95 thoughts on “Monday message board”

  1. Yes indeed DR. Well spotted.

    It’s interesting what hidden thoughts pop out when enthusiasm gets the better of prudence.

    “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist;
    Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist;
    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;
    Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

    Martin Niemoller.

  2. Apologies. A sentence went adrift. It should read

    It seems to me wrong to say we should support the public funding of schools that teach hatred of core Australian values on the grounds that we fund Catholic schools.

  3. Why are the current objections to Andrew Fraser that his views are repugnant? Surely, if his views are inaccurate, the optimal approach would be to show them up, as with eminent holocaust revisionist historians? (Though they tried to attack the worthiness rather than the merits there too.)

    Regardless of the accuracy of Andrew Fraser’s reported assertions, the current approach surely shows that university authorities are not actually concerned with its merits. They have again shown themselves up for what they are.

  4. David and Katz

    If you are going to try to tar with the bigot brush get your facts straight. The sentence before the one you refer to states quote

    ‘On the other hand the Catholic church is with us and is a component part of Australian society’.

    Hidden meanings? My butt.

    By the way Katz as to your snide remark about lack of prudence. You stated above:

    “Harry Clarke and the rest of the carpet-biting clutch of cross-kissers and gun-huggers seriously propose themselves and their ilk as the appropriate people to decide what we can and what we cannot wear, how we choose to honour our gods, what is verboten in a school curriculum, what we can and cannot watch and read and what should chucked on to the Bonfires of the Vanities”.

    How do you know I am a cross kisser or a gun-hugger. I am an agnostoc and have never owned a gun. I made no reference to clothing at all or to limiting the gods you worship or to what you can read. In relation to school curricula I only indicated it was inappropriate to teach school kids that Jews are poisoning their food and I stick with that.

    Point out to me where I said any of these things. You just invented the lot. So much for prudence.

  5. “If you are going to try to tar with the bigot brush get your facts straight. The sentence before the one you refer to states quote

    ‘On the other hand the Catholic church is with us and is a component part of Australian society’. ”

    I’m not sure what the second sentence proves. The question, Harry, is this: do you consider Australian Catholics to be Australian? If you had written

    “Catholics enter into a dialogue with other Australians on moral and other issues”, I wouldn’t be asking the question.

    I am reminded of the time, I think it was 1976, when terrorists threw a bomb into a Paris synagogue. Not only were people inside killed and injured, but so too were passers-by who happened to be just outside. The French Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, was outraged. Not only, he said, did the terrorists kill Jews inside the synagogue, but also “innocent Frenchmen” outside, implying that the Jewish victims were neither innocent nor French. Barre of course denied that he meant what he implied, but the damage was done.

    Let’s take it for granted, Harry, that you consider that (Australian) Catholics are authentically Australian. (No doubt, some of your best friends, etc.) How about (Australian) Muslims? Do you consider them to be Australian?

  6. The Outrage account of the execution points out there is no evidence of the alleged assault of a thirteen year old raised above. It is not even included in the original accounts of the confession.

    Would you think it unlikely that the Iranians would manufacture such a suggestion?

  7. Harry Clarke;

    “Australians supposedly live in a multi-cultural society where no ideology/religion can be criticized—unless perhaps it is Anglo-Saxon in origin (e.g. evangelicalism) when it is fair game. Indeed the attitude seems to be: Let’s not get ‘paranoid’ and extreme by acting now on the basis of professed beliefs – instead let’s wait until violent actions have occurred and then attack those actions. There is then no case for ceasing to provide state sponsorship to promote an ideology that despises our way of life, our political and religious values.”

    I accept your profession of agnosticism. However the above paragraph extracted from your first post in this thread reads not like an even-handed acceptance of the legitimacy of all peaceful religious practices. Rather, it reads like an ex parte assertion of the prior rights of a certain kind of religiosity correctly to be called “Australian” and consonant with “our way of life, our political and religious values”.

    I’m sure, on the face of it, a reasonable reader of these words would not suspect that they issued from the mind of an agnostic.

    As DR implied above:

    Who is Australian?

    What are “our” political and religious values? Who is “them” in this parsing?

  8. Katz,

    Quick question – what was your score on the Political Compass? I typically sit slap bang middle of the libertarian right – about 5, -5. If we are not too far apart, see where you get.

