IS A BUILDING FREEZE FOR POLLARD’S RELEASE ON THE TABLE?

Back in October of this year, I suggested that a deal might be in the wind whereby Netanyahu would offer a settlement building freeze in exchange for Israel spy, Jonathan Pollard’s freedom from jail in the US.

It didn’t happen then, but it seems that Netanyahu is now asking for Pollard’s release on ‘humanitarian’ grounds. Of course, he hasn’t yet offered a settlement freeze in order to get the talks going again but, then, even if they were to restart, we all know exactly how they’ll end.

Could it be that a behind-the-scenes deal has already been struck? Netanyahu is going to stick his neck out and ask President Obama openly in a public statement to release Pollard. If Obama then refuses to release Pollard, then relations between the US and Israel – or, more specifically, between Obama and the Zionists – are likely to go downhill and Netanyahu will lose lots of face.

If, on the other hand, Pollard is released, will Netanyahu then make a ‘goodwill gesture’ in return of ordering a freeze on settlement building, even just a little one?

Time will tell.

THE U.S. AND SOUTH KOREA SET TO DELIBERATELY PROVOKE WAR AGAINST NORTH KOREA.

South Korea announced today that it will go ahead with an artillery drill that will see the South Koreans lob shells close to disputed waters near North Korea.

North Korea has announced that they will view this as a direct provocation and will respond accordingly in retaliation. Any response from the North Koreans could then trigger a major conflagration on the peninsula that could even escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

Both Russia and China have advised South Korea not to go ahead with the drill and have asked the United Nations to intervene. Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging North Korea to show restraint despite, it seems, it looks like being South Korea that’s going to fire the first shots.

One cannot over-emphasise how dangerous this situation can become if the South Koreans go ahead as planned. Only three weeks ago the South Koreans fired artillery shells into the same area as they proposed to over the next few days. They were warned then that the North Koreans would retaliate and they did. So why do it again?

One needs to ask: who’s really to blame here for shoving this potential disaster, not just for the region, but for the world, right up to the edge?

One can rest assured that South Korea would be doing absolutely nothing to upset the North Koreans in this way without the full knowledge or encouragement or even instigation of the US.

Already the US military ‘observers and trainers’ are in South Korea to oversee what can only be termed as direct provocations.

America has become desperate to find a way out of its economic and its domestic socio-political situation and war has always been seen as a panacea for its ills in the past both as a distraction from its woes and as a means of reuniting a fractured society. The problem is; America is very disunited and needs a very big distraction to bring back together again.

Let’s hope that a nuclear holocaust is not what these lunatics have in mind as a ‘distraction’!


UPDATE 1
Monday, 20 December 2010.

The US has blocked efforts by the 15 member UN Security Council (UNSC) to come to an agreement over the Korean crisis. The US is insisting that any statement must include a condemnation of North Korea’s ‘aggression’ against South Korea which occurred on 23 November 2010 – an incident which was actually started by South Korea – and an earlier incident when North Korea was accused of sinking a South Korean warship by torpedo launched from a submarine.

China, a permanent member of the UNSC, has refused to concede to US demands that such a condemnation be include in any statement.

The South Korean firing of live shells toward disputed waters will begin once the fog has lifted.


UPDATE 2

It seems the US has been thwarted again in their efforts to get a war going against the North Koreans and the world can stop holding its breath yet again.

The South Koreans fired off their provocative artillery rounds into disputed waters (with thousands of miles of their own coastline that they can lob shells from ‘til their hearts are content, what else could it be but deliberate provocation?) without any of the promised retaliation from the North Koreans, a restraint, not doubt, instigated by the Chinese.

I guess the Iran office at the Pentagon will get busy again now.

AUSTRALIA’S RACISTS ARE TO BLAME FOR THE CHRISTMAS ISLAND BOATPEOPLE TRAGEDY.

The noisy racists of Australia and their cheerleaders in the Australian right-wing Murdoch press need to take the blame for the tragedies that have left hundreds dead in the seas around Australia. The policies they have demanded from successive governments culminated in yesterday’s tragedy that saw some thirty people, including women and children, drowned as they tried to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean.

These racist cheer leaders are Tim Blair and Piers Akerman of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, and Andrew Bolt of Melbourne’s Sun-Herald newspaper. Bolt is still awaiting trial facing charges of racial vilification of Aboriginal people while Akerman famously accused Muslims of starting the February 2009 bushfires in Victoria. Both newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Asylum seeking refugees are desperate to come to Australia and Australia’s racists are just as desperate to keep them out by trying to create an impression that public opinion actually supports their demands that boatpeople do not come to Australia. As a result, successive Australian governments, most of which are to some extent or another racist themselves and who have partially conceded to the racists demands in exchange for votes, have created conditions where asylum seeking refugees need to take extreme risks in order to try and touch Australian soil.

Ex-prime minister John Howard, a well known racist from way back, even went to the trouble of excising some of Australia’s island territories in order to deprive asylum seekers of any ability to claim having arrived in Australia. Refugees that reached these islands were transferred to off-shore facilities where they were kept in long drawn-out limbo whilst their claims were processed; a process that often took years for some refugees.

Following the recent tragedy off Christmas Island, Andrew Bolt, Australia’s most notorious racist and Islamophobe, was the first and quickest to jump on the politicisation wagon even before the tragedy had even finished unfolding by declaring in his online hate column that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Labor government had ‘blood on their hands’ for not being tough on asylum seekers claiming that by not being tough they are being ‘lured to their deaths’. Bolt later went on to accuse Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, also of having ‘blood on his hands’.

Senator Brown had written an open letter saying, quite rightly, that it was Bolt that had blood on his hands for having supported the wars that created the refugee crisis in the first place.

The bottom line is this: Bolt and his comrades Tim Blair and Piers Akerman, together with their flock of supporters at their respective blogs, are racists that do not want non-European people, particularly Muslim people, in Australia. Bolt’s politicisation of this tragedy in order to advance his racist aims and his appalling and transparent facade of pretending to actually care about what happened to these people should disgust fair-minded Australians.

AUSTRALIAN INTELLIGENCE FEARED ISRAEL MAY LAUNCH AN ATTACK AGAINST IRAN.

A report in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald today says that Australia’s intelligence agencies feared that Israel would launch an attack against Iran which might draw both the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East.

In a cable WikiLeaks have provided to the Sydney Morning Herald’s sister paper, Melbourne’s The Age, the US embassy in Canberra reported to Washington in December 2008 that the peak Australian intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), were concerned about a possible Israeli strike against Iran. Then in March 2009 another cable was sent to Washington, DC, from US intelligence agents in Australia saying:

The AIC's [Australian intelligence community's] leading concerns with respect to Iran's nuclear ambitions centre on understanding the time frame of a possible weapons capability, and working with the United States to prevent Israel from independently launching unco-ordinated military strikes against Iran.

They are immediately concerned that Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities would lead to a conventional war - or even nuclear exchange - in the Middle East involving the United States that would draw Australia into a conflict. (My bold emphasis added.)

The dates in relation to this exchange between American and Australian intelligence services are particularly interesting. On 27 December 2008 Israel launched its devastating attack against the people of the Gaza Strip, an attack which went on relentlessly until 18 January 2009. Israel then completed its withdrawal from the Gaza on 21 January 2009, just one day after Obama was sworn in as President but, more importantly, one day after President Bush left office.

Just as I noted in my blog of the 22 January 2009, it’s clear that Australia’s intelligence services were also concerned that Israel’s attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip may well have been a prelude to an Israeli attack against Iran. Having failed a little over two years earlier in 2006 to escalate their war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to find casus belli to attack Iran, Israel had tried yet against to provoke a regional war that would include an attack against Iran this time by attacking Iran’s other ally, Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Clearly, Australian intelligence was concerned that an attack against Iran by Israel would automatically bring in the US. Australian intelligence would also have known – and hence the concern – that Israel could not possibly attack Iran without being covertly in connivance with the US. In other words, an Israeli attack against Iran could never be truly ‘unilateral’.

While Obama was President-elect, Bush was still actually the President and, therefore, still Commander in Chief. Even as late as the last days of Bush’s presidency in January 2009, if Israel had attacked Iran, Bush would undoubtedly have been there to help them and Obama would have had no choice then but to finish the job off. It was this that the Australian intelligence community feared.

