NEOCONS WORK THEMSELVES INTO A PARANOID FRENZY OVER IRAN

Just a quick observation today.

Having decided that working themselves up into a lather over the supposed Iranian threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ has not had the desired effect inasmuch that it has failed to get Obama to attack Iran so that Israel can take over the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and, so they hope, south Lebanon up to the Litani River, the neocons have now decided that a bit of direct fear-mongering might do the trick.

Now the neocons are trying to tell Americans that the US East Coast needs a missile defence system in order to protect the US from Iranian nuclear-armed ICBMs.

Do they really expect Americans to fall for this utter nonsense? Are the neocons thick or do they just think the American people are? Do they expect the American people to flow out into the streets of America’s East Coast demanding that Obama attack Iran immediately? Are they nuts?

The American people and the rest of the world would be better off pouring out onto the streets demanding that there be no more wars – not for Israel or anyone else!

NEOCON DESPERATION FOR WAR AGAINST IRAN EXPOSES THEIR REAL INTENT

Henry Sokolski, the executive director of the neoconservative propaganda organisation The Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, yesterday wrote a piece in the National Review Online titled ‘Preventing a Nuclear Iran’. In it, Sokolski fumbles around with the usual nonsense about how Iran is playing for time to build a bomb, etc., and how Obama should be getting on with doing something positive about preventing Iran from having any nuclear material.

Toward the end of his nonsensical twaddle Sokolski gets down to the nitty-gritty of what this is really all about. He writes:

Finally, the U.S. and its key allies need to get serious about putting the mullahs out to pasture. This means more than merely imposing economic sanctions or making a bombing run (the merits of which are open to debate).

When he says, ‘this means more than… making a bombing run’ Sokolski is referring to the need not just to destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, but to launch a massive all-out bombing offensive against Iran’s entire military and governmental institutions such that will bring about regime change in Iran.     

Sokolski goes on to say that “the U.S. should consider how to work with its friends in the region to limit Iranian influence in Iraq, Gaza, the Gulf, the West Bank, and Lebanon”. Since America only has one friend in the region, Israel, one wouldn’t need to be a brain surgeon to work out that what Sokolski is suggesting is that, while the US is busy with Iran, Israel could take care of Hamas in the Gaza and the West Bank, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The rather fuzzy reference to ‘Iraq’ and ‘the Gulf’ is just a furphy designed not to make the connotations too obvious.

With an extreme right-wing government in Israel now consolidated under Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party together with their neoconservative backers champing at the bit to attack Iran and poised to contest the US Presidency, only President Obama stands in the way of a catastrophic disaster – and nothing is assured even as far as he is concerned.

CONVICTED AUSTRALIAN RACIST ANDREW BOLT WANTS TO STOP BLACK AFRICAN IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA

In his online blog today at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, a well known convicted Australian racist, has suggested that Australia stop allowing black African migrants into Australia.

The article is probably the most blatant piece of racism yet from Bolt who usually attempts to avoid being so obvious about his racism.

Bolt uses an article in the Age newspaper as an opportunity to peddle his hatred. The article tells of a group of Australian students who happen to be black who are complaining of police harassment when they visit the inner city in Melbourne. They have said that many of them are getting fed up with this harassment and, if it continues, there could possibly be a backlash such as there was last August in the UK when Londoners rioted over the death of a black Londoner who was shot to death by the police.

Racism, sponsored deliberately by the likes of Andrew Bolt and his fellow Murdoch so-called ‘journalists’ like the Islamophobic Tim Blair, Piers Akerman et al, is marginalising black youth in Melbourne who, in turn, look to each other for socialising and studying whilst readying themselves for work – if they can get it.

It’s time to end racism in Australia. Bolt’s blatant racism should never be allowed to take hold in Australia.

