As the USA is bombing ISIS in Iraq but helping ISIS in Syria Ns Yemen
It is safe to say ISIS is not the bogeyman we are sometimes led to believe
The real bogeyman is a lot closer to home

Hi Yebiga,

In what ways is the US helping ISIS in Syria ? By not bombing it ? Clearly, the US is focussing on clearing ISIS out of Iraq, and leaving the Assad dictatorship and Iran to deal with ISIS in Syria. Eminently sensible, in my view: Iraq is crucial to the US strategy of, to the extent it can, keeping Iran and the Saudis apart. Now that Yemen has blown up, that strategy is undergoing some stress.

Back to article: as ISIS finds itself having to take on temporal or secular or everyday responsibilities for managing a state, it will find itself in a similar position to earlier caliphates, of muddying the 'purity' of brutal religious war with the necessity to oversee the hum-drum everyday issues of the real world which they now control. I don't know how the Koran can give much guidance on the maintenance of phone towers and water supplies and sewerage systems, and the issue of dog licences and vehicle registration. At least the earlier caliphates didn't have to deal with some of those issues. Yet look what happened to them.

If ISIS has now lost Tikrit, and the territory to the east and south of it, it may not be the success story that the extreme Right (i.e. the Salafists) and the opportunist Left (i.e. the Trots, Watermelons, etc.) hoped for. It may still attract psychotics and sociopaths from all corners of the earth, since, after all, ISIS needs drivers of suicide trucks, but it's a fair bet that not too many of that opportunist Left will join them there.

Joe

What is truly grotesque here is not the fantasy drawn by the author, but his complete ignorance of what is actually happening in the Middle East. The utter stupidity and ignorance of media comment was captured by Gregg Carlstrom on 26 March 2015. He was referring to Yemen but the comment applies equally to the insanity of US/Australian policy generally. He said

"US praises US ally for bombing US equipped militia aligned with US foe who is partnering with US to fight another US equipped militia."

It makes Tony Abbott's bizarre "death cult" obsession seem almost coherent in comparison.

"The caliphate is not just a future dream; it is real and now. It has all of the trappings of a modern state." What an absolute load of crap; over running one city and holding it for a few months is a far cry from setting up a legitimate government. The author is mad.

James, can you please explain WTF this stupid quote is supposed to mean? "US praises US ally for bombing US equipped militia aligned with US foe who is partnering with US to fight another US equipped militia." For us simpletons, please explain who is supposed to be who in that offering.

CH: I can go one better than try to explain what I thought was quite a neat encapsulation. I suggest you read an article Another Week, Another War. chis-floyd.com 27 March 2015. Better value there than the sorry BS of the article we are commenting on.

Hi James,

Wouldn't it be nice if we could put all the bad people in one group and all the good people in another: A or B ? Why does it have to be so complicated ?

Well, it is. Is there any one 'good' side in Syria ? or in the Yemen ? Yes, there are plenty of 'bad' sides, and, given a need to make choices, trying to sort out which may be the very worst, which may be the second worst, etc., and in which particular REAL circumstances, makes that real world - particularly in the Middle East at the moment - extremely complicated.

So we can either curse the lot of it and withdraw to our mountain cave, James, or we can try to make some sense out of it all, and which situations are most urgent and make judgements about what should be done, and by whom.

Maybe some basic principles could be identified: that it's undeniably wrong that innocent people should be beheaded, or women and children raped and enslaved, or more broadly, aggression should be condemned. Ultimately, we have to decide if it is okay to question and discuss principles, or blindly accept what was written down in a tribal society thirteen hundred years ago, and kill off anybody who disagrees.

As for the caliphate, ISIS now controls territory the size of Britain. Boko Haram and al-Shabaab each control swathes of territory. So do the Talibans in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Islamists in Libya and southern Algeria. They are not going to just fade away. To the extent that Islam is a 'religion' of war and conquest, its dynamic is to keep conquering. That broad region may be a long way away, and in a part of the world in which we have little interest, but it's still a major force.

Then there are the conflicts between various Islamic sects, between a plethora of ethnic groups, and between secular dictatorships and Islamist movements.

Sorry for the bad news :)

Joe

Hi James,

I read the article (think is actually chris-floyd.com) and found it an interesting discussion. The author is unashamedly anti-US. I followed up by reading an interview (www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000475.html) with the author in which he discussed his upbringing and life to that point in time. Surprisingly we share a lot in common; when Reagan got re-elected I opted to leave the USA permanently. I thought like him at an earlier stage of my life but over the past 20 years I've become conservative.

My problem with authors like Chris Floyd are is accepting blanket statements like "The War on Terror began as a monstrous hybrid of imperialist adventurism, blood-money boondoggle and psychosexual power trip for the stunted, blunted second-rate souls who hold sway in our corrupt system."

At no point in the article does the author denounce ISIS, rather he presents to whole war as staged manipulation by the USA - "Barack Obama is massively escalating U.S. military operations in Iraq, launching a bombing campaign in Tikrit, ostensibly in aid of the Iraqi government's attempt to recapture the city from ISIS but more likely just to keep Iranian-led Iraqi Shiite militias from retaking the town. (Alternatively, some have suggested, not entirely implausibly, that the bombing is actually a bid to save ISIS from defeat by the Iranians, and keep both sides embroiled in conflict; the same strategy followed by the U.S. in the Iran-Iraq War.)"

I don't know, I accept there is always more going on than we know but this guy's scenario is a big stretch for me to accept.

The USA having totally used up all its credibility in Afghanistan and iraqe can no longer convince it's own people to send troops on the ground anywhere. Any honest appraisal finds that whilst the USA has secured the oil fields for the global plutocracy in Iraq, it has lost the war there and even the oil fields are held tenuously. In Afghanistan they have achieved even less except that poppy sales are up.

Going forward the USA policy is proxy war. Sometimes a state, sometimes rebels, sometimes ISIS and even Al Ciada are provided assistance. This rag tag of alliances is unreliable. The strategy seems to be to simply creates chaos.

The USA is stretched. Whilst embroiling itself in the Middle East it has entirely lost credibility globally amongst it's own citizens and the. Entire western world.

The reassertion of Russia in a loose alliance with China and Iran has left the USA bewildered and erratic. We are returning to a multi polar world. The fictional war on terror is unravelling because real politics with real state powers are re asserting themselves against the failed and crazed USA policies over the last 15 or so years.

Anyone who thinks ISIS and Al Ciada are genuine movements posing an uncontrolled threat outside the theatres they are instructed to operate is living within the matrix of mainstream media fictional narratives. And even among the general western populace the percentage who buy these increasingly incoherent story lines has dramatically dropped and morphed into widespread cynicism.

The article would more correctly be titled Obamas theatre of the grotesque.

Hi Yebiga,

What does 'yebiga' mean in Russian, I wonder ?

A fictional war on terror ? Perhaps you could tell that to the people of Kenya. Or Nigeria. or France, Denmark, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. etc.

Yes, your ISIS friends provide a convenient stick to shove up the @rse of the US, but opportunism does not get you very far, eventually. So, crow all you like.