The question now is; will Obama be complicit in any further Israeli plans to attack Iran and under what pretext might such an attack take place? What is for sure from the March 2009 cables when, by then, Obama was president; is that the Australian intelligence community were not convinced that Obama would behave any differently from Bush with regards to Israel launching a ‘unilateral’ attack against Iran.

The real big question now is; are the Australian intelligence community any more convinced today that Obama won’t be complicit in an attack on Iran – and what are America’s expectations of Australia in the event of such an attack?

IS MOSSAD KILLING INNOCENT IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS FOR PROPAGANDA PURPOSES?

The murder and attempted murder of two Iranian nuclear scientists and academics last week together with the murder of others over the year seems to be the work of Mossad.

However, since Israel knows full well that Iran has no actual ‘nuclear weapons program’, one needs to ask why then are they assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists?

The answer is simple; they need to convince the world that the Iranians indeed do have a ‘nuclear weapons program’ in order to get world public opinion to support an attack on Iran.

Since the relentless rhetoric and propaganda coming from Israel and the US over the years about Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ has not as yet had the desired effect, the Israelis have launched a campaign to make their assertions more convincing. They have done this by stating that they have intelligence confirming Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that the evidence is so compelling that they are prepared to assassinate some of Iran’s nuclear scientists in order to stop the Iranian’s from having a bomb.

The evidence the Israelis claim to have comes from an Iranian laptop stolen in 2004 and is said to have had drawings confirming the existence of a nuclear weapon program. However, it has since been revealed that the documents and the so-called ‘evidence’ are fraudulent. This, though, has not deterred the Israelis from their determination to convince the world that the Iranians are out to destroy Israel with their nuclear weapons.

Despite all the rhetoric and the ratcheted up desperate propaganda of assassinating innocent scientists to convince the world, there is still not a skerrick of any evidence whatsoever to support any of Israeli and US claims that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

When will the world wake up to Israel’s crimes? And for how long are Americans willing to be an accessory to those crimes?

AUSTRALIA’S TOP RACISTS RUSH TO ULTRA-RACIST ANDREW BOLT’S AID PRIOR TO HIS TRIAL FOR RACIAL VILIFICATION.

Two of Australia's foremost pseudo-intellectual racists and right-wing extremists, John Izzard, a frequent writer for the right-wing magazine Quadrant and Quadrant Online, and Keith Windschuttle, the well-known ‘Stolen Generations’ denialist and perverter of Aboriginal history, have both written articles defending Andrew Bolt as he is about to face Federal Court to answer charges of racial vilification.

The charges against Bolt have been made by a group of Aboriginal activists who are suing Bolt over two articles that he wrote for the Herald Sun newspaper that employs him. In the first article written in April 2009 and titled ‘White is the new black’, Bolt accuses Aboriginal people whose appearance happen to be white but who still prefer to identify themselves as indigenous, of being ‘political Aborigines’ and accuses them of identifying as Aboriginals for nefarious purposes.

In the second article titled ‘White fellas in the black’, written in August 2009, Bolt similarly accuses Aboriginal people of identifying themselves as Aboriginal in order to gain pecuniary advantages by way of grants and awards.

The question about who is black and who is white – or who is Aboriginal and who is not – is the centrepiece of the pending legal debate and both Izzard and Windschuttle discuss the background to this argument while carefully avoiding any direct discussion as to how this relates to Bolt’s case through fear of contemptuously pre-empting the courts decision.

There is also a secondary implication related to this case. Bolt argues that any decision restraining him from publicly speaking or writing about how he feels about this subject – or, indeed, any subject – violates his rights to freedom of speech and this aspect of the case is also touched on, albeit lightly, again presumably not to pre-empt any decision by the court, in the Izzard and Windschuttle articles.

If this were an isolated incident of a group of people who simply took umbrage to what someone else had said about them in the course of, say, incidental discussion then the matter would be easily resolved one way or the other by a court or even settled prior to going to court. But, in this case, it is not that simple.

While the question of ethnicity is at the centre of the debate from the legal point of view, and the question of freedom of speech will give cause for further debate depending on the judgement that will eventually be handed down, there are other, in many ways, even more important issues at stake here particularly when they relate to Andrew Bolt and his kind.

Bolt is a high profile journalist and blogger employed by a Rupert Murdoch-owned mainstream newspaper. He is well known for his racism particularly in relation to Aboriginal peoples. He is also a well known Islamophobe and xenophobe, climate change denier and pro-pollutionist.

Apart from the legal specifics relating to the case, there is also the moral question of why Bolt continually sees it necessary to vilify Aborigines and non-European foreigners at every opportunity at his blog. He does this mostly by innuendo, inference and the occasional classic double entendre whereby he writes on a subject seemingly totally unrelated to his usual run-of-the-mill xenophobic or racist rants but which is clearly meant to convey an opinion that is so offensive he could not possibly write it directly without facing further charges of vilification and discrimination. An example of this can be found here.

Bolt usually takes care not to cross the line himself. He does this by cutting and pasting sometimes quite long extracts of other peoples work obtained from all over the blogosphere and, if it’s really offensive, he ensures that the authors are out of legal reach. He then relies on his small but vocal coterie of regular commenters at his blog to endorse and amplify his intended opinion with many of the comments sometimes interpreting that opinion in a manner so crude and offensive that even Bolt or his moderators need occasionally to censor or ’snip’ it.

Bolt’s blog is not just an obscure column tucked away in some online digital recess but, rather, it is an upfront showcase of right-wing bigotry and outright racism. It’s not just Bolt the racist. The racism comes as a complete packing which is his blog; it’s ‘Bolt’s Racist Blog’, almost an entity in itself, which shamefully is paid for and published by Rupert Murdoch, and its influence, unfortunately, is potentially powerful.

It is unfortunate that Bolt’s racist views about Aboriginal people and boatpeople have now fraudulently influenced public opinion to the extent that politicians are now formulating policies relating to these peoples based on the ill-informed views of only a small but vocal rednecked and racist minority group of Australians.

One hopes that the complaints against Bolt are upheld and, while it is unlikely to see an end to the likes of Bolt’s racism, at least it would have demonstrated that Bolt’s racism is not acceptable in a multicultural society such as Australia’s.


This article can also be found at the Andrew Bolt: Ultra Racist blog.

ULTRA-NEOCON WARMONGER GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT 2012 PRESIDENTIAL RUN.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush regime and ultra-neoconservative warhawk, John Bolton, has again expressed an interest in running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. In an article in the ‘Jerusalem Post’, Bolton said that if he did decide to run that it would be a sincere bid saying that: “If I get in this, I get in it to win”.

In the same article, the ‘Jerusalem Post’ quoted Bolton as saying: “Given that diplomacy has failed, given that sanctions have failed, the only alternative to an Iran with nuclear weapons is a limited military strike against the nuclear weapons program”.

In the past, Bolton has been unequivocal about the US or Israel mounting a military strike against Iran and there is no reason to believe that, if he ever did become President, he would not hesitate to attack Iran.

A military strike against Iran would not be just against its ‘nuclear weapons program’ – apart from anything else, the US and Israel know full well that Iran has no ‘nuclear weapons program’ – though the initial strike would be against Iran’s nuclear facilities since that will be the casus belli used by the Israelis and Americans for such an attack, but it would also include strikes against Iran’s defence facilities and government institutions. Such strikes, so the West would be told, would be to prevent any Iranian retaliatory strikes. However, the real purpose of any attack against Iran would be to affect regime change, which Bolton has said in the past would be the ideal aim of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

As the recent mid-term elections revealed, Americans are despondent, to say the least, with President Obama’s performance and lack of delivery of election promises particularly with regard to bringing an end to the wars. Unfortunately, with effectively only two political parties, Americans have little choice but to register their dissatisfaction by either simply not voting or giving their vote to the other side in protest (as against support for the other sides policies) in the hope that not too many votes go the other way but enough to make the incumbent sit up and think about realigning their policies. The mid-term elections achieved that but whether or not Obama will take note of the American vote remains still to be seen. So far it’s not looking good.

They say a week in politics is a long time, so two years while waiting for an opportunity to vote again must seem a lifetime for many. Certainly a lot can happen in those two years that could inexorably change yet again the perception we have about the future of our world. A wrong call over Korea, for example, could seemingly pale into insignificance any qualms either side have over the situation in the Middle East and Central Asia. But having said that, it should be realised that anything that happens in this world will inevitably have America stamped on it somewhere and that the geo-political realities of what is happening in the Middle East are inextricably linked to what is happening over Korea and with China as the world watches the power-play taking place between super-powers anxious to secure hegemony in resource rich regions of our planet.

