i went over this morning to see my friend Grim, he's a strange old chap who's life just took a big turn last month, his wife left him, he had a few issues and found himself alone and going through a messy seperation. i saw him take a dive, the kind of dive that you have to take in life sometimes and i offered him some support, it was a close shave, Grim ended up in Manly phych ward. He was on the 24 hour watch. Today he moved into his own home, and i played him my song, 'Jazz Ciggarette'
he played a nice base line as we nailed the tune down. he's on his feet now, found a nice tranquil spot and off the gear. his life turned around, he's playing base and being creative, he's happy in his self, it was good to see, we decided to recorrd 'Jazz Ciggarette' at some point.

Louis Wain was born in London’s Clerkenwell district in 1860 and eventually became an artist, selling his sketches of dog shows to the Illustrated Sporting News. He married his youngest sister's governess, Emily Richardson, which was considered quite scandalous at the time. His wife contracted breast cancer and died three years later. To entertain her on her sickbed, Wain started drawing their cat, Peter. Emily encouraged him to send these drawings to newspapers and magazines, and soon the Louis Wain cat was a household name, not only in Britain but also in America, where his comics and drawings of cats appeared in several newspapers. Louis Wain was elected as President of the National Cat Club and wrote the book 'In Animal Land with Louis Wain' in 1904. Wain continued drawing cats for newspapers and children’s books until he fell victim to schizophrenia in 1917 at the age of 57. Coupled with WWI and the public dwindling interest it cats, Wain soon fell into poverty and in 1924 was certified “insane” and committed to the pauper’s wing of a mental hospital in Tooting, England. Years later a foundation was set up for him by his peers (including the famous H.G. Wells) which enabled Wain to spend the last years of his life in comfort in private asylums in Southwark and Napsbury, where he continued to paint and draw his cats. Wain allows us a unique insight into the delusions and course of illness in a late onset schizophrenic.
Wain’s early work, while strange to some, is dominated by fanciful imagery of cats dressed in human clothes or engaged in human activity. Considering that much of his work was political cartooning and illustrating for children’s books, the early work seems an adequate representation of his pre-schizophrenic period.




During the onset of his disease at 57, Wain continued to paint, draw and sketch cats, but the focus changed from fanciful situations, to focus on the cats themselves.







Characteristic changes in the art began to occur, changes common to schizophrenic artists. Jagged lines of bright color began emanating from his feline subjects. The outlines of the cats became sever and spiky, and their outlines persisted well throughout the sketches, as if they were throwing off energy.


Soon the cats became abstracted, seeming now to be made up of hundreds of small repetitive shapes, coming together in a clashing jangles of color that transform the cat into something resembling an Eastern diety.


The abstraction continued, the cats now being seen as made up by small repeating patterns, almost fractal in nature.
Until finally they ceased to resemble cats at all, and became the ultimate abstraction, an indistinct form made up by near symmetrical repeating patterns.



Wain, like many late onset schizophrenics, never recovered from his illness. Because of the invention and increase in availability of medications effective in treating schizophrenia, the prognosis for someone diagnosed with the disorder today is much better than the one for Wain, who had been diagnosed in 1917. There is no yet known cause for the late onset in this type of schizophrenia, much like there is no known cause for the onset in the early type. Theories include much the same hypotheses as those for early onset, namely chemical imbalances and/or traumatic experience coupled with a genetic predisposition to the disorder.

ahhh strange erotic dreams, sexual transactions with ex partners, seedy situations and steamy atmospheres, i woke up drenched in sweat, it was 3.15pm and the day was gone. i took pan for a walk, had a hot chocolate and as people said hello i said 'good morning' such is the time displaced universe i live in.
i finished blooms 'Lucifer Principle' very sobering book, but i think its a very accurate concept about humanity and the forces that shape us.
there's always that weird period between books where i seem to experience a mild anxiety about what i will read next, however today i managed to leap into Mortal Love a novel by Elizabeth Hand. I took it along with me on my walk, sat and watched the clouds over the ocean, thats one of my fave spots, just sitting watching the water and the sky
on the way home earler this morning i stopped of to chat with a friend who runs a stall in a market that sells conspiracy theories like people sell cars, anyways he had a whole batch of david ickie books and some dvds. david ickie for those that don't know is under the illusion that there are giant lizards among the human population, royal family, us president, world banks etc that are trying to take over the earth. i've read heaps of his stuff and i have to say as far as i am concerned the mans a fruitcake but as i am looking through the conspiracy man starts pointing at the skies, telling me about 'chemtrails.'
Now the deal is that these light aircraft are spraying chemicals through the atmosphere onto densly populated areas. I did see the trails he spoke of, didn't see the actual aircraft. anyway these trails apparently weaken the immune systen, they are initiated by drug companies and governements. Now the only reason i mention this is becuase i have just had my sinuses up, somethin that never happens to me, outta the blue, anyways the conspiracy guy tells me he's been watching them spraying in the early mornings, he's getting quite animated and hysterical, jumping up and down, waving his arms. i ask him what people should do about it, he says, 'build up your immune system.' then i notice on his table is some immune building compounds, lots of supplements, powders, liquids, pills and teas. yeah sells conspiracy's just like cars.

re reading lucifer principle by howard bloom, it was written ten years ago, now as i read it a whole new bunch of information is penetrating, the guys a geneus. but he offers no hope, ho way out from natures death trap, as we all hurdle into the fate we can't escape. well maybe i can, once i master this transmigration machine, alternativly there is the time machine, i just need a portable black hole and a sexy assistant with a french accent and nice boots.
well its been a crazy day, listening to jakes music on the way in to the city, we stopped as i showed him red eye, picked up the new 'dimmer' cd and a 'pixies unplugged dvd' and the special edition dvd of 'the man who fell to earth' which i have been searching for for a while.
we both enjoyed sushi train, both eating the same things then he split for college and i went into galaxy, abbeys and dymocks, book lovers heaven where i wrestled the demonic forces of book addiction and came out with only three books, all things being equal.
i'm thinking about what Bloom was saying, in the peckin order of humanity, how humans use freedom, peace and justice in a political sense yet it means a way of subverting the words themselves. one mans freedom is another mans oppression, he gives a few examples one being the way the Guals were used by Vercingetorix, Julius Caesars arch enemy. The Guals were promised freedom if they united against the Romans. They were a civilized society, they wrote greek, argues philosophy and talked about the cosmos. But they were pulled together with the word freedom. What Vercingetorix failed to explain was his idea of freedom included uniting the Guals so they could opperate under one mind. Who's mind? Vercingetorix of course. To ensure solidarity he tortured and killed those that disagreed with him, he cut of the ears, pulled out the eyes of those that didn't share his veiw, he sent the mutilated back home as a warning to those whom may be tempted to entertain independant ideas. The freedom Vercingetorix offered the Guals was the exchange of one tryanny for another.
Peace is another word abused by those high in the peking order, it usually means, 'since i am on top, lets keep the peace.'
Justice is used by those at the bottom of the peking order wanting to move up, when people refer to, 'the struggle for justice' what they really mean is lets 'keep on fighting, till i come out on top.'
Slipped from their moral disguises, these slogans become weapons used to motivate the superorganism.

give it up

i given up cigarettes and staying up late
its bad for the skin, the lungs and the health
and with the cost of living these days
its a matter of wealth
i given up speeding through traffic lights
i given up drinking and getting in fights

i given up drugs and all stimulants
they make me feel good but they fuck up my head
and then there's the vices
you take to your bed
i given up sex with strangers i meet for a night
i given up words that come back and bite

yeah give it up
give it up and be free
give it up
give it up for me

i given up the rock lifestyle
and given up the roll
its certainly not healthy they say
its bad for the soul
i given up playing my guitar up loud
i given up banging my drum in the crowd

mmm, its amazing what you right after you smoke a joint, rum in hand, thinking about the things ya should be doing, procrastinating about all the other stuff.
its been a strange day, i guess rain threatened and i was stuck, immobile, couldn't find anyone to play with, i had a coffee with sam but she was kinda 'resentful and angry' and there was a lot of residual hostility in her words, i just wanted to get close i guess but she was all female defenseive barriers and barbs out.
and that fucking accountant of mine, jeez, accountants are crap they just cream of the cash you earn becuase the tax system is so complex in australia people can't do it themselves they need accountants. fucking leeches, if i ever meet them socially i'll be telling them what i think of them so far.
other strange events, i saw basic instinct 2 which is much better than basic instinct 1, it's set in london, beautifully filmed and very atmospheric, even has a very smart story line.
mmm, well i get a chance to see jake tomorrow, so i'm looking forwards to that, but man, i need new friends.

looking at history the forces that ebb and flow through mankind are meme dominated, if ya read early parts of this blog you may have an idea of what i am referring to. gene's constitute the physical replication of the individual, the meme is the way societies are formed, they pull together, spread and dominate, acting in the same way a virus does, some are beneficial some harmful, it appears that history and culture is filled with memes that have devastated millions of lives and caused untold misery. the meme has the function of spreading and surviving, ultimately in our animal brains this translates as warfare, subjugation by fear, control via political ideology or religious. its never painless and there's always casualties. recent events show the dominant meme on the planet is radical islam, it spreads successfully and it threatens everything else. it's totally opposed to the meme of judiasm, and it has no limits becuase factored into this meme is the idea that the planet is up for grabs, whereas other religious beliefs are content to just sit back and be islam is aggressive and brutal. it is a shining example of a meme that is successful. it currently holds the world hostage.
we have seen memes like this before, communism, stalinism, early christianity even hinduism but right now this is the meme that threatens the staus quo. irronically the staus quo has become infected with a meme of tolerence, political correctness and 'fatness' the same meme that rome had before it's downfall, in fact there's not much difference between the rome of the past and the america of today, the same history repeats itself, how can we escape its cycle before the barbarians invade again?

