Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange? 5

On Thursday 20/6/19, Phillip Adams ran a program called The Assange indictment: will the US be able to extradite Julian Assange? It was an interview with international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson who represents Assange. It is of consuming interest to all concerned, as I am, with Assange's plight. Please read it from beginning to end:

Phillip Adams: I promised that Geoffrey Robertson would be on the program tonight to talk about the plight of my friend Julian Assange, and the response to that has been quite extraordinary. A vast bombardment of emails and social media. One of the emails came from an ex-foreign minister of Australia, Bob Carr, and I want to read you the part of it that's relevant. It's a very long email: 

'I look forward to hearing your interview with Geoffrey Robertson about Assange. Up to now I've been an Assange critic. The failure to do redactions, not facing up in Sweden. But the American indictment stops one not short of capital punishment, at 175 years, and it threatens media freedom in exposing abuses, and above all, for Australians, it serves up one of our citizens into the maw of the hideous American justice system. I am meeting with his Australian lawyers next week."

PA: Now before I actually talk to Geoffrey, I just want to remind you what an extraordinary fellow he is. [Note that I've omitted Adams' lengthy tribute to Robertson for reasons of space.]

GR: Very good to be talking to you once again, Phillip.

PA: Now let's do a hypothetical. If every thing goes wrong, what's the worst case scenario for your client?

GR: Oh, he dies in an American supermax. That is what is intended by the current regime. There is no doubt... this takes us back to 2010 when he produced the initial Iraqgate revelations showing the helicopter killing and the aerial manslaughter of a couple of Reuters journalists, some children, and revealed to the world the extraordinary detail of corruption throughout the Middle East, and the misbehaviour in some cases of American troops. Now at that time the Americans convened a Grand Jury in secrecy. Now I had a few high connections with the Obama administration, and I said to them do you really want him because there are dangerous precedents here for The New York Times and newspapers around the world, and they said, in a word, we don't want him but the Pentagon does, and the Pentagon may eventually get its way. And now it's got its way. Julian is in a terrible plight. He's not well, he's banged up in prison for the foreseeable future. The danger is that he will be extradited to America, embroiled in court proceedings. He's charged with conspiring with Chelsea Manning - she got 35 years before she was pardoned by Obama at the end of his run. I don't think that Julian will be pardoned by President Trump. It is US capital punishment in a roundabout way because unless the British courts spring him on one argument or another, the Trump administration is determined to argue that the First Amendment, which famously protects American newspapers and publishers, does not apply to Australians or to non-Americans, which puts American papers in difficulty because so many of their contributors and journalists are non-Americans. But in this particular case, a privilege which is given to all American papers in the public interest, free speech is going to be denied to Julian Assange because he's an Australian.

PA: You represented him previously in a case which he lost. Let's remember that.

GR: Yes, a case we would have won, and I stayed in it because we got the court to rule that he would be tried in secret in Sweden, and I couldn't imagine the Supreme Court of Britain would allow someone to be extradited to Sweden to be tried in secret. But in a foolish, in retrospect, attempt to cosy up to the Swedes and get some release from them, he dropped that point of law and so he lost. But he's been at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for 7 years. I saw him about a week before he was thrown out and he was worried then. He knew that Mike Pence had been in Ecuador, and a much needed loan had been extended to Ecuador, and he feared he would be the collateral. And of course a week or so later he was thrown out. The behaviour was disgraceful, I have to say. They kept his private notes, his legal notes, and showed them to the Americans and the CIA before they returned them, and on every score this isn't the way you treat people you've given asylum to for 7 years. But that's now a thing of the past, and I think next February the proceedings will commence once he's served his term for bail-breaking. He got 6 months for that and he'll have to stay in prison and no doubt will not get bail while he's fighting extradition.

PA: Geoffrey, there may be prosecutorial overreach here. There are 18 charges for heaven's sake. What are the most significant ones?

GR: Well, the most significant one in terms of years in prison are the charges in the Espionage Act, which is a 1921 American law that is basically for spying, and of course for disloyal Americans. But Julian is not an American citizen so it's an inappropriate act, an attempt at an exhorbitant jurisdiction because he didn't do any of the publishing while in America. He did it outside America. But the Americans do have this, and when I was an international appeal judge I used to be irritated by the American fixation on sentences that far exceed the amount of years that the defendant has to live. They sentence people to 100 years in prison. As you say, those charges add up to 175 years, and they're quite capable as they showed in Chelsea Manning's case of having a 50 or 60 year sentence. But in effect the result will be the complete silencing of someone who was a troublemaker as far as they were concerned. But they will effectively silence him for the rest of his life and he will die in an American supermax.

PA: Another part of the email from Bob Carr raises the issue of what a [British] Labour government would do with this - curtail the extradition, even send him back here. What do we do then? Is it true the incumbent government makes a difference in this case?

GR: Oh it does, a complete difference. Actually, to some extent it is a political rather than a legal decision, and this present government [in the form of] Sajid Javid, who's a rather nasty politician, unfortunately because he's the first Muslim politician that has risen to a secretary of state level. He's already shown his teeth by being prepared to have some ISIS Britons dealt with by the death penalty, which hitherto Britain had totally set its face against, and of course he refused to take back that woman whose baby died. So he couldn't wait once the Swedish courts had dropped the case, in effect, or the Swedish prosecutors had fumbled their extradition request. He didn't wait to grant America the extradition right over Julian Assange, and so now the court battle will begin next year. But I do think it's a serious problem for freedom of speech. It doesn't matter whether you love or like or dislike Julian Assange. [Note that I've omitted Robertson's account of former free speech battles for reasons of space.] The question is he is in the process of being crushed by the mighty state, the Goliath that he acted as a David with some slingshot to show what it was up to.

PA: Nonetheless the demonisation of him has not helped. Even in Australia there are people I would have thought would be manning the barricades. Peter Greste, for example, who as you know was in an Egyptian slammer. They were not that sympathetic. The Washington Post, for heaven's sake, has just published the most appallingly aggressive attack on Assange, insisting that he's got to face the music. This poisons the whole process.

