Friday, April 26, 2013

WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS OF SYRIA'S USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS - A DAY AFTER DEFENSE SECRETARY CONTRADICTED ISRAEL'S CLAIMS - THE FALSE MARCH TO WAR


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

This is an absurd development.

Yesterday, in the morning, I read Mr Hagel saying that United States' intelligence did not believe Syria had used chemical weapons.

Because Israel had already just claimed in public that Syria had used such weapons, Mr Hagel was careful to state that the United States used its own intelligence sources.

By that afternoon, we had this new story that indeed the United States thought it likely (but had no hard evidence) that Syria had used chemical weapons.

I know of no example from real life events more deserving of the descriptive term "Orwellian."

We know from the inadvertently-overheard words of two presidents not terribly long ago, the presidents of France and the United States, talking in private that Mr Netanyahu is regarded by both of them as an inveterate liar.

Mr Hagel, owing to his independence of mind regarding the Mideast, fought quite a battle after the election to be confirmed for his cabinet post.

Of course, his first words about chemical weapons contradicted Mr Netanyahu.

Something happened in the course of one day to turn him around.

Was it the same group which so opposed his nomination and confirmation?

And that group is the special interest of American apologists for Israel's excesses.

Actually, if anything, virtually the opposite is true. There was a documented incident of the so-called rebels using some form of chemical.

From where did they get the material?

From Israel, in an effort to create a casus belli?

GUANTANAMO: THE UNITED STATES OF TORTURE SAYS AN ARTICLE - BUT IT'S WORSE THAN THAT - WORLD'S GREATEST ORGANIZED BARBARISM AND HYPOCRISY ABOUT IT


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN RUSSIA TODAY

Civilized is not the point.

The United States mouths stuff about human rights and democracy while assassinating, stealing, and abusing people.

Monumental hypocrisy is the point.

The fact must be thrown into America's face when it makes spurious claims.

The CIA Torture Gulag - of which Guantanamo is only part - is gross hypocrisy, all of it carefully kept offshore, as though that fact kept the spirit of the Constitution.

The U.S. has in truth been a bloody monster for half a century: 3 million killed in its Vietnam Holocaust; a million in Cambodia owing to its destabilizing; a million in Iraq; and more.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

PROPAGANDA PIECE ATTEMPTS TO COVER THE IDIOTIC ANTICS OF CANADA'S JOHN BAIRD IN EAST JERUSALEM - WHAT PEACE MEANS - ISRAEL'S COMPLETE LACK OF INTEREST IN WHAT MOST CALL PEACE - BUYING POLICY


EXPANDED FROM A POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY EINAT WILF AND NOAH SLEPKOV IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This piece is a set of words strung together almost without meaning and certainly without logic. Its only intention is to plant certain suggestions in readers’ minds, one of the key purposes of any propaganda. According to the authors, John Baird, Canada’s current foreign minister, was not guilty of provocation in blundering into East Jerusalem as a guest of Israeli politicians, rather he was being “brave” in the cause of peace.

Brave? John Baird?

Baird has always been a coward because only a coward acts aggressively towards the weak, as he does regularly in both domestic politics and in trips abroad, and certainly the Palestinians are weak, living at the mercy of Israel’s brutal and dishonest behavior.

The leaders of Israel do not want what any normal person calls peace. Their behaviors over decades make that abundantly clear to all but biased observers.

Israel has always followed the policy advocated by early Zionists called "the iron wall" in its attitude towards the Palestinians.

How much better would have been a policy of generosity towards its neighbors, but no, generosity in Israel’s attitude has never received the slightest consideration. The one prime minister who came just a little closer to altering the county’s brutal policies was assassinated, as it happened by an Israeli.

Israel holds all the cards - armaments, economic power, American influence, and absolute rule over millions of people - but it has never made a truly honest effort for genuine peace. Words, words, and more words combined with arrogant and impossible preconditions set even for discussions.

What we see is a garrison state, armed to the teeth, threatening its neighbors constantly, ready at the smallest provocation to kill thousands, and we see that state rule over 4.5 million conquered people with a heavy-handed system of apartheid, a system recognized as apartheid by every sensible and decent observer in the world from Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu to Jimmy Carter.

And, week by week, Israel slowly steals the land on which those 4.5 million people live, stealing it through all kinds of cynical and dishonest laws – an ongoing, slow-motion practice of ethnic-cleansing in every sense of the term.

What other state could accurately claim as its national symbol a D-9 armored bulldozer used to destroy the homes of others and sometimes simply to crush opponents?

Canada’s arrogant and ill-informed foreign minister, John Baird - and Canadians all know that he is arrogant and ill-informed owing to his everyday behavior at home - steps in to validate Israel's ghastly behavior in East Jerusalem, never once saying anything about human or democratic rights.

And why does John Baird choose to behave in this obtuse fashion?

Because he is a creature of the Harper government which has as its goal, by its leader’s own admission, the elimination of the Liberal Party in Canada, a party which was always been even-handed in the Middle East, reflecting the attitude of a majority of Canadians.

Harper’s strategy includes having ended state support for political parties, using every disagreeable parliamentary dodge he can think of, being an enemy of transparency in government, suppressing the voices of experts in the civil service, and actively seeking a new and substantial flow of private financing, as it happens, from apologists for Israel eager to fund a turn in Canada’s historic and fair-minded policies.