For Bolton that power-play revolves around the Middle East rather than South East Asia. He sees a strong Israel as essential to American interests in the region as a more urgent problem to be dealt with than South East Asia. He believes the Middle East should be secured first and that Israel is the tool by which the Middle East can be tamed especially once the Mullahs of Iran have gone and their so-called ‘proxies’, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria, weakened or destroyed. Once gone, and Israel has created its Greater Israel dream, then the US can deal with China. Bolton believes that a strong display of no-nonsense force against Iran will bring North Korea to heel – that and more sanctions.

John Bolton is the most hawkish of the neoconservative warmongers itching to bomb Iran. The very idea of this man becoming the President of the United States should send a shiver down the backs of the peoples of the world. Come 2012 the people of America will have a stark choice; either more of the same under Obama which, incidentally, does not preclude the possibility that he too might attack Iran especially if Israel decides on a pre-emptive attack, or a Republican President who almost certainly would attack Iran – and who knows who else afterwards - if Bolton wins the nomination race and becomes President.

IS THE U.S INDIRECTLY PROVOKING CHINA?

On Tuesday 23 November 2010 the South Korean military launched an artillery barrage that saw its shells fall into disputed waters close to North Korea. South Korea does not deny it fired first by firing shells into the disputed waters but says the shelling was ‘away from the north’. The North Koreans had already warned the South Koreans that they would consider such an act as a direct provocation and respond accordingly.

With thousands of miles of coastline to the west, south and east that South Korea could have harmlessly fired its shells from, one needs to ask why South Korea chose to fire them knowingly toward and into disputed waters so close to North Korea. One also needs to ask why South Korea did this just days before a major joint military exercise with the US that includes the USS George Washington carrier strike group.

While the exercise had been arranged long before last Tuesdays incident, indeed, according to Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. David Lapan, the USS George Washington carrier strike group had left Japan heading for South Korea for the exercises before Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bec had spoken with each other about the incident, the Washington Post is spinning the story to make it seem as though President Obama has sent the carrier fleet to South Korea as a result of the incident. John Pomfret of the Washington Post writes:

In dispatching the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday, the Obama administration said it was putting on a show of U.S. support for South Korea.

It is clear that the South Korean opening barrage so close to North Korea was a deliberate attempt to provoke a major incident. It is also apparent that this whole charade of the crisis being a series of spontaneous events instigated by North Korea has in reality been concocted by the US and South Korea in order to deliberately point the finger of blame for the incident at North Korea with a view to escalating the crisis. The presence of the carrier strike group in Korean seas is just an added provocation.

So, what’s the aim of all this provoking?

At best, it may be just a ploy to get the Chinese to come down hard on their ally North Korea in an effort to put another turn of the screw that puts added pressure on the North Korean regime. In which case it’s just another provocation designed to keep that particular pot boiling for whatever underhanded geo-strategic double-dealing reason the US have dreamt up as they are apt to do from time to time, usually to distract from other problems the US are having.

Or could it be something far more serious and potentially far more dangerous for the world as well as the region?

The US has been very upset about China’s refusal to bend to US demands to revalue the Yuan to favour America’s flagging dollar. The US is also very concerned about China’s increasing power as a global player politically, economically and militarily. Unlike the US, China has not spent too much of its time rattling its sabre around the world in the quest for resources. Instead it simply sends its representatives to whatever country has the resources that China doesn’t have and they do a deal. Simple as that.

The Chinese have been quietly making massive deals with countries all over the planet particularly in the resource rich and, as yet, mostly untapped African continent where they have a huge presence working on all manner of infrastructure projects in exchange for resources. This has also upset the Americans who see their own influence being usurped by China’s.

America has touted itself as the sole remaining superpower since the end of the so-called ‘Cold War’. The reality, however, is that they are no longer the only superpower and the fact is, China snuck up and overtook the US over these last few years and the US resents that.

Challenging China’s proxy, North Korea, is a way of reasserting US hegemony and status.

For the sake of the future of the world, China will, for the sake of peace, be mature enough to allow the bully boy on the block to think that he’s still numero uno and let him strut the world stage. But the world now knows differently after the fiasco of Iraq and Afghanistan and every day reveals just how much power the US really has and who the real power player is in the world today.

America should take care about who they provoke.

SARAH PALIN: NO LONGER THE NEOCONS DARLING?

Despite news in the mainstream media suggesting that Sarah Palin may be running for the Presidency in 2012, one has to wonder if she really is the neocons darling anymore.

Short of the Republicans not being able to find an alternative, it seems doubtful the neoconservatives will be giving their endorsement to Palin for the 2012 Presidential race if a couple of very negative articles about her in two of neoconservatisms most popular rags, The Weekly Standard and National Review Online are anything to go by. NRO’s Mona Charen was particularly damning of Palin with her article titled ‘Why Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run’ in which Charen tells readers:

“The Republican nominee should be someone with a vast and impressive record in government and the private sector. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity — not sizzle and flash.”

Meanwhile at The Weekly Standard, neocon feature writer Matt Labash writes a review of Palin’s Alaskan ‘reality’ TV show, pretentiously called Sarah Palin’s Alaska. It’s not what Labash says that is so negative; it’s the feel of what he says. You have to read between the lines to get the idea that he’s not overly impressed by the idea that Palin may the next President of the US. There’s that plus the complete absence in The Weekly Standard of any endorsement either by ads or other articles for Sarah Palin. Same with Commentary magazine where she’s barely got a mention for yonks.

So, if it isn’t Palin that gets the nod from the neocons, who will it be?

90 DAYS AND $30 BILLION OF AMERICAN TAXPAYERS MONEY FOR WHAT?

What exactly is going to happen during the 90 day freeze on settlement building in the West Bank that is going to cost the American people some 33.3 million dollars a day? What’s going on here when it’s clear that absolutely nothing will be achieved by the end of the 90 day freeze except Israel will be better off by 30 billion dollars worth of advanced military jets?

When the 90 day freeze ends, then building simply resumes and the whole process is back where it started. Do Obama and Clinton really believe that a Palestinian state will somehow be negotiated during those 90 days? They’ve been ‘negotiating’ for the last three decades; what makes them think it’s going to be all sorted out within three months?

When will the people of the world wake up to what’s really going on here? The American people are being ripped off by billions – all of which will end up in the hands of the aircraft manufacturers while the aircraft will eventually end up in the hands of the Israelis who will use them to continue attacking the Palestinians with.

And, at the end of the 90 day freeze, there will still be no Palestinian state and the Israelis will continue to build their Greater Israel.

WAR WITH IRAN – A WAR THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD SHOULD ENSURE NEVER HAPPENS.

With the mid-term elections out of the way the talk of war against Iran has once again moved from the back burner to the front burner. This war, however, is the one war the world must insist never happens.

Here’s why.

A war against Iran cannot be like America’s wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. To begin with, apart from a few Special Forces operations inside Iran, there most certainly will not be any ground invasion. This reason for this is multi-faceted. First, because of Iran’s geographical size – it is roughly 3.75 times the size of Iraq in area and has over 2.3 times the population – Iran would be impossible to invade and occupy. Secondly, and most obviously, the US is already stretched to its maximum in occupying Iraq and fighting in Afghanistan.

If America chose to go to war against Iran, it would have only one way of achieving any likelihood of success.

But, before discussing how America might go ahead with an attack against Iran – and why it would be folly for the world to support such an attack – one should ask what the war aims would be.

In fact, there would be two sets of war aims; one would be the aims that they would tell the world the war would be about; in other words, the propaganda and rhetoric that would be used to justify such an attack; and the other would be their real aims, the ulterior motivations for launching such an attack, aims that the West would deny but, once having come to fruition, would tell the world were merely incidental outcomes that were not planned.

The US and their allies would like the West and the rest of the world to believe that an attack against Iran would be launched in order to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon, a weapon that Israel claims would be used against them. Over this last decade, the West’s accusations against Iran accusing it of pursuing a ‘nuclear weapons program’ has been relentless. Yet, despite the West’s insistence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, the West has not been able to actually produce any evidence whatsoever to support their accusations. This, however, has not stopped the rhetoric.

So, what are the real aims of attacking Iran?

