The Sydney Morning Herald's international editor, Peter Hartcher, has no difficulty being objective about the US. Now that it has pulled out of its international agreement with Iran, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU, enshrined in UNSC resolution 2231, he declares: "Trump's America has just become a rogue nation." (New world order: US goes rogue over Iran deal, 10/5/18)
(Leave aside the word "just.")
What exactly, according to Hartcher, are the forces at work in the US that have brought about this withdrawal?
He pays lip service to the deal's "unpopularity with Republican voters" (as if they spend their every waking moment worrying about what Iran is or isn't up to) and to Trump's inability to think straight "on even the weightiest of matters." And then there's this quite casual observation:
"The Iran deal has been opposed vociferously by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he carries much of the US Republican Party with him."
Could this then be the real reason for the withdrawal? A foreign power, referred to by Hartcher merely as a "US ally" (but never, God forbid, a "rogue nation") has the Republicans by the balls? And this while Trump, as Hartcher acknowledges, "doesn't care about the interests of America's allies," Britain, France and Germany?
Is this not a most extraordinary state of affairs?
Then why has Hartcher avoided writing about it all these years?
Justin Raimondo could have had the likes of Hartcher in mind when he wrote the following:
"Let's drop the pretenses and tell it like it really is: this is being done for the benefit of Bibi Netanyahu and his amen corner in the United States. For all the brouhaha about foreign influence in American politics, the pundits are eerily silent as the Israel lobby succeeds in an all out effort to drag us into their conflict with Iran. The 'special relationship' has gotten much more special in recent months, according to reports. Trump recently sent Ivanka and Jared to Israel to inaugurate the opening of the Jerusalem embassy, with casino billionaire and pro-Israel fanatic Sheldon Adelson in tow. Adelson gave millions to the Trump campaign and the GOP. While Trump rose to power as a critic of the Iraq war, and, by implication, George W. Bush's Israel-centric foreign policy, he has now positioned himself to replicate Dubya's mistakes - times ten." (From Iran deal exit: America first, or Israel first? antiwar.com, 10/5/18)
Showing posts with label Justin Raimondo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justin Raimondo. Show all posts
Friday, May 11, 2018
Thursday, March 30, 2017
A Tale of Two Protests
In his latest commentary, A tale of two protests, antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo compares two tweeted photographs - one of Yemeni protesters, the other of Russian protesters - and draws a telling conclusion about the priorities and values of Western political and media elites:
"That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States - and look at the faces in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is happening to their country, and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied bombs dropped by US-manufactured warplanes, the rest killed by starvation. The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen - one of the poorest nations on earth - with the aid and active assistance of the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even deeper involvement by the US.
"Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia, where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media, while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual, they settled on one photo as the 'iconic' image meant to convey the plight of the Russian people...
"There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of the Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition, their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance - a militance that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us." (29/3/17)
"That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States - and look at the faces in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is happening to their country, and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied bombs dropped by US-manufactured warplanes, the rest killed by starvation. The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen - one of the poorest nations on earth - with the aid and active assistance of the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even deeper involvement by the US.
"Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia, where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media, while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual, they settled on one photo as the 'iconic' image meant to convey the plight of the Russian people...
"There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of the Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition, their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance - a militance that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us." (29/3/17)
Thursday, August 4, 2016
The Rise of the Know-Nothings
This observation by antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo resonates with me:
"I've finally figured why so many pundits and journalists are signing on to the new cold war with Russia: they weren't alive during the last one. They have no memory of the Cuban missile crisis, they didn't grow up in the era of backyard bomb shelters: for them, Fail Safe and On the Beach are just old movies.
"Take Greg Sargent, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post, who was a twinkle in his parents' eyes when John F. Kennedy put American nukes in Turkey and the Russians responded by installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. So eager is he for a confrontation with Vladimir Putin that he tweeted this [Read these 3 quotes from Trump's ABC News interview side by side] the other day. I responded with this [Amazing how 'liberals' are ginning up WWIII with Russia - just like neocons ginned up the Iraq war. Get ready!]. And he fired back with this [Area man who pretends not to support Trump lashes out at mere act of pointing out his incoherence/ignorance.] - I must be a Trump supporter! As I told him, I hope he's alive after the next missile crisis with Russia - which will be coming real soon after Hillary Clinton takes office.
"Or take Josh Rogin, who writes about foreign policy for the Washington post: he's upset that Trump won't risk World War III by facing off with Putin over Ukraine. Trump must be 'in lockstep with Putin.' Yet Rogin didn't dispute the merits of what Trump had to say - that he'd consider recognizing the Crimean referendum - only implying that Trump was some kind of Manchurian candidate. I answered him here [Is he wrong? Or does that matter?], and he soon fled back into the nether reaches of the Twittersphere. And I'd make the same point about him that I made about Sargent: these people are children. They have no memory of the cold war. They never lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. To them it's all a game." (It's getting scarier, 1/8/16)
God help us - the kids have taken over the msm asylum.
"I've finally figured why so many pundits and journalists are signing on to the new cold war with Russia: they weren't alive during the last one. They have no memory of the Cuban missile crisis, they didn't grow up in the era of backyard bomb shelters: for them, Fail Safe and On the Beach are just old movies.
"Take Greg Sargent, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post, who was a twinkle in his parents' eyes when John F. Kennedy put American nukes in Turkey and the Russians responded by installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. So eager is he for a confrontation with Vladimir Putin that he tweeted this [Read these 3 quotes from Trump's ABC News interview side by side] the other day. I responded with this [Amazing how 'liberals' are ginning up WWIII with Russia - just like neocons ginned up the Iraq war. Get ready!]. And he fired back with this [Area man who pretends not to support Trump lashes out at mere act of pointing out his incoherence/ignorance.] - I must be a Trump supporter! As I told him, I hope he's alive after the next missile crisis with Russia - which will be coming real soon after Hillary Clinton takes office.
"Or take Josh Rogin, who writes about foreign policy for the Washington post: he's upset that Trump won't risk World War III by facing off with Putin over Ukraine. Trump must be 'in lockstep with Putin.' Yet Rogin didn't dispute the merits of what Trump had to say - that he'd consider recognizing the Crimean referendum - only implying that Trump was some kind of Manchurian candidate. I answered him here [Is he wrong? Or does that matter?], and he soon fled back into the nether reaches of the Twittersphere. And I'd make the same point about him that I made about Sargent: these people are children. They have no memory of the cold war. They never lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. To them it's all a game." (It's getting scarier, 1/8/16)
God help us - the kids have taken over the msm asylum.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
About That Gas Attack in Syria...
Don't you just love it when one of the world's top investigative reporters blows the official story of last August's 'Syrian government' gas attack clear out of the water, but NO Australian corporate media outlet, despite having dined out on it for months afterwards, bothers to report on his findings?
Here's an edited excerpt from Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo's column on Seymour Hersh's report, The Red Line & the Rat Line, in the London Review of Books (6/4/14), which reveals that the gas attack which almost triggered a full-scale US military operation against the Asad regime was a false flag incident engineered by the Turks:
"Now we learn from Hersh, citing senior intelligence officials, that even as US officials were proclaiming that only the Syrian government had the capability to deploy chemical weapons, and specifically sarin,Western intelligence agencies and the Pentagon knew better... [T]he Russians secured samples days after the late August incident, concluding that the sarin wasn't military grade and the means of delivery appeared makeshift.
"Hersh takes the story further, relating that the Russians sent the samples to the British, who confirmed their analysis. At which point the joint chiefs led by anti-interventionist Gen. Jack Dempsey... went to the President 'with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs,' reports Hersh, citing former intelligence officials, 'who led Obama to change course.' In a laugh-out-loud moment, Hersh writes: 'The official White House explanation for the turnabout - the story the presscorp told - was that the president... suddenly decided to seek approval from a bitterly divided Congress with which he'd been in conflict for years. The former Defence Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence 'that the Middle East would go up in smoke' if it was carried out.'
