IN THE EVENT OF WAR ISRAEL SAYS IT WILL USE WEST BANK ARABS AS HUMAN SHIELDS.

Israeli Home Front Commander, Major-General Yair Golan has announced that in the event of war when chemical weapons may be used, Israel will send Israelis of potential chemical weapon target zones to the West Bank.

Israeli ultra Zionist news source, Arutz Sheva, reported that “Samaria is heavily dotted with Arab villages and cities and that a chemical attack on Samaria would necessarily hurt the Arabs too – a presumably unwanted outcome for Muslim aggressors”.

Israel has become well known for using human shields in war. The Israeli citizens of Ashkelon and Sderot have never been evacuated from the townships when Palestinian fighters in the Gaza have launched their crude rockets at them. This is despite knowing full well after years of experience that when Israel attacks the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians there are likely to retaliate with rocket strikes against Ashkelon and Sderot. This has provided the Israelis with an excuse to accuse the Palestinian fighters of deliberately attacking civilians which, in turn, has provided the Israelis with justifying their attacks against civilians in the Gaza.

During ground incursions into the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories Israeli soldiers have gained a notable reputation of using civilian individuals as human shields when attacking people’s homes and public buildings.

Using human shields is a war crime.

Where’s the outrage at this latest proposal to commit war crimes.

AN ISRAELI ATTACK AGAINST IRAN WILL HAVE THE COMPLETE SUPPORT OF THE U.S.

Yesterday (Saturday) Janine Zacharia, writing in the Washington Post, said:

Israeli officials and commentators say that nothing short of sanctions on Iran's energy sector will work. And with no sign of that in the offing, the prospect of Israeli military action – which Israeli officials have always said remains an option if sanctions fail – looms larger.

However, a unilateral Israeli military strike against Iran is not an option. It should be made perfectly clear that it is simply impossible for Israel to act ‘unilaterally’ against Iran. Any attack on Iran by Israel cannot be achieved without the complete support of the US.

Israel will require substantial amounts of military jet fuel which is supplied by the US. Israel will also require intelligence back-up support which can only be supplied by the US. Israel will require massive post-first strike support to prevent Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel. Not only will retaliatory strikes by Iran be anticipated, but Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, will also need to have their retaliatory strike capability contained which, in turn requires even more jet fuel together with diesel fuel for ground forces. They also require a huge stockpile of ordnance for such a confrontation.

Today sees the start of a huge Israeli exercise that simulates a multi-pronged attack by Israel’s enemies. This has involved massing Israeli troops to the north of the country close to the border with Lebanon. In the last few weeks Israel has increased the number of provocative overflights of Lebanon and the talk generally has been of looming war.

Despite Iran’s recent deal with Turkey to swap uranium, the US has decided to go ahead with sanctions via the UN and is also seeking much tougher sanctions outside of the UN unilaterally and via the European Union. These moves are likely to upset the Russians and the Chinese who may now consider withdrawing their support for the UN sanctions resolution.

All of this, one may recall, is supposed to be based on the vague evidentially unsupported notion that the West and Israel suspects that Iran may have a nuclear weapons program and that it may use such a weapon on Israel despite the fact that, if it did, it would probably be the end of Iran.

Let’s get real here.

All this has nothing to do with any so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’; it has everything to do with ‘regime change’. And such regime change has nothing to do with stopping Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ but rather stopping Iranian support of Hezbollah and Hamas and the Palestinian cause. Without Iranian support, Hezbollah and Hamas resolve to resist Israeli oppression, persecution and expansionist ambitions will be severely weakened. This is the ultimate goal of the Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative supporters in the US.

While Obama talks peace to placate a moody US public opinion, he has made it abundantly clear where his real loyalties lie as more money is handed over to the Israelis in order to purchase even more weapons as his Secretary of State makes increasingly louder noises about Iran and its ‘nuclear weapons program’.

DID THE IRAN DEAL WITH TURKEY AND THE U.S. RESOLUTION DEAL WITH CHINA AND RUSSIA ‘CROSS IN THE POST’?

Here we were on Monday thinking the Iranian deal with Turkey, whereby Iran would get to do an exchange by sending some 1200 kgs of LEU to Turkey in exchange for 120 kgs of MEU, would ease the stand-off between the West and Iran. It seemed that the deal would put an end to the pursuit of further sanctions on Iran by the US if, for no other reason, China and Russia, in light of the new deal Iran has with Turkey, would very likely not support further sanctions against Iran.

Then, the very next day, news comes in that, not only has the US decided to push ahead with a resolution to impose further sanctions, regardless of the deal between Iran and Turkey, but that Russia and China have tentatively agreed to support such a resolution.

One can be forgiven for asking ‘What’s going on?’ given that both Russia and China were previously reluctant to be behind any further sanction even without any deals having been made to swap uranium.

Max Fisher, writing online at The Atlantic magazine, attempts a reasonable analysis. Fisher argues, in essence, that both Russia and China are simply shifting toward a more pragmatic stance that reflects their own wider interests in regards to their respective relations with Europe and the West respectively.

This may be so, but one wonders if, had Iran and Turkey announced their deal even a day earlier, Russia and China would still have agreed publicly to support this new resolution.

The fact is the sanctions are not really all that tough. They are certainly not likely to deter Iran from working to achieve their goal of producing electrical power from nuclear energy. Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, has said that they only support sanctions that are likely “to bring the Iranian side to the negotiating table”, adding that, "The sanctions are not for punishing innocent people and should not harm normal trade and business exchanges."

Because of the mild nature of the new proposed sanctions, there have been reports that the US and the EU may also be initiating certain unilateral sanctions outside of the UN sanctions tentatively agreed to. Already Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has expressed concern at these reports. Lavrov was quoted in Ria Novosti, the Russian online news magazine, as saying that the unilateral sanctions would include measures "of an extraterritorial nature, beyond the agreed decisions of the international community and contradicting the principle of the rule of the international law, enshrined in the UN Charter." The key word of concern here is ‘extraterritorial’.

The implications of this are very serious. They may even have a bearing on whether or not Russia actually signs up to the UN resolution when it comes to the vote next month. China too may think twice about their position if the US and their Western allies decide on unilateral sanctions that go beyond those already agreed to within the UN and which ‘contradict the principle of the rule of international law’.

