THE U.S. AND ISRAEL’S ‘OBSESSION’ WITH IRAN - THE REAL REASONS

Actually, it’s not so much that the U.S. and Israel are seemingly ‘obsessed’ with Iran, but more that the neoconservative’s of the U.S. and Israel’s right-wing Zionists are. However, this apparent obsession is only a deliberately created illusion. Israel’s real obsession is the creation of a Greater Israel and the destruction of those that prevent Israel’s expansionist dreams; Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of who are supported by Iran.

The stated casus belli for any Israeli/US attack on Iran will be that Iran is building a nuclear weapon with which it intends to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. The ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and the ‘wipe Israel off the map’ are two memes that have gone hand in hand in the propaganda and rhetoric of Israel’s Zionists and their neoconservative allies in the US and, indeed, around the world for years.

There are, however, a range of problems with these allegations. Firstly, there is, despite the constant barrage of assertions to the contrary, no actual physical evidence whatsoever that Iran actually has a ‘nuclear weapons program’. Time and time again, Israel and their allies have made the accusations but have never been able to support their allegations with any hard irrefutable evidence. All of the ‘evidence’ so far has been either vaguely circumstantial, hearsay based on statements from dissidents and defectors, straight out lies or simply conclusions based on wishful thinking and vivid imaginations.

Secondly, the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ meme is a deliberate mistranslation of a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said nothing of the sort. It was the neoconservative organisation MEMRI that was responsible for the deliberate mistranslation of the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ line which has been used extensively by neoconservatives and Israelis ever since to invoke hatred of Iran and to infer an existential threat against Israel from Iran. Still, though, Israel and the US insist that Iran is intent on producing a nuclear weapon that it plans to use against Israel and possibly even against America.

Which brings us to the third problem with the allegations ranged against Iran and that is; why would Iran, even if it did have a nuclear weapon, risk utter and swift destruction by the US and Israeli retaliatory nuclear strikes if it were to ever attack Israel with a nuclear weapon? The answer, of course is; it wouldn’t – and the Israelis and the US are well aware of it. They are also well aware that in reality Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

So why then all the fuss? The hope is that with the aid of a compliant Western mainstream media, the propaganda memes of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ repeated over and over endlessly will eventually so influence public opinion that it will support an attack against Iran.

The ‘Iranian problem’ is presented to the world via the mainstream media in its most simplistic form. It runs thus: ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program with which it wishes to wipe Israel off the map so the answer is to destroy its weapons making capabilities using military action’.

That’s the rhetoric and the propaganda.

The reality is this: Israel and the US have no real interest in Iran’s nuclear program; their real aim as far as Iran is concerned is to destroy the Islamic regime and replace it with one that is US and Israel friendly.

Attacking Iran and affecting regime change kills a number of birds with one stone. It puts an end to what Israel and the US regard as Iran’s influence in the region, but, most important as far as the Israelis and their supporters are concerned, is that an attack against Iran provides, so they hope the world will believe, a legitimate pretext for attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon on the basis that the Israelis are pre-empting a strike by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel in retaliation of Israel’s attack against Iran.

Since the only way the US and Israel will be able to affect ‘regime change’ in Iran without the use of an invasion and occupation – unthinkable considering that Iran is more than three and a half times the size of Iraq and has about two and a half times the population – is by bombing it into capitulation and surrender, one can expect a campaign that will be far more than a load of bunker-buster bombs aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Much more likely is a campaign of significant attacks against Iran’s defence and governmental institutions as well as its nuclear facilities; attacks that will deliberately inflict significant ‘co-lateral damage’ on civilians as the Iranian authorities get accused of using their civilians as ‘human shields’. The hope always with this strategy is that the civilian population will then press their government to end the war by capitulating to their enemies demands.

The only problem with this strategy is that it rarely ever works. Usually when such all-out bombing campaigns are carried out with the view to getting the enemy to sue for peace, rather than suing for peace, a phenomenon known as ‘Kriegssozialismus’ sets in whereby people from all walks of civilian life spontaneously ignore their ordinary class affiliations and come together to help each other out in circumstances where all are suffering equally due to war, and, importantly, collectively stiffen their resolve to resist the enemies actions rather than cave into them. Short of using nuclear weapons to defeat Iran, the US and Israel stand no hope of defeating the people of Iran.

There is also a problem of logistics in attacking Iran. Over the years that the threat of attack has prevailed, there have been reports that have suggested that Israel will ‘go it alone’ if they feel threatened enough by Iran’s ‘nuclear weapon program’. One report recently even suggested that the US is “concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking action against Iran’s nuclear facilities”. This is all rhetorical nonsense dished up for public consumption. The reality is that it would be absolutely impossible for Israel to launch an entirely unilateral attack against Iran without US connivance.

In any attack they mount, Israel will use American aircraft which constantly require spare parts mostly from the US. They will also require ordnance which also mostly comes from the US; they will require vast quantities of military jet fuel, and, if Israel plans to attack Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time, it will also require massive amounts of diesel fuel to power up its ground forces. All of this comes from the US and, as was recorded in August 2010, Israel has already ordered that fuel which would by now have been delivered and stockpiled.

The other major logistic hurdle Israel needs to overcome is the one of getting to and from its target. Israel is separated from Iran by at least two other countries; Syria and Iraq or Jordan and Iraq. Either way, this amounts to a round rip of around 3000kms to bomb Bushehr and/or Qom, Iran’s two main nuclear facilities. The most likely route would be via Syria who would be unlikely to offer any resistance to Israeli overflights – especially if it came under attack itself. Then there is the question of overflying Iraq. The Iraqi government on its own is unlikely to allow Israeli aircraft to overfly their territory. Israel would need to be in cohorts with the US if it wished to get the US to convince the Iraqi government to allow Israeli aircraft into its airspace. And not only would Israel need to have Iraqi permission to pass through its airspace, it would also need to use Iraqi airspace for in-flight refuelling operations which the Israelis would need to utilise since their strike aircraft do not have the range to do the job in one round trip without refuelling.

The question then is; what exactly is Israel’s intended endgame in the event of an attack against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?

Such a massive attack against all of its enemies at once is a huge commitment on Israeli resources and one of very high risk. It will, therefore, need to be decisive in terms of meeting all of its war aims.

