Category Archives: Iraq

Douglas Damien Murray For IDF Beefcake & Other Such Creepy Curiosities

BAB's A List, Communism, Critique, History, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

BY R. J. STOVE

Herewith, a few disordered (and shamelessly impressionistic) thoughts on the current Australian political scene, as it is impinged on by the Middle East horrors. Before specifying these thoughts, I should stress the fact that I consume far less mass-media news reportage than most of my compatriots do. Besides, I don’t own a television set at all.

On the other hand, what I lose in terms of the ability to acquire up-to-date data, I perhaps gain in terms of detached observation. This is what I’ve observed here over the last few months.

Australia’s Likudniks – many of whom of course are either helots of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire, or Pentecostal fundamentalists, both groups being seldom more ethnically Jewish than I am – are furiously trying to dial up the volume to eleven, SPINAL TAP style. So shameless is the truckling to Bibi, that entire issues of THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN and SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA, entire talk-shows on Sky News, appear to consist of press releases from Mossad.

In such milieux, the term “antisemite” is promiscuously applied not only to brain-dead mullahs who now and then chant nasty things about Jews at a public protest outside the Sydney Opera House, but to the coolest and most reasoned criticisms of Israel’s official policy since October 7,  of whom some are even Jewish. And yet …

It isn’t working. Even I can tell that it isn’t working.

In the 21st century’s first few years, when most of these same people furiously defended the buccaneering expedition to Iraq, the policy of shouting down all disagreement with Israel’s regime did still work. As recently as a decade ago, it did still work.

Not now, though. The opposition to the Gaza ethnic cleansing is now too widespread among intelligent Australians, and, I suspect, too confidently maintained, for the toothpaste to be reinserted into the tube. It appears that the time when even the mildest criticism of Netanyahu was equated with mass-murdering Einsatzgruppen has now – for better or for worse – ended.

I’ve also noticed a marked demographic split, on the issue of who is currently supporting Netanyahu and who isn’t. As a general rule (there exist, needless to say, exceptions), the demography is as follows:

* PEOPLE UNDER 40: Pro-Palestinian, except for a handful of neocon dittoheads in the above-named, mostly Murdoch-controlled, outlets.

* BOOMERS, APPROACHING PENSION AGE, FROM THE VIETNAM-DRAFT-DODGING GENERATION: Overwhelmingly pro-Netanyahu.

* RETIREES IN THEIR 70S, 80S, AND 90s: Surprisingly inclined to give Palestinians the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if bitter memories of America’s Anglophobic behavior over Suez in 1956 are figuring in this age group’s memories.

In a way, I could almost feel sorry for the Murdoch-controlled dittoheads. With them, as with Comrade Zhdanov chewing out dissident writers and composers in Stalin’s Russia after World War II, there’s clearly a sense of bewilderment that anyone should show such base ingratitude as to exhibit opposition. To quote Orwell’s comments on the Stalinist cultural purges of 1947-1948:

The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorizing everyone into conformity. A writer’s inventive faculties will not work unless he is allowed to say approximately what he feels. You can destroy spontaneity and produce a literature which is orthodox but feeble, or you can let people say what they choose and take the risk that some of them will utter heresies. … They [the Soviet politicians] don’t know what literature is, but they know that it is important, that it has prestige value, and that it is necessary for propaganda purposes, and they would like to encourage it, if only they knew how. So they continue with their purges and directives, like a fish bashing its nose against the wall of an aquarium again and again, too dim-witted to realize that glass and water are not the same thing.

Strangest of all, to me, is the fact that even the cleverest of Bibi’s apologists (and that’s not saying much) – to wit, Deviant Douglas Murray, neoconservative armchair Clausewitz, and accordingly a tireless apologist for every dirty deed now being carried out by uniformed IDF beefcake – is no longer, as hipsters would put it, “cutting through.” Not on this topic.

Goodness only knows what all of the above portends. What I can say with a measure of certitude about the Australian scene is a variant of the ancient aphorism about New York. Namely, that if the Likudniks can no longer make it here, they can no longer make it anywhere, other than in the United States of America.

***************

Melbourne-based historian and organist R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times and of a forthcoming book (Kings, Queens and Fallen Monarchies, scheduled for 2024) about Europe’s monarchist movements between the two world wars. Dr. Stove’s  innumerable disastrous career decisions include a total refusal to regard Rod Dreher* as the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived.

*Screen Pictures of Douglas Damien Murray For IDF Beefcake is courtesy of this site:

https://www.fanpop.com/clubs/damien-thorn/images/30060000/title/damien-photo?card

& here:

https://nypost.com/2023/11/15/opinion/on-the-ground-inside-gaza-where-israel-is-trying-to-save-civilians-from-hamas/

UPDATED (10/21/023): Gaza And The Meaning Of Mens Rea, Malice Aforethought, Or Intent

Bush, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Morality, Russia, War

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana

From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay  (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.

The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/

I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.

About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10)  (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.

Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?

Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.

BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason

* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/

UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.

Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”

It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”

The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.