The real aim of attacking is to stop Iran from supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. These two organisations are all that stands between Israel and the Israeli Zionist dream of a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Without Iran’s support, these two organisations would find it very difficult to defend themselves against Israeli aggression and ultimate expansionism.

But, of course, Israel cannot just go marching in to conquer south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip once and for all as it would like to do if Iran were not supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel needs Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas in order to justify invading and occupying south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

For Israel it’s all a matter of timing.

If Israel and/or the US can find or manufacture an excuse to attack Iran, Israel would then tell the world that an attack against both Hamas and Hezbollah, followed by invasion and occupation, could be justified in order to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah launching a retaliatory strike against Israel on behalf of Iran. As a back-up plan, it seems Israel is also willing to take a risk war at provoking war with Iran by provoking Hezbollah by continuing military jet overflights of Lebanon while also provoking Hamas by killing farmers, air raids on Palestinian homes and on Gaza supply tunnels. If Hezbollah or Hamas retaliated using Iranian supplied weapons, then that would be all Israel and the US would need to launch an attack against Iran.

I say ‘risk’ because, if war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel and Hezbollah held back from using Iranian-supplied weapons, then Israel and the US would be deprived of a casus belli to attack Iran and Israel could well find itself in exactly the same position as it did in 2006 – losing the war.

So, we know that the US and its allies can’t actually invade and occupy Iran so; what are the alternatives?

Basically, there are two alternatives; neither of which is at all acceptable – if, indeed, attacking another country without provocation was ever ‘acceptable’. First, Israel and/or the US could launch a conventional bombing attack against Iran opening the attack against Iran’s nuclear installations in order to justify the attack in the first place, and then launching a massive all-out bombing offensive against Iran’s military and governmental institutions with the aim of forcing the Iranian government to capitulate and ask for a ceasefire at the UN. The ceasefire would then be accepted on the condition that a new regime that was acceptable to the US and Israel (and, therefore, the UN) is installed.

In this scenario thousands of Iranians are likely to be killed all over Iran.

The second alternative is even more frightening but is one that might be considered because it will likely bring about capitulation much quicker, and that is the limited use of a nuclear weapon on one or two of Iran’s smaller regional cities and/or military installations with the threat of further nuclear weapon use if the Iranian government did not comply with US demands. This is an unlikely scenario but one which might be considered. The use of conventional weapons in an attack against Iran is the most likely scenario. Again, thousands would likely be killed in Iran but this time in concentrated numbers.

At the same time as Iran is being attacked, Israel would be launching a full-on assault against Hezbollah and Hamas followed by invasion and occupation of south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip respectively. Israel may also threaten Lebanon with the use of its nuclear weapons if Hezbollah persisted in launching a full-on retaliatory strike against Israel.

The war, once started, will be fait accompli and the hope – as far as the Israelis and the US is concerned – is that Iran is subdued and with a compliant government, and that Hezbollah and Hamas are destroyed and their respective lands occupied permanently with a view to eventual annexation.

The real outcome of such a war may well be far different from what is anticipated by the US and Israel who has always believed that sheer military might and the threat of the use of nuclear weapons would bring its enemies to its knees but, as yet, have never really fully used their military might. However, as the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980’s demonstrated, Iranians are quite willing to fight back.

If Iran is attacked, the repercussions for the world will be enormous. Oil supplies are likely to be affected immediately both in terms of availability and also in price. Hezbollah will almost certainly launch a massive attack against the Israelis if Israel attacks them. Hamas too would also retaliate. Hundreds if not thousands of Israelis would likely perish. Fighters from around the world would likely launch attacks on American and US interests everywhere.

In short, a true ‘war of terror’ would be unleashed and the ‘terror’ will be felt by both sides. If such a war were sustained for any length of time then some peoples of Western countries may take it upon themselves to attack Muslims residing in the West. Islamaphobia, already a powerful undercurrent in many Western countries, could erupt quickly into violence as it did in the 1990’s in the Balkans.

The people of the West must ensure that the US and Israel do not start any more wars because after the next war there will be no winners at all.

NEOCON JONAH GOLDBERG ADVOCATES THE MURDER OF WIKILEAKS JULIAN ASSANGE.

Of course, he doesn’t say so in so many words – he’s clever enough not to – but from the way he has penned his latest piece of propaganda he might just as well have.

Writing in National Review Online on Friday, Goldberg asks: ‘Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?’ He then runs through a gamut of what he thinks are useful scenarios from Hollywood that parody black-ops murders and, of course, mocks the notions that other well-known assassinations are actually the work of security service organisations. And, just for good measure to complete the illusion that so-called conspiracy theories are, indeed, only ‘conspiracy theories’, goes on to suggest that; “The main evidence that the U.S. government didn’t bring down the World Trade Center on 9/11 is that no one has the ability to pull off a conspiracy like that”.

Now that’s what I call ‘Chutzpahbabble’.

Goldberg completes his piece of delusional wishful thinking by saying that “Assange is essentially hiding behind his celebrity and the fact that it wouldn’t do any good to kill him, given the nature of the Web.” And that: “Even if the CIA wanted to take him out, they couldn’t without massive controversy.” Goldberg then completes his piece with a bit of ‘Nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ inference that killing Assange would be against the law, ignoring entirely that killing anyone under such circumstances is against the law – though since when has that stopped the CIA who have been busy killing people for decades.

It’s clear what Goldberg’s intention is with this piece of nonsense; he’d like to see Assange murdered by the CIA. He concedes that Assange’s notoriety and the fact that he is a citizen of Australia, an ally of the US, that assassinating Assange couldn’t be done without “massive controversy” but, again, since when has that stopped them? Once done it would be fait accompli.

The likes of Goldberg couldn’t care less about any massive controversy.

THE BUSH, BLAIR AND HOWARD BOOKS: WILL THEY HAVE THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT?

Is it just a coincidence that the three men responsible for leading their respective countries in to committing the Twenty-First century’s first major war crimes are publishing their memoirs within just a few months of each other?

Tony Blair, who led the UK into an illegal war based on fabrications and lies and against the overwhelming wishes of the British people, released his self-aggrandising book, ‘Tony Blair: A Journey’, last month. On 1 November the just as egotistical John Howard, Australia’s ex-Prime Minister who took Australia to war also against the overwhelming wishes of his people and based on the same fabrications and lies, will be releasing his book, ‘Lazarus Rising’; while a bit over a week later, on 9 November, ex-President George W. Bush who led the ‘coalition of the willing’ into an unprovoked attack against the people of a sovereign nation will be releasing his memoir, ‘Decision Points’.

These three leaders were the criminals that led their nations and the Western world into an unprovoked attack against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that were planned long before 9/11 took place. None of these warcriminals have shown any sign of regret that so many lives have been lost and ruined as a direct result of their lies and actions.

John Howard’s ‘Lazarus Rising’ is the next memoir out of the blocks. The book is being published by the Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins publishing house. There should be no surprises there; after all John Howard entertained Rupert Murdoch for dinner in Washington on Monday, 10 September 2001, the very eve of 9/11 itself, and Murdoch has been a staunch supporter of Howard and his conservative policies ever since.

Not so well known is Murdoch’s relationship with Blair which goes back to 1995, a relationship that was instigated by the influential Jewish-American neoconservative economist and writer Irwin Stelzer. In 1997, just a month before the UK general election which brought Blair to power, Murdoch ordered the ‘Sun’ newspaper to switch its support from the conservatives, who the ‘Sun’ had supported for some two decades, to Blair and his New Labour. In all subsequent general elections in the UK in which Blair led the Labour party, Murdoch’s ‘Sun’ newspaper has supported the Labour party. Since Blair’s departure, however, Murdoch has ordered the ‘Sun’ to revert its support to the conservatives.

Just as we have seen the three leaders take their respective nations to war based on the lies that originated from the neoconservatives, will we be treated to the same lies from each of them explaining the failures of their wars? It’ll be interesting to compare the detail of each of their explanations.

The devil is in the detail.

IS THERE A DEAL IN THE WIND – POLLARD IN EXCHANGE FOR EXTENDING A SETTLEMENT BUILDING FREEZE?

It seems Pollard’s lawyers are appealing to Obama for Pollard’s release based on some deal that was made between the US and Israel whereby he would serve only 10 years in jail. According to the Jerusalem Post, Pollard’s lawyers are asking Obama to give Pollard clemency but the article is not connecting it to the possibility that Netanyahu will extend the freeze on settlement building in order to restart the so-called peace talks.

