Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is

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

2009-07-13T10:57:00.002+09:30

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

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

Tenet then goes on to say:

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

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

Tenet explains:

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

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

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

But the story doesn’t end there.

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

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

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

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

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

2009-07-09T09:49:00.002+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing as usual.

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

2009-07-06T10:10:00.003+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

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

2009-07-01T14:16:00.003+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it goes on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRANIAN UNREST: REVOLUTION OR COUP D’ÈTAT?

2009-06-25T16:34:00.001+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-06-22T13:29:00.003+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-06-16T14:41:00.000+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-06-15T11:44:00.001+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Netanyahu knows it and so does Obama.

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

2009-06-14T10:52:00.001+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-06-12T15:40:00.002+09:30

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

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

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

Clearly it doesn’t.

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

2009-06-12T12:36:00.002+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t make this stuff up!

EHUD BARAK PREPARES ISRAEL FOR THE FINAL CONFRONTATION.

2009-06-11T11:10:00.002+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

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

2009-06-05T13:11:00.004+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

2009-06-03T14:41:00.000+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is the only way out of the current impasse.

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

2009-05-27T23:21:00.001+09:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

‘COMMENTARY’ WRITER ASKS WHO KILLED HARIRI. ISRAEL DOESN’T GET A MENTION

2009-05-27T15:07:00.001+09:30

Just a quick one for now. ‘Commentary’ writer Michael Totten has a look at the latest story about who might have killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Totten writes: “Either Der Spiegel’s sources are taking the magazine for a ride, or the evidence against Hezbollah is authentic.” Totten also says: “The impression I've gotten is that it would be largely a political move, a way to nail Hezbollah – and by association Iran – while largely letting Syria off the hook in the interests of promoting this fantasy-world 'rapprochement' with Damascus. Everyone I've heard discussing this still believes Syria did it.”

Neglected entirely in his musings is the fact that the most likely culprit is Israel’s Mossad; Israel, after all, had the most to gain from the crime and Hezbollah the least while Syria would have lost a lot more than it gained.

Isn’t it odd how the ‘Der Spiegel’ piece hinting that the UN tribunal have pointed the finger at Hezbollah should come out now on the eve of the Lebanon elections. And not a quoted source to be seen to back up this monumental accusation.

IF HEZBOLLAH OR HAMAS FIRE JUST ONE IRANIAN-BUILT ROCKET INTO ISRAEL…

2009-05-23T13:08:00.003+09:30

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just itching to find an excuse to attack Iran and what better way than to try what his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, tried in 2006 – provoke Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon by getting them to retaliate with minor incidents to Israeli border provocations and then use this as an excuse to launch massive attacks against both.

Olmert failed in 2006, not through lack of effort, but because Hezbollah didn’t use its Iranian-built ordnance against Israel and Iran refrained from any direct, other than verbal, support to Hezbollah and Hamas. Nearly three years later Netanyahu awaits his opportunity. He knows that he will not be able to strike against Iran first because Obama has made it quite clear that he doesn’t support any Israeli unprovoked so-called preventative or pre-emptive attack against Iran.

This past week Israel conducted a full-scale ‘defence’ exercise simulating war with Hamas and Hezbollah indicating that this may be seen by the Netanyahu government as the most expedient way of getting Iran to act in such a way as to provide casus belli for Israel to attack Iran with US support.

The other alternative is for Israel to make such a lot of noise about a ‘pre-emptive’ attack on Iran that Iran makes a pre-emptive pre-emptive attack on Israel – hardly likely but, what would an Iranian attack against Israel look like? A massive explosion in the heart of Tel Aviv? A missile attack alarm going off two minutes before the explosion? Maybe a second explosion of similar size elsewhere? Follow it up with propaganda about ‘Iranian pre-emptive attack’ and, voila! Instant casus belli. Why not? The Zionists are quite happy to put their own people in harms way for the Zionist cause. They certainly had no qualms about putting the people of Ashkelon and Sderot in harms way by bombing the Palestinians in the Gaza knowing full well that Palestinian fighters would launch retaliatory rocket strikes against the Israelis. It’s exactly what the Israeli military wanted them to do in order to create their casus belli to launch their devastating onslaught against the Gazan people in 2008/09. There’s no chicken and egg question here; sixty years of Israeli aggression against the Gazan people demonstrate adequately that the Gazans were responding to Israeli aggression and deprivations, not the other way round – unless, of course, one believed the Israeli propaganda.

