as ‘murderers’ and the Israeli Defence Forces who, he says, are merely ‘doing their jobs’. The self-righteous assumption is that the IDF are morally right. Pahoff ignores entirely, however, that it is the Israeli IDF that are killing innocent Palestinian women, children and other civilians and murdering, via targeted killings, Palestinian fighters. He also ignores the fact that the vast majority of the peoples of the world regard this as morally wrong.

The reality is that, it is not a matter of ‘moral equivalence’ at all but more a matter of self-righteous hypocrisy. This is the same Geoff Pahoff who said about the death of the blind wheel-chair bound spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was murdered by Israeli terrorists:

“I celebrated wildly when that filthy bag of pus, ‘the old blind wheel-chair bound spiritual leader’ finally kissed what was left of his miserable fanny and did the world the enormous favour, albeit somewhat forced, of departing from it for all eternity. Thereby correcting a major anomaly in the order of things by being born in the first place. Or not drowned slowly at the first opportunity. The slimy ignorant lying slice of toxic shit.”

And he has the temerity to mention “moral depravity”. So much for the argument over ‘moral equivalence’. It shouldn’t be confused with hypocrisy.

This in Ha’aretz and my argument countering the inference can also be considered as ‘moral equivalence’: “Hamas has sent hundreds of militants to train in Iran and Syria in the past two years…” For the Israelis that’s a bad immoral thing for their enemies to do. However, Israeli pilots and IDF commanders being trained in the US is fine. It’s not ‘moral equivalence’; its hypocrisy.

SHIMON PERES: SELF-RIGHTEOUS LIAR AND PROPAGANDIST.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has stated in an interview for La Figaro, according to a Jerusalem Post article, that Israel would use all available "non-military" options should sanctions fail to convince the Iranians to halt their nuclear program.

One wonders what those other ‘non-military’ options could be. The article goes on to note: “When asked if Israel would on its own to prevent Iran from going nuclear, the president responded with an emphatic, ‘not a chance’.”

Now, Shimon is a crafty politician who has been around for years and one needs to carefully analyse the language and words that he carefully and selectively uses. Look at the second part of the quote first. It’s pretty straight forward. He’s not saying that there is a ‘fat chance’ of Israel ‘preventing Iran from going nuclear’; he’s merely saying they wouldn’t do it on their own. So, if they won’t do it on their own, who else is there?

There are no prizes for guessing.

What then are these mysterious ‘non-military’ options that he is talking about? That’s a bit harder, but demonisation via the use of fear, lies and propaganda springs to mind and Peres wastes no time in making good use of these non-‘military options’ in the interview with La Figaro as he goes on to say: "We are talking about a world problem. It is a fact that Iran possesses long-range missiles, which make it not just a problem for Israel."

So what if Iran has long-range missiles? So does Israel’s ally the US. Israel also has a small submarine fleet that is missile-capable. Iran is quite entitled to have long range missiles. Why is that any more of a problem for the world than anyone else’s long range missiles?

The reality is; Peres’ statement says more about his own self-righteousness than what he would like the world to believe is Iran’s intentions. Peres is inferring that Iran has some kind of death wish whereby it’s prepared to sacrifice itself as a nation in order to destroy Israel. This, of course, is pure nonsense. One should not be in too much of a hurry to forget that Israel has the ultimate weapon, the very same kind of weapon that it is accusing Iran of trying to obtain.

The Jerusalem Post article goes on to say: ‘Peres also accused Iran of trying to increase its influence in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq’. It would seem that its OK for Israel to have influence over its ally, the US, to the point where the US will supply arms and weapons to the Israelis as they try to wield their influence in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, a country they occupied for years, but it’s not OK for the Gazans, the Lebanese and the Syrians to seek an alliance with Iran.

It is this, of course, that is at the core of Israel’s propaganda and rhetoric; an Iran governed by a regime that is supportive of the Palestinian cause is an anathema to Israeli ambitions for a Greater Israel that ultimately includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon, the Shebaa Farms and the Golan Heights.

