The Israeli Prime Ministership will now change hands possibly before the US Presidential elections at the beginning of November. The Kadima primaries to elect a new party leader will be held on 17 September. If the new leader is then able to form a government then the new Prime Minister will govern from around October. If the new leader is unable to form a government then Israel will go to the polls for a general election in the New Year, possibly March or April of 2009. In this situation Olmert may well remain Prime Minister until after the election. Either way, Olmert, who has said he will not stand for the party leadership in September, will not be Prime Minister after the next general election and may well not be Prime Minister as early as September.
The best thing that can happen in order to simply maintain the existing status quo in the Middle East, appalling as it is, and to minimise the risk of escalation or even all out war in the Middle East, is for the newly elected Kadima Party leader not to be able to form a government. This means that Olmert will remain Prime Minister until after the demise of President George W. Bush and, hopefully, the election Barack Obama to the Presidency.
The alternative, if any one of the likely front-runners, including present Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, wins the Kadima Party leadership and is able to form a government in coalition with some of the other rightwing political parties like Likud and/or Shas, means that this new rightwing government, far more hawkish than Olmert’s, will become the Israeli government while the Bush/Cheney/Neocon junta are still in power in the US.
A far more hawkish Israeli government led by either Livni or Shaul Mofaz, the other front-runner for the leadership, would be a lot less hesitant about attacking Iran and, if they did, they would get the full support of the US – even if Bush initially declines or is hesitant to offer full support.
The scenario becomes even more dangerous if Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader, is offered any position in a Kadima-led coalition. His well known and close association with Vice-President Dick Cheney and his equally well-known affiliations with neoconservatives and the American Enterprise Institute could make for an extremely dangerous and volatile combination of power even this late in the Bush Presidency especially in the nothing-to-lose situation that they will all find themselves in.
All talk of peace, even the faux peace that is being discussed now, will be gone for a start. Detail plans will immediately be drawn up, if they haven’t been already, to invade the Gaza, Lebanon and to attack Iran and possibly Syria.
The world’s best hope, especially for the Palestinians and the Middle Eastern peoples, is for Olmert to remain in power at least until Obama is elected President of the US.
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
TIM BLAIR: HYPOCRITE AND LIAR.
These last few weeks I’ve been posting some comments over at the Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt blogs. The aim of the exercise was to analyse the rightwing response to those posts knowing that the Blair bloggies, in particular, are prone to home in on anything I have to say. To a lesser extent the same could be said for Andrew Bolt’s blog though some at Bolt’s blog were some of the more avid bloggies from Blair’s blog keen to attack wherever I went. Some, like ‘wronwright’ for example, are so obsessed that they even hunt me down on Google in order to leave their dirty little piles of muck at other blogs.
Yesterday I posted that the exercise was over and that I wouldn’t be bothering them anymore. Blair couldn’t resist having a parting shot and wrote a little piece that invited his bloggies to respond to. His piece was titled ‘Damian Signs Off’. In it, if you visit the blog, you’ll find Blair telling his readers that he doesn’t censor posts.
This is a blatant lie.
While I do censor posts, and, as most know, I will not allow the rightwing to peddle their obnoxious garbage at this blog, Blair says he doesn’t censor. When I write a response to this, Blair doesn’t publish it.
Blair, clearly, is a liar and a fraud. He has no qualms about knowingly publishing posts from other liars and frauds or linking to articles by rightwing liars and frauds.
For those interested, below was my response which Blair did not publish.
The result of the study and the associated article, ‘Australian Mainstream Media Rightwing Bloggers and their fanatical Bloggie followers’, hopefully will be published here at a later date.
‘Damian signs off’? Not quite. I’ve ‘signed off’ on the original purpose for my visits to Blair and Bolts blogs and it was my intention simply to walk away and let you get on with it but, since Blair has opened himself up to ridicule yet again, how could I resist not commenting!
As usual Blair twists the truth somewhat. I had indeed written: “It seems that only the rightwing are now allowed to comment on Tim Blair’s Blog at Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Telegraph,” but I wrote that very soon after one of Blair’s minions had censored one of my comments and said that he/she would only publish one selected sentence of any comment I made. Later they relented and published all my comments in full (though still didn’t publish the original post).
Blair had clearly painted himself into a corner. For a long time I have rarely published rightwing comments at my blog unless they are so ridiculous that they warrant publishing. I have always made it clear that I would not be a party to peddling neocon or extreme rightwing propaganda at my blog. As a result I have been accused of practicing censorship by the loony rightwing bloggies that gather here. Blair says he doesn’t practice censorship. Perhaps not to the extent I at first suggested, but, nonetheless, he does practice censorship.
I make absolutely no apologies for censoring warmongering and racist garbage from the rightwing – as has been demonstrated by Bush, Howard and Tony Blair’s policies between 2001 and the time these warmongering liars left, or in the case of Bush, about to leave, office, there are a lot of people dumb and gullible enough to actually believe their lies. While most now concede that they were taken in by the lies, others, indeed most of those that gather here, including Tim Blair, still actually believe the lies.
Part of those lies, lies that are still being perpetuated, is the idea that the events of 9/11 happened in accordance with the official government story as endorsed by the ‘9/11 Commission Report’. This is despite the report now having been proven to be full of contradictions relative to other proven and readily available evidence, and omissions; for example, the report fails to mention anywhere the total collapse of WTC7.
The myth of a still active al Qaeda outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan is perpetuated by US neoconservatives and their mainstream media supporters as demonstrated by Rupert Murdoch’s own press empire of which Tim Blair and the likes of lunatic warmonger William Kristol of the ‘Weekly Standard’ is a part of.
Conspiracy theory? Of course there’s a conspiracy theory – it’s the one that Bush was in such a rush to come out with within hours of 9/11 happening. Time has allowed the initial numbing shock of those events to wear off and we are now beginning to see how it simply couldn’t have happened the way Bush and co said it did. That, coupled with what we now know were lies in order to start wars and the knowledge that these wars were planned and even wished for before 9/11, lead us to conclusions that go far beyond the simplistic ‘they hate us for our values’ excuse for invading, occupying, killing and destroying people of other countries and ripping off their resources.
The response to my postings here and at Bolt’s has been entirely predictable. Those of you astute enough to keep their ears to the academic ground will no doubt be keen to read the results of this study exercise at a later date – or not. While the intention was never to ‘convert’ dedicated rightwing loonies, (why bother), it is hoped that other readers, those many, apparently, that pop by and read what Blair’s and Bolt’s bloggies have got to say and have good laugh at them, have learnt a little about what makes this small but dedicated coterie of extremist right-wingers tick.
Yesterday I posted that the exercise was over and that I wouldn’t be bothering them anymore. Blair couldn’t resist having a parting shot and wrote a little piece that invited his bloggies to respond to. His piece was titled ‘Damian Signs Off’. In it, if you visit the blog, you’ll find Blair telling his readers that he doesn’t censor posts.
This is a blatant lie.
While I do censor posts, and, as most know, I will not allow the rightwing to peddle their obnoxious garbage at this blog, Blair says he doesn’t censor. When I write a response to this, Blair doesn’t publish it.
Blair, clearly, is a liar and a fraud. He has no qualms about knowingly publishing posts from other liars and frauds or linking to articles by rightwing liars and frauds.
For those interested, below was my response which Blair did not publish.
The result of the study and the associated article, ‘Australian Mainstream Media Rightwing Bloggers and their fanatical Bloggie followers’, hopefully will be published here at a later date.
‘Damian signs off’? Not quite. I’ve ‘signed off’ on the original purpose for my visits to Blair and Bolts blogs and it was my intention simply to walk away and let you get on with it but, since Blair has opened himself up to ridicule yet again, how could I resist not commenting!
As usual Blair twists the truth somewhat. I had indeed written: “It seems that only the rightwing are now allowed to comment on Tim Blair’s Blog at Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Telegraph,” but I wrote that very soon after one of Blair’s minions had censored one of my comments and said that he/she would only publish one selected sentence of any comment I made. Later they relented and published all my comments in full (though still didn’t publish the original post).
Blair had clearly painted himself into a corner. For a long time I have rarely published rightwing comments at my blog unless they are so ridiculous that they warrant publishing. I have always made it clear that I would not be a party to peddling neocon or extreme rightwing propaganda at my blog. As a result I have been accused of practicing censorship by the loony rightwing bloggies that gather here. Blair says he doesn’t practice censorship. Perhaps not to the extent I at first suggested, but, nonetheless, he does practice censorship.
I make absolutely no apologies for censoring warmongering and racist garbage from the rightwing – as has been demonstrated by Bush, Howard and Tony Blair’s policies between 2001 and the time these warmongering liars left, or in the case of Bush, about to leave, office, there are a lot of people dumb and gullible enough to actually believe their lies. While most now concede that they were taken in by the lies, others, indeed most of those that gather here, including Tim Blair, still actually believe the lies.