WAR AGAINST IRAN: LEADING NEOCON INVOKES ISRAEL’S PAST ‘GLORIES’ OF A UNITED ISRAEL TO SPUR ON ATTACK AGAINST IRAN

Leading influential neoconservative writer and warmonger, Charles Krauthammer, has invoked Israel’s success in the 1967 six day war against numerous Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan and Syria, as encouragement enough for Israel to attack Iran over its so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Krauthammer seems to think that a united Israel – at least politically and militarily if not quite universally – puts it in a position to take on Iran by attacking its nuclear facilities. Krauthammer’s argument is that the entire nation is now united due to Netanyahu commanding some 94 seats in the 120 seat Knesset due to the Kadima Party crossing the floor from the opposition to the government all because of a changeover of leadership when Tzipi Livni lost the leadership ballot to Shaul Mofaz.

There was no general election that gave Netanyahu so much power, but then who needs elections when you have politicians and political parties willing and able to change their political stance without getting a mandate from the electorate yet still keep their seat in parliament?

So much for democracy in Israel.

Israel’s modus operandi ever since Zionists first dreamed up the idea of grabbing Palestine as their homeland has always been to provoke their enemies into providing a casus belli so that any attack against their enemies will always seem as though the Israelis are defending themselves. In reality, however, all that is happening is that, while seemingly acting in defence, albeit pre-emptively, they are actually carefully fulfilling a plan designed specifically to expand their territorial holdings meter by meter. The Six-Day War of 1967 was a classic example of just that. It was a war that had its origins in Israel’s desire to have the Golan Heights. Literally, meter by meter, Israeli bulldozers pushed up the slopes of the Golan Heights with settlers close behind cultivating the land as the bulldozers moved forward. When the Syrians fired at the bulldozers to push them back the Israelis claimed they were under attack.

Similarly, the Israelis provoked the Palestinians by arresting and assassinating Palestinian activists in what is now the West Bank. The Palestinians responded with some small scale attacks against the Israelis. The Israelis counter-responded by launching a massive disproportionate attack against the Jordanian village of as-Samu in the West Bank. In doing so, the Israelis managed to get an entire regional war going. Viola! Six-Day War, occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and the Sinai, and the destruction of the Egyptian forces and the rest is history.

Now Krazy Krauthammer thinks the time is right to repeat the performance – only this time against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The world should take these people seriously. The Zionists of Israel are prepared to risk all for their dream of a Greater Israel and the destruction of all their enemies

WAR AGAINST IRAN: NETANYAHU, WITH RENEWED CONFIDENCE AS LEADER, BRINGS IRAN BACK ON TO THE FRONT BURNER

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who by taking on new allies in his previously fragile coalition government is now back on his warhorse making demands of Iran that he knows Iran will never accede to.

After making a new alliance with the Kadima Party after the Kadima leadership changed hands, Netanyahu is now in a position of political strength and that, coupled with recent polls saying that he would probably romp home in an election, has given him renewed confidence to confront Iran  as the next round of talks begin later this month. Netanyahu has made it clear to the so-called P5+1 group negotiating with Iran to halt its nuclear program that he will be demanding that Iran halt all enrichment, transfer all its enriched uranium out of Iran and shut down and dismantle its underground facility at Fordo. The next round of talks with Iran is due to begin 23 May 2012 in Baghdad, Iraq.

Shaul Mofaz, the new Kadima Party leader after ousting Tzipi Livni in a recent leadership poll, had previously held back from the idea of launching an attack against Iran. However, it now seems he has changed his mind and now agrees with Netanyahu that an attack against Iran would be the best course for Israel to take if Iran refuses to halt its nuclear program.

Since both Netanyahu and Mofaz know that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program while insisting that they have, they are now demanding that Iran halt its entire nuclear program thus raising the ante for an attack based on the likelihood of Iran refusing to comply with any such demands.

With his power in Israel now consolidated, Netanyahu will now have much greater confidence to demand Obama support Israel attacking Iran. For reasons I’ve explained before at this blog, it would be completely impossible for Israel to truly unilaterally launch a ‘pre-emptive’ attack against Iran without the full connivance of the US.

