On The Beach asks if I would like a world where the U.S. was isolationist. Yeah, brother!

People, at least those with brains, have been praying for this eventuality while the U.S. has been, for three centuries, preying on nations around the world.

They are even preying on Australia and have their dirty, bloody fingers in our country and, it seems, in most every pie of every nation on Earth.

Yeah, an Isolationist America. Hooray! Go home, Yanks!

"..... And if so, why did they pull out of Iraq, particularly because of their secret obsession with controlling oil ?"

Well...hello!

They'd already done the job. They had a friendly regime and unfettered access to the oil. That's all they really wanted.

And domestic pressure led to the US pulling out of Iraq...once it became public knowledge how they were funding the war -

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/us-public-defrauded-hidden-cost-iraq-war

"The most striking fact about the cost of the war in Iraq has been the extent to which it has been kept "off the books" of the government's ledgers and hidden from the American people. This was done by design. A fundamental assumption of the Bush administration's approach to the war was that it was only politically sustainable if it was portrayed as near-costless to the American public and to key constituencies in Washington. The dirty little secret of the Iraq war – one that both Bush and the war hawks in the Democratic party knew, but would never admit – was that the American people would only support a war to get rid of Saddam Hussein if they could be assured that they would pay almost nothing for it."

"The most obvious way in which the true cost of this war was kept hidden was with the use of supplemental appropriations to fund the occupation. By one estimate, 70% of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 were funded with supplemental or emergency appropriations approved outside the Pentagon's annual budget. These appropriations allowed the Bush administration to shield the Pentagon's budget from the cuts otherwise needed to finance the war, to keep the Pentagon's pet programs intact and to escape the scrutiny that Congress gives to its normal annual regular appropriations."

Much of that money was funnelled straight from American taxpayers into the pockets of private contractors

"What is it that the Crash of ʼ08, Global Warming, and Iraqistan and the rest of the sick, criminal bloodbaths America has created have in common? What is the single, indisputable force behind the perpetration of these horrors? It is not poor people, not bogus science, not bad religions, and not mysterious and unfathomable forces beyond human control.

It is Predatory Capitalism. And it must be eradicated and replaced by a system that nurtures, nourishes, and supports humanity and all life."

Paul Edwards wrote an article on ICH today. Above is a short excerpt which seems to support Poirot.

Predatory Capitalism is a blight on the world!

Yes we live in a septic tank.

But would China's more extreme version of Capitalism and Russia's Putinism be preferred alternatives?

People seem as though they want to be controlled, to bow down to someone who is superior when they are not, from my observation with Royalty past and present, the poor people doff their hats to people and want to wave to them, for goodness sake these people have penises, fannies, the same hole in their bum which farts daily as the poor people, Yes David G if only we could have a society where equality meant just that, all equal, but religion, wealth, superiority all crave to the tune of I am better, perhaps I have my God's blessing for being so superior, my position means I can conquer you in war, that then makes me even more superior, I want to dominate, wave to me, bow to me, I make the rules , I create unrest, have my blessing in war, I am a Christian you peasants, does that sound like Emperor Abbott., who walks as though he has just pooed himself, life gets stranger by the minute.

Hi Onjab,

So, are you suggesting that the royal family is behind ISIL ? That they want to dominate any way they can ? That they are secret Islamists ?

I'd leave that line of thought to Arjay if I were you :)

But thanks, it's interesting to see how your mind works.

Now how do you see ISIL and how their minds work ? And what should we do about them, if anything ?

i.e., BTT :)

Joe