Part of those lies, lies that are still being perpetuated, is the idea that the events of 9/11 happened in accordance with the official government story as endorsed by the ‘9/11 Commission Report’. This is despite the report now having been proven to be full of contradictions relative to other proven and readily available evidence, and omissions; for example, the report fails to mention anywhere the total collapse of WTC7.
The myth of a still active al Qaeda outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan is perpetuated by US neoconservatives and their mainstream media supporters as demonstrated by Rupert Murdoch’s own press empire of which Tim Blair and the likes of lunatic warmonger William Kristol of the ‘Weekly Standard’ is a part of.
Conspiracy theory? Of course there’s a conspiracy theory – it’s the one that Bush was in such a rush to come out with within hours of 9/11 happening. Time has allowed the initial numbing shock of those events to wear off and we are now beginning to see how it simply couldn’t have happened the way Bush and co said it did. That, coupled with what we now know were lies in order to start wars and the knowledge that these wars were planned and even wished for before 9/11, lead us to conclusions that go far beyond the simplistic ‘they hate us for our values’ excuse for invading, occupying, killing and destroying people of other countries and ripping off their resources.
The response to my postings here and at Bolt’s has been entirely predictable. Those of you astute enough to keep their ears to the academic ground will no doubt be keen to read the results of this study exercise at a later date – or not. While the intention was never to ‘convert’ dedicated rightwing loonies, (why bother), it is hoped that other readers, those many, apparently, that pop by and read what Blair’s and Bolt’s bloggies have got to say and have good laugh at them, have learnt a little about what makes this small but dedicated coterie of extremist right-wingers tick.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
MURDOCH’S AUSTRALIAN EXTREME RIGHTWING JOURNO, TIM BLAIR, NOW ONLY ALLOWS RIGHT-WINGERS TO POST AT HIS BLOG.
It seems that only the rightwing are now allowed to comment on Tim Blair’s Blog at Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Sydney Daily Telegraph’.
Over the last week or two I have left a number of comments at both Blair’s blog and Andrew Bolt’s blog at the ‘Herald Sun’. Naturally, the tiny numbers of extreme rightwing posters that gather at these blogs, one or two of them blogging at both venues, jumped on my comments but were unable to dislodge any argument I had put up. This they have clearly found frustrating, even embarrassing, to the point where Tim Blair has now decided that only his tiny coterie of posters can comment there through fear, presumably, that his regular posters will be put off from posting due to being continually embarrassed by having their argument, what few they have, being constantly debunked and exposed as either fraudulent or outright lies.
For the benefit of those that are interested, below is the full post that Blair refused to publish. The one sentence that he did publish, together with his dictate note that only one sentence of my posts will be published, can be found here.
The full post went thus:
Roskam’s demise at ‘The Age’ represents the overall decline in influence the rightwing now has in Australia. Australians are starting to wake up and understand that a world dominated by the rightwing was not a peaceful world and that they existed only to further their own greedy, warmongering and self-righteous aims. Their lies and warcrimes against peoples of different cultures are being exposed and their attacks against their own working people have been shunned.
The level of thinking by the extreme rightwing as represented at this and Andrew Bolt’s blog says it all. A tiny but vocal bunch of knee-jerk morons who are incapable of any rational thought tend to dominate Blair and Bolt’s blogs by posting their nonsense all day long attacking anyone slightly to the left of centre than comes along. When that happens they go into something akin to a feeding frenzy and the more to the left a posting is, then the more ridiculous their responses become.
A quick look through any randomly selected thread reveals a short list of names of dedicated bloggies that seem to write massive amounts of words during any one day without actually saying anything of any value. It’s the same old names cropping up over and over again. One begins to wonder if they are not just people employed specifically to bulk out the blogs to make those that run them, Blair and Bolt, look like they have a big following.
Roskam’s sacking and Shaun Carney’s elevation represents a reawakening of the Left. The rightwing are now struggling with the likes of Blair and Bolt having only the support of a diminishing but vocal band of know-nothing knee-jerk full-time bloggies.
Over the last week or two I have left a number of comments at both Blair’s blog and Andrew Bolt’s blog at the ‘Herald Sun’. Naturally, the tiny numbers of extreme rightwing posters that gather at these blogs, one or two of them blogging at both venues, jumped on my comments but were unable to dislodge any argument I had put up. This they have clearly found frustrating, even embarrassing, to the point where Tim Blair has now decided that only his tiny coterie of posters can comment there through fear, presumably, that his regular posters will be put off from posting due to being continually embarrassed by having their argument, what few they have, being constantly debunked and exposed as either fraudulent or outright lies.
For the benefit of those that are interested, below is the full post that Blair refused to publish. The one sentence that he did publish, together with his dictate note that only one sentence of my posts will be published, can be found here.
The full post went thus:
Roskam’s demise at ‘The Age’ represents the overall decline in influence the rightwing now has in Australia. Australians are starting to wake up and understand that a world dominated by the rightwing was not a peaceful world and that they existed only to further their own greedy, warmongering and self-righteous aims. Their lies and warcrimes against peoples of different cultures are being exposed and their attacks against their own working people have been shunned.
The level of thinking by the extreme rightwing as represented at this and Andrew Bolt’s blog says it all. A tiny but vocal bunch of knee-jerk morons who are incapable of any rational thought tend to dominate Blair and Bolt’s blogs by posting their nonsense all day long attacking anyone slightly to the left of centre than comes along. When that happens they go into something akin to a feeding frenzy and the more to the left a posting is, then the more ridiculous their responses become.
A quick look through any randomly selected thread reveals a short list of names of dedicated bloggies that seem to write massive amounts of words during any one day without actually saying anything of any value. It’s the same old names cropping up over and over again. One begins to wonder if they are not just people employed specifically to bulk out the blogs to make those that run them, Blair and Bolt, look like they have a big following.
Roskam’s sacking and Shaun Carney’s elevation represents a reawakening of the Left. The rightwing are now struggling with the likes of Blair and Bolt having only the support of a diminishing but vocal band of know-nothing knee-jerk full-time bloggies.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
ISRAELI PROPAGANDA OVER ‘ABDUCTIONS’ AND ‘KIDNAPPINGS’ IS ALSO BLATANT HYPOCRISY
The Israeli media loudly and stridently tells the world that their two soldiers recently returned in coffins by the Hezbollah in Lebanon had been ‘kidnapped’ or ‘abducted’ by Hezbollah and spare no imagery in their propaganda when reporting Hezbollah’s successes in capturing these enemy soldiers. And in their latest propaganda they proclaim that Hezbollah “…won’t rule out more abductions”. And, of course, a compliant western mainstream media are more than happy to accommodate this rather puerile propaganda.
But contrast this with the reality of Israeli crimes and one is quickly able to see the hypocrisy that this propaganda is.
For years Israeli snatch squads have literally been hopping in and out of territory that isn’t theirs attempting to abduct and kidnap both Hezbollah, as in this kidnap attempt in 1997, and Palestinian activists. (And, as these two stories show, their attempts occasionally end in disaster.) Furthermore, beside kidnappings and abductions of Palestinian and Hezbollah activists, the Israelis have no compunction about murdering their enemies and labelling it ‘targeted killings’ which, again, a compliant mainstream western media has no problems in supporting by reporting such events as simply a reluctant necessity which Israel needs to undertake in order to ‘defend itself’. Naturally, if Palestinians or Hezbollah were to take similar actions against the Israelis the world would be told to be horrified at this kind of outrageous terrorism.
Very rarely are Hezbollah or Palestinian fighters able to capture Israelis but on the odd occasion that they do the Israeli press is quick to hop on to the propaganda bandwagon and the western media are quick to follow. But when the Israelis take Hezbollah prisoners after abducting them from Lebanon, or when the Israelis take Palestinian prisoners after abducting them from Palestinian territories the world rarely seems to hear about it from the mainstream press in the west.
Even as the Israelis were harping on about Hezbollah having ‘kidnapped’ and ‘abducted’ the two Israeli army reservists in July of 2006, they were doing exactly the same thing themselves when on 2 August 2006 Israeli commandos abducted five Hezbollah activists from inside Lebanon. Very little was heard about that abduction in the west.
The capture of Gilad Shalit by Gazan Palestinian fighters on 26 June 2006 made headlines in the Israeli and western press and was the casus belli for the massive attacks on the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces which killed scores of innocent Palestinians and destroyed much of Gaza’s utilities and infrastructure. What went entirely unmentioned in the Israeli and western press was that two days prior to the capture of Gilad Shalit, Israeli forces had entered the Gaza and abducted two Palestinians.
Barely mentioned in the western press, and then only because of the high-profile nature of the person abducted, was the abduction and incarceration in Israel of a legitimately elected Hamas representative of the Palestinian people from the West Bank when Hamas in the Gaza were wresting control of the Strip from corrupt Fatah elements.
While the mainstream western media one-sidedly highlights only the shortcomings of a people desperate to be free, it fraudulently covers up the multitude of crimes that have been committed by those that have so often cried ‘Wolf’ the loudest when the tables are turned on them. Western media deceit it seems has become an integral part of Israeli Zionist propaganda.
