The Osterley Times

Saturday, July 26, 2008

McCain questions Obama speaking abroad, forgetting that he has done the same.

McCain's desperation is becoming embarrassing. What in God's name inspired him to say this?

"I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States," McCain told O'Donnell. "But that's a judgment that Sen. Obama and the American people will make."

Is he forgetting that the whole idea of Obama going abroad was his? Wasn't he the one who attacked Obama for not having visited Iraq as much as he had?

And hasn't he himself made speeches abroad during this campaign?

However, on June 20, McCain himself gave a speech in Canada -- to the Economic Club of Canada -- in which he applauded NAFTA's successes. An implicit message behind that speech was that Obama had been critical of the trade accord. Also, McCain's trip to Canada was paid for by the campaign.

I think McCain's famous short fuse is leading him to say things that are frankly ridiculous. Obama is currently outflanking him, but McCain's response to this - that the press are in the tank for Obama - totally ignores the fact that the press are very kindly passing over his own numerous gaffes.

But to attack Obama for speaking abroad, when your own campaign has attacked him for not going abroad enough, really is the worst kind of floundering.

Click title for full article.

Doyle: If Savage wants to see someone acting like a moron, he should simply look in the mirror.

Thank God that someone else is as outraged as I was by Savage's disgraceful remarks.

Fox News Is Pravda. McClellan offers the proof.

For every moron who has ever argued on here that Fox News is "fair and balanced", and not the right wing propaganda machine that sane people recognise it as, finally we have the irrefutable proof.

McClellan reveals that the White House gives O'Reilly and Hannity "talking points" to make sure that they are parroting the White House script. Pravda would be proud to produce a propaganda machine like Fox News.

Obama faces 200,000 crowd, McCain talks in a supermarket.

I love the fact that Fox News have caught on that some things in Germany have links to Hitler... Who would have suspected that?

And Stewart has noticed that the American flags being waved towards Obama in Germany are broken... they are NOT on fire!

Now Cabinet turns on wounded Brown

The papers this morning are full of stories about the Labour Party skulking around preparing to remove Gordon Brown after the disaster of the Glasgow East election.

The first cracks in the Cabinet's support for Gordon Brown appeared yesterday as Labour MPs urged senior ministers to tell him to quit after the party's humiliating defeat in the Glasgow East by-election.

Although cabinet ministers said there would be no immediate attempt to oust the Prime Minister, some predicted he would face a concerted move to force him to stand down in September – possibly before the Labour conference, which starts on 20 September.

What a pile of tosh. The Labour Party didn't lose Glasgow East because Gordon Brown is unpopular, they lost Glasgow East because there are many of us who aren't sure what the party stands for anymore.

Having lost the support of the working class of Glasgow East through it's almost manic determination to appease Daily Mail readers, the party now simply has to address whose values it thinks it represents.

At the moment that is unclear, which is why the Tories are storming ahead in the polls.

To add to Mr Brown's woes, the latest monthly survey by ComRes for The Independent gives the Conservatives a 22-point lead over Labour, the biggest they have ever enjoyed in a ComRes poll. It puts the Tories on 46 per cent (unchanged on last month), Labour on 24 per cent (down one percentage point), the Liberal Democrats on 18 per cent (unchanged) and other parties on 12 per cent (up one point). The figures would give David Cameron an overall majority of 236 if repeated at a general election.

A change of leader won't sort out the Labour party's woe's, they need a change of direction. I have supported this party my entire life and, at the moment, I don't know what they stand for.

They are proposing asking people to clean graffiti in order to get benefits, a policy which is so right wing that I honestly think Norman Tebbitt would have winced at the thought of introducing it. And therein lies their problem. They are trying to be all things to all people.

Brown fights to be allowed to hold terrorists for 42 days without charge and attacks benefits claimants with a ferocity which even the Tories would balk at, whilst simultaneously trying to be the party of the working class.

It's a bloody mess. Brown has yet to govern from his heart and, instead, has offered his version of a Blair premiership. He needs to stop that and to govern in a way that suits his constituency.

That's Old Labour, the very thing that we have been told that Britain will not stand for. He's got two years before the next election and one thing is very clear: Brown's version of Blair's New Labour isn't working.

