Archive for the 'Patrick Muldowney' Category

Phase 3!

The next big Ukraine push back is still to unfold and could still be weeks away but I don’t think so. I think this is now days. But events are unfolding that have caused me to pause and rethink what might be delaying this ‘long awaited’ counter offensive.

How devastated Russian troop morale is, and how ‘evident’ it is, could be the big issue that further delays the big push. Shaping operations for the Russian morale structure is also important and delay may save a lot of lives.

We are about to see that it is the masses that make war, and the mass of Russian soldiers just don’t want to be killed or injured! They will again donate large quantities of heavy ‘stuff’ when they turn and run from the swift moving hard hitting Armed Forces of Ukraine. (AFU)

Anyway, my money is still on almost ‘now’ and I expect to see quite a bit of ‘Market Gardening’ activity about to get underway (with naturally the appropriate lessons drawn from that historical over stretch). BTW I always thought Montgomery has been over rated but as usual I digress.

What is going on in Bakhmut is now doing huge damage to the Russian war fighting spirit. It amounts to a serious point of infection and could become the issue that provokes a more wide spread surrendering from these pitiful trenches. Russian troops surrendering in very large numbers is quite obviously the best hope of solid progress when this push finally does get fully underway.

It’s a realistic hope that a mass bolt from the front lines (in any car that’s to hand and that is how a rout will begin till the last ones grab the nearest bike) will smash what is left of Russian morale. The Russian high command would be terrified of the example set last time, particularly in the north and this time the AFU come calling they are going to be far more deadly than last year. The coming hard fought and costly victories will smash the Russians.

There will undoubtedly be some small areas where a rout quickly sets in and when it does the exploitation of those weak points will cause this long front line and the vast in depth defensive networks to then turn into a Russian Maginot Line.
These defensive structures are in essence all a delusion. All that effort will have produced a replay of the attack through the ‘impenetrable’ Arden.

Those that remain on the long front line will either retreat in good order or they will do so in bad order. But retreat they will, and it is only a question of how far and how fast before they get caught up with! Then they won’t be defending troops holding any sort of advantage but rather a series of badly organized columns running out of everything that had made them an invading army. Most that make it back to Crimea and the northern retreat will do so without any heavy weapons systems or any supplies at all. The Italians being routed in Nth Africa is the ‘look’ that I am fully expecting but there are plenty of other examples. Everything calls for momentum! The big MO is everything for the next 3 months.

IMV the rate of artillery loss by the Russians is going to become the most important of the various KPI’s and this is because the AFU out-range and are far more accurate (and that is a devastating combination) and the Russians are an army built on the power of their artillery. Break the artillery and you break the back of this beast. Once a couple of thousand fighting vehicles and their supporting infantry etc are across the mighty Dnipro river the attacks will be swift and significant territory liberated.

I would take a bet that Crimea will be in range of artillery and HIMAR’s etc by the end of June! Even if it’s not there are now Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that will be able to destroy what has to be destroyed in that most crucial of all target territories!

I think the lack of F16’s to deal with the Glide bomb menace is very unfortunate but other Ground based air defense -GBAD- will have to do for now, but at least some western political leaders NOW get it! Well done by the British!

The momentum that the breakthroughs (my guess is there will be ‘1’ across the river and ‘2’ from the Zaporozhye front) will generate, make this phase of this bloody war predictable and so Putin could 3 or 4 months down the track face a revolt and/or he could do something unexpected. But whatever he does now he is a dead man walking! How many further deaths he brings is the only issue. He is slowly turning into a paper tiger and this process will pick up speed.

The Russian defense trenches do not stand a chance. We can hope and even expect thousands of prisoners to be swept up and a vast liberation in the next 100 days and it will soon be time to try to sink every ship in the Sevastopol Harbor!

I think the process of this war in however many phases it takes, will change the way the world works for the rest of this century but that is another story for those that follow us, it is certain to change the next twenty years!

Glory to the Ukrainians. Onward to phase 4 and the liberation of Crimea! But first…

12-6-3

12-6-3 = Innocent

There’s a kids book called ‘Where’s Wally’ and he’s always there right on the page dressed in red and white stripes but you have to look hard to find him. Choir singers are dressed in red and white too. So where are the Wallies in our story? They can’t be in the sacristy nor at the doorway. Nor standing around in the corridor. Where are they? That’s the problem right there. There is nowhere for them to be that can position them to later get them into the sacristy for the second 6 minutes and I will explain why below.

When we review what’s been said in the comments and some of mine are article length over the 5 Pell related posts – 5/ Andrews; 4/ The Stunt!; 3/ Pell out May!; 2/ Pell 2; 1/ Pell verdict – manifestly unsafe.; it’s apparent that Steve has literally dragged himself to understand that the whole Pell case rested on a maximum 5-6 minute total window of potential opportunity as the END 5-6 of the first 12 minute ‘after’ mass period. It could not happen by definition in the first 6 minutes after as people were either on route or it (the Sacristy) was occupied by the others who got there first.

Over these several months (and only after a chimp like struggle with the numbers) Steve has dragged his brain past the first 6 minutes to arrive at a full understanding that the external procession concluded in the sacristy with men putting away stuff they were carrying! ‘The altar servers included the crucifer carrying the cross at the head of the procession, the censer bearer with incense, and other acolytes assisting the service.’ ‘The crucifer left the cross on display in the priests’ sacristy and protocol demanded those who followed him bow to it before starting their duties in the room.’ and beyond!

For Steve, men in vestments are now in the room bowing to that cross and putting away their stuff and chatting etc., and red dress, white top wearing choir boys are not there YET, nor are they standing at the door ready to go in when the room becomes empty! Steve is not prepared to say where those 2 highly visible truant boys are but he fully accepts they are NOT in the ‘priest’s sacristy’ at the end of the first 6 minutes!

