Meanwhile, the same UN who spent between USD 150 – 250 million arranging this wet fish in the face of democratic practice, fired Peter Galbraith for daring to suggest that the outcome would be flawed and endorsed Kai Eide, the Norwegian Blue Parrot at the head of the UNAMA license to steal, are lining up to line their pockets anew. Why did the UN (and EU) doggedly stick by the election process, despite all the evidence that this will take the country (even further) down into the depths of violence and authoritarian kleptocracy? Sources in Kabul point to a new round of contracts, estimated at USD 4 billion, for the 5000+ UN agencies and NGOs running around in big white trucks doing fuck all. Bookmark this and see if I’m right. I apologise in advance if no new money is voted, Ban Ki Moon kicks Kai Eide up the arse and the ‘international community’ threatens withdrawal and sanctions. But the awful hypocrisy of  a rush to congratulate to Karzai from puddinghead Gordon Brown, wanky Ban Ki and the increasingly Bushlike Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama are as emetic as anything I’ve seen for a very long time.

None of this was worth a single dead soldier, much less thousands of dead Afghan civilians. By the way, the ‘bad guys’ are in Pakistan – now. Drone bombing villages is winning no hearts and minds there either.

And another thing: while the grim spectre of mass murderer by proxy Tony Blair becoming EU President recedes, the boat is floating for David Miliband to become EU High Representative. His only qualification, apart from being a Blairite, is undying loyalty to Hillary Clinton and the US. If that’s what we want – the United States of Europe – he’ll be perfect and the EU will be involved in full scale conflicts, wherever liberal intervention sounds like a good idea, before you can skin a banana.

John J Kelly

Drone bombing insurgents, much less civilians, will not win the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, which has now spread to Pakistan, enabling the possibility of a nuclear-resourced Taliban. Former Pakistani SIS head, Lt-Gen Hameed Gul has been himself allegedly blacklisted as a terrorist by the UN for advocating dialogue with moderate elements of the Taliban and for stating the obvious. Gul was and is no angel. He masterminded US support for the Mujaheddin, who later became the Taliban, at a time when the US were primarily concerned with pissing off the Russians – but he is right to state that Afghans see any occupying force as a prime enemy, and thus that the US and Britain are as bad as the Russians in their eyes. Warlords expediently unite to repulse foreign occupiers. Invaders cannot and will not win a conventional war against guerillas in hostile terrain, fought against a backdrop of justifiable civilian outrage at ‘collateral damage,’ without huge attrition. Afghanistan could prove as costly to the US and its allies as it was to the end-of-empire Soviets. The only ‘winners’ are those who stand to gain from fanning the flames of Islamophobia and keeping the US committed to a bellicose policy.

Mission Accomplished. Democracy has triumphed. Mahdi Army rules OK.

Even if we acknowledge that US Middle East policy is modelled on the Keystone Cops, it is extraordinary that absolutely no lessons have been learned from history, or benchmarks taken from the Iraq farrago, where not only has the ‘surge’ failed to establish peace or a democratic mandate – civilian casualties have largely returned to pre-surge levels – but the entire 8 year multi trillion dollar misadventure has left the country infinitely worse off whilst empowering clan-led militias. Some, such as the Mahdi Army, are bent on establishing a version of Shiite fundamentalism and general extortion along the way. Others are simply motivated by the opportunities of corruption on a grand scale in a failed state. Al Qaida, the Taleban and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse have never been in ruder health.

Afghanistan, arguably the epicentre of the original problem, has fallen off a cliff. Puppet President, Pashtun warlord Hameed Karzai, whose credentials stem largely from his Mujaheddin past and US links stemming from the anti-Soviet insurgency period, has a brother Ahmed Wali Karzai who allegedly controls the largest syndicate in a country which supplies 93% of the world’s heroin-grade opium – infinitely more damaging to the West than the export of Islamic fundamentalism. On his chaotic watch a violent variant of rule of law is enforced in Taleban-controlled districts and US bombs are directed at his enemies while corruption is endemic. According to the New York Times: “kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.” (Bribes Corrode Afghans’ Trust in Government, New York Times, 1/01/08).