It remains to be seen whether or not the two deals were ‘crossed in the post’, but it certainly seems that, one, the sanctions recommended were ‘soft’ enough for both Russia and China to sign up to; and, two, it also seems that, if that is the case and the US and their Western allies want to fool around with tougher unilateral sanctions, then Russia and China might just back off the UN negotiated sanctions. Given that it seems as if the Turkey-Iran deal is almost fait accompli, the end result will be at the very least embarrassing for the US and the West, and, at worst, bring on a dangerous situation in the Middle East where the US and Israel may feel compelled to take matters into their own hands.

ISRAEL AND THE U.S. LOSE 'CASUS BELLI' FOR WAR WITH IRAN – OR DO THEY?

Yesterday the Iranians surprised the world with their brokered decision to allow 1200 kgs of their Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) to be sent to Turkey in exchange for 120 kgs of Medium Enriched Uranium (MEU) that can be used to manufacture isotopes for medical purposes.

The move has taken the wind out of the sails of both the US and Israel who were hoping to move on to the stepping-stone of sanctions which they then hoped would lead ultimately toward a regime-changing attack on Iran.

For both the US and, to a much greater extent, Israel, the Iran ‘problem’ has never been about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ – Israel, the US and their Western allies are very much aware that Iran doesn’t actually have one – but, rather, it has always been about Iran’s ability to support Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, the three entities that stand in the way of Israel’s long term goal of creating a Greater Israel that includes retaining the Golan Heights and gaining the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Litani River.

The West’s rhetoric about Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ has been aimed exclusively at shifting public opinion via a fearmongering propaganda campaign to ultimately supporting a Western strike against Iran with a view to regime change. The West has been unable to provide any actual hard evidence to support their claims about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’. Even the IAEA, who are usually warily ambiguous with their pronouncements on the matter, have said that they have found no actual evidence of Iran producing, or attempting or even to produce, the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) needed to produce a nuclear bomb.

So, where do these new circumstances leave Israel and the US?

Well, the goals, of course, have not changed; both want regime change in Iran. The question now is: How can it be achieved?

The ideal for the US and Israel would have been for the Iranian people to have brought about regime change themselves. However, the opportunity for that to happen has long since passed with the failure of the so-called Iranian opposition at the elections of June 2009 and the subsequent protests, stirred on by CIA and Mossad agents provocateurs, over alleged election fraud.

With that opportunity lost, it was back to Plan A whereby the US, Israel and their Western allies would seek to impose tighter sanctions on Iran knowing that such sanctions would likely be ignored which, in turn, would ultimately provide a casus belli to attack Iran ostensibly to stop its so-called nuclear weapons program but in reality to destroy Iran’s defenses and government institutions forcing the Iranians to capitulate and seek an armistice from the UN which the US would ensure be conditional on regime change to a government friendly to the West, the US and Israel. Clearly, with the new situation, however, the US is very unlikely now to convince the UN Security Council that tighter sanctions are necessary since China and Russia will very likely block any attempt to bring on such a resolution.

So now the US, Israel and their allies will have to think about a Plan C if they still want to pursue regime change.

For the Israelis and their neoconservative supporters in the US and, indeed, around the world, regime change is absolutely essential if they want to achieve their ultimate aim of creating a Greater Israel.

Direct confrontation with Iran after showing that sanctions weren’t working was only one of several options of achieving regime change as was the possibility of regime change from within. Both of these options are now off the table.

There are other options, however. One of these is for Israel to simply attack Iran ‘unilaterally’. Of course, such a strike would be anything but ‘unilateral’ since Israel could not possibly strike Iran without the US being complicit in such a strike. The ordnance and fuel for such a strike would have to come from the US and the ordnance and fuel required to fight the resulting war with Hezbollah and Hamas would also need to come from the US. Once Israel has made the first strike against Iran, the US would then be compelled, albeit with a massive show of faux reluctance, to support Israel by launching attacks against Iran designed to prevent Iran launching any retaliatory strike against Israel.

While the US is then dealing with finishing off Iran, the Israelis would then be free to massively attack both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip followed up by invasion and occupation, all while the worlds eyes are on the ‘main event’ which is the US bringing Iran to its knees.

Another option would be for the Israelis to somehow provoke, possibly by some false flag event, war with Hezbollah and/or Hamas which they would then quickly escalate. Then, the moment either Hezbollah or Hamas fire any rocket at Israel that was not previously in their arsenal, Israel and the US would have casus belli to attack Iran.

Whatever option the Israelis and the US choose, the world is now in a very dangerous place.

FAILED BOMBING ATTEMPT IN NEW YORK

A regular reader and fellow traveller, Michael Mazur, wrote a response to my previous article which I was unable to put up in the comments to posts due to me in advertantly losing his comment. However, it’s interesting enough to put up as a post in it’s own right. This is what Michael wrote:


Damian, there was no bombing attempt at all. What the NYPD found in the Nissan SUV in the first instance was burnt out fireworks expressly designed to make smoke, a propane canister, a can of petrol, and fertilizer which - laughably - could not be used for explosive purposes !

So much for explosives training by the Pakistani Taliban of Faisal Shahzad.

Given that the smoke making fireworks item would have had a yellow/orange glowing point of origin there is no question that the can of petrol and the propane canister would have had their outlet points tightly screwed down lest otherwise the petrol/propane/air mix in that enclosed space of the SUV could have potentially been set off by that glowing point resulting in a tremendous explosive fireball violently bursting open the SUV with deaths and injuries to passersby.

That outcome the intel feared more than anything, feared so much that instead of having a regular packet of ammonium nitrate they had a fertilizer which had no pyrotechnic properties whatsoever. I mean to say that what they likely feared was that if they had ammonium nitrate there it might have been possible accidentally for the petrol to have spilled on to it, resulting in a potent mix for the firework to ignite.

They were actually being overcautious, which overcaution inadvertantly revealed the perps as being themselves !

Now why would intel care if passersby got killed ? Nine years ago they obviously wouldn't, as they stood by and watched Mossad set up the Twin Towers with nano thermite explosives, but now they know all this sh!t is coming out via the people's net, and there's gonna be serious people's courts nailing these govt funded criminals who either `aided and abetted` the murder of US citizens, or committed these murders themselves, and they don't want to be in the latter category.

That is why this Times Square car bombing non attempt was so designed as to make that impossible.

