Well said John. This not about left/right arguments but finally admitting the truth.

See the scientific evidence of 911 that points to an inside job. http://www.ae911truth.org/ No concrete/steel buildings in human history have fallen at near fee fall speeds in their own foot prints due to fire or structural failure Some how the laws of physics were suspended on 911.

Yet another raving from the far side.

John Pilger is quite happy for people to be gassed as long as those nasty democracies don't do it.

Publishing this excellent article is a tribute to OLO!

Pilger says, "I have seen generations of young children with their familiar, monstrous deformities. John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war record, will remember them. I have seen them in Iraq, too, where the US used depleted uranium and white phosphorous, as did the Israelis in Gaza, raining it down on UN schools and hospitals. No Obama "red line" for them. No showdown psychodrama for them."

The hypocrisy of the West in general and the U.S. in particular is exposed by John Pilger in this touching paragraph!

Warmongers have no conscience! None.

Al Qa'ida as an ally of the US ? I think Pilger has finally gone around the bend. We'll see, but I suspect part of the problem in Syria is that, for all his vile crimes, Assad - the US knows - is the guy they will have to deal with, precisely to crush al Qa'ida, in order to give the Left-democratic-liberal forces some role. It's a vile and nasty world sometimes.

Perhaps underlying all of this is the uncomfortable proposition that Islam must be thoroughly interrogated, i.e. Muslims must eventually get around to doing what Christians in Western Europe had to do, messily, five or more hundred years ago, and question the relation between state and 'church', between those in power and those 'under' them.

That may be difficult with a religion which claims that its Word is the exact Word of their god and therefore cannot, in any circumstances, be altered in any way. i.e. that 'church' and state SHOULD be one, and that the power of those above, with the Word, must forever rule over those below.

But that's for them to work out. Pity the poor children who are going to be obliterated in the process. Not that Pilger would worry, unless somehow he could blame the Yanks.

Joe

Without any other nation offering a counterbalance, over the past two decades the US has assumed the role of "world policeman" and "the indispensable nation". In so doing it has undermined itself and brought the world to the brink of a unilateral domination. This emerging domination will ultimately benefit no-one. That's in the nature of unilateralism.
The world of Islam has been its chosen field of endeavour, and is there any doubt as to how well they have succeeded? Throughout the Islamic Crescent, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa to the Indus Valley in Pakistan, very few independent states remain. Those that do are in the firing line.
Now for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has a chance to pull the US back from this hubristic over-reach. I see a chance emerging out of this wholly prefabricated crisis in Syria. If Assad can be persuaded to put his chemical weapons under international supervision, and if that supervision is overseen by Russia and China, then we may see the counterbalance missing in international affairs for just over two decades.
Two big if's. And one big chance.

Halduell, great comment! Why is it that so few people on OLO grasp the reality that America poses should it gain global domination?

I am glad that at least a few commenters are like you and I: people who can connect the dots, think outside the square, and dismiss entirely the duplicitous propaganda that spews endlessly out of the capitalist cesspool!

I would urge everyone who is capable of thinking to visit the following link and watch the 10 minute video contained therein!

It might refresh your programmed mind, set it free for a few minutes!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36158.htm

Good to see the left wing finally coming around to Ron Paul's position. Only took them a few hundred thousand murders by their darling war criminal Barack "Nobel Peace Prize" Obama who seems more like George Bush III every day, doesn't he?

It's not that this is *not* about left and right. It's that the left wing keep confusing the right wing with two fundamentally different philosophies: the national socialist neo-cons, who are a species of socialist in believing in thorough-going government control of anything and everything; and the libertarians, whose views the leftists are agreeing with in deploring aggressive war.

However David G obviously doesn't understand *why* he favours the libertarian position on foreign policy.

David, after the second world war Fiat stopped making great engines of war and started making little motor scooters for Italians to dink their girlfriends around for coffee. Are you starting to get it now?