UPDATE
Yesterday some thirty West Bank Palestinians, mostly business people and shop owners, were abducted by Israeli terrorists raiding Nablus.
But contrast this with the reality of Israeli crimes and one is quickly able to see the hypocrisy that this propaganda is.
For years Israeli snatch squads have literally been hopping in and out of territory that isn’t theirs attempting to abduct and kidnap both Hezbollah, as in this kidnap attempt in 1997, and Palestinian activists. (And, as these two stories show, their attempts occasionally end in disaster.) Furthermore, beside kidnappings and abductions of Palestinian and Hezbollah activists, the Israelis have no compunction about murdering their enemies and labelling it ‘targeted killings’ which, again, a compliant mainstream western media has no problems in supporting by reporting such events as simply a reluctant necessity which Israel needs to undertake in order to ‘defend itself’. Naturally, if Palestinians or Hezbollah were to take similar actions against the Israelis the world would be told to be horrified at this kind of outrageous terrorism.
Very rarely are Hezbollah or Palestinian fighters able to capture Israelis but on the odd occasion that they do the Israeli press is quick to hop on to the propaganda bandwagon and the western media are quick to follow. But when the Israelis take Hezbollah prisoners after abducting them from Lebanon, or when the Israelis take Palestinian prisoners after abducting them from Palestinian territories the world rarely seems to hear about it from the mainstream press in the west.
Even as the Israelis were harping on about Hezbollah having ‘kidnapped’ and ‘abducted’ the two Israeli army reservists in July of 2006, they were doing exactly the same thing themselves when on 2 August 2006 Israeli commandos abducted five Hezbollah activists from inside Lebanon. Very little was heard about that abduction in the west.
The capture of Gilad Shalit by Gazan Palestinian fighters on 26 June 2006 made headlines in the Israeli and western press and was the casus belli for the massive attacks on the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces which killed scores of innocent Palestinians and destroyed much of Gaza’s utilities and infrastructure. What went entirely unmentioned in the Israeli and western press was that two days prior to the capture of Gilad Shalit, Israeli forces had entered the Gaza and abducted two Palestinians.
Barely mentioned in the western press, and then only because of the high-profile nature of the person abducted, was the abduction and incarceration in Israel of a legitimately elected Hamas representative of the Palestinian people from the West Bank when Hamas in the Gaza were wresting control of the Strip from corrupt Fatah elements.
While the mainstream western media one-sidedly highlights only the shortcomings of a people desperate to be free, it fraudulently covers up the multitude of crimes that have been committed by those that have so often cried ‘Wolf’ the loudest when the tables are turned on them. Western media deceit it seems has become an integral part of Israeli Zionist propaganda.
UPDATE
Yesterday some thirty West Bank Palestinians, mostly business people and shop owners, were abducted by Israeli terrorists raiding Nablus.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A SUBTLE CHANGE IN ISRAELI RHETORIC ON HOW TWO SOLDIERS WERE CAPTURED MAY REVEAL THE TRUTH.
There has been a very subtle change in the rhetoric as the time approaches for the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah to be returned to Israel. The capture of the two conscripts was the Israeli stated casus belli for the attack on Lebanon in July 2006. The Israelis claimed that the two were captured after a skirmish between Hezbollah fighters and an Israeli patrol on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon. However, initial reports even in the Western mainstream media said that the two soldiers were captured just inside the Lebanese border at Aitaa al-Chaab. Israel then insisted that they were captured on the Israeli side of the border and the compliant western media quickly went along with the Israeli version of events ignoring entirely their earlier reports as though it never happened the way they first reported it, and hoping no one would notice.
Now that the time has approached where it is likely that the two will be returned to Israel, there has been some speculation that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will give a speech celebrating the release of Hezbollah prisoners from Israel and the bodies of the many Hezbollah fighters taken by the Israelis during the war. It has been further speculated that, in this speech, Nasrallah may give some explanation of how the two were captured. In anticipation of this the Israelis are now slightly adjusting the rhetoric of their version of events. Whereas before they were saying the two were ‘kidnapped’ from inside Israel, the ‘Jerusalem Post’ is now saying that the two were taken on the border.
‘Ha’aretz’, meanwhile, in a report on the upcoming exchange said: “…a prisoner swap which would see the return of two Israel Defense Forces reservists whose abduction by Hezbollah sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006.” It’s what the report subtly didn’t say that is important here; no mention is made of where they were captured, only that they were ‘abducted’.
The Israelis are still not conceding that the two soldiers were captured inside Lebanon but ‘on the border’ and just plain ‘abducted’ is a step removed from ‘inside Israel’ which they had originally insisted on and used to justify their attack on the Lebanese people.
Whether or not Nasrallah does allude to how the two Israeli soldiers were captured remains to be seen but it certainly looks as though the Israelis are preparing their propaganda and rhetoric in advance of a possible revelation of the truth.
Now that the time has approached where it is likely that the two will be returned to Israel, there has been some speculation that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will give a speech celebrating the release of Hezbollah prisoners from Israel and the bodies of the many Hezbollah fighters taken by the Israelis during the war. It has been further speculated that, in this speech, Nasrallah may give some explanation of how the two were captured. In anticipation of this the Israelis are now slightly adjusting the rhetoric of their version of events. Whereas before they were saying the two were ‘kidnapped’ from inside Israel, the ‘Jerusalem Post’ is now saying that the two were taken on the border.
‘Ha’aretz’, meanwhile, in a report on the upcoming exchange said: “…a prisoner swap which would see the return of two Israel Defense Forces reservists whose abduction by Hezbollah sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006.” It’s what the report subtly didn’t say that is important here; no mention is made of where they were captured, only that they were ‘abducted’.
The Israelis are still not conceding that the two soldiers were captured inside Lebanon but ‘on the border’ and just plain ‘abducted’ is a step removed from ‘inside Israel’ which they had originally insisted on and used to justify their attack on the Lebanese people.
Whether or not Nasrallah does allude to how the two Israeli soldiers were captured remains to be seen but it certainly looks as though the Israelis are preparing their propaganda and rhetoric in advance of a possible revelation of the truth.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
BUSH SIGNALS ISRAEL TO START THE FINAL CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN
Knowing that the American people would be highly unlikely to support Bush attacking Iran, the President has, instead, told Israel that, if it comes up with a plan that the Bush administration thinks is viable then it would support an Israeli attack on Iran.
The reality, of course, is that if Israel attacks Iran then the US would immediately join in. All Bush is saying is; ‘You start it and we’ll be right with you once you’ve got it going’. For all intents and purposes Bush has effectively told the world that Israel and the US will attack Iran.
The Bush proviso is that Israel should first try the diplomatic route to getting Iran to halt its enrichment program but the world knows that, one, Iran is unlikely to stop what it is legally entitled to do under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and, two, Israel is only using the nuclear enrichment issue as part of its propaganda rhetoric to cover up its real aim of effecting regime change in Iran.
The window of opportunity is now rapidly closing for the Israelis and the Bush administration as the Final Confrontation draws ever closer. While some in the US military may not be in favour of a strike against Iran, they will obey their commander-in-chief in the event that Israel attacks Iran and then orders the US military to support and protect Israel. As I have written previously, it would be impossible for Israel to strike Iran without US support and active participation.
However, what is most troubling, especially now that Bush has as good as come out and said that Iran will be attacked, is the almost total lack of public protest. The massive spontaneous rallies all over the world that we witnessed during the run-up to the Iraq war are non-existent as Bush prepares for another onslaught against an Islamic nation.
This coming war has been waiting to happen for years but, now it seems that it is finally almost upon us, no one seems to care.
Protest against the Final Confrontation now!
The reality, of course, is that if Israel attacks Iran then the US would immediately join in. All Bush is saying is; ‘You start it and we’ll be right with you once you’ve got it going’. For all intents and purposes Bush has effectively told the world that Israel and the US will attack Iran.
The Bush proviso is that Israel should first try the diplomatic route to getting Iran to halt its enrichment program but the world knows that, one, Iran is unlikely to stop what it is legally entitled to do under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and, two, Israel is only using the nuclear enrichment issue as part of its propaganda rhetoric to cover up its real aim of effecting regime change in Iran.
The window of opportunity is now rapidly closing for the Israelis and the Bush administration as the Final Confrontation draws ever closer. While some in the US military may not be in favour of a strike against Iran, they will obey their commander-in-chief in the event that Israel attacks Iran and then orders the US military to support and protect Israel. As I have written previously, it would be impossible for Israel to strike Iran without US support and active participation.
However, what is most troubling, especially now that Bush has as good as come out and said that Iran will be attacked, is the almost total lack of public protest. The massive spontaneous rallies all over the world that we witnessed during the run-up to the Iraq war are non-existent as Bush prepares for another onslaught against an Islamic nation.
This coming war has been waiting to happen for years but, now it seems that it is finally almost upon us, no one seems to care.