IS THE U.S. PREPARING TO ESCALATE THEIR WAR IN PAKISTAN?

Much Western media attention has been devoted to the Saturday, 1 May, failed bombing attempt in New York’s Times Square.

As I wrote recently, had the bomb been set up by some ‘white Christian American-born American the story by now would be just a sheet of newspaper blowing around in the wind up the side streets of New York’. But because it was apparently set up by a Muslim Pakistani-American, the story has been used by the American anti-Islam propaganda machine to point the finger of blame to the Pakistan Taliban.

At first the US administration didn’t quite grasp the significant propaganda opportunity presented to them. At the time of the bomb scare the US top brass, including General David Petraeus, and the media was touting the Pakistani-American suspect as a wannabe terrorist and ‘lone wolf’ operator. It was also reported that the Pakistan Taliban has specifically denied any part in the failed bombing attempt.

Today, however, the US is pushing the line that the attempted bombing was a concerted and highly organised effort by the Pakistan Taliban to attack America. And, just to top it off, Bill Roggio, a neocon writer at the Weekly Standard is claiming that the Pakistan Taliban personally emailed him to tell him that they were responsible for the training of the suspect and setting up of the bombing attempt. Roggio makes no attempt whatsoever to explain why on earth the Pakistan Taliban, after having denied all knowledge of the bombing, would want to email, of all people, a nondescript neoconservative writer at the Weekly Standard to tell him that they were responsible.

The Murdoch press is also doing its bit to propagate the myth of a Pakistan Taliban connection to the bombing attempt by using the story to spin the notion of the Pakistan Taliban being an entity in its own right distinct from the Afghanistan Taliban. Sally Neighbour of Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper, Australia’s only nation-wide newspaper, tells readers:

While policy-makers in the US and Australia have adopted the buzzword "Af-Pak" to conflate the conflicts ravaging those countries, it is clear the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while inextricably bound together, must be treated as distinct.

This is something the US and Australia have been trying to do for at least 18 months now. It was then that an Australian First Assistant Secretary for International Policy told me that ‘Pakistan is going to become a big problem that the allies will need to deal with sometime’. All they need is an excuse to widen their war to include Pakistan. The bombing attempt in Times Square clearly is now being used as that excuse.

For Western governments it’s very easy to say, ‘intelligence agencies now have firm evidence…’ but then tells us that, for security reasons, they can’t actually show us the evidence; we’re simply expected to just take their word for it. And, of course, most people will go along with what the government tells them.

The US is paranoid that the Pakistan government will topple, together with its arsenal of nuclear weapons, into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists with close ties to the Taliban. The problem is American public opinion does not support any further American adventurism and, indeed, has lost interest in the war in Central Asia. As a result of this disinterest the administration is desperately trying to spin everything it can in order to renew public support for continued war in Afghanistan and expanded war in Pakistan. Hillary Clinton has even tried to say that Pakistani officials know where Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan Taliban leader Mullah Omar is.

For the Americans, securing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal is essential. However, they need to tread very carefully. The Taliban, especially in the north, enjoy the support generally of the Pakistan people; particularly when it comes to fighting Americans. US drone strikes against Pakistanis that have killed civilians have served only to alienate the Pakistani people further and has put pressure on the Pakistan government. American money and support for the Pakistan government is now really all that is keeping the government in power and on side with the US.

The US is anxious to get more boots on the ground in Pakistan though clearly Pakistan is not a country that could be invaded (even if the US had the capacity or the inclination to do so). The alternative is to get the Pakistan government to invite much larger numbers of ‘trainers’ and ‘advisors’ into the country. Already there are large numbers of private contractors there who are supposed to be there to protect those few advisors that are already there and other US diplomats and officials that are based in Pakistan.

Some of these private contractors it has been alleged have been used on ‘false flag’ missions inside Pakistan using car bombs in markets and other crowded public places to kill Pakistani civilians in order to alienate them from the Taliban. The Taliban have denied that they have deliberately set out to kill civilians though they have admitted to attacking police and military posts.

The US need to consolidate their position in Pakistan in order to ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal remains secure and that a US-friendly government remains in power.

An opportunity that arises that may advance opportunities for the US administration to move forward with these aims and gain support from a disinterested and war-weary American public will be eagerly seized upon – and a Pakistan Taliban-inspired bomb in Times Square is just the sort of event that the administration could hope for to advance their plans.

FAISAL SHAHZAD: FRUSTRATED INNOCENT VICTIM OF FORECLOSURES OR FAMILY MAN TURNED INSTANT JIHADIST?

HOW THE NEOCONS MILK A PROPAGANDA OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL IT’S WORTH

I suppose for the Americans and their allies in the West the story of the Propane Bomb that Fizzled in New York is really big and important headline news that deserves massive air time in the Western TV, print and online media while stories like the mass killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan by bombs launched from drones get virtually no attention at all in the same Western media.

There is only one reason for the disparity – its called propaganda.

In this case, the propaganda machinery of the West has found the perfect patsy with which to perpetuate the myth of a Global War on Terrorism.

Yet another American, disgruntled about being foreclosed on by a bank that had been the recipient of billions of dollars of bailout money, felt compelled to display his frustration by undertaking an extreme act if violence. Fortunately, he failed. Now, if he’d been a white Christian American-born American the story by now would be just a sheet of newspaper blowing around in the wind up the side streets of New York. But he wasn’t. It turns out he’s a Pakistani-born American that had recently visited Pakistan. That was enough to get the propaganda machine whirring into life.

Let’s break this story down and take a look at it from two perspectives; first, from the perspective of the propagandists, and then from the perspective of a more logical reality devoid of rhetoric and emotive propagandising.

The Washington Post tells us that the wannabe bomber, Faisal Shahzad, together with his wife and two kids, in June of last year upped and disappeared from their home. We’re told that he left his job as a financial analyst just prior to ‘disappearing’. At about the same time, they put their home on the market. Then, according to the Wall Street Journal, three months later in September, presumably after having no success in being able to sell his rapidly depreciating home, his bankers, JP Morgan Chase and Co, began foreclosure procedures on them. So far it sounds like a very familiar story that has been repeated all over America. But the way the WSJ and the Washington Post tell it one is left to believe that Shahzad threw in his job, put his house on the market and then left for Pakistan in order to receive training on how to build bombs. The Washington Post, however, are sceptical about the story. They write:

“Many details surrounding Shahzad's alleged attempt to bomb Times Square are hard to reconcile. Why would someone who spent a decade pursuing U.S. citizenship seek to bomb an American landmark and flee the country within a year of being naturalized?”