two days surfing, yeah my wetsuit works, it's a tricky thing to get into and take off, it's like a second skin but once it's on the world is my oyster, well maybe not the world but certainly there's adequate protection against the cold water. so fin in hand, flippers on feet i 've surfed at north narabeen beach and long reef, my cells feel the regenerative and restorative powers and it's been to long between surfs. the fin works as well as ever but my mind was a bit groggy, a bit slow and my attension wandered. thoughts didn't stick around for very long and i couldn't stay fixed on the task at hand. better luck tomorrow.
my accountant is a fraud, i think i am going to pay him his cash and leave him. once again he has charged me a phenomenal amount for little return, it's a shame people have to be so greedy and dishonorable, never mind, it's his loss.

it's time for me to be social again, i have slipped of the radar screen for the last few months, hibernating, being insular and reclusive, well it's about to change, i think i need some new people in my life, stimulating and irreverent, some fun. i need to laugh again.
pan seems to have hit a certain contentment, although he likes coming with me, he also likes to just sleep after his walks, which frees me up for a long surf. he's very cute, i've been playing frisbee with him and he's very good at catching it. i heard from agent stone that andrew a mutual friend was in town, however i was disappointed that he didn't call me. i don't quite understand how some one can ring you at 2 in the morning from perth when they are drunk, tell you how much they miss you, then not make an effort to even call you when they are in the same town the next month. yeah i guess there's a certain amount of water that passed under that bridge and it's stagnant now.
well i have been watching lateline the last few nights and now the insurance companies are getting all funny about global warming, governments are starting to listen. Apparently the gold coast, cairns and northern queensland are about to feel the intensity of cyclones and hurricanes that would destroy the coastal property. al gore's senior enviromental advisor said that the weather patterns they thought would happen in 2085 are happening right now and that it's going to get much worse for humanity. mmm, yeah well let's see what happens, 2012 is the year this cycle of cvilization is predicted to end and according to the bible code book 2 this year we will see a nuclear or chemical bomb detonate in jerusleum so who know's, i am sure humanity can bring about the end of the world with efficeincy and beat the deadline.

The Express
August 11, 2006 Friday
U.K. 1st Edition
Anti-Israel hypocrites need a history lesson
By Frederick Forsyth

IT MUST surely be true that the level of lies and hypocrisy that a society can tolerate is in direct proportion to the degeneration of that culture.Personally I am not particularly pro or anti Israel, pro or anti Arab or pro or anti Islam. But I do have a dislike of myth, hypocrisy and lies as opposed to reality, fairness and truth.Watching the bombing of Lebanon it is impossible not to feel horror and pity for the innocent civilians killed, wounded or rendered homeless. But certain of our politicians, seeking easy populism and the cheapest round of applause in modern history, have called the Israeli response "disproportionate". Among these politicos are Jack Straw and that master of EU negotiations, William Hague. That accusation can only mean: "disproportionate to the aggression levelled against them". Really?Why did the accusers not mention Serbia? What has Serbia got to do with it? Let's refresh our memories.In 1999 five Nato air forces - US, British, French, Italian and German - began to plaster Yugoslavia, effectively the tiny and defenceless province of Serbia. We were not at war with the Serbs, we had no reason to hate them, they had not attacked us and no Serbian rockets were falling on us.But we practically bombed them back to the Stone Age. We took out every bridge we could see. We trashed their TV station, army barracks, airfields and motorways.We were not fighting for our lives and no terrorists were skulking among the civilian population but we hit apartment blocks and factories anyway. There were civilian casualties. We did not do it for 25 days but for 73. We bombed this little country economically back 30 years by converting its infrastructure to rubble. Why?We were trying to persuade one dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, to pull his troops out of Kosovo, which happened to be (and still is) a Yugoslav province. The dictator finally cracked; shortly afterwards he was toppled but it was his fellow Serbs who did that, not Nato.Before the destruction of Serbia, Kosovo was a nightmare of ethnic hatred. It still is. If we wanted to liberate the Kosovans, why did we not just invade? Why blow Serbian civilians to bits?Here is my point. In all those 73 days of bombing Serbia I never heard one British moralist use the word "disproportionate".The entire point of Hezbollah is not to resolve some border dispute with Israel; its aim is to wipe Israel off the map, as expressed by Hezbollah's master, the crazed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.That aim includes the eradication of every Israeli Jew; ie, genocide.Serbia never once threatened to wipe the UK off the map or slaughter our citizens, yet Straw, in office in 1999, and Hague, leading the Conservative Party, never objected to Serbia being bombed.As an ex-RAF officer I am persuaded the Israeli fighter pilots are hitting civilian-free targets with 95 per cent of their strikes. These are the hits no TV network bothers to cover. It is the five per cent that causes the coverage and the horror: wrong target, unseen civilians in the cellar, misfire, unavoidable collateral casualties. Unavoidable?Israel has said in effect: "If you seek to wipe us out we will defend ourselves to the death. You offer us no quarter, so we will offer none to you. As for the non-involved, we will try to avoid you. But if you choose intentionally, inadvertently, or through the stupidity of your government to protect and shelter the killers among yourselves then, with deepest regret, we cannot guarantee your exemption." Yesterday we Brits learned that certain elements in our society had tried to organise a mass slaughter of citizens flying out of our airports. We will have to take draconian measures against these enemies in our midst. Will Messrs Straw and Hague complain our methods are disproportionate?Not a chance. Now that, dear readers, is blatant hypocrisy.ON AN almost daily basis our palsied apology for a government is having to admit the truth of independent report after report: each flatly contradicts what ministers have been telling us for years.Those who claimed the official propaganda was rubbish are being wholly vindicated.Such as? Well, if you penalise marriage and make divorce a mere formality there will be more divorces and children will suffer emotional trauma. True after all.If you make drug-buying and taking easier, the drug problem will get worse, not better.True, at last. If you give a country with a serious alcohol problem all-day, all-night boozing, the scourge will get worse until it threatens the fabric of society itself. Just been confirmed. If you flood the place with casinos you will soon create a gambling addiction problem. Just been admitted.Now, Home Secretary John Reid has conceded that if you don't crack down hard on street violence and no-ceiling immigration, both problems will intensify. Oh, and it is not racist to say such things after all.Unfortunately, Reid admits reality in almost the same breath as he announces his ministry is not fit for purpose and can therefore do nothing about it.Any chance of an apology for those, like this newspaper, who were right all along?Do not even bother to wait around for it.

here's a strange thing, my day, i start by getting up for work, while i am outside i notice the Saturday papers laying downstairs near the post box, and i am ashamed to say i think, mmm, should i grab them, i mean they must be someone's so i know it's stealing, but then its my post box. i spend about 10 mins weighing up the karmic consequences of taking these papers, it's really black and white but in self deception i make it grey, take the papers and put them in my car. Immediately as i reverse onto the road i hear a 'thwak, thwak' sound and pull over. part of a wire coat hanger is sticking out from the front left tire, it's jabbed itself about two inches into the rubber and as i pull it out i hear the release of air. i fill my tire up twice on the way in, find a tyre place and am relieved to hear it's only going to cost $40 to fix. 10 mins later the mechanic is showing me how badly my wheels are buckled. They are really bad, all twisted and squashed. thus in the first hour of my day i have spent $1000. Instant Karma.
But i have no belief in karma, i mean who's to say weather that's good karma or bad, i mean one way of looking at it is i could have driven to work without punturing my tyres and had a blow out because unknown to me all my wheels were crap. It's a blessing maybe, a $1000 blessing.

well i have a flu of some kind, a strange virus has infected me, i am hot and cold, i sweat a lot and my skin feels clammy, i dream strange vivid colours and shapes dance into my mind from backgrounds indefinable. some people downstairs make a loud noise, children scream, my phone rings and i awake having a conversation with my son, we arrange to have lunch. we chat over fruit and energy drinks about books, i am explaining why House of Leaves is one of the best novels ever written.
Later we wander into a shop where he chats to the counter girl, he introduces me as 'my dad.' It's very intresting to hear, not something i hear a lot, most people assume he is my younger brother, she flashes me a smile.
I deliver a book to a friend, i promised i would.
'You're a man of your word.' he says.
'Yes.' i reply.
Later i delve into some music and pull out a strange track called Panic in the World, by Be Bop Delux, super cool band.
Time passes by and i am drifing into a tranquil melencoly state, my cousin eagle sends me an e mail from hiafa, he said its bad. lots of damage, he says, that for him its like waking up, he has enemies who want to destroy him. He never really felt that before, always blocking it out or just thinking they were lone suicide bombers but now he knows that his enemies are legion, and his enemy is my enemy. It's funny i never really thought like that either, untll this conflict where the shape of the forces that dwell amongst human civilization reared themselves and showed their true colours. I lost friends who think israel had no need to strike back, they claim over reaction. they claim that israel has no right to exist and they claim that the arabs have a just cause. these people don't talk to me anymore. i also have friends who have become closer to me due to getting a new found perspective upon the events. the pro israeli lobby gets very little exposure here in australia, it is often seen as republican american, which makes me laugh. i recall speaking to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and she was telling me that isreal and the jews were all republican supporters. yeah such is the ignorance of people. when i wrote to media watch about the fake pictures from qana they responded by running a peice on another faked photo by a reuters photographer who consequently got the sack but did not mention qana, nor did they respond to my many letters demanding they correct their initial reports. mmm, oh well thats the nature of war i guess.
other stuff happening, mmm, lets see a few days ago i recieved a call from emilie, she's demanding to know why i don't want to see her anymore, she says her life is a mess and she wants to marry me. five mins later she rings again, screaming hysterically, she has cut her wrists and needs to see me, i arrange to meet her reluctantly. on the way she calls to cancel.I tell her to sort her life out then call me, not becuase i am unkind or don't feel anything but becuase i know my limits and my boundries. suicide girls don't do anything for me.

i been very busy as you know paying of debts, working hard and organising my pictures, i am quite excited about the idea of an exhibition, its only a matter of time now.

investigations show that humans need to be social, experiments show that babies left without touch often die, humans need to form relationships with others, these start in the family or tribe and in contempory times even ideology. within each human is a self destruct mechanism, its the trigger that leads to depression and suicide, it's the trigger that alienates individuals, this is like a time bomb resulting in death. usally the individual takes their own life, feeling there is no sense to their life anyway, no purpose. all animals have these self biological destructive circiuts, contary to popular belief evolution is not built solely upon competing self intrested loners, it also relies upon teams of individuals striving for group survival. as a result physiological feedback loops often call upon the individual to sacrifice his health, or even life, for the sake of the larger group. We inhereted this behaviour from our cellular ancsetors who first formed communities, as a result innumerable mechanisms operate within human beings.

