ISRAELI PROVOCATION OF HAMAS IN THE GAZA AND HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON INCREASING.

Yesterday’s unprovoked attack by Israeli armoured vehicles firing into the Gaza Strip at Palestinian farmers and their homes near Khan Younis in south Gaza seems to have been a follow on from an earlier incursion by Israeli on Tuesday when Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into the Gaza near the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Strip to destroy agricultural plots. Both of these attacks against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip seem to be part of a deliberate program by the Israeli Defence Forces to deliberately provoke Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against the Israelis just as the Israelis are attempting to provoke Hezbollah in Lebanon by moving tanks up to the border and increasing their overflights in Lebanese airspace.

Israel is clearly attempting once again to use its well known tactic of taking small un-newsworthy but deliberately provocative jabs at its enemies and then, when their enemy retaliates, use that as a casus belli for an all-out attack accusing their enemies of having started it. It is a tactic that Israel has repeated over and over again ever since the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel first got seriously underway.

As I wrote on Wednesday, this provocative activity in the Gaza and at the border of Lebanon isn’t random or spontaneous, they are organised and deliberate. They are designed to provoke retaliation in a well co-ordinated effort to ultimately instigate an attack against Iran.

ISRAEL UPS THE TEMPO IN ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO KICK START A FIGHT WITH LEBANON.

Despite denials yesterday by the Israeli Chief of Staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, that all is well on the northern front where Israel’s border meets Lebanon, Israeli tanks and troops are piling up at the border and Israeli Air Force jets are flying more frequent sorties in to Lebanese airspace.

It seems some Israeli armour has moved forward to within a hundred metres of the border in a deliberate attempt to provoke a reaction. What is significant in this move is that it was carried out knowing that this time it would not just be Hezbollah that the Israelis would be facing, but regular Lebanese forces who, according to a Lebanese Army spokesperson, ‘are ready to confront any Israeli assaults on Lebanon’ and have moved up tanks to the area to meet the Israeli threat.

This latest move, coupled with the increasingly bellicose propaganda campaign Israel is waging over Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program, could easily escalate into the war the Israelis have been trying desperately to provoke ever since their last unsuccessful attempt to provoke a confrontation with Iran when it attacked and then invaded Lebanon in 2006.

In any future war with Lebanon, Israel has stated that it will regard the Lebanese government and the Lebanese armed forces as much an enemy as Hezbollah who, according to a ‘Jerusalem Post’ report, are now actually training Lebanese army officers. This means that any full scale attack by Israel against Lebanon will include massive air attacks against Lebanese government and utilities infrastructure all over Lebanon starting, as per tradition, with attacks against Lebanon’s airports, airfields and military bases, supplies and communications networks.

The Lebanese air force, which, apart from a handful of very outdated Hawker Hunter aircraft, at the moment consists mainly of helicopters used for both attack work and transport, is, significantly, awaiting delivery of 10 MiG-29 aircraft gifted from Russia which are due to arrive next month. These aircraft, when flown by experienced pilots and appropriately armed, will be a reasonable match when up against Israel’s F-16’s. Israel would certainly be keen not to have to deal with these aircraft, especially if the Lebanese contract experienced Russian pilots to fly them, and so would be anxious to take on Lebanon before these aircraft arrive.

Israel is itching to go and the imminent delivery of the 10 MiG-29’s might just be the trigger they need.

ISRAEL’S MENACING RHETORIC TOWARD LEBANON AND THREATS TOWARD IRAN ARE INTRINSICALLY LINKED.

The world should not make the mistake of believing that Israel’s menacing rhetoric toward Lebanon is a separate issue from Israel’s threatening attitude toward Iran.

Israel has made it quite clear that in any future conflict with Hezbollah, Israel will regard the Lebanese government as being responsible for Hezbollah’s actions. This means that any attack Israel launches against Hezbollah will now include action against all of Lebanon and Lebanon’s armed forces.

Since Israel now regards Hezbollah as an integral part of the Lebanese government, any future war launched by Israel to destroy Hezbollah will have to involve a full-on invasion – which, of course, is what the Israelis have always wanted to do and have attempted a number of times before. But next time it will different. Next time the Israelis invade Lebanon it will be with overwhelming force and the resulting occupation of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River will likely be permanent.

The one obstacle to Israel’s stance against Hezbollah is Iran. Iran supports Hezbollah with massive amounts of financial aid and military hardware. It is quite clear that Israel’s strategy is to find a casus belli with which to launch an attack against either Lebanon or Iran. If Israel finds, or creates, a cause to attack Lebanon first then it will likely attack Iran soon after based on the notion that Iran is clearly supporting Lebanon by providing Hezbollah with weapons and possibly even men. If, on the other hand, Israel decides to launch a so-called ‘unilateral pre-emptive’ attack against Iran (there will be nothing at all ‘unilateral’ about such an attack; the US will actually be up to their ears in it) then Israel will launch an attack against Lebanon claiming that it would need to prevent retaliatory attacks on Israel by Hezbollah. Either way, when push comes to shove, Israel will want to be killing more than one bird in such a conflict.

Naturally, Israel will also want to take care of Hamas in the Gaza Strip at the same time as it launches any attack against Hezbollah.

Once committed to war, the US will have no alternative but to support Israel and will abandon all pretence about wanting to find a diplomatic way out of its differences with Iran.

Israel’s rhetoric against Hezbollah and Iran are yet again beginning to converge and is becoming heightened. It’s has happened before and such a final confrontation type war has only been avoided in the past because Israel was unable to find a strong enough casus belli to justify it.

While the US is still insisting that a diplomatic solution be found to Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ in order to satisfy US public opinion which would not support an American attack against Iran, the US knows full well that in fact Iran has no such ‘nuclear weapons program’. This can only mean then that the US is keeping the ‘Iran has nuclear weapons’ card up its sleeve to use when Israel decides its ready to launch its final confrontation with Iran. If all goes to plan, the Israelis hope by the end of it to be in southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and even possibly the West Bank permanently while the US will hope that a short sharp but brutal onslaught will bring about regime change in Iran.

IS CLINTON REALLY GETTING UP ISRAEL’S NOSE OR IS SHE ACTUALLY PUSHING ISRAEL TO ATTACK IRAN?

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton seemingly upset the Zionists of Israel recently when she remarked that the US would protect Israel and other Middle East allies from Iran if Iran becomes nuclear armed. She said the US would be prepared to build a ‘defence umbrella’ that would neutralise Irans attempt to ‘dominate’ if it were to become nuclear armed.

If one was to accept the rhetoric and propaganda that Iran does indeed have a ‘nuclear weapons program’ as Israel and her allies claim, then one wonders what it is that is upsetting the Israelis who would be the beneficiaries of such a defensive measure – and, presumably, at no cost to them. One has to ask then; ‘What’s the problem?’

The problem is; it’s not what the Israeli Zionists want the US to do as far as Iran is concerned. For Israel, the problem is not Iran’s nuclear weapons program – they know full well that Iran doesn’t actually have one and the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric is just propaganda to con the world into supporting Israel. What Israel really wants is regime change in Iran so that Israel can deal with Hezbollah and Hamas without Iran supporting them with weapons.

Now, not only does Israel know that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, but so does the US in which case; what exactly is Hilary Clinton talking about?

