ISRAEL’S HISTORY OF CONCOCTED WARS OF EXPANSIONISM: PREPARING FOR THE FINAL CONFRONTATION.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Israel is preparing itself in a big way for war. Recent reports suggest that this war will be against Hamas, Hizbollah and Syria. Naturally, al Qaeda’s name has also been thrown in for good measure. Significantly, Iran hasn’t been mentioned in terms of war directly between Israel and Iran, at least not in the same context as a war against Hamas, Hizbollah and Syria, though the Israeli Air Force has been training hard separately from Israeli ground and naval forces for long range missions.

This has lead to speculation that a joint Israel/US operation is in the offing, hence the long range air force training, while the war against Hamas, Hizbollah and Syria will ostensibly be what they will term as a ‘defensive’ war as they respond to Hamas, Hizbollah and Syrian attacks that are in fact retaliatory after the Israeli/US attack on Iran – in short; planned escalation to achieve an end.

Ilan Pappe wrote:

“Clashes with Palestinian militias provided the perfect context and pretext for implementing the ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine. The Zionist policy was first based on retaliation against Palestinian attacks in February 1947, and it transformed into an initiative to ethnically cleanse the country as a whole in March 1948”. (1)

Over the last sixty odd years, nothing at all has changed! The Zionists still attack the Arab peoples based on what they tell the world is a ‘defensive retaliation’. The attacks on both the Gaza and Lebanon in June and August 2006 were based on three of their soldiers being captured yet it is abundantly clear that these attacks on the Gazan people and the people of Lebanon, particularly in the south, were meticulously planned long before their soldiers were captured. According to World Tribune piece the Israelis are simply waiting for the next casus belli to make their move: “Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007.”

Naturally, if there is no casus belli forthcoming then one could always rely on the Zionists to concoct one. The difference this time is that this war really could be the war to end all wars!


ENDNOTE
(1) Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (Oxford: Oneworld Publications Ltd., 2007.) p. xii.

AFTERMATH OF THE TIM BLAIR EXERCISE

A few have suggested that my deletion of some posts (usually theirs) and not others are a form of censorship. Let me put these people’s minds to rest; I never censor any posts.

However, when someone comes to my blog, drops his daks and craps on the floor I will, with one click of the mouse button, clear up the mess before anyone comes along and accidentally puts their foot in it thereby spreading it around the place.

Occasionally I’ll leave some garbage out to decompose naturally. For example, some extreme right-wing garbage will be left out for a while so that their stupidity can get full exposure. Eventually I’ll get around to clearing these little messes up as well. Occasionally I instantly clean up some messes because they are of no value whatsoever, or sometimes because I simply feel like it. Others get left a bit because I’ve been busy doing other things and haven’t noticed the mess yet.

Some have argued that this is denial of free speech. If it were ‘speech’ that was being left here then it would stay here but unfortunately what these people claim is ‘speech’ is actually crap and it needs clearing up just as one would have to clear up after a puppy dog with an upset tum that didn’t quite make it to the dirt box in time. Delusional liars and assorted deceivers fall into that category.

Others have suggested that as an academic I should be more respectful and tolerant of those with opinions that differ from mine.

Rubbish!

First off, just because I’m doing a PhD doesn’t make me an academic. I’m doing a PhD because I can, that’s all. I’m coming up to 60 so I can assure you it’s not a career move! I have other degrees, most of which were done for the fun of learning. I am no longer an academic! And once this degree is finished I’ll move on and do maybe do another one. Second, let me make it quite clear that I have absolutely no problem at all in calling the right-wing all the names under the sun and making ad hominen attacks upon them. I have no time whatsoever for racists of any description, warmongers, liars and deceivers, invaders and pillagers, or those that support them.

Why did I have a spray at Tim Blair? Simple; because he is a warmongering fascist and racist that supports liars and deceivers, invaders and pillagers, simple as that.

All of the dirty little messes left behind will be cleaned up soon – including the ones that result from this post!

TIM BLAIR, AUSTRALIAN ANTI-ISLAM RACIST JOURNALIST AND BLOGGER, EXPOSED ON AUSTRALIA’S MAINSTREAM ABC TV!

Tim Blair, Australian extreme right-wing fascist/racist commentator, blogger, conspiracy theorist (he actually believes the US government’s conspiracy theory!) and host to equally extreme right-wing warmongers, Islamaphobes, right-wing Israeli Loony Lobbyists, right-wing Zionist supporters, and other assorted liars, deceivers and thugs, in short, the ugly face of anti-Islamic right-wing extremism in Australia, got short thrift on national TV earlier this week when ABCs Media Watch exposed the Tim Blair site for what it is – a disgusting example of the extreme right-wing racism that prevails in Australia.

Tim Blair’s response to Media Watch’s expose of the disgusting racist comments that Blair actively encourages and supports at his hate site was predictable. He snivels when he finds out that other editors were contacted by Media Watch’s editor, Tim Palmer, but he wasn’t, and then goes on to have a blast at Palmer about some incident in 2002 when Palmer caught Blair out in a deceit and threatened to sue. Blair conceded and apologised; fear of a big legal bill was his pathetic excuse.

The usual bunch of loony racist shills that roost at Blair’s Lair came out in support; Paco, El Cid who was featured in the Media Watch piece, and a small menagerie of other regulars including the proven liar, pseudo-intellectual and wannabe academic Dylan Kissane. The comments of some of these lunatics need to be seen to be believed.

