The London Times and Israeli disinformation

According to the former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, The Times story of Saudi Arabia colluding in an Israeli strike is a false story, planted by Mossad.

His comments are here on the American Conservative blog.

Giraldi is well-connected enough to know. In 2005 Giraldi broke the story that Dick Cheney ordered plans to attack Iran in response to a large-scale terrorist attack, irrespective of whether Iran was involved.

Based also on Biden's comments that the US won't stand in Israel's way, he draws the conclusion also that the US administration are ratcheting up the pressure on Iran.

To be fair to the Times, the wider reflection to make here is that a large proportion of "News" stories in the papers are the result of a PR, leaks or other agendas. Most news is propaganda and all of the newspapers are conduits for misinformation.

more on Obama

Another comment on the relative merits of Obama and McCain from the Larison blog on TAC.

Also, a useful article linked from The American Conservative on IBD about the effects on business of the Obama plans.

Obama and Iran

"Bomb Iran Bomb Bomb Bomb", joked Senator John McCain to the tune of the Beach Boy song, in the early days of the presidential campaign. Luckily for the world he is still Senator John McCain and not President McCain. But imagine how "Bomb Iran" from a presidential candidate sounded to the Iranians.

The Republicans were the best reason to hope for an Obama victory; or at least to view Obama as the lesser of two evils if you couldn't quite stomach the vacuity of the "Change" message, the the Blair-like (Cameron-like) contempt for the electorate that campaigning on something as non-specific as "Change" implies.

Much of what Obama has been doing on the home front has been awful: Bailout II, the stimulus, massive health care reforms, climate change; but generally on foreign policy, Obama has been an improvement. He has at least reduced the numbers of irreconciliable enemies of the free world. Reaching out to Cuba, Venezuala, Russia, especially Russia, that is good. On Iran too, he has been restrained, but is close to a lone voice. Congress voted to condemn the Iranians, with only one representative dissenting, the great Ron Paul. So politically it will be difficult.

Obama has been brave to resist calls to get heavy with Iran, but even in the first response, there was some ambiguity. Talk of "universal values" of democracy is close to neo-con/liberal interventionist talk, to the Iranians it would have still sounded like meddling, and the fear is that the realist foreign policy of "world citizen" Obama would collapse if regimes like Iran don't pass the values test. Sure enough, when the pressure gets tough, his rhetoric gets tough too. The neo-cons want the creedal nation to fight a messianic war for western democracy, and they can base their call to arms on the assumptions of the dominant liberal ideology.

As for an improvement in Iran if Moussavi wins, well look how empty the colour revolutions of Ukraine and Georgia ended up being. So don't hold your breath. Embracing western-led reforms led to terrible deprivation and disorder for Russia and Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile the American economy is heading for a lot more trouble according to Peter Schiff. It will take economic collapse to tame American, and western, hubris.

Obama and his honorary degree from Notre Dame

Let me add to the criticism by Pat Buchanan of Notre Dame university's decision to give Obama an honorary degree. This hollowing out of Christian faith is not new, and is highlighted in the English context by "Secularisation", Edward Norman's critique of humanist ideas within Anglicanism.

But we need to ask what is the crack that has allowed this evil in. The answer is the way in which the evils of progressive ideology masquerade as good. The Catholic Church's commitment to social justice is interpreted by many as commitment to progressive ideas and politicians, who in the process of (supposedly) helping the poor, promote their own gospel of Rosseau, Voltaire, Marx and Marcuse. And no-one reads the St. John's gospel anymore, they prefer the Jesus-as-very-good-man picture, as selectively gleaned by liberal theologians from the synoptics.

Catholics in the US and UK have traditionally voted for the left due to their economic profile; but the left have betrayed the poor. There is nothing about Obama that makes him particularly just: he supports open immigration, eroding the wages of poorer Americans; he gives tax-payer billions to the bankers, just like the Bush administration, and has filled his economic team with Clinton administration stalwarts; he foists abortion on Africans; he intends to override the constitutional rights of the states to enforce liberal abortion laws on conservative communities, much like the government here wants to do in Northern Ireland. In fact George W. Bush would be more deserving of an honorary degree because of additional expenditure he approved for humanitarian causes in Africa. But that wouldn't fit the script that some Social action Catholics seem to like better than the Bible. They hear the anti-Capitalism and ignore the anti-Catholicism.

Anyone who reads the Catholic papers will know there is a rather naive, anti-capitalist bias. There are many examples, but I shall cite Paul Donovan, who writes weekly for the Universe. In an article straplined "Church's roles is more than administering sacraments" he says that the "Church has withdrawn into itself", partly due to "society's hostility to Catholics", which is fair enough taken at face value, but one senses that the underlying picture he sees is one where "catholics are an excluded minority", rather than seeing anti-catholicism as an ideological hostility, part of the battle of ideas. Authentic Catholicism for him is adherence to the social programmes of the left.

His solution, therefore, is entirely in the realm of social action, which seems to be indistinguishable from what the state or a secular leftist organisation would do. He calls for housing justice, regularisation of undocumented workers, credit unions, churches as bases for the post office. In short, "Churches need to be looking to the needs of their parishioners byond simply delivering the sacraments every week." Donovan doesn't say the sacraments are a waste of time, but by implication he downgrades them.

Even a great theologian like Rowan Williams robustly criticises the failures of the economic system, while being more cautious about the evils of abortion.

Cross-posted on Christianity in the West.