  9. Katz your comment re the burka is very offensive. It does say a lot about your views about the oppression of women however.

    “I’m not sure what banning the hijab has to do with preventing oppression of women by Islam. If it were a burka it would be a different matter “
    “Really, the number of people who choose to go around in a burka is too few for any government to give a stuff about this.�

    Not sure where you are coming from Jason, are you? Is it that if only a few women are oppressed it is not a problem. Like only a few little Muslim girls have been forced into marriage, so what need is there for legislation to prevent it. Wonder if that will apply to young aboriginal girls though. I doubt it.

    Thanks Jack, and many Muslim women agree with you about what the burka is about.

    And lets stop the rubbish about the right of Australia and women’s rights.

    In 1978 Australia was elected to the Preparatory Committee for the World Conference for the Decade for Women, and was represented by Ms Kathleen Taperell, head of the Office of Women’s Affairs.

    Its delegation to the World Conference was led by the Hon. Bob Ellicott, Q.C. Minister with responsibility for women’s affairs, with Ms Beryl Beaurepaire, Convenor of the National Women’s Advisory Council, Ms Cathy Martin, M.P. and Mr Robin Ashwin, First Assistant Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs as delegates. Ms Taperell, Ms Carolyn Wiltshire and Ms Elizabeth Jensen of the Office of Women’s Affairs, Ms Ruth Pfanner of the Australian Assistance Bureau, and Ms Pera Wells from the Australian Mission to the United Nations were members of the delegation.
    The Conference adopted the World Plan for the Decade for Women.

    Australia signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1980 at the Copenhagen Conference and ratified it in 1983 following the election of the Hawke Labor Government,

    In 1982 Australia was elected to membership of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women; Ms Taperell represented Australia on the Commission between 1982 and 1984, and was elected rapporteur at the 1984 sessions.

    Australia also sent a delegation to the OECD’s High Level Conference on the Employment of Women in 1980. Ms Taperell represented Australia at the meeting of the Working Party on the Role of Women in the Economy in 1983 and 1984.

    The convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly At the special ceremony that took place at the Copenhagen Conference on 17 July 1980, 64 States signed the Convention and two States submitted their instruments of ratification. On 3 September 1981, 30 days after the twentieth member State had ratified it, the Convention entered into force

  10. I’m not sure if anyone else has noted this, but I thought I would bring to everyone’s attention the death of John Garang, leader of the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army, and the Vice President of Sudan (as a result of the peace accords signed over the last two and a half years).

    It has been reported that Garang’s helicopter crashed on route to South Sudan from Uganda. I really hope this isn’t a conspiracy, because it will spell disaster for the peace process if it is.

    Although Garang was no angel, this is a great shame on many levels. Firstly, the Southern Sudanese assembly (like the failed 1972 Addis Ababa accords, the South has gotten its own regional assembly, as well as having representatives in the national government) managed to strike an oil deal with the “White Nile” company, and a decent cut of the revenues. Whether this holds in the absence of Garang’s shrewd leadership is not immediately clear.

    Secondly, Garang was the one constant of the southern autonomist (not secessionist) cause in the past 22 years. Although numerous splits came and went, Garang managed to hold firm, and eventually reamalgamated his forces with his main tribal rivals a couple of years back. Overall, he was the undisputed figurehead, and in provided the best hope for stability in the Souths’ fractious tribal system.

    Thirdly, Garang was extremely well educated, and forged good networks abroad, as he had studied in the US, and has substantial support in the US Congress, and elsewhere. It is not clear that his replacement will have the same charisma or gravitas (literally, as he was a solid guy!).

    The worst case scenario is that Khartoum will be able to exploit divisions within the South, through the usual arm-the-tribes strategy, to effectively unwind the peace process to the point where it exists only on paper. The precedent for this was President Numeiri’s gradual dissolution of Southern autonomy in 1980-3. The result will be just as disastrous – a resumption in hostilities in the South, armed intervention from Khartoum, and bloody Nilotic inter-tribal warfare. Perhaps another million or two casualties.