Ashraf Ghani. All he is saying, is give peace a chance. And stop stealing from the people. And give the stage over to civil society, not war and criminality.

I’m no expert on Afghanistan, but I know a failing state, and I know a man who knows a lot about both. I have a high personal regard for Ashraf Ghani, Finance Minister of Afghanistan from 2001-4, founder of The Institute for State Effectiveness and co-author, with Clare Lockhart, of ‘Fixing Failed States. Dr Ghani, a previous candidate for the role of UN Secretary General is also a member of the UNDP Commission of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. As Finance Minister he was widely credited with restoring the country’s pillaged treasury to some form of accountability before he fell out with Karzai. Though highly connected, he is anything but a warlord, which admittedly has a downside of reducing his chances of success unless he has strong international support (not based on military threats). He has also urged a pragmatic dialogue with moderate elements of the Taliban, and has been fiercely critical of the vast waste of aid money on consultants and NGOs, which has not endeared him to the Powers that Be. But he has everything to play for. Last November, before Dr Ghani entered the fray, a poll gave Karzai a 25% popularity rating. ‘Nobody’ with 22%, came second.

Transparency International rank the Karzai administration as the fifth most corrupt government in the world. Last year only 40 billion Afghanis (approximately USD 800 million), were reported as revenues. In March this year the Finance Ministy estimated that 2/3rd of the government’s annual revenues, amounting to USD 1.6 billion, were ‘lost’ to waste and corruption, indicating potential annual revenues of USD 2.4 billion USD. According to Ghani’s campaign team: “the Karzai government has repeatedly expressed its inability to increase the salaries of civil servants, teachers or address the needs of the disabled, widows, and other vulnerable segments of our society. Lack of financial resources and dependence on donors who are unwilling to support these expenditures has been used as an excuse.” Ghani’s economic platform is based upon the simple expedient of establishing fiscal propriety and using the $US 1.6 billion additional revenues currently lost through corruption and waste to provide salaries and services to the most vulnerable groups of Afghani society. The extremist Taliban elements, meanwhile, draw power from the fact that there is seemingly no alternative between fanatic relgious law upheld by voilence or corruption and criminality, again upheld by violence. Ghani represents a thinking middle path.

According to Dr Ghani: “Citizen awareness of the cost of corruption and mobilization against it has been critical to promoting good governance from the early 20th century United States to Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. We must address corruption as citizens. When citizens can count the cost of corruption on their wellbeing, and the loss of opportunities for their children and grandchildren, then they can transform their individual frustrations into a collective force for change.”

Bombing wedding parties in the name of the war on terror, propping up drug lords and radicalising a ferociously independent population by settling an army of occupation among them has proved a recipe for failure and misery for the past 35 years or more, not to mention several centuries. Afghanistan could become Obama’s Vietnam, if it isn’t already. Powerful people in the US and elsewhere would be delighted for that to happen, the same people, dare I say it, who convinced Bush to focus his misguided efforts on Iraq. While it is highly unlikely that the Afghan elections in August will be fair or democratic, Ashraf Ghani represents a better than outside chance of establishing a civil society and saving the US and Britain from another humiliating misadventure in the neo-colonial Great Game, which we shouldn’t be playing in the first place, to the detriment of world peace and the enrichment of arms dealers, drug dealers and fundamentalists of all stripes. He deserves a fair go. So does Afghanistan.

John J Kelly

Gordon's got a hard hat and two pairs of brown trousers, more than the army had when they were sent into Basra.

