An example of the obscenity which is Australia's treatment of asylum seekers:
"Sumathi Rahavan never predicted the Kafkaesque situation that awaited her young family when she boarded the Australian Customs boat, Oceanic Viking, last year. The [Tamil] Sri Lankan has given birth as an immigration detainee, been branded a national security risk by [the] Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and now faces 24-hour surveillance with 3 guards watching over her family, which is being held in detention indefinitely. Her husband, Yogachandran Rahavan, [is] also declared a national security threat by the spy agency... The saga began when Mrs Rahavan decided to join her husband in Australia, bundling their daughter Atputha, 6, and son Abinayan, 3, on to what was to become the most politically charged boatload of asylum seekers under the Rudd government. In its haste to end a diplomatic stand-off with Indonesia, the Australian government offered all refugees on Oceanic Viking a special resettlement deal. As refugees, the government cannot return the Rahavans to possible danger in Sri Lanka. But because ASIO assesses them a security risk, the family cannot be settled in Australia... The reasons ASIO has for its suspicions may never be revealed. The agency's decisions in immigration matters are not reviewable. Mr Rahavan adamantly denied he was involved with the Tamil Tigers separatist group and said he did not know why he could be considered a risk... At Villawood [Detention Centre], the Rahavans are watched 24 hours a day. Emails are blocked and phone calls must go through immigration staff who type in 'approved' numbers and confirm who is on the line before passing the phone over. 'There's all the time - 24/7 - two officers inside the house', Mr Rahavan said. 'There is a Serco vehicle and officer, who watches us 24/7 through the window'. Some family members are authorised to visit and others not." (ASIO ruling puts asylum seekers in no man's land, Yuko Narushima, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/11/10)
You can be sure that lurking somewhere behind ASIO's non-reviewable assessment of these Tamil victims of Sri Lankan genocide is a 'terror expert'. My guess is the ubiquitous Rohan Gunaratna (See my 20/10/09 post Exporting Zionism 2).
James Petras' penetrating analysis of the breed is hard to beat:
"The Terrorist Experts (TE) project the violence of the rulers, their conquistadorial ambitions, their greed to seize land and resources, and their savage destructive impulses onto their victims while the responses of the victims, the survivors, are clothed in the rhetoric of pathological behaviour. The really clinical pathologies are to be found, however, in the minds of the verbal assassins - who cannot decipher the causal relation between the repeated rapes and tortures committed by their patron-states and the desperate cries and attempts at self-defence of the excluded, displaced, and exploited, or arrive at any appropriate moral conclusion. Almost all the terror experts have a chronic psychological blindness to the systematic and comprehensive violence inflicted by the West and Israel on particular groups. Today it is the 'Arabs'; at other times it is all insurgents who respond to imperial violence with violence." (The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 148-149)
"The TE simply pronounce their diagnosis of the armed resistance fighters: incurable psychopaths, extremely dangerous when at large. The politicians dictate the commands: capture, confine, torture, or kill. The Special Forces break through doors in the middle of the night, cut throats, or take prisoners. The prison commandants establish the rules of 'interrogation'. The guards torture. This is a very coherent international division of labor, in which the TE play an important part in elaborating the rationale. They ply a mortally and scientifically justified war-unto-death of the 'untermensch', the 'inferior' peoples, the 'fundamentalist Arab Muslims', the 'suicide bombers', the 'Terrorists'. A common language is spoken between the TE and their state patrons, and then promoted in and by the mass media." (ibid p 152)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Those Were the Days My Friend
"Australia's foreign spy agency has closed 6 of its international intelligence stations in 8 months, including the crucial Baghdad post, despite pleas from the US to keep it open... In recent years Baghdad has been [the] Australian Secret Intelligence Service's largest station and has played a vital role in the collection of foreign intelligence... ASIS was formed in 1952 with a staff of 9 and a budget of 218,000 [pounds]. It collects overseas intelligence through the cultivation of foreign sources - 'agents' - and other forms of espionage. But in recent years some of the agency's stations have done less spying and more liaising between the government and the American and British intelligence agencies, which run many agents in the Middle East. Like the other 5 intelligence agencies in Australia, ASIS was rescued from gradual decline by the events of September 11, 2001. It has grown by 344% since then from a budget of $54 million in 2001-2002 to $240 million in 2010-2011, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute." (Spy bases shut down to 'save money', Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald, 20/11/10)
Ah, yes, the Baghdad post, shit... the liaising! What a buzz. Maaate, will we ever see its like again?:
"For a few wild months, the HVT Bar served as the secret social hub for American spies in Iraq. It opened without fanfare late one night in early May 2003, shortly after the American-led invasion, in a distant corner of the newly captured Saddam Hussein International Airport. The saloon was dark and dingy, hidden in a grubby two-room guardhouse. Inside, a brace of captured Iraqi grenade launchers and assault rifles adorned one world, like souvenir hockey sticks in a sports bar. Lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows, and hard rock pounded from speakers. The air buzzed with backslapping camaraderie and whispers of intrigue; it smelled of rank sweat and cigarette smoke. The liquor was cheap, the beer ice-cold, and the white wine, by all accounts, the color and taste of camel piss. It was a dive of distinction.