Protest against the Final Confrontation now!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
PALESTINE: THE ISRAELI PROPAGANDA AND RHETORIC VERSUS THE GEOPOLITICAL REALITY
Bren Carlill of the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council has written a response to an article written by Paul Heywood-Smith and Bassam Dally, both of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, which recently appeared in ‘The Australian’ newspaper.
Heywood-Smith and Dally argued that, if the Rudd Labor government aspires to play an active and leading role in the pursuit of a long-term peaceful outcome to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, then it must recognise the defiance Israel has displayed as it pursues its significant expansionist ambitions in to territories that are not theirs. They further argue that the Arab-Israel conflict is also at the core of many of the other ills that currently beset the Middle East.
In response, Bren Carlill argues that Israeli expansionism is not a barrier to peace but, rather, that the Palestinians inability to accept an Israeli state is the reason for peace being so elusive. Carlill reinforces his argument about Israeli settlements not being the cause of conflict saying that Israeli settler withdrawal from the Gaza Strip seemed only to increase Palestinian activity against Israel rather than bring peace. He says: “Israel removed its settlements from Gaza, in a voluntary action designed to prompt peaceful Palestinian reciprocation.”
This is a deliberate piece of rhetorical propaganda; indeed, a lie. The then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, removed the settlements because it was simply no longer militarily and economically expedient for the Israeli government to continue to support only the partial colonisation of the Gaza Strip with Israeli settlers. The simple fact was that the cost of protecting the settlers in the Gaza was becoming increasingly prohibitive. Sharon’s plan was simple and is still being played out.
Sharon knew that, after pulling out the settlers, the Palestinians would still use the Gaza as a base for military operations against the Israelis. The propaganda was, and still is, that the Gaza is a separate entity from the West Bank and the rest of Palestine and that, therefore, the Gazans should be grateful that their lands have been returned to them and that there should be no further reason why the Gazans should attack Israel. The geopolitical reality is that the Gaza Strip is not a separate entity and that it is a part of Palestine, as is the West Bank, and the Palestinian fighters in the Gaza are fighting for the freedom of all of Palestine and all Palestinians, not just the Gaza and the Gazans.
The Gaza Strip is a relatively small enclave that the Israelis could deal with easily when they feel the time is right. However, for that time to come, the Gazan people will need to be isolated and persecuted to the point that they are forced to take some drastic action against those that are oppressing them. To this end the Israelis have effectively ghettoised the entire Gaza Strip slowly bringing life in there to an intolerable level which will sooner or later cause a violent reaction from within such that will provide the Israelis with a casus belli to invade the Strip and eventually remove its people to either the Sinai or the West Bank or Jordan while eliminating Hamas in the process. Ultimately the aim would be to incorporate the Gaza Strip into Israel. The Gaza Strip as part of a Greater Israel is the Zionist’s dream and those settlers that were removed from the Gaza will form the vanguard of a new settler movement that will eventually colonise all of the Gaza.
Another aspect of the Zionist dream is for an exclusively Jewish state as against a state that can be shared by Jews and Arabs alike. While Carlill infers that Palestinians are racist because they, as he puts it, ‘fundamentally reject Israel’s right to exist’ he has no problem in telling his readers that: “Absorbing four million non-Jews would remove the Jewish nature of the Jewish state - a non-starter for Israel”. On the one hand Carlill infers that Palestinians and Arabs are racist but then on the other, no doubt hoping that his hypocrisy will go unnoticed, advocates a Jews-only racist state.
The resultant, if the two-state solution were to go ahead, would be two states that will forever resent each other, each believing that the other is living on lands that do not belong to them. They will exist in a state of perpetual conflict that in the end can only result in either the destruction of Israel, since the demographics will never allow Israeli domination in terms of population, or the destruction of the entire region as Israel makes use of its weaponry to suppress Arab aggression toward it.
While the western world, including Australia, has governments that ignore the geopolitical realities of the Palestine-Israel conflict and, instead, perpetuate and succumb to the propaganda and rhetoric of Israeli self-interest there will be no resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict and, while there is no end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, nor will there be any end to the other conflicts that seem to plague the Middle East. A binational single state for Palestinian Jews and Arabs is the only viable solution for a lasting peace in the Middle East and the Australian government, no matter who leads it, could well play a role in achieving such a peace provided it can advocate for Palestinian interests to the same extent that it currently advocates for Israeli interests.
Heywood-Smith and Dally argued that, if the Rudd Labor government aspires to play an active and leading role in the pursuit of a long-term peaceful outcome to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, then it must recognise the defiance Israel has displayed as it pursues its significant expansionist ambitions in to territories that are not theirs. They further argue that the Arab-Israel conflict is also at the core of many of the other ills that currently beset the Middle East.
In response, Bren Carlill argues that Israeli expansionism is not a barrier to peace but, rather, that the Palestinians inability to accept an Israeli state is the reason for peace being so elusive. Carlill reinforces his argument about Israeli settlements not being the cause of conflict saying that Israeli settler withdrawal from the Gaza Strip seemed only to increase Palestinian activity against Israel rather than bring peace. He says: “Israel removed its settlements from Gaza, in a voluntary action designed to prompt peaceful Palestinian reciprocation.”
This is a deliberate piece of rhetorical propaganda; indeed, a lie. The then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, removed the settlements because it was simply no longer militarily and economically expedient for the Israeli government to continue to support only the partial colonisation of the Gaza Strip with Israeli settlers. The simple fact was that the cost of protecting the settlers in the Gaza was becoming increasingly prohibitive. Sharon’s plan was simple and is still being played out.
Sharon knew that, after pulling out the settlers, the Palestinians would still use the Gaza as a base for military operations against the Israelis. The propaganda was, and still is, that the Gaza is a separate entity from the West Bank and the rest of Palestine and that, therefore, the Gazans should be grateful that their lands have been returned to them and that there should be no further reason why the Gazans should attack Israel. The geopolitical reality is that the Gaza Strip is not a separate entity and that it is a part of Palestine, as is the West Bank, and the Palestinian fighters in the Gaza are fighting for the freedom of all of Palestine and all Palestinians, not just the Gaza and the Gazans.
The Gaza Strip is a relatively small enclave that the Israelis could deal with easily when they feel the time is right. However, for that time to come, the Gazan people will need to be isolated and persecuted to the point that they are forced to take some drastic action against those that are oppressing them. To this end the Israelis have effectively ghettoised the entire Gaza Strip slowly bringing life in there to an intolerable level which will sooner or later cause a violent reaction from within such that will provide the Israelis with a casus belli to invade the Strip and eventually remove its people to either the Sinai or the West Bank or Jordan while eliminating Hamas in the process. Ultimately the aim would be to incorporate the Gaza Strip into Israel. The Gaza Strip as part of a Greater Israel is the Zionist’s dream and those settlers that were removed from the Gaza will form the vanguard of a new settler movement that will eventually colonise all of the Gaza.
Another aspect of the Zionist dream is for an exclusively Jewish state as against a state that can be shared by Jews and Arabs alike. While Carlill infers that Palestinians are racist because they, as he puts it, ‘fundamentally reject Israel’s right to exist’ he has no problem in telling his readers that: “Absorbing four million non-Jews would remove the Jewish nature of the Jewish state - a non-starter for Israel”. On the one hand Carlill infers that Palestinians and Arabs are racist but then on the other, no doubt hoping that his hypocrisy will go unnoticed, advocates a Jews-only racist state.
The resultant, if the two-state solution were to go ahead, would be two states that will forever resent each other, each believing that the other is living on lands that do not belong to them. They will exist in a state of perpetual conflict that in the end can only result in either the destruction of Israel, since the demographics will never allow Israeli domination in terms of population, or the destruction of the entire region as Israel makes use of its weaponry to suppress Arab aggression toward it.
While the western world, including Australia, has governments that ignore the geopolitical realities of the Palestine-Israel conflict and, instead, perpetuate and succumb to the propaganda and rhetoric of Israeli self-interest there will be no resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict and, while there is no end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, nor will there be any end to the other conflicts that seem to plague the Middle East. A binational single state for Palestinian Jews and Arabs is the only viable solution for a lasting peace in the Middle East and the Australian government, no matter who leads it, could well play a role in achieving such a peace provided it can advocate for Palestinian interests to the same extent that it currently advocates for Israeli interests.
Friday, July 11, 2008
INSTANT GREATER ISRAEL – JUST ADD WATER.
The main reason that the Israelis have such an abiding interest in including southern Lebanon as a part of a Greater Israel is now becoming very apparent to the wider world as the drought takes hold in Israel and the region surrounding it.
Water has always been a highly valued commodity throughout the region and, as this year’s drought begins to bite, the importance of Israel having possession of south Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of its long-term future becomes increasingly obvious.
The Litani passes closest to Israel at Nabatiya in south Lebanon which is only some four kilometres from the Israeli border and for many years it has been the dream of the Zionists to have control of the Litani’s waters for use in Israel. The last attempt Israel made at taking the Litani River, as we know, ended in disaster for them when they were defeated by Hezbollah in 2006 despite heavy Lebanese civilian losses.