The new political picture in Israel puts President Obama in a predicament. Renewed confidences in Netanyahu in Israel will definitely reinvigour the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby in the US to put pressure on Obama to support Netanyahu’s desire to attack Iran. For the sake of public appearance, Obama is likely to resist such calls knowing full well that the American people simply do not want the US to launch yet another war. However, behind the scenes, Obama will be telling the Israelis that, if they launch an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, then the US will follow up with massive what they hope will be a regime changing bombing campaign in order to prevent and deter Iran from any retaliatory attacks against Israel. This will then leave Israel free to pre-emptively attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank where Hamas elements would likely join forces with the various Fatah groups to defend against Israeli full occupation and military rule in the West Bank.

What should be clearly stressed is that if Israel attacks Iran while Obama is still President, then one may rest assured that such an attack by Israel has been approved and carried out in full connivance with Obama no matter what Obama says about such an attack being carried out without his prior knowledge.

The bottom line today is: Netanyahu’s new-found political position in Israel, coupled with the up-coming talks in Baghdad and the Presidential elections in the US makes for a real game-changer as far as the Final Confrontation with Iran is concerned.     

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM AND AUSTRALIAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM

White ultra right-wing racists in Australia and neoconservatives in America have both adopted a propaganda line which seeks to vilify people who identify as having native heritage. The racists of Australia and the neocons of America do this by claiming that some people who identify as having native heritage but who have lost much or all of the physical features associated with the native people of Australia or America respectively are using their racial identity for purely pecuniary reasons. However, while both propaganda memes are racially based, the reasons why Australian natives are abused in this way and the reasons why American natives appear to be abused similarly are quite different from each other.

In Australia, the ultra-racist Murdoch journalist, Andrew Bolt, was recently found guilty of racial vilification in an Australian Federal Court. Judge Mordy Bromberg found Bolt guilty of vilification by virtue of Bolt’s claim that the Aboriginal people he was referring to were not really Aboriginal and only claimed to be Aboriginal in order to gain certain financial benefits. Judge Bromberg found for the plaintiffs based on the fact that the plaintiffs, all with Aboriginal heritage, had, despite their lack of Aboriginal features, identified as being Aboriginal and had always been accepted as Aboriginal by Aboriginal people for all of their lives and long before they had any knowledge of awards or grants being available to Aboriginal people. Judge Bromberg found that Bolt had failed to support his claim that those Aboriginal people concerned had claimed Aboriginality solely for the purpose of gaining a pecuniary advantage and that, in accusing them of fraud, Bolt had racially vilified them. For Bolt the intent was to vilify Aborigines that were fair skinned and had lost the Aboriginal features of their ancestors. The accusation that they had defrauded the Australian taxpayer by claiming Aboriginality was merely an excuse that provided Bolt with yet another opportunity to push his racist propaganda in his online column at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun newspaper. Judge Bromberg saw through Bolt’s deception and found for the plaintiffs.

In America, the neoconservatives are currently pushing a similar line about racial identity against a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren. Needless to say, Professor Warren is a Democrat and she will be running against the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown in the upcoming elections.

As seems to be the norm in American politics these days, especially during election seasons, both sides tend to dig up as much ‘dirt’ as possible about their adversary and sling it at each other in the hope that some might stick thus giving the other some kind of advantage. Usually, the kind of ‘dirt’ dug up tends to be about the honesty and integrity of the other and thus goes to credibility.

In the case of Elizabeth Warren, it appears that at some stage in her career she had claimed American native heritage by virtue of her great-great-great-grandmother being identified as a Cherokee Native American. Warren’s neoconservative detractors claim that she made such a claim in order to gain a benefit in her academic career. Following typical neoconservative propaganda practice, the author of The Weekly Standard article, Michael Warren, (presumably no relation!) isn’t quite game enough to out-rightly state that Elizabeth Warren was flat out lying about her heritage, so instead, he quotes someone else who is game enough to say she is lying and, in this way, projects his endorsement of the idea whilst avoiding any potential legal action against him for defaming her.