    Hopefully, IGAD and other interested parties (particularly the US State Department, which needs runs on the board now as ever) will hold Khartoum and all elements within the SPLM to account, and use whatever inducements and threats are necessary to ensure Sudan does not again career down the disastrous path of the 1980s/90s.

  11. I should clarify, since I compared the Indonesian fatwa to Cardinal Ratzinger’s statements, that I’m an Australian Catholic. And on that, I endorse what Dave said.

  12. “Katz your comment re the burka is very offensive. It does say a lot about your views about the oppression of women however.”

    Excellent! It’s further proof of your inability to read for meaning.

    For the slow-witted:

    1. Some women are forced into burkas under pain of death. This is appalling. And if it happens in a country with a rule of law, the perpetrators of this outrage should be charged and convicted of menacing behaviour.

    2. Some women are subject to pressure and suasion to wear them. They have to decide for themselves how far they are willing to resist. You’re a victim only if you choose to do nothing.

    3. Some women choose the burka and many other forms of clothing that seem eccentric to me. If this weren’t so, it wouldn’t be necessary for Turkey to legislate against wearing of such clothing as part of their heavy-handed attempt to impose secularism.

    Italy (and Australia) is a nation that has tolerated a wide range of dress styles for a long time. I’m old enough to remember the bikini inspectors of Bondi who drove women off the beach for exposing too much flesh. Some feminists would agree with the motives as suppressing the commodification and objectification of women. Most, however, found the attempt to achieve this objective to be laughable.

    With its crusade against burkas, Italy is making itself ridiculous.

  13. Some women choose forms of clothing that seem eccentric. This Swedish Iranian activist, Soraya Shahabi would not agree with you and she speaks of the hijab not the burka or chador. And they are victims only if they choose to do nothing.

    “For all women, hijab (the veil) universally and unquestionably signifies subjugation and servitude. It is so everywhere and in every case. It is argued that there are some adult women in Europe who ‘choose’ to wear the hijab. This is a seemingly sound ‘legal’ argument. In real life, however, few veiled adult women ever get to taste any degree of freedom of choice in any respect of family, married and social life, be it in clothing, social life, behaviour, or even a simple thing like food. Few adult hijab-wearing women have not experienced the fear and terror of Islamic environments hanging over their lives. They are not citizens with freedom of choice but human beings fearful of jack knives, deprived of social rights, subjugated, and alienated by the atmosphere of terror existing in Islamic patriarchal environments. Under such conditions, speaking of ‘volition’ or ‘free choice’ in dress is a travesty of these concepts. Choosing the hijab as a mode of dress by adult women is no more ‘voluntary’ than, for instance, the ‘choice’ to stay in family relations that abound in terror and torture. In fact, in today’s world, the concepts of volition and choice have clear, comprehensible meanings. They can hardly be interpreted arbitrarily. However, these clear concepts are easily made obscure when it comes to the rights of women living in Islamic environments due to concessions made to religion and racism towards those born into Islamic environments…….

    In Islamic environments where even women’s breathing is measured, there are some adult hijab-wearing women who stop attempting to bring about change….They have simply surrendered in order to ‘survive’……..

    In fact, the surrendered justify their captivity and slavery and portray it as logical and tolerable in order to gain some respect in their lives. It is here that some racists take snap shots of the ‘high’ status of these victims, share in the victims’ self-deception, justify their servitude and theorize this justification through cultural relativism. They say that the hijab is the ‘free choice’ of these women. This choice is made as ‘freely’ as the choice made by a European woman to remain in an abusive relationship! Legally, this choice is as legitimate as the choice and freedom to remain in a sadistic relationship!

    Islamic violence occurring in the centre of the ‘civilised’ West is no accident. (honour killings) These atrocities are not the result of desperation, poverty or addiction. These murders are official Islamic sentences for ‘disobedient’ women. If a father, brother and husband do not kill their ‘wanton’ daughter, wife, and sister, they will be stripped of their ‘honour’. These are what they put in the heads of young innocent girls in Islamic schools and with the veil.â€?

    Turkey’s legislation is the legacy of Ataturk
    His view of the veil
    “Women cover their faces. This habit, which caused particular discomfort in the heat of summer, was at least to some extent, the result of male selfishness, of scruples for purity. “but, friends, our women have minds too� So teach them morals and then stop being selfish. “Let them show their faces to the world, and see it with their eyes.�

    Then in Turkey it had been largely a middle class custom. (Andrew Mango)

    Sadly Australia is experiencing rickets again thanks to the covering of women.