"So they lied to everyone, perhaps even to themselves. Because neither of these explanations even approaches the truth - which is that the President, even after being confronted with evidence he'd been hoaxed, decided to try to rope everyone into the lie. Rather than call the whole thing off, the White House did a good imitation of observing the democratic process - all the while asserting in testimony before Congress that the Assad regime had 'gassed their own people' and that the rebels were the victims rather than the perpetrators. Indeed, they assert the same nonsense even to this day, as indicated by the terse denials included in Hersh's piece. Yet they were (and are) lying through their teeth, reports Hersh, without coming right out and saying so. Citing a former intelligence official, he says US intelligence analysts suspected the Turks, and goes on to relate how: 'As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. 'We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan's people to push Obama over the red line,' the former intelligence official said. 'They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors' - who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas - 'were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey - that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.'
"It also turns out that the international Surveillance State has its uses, because, according to Hersh's source, we 'intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and backslapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.' Erdogan's problems in Syria would soon be over: 'Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way'." (Who was behind the Syrian 'false flag' attack? 6/4/14)
The above is merely an extract. You can read the rest of Raimondo's report at antiwar.com, or Hersh's original at lrb.co.uk. And while you're at it, check out Did Obama's 'rebels' in Syria kidnap children from Latakia and murder them in Ghouta chemical attack to justify US bombing of Syria? thelemniscat.wordpress.com, 27/3/14. Citizen journalism at its best. Finally, my own earlier post, Something Dangerous (11/9/13), long ago cast doubt on the official version.
Here's an edited excerpt from Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo's column on Seymour Hersh's report, The Red Line & the Rat Line, in the London Review of Books (6/4/14), which reveals that the gas attack which almost triggered a full-scale US military operation against the Asad regime was a false flag incident engineered by the Turks:
"Now we learn from Hersh, citing senior intelligence officials, that even as US officials were proclaiming that only the Syrian government had the capability to deploy chemical weapons, and specifically sarin,Western intelligence agencies and the Pentagon knew better... [T]he Russians secured samples days after the late August incident, concluding that the sarin wasn't military grade and the means of delivery appeared makeshift.
"Hersh takes the story further, relating that the Russians sent the samples to the British, who confirmed their analysis. At which point the joint chiefs led by anti-interventionist Gen. Jack Dempsey... went to the President 'with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs,' reports Hersh, citing former intelligence officials, 'who led Obama to change course.' In a laugh-out-loud moment, Hersh writes: 'The official White House explanation for the turnabout - the story the presscorp told - was that the president... suddenly decided to seek approval from a bitterly divided Congress with which he'd been in conflict for years. The former Defence Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence 'that the Middle East would go up in smoke' if it was carried out.'
"So they lied to everyone, perhaps even to themselves. Because neither of these explanations even approaches the truth - which is that the President, even after being confronted with evidence he'd been hoaxed, decided to try to rope everyone into the lie. Rather than call the whole thing off, the White House did a good imitation of observing the democratic process - all the while asserting in testimony before Congress that the Assad regime had 'gassed their own people' and that the rebels were the victims rather than the perpetrators. Indeed, they assert the same nonsense even to this day, as indicated by the terse denials included in Hersh's piece. Yet they were (and are) lying through their teeth, reports Hersh, without coming right out and saying so. Citing a former intelligence official, he says US intelligence analysts suspected the Turks, and goes on to relate how: 'As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. 'We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan's people to push Obama over the red line,' the former intelligence official said. 'They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors' - who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas - 'were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey - that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.'
"It also turns out that the international Surveillance State has its uses, because, according to Hersh's source, we 'intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and backslapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.' Erdogan's problems in Syria would soon be over: 'Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way'." (Who was behind the Syrian 'false flag' attack? 6/4/14)
The above is merely an extract. You can read the rest of Raimondo's report at antiwar.com, or Hersh's original at lrb.co.uk. And while you're at it, check out Did Obama's 'rebels' in Syria kidnap children from Latakia and murder them in Ghouta chemical attack to justify US bombing of Syria? thelemniscat.wordpress.com, 27/3/14. Citizen journalism at its best. Finally, my own earlier post, Something Dangerous (11/9/13), long ago cast doubt on the official version.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Believe Nothing
As the US, British, and French dogs of war strain at the leash for yet another act of imperial hubris in the Middle East, you'll search the opinion pages of the Australian ms press in vain for an informed and savvy analysis.
Thankfully, there's always Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo. Just to whet your appetite, here's the salutary introduction - dealing with the Damascus gas 'attack' - to his latest essay, Transparent Hoax Could Lead to War:
"Those rolicking jihadists, the Syrian rebels, love a joke: although they can be deadly serious - such as when they're eating the internal organs of their enemies - what they enjoy more than anything else is a good prank. There was the time they claimed the Assad regime was killing babies in incubators - not very original, but hey, it worked for the Kuwaitis! Then there was the 'massacre' at Houla, which was alleged to have killed 32 children and over 60 adults: a photo started appearing in the mainstream media, documenting the slaughter. The state-supported BBC was first to run with it - until it was discovered the supposedly incriminating photo was taken in Iraq during the recent war. The photographer was justifiably furious, the story was withdrawn, and the Syrian rebels went back to the drawing board.
"I could go on for quite a while about the various Syrian hoaxes we've been subjected to, but let's get down to the latest one - a claim Syrian government forces used nerve gas at the Syrian village known as Ghouta. Videos posted by the rebels show rows of people killed or incapacitated without any dramatic indications of physical trauma: instead, the victims display convulsions and other signs of exposure to asphyxiating gases. Yet, as Ha'aretz reports: 'Western experts on chemical warfare who have examined at least part of the footage are skeptical that weapons-grade chemical substances were used, although they all emphasize that serious conclusions cannot be reached without thorough on-site examination. Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the US Army's Chemical Corps and a leading private consultant, pointed out a number of details absent from the footage so far: 'None of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear,' he says, 'and despite that, none of them seem to be harmed.'
"Perhaps Allah is protecting the caregivers and others attending to the sick: or maybe the aid we're shipping the rebels includes some really neat stuff from Marvel Comics. On the other hand, maybe the whole thing is yet another put up job. You tell me.
"If the 'massacre' at Ghouta involved military-grade nerve gas, all those doctors and others milling around the fallen victims would be dead or in serious trouble. That's because the poison would stick around for days, penetrating the skin and being inhaled by anyone who came close to them or even entered the vicinity. Another problem is that, as Kaszeta says, 'One issue is that you can't really test for sarin gas, you test for chemicals that are released as it decomposes.'
"The UN inspection team was in Damascus anyway, investigating previous claims of poison gas use: of course, it's just a coincidence that this latest claim is made about a site a few miles from where they're staying. They are on their way to Ghouta even as I write: but how will they determine who used whatever chemical agents were unleashed, if indeed that is what happened? The answer is: they won't. They have only to come up with 'evidence' that some sort of 'WMD' was used: in spite of rebel claims that they would retaliate' in kind in response to previous alleged chemical attacks, it will simply be assumed by Western governments and media... that the Syrian government is responsible.
"As for Washington and its allies: they aren't waiting for the 'evidence.' They already know who is guilty, and who is not. A 'senior US official' is cited by ABC as saying: 'Based on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts, and other facts, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident. We are continuing to assess the facts so the President can make an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons.'
"The War Party has the President's ear, and believe you me they aren't whispering in it - they're making their case loud and clear, in public and no doubt in private. The only dove in the vicinity of the White House is Hagel, and he's consigned to simply preparing the US military for any and all contingencies. On that front, the news isn't good: US forces are already converging on the region and moving into position."
You can read the rest without my help.