Governments using their monopoly coercive powers to tax their subject populations, and licensing monopolies to inflate the money supply in exchange for buying as much government debt as the government wants to issue, and using those funds in reliance on their monopoly war power, to make undeclared unconstitutional perpetual aggressive war against other States, by funding government's monopoly armed forces, and co-opting with stolen funds corporations who would otherwise be making peaceable products is not "capitalism" you fool. It's the opposite. It's monopolistic state aggression which all the economic arguments for liberty are aimed against; only the socialists keep not getting it.

By definition leftists are in favour of aggression by the biggest monopolyl corporation of all: the State. They love the idea that government's coercive powers are presumed to be used for some higher greater good; the idea that, when advocating policy, we never mention the fact it's based on violence; the idea that anyone who criticises the use of government aggression to serve their own values is merely spouting bourgeois "ideology". You are hoist with your own petard.

And so is John Pilger, whose views on foreign policy completely contradict his views on domestic policy. Abroad he sees clearly when the State is acting merely as a monopolist of aggression, sees through their pretended justifications, and rightly criticises unprovoked aggression to achieve alleged higher social goals. But domestically, all of a sudden that disappears, and he's in line with all the other leftists, urging the idea that the State's aggressive attacks against person and property form the necessary basis of the good and humane society! The idea that we create wealth by attacking and looting the wealth-producing people: the standard left-wing delusion; unchanged in principle since Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Who are you to criticise the State attacking people? All leftists are by definition in favour of it! It's the basis of their entire ideology, because if it wasn't, there'd be no question of trying to advance economic ends by "policy", it would be left to people's voluntary and property-based interactions, and it would be capitalism.

I love John Pilger's inverted worldview. His opinions make a lot of sense provided that you can accept certain fundamental opinions.

They are, that the USA is not a democracy it has been taken over by a military coup. And the USA started a war with peace loving Japan who only wanted to surrender in 1945 instead of committing national suicide. The USA is backing cruel despots in Egypt who want to destroy democracy, because the Muslim Brotherhood are all social democrats who only want to bring peace, prosperity, democracy and Human Rights to Egypt.

The USA wants Syria to become part of it's empire and it has allied itself with Al Qaida to do it. Defoliants who's toxic properties were never appreciated before 1970 are equated with nerve gas.

Gareth Evans is an evil man because he sucks up to Indonesia and conspires to steal the resources of poverty stricken East Timor who is currently the beneficiary of $500 million dolars a year in Aussie taxpayer aid.

This bloke lives with the fairies.

It is years since I read anything this con man wrote. Even back then I could see that his style was contrived to appeal to a limited number of people, but earn him a living.

Today I can see the real value of his writings.

He brings all the nut cases to the surface, making it easy for ASIO to identify them, & keep a check on their activities.

I still wonder if he actually believes any of the cr4p he writes, or has just found a good line of bull droppings, that keep him getting published, & more importantly, paid.

While I don't for a minute believe Pilger sides with anti-Western authoritarian governments whenever feasible - he is, of course, a truth teller...

The Russian proposal should be considered as it:

- may take years

- may involve 75,000 Boots on the Ground

- will provide Assad more time to prolong and end the war under his (not Pilger's) control...

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/if-it-happens-destroying-syrias-chemical-arms-will-be-massively-complex-undertaking/

Hasbeen, every-time you open your mouth via the comment section you expose your outstanding stupidity and advanced mental senility.

People like you and Shadow Monster are irritants to everyone who tries to treat this forum seriously.

Perhaps you think you are funny? Think again even if it is your first time!

Just as I said. Pilger brings the nut cases & the commos straight to the top. They can't help themselves, they have to defend the indefensible.

Come on Tony. Now's the time. Rout this fifth column out of our universities, & save most of the budget deficit as you do.

Hasbeen,

Somebody, SOMEBODY, used poison gas, to kill hundreds of innocent people, women and children. Nobody on the pseudo-left seems to be questioning, nutting out, puzzling, WHO of their preferred enemies did it, if Assad didn't, and by default, are secretly, implicitly, admitting that it was their boy.