The 2006 failure of Israel to secure the Litani River for themselves was not the first time Israel had been defeated while trying to get at the Litani’s waters. When they invaded Lebanon in 1978 in an operation they actually called Operation Litani, the Israelis were forced to withdraw without removing the PLO bases that they said they were after in what turned out to be a major embarrassment to the then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It wasn’t until the 1982 invasion that Israel found success in occupying south Lebanon and even then they were eventually forced to withdraw in 2000 when it became obvious that they were unable to defeat Hezbollah but not before having supervised the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in September 1982.
Now in 2008 the Israelis are itching to have another go at taking south Lebanon and defeating Hezbollah but this time they realise that they can’t do this without eliminating Iran and Syria from the equation; which, of course, brings us to the stand-off that Israel, the US and Iran find themselves at today.
Not only are the Israelis getting increasingly desperate about hitting Iran before Bush leaves office but there is now the added urgency securing a permanent water source as the drought takes hold in the region. As Israel runs out of water one wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the first people to suffer, of course, are the Palestinians who for nearly a month now have had their water diverted from their taps to Israeli taps.
The Israelis are getting desperate; not just because time is running out but it looks like the water is running out as well – and they can’t get to one without the other!
Water has always been a highly valued commodity throughout the region and, as this year’s drought begins to bite, the importance of Israel having possession of south Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of its long-term future becomes increasingly obvious.
The Litani passes closest to Israel at Nabatiya in south Lebanon which is only some four kilometres from the Israeli border and for many years it has been the dream of the Zionists to have control of the Litani’s waters for use in Israel. The last attempt Israel made at taking the Litani River, as we know, ended in disaster for them when they were defeated by Hezbollah in 2006 despite heavy Lebanese civilian losses.
The 2006 failure of Israel to secure the Litani River for themselves was not the first time Israel had been defeated while trying to get at the Litani’s waters. When they invaded Lebanon in 1978 in an operation they actually called Operation Litani, the Israelis were forced to withdraw without removing the PLO bases that they said they were after in what turned out to be a major embarrassment to the then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It wasn’t until the 1982 invasion that Israel found success in occupying south Lebanon and even then they were eventually forced to withdraw in 2000 when it became obvious that they were unable to defeat Hezbollah but not before having supervised the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in September 1982.
Now in 2008 the Israelis are itching to have another go at taking south Lebanon and defeating Hezbollah but this time they realise that they can’t do this without eliminating Iran and Syria from the equation; which, of course, brings us to the stand-off that Israel, the US and Iran find themselves at today.
Not only are the Israelis getting increasingly desperate about hitting Iran before Bush leaves office but there is now the added urgency securing a permanent water source as the drought takes hold in the region. As Israel runs out of water one wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the first people to suffer, of course, are the Palestinians who for nearly a month now have had their water diverted from their taps to Israeli taps.
The Israelis are getting desperate; not just because time is running out but it looks like the water is running out as well – and they can’t get to one without the other!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
NEOCON PROPAGANDIST TIM BLAIR OF THE MURDOCH PRESS ATTEMPTS TO PUSH PHOTOSHOP FRAUD.
Tim Blair, a neoconservative Australian ‘journalist’ with Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Sydney Daily Telegraph’ has published photos of this weeks test launch of missiles in Iran and has claimed that they have been ‘faked’. The problem is, while they may have been faked, the chances are they were faked not by Iran but by western propagandists the likes of whom Tim Blair is always keen to accommodate at his blog on Murdoch’s paper.
Little Green Footballs, a neoconservative propaganda website, published the so-called fake missile launch photos claiming that their man Charles Johnson was the first to ‘spot the fake’ after seeing it as supplied by Getty Images. The inference was that the Iranians had doctored the photo before releasing it to Getty Images though this is not made clear.
The photos do indeed seem a little fishy but one wonders what the Iranians would have to gain from such an obvious fraud particularly since – and here’s the rub that exposes it as a neocon fraud rather than an Iranian one – similar film and pictures of the launching of the missiles have also been released by Iran which can easily be compared with the fraudulent ones.
Tim Blair has hosted a number of extreme neocon fraudsters and outright liars at his blog in the past and this incident demonstrates further the extremes to which the Tim Blair and the neocons are prepared to go with their warmongering propaganda and blatant propaganda.
Little Green Footballs, a neoconservative propaganda website, published the so-called fake missile launch photos claiming that their man Charles Johnson was the first to ‘spot the fake’ after seeing it as supplied by Getty Images. The inference was that the Iranians had doctored the photo before releasing it to Getty Images though this is not made clear.
The photos do indeed seem a little fishy but one wonders what the Iranians would have to gain from such an obvious fraud particularly since – and here’s the rub that exposes it as a neocon fraud rather than an Iranian one – similar film and pictures of the launching of the missiles have also been released by Iran which can easily be compared with the fraudulent ones.
Tim Blair has hosted a number of extreme neocon fraudsters and outright liars at his blog in the past and this incident demonstrates further the extremes to which the Tim Blair and the neocons are prepared to go with their warmongering propaganda and blatant propaganda.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER NEEDLESSLY KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for some reason seems determined to keep Australian soldiers on Afghani real estate killing Afghanis who are trying to get rid of the foreign invaders from their lands.
Another Australian soldier was killed yesterday bringing the total number of Australian soldiers killed there to six with another forty having been wounded. Australian Defence Chief Angus Houston told a press conference that the latest death would hardened the resolve of Australian forces to "go after" Taliban bombmakers. Houston failed to mention that the soldier’s death would also harden the resolve of Taliban bombmakers to ‘go after’ more Australian and allied soldiers in their efforts to rid their country of the Western invaders that occupy their lands.
Australian soldiers returning from service in Afghanistan, including SAS and other Special Forces soldiers, are saying that they are fighting a losing battle there and it is time to leave. Most concede that they will never be able to win the war there and that the longer they are there, the worse the problem will become.
More and more innocent Afghanis are being killed and for everyone the allies kill so the allies create another hundred enemies. Despite the allies’ sophisticated weaponry and the presence of highly trained Special Forces soldiers, the war in Afghanistan can never be won. All foreign troops that have invaded Afghanistan must leave and the Afghan people must be left to determine their own future and not have it dictated to by self-righteous westerners.
Another Australian soldier was killed yesterday bringing the total number of Australian soldiers killed there to six with another forty having been wounded. Australian Defence Chief Angus Houston told a press conference that the latest death would hardened the resolve of Australian forces to "go after" Taliban bombmakers. Houston failed to mention that the soldier’s death would also harden the resolve of Taliban bombmakers to ‘go after’ more Australian and allied soldiers in their efforts to rid their country of the Western invaders that occupy their lands.
Australian soldiers returning from service in Afghanistan, including SAS and other Special Forces soldiers, are saying that they are fighting a losing battle there and it is time to leave. Most concede that they will never be able to win the war there and that the longer they are there, the worse the problem will become.
More and more innocent Afghanis are being killed and for everyone the allies kill so the allies create another hundred enemies. Despite the allies’ sophisticated weaponry and the presence of highly trained Special Forces soldiers, the war in Afghanistan can never be won. All foreign troops that have invaded Afghanistan must leave and the Afghan people must be left to determine their own future and not have it dictated to by self-righteous westerners.
ISRAELIS TRY YET AGAIN TO INFLAME TENSIONS WITH HEZBOLLAH IN ORDER TO PROVOKE IRAN TOWARD THE FINAL CONFRONTATION.
It seems the Israelis are ratcheting up the ante for more conflict which they, no doubt, hope will ultimately trigger the final confrontation with Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today (Wednesday) will meet with his cabinet to discuss what he claims is the collapse of UN Resolution 1701 which put an end to Israel’s attack against the Lebanese people in 2006. Olmert claims that Hezbollah are being re-armed by Syria. The ‘Jerusalem Post’ report quotes an unidentified Israeli official as saying: “Syria is rearming Hizbullah at a rapid pace and this is proof that 1701 has completely failed." While claiming that this was proof of 1701s failure, the official failed to provide any actual proof that Syria is, indeed, rearming Hezbollah. The official also failed to mention that Israel itself, meanwhile, was being rearmed by the US; the same kind of arms that Israel used to attack Lebanon in the first place.
The Lebanese people have every right to arm themselves against Israeli aggression. In 2006 Israel launched a massive bombing campaign against the Lebanese people followed by an invasion of south Lebanon on the pretext that two of their conscripts had been captured by Hezbollah fighters. Israel claimed that they had been ‘kidnapped’ during a cross border incursion into Israel by Hezbollah fighters.
Initial reports saying that the Israeli soldiers had been captured inside Lebanon were quickly changed to match Israeli claims that they had not. Claims also by the Israelis that the attack against Lebanon was as a spontaneous reaction to Hezbollah’s capture of the Israeli soldiers were soon proven to be falsehoods as it was quickly revealed that the attack had been planned months ahead of the capture of the two soldiers.