GR: I have to say that wiser voices have been heard in America. Jim Goodale, who is the real hero of the Pentagon Papers case. He was the brilliant lawyer for The New York Times. He's come out of retirement saying this is the greatest battle for freedom of speech since the Pentagon Papers, and in some respects more important. The Columbia Journalism Review has come down emphatically on Assange's side. So I think there are wiser voices, but the demonisation has been extraordinary. These proceedings in Sweden, for example, are always called rape proceedings as though there was some violent force being alleged. There's not. It's a charge which the Swedes  call 'minor rape', which is a contradiction in terms as far as we're concerned. Basically it amounts to an allegation that he had consensual sex without wearing an agreed condom. Now that's a million miles removed from our concept of rape as an offence of force and violence, but it's used against him. And the Ecuadorian claim that came straight from a black propaganda that he would smear his room with excrement is ludicrous. He is a fastidious Australian who has always shown respect in my company to the Ecuadorians, and that was a pure lie which went around the world.

PA: I have visited him in the embassy and he was, as you say, fastidious. Had to be in a tiny, claustrophobic space. One of the problems in this country is that neither side of politics have shown the slightest interest or sympathy.

GR: I think he's won some award. If you look at him objectively, he's made a lot more information available. Hardly a week goes by when you don't see sourced some WikiLeaks revelation. We know a lot more, and not all of it of course is anti- the United States. One of the ironies I find in this case is that he released the cables which were not top secret. They were secret but not classified in a way that would mean that a source or human life was in danger if they were released. They were available to 3 million Americans and what they showed was that American foreign policy, at least the CIA-sourced view of the world, was pretty accurate in exposing, or at least being aware of, the level of corruption in many countries. So he has made a lot of information available, most of it of genuine public interest, and for that he's going to be, in effect, crushed to death if the Americans get their way. I hope that they won't. I mean he's got arguments that may prevail and I think although the British have not shown themselves very unbiased so far, he comes up before some tinpot magistrate who described him as a narcissist and a coward, which Julian Assange certainly isn't. And so you've got that prejudice here. I mean, even in the literary field he eats with his fingers said one book about him, completely unaware of the Australian tradition of BBQing. But this is something all Australians should be aware of, that he is being discriminated against both as a person and an Australian.

PA:  I wanted to make the point before we've got a PM and a FM and the Opposition, none of them are speaking out. Is there anything Australia can do?

GR: Well I did have a number of meetings with Julie Bishop who I think was as sympathetic as she could be and arranged for his Australian passport to be renewed. I think there must come a point at which - I mean the man is sick. I haven't been able to visit him yet in his prison but his solicitor has said in court he's been too ill to be produced, and of course, the UN delegate who did see him issued a very stark warning about his health. So I think that is the first thing that Australia must do. The evidence is clear that he's unwell and that he's not being treated properly in prison and that is something that really the Australian government should make a protest about and an inquiry."

Do These Fools & Knaves Really Think...

... we're not wise to their tricks?

2011:

"'The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for president Assad to step aside'... As Obama issued his statement, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain joined him in calling on Assad "to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside'." (Assad must go, Obama says, Scott Wilson, The Washington Post, 18/8/11)

2019:

"A dozen Latin American governments and Canada have delivered a blistering rebuke to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, questioning the legitimacy of his second term and urging him to hand over power as the only path to restoring democracy in this crisis-wracked South American country... The US is not formally a member of the [Lima] Group but has been a vocal supporter and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participated in the meeting by video conference." (Regional powers urge Maduro to step down, Franklin Brecino, AP/The Sun-Herald, 6/1/19"

Letters? What Letters?

Netanyahu to a group of Israeli settlers in 2001: "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction."

***

Yet another Israeli-monkey-on-America's-back story:

How four US presidents, including Obama and Trump, helped protect Israel's nuclear arsenal, Adam Entous, The New Yorker, 18/6/18)

"When a delegation of senior Israeli officials visited the Trump White House on February 13, 2017, they wanted to discuss several issues with their new American counterparts. Topping the list was a secret letter concerning a subject the Israelis had promised the Americans never to discuss publicly - Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal. In a recent piece for The New Yorker, I described a tense scene in the West Wing as the Israeli delegation - which included Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer - tried to get the letter signed by President Donald Trump. By all accounts, the American Administration was eager to please the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump had promised to lavish with unprecedented support. But, at that chaotic moment, Trump's aides felt blindsided by the Israeli request. They knew nothing about the existence of any letters and were confused by the sense of urgency coming from the Israelis. The Americans had other pressing concerns - later that day, Michael Flynn, the national security adviser, would hand in his resignation letter - and they didn't appreciate feeling as though the Israelis were telling them what to do. 'This is our fuckin' house,' one of the Americans snapped.

"The White House's reaction was understandable. There had been a similar moment of surprise eight years earlier, when Barack Obama became President and received a similar request. The very existence of the letters had been a closely held secret. Only a select group of senior American officials, in three previous Administrations, knew of the letters and how Israeli leaders interpreted them as effectively an American pledge not to press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region. (American officials say the letters weren't that explicit and fell short of constituting a binding commitment.) When Trump's aides moved into the White House, they didn't find any copies of the previous letters left behind by their predecessors. The documents had been sent to the archives. The Israelis, however, had copies.

"Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six-Day War, in 1967. At that time, it had three nuclear devices, according to Avner Cohen, a nuclear historian... Israeli efforts to build a bomb at the nuclear complex in Dimona had been a source of tension with Washington for nearly a decade, But, by the fall of 1969, when Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister, met with Richard Nixon at the White House, Israel's possession of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli and the two sides reached an unwritten understanding: the Israelis would not declare, test, or threaten to use their nuclear weapons, and the Americans would not pressure the Israelis to sign a landmark international nuclear-nonproliferation treaty known as the NPT. (Israel never became a signatory, and US efforts to inspect Dimona stopped.)