The altar servers ‘would then assist the sacristan [to] remove other liturgical objects from the cathedral sanctuary to the sacristy, clean them, and store them properly there. The objects included the wine chalice and cruets, bread patens, altar cloths, water jugs and flowers.’ And they would do so in some sort of order and priority and with some sort of hierarchy with the sacristan as the main man supervising. To make sure ‘the hive of activity’ of the sacristy functions properly is a big part of his job. People are always requiring his instruction and guidance on what’s to be done. This is for him all a very well rehearsed ‘theatrical production’ that has, I will now TOTALLY speculate, been going on essentially unchanged for decades. My guess will eventually be given substance or refuted when the Catholics involved start publicly speaking up next month. But modified activities or not, the work space has to end up totally clear and ready for the next mass when the sacristan locks up and goes for his Sunday lunch that he is wanting to do asap.

As a rule people don’t make extra work for themselves and that’s most clearly seen in routine procedures. After mass, our sacristan -Potter- was a busy man; first unlocking the door for the returning procession and (say) putting the lectionary where it belongs. He’s not going to make a trip to the sacristy without carrying something. That’s a simple work process. This man wants to get to his lunch just like the rest of us. A cathedral sacristan is sort of a ‘boss of the altar servers’. https://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Sacristan

The sacristan might be the first to turn on his heel and go get something else from the sanctuary but he also may very well not be the first or even one of the altar servers to return to the sanctuary at all. He might leave that for the juniors and stay where he is directing the ‘hive’. The first one to leave to get the rest of the ‘sacred’ stuff could well be the crucifer. He could just turn on his heel and go get the wine chalice and cruets if he did so then 3 minutes later he could be back and cleaning them!

The words ‘might’ and ‘could’ etc., are all very carefully chosen as they are only speculative because we don’t know who left first, all we know is someone did. To even begin to believe the J story we are compelled to empty the room! Not one person can be left inside! We then have to deal with that people traffic in the corridor to let 2 out of bounds boys back against the flow through to the sacristy and all the while time ticks away.

Only 1 man remaining or promptly returning with his sacred object to clean and put away would destroy J’s story. Having split the remaining theoretical 6 minutes and reduced the time to 3 nothing could be left to work with as a ‘crime’ can’t happen without opportunity.

So even though they ALL came IN and put away their burdens they don’t all turn on their heels like grenadier guards and all piss off back to the sanctuary. For the story to be true they had to do so BUT still reality dictates that the whole gang of about 12 of them are now going down the common corridor.

plan plan

No boys could come back the other way as the scandalous prosecutors know. The egress of one set prevents the ingress of the other. The speed that they theoretically ALL leave the room is of little importance because it does not alter the problem of where they are going through for going to. The ‘where is wally’ problem remains for the corridor and it’s one of the fatal problems for J’s story.

These dozen men can’t all have decided to do nothing and go and divest in the utility room. That was how the ‘stunt’ achieved this miracle, or sought to, but the prosecutor failed and had to retract that fabrication because it was entirely unsupported by any evidence. Only some of these men have some very small but routine tasks to get on with, as do some other people coming the other way. People in the cathedral have some money to hand on to the sacristan for placing in the vault in the north east corner of the sacristy. They are on their way! But where are the con-celebrant priests in all this -for them- pointless movement? They are in reality back in that sacristy divesting and they do so in a ritualistic manner. They are older men taking their time and chatting quietly and perhaps waiting around to have a word with their Archbishop when he gets there with his MC Portelli a man who is tasked with staying with the Archbishop.

I’ve been an atheist for a very long time and have a general loathing for any church activity so I avoid nearly all of them. But how these men have disappeared is beyond any reasonable understanding because they are in no way needed for getting a few things from the altar and it is not the practice for the priests to attend to these very menial tasks. In a normal church the priest having ended the mass would have left the ‘stage’ and be in the sacristy ready to divest but also dealing with the sacred stuff that the altar servers would get from the altar as instructed. Often in my childhood at a parish church, one of the older nuns would fill the role of sacristan as I recall. Fine linen altar cloths were taken to be cleaned and ironed etc.. That’s about the best I can remember from the late 1960s. My point is that once a mass is over the clean up time is short and people want to get away asap. Just the size of the St Patrick’s priest’s sacristy and a dozen men milling about within indicates what the problem is. Priest’s have more ‘kit’ to get off and put away.

The altar servers only have a cassock and top and they have their small items to get from the sanctuary, they may as well turn on their heel and go get them. These servers eventually when the jobs are done get dismissed by the sacristan and go to the utility room to divest. There is no need for them in the utility room till then except if they have some flowers to take from the sanctuary. There is no room for them in the crowded sacristy where Potter, the priests and others have business as does the archbishop and his ‘shadow’ Portelli, because of the art works being restored leaving him no room of his own during that time. These were temporary arrangements so the now common space was a little crowded. But like any theater event this off stage room was a place to discuss the performance and to talk of all manner of work issues.

All that Steve is clear on is that offending by the fully robed, yet out of place and context offender is to unfold in the next 6 minutes if it’s to happen at all. Yet there are no clear 6 minutes! The priest sacristy is well known to be a ‘hive of activity’ at this precise time when the procession has returned. The entire catholic clergy, laity and community that is closely associated with the Cathedral has always understood this. That is why absolutely nobody that is connected to St Patrick’s Cathedral is having a bar of this! They are ALL silent for fear of somehow harming Pell’s legal matters and they are following ‘legal’ advice and ‘orders’ and remaining mute and dignified. But I say they are just waiting to tell the world -when Pell is free- what’s the reality of what they do in that sacristy. No clear time exists for such an idiot assault so J either hallucinated or made it up. Either way it never happened simply because it couldn’t happen.

Frankly this explanation of workplace practices must be fully told or the anti-catholic fruitcakes and pseudo-lefts will have their way and Pell and the Catholics will have doubt still hang over their heads. When the dozen or so men involved get their story out, there will be no doubt in the mind of fair observers that J is not a victim. Pell is the victim in this case.