Thankfully, there's always Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo. Just to whet your appetite, here's the salutary introduction - dealing with the Damascus gas 'attack' - to his latest essay, Transparent Hoax Could Lead to War:
"Those rolicking jihadists, the Syrian rebels, love a joke: although they can be deadly serious - such as when they're eating the internal organs of their enemies - what they enjoy more than anything else is a good prank. There was the time they claimed the Assad regime was killing babies in incubators - not very original, but hey, it worked for the Kuwaitis! Then there was the 'massacre' at Houla, which was alleged to have killed 32 children and over 60 adults: a photo started appearing in the mainstream media, documenting the slaughter. The state-supported BBC was first to run with it - until it was discovered the supposedly incriminating photo was taken in Iraq during the recent war. The photographer was justifiably furious, the story was withdrawn, and the Syrian rebels went back to the drawing board.
"I could go on for quite a while about the various Syrian hoaxes we've been subjected to, but let's get down to the latest one - a claim Syrian government forces used nerve gas at the Syrian village known as Ghouta. Videos posted by the rebels show rows of people killed or incapacitated without any dramatic indications of physical trauma: instead, the victims display convulsions and other signs of exposure to asphyxiating gases. Yet, as Ha'aretz reports: 'Western experts on chemical warfare who have examined at least part of the footage are skeptical that weapons-grade chemical substances were used, although they all emphasize that serious conclusions cannot be reached without thorough on-site examination. Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the US Army's Chemical Corps and a leading private consultant, pointed out a number of details absent from the footage so far: 'None of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear,' he says, 'and despite that, none of them seem to be harmed.'
"Perhaps Allah is protecting the caregivers and others attending to the sick: or maybe the aid we're shipping the rebels includes some really neat stuff from Marvel Comics. On the other hand, maybe the whole thing is yet another put up job. You tell me.
"If the 'massacre' at Ghouta involved military-grade nerve gas, all those doctors and others milling around the fallen victims would be dead or in serious trouble. That's because the poison would stick around for days, penetrating the skin and being inhaled by anyone who came close to them or even entered the vicinity. Another problem is that, as Kaszeta says, 'One issue is that you can't really test for sarin gas, you test for chemicals that are released as it decomposes.'
"The UN inspection team was in Damascus anyway, investigating previous claims of poison gas use: of course, it's just a coincidence that this latest claim is made about a site a few miles from where they're staying. They are on their way to Ghouta even as I write: but how will they determine who used whatever chemical agents were unleashed, if indeed that is what happened? The answer is: they won't. They have only to come up with 'evidence' that some sort of 'WMD' was used: in spite of rebel claims that they would retaliate' in kind in response to previous alleged chemical attacks, it will simply be assumed by Western governments and media... that the Syrian government is responsible.
"As for Washington and its allies: they aren't waiting for the 'evidence.' They already know who is guilty, and who is not. A 'senior US official' is cited by ABC as saying: 'Based on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts, and other facts, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident. We are continuing to assess the facts so the President can make an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons.'
"The War Party has the President's ear, and believe you me they aren't whispering in it - they're making their case loud and clear, in public and no doubt in private. The only dove in the vicinity of the White House is Hagel, and he's consigned to simply preparing the US military for any and all contingencies. On that front, the news isn't good: US forces are already converging on the region and moving into position."
You can read the rest without my help.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
General Assembly Goes Grand Guignol
"Once the most popular entertainment in Europe, Grand Guignol is an exciting theatre form that begat current thriller and horror films... This 'theatre of laughter and terror' explores our fascination with the macabre, playing with the violation of society's taboos. Grand Guignol is wildly physical, intensely psychological, and filled with gruesome special effects." (Grand Guignol: The theatre of terror & laughter, dellarte.com)
What founder of the United Nations Organisation would ever have dreamt that it would one day morph into a latter-day version of 19th century Paris's Theatre du Grand Guignol?
Essential reading from antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo - one who always manages to nail it:
"It's no wonder the Israeli Foreign Ministry initially held back from releasing a transcript of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly: Bibi's wackiness doesn't bear close scrutiny. Perhaps 'wacky' isn't quite the right word for his 40-minute peroration, during which he pulled out a bomb 'diagram' and a red marker to illustrate where he would draw a 'red line' defining the outer limits of Iran's nuclear program. Cartoonish is more like it. The cartoonish quality of the bomb drawing underscored the content and tone of the speech, which was the jeremiad of a radical ideologue rather than anything one would expect from a statesman: 'Today a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval. Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the right of all our citizens, men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all are equal before the law.'
"Israel, which privileges its priestly caste, has a state religion, and bases its national mythology on a promise from G-d, is as medieval as any of its neighbors. Aside from being a lie, however, this statement is interesting because it evokes the very same supremacist spirit that animates the controversial pro-Israel public relations campaign launched by the Jewish state's extremist American supporters. Posters in the public transport system, from New York to San Francisco, proclaim: 'In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.'
"No wonder the Israeli consulates in New York and San Francisco won't disavow those vile subway posters: Pamela Geller is the new public face of Israel.
"Yes, Israel protects the rights of all citizens - unless they're Palestinians who happen to own property coveted by the 'settlers', in which case it doesn't. And the key word here is citizens: of course, the Palestinians in the occupied territories are not citizens, but helots with no rights, and no protection from fanatical Jewish fundamentalists who have launched hundreds of attacks on their homes, and sought to displace them at every opportunity, with the active complicity of the Israeli government.
"The idea that Israel represents 'modernity' is rich, considering that every day Israeli society is sinking lower into the morass of religious and cultural fundamentalism, a regression that has not gone unnoticed in the West. Bibi opened his speech with biblical references, describing Jerusalem as the 'eternal capital' of Israel and declaring that 'the Jewish state will live forever.' Yet as we secularists know, nothing lives 'forever', and the idea of a city being the 'eternal' capital of anything is a metaphor, at best, at worst a dangerous delusion. If this is the 'modern' then one wonders how much it differs from the 'medieval.' But let's not linger too long over the obvious. Bibi rants on: 'Militant Islam has many branches, from the rulers of Iran with their revolutionary guards to al-Qaeda... but they're all rooted in the same soil. It's not whether this fanaticism will be defeated, but how many lives will be lost before it's defeated. Nothing could imperil my country more than arming Iran with nuclear weapons. To imagine what the world would be like with a nuclear Iran, imagine what the world would be like with a nuclear al-Qaeda. There's no difference.'
"The Israeli Prime minister may have been addressing the UN General Assembly, but he was really talking to the Americans, whose fear and loathing of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks can always be counted on to raise them to new levels of hysteria. Outside that context, however, equating the Iranians with Al Qaeda makes about as much sense as likening the late unlamented Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - and, hey wait, didn't we hear that equation made endlessly in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Yet this was not a time for subtlety from the Israeli Prime Minister - the cartoon 'bomb' ended all hope of that - but for the crudest sort of propaganda, which is, of course, war propaganda.
"Imagine if Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who addressed the UN that day minutes before Netanyahu took the stage, had said 'Militant Judaism has many branches, from the Washington offices of AIPAC to the center of Jewish power in Tel Aviv - but they're all rooted in the same soil' of intolerance? Picture him conjuring images of violent Jewish 'fanaticism' - not a hard task, given what is happening in Israel today. If he had done so, Abbas would have been denounced in every Western capital as the 21st century incarnation of Hitler.
"Netanyahu went on to cite the nonexistent 'record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons' - an odd claim, since Iran hasn't attacked a single one of its neighbors since the Battle of Thermopylae. The country did fight one war in modern times, when it was attacked by Iraq, which was being backed by the United States. However, it's necessary to remember that war propaganda has no need of facts: only emotionally-charged evocations of rage - and fear: 'Given this record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons, just imagine an Iran with nuclear weapons. Who among you would feel safe in the Middle East? Who'd be safe in Europe? Who'd be safe in America? Who'd be safe anywhere?'
"That this alleged champion of 'modernity' should base his case on fearmongering should come as no surprise: hasn't fear been the leitmotif of all the 'modern' ideologies of aggressive nationalism? Fear of the Other, of the barbarian at the gates - the 'savage' who, at the first opportunity, will tear your throat out with his bare teeth - is what keeps ideologues like Netanyahu and his American co-thinkers in business.