"Successive Israeli governments abided by the arrangement... often referred to as Israel's 'policy of ambiguity.' A joint document describing the agreement was never prepared. Instead, each side relied on its own notes, a former official said. President Gerald Ford abided by Nixon's deal... The Israelis first started to feel as though the unwritten Meir-Nixon arrangement was no longer sufficient during the Presisidency of George H.W. Bush, when, after the first Gulf War, in 1991, world powers talked about the possibility of creating a zone in the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms.

"The first iteration of the secret letter was drafted during the Clinton Administration, as part of an agreement for Israel's participation in the 1998 Wye River negotiations with the Palestinians. In the letter, according to former officials, President Bill Clinton assured the Jewish state that no future American arms-control initiative would 'detract' from Israel's 'deterrent' capabilities, an oblique but clear reference to its nuclear arsenal. Later, Israeli officials inserted language to make clear to Washington that Israel would 'defend itself, by itself,' and that it would, therefore, not consider the American nuclear arsenal to be a substitute for Israeli nuclear arms. George W. Bush, when he became president, followed Clinton's lead, signing a similar letter, former officials told me.

"Then, in 2009, a new President, Barack Obama, took office. Almost from the start, Netanyahu was distrustful of Obama, and vice versa. 'With Obama, we were all crazy,' an Israeli official told me. That April, Obama delivered an aspirational speech in Prague, setting out 'America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.' Obama's advisers subsequently learned 'how paranoid Bibi was that Obama was going to try to take away Israel's nuclear weapons,' a former US official told me, adding, 'Of course, that was never our intent.' Obama signed an updated version of the letter in May, 2009.

"While Israeli officials interpreted the letters as an effective commitment by successive American Presidents not to pressure Israel regarding its nuclear arsenal, US officials told me that they viewed the letters as less categorical. 'It was not a blanket 'We'll never ask Israel to give up its nuclear weapons.' It was more 'We accepted the Israeli argument that they're not going to disarm under current conditions in the Middle East,' a former US official told me...

"Ahead of a nonproliferation conference in 2010, Netanyahu became concerned, once again, that Israel would come under international pressure to disarm. In response, Obama made a public statement that echoed the contents of the secret letters, without revealing their existence. 'We discussed issues that arose out of the nuclear nonproliferation conference,' Obama said, after meeting with Netanyahu on July 6, 2010. 'And I reiterated to the Prime Minister that there is no change in US policy when it comes to these issues. We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in, and the threats that are levelled against... it, that Israel has unique security requirements. It's got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that's why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security. And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests'."

What an Inspiration this Man Is!

"Barack Obama does not seem to be missing the pressures of the White House. The latest sighting of the former US president was on board a luxury yacht in French Polynesia, where his party also included his wife Michelle, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks. The group were said to have boarded the Rising Sun, a 450ft yacht owned by David Geffen, the billionaire entertainment mogul, for an island-hopping tour of an archipelago west of Tahiti... The trip was due to end at The Brando, a luxury hotel on the island of Tetiaroa once owned by Marlon Brando, where Mr Obama has spent the past three weeks working on his memoirs. An auction for the rights to two forthcoming books by Mr and Mrs Obama is said to have surpassed $US60 million, smashing all previous records for memoirs of post-White House life... The Rising Sun is the world's 11th largest yacht and is worth an estimated $US300m." (Life's plain sailing for the Obamas, Rhys Blakely, The Times/The Australian, 18/4/17)

Neocons for Trump

Here's Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen giving Trump the thumbs-up for his first 100 days in office:

"Trump did something in his first 100 days that his predecessor could not bring himself to do in his entire second term: He enforced Obama's red line against Syria's use of chemical weapons. When the Assad regime apparently used a toxic nerve agent on innocent men, women and children, Trump didn't wring his hands. He acted quickly and decisively, and in so doing restored our credibility on the world stage that Obama had squandered." (Forget the critics, Mr President. Your first 100 days have been just fine, Marc Thiessen, 24/4/17)

Note the word "apparently." This is Thiessen paying lip-service to 'allegedly'. Clearly, he doesn't want you to dwell on the implications of Trump acting on Asad's apparent use of chemical weapons. He just wants you to move right along and applaud the president for acting "quickly and decisively."

All you really need to know about Marc Thiessen is revealed in his appended bio, where he's described as "a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for president George W Bush."

Why Obama Didn't Do What Trump Has Just Done

Everybody, but everybody's convinced that Asad is responsible for what's just happened in Khan Sheikhoun, and that's because everybody, but everybody's forgotten about (or has chosen to ignore), what really happened in similar circumstances in Ghouta in 2013, and why Obama didn't go off half-cocked then as Trump has now with his cruise missile strikes on Syria's Shayrat airbase.

As veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh explained in his April 2014 essay, The Red Line & the Rat Line:

"In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August [2013], after the sarin gas attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the 'red line' he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons. Then with less than 2 days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed... and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad's offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.

"Obama's change of mind had its origins in Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn't match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army's chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn't hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon. The joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria's infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

"For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was known to be supporting the Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. 'We know there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin gas attack inside Syria - and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat'." (lrb.co.uk)

See also my 4/8/14 post About That Gas Attack in Syria... (Just click on the Seymour Hersh label below.)

Lest We Forgot...

"Bill & Hillary Clinton & Obama until LAST WEEK murdered a million Muslims. Trump imposed a travel ban. And HE is the No 1 villain?" (George Galloway tweet, 30/1/17)

Obomber: Image & Reality

The image:

"Against a backdrop of stars and stripes and presidential seal flags, Obama stood at the podium at the White House for the very last time. Over eight years, at this spot, he has addressed the nation through highs and lows, sometimes choking with emotion when responding to incidents of gun violence." (Barack Obama's final press conference pep talk: 'I think we're going to be OK', theguardian.com,

The reality:

"As President Obama leaves office, much of his foreign policy record remains shrouded in the symbolism that has been the hallmark of his presidency. The persistence of Obama's image as a reluctant war-maker and a Nobel Peace Prize winner has allowed Donald Trump and his cabinet nominees to claim that Obama has underfunded the military and been less than aggressive in his use of US military might. Nothing could be further from the truth, and their claims are clearly designed only to justify even more extravagant military spending and more aggressive threats and uses of force than those perpetrated under Mr Obama's 'disguised, quiet, media-free' war policy.