Why, indeed. They also ask:

“How could someone with a degree in computers, who authorities say admitted receiving bomb-making training in Pakistan, assemble such an unsophisticated and unsuccessful device?”

We don’t actually know that Shahzad has ‘admitted’ any such thing; we’re only told that ‘authorities say’ he had. We are now expected to believe that an organisation that we were told was sophisticated enough to organise the destruction of the Twin Towers and other buildings as well as attack the nerve centre of the worlds sole remaining superpower at the Pentagon by flying several airliners into them within the space of a few hours and that have successfully built thousands of improvised explosive devices that have killed hundreds of allied soldiers cannot properly instruct a computer expert in the art of crude bomb making.

According to the neocon propagandists at Commentary magazine Shahzad gave up everything simply in order “to become a terrorist and to train in Pakistan”. But even the neocons can’t get their stories straight. According to The Weekly Standard, who quote a New York Post article, Shahzad became a Jihadist because of what he witnessed while in Pakistan. This conflicts with Commentary’s assertion that he left America to become a Jihadist.

Here’s is a far more realistic scenario which is supported by about as much evidence as the scenarios told by the media and their neocon propagandists but has a much more viable and rather more prosaic ring to it.

Seeing Shahzad’s home plummet in value due to the so-called Global Financial Crisis, JP Morgan Chase and Co start making noises about the value of his property not being anywhere near enough to cover the debt he has against it and they ask him to cough up more cash to cover the shortfall in the debt/asset ratio of the property. Realising that he won’t be able to either come up with the cash or even substantially increase his repayments to help cover the shortfall, Shahzad decides to retreat to his homeland where just maybe his father, a retired senior Pakistan Air Force officer, might be able to help him out either financially or, at least, be able to support him in Pakistan while he attempts to sort out his problems. There’s nothing unusual in this; many victims of foreclosure have had to return to their parent’s home – it’s just that most don’t have to head off to Pakistan to be with their parents.

Finding his father unable to help him financially he falls into arrears and the bank begins foreclosure proceedings against him. Frustrated that this has happened to him and that it has not been his fault he decides to return to America and, taking a leaf out of Joe Stack’s book, embarks on a plan to take revenge on a society that has, in his view, let him down. Fortunately, his plan came to nothing. Unlike Joe Stack, Shahzad didn’t attempt to go out in a blaze of glory but, rather, decided to leave the country and return to Pakistan where he was less likely to be caught. As we know, his plan to escape was thwarted and he was captured as he was attempting to leave the country.

So far, there has been no hard evidence at all that Shahzad had any connections whatsoever with al Qaeda or the Pakistan Taliban despite what the statements from the notoriously unreliable and utterly discredited government’s security and intelligence organisations say.

You be the judge. Is my totally unsupported story about how Shahzad may have found himself in the position he’s in less plausible than the propagandists equally totally unsupported story about him always wanting to be a terrorist and abandoning all to become a Jihadist?

HA’ARETZ AND THEIR READERS DISPLAY A NEW GLIMMER OF HOPE FOR PEACE AS THEY TURN AWAY FROM CONFRONTATIONAL ZIONISM

While having a bit of a read of the new-look Ha’aretz Israeli online newspaper (which, by the way, is much better and faster than the old site) it occurred to me that, not only had Ha’aretz changed their website look, but they have also taken a considerable step to the left away from their usual more centrist position.

Of course, this hasn’t happened overnight. The trend has been developing slowly over some time now and, if I were asked to put a finger on when this leftward trend began, in retrospect I would probably think about such events as the 2006 Israeli war which started out being against Hezbollah but ended up being against the Lebanese people. Later, that pace of leftward movement was compounded by Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip but which, like the war against Lebanon, ended being against the Gazan people.

And it’s not just the newspaper that’s taken a leftward turn; the readership too has followed suit and this is reflected in the comments that are left at many of Ha’aretz’s articles. In the new-look Ha’aretz this has now been enhanced by the addition of a facility that allows commenters and readers to rate other reader’s comments. The result shows that there seems to be a distinct turn in attitude among Jews both in Israel and throughout the Diaspora away from the blind hatred propagated by Zionists against Palestinians, particularly those in the Gaza Strip. More and more people throughout the Jewish world are beginning to reject the confrontational posture that has been the way of the Zionists for more than sixty years and those old confrontational attitudes are now being replaced by an emerging need to seek peace.

There is still a long, long way to go but this is a very positive start. Let us hope it stays positive and builds up. There is no place for the old extreme right-wing Zionism in a region whose inhabitants are displaying a growing and ever louder demand for peace.

SPEECH BY PAUL HEYWOOD-SMITH, QC, TO THE AUSTRALIAN FRIENDS OF PALESTINE, ADELAIDE.

The following address was given to introduce as guest speaker Senator Nick Xenophon at the Annual Dinner of the Australian Friends of Palestine, Adelaide, 27 March, 2010. The speech is by the Chairperson, Paul Heywood-Smith QC.

When asked to introduce Senator Xenophon this evening I cast around for a bit of a theme. Nick was born in Australia of Greek parents. I don’t think that I am misrepresenting the position by saying that he has worn his Greek ancestry on his sleeve. Nick has always claimed that the Greek people were traditional supporters of the Palestinians but I will leave him to elaborate upon that.

There has been a thought drifting in and out of my head lately on the topic of dual loyalty. No doubt there was once a time, perhaps not that long ago, when Anglo-Saxon Australians would consider that taking the side of Great Britain, on whatever issue, was the only right thing to do.

Clearly, with the mobility of people today, there will always be people in this country, for example, who have affections if not perceived obligations to another country. Thus we have Australian Italians who not surprisingly support Italy against Australia in the World Cup. Some at least, I understand, still vote in Italian elections, as I believe Australians of Lebanese extraction did in the last Lebanese election.

We live in a democracy and we are free to criticize our government’s foreign policy. It is clear that at least recent new Australians may have an emotional, religious or cultural attachment to their country of origin. What I am concerned about however is when this leads to political advocacy for their other loyalty, to the point where the interests of the other country are given precedence over the interests of Australia. And what I am even more concerned about is when we put such persons into positions of particular political influence in government.