Israel will have learnt the lessons of its past failures. After years of attacks against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been able to destroy Hezbollah or Hamas despite its efforts against Hezbollah in 2006 and against Hamas in 2008/2009. In the event of an attack against Iran, Israel is likely to simultaneously mount hitherto unprecedented attacks against both Hamas and Hezbollah. Such a strike will likely be opened up with a massive aerial and artillery barrage and then, since Israel does not have to commit ground forces to attacking Iran, it will be able to invade and occupy the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Latani River. At the same time, Israel is likely to fully occupy all of the West Bank in order to prevent any uprising by Palestinian resistance there and remilitarise the Golan Heights to prevent any backlash there.

In short, for Israel an attack against Iran and Israel’s other enemies on the pretext of pre-empting an immediate threat to its own existence will be the do or die action it will take in order to realise Zionism’s ultimate endgame; the creation of a Greater Israel.

The coming confrontation is not about Iran being a threat; it is about Israel ridding itself of all of its enemies in the places that it would like to annex as part of its realisation of creating a permanent Greater Israel nation abundant with fertile lands, its own water resources, and living space. War is its pretext.

IS THE ‘FINAL CONFRONTATION’ NOW IMMINENT?

This post is a modified version of a post that I wrote back in June of 2008. What I wrote then is just as valid today as it was then.

Those pushing for war against Iran argue, despite the total lack of any evidence to support their claims, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that they will use their nuclear weapons, once they have them, against Israel. Their allegations are reinforced by what they say, quite falsely, are President Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about ‘wiping Israel off the map’.

All of this is merely propaganda and neither Israel nor the US or even the International Atomic Energy Authority, the UNs nuclear watchdog, can produce any evidence whatsoever to support Israeli and US claims about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. [Update: An imminent report due next week from the IAEA will still not provide any hard actual evidence of Iran having a nuclear weapons program. The ‘evidence’ the IAEA will produce will only be statements fro various dissidents and defectors who claim to have knowledge of a nuclear weapons program, and some vague references to Iran supposedly researching trigger devices for nuclear warheads.]

The reality is this: Israel and their supporters have been carrying on about Iran’s nuclear ambitions for years and threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities were being made long before Ahmadinejad became President of Iran in August, 2005. Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric has merely been a reaction to Israel’s bellicose stance towards Iran and, with a little careful massaging of translations of his speeches by the neoconservative think tank, MEMRI, has provided much fodder for the Israel/neocon propaganda machine. However, the real reason Israel wants to attack Iran is not because of Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ – it simply doesn’t have one – nor is it because Ahmadinejad has said he wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ – he never said any such thing – it is because Iran supports both Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Syria who are seeking to have the Golan Heights returned to them. What Israel and the US and their neoconservative allies really want is ‘regime change’ in Iran. They want an Iran that has an Israel and US friendly government so that Israel can continue in its quest to create a Greater Israel without having to worry about Iran supporting those that are resisting Israeli expansionism.

In the event of Israel and the US attacking Iran, one can expect to see not just Iran’s nuclear facilities destroyed, indeed, that will be just a minor part of the operation, but there will also be major attacks against Iranian military targets including air bases, missile storage areas, barracks, etc. Iran’s communications systems and government buildings will also likely be targeted. In short, the Iranian government would be bombed into capitulation.

One can also expect Israel to launch an attack, probably simultaneously with the assault on Iran, against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel may also attack Syria pre-emptively on the basis that Syria has a mutual assistance treaty with Iran and despite the current domestic problems Syria is experience. The resulting conflict could have a devastating effect both on the region and around the world. As well as bringing death and destruction to countless Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians, many Israelis may also die as Iran launches missiles in a counter attack against Israel, a move that could escalate rapidly if Israel decided to its use nuclear weapons against Iran in retaliation to an Iranian counter attack.

The economic consequences for the rest of the world could also be catastrophic. Oil prices, already at record levels due to the uncertainties prevailing in the region, would play havoc with economies world wide.

Then there are the unknowns. How, for example, will Russia, a supplier of nuclear equipment to Iran, and China, a customer of Iran’s resources, react to such an attack? How will the UN handle a pre-emptive assault against Iran? How will the governments of the other Arab states react? How will the peoples of the other Arab states react? What will happen in Iraq, already destroyed by over half a decade of fighting?

The world, somehow, is not reacting to the prospect of war in the same way as it did during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. The reason for that is; the world knew the invasion of Iraq was coming, but this time around there is no overt preparations for war against Iran in the way that there was against Iraq. There is even a feeling that the US simply wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it again after the disaster of Iraq. The problem is, however, that the extreme right-wing of the US and Israel are convinced of their own self-righteousness and that all will go according to their plans.

It’s a frightening scenario. The Middle East could erupt into catastrophic war at any tick of the clock but the world doesn’t seem to think its going to happen.

Sooner or later it will. Israel’s ultimate endgame is for regime change in Iran which, in turn, will deny Hamas and Hezbollah of its ability to resist Israel’s quest for a Greater Israel. War against Iran is the only way Israel’s Zionists will be able to realise their dream.

The coming confrontation hasn’t got anything to do with Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program; it has everything to do with Israel’s desire to create a Greater Israel and rid itself of its enemies once and for all.

IRAN: THE NEOCONS HAVE BECOME CONFUSED AS THEY PUSH FOR ACTION

Yesterday, Jonathan Tobin at Commentary wrote:

With the International Atomic Energy Agency set to release a new report next month detailing Iran’s efforts to create a nuclear weapon, Tehran’s main protector in the international community is making a last ditch effort to squelch the watchdog group’s efforts to blow the whistle on this threat.

Russia announced today it opposed the IAEA’s plans to publish a report about the military implications of Iran’s illegal push for nukes.

Tobin goes on to write:

Since the beginning of the last decade, Iran has played Western diplomats for fools with Russian assistance.

While Tobin conceded that “the Russians have as much reason to fear a nuclear Iran as anyone else”, Tobin claimed that Russian support for Iran was because Prime Minister Putin “believes anything that thwarts American foreign policy goals constitutes a win for his government”.

This didn’t seem to make any sense. On the one hand Tobin – as well as other neocons and their allies – is accusing Russia of helping Iran cover up what they think is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, while at the same time saying that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be in Russia’s interest any more than anyone elses. Why would they help Iran cover up their so-called nuclear weapons program?