The more often these people are exposed for what they really are on the mainstream media TV the better.


AND JUST TO PROVE THE POINT…

Since this piece has been posted, the flock of right-wing loonies that normally roost in contented flocks at Tim Blair’s hate site, fly off like a bunch of captive homing pigeons released for a little exercise to come to this site to deposit their droppings before heading back to their roost for a bit of self satisfied gloating.

Just take a look at the comments to see what I mean.

So predictable.

It seems that some of those commenting are labouring under the illusion that racism is just about blood and biology; it isn’t. There is also another racism, one that is even more prevalent than that of blood and biology and that is the racism of religion and culture. It's the kind of racism that most of those that have commented here indulge in.


IT SEEMS SOME ON THE RIGHT ARE STILL CONFUSED ABOUT 'RACISM'...

For the really dumb among the right-wing that either can’t cope with the idea that they are racist or are simply too thick to comprehend the concept of the new racism of religion and culture content only to quote definitions from some ancient dictionary, give this site a whirl or page 39, para. 2, of this UK report – you may actually learn something!

IS THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE GAZA ABOUT TO BEGIN?

The Gaza Strip has now been almost completely isolated since Hamas decisively won its battle to wrestle control from Fatah on the strip. While the world is being told by the western mainstream media the big lie about the ‘Hamas coup’ in the Gaza, ignoring entirely the fact that it was Hamas that won the Palestinian elections of January 2006, elements of the Israeli government are already pushing for the transfer of the ordinary Gazan people to the West Bank under the guise of calling them refugees. The Israeli Justice Minister, Daniel Friedmann, is already calling for the Israeli government to allow Gazan residents to flee to the West Bank.

Life in the Gaza was bad enough before the fighting between Fatah and Hamas got under way with the help of the Israelis, the Saudis and Elliot Abrams in the Bush administration but now it is likely to get worse as they bunker down in readiness for the expected Israeli invasion as they go after Hamas. Already the Israelis are cutting off fuel supplies and the Fatah-dominated government in the West Bank are unlikely to be releasing any funds that are now to be released to them by the Israelis, to Hamas in the Gaza.

Clearing away the rhetoric and propaganda of how Hamas has unexpectedly ‘won’ the battle in the Gaza in a ‘coup’ and, as a result, has ‘created another headache for Israel’, the geo-political reality is that Hamas has played directly into the hands of the Israelis to the point where it would be a fairly safe bet to assume that Fatah in the Gaza was ‘sacrificed’ in order to isolate Hamas so that the process of both destroying Hamas and the transfer of the Gazan people can begin with the ultimate goal of Israel annexing the Gaza after it had been ‘abandoned’ by its people.

The world needs to act and act now before disaster strikes the Palestinian people of the Gaza.

GAZA FIGHTING PART OF ISRAELI PLAN TO ACCELERATE ETHNIC CLEANSING?

The Western media would have us believe that the fighting in the Gaza between Fatah and Hamas is merely a battle for control of the Gaza; and, at a very superficial level, there is some truth in this. However, there are aspects of the fighting which the mainstream media are not telling us in an effort to portray the fighting as something that has escalated solely because of differences between Fatah and Hamas domestic politics.

Such a notion could not be further from the truth.

In January 2006 Hamas became the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people having won 76 out of the 132 seats available, a clear overall majority which in any normal democratic system would have allowed them to govern in their own right. However, despite this, the Israelis and the US refused to accept them as the legitimate government of the Palestinians and have made every effort to diminish the ability of Hamas to govern by cutting off funds and arresting their leaders.

In March of this year, Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah President, appointed the corrupt Gaza warlord, Mohammad Dahlan, to head Fatah security. Recently, Elliot Abrams, the extreme right-wing neoconservative Deputy National Security Advisor and pro-Zionist Israeli expansionist, has been supplying arms and money to Dahlan with which to fight Hamas. It now seems that the money and the arms have not been well spent; Hamas now dominate in the Gaza after several weeks of sporadic fighting.

Hamas is an organisation dedicated to restoring Palestinian sovereignty; an anathema to the right-wing Zionists who seek to expand Israel into the West Bank, the Gaza and southern Lebanon, and to maintain their hold on the Golan Heights.

It is the Israeli’s aim to tighten their grip on the Gaza to such an extent that Palestinians will want to leave. Of course, once the Gaza has been laid waste by continued attacks and aggression from the IDF and the continued fighting between Hamas and Fatah fighters who are using the Gaza as a battleground, the Israelis will move back in claiming that the Gaza has been all but abandoned. The Gazan Palestinians are already applying to leave to head off to wherever they can away from the fighting, the grinding poverty and daily deterioration of life generally in the Gaza.

This is nothing less than ethnic cleansing. Once completed in the Gaza, the West Bank will have the screws that are already making life intolerable there tightened even further.

AN ATTACK ON IRAN VIA THE BACK DOOR? BUSH AND RICE MIGHT JUST GO ALONG WITH THAT!

In their continued efforts to wedge the Sunni and Shia peoples in the Middle East (bearing in mind that Sunnis are by far the largest Muslim group in the Middle East generally) the Americans have decided to take a punt and are now planning to arm Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq (where Sunnis are a minority group) under the guise of the Sunnis combating ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’.

