Tuesday 24th of December 2024
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more flim-flam maxine .....

 
Richard Clarke flags
consequences of bombing Iran 

Reporter: Maxine McKew 

MAXINE McKEW: ‘While the UN
Security Council tries to grapple with Iran's open defiance of nuclear
regulators …..’ 

Breathtaking stuff Maxine ….
would it were true. 

This is not journalism Maxine.  

The role of the journalist is to
report unbiased fact, not unjustified opinion. 

Take a minute to pore over the
Introductory Statement of the Director-General of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) on the
implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,
to its Board of Governors, dated March 6, 2006
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2006/ebsp2006n003.html#iran 

In that statement, the
Director-General said:

‘The report on the
implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran
is before you. As you are aware, the Agency over the last three years has been
conducting intensive investigations of Iran´s nuclear programme with a view to
providing assurances about the peaceful nature of that programme. 

During these investigations, the Agency has not
seen indications of diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other
nuclear explosive devices. Regrettably, however, after three years of intensive
verification, there remain uncertainties with regard to both the scope and the
nature of Iran´s nuclear programme. As I mentioned in my report, this is a
matter of concern that continues to give rise to questions about the past and
current direction of Iran´s nuclear programme. 

For confidence to be built in the peaceful nature
of Iran´s programme, Iran should do its utmost to provide maximum transparency
and build confidence. Only through clarification of all questions relevant to
Iran´s past programme and through confidence building measures can confidence
about Iran´s current nuclear activities be restored. This is clearly in the
interest both of Iran and of the international community.’ 

So, after 3 years of ongoing
investigation & inspections, the Director-General confirms that the IAEA
has found no evidence of Iran diverting or manipulating nuclear materials to
the manufacture of nuclear weapons. 

The IAEA does call for continuing
co-operation from Iran to confirm its compliance with the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty & it also requested Iran to return to its
observance of additional voluntary protocols, legally
suspended by Iran in January, & to cease its uranium enrichment activities. 

But none of this suggests that
Iran has breached its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Indeed, in stark contrast, the Director-General points out in the same
statement that: 

‘Despite these welcome
developments, there remain 34 States party to the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that have not yet fulfilled their
Article III obligation to bring into force comprehensive safeguards agreements
with the Agency, and 118 States that do not have additional protocols in
force.’ 

But no international furore over
the behaviour of those states Maxine ….. no ‘open defiance’ here
eh?   

It’s probably too long for your
investigative journalists to digest but, if your interested, the extent of
Iran’s efforts & co-operation with the IAEA to prove its compliance with
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are fully dimensioned in the
Director-General’s full report of the same date.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2006/gov2006-15.pdf
. 

Having branded Iran as ‘guilty’
in your opening remark, you then introduced your guest, Richard Clarke, former
US National Security Co-ordinator. 

Clarke’s responses to your
questions at least reflected some balance of opinion, given his readiness to
criticise the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, for refusing to
contemplate direct diplomatic negotiations with Iran over the crisis, however,
even so, your efforts to explore the deeper drivers of many of the issues
canvassed were non-existent or superficial at best. 

For example: 

RICHARD CLARKE: ‘This
administration says it won't even negotiate directly with Iran because to talk
to them would be rewarding bad behaviour. The Secretary of State says that she
sounds like she's talking about a kindergarten class. Maybe in a kindergarten
class you don't reward bad behaviour, but in the real world you negotiate with
your enemy. We've always done that. We've negotiated with the Soviet Union.
We've negotiated with Communist China. We negotiated with Japan right up until
the beginning of World War II. It's absurd to say that we would not negotiate
directly with the Iranian Government and would instead jump over that step and
go straight to a military option. Yet, that seems to be what the White House
and the State Department is saying?’ 

No comment Maxine.  

In spite of the opening offered
by Clarke, no attempt to delve into the motives of US behaviour, let alone
question it. No analysis of the US diplomatic offensive mounted against Iran:
its “have you stopped beating your wife” tactic of insisting that Iran prove
that it’s NOT in breach of its NPT obligations. 

No mention of the fact that these
were the same tactics used by the US to build its counterfeit justification for
an illegal pre-emptive war against Iraq. 