  14. “Some women choose forms of clothing that seem eccentric. This Swedish Iranian activist, Soraya Shahabi would not agree with you and she speaks of the hijab not the burka or chador. And they are victims only if they choose to do nothing.

    “For all women, hijab (the veil) universally and unquestionably signifies subjugation and servitude. It is so everywhere and in every case. It is argued that there are some adult women in Europe who ‘choose’ to wear the hijab. This is a seemingly sound ‘legal’ argument. In real life, however, few veiled adult women ever get to taste any degree of freedom of choice in any respect of family, married and social life, be it in clothing, social life, behaviour, or even a simple thing like food. Few adult hijab-wearing women have not experienced the fear and terror of Islamic environments hanging over their lives. They are not citizens with freedom of choice but human beings fearful of jack knives, deprived of social rights, subjugated, and alienated by the atmosphere of terror existing in Islamic patriarchal environments. ”

    This is an absurd argument on the face of it.

    Quite evidently, most Islamic women in Europe don’t wear the burka. In her quest for establishing the victimhood of ALL Islamic women, Soraya Shahabi has done violence to easily ascertainable facts.

  15. 1. Newspeak alert!

    According to the Bush Clique, the “Global War on Terror” is now the ”global struggle against violent extremism”.

    Everyone has been ordered to rip the offending pages out of their Newspeak Dictionary and thrust them down the memory tube.

    And you just can’t help bad timing

    This very morning in the “Age”, Ted Lapkin, director of policy analysis at the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, and reliable mouthpiece for COW agitprop, wrote:

    “And make no mistake about it: this is a war.”

    Can anyone pick the deliberate error?

    Reminds me of John Gorton defending the Nam War on the very day LBJ was looking for the exit door, but neglected to tell his Aussie Mates.

    2. Again in the “Age” today, Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary is quoted as saying that the British presence in Iraq is provoking the upsurge in insurgency and that the British should withdraw.

    Does anyone remember the British asking the Australians to take the place of the British around Basra? Seems like the British wanted Australia both to hold the exit door open for tham and to hold the baby after they did a flit.

    What are friends for?

  17. Jeez, Observa, you could be onto something here.

    Maybe you should send Lapkin’s article to the White House. It may make them change their mind again about the fact that they are REALLY fighting a war.

    For your convenience, here’s the url:

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/

  18. “According to the Bush Clique, the “Global War on Terrorâ€? is now the ‘’global struggle against violent extremism’’.”

    In case you haven’t heard Katz, that’s because we are not afraid. Alert and aware of our real enemies meboy, alert and aware!

  19. Glad to hear it.

    Keep the home fires burning, turn that bloody light out, and most of all, DON’T PANIC! DON’T PANIC! DON’T PANIC.

  21. The Age is to be condemned for allowing a representative of the Jewish community to pontificate on the problems of the IslamicCommunity What help would that be..?.Israel and its defenders here, are a major part of the problem,and until its agressive leaders(and lets’s not forget that Sharon was implicated in the Shabra-Shatila massacres in Beirut in 1982)are put in their place and told to get out of the Occupied territories,the real problems of the Middle East will never be solved. Israel ,and their powerful lobby in the USA is part of the reason the USA now find itself in such trouble. Does history offer any other example I wonder,of a great power endangering itself,for a small cleint state,and doing it for so long.? On ABC -TV last night an American expert(former CIA official)says the only way for the US to end these debacles is to disengage from the Midddle East…..a reasonable suggestion,but would Israel lobbyists in The USA ever allow that. I think not !

  22. How about what she said was that some women in Europe wear the hijab and the argument put is that they “choose� to and she does not agree, rather than most Islamic women in Europe wear the hajib (hajib not burka, is there a different understanding of terms here)

    Perhaps this BBC item would persuade you as to the purpose of the hajib and who it is that decides that women should wear it and why.
    BBC Afghanistan.
    Fazl Hadi Shinwari is Afghanistan’s Chief Justice, head of the Supreme Court and a top Islamic scholar.
    He wants Tolo TV banned, objecting in particular to women appearing unveiled and Asian music videos showing women dancing in outfits he considers immodest.
    “Some of Tolo TV’s programmes violate Islamic principles,” he said. “We’ve condemned that and asked the authorities to stop them. Western women walk about half-naked. But in Islam we say women should be covered, apart from the face.”