The reality is that there is no ‘al Qaeda’ in Iraq per se (nor, indeed, hardly anywhere else). There used to be an ‘al Qaeda’ years ago in Afghanistan and there are still remnants of it scattered throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan today, but the label ‘al Qaeda’ today has essentially been hijacked by the US and their allies in order to perpetuate the myth of a monolithic and highly organised extremist pan Islamic global movement out to take over the world and convert it to hard-line Islam; great for propaganda purposes and the rhetoric of Western leaders but the accusations are completely baseless and founded entirely on the imagination of assorted neoconservative think tanks and propagandists and totally lacking any actual evidence.

Whereas the Sunnis of Iraq in the past were the most aggrieved by the invasion of their country by the US and their allies and, indeed, did lead the insurgency in attempting to rid their nation of the invader, the Shiites are now also expressing their displeasure at the prospect of having the US and their allies continuing what is looking like a long-term occupation by the US. As a result of this Shiites are now increasingly joining the insurgency against the US and their allies and, of course, they are doing this with the help of the Iranians (whose population, like Iraq, is mostly Shiite).

Most of the bodies that have been turning up all over Iraq showing signs of having been tortured and then executed are not as a result of secular tit-for-tat killings as the western media has portrayed, but as a result of insurgents having been rounded up by covert Iraqi police and army units acting under the auspices of American commanders. While many are actually insurgents there have also been many men of military age that have innocently been caught in the round-ups and have suffered the same fate.

In the bigger picture, the real enemy of the US (and Israel) is Iran and it is for this reason that the US are trying to wedge the two groups, the Sunni and the Shia. Their thinking is that if they can stir up the Shia of Iraq enough to begin making overt, as against the current covert, connections with Iran then this will provide casus belli for the US to attack Iran under cover of stopping Iranian intervention in Iraq as against halting Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons ambitions. In other words, war against Iran would be seen simply as an extension of their efforts to keep a lid on Iraq rather than as a separate war of aggression against Iran on top of the continuing war in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan, something the American people will absolutely not tolerate.

Action against Iran, however, if presented to the American people as efforts to protect American troops in Iraq, might be a little more acceptable to the American people – or so some in and close to the administration hopes. It’s certainly the road that Sen. Joe Lieberman would like to see the US take and it’s a view that Dick Cheney would be likely to support. But, and this is what’s really frightening, it’s also a perspective that George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice, both of whom lean more toward a diplomatic solution to the ‘Iran crisis’ may also consider favourably.

As always, however, the neocons dream up these scenarios but they never seem to actually play out when they try to put them into practice. This present scheme is also due to fail simply because the neocons have failed to realise that, while there is some, but now diminishing, animosity between the two groups in Iraq, their animosity toward the US and their allies is far, far greater and the US could well find that they’ve bitten off far more than they are able to chew if they attack Iran for any reason.

THE NEOCONS ARE ALREADY DITCHING BUSH – HIS FAILURE TO PARDON LIBBY CLINCHES IT

William Kristol, writing in the neocon comic ‘The Weekly Standard’, has told readers:
“So much for loyalty, or decency, or courage. For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage--well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?”

Bush’s days are numbered but there are still a few to go before he goes. America is still well over a year away before they are rid of him but, or at least so it seems, the neocons are already preparing the way for the candidate they are giving their support to, John McCain.

Of course, the President the neocons would really like to have is Dick Cheney but, short of something nasty happening to Bush, that is unlikely to happen. The problem for the neocons is that there are a lot of hoops to go through before their man gets to the top – not least of which is, first, getting him up as the Republican candidate and, second, winning the 2008 Presidential election. If he, or the any Republican candidate for that matter, loses then the neocons are going to be back out in the political wilderness where they were after the demise of the Reagan/Bush snr. era when Clinton got elected.

Naturally, a lot can happen in a year but, from where everyone is sitting at the moment, the President and the Republican Party are pretty much on the American people’s collective nose right now and the chances of a Republican President getting elected next time round looks fairly remote.

One couldn’t put it past the ultra-hawks not to try and arrange some way of getting Cheney in considering the circumstances. Just prior to the last Presidential election the idea was mooted that there may be some ‘October Surprise’ that would ensure that either Bush or Cheney retained power. One scenario was a massive ‘terrorist attack’ that would guarantee a Bush re-election while another scenario suggested that Bush may be ‘assassinated’ by some deranged lone gunman which would give Cheney the Presidency who would immediately suspend the constitution on the basis of ‘national security’ effectively giving himself dictatorial powers. As it turned out, there was instead a ‘November Surprise’ where Bush was returned by virtue of massive voter fraud at the election – just as he was ‘voted-in’ in the first place in 2000. Of course, there could be a massive ‘November Surprise’ in the 2008 Presidential election but its going to be very difficult to repeat that again if, going into the election, the opinion polls are about where they are now. It’ll be more than just a bit suspect if a Republican candidate gets up under those circumstances.

This brings us back to another shot at the ‘October Surprise’ scenario; except it doesn’t necessarily have to be in October 2008, it could be any time between now and then.

Whatever happens, it’s quite clear that the neocons have had it with Bush. And there really is only Cheney left standing as far as the neocons are concerned at this moment of time. A worry!