The world should bear in mind that it is the US that is on dirt that does not belong to them in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is Israel that is on dirt that does not belong to them in the West Bank. It is Israelis that continually raid dirt that does not belong to them in the Gaza. It is Israel that is on dirt that does not belong to them in the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms. It is Israel that has twice attacked south Lebanon.

And it is Israel and the US and their warmongering neoconservative supporters that are itching to attack Iran – not the other war around.

WEBDIARIST IAN MACDOUGALL MISREPRESENTS ME. MY RESPONSE:

Since I’ve been mentioned in dispatches over at Webdiary I’d better respond.

Ian MacDougall says: “The 'America has a devil government' school says that 9/11 was a conspiracy set up by the Neocons to enable them to get into Iraq and grab the oil, and to put that pipeline through Afghanistan from Azerbaijan. (eg former Webdiarist Damian Lataan.)”

You have entirely misrepresented me. US/Likudnik neoconservatives are generally not interested in the oil of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are and were, however, very interested in implementing the policies outlined in the ‘Clean Break’ document written by US neoconservatives specifically for the Netanyahu government in which Israelis interest were prioritised. Their plans were, and still are, to implement regime change in Iraq, Iran and Syria, not necessarily in that order, so that the right-wing Israeli Zionist government can have a free hand in dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah in order to create a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Clearly people conspired to bring about the events of 9/11. In the light of the considerable and overwhelming circumstantial evidence it is also clear that the US government’s version of what happened that day falls well short of a proper explanation of what actually happened. Regardless of what did happen, however, the events of 9/11 allowed an exceptionally convenient opportunity for a whole range of US global interests to converge. These included the interests of the neoconservatives who found they were able, through a neat construct of pure lies, to fabricate an illusion of the West indulging in a self-righteous ‘war against terrorism’ that provided the propaganda and rhetoric that covered the geopolitical realities of their real endgame of delivering regional hegemony to Israel and the US. But it wasn’t just neoconservative interests that were served by the expediency of the 9/11 catastrophe; it seems everyone got in on the act. Even Christian fundamentalists took advantage of the fight against the evils of Islam in order to cement their relationship with the Holy Land via the right-wing of Israel. War also provided financial opportunities to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and, since much of the up-coming wars were to be fought on lands controlling the production and flow of oil and other energy resources, there were also opportunities for the US oil conglomerates to make a metaphoric killing while the MIC ensured the killing became literal, all justified, of course, by the iconic events of 9/11.

The reality is that all of these wars were planned well in advance of 9/11. Afghanistan wasn’t invaded because of 9/11; the invasion of Afghanistan was planned in March 2001. Iraq wasn’t invaded because Saddam was a nasty bastard; it was invaded because Israel needed regime change there to get the Saddam monkey off their backs. It was planned long before 9/11.

9/11 was a convenient incident by which all of these subsequent events could be justified. Because there are so many unanswered questions surrounding the events of 9/11 one can understand why, at the very least, one might ask if 9/11 wasn’t just a bit too convenient.

THE NEOCONS REWARD JOHN HOWARD, EX AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER, FOR HIS LIES AND SUPPORT OF THEIR WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC PEOPLES.

There has to be a certain irony in the fact that the first major speech ex-Australian Prime Minister John Howard has made since being dumped so thoroughly from government, and even from his own parliamentary seat, is to the neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) whose war against the Iraqi people he so whole-heartedly supported against the wishes of the vast majority of Australians.

The liar Howard was presented with the neoconservatives’ top award for liars, the Irving Kristol Award. Present among the 1200 guests were a multitude of other liars including the proven liar, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby found guilty over lying about a media leak.