So, in the grand scheme of things, Yebiga, when it comes down to it, do you support the US or ISIS ? The US ? Or ISIS ? Simple as that.

Once that battle has been resolved, in a few decades, we can get back to shoving it up the Yanks. But there are more urgent issues right now.

Joe

@Joe & CH. Nobody is going to condone the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic radical groups. But to portray them simply as expressions of Islamic fundamentalism, barbarism, or any of the other epithets currently used is to my mind to miss the point, or rather, several points.

the complexity can hardly be explored in the confines of OLO's comments section. There are however a number of relevant issues that need to be borne in mind. A far from exclusive list would include:

1. Thew US creates and uses fundamentalist groups for its own geo-political purposes (see for eg. Hersh (2007) "The Redirection").

2. As indicated in previous comments the US is simultaneously and fighting against the same groups in different countries as it suits their purposes.

3. As appalling as the carnage by ISIS et al is, it represents a tiny fraction of the millions who have died as a consequence of US policy, which is one reason Gallup polls in the Middle East and Africa overwhelmingly nominate the US as the greatest threat to world peace and the greatest terrorist nation by very wide margins.

4. The level of debate in this country on this and related issues is abysmal, marked by profound ignorance of historical and current realities, a too ready descent into cheap mud-slinging, and a mindset that marks anything that departs from the received wisdom as wrong (to use a neutral term).

Well, as bad as the US is, or is claimed to be!? I don't see where there is any official acceptance of ritual beheading, or rape or crucifixion, or sanctioned sex slaves!

If my only two choices of a place to live, work and play were the so called Islamic state and the US? Guess where I'd head, or just allow my feet to vote for me.

However, if the out and out nutters think ISIS has a case and want to join in the genocide and the massacres?

They should all be allowed exit visas, and once they're there and in just the one region, bomb them to hell; because there's just no place in paradise for murders, thieves and blood lusting dirty rotten scoundrels, without a single redeeming human quality!

Want to fight and die; and remember, you are not invincible as you once were when all this was just a video game, and where the target might shoot back, and with incredibly painful consequences!? [And if wounded may be left where you fell; gut-shot and begging for mama or death, and in a desert which regularly tops 50C!]

Then at least pick a justifiable righteous cause, not presided over by a power mad extremist; where your extremely premature, downright dumb death as some sort of sacrificial lamb, may at the very least, serve a higher purpose?

Rather than that concocted by the Devil's premier disciple!

At least the American President does have to face the judgement of the people, who retain the right to give him the right royal boot!
Rhrosty.

Hi James,

I'll ask again, what evidence is there that the US is currently supporting ISIS and the other supporters of a caliphate uner it ?

One thing I've learnt in a long and dissipated life is that when people come to the conclusion that what X or Y is doing is 'Just crazy ! Just crazy !', then they don't have any real understanding: 'Why the Stolen Generation ?! Just crazy !' 'Why cover up Roswell ?! Just crazy !' In this case, the bafflement may simply be because you've got it all wrong. Which means that, despite your faint damns, you're letting the really bad guys off the hook.

The US may be one of the most evil forces ever known in the universe, but not in this situation: can you, off-hand, name any university campus where they've killed 147 students at random ? Have they shot a couple of thousand prisoners and chucked their bodies in a trench ? Raped, killed or enslaved a couple of thousand women ? Butchered people as in Libya, Kenya, Nigeria, etc. ?

Get some proper perspective, James. In the first instance, provide some evidence of US complicity with ISIS, and if you can't, face the fact - in your own head - that currently, there may be far worse forces in the world than the Yanks. Don't grasp at straws.

Joe

@Rhrosty. Fortunately RH, we have more choices than between living under an IS caliphate or any variation thereof, and the US. There are some excellent alternative societies. Your obvious abhorrence of head chopping fanatics clearly precludes living with our close ally Saudi Arabia, about which our supine media is strangely quiet. Oh yes, they are also one of the world's largest financiers of international terrorism. Again a strange silence.

@Joe. The evidence in answer to your first question is overwhelming, including recent admissions from General Wesley Clark. You really need to widen your reading from the sheltered pages of OLO.

As to the question in your third paragraph, read the history of our involvement in Vietnam. Start with Nick Turse's Kill Anything that Moves (2013). Google Project Phoenix for an instruction manual on systematic mass murder. There is also some good recent research on Agent Orange, our gift to Vietnam that goes on giving in the form of destroyed lives.

As to my perspective Joe, happy to debate the evidence on which it is based at any time.

As I said earlier, very difficult to do justice to an argument in a word constrained comment. Why not write to our erstwhile editor and suggest that he publishes something other than the mindless pap that too often haunts these pages.

I James,

Any evidence of complicity with ISIS ? As a child (or at least, young adult) of the Vietnam era, I don't need reminding of what the Ysnks did there. But that was then, this is now.

What evidence is there of US complicity with ISIS ?

No hurry :)

Back in 1966, I took around a questionnaire in Ballarat, and again in 1970 around Auckland, asking people 'Do you think that the US has any right to be in Vietnam ?' Ninety per cent said no. But I learnt something else doing that: on a couple of occasions, when I asked the question, one person, a Pommy bloke, said emphatically, 'No!' and I thought 'Beauty ! That's that then.' But he went on, 'No, the Yanks are useless, send in the Gurkhas, they'll do the job.' And the other person, a Maori woman, said, 'No ! Send in the Maori Battalion, they'll clean up those slants.' It added something to my perspective.

So: what evidence is there of US complicity with ISIS ? Or with Boko Haram ? Or with al-Shabaab ?

No hurry :)

Joe

Loudmouth
There is a bunch real of goons known as ISIS
That they represent any genuine muslim movement is a fiction created and funded by the USA and Isreal
Ditto al ciada
Of course sometimes goons are hard to control and things don't go according to script

You want the evidence try explaining The current USA / saudi strike on Yemen
Another illegal war
It is only compliant vassal states which enjoy a high standard living like Australia where the populace still buys the increasingly incoherent chaos of USA foreign policy.

In the USA itself the populace is no longer buying the endless wars against the next western created monstrosity. The religious nutter script was never going to be sustainable in the 21 st century except by the very dumbest citizens who rarely travel, are poorly educated and social disadvantaged themselves.

The USA theatre of distorted reality is increasingly hysterical in its attempt to sustain a morally and financially bankrupt global order. The jig is up and they know it. This is why the USA populace has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the most draconian changes to civil liberty laws, the total subservience of the plutocratic media to the state.

The USA populace will not except the coming economicausterity - USA debt is now over 100% of GDP. The dollars global reserve currency status is now openly challenged

Major changes are necessary and inevitable
The empire can no longer fund itself
War and theft is never a sustainable strategy but a sign of desperation.

I get the distinct impression that Felix Imonti really does admire those ISIS cut throats. He does not come right out and say it. He just tells us how the real Muslims are striking back at the dirty European imperialists who have oppressed the poor, peace loving, innocent Muslims for so long. And he gleefully recounts how much territory the real Muslims are taking back for Islam.