One can sympathise that they can't blame the Yanks for this one, and it does seem - even going from the implicit admission of Putin - that it is clear that the regime used these illegal and criminal means of killing innocent people.

Right. Should they be allowed to do it again ? Obama says no. For all the bluster of apologists and harlots like Pilger, that seems to be the current position - that Obama et al. know bloody well that Assad was responsible, and the CMs will fly if they try that again. 'Take as long as you like to dismantle your illegal weapons, but don't try to use them again.'

Of course, the scum Pilgers of the world, like David G., will rush to the defense of the fascists (seriously, was that a fascist salute of Assad's supporters the other night on the box ?!) if they ever use poison gas again.

As an old Leftie, I'm amazed, and appalled, at the vile alliance between the pseudo left, like David G., and Halduell, and yada yada so many other trash, and the authoritarians and fascists of this world. What the hell were we fighting for all those years ago ? Authoritarian trash like Saddam and Assad and the Ayatollahs ? For al Qa'ida rather than the Yanks (anybody but the yanks) ? For Kim Jong Un and his dynasty ?

Is this where socialism ends up ? Supporting national socialism ? As long as it's against the Yanks ? Disgusting.

Joe

While moderation and tolerance clearly flow in this forum.

Obama is in a position full of contradictions and weakness. From his speech yesterday:

- Assad the moral monster is now an equal partner in international negotiations.

- The consequences would be terrible if the US "fails to act” which now seems most likely.

- America “doesn’t do pinpricks” — especially when it does not do anything.

- actions to save further children from being gassed now rely on a stalled or inconclusive inspection process.

Many more children will die by conventional weapon means with no end to the war in sight.

Pete

Pilger wrote: "The intrinsic criminality of the atomic bombing is borne out in the US National Archives and by the subsequent decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy."

The US was at war with Japan because Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor. The US fought back and was facing a determined enemy. An invasion of Japan might have cost many more lives than were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The use of the atomic bomb was horrible, but an invasion of Japan might have been even more horrible.

The US would not have been fighting Japan if Japan had not attacked the US. Somehow Pilger has made an aggressor the victim. Maybe in Pilger's world a triumphant Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany would have been better. Somehow I prefer that the US triumphed over Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

davidf. Japan had been attacking China and doing some gruesome work there. The US limited Japan's trade and tried to cut off it's oil supplies. This is why Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

We warned the US that an attack on Pearl Harbour was about to happen. The US knew all about it but needed an excuse to join WW2 because the US people did not want war. The Russians could have defeated the Nazis alone but the British needed a force to counter act the Russians.

The reason why the USA dropped the 2 Nukes on Japan was to show the Russians how much power they had because Russia was considering invading Japan.

It's all a big power game and we the people are the pawns and canon fodder.

Dear Arjay,

The US was caught flatfooted when Japan attacked. It is true that the US cut off oil to Japan. however, that was not a reason for Japan to attack the US. They got their oil by invading what was then the Dutch East Indies. There is a tendency to blame the US for all the ills in the world. I remain thankful that the power of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were done away with. I am also thankful that the Soviet Union imploded under the pressure of the Cold War.I am also thankful that Gorbachev allowed it to implode rather than try to unite the country by war. With all its faults I prefer the US as the superpower rather than Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or Soviet Russia.

You wrote: "We warned the US that an attack on Pearl Harbour was about to happen. The US knew all about it but needed an excuse to join WW2 because the US people did not want war. The Russians could have defeated the Nazis alone but the British needed a force to counter act the Russians."

If the US knew an attack was about to happen they would have been prepared. I know what the US people wanted at the time because I was a US teenager who later went into the army. We expected a war, and the recruiting stations were jammed after the attack. Most Americans of German, Japanese and Italian descent supported the war effort and were loyal Americans. It is uncertain that the Russians could have defeated Germany by itself. The Germans were deep into the Soviet, and the Soviet got much aid from the US.

Pilger and you can rewrite history, but I don't buy it. The war was touch and go, and until 1943 it looked like the Axis could win.

The US may be terrible, but it remains better than all the possible alternatives.

