Bibi's bomb - bomb fallout

Bibi's ACME bomb at UNGA inspires Israeli meme artists

Some of these are really funny.  Check 'em out!

I don't think we have to worry too much about Israel's continuing "existence" as long as Israelis (who actually live in Israel) can laugh at the antics of their "leader". 

 

An interesting political analysis of Bibi's bomb bomb by investigative journalist Gareth Porter has it that after months of trying to maneuver the Obama Administration into committing the US to attack Iran by a specific date (the famous "red line") and being rebuffed unceremoniously and publicly by US officials, his UNGA speech was, in effect, a concession that his tactics had failed and was merely a sop to Israeli public opinion that isn't interested in a unilateral attack on Iran by Israel itself. 

Here are a few excerpts:

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Netanyahu had twice used to convey to the US his purported readiness to go to war with Iran, called it a "concession speech". Netanyahu conceded, in effect, that his effort to force the US to accept his red line had failed completely.

As the Republican Party prepared to nominate Netanyahu's old friend Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate, all the pieces seemed to be in place for Netanyahu to maximize the impact of his Iran war bluff.... [but] the Republican convention in Tampa Bay from August 27 to 30 failed to make an American ultimatum to Iran, as demanded by Netanyahu, a central theme of the convention.

... Netanyahu met unexpectedly firm US resistance to his pressure tactic. On August 30, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talking with reporters in the UK, said an Israeli strike on Iran would be ineffective, and then dropped an unexpected bomb. "I don't want to be complicit if they [the Israelis] choose to do it," Dempsey said.... [but] after such a "public, bold statement" by Dempsey ... "the situation had to be reassessed".


Obama and other senior US officials had clearly decided it was time to cut off Netanyahu’s ham-handed effort at pressure on US policy at the knees. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio on September 9 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, "We're not setting deadlines". And when Netanyahu pushed Obama in a phone conversation on September 11 to adopt his "red line" ... Obama flatly rejected the demand, according to American sources. Three days later, Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine, "Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to put people in a corner".

And in an unmistakable signal by Obama that Netanyahu should end his meddling in US politics and policy, the White House even rebuffed a Netanyahu request for a meeting during his upcoming US trip, as the Israelis leaked to the news media. 

Haaretz editor Aluf Benn has suggested that Netanyahu's UN speech reflected not only the Obama administration's rebuff but the realities of Israeli public opinion. He wrote that the Prime Minister had tailored his speech to polls showing that Israelis wanted the US to handle the problem of Iran, not Israel.   

The full article:

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210493522531400.html  

Pants on fire

Look people, we're in the game!

It isn't very often that one gets caught in flagrante delicto, with his metaphorical pants down. But in a recent video shot at a policy forum luncheon at WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) the Director of Research, Patrick Clawson, suggested that a Pearl Harbor type incident is needed to coerce the US into acceding to Israel's demand for an attack on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons facilities--"crisis initiation" in Newspeak. No description of the video can do justice to the flagrantly, if not immoral, diabolical nature of the proposal and the man proposing it. 

William A. Cook, and English professor at a university in southern California, characterized Clawson as a "Clown" in one of the most drippingly sarcastic pieces of writing I've seen come down the pike in a long time:

...the absolute darkness of this soulless Clown who joked his brilliance before his peers ... this idiot vomited out of his mouth the way to move forward with his agenda and that of his peers, “after all people, we are in the game”.

But the consequences are far greater than the lost sailors in our Clown’s descriptive false flag; “after all people,” this act will propel the world into a catastrophic war, and we will “not be in a game.” Put this in context; here’s the Clown, an appointed researcher for an exclusive think tank the purpose of which is to push the Israeli agenda in the United States at all costs. These un-appointed individuals draw up strategic plans for the US government, maneuver them into strategic places in the Pentagon, the Congress, the State Department, and into the Executive Branch in order to bring them to action. This action is to force the US to go to war on behalf of Israel. That the people of the US do not favor such a war, that hundreds and thousands of their soldiers, the sons and daughters, the fathers and mothers of American families will be the fodder for WINEP’s war is irrelevant to them since they work for Israel and for AIPAC. The end purpose alone counts—their end purpose. That is what Patrick Clawson told us in that released video, a video I suspect WINEP wishes never saw the light of day. The absolute arrogance of his presentation, the total commitment he uttered in his remarks tell of a man incapable of human sympathy, oblivious to international law, uncaring, bestial.