"Few outsiders knew of the HVT Bar and, given the location, fewer still could get in. This was no surprise. It was the Central Intelligence Agency's private nightspot. The speakeasy pulsed in the heart of the Baghdad station, the CIA's newest overseas base and the center of a surreal secret world.
"The agency had decided to build the station, as it called its major outposts, in the airport compound previously reserved only for 'Very, Very Important Persons', meaning Saddam Hussein. The tyrant had not dared leave Iraq during his reign. But he built a majestic domed reception hall and opulent marble outbuildings to mark rare visits from Arab royalty and heads of state. The CIA, unchallenged rulers of the global intelligence netherworld, chose the regal VVIP complex as the spoils of a war for which it was largely responsible.
"Work bustled on all sides those first few weeks. Looters still ran free elsewhere in Iraq, ransacking ministries and pillaging factories. But inside the guarded CIA compound, technicians planted a lush high-tech jungle of antennas and satellite dishes. They uncoiled power lines and communications cables like tendrils across the gravel. Crews rushed to renovate offices and warehouses, kicking up thick clouds of dust. Late one afternoon, Army demolition experts destroyed a cache of Iraqi munitions discovered in concrete bunkers down the road. But they miscalculated badly and the deafening explosions shattered the panoramic windows in the VVIP lounge and sent people diving for cover. The plate glass was quickly replaced, but a week or two later, overeager engineers blew the CIA windows into shards again. Such was the price of progress...
"The US intelligence budget is classified, but presumably somewhere in the estimated $45 billion that Washington spent that year on spying on its friends and enemies - far more than Germany, say, allocated for its entire national defense...
"The HVT Bar rarely opened before 11 pm. but several dozen hardworking spooks usually packed the after-hours saloon: case officers, weapons analysts, code breakers, safe-crackers, linguists, British and Australian operatives, and of course, the CIA's covert ops teams. Known as Secret Squirrels, they had roared around Iraq in pickup trucks before and during the invasion, scouting targets, causing havoc, and having a swell time.
"According to 'rumint', or rumors intelligence, more than one affair caught fire in the gloom at the HVT (far more salacious rumint focused on a senior CIA official spotted flagrante delicto in the executive garage back home; it was the talk of the agency). Most HVT regulars simply let off steam around a football table, liberated from somewhere in Baghdad, which appeared one night in the back room. It proved so exhilarating that a loaded football fan fired his loaded Glock pistol in the excitement, puncturing the wall and nearly another player...
"Contract security guys known as knuckle-draggers served as volunteer bartenders. Many were retired former field operatives who earned their chops and their pensions in the squalid streets of Somalia or Kosovo or a hundred other places. Some had even survived the cutthroat corridors of CIA headquarters back in Langley, Virginia. The agency had surged for the war in Iraq - alarms clanged battle stations, all hands on deck - and veteran troopers heeded the call. A CIA bar was an honored ritual in the agency's cultish lore, a trophy in every war. In Afghanistan, after CIA paramilitary forces helped oust the Taliban, the new Kabul station proudly partied at 'The Talibar'.
"The HVT stood for High Value Target, the video game euphemism that US authorities bestowed on those they most sought to capture or kill. In time, one could even buy a souvenir T-shirt at the bar. It read HVT BAR in bold black letters on the front and showed Saddam and 3 of his top aides, their grizzled faces fanned out as 4 aces, on the back. Pentagon wags had listed the 52 most wanted Iraqis like cards in a deck. But the joke quickly lost its punch. Most of the key cards, including Saddam, the Ace of Spades, still roamed at large.