Two years later and the Israelis have now become desperate to initiate a war against Iran before George W. Bush leaves the US presidency. By upping the ante against Hezbollah, Israel hopes to both provoke and create a casus belli for war against them which they hope, in turn, will then lead to escalation which will ultimately provide Israel with the final confrontation they have been seeking for so long.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today (Wednesday) will meet with his cabinet to discuss what he claims is the collapse of UN Resolution 1701 which put an end to Israel’s attack against the Lebanese people in 2006. Olmert claims that Hezbollah are being re-armed by Syria. The ‘Jerusalem Post’ report quotes an unidentified Israeli official as saying: “Syria is rearming Hizbullah at a rapid pace and this is proof that 1701 has completely failed." While claiming that this was proof of 1701s failure, the official failed to provide any actual proof that Syria is, indeed, rearming Hezbollah. The official also failed to mention that Israel itself, meanwhile, was being rearmed by the US; the same kind of arms that Israel used to attack Lebanon in the first place.
The Lebanese people have every right to arm themselves against Israeli aggression. In 2006 Israel launched a massive bombing campaign against the Lebanese people followed by an invasion of south Lebanon on the pretext that two of their conscripts had been captured by Hezbollah fighters. Israel claimed that they had been ‘kidnapped’ during a cross border incursion into Israel by Hezbollah fighters.
Initial reports saying that the Israeli soldiers had been captured inside Lebanon were quickly changed to match Israeli claims that they had not. Claims also by the Israelis that the attack against Lebanon was as a spontaneous reaction to Hezbollah’s capture of the Israeli soldiers were soon proven to be falsehoods as it was quickly revealed that the attack had been planned months ahead of the capture of the two soldiers.
Two years later and the Israelis have now become desperate to initiate a war against Iran before George W. Bush leaves the US presidency. By upping the ante against Hezbollah, Israel hopes to both provoke and create a casus belli for war against them which they hope, in turn, will then lead to escalation which will ultimately provide Israel with the final confrontation they have been seeking for so long.
Monday, July 07, 2008
CON ‘THE NEOCON’ COUGHLIN STRIKES AGAIN!
The extreme right-wing warmonger and neocon, the aptly named Con Coughlin, executive foreign editor of the UK ‘Daily Telegraph’, is up to his usual tricks publishing totally unsubstantiated claims, this time, about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program.
Fortunately, this lying fraudster has no credibility left after other claims he has made have turned out to be proven lies and completely fraudulent, so this particular claim can also be dismissed as merely another attempt by Coughlin to peddle his sick propaganda. While Coughlin’s claims can be dismissed with the contempt it deserves, his latest attempt at warmongering nonetheless demonstrates the extremes to which neoconservatives and the right-wing loonies within the mainstream media are prepared to go in order to perpetuate the myth of the Axis of Evil and its associated propaganda in order to gain support for an attack against Iran.
It is clear that the neocon warmongers still have influence as they push for an attack against Iran on behalf of the Zionist government of Israel. The peace-loving Jewish peoples of Israel and throughout the Diaspora don’t need enemies when the have Con ‘the Neocon’ Coughlin as their friend.
Fortunately, this lying fraudster has no credibility left after other claims he has made have turned out to be proven lies and completely fraudulent, so this particular claim can also be dismissed as merely another attempt by Coughlin to peddle his sick propaganda. While Coughlin’s claims can be dismissed with the contempt it deserves, his latest attempt at warmongering nonetheless demonstrates the extremes to which neoconservatives and the right-wing loonies within the mainstream media are prepared to go in order to perpetuate the myth of the Axis of Evil and its associated propaganda in order to gain support for an attack against Iran.
It is clear that the neocon warmongers still have influence as they push for an attack against Iran on behalf of the Zionist government of Israel. The peace-loving Jewish peoples of Israel and throughout the Diaspora don’t need enemies when the have Con ‘the Neocon’ Coughlin as their friend.
U.S. DESPERATE TO AVOID PUBLIC OPINION BACKLASH IN RUN UP TO WAR AGAINST IRAN.
The Bush administration is desperate to avoid an overwhelming backlash in American and world public opinion against their plans for war against Iran. In order to achieve this, the Bush administration has steered clear of making any overt threats of war and has instead pushed the notion that it is attempting all diplomatic avenues open to it in order to ‘get the Iranians to give up their plans for nuclear weapons’.
In the run up to the war against Iraq the Bush administration and their allies made it quite clear that an attack against Iraq was imminent. The result was that the peoples of America and the world took to the streets in their millions to demonstrate against war. Bush, especially in an election year, cannot afford to allow that to happen again. During the run up to the Iraq war Bush was happy to let American and world public opinion have its say but ignore it anyway because he knew that he had both the American congress and many of the western world’s governing politicians supporting him. He also knew that once the invasion was started there would be a sense of fait accompli settling in straight away and there would be no more demonstrations, at least not of the magnitude the world saw prior to the invasion.
The run up to the war against Iran has followed an almost identical rhetoric to that which preceded the run up to war against Iraq. Indeed, I would not be the first to suggest that the only difference has been the replacement of the letter ‘q’ in Iraq for the letter ‘n’ in Iran in terms of the script being used by the US administration and the Israeli government for its current propaganda onslaught against the Iranians.
In the run up to the war against Iraq the US and Israel accused Iraq of having WMDs, including a nuclear weapons program, that was an immediate threat to Israel, the US and the rest of the world. The US government and their allies insisted they had irrefutable evidence of such weapons. While some right-wing leaders of western nations like the UK and Australia went along with the US lies and became allies of the US when they did invade Iraq, they were unable to convince a sceptical United Nations General Assembly or Security Council that an invasion was absolutely necessary. It quickly became obvious after the invasion that there had been no WMDs and that the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq had been based entirely on lies.
This time, the US and Israel is taking a slightly different approach in their run up to their war against Iran. Firstly, no effort at all is being made to suggest that the UN should support an attack against Iran over its so-called nuclear weapons program – they know that the world isn’t going to be taken in by that ploy again. Indeed, the US, apart from saying that the ‘military card’ is still on the table, has avoided suggesting that military action will occur. In that respect the US and Israel have also adopted a kind of political version of the classic ‘good cop bad cop’ strategy against Iran. On the one hand we have Israel champing at the bit to attack Iran, and on the other we have their allies the US acting as though they are the good guys wanting to give Iran the chance to ‘come clean’ on their ‘nuclear weapons program’ and threatening only sanctions against Iran.
The problem with this is that both Israel and the US know – as does the IAEA, the UN and most of the rest of the world – that Iran has no ‘nuclear weapons program’ to actually ‘come clean’ about and that the ‘nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric is simply a façade to disguise their real objective of achieving regime change in Iran.
Given the overwhelming disgust that the people of the world demonstrated just prior to the obviously imminent invasion of Iraq and the subsequent revelation that it was entirely based on lies, and that these same lies are now being used against Iran for similar purposes, the Bush administration has become desperate to avoid overt talk of imminent war against Iran. This time around the President does not have the support of all of congress – especially in an election year when the support of the American people is also required in order to maintain what little support the President does have in congress. And nor does Bush have the support of any other nation, except Israel, for an attack against Iran. For these reasons Bush cannot overtly support an immediate attack against Iran. To do so would invite disaster for the administration, the Republican Party and what’s left of US standing in the rest of the world.
The only remaining scenario to avoid a world-wide pre-war public opinion backlash is for Israel to initially launch a seemingly unilateral surprise attack against Iran and its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and possibly even Syria which the US will then feel obliged to support in order to prevent an Iranian retaliation.
I say ‘seemingly unilateral surprise attack’ because, regardless of what Israel does or how it does it, it will not be able to do it without US collusion and support during the planning of any such an attack.
US talk of sanctions through the UN is just that – talk. The US and Israel know that sanctions will not bring about regime change and they know that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Talk of sanctions merely plays for time – time which is rapidly now running out.
The world should not be fooled again by US and Israeli lies. They will attack Iran just a surely as they did Iraq – only this time the consequences will be terrifying for the entire world and not just for Iran.
In the run up to the war against Iraq the Bush administration and their allies made it quite clear that an attack against Iraq was imminent. The result was that the peoples of America and the world took to the streets in their millions to demonstrate against war. Bush, especially in an election year, cannot afford to allow that to happen again. During the run up to the Iraq war Bush was happy to let American and world public opinion have its say but ignore it anyway because he knew that he had both the American congress and many of the western world’s governing politicians supporting him. He also knew that once the invasion was started there would be a sense of fait accompli settling in straight away and there would be no more demonstrations, at least not of the magnitude the world saw prior to the invasion.
The run up to the war against Iran has followed an almost identical rhetoric to that which preceded the run up to war against Iraq. Indeed, I would not be the first to suggest that the only difference has been the replacement of the letter ‘q’ in Iraq for the letter ‘n’ in Iran in terms of the script being used by the US administration and the Israeli government for its current propaganda onslaught against the Iranians.