All the usual paranoid posters come out to play when a paranoid article like this splashes onto this forum.
At least it is a welcome respite from the usual 'Oh Hail Tony', and 'Let's Bash Labor' threads and articles we have had for months though.

I would sooner go with the history book versions of past and presents wars involving the US, that worrying about them taking over the world.

In any case, it isn't a hard decision deciding between the US or Al Qaida as world dominators....

Thank you Suse and David F.,

It's an incredibly complicated world, but there are far, far worse than the Yanks, than Obama.

I'm amazed at the Putin sluts who come out of the woodwork whenever the word comes down: sink the boot into the US. Stick up - hysterically - for anybody but the Yanks. As you suggest, Suse, accuse the Yanks of doing what (one suspects ) the sluts would do.

Obama has an incredibly difficult role: he obviously (pace Arjay and various other paranoids) doesn't want to get his country involved in another war. Yet, what should one do when another country uses poison gas ? The Left says: 'Stand aside, do nothing, Assad's one of ours', but decency cries out for a more moral response. 'These things shouldn't happen. Ever.'

Apart from the ambivalence that the pseudo-Left has about supporting al Qa'ida (not-US, therefore good) on the one hand and Assad (not-US, therefore good) on the other, the irony of all this is that, eventually, the US will - away down the track - come around to supporting Assad against al-Qai'da (pace Arjay) since it is not Islamo-fascist, merely fascist.

And yes, the world was on the brink in 1942, perhaps into early 1943, when fascism seemed like defeating all other forces and coming to dominate the world. Stalingrad, el Alamein, Kokoda, all played their parts in driving the reactionaries back and those who sacrificed their lives in those places will forever be heroes.

I wonder where the pseudo-Left sluts would have been back in those days. In some dim Paris coffee-house probably, arguing about the validity of existence.

Joe

Loudmouth et al,are reduced to ad hominem and name calling because logic and facts fail their ideological perspective. Truly pathetic Loudmouth. Empty vessels make the most sound.

Empty vessels ? But Arjay, on the internet, no-one can hear you scream :)

Interestingly I had lunch with a great friend in Jakarta yesterday. A radical woman journalist she told me that her colleagues have been filming in Turkey and their findings support what Pilger says.

I am no fan of Pilger who is at worst sanctimonious, but at times he does say things that we need to hear. The US is not a nice country.

The filmmakers report that the US is actively supporting Erdogan against the majority secular Turks who don't want Islamic hardliners defining their lives. The hardliners include this US creation Al Queda, which is a funky title for an assumed enemy..The US has engaged in diplomatic hypocrisy for ages and the objective is oil.. boring as that sounds they are oil junkies as the nation is so ridden with corporate politics they have been unable to plan for an alternative future.Living in Asia we get the blow back from this stuff, and i think our reporters have more guts. My friend tells me the same is true in Indonesia. Her investigations indicate US meddling and destabilisation using Islamic factionalism. This once united country that boasted religious tolerance is now faction ridden with boys in frocks taking to the streets in incoherent yelling against .. well anything really
Assad is the only thing standing between Christians and massacres. Remember that 54% voted for him in elections... more than voted for Tony.. shall we call Nato in to bomb Canberra? Remember all the other PR wide screen we got on Sadam?? Now Foreign policy just released transcripts of the discussion where the US agreed to give Sadam chemical weapons to kill the Iranianshttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran

Some people here on OLO have been accusing the yanks of killing a couple of million people. Now, let's see. After Russia became communist, 30 million kulaks starved to death and God knows how many millions died in the Gulags. When China turned communist, 50 million starved to death during the imbecilic "Great Leap Forward", which is what happens when the politically correct try to run an economy. Add to that a couple of million who got liquidated by the communists in the killing fields of Cambodia, and another million or two who have starved to death in Korea.

Nobody knows how many Fidel Castro had shot.

So, if the yank haters are correct, I would say that the communists killed at least 82 million while the yanks only killed a couple of million trying to stop the world becoming communist, and have the world turn out like Cambodia, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba and North Korea.