Steve says it’s virtually impossible for us humble researchers to know 23 odd years later what the next 6 minutes brought forth. But that’s not true. Deduction works. It just seems like we can’t know perhaps because a ‘reconstruction’ is not yet on film! People are wise after the event. Why wasn’t that done?

On the one story catholic clergy business as usual, on the other 2 boys are raped and get back to singing! The later story seems to be -for the baying mob- to be catholic clergy business as usual anyway! 2 boys found swilling wine; a few possible uninterrupted minutes in an open door room ‘may’ be available; several other men are supposed to be like Pell himself coming into the room to do the well known hive of activity work and divest within, and YET away we go if you’re George Pell! Bullshit heaped on bullshit heaped on yet more bullshit. Nevertheless Pell, is in Jail so our legal system is in la la land and consequently Australians need a credible inquiry to look into this. It’s more than a legal error and more than a scandal.

Steve is not like the Broken Rites gang because he wants Pell released by the coming High Court decision but just not totally exonerated. The Broken Rites mob want Pell left right where he is, and that is locked up in a jail. They can’t be persuaded by Steve that this is an unsafe verdict. Steve still thinks it IS a possible crime but the case just not beyond a reasonable doubt. I have dragged him that far and no further. The verdict is in Steve’s view after many months of guided thinking now for him ‘manifestly unsafe’, the title of my first post.

Readers are invited to review that post to note how far I have now dragged myself as well as Steve.

But less than a month from the scheduled High Court hearing and for Steve, Pell and his church ought then be happy to just live with a public doubt because the case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. According to Steve, that is the best that can be done for ‘big George’ Pell, who has, Steve is quite keen to tell us, other child sexual abuse issues to deal with anyway; so let’s not forget that!

Well Steve will get his wish. The High Court will only acquit Pell and that will do Steve just fine. That outcome is a great consolation prize for Viv Waller and the Broken Rites cabal. They don’t want any further wind back in this case! But they can’t stop us atheist democrats and the Catholics fighting back still further and consequently revealing what actually goes on in the next 6 minutes usually at least.

The Catholic silence will end when Pell is released. Then people will have their say and it will be filmed as well. The procession is the key to the case. Where are the wallies?

SANO and Waller etc., have managed to get a ridiculous conviction from presenting a fantasy world which will, after Pell is released be right out in public view to be compared to what actually happens and why it happens. The ‘mystery’ of the priests’ sacristy and the actual work of the sacristan and his altar server helpers plus the role of all the others in the procession will be revealed. The shameless of course just won’t care. They can be shown up or be ignored but they can’t be shamed for behaving like an hysterical lynch mob. Shame will only be felt by all who have just honestly failed to think this case through. Only the fundamentally honest can be shamed!

Whatever were a huge string of people thinking to have let this nonsensical imagined collection of disjointed near impossibilities from a disturbed mind end up in a trial and finish in a conviction and a lost appeal? How did this rot end in a last ditch chance? The whim of the High Court choosing to take this case is on display and the answer for many is that ‘he was rich and powerful’ what do you expect? Well that’s just not so; this case is right up there with Lindy Chamberlain as an utter travesty and so for all our sake’s George Pell must be acquitted.

In the real world 6 minutes is NOT what we are stuck with for our 2 alternatives. First we have to get those men back out of that room then we have to get 2 boys in there and all the while the seconds tick by and 1 minute is gone from the end in the rush to get back to the choir rehearsal room! How quick can men be got out and boys in? Not to worry how quick can the 1st of the acolytes get back? About 3 minutes! Out and back with a missal or a chalice. Right in the middle of the assault! That destroys the whole case.

Just recall the main aspects of this incredible case. J was a 13yr old boy soprano all those years ago and with George Pell all over the media about child abuse issues for years, J says as a 32yr old that (has had mental issues to deal with) that he and R, another soprano now dead, once left the front section of the procession when it had arrived at the rear gate. He says they made their way past dozens of adults and other boys unnoticed and 2 decades later un-recalled by the others. They made their way around and back into the Cathedral to eventually, because of a physical traffic jam -and after hiding and waiting somewhere unexplained- enter the priest’s sacristy. There they engaged in a spot of poking about. 2 unnoticed, red-dress-wearing, utterly out of place and context sopranos – when they are supposed to be at 1 of 2 possible after mass Christmas season choir practice sessions. Looking in cupboards they found wine and quickly started swilling it from the bottle. Then they were suddenly discovered by the arch demon himself, who asked what they were doing; told them off and then set upon them in an astounding manner for a man who knows this room is about to become a hive of activity. When all the vile acts were over J and the other abused singer R retraced their miscreant steps. They took the long way round. They got through what was a normally locked gate and then a normally locked rear door and there is just no explanation for not choosing the simpler alternative route either.

Though now 10 minutes late for rehearsal they entered the rehearsal room. No other member of the Choir boy or man noticed the 2 late tear-stained, recently traumatised 13yr olds entering the practice room. They were not missed -their 2 empty spots in the choir unnoticed- not just their late entry and lastly they obviously sung like larks as usual because no one recalled any bad singing! That is the madness that our legal system has reduced to! I have no doubt at all that other men were occupying that room. Priests, returning altar servers perhaps even money collectors. And let us not forget a sacristan in normal control of his sacristy. We know one version is reality the other a ‘lie’ i.e., a false memory at best.

These 2 boys were exceptional in several respects; in being keen to go back into the Cathedral where they had only just been bored 13yr olds, at mass 5 minutes ago at the start of their procession. These highly visible out of place and context boys HAVE somehow to know they can’t be there in the sacristy just then and then they also have to know when they CAN go in. But how do they know it’s empty? Steve has conceded that others are already there and about to walk out on cue. But now that we have the boys back inside the Cathedral at the 6 minute mark we have to also place them within entering distance of the priests sacristy YET they must not be visible to those walking out of it or the game would be up. Somehow they must see but not be seen as all those inside make their way out! That is about a dozen men; 6 in front and 6 in the rear of the procession. If there were only 4 in each tranche that would still be 8 men that have to come back out after putting stuff away. A High Mass with as few as 8? That would be a notable event. Then there are the side issues such as when would the money turn up for the safe? What is the sacristan’s role in opening the safe and putting in the money? What were the money movers waiting for? We can follow the money as well. Every Sunday the plate gets passed around and nobody is compelled to put in anything but quite a few do as I recall from ½ a century ago. Perhaps the money people go off to the utility room for a counting house. I don’t know but the involved Catholics can tell us! What of the staff that are going back to the Knox building after Sunday Mass; they pass down that single corridor as well!