"Those Eye-ranians, says Bibi, aren't like the rest of us, which is why deterrence won't work. 'Iran's apocalyptic leaders' are awaiting the return of the Mahdi, a holy man, whose reappearance is supposed to occur after a devastating war: 'Militant jihadists are not secular Marxists. Militant jihadists behave very differently. There were no Soviet suicide bombers.'
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Israelis also awaiting the return of Someone Special, a Messiah who will lead them out of the wilderness and establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem as His earthly domain? Militant jihadists may not be secular Marxists - but then again, militant Zionists aren't either. I would no more trust nuclear bombs in Bibi's hands than I would in Ahmedinajad's - the difference being that the former is actually in possession of such weapons.
"Which brings us to the absurdity of this lecture by the leader of the only nuclear-armed country in the region: here is a nation which refuses even to admit it acquired nukes long ago, and which disdains the Nonproliferation Treaty, making the case for a war against the neighbor that has indeed signed the NPT and is abiding by its requirements.
"That treaty gives Tehran the right to develop nuclear power. Furthermore, there is zero evidence Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program: our own intelligence community tells us they gave that up in 2003 and show no signs of resuming it. Their own religious and political leaders have denounced the possession of of nuclear power as sinful: the Israelis, on the other hand, haven't bothered reassuring us they would never use the nukes they won't admit they have.
"In a rational world, Israel would be in the dock, answering for its unwillingness to come out of the nuclear closet and admit what the whole world knows by now. Indeed, Bibi could give us some insight into how Israelstole acquired the materials to build its formidable nuclear arsenal - since, according to recently declassified documents, he was directly involved.
"In the world in which we are living, however, in which the innocent are put on trial and the guilty sit in judgement, the situation is quite different. In that world, the leader of a tiny nation entirely dependent on US largesse takes to the UN podium to issue his marching orders to Washington. Here is my 'red line', says Bibi - daring not only the Iranians but also the Americans to cross it."
"Think of Netanyahu's UN oration as just another Romney campaign speech, in which the GOP presidential candidate says Tehran must not be allowed to get 'one turn of the screwdriver away' from joining the nuclear club. According to Netanyahu, Iran is nearly at that point today, and will have a nuclear weapon in less than a year if the US fails to act.
"This is technical nonsense, but then again the truth has nothing to do with war propaganda: to the average American, the mere possession of weapons-grade uranium means all the Iranians have to do is plug it in and hurl it, slingshot style, in the general direction of Israel. This is an impression Israeli propagandists would dearly love to inculcate in the American public, and they have the great advantage of relying on general ignorance of the technical details. Good luck explaining to Mr. Average American why it would take a good four years after they've weaponized their nuclear material for the Iranians to create a useable nuke.
"The ticking-bomb theme, which has been used to justify everything from torture to the invasion of Iraq, permeates Israeli propaganda in the US and was a central theme of Bibi's speech. His message was clear: 'the hour is getting late.' We must act without giving too much thought to the possible consequences. Don't delay, don't think, act now - before the fraud is exposed, and we discover that - as in the case of the Iraqis - those 'weapons of mass destruction' were just a figment of our easily manipulated collective imagination."
For other reviews of Netanyahu's performances, see my posts Benzion, My Father (24/9/11), The Parallel World of Benjamin Netanyahu (26/9/11), Doing the Time Warp Again (7/3/12), and Another Compelling Reason to Go to War (8/3/12).
What founder of the United Nations Organisation would ever have dreamt that it would one day morph into a latter-day version of 19th century Paris's Theatre du Grand Guignol?
Essential reading from antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo - one who always manages to nail it:
"It's no wonder the Israeli Foreign Ministry initially held back from releasing a transcript of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly: Bibi's wackiness doesn't bear close scrutiny. Perhaps 'wacky' isn't quite the right word for his 40-minute peroration, during which he pulled out a bomb 'diagram' and a red marker to illustrate where he would draw a 'red line' defining the outer limits of Iran's nuclear program. Cartoonish is more like it. The cartoonish quality of the bomb drawing underscored the content and tone of the speech, which was the jeremiad of a radical ideologue rather than anything one would expect from a statesman: 'Today a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval. Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the right of all our citizens, men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all are equal before the law.'
"Israel, which privileges its priestly caste, has a state religion, and bases its national mythology on a promise from G-d, is as medieval as any of its neighbors. Aside from being a lie, however, this statement is interesting because it evokes the very same supremacist spirit that animates the controversial pro-Israel public relations campaign launched by the Jewish state's extremist American supporters. Posters in the public transport system, from New York to San Francisco, proclaim: 'In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.'
"No wonder the Israeli consulates in New York and San Francisco won't disavow those vile subway posters: Pamela Geller is the new public face of Israel.
"Yes, Israel protects the rights of all citizens - unless they're Palestinians who happen to own property coveted by the 'settlers', in which case it doesn't. And the key word here is citizens: of course, the Palestinians in the occupied territories are not citizens, but helots with no rights, and no protection from fanatical Jewish fundamentalists who have launched hundreds of attacks on their homes, and sought to displace them at every opportunity, with the active complicity of the Israeli government.
"The idea that Israel represents 'modernity' is rich, considering that every day Israeli society is sinking lower into the morass of religious and cultural fundamentalism, a regression that has not gone unnoticed in the West. Bibi opened his speech with biblical references, describing Jerusalem as the 'eternal capital' of Israel and declaring that 'the Jewish state will live forever.' Yet as we secularists know, nothing lives 'forever', and the idea of a city being the 'eternal' capital of anything is a metaphor, at best, at worst a dangerous delusion. If this is the 'modern' then one wonders how much it differs from the 'medieval.' But let's not linger too long over the obvious. Bibi rants on: 'Militant Islam has many branches, from the rulers of Iran with their revolutionary guards to al-Qaeda... but they're all rooted in the same soil. It's not whether this fanaticism will be defeated, but how many lives will be lost before it's defeated. Nothing could imperil my country more than arming Iran with nuclear weapons. To imagine what the world would be like with a nuclear Iran, imagine what the world would be like with a nuclear al-Qaeda. There's no difference.'
"The Israeli Prime minister may have been addressing the UN General Assembly, but he was really talking to the Americans, whose fear and loathing of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks can always be counted on to raise them to new levels of hysteria. Outside that context, however, equating the Iranians with Al Qaeda makes about as much sense as likening the late unlamented Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - and, hey wait, didn't we hear that equation made endlessly in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Yet this was not a time for subtlety from the Israeli Prime Minister - the cartoon 'bomb' ended all hope of that - but for the crudest sort of propaganda, which is, of course, war propaganda.
"Imagine if Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who addressed the UN that day minutes before Netanyahu took the stage, had said 'Militant Judaism has many branches, from the Washington offices of AIPAC to the center of Jewish power in Tel Aviv - but they're all rooted in the same soil' of intolerance? Picture him conjuring images of violent Jewish 'fanaticism' - not a hard task, given what is happening in Israel today. If he had done so, Abbas would have been denounced in every Western capital as the 21st century incarnation of Hitler.
"Netanyahu went on to cite the nonexistent 'record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons' - an odd claim, since Iran hasn't attacked a single one of its neighbors since the Battle of Thermopylae. The country did fight one war in modern times, when it was attacked by Iraq, which was being backed by the United States. However, it's necessary to remember that war propaganda has no need of facts: only emotionally-charged evocations of rage - and fear: 'Given this record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons, just imagine an Iran with nuclear weapons. Who among you would feel safe in the Middle East? Who'd be safe in Europe? Who'd be safe in America? Who'd be safe anywhere?'
"That this alleged champion of 'modernity' should base his case on fearmongering should come as no surprise: hasn't fear been the leitmotif of all the 'modern' ideologies of aggressive nationalism? Fear of the Other, of the barbarian at the gates - the 'savage' who, at the first opportunity, will tear your throat out with his bare teeth - is what keeps ideologues like Netanyahu and his American co-thinkers in business.
"Those Eye-ranians, says Bibi, aren't like the rest of us, which is why deterrence won't work. 'Iran's apocalyptic leaders' are awaiting the return of the Mahdi, a holy man, whose reappearance is supposed to occur after a devastating war: 'Militant jihadists are not secular Marxists. Militant jihadists behave very differently. There were no Soviet suicide bombers.'