Little has been heard of Howard since he lost both government and his own seat of Bennelong at the general election in November 2007. Yet Howard has learnt nothing from his trouncing and remains as bigoted, self-righteous and Islamophobic as ever telling his audience, “In the protracted struggle against Islamic extremism there will be no stronger weapon than the maintenance by Western liberal democracies of a steadfast belief in the continuing worth of our own national value systems. And where necessary a soaring optimism about the future of freedom and democracy.'' This is pure arrogance and hypocrisy gushing from one lunatic warmongering liar to 1200 others who, of course, gave Howard a standing ovation.

Interesting that, despite losing government and his own parliamentary seat, the AEI should describe Howard as, “one of the world's most successful democratic politicians”. Howard was kicked out of government because the Australian people finally woke to his lies. Hopefully, the American people will wake to the lies of their government and give them the boot as well.

U.S. SHIPS BACK OFF FROM LEBANON – LEBANESE GOVT. SEES THEM AS THREAT.

The USS Cole has steamed through Suez heading for the Gulf. The Lebanese government has said it did not ask for the ships to be off Lebanon. According to US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, the USS Cole was there “simply to make [it] very clear that the US is capable and willing to defend its interests and the interests of its allies”. Problem is, as far as the Lebanese government, one of America’s allies, is concerned the presence of the USS Cole was not in their interests; in fact it was seen as more of a threat than a comfort.

US gunboat diplomacy is not appreciated in that part of the world, particularly in Lebanon where Hezbollah has considerable support especially when it comes to dealing with the Israeli threat and, while Lebanon prefers independence from Syria, many are quite happy to accept Syrian support via Hezbollah when it comes to defending Lebanon against the Israelis.

When Israel launched its last war against Lebanon in July 2006 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made it quite clear that the war was against Lebanon and not just against Hezbollah. As a result the Lebanese government see the presence of US warships off their shores as a threat at a time when, if push comes to shove, Israel decides to attack Hezbollah again. While the Lebanese government might be reasonably friendly toward the US government, the Lebanese know that when it comes to a fight the US will always be on Israel’s side. The Lebanese people remember how American warships opened fire on Lebanon in September 1983 during the civil war.

Hezbollah have made it clear that if there is to be another war then they are quite ready for it but will not be starting it.


UPDATE

While the USS Cole has steamed off, it has apparently been replaced by two other US warships, the USS Ross and the USS Philippine Sea. This move can only heighten tensions between Lebanon, Hezbollah in particular, and Israel. It will also put the Lebanese government in an awkward position inasmuch that it does not wish to irritate the US but, on the other hand, are aware of how popular Hezbollah are when it comes to a fight with the Israelis.

Thanks go to ‘Blacksmith Jade’ for bringing this to my attention. His post containing this information was not published because it contained insults. I have switched on the moderation function and any comments containing even a hint of insult or belittlement in any way toward the author of a post or comments will not be published. Only comments that stick strictly to the subject will be published in future. If you want to insult then go elsewhere and do it or create your own blog.

ISRAELIS START TO TALK OF MOVING GAZAN CITIZENS.

The first tentative talk of moving Gazan citizens has begun in Israeli government circles. Israeli Minister for Terrorism against the Palestinian People, Ehud Barak, has suggested that Gazans be cleared out of areas where Palestinian fighters are launching rockets and mortars. In order to ensure that they then stay out of the area one of two things need to happen; one, the Gazans that are removed will need to moved out of the Gaza altogether, perhaps to the West Bank, or as many Zionists would prefer, to Jordan or the Sinai in Egypt, or two, the Israeli IDF occupies the area evacuated. The third option, of course, is that they do both.

Pushing the removed citizens just further into Gaza will create huge problems for the already overcrowded and under-serviced Strip. The Israelis must realise, however, that in pushing into the Gaza this way, all they are succeeding in doing is pushing back the war front. The Palestinian fighters will simply move their weaponry back and aim them at the occupying IDF rather than into Israel. The Israelis will then need to push even further into the Gaza shifting more people out. One doesn’t need to be a military genius to see where all this is going.