"By early summer, hundreds of American, British, and Australian intelligence officers were swarming into Baghdad. The majority set up shop at Camp Slayer, a bizarre sprawl of Arabian nights palaces and Hieronymus Bosch bunkers across the airport from the CIA station. It was a wondrous place. Intelligence teams moved into marble guesthouses, lakeside cabanas, and a fabulous former whorehouse. They hauled in plush carpets, garish paintings, and gilded thrones, plundered from the dictator's former digs. Most of the hooches had no electricity, air-conditioning, or running water, and a creepy colony of bats blackened the sky at dusk. But early post-Saddam Iraq felt like a carnival, and it was grand." (Curveball: Spies, Lies, & the Man Behind Them: The Real Reason America Went to War in Iraq, Bob Drogin, 2007, pp xvii -xx)
Ah, yes, the Baghdad post, shit... the liaising! What a buzz. Maaate, will we ever see its like again?:
"For a few wild months, the HVT Bar served as the secret social hub for American spies in Iraq. It opened without fanfare late one night in early May 2003, shortly after the American-led invasion, in a distant corner of the newly captured Saddam Hussein International Airport. The saloon was dark and dingy, hidden in a grubby two-room guardhouse. Inside, a brace of captured Iraqi grenade launchers and assault rifles adorned one world, like souvenir hockey sticks in a sports bar. Lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows, and hard rock pounded from speakers. The air buzzed with backslapping camaraderie and whispers of intrigue; it smelled of rank sweat and cigarette smoke. The liquor was cheap, the beer ice-cold, and the white wine, by all accounts, the color and taste of camel piss. It was a dive of distinction.
"Few outsiders knew of the HVT Bar and, given the location, fewer still could get in. This was no surprise. It was the Central Intelligence Agency's private nightspot. The speakeasy pulsed in the heart of the Baghdad station, the CIA's newest overseas base and the center of a surreal secret world.
"The agency had decided to build the station, as it called its major outposts, in the airport compound previously reserved only for 'Very, Very Important Persons', meaning Saddam Hussein. The tyrant had not dared leave Iraq during his reign. But he built a majestic domed reception hall and opulent marble outbuildings to mark rare visits from Arab royalty and heads of state. The CIA, unchallenged rulers of the global intelligence netherworld, chose the regal VVIP complex as the spoils of a war for which it was largely responsible.
"Work bustled on all sides those first few weeks. Looters still ran free elsewhere in Iraq, ransacking ministries and pillaging factories. But inside the guarded CIA compound, technicians planted a lush high-tech jungle of antennas and satellite dishes. They uncoiled power lines and communications cables like tendrils across the gravel. Crews rushed to renovate offices and warehouses, kicking up thick clouds of dust. Late one afternoon, Army demolition experts destroyed a cache of Iraqi munitions discovered in concrete bunkers down the road. But they miscalculated badly and the deafening explosions shattered the panoramic windows in the VVIP lounge and sent people diving for cover. The plate glass was quickly replaced, but a week or two later, overeager engineers blew the CIA windows into shards again. Such was the price of progress...
"The US intelligence budget is classified, but presumably somewhere in the estimated $45 billion that Washington spent that year on spying on its friends and enemies - far more than Germany, say, allocated for its entire national defense...
"The HVT Bar rarely opened before 11 pm. but several dozen hardworking spooks usually packed the after-hours saloon: case officers, weapons analysts, code breakers, safe-crackers, linguists, British and Australian operatives, and of course, the CIA's covert ops teams. Known as Secret Squirrels, they had roared around Iraq in pickup trucks before and during the invasion, scouting targets, causing havoc, and having a swell time.
"According to 'rumint', or rumors intelligence, more than one affair caught fire in the gloom at the HVT (far more salacious rumint focused on a senior CIA official spotted flagrante delicto in the executive garage back home; it was the talk of the agency). Most HVT regulars simply let off steam around a football table, liberated from somewhere in Baghdad, which appeared one night in the back room. It proved so exhilarating that a loaded football fan fired his loaded Glock pistol in the excitement, puncturing the wall and nearly another player...