In the run up to the war against Iraq the US and Israel accused Iraq of having WMDs, including a nuclear weapons program, that was an immediate threat to Israel, the US and the rest of the world. The US government and their allies insisted they had irrefutable evidence of such weapons. While some right-wing leaders of western nations like the UK and Australia went along with the US lies and became allies of the US when they did invade Iraq, they were unable to convince a sceptical United Nations General Assembly or Security Council that an invasion was absolutely necessary. It quickly became obvious after the invasion that there had been no WMDs and that the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq had been based entirely on lies.
This time, the US and Israel is taking a slightly different approach in their run up to their war against Iran. Firstly, no effort at all is being made to suggest that the UN should support an attack against Iran over its so-called nuclear weapons program – they know that the world isn’t going to be taken in by that ploy again. Indeed, the US, apart from saying that the ‘military card’ is still on the table, has avoided suggesting that military action will occur. In that respect the US and Israel have also adopted a kind of political version of the classic ‘good cop bad cop’ strategy against Iran. On the one hand we have Israel champing at the bit to attack Iran, and on the other we have their allies the US acting as though they are the good guys wanting to give Iran the chance to ‘come clean’ on their ‘nuclear weapons program’ and threatening only sanctions against Iran.
The problem with this is that both Israel and the US know – as does the IAEA, the UN and most of the rest of the world – that Iran has no ‘nuclear weapons program’ to actually ‘come clean’ about and that the ‘nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric is simply a façade to disguise their real objective of achieving regime change in Iran.
Given the overwhelming disgust that the people of the world demonstrated just prior to the obviously imminent invasion of Iraq and the subsequent revelation that it was entirely based on lies, and that these same lies are now being used against Iran for similar purposes, the Bush administration has become desperate to avoid overt talk of imminent war against Iran. This time around the President does not have the support of all of congress – especially in an election year when the support of the American people is also required in order to maintain what little support the President does have in congress. And nor does Bush have the support of any other nation, except Israel, for an attack against Iran. For these reasons Bush cannot overtly support an immediate attack against Iran. To do so would invite disaster for the administration, the Republican Party and what’s left of US standing in the rest of the world.
The only remaining scenario to avoid a world-wide pre-war public opinion backlash is for Israel to initially launch a seemingly unilateral surprise attack against Iran and its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and possibly even Syria which the US will then feel obliged to support in order to prevent an Iranian retaliation.
I say ‘seemingly unilateral surprise attack’ because, regardless of what Israel does or how it does it, it will not be able to do it without US collusion and support during the planning of any such an attack.
US talk of sanctions through the UN is just that – talk. The US and Israel know that sanctions will not bring about regime change and they know that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Talk of sanctions merely plays for time – time which is rapidly now running out.
The world should not be fooled again by US and Israeli lies. They will attack Iran just a surely as they did Iraq – only this time the consequences will be terrifying for the entire world and not just for Iran.
Friday, July 04, 2008
AN ATTACK AGAINST IRAN WILL BE A JOINT ISRAEL-U.S. OPERATION DESPITE THE PROPAGANDA AND RHETORIC
There should be no misunderstanding here. If there is an attack against Iran, it will be by BOTH Israel and the US. It would be impossible for Israel to attack Iran without the nod from the US. It will be joint effort.
The current rhetoric about US reluctance to attack Iran before giving other options a chance and about the possibility of Israel going it alone is pure propaganda designed to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security because they know that the Israelis can’t do it on their own. The current rhetoric also creates the impression that the US actually wants to give ‘diplomacy a chance’ which, in turn, creates the impression that it is the US holding back the Israelis from attacking Iran.
The reality, however, is this; Israel, at the very least, will need to overfly Iraq in order to get to Iran and will therefore require US permission. Israel will need to acquire the special weapons it needs for such an operation from the US. The US will need to provide airspace control over the entire route from Israel to Iran and back. The US will need to supply Israel with extraordinary amounts of jet fuel. The US will need to pre-plan and provide air support for unexpected contingencies during a strike operation. The US will need to have other preparations in hand ready for any Iranian retaliation. In other words, the idea of Israel simply going after Iran on its own or against the wishes of the US is a complete illusion.
Since the real objective has always been regime change, to be achieved by destroying Iran’s military and political institutions, and not the destruction of Iran’s so-called nuclear facilities, though these no doubt will be hit just to make it seem as though they were the objective, with their real primary targets presented to the media as merely secondary, the Israelis will require a massive air fleet to launch such an attack with their strike aircraft possibly having to do two or even three sorties each throughout the operation. The real challenge for the Israelis, however, lies in their ability to prevent an Iranian counter attack against Israel. This means destroying Iranian missile sites during the initial attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and before they are able to mobilise them into action; a massive undertaking that Israel alone could not undertake.
The threat by the US and Israel to take on Iran has been one of those ‘on-again off-again’ threats that has dominated the entire Bush presidency. Now the Bush presidency is drawing to close and an Obama presidency will not attack Iran. One can reasonably conclude therefore that an attack against Iran is now imminent if for no other reason than the opportunity to do so is rapidly disappearing.
The US by using the propaganda and rhetoric of a ‘diplomatic resolution to solve the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis’ are hoping to avert the public backlash there would be if the US started simply issuing overt threats in a run-up to a war against Iran. A ‘surprise’ attack, on the other hand, would be fait accompli which, as usual, a compliant media and an American public pre-occupied with simply trying to keep a roof over their heads will just accept.
The current rhetoric about US reluctance to attack Iran before giving other options a chance and about the possibility of Israel going it alone is pure propaganda designed to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security because they know that the Israelis can’t do it on their own. The current rhetoric also creates the impression that the US actually wants to give ‘diplomacy a chance’ which, in turn, creates the impression that it is the US holding back the Israelis from attacking Iran.
The reality, however, is this; Israel, at the very least, will need to overfly Iraq in order to get to Iran and will therefore require US permission. Israel will need to acquire the special weapons it needs for such an operation from the US. The US will need to provide airspace control over the entire route from Israel to Iran and back. The US will need to supply Israel with extraordinary amounts of jet fuel. The US will need to pre-plan and provide air support for unexpected contingencies during a strike operation. The US will need to have other preparations in hand ready for any Iranian retaliation. In other words, the idea of Israel simply going after Iran on its own or against the wishes of the US is a complete illusion.
Since the real objective has always been regime change, to be achieved by destroying Iran’s military and political institutions, and not the destruction of Iran’s so-called nuclear facilities, though these no doubt will be hit just to make it seem as though they were the objective, with their real primary targets presented to the media as merely secondary, the Israelis will require a massive air fleet to launch such an attack with their strike aircraft possibly having to do two or even three sorties each throughout the operation. The real challenge for the Israelis, however, lies in their ability to prevent an Iranian counter attack against Israel. This means destroying Iranian missile sites during the initial attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and before they are able to mobilise them into action; a massive undertaking that Israel alone could not undertake.
The threat by the US and Israel to take on Iran has been one of those ‘on-again off-again’ threats that has dominated the entire Bush presidency. Now the Bush presidency is drawing to close and an Obama presidency will not attack Iran. One can reasonably conclude therefore that an attack against Iran is now imminent if for no other reason than the opportunity to do so is rapidly disappearing.
The US by using the propaganda and rhetoric of a ‘diplomatic resolution to solve the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis’ are hoping to avert the public backlash there would be if the US started simply issuing overt threats in a run-up to a war against Iran. A ‘surprise’ attack, on the other hand, would be fait accompli which, as usual, a compliant media and an American public pre-occupied with simply trying to keep a roof over their heads will just accept.
ISRAELI ZIONIST LEADER WANTS TO TAKE A LEAF OUT OF THE BOOK OF THE PAST MASTERS OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister, apparently wants to have the home of the Palestinian that went on a rampage killing three people before being killed himself destroyed, presumably by bulldozer, and despite the fact that it is home to some 20 people.
Beside the fact that the collective punishment of a civilian population is a war crime; one has to wonder how many homes would be left standing if the Palestinian people were able to commit a similar crime against the Israeli people every time the Israelis attacked the Palestinians.
I’m not suggesting that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander – two wrongs never ever make a right – but it does give the crime greater perspective when viewed this way.
One should also remember who taught the Israelis this particular method of collective retribution and, more importantly, remember what the long term objectives were behind it.
Beside the fact that the collective punishment of a civilian population is a war crime; one has to wonder how many homes would be left standing if the Palestinian people were able to commit a similar crime against the Israeli people every time the Israelis attacked the Palestinians.
I’m not suggesting that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander – two wrongs never ever make a right – but it does give the crime greater perspective when viewed this way.
One should also remember who taught the Israelis this particular method of collective retribution and, more importantly, remember what the long term objectives were behind it.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
AUSTRALIAN WARMONGERING EX-FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER AND U.N. HATER SEEKS JOB AS U.N. PEACEMAKER!