This was in the Sunday Buisness Post an english newspaper, it's certainly a minority piece, not something that most papers dare print yet it clearly states the obvious.
 
Failing to confront the enemy within
15 August 2006
LAST summer, Great Britain was shocked to discover that some of its own – four British citizens of Asian descent – hated their native country so much that they were prepared on 7 July to detonate suicide bombs on London buses and the Underground to kill themselves and 52 innocents. This weekend, with over 20 British-born Muslims locked up under suspicion of plotting another despicable terrorist attack – but on a far grander scale – it should be clear to all but the wilfully blind that the size, scope and murderous intent of Britain’s enemy within is the most pressing problem facing the country.

During the relative quiet since the abortive copycat bombings on 21 July last year few wanted to believe that there were more attacks to come, especially not from young people born, educated and raised in the United Kingdom. But it was merely the lull before the real storm: Britain’s home-grown terror threat is greater than ever before because a small but deadly minority of young British Muslims hate the country of their birth and its prevailing non-Muslim culture. This threat from British Muslim nihilism is made all the more dangerous because the default response of a soft-headed British Establishment – including police chiefs more anxious to parade their politically-correct credentials than catch criminals and judges who play into terrorists’ hands by elevating civil liberties above national security even in time of crisis – is to worry more about the growth of so-called Islamophobia in non-Muslim Britain than to do everything it takes to root the Islamist terrorists and would-be terrorists in our midst.

Yet there is now a clear pattern evolving in the process that creates the enemy within: young Muslim men (including some recent converts), usually from honest and hard-working families – more middle-class than under-class – are radicalised after exposure to extreme Islamist elements in Britain and during subsequent and inevitable trips to Pakistan. They are fed a heady brew of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-western propaganda which exploits undoubted Anglo-American foreign policy failures and perceived injustices in Afghanistan, Iraq and what would be Palestine; and they are nurtured by a British-based Jihad apparatus which thrives under the noses of the British police. Their Islamist certainties are then fanned by the fact that they live in a country increasingly hated by its own political, media, legal and cultural elites whose predominant relativist philosophy eschews moral judgments and allows crime, social decay, feckless welfare dependency and widespread educational failure to eat away at society from within, convincing alienated Muslim youth that they really do live in a sick and disgusting society that deserves to be bombed.

When a society allows vulnerable young minds to be poisoned by Islamo-fascism and does next-to-nothing to stand up for its own traditional values of decency, responsibility, self-discipline, hard work, respect for others and the carefully-constructed freedoms of liberal democracy – indeed, far from standing up for them takes a perverse, right-on pleasure in seeing them wither on the vine – then we should not be surprised when the warped and deluded decide to take matters into their own hands; and they do not even need a global terror network to do it.

We are no longer threatened by an organisation which can be smashed or decapitated: al-Qaeda has had most of its operatives captured and been robbed of its Afghanistan base; Osama bin Laden is now a figurehead, reduced to making home videos. But al-Qaeda is still dangerous as a philosophy and a franchise and Great Britain is more vulnerable than most to it because it hosts the perfect environment for extremism to flourish: inept, politically-correct policing; lax laws on the rights of extremists to congregate, plot and spread hatred; a disastrous culture of easy welfare and failing schools; the ghettoisation of immigrants and religious minorities; pathetic border controls; and an Establishment which believes – and teaches in state schools and spreads through the broadcast media – that Britain is essentially an evil country while terrorists are just misunderstood.

Radical and urgent action needs to be taken; but there is little chance of that under a British government which has failed to enact its own agenda, even after last July’s atrocities. In their aftermath, Tony Blair notoriously produced a 12-point plan promising tighter enforcement of asylum and deportation, blacklists of extremist bookshops and bans on hardline Islamist groups. It was concocted in 10 Downing Street with the usual Blairite desire for eye-catching initiatives and the predictable lack of substance. A year later only three targets have been met and the whole exercise has lost momentum. While the Middle East burns and a terrorist plot greater than 9/11 is hatched on British soil, Mr Blair suns himself in Barbados, providing symbolic and visual evidence, if any more were needed, of his lack of resolve, short attention span, irrelevance and essential decadence when it comes to the great challenges of our time.

But it is not just the head that is rotten; so are the arms and legs. Britain’s police chiefs are now so steeped in political correctness that they have become the useful idiots of the Islamist movement. On Thursday, as the terrible scale of the plot unfolded and the terrorists were rounded up, one senior policeman could not resist mouthing platitudes about the arrests not being an attack on the Muslim “community”, even though nobody had suggested they were. Another Scotland Yard commissioner recently said that the words “Islamic terrorist” would never pass his lips, which merely underlined that his ignorance of what we are up against passeth all understanding. Meanwhile the supreme useful idiot, Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police, once declared that “there is nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist Muslim, any more than there is anything wrong with being a fundamentalist Christian.” Not on the face of it – except that, last time we looked, fundamentalist Christians in Britain (such as they are) were not blowing themselves up in crowded Tube trains or trying to blow their fellow citizens out of the sky, unlike their Islamist equivalents.

Sir Ian’s homespun drivel is what passes for profundity in today’s Britain. He and the rest of the British Establishment would be better employed figuring out why it is that Britain has spawned this Islamist enemy within while the United States, perceived by Islamists everywhere as the Great Satan and with a huge Muslim community of its own, has not. American Muslims seem far better integrated than their British counterparts, far prouder to be Americans than Britain’s Muslims are to be British, far quicker to disassociate themselves from those who bring disgrace and dishonour to their religion. You do not see American Muslims burning the Stars and Stripes or chanting “Death to Americans”; yet it is now commonplace in British Islamist demonstrations for Britain to be denigrated and its non-Muslim citizens threatened with retribution.

The reasons for the difference are profound. The American Establishment, confident and proud of its country, provides its immigrants with an inspiring American narrative in which all newcomers are invited to share; the British Establishment, which so often appears ashamed of its own country’s past and present, provides no such narrative (indeed, quite the reverse: those who turn on their adopted country will find plenty of supportive allies in the British elite). The American experience emphasises integration as the way forward for all immigration groups, even if it sometimes ends up with more of a mosaic than a melting pot. The bien pensant British way is to swamp any thought of an inclusive British culture with an emphasis on multi-culturalism, which has produced a de facto apartheid of ghettos and sub-cultures where extremism now breeds.

To the failure of the British elite we must add the failure of the British Muslim community to confront the enemy within its midst. Indeed many British Muslims seem to be in denial, regarding any arrests of suspected terrorists as further evidence of Islamophobia. There is really no such thing as the “Muslim community” but a series of distinct Muslim communities, none of which has produced leaders of wisdom, moderation or distinction.

Attempts by the government to elevate moderate “Muslim leaders” – the type which John Prescott, the preposterous Deputy Prime Minister, was consoling and consulting on Friday – have ended in failure. Most of those wheeled out over the past few days have prefaced their condemnations of terrorism by explaining how they understand the so-called “frustrations” of young British Asians (as if frustration was cause enough to become a suicide bomber) and ludicrous criticism of the police for arresting only Muslims (maybe they should have rounded up a few Baptists as well, just to be even-handed).

Nor is the mantra of the politically-correct – “the moderate Muslim majority” – quite as comforting as its repetition would suggest. Too many British Muslims subscribe to the central Jihadist lie – that the attempt to liberate Iraq from its dictator and the purging of Afghanistan of a great evil were primarily anti-Muslim military campaigns; on the other hand, it is hard to blame them too much for believing such nonsense since a large chunk of the liberal-left British elite believes it too. The real problem for Muslim communities is that within them reside substantial minorities which despise the country in which they live: a recent Populus poll found that 13% of British Muslims – equivalent to at least 125,000 adults – believe the 7 July bombers should be regarded as “martyrs”; 7% think suicide attacks on civilians justified, 16% see them as fine for military targets; 2% even said they would be proud if a family member joined al-Qaeda. Minorities, to be sure. But big enough minorities to provide a steady stream of home-grown fanatics for the foreseeable future.

Sadly, there is no stomach for a fundamental reappraisal of the underlying factors which have produced Britain’s new enemy within, on either the Left or the Right. So, for now, all that can usefully be done is to pursue the successful prosecution of those who were plotting to blow us up. This is by no means a foregone conclusion: British prosecutors have a lamentable track record in securing the conviction and jailing of Islamist terrorists. If all (or most of) the suspects arrested last week have eventually to be released, it would be the final humiliation of Britain’s security forces (the folks that brought us WMD in Iraq, the killing of an innocent Brazilian after 7 July and, most recently, Forest Gate). It would also leave what remains of the Blair government’s authority in irreparable shreds.

