Evil ayatollahs bomb Oz synagogues!

The Guardian yesterday, August 26

*

If you’re wondering why on earth Iran would want to direct antisemitic attacks on synagogues down under – or whatever term is used for the antipodes in Western Asia – you’re not the only one, though we’re likely to be a minority. It’s not the kind of question we’re encouraged to ask, is it, in the context of alleged misdoing by a demonised state?

Nor are corporate media given to reminding us at such times of a truth we’re inclined to forget in the heat of propaganda blitzes; viz,  that “we have evidence”  is not evidence.

As you might expect, not one shred of evidence has been provided for this assertion, much less the giant mountain of rock-solid proof required for intelligence agency credibility in a post-Iraq invasion world.

This hasn’t stopped the Murdoch press from going ballistic and framing the assertion as a “bombshell revelation” of an established fact. It also hasn’t stopped Australia’s state broadcaster the ABC from publishing an article by Laura Tingle with the flagrantly propagandistic title “Revelations Iran was behind antisemitic attacks show IRGC tentacles have reached Australia”. Evidence-free assertions made by the government are not “revelations”, and to frame them as such is journalistic malpractice.

Caitlin Johnstone – 21 Questions about the Iran, Australian Synagogue claims

Given (a) the lack of evidence or even motive, (b) Western corporate media’s systemic inability to subject empire-serving claims to meaningful interrogation and (c) a consensus within sources I take seriously that a second US-Israeli attack on Iran is a question of when not if, it would be a dereliction of my duties not to point out the near certainty that the Canberra expulsion will not be a one off, but part of a campaign to psyche us up for yet more criminality by Western powers also guilty of, inter alia, abetting a genocide.

Moon of Alabama thinks so too …

* * *