In order to clarify Tobin’s stance, I emailed him. I wrote:

What you are saying, Jonathan, is tantamount to suggesting that Russia is complicit in aiding Iran to become nuclear armed. I wonder, can you explain how a nuclear armed Iran would be in Russia's interest?And, even if it were in Russia's interest, would it not be easier for Russia to simply supply Iran with the nuclear arms you say it seeks?

His response was even more confusing than his article. He replied:

As I wrote, a nuclear Iran is not in Russia's interest. But its delight in thwarting American policy aims seems to trump common sense in this case. Russia has been Iran's chief enabler in international diplomacy as their effort to suppress the IAEA report shows. While Russia knows better than to give Iran nukes, a Middle East in which Iran displaces the U.S. as a power is one that they may think they can live with.

The response provided more questions than answers. I wrote back to him saying:

May I take this a little further since your reasoning seems to be contradictory. We can agree that a nuclear armed Iran is not in Russia's interest, but how can Iran 'displace the US as a power' without being nuclear armed? And, if it's not in Russia's interest, how is it that Russia could 'live with' that?

I’m still, not unsurprisingly, awaiting his reply.

IRAN: IS CONFRONTATION NEAR AT HAND?

In recent days America has accused Iran of plotting to commit an act of war on American soil by assassinating a Saudi Arabian diplomat. The first question one would need to ask is: why on earth would Iran commit such a deliberate act of war against the US and Saudi Arabia?

And the answer, of course is: they simply wouldn’t.

Yet, this is exactly the ludicrous scenario that the US administration is hoping the world of will accept. “We’re in the process of uniting world public opinion continuing to isolate and condemn their behavior. Nothing has been taken off the table,” vice–President Joe Biden told ABC News on the ‘Good Morning America’ show.

Robert Baer, an ex-CIA intelligence analyst specializing in Iranian affairs, however, has doubts about the veracity of the report about an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, DC, saying that the plot is “completely out of character” for the Iranians.

Apart from a load of wild accusations and an arrest of one of the so-called plotters, the US has not provided any evidence whatsoever of any plot. It seems to be yet another case of ‘we have said it has happened and, therefore, it has’. The world is then expected to believe it just on that basis despite having been gullible enough to have fallen for this nonsense so many times before.

Two questions remain unanswered. First, my original one: why would Iran do such a thing: and two, why would the US want to accuse Iran of plotting such an outrageous act knowing that it could lead to war?

As readers of my blog will be aware, I have warned for some time of a coming confrontation between Iran and Israel and its allies. For years, the Israelis and the US together with their other Western allies have accused Iran of having a nuclear weapons program. And for just as many years, not a skerrick of evidence has ever been produced to support the claims. Iran has consistently claimed that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only in order to produce electrical energy and for medical purposes. And, contrary to claims by the US, Iran has allowed the IAEA access to all of its facilities and no evidence has ever been found that supports the accusation that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

While the US continues to claim that Iran does have a nuclear weapons program, it does so purely to maintain the propaganda rhetoric; it certainly doesn’t have any hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program that would justify it attacking Iran. It is for this reason that the US has resorted to making other accusations about Iran’s hostility toward the US – and in this case, has also attempted to wedge an already extremely fragile relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran into the bargain.

The reality is that Iran is in no position to provoke a war against either Israel or the US. Both Israel and the US, however, would gain extensively from a war that resulted in regime change in Iran.

If the US attacked Iran, say, on the pretext that Iran threatened to commit an act of war against the US, then Israel would be provided with a pretext to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on the basis that they would be pre-empting a retaliatory strike by Hezbollah and Hamas who are Iran’s allies. And just for good measure, the Israelis would also launch a full scale invasion and full military occupation of the West Bank in order, so they would tell the world, to prevent hostile Palestinian elements taking up arms against Israel and the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. While the American attack against Iran would take the world’s centre stage, the Israeli reaction to an American attack against Iran – attacks against Hezbollah and Hamas – would be seemingly only of minor significance compared to the war against Iran whereas in fact the entire war is really is about Israel’s desire to rid itself of its enemies once and for all and thus go some way to realising their dream of creating a Greater Israel.

The fact is; Iran is not at all a threat to the US and never can be, but while Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran will always be there to thwart Israel’s dreams of a Greater Israel.

Only a full on war against Hezbollah and Hamas and regime change in Iran will give the Zionists of Israel what they have yearned for since 1948. And that can only be achieved by America attacking Iran.

COULD TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS LEGITIMISE TIT-FOR-TAT KILLINGS OF THE LEADERS OF THE BELLIGERENTS?

I’ve spent much of the day reading a dozen or so newspaper articles, opinion pieces and commentaries on the pros and cons of the killing of American citizen and Jihadist, Anwar al Awlaki, who died in Yemen yesterday after being targeted by a Hellfire missile fired from an American operated drone aircraft.

The left and the civil and human rights folk together with folk from the libertarian right have condemned the killing as illegal and unconstitutional, while the right-wing, led noisily by the neoconservatives, have praised the killing as a victory and argued that in time of war such killings are quite justified.

What’s missing from all of these arguments from both sides is the fact that such extra-judicial killings can work two ways. No matter what the rights and wrongs of these kinds of killings are, it means that if it’s okay for the US and its allies to kill their enemies in this way, then its okay for the enemy to do likewise and kill American leaders and leaders of American allies; and since the President of the United States also happens to be the Commander in Chief of American forces, he now becomes a quite legitimate target by exactly the same virtues and logic that the President viewed al Awlaki to be a legitimate target.

Targeted assassinations, of course, are nothing new; the Israelis have quite famously and openly attempted to legitimise the extra-judicial killing of its non-combatant enemies for years. It could even be argued from an historical point of view that Israel’s long history of not very seriously challenged policy of targeted assassinations has paved the way for the Americans to do likewise. Whilst the practise has caused outrage in the past, that outrage hadn’t stopped the killings – killings which continue almost daily in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere against Islamic militants, both combatant and non-combatant. Today, people have become so war-weary they have become immune to more news about such killings. In the case of the latest killing, the uproar is because al Awlaki was an American citizen but this too will soon become just another killing that will usher in a new era of Americans killing Americans justified solely on the basis that they are a threat to security.