We do not rule it out. Nor do we exclude some Blairite histrionics as a substitute for proper action. It is just possible that Mr Blair will return from Barbados, full to overflowing with the resolve which he whips up for such events, and recall Parliament from its summer slumbers. Expect another 12-point plan and a promise that this time he really will get tough with the judiciary. Then, inevitably, his enthusiasm will cool as resistance is mounted by the leftist media and his proposals are blocked by the institutional political correctness of the police and legal system, leaving the terrorists of Londonistan free to plot further atrocities – one of which will one day succeed on a horrendous scale

single celled life is programed to survive, as it evolves cells clump together to survive, these cells specialize in various functions that assist make the larger organism, the large organisms in turn clump together and form societies, ants, monkeys, people, these societies all have one function, to survive and they in turn may form super organisms. just as our individual cells have no awareness of their existance and overall design, nor do individual people, or societies. there are exceptions, once that eighth circuit is active, you can get a fix on the ocean of humanity. the eighth circuit in societies and cultures, just imagine, how would it look, where on this planet could that happen on a level where the culture of that country manifests to this level. japan maybe. how about israel.

what i see is a people, the jewish people's continual battle against hostile forces, other societies that are sworn to destroy them, these forces have very little function or drive, anything else is beyond their immediate vision. it is basically that simple. others would see these countries as justified or sympathise with them, thats fine. what is difficult is when these sympathetic countries refuse to let israel defend or act in its own survival intrests. not that this stops israel. the un has shown where its intrests lay time after time, it's double standards and misinformed outbursts are nothing but indications of how it feels about the state of israel. never has it condemed or spoken out about the endless suicide bombings, but its always very quick to accuse israel. and please don't think that this is a blameless society, it's very much a society as that has its own internal operating system issues but generally it is a society that is filled with potential and an awesome vision.
meanwhile over in iran ahmeadinejad is under the delusion that he is heralding the second coming of islams 12th Iman but in order for this to happen he has to bring about armageddon.
israel has its fair share of nuts as well, amongst the temple mount faithful is a small group of 50 people who want to dismantle the temple mount and build the 3rd temple of solomon, making way for the jewish messanic era as predicted in the bible. however the big difference is these people are not the president and they don't have nuclear ambitions.
israel had very little choice but to strike hard now, in an attempt to draw attension to the area, drawing un troops in don't promise it anything but it does buy israel time becuase in 2 years hezzbolah will have access to nuclear or chemical weapons, if not both and then an outdated katushia missile can have a different kind of effect. small pox is the favorite.

mankind, humanity is at a point now where the war within is the war without, ultimatly the line is drawn, this is not really about countries, it is not really about religion, invisible friends or ideology, its just about survival. the forces that have shaped history have always repeated the same old patterns, rise of a civilization, the empire becomes fat and lazy, the barbarian invades and conquers. civilization is just a construct of these superorganisms, we can chose to embrace the universe and our destiny, just as we embrace change, technology sex and art or we can rage against it.

Iran takes lead in 60-year war to destroy Israel

25 July 2006

THE international clamour grows for a ceasefire in the latest Middle East hostilities; Israel seems determined to ignore it as its men and armour gather for what looks like a major incursion into Lebanon; the condemnation of Israel grows ever louder for what is now generally agreed is a “disproportionate” response to Hezbollah provocation. Pause before joining this global consensus (which does not yet include the United States and Great Britain, though both are under increasing pressure to join it). Consider two matters.


THE international clamour grows for a ceasefire in the latest Middle East hostilities; Israel seems determined to ignore it as its men and armour gather for what looks like a major incursion into Lebanon; the condemnation of Israel grows ever louder for what is now generally agreed is a “disproportionate” response to Hezbollah provocation. Pause before joining this global consensus (which does not yet include the United States and Great Britain, though both are under increasing pressure to join it). Consider two matters.

First (and less important), those who are so sure Israel’s response has been “disproportionate” (the buzz word of Israel’s critics) are least able to tell us what a “proportionate” response would have been. When a terrorist group too powerful to be destroyed by its host country (Lebanon) and bent on the destruction of another (Israel) kidnaps your soldiers, kills others in the process, then rains down hundreds of rockets indiscriminately on your towns and cities, what exactly is the “proportionate” response? It is not clear that turning the other cheek or token retaliation quite does the trick. After all, Israel has been restrained during previous Hezbollah provocations, prepared even to trade an inordinate number of terrorist prisoners for a few abducted Israeli soldiers; but that has hardly earned it brownie points with Hezbollah, as the citizens of Haifa and other parts of northern Israel on the receiving end of its rockets can no doubt testify. Those who seek your destruction do not think more kindly of you when you show compromise and compassion; they see both as signs of weakness and redouble their efforts to destroy you.

Second (and paramount), what exactly would a ceasefire achieve? In the short term, of course, it would stop the civilian death toll on both sides of the border, but especially in Lebanon, where the fatalities and grief have been greatest and where Israel (like America in Iraq) has not done enough to minimise civilian casualties (though let it not be forgotten that Hezbollah places its rockets and terrorist cells in urban areas – using the local population as human shields – precisely because it knows Israel will inevitably kill civilians when it comes to destroy them). But a ceasefire now is likely to mean far more civilian casualties on both sides of the border – and probably far beyond – later.

It is important to realise the wider significance of what is happening: in the 60-year war to destroy the state of Israel, Iran is now in the lead. Those who used to be in the vanguard of Israel’s destruction – Egypt, Jordon, Saudi Arabia, the PLO – have retired from the field with bloody noses and are even tut-tutting at Shi’ite Hezbollah’s antics, which they fear are also a threat to their Sunni regimes. Now Iran has stepped up to the plate, with Syria in supporting role. It is using Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south to fight a proxy war against Israel and it is doing so as part of a wider strategy. In leading the fight against Israel and developing its own nuclear arsenal, Iran is aspiring to become the regional superpower and bidding for the leadership of Political Islam – a leadership it will use to rid the Middle East of Western influence (which requires, among other things, the destruction of Israel) and create a new Shi’ite imperium. No wonder it is not only Israel that is nervous.

A ceasefire for the sake of it would not deflect Iran from its proxy war with Israel and the West. Tehran would regard it merely as a breathing space to equip Hezbollah with bigger and better missiles that could wreak havoc in a few years’ time in Tel Aviv or even Jerusalem; then we would witness what indiscriminate civilian casualties really look like. Iran and Syria realise that Israel cannot be defeated by mass armies on the battlefield; that way has been tried often and failed every time. Now it faces the worst threat since the nearly fatal 1973 Yom Kippur war from Iranian-backed Islamic terrorists bent on its destruction and armed not just with AK47s and explosives but the latest in rocketry – and the ability to whip up an often fickle and ignorant Western public opinion against its enemy.

Israel faces the new threat at a time when anti-Israeli sentiment in the West has never been stronger or more strident. A rampant Political Islam headed by an Iran with nuclear ambitions is as much a threat to the West as it is to Israel; but even though Israel is in the frontline against this threat the irony is that it can count on less support than ever from the West, whose political and media elites on the Left and Right are increasingly consumed by rampant hostility to Israel. Those who lead the charge against Israel, of course, come from the same debased intellectual heritage that believed you could negotiate with Hitler and that Stalin was committed to world peace. But for Israel, the soft underbelly of Western opinion is as much a threat as Hezbollah’s rockets.

Western capitals are rife with the view that, if only a ceasefire to current hostilities can be arranged, the so-called roadmap to a two-state solution can be revived and a peace settlement achieved. Underlying this approach is the belief that Israeli intransigence is the real roadblock to peace. It is a view straight from cloud-cuckoo land. There is no prospect of a peace process worth its name now that Iran and its surrogates are in the driving seat. Neither Iran nor Syria nor Hezbollah nor Hamas believe in the two-state solution; they believe in the destruction of Israel and the humiliation of the West. Those who do believe (to varying degrees) in a two-state solution – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, PLO – are increasingly marginalised. Yet Western capitals and commentators persist in believing that the old diplomatic game can be revived. It is self-delusion on a massive scale.

In the current situation, a ceasefire will mean only a lull in hostilities as long as Hezbollah remains a state-within-a-state in Lebanon, the Beirut government remains too weak to dismantle it and Iran-Syria believe they are winning. The military destruction of Hezbollah, of course, is not easy; but the price of not trying could be incalculable: if Hezbollah is not neutered now, it will have to be very soon by whatever it takes, before it is able to commit an unimaginable atrocity with Iran’s help. A continued Israeli assault on Hezbollah is the only practical way to reduce its power and military capability and to make Iran and Syria realise that not everything is going their way in the proxy war they are currently waging; a limited ground intervention by Israel, of the sort which now looks increasingly likely, in addition to aerial bombardment, will be required to destroy underground bunkers and missiles caches. Then we can start to look at longer-term solutions, including an international presence on the Israeli-Lebanese border strong enough to deter Hezbollah from a repeat performance of the past 10 days (unlike the present pathetic UN force) and a government in Beirut strong enough disarm Hezbollah’s military wing, as it is required to do under UN resolution 1559, which was part of the last “peace” deal.

Neither of these solutions will be easily arranged; indeed the odds are against them because solutions require goodwill on both sides – and there is precious little goodwill emanating from Tehran these days, a blunt truth that ˇliberal-left commentators in the West seem determined to ignore. So consider this, a speech made last week by the Iranian Parliament Speaker, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, which summarises the false narrative being spread across the Islamic world which portrays Israel at the heart of a Western conspiracy against Islam: “England, and then America, wished to have control over the Islamic world, to prevent Muslim unity, and to have control of the oil resources in the Middle East. Therefore, following the Second World War, they established an artificial, false and fictitious state called Israel in this region … They mobilised the racist Zionists, who are not accepted even by many Jews. They came to Palestine and, under the pretext of wrongs supposedly done to them during Second World War, they carried out terrorism, conspiracies, massacres and bloodshed in this region.” Such sentiments are widespread not just in Iran but across the Middle East, thanks to years of state-sponsored propaganda along similar lines. They are hardly mood music for a revived peace process.