The problem is that the Obama administration, who would actually like to see ‘regime change’ in Iran as much as Israel would, has painted itself into a bit of a corner. Politically, he can’t just go joining in with Israel in a pre-emptive attack against Iran without good cause. And, for the American people, simply accusing the Iranians of having ‘a nuclear weapons program’ without any proof whatsoever is hardly ‘good cause’, especially since the previous President had already pulled that stunt with Iraq. The only way out of the dilemma for Obama is for Israel to ‘unilaterally’ attack Iran which would then force a fait accompli situation on Obama who would feel he had no alternative but to support Israel by also attacking Iran in order to prevent any Iranian retaliation against Israel.

Any talk of peace with the Palestinians based on settlement withdrawal can be kissed goodbye and, of course, the Israelis would be just hoping that the Palestinians and Hezbollah react to an attack on Iran by launching attacks against Israel so that the Israelis could then fully invade and occupy the Gaza, the west Bank and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. And with such a major escalation, the US will just let them get on with it and the UN would be ignored entirely.

So, is Clinton really getting up Israel’s nose, or is she actually encouraging the Israelis to launch an attack against Iran first so that the US would then have an excuse to join in?

BEFORE IRAQ WAR THERE WERE MASSIVE PROTESTS, BUT IN RUN UP TO ATTACK IRAN WE DO NOTHING. WHY?

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, millions of ordinary people – not just lefties, but plain ordinary people of all ages, professions and class, many of whom had never taken part in any protest before – took to the streets in unprecedented numbers both in national capitals and in small country towns around the world to loudly protest the inevitable war.

It didn’t make a blind bit of difference; a western world predominately lead by right-wing governments determined to go to war regardless of what their peoples demanded, refused to listen and went to war anyway.

Western governments learnt their lesson however. In order to avoid a repetition of those massive worldwide rallies, wars in future will not be announced so blatantly. With Iraq, the world watched as the Western powers built up their forces, issued transparent ultimatums and then invaded. The world watched this happen over a long period of time as though it were following a prearranged and well publicised agenda. By August 2002 the world knew invasion was all but inevitable. An anti-war movement rapidly grew with demonstrations taking place on a regular basis around the world.

Despite warnings to the Australian government about the potential for bomb attacks on tourist areas in Bali, the Australian government decided not to issue any special warning to Australian travellers. As a result, on 12 October 2002, just a week after massive anti-war rallies in Europe and around the world, including Australia, two bombs exploded in the night club area of Kuta in Bali and some 202 people were killed including 88 Australians. If then Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer thought that by not warning Australians about the potential threat and the resultant deaths due to that decision would somehow swing Australian public opinion in favour of Australia’s participation in an attack against Iraq, then they were sorely mistaken. The following weekend, and for weeks after right up to the invasion of Iraq, saw some of the biggest rallies ever in Australia and around the world.

This time around, as the Western powers gear up for an attack on Iran, the prospect of great protests and rallies against such a war are remote. The reason for this is simple: The build up for war is not so visible. Whereas in the lead-up to the attack against Iraq the West fed the public a running commentary, albeit based on lies, on why they were about to attack Iraq, in this coming war there is no direct threat of war from the US. This time around the US is playing a different game. With Iran, the US are playing the good cop - bad cop game with Israel playing the bad cop and the US appearing to be conciliatory – but only if Iran is prepared to be.

The problem is; while the Israelis and the US are accusing Iran of exactly the same things they accused Iraq of, no one is actually threatening or planning to invade Iran. The hope this time is to bring about ‘regime change’ without invasion. The casus belli for attack is the single issue of Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program which the Israelis and their Western allies accuse Iran of having despite the total lack of any evidence that Iran has such a program. While there are similarities between the rhetoric used today against Iran and the rhetoric used against Iraq, the main difference is in the perceptions of the threat of war. Whereas everyone just knew that Bush was determined to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein regardless of what Saddam did, the perception this time is of a President Obama who on the surface seems genuinely concerned to avoid attacking Iran and even looks as though he’s trying to restrain Israel from attacking Iran. While this perception prevails, there’s no need for the world to protest the possibility of another war. For some the perception is that Obama will actually prevent Israel from attacking. All of these perceptions have given the world a false though somewhat tenuous sense of security.

Just as the Bali bombings came at a time when public opinion was ranged against a looming war against Iraq, the recent bombings in Indonesia provides an opportunity for the governments of the Western world to remind all that the potential for Islamic violence is still very much alive as Israel ratchets up the rhetoric against Iran.

The reality, however, is far different from the perceptions and the world should take note before it is too late. The US has recently indicated that Israel must do what it needs to do to maintain what it thinks is its own security. This is just another way of saying that if Israel feels the need to attack Iran then the US would not stand in its way.

However, in order to attack Iran, Israel must contrary to the public perception that the US is trying to build, have help in some form or another from the US. Israel cannot possibly attack Iran completely independently of the US. If for nothing else, the huge amounts of military jet fuel needed for such a strike will have to come from the US, and most of the bunker-buster type munitions used will, in all likelihood, come from the US.

If Israel is permitted the use of Saudi airspace as has recently been reported, then the Israelis will not need to get permission from either the Iraqis or the US to use Iraqi airspace; they will only need to over-fly Saudi Arabia. Use of Saudi airspace in order to avoid using Iraqi airspace will be of paramount importance to the US if they are to maintain the perception of remaining ignorant of Israel planning a specific attack against Iran.

The world should ignore the perceptions; they are just as deceitful as the lies Bush told prior to the invasion of Iraq. An attack against Iran is as inevitable as the attack against Iraq was but this time we’ll get little or no warning of it. We’ll just wake up one morning to find that the world will have become an even more dangerous place to live in and the Global Economic Crisis will be the least of our worries.

MONITORING CITIZENS PHONE & EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS EVOLVED BEFORE 9/11 & ENCOURAGED BY CHENEY. NYT COMPLICIT IN COVER-UP.

According to George Tenet’s memoir, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’, it was General Mike Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency, who first hinted at the idea of monitoring phone and email communications outside of the powers that were already available. Tenet writes:

“I remember reflecting on testimony Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of NSA, had given to a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in 2000. Mike created quite a stir when he said that if Usama bin Ladin had crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario, to Niagara Falls, New York, there were provisions of US law that would offer him [Hayden] protections with regard to how the NSA could cover him. Mike would late say that he was using this as a stark hypothetical. On September 12, 2001, it became real.”

Tenet then goes on to say:

“After the 9/11 attacks, using his existing authorities, Hayden implemented a program to monitor communications to and from Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks were planned. With regard to the NSA’s policy of minimisation, balancing US privacy and inherent intelligence value, Mike moved from a peacetime to a wartime standard. He briefed me on this and I approved. By early October 2001, Hayden had briefed the full House Intelligence Committee and the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

It was at this point that Cheney asked Tenet “if the NSA could do more”.