While the accusations made by Andrew Bolt in Australia are the same as the accusations made by the Republicans and their neoconservative supporters in the US and which are as despicable as each other, the motives for Bolt’s accusations against the Australian Aboriginals are completely different from the neocon’s accusations against Elizabeth Warren. For Bolt the motivation was quite simply to racially vilify Aboriginal people generally, while in the US the neocons were simply attempting to defame a political adversary for political reasons though, in the process, they have also managed to vilify a person of native heritage.

Bolt is complaining that he is being denied his freedom of speech by being ordered by Judge Bromberg not to vilify in future. He points to the same accusations being levelled freely against Elizabeth Warren in the US as an example how the right to freedom of speech should be applied in Australia. But this, again, is just a propaganda ploy Bolt is using. Judge Bromberg has not deprived Bolt his freedom of speech as he claims, but rather Bromberg has merely found Bolt guilty of vilification and has warned him against re-offending.

Conversely, in the US, while the neocons accusations are despicable and may be considered bordering on vilification, the accusations were made primarily and deliberately to defame Elizabeth Warren for political reasons. Warren may or may not find that she has reasonable grounds to take her detractors to court but, if she does, it will be to sue them for defaming her whereas the Aboriginal people who took Bolt to court did so because they were vilified by him. His defaming them was as a result of his vilification of them, but in the case of Elizabeth Warren, her vilification is as a result of the neocons defaming her.

The two cases have similarities but have very different motives. Bolt cannot claim they are the same and hold the US up as a shining example of free speech.    

AUSTRALIAN RACIST, ANDREW BOLT, THINKS AUSTRALIAN NATIVES ARE LIKE AN ‘ARMY OF GIANT RATS’

In his column today at the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote the perfect metaphor that reflects his loathing and contempt for native Australian people.

In his article, Bolt describes how native Australian Possums in his neighbourhood are eating out the tops of the trees that have been planted down his street and have now moved into his garden. Never mind, of course, that it was he that had actually moved into their garden in the first place – a garden that they had occupied for millions of years before Bolt’s family arrived there. But that wouldn’t worry the likes of Bolt who now looks upon all of Australia’s natives, human or animal, that impinge into what he now thinks is his world, as ‘an army of giant rats’.

It’s his metaphor for describing what he feels about those that are different from him. His contempt doesn’t stop at native Australian Possums and Australia’s native peoples.

Just because he is Australian-born, he truly believes that he is a ‘native’ himself and that Aboriginal people, therefore, should become as he is – Australian.

The problem is; Bolt is not a ‘native’ as he likes to think he is. Being born here doesn’t make you a ‘native’. He is – like most who call themselves Australian – an introduced species. The word ‘Australia’ itself is a non-native construct that’s barely just a few hundred years old. The natives called their lands by other names – they still do. None of them were ‘Australia’.

(When one sees it like that, then I’m wrong in calling Aboriginal people; ‘native Australians’. I’m even wrong in calling native Possums; ‘Australian’ native Possums. More correctly I should be referring to them as being native to a land we – we who are not native to – call ‘Australia’.)

But, as I said, it doesn’t stop there for Bolt. His new-found nationalistic arrogance about being ‘Australian’ is so powerful that he now resents not just Possums living in his street but any person new to Australia who is not like him. Just as Possums and Aboriginal people are alien to him, so too are Arab, Central Asian and African people, and especially if they are Islamic and dress differently from him and what he perceives as an ‘Australian’ way of dressing.

Recently Bolt was taken to court for vilifying Aboriginal people. He was found guilty. Now Bolt is playing his conviction for all it’s worth in order further push his racist agenda.

Bolt denies that he vilified Aboriginal people claiming that he was only pointing out that some people are claiming to be Aboriginal in order to gain some kind of pecuniary advantage. He supported his accusations by saying that these people were so un-Aboriginal looking that they couldn’t possibly really be Aboriginals and that they, therefore, were frauds. Fortunately, Judge Mordecai Bromberg was able to see right through Bolt’s ploy and saw it for what it really was – blatant lies designed to specifically vilify Aboriginal people. Bromberg then ordered Bolt not to repeat such vilifying lies. Bolt has since responded by claiming he has lost his freedom of speech.