Gordon should go back to the kind of politics which he has believed in all of his life, he should abandon appeasement of the Daily Mail and start thinking of what the people of Glasgow East need from a Labour government.

That's his core vote. And that's who the current policy is alienating.

Without Glasgow East, there simply can't be a Labour government. That is an undeniable fact.

You can change the figurehead as many times as you want, but until you represent those people and their interests, you will lose to Cameron. The middle class know that Cameron represents them, the working class feel deserted by Labour. No, I'll go further, they feel betrayed.

And the reason they feel betrayed is because they have been.

So I don't support the calls for Brown's scalp, but I do wish Brown would start to govern as if he's the elected representative of Kirkcaldy rather than the elected member for Knightsbridge.

Related Articles:

Deborah Orr makes some brilliant points and is well worth reading.

New Labour has only itself to blame

The truth is that Labour's own dependence on supplementing even working people with benefits, instead of promoting their reasonable need to be able to live on their earnings, has repulsed many of their "core voters". It is the exhausting strain of working poverty that promotes benefits dependency, and the ensuing informal, sometimes criminal economy. Beyond its early and timid championship of the minimum wage, Labour has failed to promote the idea that employers should do more than treat humans as squeezable units of profit at all. That is the greatest Labour failure, and this dying Government's most putrid legacy. If there is a personal message to Brown in this result, that is it. The most awful thing is that he seems no more able to hear it than David Cameron, the man who will, sooner rather than later, succeed him.

Roy Hattersley in Guardian Comments.

Don't give up - Labour can still win in 2010. Here's how

Labour has to decide whose side it is on.

The fear of alienating people who are already Labour's enemies is one of the reasons why the government is so rarely on the offensive. Much that has gone wrong during the past six months is the direct result of either Tory policy or Tory ideology that Blair accepted.

Click title for full article.

Friday, July 25, 2008

House bid to sell oil from reserve fails

You've got to love Republican logic:

The House of Representatives on Thursday failed to pass legislation intended to cool off gasoline prices by requiring the government to sell 70 million barrels of light sweet crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the national stockpile.
Democrats had pushed the legislation, hoping to lower surging oil prices by putting more of the reserve's light sweet crude, sought by refiners, on the market. Sweet crude is desirable because it has less sulphur and is more easily refined into gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products.

The White House had threatened to veto the measure, arguing that Congress should work toward increasing domestic supply rather than tap into a strategic reserve.

Although the House voted 268 to 157 in favor of the legislation, the measure fell short of obtaining the two-thirds "yes" vote that is required when the chamber suspends its rules to act quickly on a bill.

Bush wants to give the oil companies drilling rights all over the place, so he objects to tapping into "a strategic reserve".

That wasn't the argument when he took Clinton's projected ten year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion and turned it into a $415 billion deficit in part by giving $630 billion in tax cuts to the richest 1% of the population. And that's not even the true size of the deficit:

Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It’s like pretending you’re richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion “nominal” deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565 billion.

So you can spend reserves as long as they are financial reserves and you are doling the money out to the richest people in the land, but can't touch reserves of oil which are put aside for precisely such a time as now.

The logic of these people is simply mind-bending.

Click title for full article.

Glasgow East: it doesn't get worse than this

Brown's problems simply couldn't get any worse as Labour yesterday lost Glasgow East, the 25th strongest Labour seat in the country.

This wasn't a defeat, it was a mauling, with a 22.5% swing away from the party.

Almost no Labour MP, including Brown, is now safe. Glasgow East was Labour's 25th safest seat in the UK and its third safest in Scotland. The seat had been Labour since the 1920s. If the 22.5% swing was replicated in a general election, Labour would have just one Scottish MP left. It doesn't get worse that this.

This was a revolt of the core vote. Nationally, Labour lost most of the swing vote in 2005. Three years on, the rest of the swing vote is long gone and the core vote is now bleeding away. Even in 2005, Labour topped 60% of the vote in Glasgow East. The byelection rips a huge hole in the mental and political safety-net that saw Labour through the disasters of the 1980s. The idea that Labour will always win 200-plus Westminster seats is history.

This problem started under Tony Blair who used to speak of "Guardian readers" as a form of insult. An extraordinary way for a political leader to speak of his supporters, but Blair consoled himself that, come election day, we had no-one else to vote for other than Labour, so he didn't have to concern himself with what we thought. He could concentrate on appealing to the floating voter somewhere in the middle.