Tenet explains:

“Our ability to monitor al-Qa’ida’s planning was limited because of constraints we had imposed on ourselves through the passing of certain US laws in the late 1970s. I called on Mike to relay the vice-presidents enquiry. Mike made it clear that he could do no more within the existing authorities. We went to see the vice-president together. Mike laid out what could be done that would be feasible, prudent, and effective.
Within a week new authorities were granted to allow the NSA to pursue what is now known as the ‘terrorist surveillance program’.” (1)

Clearly it was Dick Cheney who instigated the action required to allow the NSA to conduct illegal wiretapping of phones and email communications and it was Cheney and Hayden who had gone to Cheney to fill him in on the details of what exactly what they wanted to do. According to Tenet, all this happened by November 2001.

It wasn’t until four years later that the world got to learn of what had been going on when The New York Times writers, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, exposed the illegal wiretapping in an explosive article that The New York Times published on 16 December 2005. In it Risen and Lichtblau say that Bush signed off on the order in early 2002 but, from the way Tenet calls it, it seems more likely that Bush signed it off closer to the end of 2001 after pressure from Cheney.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The exposé by Risen and Lichtblau only came about because James Risen was about to launch his book ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’, in which Risen writes a whole chapter on the illegal wiretapping affair.(2) However, according to Walter Isaacson who reviewed Risen’s book in The New York Times, Risen’s The New York Times article had actually been written about a year before it was eventually published but the Bush administration had asked the NYT not to publish and the NYT had obliged thus making themselves as complicit in the cover up as Bush, Cheney, the NSA and George Tenet of the CIA.

Cheney, Tenet and Hayden between them have a lot to answer to. Not only were their deeds immoral, they were also very illegal.


ENDNOTES
(1) George Tenet, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007.) p. 237.

(2) James Risen, ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’. (New York: Free Press, 2006.) Chapter 2. pp. 39-60.

THE SETTLEMENTS ISSUE: DON’T THE PALESTINIANS GET A SAY?

A headline article in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today blared ‘Emerging settlement deal will let US, Israel claim victory’. The article went on to explain: “According to senior government officials, under this type of solution, Israel would declare a moratorium of a few months on the settlement issue, possibly half a year, while the US would give Israel a green light to complete a still-to-be-determined number of housing units in the settlements that are in advanced stages of construction.”

It seems, however, that the Palestinian people, whose lands these settlements are being built on, don’t actually get a say on the subject. Somehow it’s now the US that decides where and when settlements can be built on Palestinian lands.

The fact is; the issue of settlements in the West Bank has nothing to do with the US. The Palestinian people have not asked the US to negotiate on their behalf, and have certainly not authorised the US to concede any lands whatsoever within the West Bank to the Zionist settlers. For the Palestinian people the issue is simply resolved: Every single settler on Palestinian territory should leave; it’s as simple as that.

The Palestinian people seem to have been completely forgotten in these discussions. It’s as though they weren’t there. It’s almost as though somehow the lands now belonged to the US and that they were now negotiating with Israel over its use.

The reality of the US-Israeli ‘deal’ is that, as usual, everything has been put off until some other time in the future. And then it’ll be just more talks that are likely to go on for years with nothing ever eventually transpiring.

But then, of course, this is just what the Israelis want; more time while they wait for an opportunity to do what they do best and that is to find some casus belli with which to simply take what they want.

This whole charade of ‘settlement talks’ is just another Israeli time-wasting exercise while they wait for the ideal moment to strike at their enemies. Netanyahu and his Zionist government have no intention of ever giving up West Bank settlements, indeed, their intentions are just the opposite; to eventually find a way to overrun, occupy and then eventually annex the entire West Bank to become part of a Greater Israel of the future.

The Israelis hope that ‘Irans nuclear weapons program’ will be the trigger they need to strike at their enemies and realise their dream of a Greater Israel. Meanwhile, what will the rest of the world be doing?

Nothing as usual.

THE IRANIAN ‘REVOLUTION’ HAS FAILED SO IT’S BACK TO THE ‘IRAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS’ RHETORIC TO BOMB THEM INTO ‘REGIME CHANGE’.

With the failure of the Western powers to foment a popular uprising after the 12 June elections in Iran that they hoped would lead to regime change, the West has now had to return to the ‘Iran has nuclear weapons’ meme in order to pave the way for an attack against Iran in the hope that regime change can be affected that way.

In an interview on Sunday, Vice-President Joe Biden, when asked, “…if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?” responded saying: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

Biden was then asked: “You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike”, to which he responded, “I'm not going to speculate… on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.”

Yesterday (5 July) ‘Timesonline’ reported that the Saudis had made it clear to Meir Dagan, Israel’s Mossad chief, that they would not object to Israeli overflights if they were on their way to targets in Iran. While a flight to Iran from Israel via Saudi Arabia would be much longer that a direct flight to Iran overflying Jordan and Iraq, a flight via Saudi Arabia would not require permission from any other country; not even the US to fly over Iraq. And if the Israelis can get permission from the Saudis to have support aircraft in the air in Saudi airspace to refuel the Israeli strike aircraft over, say, the Persian Gulf, then an Israeli strike against Iran is feasible.

It’s interesting that the report about the Saudi’s giving clearance for overflights to attack Iran were quickly denied by Netanyahu’s office. Clearly, the Israelis are anxious to bury this information though, one suspects, that it is now too late and the Iranians will now have their spies in Saudi Arabia scanning the skies and radio bands for high flying aircraft heading west to east across Saudi Arabia toward the Persian Gulf.

It may well be that Israel could be keen to take advantage of the unrest that has recently unsettled Iran but now seems to have died down. A strike now, they may feel, might just reignite the embers of insurrection that still glow especially if there was also a strike against Iran’s security forces and it’s military.

Even if Israel did strike against Iran via Saudi skies, Israel would still need to rely on the US for support. The fuel required for the mission would need to be supplied by the US as would most of the munitions. US forces would also need to be on standby ready to prevent any Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and the US. Israel would also need to have its troops on standby at home in preparedness for retaliatory attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas.

For Israel, a Hamas and Hezbollah strike against them would be what they want. It would provide the casus belli for Israel to invade both the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon – perhaps all of Lebanon – knowing that the Iranians would not be in a position to help them. And with Iran out of the equation, Syria would not dare move against Israel.

With the failure of the post-election Iranian revolution, Israel will now resort to its old rhetoric of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ to try again to get public opinion onside for when they launch their attack against Iran to effect regime change. With the US now clearly not standing in the way and the Saudis prepared to let the US off the hook with regard to being seen by the world as facilitating an Israeli attack by allowing the Israelis to overfly Iraq despite all the talk of pursuing a “diplomatic solution”, everything seems in place for the Israelis to feel free to attack Iran when ever they feel they are ready.

The prospect of a final confrontation between Israel and Iran is now off the back burner and back on to the front burner. The problem is, If and when it happens, it won’t be a simple make or break fight for Israel or Iran; the repercussions will reverberate around the world for years to come.


CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

THE NEW RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA: 'NAZIS WERE LEFT WING THEREFORE ANTI-ZIONIST LEFTIES ARE NAZIS'.

As the Zionists of Israel drift further to the right and increasingly demonstrate how their racial and expansionist policies for Israel are parallel to the policies of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the extreme right-wing in the blogosphere seems to have become confused and increasingly unable to distinguish their left from their right.

The main cause of their confusion is rooted essentially in the irony of history whereby those peoples who suffered most at the hands of the Nazis are the same people that are now causing the most suffering – and for exactly the same reasons – to others.