Let there be no mistake about what the long-term aims of the Israeli Zionists are; they want all Palestinians out of the Strip which they will then occupy militarily and then eventually colonise with settlers. THIS WAS ALWAYS ARIEL SHARON’S ULTIMATE AIM. He knew when he decided to evacuate the Israeli settlers from the Gaza in 2005 that they one day would return. A Gaza Strip separated and isolated from the West Bank was never going to be a viable proposition any more than a sovereign state of Palestine is likely to be in the eyes of the Zionist Israelis and their neocon supporters throughout the world.

Barak’s excuse for wanting to shift the Gazan civilians is ‘to give the Israel Defense Forces greater room to manoeuvre and target rocket crews without endangering civilians.’ The truth is, the Israeli Terrorist in Chief has never in the past cared about civilian losses and has never been bothered before when he was an active terrorist himself about who he had killed just because they happened to be in the way.

The world needs to ignore the propaganda and rhetoric of the Zionist Israelis and wake up to the geo-political reality of what’s really going on here.


ISRAEL’S DOUBLE STANDARDS HIGHLIGHTS THEIR HYPOCRISY

It seems Israel is now complaining that Hezbollah are being supplied with weapons from Iran (what else is new!). One has to ask from an objective point of view: So what?!! There are no prizes for guessing where Israel is getting its weapons from.

The Israelis are arguing that supplying Hezbollah with weapons is in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. And so it is too. But then, so are Israel’s constant and provocative forays into Lebanese airspace with their strike aircraft.

Unbelievable self-righteous hypocrisy from the Israeli Zionists.

U.N. SANCTIONS MAKE IT DIFFICULT FOR ISRAEL AND U.S. TO ATTACK IRAN – FOR NOW.

The latest round of sanctions levelled against Iran by the United Nations Security Council in many ways is a victory for Iran. The decision has at least saved Iran from immediate attack by the US and Israel. Russia and China, by supporting the sanctions and whose support was vital for the sanctions to be approved, has saved Iran from being attacked – at least for now.

The sanctions are unlikely to badly affect the average Iranian and will have little effect on the Iranian economy.

Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UNs nuclear monitor, has still not found any evidence that Iran has a nuclear program, the US and Israel continue to claim Iran does have such a program. While the IAEA have not found any evidence, nor have the US or Israel presented any evidence to support their claim.

The only items that the IAEA claimed to have found that have anything to do with ‘nuclear weapons’ are a few “sketches and a video that appear to have come from Iran’s own military laboratories” that are indicative of nuclear research, according to Olli Heinonen, a senior IAEA inspector. A ‘few sketches and a video’ seems to me to be more indicative of a crude attempt to set up the Iranians than the advanced nuclear program that the US and Israel have claimed Iran has been working on for years.

Unfortunately, all the latest round of sanctions achieves is putting off the inevitable. It does not change Israel’s need for regime change in Iran. Israel and the US will now need to find some other ‘casus belli’ to attack Iran. Perhaps increased interference in Iraq or sophisticated Iranian weaponry finding its way into Hamas and Hezbollah hands and used against the Israelis. Time will tell, but meanwhile, the Israelis will be sure to continue to provoke the Palestinians in the Gaza toward that end just as soon as Condoleeza Rice has departed the region after discussing a new strategy of how to attack Iran.

IS THE MIDDLE EAST ABOUT TO BLOW?

The situation in the Middle East has become extremely volatile over the last few days what with the Israelis killing Palestinians by the score in the Gaza and the US provocatively placing their warships just outside of territorial waters off Lebanon. After months of festering, the Israelis and the US seem set to bring the entire Middle East to a head with the ultimate endgame being the final confrontation between Iran and the US and Israel.

Israel has already launched a murderous onslaught against the Gazan people that has killed scores of civilians and which seems to be a prelude for a full-on invasion of the Gaza that will inevitably cause even more death and misery for the already badly suffering Gazan people. Hundreds, if not thousands, are likely to be killed if the Israelis invade the Gaza.