Reality check, Felix.

Islam is, and always has been, a fascist religion which sees nothing wrong with expanding it's religion through violence and terrorism. In the 100 years since it's invention, it attacked and conquered all of the Middle East, and a fair bit of Southern Europe through war and terror. The leaders of this religion are now determined to do the same thing again and they are having a fair bit of success at it.

And you like this idea, Felix?

Winston Churchill was mocked by the Left for stating the obvious that "war with Germany will come." War with Islam will come too, but unfortunately there are still a lot of Appeasers and denialists around like Felix, who seem to think that there is nothing wrong with Islam, that their own societies are disgusting oppressors, and they are the real reason why poor the oppressed Muslims have reintroduced slavery, crucifixions, and suicide bombings.

About the only good thing about the present position in the Middle East, is that the Muslims are squabbling over who should lead the Jihad on the West. It's a bit like 1930 Germany where everybody with a gun hated democracy, and half of the Freikorps and Ernest Roehm's SA were at war with Hitler's half of the Freikorps and his SS.

But whoever wins the Muslim civil war, they are going to be no friends of the Western democracies. Our best bet is to keep stirring the pot and let them kill each other off. Put a stop to Muslim immigration into the west and only allow Christians to immigrate. Put a fence around the entire Middle East let them sink back into barbarism.

I'm suspecting there is a connection between Iftikhar and Yebiga. They share a similar distain for the USA and all Western countries but neither is hopping on plane to go live in the paradise of the Middle East.

Iftikhar's comments suggest he's based in Great Britain given his repeated rants about the lack of government funded Muslim schools in that country.

A Google search of the word Yebiga produces only one result other than links to his various forum comments. Yebiga is the name of a kitchen refurbishing company located in Solihil / Birmingham GB. Birmingham coincidentally has one of the largest Muslim populations.

I won't go so far as to suggest they are one in the same person as their writing styles differ and Iftikhar comes across as slightly more unhinged. Yebiga on the other hand is caught up in paranoid world dominated by evil anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

Hi Yebiga,

Do you have any evidence that ISIS is ' a fiction created and funded by the USA and Isreal' ? Or 'al ciada' ? Do you have to go back to the late eighties in Afghanistan, to find any vague link between the Yanks and what later evolved into Islamist-fascist groups ?

I'm puzzled by the denial by pseudo-leftists of the seriousness of the Islamist threat, not just in Uganda and Nigeria and Yemen and - of course - across the Middle East - but its attractiveness to - to use your words - 'the very dumbest citizens who rarely travel, are poorly educated and social disadvantaged themselves', in backward countries like Pakistan. When the Islamo-fascist ideology really gets going in Pakistan, that's when we will know about it.

So why do pseudo-leftists deny the significance of Islamo-fascism ? Because it takes the object of their bile away from the Yanks ? That there could be forces in the world, quite endogenous and with their own dynamics, which are - but from the extreme Right - battling the Yanks far more effectively than they ever could ?

The revolution is well and truly over, comrade, speaking as someone from the long-term inside. The workers never wanted anything remotely like revolution in Australia - you would have grasped that if you had ever worked in factories or on farms: and fair enough too, why should they be somebody else's fodder ?

So where can the pseudo-left turn for some anti ? Well, who do the Yanks hate most, at the present time ? Aha ! The Islamo-fascists ! Therefore, they must be given pseudo-leftist support as the most anti-US force currently. So their brutality must be down-played,: it's all a US game of dirty tricks, they are really not so bad. Misguided 'goons' maybe, but no real issue. The real issues are blue ties and onions and leaning on walls and winks.

Hmmm: problem - how to inject Abbott into this 'discussion' ?

But that's not your real problem, Yebiga - facing reality beats it hands down.

Joe

In the blue corner, we have history's most expensive military spread across 150 countries, with drones, ballistic missiles, Apache helicopters, satelites, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, global surveillance and a compliant global media

In the red corner is a poor uneducated angry goat herder with a few of his mates who is given a gun and a grenade made by the most expensive military in history.

A violent event occurs and the smartest people in the room blame the goat herder and his mates. If the most expensive military in history was used for evil purposes, who will tell you about it? There has never been a benevolent military empire: not Egypt, not Persia, not rome, not Napolean's france, not England, not germany, not the USSR. Empire is about power and goat herders are not powerful no matter how angry they get.

Is the objective for America and vassal Anglo and European States to subjugate the entire world?. I could live with that and if we were honest about such an objective there would be a more coherent policy which didn't simply destroy countries.

But what is really happening is that the most powerful corporations who supply the military and benefit from war, together with the biggest miners in the world have supplanted usa foreign policy for their own benefit. these corporation have decided what is good for them is good for us. The profits from war are breath taking.

If you follow the money trail you will find the uneducated poor angry goat herder does nt see any of those profits. He doesn't get interviewed on CNN. He doesn't have golf membership back in Augusta, he doesn't mix with CEOs, pentagon officials, or go to the theatre.

The western narrative believed by so many in this country is totally insane. We blame goat herder. Who now controls the oil fields in Iraq and Libya? Is it a goat herder? Sorry it's shell, Exxon, bp and friends. Please stop being so dim.

Hi Yebiga,

Do you have any evidence that ISIS commanders have ever been goat-herders ? Or that many of the hundred thousand ISIS, or al Qa'ida, or al-Shabaab or Boko Haram or Taliban or etc., have been goat-herders ? My bet is the only time any of those fascists have seen a goat is on the end of a fork.

Isn't it fun to exaggerate ? 'In the blue corner' total omnipotence, and 'in the red corner', poverty and struggle and oppression ?

And even more fun, as against that eternal struggle in most Middle eastern countries between Islamism, dictatorships and democratic-progressive forces, rather than openly praise the Islamists, or support the democrats and progressives (since the hated US has been trying to support those) to sink the boot into dictatorships ?

Oh, except that one in Syria: you probably support that one 100 % ?

And the theocratic dictatorship in Iran as well ? I wonder how many of the ayatollahs there have ever been goat-herders.

Oh look ! There's a pigeon !

Nice try, Yebiga !

So: what evidence is there of US complicity with ISIS ? Or with al Qa'ida (since 1990) ? Or with Boko Haram ? Or with al-Shabaab ? Or Abu Sayyaf ? or the Taliban ? Or Chechen Islamists ?

Joe

Yes C.H., and sad isn't it?

Clearly these guys are out and out fundamentalists, just looking for (a) sad sack target(s) to groom as human bombs/shields/dispensable cannon fodder, who will invariably be left where they fall; even if just wounded!?

One doesn't need to have the I.Q. of a moron to be convinced by this verbal vomit, but I guess it has to help!?

As for insufficient Government funding of Britain's Muslim schools?

If they weren't places that regularly produced fifth columnists/fundamentalists, whose only goal is to reject friends and family, and join ISIS as anti Christian warriors; perhaps there's a case for more funding, as indeed is the case for all education in today's G.B!