The extreme right-wing is quite happy to call themselves right-wing because, even if for no other reason, it distinguishes them from their mortal enemies, the ‘Left’. The problem arises however, when it is realised that in calling themselves ‘right-wing’ they share the same ‘right-wing’ label as Hitler does and, because most of today’s modern right-wing are actually Zionists or Zionist supporters, they don’t, for obvious reasons, want to be associated with Hitler and the Nazis. Because there are still some on the outer fringes of the far right who really are Nazis inasmuch that they are white-supremacist style anti-Semites with an intense hatred of Jews – and, indeed, anyone else who isn’t white – today’s modern Zionists and their extreme right-wing supporters have constructed a new propaganda strategy to distinguish themselves from their Nazi look-alikes.

This new construct is designed for the rank and file dumb and gullible of the right. It argues that Hitler and the Nazis weren’t actually ‘right-wing’ because they were called ‘National Socialists’ and, according to the Zionist propagandists and their supporters, they had socialist ideals. The new propaganda further argues, because the name of Hitler’s party also included the word ‘Workers’ in it, (the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party), that this was further proof of the Nazis ‘left-wing’ roots. There is also a certain convenience in this new construct for the Zionists and their supporters because, not only do they think it disassociates them as right-wingers from the rather embarrassing and similarly labelled Nazis, but it now allows them to cast anti-Zionists, most of whom have a tendency to lean to the political left and who Zionists attempt to demonise as anti-Semites, into the newly constructed ‘Nazi is left-wing’ mould.

The new ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda construct is currently being pushed via the right-wing blogs. Andrew Bolt, a Murdoch propagandist and blogger at Melbourne’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper, a couple of weeks ago highlighted the new propaganda in his column in which he argues that Jewish groups in Europe who worry about the recent gains the anti-Semitic right made in European elections should be far more concerned about the left-wing anti-Zionists in Europe and that the right-wing that are not anti-Semitic are the ‘Jews real friends’. Bolt then allows his bloggies to launch into the ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda. Here are a few examples:

Bolt Bloggie ‘larrikin’ writes:
“it [sic] was the German socialists who formed the Nazi party that instigated the holocaust and it is the left that now demonise Israelis and act as apologist for the islamists [sic] threatening to annihilate Israel. own [sic] it, leftard [sic].” ‘larrikin’ goes on to comment elsewhere:
“…you can’t be ‘right’ and neo-Nazi because Nazism is a creature of the left. If by ‘right’ you mean the opposite of leftism then you are referring to someone who is, essentially, a supporter of the classic republic as a legal and political model. Therefore the ‘right’ is always opposed to dictators and oligarchs, whatever they call themselves and regardless of the form of goose stepping they practice. the left on the other hand ultimately and invariably support dictators and oligarchs.”

While another Bolt bloggie, Alan Mears, writes:
“Hitler was actually from the left, the NAZI party was the Workers Nationalist Socialist Party. What is it with the left? They always attribute the evils deeds committed by their own by using the word “Extreme” with the word Right.”

Regular Bolt bloggie ‘Verax’ responded to Mears’ remark that “Hitler was from the left” saying:
“You are wasting your time with this one, Alan. I have posted that there are two kinds of socialism, national socialism (often called fascism) and Marxian socialism (communism), here ad nauseam.”

And so it goes on.

The new right-wing propaganda has two aims; first, it attempts to cast them as the true right-wing by implying that the Nazis were really ‘left-wing’, and, secondly, in doing so, they think they have created a bin into which the left, because of their anti-Zionism, can now be thrown.

As most true German socialists of the day would attest, or would if there were any actually left, there was absolutely nothing at all ‘socialist’ about the Nazis beyond the word being used in the title of the Nazi party; indeed, it was socialists in the main with whom Hitler’s Brownshirts battled in the streets of Germany prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1933 and rounding up most of the socialists in Germany, and wherever else he could find them, before trying to exterminate them along with everyone else that didn’t fit their political, cultural and racial mould of his Greater Germany.

In the early days there were some Germans deluded enough to actually believe that the word ‘socialist’ in the Nazi party’s name actually did mean that Hitler’s party had socialist leanings and for a while Hitler was quite happy to allow the myth to continue as he built up the party’s numbers and strength using its following to give the party an air of popularity. The delusion was shattered and the myth was dispelled in July 1934 when Hitler and his SS and Gestapo purged the ranks of the massive Brownshirt movement which was the SA. In part this was done more than anything else to appease the extremely un-socialist German military that were beginning to see the SA rabble as a rival to their own power. In short, for Hitler, the SA had fulfilled their role and what few ‘socialists’ had found their way into the Nazi party soon found themselves purged from it or converted to Nazism.

But here’s where the propaganda really back-fires on the right-wing Zionists and their supporters in the West. This early history of the Nazi party to which some deluded socialists, and even communists, initially flocked to, actually reflects much of the early history of Zionism as it established itself in Israel. The early rank and file Kibbutzim movement was made up predominately of those that thought of themselves as socialists, communists and generally left-wing. Many leftish Europeans and Americans, both Gentile and Jewish, made the ‘pilgrimage’ to a Kibbutz in Israel for a year to experience a taste of socialist life. Israel’s early economic and domestic and social policies were essentially left-wing and, indeed, to a certain extent, still are.

Essentially, the new propaganda is really just another attempt to prop up the ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’ meme which the Zionists have been trying to push with vigour in an effort to counter the influence that Mearsheimer and Walt’s best-selling book ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’ had on the anti-Zionist movement since it was published.

The new propaganda, in the end, does nothing except demonstrate how desperate the right-wing have become in trying to protect Zionism from its inevitable collapse.

IRANIAN UNREST: REVOLUTION OR COUP D’ÈTAT?

It seems odd that the neoconservatives seem to be backing an Iranian that, for all intents and purposes, has been their mortal enemy for around three decades, but it is the case that throughout history that international politics has turned out some strange bedfellows. It reminds me a bit of what happened in the last century: In order to kick off World War Two, Hitler found it necessary to get into bed with Stalin. The situation today isn’t quite as dramatic as that but, nonetheless, there are distinct parallels – or at least so it seems.

Even before all the votes had been tallied in Iran toward the end of a long election day on Friday, 12 June, Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, claimed victory, as, indeed, had Ahmadinejad. But then, unlike Mousavi, Ahmadinejad had good reason to claim early victory; with votes being counted throughout the day, it soon became apparent that Ahmadinejad was a clear leader and way in front of Mousavi. Ahmadinejad had every reason to claim an early victory while Mousavi had none at all. Then, on Saturday when it was officially announced that Ahmadinejad had in fact won the election, and by around the same margin that the pre-election polls had predicted, Mousavi immediately cried ‘foul’ and, almost on cue, seemingly spontaneously, the massive demonstrations began on the streets of Tehran and by nightfall Saturday rioters supposedly supporting Mousavi were setting fire to dumpsters and vehicles.

Instantly the Western right-wing media were on to the turmoil and backing Mousavi’s claim that the elections had been rigged. The media began to talk up a ‘popular revolution’ in Iran concentrating their efforts on highlighting the pro-Mousavi demonstrations and ignoring entirely the equally massive demonstrations being held in support of Ahmadinejad. So keen were the Western media to support the Mousavi camp they even used a picture of a massive Ahmadinejad rally and claimed it was of a pro-Mousavi rally.