"Contract security guys known as knuckle-draggers served as volunteer bartenders. Many were retired former field operatives who earned their chops and their pensions in the squalid streets of Somalia or Kosovo or a hundred other places. Some had even survived the cutthroat corridors of CIA headquarters back in Langley, Virginia. The agency had surged for the war in Iraq - alarms clanged battle stations, all hands on deck - and veteran troopers heeded the call. A CIA bar was an honored ritual in the agency's cultish lore, a trophy in every war. In Afghanistan, after CIA paramilitary forces helped oust the Taliban, the new Kabul station proudly partied at 'The Talibar'.
"The HVT stood for High Value Target, the video game euphemism that US authorities bestowed on those they most sought to capture or kill. In time, one could even buy a souvenir T-shirt at the bar. It read HVT BAR in bold black letters on the front and showed Saddam and 3 of his top aides, their grizzled faces fanned out as 4 aces, on the back. Pentagon wags had listed the 52 most wanted Iraqis like cards in a deck. But the joke quickly lost its punch. Most of the key cards, including Saddam, the Ace of Spades, still roamed at large.
"By early summer, hundreds of American, British, and Australian intelligence officers were swarming into Baghdad. The majority set up shop at Camp Slayer, a bizarre sprawl of Arabian nights palaces and Hieronymus Bosch bunkers across the airport from the CIA station. It was a wondrous place. Intelligence teams moved into marble guesthouses, lakeside cabanas, and a fabulous former whorehouse. They hauled in plush carpets, garish paintings, and gilded thrones, plundered from the dictator's former digs. Most of the hooches had no electricity, air-conditioning, or running water, and a creepy colony of bats blackened the sky at dusk. But early post-Saddam Iraq felt like a carnival, and it was grand." (Curveball: Spies, Lies, & the Man Behind Them: The Real Reason America Went to War in Iraq, Bob Drogin, 2007, pp xvii -xx)
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Taming the Internet for Israel
Imagine an Orwellian world where Zionist ideologues have succeeded in redefining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and pressuring compliant governments into controlling what we read and view on the internet based on that definitional sleight of hand. Well, don't worry, they're working on it:
"Internet Service Providers (ISP) lack the knowledge and insight into racism to enable them to make an informed decision about whether a particular publication has crossed the line into racial vilification or harassment... The final decision about whether or not to allow an allegedly racist publication to remain on the net should not rest with them... The technical means exist to curtail cyber racism if not eliminate it altogether and to force website owners and ISPs to act with social responsibility if they will not do so voluntarily. Only if governments cooperate will it be possible to harness these technical means to deal effectively with cyber racism. As a starting point, countries could agree in a formal treaty to recognise and give effect to judgments delivered by one another's courts concerning specific racist publications. For example, the government of country A could undertake to order an ISP operating from its territory to ensure that certain content is not accessible to users of the internet located in country B if a court or tribunal in country B has found that the publication of the content in country B is in breach of its laws." (We can tame the cyber racism beast, Peter Wertheim, The Age, 19/11/10)
Of course, Wertheim's sinister 'opinion' piece is less than forthcoming. Ostensibly, his concern is cyber racism of whatever form: "The promotion of racism in the public domain undermines, and can ultimately destroy, the sense of safety and security of targeted people or groups and also adversely affect social harmony." The subjects of anti-Semitism and Israel are nowhere raised. It is only when we scan his appended bio that we learn that Wertheim is the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and a recent attendee at an "Experts Forum on Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottowa." Even then, the casual reader might not be aware that the ECAJ is a component part of the Israel lobby in Australia.
To see where this supposed crusader against generic racism is really coming from, we need to take a look at The Ottowa Protocol on Combating Anti-Semitism, described as a "document which represents global co-operation in the fight against anti-Semitism." (cjnews.com) In that document, we read the following: "We are alarmed by the explosion of anti-Semitism and hate on the Internet, a medium crucial for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression, freedom of information and the participation of civil society." For all I know, what has been termed 'classical' anti-Semitism may well be surging on the internet, most likely as a spillover from the criminal behaviour of the 'Jewish' state. However, the worry with Wertheim emerges further on in The Ottowa Protocol when references to Israel begin to appear.
Incredibly, the following are cited as "contemporary examples of anti-Semitism": "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour." "Applying double standards by requiring of it behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis." Alas, the feeble disclaimer that "criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic... but singling out Israel for selective condemnation and opprobrium - let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction - is discriminatory and hateful," will only reassure the gullible.
It is obvious that, if Wertheim had his way, the internet would become as much of a no-go zone for the truth about Israeli apartheid and genocide as the mainstream media.