There is no option now for the Israelis but for the Iranians to be seen casting the first stone. Without that there can be no attack against Iran.

CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

U.S. ‘INTRANSIGENCE’ MAY FORCE ISRAEL TO ‘CREATE’ A CASUS BELLI TO STRIKE IRAN.

2009-05-22T11:25:00.000+09:30

President Obama and his administration have created an air of intransigence over Israel’s desire to attack Iran. However, one wonders if this is merely a feint to create an impression of intransigence whereby Obama and his administration prefer not to be seen actually advocating or supporting military action against Iran but, rather, be seen to be going down the diplomatic road to peace instead.

Peace is the last thing that Netanyahu and his right-wing Zionist followers want. Peace will deprive them of any reason to remain in the West Bank. It may force them to give up the Golan Heights. The waters of the Litani River will become inaccessible forever. A Palestinian state will ultimately be Hamas dominated and the Gaza will be lost forever. Peace could also be a stepping stone toward a single state which ultimately will be dominated by Palestinians.

Obama has had no choice but to publicly show himself to be diametrically the opposite of everything that George W. Bush was. He was elected to the Presidency on that basis. He must placate both American and world public opinion in order to demonstrate that he is a President of change.

But beneath the bluster of change and peace and diplomacy there remains a President that unswervingly supports Israel before all else. If push comes to shove Obama will not hesitate to support Israel. The Netanyahu knows this intimately. Obama said as much to him last Monday when they met. All that Israel needs now is to be shoved.

Obama has made his position abundantly clear. The onus is now firmly on Israel to make the decision about a strike against Iran but the US cannot be seen to support a unilateral ‘preventative’ or ‘pre-emptive’ strike without good cause. This leaves Israel only two options: One, it can sit and wait for some situation to develop that will provide a casus belli for them to strike, or two, they can create some situation that will provide casus belli to attack.

In the past Israel has always been the aggressor while posing as the victim. In late June 2006 Israel massively attacked the Gaza Strip over the capture of a single Israeli conscript. The capture of Gilad Shalit served as the casus belli for Israeli jets to destroy much of Gaza’s infrastructure in an operation called Summer Rains aimed primarily at provoking Hezbollah and Iran to re-act. The provocation was reinforced when Israeli jets flew over the Syrian Presidential place in Damascus on the same day Israel attacked the Gaza.

A little over two weeks later, on 12 July 2006, Israel found excuse to also attack Hezbollah in south Lebanon. Two Israeli soldiers who had been part of a reconnaissance patrol in south Lebanon had been captured after a small fire-fight. The Israelis claimed that the two soldiers were ‘kidnapped’ from inside Israel close to the border and used this as an excuse to launch a massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon that killed over a thousand civilians and destroyed thousands of homes and Lebanese infrastructure. The bombardment lasted for over four weeks. The US refused to intervene despite the international outcry over its barbarity. Clearly, the Israelis were hoping by attacking Hezbollah to provoke Iran in to some kind of retaliation, perhaps by providing Hezbollah with more sophisticated missiles to launch against Israel; an action which the Israelis and the US could then use as a casus belli to strike Iran. Iran resisted and Israel’s attempt at creating a casus belli to strike Iran failed.

Ever since even before the creation of Israel they have made use of the ‘false flag’ technique of creating and manipulating affairs and events that they have subsequently used as a legitimate excuse to attack their enemies in the quest to expand and create their Greater Israel.

Now Israel needs once again to find casus belli to attack Iran. They have tried the simple propaganda of claiming that Iran has something it hasn’t just as it did with Iraq and its non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Now, even in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, they are trying once again to insist that Iran is intent on creating a nuclear weapon with which, so the Zionists claim, they can specifically destroy Israel.

Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran know exactly what Israel’s game is and are not biting – just as Iran did not bite when Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006. Now Israel must find some other way to provoke Iran but it can be seen as an overt provocation. Instead, Israel must find a way of making it look as though Iran is doing the provocation. It is the only way that Israel will be able to get the US to support an attack against Iran – it would be absolutely impossible for Israel to do it without US support.
Creating a false flag event is now Israel’s only option if it is to strike at Iran. The US will not be interested in any so-called ‘preventative’ or ‘pre-emptive’ strike. However, a major ‘Iranian-sponsored’ Hezbollah ‘attack’ against either Israel or the US or both might just do the trick.

MURDOCH WAR LOON AT THE ‘WEEKLY STANDARD’ THINKS CHENEY’S ‘WINNING THE DEBATE’.

2009-05-22T08:23:00.001+09:30

I’m not sure what Stephen ‘Smokey’ Hayes over at Murdoch’s neocon comic ‘The Weekly Standard’ has been puffing on this time but it seems to either hallucinatory or, more likely, just a little something that induces delusions.

In his latest piece he seems to think that Cheney, despite being ‘unpopular’ (try ‘despised’) is winning the debate on where US national security policy should be going. Smokey just loves Cheneyspeak and is keen to quote his most disgusting hate and arrogance utterings:

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.”

al Qaeda terrorists? What al Qaeda terrorists? The vast majority the US has locked up down Guantanamo way are innocent of any crime; but, hey, why would Cheney, Smokey and all their warmongering mates let a little thing like ‘innocence’ get in the way of all the fun they have waterboarding them?

Then there’s this piece of arrogance that Smokey quotes:

“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy.”

Cheney, Smokey and the rest of the neocon gang at ga-ga land couldn’t care less if their so-called policies ‘generated controversy’ or not; they’d just go right ahead and do it anyway.

Cheney’s not ‘winning the debate’; rather, Obama is losing it to him. The vast majority of American detest Cheney and detest the notion of torture, recognising that it flies in the face of all that America is supposed to be and what most Americans believe in.

The neocon loon Smokey Hayes might like to think Cheney’s winning the debate but the reality is the people of America have already heard the debate and made their choice at the last Presidential election. Cheney’s ilk lost the debate and lost the election. The fact that Obama’s going back on the mandate the American people gave him has nothing to do with the criminal Cheney ‘winning the debate’.

But don’t tell Smokey; he’ll wake up to reality just as soon as whatever he’s been puffing on wears off.

THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO POSTED AT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

THE OBAMA–NETANYAHU TALKS HAVE TOTALLY PREDICTABLE OUTCOMES: NO PALESTINIAN STATE, PROMISES OF ‘TALKS’, AND IRAN STILL UNDER THREAT FROM ISRAEL.

2009-05-19T12:06:00.002+09:30

You have to wonder why they even bothered since it was so clear that the meeting was intended only to be a public relations exercise from the outset.

Obama is only making noises about ‘talks’ with Iran in an effort to keep public opinion on side. The reality is; there’s nothing to actually talk about. The US knows full well there’s no nuclear weapons program to talk about. So do the Israelis. So what’s to talk about?

Obama has paved the way for an Israeli strike when he asked Israel not to surprise the US with an attack ‘out of the blue’. Netanyahu has promised he won’t – he’ll let the US know first. Of course, Netanyahu would have no option but to let the US know first. A surprise unilateral attack against Iran without the US knowing about it would not be at all possible considering all the logistics of such an attack. So, if there is such an attack and Obama says stuff like ‘I didn’t know about it’ or ‘it’s as much a surprise to me as it is to the rest of world’, you’ll know he’s lying. Obama, like his predecessor George W. Bush, refuses to take the option of a strike against Iran over its so-called nuclear weapons program, ‘off the table’. Obama has also said just days ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu with regard to Israel’s stance on Iran, “I understand very clearly that Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and given some of the statements that have been made by President Ahmadinejad, you can understand why. So their calculation of costs and benefits are going to be more acute. They're right there in range and I don't think it's my place to determine for the Israelis what their security needs are”.

And what of the ‘Two-state solution’? Obama also knows full well that Netanyahu has always said there will never be a Palestinian state while he has anything to do with it. Yet Obama seems obliged to be nice about it and, for the sake of public opinion, feels obliged to ask Netanyahu about it knowing what the answer will be: ‘More talks’. Obama isn’t demanding a Palestinian state; he’s simply asking Netanyahu nicely if he’ll at least think about it. And, as if to emphasise Obama’s powerlessness in the face of Zionism, at virtually the same time as they’re talking about a Palestinian state, Israel are giving the go ahead to build a brand new settlement in the West Bank.