That puts the socialists/ communists 80-90 odd million dead in front of the yanks. But where is Arjay and David G on that point?

Oh, and a "socialist" is just a "communist" without a gun

LEGO,

After a lifetime as a socialist, I'm coming to the very uncomfortable conclusion that a socialist is just a fascist without a state apparatus. Yes, without a gun, if you like.

Yes, I think that WAS a fascist salute that I saw in Syria on TV.

So, David F, et al., we have now established that no gassing of hundreds of women and kids took place, not by our boy ? It's all American propaganda ? Obama's crazed war-mongering ? So nobody has to get bombed ? I'm glad that's been straightened out then.

On the other hand ....... what should the US do if it happens again ?

Keep your banners ready, to trot them out when your boy tries it again. Oops, no he didn't, that's just US propaganda (have all that ready, folks), and it didn't happen.

Just keep your eyes and ears shut, it's easier to keep your illusions intact that way.

Joe

Loudmouth wrote:

So, David F, et al., we have now established that no gassing of hundreds of women and kids took place, not by our boy ? It's all American propaganda ? Obama's crazed war-mongering ? So nobody has to get bombed ? I'm glad that's been straightened out then.

Dear Loudmouth,

It certainly is not ok. The unfortunate reality is that bombing just produces more corpses. It does not bring the dead back to life. It will not depose Assad. It will not get rid of Al Qaeda or others opposing Assad. The opposition to Assad is a very mixed bag - 1) the Kurds, always looking for ways of unifying the Kurdish homeland on the Iraqi border, 2) an insurgent Sunni-Islamist group, Jadhat al-Nusra--admiring (if not loyal to) Iraqi Al-Quaeda--and, 3) a (more or less) secular and (more or less) puny Free Syrian Army, the heart of an opposition ("maybe 1200 free floating groups") backed by Qatar, and led ("this month, anyway") by Ahmad Jarba, with ties to Saudi Arabia.

What good will bombing do?

I think Obama is acting wisely. He apparently is also asking himself what good bombing will do. Obama is possibly the best president that the US has had in recent years.

Eisenhower was criticized as a do nothing president. He resisted attempts to get the US more involved in Vietnam. Kennedy and Johnson increased US involvement, and there was great slaughter. Many of the things that Eisenhower didn't do shouldn't have been done. Obama shows the same wisdom.

After bombing Syria then what?

David F.,

What ?! Obama is not a crazed war-monger ? US is not out for world domination, and therefore fabricates this imaginary gassing of women and children ? Thanks for clearing that up.

Yes, I agree that the situation in Syria, and across the entire Moslem world, is incredibly complicated, and of course the US or anybody else, including the Russians, shouldn't be trying to stir the pot, and that Islamo-fascism is a enormous danger and incredibly difficult ideological force to oppose. I feel very sorry for any 'moderate' Muslims, if such exist, in their efforts to critique and oppose those various fascisms. Perhaps their only way out of that ghastly morass is to become non-believers and catch up with the rest of the progressive world. I certainly wish them well.

Almost as horrifying is the likelihood that the upshot of all this is that, away down the track, the US - along with, as you say, the secular but puny groups of a liberal/progressive/secular opposition - join forces for a time with Assad, to oppose and hopefully destroy the worse fascisms of the Islamists. No, there are no fairy-tale endings to this one.

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

Islamism, the belief system of certain believers in Islam, which demands fanaticism and violence to spread their beliefs is a danger. Islamo-fascism is merely name calling. It is like calling somebody whose views you don’t like a Nazi.

Fascism was a movement embodying nationalism, violence, belief in a supreme leader, spectacles such as the Nuremberg rally and fancy uniforms, militarism, organised armies etc. Islamism does not have a supreme leader, is not nationalistic, does not have fancy uniforms or mass rallies and lacks other elements of fascism.