http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19610

As an accessory piece to the clown metaphor we have the cartoonish performance of drawing “red lines” in the sand (and on cartoon bombs) by the supposedly mature adult macho man PM of Israel in the United Nations. But it seems the bomb may have been a dud:

Binyamin Netanyahu's cartoon nuclear bomb certainly grabbed attention, but not necessarily the kind he wanted. No doubt it was intended as a bold and graphic way of presenting the Iranian nuclear threat, but much of the initial response – on Twitter, at least – was ridicule. -  The Guardian

These kinds of performances by Israeli officials and their hired public relations and black ops operatives will do nothing to stabilize the tensions and rivalries in the Middle East. Nor will it endear them to any but the most right wing and neo-conservative types in the United States, who still don't realize how much their benighted adventure in Iraq has weakened the US's ability to successfully fight wars in that region. The Administration main's concern, although unstated openly, appears to be getting out of the military quagmire without losing more once friendly allies and face than necessary. An Israeli-inspired military fiasco in Iran will only inflame the already volatile Middle East, further damage the reputation of the United States and keep the global economy locked into a very long term recession if not plunge it into a depression.

We've had enough farce in the region already, let's not Send in the Clowns. 

Looking Back: 1 - a generation neither here nor there

As Charles Dickens said of David Copperfield—and perhaps himself as well: I am born.

me

Aren't we all!

Mom and Dad

I wasn't born a Baby Boomer. I must have been born a vagabond. In those days we were just born into an unlabeled generation. The “neither here nor there generation” you could say. I arrived on the planet on the cusp of the Great Depression and World War II—December, 1941. It seems, in retrospect, that I was born into a world entering an era of perpetual war, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes in conscious thought, sometimes buried in the unconscious disturbing only occasional dreams, but always there as a kind of painted backdrop to a stage set.

me - 8-years old

I don't remember much of my earliest years (nothing actually) and only know what I've been told. I lived in a bilingual home (English and French) because we lived with my recently widowed grandmother until I was about 4- or 5-years old. Grandma was an immigrant from Montreal in Quebec Province, Canada who spoke no English. She was a widow because my grandfather died from a head injury incurred when he hit his head on a low tree branch while riding in an open trolley. When my grandmother remarried she sold the house and moved out. We moved into a cold water, unheated (that was normal in those days) 2-bedroom tenement in another part of town and I entered the first grade at the local parish school. My younger brother was born in the same year, 1946.    

Elvis Presley in the 50s

We came up in the era of Rock 'n Roll--Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley idolized by millions of swooning hysterical fans. There were Father Knows Best,Leave it to Beaver and American Bandstand on that marvel of marvels, the TV. I was around 12-years old when we got our first one. Before that, I remember listening to programs like The Shadow and Fibber McGee on the radio in the kitchen. The 1950s were a kind of age of innocence, or maybe it just seemed that way because we were still young and relatively innocent to the world outside our small industrial city. It was the time of my first high school (unrequited) crush, "duck's ass" haircuts, record hops, bowling night, wet dreams, pegged pants and white buck shoes. Some of the lucky ones had cars, but not me. We swam on weekends at my uncle's “camp” on a lake and ice skated on the frozen pond just down the street in the winter.

James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause

The seemingly placid surface of the 50s began to show a few ripples, troublingly and darkly, in Rebel Without a Cause at the movies. James Dean epitomized the angst of growing up with pablum for breakfast in a sunny TV kitchen (the real “morning in America”?) and the aimlessness and confusion over what to do with a life seemingly without challenges (other than seeking thrills in driving cars over a cliff in the flicks). And then, when I was 16, Brigitte Bardot breathtakingly appeared in shocking semi-nudity in the then notorious (now, what was all the fuss about?) French film (et dieu crea la femme) And God Created Woman. There were two movie theaters practically next door to each other on Main Street in our town. One was showing And God Created Woman, the other was showing Walt Disney's Bambi. My cousin and I told our parents that we were going to see Bambiand, of course, went into the other theater instead.

Brigitte Bardot in et dieu crea la femme

Around this time my parents were building their dream home. My father, who died in 1986, was a carpenter. In high school I was interested in drawing and took a mechanical drawing class as an elective for three years. Part of the class involved drawing blueprints and with Dad's guidance we designed the “dream house”. We worked together building it on weekends when my father became very ill with bleeding ulcers. To help supplement the family income and while still in high school I went to work part time at my uncle's small furniture making factory doing a bit of everything that didn't have to do with dangerous machinery, but mostly in the shipping department. And so, the 50s played out not altogether as carefree as they had seemed earlier in the decade.

To be continued...