The way it’s being talked about at the moment is as though the two are not contingent on each other. Pollard’s release could be touted by the US as conceding to a deal made long ago while any extension of the settlement building freeze would more than likely be touted simply as Netanyahu having a change of heart in the pursuit of peace.

The proof of whether or not a deal was struck will be in the amount of noise the extreme right-wing Zionist politicians make over any reinstatement of the settlement building freeze. If there’s only a token noise, then you’ll know a deal was made – Pollard’s freedom in exchange for getting Abbas back to the table via a building freeze.

THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN – THE ONE STATE SOLUTION IS NOW THE ONLY SOLUTION.

Doesn’t anyone get it yet? Surely by now the world can see how farcical the so-called Palestinian statehood talks are and that the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters are never going to allow a proper sovereign Palestinian state exist.

Talks between Netanyahu and Abbas have now effectively come to an end and, even if they are revived, they are still likely to come to nothing. Netanyahu has refused so far to extend the freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, and, even if he did, it was only going to be for a couple of months.

What the Palestinians want is not a ‘settlement building freeze’ but for the Israelis in the West Bank to leave the West Bank for good. They also want them to take their wall and fence with them and, if they still feel the need to have their walls and fences, to put them on their side of the 1967 line and not on Palestinian land. But we all know that none of this is ever going to happen.

Israel is just treading water waiting for an opportunity to kick off a war against Iran that will provide them with an excuse to launch a wholesale assault on the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon and the full occupation of the West Bank on the pretext that they are acting to prevent retaliatory strikes against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas.

Since Iran will not be attacking Israel and it is clear that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, despite the continuing rhetoric and relentless propaganda, Israel will now have to rely on somehow provoking Hamas and/or Hezbollah into war which they will hope escalates to include Iran and the US. As in 2006 when Israel provoked Hezbollah by launching mock air-raids over Lebanon which resulted in Hezbollah launching rockets against Israel, so Israel today is attempting to provoke Hamas into retaliation by flying mock air-raids over the Gaza Strip. These air-raids are barely being reported in the Western mainstream media though it can be guaranteed that if and when Hamas do retaliate, the Western world will quickly hear about it. By continuing their almost daily military jet overflights of both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip the Israelis hope to provoke Hezbollah and Hamas into responding thus providing Israel with the excuse they need to begin their war. Once war against Hezbollah has begun, Israel will then be seeking an excuse to attack Iran and the first rocket lobbed against Israel by either Hamas or Hezbollah with ‘Made in Iran’ written on it will likely provide that excuse. Once Israel attacks Iran the US will have little choice but to support Israel since Israel does not have the wherewithal to take on Iran fully and prevail. Israel will need the US to destroy Iran’s ability to strike Israel and induce regime change in Iran.

Such a war against Iran will be so horrendous that it is likely to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s aggression against Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and possibly Syria.

Once such a war starts – and just about anything can trigger it – the situation could well escalate very quickly and before the world knows it, we could find ourselves facing world war.

There is only one way in which this disaster can be avoided and that is for the entire world to demand that Israel and Palestine become one nation where Jews and Arabs alike live as equals in a state that extends from the Mediterranean Sea in the West to the Jordan River in the East, and from the Lebanon border in the North to the Sinai in the south. Those Jews and Arabs that cannot bring themselves to go along with this arrangement should then consider finding elsewhere to live. There must be right of return and there must be a process of reconciliation Jews and Arabs have managed to live together in relative peace before and there is no real reason with the help of the rest of the world why it cannot be done again.

The One State Solution is now clearly the only solution. The alternative is too horrific to contemplate.

ARE THE NEOCONS FUDGING THE POLLS AGAIN?

The desperately and somewhat ridiculously named neoconservative front organisation, the Emergency Committee for Israel, headed up by William Kristol, recently commissioned McLaughlin and Associates to conduct a poll to gauge American public opinion about the Zionists and neocons arch-enemy, Iran. One of the questions asked in the poll (Q28) was: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “I am strongly opposed to the use of military force by Israel or the United States to attack Iran”. According to the neocon’s poll 52.8% disagreed; in other words, according to the poll, a majority of American’s are not opposed to attacking Iran.

However, the results fly in the face of several other recent polls on American public opinion regarding whether or not America should attack Iran. The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll found that very few Americans would support a war against Iran; only 25% - and that’s only if Iran attacked American soil.

Last months release of the prestigious Chicago Council on Global Affairs National Survey of American Public Opinion found that only some 38% of Americans would support America going to war against Iran even if Israel attacked Iran.

I’ll leave readers to link to the polls and discover for themselves the disparities between the neocon’s poll and the others. Suffice to say that the neocons poll results is so far out of whack compared with the others that one, at the very least, needs to question the credibility of the neocons’ pollsters, McLaughlin and Associates, while we all know that the neocons themselves, after nearly ten years of lies and wars started with false accusations, have no credibility left whatsoever anyway.

AS A ‘JEWISH’ STATE, ANY PROSPECT OF A ‘RIGHT OF RETURN’ IN THE FUTURE WILL BE GONE FOREVER.

If Abbas and the Palestinian Authority concede to Netanyahu’s demands that, in exchange for a couple of months freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, the state of Israel be recognised as a ‘Jewish state’ – which, with twenty percent of its population being Arab, it clearly is not – and what with Israel demanding that all new Israelis swear allegiance to the ‘Jewish’ state, Abbas will effectively be abandoning any prospect of there ever being an eventual right of return of Palestinian refugees or having a truly Palestinian state.

Talks thus far have been farcical. Rather than being orientated toward seeking a solution to the problem of creating a viable Palestinian state, all the players involved have been far more intent of using the talks as a means of scoring political brownie points for each of the respective participants agendas.

For President Obama the talks have been used merely to score a few brownie points ahead of the US mid-term elections this coming November. Obama thinks that if he can just prevent the talks from breaking down entirely before the November polls he might just be able to get the Democrats across the line without such a great loss in the House as is so far predicted. For Netanyahu, aware of Obama’s predicament in desperately trying to hold the talks together before the approaching polls, the talks are an opportunity of getting the US to persuade Abbas to concede to Israeli demands. For Abbas, who has no real mandate to govern Palestinians and who knows full well that that there is never going to be a Palestinian state, it is simply a matter of clinging to power which he knows he can only do with US and Israeli support. As a result, Abbas plays a game of apparent willingness to continue talks while Netanyahu gradually eats away at all of the dreams Palestinians have aspired to. Meanwhile, Palestinians are kept divided and those in the Gaza remain completely isolated as Abbas continues to harass and arrest Hamas members in the West Bank.

So far, Netanyahu is in front with more brownie points than the other two put together and if, with Obama’s help, he can get Abbas to concede to recognising Israel as a Jewish state, all dreams of a proper Palestinian state for the future, whether it be the OneState Solution with right of return for refugees or a full-on real sovereign state of Palestine without settlers under Israeli rule and proper borders and without all this ‘land for peace’ nonsense, will be gone forever.

ANDREW BOLT, AUSTRALIAN ULTRA-RACIST MURDOCH JOURNALIST, GETS TAKEN TO COURT ACCUSED OF RACIAL VILIFICATION.

At long last, a group of Aboriginal people are to take Australian journalist Andrew Bolt of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, to the Federal Court accusing him of racial vilification. The documents were lodged with the court on 7 September 2010, and the case is due to be heard this coming Wednesday, 29 September 2010.

For years Bolt has been vilifying people who identify themselves as being Aboriginal accusing them of abusing their racial identity in order to receive benefits and awards that are exclusively for Aboriginal people. Bolt seems to think that some people who identify themselves as Aboriginal are ‘too white’ to be Aboriginal. For Bolt, it would seem that the only test of Aboriginality is the colour of ones skin.

The group that are prosecuting the matter are basing their claim about Bolt’s vilification on two articles Bolt had written and that were published in the ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper. The first appeared in Bolt’s Column and blog on 15 April 2009 and was titled ‘White is the New Black’, and the second appeared as an opinion piece on 21 August 2009 titled ‘White fellas in the black’. In both articles Bolt attempts to vilify people with pale skin and who identify as Aboriginal by implying that they are frauds. Bolt uses his own brand of genetic rhetoric of eye, hair, and skin colour to support his claims.

