Greg Sheridan : If A Palestinian Says It, It Must Be A Lie

The Australian's "most influential" foreign affairs commentator Greg Sheridan on February 5, 2009 :

I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts....

The United Nations isssued a report yesterday on Israel's clear and painfully obvious war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, which killed more than 1400 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children :

United Nations investigators found that Israeli missiles killed 30 to 40 Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the Jabalia school in Gaza Strip, where hundreds of others had taken refuge during the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a report released Tuesday.

The attack against the Jabalia boy school, also known as the al-Fakoura school, which was run by the UN refugee agency in the Middle East (UNWRA), was among the six attacks against UN compounds cited in the report by a three-member investigative board.

'The board found that the undisputed cause of the injuries and the deaths to persons in the immediate vicinity of the school was the firing of 122 mm mortar rounds by the IDF, which landed in the area outside the school and at the compound of a family home nearby,' the report said.

If Sheridan writes about the UN report, he will use the words "one-sided" and "biased" prominently.

He doesn't need to get a memo, he knows what his job is.

Greg Sheridan's Bizarre Anti-Free Speech, Anti-Free Assembly Propaganda

I'm Not Paid To Tell The Truth You Know, Just Because I Write For The Australian

Here's how The Australian newspaper proudly promotes professional propagandist Greg Sheridan :

Greg Sheridan is the most influential foreign affairs commentator in Australia. A veteran of over 30 years in the field, he has written five books and is a frequent commentator on Australian and international radio and TV.

Here's Sheridan using all that foreign affairs experience in writing about the widespread claims of Israel war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians :

I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts....

There is now :

"There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"He shot them straight away....he killed them."

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza].

"Everyone there is a terrorist."

Greg Sheridan obviously listens very closely to his boss, Rupert Murdoch, and always does what he knows he should.

Sheridan won't be fired, he'll probably just get another award.

So is Rupert Murdoch still quietly funding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, and the ethnic cleansing it involves, or was that more of a 90s thing?

Whitewashing Howard's Iraq War Legacy

By Darryl Mason

In a long, glowing tribute to John Howard, 'the most influential foreign affairs commentator in Australia', Greg Sheridan, decides the debacle and horror of the Iraq War is hardly mentioning. Well, not beyond a weighty 42 words worth of whitewashing.

Regardless of how Sheridan tries to spin it, in two or three decades, Howard's involvement in the Iraq War will be one of the three key reasons why his name will be mentioned in the history books, along with his, reportedly, platonic man-love affair with President George W. Bush.

Historians care little for "the economy" in the long term, they always write at length about the controversies and dramas, the wars and conflicts and the big historical events that divide and unite the nations that prime ministers and presidents lead.

Howard's larger national and international legacy is not "the economy". It is the Iraq War. Without Howard's shameless appeals to President Bush, from early 2002, if not earlier, that Australia was right behind the Iraq War, Bush would have had one less key member of the Coalition of the Willing, which was thin enough to begin with, outside of the involvement of the UK and Spain.

The Iraq War has occupied five years of Howard's 11.5 year reign, almost half of the total years Howard served as prime minister, if you consider the Iraq War began for Australian when it sent in special forces troops in late 2002.

The lead-up to the Iraq War saw the largest gatherings of people opposing a government policy in the nation's history. And it some of the most foul and odious columns ever written by Australian opinionists, in a disturbingly co-ordinated effort to try and dampen down the overwhelming opposition to the coming invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Many so-called journalists, including Sheridan, followed Howard's psy-op line that if you opposed the war you were giving "aid and comfort" to Saddam Hussein. Tell that to the many thousands of Australian war veterans who marched and spoke out in early 2003 against the brutal violence and mass civilian slaughters they knew, from experience, were coming to the people of Iraq.

Before the Iraq War began, Australian, British and American intelligence agents broke protocol, and cover, to warn Howard directly against backing the extremely dodgy 'Saddam Has Nukes And Lots Of WMDs' NeoCon fakery, most of which was built around the claims of the infamous 'Curveball', who turned out to be nothing more than a desperate Iraqi who was being paid to tell NeoCons what they wanted to hear, so they could use it to try and sell their war to the people.