Only 1 adult has to block entry to that sacristy. Only 1 of these obviously somewhere about the place people have to actually be where they are supposed to be and the whole story becomes an obvious mad romp.

We are all left wondering what happened to the con-celebrant priests? They have disappeared or been turned into altar servers off to the sanctuary or the utility room! Why? Well we don’t know other than to get rid of a problem that it is now clear never goes away! The conclusion is Pell is innocent and an inquiry needed.

MENA

An opportunity for a full discussion of the current state of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) swamp!
What do leftists now think is going on.

Tom Griffiths
February 7 at 8:31 PM ·

As some may gather I keep an eye on events in Turkey courtesy of the Turkish Bianet news service and my friendship with one of the initial organizers in the mid 90’s of Saturday Mothers, a weekly gathering of mothers, wives and friends of the ‘disappeared’. My friends husband was one of the ‘disappeared’ and she came very close to ‘disappearing’ herself. Their spirit of resistance and determination, then, now and in the years in between, is beyond admirable – they are inspiring, which is why the Turkish regime is subjecting them to new rounds of intimidation and harassment. I’d like to ask people to subscribe to Bianet and keep a supportive eye on the Saturday Mothers and all others resisting the dead weight of the regime.

Yoleri briefly detained

Yoleri briefly detained

Susan Geraghty How can we help??

Tom Griffiths Good question Susan. Otherwise known as – how can we assist/support the Turkish people to give Erdogan the flick? From here not a lot. However messages of support/solidarity is something we can do – to Bianet (I’d assume they’d pass them on) and I can pass them on through my friend in Turkey. You’ve got me thinking…

Ruth Frances It’s very distressing to see what this man is doing to Turkey .

Patrick Muldowney I presume you are not objecting to the Turkish government providing shelter for the almost 8 million Syrians that it is now involved in doing. So I guess this is just a pro PKK post and not pro Assad and Putin. as if the war with the PKK has not been going for many decades and was under Erdogan making progress via the democratic solution to the Kurdish issues that brought on war in the first instance.

Patrick Muldowney I would say that Erdogan is currently the most important political leader by a long shot and so I think we ought to talk about this issue and see what we actually think. Syria is very confusing and even Arthur and Barry and Dave completely misunderstood what Putin was up to back in 2015. They don’t talk about it these days but believe me I still do and it is even more complicated than it was when I first started to investigate it back in 2011. As you know No investigation no right to speak and I have earned that right.

Patrick Muldowney
I have opened a thread at http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/ called MENA if that would help people keep track of where any investigation takes us. I expect this to be quite a difficult investigation and do not assume that people have any current background understanding but just a good will attitude to investigating the issues.

Andrews

The High Court train is still coming, even if people look the other way. When it gets here the legal game-playing stops and reality will be released with Pell. That reality will run right over those still facing the wrong way. No prize for guessing what political elements will be run over. The smart ones are already well away from these tracks but the Victorian Premier is tied to them.

Steve Owens is not prepared to convict on the strength of what he now understands are the accusations and that is moving past the former position of not approving of a word on word conviction on principle.

After the appeal, and even before I read Weinberg I had already thought the appeal to the High Court ought to be made and what that court ought to find because of the merits of this case as they had slowly been revealed to me before that appeal. Nobody thought an appeal ought to be launched on the basis that the word on word legislation was unconstitutional, so Steve even if he didn’t like it, must have thought that it was open to the jury to find guilt in this case on the strength of that evidence as the majority concluded. Without Weinberg Steve would be lost.

The appeal itself was as I read it, unexplainable head-shaking crap from the majority and typical understatement from the dissenting lawyer turned judge.

If Weinberg did not exist, and some other judge had joined with the majority for a 3:0 decision I would not have altered my view of this case in the slightest. The majority were not dealing with the reality of time and space, let alone in their proper sequence by starting with the leaders of the procession. The leaders had to get to the priests sacristy first; and physical consequences follow from this deductive fact: starting with a time span that had just ended and another commenced.

Even running the impossible argument; say the boys had got there first anyway (and they physically could not without an actual and thus memorable disruption to what would have to have been a stalled procession, that we know did not happen because it was not recalled by the unchallenged witnesses) then the boys would have been discovered by the leaders of that procession as they entered that same room and no crime could result!

So despite the accusation, the facts disclose that the room is already occupied! And everything of the time sequence problem flows from this undoubted fact. The total normal time length of the procession had to expire without any opportunity arising for the boys to enter the sacristy.

The hive of activity evidence then prohibits a subsequent entrance to this area. The boys could never have been there! That is what Steve Owens -and all the other bigots- won’t turn their mind towards.

My ability to spot a consequential massive miscarriage of justice does not rely on the games (with either good or bad motives) that are played by the bourgeois legal profession. I’m only glad that Weinberg was around and able to do as much as he has for the further legal process of the High Court that is coming in about 3-4 months now. Our legal system is the very flawed adversarial system that Australians suffer under. I am not defending ‘their’ system but it looks like Steve Owens is.

On the purely legal issue, my view developed and changed from ‘not guilty’ to something else altogether…

These 5 accusations (for all the reasons already discussed by me) can’t be accepted to being proved to beyond the point of reasonable doubt. That doubt is only in theory; in practice, it’s really the opposite. The accused has 2 strikes against them by being there in the dock in the first place! The presumption of innocence is theory. Doubt ought to have -in this case- remained standing in the accused favor but I failed to convince Steve of this.  Dissenting judge Weinberg has convinced Steve of this. The rest of ‘us’ that he read could not get through to the political opponent Steve. Such a surprise!