The election of Brown was supposed to change all that, but it hasn't. He still concerns himself with pushing through 42 day detention bills and, most recently, reforming the benefits system in order to make people clean graffiti and perform other menial tasks before they can collect any form of benefits.

Glasgow East has let him know what it thinks of these regressive policies.

For too long the Labour Party have taken it's core voters for granted, pushing Tory policies upon us whilst fully aware that we did not want them.

And yes, rising oil prices and the cost of food will have played their part in this disaster, but this is no longer a case of the middle class losing their faith in New Labour, this is the Labour heartland finding that the SNP represent their values much more than the Labour Party do.

The SNP have abolished prescription charges in the NHS and have scrapped the graduate endowment to restore free education in Scotland. They have also frozen the Council Tax.

These should be Labour Party policies but, of course, it was Blair who pushed through loans for students, removing the right to free university education. The SNP have wisely campaigned against all of the least favourite Brown/Blair policies and, in doing so, have cut right into Labour's heartland.

Labour now find themselves facing a problem of their own making. If Brown continues to govern by operating a policy of Tory-lite, then Scotland is gone and with it the chance of Labour ever again forming a majority government.

We voted Labour because we wanted a Labour government. In the early days, on subjects like health and education, we got one. But, 9-11 changed everything.

Blair wholeheartedly bought into the response of George Bush and by the time he had succeeded in pushing the Iraq war through parliament he was almost utterly removed from his party and it's supporters.

The SNP are now representing the values of those supporters much better than Labour do.

That's why the disaster is on the scale that it is. Blair treated his supporters with contempt, taking comfort from the fact that they had nowhere else to go.

In Scotland, they do. And they've gone there in record numbers. Even if remedial action is taken immediately, it's hard to see Labour winning another term. For, in truth, unless they start to represent the values of the people who elected them, they don't deserve it.

Click title for full article.

Palestinian anger at claims new West Bank settlement 'to get go-ahead'

Both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have recently been to Israel to emphasise the need for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestine crisis and for the importance of international law in sorting it out.

Which makes it all the more extraordinary that Israel have chosen this week, of all bloody weeks, to announce that they are going to build more illegal settlements in the West Bank.

All settlements in occupied territory are illegal under international law and Palestinian officials were quick to criticise the proposal.

"This is destroying the process of a two-state solution," said Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator. "I hope the Americans will make the Israelis revoke the decision. I think they can make the Israelis do this."

The US road map, which is the basis of the current peace talks, calls for a freeze on all settlement activity, but Israel has defended its recent decisions to press ahead with construction in East Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements that it believes will become part of Israel in any peace deal.

Israel tried this two years ago and had to give up plans for a Maskiot settlement after international outrage at the proposal.

A spokesman for Olmert is pointing out that he has not approved settlement building, but this reassurance is not enough for many.

Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the Israeli group Peace Now, said the growing pressure on the government from the settler movement often appeared to outweigh international pressure against the expansion of settlements.

"I think it is very disappointing," he said. "It is paving the way to a one-state solution. We are afraid eventually that if there will be a peace treaty there will be so many settlements it will not be possible to implement it."

Settler leaders sounded buoyed by the news. "This should have been done a long time ago," Dubi Tal, chairman of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, told the Ma'ariv newspaper.

"I welcome this decision with much hope and, with God's help, we will build and bring those expelled from Gush Katif to a safe place." Gush Katif refers to the settlers evacuated from Gaza three years ago.

The Israelis are playing with fire here. If they proceed down this path they will make a two state solution impossible. That is perhaps their intention. But they are moving towards a point where we are going to be left with only three choices.

1. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

2. The continuation of the present quasi-Apartheid system.

3. A one state solution.

The first two solutions will simply not be acceptable to the rest of the planet and the third solution, because of the difference in demographics between the Israelis and the Palestinians, would result in the end of Israel as we know it.

It is not in Israel's interest to continue down this path. Even the old war criminal, Ariel Sharon, realised as much which is why he ordered the evacuation of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Which is why this proposal is causing such consternation around the world.

The following footage was released recently by an Israeli human rights group and shows a Palestinian, blindfolded and tied up, being shot at close range with a rubber bullet by the IDF.