Indeed, with Iran and its proxies now in the driving seat, the so-called “roadmap to peace” is dead in the water, however much Western politicians try to pump life into it. Six years ago, Israeli pulled out of southern Lebanon, handing back what had been a buffer zone; the land was immediately seized by Hezbollah and used as a launch pad for attacks. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal last year from the Gaza Strip, where the army evicted 8,000 Israeli settlers, has been repaid in similar kind (rockets and abduction) by Hamas. Instead of pocketing their gains and beginning a new peace process which would bring more, Hamas and Hezbollah have interpreted Israel’s retreats as a sign of weakness and used them as a springboard to renewed hostilities. There is no peace in this process.

Indeed there are only signs that Iran is now fighting on a broad front. Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week that the missiles supplied by Iran to Hamas and Hezbollah (via Syria) are “very similar if not identical to those used against British troops in Basra”; thus did he make explicit something the British military has known – but dared not say – for over a year now: that Iranian munitions are killing British troops in the south of Iraq. The British and Israeli armies are being struck with arms made from the same Iranian factories. Iran is fighting a proxy war not just on the border of southern Lebanon but on the borders of southern Iraq.

Largely because of the mess that is Iraq, the West is not yet of a mind to see the wider threat that events on the Israel-Lebanon border represent, much less is it prepared to respond. But, as Iran evolves into the undisputed regional superpower and its proxies wreak havoc on Israel and the West, there will have to be a belated and tough Western response. Until then, those who have neither the courage nor foresight to act now should not get in the way of those who do.
 

'Disproportionate' in What Moral Universe?
By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post
Friday, July 28, 2006

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?
What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?
To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats -- has completely lost its moral bearings.
The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."
When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.
Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.
Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.
The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.
In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.
But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.
On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?
Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.
Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.
Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?

A minority causes collateral damage to the way we live, writes Paul Sheehan.

One of the edges of the global clash between Muslims and the rest is a bottle shop in a small and ratty shopping mall in western Sydney. The owner of the bottle shop is suffering low-level but steady harassment from his neighbours, who want him gone. He's a Christian who has been told repeatedly: "This is a Muslim area," and he is selling alcohol, which is proscribed by Islam.

The one-hour parking zone outside the bottle shop is always occupied because local Muslims leave their cars there all day. The owner has written to the local council to complain, and nothing has been done. He does not want to be identified because he fears retribution. His reaction is sensible.

A friend of mine, Jenny D, used to live in Lakemba. She began receiving insults from people in the street, usually Muslim women wearing headscarves, and sometimes Muslim men. If she wore a short skirt, she could expect abuse or comment. She left Lakemba. Soon after, I moved to America, stayed away for 10 years, and thought nothing more of her story. But after I came back to Sydney I found Jenny's experience had been part of a larger pattern.

One particularly strong witness to this pattern was Judith, who managed an agency helping war widows, because she encountered "dozens" of cases where people were harassed by Muslim neighbours who wanted them gone. "It was common," she told me. "A lot of these ladies couldn't take it and moved out. It happened in Campsie, Belmore, Lakemba, Bankstown, Punchbowl ...

"It was everything ... throwing rubbish over the fence, screaming abuse, blocking the driveway, knocking fences down. One guy would throw coffee grains on the windows and bottles on the roof late at night ... I confronted some of them, and the men would call me a lot of names, mostly in Arabic."

Our Western multiracial ideals have been assaulted yet again this week, via the plan by Islamic jihadists to commit mass murder by blowing up airliners flying out of Heathrow Airport. Even in failure, the plot is producing immense collateral damage in disruption, fear and suspicion.

The collateral damage is particularly severe among the proverbial people "of Middle Eastern appearance". Apart from the majority of Muslims who are just trying to get on with the normalcy of live-and-let-live, most Australians do not appear to realise that the majority of immigrants from the Middle East are not Muslim but Christian. The harassed operator of the bottle shop, for instance, is an Arab Christian. The Maronite, Catholic and Orthodox Christians from Lebanon, the Christian Palestinians and Iraqis, and Coptics from Egypt, collectively outnumber Muslim immigrants from the Middle East in Australia.
This majority of Middle Eastern immigrants have been innocent bystanders in the cultural tensions in Sydney since the Cronulla riot and self-styled "intifada" that followed it in December. They are experiencing collateral damage just as Lebanon itself is suffering as Israel uses a sledgehammer on Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims, while causing enormous suffering to the Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims who had largely run Lebanon in partnership for many decades.

Anyone who traces the growth of problems in Sydney involving Muslims who began arriving from the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and 1980s must encounter a two-way street, though you would never know it from most reporting. Not just the failure of government policies, high unemployment, and Australian distrust, but numerous episodes of racism or aggressive insularity that arrived as part of the cultural baggage of some refugees. The open contempt some Muslims have for non-Muslims is a common thread throughout the world where Muslims communities rub against the kafirs, or non-believers.

This is especially so in Britain, where Western liberalism, freedom and the rule of law have been used as tools to help make it an operational centre of global jihad. A report by British intelligence estimates a quarter of the 1.6 million Muslims living in Britain support jihad at least somewhere in the world.

It is a place where fanatical intolerance hides in plain sight. On February 3, between 500 and 700 men marched from the Regent's Park mosque to the Danish embassy in Knightsbridge to protest against the publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Islam. Demonstrators carried posters stating "Exterminate those who slander Islam", "Be prepared for the REAL holocaust", "Massacre those who insult Islam" and "Behead those who insult Islam".

No arrests were made. As a senior Scotland Yard officer explained after complaints by several British MPs: "We have to take the overall nature of the protesters into account. If they are overheated and emotional we don't go in. It's a risk assessment. If we went in to arrest one person with a banner the crowd would turn on us and people would get hurt."

The chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Asghar Bukhari, said this demonstration should have been stopped by police. "The protesters did not represent British Muslims," he told the BBC. "The placards and chants were disgraceful and disgusting. Muslims do not feel that way. I condemn them without reservation."

But he didn't have to confront the mob. Police in Sydney reached a similar conclusion in December, as an incident report prepared by Bankstown police made clear: "On the evening of 12/12/05 numerous vehicles were sighted congregating in the vicinity of Punchbowl Park situated on Rose Street, Punchbowl. These vehicles and the crowd that had gathered were suspected to be Middle Eastern criminals who have been involved in malicious damage and civil disobedience offences throughout the Sutherland Shire and St George areas. A direction was given to police about midnight not to enter the area and antagonise these persons."

The armed and dangerous enemies of tolerance were hiding in plain sight.

Okay what follows is the incredible truth about the perception israel deals with, and how it is purpetrated by the media and the forces that guide islam. if ya think i'm messing around, fuckin with ya, playing propaganda games, read on. this is just one example from hundreds of how israel is treated by the media, its a classic example of anti semitism, cold, calculating and based on lies.

Hezbollah’s Qana Caper: Recent Socialist Rant Places Ideology over Facts
Thu, 2006-08-03 07:47
By Dr. Richard L. Benkin

Once again the world’s gullible and its ideologues have swallowed whole another terrorist claim of an “Israeli massacre.” The world was told that 54 people, mostly women and children, were killed after an Israeli rocket hit a residential building in Qana, Lebanon. And the reactions were swift to condemn Israel. Newspapers and blogs in Europe and the Muslim world called it a massacre. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the Security Council to condemn Israel. But while swift, the response was uncritical, despite the fact that contradictions almost from the moment it was first screamed should have called its veracity into question. As more facts emerge, it is becoming ever clearer that Qana is merely the latest “Israeli massacre” that never was.

Typical of the gleeful reaction was a piece in Asian Tribune by Australian socialist, Mike Head. The piece was full of sloganeering, ideology, hyperbole, and unsubstantiated accusations. But what it did not have was fact. He failed to provide any verifiable facts at all about Qana, but merely attributed it—with not so much as a “trust me” for the reader to go on—as the pretext for Israel expanding its war plans. And that was odd, as well, given Head’s reliance on a view of Israel and the United States as evil hegemonists, unconcerned about “world opinion.”

Since Head refuses to cite facts, we can do so here. The first is the time discrepancy. All parties agree that the last Israeli bomb to hit the building was at 1am. Yet, the first report of any deaths from the scene came at 8am, seven hours later. An explosion strong enough to “flatten” a building (as described in the press) would be loud enough to waken the town. The fire would light up the sky. But none of that was reported. This delay is characteristic of a pattern found frequently in this war: that due to secondary explosion. Specifically, Hezbollah has made no secret that it hides its stocks rockets and explosives throughout buildings in Lebanon, including apartments and other residential locations. Group members even pose for pictures with their deadly stocks in these residential buildings. Quite often, the Israelis will attack a location based on intelligence identifying them as legitimate targets, but the initial strikes cause only little damage. The real devastation often comes hours later when fires, structural damage, or heavy vibrations from the attacks go on to ignite and set off the Hezbollah munitions. This is one likely explanation for Qana.

Senior Israeli officials on Monday produced evidence of consistent intelligence that Hezbollah rocket launchers were concealed in civilian buildings in the village and fired on Israeli civilians. Interestingly, Head and his like show no concern for the Israelis murdered by these rockets in Kiryat Shemona, Afula, Ma'alot, and other Israeli cities and towns. And in fact, Israel has also released video footage of rocket launchers being driven into and fired from Qana. Further intelligence indicated that Hezbollah operatives were inside that particular building, along with Katyusha rockets and launchers. Numerous media, and Hezbollah members themselves, have reported that the group’s fighters typically run into nearby buildings after firing rockets. A senior Israeli officer noted that the air force “has been bombing Kafr Kana for three days already... Most civilians have left already, and most of those who remain are Hizbullah rocket launching cells.”