One wonders how long it will be before a militant will be targeted and killed in America itself simply because he represents ‘a threat to security’.

And one wonders how long it will be before American and Israeli leaders are themselves targeted by their enemies.

ANDREW BOLT: GUILTY OF RACISM!

In a landmark victory for multiculturalism in Australia, a Melbourne court today found Murdoch propagandist Andrew Bolt guilty of breaching the racial discrimination act.

While many, including those who detest Bolt’s ideology and writings, have stated that the decision is a blow against freedom of speech, the reality is that it’s actually more of a blow to those that abuse the freedom of speech in order to peddle their scaremongering extreme right-wing ideology of hate and racism.

People like Bolt and his other racist cohorts at the various Murdoch publications including Tim Blair, Piers Akerman, et al, are going to have to think twice before hitting the keyboards to spout their hatreds.

THE ZIONIST BIG LIE ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN ‘BIG LIE’

Zionist and neoconservative rhetoric often refer to the Palestinian claim that they were expelled from Palestine in 1948 as the “Big Palestinian Lie”. Instead, the Zionists argue that, rather than being expelled from Palestine, they fled.

It is, of course, classic Zionist Chutzpah. The obvious question is; why then did they flee? It wasn’t just to escape the fighting; it was through fear of what would happen to them if they stayed. The Palestinians that fled had heard of the atrocities that the Israeli fighters had committed on Palestinians elsewhere such as at Deir Yassin, Lydda, Ein al Zeitun, among many others.

The Palestinians that left weren’t refugees from the fighting; they were expelled through fear of being killed by the Palmach, the Irgun or the Haganah forces of Zionist Israel.

The latest lie about the Palestinian expulsion came from Sol Stein writing in the neocon online rag National Review Online. This time, however, Sol Stein has exposed himself as a liar. His lie is so obvious. I have emailed him to let him know that his claims are false and why they are. This is what I said to him:

Hi Sol
In your article “The Palestinian Big Lie: The Palestinians distort the origins of the conflict with Israel” which recently appeared in National Review Online, you wrote:

“Almost immediately, Safed’s Arabs began streaming out toward the Syrian border. There were no expulsions of Arab civilians by Israeli forces.”

Yet Ben Gurion wrote in his diary on 7 June 1948:

“Abraham Hanuki, from Ayelet Hashahar, told me that since there were only 100 old people left in Safed they were expelled to Lebanon.”

How can you say there were no Arab civilians expelled by Israel? You are contradicting, not just a Palestinian claim that, indeed, there were expulsions, but a claim by Ben Gurion himself.

I look forward to your explanation.

Kind regards
Damian Lataan

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response or any form of explanation because any response, other than an apology to the Palestinian people, would simply compound the Big Zionist Lie.

APPLAUDING DEATH? AMERICA’S SICKNESS

There’s something very 1984-ish about an audience applauding the deaths of others. George Orwell wrote of a society that went to the cinema where part of the ritual was to applaud newsreel film of people being bombed and machine-gunned to death. Of course, they weren’t people from their own society that were being killed; they were people that belonged to another society that supposedly were their enemies. No one in the audience knew who they were. They didn’t care. They were just ‘them’; the enemy.

When Rick Perry was asked recently about the record number of 234 death-row prisoners put to death on his watch the audience vigorously applauded. Later, Perry told his audience that he didn’t care whether the condemned were actually guilty or not. His audience thought that was okay as well.

And America wants the world to be like them.

A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF NEOCONSERVATIVE HYPOCRISY

There are so many neocons writing daily blogs in their online comic magazine Commentary these days that it’s inevitable that one neocon sooner or later was going to write something that would demonstrate the hypocrisy of their rhetoric when contrasted with something written by another neocon writer. Here’s a classic.

On Sunday, 11 September, Michael Rubin writes:

Many states will vote for unilateral Palestinian statehood at the United Nations on September 20. Let us hope they consider their votes carefully, because they will create a precedent that can impact more than a dozen other countries.

After all, if the Muslim bloc can use its population and oil leverage to extort votes of smaller countries on this issue…

‘Extort votes’??!!

Apparently, however, it’s Muslim bloc bad, but Western bloc good as Jonathan Tobin, also writing in Commentary, explains:

For decades, American aid to Egypt has been a necessary embarrassment. The $2 billion per year paid to the Egyptian dictatorship was more than the price for Cairo to adhere to its peace treaty with Israel. It was also necessary to keep the largest Arab country safely out of the hands of first the Soviet Union and then the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Though the money only enriched the military and the ruling elite, it was still considered something of a bargain.

‘Though the money only enriched the military and the ruling elite’??!!

Now, if that isn’t hypocrisy then I don’t know what is!

And America wants the rest of the world to be like them?

THE USE OF ‘VALUES’ RHETORIC TO POLARISE AND DISGUISE RACISM

On the Australian ABC’s ‘7.30 Report’ a week ago, ex-Prime Minister John Howard gave an interview about the ‘current state of the political landscape’ in Australia. Toward the end of the interview Howard made some remarks that highlighted and exposed his racism. He said:

There is a realisation, also, that the thing that binds countries together are common values and common beliefs, and the takeout of mine over the last 10 years is that the strongest bonds between nations are shared values and shared attitudes more than anything else.

He then went on to reinforce this notion by saying:

…I believe very strongly that what brings countries more closely together than anything else is our shared values. That is why, despite the economic significance of China - and it is very significant - America and Australia will always be closer than China and Australia because we have shared values. That's not to be critical of China or downplay the importance of the relationship, but just to emphasise that it's values that drives the strength of an alliance more than anything else. [My bold emphasis.]

One has to ask; what are these ‘values’ that Australia shares with America? Apart from speaking English and being generally Judeao-Christian in religious beliefs, there’s actually very little else we have in common. There was a time when we truly did have common values coming basically from the same British stock but those days are long gone as both countries evolved in differing ways that were dominated mainly by successive waves of different kinds of migrants into the two countries. For the US it was the influx of Africans as slaves to America and the earlier influence of the Spanish in the Americas while in Australia our society has become multicultural by virtue of its indigenous population, the influence of continental European migration and then latterly by Asian immigration – including Chinese – and even more recently by Middle Eastern and Central Asian migration.

John Howard lives in the past and refuses to accept that Australia is a truly multicultural nation and that our values have as much in common with China these days as they have with any other nation.