WHAT YOU MISSED AT WEBDIARY

For those who occasionally visit here from Webdiary (and elsewhere) and are wondering what David Roffey, the new head honcho there, refused to publish in response to yet another load of rhetoric and propaganda from Chris Parsons, here it is in its entirety:


GEO-POLITICAL REALITY VERSUS RHETORIC AND PROPAGANDA

I wonder how the Iranian President is going to ‘wipe Israeli off the map’ C. Parsons.
You see, the geo-political reality is, and this is with total disregard to the rhetoric and propaganda (R&P) of either side, Iran is posturing the way it does because it feels threatened by the US and to a lesser extent Israel. Reality: Bush has called Iraq, Iran and N. Korea an ‘Axis of Evil’. Reality: Iran then witnesses Bush change regime in Iraq, indeed, ‘wipe the Iraqi regime from the map’ (to us a metaphor you like so much in your R&P, for that is all it is).
Reality: The right-wing Zionists of Israel, supported by the neoconservatives in the US who wield influence in the Republican Party and the Bush administration, wish to create a Greater Israel that includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and even possibly the south of Lebanon up to the Litani River (as they attempted to do last year).
Reality: the only nation stopping the right-wing Zionists achieving its ambitions of a Greater Israel is Iran. How? Iran supports Hizbollah that defends south Lebanon from the Israelis and also supports Hamas as they resist Israeli aggression in the occupied territories. Iran also assists Syria who also supports Hizbollah and Hamas. How to redress this problem? Easy. Get the US to get rid of the Iranian threat to Israeli aspirations. How? Wind up the R&P accusing Iran of wanting to ‘wipe Israel of the map’ with its non-existent ‘nuclear weapons’. Once the present Iranian ‘regime’ is out the way and replaced with a nice submissive and compliant government acceptable to the US and Israel, Syria will quickly capitulate and, so it is then hoped, Hizbollah and Hamas resistance will then collapse leaving the right-wing Zionists a free hand to realise its dream of a Greater Israel.
Reality: All the chatter about what Ahmadinejad has and hasn’t said is just R&P. Even if he said ‘wipe Israel of the map’ there is no means by which he could do that. Despite all the R&P about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons the reality is; Iran doesn’t have any. A further reality is, despite the R&P, is that there is no evidence of Iran seeking nuclear weapons. It’s all just R&P just like Bush’s R&P leading up to the invasion and plundering of Iraq which has left some 600,000-700,000 people dead, mostly killed by the US and their allies (despite the R&P) and another 4 million displaced and seeking refuge because their country has been utterly destroyed.
Ahmadinejad can carry on with all the R&P he wants and you can carry on with all the R&P you want to counter his R&P but for all of that the geo-political reality doesn’t change – Iran doesn’t have the means to ‘wipe Israel off the map’, the right-wing Zionists are only using R&P against Iran in order to further their own political interests in relation to their dream of a Greater Israel. They think because the R&P worked against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who was supporting the Palestinian cause against the Israelis, that it will work again against Iran. The reality is it won’t.
If the US is dumb enough to try and attack Iran, and if they’re dumb enough to believe that the Iraqi people were going to welcome the US and their allies as ‘liberators’ when they invaded Iraq then they might just try it, then the world is going to be in a serious mess. Iran will retaliate.
Reality: Israel must withdraw entirely from all of the territories it occupies and return to behind the 1967 line. It must withdraw all of its settlements which are on real estate that isn’t theirs. They must tear down the wall. They must accept sharing their land with others that they displaced in occupying it.
There will be no peace until this happens. The peoples of the world must understand the reality and make peace happen. The R&P that you espouse will only perpetuate the violence and killing.

DURING WAR DID ISRAEL BOMB LEBANESE BUSINESSES THAT WERE COMPETING WITH ISRAELI BUSINESSES IN SAME MARKETS?

Evidence is coming to light that shows that this is indeed the case.

During last years war between Israel and the Lebanese people the Israeli Air Force (IAF) were provided with targets that had nothing to do with diminishing the ability of Israel’s stated enemy to strike back at Israel. Many of these targets were small and medium sized Lebanese industrial businesses that were manufacturing products for the global and regional market – a market that Israeli businesses were also competing in.

An Australian-Lebanese businessman that has recently returned from an investigative visit to Lebanon armed with a documentary film unit has evidence that indicates that many of the small and medium sized businesses that were hit by the Israel Air Force in Lebanon were deliberately targeted for reasons that seem to indicate that Israel wished to destroy, not so much the Lebanese industrial sector because it was in some way aiding Hizbollah efforts, but solely because they were a threat to Israeli commercial interests. In virtually all instances where businesses, particularly manufacturing businesses, were destroyed or badly damaged, there was no evidence to suggest that their destruction or damage was because of collateral damage due to them being close to any target that could have been construed as offensive to the Israelis.

A Lebanese cousin of the Australian-Lebanese businessman had, with other family members who had pooled some several million dollars of their resources, built and operated a high-tech business manufacturing innovative medical supplies. The business was remotely located in an olive grove that belonged to one of the family stakeholders. After all the hard work and effort the entire project was totally destroyed in an instant when it was hit by Israeli air force bombs and missiles.

Amnesty International in their initial report of the conflict, published 23 August 2006, noted that some 900 ‘commercial enterprises were hit’.

Since the Israeli’s stated war aims was to retrieve two arrested soldiers and to destroy Hizbollah it seems incongruous that Israel’s air force would need to deliberately target a remotely situated medical supplies manufacturing business that were involved in no activities that could in any way be construed as a threat, directly or indirectly, to the Israelis.

This report will be developed further when the supporting evidence is made available for publication.

MORE HYPOCRISY FROM THE U.S. OVER TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS.

Commenting on the UNs decision to press ahead in bringing the perpetrators of the assassination of Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to justice, the US Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said: “By adopting this resolution, the council has demonstrated its commitment to the principle that there shall be no impunity for political assassinations in Lebanon or elsewhere”.