If it were down to me? I'd ask the Christian community to pass the hat around and buy one way tickets to the M.E., for these brain-dead butchers; and indeed, all those who's only goal is more of the same anti Christian bastardy!

Clearly all the troubles in the M.E., are down to home grown dictators!

I mean and come on, the Christian Crusades were done and dusted over a thousand years ago! And can hardly be blamed for today's home grown stone age brutality!

And if the west provided some funding or help from time to time, it was on the basis the my enemy's enemies are also my friends; and an evolving scenario! End of story!

And given that is so, countries like Turkey ans Egypt need to decide which side of the fence they want to stand on; and because trying to straddle the middle can be the worst possible position, and well remembered by the west, after this women hating devil's brigade of inhuman butchery and thuggery, is just little more than a bitter, impossible to forgive or forget, memory!
Rhrosty.

Loudmouth
ISIS is full Ivy League graduates
It's the poor USA military who have to put up with these well equiped murderers
What chance have these poor secular innocents against these trained assassins
It is unfair

Has no one thought that maybe the US is deliberately mixing their
support to set them at each others throats ?
Hopefully the Iraqi/Iranese will wipe ISIS out in Iraq & Syria and
we can then let them have a go at Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Saudi Arabia itself.
That will occupy them for the next hundred years and leave them
significantly weakened. In that fight they will callback all the
Sunni & Shia moslems in Europe and Australia and solve our problem.

As I said a long time ago, we need to build an electronic wall around
the middle east, let nothing out except oil, and let nothing in.
Send as many as possible back, but letting them stay on the
understanding that there is no Islam outside the wall.

This whole mess has been going on far too long and frankly I suspect
I am not the only one who wish I had never heard of Islam & moslems.
It is an absolute nonsense to say ISIS are not truly Islamic.
Of course they are, they follow the Koran to the letter.
That is the problem.

In the next 10 years or so we will have left oil & coal and they will
be left with a very poor economy as they have demonstrated that they
cannot manage a modern economy without oil exports as demonstrated by Egypt.

Perhaps those moslems that say ISIS are not moslems are themselves
not moslems and should either be atheists or join another religion.

The forum is now full of theology experts
I hate to tell you but the last time you ate at a restaurant the chances are very high a muslim prepared your food.
God save us from this simplicity

Yes, Yebiga, the moslems are employed in the abattoirs because if they
do not employ them the plant is declared non-Halal.

That is otherwise known as extortion.
Strange the Unions have nothing to say about that.
Reds in the beds ?

In answer to YEBIGA.

In the blue corner we have the world's foremost democracy, which has bestowed upon the world everything from the internal combustion engine, to electric lights, manned flight, penicillin, the Voyager spacecraft, men on the moon, and so many other benefits to the human race that they are too numerous to mention. It is a country where everybody wants to immigrate to. The reason why this civilisation prospered is because of the freedom it gave it's citizens which creates wealth. The people of the USA enjoy freedoms almost unheard of even within other western societies, the most important of which is freedom of speech.

In the red corner, we have a civilisation which has stagnated for 1400 years and which has bestowed upon the human race almost nothing. It's adherents are some of the poorest and most ignorant in the world who live in mud huts and have not socially advanced beyond the driving of goats. The reason why this civilisation remained stagnant, poor and ignorant is because it's religion forbids it to embrace the modern world. It is a civilisation ruled by religious authorities who see the modern world as eroding the power of the Mullahs over the people. It is a religion which most definitely does not believe in freedom of speech and it therefore can never reform itself because the penalty for criticising Islam is death. Islamic countries are ones where nobody wants to immigrate to, including YEBIGA.

It is hardly surprising that these two civilisations are increasingly hostile to one another. But I will stick with the civilisation ruled by science and democracy, however perverted that concept has become, as opposed to a civilisation still in the medieval age which has clearly failed to provide any prosperity to it's own people, but like every other unsuccessful nobody, seeks to blame it's misfortunes on those who's philosophy for hard work and critical thinking gave them success.

Hi LEGO,

Spot-on. I suppose we can take comfort from the fact that fascists and totalitarians don't get on, or not for long. I recall a cartoon from 1938 by the great Kiwi David Low, depicting the panic amongst the Italians when the Nazis swallowed up Austria: it depicts Mussolini's daughter rushing to the Brenner Pass on the Austrian border. Actually, Mussolini did rush troops there.

And the wars between Russia and China around 1970 further illustrate the point, as well as China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979. No love lost between totalitarians, each seeking to be the one and only.

On the other hand, being rank opportunists, they often collaborate: ISIS and al Qa'ida have just done so in their assault on the Palestinians in Yarmouk, outside Damascus. That might put Hamas on the spot: do they defend their 'fellow'-Palestinians (and risk losing their Iranian honey-pot) or do they stay silent ?

Interesting times.

Joe

Joe, in response to your queries to me at 4.14pm and 6.00pm on 3 April the evidence is there for those who wish to truly discover just how this world of ours is run. Hint: it's not as you would find it in the pages of Murdoch, Fairfax or OLO.

In the hope that your query was a genuine one and not typical troll behaviour of deflecting from the argument by raising fake questions, may I refer you to a recent article by Nafeez Ahmed, a British researcher and director of a policy institute in London. He has written a number of books that are among the best in their genre.

He must have anticipated your question, because he has written an excellent article entitled Islamic State is the Cancer of Modern Capitalism. You will find it on Intrepid Report 3 April 2015. www.intrepidreport.com/archives/15613.

Happy scholarship

James

Sorry, James, that URL didn't come up: 'page not found'. Perhaps you can briefly tell me in what way the US is, today, in 2015, complicit with ISIS or al Qa-ida ?

I'm working my way through Fernand Braudel's 'History of Civilizations': there is a seventy-five-page section on Islam or, more correctly, the world that Islam (or forces in its name) conquered. Sorry, 'spread to', to borrow school curriculum jargon. Spread how, one wonders. As happy little vegemites ? or by the sword ?

What leaps out at a reader of Braudel is how predatory Islam, or a rather the desert ideology behind it, has been from the very beginning: slaves doing so much of the work, Christians and Jews paying the jizra, very little actual industry but plenty of trade, with profits skimmed off. So one could respectfully suggest that, broadly, Islam has not been an ideology of producers but of exploiters and scavengers.

After all, it's forgotten now that Muslim pirates were raiding the coast of Ireland as late as the early nineteenth century for slaves - until crushed in their home-bases by the US Marines: as their song says, ' ... to the shores of Tripoli.'

Perhaps from a Marxist point of view, the tragedy for people in nominally Islamic societies has been the despising of actual production, and certainly of any innovation in production: what Marx calls the development of productive forces has been stunted in Muslim societies from the beginning. Hence, even the development or flowering of a democratic 'Arab Spring' was, with hindsight, bound to fail. With no significant working class to speak of, but a huge impoverished petty-bourgeoisie, it seems that it's always been every man for himself.

And perhaps in that principle, lies the eventual downfall of the Islamo-fascism of ISIS and al Qa'ida, etc. The question is: what might come after it, if the economies remain stunted, reliant on oil, as the be-all and end-all. Except perhaps for the date industry, worked for so long by the despised peasants.

