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.

AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER, KEVIN RUDD: MAN OF DECEIT

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ex-Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister, is either nowhere near as bright as he likes to think he is or he is being deliberately deceitful.

Yesterday, while visiting Melbourne, Rudd stopped off at a café in one of Melbourne’s shopping plazas. Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported that his choice of cafe was deliberate. Rudd was quoted as saying: ''As an individual citizen - that is me, K. Rudd - I am here because I object to the boycotting of Jewish businesses”.

If Rudd had said he was there because he objected to the boycotting of Israeli businesses then that would have been fine – but he didn’t. He specifically and deliberately said ‘Jewish’ businesses. It was deliberate because he went on to emphasise the point by saying that “anyone with historical memory should deplore boycotts of Jewish businesses”. Rudd, of course, was referring to the way Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses in Germany during the 1930s.

Rudd’s inference here is quite clear; boycotting Jewish businesses is anti-Semitic – and if the businesses were being boycotted simply because they were Jewish, it would indeed be anti-Semitic.

The problem is; this particular business, a Max Brenner Chocolate Bar, was targeted for boycotting recently by pro-Palestinian activists, not because it was a Jewish-owned business, but because it was an Israeli-owned business. The fact that the business also happens to be Jewish-owned is incidental. There are many Jewish-owned businesses all over Australia and not one of them is being boycotted solely because it is Jewish-owned.

There also happens to be another aspect to this story that Rudd hadn’t considered when setting out to take this action.

The Max Brenner chain of businesses is owned by the Israeli-based company the Strauss Group. The Strauss Group is headed up by Michael Strauss. Michael Strauss also happens to be a strong supporter of an Israeli centrist think-tank called the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).

Recently the extreme right-wing Zionist government led by Benjamin Netanyahu introduced laws in Israel that would ban Israelis from supporting calls for boycotts of Israeli goods and businesses. There has been a backlash against the anti-boycotting law proposal on the grounds that such a move is undemocratic – and the IDI has come out very strongly in support of the move to defeat the new anti-boycotting laws.

Rudd’s attempt at invoking Nazi era anti-Semitism in order to promote Zionism is transparently inappropriate and utterly deceitful – not to mention as in this case, totally misplaced considering that the head of the company that owns the cafe Rudd stopped at effectively supports the right to boycott.

BOLT THE RACIST, BOLT THE HYPOCRITE.

In his rush to demonise Islam, the racist Islamophobe Andrew Bolt forgets how similar Islam is to Judaism in many of its practices. In his column today he does his usual lazy journalist stunt of cutting and pasting other people’s work to create a post that is totally bereft of any of his own words. In this case he cites fellow Islamophobe Mark Steyn from his blog in order to project his own view.

Basically, the piece attempts to belittle Islam by highlighting the Islamic practice of not allowing menstruating women to worship in their mosque and being made to sit at the back of the place of worship during this time. Bolt and Steyn infer that the practice is both sexist and archaic. Another Islamophobe, Kathy Shaidle, reinforces this notion in her article which Steyn and then Bolt quote: “…and the year is 2011” implying that this sort of practice isn’t appropriate in this day and age.

The problem is that all of these Islamophobes have been so busy trying to demonise Islam in this way that they’ve not realised that some sects within Judaism have very similar laws about menstruating women with some synagogues not even allowing menstruating women into the synagogue let alone make them sit at the back.

All Bolt, Steyn and Shaidle have demonstrated with this piece of attempted hate-spiel is their own hypocrisy and utter ignorance – not to mention their Islamophobic racism and contempt for the Islamic religion. Their hate-spiel goes to the heart of Islamic religious practices, practices which also happen to be shared by other religions, and has absolutely nothing to do with Islamic extremism which they claim is their only objection to Islam.

Freedom of speech is one thing; Bolt’s brand of hate-speech is something else. The quicker this sick racist is shut down the better for Australia and the better for the planet.

REUEL MARC GERECHT: THE DECEITFUL NEOCONSERVATIVE EXPOSED

Reuel Marc Gerecht is one of neoconservatisms most diehard ideologues. In his latest piece of neocon rhetoric in The Weekly Standard Gerecht writes:

“…the uncertainties of the Arab Spring and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war in Libya have spooked the administration. Its ‘realist’ tendencies are well known, and ‘realism’ powerfully comes to the fore when a president doesn’t know what to do​—​or believes that the United States can do little. The safest and easiest bet then is to do nothing​—​the essence of most ‘realist’ policy.