In the past week the clueless yet relentlessly authoritarian UK government scaled new heights of ineptitude and plumbed new depths of contempt for public sensibilities. Announcing the long-awaited Iraq War enquiry on a timetable that would ensure its publication only after the next election is one thing. Appointing five government/Whitehall stooges to hold said enquiry, at least two of whom were responsible for the policy and strategy which led to Britain’s involvement in the war in the first place is another. Claiming on national radio, as did Blairite Foreign Secretary, ‘banana boy’ Miliband, that ‘every secret service in the world’ thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that ‘if you’re looking for a conspiracy, you won’t find one’ gives a further clue to the ‘outcome’ of the enquiry. Announcing that this epic search for truth would be held in secret on the twisted logic that this would ensure that those questioned would feel more inclined to tell the truth on the precondition that nobody would be held accountable sums up the depths of degradation into which the current government has sunk our ‘democratic’ system. Had enough yet? Well think again, there’s more.

The familiar excuse that the enquiry needed to be held in camera ‘in the interests of national security’ was a spin too far for the men in black glasses and the men in nylon khaki. It is an open secret that the spooks felt hard done by at being blamed for the amateurish and deeply mendacious ‘dodgy dossier,’ lifted from a PhD student’s C grade essay and allegedly sexed up by Alastair Campbell, which Blair brandished as his ultimate casus belli. (Had they been involved, the document would at least have been spellchecked).

Every security service in the world thought this was Yellow Cake Uranium when in fact it was a deadly weapon of my image destruction.

Though Austin Powers (aka John Scarlett) was the source of the Yellow Cake Nigerian uranium nonsense which Bush used as part of his ultimate casus belli, this appears to have been a combination of wishful thinking and routine incompetence, rather than politically-motivated mischief. ‘In the interests of national security,’ we might never know whether the sources and judgment of the UK security services were corrupted (think Mossad) and its advice overridden (think Blair/Campbell) in the haste to rush to war and support the carpet bombing of tens of thousands of civilians and cause an insurgency which took the death toll to more than 100,000, not to mention the turkey shoot of over 22,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first glorious ‘victory week’ of an engagement which has lasted far longer than WW2 and Vietnam.

The British army, justifiably angry at having held their tongues after holding Basra for five years with cheap equipment, clown cars, mail order uniforms and armour that wouldn’t pass muster at a girl guide’s paintball party, then ridiculed by the US for leaving the place in a mess – ie. with lots of Iraqis left alive – also declared themselves off side. With (Sir) John Chilcot, a dab hand with the Persil, cf the Butler Report, at the helm, Professor (Sir) Lawrence Freedman (co-author of Blair’s 1999 Chicago ‘Humanitarian Intervention‘ speech and alleged architect of the government strategy on engagement in Iraq) riding shotgun and three other sockpuppets to make up the numbers, there was little chance of a fair hearing. Faced by a mutiny led by General (Sir) Richard Dannatt and dark, professionally deceitful Oxbridge twats turning against their lords and masters, the government executed a partial U-Turn (which could yet become a full one).

How, or why, did they ever think they could get away with another cover-up? God told them to do it. In today’s Observer, it is alleged – and predictably denied by this Pinocchio government – that Brown was asked by Tony Blair (through Mandelson, one presumes) to hold the enquiry in secret, for fear that he (Blair) would be tried in the court of public opinion. Well, yes he would, should and well might be, except that a more appropriate and less biased place might be the International Criminal Court at the Hague, where the tribunal would not be stacked with Blairite cronies.

Meanwhile, Thus has thought long and hard as to how to drag the truth of the situation out of Blair and his fellow alleged war criminals. Since it was also revealed this week, in the first of a series of leaks designed to soften the impact if and when they are later confirmed, that while Blair had not authorised the use of torture by UK forces or agencies, he had not stood in the way of other countries who chose to use it, we have our answer! Hold the enquiry in Morocco. Transport can be arranged. After a professional application of waterboarding, a spot of Binham Mohamed on the Old Man, electric shock therapy and constant repetitive exposure to loud music – may we suggest ‘Things Can only Get Better? (Thus passim) – we won’t need any high fallutin’ experts to tell us who did what and when. After all, as any Blairite will tell you, torture works. It formed the basis of much of the intelligence gathering behind the War on Terror, after all.