Would that it was not so, James :(

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, I don't know why the URL didn't work, but you can find the article via Google. Just type in Intrepid Report and go from there. The article cited has just been published.

Loudmouth & Joe,
An interesting vision of the future for Islam in the Middle East is Egypt.

Egypt being largely desert has just one source of food to support the
population. I believe at the time Napoleon was there the population
was around 10 million. For at least a thousand years Egypt was the
breadbasket of the Mediterranean.
The best information I have is that the population at the end of the
19th century was around 35 million. This population was supported by
the Nile, comfortably I believe.
Early in the 20th century oil was discovered and production increased
right up to 2000. During the 20th century Egypt was a significant
oil producer and exporter.
The government used the profits to subsidise food and fuel prices.
With ample income from oil & tourism the population grew to 85million.
All went well until oil production peaked and in the 2000 to 2010
period Egypt became an oil importer and the subsidies were cut back
despite very angry protests.

The disruption and protests resulted in the overthrow of Mubarak.
Egypt has a population of 85M and a river that can support 40M at a push.
They are living on charity from the Gulf states but that cannot
continue indefinitely. Egypt has to get rid of 25M people somehow.

This will be the patten in the other Middle East states as the oil declines.
It is interesting that Saudi Arabia's exports are affecting the way
they support their unemployed people, their internal usage has reduced
exports and is starting to worry their treasury.

As you said they have no skills at other industrial business nor do
they seem to have an aptitude for other than cottage industry.

Egypt will write the script for the rest of the Islamic world.

Hi James

I found and read the article you recommended by Nafeez Ahmed.

There is a lot of bold claims but whether or not its factual is questionable. Sure there is a spattering of historic hind sights but I'm not convinced the world is the way you see it, just because this guy says its so.

One thing I did glean from the article is Muslim extremists seem to be easily duped and manipulated by the West, if his accusations are correct. For instance his references to the West printing and distributing school books filled with violent images that advocated jihad against the Russians.

Why didn't the adherents of the 'religion of peace' reject, rather than embrace such propaganda if it didn't align with the Islamic philosophy?

Why do you want to defend religious radicals that are clearly as evil as anything we have seen in our life time? It doesn't matter how these thugs evolved, they are a menace to Islamic people more than to us, and they need to be destroyed.

Whoops I said;
Egypt has to get rid of 25M people somehow.

I should have said;
Egypt has to get rid of 45M people somehow.

Now think how excited that would make Senator Hansen-Young !

Hi CH,

I keep trying that URL but it doesn't work. But as you suggest, why does anybody think that Islamists are easily duped by anything from the West ? Why don't conspiracy theorists have enough respect for Islamist to at least consider that they will be able to think for themselves, to be able to think from inside their own square, if you like ? Surely, the last thing any Islamist would believe is anything published in the US ?

I love conspiracy theories for their sheer nuttiness and incredible naivety: they have to assume all manner of impossibilities and unlikely factors, and leap to ridiculous conclusions. In fact, they seem to invariably assume further, deeper, more devious and nefarious conspiracies, involving bigger and more powerful and insidious world forces.

But they always miss the obvious: the hand of the Swedes. Nobody ever suspects the Swedes. Notice that there is never any obvious evidence of the Swedes' involvement behind the scenes in any atrocity ? Why's that ? Because they are such clever b@stards, they have had centuries of learning how to cover their tracks, and eliminating any trace of involvement with anything. So everybody thinks they are pure and innocent while if the few intelligent people such as myself look carefully, one learns that that absence of evidence is clearly evidence of manufactured absence.

Not too many can see it. Just me and perhaps a few others. 9/11 ? Obviously, Swedish agents, operating under-cover from Minnesota, pinning the blame on a few Arab sight-seers. The 2004 tsunami ? Well, who would suspect Swedish testing of nuclear devices in the Indian Ocean, in the guise of some UN humanitarian body ?

The key to good conspiracies: look for the most unlikely, and you've got it: persevere and all sorts of unlikely facts fall out from all sorts of URLs.

Joe

Lego that is just insane
Democracy - Athens
Internal combustion engine - Austrian / german
Lighting - english
Penicillin - french
Absent the Second World War and the manufacturing boom it created the USA would remain the provincial backward racist hole it had been since its founding
The airplane is largely their ingenuity
But without the scientists who left war torn Europe they would remain the joke they were and are now reverting back to norm.
The yanks are marketers, salesman not thinkers
A simple people easily led with no sense of history or geography or morality or culture
They are crass in the worst sense of the word
The advantages they had post ww2 were mammoth and they have wasted them
To have world leadership and to regress the world into a medieval religious war is unforgivable
As for the Arabs they don't sell themselves as well but to the less ignorant they have made solid contributions in mathematics, astronomy, medicine...

When are you moving to the Middle East YEBIGA? If you honestly believe the crap you just posted then you are a total hypocrite if you don't move.

Flap on all you want; everyone except Ifitikar and perhaps James O'Neill sees straight through your emotional diatribes. America has done more for the world than all your tribal Bedouins will ever do in all of history.

Okay, I will bow to the one recognised good invention that came out of Arabia... the zero. Other than that and a few decent horses and oil which they didn't create, they've got nothing on the Yanks.

CH,

The zero ? An Indian invention, predating the Muslim and Christian use by eight hundred years; this is from Wikipedia:

The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol or an empty space for separation is attributed to India, where, by the 9th century AD, practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of division.[12][13]

The Indian scholar Pingala, of 2nd century BC or earlier, used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), a notation similar to Morse code.[14] In his Chandah-sutras (prosody sutras), dated to 3rd or 2nd century BC, Pingala used the Sanskrit word śūnya explicitly to refer to zero. This is so far the oldest known use of śūnya to mean zero in India.[15] The fourth Pingala sutra offers a way to accurately calculate large metric exponentiation, of the type (2)n, efficiently with less number of steps.[15]

The earliest text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhāga, dated 458 AD, where śūnya ("void" or "empty") was employed for this purpose.[16] The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuja Temple at Gwalior in India, dated 876 AD.[17][18] There are many documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, but their authenticity may be doubted.[11]

In 498 AD, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that "sthānāt sthānaṁ daśaguṇaṁ syāt;"[19] i.e., "from place to place each is ten times the preceding,"[19][20] which is the origin of the modern decimal-based place value notation.[21][22]

And of course, CH, our number system - called Arabic numerals - was derived from the Indians too. Also logarithms. Brilliant mathematicians !

Cheers,

Joe

Conservativehippie
I am a western cultural supremacist chump
The current USA led deformity is a complete betrayal of everything good about the tradition.
So to me you and your kind are a wrong turn a dead end and lobotomy
The good thing is that your sort are so incredibly dumbed down that your leadership can't help but end sooner than you think.

And amazingly you probably won't notice that either

Yebiga, if that's the best you can come up with when you've been totally trumped, you really are a disappointment.

Still being hypocritical, haven't you realised that if the governments of western civilization crumble the way you are predicting, you will still be living in the ruins. What then?

