Author: Jin

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Johnny can go lower

Barack WhoYep, little Johnny Rodent has shown he can limbo down further even than Alexander Beetle when it comes to backing their best mate, Doodoo Dubyah. Our cheeky prime monster takes to Dem presidential contender Obama and the Dems en masse with his baseball bat, and the world cringes.

“If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats,” our intemperate Doodoo-worshipping prime monster decreed to goggle-eyed Americans and all and sundry. Sounds like Johnny thinks he has a telepathic connection with OBL. His wires are crossed though because OBL and co have declared their love for Doodoo on several occasions, logically aware that crass, stupid chest-thumping and warmongering delivers lots more fanatical supporters for the Al Qaeda agenda than the Dem’s sophisticated diplomacy.

Howard attacks Obama
Obama swiftly volleyed back, calling little Johnny’s shameless reacharound with best buddy Doodoo “empty rhetoric” and inviting him to put his troops where his mouth is.

Senator Obama also rejected claims that a US withdrawal would increase the threat of terrorism, noting that the “Bush administration’s own intelligence agencies have indicated that the threat of terrorism has increased as a consequence of our actions over there.”

According to an October 2006 poll conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, this is a view shared by the majority of Australians. It found that 84 per cent of Australians believe the Iraq war has done nothing to lower the threat of terrorism.

Two-thirds of respondents disagreed that the war would lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and 91 per cent said they believed that the Iraq war had worsened US relations with the Muslim world.

Executive director Alan Gyngell said the poll showed a strong trend in the attitudes of Australians toward the Iraq war. Referring to the Australian public’s long-standing skepticism about intelligence used in the lead up to the US-led invasion, Mr Gyngell told ABC Radio, “The debate seems to be over about the reasons that we went into Iraq, that is 84 per cent disagree with the statement that the threat of terrorism has been reduced by Iraq. There’s pretty strong agreement that is hasn’t worked.”

He also said that, “There’s a very strong view that the US has too much influence on our foreign policy.”

Both Dems and Repubes expressed their annoyance with Johnny’s craven plug for the United Stupids’ latter day Caligula. But that didn’t stop the heroic Alexander from missing an opportunity to suckhole his leader *and* Doodoo contemporaneously.

“It’s a free world, and we are entitled to a point of view,” he grovelled. Well so are we, Alexander, so are we and from the Lowy Institute’s study, it looks like you are way off beam if you think Australians support you and Johnny’s sycophantic warmongering.

Kevvie homes in on Johnny’s mighty blunder with what seems to be a growing killer instinct:

“I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say … that the Democratic Party of the United States, is the terrorist party of choice,” he told Parliament.

“Let us be clear what is at stake here – not just an attack upon a single US senator but an attack upon an entire political party.”

Quite right, Kevvie. Little Johnny tries to slither, backpedal and lie that he didn’t say ‘all the Dems’, but to no avail, his words are there in black and white. And neither will the rodent retract his Obama accusations. What a loyal Doodoo servant he is.

Howard not a lying rodent
Paul Keating scores the best Johnny paddywhack of the day after the shock horror latest polls show Rudd and the ALP way in front:

“He’s become an old desiccated coconut, hasn’t he, and he stayed too long,” Mr Keating said.

“He had a chance to get out, give it to Costello, but he wants to hang on. You know prime ministers have got araldite on their pants, most of them, they want to stick to their seat and you either put the sword through them or you let the public do it.”

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How low can Downer go?

Our embarrassing foreign minister, Downer, has done it again, brazenly out-toadying his lackey leader, lecturing those uncharitable, churlish Europeans and their media who might dare to question the wisdom of the illegal invasion of Iraq, despite Americans questioning it wholeheartedly themselves, both in government and on the street. Shades of Lon Cheney’s “Be careful what you say” post 911 imperial decree.

“In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Alexander Downer urged European politicians to weigh up the consequences of their words before they “leap out there and attack America”.

Mr Downer gave warning that criticism of America’s conduct in Iraq could inadvertently provide an incentive for terrorist attacks.

“People in the West, and not only in Europe, blame America for a suicide bomber in a market in Baghdad,” he said.

“That only encourages more horrific behaviour. Every time there is an atrocity committed, it is implicitly America’s fault, so why not commit some more atrocities and put even more pressure on America?”
….

“The more you can get media denigration of America, the more that the war against terrorism is seen to be an indictment of America, the better for those who started this war.”

Media critical of America is good for those who started the war – the neocons? What is Downer trying to propagandise here? Does he think Al Qaeda somehow started the war in Iraq by waving a magic wand over Bush, Cheney and the rest of the warmongering, fash fools?

Unbeknownst to the hapless, witless Downer, his fat foot once more in his mouth, he has given the Iraqi insurgents some wonderful encouragement – according to him, their supposed strategy is a winner. Fat chance that Europeans or the media are going to stop criticising America because of Downer’s abysmal pseudo-logic.