This issue was thrown into sharp relief in January when Mossad apparently murdered a Hamas official in Dubai and in the process used four Australian passports. It transpires that the real persons behind the passports are Australians living in Israel. If, as seems increasingly likely, given the lack of apparent complaint by them, the use of their passports was made possible by the consent of the persons concerned, we clearly have an instance of Australians with dual loyalty placing the interests of a foreign nation ahead of their own.

Rather surprisingly this appears to be something that in some instances the Australian government will condone. Thus we have the unseemly instance of the praise given by a former Australian Foreign Affairs Minister (Alexander Downer) to a young Australian who died fighting in the IDF (Israel Defence Force) during the 2006 Lebanon war. We could be confident, however, that no such praise would have been forthcoming for a young Australian of Lebanese extraction who died fighting for Hezbollah in the same war.

It would seem that dual loyalty when one of the countries concerned is Israel is not a problem. But is it not a problem?

In November, 1947 at the time of the vote on partition a vigorous debate ensued in Australia over the advisability of a Jewish state in Palestine. One person who totally opposed the plan was Australia’s most eminent Jewish Australian – Sir Isaac Isaacs. Isaacs was Australia’s first Australian born Governor–General (1931-36). He was a member of the first Federal Parliament (1901-6), a member of the High Court (1906-1930) and Chief Justice (1930-1931). He died in February 1948, two months before the creation of Israel. In the years prior to his death he engaged in a most public debate over the advisability of that event. He opposed it, and political Zionism, strongly. The Zionist champion was Prof. Julius Stone, a distinguished legal academic, also Jewish. One of the primary planks of Isaacs’ argument was that it created dual loyalty of Jewish persons to the states in which they were citizens and to a proposed Jewish state. Stone argued that there were no such problems. There can be little argument that history has born out the fears of Isaacs on this issue.

One need only look at the United States. Of course there is absolutely no objection to an American of Jewish background running for public office. But consider the actions of Senator Joseph Lieberman for example. Whenever the current Israeli government does another outrageous act as it did two weeks ago when Vice-President Biden went to Israel to kick start negotiations – by announcing another 1600 homes for settlers in the occupied territories – Lieberman can be counted upon to come up with a reflexive, unambiguous response in support of Israel, even when the country’s top brass – Petraeus and Mullen – are finally telling the President that the US support of Israel is acting against America’s interests.

The United States is perhaps a discrete example. Many people in government come from Jewish backgrounds. They have invariably been total supporters of Israel in its war against the Palestinians. Today, we have David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel. Yesterday we had such people as Richard Perle, Dennis Ross, and Paul Wolfowitz. One thing is certain. In the US, if you dared to suggest that some American Jews are guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel, you would be accused of being anti-Semitic.

It is interesting however, and possibly a sign of the times, that only in this last week has the US Dept. of Justice been requested to regulate AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) as a foreign agent. But what of other countries? In the UK we find that the current Minister for Foreign Affairs is Jewish. David Miliband’s Polish and Belgian Jewish ancestry no doubt will have played an enormous part in his formative years, his parents and grandparents coming to the UK from a war-torn Europe. Would it even be fair to expect an impartial approach from him to such an issue as the use of UK passports by Mossad?

In Australia we have a different sort of problem. We have a Prime Minister who calls himself a Zionist. I don’t understand him to be Jewish or to have a Jewish background. I personally would rather have a Prime Minister who calls himself an Australian. We don’t want a Prime Minister who brings that sort of baggage to his decisions concerning this, one of Australia’s most important foreign issues.

But returning to the topic of dual loyalty: Michael Danby is a Jewish MHR who has been a steadfast advocate for Israel for the whole of his political life. Michael Danby has every right as an Australian to run for public office. But for someone with such clear divided loyalty is it appropriate for him to be made the Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee?

These are perhaps a few thoughts that I will leave you with.

The speaker then proceeded to introduce Senator Xenophon

WHO IS THREATENING WHO?

HYPOCRISY! ONE OF THE VALUES THAT 'THEY' HATE ABOUT 'US'.

From today’s ‘Jerusalem Post’:

"...the State Department said transfers of increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including rockets, to anti-Israel militants in southern Lebanon and Gaza could spark new conflict in the Middle East".

Not bad coming from a country that supplied Israel with the weaponry the Israelis used to kill and maim thousands of Lebanese and Gazan people with.

‘They hate our values’. No wonder!

BARAK BERATES SYRIA FOR SUPPORTING HEZBOLLAH WHILE IN WASHINGTON SEEKING SUPPORT FROM THE U.S.

Barak denies provoking Hezbollah while Israeli jets are flying over Lebanon.

Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, in Washington yesterday conferring with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, told a press conference ‘that Syria was transferring weapons systems to Hezbollah and that Israel is closely watching the developments, though he assured Israel did not plan to provoke a conflict’.

If Israel aren’t planning ‘to provoke a conflict’, then why do they continue to provoke Lebanese and Hezbollah ire by flying military jets at supersonic speeds creating sonic booms in Lebanese airspace? These are acts of war. And 'monitoring Hezbollah' is no more an acceptable excuse than Syria flying supersonic sorties over Tel Aviv claiming they are monitoring the IDF.

Israel has invaded Lebanon several times in the past so who can blame the Lebanese for wanting to defend themselves against further invasion by arming themselves with missiles? Just as Israel has the US as their ally, so Lebanon has Iran and Syria as theirs. Hezbollah remember the carnage the Israelis wrought during past invasions with massacres and the cluster bombing of civilians. With missiles that are more powerful than any they've had before, maybe Israel will think twice before attacking the Lebanese people again – though, somehow, I doubt it!.

ISRAEL COULD LOSE EXCUSE FOR WAR... BUT THAT WILL NOT STOP THEM!

With the Iranian’s now moving toward a deal which may see them yet doing an exchange of their uranium stockpile for ready-to-use fuel rods from a third country, we will likely see the anti-Iranian rhetoric shift from the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ nonsense to the ‘Iran supplies and trains the Taliban that kill US soldiers in Afghanistan’ propaganda which the neoconservatives have already kicked off.

The Israelis and their neoconservatives supporters will be particularly disappointed, to say the least, if Iran goes down the road of getting their fuel rods from a third country because it means Israel will then have lost any reason to continue directly threatening Iran with a strike against their nuclear facilities on the basis that ‘Iran is an existential threat to Israel’ if it continued enriching uranium.