Alexander Downer, ex-Foreign Minister and potential co-defendant war-criminal with ex-Australian Prime Minister John Howard over their role in the destruction of Iraq, has today resigned his seat on the back benches of the Australian Parliament in order, of all things, to take up a position as a UN peace diplomat in the seriously delicate and ongoing negotiations for peace in the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
The negotiations over Cyprus, as has been pointed out to Downer, and which have been going on for decades, are extremely delicate and complex, and one has to wonder if Downer is the right person for the job considering his somewhat erratic and indelicate diplomacy skills and his well-known and historical utter disdain of the United Nations.
His disdain for the UN was first displayed even before 9/11. In March 2000 when the UN Human Rights Committee rebuked Australia over its native title laws, Downer, then Australian Foreign Minister, was quoted as saying: “We are a democratically elected government in one of the most liberal and democratic countries you will find on earth, and if a UN committee wants to play domestic politics in Australia it will end up with a bloody nose” Is this really the sort of language that one would associate with a wannabe peacemaker; a peacemaker in one of the worlds most delicate and long-running conflicts?
Of course, Downers show of utter contempt for the UN when the UN refused to allow the US, the UK, Australia and their allies a mandate to go ahead and destroy Iraq, is legendary when in 2003 at the time of the invasion of Iraq he condemned the UN and multilateral diplomacy as “irrelevant”.
One needs to wonder how this warmongering UN-hater can end up being considered for a job as a UN peacemaker.
The negotiations over Cyprus, as has been pointed out to Downer, and which have been going on for decades, are extremely delicate and complex, and one has to wonder if Downer is the right person for the job considering his somewhat erratic and indelicate diplomacy skills and his well-known and historical utter disdain of the United Nations.
His disdain for the UN was first displayed even before 9/11. In March 2000 when the UN Human Rights Committee rebuked Australia over its native title laws, Downer, then Australian Foreign Minister, was quoted as saying: “We are a democratically elected government in one of the most liberal and democratic countries you will find on earth, and if a UN committee wants to play domestic politics in Australia it will end up with a bloody nose” Is this really the sort of language that one would associate with a wannabe peacemaker; a peacemaker in one of the worlds most delicate and long-running conflicts?
Of course, Downers show of utter contempt for the UN when the UN refused to allow the US, the UK, Australia and their allies a mandate to go ahead and destroy Iraq, is legendary when in 2003 at the time of the invasion of Iraq he condemned the UN and multilateral diplomacy as “irrelevant”.
One needs to wonder how this warmongering UN-hater can end up being considered for a job as a UN peacemaker.
NEOCONS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS RUSH TO PROTECT DEBUNKING9/11.COM FROM BEING EXPOSED AS A FRAUD.
My accusation at the beginning of the week that the debunking9/11.com website was a neoconservative-inspired site dedicated to preventing the revelation of evidence showing that the events of 9/11 were not as the US government had said has provoked a flurry of mostly fringe lunatic comments supporting the now increasingly discredited government story. In doing so, however, the neoconservatives and their supporters have revealed that, indeed, the site is nothing more than a neoconservative propaganda site designed specifically to feed the paranoia of those that fear the truth of what their government and allies are able to do in the pursuit of power, greed and hegemony.
Of those that rushed to support the government’s version of events and the so-called ‘debunking’ website, none were able to offer any objective argument that supported their view that the government’s version of events is correct. All were only able to offer the insults and abuse that one has come to expect from frothing-at-the-mouth Bush and neocon supporters when discussing these issues. A person calling himself James B and who has his own blog that is dedicated to simply belittling and demeaning those who offer alternative scenarios as to what happened on 9/11 and who is associated with the debunking9/11.com website posted in response to my article but, as could be expected, was only able to offer further insults which he then proceeded to elaborate on at his own blog thus confirming the desperation paranoia of the situation they now find themselves in.
There is also one B.J. Edwards who runs yet another what can truly only be described as a lunatic fringe blog dedicated to preventing evidence of 9/11 collusion being revealed. This site is unable to hide its neoconservative links as it praises the works of David Frum, one of neoconservatism’s most outrageous warmongers, dedicated Zionist extremist and Islamophobe.
What gives these and other so-called ‘debunkers’ away is their extreme paranoia over the truth of the events of 9/11 being revealed. In the classical tradition of the paranoid they betray themselves by attempting to ferociously belittle and demean the ideas and notions that they fear most in their lives. This is done without any consideration to rational or objective argument. Only the neoconservative political agenda serves what little rationale they have.
Those that provide the funds that support the neoconservative cause have found a way of providing fodder for these paranoid extremist’s by providing a website that makes futile attempts to make pseudo-technical and pseudo-academic argument against what is increasingly being exposed as a lie.
The response to my piece that accused the ‘debunking9/11.com’ website of being just another neoconservative-backed propaganda website serves only to validate that accusation.
Of those that rushed to support the government’s version of events and the so-called ‘debunking’ website, none were able to offer any objective argument that supported their view that the government’s version of events is correct. All were only able to offer the insults and abuse that one has come to expect from frothing-at-the-mouth Bush and neocon supporters when discussing these issues. A person calling himself James B and who has his own blog that is dedicated to simply belittling and demeaning those who offer alternative scenarios as to what happened on 9/11 and who is associated with the debunking9/11.com website posted in response to my article but, as could be expected, was only able to offer further insults which he then proceeded to elaborate on at his own blog thus confirming the desperation paranoia of the situation they now find themselves in.
There is also one B.J. Edwards who runs yet another what can truly only be described as a lunatic fringe blog dedicated to preventing evidence of 9/11 collusion being revealed. This site is unable to hide its neoconservative links as it praises the works of David Frum, one of neoconservatism’s most outrageous warmongers, dedicated Zionist extremist and Islamophobe.
What gives these and other so-called ‘debunkers’ away is their extreme paranoia over the truth of the events of 9/11 being revealed. In the classical tradition of the paranoid they betray themselves by attempting to ferociously belittle and demean the ideas and notions that they fear most in their lives. This is done without any consideration to rational or objective argument. Only the neoconservative political agenda serves what little rationale they have.
Those that provide the funds that support the neoconservative cause have found a way of providing fodder for these paranoid extremist’s by providing a website that makes futile attempts to make pseudo-technical and pseudo-academic argument against what is increasingly being exposed as a lie.
The response to my piece that accused the ‘debunking9/11.com’ website of being just another neoconservative-backed propaganda website serves only to validate that accusation.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
REVENGE IS SWEET?
There was a rather interesting story in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today about how President Ahmadinejad of Iran may have been the target of an ‘X-Ray Plot’ while on a trip to a UN sponsored global food summit in Rome earlier this year.
Apparently the x-ray security devices were being remotely controlled so that they were able to deliver higher doses of x-rays than normal to the point that they could do permanent damage to a person.
The whole thing sounds a little fanciful until one realises that this method of permanently injuring or even causing the death of somebody had been suggested before. It sounds even less fanciful when one learns that this method of permanently injuring a person was first thought up by the Nazis when the SS thought it may be an efficient way of sterilising the European Jewish population without any pain being administered. The plan in theory was simple: As the German occupiers moved in to a country they would simply order all Jews to report to an office to register. As a victim was being interviewed by a clerk a dose of radiation would be delivered to the genitals from an x-ray machine hidden behind the counter. The victims wouldn’t even know they had been zapped until they wondered why they were no longer able to procreate. The main problem with the plan was that people react in different ways to various doses of radiation. What might be just right for one person might be far too much for another.(1) The game would soon be up for the Nazis.
Sixty-five years later, however, and with the technological bugs ironed out of the idea… Well, who would do a thing like that to Ahmadinejad?
ENDNOTE
(1) Tiefenbacher, “Letter to Viktor Brack Concerning the X-Ray Sterilization Experiments”, 12 May 1941, Harvard Law School. HLS Item no. 115.
Apparently the x-ray security devices were being remotely controlled so that they were able to deliver higher doses of x-rays than normal to the point that they could do permanent damage to a person.
The whole thing sounds a little fanciful until one realises that this method of permanently injuring or even causing the death of somebody had been suggested before. It sounds even less fanciful when one learns that this method of permanently injuring a person was first thought up by the Nazis when the SS thought it may be an efficient way of sterilising the European Jewish population without any pain being administered. The plan in theory was simple: As the German occupiers moved in to a country they would simply order all Jews to report to an office to register. As a victim was being interviewed by a clerk a dose of radiation would be delivered to the genitals from an x-ray machine hidden behind the counter. The victims wouldn’t even know they had been zapped until they wondered why they were no longer able to procreate. The main problem with the plan was that people react in different ways to various doses of radiation. What might be just right for one person might be far too much for another.(1) The game would soon be up for the Nazis.
Sixty-five years later, however, and with the technological bugs ironed out of the idea… Well, who would do a thing like that to Ahmadinejad?
ENDNOTE
(1) Tiefenbacher, “Letter to Viktor Brack Concerning the X-Ray Sterilization Experiments”, 12 May 1941, Harvard Law School. HLS Item no. 115.
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