So now, instead of saying exactly what thinks, he uses metaphors as above and links to other racists writings who say what he is unable to. Despite all his denials, Bolt remains an outrageous racist. One day Murdoch will wake up to the fact that Bolt is not doing the image of Australia any good at all and shut him down. Australia will then be a far better place for everyone to live in – native or otherwise.

And even a better place for Possums to live in.

A NEW SEEPING PARADIGM THAT COULD DESTROY DEMOCRACY: GOVERNMENT BY THE MEGA-RICH

The very rich have always played a part in government but, for most of them, their decision to enter politics was for truly altruistic reasons. They believed that their experience in business could contribute to the well-being of the entire nation and that the nation as a whole would benefit from their management and decision-making skills. There were, of course, some that said that they were entering politics for purely altruistic reasons but either had ulterior motives for doing so in the first place or, alternatively, soon discovered that their position offered opportunities that could be exploited in order to covertly enrich themselves through various devious contrivances while being in politics. Such people, for better or worse, have been involved in politics for eons ever since ‘politics’ was invented.

Today, however, a frightening new trend is developing in Australia. No longer are the mega-rich entering politics in order to help create a better nation - and in recent history the likes of Malcolm Fraser and Malcolm Turnbull might be numbered among those. Today the mega-rich are quite overtly attempting to buy their way into both power and influence for no other purpose than to further enrich themselves and their shareholders.

Yesterday, Queensland businessman Clive Palmer announced his intention to enter Federal politics by running against Labor Federal Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan in Swan’s electorate of Lilley, Queensland. Palmer, whose main business interests are in mining, has made it quite clear that his purpose and intention for entering politics in this way is to fight against the proposed Mineral Resource Rent Tax and carbon tax which would directly affect his personal fortune and his company’s bottom line.

Joining Palmer in the quest for governmental power and influence in order to directly protect their assets and avoid having to pay the proposed taxes is fellow mining magnate Gina Rinehart of Western Australia. While Palmer is attempting to get into Federal parliament in order to get rid of the taxes, Rinehart’s preferred method of influence is to buy up interests in Australia’s media through which she hopes to influence public opinion by using aggressive right-wing media propagandists. In 2010 Rinehart took a 10% holding in Ten Network Holdings and has also latterly acquired a substantial holding in the slightly left of center Fairfax Media.

Already Rinehart’s influence in the Ten Network is paying dividends. The right-wing Murdoch commentator and Rinehart and Palmer supporter, Andrew Bolt, now has his own program at Ten, The Bolt Report, which overtly and frequently pushes  both Palmer’s and Rinehart’s personal agendas with regard to the mining tax and the carbon tax. Bolt also pushes those same agendas at his online column and blog at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun.

And, finally, there’s the perennial right-wing media player himself, Rupert Murdoch, who already wields massive conservative media influence throughout Australia and much of the Western world and whose journalists and commentators in Australia are already pushing the new paradigm of governance by the mega-rich in order to further enrich those that hope to eventually govern. Besides Andrew Bolt, Murdoch’s Australian media has a whole gamut of journalists and commentators who seem willing to take up the miners cause. In recent days, Murdoch’s UK newspaper The Sun has even been seconded to help the conservative cause in Australia with headlines that blatantly demonised the Gillard government.   

The domination of government and the media by the wealthy for the sole purpose of further enriching those that govern represents a fundamental change in our democratic system that, if successful, does not bode well for the political health of Australia. With the demise of the altruistic motives of the well-heeled and the well-intentioned being replaced by those that openly wield their wealth in order to influence, govern and then profit, Australians face a bleak future – if, that is, the mega-rich are allowed to get their way.   