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Israelis also awaiting the return of Someone Special, a Messiah who will lead them out of the wilderness and establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem as His earthly domain? Militant jihadists may not be secular Marxists - but then again, militant Zionists aren't either. I would no more trust nuclear bombs in Bibi's hands than I would in Ahmedinajad's - the difference being that the former is actually in possession of such weapons.
"Which brings us to the absurdity of this lecture by the leader of the only nuclear-armed country in the region: here is a nation which refuses even to admit it acquired nukes long ago, and which disdains the Nonproliferation Treaty, making the case for a war against the neighbor that has indeed signed the NPT and is abiding by its requirements.
"That treaty gives Tehran the right to develop nuclear power. Furthermore, there is zero evidence Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program: our own intelligence community tells us they gave that up in 2003 and show no signs of resuming it. Their own religious and political leaders have denounced the possession of of nuclear power as sinful: the Israelis, on the other hand, haven't bothered reassuring us they would never use the nukes they won't admit they have.
"In a rational world, Israel would be in the dock, answering for its unwillingness to come out of the nuclear closet and admit what the whole world knows by now. Indeed, Bibi could give us some insight into how Israel
"In the world in which we are living, however, in which the innocent are put on trial and the guilty sit in judgement, the situation is quite different. In that world, the leader of a tiny nation entirely dependent on US largesse takes to the UN podium to issue his marching orders to Washington. Here is my 'red line', says Bibi - daring not only the Iranians but also the Americans to cross it."
"Think of Netanyahu's UN oration as just another Romney campaign speech, in which the GOP presidential candidate says Tehran must not be allowed to get 'one turn of the screwdriver away' from joining the nuclear club. According to Netanyahu, Iran is nearly at that point today, and will have a nuclear weapon in less than a year if the US fails to act.
"This is technical nonsense, but then again the truth has nothing to do with war propaganda: to the average American, the mere possession of weapons-grade uranium means all the Iranians have to do is plug it in and hurl it, slingshot style, in the general direction of Israel. This is an impression Israeli propagandists would dearly love to inculcate in the American public, and they have the great advantage of relying on general ignorance of the technical details. Good luck explaining to Mr. Average American why it would take a good four years after they've weaponized their nuclear material for the Iranians to create a useable nuke.
"The ticking-bomb theme, which has been used to justify everything from torture to the invasion of Iraq, permeates Israeli propaganda in the US and was a central theme of Bibi's speech. His message was clear: 'the hour is getting late.' We must act without giving too much thought to the possible consequences. Don't delay, don't think, act now - before the fraud is exposed, and we discover that - as in the case of the Iraqis - those 'weapons of mass destruction' were just a figment of our easily manipulated collective imagination."
For other reviews of Netanyahu's performances, see my posts Benzion, My Father (24/9/11), The Parallel World of Benjamin Netanyahu (26/9/11), Doing the Time Warp Again (7/3/12), and Another Compelling Reason to Go to War (8/3/12).
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Return of the Witch-Hunter
Islamophobia, unlike the proverbial shit, doesn't just happen. A lot of money and work go towards making it happen.
In his enormously insightful essay, The Return of the Witch-Finder (10/3/11), prompted by Republican (NY) congressman Steve King's current hearing into the 'Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community & that Community's Response', antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo exposes the re-emergence of a same old, same old industry dedicated exclusively to the whipping up of fear and hysteria among the ignorant and the gullible. Here's my abridged version of Raimondo's superb and timely analysis:
"During the cold war era... [n]umerous right-wing groups sprang up whose only apparent function was to catalogue and 'expose' manifestations of the Commie Menace operating in our midst... [These] professional anti-communists, many of them ex-Communists of one sort or another, created a cottage industry out of their disillusionment: they wrote books, went on lecture tours, set up a multitude of organizations, and made lucrative careers out of the cause. Their ultimate goal, to get on the government payroll, was achieved in all too many instances. The national security apparatus, which was then beginning to burgeon into its present bloated size, was primed to absorb them, with such ex-leftists as Jay Lovestone, former national secretary of the Communist Party, going to work for the CIA. The anti-Communist propaganda apparatus that sprang up in the wake of the cold war deployed platoons of embittered ex-communists and former Trotskyites and gave gainful employment to an entire generation of embittered ex-leftist intellectuals who, otherwise unemployable, would have ended their days sitting in the corner bar, drowning their memories of disillusion and betrayal in drink. Those who didn't manage to weasel their way into government jobs were taken in by right-wing think-tanks, and magazines such as National Review - whose chief editorial contributors, from the very beginning, were recruited from among this league of tattle-tales and turncoats.
"With the sudden implosion of the Soviet Empire, all these people were out of business: like many real estate agents in the wake of the housing bust, these former 'experts' in a field that no longer had much money in it had to find other work - a new bubble, and a new scam, with which to entice a fresh crop of suckers/customers. The first years of the post cold-war era were not promising, and they were indeed lean years for the witch-hunters. There was no enemy, no Satan-with-a-sword, with enough stature or menace to constitute a credible threat - and, therefore, no internal 'fifth column' to vilify, hunt down, and prosecute. What's a witch-hunter to do? The 9/11 terrorist attacks solved that problem for them quite neatly. The new Enemy: Muslims. The Fifth Column: the many Muslim organizations, and the several thousand mosques in the US, along with the entire Muslim-American population. The witch-hunt was back on, and there was more money in it than ever. An entire 'homeland security' industry grew like kudzu, fed and carefully nurtured with lucrative government contracts and the post 9/11 hysteria that gripped the nation and validated a veritable flood of federal dollars poured into projects with little or no congressional oversight. The industry is still growing by leaps and bounds, perhaps the only sector of the economy which is experiencing a boom at this point.
"Most of these corporate entities are involved with the development of various high-tech snooping devices, 'cyber-warfare', and recruiting mercenaries, but a vital and growing subset are the propaganda outfits. These often assume an air of semi-objectivity, like Steven Emerson's 'The Investigative Project on Terrorism', whose very name combines the imagery of both journalism and law enforcement. Others are openly ideological, like the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, whose founder and director, Dr Zuhdi Jasser, was Rep. Steve King's star witness at the anti-Muslim show hearings which opened on Thursday. In his testimony, Dr Jasser singled out his rivals among the various Muslim groups as little more than a jihadist fifth column... This is always the method of the Grand Inquisitors: create a fifth column within the alleged 'fifth column'... While repeating his talking points, he kept coming back to one particular point: how 'we' (ie the government) have to come up with the 'resources' (ie tax dollars) to conduct the 'war of ideas' against the Bad Guys... Give us the 'resources', give us the 'drive' and a 'platform' - and that is precisely what the King hearings aim at, aside, of course, from instilling in the public the idea that Muslims are a dangerous fifth column who may one day have to be interned and at the very least closely watched...
"As in the past, foreign influences and interests figure in the witch-hunt. Dr Jasser, besides being Rep. King's star witness, was the star of a film entitled The Third Jihad, which purports to 'prove' that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all aspects of American life, and poses a serious threat of installing an Islamic government in the United States, with shariah law as the law of the land. The film, along with another one, Obsession, was financed by the Clarion Fund, a 'charity' run by Aish HaTorah, which Nation writer Sarah Posner describes as 'one of Orthodox Judaism's most successful outreach programs'. The group, international in scope, has its headquarters in Jerusalem, where the Israeli government has awarded it 40% of the land facing the Western Wall. On one of its websites, dedicated to preventing intermarriage between Jews and people of other faiths, Aish HaTorah notes: 'As one Israeli official explained why Aish HaTorah was chosen to receive these two prestigious locations, 'Unless we get today's youth to identify with our heritage, who will make Aliyah, who will buy Israeli bonds, who will support the Federation drives? Aish HaTorah is doing the job!' The Israeli government funds Aish HaTorah's extensive 'outreach' programs, as well as its international headquarters, including its propaganda activities in the US. No doubt the extremist government now in power in Tel Aviv considers the anti-Muslim sentiment stoked by Jasser and his ideological bedfellows to be a fertile field indeed, to be harvested for all it's worth. The King hearings are a propaganda triumph for the Israeli government, and the Israelis are in the background of this movement, encouraging and even indirectly funding it, as in the case of the Aish HaTorah-Clarion Fund connection. In this way, some of the $3 billion a year we ship to Israel is being used to shape American public opinion and government policy. What with the Park 51 controversy and the recent uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric by such finger-in-the-wind opportunists as Newt Gingrich (whose film, America at Risk, also featured Dr Jasser), the witch-hunt has been gathering steam in recent days. The King hearings are the culmination of a well-planned and well-financed campaign by foreign interests to foist a ridiculous conspiracy theory on the American public - a conspiracy theory, I'm sad to say, that has resonance with all too many Americans."