There’s a certain kind of inverse irony with Bolt’s racial views. Readers may remember the 1978 made-for-television film, ‘Holocaust’, about the attempted genocide of European Jewry by the Nazis during World War 2. In it there was a scene which depicted Himmler, the head of the SS, witnessing the execution of captured Jews by shooting. As the naked prisoners were being lined up prior to being shot, Himmler noticed a young man who to Himmler didn’t appear to be Jewish. Himmler called him over to ask him if he was Jewish. The young man readily identified himself as Jewish to which Himmler then responded: “Then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you”. The youth then returned silently to his place at the execution pit where he and the others lined up with him were then shot. For the Jewish youth who was murdered, his Jewish identity was so important to him that he was prepared to lose his life for it despite the opportunity of possibly saving himself from dying that particular day.

For Aboriginal people, racial identification is also important. It may not be about life or death today, but it may well be about the survival or demise of Aboriginal heritage in the future if the likes of racists like Andrew Bolt are successful in denying those that identify as Aboriginal of their heritage.

One can only hope that this prosecution will be successful.

ISRAELI SPY, JONATHAN POLLARD, TO BE USED BY OBAMA AS BARGAINING CHIP IN ‘PEACE TALKS’.

It seems President Obama may be considering using convicted Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, currently doing life in an American prison for giving American secrets away, as a bargaining chip in the so-called ‘peace talks’ between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Abbas.

Obama is desperate to keep the talks going at least until the November mid-term elections in order to show the American people that Democrats are worthy of being kept on in Congress. Obama may be willing to hand over the ultra-Zionist Pollard to the Israelis in order to placate Israel’s right-wing who are likely to get very upset when they hear that Netanyahu is going to extend the West Bank settlement freeze due to expire on Sunday 26 September. Pollard will be the pay-off to the ultra-Zionists in the Israeli government for the freeze to be extended

The deal achieves pluses for both Obama and Netanyahu as well as for the right-wing of Israel. In short, the deal will buy time for Obama who needs to make things look good between now and the mid-terms; it will also buy time for Netanyahu who can’t afford to be seen by Obama and the rest of the world as a ‘spoiler’ in the quest for peace with Palestine while he waits for an opportunity to provoke enough trouble with Hamas and/or Hezbollah to be able to call all talks off and, hopefully, instigate a war that will escalate to include a confrontation with Iran.

It’ll be a win-win for all – except, of course, the Palestinian people.

NEW POLL SHOWS AMERICAN’S NOT INTERESTED IN WAR WITH IRAN – EVEN IF IRAN ATTACKS ISRAEL IN RETALIATION TO ISRAELI STRIKE.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs released its latest survey of national public opinion on US foreign policy last Thursday 16 September 2010 with some rather surprising results – results that are sure not to please the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters in the US particularly and around the world generally.

The survey has found that the rhetoric of the President, his administration, Congress and right-wing political commentators regarding US support for Israel does not at all coincide with the American public’s view about supporting Israel – especially when it comes to the prospect of war with Iran.

Crucially, when asked; if Israel was to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and if Iran were to retaliate against Israel and the two were to go to war against each other, should the United States bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel, some 56% of respondents said ‘no’ and only 38% said ‘yes’. (See p.21 of the survey.)

The survey also showed that American’s are in no mood to go to war against Iran directly. 71% favour economic sanctions coupled with continued diplomatic efforts to resolve the ‘crisis’ while 77% supported not trading with Iran and a surprising 62% supported the idea of US leaders having direct talks with Iranian leaders. (See p.19 of the survey.)

The results of the survey are likely to put a dent in neoconservative and Zionist aspirations for regime change in Iran as far getting American public opinion to support military action is concerned. However, one needs to ask; is that likely stop the Israelis from striking Iran and would current American public opinion stop President Obama and Congress from committing the US to war against Iran if Iran were to retaliate against Israel?

Certainly, this side of the mid-term elections, Obama is not likely to support war against Iran and, if that’s the case, Israel will unlikely strike Iran any time soon even if it wanted to. As I have argued consistently at this blog, it is impossible for Israel to launch a truly unilateral strike against Iran; Israel would need the full collaborative support of the US in order to strike Iran. However, if Israel actually were able to strike Iran unilaterally, the US government would feel obliged to support Israel in preventing Iranian retaliation which effectively would mean the US launching an all-out war against Iran, regardless of whether or not the American people supported it, with the US government hoping that, once committed to war, the American people would come around to supporting it – as they have so often done in the past.

In its analysis, the survey suggested that the American people are far more concerned about their own domestic economic plight than they are about Iran, but, whether or not that will stop the push for war by the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters remains to be seen.

For the Zionists of Israel it’s a matter of manipulating regional affairs to suit their agenda of creating a casus belli which can be used to launch an attack against Iran. This may be via war directly against Hezbollah and/or Hamas instigated as the result of some Israeli provocation, or alternatively, Israel finding some excuse to launch an attack directly against Iran. Either way, I doubt that American public opinion overall will have too much bearing on how Israel finds a way to have the war it’s been itching to have for some years; and I doubt that American public opinion will count for much if push comes to shove and Israel bites off more than it can chew in attacking Iran and finds itself in need of America’s support – again. On the hand, though, I doubt that Obama will be in much of a rush to covertly support, even if he were able to do it covertly, an Israeli unilateral strike against Iran.


UPDATE

Despite American public opinion being firmly against war on Iran, the Republican Senator for South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, who sits on the influential Senate Armed Services Committee, has come out in favour of attacking Iran with air and sea strikes (not invasion) in order to effect regime change in Iran.

PRESIDENT JOHN BOLTON ?!!

I’m not sure who got this one going but the chatter around the neocon traps over the last couple of weeks is that John Bolton just might consider taking a run at the 2012 Presidency. Yesterday, both the ‘Atlantic Wire’ and ‘National Review Online’ were pondering the idea.

So far it’s all been a bit tongue in cheek for Bolton who concedes that he’s not a politician and has never run for any public office before. On the other hand, he reckons he’s been around long enough in different jobs at various levels of government to know how to do the top job.

So far, he’s just been touted as the ‘dark horse’ candidate for President. It maybe that a small kite is being flown just to see how high it will go and by being a little tongue in cheek about it now, he can pull out without losing any face if he feels he’s going to get nowhere with the idea. As Bolton puts it:

I have absolutely no illusions as someone who hasn’t run for elective office before. But I have been talking to people about it to find out whether they break out laughing. I’m sometimes met with a dumbfounded look when I mention it, but most of people then say, ‘Well, why not?’

Well, I can certainly tell them ‘Why not’.

Bolton winning the Presidency in 2012 is possibly the worst scenario that the world – not just the United States – could possibly ever imagine. If America and Israel hasn’t attacked Iran before the end of January 2013 then you can put a substantial bet on it being attacked shortly after if and when the nightmare of a John Bolton Presidency has been realised.

Hopefully, this is going nowhere and that even the extreme right-wing of the GOP will be able to see that. But, if they don’t and they start getting serious about lining Bolton up for the Presidency, then get ready to oppose it with everything you’ve got.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the future of the world would depend on preventing John Bolton from ever becoming President of the most militarised nation on the planet.

WORLD’S NEOCONS SAY THAT IF ISRAEL IS LOST THEN THE WEST IS LOST.

Ex-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has told the Washington launch meeting of brand new neoconservative Zionist front group called the Friends of Israel Initiative (FII) that if ‘Israel is lost then the West is lost’.

The new group is a gathering of international neoconservatives from all over the West. Founded by Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister who supported George Bush’s push for war against Iraq, the group has attracted many international neocons including extreme right-wing British historian and neo-fascist Andrew Roberts; American businessman, Zionist and neoconservative, Robert Agostinelli; former Bush ambassador to the UN and ultra-warmonger John Bolton; former British conservative parliamentarian, Life Peer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize David Trimble; US Catholic Islamophobe extremist George Weigel; and the aging British publisher George Weidenfeld who is now called Lord Weidenfeld, and many other international notables both Jewish and non-Jewish.

Aznar, who took Spain off to war in Iraq against the overwhelming wishes of the Spanish people and then lost government in an election shortly after, was addressing the launch meeting of his group in Washington when he announced his belief that Israel should be defended at all costs and that the survival of the West depended on Israel’s survival. He told his audience:

…it is not only the threat that if Israel goes down, which, make no mistake, many of its enemies would like to see happen, we all go down. It is that letting Israel be demonized will lead to the delegitimation of our own cherished values. If Israel were to disappear by the force of its enemies, I sincerely doubt the West could remain as we know it.