    I was narked also Observa by Katz’s “They have to decide for themselves how far they are willing to resist. You’re a victim only if you choose to do nothing.â€? To be a victim is a choice? Victim still means in my dictionary, person that suffers harm from another.

    That strong empathy for my fellow women and a lurking fear of the consequences possible from the acceptance of such practices against them and as many Muslim women (those who are allowed a voice) also object to is attention seeking is wierd. And vicious?

    Thus every one who comments here is merely attention seeking surely?

    It would seem from an article in today’s Australian that the UK has some concerns that it has a ticking bomb (another round of bombings anticipated) and that they have made the decision to use intelligence obtained from “torture�. Senior Police Officer “asking all of our international allies for help, even if the standards of their interrogation methods are not as scrupulous as our own. Needs must I fear.�

    If Amnesty International did say in response that Britain should not be using this kind of intelligence the self appointed moral arbiters of the west are truly mad.

    Technorati says one blog is created every minute with the number of blogs doubling every five months

  23. Bemusing how left multicultural liberal progressives accuse right conservatives of being slow to come up to pace with their values (Sex Discrimination Acts?) and then when the latter presumably, grudgingly accede to their 20th century values, the former get downright ornery and go and cuddle up to to some good old fashioned 7th century ones. If you dare to suggest that our spiritual leaders should at least be able to speak our lingo, you’re some racist trog. Shaky sheikhs and shufti muftis are now the true Australians, just like the Habibs and Hickss. If you’re not in a state of constant revolution against the state, your status is not that of a true Australian. Poor old Castro and Kim fans must be feeling on the outer at dinner parties that matter these days. Everyone’s falling over themselves to get an incomprehensible Imam. It’s all about understanding the grievances of the unhappy strappers nowadays. A bit like 1970s movies, where you come away thoroughly depressed and clueless and all rabbit on about what a deep and meaningful experience it all was.

    The beauty of all this for neocons is we don’t have to define what being Australian is all about. Just give the eternally restless among us enough rope and they’ll hang the noose around the neck of of what being un-Australian is for the masses. Mad Marxists, Dopey Dreamtimers and now it’s Crescent Moonies. What’ll they cook up next as a recipe for social disaster? Australians are asking that very question now and concluding enough is enough. They’re not alone in the West.

  24. At a Roman sarcifice the animal to be sacrificed was called a victima.

    This is the original meaning of the word victim … one who is a passive participant in a sacrifice, one who does not fight back.

    If you fight back and lose, you aren’t a victim, you’re a loser.

    Victimhood inheres in the mental frame of the sacrificed being. Thus, Napoleon lost the Napoleonic wars. He wasn’t a victim of the wars.

  26. “The beauty of all this for neocons is we don’t have to define what being Australian is all about.”

    So we are a neocon now are we Observa?

    I presume you know what a neocon is and go on to make the following observation:

    If you are indeed a neocon, you must be one of the few not in captivity. Because being a neocon is sooooo, shall we say, 2003. Ever since their big show bombed in Baghdad, getting IEDs rather than the hoped for flowers and chocolates, the Bush clique has pushed them out of the White House.

    I’m reliably informed that several leading neocons are as we speak being spiritually readjusted at the East Jesus, Oklahoma, Pentacostal School of Astral Lingusitics.

    Never again will they be allowed anywhere near the levers of power until they have proven to a panel of leading ecclesiastical eschatologists that they will be counted among the first rank of those raptured up to heaven on That Great Day.

    In any case, it is probable that VP Cheney allowed the neocons to hang around the White House for as long as they assisted him and Halliburton pull off a good old fashioned swindle of the American taxpayers.

    Is your Necessay Idiot registration still current Observa?