"The reality is that Obama has increased US military spending beyond the post-World War II record set by President George W. Bush. Now that Obama has signed the military budget for FY2017, the final record is that Obama has spent an average of $653.6 billion per year, outstripping Bush by an average of $18.7 billion per year (in 2016 dollars). In historical terms, after adjusting for inflation, Obama's military spending has been 56% higher than Clinton's, 16% higher than Reagan's, and 42% more than the US Cold War average, when it was justified by military competition with a real peer competitor in the Soviet Union. By contrast, Russia now spends one-tenth of what we are pouring into military forces, weapon-building and war.

"What all this money has paid for is the polar opposite of what most of Obama's supporters thought they were voting for in 2008. Behind the iconic image of a hip, sophisticated celebrity-in-chief with strong roots in modern urban culture, lies a calculated contrast between image and reality that has stretched our country's neoliberal experiment in 'managed democracy' farther than ever before and set us up for the previously unthinkable 'post-truth' presidency of Donald Trump.

"Obama's doctrine of covert and proxy war was modeled on the Phoenix Program in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and Ronald Reagan's proxy wars in Central America in the 1980s. It involved a massive expansion of US special operations forces, now deployed to 138 different countries, compared with only 60 when Obama took office. As senior military officers told the Washington Post in June 2010, the Obama administration allowed, 'things that the previous administration did not,' and, They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.' Whenever possible, US forces have recruited and trained proxy forces to do the actual fighting and dying, from the Iraqi government's Shiite death squads to Al Qaeda splinter groups in Libya and Syria (supporting 'regime change' projects in those countries) to mercenaries serving Arab monarchies and seemingly endless cannon fodder for the war in Afghanistan.

"Obama's ten-fold expansion of drone strikes further reduced US casualties relative to numbers of foreigners killed. This fostered an illusion of peace and normality for Americans in the homeland even as the death toll inflicted by America's post-9/11 wars almost certainly passed the two million mark. The targets of these covert and proxy wars are not just guerrilla fighters or 'terrorists' but also the 'infrastructure' or 'civilian support mechanism' that supports guerrillas with food and supplies, and the entire shadow government and civil society in areas that resist domination. As a US officer in Iraq explained to Newsweek in 2005, 'The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.' [...]

"Obama's failure was the result of his deference to generals, admirals, the CIA and hawkish advisers like secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and of his blind faith in US military power. But war was never a legitimate or effective response to terrorism. The misuse of military force has only spread violence and chaos across the Muslim world and spawned an explosive mix of political disintegration, rule by militias and warlords, a dizzying proliferation of armed groups with different interests and loyalties and, ultimately, more blowback for the West. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, Qatar and other 'allies' have been only too eager to exploit and redirect our aggression against their own enemies: Iran, Syria, Libya; and different ethnic groups, minorities and political movements in what was, for centuries, a diverse, tolerant region of the world. The US has become a blind giant stumbling through a thick forest of shadows and unseen dangers, striking out with its devastating war machine at the instigation of self-serving allies and the same dark forces in its own 'intelligence' bureaucracy who have stirred up trouble, staged coups and unleashed war in country after country for 70 years. The only consistent beneficiary in all this death, destruction and chaos is the 'military industrial complex' that President Eisenhower warned us against in his farewell address in 1961.

"In 2012, I researched and wrote about how General Dynamics CEO Lester Crown and his Chicago family backed and bankrolled the political career of Barack Obama. As manufacturers of Virginia class submarines, Arleigh Burke and Zumwalt destroyers and littoral combat ships (all programs saved, revived or expanded by Obama) as well as other types of munitions, the Crown family's patronage of Barack Obama has proven to be a profitable investment, from the violence and chaos in the Muslim world to the New Cold War with Russia to the 'pivot' to the South China Sea. Now Mr Trump has nominated General Dynamics board member, General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis as Secretary of Defense, despite his responsibility for illegal rules of engagement and systematic war crimes in Iraq, an obvious conflict of interest with the millions he has earned at General Dynamics and clear laws that require civilian control of the military.

"When will we ever learn to tell the difference between corrupt warmongers like Obama and Mattis and progressive leaders who will let us live in peace with our neighbors around the world, even at the expense of General Dynamics' profits?" (Obama's bombing legacy, Nicolas J.S. Davies, antiwar.com, 18/1/17)

John Kerry & the Perils of Permissive Parenting

Outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry described his 28 December speech, Remarks on Middle East Peace, as "candid thoughts."

Frankly, his speech reads more like the exasperated plea of a permissive parent whose son has gone off the rails. For the rest of the planet (with the exception of Australia), of course, the brat is more Frankenstein monster than juvenile delinquent.

Kerry's speech betrays not a hint of self-awareness. There is no acceptance of responsibility for Obama's role in the creation of this monster; no acknowledgment that just about every previous US president since Truman, by indulging Israel's every wish and whim, and turning the proverbial blind eye again and again, has contributed to its creation. There is no trace whatever of a mea culpa, only further evidence of a sick and dysfunctional relationship that merely serves to discredit the US as a serious nation in the eyes of the world:

- "President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security, and that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East."

- "Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect."

- "This friend has done more to support Israel than any other country, this friend has blocked countless efforts to delegitimise Israel..."

- "This Administration has been Israel's greatest friend and supporter, with an absolutely unwavering commitment to advancing Israel's security and protecting its legitimacy."

- "Time and again we have demonstrated that we have Israel's back."

- "More than one half of a our entire global Military Financing goes to Israel."

- "This fall, we concluded an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time..."

- "This commitment to Israel's security is actually very personal for me. On my first trip to Israel as a young senator in 1986, I was captivated by a special country, one that I immediately admired and soon grew to love."

- "We were the only administration since 1967 that had not allowed any resolution to pass that Israel opposed."

- "We strongly reject the notion that somehow the United States was the driving force behind this resolution."