WAR AGAINST IRAN: EX-SHIN BET BOSS EXPOSES NETANYAHU AND BARAK’S REAL PLANS FOR ISRAEL

The UK Guardian reported today that Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Israel’s internal security organisation, Shin Bet, said that:

…the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Ehud Barak – the principal advocates of military action against Iran's nuclear programme – were unfit to lead the country and could not be trusted to conduct a war. The "messianic" pair were misleading the public on the merits of an attack.

The Guardian went on to report that:

The former Shin Bet chief did not confine his comments to Iran. On peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he said: "Forget all about the stories they're selling you in the media about how we want to talk but [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas] doesn't, and so forth. I'm telling you, we're not talking with the Palestinians because this government has no interest in talking with the Palestinians … I know from up close what is going on in that area”.

Diskin presented the Iran issue and the Palestinian issue as though they were two separate issues that needed to be dealt with but which he considered were being handled badly by Netanyahu and Barak.

The reality, however, is that the two issues are very much related to each other; indeed, the extreme right-wing Zionist obsession with Iran is because the Zionists real determination is to not only never allow the Palestinian people to ever have a state of their own, but to occupy and eventually annex the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. Together with the Golan Heights, which they have already annexed after taking it from Syria, they hope to realise their long held dream of creating a Greater Israel. Iran comes into the picture because it is Iran that supports the two organisations, Hamas and Hezbollah, which are preventing the Greater Israel Zionists from realising their dream.

While the Israeli’s know that the world will not tolerate Israel simply marching in and taking what they want, the Greater Israel Zionists believe that if war breaks out between Israel and Iran on the pretext that Iran is a threat to Israel, then such a war would could also provide the pretext for Israel to invade and occupy the Gaza, West Bank and south Lebanon telling the world that it was necessary in order to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah retaliating against Israel for Israel’s attack against Iran.

Netanyahu is now under massive pressure. He and Barak are reliant on the US in their war against Iran. While Israel will fire the opening shots against Iran, it will need the US to finish the job on Iran while Israel deals with Hamas and Hezbollah. As the US elections approach, the timing of a war against Iran becomes critical. The fact that Israeli elections may take place at around the same time as the US elections makes the timing even more critical.

And now, with internal pressures dominating headlines in Israel, Netanyahu and Barak’s hands may be forced to take the ultimate step while in the US, Obama, under electoral pressure from the Republicans and the American right-wing and neoconservatives that support the Greater Israel Zionists, may feel obliged to take a punt knowing that a successful war against Iran will ensure him a second term.

Factors operating against this scenario which may prevent war are: Obama may resist pressure from Israel to instigate a war against Iran if opinion polls favour him right up to the election and if he knows that he is going to get over the line reasonably comfortably. That, coupled with internal pressures in Israel against Netanyahu and Barak’s push for war, may well tip the balance to avoid war.

The world can only hope that sensible heads prevail.

FOR AUSTRALIAN READERS…

The latest news on Australia’s most notorious racist, Andrew Bolt, is here.

WAR AGAINST IRAN: THE TIMING OF POSSIBLE ISREALI ELECTIONS ARE A WORRY

The headline in Ha’aretz today is cause for concern. Apparently Likud Party sources have said that a general election is likely to be held between September and November – at just the time the US presidential race is heading down the final straight and a champing at the bit Mitt Romney is keen to see Netanyahu get past the post in Israel.

As usual with Israeli politics, the stated reasons for an early election are varied and complex depending on which Israeli newspaper one reads. However, whatever the reason for an election, the timing of it should be of great concern to both the US and Iran by simple virtue of the fact that Netanyahu would be almost assured of a landslide victory if, prior to the election, Israel launched an initial attack against Iran which Obama could then follow up on leaving Israel to attack and destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The destruction of Israel’s enemies would bring glory to Netanyahu and sweeping victory at the polls for the Likud and the right-wing Zionist parties of Israel while regime change in Iran as a result of a massive follow-up bombing attack against Iran by the US would bring certain victory for Obama.