DID AUSTRALIAN P.M. JOHN HOWARD JOIN WITH BUSH AND BLAIR IN AGREEING TO WAR EVEN WITHOUT U.N. RESOLUTION 1441?

New evidence has emerged which shows that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush agreed to take military action against Iraq even if UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was vetoed.

In the following narrative the dates are important.

A letter dated 17 October 2002 from Matthew Rycroft, Tony Blair’s private secretary, to Mark Sedwill, private secretary to then British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, shows that Blair and Bush had agreed that they would take action against Iraq without a resolution if it were found that Saddam Hussein was in clear breach of the earlier resolutions.

As we now know, there was no further separate UN endorsement for military action but the allies decided to go to war anyway once it became clear that France and Russia were going to veto any further UN Security Council Resolution that specifically permitted military action. The leaders of the Coalition of the Willing eventually argued that Resolution 1441 gave them the right to invade and disarm Iraq and that no further resolution was required.

The letter is extremely significant because it shows that, by at least mid-October 2002, both leaders had already made the decision to invade Iraq even if UNSC Resolution 1441 had been vetoed. As it happened, UNSC Resolution 1441 went through unanimously on the 8 November 2002.

So where does the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, fit into all this?

Howard, of course, was a close ally of both Bush and Blair. Bush had pushed for a UN resolution to force Iraq to comply with the disarmament demands of previous resolutions and that failure to comply with the new proposed resolution should result in Iraq being disarmed by military force. On the 12 September 2002 Bush gave a speech to the UN outlining the US case and proposing the resolution. After intense negotiations that went on for some eight weeks a wording was agreed upon that enabled UNSC Resolution 1441 to go through. The rest, as they say, is history.

The big question now is, did John Howard know of the secret agreement between Blair and Bush, an agreement which more than likely was struck when Blair dined with Bush at Camp David on the evening of 7 September 2002 after Bush had spent most of that day with his national security team ‘finalizing his decision on the resolution’.(1) Is it a coincidence that it was also on this day that Bush had had a telephone conversation with Howard about the forthcoming resolution?(2) A little over two weeks later Howard was in London having talks with Tony Blair. On 25 September 2002, Howard gave a doorstop interview in London just after his meetings with Blair. A reporter asked him:

Prime Minister, the three former prime ministers and the former governor general have come out urging you not to back a US and UK strike without UN sanctions. Do you have a comment on that?

Howard’s reply was this:

Yes, I have got a comment. Right at the moment, Australia is strongly supporting the attempts of the United States and Britain to obtain Security Council support for a resolution on this issue. It is clearly not in Australia's interests for me to speculate as to what this country might do if those attempts fail. The right thing for Australia is for me to support those current attempts and to refrain from any comment as to what might be Australia's attitude if those bona fide attempts are not successful. Thank you.

In retrospect and knowing what we know now, his answer is, at the very least, telling. The phrasing, as always with Howard, is carefully chosen. One has to ask, however, why is it not in Australia’s interests for him “to speculate as to what this country might do if those attempts fail”?

And why was it “the right thing” for him “to refrain from any comment as to what might be Australia's attitude if those bona fide attempts are not successful”? It begs the question, was Howard privy to Blair and Bush’s agreement? And, more importantly, had Howard become a silent partner in that agreement since events, as it transpired, would be in line with such an agreement?

It is significant that Howard did not mention this September 2002 meeting with Blair in his autobiography. The upshot here is: Was this the meeting where Howard committed Australia to war – even if UNSC Resolution 1441 had been defeated? Because, if it was, Howard is very much guilty of misleading the Australian people and the Australia Parliament to whom he had insisted that he had not made a decision about going to war until almost the very eve of the invasion.

History will not be kind to Howard. The evidence so far, while only circumstantial, is fast becoming compelling. It is only a matter of time before the truth will eventually be told.


ENDNOTES

(1) George W. Bush, Decision Points. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.) pp. 238-239.

(2) John Howard, Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography. (Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.) pp. 432-433.

NEOCONS WANT LIBYA TO BE A ‘WESTERN-STYLE DEMOCRACY’ – ENFORCED BY WESTERN BOOTS ON THE GROUND

Neocon armchair warmonger-in-chief, ‘Mad Max’ Boot, writing in Commentary today has said:

If Libya is to arrive at the destination we would all like to see – if it is to emerge as a liberal, Western-style democracy – much hard work lies ahead.

“…the destination we would all like to see”? What about what the destination the Libyan people would like to see? After looking at the way America has performed over the last couple of centuries and seeing how it has ended up today – broke and with a dog eat dog every man for himself mentality – the last thing the Libyan people would want is a ‘liberal, Western-style democracy’ with all of the hypocrisy and arrogance that goes with it.

Boot goes on to write:

I have been arguing for awhile, it is vitally important NATO be ready to help stabilize the situation, to prevent Qaddafi’s supporters from mounting an insurgency, to keep potent weapons from slipping out of governmental control–in short to ensure Libya does not suffer the fate of Iraq or Afghanistan, which descended into chaos after the collapse of their regimes

The best way to ensure that Libya doesn’t suffer the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were invaded and destroyed by the US and their Western allies, is for the US and the West to keep well out of Libyan affairs and let them sort it out for themselves.

Boot’s idea of ‘helping to stabilise the situation’ is to put around hundred thousand Western troops on the ground in Libya. I can just see the rebels after all they’ve been through getting rid of Gaddafi, letting in a hundred thousand Western troops to ensure that they do what they are told by the US.

He’s not called ‘Mad Max’ Boot for nothing!

NEOCONS NOT SURE YET WHO TO BACK FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION

It seems pretty clear as one reads through the various articles in neocon online rags such as Commentary, The Weekly Standard and National Review Online, that the neocons still haven’t firmed on backing any particular runner in the race for Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential elections.

They have, however, made it fairly clear who they don’t want - and that’s Ron Paul, the candidate who ran an extremely close second to Michelle Bachmann in the recent Ames straw poll. While Paul’s ideas about ending the wars goes down well with many war-weary Republican – and, indeed, Democrat – voters, it would be a complete anathema for the neocons who see the wars against Islam as essential for the long-term objective of Israel’s expansionist aspirations into the occupied territories and elsewhere.