None of it worked to convince even a thin minority of Australians that the Iraq War was necessary. Regardless of the mass opposition from the people, Howard sent his nation to war, knowing full well the NeoCon-packaged WMD intelligence was pure crap.

So here's how Greg Sheridan, supposedly one of our most respected and highly regarded foreign affairs journalist, sums up Howard and Iraq :

Howard made the right call on the information available, and it took incredible guts to do it. There were certainly no lies involved - every responsible authority was convinced Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction - and Howard will be vindicated by history.

This is whitewashing at its best, and most shameless.

The lies from Howard about the Iraq War were many, and Sheridan knows this.

Here's but one of the many bold and outrageous lies from Howard on Iraq : He told us he had not committed Australian forces to war in Iraq, literally 48 hours before the 'Shock And Awe' bombings of Baghdad began. But Howard knew, as Greg Sheridan knew, that Australian special forces had been working away in Iraq's west for months, and many Australian troops had been told in October and September, 2002, that they were going to Iraq to fight a war, and that they were prepare for war, and that they were prepare their families for that fact.

That Sheridan would even think he could float such an absurd paragraph in a major newspaper and that people would believe him is just bizarre.

Perhaps Sheridan is so mortified by what has happened to the people of Iraq, in a war that he relentlessly promoted through the last half of 2002, and right through 2003, that he really wants to believe his own twaddle. Maybe he has to. Perhaps it is easier then to sleep soundly at night, and not think of the millions of innocent people, mostly young people, killed or maimed or driven from their homes.

And don't think for a moment that Sheridan was some of sort of apologist, or PR flack for Howard. God, no. Sheridan himself admits he was "savagely critical" of Howard during the former prime minister's 30 year long political career. How many times was Sheridan "savagely critical"?

I'll let Sheridan reveal the vast extent of his savage criticism for himself :

"Twice in Howard's career, I have been savagely critical of him."

Twice!

Sheridan was relentless in holding Howard to account for his foreign policy decisions and disasters, and you would expect nothing less from 'the most influential foreign affairs commentator in Australia'.

How did Howard stand all that pressure and scrutiny from Greg Sheridan?

It must have been tough.


Janet Albrechtsen : I Don't Even Mention The Word "Iraq" In My Howard Whitewash

September 2007 : Greg Sheridan's Shameless Anti-Democracy, Anti-Free Speech Propaganda

February 2007 : Sheridan Helps Dick Cheney Make His Case For War On Iran

Sheridan Predicts "Outside Chance" Victory For Liberals In 2010, With Tony Abbott In Charge

Liberals Have An "Outside Chance" Of Winning The Election...Next Time

Greg Sheridan gets in really, really early with his prediction that if the Liberals can get their act together, and treat Tony Abbott as their Socrates-meets-Tony Montana for the next three or four years, they could break the always-a-two-term rule of Australian governments and unseat Rudd at the next election :

...the Liberals might have an outside chance in three years' time. But they will need to remain credible: more than that, to have a sense of life about them, a sense of vigour and purpose.

And who will the Liberals have to rely on for all this life, vigour and purpose? Tony Abbott, of course. Who else is there? Alexander Downer? Brendan Nelson?

Sensing the Liberals are, after the weekend's presumed election defeat, going to lose Abbott to a opposition bench free lifestyle, Sheridan all but begs Tony Abbott not to follow the advice of friend Glenn Milne and "go home to his wife" :

Abbott has been central to conservative politics for the past 15 years. He needs to be central to it for the next 15 years. Even in opposition the Liberals will need to try to shape the debate, defend their record, defend their heroes and defend their ideas...you can't win a battle without warriors.

Even if the only viable 'warrior' you've got left is Tony "Too Honest" Abbott.