]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk-mr-blair/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do-the-new-model-of-democracy-inc/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do-the-new-model-of-democracy-inc/#comments Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:28:31 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3608 Not long ago, in a country far away, the world held its breath as a tightly-fought election drew to its climax. The popular democratic candidate appeared to have won, but at the last minute, 25 key votes from the electoral college of a state run by the candidate’s brother assured victory for the son of the president before the last one. Victory was achieved by deliberately disenfranchising the voting rights of a poor ethnic minority predisposed to vote for the democratic party and by claiming that the ballot papers of others were spoiled by a technical anomaly. The bad guy, a fundamentalist puppet of amoral neo-conservatives with a history of warmongering and a vested interest in weapons of mass destruction, took over the country.

The suffering population of another country on another continent was bombed into the stone age in pursuit of its oil, under the pretext of freeing its people and establishing democracy. Torture and illegal detention became the norm, as a ‘war on terror’ was pursued to the detriment of the lives and liberties of large parts of the planet, justified by a systematic disregard of international law. Breathtaking abuses of trust, enacted in the name of liberalisation, destabilised and pillaged the global financial system. Armed and supported by that great nation its Middle East client state annexed territories, built concentration camps, killed thousands of civilians, invaded a neighbouring sovereign state causing billions of dollars of damage and ensured the election of a fellow neocon hawk by murdering over 2300 men, women and children, fanning the flames of despair, hatred and fundamentalist terror. Eight years later, with thousands of its own soldiers dead and wounded, fighting another unwinnable war of aggression with a busted economy and its international reputation in tatters, it was time for another election. This time the good guy won. Or did he?

I’m not talking about Iran.

John J Kelly

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Donate to the Gaza appeal and don't pay your BBC licence fee

In a display of lip-curling spinelessness, the BBC has refused to air the non-aligned Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Humanitarian Aid to the victims of the Gaza conflict. Other UK (commercial) TV channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, have agreed to air the appeal. Sky Television is considering its position. (UPDATE: unsurprisingly, Sky has now declined to broadcast the appeal).

The decision has been condemned by the usual suspects such as John Sentanu, Archbishop of York, The Archbishop of Canterbury, Tony Benn, George Galloway, 60 MPs and Hazel Blears – with friends like that, you might say – but at least they aren’t scared of the shrill ultras (neither is Thus, by the way). International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander’s statement is particularly balanced: “I think the British public can distinguish between support for humanitarian aid and perceived partiality in a conflict. I really struggle to see, in the face of the immense human suffering in Gaza at the moment, that this is in any way a credible argument. They still have time to make a different judgement, to recognise the immense human suffering and to address the concern – which I think otherwise may develop – that somehow the suffering of people in Gaza is not taken as seriously as the suffering of people in other conflicts.”

UK Culture Secretary, the meaningless Andy Burnham, has sat on the fence uttering platitudes. So far, the BBC has reported that it has received over 11,000 complaints from UK citizens but has neglected to mention the sizeable protests outside BBC HQ. In a display worthy of Ruritania, BBC spinmonkeys have tried to turn the story into a defence of BBC ‘impartiality’, claiming that their political position would be affected by broadcasting this appeal – a curious claim given that there are several precedents for airing appeals for the victims of warfare.

The appeal calls for urgently needed food and medicine. The Disasters Emergency Committee aggregates the efforts of 13 largely non-aligned agencies – ActionAid, British Red Cross, CAFOD, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund and World Vision UK, attributes no blame and makes no political statements. The simple fact is that many hundreds more men, women, children and old people may die without urgent help. Gaza’s hospitals and infrastructure have been pulverised, on top of a long siege and blockade which has depleted resources. Add to this the destruction of the tunnels which were the only way to bring in essentials (never mind weapons) and you have a full scale humanitarian emergency, admittedly created by man, not nature. What part of this does BBC Director General Mark Thompson find difficult to understand? Arguably, by refusing to air the relief message, the BBC is making a political statement – that these people do not deserve the help of the vast majority of the UK citizens who don’t like watching innocent people needlessly suffer and die. A lot of Jewish people would no doubt contribute too, but not if the spin is that for some bizarre reason, it is politically incorrect to do so.