Paul Ryan, who hasn’t said he’d run yet, apparently doesn’t cut it with the neocons either. In this case, it’s Ryan’s domestic policies that seem to be at odds with what the neocons advocate.

For the neocons – and also much of the commentariat of the mainstream media as well as at least one poll – the three main contenders at this stage of the game are Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

There does seem to be a distinct trend toward favouring Rick Perry inasmuch that there is nothing being said by neocons that is critical of him – though, having said that, most comments about him are more simple observations about him rather than open support.

It may be that the neocons are still holding their cards close to their chest in case someone more favourable decides to throw their hat into the ring or they may think that it’s simply too early to put all their weight behind one candidate just to find that he or she later backs out.

One thing’s for sure; right now there is no one in the running who has really impressed the neocons. There is no George W. Bush or Dick Cheney combo anywhere on the horizon and, certainly, none of the current frontrunners could be framed as ‘neoconservative’, though all support certain aspects of neoconservative ideolgy and all have taken advise from neoconservatives. They still all have to fully prove their foreign policy credentials, particularly in relation to the Middle East and Israel, before the get the full unconditional support of the neoconservative movement.

NEOCONSERVATIVES AND THEIR GRAND DELUSIONS

The neoconservative’s ability to delude themselves knows no bounds. Thomas Donnelly writing in the neoconservative’s comic The Weekly Standard says in his latest article:

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

The ‘world’s sole superpower’? ‘Guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace’? ‘Widespread prosperity’? ‘Unprecedented human liberty’?

Who’s Donnelly trying to convince?

Ever since the downfall of the Soviet Union the US has fancied itself as the ‘world’s sole superpower’ but in reality of course, it is nothing of the sort. It forgets that China is also a ‘superpower’ with the ability to destroy the US, and it forgets that Russia, if push ever came to shove, could also still destroy the US. If it took five hundred nuclear warheads to destroy the planet, having a thousand of them when your two main potential enemies has only six hundred each doesn’t make you a superpower. The US, China and Russia all have Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) capability. How does that make the US the ‘sole superpower’? Perhaps the neocons think that the US propensity to throw their weight around gives them rights to such title but, again, reality shows us differently. In October 2001 the full technological might of the ‘world’s sole superpower’ was thrown against a rag-tag army of poorly armed Islamists and insurgents. Ten years later and the ‘world’s sole superpower’ still hasn’t anywhere near defeated the rag-tag army of Islamists and insurgents – and, after ten years of fighting, it’s unlikely that they ever will.

In March 2003 the ‘world’s sole superpower’ unleashed that same technological might against the people of Iraq. Just over nine years and four months later, on 15 August 2011, a series of bomb explosions across Iraq killed some 60 people and injured another 100.

So much for having ‘created a generation of great-power peace’.

And ‘widespread prosperity’!? The country is on the verge of bankruptcy. The American people are at breaking point with almost an entire middle and working class facing ruin. The only people who have prospered are the bankers and the Military Industrial Complex.

And, as for ‘unprecedented human liberty’; all this ‘liberty’ has ever given the American people is the freedom to hate each other and to exploit and manipulate each other. The wealthy have been free to enslave and fleece the gullible. The power hungry have been free to lie and trick the people in to sacrificing their lives for the cause of a nation that’s not theirs. While they talk of ‘human liberty’ they have imprisoned and tortured thousands who have had no trial or justice.

So much for ‘unprecedented human liberty’.

It is the grand delusions of the neoconservatives that will keep America from ever becoming a real superpower. Arrogance and military might do not a superpower make.

THE ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ CHUTZPAH OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES

Jonathan Tobin, a neoconservative Zionist writer at Commentary magazine seems to think that Jews will be ‘ethnically cleansed’ from a new Palestinian state. However, as I have explained in a letter to him, his argument is flawed. Here’s what I wrote to him:


Jonathan

Your argument in your article “Abbas’ Vision of an Ethnically Cleansed Palestinian State” is flawed. You write “…that any Israeli who would call for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel is rightly branded as an extremist whose views are out of touch with the democratic values of the nation.”

The problem with this is that Arabs living in Israel are subject to Israeli law and jurisdiction whereas Jewish settlers living in the West Bank want to remain subject to Israeli laws and jurisdiction if and when there is ever a Palestinian state. Settlers remaining in the West Bank after the creation of a Palestinian state would not be prepared to subject themselves to the laws and jurisdiction of a Palestinian state if the settlements were included within the new Palestinian state.

It’s not so much a case of ‘ethnically cleansing’ the new Palestinian state but, rather, Jews living in the settlements not wanting to subject themselves to the laws and jurisdiction of the new Palestinian state and, therefore, leaving and returning to Israel or from wherever they originally came from.

Neoconservatives and Zionists have consistently argued when discussing Israel’s history that the Palestinians were never ‘ethnically cleansed’ from modern Israel – with all that that implies – but left as the state was being created. Now you are arguing that, when the state of Palestine gets created, Jews living within it are somehow going to be ‘ethnically cleansed’ when in reality they will simply prefer not to live under Palestinian laws and jurisdiction.

Unlike most Palestinians that fled to become refugees at the creation of Israel, Jews in the new state of Palestine will not be chased out at the point of a gun amidst threats of death. In fact there will be no ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jews from a Palestinian state, only an orderly departure of those Jews that live in the West Bank who would prefer to remain Israeli and not become Palestinians.

Damian Lataan

THE UK RIOTS: A PRELUDE FOR ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ BY ENGLISH RACISTS AND ISLAMOPHOBES?

It was only a matter of time before the Islamophobic extreme right-wing English Defense League (EDL) used the riots that originated in London but have since spread to other areas in the UK as an excuse to take to the streets themselves “to stop the riots”. According to a report in the UK Daily Telegraph, EDL leader Stephen Lennon has said that “up to 1,000 members would take to the streets in areas of unrest to stop the riots”. Lennon added that the “police obviously can’t handle it”.

One wonders how the EDL plan to “stop the riots” and, if they choose to use violence, who exactly will their violence be perpetrated against.

We were told at the beginning that these riots were race related. Later, however, it became obvious that it was much more about disenfranchisement of youth, caused by unemployment, poor living conditions, lack of opportunity, etc., than with race though there is certainly an element of racial tension involved and, indeed, the shooting that set it all off seems to have had racial connotations.