Images like this are what many of us think of when we hear the term "occupation". And images like this are why many of us are so determined that the illegal occupation should come to an end.

Palestine is not Israel, and the Israelis need to stop building on another people's land.

Click title for full article.

Europe embraces Obama.

Barack Obama has made his speech in Berlin - in front of an estimated 200,000 people - and, at a time when many right wingers are talking of a war of civilisations, he was careful to dismantle the very premise:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

I notice that others are concentrating on other aspects of his speech, but it was this portion which spoke to me the most loudly. It appears to undermine the argument of the war of civilisation brigade and demand that we build bridges between our cultures rather than revel in our differences.

It was part of a theme he laid out which his Berlin audience simply loved:

He invoked the spirit of the Berlin airlift, exactly 60 years ago, as an example of a time when the US and the West stood with the beleaguered people of Berlin, who were cut off by the Communist blockade. "People of the world, look at Berlin," he said, constantly interrupted by cheers and applause from his mainly young audience. "People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment, this our time."
The airlift had been a show of solidarity in which the Western pilots had won over "hearts and minds", he said. "Now the world will watch what we do with this moment," he went on, as he called for a "true partnership".
He cited challenges ranging from lifting a child out of poverty in Bangladesh to helping dissidents in Burma, bloggers in Iran and voters in Zimbabwe.
The crowds went wild. They had come to the Tiergarten Park to hear Mr Obama deliver his speech as the sun set behind the Golden Angel atop its column, but the speech was long on ideals and rhetoric and short on detail.
Without mentioning the name of George Bush once, he won more applause as he outlined his vision of peace in the Middle East, a world without nuclear weapons, an end to the war in Iraq, tackling global warming and the defeat of terrorism.

Speaking as a European, sickened by eight years of Bush's bullying and horrendous foreign policy, Obama comes across a breath of fresh air.

I understand that some American friends on the left have been distressed by his move to the centre since winning the nomination, and I share their disappointment; however, it is Obama's foreign policy which most concerns me, and his talk of mending fences and listening to his allies is such a welcome change from the Bush nightmare that Europe was always guaranteed to go crazy for this guy.

After George Bush's "my way or the highway" approach to the UN and international law, the very fact that there is a possible American president who recognises international restraint - and is prepared to acknowledge international bodies - makes us somewhat giddy.

People living within the most powerful country in the world can have no idea of what it feels like for those of us who live outside it to witness an American president ripping up international law, and doing so with apparent immunity. Nancy Pelosi, whose elevation to Speaker of the House we all applauded, has appalled us by her decision not to seek impeachment of Bush no matter what crimes he may be found to have committed. The entire American political system has failed to restrain Bush as he violated international law with extraordinary rendition, torture and the Iraq war itself. We have watched, dumbfounded, as this man has been allowed to act as if the law is what he says it is.

Our faith in America is shattered.

And that is why we so wholeheartedly embrace Obama. He is saying that the rules which we all jointly agreed to still have merit. It's a sad day that something so basic should get us all so excited but, after eight years of Bush, this is what we are left with.

Obama is hinting that the end of the nightmare is in sight. Which is why Europe is going crazy for him.

Click title for full article.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

John McCain's Neverending War

The JedReport does a great job of putting together clips showing McCain's overwhelming support for Bush's actions regarding Iraq, despite his claims that he was opposed to how the war was being waged in the beginning.

McCain and the surge.

It's bad enough that McCain is attempting to portray himself as a foreign policy expert whilst buggering up the Iraq war timeline, but the sheik that he said was protected by the US was actually assassinated during the surge.

"Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks," said the Senator. "Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening."

The Arizona Republican's campaign went further the next day, claiming that the major figures that turned around Anbar province would have been killed had the surge policy not been in place. "If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda," said spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Sadly, that murder took place even with the surge underway. In September 2007, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the sheik widely credited with persuading Sunni leaders to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq, died in a bomb attack in Anbar.

This is turning into a disaster for McCain. And this is supposedly his strongest issue. He really is beginning to sound as if he simply doesn't know what he is talking about.

Thousands Of GIs, State Dept Workers Flock To Obama In Baghdad

McCain hoped that Obama's trip to the Middle East would result in some gaffe which could be exploited to his benefit. The very opposite has happened. Maliki has come out in agreement with Obama's plans for withdrawal and, as you can see from this video, GI's and embassy staff greet him as if he's a rock star.