But all was not as it seemed. Rather than seeming to be spontaneous, the demonstrations and rallies had all the hallmarks of being highly organised. Placards had been professionally produced in large numbers and written in English as well as Farsi. They were distributed through the crowds and clearly made for Western consumption. Some serious money was behind the effort and it was obvious that many of these had been produced before the elections and readied for post-election protests that were clearly organised prior to the election.

While the vast majority of the protestors and demonstrators from both camps were peaceful, there were among the Mousavi protestors provocateurs determined to provoke violence by running riot and setting fire to vehicles and buildings while wearing the green colours representing the Mousavi camp. The Western media have been portraying these violent and destructive elements as somehow being the vanguard of a revolution or brave freedom fighters confronting the police and security forces.

However, lurking beneath the superficial Western presentation of populist Iranian discontent are far more complex issues that govern what is really going on in Iran today.

Essentially Iran remains an Islamic state which the vast majority of Iranians, regardless of whether they’re for Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, still support. Rather than being a battle between Islamist-style government supporters and secular western-style government supporters as the Western media is trying to portray the unrest, it is actually about a class struggle between the ‘have-not masses’ that generally support Ahmadinejad and the young modern well-to-do, but still Islamic, ‘haves’ that support Mousavi.

The Western media would like to present to the Western peoples a picture of the beginnings of a popular uprising and revolution in Iran and have relentlessly used all of its propaganda resources to achieve this belief even down to the filming of the attractive young Iranian girl who lay dying in the streets; killed, at least so we are told, by brutal Iranian security forces for no other reason than she was protesting. No matter how or why she died, there can be excuse for her death; but to assert that her death represents the spirit of revolt against the government is to cynically abuse her death for purely propaganda purposes. And the West has not thought twice about so doing. Even President Obama has used her death for propaganda purposes

However, it is not just Obama that has used the young girl’s death for propaganda purposes. While the Western media would like to portray the unrest in Iran as the beginnings of a populist revolution against the Mullah’s, what may turn out to be the real reason for the unrest has emerged.

This last week has seen the claimant to the Iranian throne appear from the wings. All but forgotten, the son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has finally shown himself. At a Press Club gathering in Washington last Monday, Pahlavi produced a photo of the dead girl and, with tears in his eyes, told the world, “I have added her to the list of my daughters. She is now forever in my pocket”. One can take ones choice as to which metaphor is appropriate with the remark: ‘She is now forever in my pocket’. The point is; Reza’s late father, deposed in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, was one of the world’s most ruthless and brutal dictators who, like his father before him, detested the very idea of ‘democracy’. Reza Pahlavi is unlikely to be any different despite all his talk of ‘democracy’. To top it off, demonstrations in the US by Iranian expatriates, have been flying the old Iranian flag of the Shah. These flags have clearly been recently made and stored and have been distributed for use in carefully orchestrated pro-Shah rallies outside of Iran. The question one now needs to ask is: Since it is clear that the idea of a ‘popular revolution’ is merely a figment of the propagandists imagination, is there a possibility that Israel, the US and the UK could bring on a coup d’état that would see Reza Pahlavi restored to power leading a quasi-democratic pro-Western puppet government?

It’s doubtful this would happen, but one can almost hear the right-wing Western political mind ticking as it mulls the idea over and read between the lines of what neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht is trying to say in his ‘Weekly Standard’ article.

IRANIAN UNREST: THE WEST DOESN’T CARE WHO WINS OR HOW MANY DIE JUST AS LONG AS IT RATTLES THE MULLAHS.

For the right-wing Western media it is really unimportant who won the election in Iran; the important thing is that the resulting turmoil, chaos, and deaths works against the ruling Mullah’s and in favour, no matter how little, of the right-wing of Israel and the US and their supporters in Iran. Greg Sheridan, a Murdoch propagandist with The Australian newspaper, sums it up: “In many ways, a savagely weakened Iranian regime is the best result Israel and the US could have wished for.” Democracy per se, as far as the right-wing are concerned, actually has very little to do with it as long as it’s a good ‘result for Israel and the US’.

It’s quite clear that the reaction to the announcement of the results of the election were planned in advance well before the election took place. Some pre-election polls had Ahmadinejad well in front by some 2-1 so the outcome, contrary to what the Western media would have us believe, wasn’t exactly a surprise to anyone.

However, since the likely outcome was not entirely unexpected, it gave the opposition an opportunity to plan a false claim to election victory, a claim which they voiced as soon as the polls closed. And then when the results were announced, they simply cried ‘foul’. All of this has been helped along by the right-wing Western media who supported the opposition’s claims by focusing the news on the opposition’s rallies and demonstrations against Ahmadinejad and ignoring the pro-Ahmadinejad rallies which were on some occasions much bigger than those of the supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi. So desperate were the Western media to push the pro-Mousavi cause they even, on at least one occasion, actually claimed that pictures of a massive pro-Ahmadinejad rally were of a pro-Mousavi rally.

It’s quite clear that agent provocateurs have been employed to push along the oppositions agenda. They have encouraged the violence on all sides by provoking the police and by setting fire to buses, cars, motorbikes and buildings. The Western media have claimed that the authorities have violently cracked down on dissenting demonstrators when in fact they have been cracking down on those that have set fires and been running riot. The vast majority of both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi demonstrators have been peaceful. It is only the anti-Mullahs professional agent provocateurs that have stirred up the trouble by running riot and setting the fires and claiming to be supporters of Mousavi.

For the right-wing of the US and Israel, as Murdoch propagandist Greg Sheridan infers, it doesn’t matter whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi end up getting the nod, nor does it matter how many Iranians have to die in the process, the important thing is that it stirs up trouble for the Mullahs.

For the Israelis it’s just another step along the road toward their final confrontation with Iran.

IRAN’S POST ELECTION PROTESTS: WESTERN MEDIA BEAT-UP OR PRELUDE TO REVOLUTION?

Ever since last Friday’s election in Iran and the announcement that President Ahmadinejad was the clear winner, rumours have been flying that the elections were rigged. Over the last four days since the announcement, demonstrations by Iranians who supported the opposition candidate, the comparatively ‘moderate’ Mir Hossein Mousavi, have been on the streets of Tehran in force setting light to buses, trucks and buildings and engaging in running street battles with the police that have resulted in the death of at least one demonstrator.

As yet, however, there has been no actual hard evidence of any vote tampering or irregularities though the Mullahs have authorised an investigation into the claims. The big question is; how does one ‘rig’ such a massive election? With over 39 million people casting votes, there are so many people involved in the tallying process that any fraud as massive as that being claimed by the opposition would have been spotted instantly by the election authorities and, more importantly, the thousands of volunteer and temporary staff that were working for them around the country on the day. There would have been no way that frauds that massive could have been kept quiet so, one wonders, why bother attempting it?

The Western media have made the most of the post-election turmoil in Iran having backed a Mousavi win in the hope of triggering a ‘regime change’ that would see a government more friendly toward the West and Israel come into power and possibly even overthrowing the Mullahs from their peak power positions or, at least, putting a severe dent in their power. Some Western mainstream media are now even pushing the idea of another ‘revolution’ in Iran.