The status quo hasn’t changed. Netanyahu is just as determined as ever to effect ‘regime change’ in Iran and Obama is just playing with words to placate public opinion while, at the same time, going along with the Zionists ploy. Obama’s ‘talks with Iran’ is as big a play for time as Netanyahu’s ‘talks with the Palestinians’.

A strike against Iran is as likely now as it ever was. And, when it happens, the US, despite all of Obama’s rhetoric, will be there to facilitate it.

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ISRAEL NOW AGREES TO TELL THE U.S. WHEN IT IS ABOUT TO ATTACK IRAN

2009-05-15T17:09:00.004+09:30

There’s been an interesting change in article headline in Ha’aretz today. The original headline for an article dealing with the story of President Obama’s demand that Israel not launch a surprise attack on Iran read thus:

“Israel vows not to surprise U.S. with strike on Iran”.

Later, however, the headline for the same word for word article ominously read:

“Israel: U.S. will know before any Iran strike”.

The not too subtle change in wording is ominous because it simply means that Netanyahu wants to keep his own options open about attacking Iran. While it may seem as though Obama has asked Netanyahu not launch a surprise attack against Iran, the reality is that what Obama was actually saying was ‘don’t do it without telling us first’. By asking Netanyahu not to ‘surprise the US with an attack on Iran’, he wasn’t actually saying ‘don’t attack Iran’.

The fact is Israel couldn’t possibly attack Iran without the US knowing all about it well in advance. Just about all the munitions and military jet fuel needed for the operation would be supplied by the US. Even if the Israelis initiated an attack on Iran via Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from their Dolphin class submarines, the Israelis would need to have prepared their air force with huge amounts of fuel and ordnance to counter the Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel not to mention to counter the probable rocket attacks from Hezbollah in south Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza.

Obama’s ‘let’s talk to the Iranians about their nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric is just that – rhetoric. Obama knows full well that Iran is no threat to Israel or anyone else. He knows full well that Iran has no ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Obama is playing the world for suckers. He’s trying to present himself as ‘Mister Nice Guy’ for the Western World saying ‘look at me, I’m trying to get the Middle East to talk about peace’ while he knows full well that he and his administration are looking for regime change in Iran – and he knows just the guys to instigate it because, after all his talk of ‘talk’, the US now can’t actually instigate an attack itself.

All Israel needs to do now is create a casus belli.

And the Israelis are expert at that.

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HOW WILL ISRAEL ATTACK IRAN?

2009-05-14T13:18:00.002+09:30

The big question is not ‘if’ Israel will attack Iran – it will sooner or later – but more a question of how it will attack Iran and what will precipitate the attack.

A report today in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ claims that the Israeli Air force have been practicing dog-fights between their F-16s and MiG-29s of a type similar to the 40 or so MiG-29s the Iranian air force operate. The report also stated that the F-16s have been flying under maximum all-up weight conditions with full fuel and armaments simulating long-range mission flying.

However, when one considers the logistics of an Israeli attack on Iran, one is left wondering if the job is even at all possible. The main problem is the route the aircraft will have to take to get to Iran.

The shortest route, of course, is the direct one, but this route, from probably either the Ramet David air base or the Hatzerim air base in Israel to the various targets around Iran is around 1600 kilometres and would involve overflying at least Jordan and Iraq. Since the F-16 aircraft only have a combat radius of around 550 kilometres at best, an out and back sortie to targets over Iran will require around four or five 5 refuels. In itself, this is not a problem; the Israeli air force has a number of in-flight refueller tanker aircraft. The problem is that the refueller aircraft will have to either wait inside hostile airspace over Iran to refuel strike aircraft that have had to attack targets in eastern and maybe north-eastern Iran or wait in international airspace over the Persian Gulf or further east over the Arabian Sea. Either way, they will be vulnerable to Iranian anti-aircraft missiles and/or Iranian fighters. This means that the tanker aircraft will need a fighter escort – hence the dog-fight practice with MiG-29s. The tankers, however, will only be important targets for the Iranians as the Israeli strike force is in-coming rather than when they are leaving when, one assumes, the damage has been done and therefore not worth the Iranians losing aircraft to a withdrawing strike force.