- "A hundred and twenty years ago, the First Zionist Congress was convened in Basel by a group of Jewish visionaries..."

Seriously now, where is the spine, the brain and the dignity in such statements? By enabling Israeli genocide and apartheid in Palestine, from Truman on, the United States has not only betrayed the long-suffering Palestinians, but created one hell of a rod for its own back.

As US international law professor Francis A. Boyle put it in 2003:

"All who support Palestinian self-determination must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States is an 'honest broker' in the Middle East, let alone elsewhere. The United States government has never been an 'honest broker' since from well before the very outset of the Middle East peace negotiations in 1991. Rather, it has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians as well as against the other Arab States. As I can attest from personal experience, the Palestinian negotiators have always been subjected to continual bullying, threats, harassment, intimidation, bribery, lies, and outright deceptions perpetrated by the United States working in conjunction with Israel. It cannot be emphasized too strongly: just as President Clinton ordered Indonesia out of East Timor, President Bush Jr. can order Israel out of Palestine tomorrow. Anything less than that is just a diplomatic dog-and-pony show maliciously orchestrated by the United States government on behalf of Israel - unless the US seriously wishes to concede that its hands are tied in foreign policy in the Middle East by the illegal and aggressive interests of another state. We must settle for nothing less than that US presidential order to Israel." (Palestine, Palestinians & International Law, p 158)

Greg Sheridan: Still Channeling Auntie Poppy After All These Years

The human mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Be that as it may, one such mind, that of Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian, works (if that is the appropriate word), not so much in mysterious as in downright peculiar ways. An explanation for this may be found in his formative years. In the beginning were the words, and the words were, alas, Auntie Poppy's:

"Auntie Poppy always told me I must never forget that the Jews were God's chosen people... Dad and Auntie Poppy were always pro-Jewish and pro-Israel." When We Were Young & Foolish: A Memoir of My Misguided Youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & Other Reprobates (2015)*

As though brought down from Mt Sinai, engraved in stone, there was no looking back for the nerdy Catholic nipper. Hence:

"Barack Obama's presidency is ending with a fine contempt for democracy as he exhibits every trait of hubris, arrogance and disregard for the messy business of elections and democratic mandates in his efforts to tie the hands of his successor on contentious policy that Obama was never willing to take to the electorate, or put before congress. On two contentious issues - Israeli settlements and offshore drilling in the Arctic - Obama is taking actions directly against the spirit and practice of democracy by using bureaucratic and legal manoeuvres  to try to put policy decisions beyond democratic revision. Obama chose to wait until after the presidential elections to take these steps.

"Obama, with Hillary Clinton, was always the best advertisement for Donald Trump, even more so now, for Obama, at the extreme end of lame duckery, demonstrates a peerless elite disregard for democratic process and the messy and inconvenient business of electoral results. It is Obama, not Trump, who pioneered American weakness and retreat from leadership.

"Obama has been kind to America's enemies, but he is a dangerous friend. America's allies, in this case Israel, have been his chief victims. By abstaining, Obama allowed a resolution to go through the Security Council that the US had always previously vetoed. It is a non-sided and expansively worded condemnation of all Israeli settlements outside the lines of the state of Israel as it existed before the 1967 war. On its face, the resolution makes no sense as the land the resolution chiefly concerns was never officially Palestinian land but, before 1967, belonged to Jordan. Israel has always accepted that the final status of this land must be worked out in negotiations and has made at least three serious offers to give more than 90% of the land in question to a new Palestinian state. In exchange, the Palestinian leadership must accept that this is an end of claims, must recognise the legitimacy of Israel, and must commit to its future security. The Palestinians have not been able to meet these conditions.

"No one who lives in the real world thinks the Israel-Palestine dispute can be solved in today's environment of a Middle East in flames. Let's be quite clear about this. Obama, with extreme irresponsibility, is licensing a new wave of global anti-Semitism... " (Obama delivers last-minute hit to democracy, The Australian, 27/12/16)

[*See my 3/8/15 post Greg Sheridan: The Making of a Gentile Zionist.]

Netanyahu Threatens War on New Zealand

Clearly, Netanyahu's mask is slipping. As you read the following detailed Israeli account of what went on behind the scenes in the lead up to last Friday's UNSC vote on the illegality of Israel's settlement project in the West Bank, bear in mind:

a) that it is only because of the abject failure of Western governments to stand up to Israel's criminality and bullying decades ago that has led to this;

b) that it was only in September that Obama approved the largest aid package in history for Israel, an unconditional $38 billion over the next 10 years; and

c) that the Turnbull government has issued an invitation for the man who has declared war on NZ to visit these shores early in 2017.

Britain pulled the strings and Netanyahu warned New Zealand it was declaring war: new details on Israel's battle against the UN vote, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 28/12/16:

"Last Friday, a few hours before the UN Security Council vote on the settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned New Zealand's foreign minister, Murray McCully. New Zealand, together with Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela, was leading a move to resubmit for a vote the resolution from which Egypt had backed down the day before. A few hours earlier, a senior official in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem called New Zealand's ambassador to Israel, Jonathan Curr, and warned that if New Zealand's move came to a vote, Israel might close its embassy in Wellington in protest. Ambassador Curr noted this and reported it to his government, but when dawn came in New York Israel understood that things were still moving ahead. Netanyahu's phone call to McCully was almost his last attempt to prevent the vote, or at least postpone it and buy a little time. Western diplomats say the conversation was harsh and very tense and Netanyahu let loose with sharp threats, perhaps unprecedented in relations between Israel and another Western country. 'This is a scandalous decision. I'm asking that you not support it and not promote it,' Netanyahu told McCully, according to the Western diplomats, who asked to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of the matter. 'If you continue to promote this resolution from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences. We'll recall our ambassador to Jerusalem.' McCully refused to back down from the vote. 'This resolution conforms to our policy and we will move it forward,' he told Netanyahu.