In his enormously insightful essay, The Return of the Witch-Finder (10/3/11), prompted by Republican (NY) congressman Steve King's current hearing into the 'Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community & that Community's Response', antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo exposes the re-emergence of a same old, same old industry dedicated exclusively to the whipping up of fear and hysteria among the ignorant and the gullible. Here's my abridged version of Raimondo's superb and timely analysis:
"During the cold war era... [n]umerous right-wing groups sprang up whose only apparent function was to catalogue and 'expose' manifestations of the Commie Menace operating in our midst... [These] professional anti-communists, many of them ex-Communists of one sort or another, created a cottage industry out of their disillusionment: they wrote books, went on lecture tours, set up a multitude of organizations, and made lucrative careers out of the cause. Their ultimate goal, to get on the government payroll, was achieved in all too many instances. The national security apparatus, which was then beginning to burgeon into its present bloated size, was primed to absorb them, with such ex-leftists as Jay Lovestone, former national secretary of the Communist Party, going to work for the CIA. The anti-Communist propaganda apparatus that sprang up in the wake of the cold war deployed platoons of embittered ex-communists and former Trotskyites and gave gainful employment to an entire generation of embittered ex-leftist intellectuals who, otherwise unemployable, would have ended their days sitting in the corner bar, drowning their memories of disillusion and betrayal in drink. Those who didn't manage to weasel their way into government jobs were taken in by right-wing think-tanks, and magazines such as National Review - whose chief editorial contributors, from the very beginning, were recruited from among this league of tattle-tales and turncoats.
"With the sudden implosion of the Soviet Empire, all these people were out of business: like many real estate agents in the wake of the housing bust, these former 'experts' in a field that no longer had much money in it had to find other work - a new bubble, and a new scam, with which to entice a fresh crop of suckers/customers. The first years of the post cold-war era were not promising, and they were indeed lean years for the witch-hunters. There was no enemy, no Satan-with-a-sword, with enough stature or menace to constitute a credible threat - and, therefore, no internal 'fifth column' to vilify, hunt down, and prosecute. What's a witch-hunter to do? The 9/11 terrorist attacks solved that problem for them quite neatly. The new Enemy: Muslims. The Fifth Column: the many Muslim organizations, and the several thousand mosques in the US, along with the entire Muslim-American population. The witch-hunt was back on, and there was more money in it than ever. An entire 'homeland security' industry grew like kudzu, fed and carefully nurtured with lucrative government contracts and the post 9/11 hysteria that gripped the nation and validated a veritable flood of federal dollars poured into projects with little or no congressional oversight. The industry is still growing by leaps and bounds, perhaps the only sector of the economy which is experiencing a boom at this point.
"Most of these corporate entities are involved with the development of various high-tech snooping devices, 'cyber-warfare', and recruiting mercenaries, but a vital and growing subset are the propaganda outfits. These often assume an air of semi-objectivity, like Steven Emerson's 'The Investigative Project on Terrorism', whose very name combines the imagery of both journalism and law enforcement. Others are openly ideological, like the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, whose founder and director, Dr Zuhdi Jasser, was Rep. Steve King's star witness at the anti-Muslim show hearings which opened on Thursday. In his testimony, Dr Jasser singled out his rivals among the various Muslim groups as little more than a jihadist fifth column... This is always the method of the Grand Inquisitors: create a fifth column within the alleged 'fifth column'... While repeating his talking points, he kept coming back to one particular point: how 'we' (ie the government) have to come up with the 'resources' (ie tax dollars) to conduct the 'war of ideas' against the Bad Guys... Give us the 'resources', give us the 'drive' and a 'platform' - and that is precisely what the King hearings aim at, aside, of course, from instilling in the public the idea that Muslims are a dangerous fifth column who may one day have to be interned and at the very least closely watched...
"As in the past, foreign influences and interests figure in the witch-hunt. Dr Jasser, besides being Rep. King's star witness, was the star of a film entitled The Third Jihad, which purports to 'prove' that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all aspects of American life, and poses a serious threat of installing an Islamic government in the United States, with shariah law as the law of the land. The film, along with another one, Obsession, was financed by the Clarion Fund, a 'charity' run by Aish HaTorah, which Nation writer Sarah Posner describes as 'one of Orthodox Judaism's most successful outreach programs'. The group, international in scope, has its headquarters in Jerusalem, where the Israeli government has awarded it 40% of the land facing the Western Wall. On one of its websites, dedicated to preventing intermarriage between Jews and people of other faiths, Aish HaTorah notes: 'As one Israeli official explained why Aish HaTorah was chosen to receive these two prestigious locations, 'Unless we get today's youth to identify with our heritage, who will make Aliyah, who will buy Israeli bonds, who will support the Federation drives? Aish HaTorah is doing the job!' The Israeli government funds Aish HaTorah's extensive 'outreach' programs, as well as its international headquarters, including its propaganda activities in the US. No doubt the extremist government now in power in Tel Aviv considers the anti-Muslim sentiment stoked by Jasser and his ideological bedfellows to be a fertile field indeed, to be harvested for all it's worth. The King hearings are a propaganda triumph for the Israeli government, and the Israelis are in the background of this movement, encouraging and even indirectly funding it, as in the case of the Aish HaTorah-Clarion Fund connection. In this way, some of the $3 billion a year we ship to Israel is being used to shape American public opinion and government policy. What with the Park 51 controversy and the recent uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric by such finger-in-the-wind opportunists as Newt Gingrich (whose film, America at Risk, also featured Dr Jasser), the witch-hunt has been gathering steam in recent days. The King hearings are the culmination of a well-planned and well-financed campaign by foreign interests to foist a ridiculous conspiracy theory on the American public - a conspiracy theory, I'm sad to say, that has resonance with all too many Americans."
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Israel: The Ultimate Identity Fraud
Up to here with Mossad death squads and identity fraud? Sorry, there's more:
1) "ASIO is investigating at least 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens whom it suspects of using Australian cover to spy for Israel. The investigation was under way at least 6 months before the assassination in January of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh... Authorities in Dubai have revealed that 3 people suspected of involvement in the assassination were travelling on forged Australian passports, using the names of 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens. The 3 people linked to Mabhouh's death are in no way connected to the 3 being investigated by ASIO... According to 2 Australian intelligence sources who have been in contact with The Age, the 3 dual citizens under ASIO surveillance all emigrated to Israel within the past decade. Each of the men has since travelled back to Australia at different times to legally change their names and obtain new Australian passports... In each case, the men have changed their names from surnames that could be read as European-Jewish sounding names, to names more typically identified as Anglo-Australian... The new Australian passports have since been used to gain entry to a number of countries that are hostile to Israel, including Iran, Syria and Lebanon... The Age understands that the 3 Australian nationals share an involvement with a European communications company that has a subsidiary located in the Middle East." (ASIO in fresh Israel spy probe, Jason Koutsoukis/Jonathan Pearlman, The Age, 27/2/10)
2) Lebanon? Did they say Lebanon? Seems the place is fairly swarming with Israeli spooks: "Lebanon's security service says that since November 2008 it has broken up no fewer than 25 Israeli spy rings. The reported arrest this month of a colonel in Lebanese army intelligence... brings the number of those charged to 70-plus; 40 of them are in Lebanese police custody." (Not such a success, The Economist, 25/2/10)
Communications? Did they say communications? "Aside from the alleged spies, the Lebanese say they netted fancy surveillance and communications gear disguised as, among other things, Thermos flasks, canisters of motor oil and battery chargers." (ibid)
3) But surely all this is just a mere slip of the Israeli halo, and all the "lone beacon of democracy in a hostile region" has to do, as today's editorial in The Australian sagely advises, is "take Australia's concerns seriously, co-operate with investigations, acknowledge wrongdoing and ensure it is never repeated"?