Whether or not Israel would be able to persuade Jordan to allow Israeli strike aircraft to overfly Jordan is questionable. If Israel did decide to go the direct route it may consider it too much of a security risk to ask the Jordanians and may consider it easier to simply do it without their permission and worry about the diplomatic consequences later. Overflying Iraq will be even more of a problem than overflying Jordan. If the Iraqi government have anything to do with it then it simply won’t happen. The US is unlikely to allow it if for no other reason than it will immeasurably set back relations between Iraq and the US with the possibility of triggering a massive backlash against the Iraqi government and US forces.

Given these considerations, it is unlikely that Israel will be able to make a pre-emptive unilateral strike against Iran by the direct route that involves overflying Jordan and Iraq.

It would seem that the only way Israel could possibly make a pre-emptive unilateral strike against Iran would be by covertly deploying its submarine fleet – Israel has three Dolphin class submarines – to the Arabian Sea from where it could launch a Tomahawk cruise missile attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The problem here though is that cruise missiles do not have the capacity to do the kind of damage required to completely destroy all of Iran’s facilities, many of which are well protected underground.

However, since Israel is fully aware of the fact that Iran actually has no nuclear weapons program, despite the propaganda and rhetoric claiming they do, it may well be that Israel is willing to go down this route if only to trigger a response from the Iranians that will either drag in the US to a rapidly escalating conflict or, at least, get the US to allow an air strike against Iranian governmental and defence institutions with the hope that the US will join the fight later as the Iranians threaten or initiate retaliation.

The submarine scenario could well be a starter especially considering the logistical problems associated with a direct air strike. It may also turn out that the ‘practice’ dog-fights and all-up weight fully loaded flying is just a feint to get the Iranians to prepare for an aerial assault when really the Israelis are planning a cruise missile attack to be followed up by an aerial assault.

The Israelis do have a number of other alternatives to initiating a strike against the Iranians. While the indirect provocation method, which is where Israel creates a fake or weak casus belli to attack Hezbollah or Hamas in order to drag in Iran, hasn’t worked so far in creating circumstances where Israel could claim being threatened by Iran because of either Hezbollah of Hamas actions, it might be willing to give this method another try. Firstly, it has the advantage of killing several birds during one big confrontation rather than a few little risky wars that may or may not work in Israel’s favour and turning public opinion even further against them. At least with the final confrontation scenario it is fait accompli and, in the end, it is all over and done with one way or the other. It will also guarantee US involvement even though the US may be reluctant; it may well be forced into a position where it has no option but to support Israel in knocking out Iran.

Alternatively, the Israelis may consider trying some kind of false flag operation against either Israel or the US, though more likely against Israel considering the current slight thawing of relations between Iran and the US, which will give Israel casus belli to directly attack.

Whatever way the Israelis find to attack their enemies, the world can be assured that it is only a matter of time and, as usual, the Israelis will play the role of victim in doing so.

For the Zionists, regime change in Iran is essential for their endgame of a Greater Israel. Irans non-existent nuclear weapons program is the ploy; all they need to do now is find a casus belli that suits their propaganda needs or to play the fait accompli card or both.

UPDATE

President Obama has sent a message to Netanyahu telling him not to ‘surprise him’ with a strike against Iran.

The reality is; there is no way the Israelis could ‘surprise’ the US any way. Israel will need massive amounts of military jet fuel stockpiled for such an attack and its aftermath which it gets from the US. Most of the munitions needed for such a strike also comes from the US. There is no way that Israel can fly any missions over Iraq without US permission if the Israelis choose to attack Iran by strike aircraft. Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines also come from the US though Israel may have already stockpiled these.

There are few options left if Israel is determined to strike Iran. Only a false flag attack against Israel or a provoked war against Hezbollah and/or Hamas will now get the US on side for Israel to attack Iran.

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MICHAEL B. OREN: WARMONGERING ZIONIST, NEOCON LACKEY – AND ISRAEL’S AMBASSADOR-DESIGNATE TO THE U.S.