But a provable lack of opportunity is not guilty because of a demonstrable time and place problem and is another matter altogether. The evidence shows the room where the 4 charges were said to have occurred could not be available for these attacks as others were using the room.

5-6 minutes were not (and so even if unreasonably extended to 10 minutes) available for the crime.

The entire case has collapsed on those 2 physical points of time and space. There was no opportunity for Pell or anyone else to have committed these crimes at that time and place. If that is so it is clear that all 5 charges are simply false.

The defense was correct to say that the case was impossible because it was!

How the jury and the majority missed this is interesting of itself but not important because that is what they have done like it or not. Facts are, as is said, stubborn things!

There is thus not even a need to look further and ask why the accusations were made by J, or how convincingly they were made by him; because without opportunity nothing could have happened no matter what was said! Enter the political, social and cultural dimensions to this case.

A lack of opportunity conclusion ALSO ends the legal issues – BUT we are left not with a political opponent that is still under a cloud and so maybe he is just lucky to have got off… because he is rich and powerful – but instead we are left with an innocent man that is now and could have been for years politically, socially and culturally attacked by the forces that now have to account for what they have been doing with all the power and funds at their disposal. An inquiry is in order to get to the bottom of this.

My question is not what sort of games can the legal profession play to hide that reality, but rather what was the SANO task force actually doing when they had a responsibility to work out if such an implausible accusation was even possible in the first place?

There are in short also the political, cultural and social issues to consider along with the legal, and there are many people who do not want these factors examined. Steve can start by acknowledging that this is the case. A clearly identifiable element do NOT want any further investigation; as a democrat I am deeply concerned about the power of the police and publicly-funded ABC journalists and I do want this inquiry.

For the account to have been real people had to be disappeared or there had to be a Catholic conspiracy to assist in a crime of pedophilia and that (with the people in this procession) is not the real world.

This 2nd form of acquittal thus drags in the police for these other reasons. The police who were in a position to know and yet didn’t go to the trouble of sorting this opportunity issue out; behaved much worse than just recklessly.

They had no excuse to have not sent a couple of police along to record over several Sundays just how the event would have unfolded, that could in any way enable boys to do the bad behavior claimed – without adults noticing what was going on! The police ought never to have flown to Rome over such twaddle! Pell should never have even been interviewed about such crazy accusations. This is persecution heaped upon persecution.

The fact that this man ‘J’ is mentally disturbed in some manner is totally relevant.  I correctly picked up on the issue.  How is it that such a series of implausible accusations from a mentally troubled person were pursued by the police? This will have resulted after all the struggle, trauma and costs that Pell, the Church, and Catholics generally have been put through in a total defeat of all these accusations!  Indeed all the charges against Pell were all flawed to such a sad extent that these last 5, and clearly lunatic accusations were all that went to trial!

Steve is only ‘…prepared to go as far as judge Weinberg and say that there is a significant possibility that Pell is innocent and on that basis should walk free.’

‘Significant possibility’ when the words Steve is looking for are the jury got it wrong; that Pell ought not have been convicted; Pell ought not have spent 1 day in jail, but he will have spent over 14 months in jail and even Steve Owens with so little time to study the issue, understands that this outcome is wrong!  So that begs the question; how was it that the police who are paid to do the investigating couldn’t understand that Pell ought not to be charged let alone convicted from the evidence that they cobbled together? Why did they choose to believe a person with a mental disorder who was changing his story?  Why did the police advertise for complainants? Why did they bring such feeble-minded accusations all the way to Rome, when J could not even get into the room because other people were already there? Is this how Australia ought to run? There are also the political and cultural aspects of our country to consider and Steve knows this and that is why Steve is dissembling.

People like David Marr have definitely not gone to ground and neither have the police. They have caused the mischief and will get away with it if there is no inquiry and the Victorian ALP Premier does not want one!

Marr did not think the High Court would be interested BUT they are! Mind you when Marr thought that Pell would win the appeal he thought the High Court ought to be interested! Chris Kenny just said ‘say what?’. Marr is exactly the bias of this case writ large. Marr’s motive is to get Pell irrespective of the evidence! Marr has no problem looking both ways to suit himself, just like all the rest of the anti-Pell campaigners that Steve is now unable to openly unite with. Yet Steve is also not wanting to expose them.

I am after an inquiry and their goal will be to prevent an inquiry. Steve Owens is heading for another fence to sit atop, with the pretense that it’s all too hard to work out!

What Weinberg has done is not now the important part that I have been trying to get at, and others are trying to hide from. Weinberg had explained the law to his incompetent Supreme Court colleagues – that somehow he could not get to join him in the real world. He went down 2:1 and I don’t understand that, nor do I claim to fully grasp how the jury could have been so flawed.

As luck would have it, Pell won the support of a single judge and that legal expert could clarify matters sufficiently for the scales to fall from Steve’s eyes. As far as an acquittal goes that is the simple luck of having this single judge to guide and explain how this case has gone so terribly wrong.

So now Steve, like me, also now thinks the High Court will rule in Pell’s favor. I couldn’t convince Steve, nor could Bolt, or Windschuttle etc., Steve just held to his initial discomfort of this being just 1 man’s word against another, with no supporting evidence at all and THAT Steve found himself unable to countenance, but that was the law and so there was nothing to see other than that. Importantly for Steve, the change of stance is only just enough. Weinberg is simply not concerned with the police misconduct that I have spotted and want dealt with. Weinberg is not interested in an inquiry that drags in the ABC. Steve can’t see anything wrong with what the police and the ABC have done, and in his view, Australia ought to just move on as the system has worked as it should!

There is now sufficient doubt for Steve to understand the case to the degree required to go along with that minority of one judge and condemn the majority decision as an error that he wants the High Court to overturn 7-0.  WOW; that is something.