That’s not to say, however, that the US would not attack Iran using Iran’s ‘interference’ in Afghanistan and Iraq as an excuse but, even if that happened, it would still be difficult for Israel to find an excuse to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip as the war essentially would be between Iran and the US over events that are not directly connected to Israel.

If Hezbollah and Hamas did not make moves to strike Israel in retaliation for a US attack against Iran, then any move by Israel to strike Hamas and Hezbollah would be seen as an unprovoked attack and thus a war crime. In short, even if the US were to prevail in a future attack against Iran and managed to get the Iranian government to capitulate and submit to UN demands to have a new government that was ‘Western friendly’, it would deprive the Israelis of their endgame of creating a Greater Israel at the expense of south Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The status quo would remain much the same as it is now provided Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t provide Israel with any excuse to attack them. Since Hamas and Hezbollah would have lost their main benefactor, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah would be taking care not provoke Israel. This, in turn, may frustrate Israel enough for them to seek other ways of coming up with a casus belli to attack Hamas and Hezbollah. As has been demonstrated before by Israel, they are likely to attack on the basis of the most flimsiest of excuses or, failing that, create one themselves.

ISRAELI DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER THINKS ISRAEL CAN BEHAVE BADLY BECAUSE ITS NEIGHBOURS ‘DON’T ALLOW WOMEN TO VOTE’.

According to Danny Ayalon, accusations about Israeli warcrimes are inappropriate because they come from those who “are the mouthpiece of autocratic regimes”. In his op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post today, he states that the Goldstone Commission was initiated by the Organisation of Islamic Conference and that attempts to arrest Israeli officials in Europe “are initiated, supported and funded by those in our region who will not allow a woman to vote and [who] kill and oppress their own people”.

Ayalon’s childish attempt to deflect accusations of warcrimes by arrogantly pointing out the foibles of other nation’s cultures would simply be laughed at if it were not for the fact that this man is Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and is a member of Israel’s hard-right Zionist party, Yisrael Beiteinu. It’s a bit like a child being told off for bullying and the child responding by saying something derogatory about the behaviour of the kids in the classroom next door as though it will somehow excuse ones own bad behaviour.

Ayalon is a classic Zionist who believes that the way the world has treated Jews throughout history gives Israel exclusive rights to behave outrageously and with impunity toward all those that stand in the way of what they perceive as their God-given right to create a state from lands that are not theirs.

One should note that nowhere in Ayalon’s article does he attempt to defend the warcrimes accusations. He does, however, happily applaud Israel’s ‘successes’ in creating the state of Israel based on the ability of Israel to defend itself against victimhood. He ends his piece ominously with:

“We have continued Herzl’s vision, even after our independence, and are dreaming of bigger and better things. This is why we have a bright future, and we can make it even brighter, not only for Israel, but for all the people who are inspired, assisted and supported by Israel.”

‘Dreaming of bigger and better things’? Like what? Expanding Israel into south Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank?

AS THE MYTH OF IRAN’S ‘NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM’ FAILS TO IMPRESS, IRAN’S INVOLVEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN MAY BE ALL OBAMA NEEDS.

You’d have to be blind Freddy not to be able to see what’s really going on here. Just as the Israelis and their neoconservative supporters in the George W. Bush administration created the myth of Saddam’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ which resulted in regime change in Iraq, so the Israelis and those same neoconservatives have been trying the same ruse again in order to get the US to strike Iran in order to effect regime change.

But just as the invasion and destruction of Iraq was never really about ridding Saddam of his WMDs, so a strike against Iran will not be about halting Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’. In both cases the objective is to change regimes to ones that are submissive to the US and, therefore, Israel. A neutered Iran with a compliant puppet government installed would then allow Israel to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Ever since the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah and the Lebanese people when Israel and the US attempted, but failed, to provoke a conflict that would escalate to include Iran directly, the US and Israel and their supporters have intensified their propaganda war against Iran. Four years later and both the US and Israel have failed to bring the first and very necessary stage of striking Iran over its ‘nuclear weapons program’ to a head. While sanctions do already exist against Iran, they are largely totally ineffective in terms of halting Iran’s determination from going ahead with a nuclear program which is designed for electrical power generation and which, without any evidence whatsoever, Israel and the US are saying is a nuclear weapons program.

The US are now having massive problems in getting Russia and China on board to go down the road of tighter sanctions which would be the next necessary step before the US could say sanctions have failed completely and launch an attack against Iran. Without Russian and Chinese support the US would be not be able to muster enough favourable Western and world public opinion to support any attack against Iran.

As a result, the neoconservatives are now trying another tactic that they believe will provide a casus belli to attack Iran, one that doesn’t need UN support. Iran’s supposed influence in, and supply of arms and training to, Afghanistan is now being promoted as a reason for striking Iran in order to effect regime change. The neoconservatives have pounced on statements made by US chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who has said that ‘significant shipments of arms’ are being delivered to Afghan fighters from Iran; arms that the neocons are saying are being used to ‘kill Americans’.

While the neocons would much prefer Obama to simply ignore world opinion and launch a massive fait accompli attack against Iran, Obama is aware that he cannot launch an attack against Iran without first trying the sanctions road despite knowing that the sanctions road will not stop Iran’s determination to see its nuclear program into fruition. Obama is also aware that the people of the US are in no mood to launch another war in the Middle East even if such a war does not involve ground troops. However, Obama, like Bush before him, has not taken the military option off the table and may well be open to considering alternative scenarios that would provide him with a casus belli to attack Iran that the American people might support.

The American people have a history of becoming supportive of their government once their leadership has committed them to war and, if Obama detects even a slight swing towards support for war against Iran, he might just be tempted to launch an attack if he finds a casus belli scenario that does not need to involve sanctions or the UN. Intensive Iranian involvement in Afghanistan, real or not, might just well be all he needs. While the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric will continue, it may be that the neocon’s rhetoric about Iranian support of the Taliban in Afghanistan will ultimately tip Obama’s hand to attack Iran and hand to Israel everything it needs to crush Hezbollah and Hamas and create a Greater Israel.

AUSTRALIAN MURDOCH PROPAGANDIST AND RACIST, ANDREW BOLT, FINDS SUPPORT AT NEO-NAZI ‘STORMFRONT’ BLOG.