2009-05-13T11:37:00.002+09:30

Michael B. Oren, the American-born and educated, and soon-to-be Israeli ambassador to the US, has a well established history of being a lackey for far-right Zionism and his most recent article, which has appeared in the latest issue of the neoconservative magazine ‘Commentary’, posits him clearly and firmly in the warmongering neocon camp of US and Zionist politics.

Born Michael Bornstein in upstate New York in 1955 and educated in the US, Oren has always been an ardent supporter of Zionism having been an activist in various Zionist Youth organisations while at school in the US and having made his first visit to Israel when he was 15 when he went to work on a Kibbutz. He studied for his degree at Columbia University where he went on to earn a Masters in International Studies in 1978. He then migrated to Israel in 1979 where he stayed for a few years during which time he joined the IDF. After his service with the IDF he returned to the US to complete a PhD in Near East Studies at Princeton University which he received in 1986.

During his service with the IDF he saw action as a paratrooper in the 1982 Lebanon war. Later, as a reservist and having returned to Israel after the completion of his research, Oren served as a liaison officer to the US Sixth Fleet during the 1991 Gulf War. During the 2006 Israeli assault on Hezbollah and Lebanon, Oren again served with the IDF Reserves, this time as an army spokesman. And latterly during the onslaught against the Gazan people in December 2008 and January 2009, Oren again was called up as a reservist when he was charged with presenting the Israeli army’s lies in the effort to avoid warcrimes charges being laid against the IDF as he himself explains in an article written as the onslaught got underway.

In his latest piece Oren reflects the thinking of the Netanyahu government and what it has in store for the people of the region. Oren calls his article ‘Seven Existential Threats’. Basically it’s a simple entreaty about ‘Israel the victim’ - again. Oren starts his list of ‘existential threats’ with this: “The preservation of Jerusalem as the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish state is vital to Israel’s existence.” This, of course, is pure nonsense. Jerusalem might well be the spiritual centre of the Jewish religion – as, indeed, it is for Christians, and also an important centre for Muslims as well – but to say that Israel’s existence depends on Jerusalem being the ‘political capital of the Jewish state’ is plain racist arrogance that demonstrates the Zionist contempt for other religions.

Next, Oren lists ‘The Arab Demographic Threat’ as being a threat to the Jewish state of Israel. Here Oren again displays his racism that is so typical of neocon Zionism. He writes: “Israel, the Jewish State, is predicated on a decisive and stable Jewish majority of at least 70 percent. Any lower than that and Israel will have to decide between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. If it chooses democracy, then Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist.” This statement is a very thinly veiled threat that says that there will come a point that Israelis will have to forego democracy in order to maintain its Jewishness.

Oren then goes on to say: “Ideally, the remedy for this dilemma lies in separate states for Jews and Palestinian Arabs”, but then adds, “The basic conditions for such a solution, however, are unrealizable for the foreseeable future. The creation of Palestinian government, even within the parameters of the deal proposed by President Clinton in 2000, would require the removal of at least 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes. The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF troops—the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—and was profoundly traumatic. And unlike the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, which is now called the West Bank, Gaza has never been universally regarded as part of the historical Land of Israel.” Clearly, the Zionists do not have any intention of withdrawing the settlements from the West Bank which they regard as being a part of Israel and nor do they have any intention of allowing a Palestinian state.

Oren then concedes that, without the possibility of a ‘two-state paradigm’, “…international pressure will grow to transform Israel into a binational state”, and that “This would spell the end of the Zionist project.”

Curiously, what’s important here is not so much what Oran says but more what he doesn’t say, and that is; what will the Zionists do about what they consider to be their predicament.

Interestingly, Oren also lists ‘Delegitimisation’ as an existential threat. By ‘Delegitimisation’ he means the world is slowly waking up to the reality of Zionism as a virulent form of racist nationalism on a par with South African apartheid and twentieth century Nazism. He writes: “Most recently, Israel has been depicted as an apartheid state, effectively comparing the Jewish State to South Africa under its former white supremacist regime,” and continues saying, “Many of Israel’s counterterrorism efforts are branded as war crimes, and Israeli generals are indicted by foreign courts.”