So we can expect those that were responsible for the political assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin the spiritual leader of Hamas in a targeted killing in March 2004 to soon be brought to justice as well? And, of course, we can expect to see in the courts fairly soon those that have been responsible for all the other political leaders that Israel has assassinated in targeted killings in the Gaza and West Bank of late.

THE MYTH OF AL QAEDA IS NOW ALMOST TOTALLY EXPOSED.

The label ‘Al Qaeda’ has been used, or rather abused, ever since 11 September 2001 when the finger of blame for that terrifying day was pointed at bin Laden and his ‘al Qaeda’ organisation. Indeed, according to George Tenet in his book, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA, bin Laden was blamed for the attacks by at least three-thirty in the afternoon of 11 September 2001.[1]

Ever since 11 September 2001 bin Laden and/or al Qaeda have been used as an excuse for nigh on every attack that the US and the Israelis have made on Islamic peoples and their nations. An alleged relationship between Saddam Hussein and ‘al Qaeda’ was used as the casus belli for the US and its allies to invade Iraq. Dick Cheney even asserted that Saddam Hussein, with al Qaeda, was responsible for the events of 11 September 2001. But it turned out that there was no such connection at all.

As the insurgency against the occupiers in Iraq gained momentum and US and allied casualties began to mount, so the blame for the increased resistance was placed on ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ and all those that resisted the occupation were labelled ‘terrorists’. The hate figure devised by the allies to perpetuate the propaganda myth of ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ was ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’. He gave something that young and gullible US and allied troops could go after. And when he was supposedly ‘killed’ in June 2006 there was much propaganda fanfare and mileage gained from his ‘death’ which was hailed as a ‘great victory’ against al Qaeda.

The ‘great victory’ was short-lived however, and a new hate figure, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, previously Zarqawi’s number two in Iraq, was quickly promoted before people started to believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death may actually have signalled the end of the ‘war against terrorism’. It had been reported that he too had also been killed, not by allied forces but by Sunni insurgents in factional fighting, though this has not been confirmed by the US authorities in Iraq.

For some time Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, have tried to plant stooges in the Gaza and West Bank among Palestinians who have tried to pass themselves off as ‘al Qaeda’. The Israelis have failed miserably in their attempts at this. For one thing, the Gaza resistance community is a very tight knit one where everyone just about knows everyone and strangers are very quickly pointed out. The same applies in the West Bank. Of late, however, the Israelis and the US have taken a new tack playing on the friction that has evolved between Hamas and Fatah. Despite the fact that Hamas was popularly elected to govern the Palestinian peoples the Israelis have constantly thwarted Hamas’ ability to so do and have attempted, almost successfully, to polarise the two groups and Palestinians. The US has been active in playing off one against the other by supplying arms to Hamas’ opposition, Fatah.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the same US officials responsible for working with the Israelis to undermine Hamas have also been arming and supplying a Sunni Palestinian refugee group in an effort to wedge the influence of the Shia Hizbollah predominate in southern Lebanon. The problem here is that the arrangements have backfired on the US. The group, known as Fatah al-Islam, has taken on an aggressive role against the Lebanese government. The western propaganda machine is trying to say that the Fatah al-Islam group are an ‘al Qaeda inspired’ group. In fact they are more like an ‘Elliot Abrams inspired’ group. The US is now desperately flying in big weapons to deal with this tiny group – which brings us to the next anomaly in this saga.

The group are said to be only five hundred strong at most, probably nearer three hundred, yet the US are going to a huge amount of effort to airlift a lot of weapons for the Lebanese government army. This is more than just a hammer to crack a nut. It’s more like a 300 tonne hydraulic press to squash a pea; unless, of course, the US knows something that the Lebanese don’t.

In raising the ante in Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza by again raising the empty spectre of ‘al Qaeda’ in order to get at Iran, Syria and Hizbollah, the US and the Israelis have exposed their hand about the myth of ‘al Qaeda terrorism’ in the Middle East.



ENDNOTES
[1] George Tenet, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA. (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007.) p. 169.

GEORGE TENET’S BOOK PROVIDES MORE PROOF U.S. PLANNED WAR WITH AFGHANISTAN BEFORE 9/11

There’s a paragraph in George Tenet’s book, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA, which confirms that the US planned to invade Afghanistan before 11 September 2001. It goes like this:

“At eight-thirty that evening [11 September 2001], speaking from the Oval Office, the president addressed the nation in terms both stirring and deeply earnest, including the first enunciation of what became known as the Bush Doctrine. “I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice”, he told a global audience of some eighty million people. “We will make no distinction between the terrorists that committed these acts and those who harbor them.” For us at CIA, the new doctrine meant that restraints were finally off. We already had on our shelves the game plan for going after al Qa’ida and its protectors, the Taliban, in Afghanistan .Now we could begin to implement it. Amid the sorrow of the day, we realised that we were finally going to be given the authorisation and the resources to do the job we knew had to be done.”[1] (My italics for emphasis.)

As if we didn’t already know! This, however, is primary evidence.


ENDNOTE
[1] George Tenet, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA. (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007.) p. 170-171.