Greg Sheridan's Bizarre Pro-APEC Anti-Democracy Propaganda

From the Sunday Telegraph :

ALL this week and next weekend, Sydney will host the biggest and most important international meeting in the history of Australia.

The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum will attract cabinet ministers and government leaders from 21 economies around the Asia Pacific.

There will inevitably be some traffic disruption in and around central Sydney, but it is truly in a noble cause.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, was right when he said that if there is any real disturbance, the people to blame for this are not the APEC delegates, but the violent demonstrators themselves.

It is a tragedy of modern democracies that violent extremists exploit their freedoms to try to shut down free discussion.

It is a bitter fruit of the anti-democratic, totalitarian, fascist, street-fighting qualities of modern demonstrators that, for international delegates, it can be easier to have a free discussion in Beijing than Sydney.

It would, of course, be madness for a proud, democratic nation like Australia to give in to the anti-democratic forces by not holding meetings such as APEC.

APEC provides an opportunity for leaders to hold private meetings, without all the pre-meeting negotiation involved in one leader visiting another's country.

At difficult times between the US and China, their presidents have been able to meet at APEC and often defuse the tensions between their nations.

APEC is wholly a good thing.

The demonstrators trying to wreck it are nuts.

95% of the commenters who responded to Sheridan's 'story' recognized it for the blatant anti-democratic, pro-fascist propaganda that it is. Most could scarcely believe such crap would be printed in an Australian newspaper.

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 5

Cheney Makes His Case For War On Iran

20% Of World's Oil Supply "Is Vulnerable To Iranian Military Action"

By Darryl Mason

It must be years since US Vice President Dick Cheney sat down for an interview with someone who wasn't a kindly old friend or simply too terrified to actually ask him some tough, uncomfortable questions.

No big surprise then that Cheney's main interview while in Australia was with journalist Greg Sheridan, who just happened to have backed the War On Iraq, through late 2002 and all through 2003 and 2004, with a white-hot fervour that threatened to spontaneously combust his heard.

Just how much of a good friend to Cheney is Greg Sheridan?

They've known each other for at least 16 years, met half a dozen times or more, and once attended a conference together where "a young man undressed on the stage".

Or you can try this description of his old mate for calibration: "...you never find Cheney hiding in the shadows, he's always in the bright light of the day"

Or this :

There is something bracing about Cheney's unrepentant attitude generally

Or this :

(Cheney) certainly presents as the very model of sweet reason...

Good God man, have you no shame?

Sheridan's the chief foreign affairs writer for Rupert Murdoch's flagship 'The Australian' newspaper, so you might think the idea of the United States launching a War On Iran would fill him with unease, even a tinge of horror, considering the near ceaseless slaughter of civilians in Iraq over the past four years of war and the general state of calamity and fallout the war has produced across the Middle East.

Well, you'd be wrong :

US Vice-President Dick Cheney believes a military confrontation with Iran would be a lesser evil than an Iran with nuclear weapons.

Yeah, but they don't have nuclear weapons. In the same way that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons, even though Cheney infamously insisted Iraq did. Again and again and again.

But then, it's not really the the threat of Iran's nuclear weapons that concerns Cheney the most.

Sheridan helpfully cuts through the miasma of standard Cheney 'War on Terror' rhetoric and NeoCon-plated recent history lessons on the Middle East with this lone, floating sentence, which is probably the most important thing Cheney has said in months, and all but confirms a War On Iran will begin with or without the support of the UN Security Council :

Cheney also points out that 20 per cent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and is vulnerable to Iranian military action.

You can pin that quote to the fridge, because you are going to be hearing that reasoning for why a War On Iran is necessary a hell of a lot in the coming weeks.

It also explains why the US currently has two massive battle cruiser fleets near the Strait of Hormuz.

Now that the US can control the flow of 20% of the world's oil supply, by confronting Iran over its non-compliance with UN Security Council backed demands to halt its nuclear enrichment programs, you can pretty well guess what kind of bargaining chip the US will now use to get the backing from China, Russia and the rest of the Security Council for more hardcore sanctions against Iran.