No room for parallel thinking
..... just straight through to the keeper. 

Then we have this wonderful gem.

MAXINE McKEW: ‘There's also the question of Israel. What of their position
in all of this? Should we assume they are in some way encouraging an American
attack on Iran at some point?’  

RICHARD CLARKE: ‘Well, put
yourself in Israel's shoes. The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he
wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He's repeatedly denied that the
Holocaust ever took place. He talks in mystical terms about the invisible Imam
and the return of the expected one, the Madi, all of which sounds like an
Islamic version of the fundamentalist Christians talking about rapture and
final days and if this person had the authority to throw nuclear weapons
around, would he perhaps throw them at Israel without further provocation
because he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? From the Israeli
perspective, two or three nuclear weapons going off in their country is the end
of their country. This is an existential issue for Israel. So, we, as Israel's
ally, have to take that into account. This is not just a question of another
country getting a nuclear weapon like, say, Pakistan or India. It's a question
of a country that has actively supported terrorism, has had complete disregard
for international law and talks openly about destroying Israel. So, this is a
serious question for the United States and for Israel. But it doesn't mean that
because it's a serious question that the answer is necessarily a military
option.’  

No response Maxine …. bad luck:
fresh out of time. 

No attempt to parallel the
rhetoric of Iran with that of the Bush administration. 

No attempt to question Clarke’s
claim that a nuclear Iran is an “existential issue” for Israel; nor to probe
the probability that Israel’s possession of an estimated 200 nuclear bombs
might be an even bigger “existential issue” for Iran. 

No attempt to question the
obvious double standard being followed by the US in supporting further nuclear
proliferation by India & Pakistan, including the development of more
nuclear weapons, whilst hypocritically demanding that Iran toe its double
standard line. 

No attempt to highlight the
breaches of International Law by the US, nor its support for terrorist groups
over the years. 

Again, just time for a “soft” but
lengthy editorial statement by Clarke that, in the final analysis, simply
justifies the behaviour of the US & neatly ties back to your false opening
hypothesis that Iran is in “open defiance” of nuclear regulators. 

And finally Maxine: where’s the
contrary view?

If it’s good enough to give
airtime to an apologist for the US, whilst you adopt the role of armchair
sledger, why can’t we hear a view from the opposing side of the argument? 

But, of course, that might risk
us being treated to a piece of balanced journalism & we couldn’t have that. 

Not on the 7:30 Report or our
ABC.

So right, John

With this blog above, John, you are so right... Our media, our Labor party have all caved in to the propaganda machine spewing uninterrupted porkies from Washington... Sad. sad... It's like if they were getting their nuz from watching the Fox channel... That someone like Maxine, a very intelligent woman fall for it too is mind-blogging...

Even the United Nations and the Europeans have fallen for it...

Our last stand is... China and Russia... Russia is still reeling from a few tricks, including the Yukos disaster where one bloke in just few years managed to siphon off (legally of course. in the eye of the west) several billion dollars for himself from the Russian oil industry...

credit where credit's due .....

NSW Government reverses
decision on dioxin testing …. 

Well done 7:30 Report but you can’t take your eyes of the
“Dilemma” government for a moment.

The evidence?

JONATHAN HARLEY: Do you think people are eating more than 150 grams of
Sydney Harbour seafood per month?

JOHN HATZISTERGOS: I'm not.  

Says it all, eh folks?

And by the way, now that the
dreadful plight of the Sydney Harbour fisherman & their families is to be
addressed & the long-term health problems of the harbour itself have been
highlighted, is it appropriate to wonder about the condition of the many tens
of thousands of Sydneysiders who have doubtless been regularly feasting off the
same catch for many years?

Shooting the wrong scapegoat

From the New York Times

Fired C.I.A. Officer Denies Role in Leak

WASHINGTON, April 24 — The lawyer for a Central Intelligence Agency official dismissed last week after being accused of leaking classified information said on Monday that his client denied disclosing any classified information and was not the source for newspaper articles about secret C.I.A. prisons abroad.
Ty Cobb, a Washington lawyer recently retained by the official, Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired last Thursday and escorted out of agency headquarters, said his client had never been granted access to the information she was accused of leaking, referring to material used in Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about C.I.A. prisons.