OK, but haven't we been there before? Wasn't it only yesterday that The Australian reported on its front page that "Australian authorities quietly approached [on bended knee, with gaze averted?] the Israeli government in the 1990s to seek assurances that Australian passports would not be abused after it was feared Israeli agents had doctored several New Zealand passports"? (Aussies caught in Israeli spy hit, Stewart/Maley)
And wasn't Israel's reaction to our humble request reported as one of "enraged self-righteousness"? (ibid)
As for acknowledging wrongdoing, is The Australian serious? After all, as the horse's mouth (aka The Jerusalem Post) reminds us, "If there are two traits that are meant to typify the average Israeli it is the fear of being a freier [sucker] and an innate inability to apologize." (My word: Doing what comes naturally, Liat Collins, 20/2/10)
And then there's that slight matter of Mossad's 'passport factory' and its operatives. Would the editorialist want that dismantled and its crew thrown on the dole queue?
Passport factory?! Do tell:
"In the world of international terrorism, both privatized and state-sponsored, passports... are the coin of the realm. Terrorists targeting America are particularly eager to get their hot little hands on Canadian and New Zealand passports, for a number of reasons, most especially because the holders don't need visas across a wide swathe of the globe, including the US. Now... discovering how the terrorists procure travel documents provides important clues as to how they operate - and with whose complicity.
"In April [2004] I wrote about the 'passport farm' Israeli agents set up in New Zealand, in which 4 employees of Mossad... were caught trying to obtain a NZ passport in the name of a housebound paraplegic. Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara were arrested, in a much-publicized case, and jailed, while Prime Minister Helen Clark openly raged against what was undoubtedly an Israeli intelligence operation. Since then there have been a few rather interesting, albeit ominous, developments.
"It turns out that the ringleader, Ze'ev William Barkan, who fled before NZ security could nab him, was and presumably still is a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps, having served at embassies in Vienna and Brussels. He was last seen in North Korea, traveling with a Canadian passport as 'Kevin Hunter', where he turned up in Pyongyang as a 'consultant' brought on to help the North Korean government build a 'security fence' in order to keep their people in. Now that the East Germans have wound up in history's dustbin, the Israelis are the current experts in the field.
"Barkan is a man of many skills, and one of them, according to an aid worker cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, is this: 'He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports', the aid worker said. 'Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports'. Intelligence analysts in NZ believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the IDF, was trying to secure a 'clean' passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport'.
"The inner workings of Barkan's NZ operation were exposed when the fourth suspect in the case, Tony Resnick, was outed. Mr Resnick, 35, who fled the day after the arrest of Kelman and Cara, was a paramedic with the St John Ambulance in Auckland before taking a job as a healthcare lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology. He had previously worked as a paramedic in Israel, and in his capacity as a paramedic in NZ, had visited the home of the targeted paraplegic. Using Resnick's connections to wheelchair-bound and otherwise incapacitated NZealanders, Barkan's cabal targeted people who would not likely be traveling abroad, and set up a passport farm by stealing their identities. The Israelis were caught by a suspicious official, who checked their references and laid a trap. But the question that is no doubt haunting the government of NZ is how many times did they succeed before they were caught - and to what purpose was Israel culling travel documents?
"The answer to this last question is discernible if we look at Israel's record in this regard. The botched assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan caught the Israelis with their pants down on the passport issue: the assassins were outfitted with Canadian travel documents. This incident no doubt came to mind as NZ government officials contemplated the meaning and purpose of Israel's underground passport factory.
"Speaking of Canada, the story of the Mossad's NZ hijinks took a Canadian twist when that country's foreign ministry announced that it was investigating the matter of Barkan's passport. NZ's foreign minister, Phil Goff, replied: 'I have read with interest the Canadians are following up allegations he may have travelled at some point on a stolen Canadian passport. When he came to NZ my understanding was he was travelling on a US passport. Clearly there would be co-operation between police forces in different countries to try to get to the bottom of these things'.
"So there's an American twist, too. Barkan reportedly had an American accent, and said he came from Washington, DC, where his family supposedly was in the 'windows and doors' business. The Sydney Morning Herald confirms his Washington residence, and says Barkan grew up there as Zev Bruckenstein, where his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue." (Passport to terror, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 6/8/04)
But all of the above, and more, is but the tip of the iceberg. Israel is a country that has practiced identity fraud on a grand scale for decades now. After all, didn't it steal Palestine, tamper with its ethnic identity, and call it Israel? Identity fraud doesn't get much more brazen than that.
1) "ASIO is investigating at least 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens whom it suspects of using Australian cover to spy for Israel. The investigation was under way at least 6 months before the assassination in January of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh... Authorities in Dubai have revealed that 3 people suspected of involvement in the assassination were travelling on forged Australian passports, using the names of 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens. The 3 people linked to Mabhouh's death are in no way connected to the 3 being investigated by ASIO... According to 2 Australian intelligence sources who have been in contact with The Age, the 3 dual citizens under ASIO surveillance all emigrated to Israel within the past decade. Each of the men has since travelled back to Australia at different times to legally change their names and obtain new Australian passports... In each case, the men have changed their names from surnames that could be read as European-Jewish sounding names, to names more typically identified as Anglo-Australian... The new Australian passports have since been used to gain entry to a number of countries that are hostile to Israel, including Iran, Syria and Lebanon... The Age understands that the 3 Australian nationals share an involvement with a European communications company that has a subsidiary located in the Middle East." (ASIO in fresh Israel spy probe, Jason Koutsoukis/Jonathan Pearlman, The Age, 27/2/10)
2) Lebanon? Did they say Lebanon? Seems the place is fairly swarming with Israeli spooks: "Lebanon's security service says that since November 2008 it has broken up no fewer than 25 Israeli spy rings. The reported arrest this month of a colonel in Lebanese army intelligence... brings the number of those charged to 70-plus; 40 of them are in Lebanese police custody." (Not such a success, The Economist, 25/2/10)
Communications? Did they say communications? "Aside from the alleged spies, the Lebanese say they netted fancy surveillance and communications gear disguised as, among other things, Thermos flasks, canisters of motor oil and battery chargers." (ibid)
3) But surely all this is just a mere slip of the Israeli halo, and all the "lone beacon of democracy in a hostile region" has to do, as today's editorial in The Australian sagely advises, is "take Australia's concerns seriously, co-operate with investigations, acknowledge wrongdoing and ensure it is never repeated"?
OK, but haven't we been there before? Wasn't it only yesterday that The Australian reported on its front page that "Australian authorities quietly approached [on bended knee, with gaze averted?] the Israeli government in the 1990s to seek assurances that Australian passports would not be abused after it was feared Israeli agents had doctored several New Zealand passports"? (Aussies caught in Israeli spy hit, Stewart/Maley)
And wasn't Israel's reaction to our humble request reported as one of "enraged self-righteousness"? (ibid)
As for acknowledging wrongdoing, is The Australian serious? After all, as the horse's mouth (aka The Jerusalem Post) reminds us, "If there are two traits that are meant to typify the average Israeli it is the fear of being a freier [sucker] and an innate inability to apologize." (My word: Doing what comes naturally, Liat Collins, 20/2/10)
And then there's that slight matter of Mossad's 'passport factory' and its operatives. Would the editorialist want that dismantled and its crew thrown on the dole queue?