Talking of ‘terrorism’, Oren also mentions that resistance to Israeli expansionism is an ‘existential threat’ to Israel. This, of course, is pure Chutzpah that is typical of Zionist propaganda. To them everyone that raises their hand to resist Israeli expansionism is labelled a Jew-hating ‘terrorist’.

Currently, the greatest ‘existential threat’ to Israel according to the Zionists and their neoconservative allies is Iran. The Iranian ‘threat’ is multi-faceted according to Oren. He writes: “The principal sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is inextricably linked to the terrorist threat. But when the Islamic Republic achieves nuclear weapons-capability—as early as this year, according to Israeli intelligence estimates—the threat will amplify manifold.”

Iran certainly does support Hamas and Hezbollah in their resistance to Israeli expansionism but to say that Iran is about to achieve ‘nuclear weapons-capability as early as this year’ is blatant scaremongering. Neither Israeli intelligence, nor any other intelligence organisation in the world, have any evidence whatsoever to suggest that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program let alone being on the brink of ‘nuclear weapons-capability as early as this year’.

Oren also bemoans Israel’s own sovereign powers saying that “A significant percentage of Knesset members, Arabs and Jews, do not recognize the validity of the state they serve. Some actively call for its dissolution. Israel is, quite simply, haemorrhaging sovereignty and so threatening its continued existence as a state.” While he also cynically writes that “Over 100 outposts have been established illegally in the West Bank, and Jewish settler violence perpetrated against Palestinian civilians and Israeli security forces is now regarded as a major threat by the IDF”, Oren goes on to hint at Israel having to “draw its eastern boundaries unilaterally”, that is to say; Israel will simply take chunks of the West Bank that they want for themselves saying: “The new borders should include the maximum number of Jews, of natural and strategic assets, and of Jewish holy places”, which will effectively eliminate any concerns he has about ‘Israeli sovereignty’.

Oren ends his list of what he considers are Israel’s seven ‘existential threats’ with the charge of corruption against ‘major Israeli leaders’. In this regard, Oren displays his own self-righteousness. Corruption virtually built Israel but for Oren, his concerns are not so much about morality, but more about it ‘emboldening Israel’s enemies and sullying Israel’s international reputation’.

Michael Oren is nothing more than a fanatical secular Zionist. If he were nothing more than that then world would have nothing to fear. However, he is about to become Israel’s next ambassador to the US. This gives him much power and, far more importantly since he is also an American with extensive contacts within the American hierarchy and ruling elites, massive influence within the corridors of power in Washington. Armed with the views he has expressed in his ‘Commentary’ article, he clearly is a man on a mission; a mission aimed only at creating the Zionist vision of Greater Israel that excludes any notion of any kind of Palestinian state but does entail a change of regime in Iran and the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Thr world is about to become an even more dangerous place. Oren’s extreme right-wing racist and nationalist views reflect the views of those that now govern Israel.

Peace will not get a chance with the likes of Oren at Israel’s helm. The one-state solution is the only solution.

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THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION MYTH.

2009-05-12T12:55:00.000+09:30

There may have been a time when the two-state solution would have been useful if only as a stepping stone toward the inevitable single-state bi-national solution. However, what with the occupation of most of the West Bank by Israel, the building of the separation wall, Israeli road blocks everywhere throughout all of the West Bank, Israeli settlements springing up weekly, Israelis-only roads traversing and criss-crossing much of the West Bank to connect Israeli settlements, the gradual pushing out of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, the destruction of Palestinian farmlands, the ghettoising, systematic destruction of utilities and general terrorising of the Gaza Strip and its peoples, that time when a two-state solution might just have worked as part of a program where the lands could have become one again for all the peoples to live in has long, long past.

President Barack Obama is just the latest in a very long line of US Presidents that have tried their hand at creating peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. All before him have failed, and, especially in the light of the situation that prevails today in the region, there is absolutely no reason at all to believe that Obama has any more hope of succeeding than any of his predecessors had. In fact, in the prevailing circumstances, Obama is the least likely of all the Presidents to succeed.

Obama, it seems, has now all but given up talking about a ‘two-state solution’ though hasn’t yet given up the idea. The talk now has morphed from a ‘two-state solution’ to a ‘peace plan’ with virtually no mention at all of a Palestinian sovereign state, only demands for ‘the Muslim world to recognise Israel’.