The BBC has come under constant fire from various Ultra propaganda conduits in the past and during the recent conflict (massacre?) for its perceived pro-Arabist coverage of Israeli-related issues. Its own gormless attempt to spin this decision shows that the corporation has learned a lot from the constant crude fascist barracking from AIPAC and other nutters. Political interference, on one level or another, is apparent. It is cant to pretend otherwise.

Israel, meanwhile, has pledged legal aid to protect its soldiers from prosecution for war crimes in Gaza – as near to an admission that there were war crimes as you’re likely to get. This is entirely their prerogative, and we look forward to the proceedings. I doubt you’ll read much about it on the cowardly BBC, whose executives don’t want their inboxes spammed by gibberish from Zionist PR activists. The Israel lobby has won another victory. The problem with mass murder and terrorising thousands of civilians, bombing hospitals, blockading aid efforts and stifling the international efforts to help is that responsible media organisations might report on it – unless they are intimidated. This was and is part of Ultra-Zionist strategy since the 1982 Lebanon massacres. Neo-fascists in Darfur, DRC, Myanmar, Tibet, Zimbabwe and elsewhere will be taking notes.

You can read about the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal here. Personally, I think Israel should pay full retribution for the damage they have caused – and pay Palestinians in full for the Occupied Territories which they have annexed since 1967 and which are the cause of the Middle East tensions. They can easily afford it. That’s a political statement. Donating isn’t.

John J Kelly.

Media censorship has a habit of rebounding. For example, even friendly media would struggle to describe the actions of Hamas, (whom I’ve already described in several posts as a bunch of criminal sociopaths originally sponsored by Mossad), but who have been morally strengthened by what can only politely be described as Israel’s ill-advised use of disproportionate force. It is entirely likely that they have been firing rockets out of heavily-populated positions  - Gaza is one of the world’s most densely-populated areas, so it’s hard to see how they could avoid doing so. Thus, they must be aware that in doing so they put the lives of civilians at risk. However, this equally means that the invading Israeli forces must have knowledge that in bombing buildings (and UN compounds) they will kill inncocents. Moreover, as the aforementioned grainy YouTube clips (some dating back to 2007) show, they have sophisticated surveillance techniques which show in minute detail the exact position of Hamas armament and fighters. Knowingly Bombing civilians is a crime against International Law and an indisputable breach of the Geneva Convention. Both Hamas and Israel are guilty and both should be censured. (For that matter, so should Britain and the US, for crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that’s another sorry tale altogether).

I am equally certain that Hamas rockets might have done a lot more civilian damage over the past eight years, with a lot more international outrage, had the Southern Israel citizens not organised highly effective early warning systems and educated their children to flee to purpose-built shelters within a minute of hearing a siren. Whether or not the bombs don’t achieve their ‘goal’ of killing people, the effect of constant bombardment, even with toytown rockets, exacts a terrible toll on the hearts and minds of Israeli civilians, up to and including the biblical desire for revenge. Thus, Israel’s efficiency in defending its citizens has possibly and paradoxically contributed to the build-up to the present unequal contest. Allied to the sense of hopelessness in the face of muted international condemnation of Hamas (and Hizbollah), this may have led inexorably to a situation where the military hawks (vicious, opportunistic bullies but never the cleverest or most lateral thinkers) forced their ‘solution’ (bombing civilian populations) to the front of the agenda. 

The (deplorable) default position of the international liberal media is to don the keffiyeh and metaphorically chant Palestinian slogans, in a misplaced parody of 1968 and all that. On the other hand, the (majority) illiberal media, as represented by The Daily Mail and Telegraph in the UK, Fox News and most of the Murdoch gang in the US and elsewhere, are natural Neocon allies of Israel, especially in its current belligerent incarnation. By banning the media (in contravention of international law and in defiance of a ruling of the Israeli Parliament itself) Israel is laying itself open to the charge that it has all but abandoned any semblance of respect for natural human justice. In doing so, it puts itself on the same rogue state level as the criminal sociopaths from whom it so rightly feels the need to defend its citizens. 