On the other hand, the failure by Netanyahu to bring the confrontation against Iran to a head by election time will almost certainly cost him his office – and with it will go any future opportunity for him to realise his goal of creating a Greater Israel. For Obama, war against Iran would be better fought after the next US presidential election when he has nothing to lose. However, if Netanyahu forces Obama’s hand by insisting on confronting Iran, Obama will throw every ounce of US muscle into the fight to ensure not just that Iran is deprived of its so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’, but that there is ‘regime change’ in Iran.   

WAR AGAINST IRAN: MARCO RUBIO AND THE PRETENTIOUSNESS OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Despite the failures of neoconservative-inspired American ventures into Afghanistan and Iraq, it should, nonetheless, come as no surprise to hear that neoconservative Marco Rubio, who could possibly become America’s next Vice-President, still believes in American exceptionalism and the right of the US to dominate and lead the world.

Yesterday, Rubio, addressing a meeting at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, finished his frightening foreign policy address by telling his audience:

Why does it have to start with us, some say. Why do we have to do it? We find our answer in the words of a non-American. In an address to Congress in 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said:

“I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go -- I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, ‘Why me, and why us, and why America?’ And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.”

And so it is. For this new century is a time of tremendous challenges. But it is also a time of tremendous promise. This is indeed the world America made. It is freer and more prosperous than it has ever been.

But it can be even better. As Americans we can’t make that happen by ourselves. But the world cannot make it happen without us.

His words sum up the neoconservative’s vision of a New American Century first proffered to the world in 1997.

So, why do I say ‘frightening’?

It’s frightening simply because the neocons seem not to have learnt a thing since the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq. Read the text of Rubio’s speech; all the rhetoric by neoconservatives that led to the destruction of Iraq is repeated again against Iran. But this time there’s more. Lurking in the background of Rubio’s foreign policy speech is the looming threat of China’s challenge to America’s dominance as a so-called ‘superpower’. Rubio wants China to be like America and until it does become like America, it will forever be a threat to America.

The world must reject the arrogance of America’s neoconservatives. The myth of ‘American exceptionalism’ should be exposed. Only they and their supporters in the West can truly believe that the wreck that is America today is actually Exceptional and that the world should want to emulate it.

I doubt anything will alter the fact that Iran will eventually be attacked by the US and Israel, but if the Republicans get their man Romney and his probable off-sider Marco Rubio into the White House, then any doubts that remain will be gone.    

NEOCONS AND THE BREIVIK AFFAIR

There’s an interesting piece in the National Review Online today by neocon writer John O’Sullivan.

Clearly, neoconservatives around the world have a serious image problem as a direct result of the deeds of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik on account of the neocons and Breivik having exactly the same political ideology. Now that Breivik is on trial, his motives are becoming even more exposed than when those terrible events happened back in July of last year. Because it was such an horrific event, the commentary that attempted to answer the question of ‘why’ it happened got a little lost as we tried desperately to find out ‘how’ it happened. But, now the trial of Breivik has begun and it’s becoming clearer every day that Breivik is nothing more than an extremist ultra-violent Islam-hating neoconservative, neoconservatives around the word are having to put as much distance between themselves and Breivik as they possibly can. In order to do this, neoconservatives need to utterly condemn Breivik’s deeds to the extreme. And John O’Sullivan is doing just that by inferring that Norway should reintroduce the death penalty.

Leaving aside the fact that neoconservatives would simply like to see the problem go away, and executing Breivik, so they hope, would achieve that, O’Sullivan’s piece also exposes a lot about the neoconservative mindset.

First, there is the pure arrogance displayed in the piece.

Norway is a sovereign state with laws and practices that exclude the use of the death penalty. Norway is also a nation that provides every single person under its jurisdiction an opportunity to the full benefit of their laws no matter who or what they’ve done and does not make exceptions to those laws – especially on the suggestions of American neoconservatives.