Most damning of Hezbollah were photographs smuggled out by journalists from the Herald Sun of Head’s own Australia. The photographs are powerful and show Hezbollah terrorists using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy caliber weapons. The photographs show them carrying automatic assault rifles and riding on trucks mounted with canon and wearing civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear. In east Beirut’s Wadi Chahrour area, images show one group of men and youths preparing to fire an anti-aircraft gun from an apartment block with sheets hanging out on a balcony to dry. Another depicts the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket destroyed in an Israeli air attack without destroying the residential block where it was situated. The Australian man who smuggled out the shots out confirmed that he was close to the site when it was obliterated. Head was fond of quoting the UN’s humanitarian chief in Lebanon, Jan Egeland. But he conveniently neglected to mention that Egeland has become quite outspoken against Hezbollah. He recently called them “cowards” for operating among civilians. “When I was in Lebanon, in the Hezbollah heartland, I said Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children,” he said.

But the terror group’s efforts appear at times even more insidious. Israeli General Amir Eshel reported that as recently as two days prior, military intelligence reported the building area had been used by the terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to cram dozens of women and children.

Did Hezbollah purposely herd civilians into that place expecting an Israeli attack that they could use as a pretext to force a premature cease fire that would save them from devastation? CNN’s Ben Wedeman noted that the roof of the building was intact and observed that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike. Hezbollah has cried that the victims were killed in their sleep. Yet, since the building was not destroyed, is it likely that they would have remained there or would have slept through the alleged thunderous Israeli raid?

Once journalists were called to the scene, Hezbollah fighters kept what they could see and where they could go carefully restricted. (As CNN’s Nic Robertson noted once he was out of Lebanon, the only way journalists have access to information in Lebanon is when it is stage managed by Hezbollah.) No one was allowed to evacuate the building until the camera crews came. This also means that Hezbollah already knew that everyone inside was dead, even before investigating it. And indeed, no live or injured people were extracted. This is highly unlikely in this sort of situation, and no one would assume it to be the case as it appears Hezbollah did. Or did they know in advance what was to happen?

Wedeman also noted that there was little blood, and that journalists were not allowed near the building. Rescue workers filmed as they went, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead. Israelis and others experienced with scenes of carnage noticed that the ashen faced victims already were showing rigor mortis; effects that would not have manifested so soon after the time of the attack. Did a cynical and ghoulish Hezbollah truck in dead bodies that they were hording for just such an opportunity? This is another possible reason for the carnage in Qana.

Whichever it is, there is less and less likelihood of an Israeli massacre. This would be in keeping with manufactured massacres in Jenin in 2002, on the beach in Gaza earlier this year, and the death of young Mohammed al Dura; all of which have been proven conclusively to have been staged. And in fact the debunkers were a German socialist magazine and others not known to be overly friendly toward Israel. The French journalist responsible for the al Dura libel has been disciplined.

Finally, it must be asked who benefits from the Qana incident? Certainly, Israel does not. It has come under increasing pressure to halt its anti-terrorist operations before it can finish destroying Hezbollah. That is precisely what happened after an incident in Qana it 1996, resulting in a Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure that provoked today’s conflict. Certainly, the United States does not benefit. It, too, is coming under great pressure to change its policy supporting Israeli success in destroying Hezbollah prior to a cease fire. And certainly, the people of Lebanon do not gain from more death and destruction.

No, the only winners in this are Hezbollah and Iran. Iran gains because the growing world attention and consensus to stop its nuclear weapon ambitions has been sidetracked with the Middle East violence. Hezbollah is attempting to use the incident cynically to take the moral high ground—reprehensible since it rejoices in the deliberate targeting of Israeli citizens. (That is not entirely the case. While it cheers the deaths of Israeli Jews, Hezbollah apologized to the parents of two Israeli Arabs killed by one of its rockets in Nazareth.) It is trying to advance its designs to survive the Israeli counterattack to its unprovoked attack by manipulating the international community in pushing for a pre-mature cease fire.

Mike Head has shown his bias before. The World Socialist Web Site, of which he is part, seems never to have met a terrorist it did not like. In a current article on the fighting in Sri Lanka, it consistently reports the LTTE position, while calling the government’s “biased.” “The rapid expansion of the conflict gives the lie to government claims that it is carrying out a limited, “humanitarian” [and has] exploited the issue as the pretext for launching an offensive to seize LTTE territory, in clear breach of the 2002 ceasefire agreement.” That sounds like the same refrain he used to explain the phantom massacre in Qana.

Head himself has made clear that he comes from a position that automatically sees the side supported by the United States and Israel as wrong; he has even said that Australian Prime Minister John Howard should be put on trial for war crimes! But, like many others, Head would prefer to wallow in his delusional ideology than to face the truth of what happened in Hezbollah’s Qana caper.

- Asian Tribune -



Stage-Managed MassacreBy Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 2, 2006


“The Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana early Sunday morning did more than kill 57 civilians,” says Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post. “According to a wide range of commentary in the international media, it inflamed already boiling public opinion in the Arab world against Israel, undermined what little support the United States has among the Lebanese people, and illuminated the continuing inability of Israel and the United States to achieve their goal of decisively weakening Hezbollah.” The Hindustan Times editorialized that “with Qana, one senses that the Israelis’ definition of ‘collateral damage’ has started to bear a striking resemblance to that of the very terrorist organisation that they are keen to destroy.” At a rally outside the State Department building protesting the Qana “massacre” on Monday, Leftist protestors chanted, “Hey, Rice! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?”; “Israel Out of Lebanon! Ceasefire, Now”; and “Shame! Shame! Shame, on you!” An Australian Muslim in Qana told Australia’s Herald Sun: “I would say a few hundred have died. This isn’t war, it’s genocide.”



Except for one little detail: it is increasingly clear that the Qana “massacre” was a stage-managed Hizballah production, designed precisely to enflame international sentiment against Israel and compel the Israelis to accept a ceasefire that would enable the jihad terrorist group to gain some time to recover from the Israeli attacks. Some of the principal evidence for this:
 
* The Israeli bombardment took place about midnight, but the house where the civilians were gathered reportedly did not collapse until 8AM. Said Brigadier General Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.” Indeed, it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed. Eshel suggested that “it could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there” – in other words, Hizballah bombs and/or weapons.
* Photos of the rescue operation, which were transmitted all over the world and appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other major newspapers, are extremely suspicious. The blog EU Referendum has done important work scrutinizing the photos, finding numerous anomalies. Most notably, the dating of the various photos suggests that the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble. In a rebuttal to this charge, AP’s David Bauder rather lamely asserts: “web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken.” Responds Richard North of EU Referendum: “Note, however, the use of the word ‘can’. He does not say that the ‘date stamps’ are wrong.” EU Referendum has also uncovered strange anomalies in the photos themselves: some workers are wearing different gear in different photos, yet clearly carrying the same corpse. Richard North comments about one of these workers: “It stretches belief to breaking point to argue that, on his way to the ambulance, he took off his helmet, his fluorescent waistcoat and his flack jacket just in order to pose for the cameras putting the body in the wagon – especially as we have the body being placed on the ‘guerney’ – which means the scenes are totally inconsistent.”
* The very existence of these pictures raises more questions. As Israel Insider puts it: “While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.”
* The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizballah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague: “We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.”
* According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, “the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezbollah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: ‘Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians.’ Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population ‘as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.’”

Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, declared that “War is deceit.” Specifically, he taught that lying was permissible in battle.[1] While the doctrines of religious deception (taqiyya and kitman) are most often identified with Shi’ite Islam, and ostensibly rejected by Sunnis, because they were sanctioned by the Prophet, they can still be found in traditions that Sunni Muslims consider reliable, and are practiced among Salafis. Jihadists today have spoken of the usefulness of deceptive practices.
 
Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that. Qana has already largely accomplished what it was supposed to. It will now take its place beside the Danish cartoons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all the rest as a useful focal point for Muslim outrage and a magnet for jihad recruitment. The dhimmi Leftist Western press is happy, for it can again show America and Israel as guilty in the world’s site. The mujahedin are happy, for jihad and Sharia will advance still more. The only people who couldn’t possibly be happy with this are the Israelis and others on the front lines of the jihad worldwide.
 
But who cares about them?
 

hey people, anyone out there, no, you all vanished, left me here with my guitar, three chords and the truth.
its a beautiful day at mission control, weathers amazing, like a summers day, birds chirp, the traffic is thin, people smile, i wander through babylon, pick up some mail, buy supplies, have a coffee with an guy i have'nt seen for ages, we talk books and i tell him to read the lucifer principle, in fact i suggest he reads my copy asap to get some background on what's going down, some people are not ready for the truth but i reckon based upon my intellectual powers and strong intuition that this guy can. so then i mail my letter to Von Donaldson, my guitar player in Berlin, it's the second letter, short and sweet.
there's a few people commenting in the newspapers about the foiled terrorist plot, mostly its downplayed, a dude from england comments upon the fact it is not a war of civilizations, it is just a small bunch of evil extreemists that want to be listened to. right lets have a cup of tea and discuss the problem, oh it's israel, no problem we hate that place to.
the real issue as i have stated is one of time displacement, half the earth have embraced technology, sex, art and the intrests of freedom of individuals over the state and religion, the other half haven't and refuse to. call it what you want but there is no escape that this is a war of civilizations, i don't say one is better than the other but i like sexually aggressive women, i have a great intrest in technology and i like the fact i can refuse to believe in whatever i want without some one hurling rocks at me.

A response from John Birmingham to Mark Steynes article in the australian.