"She categorically denies leaking classified information," Mr. Cobb said by telephone on Monday. "She denies having access to the information attributed to her."

Mr. Cobb, whose comments about Ms. McCarthy's denials were first reported on the Newsweek Web site, said his client had also told him that she never admitted leaking any classified information before she was terminated. She believes she was fired solely because she failed to report contacts with journalists to her superiors, he said.

read more at the New York Times

-----------------------

A case of shooting the wrong messenger,,, nothing you with this presidency.

"Miracle economy" ?...

Last night on Lateline with Maxine there was a door ajar into something that has long been a troubled furphy...
----------------------------------
See Lateline site ABC.
Megalogenis' book reveals strange bedfellows

MAXINE McKEW: Well, with the Federal Budget due in just over a week, a new book looks inside our miracle economy and poses the most interesting question of all: what has our record-breaking prosperity delivered, and where is it taking us? If we've become a nation of Kath and Kims with a four bedroom McMansion and bulging shopping bags, there's also a downside. The average householder is also a reckless borrower, with zero savings and vulnerable to any downturn in property prices. Well, News Limited journalist George Megalogenis has brought all this together in a book he's called 'The Longest Decade'. Now, he's that rarest of creatures - an economist who can look at the raw data and turn it into a compelling story about societal behaviour. 'The Longest Decade' also gives us a fresh angle on two political foes: Paul Keating and John Howard, and there are some fascinating revelations.
.................................

MAXINE McKEW: George, let's talk about the two individuals that you focus on, who have brought us to this point: of course, both Paul Keating and John Howard. Interestingly, I mean, you call them the twin architects of deregulation. You see them as having a lot more in common than most of us would imagine...

Read more at the ABC

--------------------------------------

Gus has been through it all before...
Yes Paul Keating was an economic rationalist,
Yes John Howard is a mug-bean-counter rationalist and he's inherited a lot of the "good" work done by Keating.
And yes the ALP has lost a lot of its traditional middle class voters to the Liberals as "money became more liberated"...

But to Gus this is about as far as we can go on that track. Keating opened the door to a more flexible economy, Johnnee turned it into a circus contortionist act. And our illusion of prosperity is thus very tenuous and false, as since the "bad" old days of Keating as Johnnee would have us to believe, our trade deficit is going down the gurgler at faster warp speed...

Paul Keating had a "certain" heart in making sure that the poor, the oppressed, the underprivileged, the workers had a fair go... Johnnee has made everything possible to broom them under the carpet and pass the helpless off to charitable enterprises, including his recent IR reforms that are designed to lower basic workers' wages.

Johnnee thus relegated the state duties, to maintain a fair system, in favour of ruthless competition on a crooked playing field. Johnnee's fiddles have shifted the small national debt to a huge private citizen's debt ... Johnnee presided over the halving of Telstra share value... the selling of AWB to private enterprise to which some of his ministers in the loop bought shares, and is prepared to do the same with other states entities. He presided over great failures of private enterprises with the demise of Ansett, HIH, many others (OneTel) and the food for oil scandal with the "now" private enterprise AWB, for which he spends public money to rescue private wheat deals in Iraq by sending hit men and trade ministers ...

During election time, Johnnee harped on about high interests rates under Labor,— all failing to mention that this was a world wide phenomenon and that by the end of Keating's rule interest rates had already gone low.
Now, even with the price of petrol going through the roof, inflation stays low and Johnnee pats himself on the back for the "good" work which has nothing to do with him... Inflation is low because it is low in the rest of the western world, For example, interest rates are so low in japan they don't even register... and all this low illusion is very carefully stage-managed by the US deficit... Ask anyone who knows... It's like a giant poker game where no one is calling the bluff because everyone know the kitty is really empty despite the tokens on the table.
Counterfeit money? The federal US reserve...
Counterfeit handshakes? George W Bush...
Real guns on the table mind you but in the hands of Bushy the little Kid it's dangerous like hell!
Anyway where is that extra fake cash going to? It's feeding the stock market, trickling down from huge US government contracts to make weapons... wage wars and the like... and other fiddles, eventually lifting the stock value by about 15 per cent every year while inflation barely hits 3 per cent... So somewhere someone is massively cashing in the differential with fake values that only exist because they have entered the mainstream.