(Wild Cheers)

Nightline: Monday night in Baghdad, Barack Obama is in the house. The house, the U.S. Embassy and it was an amazing scene.

Barack: I just want to introduce myself, I’m Barack Obama.

(Wild Cheers)

If McCain wasn't shitting himself before Barack Obama went to the Middle East, he sure will be now. These guys are supposed to be on McCain's side, why are they so excited to see the other guy?

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Bush - "Wall Street Got Drunk"

Security is paramount, Obama tells Israel

And, finally, he arrives in Israel. There's a certain amount of tap dancing to be done as he makes his way through the myriad of potential traps, but so far he appears to have avoided any obvious gaffe in the midst of the minefield.

The Democratic nominee went out of his way to reassure Israelis and Jewish voters in the US that an Obama presidency would even strengthen "the historic and special relationship" between the two countries – "one that cannot be broken".

Mr Obama also sought to allay Israeli anxieties about his willingness to meet Iranian leaders if he thought it would serve US interests. A nuclear Iran would be a "game-changing situation" that "would pose a grave threat, and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon," he said.

Standing in front of a symbolic display of exploded Qassam rockets at the police station in Sderot, which has borne the brunt of attacks from Gaza, Mr Obama declared: "America must always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself against those who threaten its people"

This is all to be expected along with a promise that a nuclear Iran is not an option that he would countenance. But it is his comments in which he appears to understand the pain and frustration of the Palestinians which is making him appear to be the American leader the Middle East has been waiting for.

That's certainly the view of some Palestinians.

"We have no problem with him supporting Israel, the question is how," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst and former planning minister. "We are not expecting him to become pro-Palestinian or not to be pro-Israel but he could be more useful to Israel if he convinced Israel to stop expanding settlements, if his administration became more supportive of the negotiations, if he could relax regional tension."

A McCain presidency would be "problematic", he said.

I don't know why, but I have a feeling that Obama gets the problem here and that his presidency would push very hard for a fair settlement. It's a bit like reading tea leaves at the moment but there is certainly a tone to what he says which implies that he is not going to be as tied to the Likud line as previous American presidents.

It's routine for anyone vying to become America's next president to make this sort of commitment to Israel, but what makes Obama, at this point unique, is that he has been inserting caveats into his formal declarations.

Some Israelis appear to have noticed this:

Gerald Steinberg, head of political science at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, said it was too early to judge Obama until he began choosing his staff: "He is not someone who people can easily box into a liberal or neo-con approach to the Israeli-Arab issue."

Steinberg said he had concerns about some advisers who were, in his view, as "part of the Israel-bashing gang".

However, this has not dented his popularity amongst America's Jewish voters, where he actually enjoys more support than Joe Lieberman. A recent survey by the new progressive pro-Israel group J Street has found that Barack Obama is viewed favourably by 60% of American Jews, which is much better than either Lieberman (37%) or McCain (34%).

McCain has attacked Obama's campaigning for change as simply rhetoric, but there are many of us, reading between the tea leaves, who think that change - especially when it comes to the Middle East - is exactly what Obama is promising.

Maybe he's simply the ultimate politician, stringing us all along, but he's the first presidential candidate that I can think of who has taken the bother to insert caveats into his undying support for the Israelis. That's a high risk for any presidential candidate to take. I find it hard to imagine that he would take such a risk without having the intention, further down the road, of cashing in those chips.

Click title for full article.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

McCain Meltdown

It's a sad day for McCain when even Joe Klein thinks he has gone too far. But his recent unbelievable comments regarding Obama have caused Klein to say this:

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:
This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

Desperation indeed. When you couple this with his claims that the press, which have sided with him every inch of the way, are biased towards Obama, then one realises that McCain has caught on to the fact that he is losing this election.

I expect McCain's campaign to get more scurrilous as time goes on....

Click title for full article.

McCain Ad Blames Obama for Gas Prices

This is his most ridiculous claim to date. Attack ads need to be factual. This is delusional.

Sudan cites US as an example of why it won't comply with UN ICC.

ZAKARIA: Will your government mount a defense in the International Criminal Court?