So, if all the judges had sung from the same hymnbook, Pell would have no support from Steve except that he thinks that the law which could permit a word on word trial to bring forth a conviction of beyond a reasonable doubt in the first instance, is wrong.

Luckily, we have the ruling elite lawyer turned judge to solve our thinking for us. Weinberg gives Steve the excuse to go further than he previously had.

What Steve had managed was something like; that bastard Pell could be convicted because it is the law that the jury can decide who they believe! And though Steve’s not happy with that state of affairs, nevertheless that is the law, and Pell had a fair trial and the jury convicted. So, nothing unusual in that and the High Court ought not to interfere with that!

No concession to any deductive reasoning from amateurs.

No concern about what the police have been up to.

No problem with a culture of hysteria generating a collective blind spot.

No problem with the publicly funded ABC bias.

NADA care, ZIP comment.

Steve can just bleat that really we can leave it for our betters to decide Pell’s fate. I can picture Steve, straw in mouth bringing in the squires sheep talking to another muck covered peasant; ‘Aye Jim lad; and it’s not as if that rich bastard has not had the very best legal minds that money can buy now is it?’ ‘They would have gone through all that stuff that them there Pell supporters are raising now; wouldn’t they Jimbo?’ Tis not for the likes of us to work this out and we’re all too busy with the sheep and the fires anyway! Mark my words, the lawyers will sort this out and we can rest assured of that.’

Given Steve understand ‘its the timing of the subsequent events that matter.’ who got to the room first? J and R who had to double back and work out where to go as they went back into a church like all young boys would NOT do after they got out of the joint or those leading the procession?

Naturally, Steve will stick to not knowing. It won’t matter to Steve to get to the bottom of this either.  Steve won’t want another hearing for the other people in the procession to explain reality. Once people answer that question of who got back first all the rest goes up in smoke.  The room was a ‘hive of activity’ from that point on!  It was known to be a hive of activity by all those actually involved.  None of these people believed such an event could have happened!!

Apparently the police from SANO have Steve’s full support. I on the other hand call for an inquiry into what has made Australia a laughing stock right across the world.

According to Steve, Pell is just lucky to be getting out under a cloud of suspicion thanks to Weinberg. The ability of others to see right through this is pure luck and anyway methodologically flawed. People ought not to try to work this out themselves because they were not in the room for the whole trial, so they really are not in anything like the best place to do the job. We should all just keep quiet and let the process unfold. But why will that not end with the police getting away with this misconduct, and Victorian Premier Andrews not looking the other way?

If it weren’t for Weinberg as far as Steve is concerned, Pell would just sit there and do his time!

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and fence-sitting pseudo leftists can pretend there is nothing to investigate. But when the film is made it will show them all up as the threats to democracy that they really are.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Angels_(film)

Russian shot down; good or bad?

It’s now 2 years and 5 months down the killing tracks launched by Vlad the honest.  Arthur recently said; ‘I still expect a negotiated transition from the Assad regime, facilitated by Russia and Iran.’ and Barry pressed the like button.  David has remained mute while posting on safe ground.  None have attempted to complete the 1/2 theory.

If any of these three are still claiming that the Russian bombers are in Syria to bring the war to an end – with a plan of ending the Assad regime – bringing about elections and thus the democratic opposition to power in all of Syria, then there is no hope for any useful debate.   Naturally Arthur has not produced any MSM articles, trumpeting this now self evidently wrong insight. Instead there has been an ongoing refusal to debate and systematically concede any points to others who had worked on StrangeTimes as a collective blog.  The charge of wrecker is irrefutable.

No the Russians didn’t turn up to do what Arthur thought.  The 1/2 theory was only ever a half theory leading nowhere, a dead end. And, no, this is not just a matter of timing! Russians turning up has been an unmitigated disaster for the Syrian democratic revolution.

Arthur further said; ‘As far as I can make out the opposition does not view itself as defeated and reports that it has been are from the same media that goes on about “the Russia thing” in the US.’  The correct reply to this is so what?  That has nothing to do with the views expressed against the 1/2 theory on this site by me.  This site got very active trying to work out what was going on in September 2015 when the Russians turned up and Arthur took a position that was measurable and was disputed and then was systematically argued against.  I argued at the time that the Russians were there to kill the side that I was backing and they did turn up and are still there for that purpose.  I also said that Putin was not doing something brilliant but rather the opposite.  The democratic revolution has been set back but not defeated.

Arthur went on to say ‘…Certainly I was not expecting those gains and it confirms my complete inability to get a handle on timescales….’   and I say; the expedient of not having a meaningful time line for any events at all is simply a device to ensure he would be unable to be proven wrong over anything, so naturally, Arthur clutches for this life preserver.  But all were told years ago, that Assad will be moved along as required but not in the near future.

We were also told by Arthur that ‘Obama would be able to claim success’ well that is a time-line and Obama could not make the claim now could he?

Munich style documents were waved aloft in triumph and they had time-lines, and 1/2 theorists were told point blank and at the time, that the documents would be dishonoured, and they were.

Time lines are in the picture and they only emphasise how clear the dispute is.

100’s of thousands of refugees later, all the deaths, and rubble and apparently Putin still showed up to end the regime and consequentially bring democracy!  That is really what has been and still is argued! But now it is just waffle about how Iran and Russia can’t possibly believe… and ‘6.  The territorial gains by the regime could, if they are suicidally inclined, be preparation for an ongoing war in which they hope to remain in charge. … But I see no sign that they are inclined towards suicide and no sign that they are gaining forces rather than just territory that will cost them a continued depletion of forces if they choose to keep fighting.’

Who said they would win?  Not me!  What I said was that Russians would turn the tide and kill the revolutionaries.  They did that!  Arthur just scoffed that there were obviously not enough of them!  I showed where the troops would come from, and they did.   Arthur was wrong because there were enough of them!  I expected their bloody gains but Arthur didn’t.