However, while the opposition rallies and protest demonstrations are extremely well organised and are clearly not at all spontaneous as some have reported with placards and flags being well-designed and professionally mass produced and obviously aimed at a Western audience with many of the placards written in English as well as Farsi, all may well be not what it seems.

The Western media generally, after years of demonising Ahmadinejad, have little option but to support his slightly more moderate opposition, Mousavi. But how much more ‘moderate’ is he?

If the US and Israel think that Mousavi is going to be any the less supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah or more tolerant toward Zionism and Israeli aggression toward the Palestinian people than Ahmadinejad then they are in for rude awakening. Furthermore, Mousavi is as much a supporter of Iran’s nuclear program as Ahmadinejad is – and is as equally insistent that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program. In short, from Iran’s foreign policy point of view there is no difference between the two. Their differences are in their domestic policies with Mousavi being a little more tolerant of women playing a greater part in the affairs of Iran.

The Mullah’s probably care little which of them become president, but, because the Mullah’s are promising an enquiry, some time has time has been bought which might well be enough to see the backlash against Ahmadinejad simply run out of steam.

There has been at least one death in the protests since the elections and the demonstrations have been massive but when weighed against the kind of violence India has every time it goes to the polls where hundreds routinely die in riots and demonstrations, Iran’s post election demonstrations and protests have been relatively tame.

The Mullah’s will continue to run Iran and either Ahmadinejad or Mousavi will help them. The regime will not change. It’s still on Israel’s agenda regardless of who gets up in the end.

NETANYAHU’S SPEECH: IT JUST BUYS MORE TIME BY OFFERING THE USUAL PLATITUDES, A GIFT BOX WITH NOTHING IN IT AND IMPOSSIBLE DEMANDS.

Yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his much awaited speech in response to US President Obama’s call for a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s response was predictable. Knowing that the conditions he would put on accepting a Palestinian state could not possibly be met by the Palestinian people he outlined the circumstances under which he could accept the existence of a separate Palestinian state. Netanyahu knew that all Obama wanted to hear was ‘yes’ to a two state solution. It’s a win for Obama because that’s all he wanted to hear; the conditions mean nothing to him at this stage – all Obama wanted was a political win on the basic concept.

And, of course, it’s a win for Netanyahu because he knows that his conditions of accepting a Palestinian state are way beyond what the Palestinians will be willing to accept. His Zionist followers will be able to rest easy knowing that under Netanyahu, creating a Palestinian state will be impossible. What will now follow, as always, are endless talks that, again as always, will resolve absolutely nothing. Already the Palestinian leadership are outraged at Netanyahu’s offer. Netanyahu has demanded that a future Palestinian state be demilitarised and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. No sooner uttered, these demands are doomed to put an end to any notion of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu re-emphasised his alternative approach to relations with the Palestinians via the gift box of economic ties but, again, he knows this will never happen. Israel has its own economic problems right now without trying to sort out the massive economic problems the Palestinians have. Long term economic commitments aren’t going to solve the vast political differences and Netanyahu knows it.

Netanyahu himself outlines the bottom line of the problem. He says: “Even as we look toward the horizon, we must be firmly connected to reality, to the truth. And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.”

That, indeed, is the reality and the truth. The problem is that the Jewish people that seek a homeland want it to include land that does not belong to them. Many Zionists, Netanyahu and many of his political allies in his government amongst them, believe that their ‘historic homeland’, a Greater Israel, includes all of Judea and Samaria together with Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, not to mention all the lands they took beyond that which the UN gave them in 1948. To demand of the Palestinians that they say: “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way” is to ask the impossible – and Netanyahu knows it. Why on earth would the Palestinians say: “We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace” as Netanyahu demands? It’s just not going to happen especially when Netanyahu speaks of “…the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years.” Then goes on to say: “Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.”

Then, just to ensure that the Palestinians never agree to Israel’s demands, Netanyahu says: “It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarized.” One can be sure that it will be equally impossible for the Palestinian people to agree to such a principle. A sovereign state is one that is free to defend itself and demand that its airspace is regarded also as sovereign. A sovereign state being allowed to exist only upon the conditions and demands of another sovereign state is no sovereign state at all – and Netanyahu knows that.

All that Netanyahu has succeeded in doing with his speech is buy more time for the Zionists to find some other way of fulfilling their dream of creating a Greater Israel. He has also been able to offer Obama a flicker of political hope that will ultimately achieve absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Netanyahu knows it and so does Obama.

IRANIAN ELECTIONS JUST ANOTHER EXCUSE FOR MORE U.S./ISRAELI SPIN PUSHING FOR REGIME CHANGE.

The reality is that the US and Israel and their Western allies couldn’t care less who the President of Iran is; the Mullah’s actually run the country and it is the Mullah’s who provide the support, through whoever the Iranian people elect to be their President, to Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Israeli Arabs, and it is that which drives the propaganda and rhetoric against Iran.

Not unpredictably, the accusations are now flying thick and fast that Ahmadinejad’s overwhelming victory at the polls was as a result of voter fraud. Such accusations in the West are simply a knee-jerk reaction in an effort to counter what is an even bigger victory for Ahmadinejad; the massive propaganda boost he gets from having won the election so convincingly and proving himself to be such a populist President. The Western media in the lead-up to the elections pushed along the so-called ‘moderate’ that stood for election highlighting the massive rallies that supported the opposition ‘moderate’ candidate but failed to highlight the even bigger rallies that were held in support of Ahmadinejad, at least one being so big that it was considered wise for Ahmadinejad not to show up least it became a security risk, as if pushing the ‘moderate’ in the Western press was actually going to influence voters in Iran. The bottom line is; the Iranian people have shown their overwhelming support for Ahmadinejad and, in doing so, have also shown their support for the Mullah’s and the Palestinian and Arab cause against Israeli Zionism.

But, ultimately, nothing has changed as far as the Israelis and their Western allies are concerned. Iran, by its support of Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Arab Israelis, is still all that stands between the Zionists and the realisation of their dream of a Greater Israel. Iran’s continued and quite legitimate program to enrich uranium for use in power generation will remain the center of attention for the Israeli and Western right-wing propagandists attempt to demonise Iran with the Israelis hoping that they will be successful in convincing the world that Iran seeks nuclear weapons and is intent on using them against Israel. Such a threat will eventually become the excuse the Israelis need to attack Iran and bring about ‘regime change’ with the help of the US.

Since Obama became US president, the Israelis have been somewhat frustrated in their push to get the world to support an attack against Iran despite upping the tempo of their propaganda and rhetoric against Iran and Ahmadinejad and their so-called nuclear weapons program. Despite their unrelenting insistence that Iran, indeed, is seeking nuclear weapons, Israel has failed to provide the world with any evidence whatsoever that supports their claims. Even US support of these claims is now half-hearted with recent IAEA reports and US National Intelligence Estimates reports failing to find any hard evidence at all of a nuclear weapons program or evidence of enrichment beyond that needed for power generation.

The only benefit the Israelis have from an Ahmadinejad win is that they don’t have to start all over again to demonise a comparatively unknown new ‘moderate’ Iranian president; they can now simply can get on with demonising the one they already know so well with the hope that affairs in the Middle East might be so manipulated that there will arise just the excuse they need to attack Iran and their other enemies.