What is with you, that you cannot denounce ISIS?

What you fail to understand is that we are in ruins
And ISIS is merely one of many mirages to prevent you seeing how desperate our state is
Look at our environment, our economy, our infrastructure
We are in regression
ISIS is a joke
What happened to el ciada?
Bogey man coming for you bogey boo!

Read something of our history for heavens sake
Or soon crossing th street will challenge you - there will be bogey man real and imagined on every corner.

ISIS is an Egyptian. Goddess be careful she is powerful magic
Who writes these scripts

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses...

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent...

...There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to.

It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?).

I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Smedley Darlington butler
1933 major general U.S. marine

Oh conservative hippy you got that one wrong.

First, the Arabs did do some very good work in the period say, 900 to 1500.
They did a lot with maths and medicine and passed it onto Europe when
they occupied Spain. They had then, as they do now, have designs on
Europe but Isabella and Ferdinand put a stop to that after some hundreds of years.

You also got the zero wrong, it was invented by the Indians and passed
it onto the Arabs when they taught them arithmetic.

The Arabs did themselves no favours when they started the custom of
marrying their cousins. I don't know when that was but it was OKed
by Mohammad who checked with Allah.
Possibly the educated classes new better, although you would think an
agricultural people would know better.

Hmmm, taking a Bex and have a good lie down for some comes to mind.

"Islamic State is a cancer of capitalism", claims James O'Neill.

Sometimes, somebody says something which is so potty it is breathtaking. Congratulations, James O'Neill, you get this years Nobel Prize for Science for conclusively proving that there are indeed parallel universes.

One over riding fact demonstrates the failure of Islam to provide societies in which their people can be free and can prosper, it is the glaringly obvious connection that the more Islamic a Muslim state is, the more economically and socially backward it is.

It is no surprise that those Muslim countries that are the most insular, despotic, mullah ridden, and repressive, are the most staunch opponents of free trade and the most enthusiastic supporters of Osama bin Laden and his merry band of suicidal Jihadi's. Guess what else they have in common? None of these nations even belongs to the hated World Trade Organisation. which, with 142 members, is hardly an exclusive club. The Muslim world itself chooses to live in self imposed economic exile and is suffering terribly because of it. And who was the target of the 9/11 attack? The World Trade Centre of course. Muslims hate what they see as non Allah bestowed prosperity.

For while economic rationalism, free trade and liberated market forces have fomented dramatic changes around the world, (mostly for the better) the two places they have achieved nothing is in the African and Arabic worlds. With a few mostly "liberal" muslim countries as exceptions, (Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and some Gulf States) most Muslim countries have done their best to keep international economic integration completely at bay.

The extreme poverty that exists in Islamic countries, is a product of their own religious beliefs and almost every Muslim country is an economic basket case. Muslim economies are growing, on average, only 1% a year. But Muslim populations are growing, on average, at a disastrous 4% a year. Muslim societies are great believers in breeding like flies and Muslim families are noted for having very large numbers of children. This factor alone is instrumental in their appalling levels of poverty, superstition, unemployment and ignorance

Their own attitudes to family size and birth control has condemned almost an entire generation of young Muslims to be bereft of employment or a future in their own countries. These angry young men are simply becoming recruits for terrorist organisations who seek to blame everyone else but Islam for their own woes. Muslims covet the prosperity of the West and dream about our consumer goods and lifestyles. But they will not accept the liberal values and secular philosophies that have created that prosperity. All they can do is dream about gatecrashing a western country, or bob up and down on their prayer mats five times a day waiting for Allah to solve all their problems for them.

Financial institutions like commercial banks, stock exchanges and investment houses hardly even exist in Muslim societies, and venture capital for small entrepreneurs is unheard of. Even the concept of banks giving interest on deposits is against the teachings of the Prophet, who decreed that lending money and gaining interest was usury. According to statistics compiled by economic historian Angus Maddison and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, between 1985 and 1998, average per capita income declined 10% in real terms in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. By contrast, it rose 30% in Israel, 50% in Uraguay, 90% in Chile and more than doubled in Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico, and South Korea.

Christianity has its faults and bad people, but look around this globe and see where 99.99% of all inventions originated. Look around this globe and see where 98/99% of manufacturing is. Look around this globe and see where a 100% of charities that cater to everyone, even pagans, in the world are. Look around and see where the arts are - music, dance, paintings etc are. Then look again and see which countries are dictatorships, which countries are endemically corrupt, which countries kill, rape and oppress women. Which countries are sordid messes. Then have a look at the top hospitals, teaching universities etc - yes all in western Christian or nominally Christian nations.

The Jews have come from the tragedy of repeated pogroms and forced the world to respect them. With their knowledge, not with their terror. With their work, not their threats. Humanity owes many of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, won their rights through hard work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing Christians, Buddhists or Hindus. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist kill an ambassador or kill a cartoonist. Only the Muslims defend their religious beliefs by burning down other people's temples and killing people. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they can ask that humankind respect them.

Upwards of a thousand years ago, Islam was far less objectionable and more civilized than Christianity. But whereas Christianity has gradually become more humane, Islam has gone in the other direction and reverted to it's founding violent fundamentals. This is partly because Mohammed (570-632) laid it down that, to avoid the sort of corruption that had beset Judaism and Christianity, his new religion must never accept any change of any kind. And to this day, the true Moslem continues to obey this injunction and resist anything new in social mores.

In the entire Arabic world, the only real economic success stories have been the burgeoning profits and high volume trading of the gun shops in Beirut, and the slave markets in the Sudan, Syria, and ISIS ruled Iraq. Certainly the tourism industry in the Islamic world is hardly booming, unless you count the booming that killed and wounded hundreds of innocent western tourists at Kuta Beach. For despite being the Middle East being the custodians to the world's most revered archaeological treasures, persistent bomb, grenade and machine gun attacks by western hating Islamic nut cases has seen even tourism drop to zero

Spot-on, LEGO.

"Islamic State is a cancer of capitalism", claims James O'Neill.

I would have thought that there has to be a body or body part for a cancer to colonise. So where is the capitalism, standard capitalism, in regions infested by ISIS or al Qa-ida or al-Shabaab or Boko Haram ? It is actually remarkable by its complete absence, isn't it ?

From a Marxist point of view, capitalism surely presupposes a proletariat, a working class ? Not just peasants and artisans but workers ? Factories ? The processing of raw materials into commodities, and their distribution and sale ?

On the whole, what is remarkable about the Muslim world is the ABSENCE of standard capitalism. Rampant, rentier capitalism maybe, the flogging off of raw materials, and entire societies largely parasiting on the proceeds. Of course, they're not alone in that - Russia springs to mind, and Australia as well to a large extent now.

But I'm sure if Marx could come back for a day or two, he would immediately declare that the curse of Muslim countries is that they have missed out on capitalism. Capitalism produces, and is produced by, workers who, in Marx's Utopian view, would re-make the world. Fat chance, but there's a grain of truth in his hypothetical observation.