MOHAMAD: We have no relation with the International Criminal Court. We don't recognize its authority. We are not going to cooperate with it.

ZAKARIA: But of course, you know that other governments that did not recognize the Criminal Court were still forced to extradite their leaders. I'm thinking of Yugoslavia.

MOHAMAD: No. I don't care about them. As far as we are concerned, we are not members. We have been told these days repeatedly that the ICC is an independent body. And so, OK, if it's an independent body, I am not a U.N. organ. We have full right to be part of it or not. And we choose not to be part of it, like the United States.

This is the company that the US now finds itself in regarding the International Criminal Court.

Obama pledges to work for Middle East peace

Barack Obama is promising to search for peace in the Middle East "starting from the minute I'm sworn into office".

This is a break from the usual US practice of leaving the Israel-Palestine dispute until your second term in office, or the George Bush approach of calling for a state of Palestine and then being so unbelievably pro-Israeli that you make a state of Palestine impossible to achieve. Even going as far as to declare the illegal Israeli settlements "facts on the ground".

Obama offers a break from all of that, which is to be greatly welcomed.

Before what may prove the toughest and – in a political sense – hazard-strewn visit of his high-octane world tour, Mr Obama implied he wanted to break with the presidential habit of leaving the Israeli-Palestinian issue to a second term.

Having secured Iraqi government backing for his plans for US military withdrawals, signalled his intention to persuade Nato to focus greater military resources on Afghanistan and edged the US administration into more diplomatic contacts with Iran – Israel's No 1 external preoccupation – Mr Obama arrives on a foreign policy roll.

And while he was careful to say in Amman that it was "unrealistic" to expect a US president "to snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region", he indicated he would have to take into account Palestinian hardship as well Israeli security concerns.

Mr Obama said the close alliance with Israel "would not change" but added: "What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognise the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now."

Obama offers to bring a much more even handed approach to solving this conflict and has pointed out that being "pro-Israel" doesn't mean a refusal to oppose Israeli actions. For too long now supporting Israel has meant supporting Likud policies. Obama offers a break with that and it won't come a moment too soon.

The last eight years have been an utter waste of time when it comes to solving a dispute which is at the heart of Muslim anger towards the west. Indeed, Bush's decision to back any Israeli action, no matter how severe, has possibly caused even more hatred to be directed towards the west.

Obama, having shored up his pro-Israeli credentials, is now openly speaking of his understanding of Palestinian suffering. This comes close on the heels of Gordon Brown telling the Knesset that the road to peace lies through UN resolution 242.

I've often argued that Bush's policies made him a very bad friend of Israel, by telling the Israelis only what they wanted to hear. Brown, despite a lot of the nonsense he spoke at the Knesset, did have the courage to say what they didn't want to hear; that international law applies to this dispute and that 242 offers the only way out of this mess.

Obama is offering more of the same. A sincere wish to end this dispute in a way which is fair to both parties. This represents an amazing break with the Bush policy of "tilting towards Israel" which, in reality, manifested itself in sitting idly by as Sharon razed Jenin and actively encouraging Israel to attack Beirut.

Bush's idea of friendship towards Israel was akin to that of an enabler. He was like the kind uncle offering the obese child more chocolate.

Obama appears to be offering a much more useful friendship, one that tells his friend what he actually needs to hear.

This is long, long, overdue.

Click title for full article.

US election: McCain accuses media of bias towards Obama

This video has been released by McCain to emphasise how much the media are in the tank for Obama.

It's an extraordinary thing for McCain to have done, especially as the mainstream media are giving him such an easy time of it. There has been no serious examination of the myriad of times in which he has flip-flopped and yet, as Obama goes to Europe, McCain throws a huge hissy fit claiming the media are stacking everything against him.

This has apparently been brought on because McCain wrote an article about Iraq in response to an article Barack Obama had published in the New York Times, and the New York Times refused to publish McCain's rejoinder. This left an enraged McCain with no choice other than to take his article to Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and to claim that the Times rejection was further proof of media bias against him.

You will not be surprised to learn that the New York Times have an entirely different take on these events.

The New York Times said it had not rejected the article, only asked for the senator to rewrite it to "articulate in concrete terms how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq".

You see, the real crime the New York Times have committed was to ask McCain to define "in concrete terms" his version of "victory" in Iraq. McCain would have found this impossible to do, so he's stormed off in a huff, claiming that even asking him to define victory is somehow an example of media bias.