Aznar and his coterie of international neocon cohorts have made it clear that they now see Israel as the bulwark on the font line of Western exceptionalism that is to be defended at all costs against the forces of Islam.

As the neoconservative rose to power in the Bush administration and then consolidated that power in the wake of 9/11, the enemy, so we were told, was the extremists of Islam. The neoconservatives denied that the war on terror was about defending Israel or that war against Iraq was because Israel needed Saddam of their back as he supported Arafat’s Second Intifada. Saddam, we were told, was an ‘imminent threat to the world’ with his ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which, so we were told, he was secretly producing and stockpiling to give to terrorists who would use them to attack the West. The ‘War Against Terrorism’, so we were told, was not about Israel but about defending the West. As time wore on and the neocons were exposed for the liars and Zionists that they are, it became clear that it really was about Israel all along. Now, as the Zionists and their neoconservatives supporters clamour for war against Iran, there is no doubt about who all these wars and threats of wars have been in aid of and Aznar’s new organisation, the Friends of Israel Initiative, and the reason for it’s existence, as Aznar himself explains, proves that it has always been for Israel.

AMERICA’S BIGGEST MISTAKE: KILLING THREE THOUSAND OF ITS OWN PEOPLE AND THEN BLAMING ISLAM FOR IT.

What made them think they could get away with it? Killing three thousand of your own people is one thing; blaming someone else for having done it is something else. One thing is for absolutely sure: sooner or later the full truth will emerge and the evidence against the perpetrators will be overwhelming and, when it does, it will be the end of America’s reason for existence in its present form. The lives and standing of all of the American people will be changed forever in the eyes of the global community. America will become a pariah state.

During the first eight months of 2001, an extremist faction within the George W. Bush administration which had assumed office in late January 2001, conspired with elements of Israel’s secret service and intelligence agency, Mossad, to murder Americans and destroy and damage prominent physical symbols of America’s wealth and power in order to begin wars against those they perceived as their enemies both overseas and at home.

The crime they committed was at first seen as being so horrendous in magnitude that no one dare question the government about the explanation of the events of 9/11 through fear of appearing to be unpatriotic in the face of what seemed to be the greatest threat to America’s power to date. By November 2002 a Commission was established to investigate the attack. It published its findings in July 2004 in a 567 page book titled ‘The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States’. All the report ended up doing was confirm what the government had already told the people of America about what had happened on 9/11. It meant nothing.

Within literally hours of the events of 9/11 America began planning to attack Iraq after first attacking Afghanistan; an attack which had already been planned months before 9/11. Within a month America invaded Afghanistan while at the same time continued to plan their attack on Iraq. They began their propaganda campaign against Iraq in an attempt to build public support for invading Iraq.

Meanwhile, within days of it happening, doubts began to emerge about the veracity of the US government’s explanation about the events of 9/11. Still stunned by the enormity of the crime, most of these doubts were at first ignored. But then, as time went by and the shock of it all had begun to wear off, people began to think a little more clearly about what had happened. They wondered how it was that four scheduled airliners were able to erratically fly around America’s skies for over an hour obviously off course, heading in the wrong direction, not following their flight plans and with their identifier transponders turned off without being challenged by air traffic controllers and being investigated by scrambled fighter jets. Later, as more information was released about the so-called hijackers, experienced people in the aviation game began to wonder how pilots who were barely ably to fly a Cessna around the circuit of the local airfield were able to successfully takeover commercial jet airliners, navigate them to their targets, let them down from cruising altitude to just a few hundred feet above ground level and then accurately crash them in to pre-arranged and targeted buildings.

Then structural engineers, curious to understand why buildings designed to withstand a commercial aircraft crashing in to them had collapsed, began to investigate past occurrences of fire in high-rise buildings to see if these examples might provide an answer as to why the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed. They found examples of numerous buildings that had burned many times more ferociously than the fires in the WTC buildings but couldn’t find one that had ever collapsed as a result of fire.

More doubts emerged when it became generally known that a third building, WTC Building 7, a 47-story high-rise office block, had also suddenly and spectacularly collapsed into its own footprint, just as the Twin Towers had – and without any aircraft crashing into it or having sustained any major fire damage that would have caused a collapse in his manner. Numerous video films of the collapse taken from different angles showed that the building collapsed evenly and at free fall speed, an event that was not at all consistent with a building that had fires contained in pockets within the building. People wondered why none of this was mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

What, people wondered, were the odds of three buildings collapsing totally and fully and at almost freefall speed into their own footprints in one day? People began to ask about what the Fireman and Medics were talking about when they say they heard explosions at various levels and in the basements of these building; explosions that had nothing to do with aircraft flying in to them.

Eventually, those that were really responsible for these crimes and were involved in setting them up will begin to talk. More evidence will emerge implicating more and more people. There will come a time when the government will be so overwhelmed with the evidence that says Islamic extremists – if involved at all in the carrying out of these crimes – did so with the full connivance and support of various personnel within the Bush administration and with the planning and support of senior Israeli right-wing Zionist politicians and elements of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. At this point Western governments and the US government will have no alternative but to acknowledge full complicity and responsibility for everything that happened on 9/11.

It may well be that by the time the whole conspiracy has fully unravelled to that point that the major players, including Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Douglas Feith, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and all the others, will have passed on. Let’s hope that at least some of them are brought to justice before that because if none are, then the world will never ever be able to have any faith in America ever again and Americans will have lost all the things that they were told their lives revolved around – freedom, justice and democracy.

THE BALKANS PHENOMENA SWEEPS THE GLOBE: FROM LIVING IN HARMONY TO DYING FROM HATE.

A story in the online UK Guardian sent a chill down my back as I read it today. The title of the article was ‘Muslims in America increasingly alienated as hatred grows in Bible belt’, but it wasn’t so much the title that got me; it was the subtitle. It had an ominous and familiar ring about it: “On the anniversary of 9/11, Chris McGreal reports from the Tennessee town where Muslims have lived in harmony with Christians for decades – but where they now feel under threat”.

Muslims and Christians living together in harmony for decades now feel under threat? Where have we heard this before?

The lunacy of hatred, it seems, has caught up with small town America. It’s a hatred that has recently been simmering all across America fuelled by ignorance and the propaganda of the mainstream media.

As the anniversary of 11 September comes around again it has dawned on me that an extraordinary phenomenon has taken place.

When 9/11 happened, we were told that the attack on America was perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Sure, there was a surge of mistrust and even hatred toward Islam from the predictable right-wing of America, but most folk accepted that the attacks of 9/11 were the acts of extremists and, hey, there have been religious extremists from all sorts of religions throughout American history but they don’t reflect the views of ordinary people within those religions most of whom just want to get on with their lives. As a consequence, while there were a few ups and downs, people of Islamic faith generally continued to get on reasonably well with believers of other faiths in the immediate post 9/11 period despite what had happened. But as the years have gone by, rather than what anger there was subsiding and relations with Islam returning to one of tolerance, the opposite has happened. The hatreds, rather than diminishing, have grown and now seem set to engulf everyone.

In the 1990’s the Balkans witnessed an explosion of hatred that seemed to burst as if from nowhere. It resulted in the indiscriminate deaths of tens of thousands, the vast majority of whom were civilians that were callously and cold-bloodedly murdered for no other reason than they were different from those that were murdering them. Most of the dead were Muslims but the slaughter was perpetrated by people of both sides as the hatreds spiralled into a bloodbath where neighbours, literally, who had lived next door to each other for generations, who had shared work, food and drink with each other and had even inter-married, suddenly turned on each other in blind hatred and began mindlessly slaughtering each other.

But there are other eerily similar circumstances in America today as there were in the period prior to the outbreak of wholesale violence in the Balkans in the 1990’s and that is the economic crisis which swept through the whole of the Federated Republics of the then Yugoslavia. The feeling of utter hopelessness and despair that the people of the Balkans experienced as a result of this severe economic crisis was the physical trigger that violently released the years of pent up anger that had been suppressed during the Tito years. Now, as the so-called Global Financial Crisis bites harder and deeper in the US, many Americans are experiencing a similar feeling of hopelessness and despair. This, coupled with American’s anger over the wars that America’s leaders have got them into since the events of 9/11 and 9/11 itself, and American’s are now at the point where many are ready to unleash their fury on those whom they have been told day in and day out by the mainstream media ever since 9/11 are responsible for their woes; Islam and those that are Islam’s practitioners, Muslims.