But even Marx would concede that capitalism also, willy-nilly, brings about - eventually - more equal societies than those which existed prior to its development: also better health, more widespread education, equal voting rights - even eventually for women ! - and an explosion in self-expression, good and bad.

But of course, self-expression is anathema to ideologues, of the 'Left' as well as, in this case, the extreme Right.

I wonder it that's why the 'Left' is going so soft on the Islamo-fascists: birds of a feather .....

Thanks, James, for provoking some re-thinking.

Joe

Very much to the point Lego.
The illustration of Egypt that I gave a few pages back shows where the
Islamic countries will go as the oil revenue runs down.
Saudi Arabia has only been able to keep the opposition at bay by use
of the subsidies for the people.

It is interesting to note that the Islamic countries refused to sign up
to the UN Human Rights Treaty so they can do what they like to women
and the UN has to keep its mouth closed or risk a diplomatic protest.

Once the well head cost of Saudi oil starts increasing most middle east
countries will go into an economic decline. I suspect that will cause
turmoil amoungst the unemployed youths and those finding their oil
funded lifestyle declining.
What do you think they will do ?
Become boat people or just go to war with the Big Satan.

Looks to me like it could go either way, into collapsing states or
another big Moslem invasion of Europe ?

There are so many aspects and players in the mess that is the Middle East that it makes your head spin.

The modern day mess started with 911.
The War on Terror and the resulting invasion of IRAQ was because of bogus intelligence of WMD's and was supported by Israel.

IS commanders are all members of Saddam Hussein’s former Baathist army.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-militants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html

None of this would be happening if not for US foreign policy or our own former PM John Howard's willingness to go along with what George Bush Jnr wanted.

500,000 children died in that Iraq war and we all have their blood on our hands for choosing our leaders who supported it.

I'll never vote for either of the major parties again.
Better to choose randoms from the phone book IMO.

Our leaders are the ones that make dumb choices and get the country drowned in debt.
I was taught 'If its not in your wallet you can't afford it'
Make them pay back the debt themselves (not us) or put them all in prison for acting recklessly.

And when they say they are only collecting metadata.. They're lying.
You cant get the metadata without the content.
You think our MP's have any oversight of what intelligence agencies are doing?
They only know what they are told.

'None of this would be happening if not for US foreign policy or our own former PM John Howard's willingness to go along with what George Bush Jnr wanted.'

your ignorance of Islam is astounding.

Runner
How is Islam different to Christianity or Judaism?
It is your wilfull ignorance which is insulting and unforgivable.
And may the millions of innocents of all sides who perish in these insane wars be attached to your soul

Armchair Critic said;
And when they say they are only collecting metadata.. They're lying.

It seems to me that you just do not understand.
If content was included no one could afford the storage. NO ONE !
The amount of storage needed would be unsearchable, the time to search it
would mean the result would be well out of date.

Just think of all the videos that would be stored ! Even still photos
can have secret messages hidden in the binary bits. Put that into
individual frames, or scattered through all frames of a two hour video. !

aaarrrggghhh !

The first shots were fired much earlier, the East African embassies.
The USS Cole etc.
Saddam did have a nuclear program, not far advanced I suspect but I
saw him boast about it. Even if it was just bravo talk, with nuclear
you really just cannot take the risk.

'How is Islam different to Christianity or Judaism?'

YEBIGA

just conmpare the life of Jesus Christ and Mohammed Yebiga and you will have your answer. Christ was sinless while Mohammed was full of sin hence the difference in followers.

Yes very different when they did not have any power
But once the Christians gained any kind of power their cruelty and bloody minded ness
Surpassed the Muslims by many exponential factors - as it does to this very day

When it comes to insane mass cruelty Christians are world champions
we have converted natives into Christian s on every continent
nothing compares to our arrogance

The lasting message of Christ is to suffer unto death - the suffersing and death is glorified
For truth, for love - sure but when truth is manufactured and love is misdirected only patient glorified suffering unto death remains
Onward Christian soldiers!!

Our whole attitude to Islam will be set by what happens over the next
few years. It may be that their threat will change from a direct
military threat and terrorist campaign to a wild internal
fragmentation that will be a quite different threat.

As James Kunstler writes;

Global disintegration has advanced furthest, not surprisingly, in the
fragile band of regions most strung out on the primary commodity:oil.
The Middle East / North Africa / Central Asia war zone is
steadily combusting, and there is no sign of resolution across the
whole of it, only the promise that conflict will get worse. Saudi
Arabia was the cornerstone of that district, and the senile Saudi
leadership finds itself in peril as its military pretends to support
splintering Yemen. The other Arabian princes of other non-Saud clans
must be watching the spectacle with wonder and nausea. When Arabia
blows up, that will truly be the beginning of the end.

'Our whole attitude to Islam will be set by what happens over the next
few years'

I doubt it Bazz. If people can't see now its because they are blindfully ignorant. Just waiting for Bush to be blamed for the massacre in Kenya.

Well Runner I think that is what I meant.
It will force people to remove the blinkers and will reform the majorities
attitude to Islam. It will be seen to be bereft of realty, to be the
most ill-directed religion of all, and to be no more than a fascist religion.

Hi Bazz,

I know what you mean, but I'm beginning to suspect that the fascists are using Islam as a veneer for their atrocities, and like any book, the Koran serves that useful purpose. The various Islamist groups certainly don't have any trouble citing their scripture to suit their vile aims: the destruction of the world, to pave the way for Paradise to supersede Earth.

If anything, maybe the Islamo-fascists (and what else would you call them, James?) are exposing the fact that Islam itself is a veneer over the ancient, backward and incredibly reactionary (in 2015) traditional culture of the desert Arabs, who from the beginning, despised towns, agriculture, peasants, and anybody who was not of a similar desert culture to their own.

So, from the beginning of Islam, manual labour, work, honest toil, was despised, taxed, and generally exploited. That might explain the Islamic predilection for slavery, theft, pillage and conquest, for taxing non-Muslims, and for carefully balancing the proportion of despised workers and Islamist rulers go ensure that revenues were sufficient, without the Islamist themselves having to actually work.

Hence, the vaunting of architecture and the non-social sciences in Islamic culture, the standard approach in all totalitarian societies.

The tragedy for all Islamic societies then has been the discouragement of all actual industry, except basic food production and artisan cottage industries, and prohibition on any technological development in production, and in scientific thought.

That's my take on it all, which perceives the current 'Left' as finding itself, yet again, on the wrong side of history.

Wow, you can take the boy out of Marxism, but .......

Joe

Agreed Loudmouth,
Here is an illustration of where Islam gets itself
stuck in the Middle Ages;

Historically the Jews decided there was something wrong with eating pork.
So they banned it as not Koshure. Muhammad adopted the Jewish food
laws and wrote the ban into the Koran. Also written into the Koran is
the ban on any reinterpretation of the Koran and death for anyone who trys.

Now back around 500BC the Chinese discovered what the probem was with
eating pig meat. It was a simple case of proper animal husbandry.
This knowledge passed through the Middle East into Europe and
the raising of pigs became common.