Until recently McCain has been happy to define himself as the underdog and has even commented that this is a position that he is happy to occupy.

His latest outburst suggests that this is no longer the case and that he is furious that Obama is proving much more media savvy than himself.

And this is leading him down some desperate roads:

McCain's campaign team, in a conference call with reporters, yesterday criticised Obama for acknowledging during a press conference in Amman that he is at odds with the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, over Obama's proposed pull-out of US troops. Obama said Petraeus wanted to retain flexibility but Obama insisted that, as president, he had to take a global view of priorities.

McCain's team said Obama should not presume to know better than the general who had fought a successful war.

The last time I checked the US army obeyed it's civilian leadership, the civilian in charge did not bow to the leader of the military. The president is the commander in chief and, if he says the mission has changed, then he mission has changed, no matter what Petraeus thinks.

I seriously doubt that McCain is arguing for a military command which is more powerful than it's civilian leadership, so I don't see this as being an argument that is useful to him in the long run.

The truth is that McCain, for reasons best known to himself, has chose to campaign as the champion of a dreadfully unpopular war. He recently, rather bizarrely, claimed that success had been achieved in this unpopular war.

The New York Times have merely asked him to define the terms of that success. That's not an unreasonable thing to do.

But McCain is so used to being allowed to peddle false narratives that he sees bias in the New York Times' request. If you are going to claim a victory that no-one else on the planet can see, then you should be able to articulate what you mean when you say "we have succeeded".

McCain can't. So he rails against "bias".

Click title for full article.

UPDATE:

Here's a discussion of just how biased the media is in favour of McCain.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Brown warns Iran to end 'totally abhorrent' threat to destroy Israel

It's one of those lies which has been repeated so often that it is now universally accepted as a truth. It is the lie that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" when, in actual fact, Ahmadinejad did not say that.

But now we have politicians of all stripes and colours all proclaiming their horror at what Ahmadinejad didn't say.

The latest is Gordon Brown who is in Israel promising to stand firm against this threat that wasn't really a threat.

Gordon Brown will today recall the Holocaust as he delivers a blunt warning to Iran to end its "totally abhorrent" threat to destroy Israel, calling on Tehran to abandon plans to develop nuclear weapons.

In the first speech by a British prime minister to the Israeli parliament, Brown will declare that Britain will stand by the country when its "very right to exist" is under threat.

Brown's remarks will be seen as a signal that Britain could be prepared to support a military strike against Iran if all other diplomatic routes fail, including a tightening of sanctions. The prime minister will tell Israeli MPs: "Britain is your true friend. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat."

Brown will single out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who has said that Israel should be wiped from the map. The prime minister will say: "To those who question Israel's right to exist, and threaten the lives of its citizens through terror, we say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security. And to those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears we say in one voice: that it is totally abhorrent for the president of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world."

It really does appear as if no western leader is allowed on to the international stage unless he is prepared to accept several false talking points as fact. In this case Brown offers two, the "wipe Israel off the map" statement which Ahmadinejad did not make, and the assumption that Iran are chasing a nuclear weapon, despite the fact that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa saying the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam.

Brown has also offered an extra £30 million in aid to the Palestinians in an attempt to appear even handed, but then slipped in this:

Brown chose his language with care as he said Palestinians needed to do more to ensure Israel can live in peace.

This is the only instance I can think of where it is the responsibility of the occupied people to ensure the safety of their occupiers, normally that is precisely the other way around.

But, as Brown's entire speech proves, everything is back to front when it comes to the Middle East.

Israeli MPs will today hear a personal account from Gordon Brown of how he has been a passionate supporter of their country from when he was growing up in the 1950s. Brown will tell the Knesset, in a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, that he was inspired by his father.

John Brown used to visit Israel up to twice a year in the 1950s and 1960s as a chairman of the Church of Scotland's Church and Israel Committee. The prime minister's father would return home and show slides of the building of the new state to his family.

What Brown will omit to mention is the fact that in those days Israel was a tiny socialist country whose workers organised kibbutz'. It's hard to imagine Brown's father being as moist eyed today as he watches Israel carry out the longest occupation in modern history.

But facts counts for nothing when it comes to this part of the world.

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