It seems Andrew Bolt’s utterly transparent pseudo-disgust and criticism of those that have ‘smeared’ South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche’s racism is seen as support for the White supremacist cause among some at the neo-Nazi Stormfront blog.

In Bolt’s latest commentary about Terreblanche’s death, Bolt attempts to invoke journalistic professionalism, (as if in his own work he actually cared about journalistic professionalism), in order to defend the monster that is Terreblanche against allegations that Terreblanche may have been sexually abusing young men.

The comments at the ‘Stormfront’ blog generally support Bolt despite Bolt’s ‘apparent’, as far as at least one Stormfront member infers, support for Jews. Another ‘Stormfront’ member, however, implies that ‘Bolt has to support Jews, Israel and Zionism because he’s part of the Jewish-owned media’. He’s not, but he’s certainly part of a media organisation, owned by Rupert Murdoch, that supports the Zionist cause.

Bolt makes it quite clear in his column that the real enemy is not Terreblanche but the blacks of South Africa – which, of course, reflects his own views about non-white non-Europeans everywhere, particularly in Australia. While Bolt treads a cautious path taking care not to outrightly appear to be supporting Terreblanche, Bolt’s followers at his blog make are quite overt about their support for Terreblanche as they try to deflect the ‘smearing’ of his, presumably, ‘good name’.

Bolt, whose ridicule of people who identify as Aboriginal Australians is well known, is also a fervent Islamophobe, and lobbyist against refugee non-white non-European asylum seekers who wish to find refuge in Australia.

ISRAELI ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE WEST BANK: EHUD BARAK WANTS SIX MONTHS FOR… WHAT?

Last Wednesday the Israeli Supreme Court sat to rule on the status of illegal Israeli settlements at Hayovel and Horsha in the West Bank. Despite the structures being illegal, each of the families received some NIS 77,000 from the state of Israel when they settled the sites.

That’s disturbing enough in itself, but what’s really interesting is the fact that Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has asked the court for a six months adjournment before telling the court when the settlements will be razed as per the court’s orders. One wonders what’s likely to happen over the next six months that is likely to change the circumstances that dictate the future of these illegal, not to mention immoral, settlements. Will the status of the West Bank change over the next six months? If so, how?

Now that’s a worry!

WESTERN DELUSIONS AND ISRAELI DREAMS

There are two things about the Middle East that the world should be absolutely clear about. First, Israel has no intention of ever allowing any kind of Palestinian state to exist in any shape or form in any part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Second, there is absolutely no way that Israel can ever launch an attack against Iran without US knowledge and US connivance. Any claim that an Israeli strike against Iran was completely ‘unilateral’ would be a lie.

The talk of ‘peace’ between Israel and the Palestinian people is nothing but a ruse to play for time while the Zionist Israelis await for an opportunity to arise that will provide them with the excuse they need to massively invade and completely occupy the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. These are the ultimate aims of the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters in the US and elsewhere around the Western world. And it is the hope of the Zionists of Israel that Iran somehow will provide the casus belli to initiate such a chain reaction of events that will allow Israel to fulfil its dream of creating a Greater Israel.

A quick review of the list of so-called peace initiatives that have been attempted shows just how insincere and hypocritical the Israelis have been about Palestinian independence. Ever since Israel came into existence there have been no end of so-called 'peace talks' including the Jarring Mission, the Rogers Plan, the Reagan Plan, the Oslo Accords, the Wye River Memorandum, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Summit, the Elon Peace Plan, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement, the Arab Peace Initiative, the Road Map to Peace, the Madrid Conference, the Hebron Protocol, the Annapolis Conference, the Beirut Summit, the Peace Valley Plan, etc., all of which have been going on for years and none of which – not one – have amounted to anything, and all the time while these talks and negotiations have been going on, Israel has slowly and insidiously permeated its way onto lands that do not belong to them.

Today, Israel’s modus operandi has become blatantly transparent. They have demonstrated that there will be no let up in the building of settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem despite the rhetoric about wanting ‘peace’ – knowing full well that peace on Israel’s terms will not ever be acceptable to the Palestinian people and nothing that the Palestinians will concede to will ever be enough for the Zionists.

The neoconservatives and the Israel lobby in America have ensured that the US will never get serious about there ever being a Palestinian state. The Israel lobby have succeeded in ensuring that virtually all the members of Congress on both sides will unflinchingly support Israeli Zionism.

If Israel did attack Iran in what they would tell the world was a ‘unilateral pre-emptive first strike’, the world can rest assured that the US will respond by siding with Israel with immediate and massive follow-up strikes against Iran in order to deter Iran from retaliatory action against Israel and to compel Iran to capitulate or face further massive destruction upon their nation. Meanwhile, Israel will simultaneously attack both Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and follow this up with full-on invasions of the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon and the West Bank on the pretext that these actions too are to pre-empt Hamas and Hezbollah retaliation after striking Iran. In the face of such a massive onslaught by the US and the Israelis, the Syrians are unlikely to respond with any great enthusiasm.

The West’s delusions about ‘peace’, a ‘Palestinian state’, and Irans suicidal bid to destroy Israel with a nuclear weapon will end in disaster for the people of the Middle East – and perhaps even the world.

There is now only one solution and that is the One State bi-national solution where the Jews of Israel live in equality with the Palestinian people, where the Golan Heights are returned to the Syrians, where both all of the Gaza strip and the West Bank becomes part of the new state and the Palestinians have full right of return with full compensation for their land losses paid for by the world community.

The alternative will be disaster for both the Arabs, the Israelis and the possibly the world.


UPDATE

Michael J. Totten, writing in the Zionist Neocon journal Commentary, has confirmed my assertion that attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to destroy its weapons making ability is not what the Israelis really want. He writes:

"If the Israelis decide to use force, the nuclear facilities should not be the target. The government should be the target. And the U.S. should back Israel's play and even assist it, no matter how enraged American officials might be."

This is exactly the scenario I suggested years ago at this blog. He also foresees the same scenario I suggested with regard to Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon:

"Striking Iran would, in all likelihood, ignite several Middle Eastern wars all at once. Hamas and Hezbollah would bombard Israel with missile attacks. Lebanon and Gaza would both come under massive counterbattery fire."