Cheney will soon claim that US action on Iran will help to guarantee the continuing flow of 20% of the world's oil supply to oil-hungry countries like Indonesia, India, China and the US itself.

But that's all for later, let's get back to Sheridan's fawning portrait of the man himself :

...in person he is avuncular, softly spoken, often deploying a little wry irony.

One of Cheney's most appealing qualities is that he tells it exactly as he sees it. There is never a trace of ambiguity in what he says...

Particularly when what he says is 80% distortion and spin.

Cheney had a lot to say to Sheridan, or through Sheridan, and the journalist appears not to have challenged or confronted Cheney on anything, least of all the real-time horrors of the Iraq War. But then, they're both guilty of creating that reality.

And to be fair to Sheridan, time for the interview was limited, and questions from the journalist would have cut into valuable propaganda time for Cheney.

Far be it for me to get in the way, too. Here's some highlights of the interview, where Cheney clearly spells out the case for a coming soon War On Iran :

"We've seen Iran in recent years led by a man who is a radical by most definitions - Mr Ahmadinejad - who espouses an apocalyptic philosophy and has made threatening noises to Israel and the US and others.

"They (Iran) are the prime sponsor of Hezbollah, working through Syria in the conflict with Israel last summer in an effort to topple the Government of Lebanon.

"Working through Hamas they have added to the difficulties of getting some kind of peace process started with respect to the Palestinians and the Israelis. They clearly frighten most of their neighbours.

"We believe they have engaged in providing improvised explosive devices to insurgents in Iraq. We've taken action recently to crack down on identifiable Iranian agents operating inside Iraq. We've made it clear to them that their conduct has been inappropriate."

Cheney also plenty of praise for Australia, for John Howard and Australia's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there's also fresh reasoning from Cheney of why they can't leave Iraq any time soon.

To do so would disappoint all those who believed in, and committed, to the War On Iraq.

People like Greg Sheridan, and others :

"People, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, who've signed on in this global conflict, with our backing and support - the thousands who've signed on to the Iraqi security forces, the millions who voted, people like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and (Pervez) Musharraf in Pakistan - they didn't have to make the choices they've made. They decided to sign on with the US and its allies to fight the extremists. If the US were to decide it's too tough and to go home, it would have devastating consequences, for all of those people who bet the farm on this struggle."

And just in case the War On Iraq turns out to actually be the worst foreign policy decision in the history of the United States, Sheridan supplies a closing bit of praise for his old mate, that utterly ignores the humongous death tolls, destruction and third world living conditions that are now daily realities for more than a third of all Iraqis :

You may not agree with Cheney but he certainly lets you know what he thinks. If the US fails in Iraq, it certainly won't be because he lost his nerve.

No, if the US fails in Iraq it will because Cheney and his old mate, Donald Rumsfeld, denied repeatedly for more than TWO YEARS that the Iraqi insurgency was a reality and was ripping the country to pieces and both of them did nothing to try and stop it, even when veterans back from the war publicly begged them to face the reality.

Instead, Cheney said the "Saddam dead enders" were in "their last throes" and Rumsfeld shrieked about how well-informed people who tried to warn of how powerful the insurgency actually was were "Chicken Littles" crowing on about how "the sky was falling."

And all the while hundreds of American and British soldiers were being blown to pieces in roadside IED attacks and car bombings.

Obviously the most important thing of all in the scale of this monumental tragedy is that Cheney didn't lose his nerve.

Imagine if he had.

That might have constituted a livid horror beyond anything the Iraqis, or the thousands of Americans and Brits who lost family members over there, are now suffering through.

Well, for Cheney and his good mate Greg Sheridan at least.


Iran Vows To Defend Nuclear Program

Cheney Warns Of Iran Strike

Cheney : China's Military Build-Up "Not Consistent With Stated Goal Of Peaceful Rise"

US Keeping "All Options" Open Regarding Iran

John Howard Denies Snubbing Cheney, Twice, "Absurd Proposition"