Israel has now achieved its domestic objective: the forces of Netanyahu have prevailed and the country needs to dig in for a period of international ostracisation. The US and Britain will veto any Security Council Resolution condemning its actions, so it won’t face international sanctions. Hamas will be deposed and go underground (again), where its hard liners will resort to acts of covert terrorism which will kill many more innocent people. Likewise Hizbollah and other whacko Palestinian militants. The neighbours and relatives of the thousands killed, half-starved and displaced by the bombardments of Lebanon and Gaza will hate Israel even more and aid the terrorists (no change there). There is no other possible outcome at this stage than an increase in the likelihood of Terror – so thanks a lot from the rest of us. On the other hand, Israel will have its Right-Wing coalition and may well try and invade Iran. In which case, welcome to Armageddon (literally). 

Obama has his work cut out, though the composition of his advisors (Rham Emmanuel, Hilary Clinton and her Rubinesque cabal, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Soros et al) make it unlikely that much will change on the policy front. I’m not saying any more about this horrible mess, (even if I told you so) except that I am sorry for all the innocent people killed in the name of political expediency. It was ever thus.

John J Kelly

(Irish, friend of Jews everywhere but not fond of Israel, especially its Neanderthal politicians).

Israel is feeling “no real pressure” from the world to end the operation in the Gaza Strip, and the amount of time the international community will sit relatively quietly on the sidelines depends on how things develop, senior diplomatic officials said Sunday. According to the officials, one errant IDF shell could bring to a dramatic end what has been described as “greater understating than you can imagine” for Israel’s actions.” HERB KEINON, Jerusalem Post, Monday 29 December 2008.

No Arab, No Terror, by John Keane, The Inconvenience of History series, 2003

This article from today’s Jerusalem Post : Jerusalem: No international pressure to end op demonstrates the urgent need to send a clear public signal to Israel that its behaviour makes it a pariah in the international community and a threat to world peace. Dancing around the handbags is not an option. While it is true that the Christmas holidays meant that the liberal media was caught on the hop – The Guardian’s 27 December front page concerned the English High Street sales and the movements in Gaza were relegated to a couple of columns in the international section, for example – the world is now catching up. As the undemocratically-compromised US media shows itself broadly in favour of the genocide, up to and including the ‘food aid’ malarky (Thus passim) Israeli citizens should be made fully aware that the rest of the world won’t be fooled again. The Jerusalem Post article notes (disapprovingly) the disapproval of Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Prime Minister (Thus passim). It also notes, approvingly, the tepid criticism from the EU and the unco-ordinated early statements from the UN, (now followed, as predicted, by a weak statement from the Security Council). The modus operandi of previous Israeli state terror campaigns has been to seek tacit approval from the US, start bombing and withdraw with no apologies or retribution when ‘objectives’ have been met, to muted protest from the western ‘powers’. There are moderate and balanced voices in the Israeli media prepared to describe this tragedy relatively objectively, such as Amos Harel of Haaretz:

The events along the southern front which commenced at 11:30 on Saturday morning are the closest thing there is to a war between Israel and Hamas. It is difficult to ascertain (geographically) where and for how long the violence will reach before international intervention forces a halt to the hostilities. However, Israel’s opening salvo is not merely another “surgical” operation or pinpoint strike. This is the harshest IDF assault on Gaza since the territory was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967.

“Palestinian sources in Gaza report that 40 targets were destroyed in a span of three to five minutes. This was a massive attack much along the lines of what the Americans termed “shock and awe” during their invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Simultaneous, heavy bombardment of a number of targets on which Israel spent months gathering intelligence. The military “target bank” includes dozens of additional targets linked to Hamas, some of which will certainly come under attack in the coming days.