John Birmingham: Righteous lefties lose out on the laughs
Where, John Birmingham wants to know, is the Mark Steyn of the Left, a talented polemicist able to rake down John Howard and Abu Bakar Bashir with a single, well-aimed witticism?
August 10, 2006

WHEREIN lay the greatness of Rome? In a thousand marble palaces, long fallen to ruin? In the crackling commercial energy of the Forum? Or in the ruthless elan of an elite military with the fashion chops to match a wicked iron short sword with a really spanking pleated leather skirt and lace-up sandals?

Well, in all those things, but also in its jokes. Joseph Addison, an English poet and diplomat of the early 18th century, thought satires and invectives "were an essential part of (the) Roman triumph". An informal check on hubris, just like the slaves who rode with Rome's victorious generals, whispering in their ears: "Remember that you are mortal."

In Addison's view it was folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, "and a weakness to be affected by it".

Reproach being concomitant to greatness, the magnificently big-wigged poet set up his own small journal, The Spectator, to have a go at the issues and eminences of the day.

Three hundred years on, humour retains the power to subvert all manner of self-regard and frozen orthodoxies. It's possible to overstate the case, of course. The piano-playing American humorist Tom Lehrer loved to point to "the satirical Berlin cabarets of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent (World War II)".

But as The Australian's opinion-page cartoonist Bill Leak discovered earlier this year, a well-turned gag can reverberate right up to the top of the political food chain.

Until recently, the modern incarnation of The Spectator was graced with the reproaches and invective of Mark Steyn, inventor of the comedy subgenre "acerbic drollery", and Canada's third most successful export, after maple syrup and dangerously fatty but delicious bacon. Self-described as a one-man global content provider, he files for magazines and newspapers, including this one, throughout the English-speaking world and is at present in Australia for a sell-out speaking tour.

Less generously named as Dangerous Idiot of the Week by Britain's New Statesman, Steyn is a very modern phenomenon, a weapons-grade conservative with a functioning sense of humour that can go from gentle mockery to violent rhetorical demolition with a quick tap of the accelerator, a sort of P.J. O'Rourke without the drugs or sports cars.

He writes beautifully about pop culture, and music in particular, but since Mohammed Atta laid claim to his 72 yummy virgins, or possibly yummy raisins, and brought down the twin towers, Steyn has been writing about jihad "24/7". As he explained to the ABC's Michael Duffy during a late-evening chat about jazz lyricists this week: "I'd much rather live in a world where I could write about Dorothy Fields and Cole Porter. But if you value the world that you live in and you see that it's under threat, then you've got to do what you can in the way you can to make a shot at saving it."

It's odd, at first, to think of someone, anyone, turning global jihad to comic effect, especially someone who cares enough to be obsessed by it. But the original Spectator's founding publisher would recognise the efficacy of Steyn's personal jihad, to poke fun at anyone who interferes with the long, grim task of seeing off fascist Islam.

The specific details might vex old Addison, but not the intent, which is to strengthen one's case via reason, rather than by appeal to superstition or by simple diktat imposed by force, the modus operandi of the Taliban, for instance when their religious enforcers cum fashion police flogged young girls for wearing white socks or nail polish.

Such medieval rigidity of thought is almost self-satirising, if your tastes run to the sort of black humour that would make the creators of Little Britain blanch. But it is the rigidities of thought within our midst that call forth Steyn's sharpest and often funniest barbs, the doublethink of the anti-war Left, which remains silent on the atrocities of mass murderers such as the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, unless it is to equate them with the atrocities of imagined mass murderers such as George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

For a long time there has been a dreadful predictability of thinking on the Left, a lack of originality that means a thousand monkeys hammering away at a thousand typewriters could very quickly produce a whole issue of Green Left Weekly without even stopping for an expensive banana. The reflexive anti-Americanism is probably a Vietnam War era relic, but what's new, and nearly as debilitating, is the lack of any sense of proportion or humour. It is possible to make a case in favour of prosecuting the war against al-Qa'ida and its franchises while arguing that Bush and his cohorts have comprehensively bungled the conflict from day one.

Ostensibly progressive political satirists should have a vast arsenal to draw on. But where is the Steyn of the Left, a talented polemicist able to rake down John Howard as well as Abu Bakar Bashir with a single joke?

Perhaps Howard was right when he said that political correctness has had a chilling effect on debate, but not at all in the way he thought.

At the heart of much humour lies a finely calibrated cruelty, such as Steyn's reflections on the Muslim youth riots in France last year. "What is the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back on your Zimmer frame across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement."

It is open to Steyn to make such quips because he is unconstrained by PC edicts about respecting the elderly or, even more absurdly, the rioters and their grievances. A left-wing writer, bound up in the silken skeins of myriad interests he must not offend, has no such freedom. A pity, really. Because there are so many aspects of the conflict that flared into life on September 11, 2001, that are in desperate need of a good piss-taking.

yes two days to play, well firstly i'm continuing doing my responsibilities, you know paying debts and getting my car registered, it's nice when ya on top of it all, free from the banks evil clutches and high interest rates, in control of your own finaces, pursuing your dreams and ambitions.
i have been thinking a lot about the next set of photo's and i actually need a few girls to model for me, i have a few ideas for some more in my series of demons and gods but i need a girl with amazing legs and a nice pair of shoes.
(don't we all, i hear you say)

i was strolling through babylon the other day when i was asked about the sbs show they had on the tele about anti-semitism, i enjoyed chatting about it with people who were prepared to listen to the point of view of a modern secular jew who has lived in the mid east, it was a good conversation. the show itself didn't teach me anything new, it starts in new testament with the killers of christ then europe with the usual stuff, that bit has never changed, then Hitler who met with the grand mufti of Jerusalem and disseminated mien kiemf and the protocols of the elders of zion to the arabs, yeah well i won't bore you with the details but it was an excellent show, for the first time i have seen just the facts presented on tv, it didn't take sides, didn't moralize, didn't deviate from the objective history. anyway it was a surprise.

the day was kinda spent pottering around, i fixed up the four track mixer so my mic works, and i played a song through the head phones, the vox sounded better than i thought but its tricky reading lyrics without a stand to put them on, i kept having to turn my head. i guess i should learn them hey?
i enjoyed john birminghams comments in the australian, he was saying how outta whack the left is, it was really refreshing to read some one else look at the way left wing politics is so far removed from reality. not that the right is any better but at least they have a less deluded perspective.
in the evening i received a call from dad, he told me that 18 terrorists were caught in london trying to blow up planes or crash them over cities. thank god they were caught is all i can say. here is another example of a meme that must be stopped, i have little problem with individuals who want to take their own lives but i do have issues with suicide bombers who want to take as many people down with them as possible. most people on this planet have very little imput into how their govt. works or decisions that are made, the afghan farmer possibly has the same immediate concerns as you or i, money, food, shelter. as we all go about our buisness, the last thing we need to stress about is some whacked out religious pakistani who decides you have to die with him. its a lost cuase man. islam needs to put a stop to this nonsense now, it can't come from the west anymore, the stupid polititions and media people don't have the balls, its gotta come from the moderate islamic community, 'are you there, moderate arabs, hello...'
unfortuatly is the end game being played out, my bible code book is amazing, it's convinced me against all odds that there are some things known and revealled about the future, sure we can intervine and change it all, but from where i am sitting it looks unlikely, yeah jeruselum may be nuked, chemical weapons in downtown new york, london bombed by a bunch of brainwashed monkeys with nothing constructive to offer the planet but bllod and tears.
me i made my peace with my god a long time ago, when my numbers called i 'll be waiting, there are lots of cuases worth fighting for but none worth dying for.

For the first time since the beginning of the conflict i have seen some reasonable reportage and opinions in the australian daily newspaper, which i must admit i very rarely read. Here's some snippets.

Brian Wimborne: Left in perversity
For leftists, Israel is the aggressor and terrorists are the victims, argues Brian Wimborne

IN her book The New Anti-Semitism (2005), American feminist academic Phyllis Chesler writes: "The American and European Left have made a marriage in hell with their Islamic counterparts. The same Left that has still never expressed any guilt over its devotion to communist dictators who murdered millions of their own people in the service of a Great Idea has now finally, fatefully, joined the world jihadic chorus in calling for the end to racist Zionism and to the Jewish apartheid state."
This is an especially interesting comment in view of the fact that, immediately after World War II, this same political Left lent support to the Jewish people and favoured the creation of a homeland for them in Israel. Even the Soviet Union voted in the UN Security Council for the establishment of the state of Israel, albeit for its own political ends. So what went wrong?

To understand why the Left has done a U-turn on this issue, one needs to appreciate that activists such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Antony Loewenstein feed on a constant diet of victims and define the progressive cause by hatred of whichever group they hold responsible for victimisation. Hatred has always been an essential characteristic of leftist ideology, providing the motivating force for its theory of dialectical materialism.

Traditionally, the Left's favoured victims were the proletariat or working class who were oppressed by the hated bourgeoisie, aristocrats, landholders, factory owners, small businessmen and managers. Only recently, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shrinking of the working class in developed economies, have numerous other groups become the Left's favoured victims. These include indigenes, welfare dependents, homosexuals, refugees (especially if they are illegal immigrants) and displaced populations of dysfunctional states primarily in Africa and South America. Failure, in addition to class, has become a desired prerequisite for joining the Left's brotherhood of victims. Through its support of those it deems less fortunate, the Left assumes a moral high ground from which it feels self-righteously justified in attacking those it designates as oppressors.

At the conclusion of World War II, the Jewish people were added to the Left's list of stereotypical victims.