Ahmadinejad’s re-election to the Iranian presidency has changed nothing as far as the Israelis are concerned. However, his re-election by such a spectacular margin does demonstrate that, contrary to Western propaganda, Iran is still a proud Islamic nation that supports its president’s stand against Israeli and Western pressures and supports the Palestinian and Arab peoples fight against Zionist aggression and occupation.

Ahmadinejad and the hierarchy of the Iranian government have shown that they have the support of the Iranian people. While Israel and the neocons once believed it might be able to attack the Iranian government and trigger another Iranian revolution against the Mullah’s and the theocratic state, they now know that such an attack against Iran will serve only to galvanise the people of Iran against Israel in particular and the West generally.

Where will the Israeli and US propaganda spin head now? Watch out for accusations of collusion between ‘al Qaeda’ and Iran and increasing Iranian ‘interference’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There will be more stories emerging about Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah particularly with supplies of rockets and other armaments. The search for a casus belli to attack Iran will increase in pace and if Israel can’t find an excuse, be assured they’ll eventually create one.

Meanwhile, the Israelis and their right-wing Western allies are hoping that the disappointment of the supporters of the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, will spill over into some kind of popular uprising against the government. No doubt agent provocateurs from Israel and their allies will be in Tehran doing all they can to stir unrest in the capital.

NEOCON ‘COMMENTARY’ WRITER CAUGHT OUT IN BIG LIE OVER STORY ATTEMPTING TO JUSTIFY TORTURE.

Arthur Herman, a neoconservative, has written an article entitled ‘The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard’ in which he attempts to justify the use of torture arguing, quite predictably, that such methods of interrogation give results. To prove his argument Herman provides the example of one so-called al Qaeda captive, Muhammad el-Qahtani who, Herman claims, is a Saudi national who was captured by U.S. forces on the border Pakistan and Afghanistan border in December 2001 and who, after intensive interrogation, “…picked out pictures of all nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers and called out their names—and admitted that he, not Zacarias Moussaoui, had been slated to be the twentieth hijacker”.

The problem with this story is that, as Herman reveals himself in his article, el-Qahtani didn’t divulge this ‘information’ until January 2003. By this time it was a well established fact that the names didn’t actually match the faces of at least seven of the supposed hijackers of the 9/11 aircraft since seven of those that the FBI originally named were still alive.

If el-Qahtani really was so intimately involved with the events of 9/11 as Herman suggests then he would have either have been able to have put the real names against the faces of the photographs he was shown of those who were accused of the hijackings or, alternatively, have told his interrogators that seven of the photos he was shown did not match the names of the hijackers he knew. If the hijackers really had stolen the identities of those that remain alive, el-Qahtani would have known about it. Herman can’t have it both ways; el-Qahtani either knew all of the names or knew all of the faces but he couldn’t possibly have put the names to the faces unless he’d been told to by his interrogators or simply told them what they wanted to hear having known before capture the names and faces the FBI had already put out – in which case, of course, Herman has undone his own argument in which he asserts torture works.

Clearly it doesn’t.


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THE NEOCONS TRY A NEW TACTIC OF DENYING THEIR OWN EXTREMISM BY ACCUSING THE LEFT OF BEING ‘RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS’.

There is an emerging trend of demonising the anti-extreme right-wing that seems to be well co-ordinated, particularly among the neoconservative commentariat of the Murdoch press, which has been triggered by the incident at the Holocaust Memorial in the US a few days ago. Not unsurprisingly, this new tactic revolves around the Judeo-centric ideology of modern neoconservatism whereby the aim is to deflect accusations of ‘Zionism being racism’ being made against Zionists and their neoconservative supporters.

The Zionists and their neoconservative supporters throughout the world – and especially within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Empire – have embarked on a campaign of attacking all who are left of center in an effort to demonise those that are, and were, activist against Zionism and their neoconservative supporters and against the neoconservative foreign policies of the Bush administration.

The incident at the Holocaust Memorial at first confused the extreme right-wing commentators, especially those Murdoch propagandists that work outside of the US. They seemed perturbed that the negative outpouring from ordinary people around the world over the actions of the white supremacist Nazi James Von Brunn, clearly a right-wing extremist, might rub off on Zionists and their neoconservative allies who have over the past nine years been well known for being right-wing and often considered right-wing extremists themselves.

They seem now to have come up with a co-ordinated tactic of deflecting these accusations which, in the light of Von Brunn’s actions, has exposed the Islamophobic and racist nature of Zionism and neoconservatism.

Their tactic works like this: While demonising Von Brunn who is clearly an anti-Semite and, therefore, an anti-Zionist as well but for different reasons entirely from those on the left, grab the opportunity of demonising all on the left who are also anti-Zionist and cast them in the same mould as the neo-Nazi anti-Semites – and while they’re at it, take the opportunity, as Glenn Beck on Murdoch’s Fox News has, to demonise the so-called ‘9/11 Truthers’ as well.

This is a tactic that has now been taken up by the rest of Murdoch’s propagandists all over the world. Some of Murdoch’s propagandist’s bloggies have even gone so far as to suggest that Nazism is Socialism because Hitler called his party National Socialist and, therefore, all those on the left that are anti-Zionist must be Nazis.

You can’t make this stuff up!

EHUD BARAK PREPARES ISRAEL FOR THE FINAL CONFRONTATION.

Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has put his country on a firm war footing and has recently completed a 5-day military drill, ominously named “Turning Point Three”, in which ‘Israeli forces and civilians prepared themselves for a simultaneous war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and practiced counterinsurgency tactics against Israeli Arabs’. At the end of the drill Barak was quoted as saying last Tuesday: “The IDF's future operations will be broader and more demanding in terms of their scope and pace, with more risks than Operation Cast Lead”.

While Middle Eastern media headline space has been taken up with the impasse between Netanyahu and Obama over settlements in the West Bank, the exercise quietly went ahead with little fanfare in the Western mainstream media. However, the impasse over the issue of settlements and Israel’s massive war footing exercise are intrinsically linked.

The Israeli Zionists will not give up their claims to the settlements nor, indeed, their claims for the entire West Bank which they call Judea and Samaria. For hard core Zionists, Judea and Samaria are at the very core of Zionist and Likud party ideology as is the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and south Lebanon up to the Litani River, all of which for the Zionists, will become part of Greater Israel. Standing between the Zionists and their dream of a Greater Israel is Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the Israeli Arabs; hence the simulated simultaneous war against them.

As always, the Israelis will wait until some casus belli presents itself for them to justify such a war, and, no doubt, if no casus belli materialises from their enemies, then the Israelis will invent one. Since of late the political atmosphere between Iran and the US has eased while the atmosphere between Israel and the US have become strained over the settlements issue, it seems likely that any casus belli that does arise that leads to Israel attacking any of its enemies will be as a result of some manipulated incident or straight out false flag attack against Israel or the US where the finger will be pointed to any one of Israel’s enemies and, of course, Iran.