The question now is; if the unrest continues and the EDL do take to the streets to “stop the riots”, will they use it as an excuse to go after the Islamic youth in those areas that are affected and, if they do, where will it end?

Those that have spread hatred against Islam have a lot to answer for.

See here for more on this as seen through the eyes of an Australian Murdoch Islamophobic journalist.


UPDATE

Three Muslim men guarding their properties have been murdered in Birmingham by being run over. One man has been arrested.

MURDOCH JOURNO, ANDREW BOLT, DEFENDS THE ‘CREED’ THAT MOTIVATED ANDERS BREIVIK

In his column today, Murdoch journalist Andrew Bolt defends the creed of hate that motivated the killing of more than 90 people in Norway.

In his article, which he titles ‘Look not at his creed but at his wounds’, Bolt attempts to excuse the actions of Breivik by portraying him as being deeply frustrated by a sense of “powerlessness” which Bolt suggests is bought on by being engulfed by Islam, and “rejection” because of coming from a broken family.

While Bolt has used various superlatives to describe what Breivik had done including ‘murder’ and ‘atrocity’, etc., Bolt has consistently failed to wholeheartedly condemn the crime or the ‘creed’ that motivated it.

Fortunately, apart from a few of Bolt’s regular far-right Islamophobic supporters, most comments, even from some who often support Bolt, are critical of him for taking this stance.

After a careful read of Bolt’s post one can only conclude that Bolt is actually supportive of the reason why Breivik committed this crime. Certainly Andrew Bolt and his Islamophobic supporters in Australia are on exactly the same wavelength as Breivik. It was only a matter of time before Bolt's influence manifested itself in this type of violence.We have Murdoch to thank for the part Bolt has played in bringing the kind of hate-filled thinking Breivik has displayed to Australia.

Murdoch should immediately sack this hate-monger before his Islamophobic nonsense gains a foothold in Australia and culminates in the same kind of tragedy that happened in Norway.

MURDOCH’S AUSTRALIAN HATE MERCHANTS

Whereas in Britain Murdoch’s journalists revel in tabloid sensationalism utilising various nefarious methods of gaining material for their non-stories, Murdoch’s Australian journalists tend more to specialise in ultra right-wing racism. This includes cultural and religious racism directed mainly toward Islam, as well as blood and colour racism which is directed particularly toward Australia’s own Aboriginal people and also toward black Africans that have sought refuge in Australia.

At Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, the ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, almost daily lays bare his racist credentials for all his followers to see. Today, for example, he tells us that the ‘underclass are stirring’. For Bolt the underclass are the whites of Australia who are lashing out against African migrants. In a futile effort to distance himself from the activities and violence of the underclass that he has stirred up by writing articles designed specifically to influence such perpetrators of violence and hatred, Bolt calls his post about the stirred underclass; ‘White trash’.

Meanwhile, at Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper, The Telegraph, another ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, Tim Blair, showed his Islamophobic colours when he made the same knee-jerk call as Bolt when the Norwegian atrocity story broke; he blamed Muslims.

The other blogger-columnist at The Telegraph is the all round racist Piers Akerman. Writing, thankfully, only intermittently these days, Akerman’s latest offering, ‘What a pack of Burqas’, was apparently written in France where he has been touring. The article covers the whole gamut of Akerman’s lunatic rantings (he once actually attempted to blame Muslims for causing the 2009 Black Sunday fires in Victoria) ranging from protecting what’s left of Murdoch’s credibility in the UK to Muslim immigration in Europe and back again.

The propaganda at Murdoch’s – and Australia’s – only national newspaper, The Australian, is only marginally more sophisticated than his regional tabloids. Greg Sheridan, Dennis Shanahan and Janet Albrechtsen, the Ann Coulter of the Australian loony right, are among the most prominent racist ultra right-wingers that Murdoch employs. Naturally, they all also happen to be climate change denialists and supporters of pollutionists. Currently, most of them are busy trying to isolate Murdoch’s Australian propaganda machine from the fallout from the misdeeds of his UK propaganda machine.

The aims of the two arms of his propaganda empire, the UK and Australia, are the same; its just that the UK arm tends more toward using underhand means of pushing their message while the Australian arm uses blatant fear-mongering racism and lies about climate change to get to its objectives of ‘regime change’ in Australia.

Murdoch’s merchants of hate in Australia have played down the events that occurred in Norway two days ago. Few have condemned the atrocity and have only reported the facts. Nor have Murdoch’s propagandists properly condemned the reactionary violence against African immigrants by racist white youths who clearly have been influenced by the likes of Murdoch’s Australian propagandists.

MURDOCH JOURNO ANDREW BOLT FAILS TO CONDEMN FAR-RIGHT KILLINGS AND BOMBING IN NORWAY

Murdoch journalist and extreme right-wing Australian racist, Andrew Bolt, is always quick to condemn Islamic terrorism wherever it may occur. Of course, all terrorism needs to be condemned but for Bolt, such condemnation is also seen as an opportunity to push his hate spiel against Islam for his racist followers to feed on.

Yesterday, as news came in that bombing and shooting atrocities had occurred in Norway, Bolt was quick off the mark to blame Islamist extremists saying “Once the identity of the attackers becomes known, the consequences for Norway’s immigration policies could be profound”.

Well, the identity of the attackers did become known and it seems at least one of them, who has been arrested, is actually just like Bolt and his crew of haters – an Islamophobic far-right racist.

Once Bolt realised that the attack had not been perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, he began to report only the bare facts in a series of updates to his original post. All of the updates were noticeably devoid of any condemnation. To date there have been no further posts on the attacks at Bolt’s blog.

This is part of the Murdoch style of journalism in Australia. Whether or not there is phone hacking going on in Australia is as yet unknown, but certainly there is a distinct pattern of anti-Islamic and anti non-white racism running through most of Murdoch’s publications in Australia particularly in Sydney where another Murdoch racist, Tim Blair, operates, and in Melbourne which is Bolt’s hate base.

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, IT’S ABOUT RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE

The climate change debate has caused us to lose sight of the real issue at stake.

The right-wing media that support the polluters are contesting the Greens argument that continued use of the earths non-renewable resources as a fuel will eventually lead to a rise in temperatures that will ultimately see many of the planets low lying areas become engulfed by and lost to rising sea levels. The right-wing media argues simply that this just won’t happen and that there’s no proof to support it. The Greens, in turn, say there is ample proof and that we should take immediate steps to do something about it.