After 1500 years of religiously inspired anti-Semitism that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, Jews were an obvious choice; they were poor, mainly working class, discriminated against, often landless and powerless. Implicit in the Left's stereotyping of Jews was that, despite incidents such as the Warsaw ghetto uprising, they were incapable of defending themselves. Their history suggested that, although individuals could be successful, Jews might not be as a group.

The image of Jews being persecuted throughout Europe and being led finally into the gas chambers of concentration camps would touch the consciences of people everywhere. As a result, although the state of Israel owes its origins to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a more potent impetus for its establishment was the Holocaust and the need to find a homeland for the remnants of European Jewry. However, the odds of the new state surviving were not sanguine.

Designated a victim-state by the Left, Israel did not live up to expectations. To begin with (and despite being under constant Arab attacks from the day of its foundation in 1948), Israel has been internally stable and politically mature. Unlike most post-war emerging states that followed decolonisation, it did not experience widespread corruption, dictatorship or military takeover. From the beginning it was the only democracy in the Middle East, and through hard work, planning and foreign aid its people built a thriving economy. Worse still, the Left's stereotype of Jews was proved wrong. Jews were prepared to fight back and defend their lives and homes.

Paradoxically, the state's success has been the reason the Left turned against Israel. Within a few years of its foundation, Israel had broken the first commandment of the Left's ideology: "Thou shalt not succeed." Success is anathema to the Left because it puts an end to victimhood; without victims the Left has no reason to exist. In the eyes of the Left's supporters, Israel's great accomplishments meant that the country no longer qualified as a victim. Israel, through being successful, effectively turned its back on the role chosen for it by the Left.

From the Left's rigidly dialectical viewpoint, the world is made up solely of victims and oppressors, and if Israel is no longer a victim it has to be an oppressor. The consequence is that the mantle of victimhood once thrust on Israel now cloaks the Palestinians; it is a cloak they may come to regret.

The deep-rooted problems of the Palestinians are not attributable to Israel but to their own corrupt leadership, culture of mendacity, lack of foresight and duplicity of their supporters (originally Egypt, Jordan and Iraq; more recently Syria and Iran).

However, Realpolitik cuts no ice with the Left, whose preference for ideology over reality means Israel is judged to be the cause of all the Middle East's problems.

For instance, in his 1983 essay Fateful Triangle, American polemicist Noam Chomsky portrayed Israel as a terrorist state similar to Nazi Germany. Chomsky's central premise is that Israel should cease to exist because it is "a state based on the principle of discrimination". That only in Israel have Palestinians enjoyed full citizenship rights for more than a half-century is something he conveniently ignores.

Closer to home, Australia's counterfactual journalist John Pilger argues that Israel's "brutal subjugation of the Palestinians is, under any interpretation of the law, an epic injustice, a crime". This is despite the historical evidence that the real subjugation of the Palestinians has occurred in Arab countries and in Gaza and the West Bank, under the tyranny of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

In short, Israel has become the aggressor; terrorists or so-called insurgents, by contrast, are the darlings of the Left.

In addition to Israel's failure to play the role of victim-state, there is another reason for the Left's about-face in respect of Israel. The Left has long been permeated with anti-Semitism. It should not be forgotten that the Nazis (an acronym for National Socialist German Workers Party) had strong left-wing antecedents. The Nazis' doppelganger, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, not only supported traditional Russian anti-Jewish movements but organised pogroms for its own political purposes.

Socialist parties in Britain, France, Australia and many other countries, despite having Jewish adherents, had a strong anti-Semitic thread running through them. It is not surprising that as the Left's support for Israel faded, a latent anti-Semitic ideology replaced it, with the result that the centre of world anti-Semitism is now firmly rooted in the Left.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that where morality is concerned, the Left is value free. It draws no distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. Hence, in the minds of leftists, the terrorist becomes a freedom fighter and murderers are transformed into heroes. This should surprise no one. In the past century the Left gave rise to national socialism and international socialism; today it continues to function without a semblance of moral rectitude, offering support of any group it designates as victims.



Visiting columnist Mark Steyn, on ABC radio's PM on Monday, on why stability is the enemy of the Middle East
YOU have to understand that stability is the big enemy in the Middle East. We have had stability fetishists. Almost all foreign policy experts in the Western world become stability fetishists.

They don't want to update their Rolodexes more than once every couple of decades. So they stuck with the house of Saud, they stuck with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, they've stuck with Syria's Bashar al-Assad. And they were quite content in that sense with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They believe stability is the big thing. "Stability uber alles" is basically the watchword of foreign policy establishments.

Question: But what's the choice? I mean, look at Baghdad now.

Steyn: Because there is no stability. Because you see what's happening in Lebanon, that in fact Hezbollah has better rockets that can reach deeper into Israel, that even the Israelis - who have a much better intelligence service than the US and the UK and most other countries - even the Israelis didn't know they have. So every time you bet on stability, there is no stability.

Underneath it's like a pond with a very thin layer of frozen ice in winter. Underneath the ice it's always moving. And if it's not moving in your direction, generally speaking, things are going the other way. And that's what has happened with Hezbollah, that the more you freeze the Middle East, the more you say: "We have to keep these same regimes in place", the more the technology and the demography and the general situation favours the darkest forces in that region.

Question: But seizing the day means the possibility of anarchy and appalling bloodshed.

Steyn: I think you have to look at the Middle East in zero-sum terms in a way. The US has given billions of dollars per year to Mubarak in Egypt and, in return, what did it get? It got Mohammed Atta flying through the window of the World Trade Centre at 8.30 in the morning.

Question: I'm just going to stop you there. Surely, Mohammed Atta doesn't come out of Mubarak? Mohammed Atta comes out of Mubarak actually trying to repress the Muslim Brotherhood.

Steyn: Exactly. And that's my point, that in a sense once you do what the US did for 40 years, which is bankroll and sustain in power these authoritarian and rather squalid and unlikable regimes, they in effect licence anti-Americanism as a distraction from what might otherwise be more locally focused grievances. In other words, it's in their interests to encourage their people to shout death to the "Great Satan" rather than complain about the Mubaraks, and the house of Saud, and the other local regimes ...

Whatever happens in the Middle East, it has to become something other because the post-war Middle East, if you like, put it in rough terms, the post-Suez Middle East, has been a spectacular failure.



Editorial: Facing facts about Hezbollah
August 08, 2006
Israel's destruction is the name of the militants' game

THE quest for peace in the Middle East is one of the most frustrating stories of the modern age. Unlike the Cold War, which was decided by the hard and demonstrable realities of economics, conflicts in the Middle East are conducted and judged in a far less objective arena, where values of religion and honour are very often the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong. This makes it very difficult for Western observers to take the measure of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, despite it being a battle between competing world views – medieval theocracy versus secular, liberal democracy – that are the political matter and anti-matter of the 21st century. Understood as such, the impasse at the UN over the wording of a resolution calling for an end to hostilities in the conflict was inevitable. Certainly, no one wants to see a continued loss of life on any side. But present efforts at the UN were doomed to fail. The fact is, the UN's track record in southern Lebanon is abysmal. Its mission to southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, consumes $133 million a year and has consistently failed to enforce UN Security Council resolution 1559. That document, a binding Chapter 7 resolution, explicitly calls for the disarming of all militias including Hezbollah within Lebanese territory. In pursuing and rooting out Hezbollah, Israel is not only protecting its own citizens – who have been subject to routine and often fatal harassment actions against it since pulling out of southern Lebanon in 2000 – but it is also enforcing international law where others have been unwilling or unable to.

But the second and broader problem behind any treaty is that for Israel, a tiny, liberal democracy surrounded by fascist autocracies, there can ultimately be no peace with Hezbollah – just a securing of a buffer zone. Created in the turmoil of the Iranian revolution with the goal of spreading radical Shia influence throughout the world, Hezbollah (aka the Party of God) is devoted to the destruction not just of the state of Israel but Judaism everywhere. Hezbollah will treat any deal as little more than an excuse to rearm and hope for better luck next time. In 1994, the group committed the deadliest act of terrorism ever on Argentinian soil, blowing up the Jewish community headquarters in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding about 300 more. Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah whose picture is triumphantly carried by baying mobs at rallies around the world, has said that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide" and that "the Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death". Despite these lunatic ravings, Hezbollah is winning the propaganda war in the West, where decades of postmodernism have atrophied the culture's moral musculature and accorded the terrorist group privileged victim status. That Hezbollah loves death can be seen in its barrage of the past weekend, which hurt Israeli Arabs most of all. But if Hezbollah does not care about people, it does care about history and its place in it. As Nasrallah himself said in a recent rant in which he called Israel a temporary country: "By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief." Middle Eastern broadcasters help by connecting the conflict to a much broader sweep of Arab and Muslim history that goes back to and beyond the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and portrays victories against Israel as evidence of a supposed rising tide of Islam. As such, those in the West who believe that world peace would be achieved were Israel to retreat behind its pre-1967 borders (or disappear entirely) are mistaken. Such a move would only embolden the likes of Hezbollah and its backers in Syria and Iran. Here those who truly care about the future of the Middle East and believe in the values of secular, liberal democracy and all the freedoms that they entail should gain the confidence to speak up for them in the present conflict. For, in the long run, there is nothing less that is at stake.

In the present conflict, all Hezbollah needs to win is to not lose. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged as much on the weekend when he said it would not be possible to completely destroy such a guerilla organisation. But that is not to say that Israel should not fight Hezbollah and respond to its provocations. For until Hezbollah and its backers in Tehran are deposed or have a change of heart, and the rest of the Middle East sees the Jewish state as a neighbour with whom to coexist rather than a cancer to eliminate, Israel has no choice but to defend itself. Any peace that does not secure Israel's borders in the short term while also communicating to its foes that attempts to destroy the Jewish state will be met with overwhelming force will be a mortgage on future lives and a peace of the dead.