  27. Brian, another view from an ex CIA
    http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20041101.middleeast.sageman.understandingterrornetworks.html
    Marc Sageman, a FPRI Senior Fellow, was a CIA case officer in Afghanistan between 1987–89 and is now a forensic psychiatrist.

    eg
    “This social movement was dependent on volunteers, and there are huge gaps worldwide on those volunteers. One of the gaps is the United States. This is one of two reasons we have not had a major terrorist operation in the United States since 9/11. The other is that we are far more vigilant. We have actually made coming to the U.S. far more difficult for potential terrorists since 2001.”
    and
    “So in 2004, Al Qaeda has new leadership. In a way today’s operatives are far more aggressive and senseless than the earlier leaders. The whole network is held together by the vision of creating the Salafi state. A fuzzy, idea-based network really requires an idea-based solution. The war of ideas is very important and this is one we haven’t really started to engage yet.”

    Seems to me to be a different perspective to Michael Scheuer.
    His views are spoken of in the current New Scientist.

  28. Well I thought I was a neocon Katz since I didn’t vote for Mark Lithium and support his troops home by Xmas stance and I certainly didn’t vote for John Kerry. As well I don’t see the happy clappers as the greatest threat to civilisation since Atilla the Hun, since I work with a couple of them. True they are straight married family types like me, but there is always the possibility that they might be tempted away from the dark side if their kids can escape their mind control and progress to being druggies or single mums. They might see the true light then. In the meantime this modest capitalist can only envy not being able to expolit his workers to build buildings as fast as they can raise the odd barn. Of course that will all change when I get the power to slash wages and sack at will. I gather that’s the really sexy neo part of being a cutting edge conservative these days.

  29. “I presume you know what a neocon is ”

    So I guess the jury is still out on that one, Observa.

    Maybe you’ld like to look up Leo Strauss and check his ideas about this and that against your own.

    Two may be particular interest to you:

    1. Strauss’s attitude to religion.

    2. Strauss’s idea of the relationship between elites and the ignorant masses.

  30. The beauty of all this for neocons is we don’t have to define what being Australian is all about. Just give the eternally restless among us enough rope and they’ll hang the noose around the neck of of what being un-Australian is for the masses. Mad Marxists, Dopey Dreamtimers and now it’s Crescent Moonies. What’ll they cook up next as a recipe for social disaster? Australians are asking that very question now and concluding enough is enough. They’re not alone in the West.

    For some reason, observa, you seem to have omitted “Ignorant Right Wing Loonies” from your list.

  31. Observa: do you believe that the US must remain the dominant world power for all time and that it has a moral duty to destroy any country which could threaten that dominance, even if the country has no current hostile intent towards the US?

    That’s the basic premise of the Partnership for a New American Century, the organisation which launched the neo-con movement.

  32. Observa,
    Could you share with the rest of us hopeless, self hating, treachorous, anti feminist, anti male, sheikh loving etc; people, your definition of what ‘being Australian’ is all about? This would be a useful service, because then we could go and measure up every body against the definition, and elimiante oops, I mean deport, those who don’t measue up! That would fix it up, and we could stop having debates about who make the best immigrants, and whether adult women in a liberal and secular democracy should have the right to choose to wear a burka or a hijab, even if we wouldn’t want to do so ourselves. C’mon. I want to read what Australia is all about, from an expert!

  33. “Observa: do you believe that the US must remain the dominant world power for all time and that it has a moral duty to destroy any country which could threaten that dominance, even if the country has no current hostile intent towards the US?”

    Ian, perhaps I could explain it to you more clearly after you answer your same question about the following situations:
    1. Austn intervention in ET and the Solomons
    2. US intervention with Saddam in Kuwait
    3. Austn troops to Afghanistan (cf Russia if you like?)
    4. US intervention in Europe in WW2(You might add ours here too)
    5. US intervention in Kosovo
    6. Aust in Korea
    7. Aust in Vietnam

    I have a feeling that by the time you untangle that moral mess Ian you won’t need me to further tie you up in knots. Let’s just say that times change and now the West is freed from the unpleasant expediency of the Cold War, it has a clearer focus on where the next big threat to world peace lies and consequently its obligations in that regard. Naturally enough it’s hard to get any gathering of like minds to agree on threats, goal setting and priorities from time to time and of course resources are always a problem.(try our parliaments) In the end, leadership and resolve are paramount and until I see any better leadership come along, I’ll stick with the Anglos on this and their beacons of light. After all, setbacks and diversions aside, they have got the scalps of fascism and communism to their moral credit here, but I’d concede it’s not something you want to spend in a profligate or wanton manner.