DIPLOMACY FIRST OR WAR RIGHT NOW? THE BUSH-CHENEY DIVIDE

Israel by arresting some thirty of Hamas’ senior members in the West Bank is making a concerted effort to destroy Hamas and thus bring the Palestinian people to their knees. At the same time the US is trying desperately hard to intimidate Iran. And also at the same time the IAEA has released a report about Iran’s nuclear program that the US is going to pounce on despite the conciliatory tone regarding nuclear weapons generally (a tone incidentally that seems to have infuriated the US, Israel and their allies).
If one steps back a bit and takes a look at these events collectively one can see a bigger picture emerging – and it’s not one that bodes well for the people of the Middle East. The whole kit and caboodle is teetering on the edge of disaster.
A rift seems to be developing between the major players in the US/Israel hierarchy. On the one side are those who want to follow the President Bush path who would like to see Israel get what it wants by diplomacy and negotiation, and on the other side there are those who are less patient that want to follow the Vice-President Cheney path that prefer to see Israel get what it wants by war, starting with Iran. All of them are hawks but it seems that some are more hawkish than others and, if push comes to shove, it wouldn’t be too difficult to see the Bush team go over to Cheney thinking with Iran ending up getting attacked, followed up by an all-out assault by the Israelis on the Gaza, West Bank, Syria – if they don’t capitulate first – and Hizbollah in south Lebanon. What could happen beyond that scenario is anybody’s guess.
Suffice to say that whatever way it goes many more people will lose their lives and even more will lose their homes and country.
And all because the extreme right-wing Zionists of Israel and their supporters want to see a Greater Israel.

TOP US-ISRAELI NEOCON BEHIND PALESTINIAN UNREST.

Elliot Abrams, a long-standing neoconservative, well-known Greater Israel Zionist and currently Deputy National Security Advisor, is reportedly behind not only the current violence between Hamas and Fatah, particularly the fighting in the Gaza, but also the violence in Lebanon.

To most people who are familiar with Abrams history this assertion will not come as any surprise; his role in the notorious Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s is well known. Abrams is well versed in the art of playing off one set of peoples against another in order to achieve an outcome that ultimately is not in the interests of either but only in the interests of the US and/or Israel. This current situation among Palestinians is no exception.


...AND FOLLOWING UP ON THIS IS THE INEVITABLE AL QAEDA CONNECTION – NEVER FAR AWAY FROM ANYTHING ABRAMS GETS INVOLVED IN!!

The Israeli and US propaganda machine is waking up to the fact that the peoples of the world are themselves waking up to the fact that most of the stuff that comes out of the right-wing mainstream media of Israel and the US is, indeed, just propaganda.

The Fatah al-Islam mob in Lebanon that have been covertly financed and supplied by the US for example are only being touted as ‘al Qaeda inspired’ rather than ‘al Qaeda in Lebanon’ or some other such nonsense. (They are actually ‘Elliot Abrams inspired’.)

It is also becoming quite clear that al Qaeda has nothing to do with any of the violence that is currently going in Iraq, and that it never has had, despite Bush’s recent announcement releasing ‘evidence’ to show bin Laden had started up al Qaeda in Iraq using the ‘late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’ to set up the Iraqi branch office of al Qaeda in Iraq.

There is, of course, no actual ‘evidence’ shown. There’s just Bush reading his notes telling the world another load of garbage and then expecting this to be accepted as ‘evidence’. He hasn’t quite woken up yet to the fact that most people on this planet simply don’t believe him or anything his administration says anymore.

Meanwhile the warmongers are upping the ante off Iran today with the arrival of some 17,000 marines on the USS Bonhomme Richard assault ship that has recently arrived in the Gulf for ‘exercises’.

ISRAEL TO EXECUTE PALESTINIAN POLITICAL LEADERS! WHERE’S THE WORLDS OUTRAGE!

One would have to wonder how the West would react if the Palestinians found a way of making successful ‘targeted killings’ of Israeli political and military leaders and their soldiers. Imagine if you will that Palestinians suddenly had in their possession an arsenal of incredibly accurate remotely controlled flying bombs that could roam the skies over Israel with impunity and that could strike down say Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defence Minister Amir Peretz at will. There would be absolute outrage throughout the world. There would be a demand that such activities ceased forthwith and, furthermore, that those responsible be brought to justice.

Yet when Israel carries out targeted killings against Palestinians there is hardly a peep of outrage from the West. When Sheik Ahmed Yassin the spiritual leader of Hamas was assassinated in a targeted killing in March 2004, there was barely a ripple of outrage despite the fact the he was blind, wheelchair-bound and 67 years old. And we learn now that the Israeli cabinet has given the OK for the IDF to assassinate Hamas politicians.

This is state terrorism of the very worst kind. The world should be outraged. Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people to represent them. Now they are being targeted for assassination – and given the well-known reputation of IDF efficiency, this amounts to nothing less than the summary execution of democratically elected national leaders. Yet still the world remains silent. Have the peoples of the entire Western world been brought to their knees by fear and paranoia?

When are the peoples of the world going to denounce these crimes and demand that the perpetrators be brought to the International Criminal Courts charged with warcrimes?



TWO CONTRASTING HA’ARETZ ARTICLES PUBLISHED TODAY HIGHLIGHT HOW THE ISRAELI MEDIA DIFFERENTLY VIEW THEIR FELLOW HUMANS.

One article is entitled ‘Sderot traumatic stress center sees steep rise in new patients’ while the second is entitled ‘Nine die in IAF Gaza strikes, 8 of them in home of Hamas official’. Just about sums up the right-wing Zionist mentality does it not?

MORE FEARMONGERING RUBBISH FROM AUSTRALIA’S ISLAMOPHOBIC AND RACIST GOVERNMENT.