Consider again his seemingly innocuous example: "[T]he government of country A could undertake to order an ISP operating from its territory to ensure that certain content is not accessible to users of the internet located in country B if a court or tribunal in country B has found that the publication of the content in country B is in breach of its laws."
Let's cut to the chase here. Just imagine: Australia, at the instigation of the Israel lobby and its useful fools in parliament, legislates that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Citing that legislation, an Australian court rules that a certain internet site is in breach of the legislation. The Australian government then prevails upon the country in which the site's ISP operates to block access to it by Australian viewers.
Brave new internet indeed.
Postscript (23/11/10): "Most students made no distinction between traditional anti-semitism and anti-Zionism." (Australian Jewish students report anti-Semitism, ynetnews.com, 17/11/10) I rest my case.
"Internet Service Providers (ISP) lack the knowledge and insight into racism to enable them to make an informed decision about whether a particular publication has crossed the line into racial vilification or harassment... The final decision about whether or not to allow an allegedly racist publication to remain on the net should not rest with them... The technical means exist to curtail cyber racism if not eliminate it altogether and to force website owners and ISPs to act with social responsibility if they will not do so voluntarily. Only if governments cooperate will it be possible to harness these technical means to deal effectively with cyber racism. As a starting point, countries could agree in a formal treaty to recognise and give effect to judgments delivered by one another's courts concerning specific racist publications. For example, the government of country A could undertake to order an ISP operating from its territory to ensure that certain content is not accessible to users of the internet located in country B if a court or tribunal in country B has found that the publication of the content in country B is in breach of its laws." (We can tame the cyber racism beast, Peter Wertheim, The Age, 19/11/10)
Of course, Wertheim's sinister 'opinion' piece is less than forthcoming. Ostensibly, his concern is cyber racism of whatever form: "The promotion of racism in the public domain undermines, and can ultimately destroy, the sense of safety and security of targeted people or groups and also adversely affect social harmony." The subjects of anti-Semitism and Israel are nowhere raised. It is only when we scan his appended bio that we learn that Wertheim is the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and a recent attendee at an "Experts Forum on Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottowa." Even then, the casual reader might not be aware that the ECAJ is a component part of the Israel lobby in Australia.
To see where this supposed crusader against generic racism is really coming from, we need to take a look at The Ottowa Protocol on Combating Anti-Semitism, described as a "document which represents global co-operation in the fight against anti-Semitism." (cjnews.com) In that document, we read the following: "We are alarmed by the explosion of anti-Semitism and hate on the Internet, a medium crucial for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression, freedom of information and the participation of civil society." For all I know, what has been termed 'classical' anti-Semitism may well be surging on the internet, most likely as a spillover from the criminal behaviour of the 'Jewish' state. However, the worry with Wertheim emerges further on in The Ottowa Protocol when references to Israel begin to appear.
Incredibly, the following are cited as "contemporary examples of anti-Semitism": "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour." "Applying double standards by requiring of it behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis." Alas, the feeble disclaimer that "criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic... but singling out Israel for selective condemnation and opprobrium - let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction - is discriminatory and hateful," will only reassure the gullible.
It is obvious that, if Wertheim had his way, the internet would become as much of a no-go zone for the truth about Israeli apartheid and genocide as the mainstream media.
Consider again his seemingly innocuous example: "[T]he government of country A could undertake to order an ISP operating from its territory to ensure that certain content is not accessible to users of the internet located in country B if a court or tribunal in country B has found that the publication of the content in country B is in breach of its laws."
Let's cut to the chase here. Just imagine: Australia, at the instigation of the Israel lobby and its useful fools in parliament, legislates that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Citing that legislation, an Australian court rules that a certain internet site is in breach of the legislation. The Australian government then prevails upon the country in which the site's ISP operates to block access to it by Australian viewers.
Brave new internet indeed.
Postscript (23/11/10): "Most students made no distinction between traditional anti-semitism and anti-Zionism." (Australian Jewish students report anti-Semitism, ynetnews.com, 17/11/10) I rest my case.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Australia First!
"US sick of asking Australia for troops," runs the front page headline in today's Sydney Morning Herald, citing "US officers." "Any discussion on [Australia taking the] leadership [in Oruzgan] [province, Afghanistan] is quickly terminated by Australian politicians," according to a "third source."
This, of course, is your run-of-the-mill stonewalling. But isn't that just a little old hat these days? Really, it's time to move on to an entirely new way of dealing with the US.