One does not fight Islamism the way one fought fascism. Islamism expresses itself in guerrilla warfare and religious indoctrination. Fascism was a modern ideology which worshiped the machine and technology. Islamism seeks to return to an imagined past where life was 'pure' and primitive although Islamism will use modern technology to achieve that end.

It is better to try to understand Islamism for what it is than to conflate it with our enemies of the past.

Yes, you're right, David, Islamism lacks many of the outward signs of traditional fascism - it doesn't seem to have any plans to make the trains run on time, for example, and few of them speak German or Italian. So yes, you've really got me there. As for uniforms, can I respectfully suggest that black seems to be the new black for Islamist terrorists. ?

And yes, you're also right that it doesn't have a supreme leader, perhaps because it doesn't need one - it already has the Book, which their less-than-supreme leaders, imams, ayatollahs, etc., can interpret, probably accurately, as supporting the Islamist cause of world domination.

My use of the term 'fascist' was a bit sweeping, referring to the tendency to use force, violence, the rightness of an overriding cause (and therefore, in a ghastly way, Utopian) which was common to the various fascisms of the past, and (my original point) to the various socialism-communisms as well. All of which failed, I would suggest, and certainly degenerated from their initial intentions.

That common longing for certainty, for a reassuringly all-powerful leader, Party or ideology may go some way to explain why sections of the Left - and of course, Right - soft-pedal so easily on their criticisms of the various and diverse forms of fascism , neo-Tsarism in Russia and mandate-of-heaven imperialism in China, for example, as well as Islamist terrorism.

Give me good old US imperialism, with its imperfect Enlightenment values any day.

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

I have a great admiration for Enlightenment values, and the ideas on which the US was founded. One of the greatest works of political science is the 'Federalist Papers' which I am now reading. The papers outline the philosophy behind the US Constitution. The authors of those papers saw religion as a divisive force and advocated separation of church and state. The subsidising of religious schools and chaplains in the non-public schools in contemporary Australia would be illegal in the US.

As far as the Fascists making the trains run on time that is myth. The Fascist march on Rome in 1922 was partially done by train, and the Fascists got to Rome on time. As Gaetano Salvemini pointed out the Italian trains ran on time before the Fascist takeover and continued to run on time after the takeover.

The US in addition to imperialism has an anti-imperialist tradition which sometimes makes its weight felt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Anti-Imperialist_League is one example.

Socialism was originally an Internationalist ideology which opposed the concept of nationalism, on the basis that nationalism was responsible for the horrors of WW1. It was first tried out in Russia, and the Russians used their position as the first Socialist state to be the international leader of this new ideology. All international socialist parties were expected to be loyal to Moscow because the Soviet Union was regarded as the Brave New World which would soon create a classless society which would be utopia, because it's economics were not affected by the profit motive.

This did not suit the German socialists at all. The German socialists were still very nationalistic and it is hardly surprising that they set a party called the "National Socialist German Workers Party." There was very little difference between International Socialism and National Socialism, other than the fact that National Socialists were still expected to be loyal to their own country, not Moscow.

Both were military dictatorships and originally, both were quit friendly with each other. The Germans had the Waffen SS and Gestapo, and the Russians had the KGB to keep everybody in line. The Sovs believed totally in state ownership of the means of production, the while the Germans tolerated private industry.

I think that the similarities between Socialism and national Socialism was best summed up by a German soldier (Guy Sajer. who wrote the book "The Forgotten Soldier", about his experiences on the Russian front.) He wrote "We were fighting and dying to destroy a political system which was almost identical to our own."

"Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity."

In the coming immediate future...the duty of the citizen primarily is not to be a worker for 'society' as we currently made to be...but protector of liberty and freedom...from the very thing we 'created' or thought it was good...Democracy...but now we know its just an image of...and real is the two tier system of those wielding power and control, and rest to work and serve...knowingly or unknowingly...and façade that is called Parliament\government\judiciary...that serves to propagate the deceit called democracy...

Primarily...if we all...tomorrow...stopped working completely...and willing to die in inaction...maybe we humans may have a future of actual life to be an real person and live in harmony...maybe...
sam