"Just one month earlier, when McCully visited Israel and met with Netanyahu, he found the latter an entirely different man. Netanyahu was pleasant, friendly and overflowing with warmth. He showed McCully the famous PowerPoint presentation that he had shown in a round of background briefings for the media last summer. Laser pointer in hand, Netanyahu told McCully that Israel was expanding its foreign relations, breaking through in the region and making friends in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Western diplomats said that McCully, who over the past two years had been consistently pushing the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the UN Security Council, spoke with Netanyahu about the resolution his country wanted to promote. It was a much softer and more moderate version than the motion that passed last Friday. New Zealand's resolution did talk about freezing construction in the settlements, but also about freezing Palestinian steps in the UN and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and called for direct negotiations without preconditions. Netanyahu rejected this outright. If it were up to him, the Palestinian issue would not have come up in the meeting at all. His message to McCully was similar to what he said endlessly in public over the past few weeks. The world doesn't care too much about the Palestinian issue. The automatic majority against Israel in the UN is about to become a thing of the past. 'The vote Friday proved differently and showed that Netanyahu's assessment was wrong,' a Western diplomat said.

"Discussions with Western and Israel diplomats reveal many interesting details about some of what happened behind the scenes at UN headquarters in New York between Thursday afternoon, when Egypt announced it was backing down from the resolution on the settlements, and Friday morning, when New Zealand, Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela announced that they would continue to push for a vote. From the moment Egypt backed down on Thursday, the Western and Israeli diplomats say, New Zealand, Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela were pressured to move ahead anyway. The Palestinians were the first to exert pressure, but they were joined by some of the Gulf States and Britain. The Western diplomats said that the British encouraged New Zealand to continue pushing for a vote even without Egyptian support. The British had become active regarding the resolution a few days earlier. The Israeli diplomats say that from information that reached the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, British legal figures and diplomats had been working directly with the Palestinians on the wording of the resolution even before it was distributed by Egypt the first time on Wednesday evening. According to the Israeli diplomats, the British did this secretly and without informing Israel. The suspicion in Jerusalem is that the British had been working during all those days for the Americans to make sure the resolution was to US President Barack Obama's liking, but without the need to intervene directly in formulating it."

From Neoliberalism to Neofascism

There is much truth in this post-election statement by Cornel West, US philosopher, academic, social activist, author, public intellectual and member of the Democratic Socialists of America:

"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishment in the Democratic and Republican parties - both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians. The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order - a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.

"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens - out of anger and anguish - rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process. This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.

"What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and were obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse - and to protect precious rights and liberties.

"The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad. Rightwing attacks on Obama - and trump-inspired racist hatred of him - have made it nearly impossible to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering - be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile, poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence. In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat trump to avert this neofascist outcome!

"In this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity, courage, empathy and a mature sense of history - even as it seems our democracy is slipping away. We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy - such as Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to expanding US military presence. As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching, Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do. For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe." (Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here, theguardian.com, 17/11/16)

Bushama's Legacy

Sit down before you read this:

"Israel's Channel 2 has today reported that Israeli officials have accepted the most recent US military aid package, which will see them receiving some $38 billion over the next decade." (Report: US, Israel agree on $38 billion military aid deal, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 12/9/16)

"Since taking office in January 2009, the Obama administration has offered over $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in 42 separate deals, more than any US administration in the history of the US-Saudi relationship." (US arms transfers to Saudi Arabia & the war in Yemen, William D. Hartung, securityassistance.org, 9/6/16)

Obama's Legacy

While we may find the slapstick routines of Trump and Clinton diverting, it's always the Zionist Grand Guignol behind the scenes that we should be focusing on. For example:

"While her speech today at the American Jewish Committee Global Forum included some vague criticism of ongoing Israeli settlement expansion, as usual that will have no impact on US policy, as National Security Adviser Susan Rice centred the speech on pledges of a record military aid package being agreed to soon. The aid package, which Rice reiterated would be the 'single largest military assistance package - with any country - in American history,' is expected to be between $37.5 and $40 billion over the next decade, which Rice said proved increasing aid to Israel isn't a partisan issue in the US, but 'an enduring American interest.' The US had initially offered a $40 billion deal which required the Israeli government to promise not to lobby the US Congress for more money during the 10-year plan, but this was rejected by Netanyahu." (Susan Rice assures Israel of 'largest military aid package in American history', Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 7/6/16)

The-single-largest-military-assistance-package-in-American-history...

And all on Obama's watch.

Obama's World

From Obama's ratings for international leaders revealed (Ben Hoyle, The Australian, 30/3/16)

"One administration official told me [Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, April], 'Our allies all give us headaches, except for Australia. You can always count on Australia'."

Australia's a lapdog.

"Mr Obama said... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a source of frustration and a 'fountain of condescension' and is 'the world leader who consistently frustrated Obama the most'."

Israel's a right pain in the arse.

Sanders Does AIPAC

The circus clowning of a Clinton or a Trump is not the nadir of a US presidential campaign. Kissing Israel's ring at the court of King AIPAC is.

This was Obama in 2008:

"I first became familiar with the story of Israel when I was 11 years old. I learned of the long journey and steady determination of the Jewish people to preserve their identity through faith, family and culture. Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland in the face of impossible odds... Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel, threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security."

This is Bernie Sanders now:

"I was invited along with other presidential candidates to be at the AIPAC conference in Washington, but obviously I could not make it because we are here. The issues that AIPAC are dealing with are very important issues and I wanted to give the same speech here as I would have given if I were at that conference. Let me begin by saying that I am probably the only candidate for president who has personal ties with Israel. I spent a number of months there when I was a young man on a kibbutz, so I know a little bit about Israel. Clearly the United States and Israel are united by historical ties. We are united by culture. We are united by our values, including a deep commitment to democratic principles, civil rights, and the rule of law." (Sanders outlines Middle East policy, berniesanders.com, 21/3/16)

No need, as you can see, to bother with the rest of his speech. Same old, same old.