Now it's not as if we have to start from scratch, mind you. All we need do is take a leaf from Israel's book, and ask, What's in it for us? And I don't just mean what's in it for us? I mean what's really in it for us?
We should begin by demanding a $3 billion+ annual subsidy - the sort of thing Israel takes for granted, for example. To justify this our Washington lobby (and we will need to work on this) should bang on endlessly about Australia being America's strategic asset in the Asia/Pacific area. After all, it works with Israel in the Middle East. That nonsense of the PM's about Australia being America's best maaate in the region. I mean, that's sooo throw-a-shrimp-on-the-barbie, isn't it? Downright embarrassing! It's really got to go.
We should become the Asia/Pacific's mad dog, barking (mad) and lunging at every available opportunity. New Zealand our Judea! PNG our Samaria! (Plenty of Lost Tribes there.)
We should deem the entire region an existential threat and market ourselves as the only dinky-di democracy within cooee. Why, we could even grant all of Fred Nile's Christmases at once and declare ourselves 'the Christian state'... but I digress. Let's get back to the question of what could be in it for Oz in Oruzgan. Plenty... if Israel's our paradigm!
Now if, in exchange for a piddling 90-day halt to Israel's current rate of settlement metastasization in the West Bank, the US has to fork over $3 billion worth of stealth fighters and promise to shield Israel from adverse UN Security Council resolutions (for as long as they both shall live?), for a few more boots on the ground in Afghanistan, why the hell can't we get armed to the teeth for free just like Israel does?
Way to go!
This, of course, is your run-of-the-mill stonewalling. But isn't that just a little old hat these days? Really, it's time to move on to an entirely new way of dealing with the US.
Now it's not as if we have to start from scratch, mind you. All we need do is take a leaf from Israel's book, and ask, What's in it for us? And I don't just mean what's in it for us? I mean what's really in it for us?
We should begin by demanding a $3 billion+ annual subsidy - the sort of thing Israel takes for granted, for example. To justify this our Washington lobby (and we will need to work on this) should bang on endlessly about Australia being America's strategic asset in the Asia/Pacific area. After all, it works with Israel in the Middle East. That nonsense of the PM's about Australia being America's best maaate in the region. I mean, that's sooo throw-a-shrimp-on-the-barbie, isn't it? Downright embarrassing! It's really got to go.
We should become the Asia/Pacific's mad dog, barking (mad) and lunging at every available opportunity. New Zealand our Judea! PNG our Samaria! (Plenty of Lost Tribes there.)
We should deem the entire region an existential threat and market ourselves as the only dinky-di democracy within cooee. Why, we could even grant all of Fred Nile's Christmases at once and declare ourselves 'the Christian state'... but I digress. Let's get back to the question of what could be in it for Oz in Oruzgan. Plenty... if Israel's our paradigm!
Now if, in exchange for a piddling 90-day halt to Israel's current rate of settlement metastasization in the West Bank, the US has to fork over $3 billion worth of stealth fighters and promise to shield Israel from adverse UN Security Council resolutions (for as long as they both shall live?), for a few more boots on the ground in Afghanistan, why the hell can't we get armed to the teeth for free just like Israel does?
Way to go!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Australian Stupid
Seen on a boofhead in a shopping centre recently: a white t-shirt bearing the words 'American Arrogant'. Wouldn't Australian Stupid have been more appropriate?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
We Don't Know What Got Into Them
Oh dear!
"A major Jewish charity has apologised for publicising an upcoming event using obscene and offensive imagery. United Israel Appeal (UIA) NSW president Bruce Fink said using one image mocking the torture of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and another that had the headline 'Suck my Billy's, C**t!' to promote a young adult event was deeply regrettable. Clearly, on this ocassion, the volunteers in Young UIA used some material that was inappropriate, and we took steps immediately to remove it once it came to our attention', Fink said." (UIA retracts offensive promotion, The Australian Jewish News, 12/11/10)
I wish to make five points concerning the above:
The first relates to the deliberate labelling of the Zionist UIA as 'Jewish'. This is par for the Zionist course: when you need a cover for Zionist criminality, reach for the 'Jewish' label. And when the great unwashed fail to properly distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, just howl anti-semitism. Works a treat.
The second relates to the fact that dumb blonde Australia grants the UIA, Israel's central fundraising organisation, tax-exempt charitable status. The mind just goes on boggling.