I have suggested this, but the ‘counterbattery fire’ would be followed up by invasion and permanent occupation.

Totten also suggests that:

“A military attack against Iran should be rolled out only if every conceivable peaceful solution fails first.”

He knows, of course, that there is no ‘peaceful solution’ to a problem that only exists in the minds of Western and Israeli schemers and deceivers who are manipulating the West to support a strike against Iran. They know that Iran has no ‘nuclear weapons program’ but are perpetuating the myth that they have for the same reasons as they did with Iraq – only this time there is far, far more a stake.

PRIME MINISTER KEVIN RUDD CAVES IN TO AUSTRALIA’S RACISTS.

It’s a sad fact that Australia has had a long history of intolerance of non-white and non-European people – including its own indigenous Aboriginal people. Proof of this is in the fact that it was only in 1962 that Aboriginal people were ‘given’ the right to vote in their own country, and only as recently as 1973 that Australia finally rescinded the White Australia policy which had dominated Australian immigration policies since Federation in 1901.

Nonetheless, despite the end of the White Australia policy, and the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, a small but vocal group of right-wing white Australians have continued to actively agitate against non-white non-European immigration to Australia and against Aboriginal rights in Australia.

These right-wing white Australians have always been vocal about race issues in Australia but the intensity of their rhetoric tends to rise and fall with the flow rates, in particular, of asylum seekers that arrive at Australia’s shores by boat. The racists that object to boatpeople tend to couch their arguments in terms of it being part of a broader debate on immigration to Australia generally. However, this is just a cover to deflect criticism of their real motives for objecting to boatpeople. The cover is transparent by virtue of the language they use to voice their criticism. Instead of calling them what they are; asylum seeking refugees, the racists tag them as ‘illegal immigrants’ in order to vilify them.

Boatpeople that come to Australia do so as refugees seeking asylum, something they are quite entitled to do under international laws and agreements which Australia are a party to. Once having arrived here, their claims are verified and, if they are found to be genuine refugees, they are offered sanctuary in Australia. Those not found to be genuine refugees are returned home. It is all very simple and straight forward. For the racists though, this is too much.

Virtually all of the boatpeople that arrive in Australia are non-white non-Europeans and it is this that the racists really object to. The vilification of asylum seekers that arrive by boat is reinforced by the fact that the racists ignore almost entirely the real illegal immigrants that are in Australia who have arrived by airline on visas the conditions and limits of which they have every intention of ignoring. However, because the vast majority of them are white Europeans (mostly British and American) the racists seem not to be concerned about them.

The racists’ argument against accepting boatpeople based on concerns regarding Australia’s population growth, particularly in light of recent statements that Australia’s population could be 35 million by 2050, also does not hold water since boatpeople make up less than half of one percent of Australia’s total average annual immigration intake. While the percentage value varies, depending on the geo-political stability of the world, it would rarely rise above one percent, yet the more extremist elements of the racist right-wing of Australia, particularly in the Australia’s mainstream media, are writing almost daily about the so-called swamping of Australia’s shores by boatpeople.

The media, it seems, has now had a profound effect on Australian public opinion with the result being that Australia's Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has caved in to the racists of Australia by announcing that the government will not be processing any further asylum claims from Sri Lankan or Afghan refugees.

The move has placed Rudd in a moral dilemma with some even suggesting that the move is in contravention to the Racial Discrimination Act. Certainly, the move has been made for purely political reasons; to placate a section of Australian society that are clearly gullible to racist’s fearmongering at a time when the Australian people face going to the polls later in the year.

Rudd has claimed that he has made the move on the basis that both Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are now stabilized and that people from these nations need not now seek asylum in foreign countries. The reality is somewhat different. Sri Lankan authorities have been arresting Tamils since the war ended, and, in some cases, have been executing them summararily, while in Afghanistan the war continues to rage with another of Obama’s so-called ‘surges’ imminent.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has exposed Australia to be a truly racist nation by bowing to the White Australian extremists demands of limiting or stopping non-white non-European immigration into Australia.

Shame on Rudd and the Australian Labor Party, and shame on Australia.

EVER WONDERED WHY ‘THEY’ HATE ‘OUR’ VALUES?

Well, this could be one reason. And this could be another. And, of course, there’s this.


To keep tabs on Australia’s leading racist, visit Andrew Bolt: Ultra Racist

MURDOCH’S NEOCONS AT THE ‘WEEKLY STANDARD’ DESPERATELY SPIN WIKILEAKS ‘COLLATERAL MURDER’ VIDEO RELEASE.

Yesterday, Wikileaks, a website dedicated to publishing classified documents and films, released a video showing the murder and wounding of Iraqis including two Reuters news workers who were murdered and two children who were wounded. Altogether, some twelve people died in the incident.

The film clearly shows Iraqis being blasted by machine-canon fire from a helicopter gunship. While arms are mentioned there is little indication that they were armed. Certainly after the initial attack, when a van appeared to take away the wounded, there was no sign of any arms yet the gung-ho American murderers decided to open fire on them anyway and then laughed after. Later, an American tank arrives on the scene and blithely drives over one of the dead Iraqis.

Despite the clearly murderous intent of the Americans operating the guns who can be heard almost pleading for permission to open fire on a clearly badly wounded Iraqi and the van that had arrived to evacuate him, Weekly Standard propagandist, Bill Roggio, attempts to spin the murders as being a legitimate action claiming that everything that happened was within the military’s Rules of Engagement and that the attack on the van that arrived to rescue the injured Iraqi was legitimate on account of it not being marked as an ambulance. But what is really disgusting about Roggio’s attempt to spin the incident is the way he accuses Wikileaks of merely sensationalising the event in order to attract media attention and internet traffic to their website.

Watch the video, read Roggio’s pathetic propaganda piece and weep.

These people want the world to be like them.


UPDATE

New York Times writers Noam Cohen and Brian Stelter must have read the Weekly Standard piece by Roggio as well. Cohen and Stelter have authored an article in today’s NYT entitled ‘Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site’.

Their article is both a classic piece of distractive propaganda with a dash of sour grapes thrown in. Rather than talk about the horrendous crime that has been committed, the writers attempt to shoot the messenger - in this case Wikileaks - by suggesting that Wikileaks is merely attempting to big-note itself by releasing the film.

I say; 'Good on 'em!' If the mainstream media won't report important stuff like this, then let Wikileaks do it for them.