We can already see that when a political solution does show up the half theory will be able to lay claim to it.  There you go I told you so will be the claim!  HIRI(S)E turned up to end the regime (S) and bring about a political solution and that will require elections.  But what you were told was that enclaves were going to be cut out and Syria not put back together (at least in any near future).

The current maps do reflect a great deal of reality.  They even show in great detail just how the process unfolds.

People are also still deluding themselves that the self obsessed wrecking conduct was acceptable behaviour in dealing with someone (me) who not only disagrees, but apparently, writes far too much about why they disagree. Perhaps people might tell the world why they had to (and ought to) smash a debate by first refusing to hold it; and then complain that others won’t shut up and just read their great insights; and, or play idiotic ‘collect links’ with them, till they get bored and move on because “nothing can be done” anyway!

What utter tosh!  Yet after all the brazen scoffing the bad mannered wreckers and cancel culture  practitioners have just had to resort to silence.  They have shamed themselves out of any credibility as fearless  speakers in the true ML tradition.

Naturally nothing can be done now about any MSM article that was threatened but never delivered. All quite predictable, and predicted.  Totally unacceptable behaviour in refusing to debate a perfectly disputable 1/2 theory is all justified because the other side was too verbose.  Nothing to back-down about at all.

What else could people expect from collectors of links who just knew – from that very first month – that the Russians had turned up to end the regime and end the war.

Let us not forget the ongoing distortions that are now essential in anything to do with the Syrian 1/2 theory and in justifying the recidivist, base behaviour of pathetic wrecking.

Well here is a problem for these comrades with a ML background.

The war is not ended, the maps have altered, and the FSA types have been killed in large numbers by the HIRISE, these are the material circumstances.

There is a functioning coalition of the wicked anti-democrats and they are not in Syria to bring democracy to Syrians.

I am in favour of Al Qaeda being defeated root and branch. Yet, I am in favour of, for example, the latest Russian plane being shot down.  The pilot was then involved in a shoot out on the ground and died.  This is good IMV because only the west in co-operation with Turkey can bring about a progressive occupation of Syria.

I think Erdogan is furthering the democratic struggle in uniting with the FSA, and I understand why the Turks will fight the PKK, in whatever form they appear in, until a return to a negotiated progress is under-way and that will not begin (sadly) until the Afrin issue is dealt with to the extent of the Kurds having to move east of the Euphrates. (I admit to being utterly conflicted over this issue, and instinctively wanting to side with the Kurds)

I have great sympathy for the Kurds, but I can’t deny that they have conducted themselves badly in this nth west region against the FSA etc., as they have collaborated with the Assadists.

With no expectation of reasonable conduct I repost the following as proof that a debate was reasonable at the time and that I was the one that conducted myself properly.

patrickm

1. De l’audace, may well be a motto that Putin finally turns to when it’s time to settle on a plan. We have seen him and his sort operate plenty of times before; encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace. He is after all at the start of this bold new in your Western face action doing the audacious whatever else it is. For Marxists there are the five more ponderous constants of war in the strategic background; for supermen types there is blitzkrieg to smash democratic revolution; kill the democrats and terrorise the masses. Putin is an action man anti-democrat with a faltering economy no less. Putin is Assad’s big untrustworthy brother.

2. Obama once said “What I could not support was a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics”. So we can’t hope for audacity from this man. From him we got a self promotional book ‘The Audacity of Hope’ and for the next 470 days there is for the West, if not no hope, very little. But audacity? Well I don’t think we have to worry about any precipitate overreach from the affronted superpower for that period. “No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics–the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.” BO “Right…is that the time? Shit I have a Paris climate conference to get to.”

3. Anyway the Putin plan unfolds and while the think tanks scramble to offer leadership to the Western leaders which is fair enough when even the best of them started with; “To be frank, I still don’t see any clarity in Russia’s stance on Syria”; we Australian Communist commentators can at least formally mark off the parts that have unfolded.

4. The enemy works to a broad plan to fight a new phase of this old war with his new COW. In short, regardless of the now moot if not futile think-tank search for THE Putin plan – the actual fresh troops turn up every day and go to work on their part of it, so we can tick the boxes and people can propose corrections as events move further along. This anti-democrat’s plans may not work in the long run but as Keynes said…all dead by then.

5. The urgent systematic killing by Russians of FSA types is working to that set Russian plan that sooner or later will also incorporate the ‘transitioning’ of Assad but only as, if and when required and that is very far from urgent.

6. The urgent warning-off of Turkey, the regional power capable of intervening is a part of the plan. Turkey had no choice but to threaten to shoot down any other over-flying Russians, with the clear implication that you stay to your side and we will stay to ours and we Russians will use all of the Syrian air space because we are working for the lawful Assad government!

7. Urgently making NATO NFZ war, and the establishment of safe zones a no longer viable option, by declaring all those in armed revolt against the Syrian ‘government’ terrorists – and subjecting them from day one to barrel bombing is a big part of the full plan.
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/syria-needs-no-fly-zone.html
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/how-syrians-can-return.html

8. The elimination of any fatal US red line ‘veto’ was long ago achieved by noticing that one was feebly declared then pushing it to the utter limit before, and with the all important intervention of big brother, surrendering that WMD stockpile for the US to dispose of. No choice and so it was no longer a useful stockpile by that point anyway. Thus Obama was played then and this was just an earlier phase of this same war. Current planning of this ongoing war developed with this very important background. The Russians had gotten themselves involved and had supposedly delivered to Kerry and Obama a US ‘win’. Spare us all from such wins that ought to have been an instant hot war when the line was crossed and the Russians ought to have been shown the door and the US cruise missiles smashed Assad’s airports and his command and control etc., the NFZ declared there and then with the Russians dramatically warned off as they had failed and were not a Mediterranean power anyway. Not to be. So the conclusions were that the US were not serious about fighting and that is the vital background.

