LAST MONTH’S AWARDS: THE GOEBBELS AND RIBBENTROP PRIZES GO ...

Well the awards are in folks and last month's Goebbels Prize for Most Outrageous Piece of Propaganda Codswallop, and the Ribbentrop Prize for Invincible Geopolitical Insanity are both being awarded simultaneously to President Barmitt Obromneyack(D-Wherever), and Prime Minister Benjamin Nuttyahoo for their speeches at the (Dis)United Nations. Nuttyahoo's speech may be read here:

Netanyahu UN Speech 2012

We found the Prime Minister's bomb graphic to be particularly helpful in making our determination of the award, for he was in a very close heat with Iranian President Ahmadenicablooey(Gesundheit!).

In all seriousness, one can read with much sympathy the Prime Minister's remarks. We all know that there are mediaeval tendencies in all three Yahwisms (and perhaps, just perhaps, that's part of the problem? the character of this book god himself?). But when we get to the threat allegedly posed by the Iranian nuclear problem, leaving aside for the moment the sanity of its ruling ayatollahs and President Ahmadenicablooey(Gesundheit!), we might want to consider the following alternative set of readings of the situation:

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Iran and the Bomb, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Facts

In the end, the Prime Minister's speech was a rhetorically precise and well-tuned propaganda piece for war with Iran, never mind opposing viewpoints.

Which leaves Barmitt Obromneyack's speech to the (Dis)United Nations:

Barack Obama UN Speech 2012

For this, we refer the reader to the trenchant analysis offered by Thomas DiLorenzo:

The Lincoln Curse (Obama Edition)

DiLorenzo is correct: one may sputter all one wishes about American isolationism, and one will inevitably hear such sputtering coming both from Dummycrooks and Republithugs in this presidential (s)election cycle, but the reality is that Lincoln and the American Civil War transformed the geopolitical culture, and ambitions, of the nation. McKinley and Roosevelt were merely the afterthoughts. Geopolitics had now become inextricably tied to moralizing and "manifest destiny." And the Amerikan Empire is the result. But the plain fact is, Iran is not Iraq nor Afghanistan; military action, must less invasion and occupation, on an already overtaxed economy, on an already over-stretched military, on such a large country, is a kind of geopolitical insanity we haven't seen since...well... Joachim von Ribbentrop, Herman Goering, and all the wonderful folks at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Given all the other sad fruits of Operation Paperclip on our culture, maybe that should not come as any big surprise.

See you on the flip side.