  34. observa – US in Europe in WW2 is easy – Germany declared war on the US after Pearl Harbour in support of Japan, as their treaty demanded. No question, no moral problems. The others may give some of the posters here a problem, however.

  35. Well, Russian communism has the scalp of German fascism, not the ‘Anglos’. Moreover, in almost every instance the Anglos decide to confront communism they do it by propping up some sort of a fascist structure, i.e. Greece, Chile (and most of Latin America), Korea, Taiwan, etc. The Anglos love fascism, it’s good for business.

  37. 6. Aust in Korea was a United Nations sponsored intervention.

    7. Aust in Vietnam. Now, here’s a fine example of successful US intervention in the world! And to think that Australia’s contribution to this triumph was to give the US a pep talk about the Domino Theory when Johnson was wobbling a bit about going all the way with himself. (Observa mentioned The War once. And he didn’t get away with it.)

  38. So basically Observa, your answer is “yes”.

    In that case, I’m quite happy to accept that you are a neo-con.

    I’ve got a rotting albatross carcass called “Iraq” here, just slip the cord around your neck, will you?

    For the record, I approved of Australian/US intervention in the first six instances. I disapproved of Australia intervention in Vietnam for the same reasons I disapprove of the Iraq war – they were both stupid, poorly planned, idelogically-driven wars which weakened the US and the western alliance.

  39. Christain Science Monitor has a test for those who want to know if they fit the neocon mold and haven’t seen it.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoconQuiz.html

    They also provide a brief description of neocons eg
    What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?

    “Liberals first applied the “neo” prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d’etre during the 1970s and 80s.

    Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They’ve always been “Reagan” Republicans”

    The Monitor also provides a list of neocon journals, presumably all dishonest war mongers.

    I did it some time ago and my memory is that I am a neocon. I would have preferred to be a realist. Other alternatives, isolationist and liberal.

    I have always understood that the feminist movement came from left activist women who were sick of being relegated to making the coffee.

  40. Katz, the UN didn’t precisely sponsor the Korean Police Action – the vote got through on the letter, not the spirit, since the USSR was boycotting the UN at the time and didn’t get back in time to do a veto.

    What I’m getting at is that if you want to draw on a moral point, you can’t, but if you only want to point out that it was all in due form, certainly it was.

  41. So Observa, satisfy my curiosity further: if the country which represented a future potential challenge to US supremacy was Australia would you still support military action to prevent that challenge arising?

  42. Ros,
    Looks like I am a realist – about right. A few of the points are a bit difficult, though.

    PML – The UN did sponsor it, it was right to go in and it was just a pity that the Chinese intervened – MacArthur was wrong to say they would ‘go on to Beijing’. It resulted in the suffering of the North Korean people ever since. The fact that the Russians did not veto, but would have if they could have, is just another reason why the veto structure is wrong in principal and the UN should therefore be ignored in deciding on the rightness or wrongness of any action.

  43. “So Observa, satisfy my curiosity further: if the country which represented a future potential challenge to US supremacy was Australia would you still support military action to prevent that challenge arising?”

    Why would I or any US citizen care if there were 2,3,4,5…. countries that share our values, are of equal or greater size, and can shoulder the COW burdens of failed states and tyrannous regimes, that are a joint threat to our security and well being? Fabulous if the whole bloody world consisted of Australias and USs as far as I’m concerned. Then the Bushs, Blairs and Howards would have a lot more time for golf and cricket, after they’d mopped up the results of liberal progressive social policies with all the loot they saved from our redundant militaries. Forget the hypotheticals here and go ask Britons how they coped with the passing of their baton to the US?

    Err, this cross hair on the political compass is apparently a realist on the neocon quiz.

    It seems stoptherubbish needs to get stuck into this fascist, discriminatory, racist, neocon here
    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16159748-29277,00.html

    Inch by inch, nails scraping and clawing their ‘multiculturalism at any cost’ religious fervoured ground, the crescent moonies are being dragged toward the light of day. 7th century Islam is an excellent deprogramming tool it seems.

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