NEW COLUMN: Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’

Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

America has engineered Ukraine’s current existential reality to dislodge Vladimir Putin ~ilana

By America’s prescriptions, Russia should be a woke, minority white, multicultural sewer, awash with MeToo, BLM, and ANTIFA sensibilities ~ilana

NEW COLUMN is “Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’.” It is a feature on The New American, The Unz Review, and WND.

Now on IlanaMercer.com

Excerpt:

… America has engineered Ukraine’s current existential reality by purging the pursuit of diplomacy and peace from its duties as the world Super Power. Mention of a negotiated truce between Ukraine and Russia is practically labeled treason by the command-and-control US media.

That the Ukraine-Russia “war is the health of the US State” was top-of-mind with one Dan Sullivan, Republican representative from Alaska, on August 3.

Following a recent NATO Summit, which determined that faithful stooge Ukraine would not be rewarded with NATO membership—Fox News, an establishment shill, entertained Sullivan for a comment.

With a demented grin you’d expect to see on a patient with end-stage syphilis (a career-destroying line I used on Genghis Bush in 2003)— Sullivan griped that Ukraine has not yet won. The question was not Ukraine’s admission into NATO, said this Republican reptile; the question was Ukraine vanquishing Russia.

“Win or die, dummies” is what Ukrainians are being instructed by the US UniParty, its NATO marionettes and their leader Zelensky, who is protected by the above forces.

The “win or die” policy imperialism, vis-à-vis Ukraine, was seconded, on August 7, by Joni Ernst, junior senator from Iowa. Ernst proves, in the end, that it is as Dr. Johnson said: “There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.” Neoconservative or neoliberal; louse or flea, a pest is a pest is a pest.

SHOCK-‘N-AWE THE BOOBS

The words of this particular political pest were as follows, and I paraphrase their gist accurately with added cynical embellishment:

Once Republicans explain to Americans the nature of the mission to Iraq, oops, Ukraine—yes, where have we heard such Machiavellian GOP rhetoric before?—The People, being boobs, will somehow get behind the mission.

“Shock-‘n-awe of the old days,” beamed Joni. That will garner support for the war in Ukraine. …

No worries, Joni. America’s top pundits are with the pols. On August 5, also on Fox News, Victor Davis Hanson turned in his standard neoconservative performance. He critiqued Obama for the scant good 44 did: returning to Iran monies stolen by the American government and maintaining diplomacy with—rather than warring against—Russia. …

… THE REST. Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’ can be read on The New American, The Unz Review, and WND.

Now on IlanaMercer.com

 

Twenty Years Ago: Dissident From Day One

Bush, Democrats, Elections, Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Republicans, The Establishment, War

To be branded Dissident from Day one and cancelled is untenable. Destructive. A career killer

LOOKING FOR mention in my own works of the remarkable Dennis Kucinich, I came across “BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE” (July 16, 2003), one of many antiwar columns written at the time.

It still haunts. What passion (as Hillel, Jewish sage and genius, said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”). I believed in the power of pellucid prose and reason to persuade. Instead, I got cancelled from day one.

It’s easy to become a dissident when such a pose is trendy, and is struck once one has enjoyed 20 years of work in the Establishment.  To be branded Dissident from Day One and cancelled is untenable. Destructive. A career killer.

But then I did liken the “bring ’em on” grin on the face of Bush, beloved of most rightists back then, to the grin “on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.” LOL. Totally worth it. I think.

Reducing this administration’s single-minded will to war to an erroneous 16 words ignores the big picture. First came the decision to go to war. The misbegotten illegality that was this administration’s case for war followed once the decision to go to war had already been made. The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework; it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes; it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.

By all means, dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies” leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized. But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you?

Do what the critical mind must do. The rational individual, wedded to reality, reason, and objective, non-partisan truth saw Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was. He saw Bush as the poster boy for ‘the degeneracy of manner and morals’ which James Madison warned war would bringthe same ‘bring ’em on’ grin one can also observe on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis. The rational individual saw all this, and understood that when Madison spoke of ‘war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,’ he was speaking of the disposition of this dictator.

AND

…. Members of the media aren’t capable of much more than fragmenting and atomizing information. Integrating facts into a conceptual understanding is certainly not what Howard Fineman, Chris Matthew’s anointed analyst, and the brain trust on MSNBC’s “Hardball” does. To disguise his pedestrian politicking, Fineman discussed who, at what time in the afternoon, as well as when in the estrus cycle of the next-door cow, did an official put the infamous 16 words about nukes and Niger on the president’s desk. That ought to make a nation already bogged down in concrete bits of disconnected data see the forest for the trees, wouldn’t you say? … “BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE” (July 16, 2003)

https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/war/page/2/
https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/war/

Dennis Kucinich was always there, along for the lost battle ….

THUS, it’s a bad idea for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to tout Mr. Kucinich, his newly nominated campaign manager, as progressive.

Kucinich, like the great Southern senator and gentleman Robert Byrd, RIP (who also greatly opposed Obama’s constitutional usurpations), is noted for voting AGAINST the detestable Democrats and the GOP in opposing the US war machine and the executive dictatorship.