In the United States, this pattern of funding is now an integral part of its foreign affairs. In just one example - and there are countless examples - the unpleasant Newt Gingrich received the best part of $20 million from just one wealthy American heavily involved in Israel’s affairs to run his presidential bid.

The price for that money? Newt's peppering his speeches with ignorant assertions like "There's no such thing as a Palestinian.” In another notorious example, Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader, once openly suggested that Israel just go ahead and run all the Palestinians out of the occupied territories – surely the kind of assertion that does not come naturally from an ultra-conservative economics major for whom property rights are virtually religious dogma.

And just so, John Baird's bull-in-a-china-shop behavior in East Jerusalem and at the UN or Peter Kent's sudden outbursts, almost like someone given to speaking in tongues, about Canada defending Israel or Harper's regular speeches claiming credit as a warrior against (virtually non-existent) anti-Semitism and deliberately conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

In the normal world, we know peace in any violent disagreement is often only obtained by outside intervention and patient talks and mutual respect, but somehow when it comes to Israel, this common understanding just disappears. Israel is never pressured to treat its neighbors with respect, and it is never pressured to talk to them without arrogant preconditions. Never.

No one dares say a word about the decades of abusing 4.5 million people, of Israel’s endless torture and assassinations. Nor do the “brave” John Bairds of this world raise their voices when Israel kills 400 children as it did in its invasion of Gaza or when it commits piracy on the high seas or when it murders a Canadian officer serving as a UN observer or when it drops a million hideous cluster bombs on civilians as it did in Lebanon. No condemnation over the theft of farms and homes is ever heard. Not a word about endless illegal arrests and the imprisonment of thousands. Nor a word about the seizure of taxes and foreign aid moneys from their rightful owners.  

Of course, there is never a word about the Six Day War so many decades ago, the very event which put all those people at Israel’s mercy, a war which Israel cynically started knowing it could win, aiming ultimately to create what is known as Greater Israel. Nor was a word said about Israel’s attacking a well-marked American intelligence ship, of which they had been advised in advance, during that war to silence signals informing Washington that Israel was turning around its armor to seize all of what it controls today. And there was not a word about the mass murder of hundreds of Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai to expedite that turnaround.

Does anyone in his right mind believe peace is obtained the way Israel has claimed to pursue it? Only if your definition of peace is Israel’s taking all the additional land it covets without any of the people who own it and live there, which is pretty much what the concept of Greater Israel involves. I suppose that is a kind of peace, the kind of peace brutal American soldiers achieved in My Lai, Vietnam, or in Fallujah, Iraq.

JOHN BAIRD MAKES EFFORT TO STOP PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER SALAM FAYYAD FROM RESIGNING AND FAILS - NO LOSS TO PALESTINIANS ONLY TO ISRAELI INTERESTS


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad quit on Saturday after months of tension with President Mahmoud Abbas

We may safely assume that when the likes of John Baird care about a political figure such as the Palestinian prime minister staying in office, the resignation means absolutely nothing to the Palestinian people.

Apart from the fact that John Baird has no stature whatever in world affairs and no credibility as a statesman, the simple fact is that he is an ignoramus on affairs in the Middle East.

Baird is also a man - perhaps a reflection of his argumentative and destructive life as a domestic politician - who has proven he has no concern for the terrible situation of the Palestinians.

He is in addition a pathetic figure whose only objective in the region is to loyally serve American-Israeli positions - resembling in the act a wagging dog waiting for his master to hand out a treat.

Palestinian politicians like Abbas and those associated with him are pleasing to Israel because they maintain a totally submissive demeanor. There is almost something in them of the nature of the old minor Hollywood black actor known as Stepin Fetchit.


ATTACK ADS AGAINST JUSTIN TRUDEAU JUST ELECTED AS LEADER OF CANADA' S LIBERAL PARTY - WHY THEY WON'T WORK AND THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Propaganda - and this kind of attack-advertising is just a form of propaganda - generally is effective when there is an accepted truth incorporated in the muck.

Thus, America blubbered about the plight of women while attacking Afghanistan (killing thousands of them along the way, too). Thus, past attacks on Ignatieff only said something we all believed already about that ineffective and disingenuous man.

These new ads cannot work against Trudeau because most Canadians rightly perceive him as a decent, earnest young man. And Trudeau is doing exactly the right thing in quietly explaining the ads' dishonesty.

The ads will serve to confirm Harper as the most hateful person ever to have been prime minister.

WHO IS TAKING JOBS? COMPUTERS MARGARET WENTE BLUBBERS - A SUGGESTION


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

One thing is clear, a computer could certainly replace Ms. Wente, and do so handily.

Computers are really good at things like searching around on the Internet for what others have said and then regurgitating it.

NETANYAHU'S APOLOGY TO TURKEY



What possibly is the value of an apology from an inveterate liar?

We do have, after all, the public words of the presidents of two major countries that Netanyahu is exactly that, an inveterate liar.

It only took a couple of years plus immense outside pressure to have him even offer this poor excuse for an apology.

And I'll bet a great many pirates, killers, and thieves wish they could get off by muttering a few cheap words.