Such ‘prudence’, ‘restraint’, and ‘patience’​—​the administration is fond of these words​—​can be commendable when a situation is messy or murky. But neither applies in Syria. This is an easy call: We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region​—​the linchpin of Iran’s alliances and terrorist apparatus. We have a chance to traumatize Tehran: The world will look a lot more precarious to supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a lot more hopeful to the millions behind Iran’s pro-democracy Green Movement if Bashar al-Assad goes down. The importance of Syria to Iranian foreign policy and internal politics cannot be overstated.”

Now, Gerecht has been around spouting the neocon cause for a very long time and while in his latest article he comes across all concerned about America’s dwindling power, the reality is that his primary concerns are not so much for America but far more for Israel.

Gerecht accuses Obama of either not knowing ‘what to do’ about Syria or believing there is little that can be done. There is another option that Gerecht doesn’t mention but which is far more likely to be the case as far as Obama is concerned and that is it’s simply not practical to go in boots and all as Gerecht would like him to do.

One has to ask oneself; how come Gerecht and all his neocon buddies are so deadset obsessed with Syria and Iran? Neither nation is a threat to America. Gerecht says; “We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region…” but how is Syria an enemy? In what way is it a threat?

What Gerecht really means to say is: “We have a chance to eliminate one of Israel’s worst enemies in the region”. Syria, of course, is an enemy of Israel because Israel invaded, occupied and then annexed Syria’s Golan Heights. Syria also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

And Gerecht’s interest in Israel doesn’t stop at Syria. For Israel the real enemy is Iran. Iran has the weapons to supply to those that are resisting Israel’s expansionist ambitions whereas Syria is the means by which those weapons can be supplied. And it is Iran who Gerecht has been encouraging, not just the US, but Israel to attack regardless of what the consequences might be.

Gerecht, as part of his rhetoric, has a penchant for exaggerating threats, particularly the Iranian threat, to Israel. In an article last year in The Atlantic magazine Gerecht, writing about a possible Israeli attack on Iran, said:

“Israeli calculations for a preventive strike don't have to be conclusive to be successful. If the Israelis do nothing, they know that they would eventually be staring at an internally unstable, virulently anti-Semitic, terrorist-fond regime with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Simply imagining the probable hair-trigger scenarios in which Israel will have to play atomic-bluff with Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps -- the organization that oversees Iran's nuclear program -- ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder.”

“…ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder”? Indeed it would, but not in the way Gerecht imagines. Gerecht paints a picture or Iran that is totally unreal. Even if Iran did have a nuclear weapon, it would hardly be likely to use it against Israel. The fact is; Israel just isn’t so important a nation that Iran is ready destroy itself over no matter how much Iran despises Zionism.

The neocons are making a concerted effort to destroy Syria’s Assad regime and wants to get Obama to hasten Assad’s demise, but what the neocons don’t seem to realise is that once Assad is gone there is not suddenly going to be some Israeli-friendly, or even US-friendly government, taking his place. The people of Syria object to Israel taking the Golan Heights and they support the Palestinians and their cause. The revolt against Assad is purely an internal matter No matter how it is ultimately resolved; it is unlikely to change the Syrian people’s view of Israel or even Syria’s support of Hezbollah.

Gerecht and his fellow neocons, as usual, are practising deceit – again. Gerecht is motivated by Israeli interests and not America’s. He just wants the US to do the dirty work for Israel. Surely the American people have woken up to this deceit by now. Look what happened in Iraq. How many Americans died there?

And how many Israelis?

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH?

It’s tempting to suggest that the scandal enveloping the Murdoch media empire may well see the demise of the world’s largest political propaganda machine. Unfortunately, the very fact that it is such a massive propaganda machine will likely ensure that his empire does survive – albeit needing some considerable time to recover.

Apart from being a massive world-wide propaganda machine, Murdoch himself wields much personal and political influence. There are many leaders around the world, past and present, who owe much of their success to Murdoch and his media empire. Even the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, arguably, may not have got into power without Murdoch’s backing. And Tony Blair too might not have enjoyed such a large victory at the polls as he did in May 1997 without the last minute support of Rupert Murdoch. In the US, Murdoch’s long string of media enterprises, in particular Fox News, helped George W. Bush gain American support for the war against Iraq. Around the world, Murdoch’s newspapers and media served Bush’s cause and those of his allies including Tony Blair; Australia’s Prime Minister of the time, John Howard; Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, all of whom benefited from Murdoch’s unwavering support for the war. Aznar even went on to become a senior member of the board of directors for News Corporation.