“Like the U.S. assault on Iraq and the Israeli response to the abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser at the outset of the Second Lebanon War (the “night of the Fajr missiles,” a reference to the IAF destruction of Hezbollah’s arsenal of medium-range Fajr missiles), little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians. From Israel’s standpoint, Hamas, which persistently fires rockets while using the civilian population as cover, had plenty of opportunities to save face and lower their demands. In stubbornly continuing to launch rockets during the course of recent weeks, it brought this assault on itself. (Read full article here).

The Hamas leadership are incompetent sociopaths who are treating their own constituents as pawns in this deadly game (witness the reports that they are not allowing the wounded access to Egyptian aid).  Sending rockets into civilian complexes, occupied by whoever, is unpardonable, as is suicide bombing and all its derivatives. But, like the US in Fallujah, for example, the ‘contest’ is grotesquely unequal. We expect a degree of compassion and forethought from one of the world’s most civilised and formerly-oppressed peoples. Yet, over the past eight years in particular, this wayward and dysfunctional offspring of Kissinger diplomacy has more or less rampaged as it pleased with a toy box full of the latest weaponry from its doting US parents, the Neocon Nutter family. Indeed, Israeli forces trained and equipped the hapless Georgian clients (2nd largest recipients of US aid after Israel) in their stupid assault on South Ossetia last August, which only now has the spin apparatus managed to turn into a Russian offensive. Nearer to home, Israel has twice trashed the Lebanon, scorched the West Bank, built a grotesque wall reminiscent of Berlin and any number of concentration camps and sewn the seeds of a generation of terrorists by half-starving the disenfranchised people of Gaza, whom it is now indiscriminately bombing prior to re-annexing their miserable territories. The ‘justification’ for all these acts is the ‘War on Terror.’ The reality is that Israel needs land for its immigrant settlers. It is easily the best-equipped military force in the region (with or without nuclear capability, which it has and has threatened to use) and long ago stopped worrying about security.

Except that last year’s land invasion of Lebanon did not go according to plan. A series of blunders and savage resistance from Hizbollah led to a withdrawal, which the incumbent government fears will be met with disapproval at the polls in February’s Israeli elections.

The Jerusalem Post is largely right in its assessment of the level of Western disapproval to date. AIPAC was so sure of its position that its offices were closed until today. But now China and others have joined the howls of protest, and even the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has hinted that he is . . . erm . . . less than happy with the slaughter side of things, there is a chance that Israel’s bloodlust can be tempered if enough people are brave enough to say ‘genug ist genug.’

It’s a small thing, but Avaaz have launched a petition, which you can sign here:

Thus will move on now that the regular news sources have come back from their holidays, but silobreaker.com is a good source of aggregated news and opinion for agnostics. The full force of AIPAC will be brought to bear on the world’s media and will intensify as this ‘conflict’ – or turkey shoot – enters its next stage. For light relief, I’ll be reviewing ‘Defiance’ and ‘Waltz with Bashir’ over the next couple of days.

Surgical strike, Gaza City, 28 December 2008

Remember the PFLP? Well, they’re back, thanks to helicopter gunship diplomacy. By John J Kelly from sources in Gaza

There is still time for Israel to pull back from the endgame, but we are being told that the wanton slaughter of the past two days has met with ‘widespread public approval on all sides of the Israeli political spectrum,’ and that ‘Israel has not ruled out sending ground forces into Gaza,’ where the death toll is close to 300, with at least 1000 wounded. In the past six weeks, whatever their intention, Hamas rockets (fired into occupied territories) have so far killed only one Israeli citizen. Israel claims that only 15 of (its) reported 270 dead to date were civilians but international reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers.  More than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training were among those Israel labels “terrorists”. Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school. (The Israeli definition of a combatant, according to the UK Deputy Ambassador, interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Today, is ‘anyone in uniform’). In contempt of the Geneva Convention and the UN (unsurprisingly, since it is is in breach of more than 16 Resolutions), Israel has assumed divine right to execute political and civil service functionaries who happen to work for a party of which it disapproves, using Apache gunships and F-16 fighters supplied by the United States, which has so far refused to condemn the Gaza invasion. Hamas is to blame for the ‘collateral’ civilian damage, since it sites its ‘headquarters’ (including police stations and civic centres) in centres of population. 1.5 million people are densely packed into the Gaza strip. The Israeli rhetoric could be lifted from a PR handbook of the Third Reich. “The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The ceasefire should be restored immediately,” the U.S. State Department said. The only reasonable part of that statement is the last six words. The rest is worthless.