As Mearsheimer & Walt noted almost ten years ago:

"America is about to enter a presidential election year. Although the outcome is of course impossible to predict at this stage, certain features of the campaign are easy to foresee. The candidates will inevitably differ on various domestic issues - health care, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, education, immigration - and spirited debates are certain to erupt on a host of foreign policy questions as well... Yet on one subject, we can be equally confident that the candidates will speak with one voice. In 2008, as in previous election years, serious candidates for the highest office in the land will go to considerable lengths to express their deep personal commitment to one foreign country - Israel - as well as their determination to maintain unyielding US support for the Jewish state. Each candidate will emphasize that he or she fully appreciates the multitude of threats facing Israel and make it clear that, if elected, the United States will remain firmly committed to defending Israel's interests under any and all circumstances." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007)

'A Stinging Defeat' for AIPAC

Netanyahu's US 5th column, AIPAC, bites the dust:

"Officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee knew the odds were against them in the fight to block President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran from surviving a congressional vote. But the influential pro-Israel group threw itself into a nearly $30 million advertising and lobbying effort to kill the accord anyway. On Thursday, the committee, known as Aipac, was handed a stinging defeat. After Mr Obama mustered enough Democratic backing in the Senate to halt a vote on a resolution of disapproval against the deal, a group known for its political clout saw its power and reputation in Washington diminished. 'They failed - they couldn't even get a vote,' said Clifford Kupchan, an Iran expert and the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, who noted that Aipac had gone 'all in' and tried everything to stop the deal. 'It's among the biggest setbacks for Aipac in recent memory.'...

But watch this space:

"Aipac now faces a debate within its ranks about how to respond to the defeat, whether by exacting a political price from lawmakers - all of them Democrats - who defied its wishes and supported the Iran deal, or moving swiftly to mend fences with lawmakers and White House officials angered by the group's efforts to kill the deal... 'I think you may see donors withholding or not wanting to write a check to people because they feel betrayed... said Josh Block, the president of the Israel Project, a pro-Israel public relations group." (Influential pro-Israel group suffers stinging political defeat, Julie Hirschfeld, nytimes.com. 10/9/15)

For the background see my posts: Israeli Desires vs American Interests (17/8/15); Made in Israel: America's Next War 1& 2 (18-19/8/15); Zionzilla vs Uncle Sam: An Update (4/9/15)

Zionzilla vs Uncle Sam: An Update

Iran Deal update from Philip Weiss (See my posts Israeli Desires vs American Interests (17/8/15) & Made in Israel: America's Next War 1&2 (18-19/8/15)):

"You've read it already, but we had to jump on the bandwagon. Today's news that [Senator] Barbara Mikulski [Dem] supports the Iran Deal has put President Obama over the top. Hurray. He has defeated Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Netanyahu's lobby to win the most important foreign policy shift of his administration. And achieve the biggest setback to the lobby's power in a generation. Now it's all about getting to closure: 41 votes, so that the Dems can filibuster the anti-agreement vote." ('Turning point' - Obama defeats Netanyahu & 'destroyers of hope' on Iran Deal!, mondoweiss.net 2/9/15)

So far so good, but the power of Israel over American politicians is still painfully obvious. Just look at Secretary of State, John Kerry's guarded reference to the above:

"... history may judge it as a turning point, a moment when the builders of stability seized the initiative from the destroyers of hope."

In translation: History may judge it as a moment when the US got Israel and its lobby (aka "the destroyers of hope") off its back.

But for how long?

Today's battle may be going Obama's way, but doing something about the big-spending Israel lobby's financial hold over US politicians will require an even bigger battle (war?), as the following grovel by the aforementioned Ms Mikulski indicates:

"For all my time in both the House and the Senate, I have been an unabashed and unwavering supporter of Israel. I have persistently supported the sanctions that brought Iran to the table. I have been insistent on foreign aid and military assistance to Israel that maintains its qualitative military edge on missile defense. With the horrors of the Holocaust in mind, I have been deeply committed to the need for a Jewish homeland, the State of Israel, and its inherent ability to defend itself. And for the United States to be an unwavering partner in Israel's defense. I have been and always will be committed to those principles."

IOW, she hasn't given a moment's thought to what the hell Israel is really all about, and has, therefore, helped ensure that "the destroyers of hope" have, for decades, effectively held the whip hand when it comes to US Middle East policy making.

And why is this?

Is it because she's stoked on the Old Testament and can't differentiate between Israelites and Israelis?

Is it because she once read Leon Uris' Exodus and never recovered?

Or is it because between 4/1/09 and 3/31/15 she received, as a politician, US$132,175 in pro-Israel (monetary & non-monetary) contributions. (See maplight.org)

As Mearsheimer & Walt have pointed out:

"The obvious way to reduce the lobby's influence... is campaign finance reform. Public financing of all elections would seriously weaken the link between the lobby and elected officials and make it easier for the latter to pressure Israel (or simply withdraw US support) when doing so would be in America's interest." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007, p 349)

Watch this space...

Made in Israel: America's Next War - Part 2

Continued from the previous post...

Israel's Proxies and the Obama-Iran Nuclear Accord

"All the major US spy agencies, including the CIA, long ago concluded that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear program has been proven to be limited to legal, internationally-sanctioned, peaceful civilian use. When the US intelligence establishment went 'off-script' and cleared Iran of a nuclear weapons program, Israel responded by brazenly assassinating five Iranian scientists and engineers, leaking faked evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and directing its US proxies to push the US toward greater economic sanctions. They escalated their media campaign, demonizing Iran, pushing for an economic and military blockade of Iran using the US naval forces in the Persian Gulf and its military bases in adjoining countries. Israeli officials want yet another US war for Israel along the lines of the Iraq invasion.

"With the recent change in the Iranian government leadership via democratic elections there have been serious serious expressions of greater flexibility with regard to inspections of its nuclear programs and facilities. At the same time, Washington has been confronted with multiple, escalating insurgent wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. This provides the context for President Obama's 'pivot' toward negotiations and diplomacy to secure an agreement with Iran and away from military confrontation.