Perhaps in his inadequate amphibian brain, only non-American atrocities count as *real* atrocities and have no logical, reasonable cause at all, or is he automagically blaming the victims, attempting to shift the blame from the actual perpetrators of the war against Iraq? This disconnect is already rife amongst braindead flagwavers – to question the empire, no matter how brutal, self-serving and self-defeating it is, is treasonous – so everything is always someone else’s fault, not the perps’. The simple undeniable fact is that there would not *be* suicide bombers in Baghdad markets if the Coalition of the Gobbling hadn’t stupidly, wilfully and illegally invaded Iraq. Are we meant to forget this by withholding criticism of the fools who deliberately and with malice aforethought created the mess which has engendered such gruesome and ongoing outcomes? To collude with such madness through silence one would have to be mad oneself.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it – and so the neocons are hoping for the next stop already – Iran.

The rampage in Iraq will end when it becomes clear the “surge” and escalated aerial bombings aren’t working either and the Americans leave, as the Iraqis have wanted for years and as now the overwhelming majority of Americans also want, regardless or in spite of further loss of imperial face. And *that*, with any luck, will discourage the disgraceful warmongers from further misadventurism for fun and profit in the region for quite some time.

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Building a real democracy in Israel

Arabs make up one fifth of the population of Israel. They suffer discrimination, victimisation and otherwise lack equal opportunity in a nation which hypocritically poses as a democracy. In reality, Israel is a rich ghetto for an elite that prospers at the expense of the rest of its citizenry. Such a situation is a potent recipe for ongoing agitation for rights and recognition by disadvantaged minorities.

A new paper compiled by 40 leading Arab Israeli academics sees the way forward to true democracy.

From the NY Times:

“They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.The authors propose a form of government, “consensual democracy,” akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.
…

A 2003 government report acknowledged discrimination by state institutions, and a recent report on poverty published last year by Israel’s National Insurance Institute indicated that 53 percent of the impoverished families in Israel are Arabs.”

The present situation is reviled by the vast majority of Israeli Arabs.

“According to a poll of Arab Israelis by the Yafa Institute, commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, only 14 percent of respondents said they thought Israel should remain a Jewish and democratic state in its current format; 25 percent wanted a Jewish and democratic state that guarantees full equality to its Arab citizens. But some 57 percent said they wanted a change in the character and definition of the state, whether to become a state for all its citizens, a binational state, or a consensual democracy.”

According to Shawki Khatib, co-author of Future Visions and Department Head of the Government Political Philosophy Department at the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa, the document describes three specific areas for change.

“First is the principle of human rights: the document addresses the fundamental rights of the Palestinians in Israel as human beings – to economic and social development, women’s and children’s rights, to live without violence, etc. – and demands their realization. The second principle invokes civil equality: the basic democratic right to equality before the law and the demand to annul laws, structures and symbols that alienate the Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure Jewish superiority.

… And the third principle is that of the right of communities to self-determination, including the autonomous right to manage specific areas of life such as their own education and cultural and religious affairs.

In order to realize these foundations, the document’s writers demand the implementation in Israel of a consociational system. This would replace the existing liberal system that is exploited automatically by the Jewish majority and that, indeed, constitutes a “tyranny of the majority” in which, in the name of liberal democracy, that majority takes draconian steps against the Palestinian minority and its fundamental rights.”

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Ziocon Feith Nailed

Although no charges against Feith and his co-conspirators are forthcoming at this stage at least, the truth behind the ziocon push to illegal war against Iraq is being exposed unequivocally for public view at last.

“A leading figure in the Bush administration’s march to war in Iraq helped justify the 2003 invasion by undercutting the CIA with questionable intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s links to al Qaeda, a Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report on Friday.

Former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith presented the White House with claims of a “mature symbiotic relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda as if they were facts, while ignoring contradictory views from the intelligence community, the report by the Pentagon inspector general said.

“They did not show the other, dissenting side,” Defense Department acting inspector general Thomas Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing.

A claim by Feith’s office that September 11 hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official months before the 2001 attacks could not be verified by intelligence, he said.

Gimble, who produced the classified report after a one-year review, concluded that Feith was authorized by former deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to pursue alternative intelligence conclusions and that the action was lawful.

But Feith’s actions were sometimes “inappropriate” because they “did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community,” said an unclassified two-page executive summary of the report released by the inspector general’s office.

As a result, Feith’s office “did not provide ‘the most accurate analysis of intelligence’ to senior decision-makers,” it said.”

The New York Times presentation on the Inspector General’s report goes into more depth and quotes Gimble more extensively:

“Mr. Gimble told the committee today that, while the Pentagon’s in-house intelligence-gathering was not illegal or unauthorized, ‘the actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products.'”

Feith starts covering himself and dragging in his co-conspirators:

“On Thursday, as details of Mr. Gimble’s report were beginning to come out, Mr. Feith issued a statement saying his office’s activities had been authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and that his office properly shared its findings.”

Further questions remain to be answered:

“However, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, drew from Mr. Gimble a statement that Mr. Feith had not been entirely consistent in his intelligence briefings, in ways Mr. Gimble said he could not go into for security reasons.’He changed the briefing for his audience?’ Mr. Reed asked.

‘There were adjustments made depending on the audience,’ Mr. Gimble replied.

‘Well, why would he do that?’ the senator asked. ‘Why would he make changes based on the audience?’

‘I don’t think I’m in a position to make a comment on why he would do what he did,’ Mr. Gimble said.”