And then there are the lies about going to war in Iraq... Lies that have been swept under carpet with "intelligence failure" enquiries here and in the US,, but the stench has not gone away. It won't... From time to time, documents or former agents at the CIA let us know what we knew back in mid 2002... that Saddam had NO weapons of mass destructions and that the US was concocting some fake "evidence" that he had... in order to go to war and blame him for 9/11 for which he had nothing to do. Only a deceptive Johnnee could keep a straight face through all that... even after more than 100,000 dead. Plus 20,000 US soldiers maimed and 2.400 dead, 69 this month alone...

Paul Keating was managing a society where fair go and social justice still had a name...
Johnnee presides over a run for your life opportunistic jumble sale.

Keating was managing an increasingly good relationship with our neighbours, like indonesia despite some mischievous comments by the Malaysian PM... When Johnnee came into power he bulldozed all that good work, including ordering the destruction of the ABC transmissions abroad...
A few years later he realised — or was force to come to term with — that this had been a silly mistake (why do you think the BBC and the Deutchevelle transmit to these parts of the world? just to waste air space? No, the programs help maintain a country's image and a network of commercial relationship)

But then "smart" Johnnee put the TV tender to commercial entities who after a too few years folded because it was not "commercially" viable for them. Basically doing the hard yard with no direct returns. Since then, the ABC has taken the transmission over again but every-time the "contract" runs out Johnnee puts it out to tender.... The silly sausage... Only the ABC can do a proper job without having to repeat american junk...

The list of cock ups we, the Australian public, have accepted from Johnnee is long.., From medicare to outrageous refugee polices... this list is only accepted under the triple banners of "economic management" "fear" and "Moralisationing" as if we had to swallow the junk like an awful medicine... But most of us are already politically asleep because the drums of the ALP are now no more that a muffed squeak...

The "war on terror" now known as "the long war" is a spruiker's subterfuge to create an illusion of selling the right thing at the right price, even discounted price... We're suckers for "bargains" even if we know the wheels will fall off ... The price is too good...the stakes are too high, we are selling our soul: as a country, we have lost our sense of equity, fair play and we've become suspicious of everybody... Our fences have grown taller, corrupt behaviour abound with impunity, including inside the government (unless it's high degrees of incompetence), our "socialist"-capitalism, that should have helped maintain our human ethics has now been turned into a fascist-capitalism by Johnnee and his US friend, making wealth exclusive to the rich — and a few privileged small-potatoes, to give the illusions to the poor that they can get there with hard work...

Bollocks! The goal posts will be moved faster around by the Sneaky Despots, and more deep holes will appear in front of us as if the turf had been upturned by a hard game of polo... So while the rich play on their "horsee", we'll have to go there at intervals to turn the dirt back again and again and again...

We'll dream on of making it — slaving away under stone age contracts for more peanuts.

And did I mention Johnnee appalling record on the environment?

While the US prez is about to nuke someone...

From Al Jazeera

Iran to invest in Indonesian gas, oil

Friday 28 April 2006, 12:45 Makka Time, 9:45 GMT

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, will sign the investments during a state visit to the Southeast Asian nation next month.

Yuri Thamrin, an Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday: "Iran wants to invest $200 million to fix offshore refinery platforms in Indonesia and also to invest $400 million in building a gas pipeline from South Sumatra to Batam."

read more at Al Jazeera

No need to nuke anybody

From Al Jazeera

Iran could suspend nuclear programme

Thursday 21 September 2006, 22:42 Makka Time, 19:42 GMT

The [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/046DFC9E-DC39-4168-998E-0E0BB685C25B.htm|Iranian president] has said the country would be prepared to suspend some of its nuclear activities if negotiations take place "under fair conditions".
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a UN news conference in New York that talks with the European Union on Iran's nuclear programme were on the right track.
In the most explicit indication by the Iranian leader that Tehran is seriously considering complying with the key condition for broader talks on the issue, he said: "We have said that under fair conditions and just conditions we will negotiate about it."
In an apparent reference to the US, he said: "We believe those negotiations are moving on the right path. Hopefully others will not disrupt the work."