The third is that Israel, with its dictum that 'the only thing the Arabs understand is force' and its history of anti-Arab dehumanisation and torture, was arguably the primary ideological and practical force for what went on in Abu Ghraib, which helps explain the moral vacuum in which the Young UIA operate. The Lieberman generation?
The fourth is that, if an Arab/Muslim organisation had perpetrated such an 'advertisement', the Murdoch press and the shock jocks of radio and television would have dined out on it forever and a day. Typically, the matter was reported only in The Australian Jewish News.
The fifth is that the apartheid Zionist project is the ultimate obscenity. Young UIA's promotional material is just a chip off the old block.
"A major Jewish charity has apologised for publicising an upcoming event using obscene and offensive imagery. United Israel Appeal (UIA) NSW president Bruce Fink said using one image mocking the torture of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and another that had the headline 'Suck my Billy's, C**t!' to promote a young adult event was deeply regrettable. Clearly, on this ocassion, the volunteers in Young UIA used some material that was inappropriate, and we took steps immediately to remove it once it came to our attention', Fink said." (UIA retracts offensive promotion, The Australian Jewish News, 12/11/10)
I wish to make five points concerning the above:
The first relates to the deliberate labelling of the Zionist UIA as 'Jewish'. This is par for the Zionist course: when you need a cover for Zionist criminality, reach for the 'Jewish' label. And when the great unwashed fail to properly distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, just howl anti-semitism. Works a treat.
The second relates to the fact that dumb blonde Australia grants the UIA, Israel's central fundraising organisation, tax-exempt charitable status. The mind just goes on boggling.
The third is that Israel, with its dictum that 'the only thing the Arabs understand is force' and its history of anti-Arab dehumanisation and torture, was arguably the primary ideological and practical force for what went on in Abu Ghraib, which helps explain the moral vacuum in which the Young UIA operate. The Lieberman generation?
The fourth is that, if an Arab/Muslim organisation had perpetrated such an 'advertisement', the Murdoch press and the shock jocks of radio and television would have dined out on it forever and a day. Typically, the matter was reported only in The Australian Jewish News.
The fifth is that the apartheid Zionist project is the ultimate obscenity. Young UIA's promotional material is just a chip off the old block.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Love Story
Meet Karni Eldad, a woman in love...
"I've moved many times in my life. My father was a career army officer, so throughout my childhood we followed him around the country. I hated these moves - the packing and unpacking, the feeling of temporariness, the loneliness, the foreignness. So after I finished my army service, I swore that insofar as it depended on me, I would never move again. And indeed, I lived for years in the same apartment in Jerusalem, breathing the mountain air and clinging to everything that was permanent, a rock, a home, an anchor.
"Then, suddenly, I met the love of my life, and everything turned upside down. That, apparently, is what love does. My love grew up in Gush Katif in Gaza, and since the Jews were expelled from there, he hasn't had a home. He's a refugee. So ever since our marriage, we've been searching for a bit of land that would be ours - not mine alone - on which to build a house, a life and a family.
"There were many options. But we naturally wanted to move to a small, closeknit community, and we wanted a place where we could help reinforce the Israeli peoples hold on its land. In other words, we looked for a settlement.
"We visited many different hilltops, spent a lot of Shabbats being hosted at different places and talked to a lot of community admission committees. Some settlements deemed us too religious, others deemed us too secular. Perhaps this sounds like a children's story, where the moral is that we must accept everyone. But our story ended with the settlement of Tekoah.
"Tekoah is a mixed community of religious and secular Jews located in the eastern part of the Gush Etzion settlement block. Some 670 families live there. It has organic farms, a winery, an olive press. It also has the nicest people I have ever met. Not just affable, but really nice. They go out of their way to be nice.
"And it's lovely in Tekoah. It's quiet. The birds twitter amongst the pine and eucalyptus trees. From the window of our caravan you can see Herodian.
"It was very hard to leave Jerusalem. The move itself was very hard for me, and especially the fact that I was leaving the city I loved so much. I felt like a traitor. But on my last night, as the city's lights were blurred by my tears, I realised that Jerusalem didn't care. She has seen people like me coming and going for thousands of years. Who am I that I could betray her?
"We moved from a huge apartment to a tiny caravan, all of 45 square metres. Yet it is now our entire world, until we build our permanent home. We soon had it organised. Boxes annoy me. I needed to put down roots quickly, to call this place home quickly, to become attached, to settle.