While there seems to be plenty of talk about a peace plan, there seems to be very little substance; certainly no one has yet been able to describe exactly what this ‘peace plan’ is likely to entail.

It’s early days into both Obama’s administration and Netanyahu’s Israeli government and, while Obama initially pushed the idea of yet another plan for the two-state solution, he quickly gave up when it became obvious that Netanyahu is not in the slightest bit interested in the Palestinians having their own state under any circumstances. And from the Palestinians standpoint there can be no Palestinian state without, at the very least, the Israelis pulling out all of the settlements, withdrawing entirely from the West Bank and East Jerusalem back to the pre-1967 lines, and allowing the right of return of the refugees. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, none of this is ever going to happen. Obama knows it.; Netanyahu certainly knows it; and just about the entire world knows it – so, one has to ask, what’s left to talk ‘peace’ about?

Netanyahu is biding his time waiting and manoeuvring behind the scenes for an opportunity to strike Zionism’s enemies: Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. At the moment Netanyahu is simply nodding and shaking his head appropriately as Obama says his stuff. Netanyahu knows that he can’t upset Obama too much; Netanyahu will need Obama’s support when the time does come to confront Iran. But, on the other hand, Netanyahu can’t give in to Obama’s demands for a pulling out of the settlements but, rather, to say simply that ‘he’d talk about it’. This is just more time wasting.

Obama and Netanyahu are set to meet in a few days time in Washington. High on Obama’s agenda will be, once again, to get Netanyahu to talk about a two-state solution, and, once again, Netanyahu will say he will consider the possibility of thinking about talking about it but that’s about as far as it will go.

If, per chance, Netanyahu does start to get all positive about the idea of a Palestinian sovereign state, you can then bet your bottom dollar that something terrible is about to happen that will put an end to any such notions.

The two-state solution is even more of a myth today than it has ever been. The world should demand a one-state bi-national solution. It is the ONLY logical solution.

PERES AND LIEBERMAN: THE ESSENCE OF ZIONIST HYPOCRISY.

2009-05-05T10:52:00.002+09:30

Israeli President Shimon Peres yesterday addressed the AIPAC conference where he launched in to what must be considered as being the most hypocritical speech ever given to an AIPAC conference – and there have been many.

Speaking about ‘his Prime Minister’, Benjamin Netanyahu, he told his audience: “He knows history and wants to make history. In our tradition, making history is making peace, and I am sure that peace is his priority."

‘In our tradition, making history is making peace’? In the sixty years of Israeli history there has been nothing but war instigated by the Zionists of Israel against the Palestinian people.

Just to compound his hypocrisy, he continued: "Israel stands with her arms outstretched and her hands held open to peace with all nations, with all Arab states, with all Arab people," and then adds: "To those still holding a clenched fist I have just one word to say: Enough. Enough war. Enough destruction. Enough hatred. Now is the time for change. Israel is prepared today to bring peace closer. Today."

Apart from the blindingly obvious hypocrisy in these words, one has to ask; ‘What peace are you talking about?’

But Peres isn’t alone with this hypocritical nonsense. The word ‘peace’ seems to be a new buzzword among leading Zionist Israeli politicians these last few days as they talk about the ‘peace process with the Palestinians’. Even Israeli foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, on tour around Europe, has been talking about how the current Israeli government ‘could reach peace with the Palestinians’. Lieberman, speaking at a news conference in Rome, Italy, said that the Netanyahu government would reach a “secure and definitive peace with the Palestinians and the Arab nations around them”. Neither Peres nor Lieberman explained how this ‘peace’ was going to be achieved. For the Palestinians there will never be peace while Israel occupy their lands and, since Netanyahu has made it clear that there will never be a Palestinian state and the Likud Party’s entire platform revolves around a Greater Israel that includes the west Bank and the Gaza as well as the Golan Heights and south Lebanon up to the Litani River, one can only assume that the words of the Israeli leaders is pure rhetoric designed to buy more time while an excuse is found to trigger their confrontation with Iran.

Perhaps Peres and Lieberman really do mean there will be peace but only after the Iranian regime has been changed and the Israelis have smashed all Arab and Palestinian resistance to the Israeli Dream of a Greater Israel.

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