@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