Much will hinge on tomorrows Presidential elections in Iran and how Ahmadinejad will fare in those elections but the world should not be lulled into a false sense of security if a more moderate candidate gets up and defeats Ahmadinejad. No matter who wins the Presidency in Iran it will still be the Mullahs that will be pulling the strings and they are unlikely to relinquish their support of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas no matter who wins. In other words, the basic status quo between Israel and Iran will stay the same. Iran will continue to support the Arabs and Palestinians against Israel and Israel will continue to dream of their Greater Israel and continue to see Iran as a hindrance to that dream.

Little will change. Israel will still seek its final confrontation with its enemies.

And when the final confrontation does come, Obama will side with Israel.


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DOES ISRAELI ULTRA RIGHT-WING ZIONIST M.K. ARYEH ELDAD MAKE A THINLY VEILED THREAT OF ANOTHER 9/11?

Israeli MK Aryeh Eldad, of the extreme right-wing Zionist National Union party, was quoted in Arutz Sheva Israel National News yesterday as saying:

“Obama makes a shocking parallel between the destruction of European Jewry and the suffering that the Arabs of Israel brought upon themselves when they declared war on Israel. If Obama does not understand the difference between them, perhaps he will understand it better when he visits the Buchenwald concentration camp in the comings days. And if he doesn’t understand it even there, then Islam will once again teach it to him, just as it taught his predecessor on 9/11.”

Eldad is clearly saying that, if Obama doesn’t come on side with Israel then ‘Islam’ could very well do another 9/11 job on the US. However, since we now know that there is a whole lot more to the 9/11 story than the simplistic ‘Islam did it’ meme to the point that it now seems that, at the very least, if ‘Islam did it’ then they did it in conjunction with people who had far more skills and influence than Islam alone could possibly have ever mustered, then Eldad’s threat needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

For most people on the planet the destruction of WTC7 and the latest evidence showing traces of Thermite or a related demolition product being found in the rubble of WTC1&2 has become the clincher that is swinging more and more people away from the official conspiracy theory of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden having been solely responsible. Most logical thinking people have come to the conclusion, as unpalatable as it may be, that forces far more powerful than Islamic extremists were responsible for 9/11. Could it be that Eldad is so familiar with those forces that he is confident enough to make the kind of thinly veiled threat that he has?

U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS: SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE.

Relations between Israel and the US seem to have come to some kind of impasse since Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel. While Obama is insisting that Israel freeze settlements in the West Bank as a prelude to talks about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel, under Netanyahu’s Zionist government are unlikely to shift their settlement policies. While some of the so-called ‘illegal’ outposts, consisting of little more than a few transport containers, are being removed, Netanyahu is refusing to freeze what he calls ‘natural growth’ expansion on the so-called ‘legal’ already established settlements.

The media has been full of speculation about how the US will react to Netanyahu’s intransigence. Measures under discussion include withdrawing US support for Israel in the UN. The support of the US with its power of veto on the UN Security Council is crucial to Israel. Without US support Israel would be hard put to even survive let alone prosper. However, Israel, with its massive political lobbying influence in the US, is unlikely to be too perturbed by this suggestion, indeed, the US State Department have already reiterated its full support for Israel in the UN. Withdrawing financial guarantees to Israel has also been ruled out.

Netanyahu cannot afford to back down. His whole premise of political power is based on a Greater Israel that includes, at the very least, the West Bank settlements and the non-existence of a sovereign Palestinian state. On the other hand President Obama has said the settlements must at the very least be frozen as the first step to peace with the Palestinians. From the Palestinians point of view there can be no peace while the settlements exist in the West Bank. While Abbas might be willing to talk ‘peace’, especially if money is involved, he does not have the backing of all activist Palestinians who want nothing less than a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, full right of return and a completely autonomous sovereign state that is not subordinate to any other state, particularly Israel.

With the two sides now deadlocked leaving little wriggle space for either to move, only something out of left field can shift the balance for Netanyahu.

The Zionist and Netanyahu’s Likud party’s long term aim is to establish a Greater Israel that is not threatened by Hamas and Hezbollah. Because the Zionists wish to create their vision of a Greater Israel out of the lands that both Hamas and Hezbollah are defending, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Hezbollah in south Lebanon with both in turn being supported by Iran, Israel needs ultimately to eliminate Iran as an enemy and supporter of those enemies directly impeding Israel’s ambitions.

To a certain extent, the existence of both Hamas and Hezbollah actually serve Israel’s interest inasmuch that they provide a reason for the US to continue supporting Israel. The Israeli propaganda machine also uses the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah to paint Israel as the victim. In reality, however, Israel could use its military might to easily crush Hamas, but can’t because of the world outcry if it did so for no apparent reason. To a much lesser extent, the same applies to Hezbollah though a full-on war against Hezbollah would be a very bloody affair but one which militarily Israel would prevail in. In Israel’s dealings in the past with their battles against Hezbollah, Israel has exposed its Achilles Heel. In recent times Israelis have shown a reluctance to expend too much of their own blood in chasing their cause. The advent of the internet and its proliferation over the past decade, especially when coupled with today’s modern global communications systems that is readily available just about everywhere, has made it almost impossible for the Israelis to hide from the world and, importantly, ordinary Israelis despite Israeli censorship, what they are doing in the places they attack.

It is for this reason that Israel, even more so now than ever before, needs to always to have a casus belli with which to attack their enemies. And, if they can’t covertly provoke their enemies into providing a casus belli then it is not beyond them to create one themselves by using a false flag event which they subsequently blame on those they wish to attack..

Now, more than ever, Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Zionists are in dire need of just such an event which will allow them attack Iran as well as Hamas and Hezbollah and bring the US back on side with support.

It is the only way out of the current impasse.

COULD CALLS FOR A ONE-STATE SOLUTION BECOME AN IMPRISONABLE OFFENCE IN ISRAEL?

A bill passed a preliminary reading through the Knesset on Wednesday ‘that would mandate the imprisonment of anyone who calls for the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state’ according to a report in the ‘Jerusalem Post’.

If the bill goes through it could mean that Israelis that are interested in the one-state bi-national solution will be silenced or face imprisonment. Since much of the push for a one-state solution must come as much from the Israeli people as it does from the Palestinian people and the rest of the world including Jews throughout the Diaspora, the bill could become a major stumbling block for all those that seek peace there.

The right-wing Zionists that are pushing this bill are doing so to ensure that a one-state solution can never be openly supported in Israel because to do so would require calling for Israel to become a non-Jewish state. Since a two-state solution, despite Obama’s insistence, is never going to happen, the bill clearly is a blatant attempt to stifle all calls for a Palestinian state of any kind.

Furthermore, if the bill is successful, it may have severe repercussions on Diaspora Jews who support a one-state solution and occasionally travel to Israel. It is not clear yet if in these circumstances if a Diaspora Jew could face arrest when touching Israeli soil. Nor is it clear if an Israeli citizen calling for a one-state solution outside of Israel could also be arrested upon returning to Israel.

The proposal demonstrates the extent to which Israel has lurched to the right and how much closer to becoming a fascist state Israel under Netanyahu has become. It is time the true voice of Diaspora Jews who would like to see real peace prevail in the region to make their voices heard over and above those of the tiny but vocal right-wing Zionist lobby groups that tend to dominate Jewish opinion in the Western world.

Rally against this bill and rally for a one-state solution which is fast becoming the only solution. The Zionists are pushing this bill for one reason and one reason only – fear.

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