"This has infuriated the Netanyahu regime. Its government leaders and agents met with the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, leading Zionist Washington insiders like Dennis Ross, super-rich Zionist billionaires, and multiple delegations of notables, and told them to launch an all-out campaign to sabotage the Iran-US-England-France-Russia-China and Germany ('P5+1') nuclear agreement.

"The entire Zionist political apparatus immediately organized a multi-pronged, multi-million dollar campaign blitz to undermine the US President. The American (sic) Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mobilized hundreds of its full-time functionaries, invading the US Congress with offers of all- expenses-paid junkets to Israel, political threats, campaign 'donation' enticements, and outright blackmail.

"Influential US Zionist Congress people joined the onslaught with their 'leader', the senator from Tel Aviv, Charles Schumer, accompanied by his fellow Zionist one-hundred percenters. Congress people like Steve Israel, Ted Deutsch, Eliot Engel and Nita Lowery. They have openly chosen to follow the dictates of the Israeli prime minister against their fellow Democrat, US President Obama. Schumer, who frequently boasts that his name derives from 'shomer Yisrael' (Israel's Guardian), flaunts his 'role in Washington' to serve Israel's interest. The unannounced (or undenounced) 'elephant in the room' is their primary loyalty to Israel over the US. The Democratic Congressional Zionists have joined hands with the Republican war-mongers - both in tow to militarists, Zionist billionaires and media moguls. The 52 Organizations brazenly announced a $40 million budget to fund an Israeli front group, 'Citizens for a Nuclear-Free Iran', to undermine President Obama's (and other members of the P5+1) push for diplomacy.

"Netanyahu's 'megaphones' in the US mass media spread his message in their daily reports and editorial pages. The Zionist power configuration ran roughshod over dissident Jewish voters and Congress people who dared to support Obama's Iran agreement - an agreement which has majority support of the war-weary US public and support from US scientists and Nobel Prize recipients.

"President Obama has finally counterattacked this campaign to undermine the agreement, calling attention to the fact that 'the same people who led us into the Iraq war are pushing us into war with Iran'. The President discreetly omitted identifying the Israeli links of 'the same people'.

"Obama understands that the alternative to the peace accord opposed by Israel and the Zionist-led US Congress members will be a devastating regional war, costing trillions of dollars in losses to the US economy, thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers - not to speak of millions of Iranian casualties - and an environmental holocaust! While the Zionist power configuration saturates the airwaves with its unending lies and fear-mongering, each and every major city and community Jewish Confederation have sent their activists to plant stories and twist arms to sabotage the agreement.

"While many US intellectuals, liberals, progressives, and leftists support the US-Iran agreement (see the Scientists' Letter to Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal, 8/8/15, with 29 top scholars and Nobel laureates supporting diplomacy), few would dare to identify and attack Israel's US proxies as they promote Tel Aviv's agenda pushing the US to war with Iran. A brief glance through the sectarian left press, for example, The Socialist Register, New Politics, New Left Review, finds no discussion of the powerful, well-financed, highly organized, elite-driven Israeli proxies and their role in determining US wars in the Middle East, and more specifically the war agenda toward Iran.

Conclusion

"The success or failure of the US-Iran nuclear agreement will have momentous, world-historic consequences that go far beyond the middle East. Obama is absolutely right to pose the question as one between a diplomatic accord or a large-scale, long-term devastating war. But war is what Israel, its leaders, its majority and its opposition parties are demanding and what its US proxies are pursuing.

"The basic question for all Americans is whether we will act as an independent, sovereign country pursuing peace through diplomacy, as we currently see unfolding with Iran and Cuba, or a submissive military instrument, directed by Israel's proxies, hell-bent on destroying America for Israel." (petras.lahaine.org)

Israeli Desires vs American Interests

The most bizarre phenomenon in the annals of political science has to be the spectacle of the elected representatives of 'the world's greatest democracy' consistently choosing Israeli desires over American interests.

Next month's congressional vote on Obama's Iran nuclear agreement will pit an Israel lobby-funded and -manipulated US Congress against America's president. The outcome of the vote will determine just who is the most powerful political leader in the US today, its democratically-elected president, Barack Obama, or Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.

Read on:

Congress' Test of Allegiance: US or Israel?

by John V. Whitbeck

"Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has instructed the US Congress to reject an international agreement constraining Iran's nuclear program and to humiliate the sitting US president, thus testing where the primary allegiance of most members of Congress lies, with the US or Israel.

"The choice facing members of the US Congress in September's 'disapproval' votes could scarcely be clearer and has little to do with the merits of the international agreement reached on July 14 with respect to Iran's nuclear program...

"Since this... agreement is obviously good news for the world, the UN Security Council has unanimously approved it and only one of the UN's 193 member states, Israel, is currently opposed to it.

"The choice before members of Congress is thus a clear and simple one: Do they owe their primary allegiance and loyalty to the United States of America or to Israel? 

"The great majority of members of Congress have traditionally seen less personal career risk in favoring Israeli desires over American interests than in favoring American interests over Israeli desires. There has been good empirical evidence to support this self-serving calculation. Several prominent and patriotic American politicians have lost their reelection bids as a result of the perception that they put American residents ahead of Israeli desires, and it has become a truism in American politics that 'no one has ever lost an election for being too pro-Israel'.

"However, the choice facing members of Congress has never been so clear-cut and consequential as in the imminent 'disapproval' votes on the Iran nuclear agreement.

"At first glance, it appeared that President Obama had outsmarted the Republican Congressional leadership by getting them to agree that approval of American participation in any Iran nuclear agreement would not require an inconceivable two-thirds majority of the Senate but, rather, only a post-veto one-third minority approval in one of the two houses of Congress.

"However, particularly since the influential Democratic Senator from New York Chuck Schumer, poised to become the next Democratic leader in the Senate, has confirmed his personal allegiance to Israel and consequent intention to vote for 'disapproval', it is by no means certain that even one third of one house of Congress will choose the United States over Israel.

"What if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does defeat President Barack Obama in the American Congress? How might Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry react to a defeat more crushing and humiliating than any defeat ever suffered by any American president and secretary of state?" (12/8/15)

You can read the rest of Whitbeck's analysis at consortiumnews.com