In the current crisis, Cameron initially supported Murdoch in the hope that it would all be just a flash in the pan and, after a few smaller heads were made to roll, all would be well again. Cameron supported Murdoch’s push to buy up all of Britain’s BSkyB media company but, in the wake of the growing crisis and the now obvious fact that it isn’t simply going to go away, Cameron has now joined the political call from Britain’s other major parties for Murdoch to abandon his plans to take over BSkyB which will be a major blow for Murdoch.

As the crisis deepens and it’s becoming apparent that the practice of phone hacking was far more widespread than initially thought, many are wondering how far the practice did extend and to what extent were senior and top managers aware of what was going on or even approved or, worse still, had instigated the practice. Did Murdoch himself know or approve of it? He’s hardly likely to admit it if he did though if he’s hauled up to front an inquiry and denies it and then is subsequently found to be a part of the practice then that surely would be the end of him.

Whether it comes to the demise of Murdoch himself remains to be seen. Murdoch has enough personal wealth to ensure that he will be very comfortable for the rest of his days; however, doing business is his obsession and he wouldn’t last very long without the fix of doing deals so I’d suggest that he’ll fight this all the way – even if it’s just for the thrill of it. Whether he wins or not is another matter.

In Australia, where it all started for Murdoch, his newspapers are relatively safe. His flagship paper, the nationwide The Australian, has all but ignored the crisis on the other side of the world, as have his regional and city papers. All of them seem to be reporting only the bare facts of what’s happened with very little comment or opinion being aired.

For his rival newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and The Age in Melbourne, it’s a different matter. Both have been giving the emerging stories full headlines though the intensity of reporting and commentary has now dropped off a little – at least for now.

A world without Murdoch’s propagandists in it, however, is still some way away though the next few months will likely see some interesting developments that will see them pull their horns in.

Heads will roll; it’s going to be interesting to see whose.

NEOCONS, ZIONISTS AND THE ‘FREEDOM FLOTILLA’ – 2

Last week I wrote about how neocons and Zionists don’t understand why the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’. Of course, it’s not really that they don’t understand, it’s more that they would like to continue to use the original reason for having a flotilla in the first place – to bring relief and humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip – for propaganda purposes. They think that if they can show there is no longer a need for humanitarian aid then there is no reason for a flotilla. They now argue that, because they think there is now no need to bring aid to the Gaza, then the flotilla must only be to provoke Israel.

The reality is far from what the Zionists and neocons would like us to believe. First, there is still a need for aid. Despite the sporadic opening of the Gaza-Egypt border and even a slight increase in the amount of goods passing into the Gaza from Israel, there is still nowhere near enough coming in to service all of the Gazan people's needs. As for ‘provoking Israel’, the reality is the complete opposite; it is Israel that is deliberately provoking Hamas.

Michael Rubin, a neocon writer for Commentary, sums it up thus:

It’s about time the international media drop the fiction the Gaza flotilla is motivated by humanitarian concerns. It is not about resolving conflict; its aim is to create conflict.

The fact is, the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is motivated by nothing else other than humanitarian concerns – even if it were not bringing actual aid to the Palestinian people. Just by coming to the Gaza Strip is a form of humanitarian relief. It comes in the form of breaking a psychological barrier as well as a literal one. It shows that there are people all over the world that care about their plight. By breaking the blockade, humanitarian relief comes in the form of being free to trade with whom ever the Palestinian people want without having to go cap in hand to the Israelis. Humanitarian relief is more than just a ship-load of bandages and bags of cement; it’s about freedom and the right to trade without harassment and with any one they wish – including Israelis.

What the neoconservatives and the Zionists need to do is drop the fiction that their aim of blockading the Gaza flotilla is to prevent arms and weapons reaching Hamas. They know full well that there are no arms or weapons on board any of the vessels. The world knows that the Zionists' true aims are not about preventing arms reaching the Palestinians but about creating conflict in order find an excuse to subdue and crush the Palestinian people and stop them from having their own sovereign state which, in turn, will prevent the Zionists from ever realising their ultimate dream of creating a Greater Israel.

The ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ for a reason. It’s something the neocons and Zionists refuse to understand.