The domestic political motive (Thus passim) may be interpreted either as an opportunistic demonstration that Labour Defence Minister Barak and Foreign Minister Livni are at least as cynical, bloodthirsty and vicious as their Necocon Likkud opponent, Mr. Netanyahu, ahead of the February elections, or as an attempt to re-annex Gaza ahead of Barack Obama’s inauguration. The latter will leave him contemplating a fearful series of opening moves. If he withdraws support for Israel, AIPAC, the US Christian Zionists and the Bush Israel lobby neocons will brand him a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. If he allows Israel to persist with de facto ethnic cleansing and a further land grab, (Hilary Clinton for one will not push for a confrontation with AIPAC) the Arab world will go up in flames on several fronts. Israelis may use this as a pretext to attack Iran – with the 20,000 missiles which Bush supplied earlier in 2008 – and global terror will accelerate, courtesy of various militant wings of Fateh, Hamas, Hibollah and the gone but not forgotten PFLP, not to mention Al Qaeda. Hamas, while including some horrible sociopaths, was democratically elected, restored some semblance of civil order and rather like the Taliban was tolerated by large portions of the citizenry accordingly. Bringing it down suits the agenda of Israel and Fateh. Perhaps one reason why it refused to renew the truce was that it saw that its end was inevitable. Despite Israel’s protestations, Israeli hawks and settlers are delighted by this escalation. The military action will not stop Hamas lobbing fireworks into territory occupied by Israeli settlers unless Israel withdraws and gives back the land which it stole, which it won’t. If Israel ‘succeeds’ in knocking out Hamas, meanwhile, even more dangerous fanatics will be happy to take their place, as the (relatively mild) statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine amply demonstrates.  Fateh (secularist successors to the PLO) have kindly said that that they will fill any vacuum left by the Islamist Hamas, branded a terrorist organisation by the US and Israel (who should know, since they helped found them). But their weakness and corruption gave Hamas a mandate in Gaza in the first place. And let’s not forget Hizbollah,  whose ‘mission statement’ has extended to recovering occupied territories and Al Qaeda which just plain hates Israel and the US.

While condemning the inflammatory rhetoric and undisputable terror tactics of Hamas, the world needs to send an unequivocal ultimatum to Israel that state terrorism is no different from whatever label is applied to the various forms of ‘freedom fighting’ which America and its allies have chosen to label unacceptable in free civil society. The UN has now called for a ceasefire and is planning a Resolution (which the US will veto), the EU, as ever, is waffling and the Quartet, conducted by Bush puppet and double busted flush Tony Blair, is still tuning up. However, if the first act of Obama is to withdraw Israel’s mandate to invade and hold onto territory which it occupies in open defiance of several UN Resolutions, the UN itself may recover sufficient authority to apply pressure for a settlement. Israel may choose to ignore this, but in doing so it would show its hand as a recividist fascist rogue state (which we all hope it isn’t). If the US allows the invasion of Gaza to happen, then the Palestinians will have no option but to continue their unequal struggle and thousands more innocent people will die – very few of them Israelis.

The Northern Ireland peace process started when the US stopped turning a blind eye to support for IRA activities on the part of the Fenian lobby. Everything depends on Obama’s first thirty days. He needs to grasp the AIPAC nettle and make it clear that Israel no longer has a pass to be the world’s best-resourced and most aggressive state terrorist organisation.  He cannot afford to make any bad compromises. Let’s see how good he is.

John J Kelly