Passport factory?! Do tell:
"In the world of international terrorism, both privatized and state-sponsored, passports... are the coin of the realm. Terrorists targeting America are particularly eager to get their hot little hands on Canadian and New Zealand passports, for a number of reasons, most especially because the holders don't need visas across a wide swathe of the globe, including the US. Now... discovering how the terrorists procure travel documents provides important clues as to how they operate - and with whose complicity.
"In April [2004] I wrote about the 'passport farm' Israeli agents set up in New Zealand, in which 4 employees of Mossad... were caught trying to obtain a NZ passport in the name of a housebound paraplegic. Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara were arrested, in a much-publicized case, and jailed, while Prime Minister Helen Clark openly raged against what was undoubtedly an Israeli intelligence operation. Since then there have been a few rather interesting, albeit ominous, developments.
"It turns out that the ringleader, Ze'ev William Barkan, who fled before NZ security could nab him, was and presumably still is a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps, having served at embassies in Vienna and Brussels. He was last seen in North Korea, traveling with a Canadian passport as 'Kevin Hunter', where he turned up in Pyongyang as a 'consultant' brought on to help the North Korean government build a 'security fence' in order to keep their people in. Now that the East Germans have wound up in history's dustbin, the Israelis are the current experts in the field.
"Barkan is a man of many skills, and one of them, according to an aid worker cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, is this: 'He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports', the aid worker said. 'Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports'. Intelligence analysts in NZ believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the IDF, was trying to secure a 'clean' passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport'.
"The inner workings of Barkan's NZ operation were exposed when the fourth suspect in the case, Tony Resnick, was outed. Mr Resnick, 35, who fled the day after the arrest of Kelman and Cara, was a paramedic with the St John Ambulance in Auckland before taking a job as a healthcare lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology. He had previously worked as a paramedic in Israel, and in his capacity as a paramedic in NZ, had visited the home of the targeted paraplegic. Using Resnick's connections to wheelchair-bound and otherwise incapacitated NZealanders, Barkan's cabal targeted people who would not likely be traveling abroad, and set up a passport farm by stealing their identities. The Israelis were caught by a suspicious official, who checked their references and laid a trap. But the question that is no doubt haunting the government of NZ is how many times did they succeed before they were caught - and to what purpose was Israel culling travel documents?
"The answer to this last question is discernible if we look at Israel's record in this regard. The botched assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan caught the Israelis with their pants down on the passport issue: the assassins were outfitted with Canadian travel documents. This incident no doubt came to mind as NZ government officials contemplated the meaning and purpose of Israel's underground passport factory.
"Speaking of Canada, the story of the Mossad's NZ hijinks took a Canadian twist when that country's foreign ministry announced that it was investigating the matter of Barkan's passport. NZ's foreign minister, Phil Goff, replied: 'I have read with interest the Canadians are following up allegations he may have travelled at some point on a stolen Canadian passport. When he came to NZ my understanding was he was travelling on a US passport. Clearly there would be co-operation between police forces in different countries to try to get to the bottom of these things'.
"So there's an American twist, too. Barkan reportedly had an American accent, and said he came from Washington, DC, where his family supposedly was in the 'windows and doors' business. The Sydney Morning Herald confirms his Washington residence, and says Barkan grew up there as Zev Bruckenstein, where his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue." (Passport to terror, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 6/8/04)
But all of the above, and more, is but the tip of the iceberg. Israel is a country that has practiced identity fraud on a grand scale for decades now. After all, didn't it steal Palestine, tamper with its ethnic identity, and call it Israel? Identity fraud doesn't get much more brazen than that.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Massacres? What Massacres?
"Right now, today, Palestinians are demonstrating peacefully in the occupied territories, protesting the demolition of their homes by the Israeli authorities and government-backed 'settlers' decrying the shameful 'Wall of Separation', and demanding an end to the daily indignities visited on them by the occupiers of their land. Yet we don't see American web sites changing their colors in showy displays of narcissistic 'solidarity'. We don't see 24/7 breathless blogger coverage of events as they unfold - heck, we don't even hear about it at all. When the Israelis went in to Gaza and killed thousands, injuring thousands more, these people were nowhere to be found: or, at any rate, there was a notable lack of breathlessness in their coverage, such as it was." (Iran's Green Revolution, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 19/6/09)
Headline for John Lyons' report from Tehran in yesterday's The Australian: Students massacred in attack on uni
In the opening paragraphs we read: "Details emerged last night of a massacre of students at Tehran University by suspected members of the Basij militia as opposition supporters planned a day of mourning for slain protesters. At least 3 men and 2 women were killed in the attack on their dormitory on Sunday night."
Hold that thought: 5 killed=massacre. Got it?
Now revisit The Australian's headlines for December 2008 and January 2009 when Israel's massacres in Gaza were in full swing:-
29/12: Israel may follow strikes with ground war And in the body of the report: 270 killed.
2/1: Hamas appeals for ceasefire in Gaza (400 killed)
3/1: Nuclear fear drives Israel's hard line (425 killed)
6/1: Israeli chemical cover for Gaza assault (500 killed)
8/1: UN rejects claim on school (660 killed)
9/1: Lebanese rockets fire on Israel (700 killed)
12/1: Israelis split on do-or-die decision (850 killed)
13/1: Troops mass as Gaza endgame looms (879 killed)
14/1: Israel divided over its next move (900 killed)
15/1: Olmert dodging ceasefie meetings (1000 killed)
19/1: Hamas rockets break truce (1200 killed)
20/1: Israel begins withdrawal after truce (1300 killed)
Moral of story: In Murdoch fish wrapper, if Iranian forces murder 5 or more Iranian protestors, it's a massacre. If Israeli forces murder 1300 or more Palestinians, it ain't.
Headline for John Lyons' report from Tehran in yesterday's The Australian: Students massacred in attack on uni
In the opening paragraphs we read: "Details emerged last night of a massacre of students at Tehran University by suspected members of the Basij militia as opposition supporters planned a day of mourning for slain protesters. At least 3 men and 2 women were killed in the attack on their dormitory on Sunday night."
Hold that thought: 5 killed=massacre. Got it?
Now revisit The Australian's headlines for December 2008 and January 2009 when Israel's massacres in Gaza were in full swing:-
29/12: Israel may follow strikes with ground war And in the body of the report: 270 killed.
2/1: Hamas appeals for ceasefire in Gaza (400 killed)
3/1: Nuclear fear drives Israel's hard line (425 killed)
6/1: Israeli chemical cover for Gaza assault (500 killed)
8/1: UN rejects claim on school (660 killed)
9/1: Lebanese rockets fire on Israel (700 killed)
12/1: Israelis split on do-or-die decision (850 killed)
13/1: Troops mass as Gaza endgame looms (879 killed)
14/1: Israel divided over its next move (900 killed)
15/1: Olmert dodging ceasefie meetings (1000 killed)
19/1: Hamas rockets break truce (1200 killed)
20/1: Israel begins withdrawal after truce (1300 killed)
Moral of story: In Murdoch fish wrapper, if Iranian forces murder 5 or more Iranian protestors, it's a massacre. If Israeli forces murder 1300 or more Palestinians, it ain't.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Blowback
The Israeli ynetnews.com report of 5/3/09 read:-
"Jerusalem: Bulldozer plows into police vehicle; [Palestinian] terrorist killed. Tractor hammers into police squad car on Menachem Begin Boulevard in the capital; misses nearby bus. Two officers injured, attacker neutralized."
Hello? As Justin Raimondo once advised: "The Israelis should shut up about terrorism, look at their own bloody history, and change the name of their country to Blowback."
"Jerusalem: Bulldozer plows into police vehicle; [Palestinian] terrorist killed. Tractor hammers into police squad car on Menachem Begin Boulevard in the capital; misses nearby bus. Two officers injured, attacker neutralized."
Hello? As Justin Raimondo once advised: "The Israelis should shut up about terrorism, look at their own bloody history, and change the name of their country to Blowback."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)