But the potential for ethnic and religious violence isn’t confined to America. Europe is at an even more advanced state of ethnic and religious potential for violence than the US. Across Europe anti-Islam movements are growing at a horrendous rate. Anti-Islam propaganda and commentary has reached epidemic proportions on the blog pages of the mainstream online media. The English Defence League attracts larger and larger numbers to their anti-Islam demonstrations. In Europe, extreme right-wing anti-Islam parties are gaining numbers at the polls and winning seats on councils and in parliaments. Journalists and commentators in the mainstream press attract massive followings as they call for a halt to Islamic migration, bans on the wearing of Burqas and even bans on building Mosques.

But why now, nine years after 9/11? Why didn’t this happen in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when one would have thought that, if it had to happen, then that would have been the time?

Undoubtedly the mainstream media must bear the responsibility of creating the mood within which this is all happening. Western governments have followed a policy that supports Israel’s stance against the Palestinians and the West’s mainstream media has given them unfettered support. In turn, Iraq and Iran as nations, and despite having fought a bitter war with each other, have condemned Israel for what they have done to the Palestinian people, as have so many people of other Islamic nations. Israel had accused Iraq of supporting the Palestinian’s fight against Israel. The US then found an excuse to eliminate Iraq as an enemy of Israel. Having eliminated Iraq, Iran is now also in the frame to be dealt with as the next Islamic state that is an enemy of Israel, and it is the rhetoric and propaganda of Israel and the West that is now preparing the way for Iran’s elimination as Israel’s enemy that has stirred the pot of hatred of Islam in the West.

I hope that what the world witnessed in the Balkans in the 1990’s wasn’t just a foretaste of what the world will experience itself as the spiral of hatred whirls out of control fed by the West’s own mainstream rhetoric and propaganda.

WHY WAR AGAINST IRAN?

FORGET ‘IRAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM’; TRY ZIONIST DREAMS OF A GREATER ISRAEL.

Much has been written, particularly over this last year or so, about the prospect of war against Iran. The talk of war revolves around what is claimed to be Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Israel and their neoconservative allies in the US and elsewhere around the world have managed to get Western leaders to join with them in accusing Iran of having a clandestine ‘nuclear weapons program’. As a result, pundits and commentators alike have proffered their analysis of why there may be war based entirely on the presumption that Iran does indeed have a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

However, the reality of the situation is not at all as it seems.

Despite the deafening rhetoric about Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’, there is actually not a skerrick of hard evidence to suggest that such a program exists. The consistent and unrelenting accusations from the Zionists and their right-wing allies in the West over a period of years has drowned out Iran’s denial and insistence that it is only aiming to produce electricity from its nuclear energy program.

But the remorseless rhetoric has caused the world to overlook the fact that there is no actual evidence of a nuclear weapons program. It’s been said so often and so loudly over such a long time that the world now as good as accepts it as given that Iran does have a nuclear weapons program.

As a result of this unrelenting propaganda against Iran, the talk now is not; ‘has Iran really got a nuclear weapons program’, or even; ‘if it has, how can this be a threat to any one of the nuclear armed nations of the world, including Israel, which could obliterate Iran in an instant’ but, rather, the talk is; ‘how best can an attack be launched’, ‘who should launch the attack’, and ‘how far can the West go in attacking Iran in order to prevent retaliation’.

Even those against an attack aren’t against it because there is absolutely no moral, practical or legal justification for it; they’re against because of the consequences such an attack might bring. They worry not so much about the massive loss of life such a conflict will bring to the region but they worry that it’ll send the cost of oil sky-rocketing and doing untold damage to an already very wobbly global economy.

So, if Iran, as it says, doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program and is only engaged in seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and if there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, why are the Israelis and their neocon allies in the West so insistent that Iran does have a ‘nuclear weapons program’?

The answer is simple: The Israelis and their allies want to use the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ meme as an excuse to eliminate Iran from being a hindrance to Israel’s political long term aspirations of creating a Greater Israel which includes south Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Regime change in Iran from one that is hostile to Israel and the US and their allies to one that is friendly will dramatically change the entire Middle East and Central Asian geo-political landscape. Such a move will deprive Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip of its ability to resist Israeli expansionist aggression.

However, in order to serve Israel’s ultimate purpose the act of regime change must be seen to be merely an outcome of Israel’s stated aim of eliminating Iran as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel. Regime change instigated by internal conflict in Iran will not serve Israel’s purpose. It would deprive Israel of the need to attack Hezbollah and Hamas and invade Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in order to occupy and later annex them to Israel.

The excuse Israel will use in order to justify an attack, invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and the West Bank will be that Israel is pre-empting a retaliatory strike by Hamas and Hezbollah which the Israelis anticipate after Iran has been attacked in order to prevent Iran from building and using nuclear weapons against Israel and the West.

Israel’s ultimate aim is to invade, occupy then annex south Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to realise their dream of creating a Greater Israel. The payoff for the Americans is an Iran that is as at least pacified and, they hope, with a government that is friendly toward the US and Israel, and for Israel; an impotent Syria and a Greater Israel that will ultimately be cleared of all Palestinians and Arabs.

But, in order for Israel to arrive at their endgame, an attack against Iran is essential. Without that there will be no Greater Israel.

Iran has no nuclear weapons program, but Israel does have a program for creating a Greater Israel.

Is the world going to let them get away with it again? How many millions are going to have to die this time? It’s time the world got back on the streets to protest.

ISRAEL ORDERS MASSIVE MILITARY FUEL STOCKS FAR IN EXCESS OF THAT REQUIRED FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS

Three weeks ago the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published a notice, as it is legally required to do, announcing that Israel has ordered massive quantities of various fuels suitable for military use, and in the case of the order for JP-8 jet fuel, suitable only for military use.

The massive order is valued at some $2 billion and, as well as the 284 million gallons (1.075 billion litres) of JP-8 jet fuel, the order also includes 60 million gallons (227 million litres) of unleaded gasoline and 100 million gallons (378 million litres) of diesel fuel.

Last week I wrote of how it would not be possible for Israel to mount a ‘unilateral’ strike against Iran because Israel would require complete connivance and support for such a strike from the US. I explained, as I have in the past, how it would be necessary for the US to supply the massive amounts of fuel need for such a strike. If Israel were to strike Iran, Israel would only require the massive amounts of jet fuel and over a billion litres of jet fuel would be more that enough to do the job in practical terms.

If Israel were planning to strike Iran then that would explain the requirement for the large amounts of JP-8 fuel. However, it does not explain Israel’s need for such large amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel since an Israeli strike against Iran is unlikely to include any type of ground incursion into Iran for which these fuels would be used. The only conclusion one can draw, if Israel is not planning to actually invade Iran, which, clearly, it could not, is that Israel is planning to use the gasoline and the diesel fuel for some other ground incursion – and that can only mean an invasion of Lebanon and possibly the Gaza and West Bank when an attack against Iran is launched.

This massive order begs the question; is the final confrontation imminent? And, if not, then what is all this fuel for?

Time will tell. Jet fuel, if it’s going to be used in peak condition, doesn’t have a very long shelf life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither Israel nor the US will be attacking Iran for the exclusive purpose of eliminating Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to destroy its so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’; the US and the neoconservatives have made it quite clear that their aim is to bring about regime change in Iran and nothing less. The idea that either or both will attack in order to destroy Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ will merely be the stated casus belli to justify such an attack.

And there are other realities that also need to be considered. Despite the now almost deafening rhetoric of Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’, there is still the not unimportant matter of evidence proving that Iran actually has a ‘nuclear weapons program’. To date not a single skerrick of any hard evidence has been produced to support any of the US or Israeli claims. The UN’s nuclear watchdog organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has not been able to find any evidence and the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 stated quite categorically that Iran had discarded its nuclear weapon program in 2003. While the 2010 NIE (which this year is entitled ‘The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community’) has suggested that Iran “is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that bring it closer to being able to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so”, no actual hard evidence was offered to support the idea that Iran actually had a ‘nuclear weapons program’. The 2010 NIE also noted tellingly that: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons”. Surely, if Iran hasn’t yet decided to build nuclear weapons how would it have a nuclear weapons program? And if they ‘do not know’ then what evidence can they possibly have to even assume that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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