Making headlines in Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda spreadsheet, ‘The Australian’, today is this piece of totally unsubstantiated garbage from Alexander Downer and Australia’s security and intelligence organisation (ASIO) that blares; ‘Islamists being starved of funds’.

The piece opens by telling readers: “Islamic extremists in Australia are being starved of money by an unprecedented crackdown on the secret flow of funds from Saudi Arabia.”

The first question one needs to ask is: ‘What Islamic extremists in Australia?’ Where is the evidence that these people actually exist. Are Australians expected to believe anything and everything that they are told by ‘the government’? There seems to be the automatic assumption that Australian’s will believe anything the government and their agencies tell them. This is despite the fact that these are exactly the same people who told Australians that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They are exactly the same people that told Australians that Saddam Hussein was a direct threat to Australia. These are the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein supported bin Laden and the events of 9/11. This is also the same Alexander Downer that insisted that trucks found in Iraq after the invasion were mobile chemical or biological weapons factory. This liar even continued to insist these trucks were mobile chemical or biological weapons factory long after they were revealed to be nothing more than mobile hydrogen generators used to inflate weather balloons and artillery ranging balloons. Now we are expected to accept without question his assertion that there are ‘Islamic extremists in Australia’.

As we read on, however, readers discover that Downer and ASIO aren’t actually discussing ‘terrorists’ per se but ‘Islamic extremists’ though, of course, the mention of Jamaah Islamiah and the Bali bombings are somehow woven into the story as an example, again totally unsubstantiated, of how Saudi funds have ‘bankrolled’ Indonesian ‘terror groups’. The propaganda connection is thus made.

The actual intent of this story is to demonise Islam by invoking the fear of Islamic extremism by relating it to ‘terrorism’. The reality is that Islamic extremism does not automatically infer ‘terrorism’ any more than Christian or Judaism extremists automatically infer ‘terrorism’.

In fact we learn that the money was not for use by terrorists at all but was to be used for the construction of two mosques; one at Belmore in Sydney and the other at Park Holme in Adelaide. ASIO it seems was opposed to Saudi funds being used for the construction of these mosques on the grounds that Wahabism, a form of Islamic fundamentalism practiced predominately in Saudi Arabia may be taught there.

All of this really has absolutely nothing to do with ‘terrorism’ in any way shape or form but has absolutely everything to do with the Australian government and its agencies extreme right-wing racism against what they consider to be ‘non-Australian’ religions and cultures.

DIVIDE AND RULE USING TORTURE AND SUMMARY EXECUTION KEEPS AMERICA AND HER ALLIES IN IRAQ.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the cycles of torture and execution-style killings and the subsequent retaliatory bombings in Iraq stems from the highly organised killings of Sunnis being carried out by US and Israeli trained mercenaries in conjunction with Iraqi police death squads that are fully sanctioned by the US occupiers.

Sunni men are being randomly and clandestinely rounded up by covert squads of Iraqi police under the command of US and Israeli mercenaries, taken away and ‘interrogated’ for any information they can glean about the predominately Sunni insurgency against US occupation, and are then taken away to be executed and dumped.

The motivation of the perpetrators of these disgusting crimes is threefold. Firstly, there is the strong possibility that among any number of Sunni men that they do pick up there will be some that actually are insurgents and from these some intelligence may be gained. Second, in executing their captives they are inevitably ridding themselves of those that they see as their enemies. And finally of course, there is both the deterrence and the fear factor.

Executing captured insurgents is nothing new. Indeed, it was alleged that US-sponsored interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, personally executed some six captured insurgents at a Baghdad police station in July of 2004. Now the monthly body counts of tortured and executed Sunnis has become even more outrageous with some 234 bodies dumped around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May this year alone and that’s just the ones that have been found.

If the Americans and their allies left Iraq tomorrow the cycle of inter-Iraqi sectarian violence would have no reason to continue. It is the Americans that are pitting Sunnis against Shiites in the classic colonial game of divide and rule, but with the Americans gone the two factions will have no choice but to join forces in order to rebuild their shattered nation. The alternative is complete annihilation as a nation – something neither side really want or can afford to risk. To continue fighting would be pointless since, at the moment, there is nothing actually left to fight over and there will be even less when the Americans leave.

Which, of course, is why the US and their allies are quite happy to see and, indeed, encourage, the two sides to continue killing each other.

HOWARD’S ATTEMPT AT USING SEDITION LAWS EXPOSES HIS RACISM AGAINST RELIGION AND CULTURE.

Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian reckons: “Australian mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali is under investigation over whether his call for the Muslim world to unite behind Iran breached sedition laws by urging assistance to an enemy of the state.”

Since when has Iran been ‘an enemy of the state’?

The Australian goes on to tell us: “Australian Federal Police officers interviewed Sheik Hilali last Tuesday over his call to Muslims to ‘stand in the trenches’ with Iran, described by US President George W. Bush as a member of the ‘axis of evil’.”

Why do we need to be reminded that George W. Bush has called Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’? Just because George W. Bush, President of the United States – not President of Australia – calls Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’ doesn’t make it so.

There is no sedition here; only a very crude attempt by the AFP and the Howard government to demonise al-Hilali specifically and Islam generally. The mufti al-Hilali says some outrageous stuff occasionally but for newspapers like the right-wing Murdoch-owned The Australian to report these things the way it does, blowing the importance of what al-Hilali says out of all proportion is pure and deliberate racist propaganda against the religion and culture of Islam.