To help the pollutionists argument, the right-wing have arranged an assortment of so-called experts to travel around the planet in an attempt to persuade the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘not convinced’ into their camp. One of the most prolific pro-pollutionist speakers, an ‘expert’ with no formal qualifications in the field, is a certain Lord Christopher Monckton. As part of his rhetoric, Monckton actually claims to be a member of Britain’s House of Lords while knowing that he is not. So serious is the matter that the House of Lords have had to ask Monckton to refrain from claiming that he is a member. ‘Lord’ Monckton, thus, has no credibility yet the pro-pollutionists continue to pay for his services. While there are far more pro-climate change scientists around than there are denialist scientists – most of whom seem to have various vested interests in supporting the pollutionists – the denialist scientists have the support of a massive right-wing media controlled mainly by the now much troubled Murdoch group of companies.

In the pro-polluters camp there are two distinct groups. One group are the polluters themselves who are currently making a lot of money out of polluting and so don’t want to stop polluting; and then there is a second more complex group that support the polluters cause but for their own nefarious reasons. Together they have formed an alliance that is determined to stop the world from stopping the polluters polluting it.

The second group that support the polluters do so only because their primary concern is that they don’t want to have to pay the polluters compensation to stop polluting us which is what some of the world’s governments are proposing. They are also concerned that the polluters will more than likely not stop polluting us and far more likely make even more money by trading in the complex government-sponsored ‘carbon credits’ scheme. They argue simply that a ‘carbon tax’ will cost the planet in jobs and money and do little or nothing to stop climate change – if, indeed, it’s actually changing anyway.

Within the second group there is a small group who think, possibly rightly, that the ‘carbon tax’ is just another government rip off from the ordinary working class world that will achieve nothing except enrich further those that are already rich. This group aren’t so much for the pollutionists but, rather, against the impost of a tax. In nations like Australia where a ‘carbon tax’ is being proposed, this group are politically important because they may well be the group that decide who will next govern Australia because, the way things are going at the moment, the next election could revolve almost entirely around this issue.

My argument, however, is not so much about whether or not there is climate change occurring – I happen to think there is - but more about the future of resources for a world that our children, grand-children and great grand-children will inherit; a future which should concern all of us whether we are believers or not.

Our world is populating at an exponential rate; it has more than tripled in just the last 90 years. Advances in medicine and health care have ensured a generally longer life. Fertility treatment, higher birth survival rates and post-natal care practices also play a part in increasing the world’s population. Although wars, unfortunately, are still a part of human existence on the planet, they are nowhere near as devastating in terms of numbers dead as the wars that dominated the twentieth century and this fact too has increased the planets population. As a result, in 50 years time we can expect a world population of some 10-12 billion people from the 6.93 billion we have now. Providing energy for such large numbers of people from non-renewable resources is likely to deplete the known resources very quickly.

Pro-pollutionists argue that there are still plenty of resources left in the ground that has not yet been discovered. The obvious retort to such an argument is; if it has not yet been discovered, how can anyone say that there's plenty left? While it is true that man has over the past several decades since the Second World War discovered vast deposits of energy resources, we have quickly used much of these up, and the areas where man can now look have been all but exhausted. The pro-pollutionists, however, insist on continuing to search for these resources knowing that the chances of finding them become less likely as each day goes by.

We need to ask ourselves a number of questions; first, are we willing to take a punt on there actually being vast amounts of resources left and, even if there are, how much longer will it last before we need to start another desperate search for more? Second, if we do find the extra reserves the planet needs, are we willing to take a punt on the climate change scientists being wrong by going ahead and burning it in the hope that it will have no ill effects? And when those reserves do run out; what then?

Our planet’s engineers now have the technology to produce energy from solar, lunar and geothermal resources. We can produce power directly from the sun via photo-voltaic (PV) cells, direct radiation on absorber panels (solar hot water systems), wind energy (which comes via the sun heating air masses which causes air to expand and move), and other devices that use mirrors and lenses. We can produce power by harnessing the moon’s gravitational pull on the worlds oceans (tidal and wave power); and we have an abundant source of geothermal power locked up beneath the earths surface which we are only just beginning to understand and use though some countries, like Iceland, have been using geothermal power for years for various applications including heating water and living spaces as well as generating electricity.

For sure, much of this technology is still in its infancy and a lot of research and development still needs to be done before it can be used universally and in enough numbers where a point can be reached that we no longer need to worry about our future energy needs even if we knew there was no more non-renewable resources left to use, but we are moving along fairly rapidly. Just recently there has been a tremendous surge in the use of PV energy generation. PV panels are now the most common form of renewable energy generation used in private homes. Advances in PV efficiency both in terms of power generation and cost have allowed them to become a very practical alternative to ever-increasing power bills for many households. If the PV technology advances follows anything like the way computer technology advanced then we could very quickly see rapid universal use of them everywhere.

Wind power generation has also seen huge advances in use in less than a decade. In South Australia, for example, more than 20% of the states power needs are generated from wind turbines with more on the way. And, again, wind turbine technology is also seeing this form of power generation come into rapidly increasing usage.

Advances in energy storage systems, especially in lithium battery design, is bringing the electric car concept closer to reality. Once the volume-mass problems associated with energy storage systems have been solved, so we will be a step closer to using all-electric transport systems of all types.

We do still have a long way to go but the time it takes to get there can be drastically shortened if the energy providers of the world can be given incentives to increase their research and development to providing renewable energy resources rather than using up what’s left of the worlds non-renewable resources. There is far more at stake here than the loss of a few coalminers jobs or the non-renewable energy providers profits. We need to look forward to a world that doesn’t rely on fuels that will run out; a world where its inhabitants don’t have to fight over the pickings of what reserves are left; a world that stops consuming itself and instead uses what our solar system can provide – abundant energy that will increase the quality of life for everyone on the planet.

The choice is simple. You can have this (above) which the likes of Andrew Bolt, a notorious pro-pollutionist, thinks is a “rotten thing” because, he says, it has ruined one of his “favourite views in Victoria”, or we can have this (below).
The so-called ‘carbon tax’, which will pay for the research and development of renewable resources, is a small price to pay, both now and for our future.