"Tekoah's hometown prophet is Amos, who, according to the Bible, 'was among the herdsmen of Tekoah'. His prophecy of consolation, which comes at the end of his book, so precisely describes our situation, that when we read it, we realised we were in the right place.
"His words were uttered from these hills, from this land. And Amos said: 'And I will return my people Israel from captivity, and they shall build the abandoned cities and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof, and make gardens and eat the fruit thereof. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be uprooted from their land which I have given them, said the Lord thy God'.
"We have indeed returned to the abandoned cities where Amos once walked, and they are no longer desolate. Hundreds of children run along Tekoah's paths - some with sidelocks, some without, some with skullcaps, some without. They run to houses with gardens that contain vegetables and fruit, and they eat the fruit thereof.
"These children have roots. Those who planted them here planted them like fruit trees, for the long term. And we shall no more be uprooted from our land. We shall not be expelled, we shall not pack, we shall not leave. for thus God has promised us." (We were evicted from Gaza - we'll never leave Gush Etzion, Haaretz, 10/11/10)
Don't you just want to pinch her rosy cheeks?
"I've moved many times in my life. My father was a career army officer, so throughout my childhood we followed him around the country. I hated these moves - the packing and unpacking, the feeling of temporariness, the loneliness, the foreignness. So after I finished my army service, I swore that insofar as it depended on me, I would never move again. And indeed, I lived for years in the same apartment in Jerusalem, breathing the mountain air and clinging to everything that was permanent, a rock, a home, an anchor.
"Then, suddenly, I met the love of my life, and everything turned upside down. That, apparently, is what love does. My love grew up in Gush Katif in Gaza, and since the Jews were expelled from there, he hasn't had a home. He's a refugee. So ever since our marriage, we've been searching for a bit of land that would be ours - not mine alone - on which to build a house, a life and a family.
"There were many options. But we naturally wanted to move to a small, closeknit community, and we wanted a place where we could help reinforce the Israeli peoples hold on its land. In other words, we looked for a settlement.
"We visited many different hilltops, spent a lot of Shabbats being hosted at different places and talked to a lot of community admission committees. Some settlements deemed us too religious, others deemed us too secular. Perhaps this sounds like a children's story, where the moral is that we must accept everyone. But our story ended with the settlement of Tekoah.
"Tekoah is a mixed community of religious and secular Jews located in the eastern part of the Gush Etzion settlement block. Some 670 families live there. It has organic farms, a winery, an olive press. It also has the nicest people I have ever met. Not just affable, but really nice. They go out of their way to be nice.
"And it's lovely in Tekoah. It's quiet. The birds twitter amongst the pine and eucalyptus trees. From the window of our caravan you can see Herodian.
"It was very hard to leave Jerusalem. The move itself was very hard for me, and especially the fact that I was leaving the city I loved so much. I felt like a traitor. But on my last night, as the city's lights were blurred by my tears, I realised that Jerusalem didn't care. She has seen people like me coming and going for thousands of years. Who am I that I could betray her?
"We moved from a huge apartment to a tiny caravan, all of 45 square metres. Yet it is now our entire world, until we build our permanent home. We soon had it organised. Boxes annoy me. I needed to put down roots quickly, to call this place home quickly, to become attached, to settle.
"Tekoah's hometown prophet is Amos, who, according to the Bible, 'was among the herdsmen of Tekoah'. His prophecy of consolation, which comes at the end of his book, so precisely describes our situation, that when we read it, we realised we were in the right place.
"His words were uttered from these hills, from this land. And Amos said: 'And I will return my people Israel from captivity, and they shall build the abandoned cities and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof, and make gardens and eat the fruit thereof. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be uprooted from their land which I have given them, said the Lord thy God'.
"We have indeed returned to the abandoned cities where Amos once walked, and they are no longer desolate. Hundreds of children run along Tekoah's paths - some with sidelocks, some without, some with skullcaps, some without. They run to houses with gardens that contain vegetables and fruit, and they eat the fruit thereof.
"These children have roots. Those who planted them here planted them like fruit trees, for the long term. And we shall no more be uprooted from our land. We shall not be expelled, we shall not pack, we shall not leave. for thus God has promised us." (We were evicted from Gaza - we'll never leave Gush Etzion, Haaretz, 10/11/10)
Don't you just want to pinch her rosy cheeks?
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