One may not agree with what al-Hilali has to say but he has the right in Australia to say it and, while Iran and their leaders might get up John Howard’s nose, (as, no doubt, he gets up theirs) we are not at war with them and we are certainly not at war with their people.

Iran is not an enemy of the state of Australia – regardless of what Bush or his deputy sheriff John Howard might like to think.

Sedition indeed!!! More like Howard’s last fling towards fascism in Australia.

WILL AUSSIE PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD RETIRE BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTION?

It seems Australian Prime Minister John Howard may not only lose government to Kevin Rudd and the Labor party at the next election but may lose his own seat as well. A poll out today has it that Maxine McKew, an ex-current affairs and popular ABC TV host, standing for Labor in Howard’s seat of Bennelong in Sydney, would easily have unseated Howard had an election been held this weekend.

So where does this leave Howard? His ego won’t allow him to lose and the poll margin of 4% (representing a 6% swing to Labor in a seat that only requires a 4% swing for Labour to win) has McKew in front enough that even if the Liberal Party political fortunes were to generally change in their favour by the time of the next election, it more than likely would not change quite enough to save Howard’s own seat. McKew, not taking anything for granted, and despite the figures, reckons it will still take a ‘miracle’ to unseat the Prime Minister despite the polls verdict suggesting otherwise. But the question is; will Prime Minister Howard be willing to risk the ignominy of losing his own seat to Labor? And, of course, the worst case scenario for Howard would be for his government to retain power but for Howard himself to lose his own seat.

Howard has a deep, though somewhat warped and misguided, sense of Australian history; a history that he sees himself being a part of. However, a sitting Prime Minister losing his own seat, despite the fact that it wouldn’t be the first time, is not the kind of history that Howard would want to be remembered for.

It is these poll results, and the fact that the election is now only months away, that has now put Howard in somewhat of a predicament. He has repeatedly told the Australian people that he would not step down from the leadership while the Liberal party still wanted him to be leader. Next in line for the Liberal Party leadership is Treasurer Peter Costello. Problem is Costello leading the Liberal party into the next election would ensure disaster for the Liberal party. For the Liberal party and conservatives everywhere Costello has all the credentials required to be leader except one – he has negative charisma, which is even worse than having no charisma at all. The Liberal Party are very much aware of this and, besides, would hardly be wanting to change horses at this late stage even if Costello did have what it takes. Perhaps Howard should have handed over the reigns of power to Costello when he had the opportunity because now is too late – at least for the Liberal Party it is.

On the other hand Howard may see the writing on the wall for the Liberal government anyway, and not to mention his own seat, and decide to walk away from the leadership on the some other grounds like health and/or age/leadership burnout or whatever – anything to avoid the embarrassment of losing government and ones own seat at the same time.

Whatever happens at the next election, Howard is unlikely to remain Prime Minister. If his demise comes about by losing both government and his own seat than what better way could history take revenge on such a monumental liar as ‘Honest John’ Howard? And if he chooses to walk away from the leadership prior to the election then it would both ensure a Labor win and, at the same time, expose Howard for the transparent deceiver that he is.

Whatever Howard does he can rest assured that history will not treat him the way he imagines it would be. One can only hope that he lives long enough for him to witness how history will treat him. For him no punishment for his warmongering and inhumanity while he was in power could be worse.

THE NEOCONS ATTEMPT TO PERPETUATE THEIR MYTHS AND CONTINUE TO STROKE THEIR OWN EGOS.

The highest ranking neoconservative serving in the Bush administration, Vice-President Dick Cheney, recently visited Iraq to tell the troops that the Global War on Terrorism continues. In his latest piece of Grand Chutzpah Cheney reckons, “We’re fighting a war against terror. We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war.”

It hasn’t occurred to this delusional megalomanic lunatic that the only ‘terrorists’ in Iraq are the US occupiers and their allies and that those that are fighting back are the resistance that don’t want the US there. He seems to forget that it was the US that declared war on the Iraqi people; not the other way round as he states. Furthermore, the Iraqi people never declared war on America – not even Saddam Hussein declared war on America. It was Bush, Cheney and their neoconservative pro right-wing Zionist cronies that declared war on Islam when they conspired, as it is increasingly seems, to bring down the World Trade Centre and blame it on Islamic extremists.

Cheney’s efforts to perpetuate the myth of a global al Qaeda terrorist organisation with Osama bin Laden at its head is now beginning to crumble. The government story of the events of 9/11 is coming apart at the seams as it becomes increasingly obvious that the government are unable to answer basic questions about what happened that day. It won’t be too long now before the entire neocon con unravels entirely.

MEANWHILE IN OZ…
The Cheney supporting, warmongering neocon Aussie commentator, Greg Sheridan, from Murdoch’s propaganda rag The Australian, had this to say about Britains Tony Blair in a piece that he had the temerity to title (and I jest not) ‘The world was lucky to have Tony Blair’: “Tony Blair was the greatest statesman in Western civilisation in the past 10 years and the world will sorely miss his leadership.” Sheridan should try telling that to the relatives and friends of the 655,000 Iraqis that have died since he, Bush and Australian Prime Minister John ‘Deputy Sheriff’ Howard decided to invade, occupy and plunder Iraq and Afghanistan.

One wonders also if the relatives and friends of the 148 or so British military personnel that have died so far in Iraq will be as convinced as Sheridan that Blair’s leadership will be missed.