Meanwhile, the US has placed the USS Cole and other support vessels off shore of Lebanon. The Israelis and the US are clearly anticipating Hezbollah to launch some kind of action against Israel in support of the Palestine fighters in the Gaza and in retaliation of the recent Israeli-orchestrated killing of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh. Israel is likely to respond with yet another massive attack against Hezbollah and the Lebanese people just as they did in July and August of 2006. Already Israel are accusing Hamas in the Gaza of using Iranian supplied missiles against Ashkelon in Israel and no doubt, if Hezbollah do enjoin the fight against Israel, similar accusations will be laid against Hezbollah who, as the Israelis did during the last war, will accuse the Iranians of supplying weapons via Syria, thus providing the excuse the Israelis need to attack Syria. The hope then will be that Iran will come to the aid of Syria thus providing casus belli for the US to attack Iran.

In the event of such a war developing and escalating to this level it may well be that Abbas in the West Bank may loose control over Fatah fighters there who might forget their differences with Hamas and join the fight against Israel in support of their fellow Palestinians in the Gaza and their fellow Arabs fighting in Lebanon against a common enemy.

And all this will happen while the rest of world just sits and lets it happen without a murmur of protest.

THE CHICKEN AND EGG ANALOGY APPLIED TO THE GAZA/ISRAEL CONFLICT.

The Western mainstream media propaganda is portraying the Gaza/Israel conflict as one that the Palestinians, Hamas in particular, started. For example, in today’s New York Times there is an article which says: “Tens of thousands of Gazans protested Israel’s repeated raids to halt persistent Palestinian rocket attacks…“

It explicitly says that Israel is bombing and killing Palestinians because of the rockets that Hamas is launching into Israel. The reality is; Hamas is launching rockets into Israel in order to get the Israelis to stop killing Palestinians in the Gaza.

Let’s be clear about this; the Israelis were killing Palestinians in the Gaza long before the Palestinians started launching rockets at the Israelis.

The Israelis began killing Palestinians in 1947 when they began their ethnic cleansing of the Arab peoples out of Palestine in order to create the Zionist state of Israel. But not content with just the lands allotted to them by the UN in their totally misguided decision to partition Palestine, the Israeli Zionists wanted more – and still do.

Their long-term aim is to create a Greater Israel that includes the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (or, as the Israelis call it, Judea and Sumaria) and, if they can get away with it after having tried twice before, southern Lebanon up to the Litani River; a Greater Israel that is free of all Palestinian Arabs.

Up until now the Israeli Zionists have always managed to hoodwink the West into believing that any actions they take against Palestinians and Arabs is as a reaction to actions the Palestinians or Arabs made first. This is a complete and utter myth. As the Israeli historian Illan Pappe wrote: “Clashes with Palestinian militias provided the perfect context and pretext for implementing the ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine. The Zionist policy was first based on retaliation against Palestinian attacks in February 1947, and it transformed into an initiative to ethnically cleanse the country as a whole in March 1948”.(1)

Nothing has changed.

A classic example is the last war Israel launched against the Lebanese people in 2006. They claimed that they attacked Hezbollah and the Lebanese people because Hezbollah had captured an Israeli soldier. Pure nonsense. The Israelis had planned their attack on Lebanon months before their soldier was captured.

Today the Israeli Zionists are claiming they are attacking the Palestinians in the Gaza to stop the Palestinian fighters launching rockets against Israel. This is rubbish. The Israelis are attacking the Palestinian people in the Gaza for the same reason that they’ve always attacked the Palestinian people in the Gaza – in order to eventually squeeze them out.

Even the ordinary Israeli people are slowly starting to wake up to what’s going on. It’s about time the rest of the western world did too!


ENDNOTE

(1) Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (Oxford: Oneworld Publications Ltd., 2007.) p. xii.