Secondly, there is the usual propensity that neocons display – the ‘do as we do’ notion of justice. O’Sullivan actually asks why there should even be a trial at all. Could it be that Norway, unlike the US, would prefer to seek justice rather than revenge against those that commit crimes? Trials not only provide justice, they also often provide an understanding of what went so horribly wrong and, in doing so, may also provide answers in seeking ways to prevent reoccurrence.

And, of course, it’s not just O’Sullivan that’s back-pedalling as fast as possible to put distance between Breivik and the neocons; they’re all at it across the world. Dan Hodges, a Blairite neocon writing in the UKs Daily Telegraph, asks why the Norwegian police didn’t just shoot Breivik on the spot. While Hodges then goes on to explain why they shouldn’t have, one needs to ask why he suggested it in the first place. Hodges then goes on telling his readers how the Norwegians should run their justice system.

And I’ve already written about how Australian neocon, Andrew Bolt, is also trying desperately to put distance between himself and Breivik.  

WAR AGAINST IRAN: CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF THE NEOCON PROPAGANDA MACHINE IN ACTION

An article in Commentary today by neoconservative arch-propagandist Jonathan Tobin demonstrates exactly how the neocon propaganda machine works to influence the political wheels in Washington.

The article is supposedly about a fake fatwa issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that effectively banned the production of nuclear weapons. Tobin’s fevered argument is that the fatwa was never issued and the rumour that it was is designed to fool the West into giving Iran more time to actually build a nuclear weapon.

Whether or not a fatwa was issued is really beside the point; what’s interesting about Tobin’s rant is the ‘evidence’ he uses to support his argument that the fatwa never existed.

First he refers to this article by fellow neoconservative writer Ruthie Blum writing in Israel Hayom which Tobin links to. Blum’s article, in turn, then links to the notorious neoconservative propaganda think-tank MEMRI.org, which Tobin also links to in his article. The pattern, of course, is that Tobin refers only to a network of other neoconservative individuals and organisations who he presents as credible authorities on these matters.

MEMRI.org was the organisation that deliberately mistranslated and then misrepresented the speech by Iranian President Ahmadinejad in which, so MEMRI.org tells it, he said that ‘Israel must be wiped from the map’. In fact, what Ahmadinejad said was; ‘this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time’; something completely different. But the propagandists are sticking with the ‘Iran said it will wipe Israel off the map’ meme because it fits in nicely with the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ meme with which they are telling the world Iran will use to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

The ‘fatwa’ nonsense is just another piece of neoconservative garbage emanating from their recycle bin of propaganda. They just hope that no one goes rummaging around in their bin of lies to find that most of it comes from the same source – themselves! 

ANDERS BREIVIK AND ANDREW BOLT: THE SWORD AND THE PEN OF KINDRED SPIRITS

At his blog today Andrew Bolt tried desperately to spin his way out of being put in the same ideological frame as Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

Bolt writes:

You will remember how eager were many on the Left to use the horrific crimes of Anders Behring Breivik to smear mainstream conservatives.

He then goes on to quote an ABC article as though it was the ABC that was trying to smear ‘mainstream conservatives’. But what the ABC piece actually said was:

Accused Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik praised four Australian conservative leaders - including former Prime Minister John Howard - in his 1,500-page manifesto.and:In a manifesto posted online under the Anglicised pseudonym Andrew Berwick, the killer quoted Mr Howard, former treasurer Peter Costello, Catholic Cardinal George Pell and conservative writer and historian Keith Windschuttle.

It wasn’t the ABC smearing ‘mainstream conservatives’, the ABC was merely quoting Breivik himself. What Bolt has actually attempted to do is smear the ABC.

There should be no misunderstanding here – Bolt has no choice but to condemn Breivik for what he has done, but beneath the surface of that condemnation lurks the real Bolt who has exactly the same nationalistic and Islamophobic aspirations as Breivik. But where Breivik had a gun, Bolt has a weapon far more dangerous - he has access to the mainstream media with which to peddle those aspirations.

Bolt is peddling as hard as he can to put ideological distance between himself and Breivik but the more he tries, the more he places himself in the same pigeon-hole.