However both the Jews and the Moslems were unable to accept this
"modern" knowledge because Jarwah and Allah had forbidden it.

This simple problem illustrates why those non moslems calling for
a renaissance in Islam are wasting their time, they are just unable
to accept that the Koran may have got something wrong.

Such blind stubborn ignorance is why they can never negotiate honestly
and why they can never accept that they are wrong.
It has become genetically imprinted into their behaviour.

Hi Bazz,
Ill accept some of the things you say such as animal husbandry in your last comment, and I will agree with you that radical Islam is a concern, but I cant go along with everything you said.

Firstly its really ignorant and narrow minded to stereotype religions.
- Ive said this before and I'll say it again.

Not all Muslims support ISIS or are religious extremists.
Not all Jews support Zionism
Not all Christians support Israel
(Only the useful idiots in all the above instances)

I could provide examples for all the above if needed, but I do accept the trend in each different example.

What I mostly wanted to say - and without any insult - is that you are most certainly wrong about collecting content and not just metadata.

You see you aren't actually arguing with me on this topic but the former Technical Director of the NSA, William Binney.

You mentioned a 2hr video, well I'll give you the 1hr interview in the hope you and others might actually learn something.
If you want to say I'm wrong then at least do yourself the justice of learning the truth for yourself.
You will find out exactly how they do it, every program they use to do it, and where they store it all as well.
(Don't forget the US spends billions everyday that it just prints, so yes someone can afford it.)

Watch this video - PLEASE watch this video, then come back and tell me once again I'm wrong.
Skip the first 4 minutes...

http://youtu.be/rsVqIRXdYDc

William Binney - Wikipedia - So you cant say he's not the real deal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intelligence_official)

Let's be honest, Christianity makes you gay
All that love your neighbor and turn the other cheek
All disciples hanging around on the beat
All very very gay - not that there is anything wrong with that
Just stating the obvious

Hmm AC, I watched that video and it was very interesting.
I noted that he said they are collecting everything. ie including content.
He did not say for how long they store it. The only clue on that that
I picked up was a comment by Alex Jones that they could go back and
collect all someones emails, or was it Binney that said that ?

That suggests an infinitely large database on 5 billion people !
Presumably the other 2 billion do not have mobile phones.
That part was referring to tracking everybodies movements.

So they are recording 5 billion peoples phone calls, location details,
emails, video down loads, pictures of the kids, holiday snaps etc etc
as well as all internet purchase transactions, browsing & downloads
skype contacts, airline bookings, electricity bill payments, bank
transfers etc etc etc, and keeping this forever !

I just do not believe it. I suspect that they discard after a period
unless flagged by one of the analysts. I noted Binney commented that
the analysts were overloaded. That I can believe even if there are 6000 of them.

However the premise that they collect everything seems to be true but
whether the five eyes have full access I don't know, it might just
be on a need to know basis. I guess this discussion will come to
someones attention since certain names and words have been mentioned.

Good morning/evening to all of you and keep up the good work and keep
at the ones that need attention and stop wasting time on the likes of us.
We are your paymasters you know !

AC

You suggest, quite correctly that

'Not all Muslims support ISIS or are religious extremists.
Not all Jews support Zionism
Not all Christians support Israel.'

So who on earth ever suggests otherwise ? Of the 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, of course only a small fraction support any extremists, and only a fraction of those support ISIS - perhaps 5 % of 5 % - as well as a proportion of the opportunist 'Left' in many Western countries. All up, barely ten million fanatical would-be killers and their hangers-on. Still, not a small army: with terrorist activities and supporters in every country in the Middle East, north Africa, and elsewhere, they are still able to do enormous damage. How to counter their ide9logical influence is a huge task, mainly for Muslims themselves, but not alone.

As for Zionism, of course not all Jews support Zionism and that's how it's been from the beginning. Not even all very devout Orthodox Jews support Zionism. For all that, Israel exists and has the right to exist. If invasion and conquest is okay for Muslims throughout their history, then they can't really complain about any other ethnic group taking back their country. And until that right to exist is recognised, then no progress can really be made on the issue of Palestinian statehood - certainly not while bigger battles are being fought. Why negotiate about anything if people want to push you into the sea ?

As for Christians, I don't know or care much what they believe, it's not only irrelevant but not really any of their business, any more than whether or not 'Hindus support Irish independence'.

So where will the next jihadist atrocity occur, and how many more innocents will be slaughtered, while you obfuscate over ISIS and find excuses for fascism ?

Joe

Joe said;
complain about any other ethnic group taking back their country.

That is the crux of the matter. The Moslems believe that any land
previously occupied by moslems is always moslem land.
That is why they cannot accept that the Jews now occupy the land from
which they were ejected first by the Romans and then later by the Arab moslems after Islam was invented.

Likewise they still claim Spain is moslem land.

Hi Bazz,

Yes I'll agree its all pretty hard to believe, at least when you first come across the info. Maybe part of the reason this is so is because they have gone to some lengths to tell us all that this isn't the case.
You got a few of the numbers wrong, Binney said surveillance is on 4bn people, that 3 thousand analysts have access to it plus the contractors that maintain the systems and that 80% (not all) phone calls in the US are being recorded.
You were also correct when you said they are overloaded, and Binney responded that because of this they aren't really effective at identifying and stopping the real threats.
As an afterthought, Its been said in other articles and interviews that all the terror threats thwarted by the FBI in the US were in fact patsies that the FBI itself set up.

Crazy world we live in.
Thanks for watching the video and being open to an alternative point of view. The point is if they lie about this then what else do they lie about?

Loudmouth, you make a good point in that even if its only a small percentage of radical thinking Islamists then this still equates to a large number of people.

The problem with the whole scenario is that the average Joe is lead to believe that this is all a home-grown uprising related the the Arab Spring, where as in truth a lot of things may be happening just as much by design (by countries, intelligence agencies, globalists, think tanks and other parties) than by accident.

I don't support ISIS, not in any way but I do think the radical Muslims themselves (fools) are just as much victims of or a product of this manipulation of these different interest groups as much as we too are in some ways manipulated into a certain hive-mind way of thinking by our mainstream media and governments positions as well.

It is a crazy world we live in and the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

No, AC, I don't think the entire Muslim world are gullible puppets on the end of a string from Langley or Georgetown or wherever: they think for themselves and for better or worse, that's not necessarily how people in the West think, and it never has been. I suggest that we should have enough respect for Muslims (and everybody else, of course) to try to grasp that their history, stories, ideologies, mindsets, God, sense of how the world works, is not necessarily the same as those of people raised on Hollywood sit-coms or NCIS or Home and Away.

I have no trouble perceiving what happens in the Middle East and North Africa as most certainly home-grown, endogenous, the unfolding of how people there see the world and how to overcome their conflicts with the West. Surely, if there is any lesson to be learnt from what is going on across that region, it is that the West is ideologically powerless to a very large extent - it does NOT dictate to the world, and most certainly does not impose its ideologies holus-bolus on that part of the world, and never has. And probably never will.

[Ordinary] Joe