9. The inclusion of Hezbollah troops – now with a considerable footprint, Iraqi Shiites, and Iran is a big part of the plan and they are in and involved in what is a region wide power play. So cruise missiles are thrown across their air space no less!

10. A deal is dangled for the Kurds that gives them what the leaders of Turkey didn’t want to see them get.

11. Whatever the US and the Europeans thought last month, this month their concern is to warn Putin that they will fight to protect Turkey’s borders only.

12. Putin wants to now get zones in Syria’s fight against Daesh terrorism. They have told the US to get out of the way.

13. They have declared war on the Western supported forces and humiliated not just the US but all of NATO and the local Sunni states.

So with all those boxes ticked the clock ticks along as well.

14. People can add to that list as the days go on but just saying this can’t be happening because Russia is not a Mediterranean power capable of doing it – and if fought it could not- is no longer very relevant.

15. The other day I thought ‘The current lot [Western political leaders] will have to wait to get told what to do about this crisis. Western leaders have no intention of leading.’ and some people are leading their analysis with what appears to me as something, something, something, ‘and exclude both Bashir and the Takfiris without chaos and slaughter in Damascus?’

IMV it is clear that Putin has built a region wide coalition to fight the other region wide gang. There is a red line.

16. I have no problem engaging in ‘suppose’ questions unlike those who imagine they really will require a quality environment to produce work in! ‘10. Then why couldn’t a second stage follow an initial regime change with some sort of Geneva style negotiations for an orderly transition to a transitional regime that excludes…’

17. Because Iraq and Syria these last few years demonstrates to the locals that a massive war is required to rid this region of what even barely democratic types in it are up against. Bashir types and the Takfiri types are very good at killing, causing terror and consequent flows of refugees. So people who have fought them over all this time by now ought to think like the allied leaders of WW2 that no amount of power sharing will work in an environment where it is so easy to slaughter Shiite peoples’ and that only unconditional surrender is viable. That is not viable without the separation that the Kurds have long enjoyed. They have been the standout success. They have, in other words policies of population separation. In the WW2 case the killing went on all the way to the bunker.

18. I agree that;
1. World politics currently does not revolve around a clash between two superpowers; however this now up and running region wide conflict is between the 2 Islamic sides that are slipping into murderous sectarian war backed by the 2 regional powers Iran on the 1 side and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the other. So Putin has joined on the one side. He joins as more than just a CEO leading a former superpower. Russia and him personally has a massive history of dealing with Islamic issues and currently he has public support for his brand of De l’audace, so he will try to sustain that support by reminding people of Beslan school type of reasons to deal with the swamp. The Daesh side is providing plenty of Nazi like conduct to remind people of ‘why they fight’. Putin I think also believes in a swamp theory, but ultimately his solution is the same as the Egyptian ‘solution’ just a form of rotten ‘realism’. No solution at all really just gangsterism that might be self-talked by both these mere mortals into a case of best they be leading ‘benevolent’ dictatorships.

19. With all Putin’s problems, Russians no doubt have a dogged nature, so he can for now and for some time formulate this grand move as an unavoidable effort to deal with the worst of the worst. And on the other side…well let us just say a big COW are attacking Daesh from the air without follow up ground forces, while the revolting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) strikes out in all directions (Yemen) and has a deep state structure where support for Daesh and all round Sunni supremacy is not able to be prevented. Thus Putin plays as a special player on the new team rather than throws Russian weight around as if this were one superpower v another. Obama plays on the other team thus ensuring Daesh can’t form heavy columns and the Russians are in sufficient strength to turn on any big Saudi effort that might get sent North in due course. Putin believes he has some time to establish the best solution map and that other players particularly Turkey are going to be distracted by their own problems while he does so. Also Israel keeps dividing the other team’s effectiveness and Putin has no such Albatross. Putin has a realistic goal with his team and it includes moving Assad along when and as that is required. I along with most of the world think it will be required but not right now. Keeping a client or vassal type state going, with the core being the Alawite people of the former Syria in as big a chunk as is realistic, is I believe seen to be viable. The breaking of eggs bit is dumping millions of refugees for resettlement. The region is renowned for this but actually it is a major issue from the history of Putin’s region as well.

20. Just because ‘Russia was not a Mediterranean Great Power at all and “Moscow simply cannot deploy the kind of forces to Syria that could meaningfully change the arithmetic of the war and save the regime.” He can ONLY come and play on the side that requires his special talents as a kind of defensive full back. High speed counter attacks are launched by the fullback, momentum and audacity could be his calculation.

21. I also think ‘Putin is not an imbecile and knows that.’ So, he has a team view and an assessment of the other team as in disarray with his conclusion being disunity is death for them. Now not surprisingly some people who don’t play in teams haven’t got a clue and constantly play the role of wrecker. This Putin fellow is nothing but an ‘Us and Them’ type captain blood.

22. As for Obama the clock is now 470 days and his policies having in fact made the whole situation catastrophically worse than it needed to be, he will thus not have a chance to undo this and ever look successful even to his supporters. Despite having avoided more US blood and treasure in Middle East wars. Clinton will try to clean up the mess. But IMV the American prestige will not return to any great extent and the only thing that can do prestige building is a return to the revolutionary path of America, and no bourgeois leadership has the vigor for that unavoidable people’s struggle for democracy. The US will remain on the side of the angels but the greatest gift they could manage was to STOP being the swamp making blockage. The unblocking of tyranny is hard work for the revolutionary masses in the region. They are faced with a vast war that is terrible to contemplate, yet obvious to the ME masses who are seething with hatred. The US superpower status is now gone and is not coming back. The revolution must go on without being led by US ground forces.

23. yes ‘There are people within the Assad regime who believe they cannot win and face death if they don’t end the war.’ and they have had their spirits lifted from the depths of this depression for now. How long their mood stays up will depend on progress on the ground as the reserves turn up and reverse the battlefield direction. But ultimately if not enough reserves turn up and not enough of their FSA type enemies are killed, and not enough of the demographic problem that they have are driven off as refugees then that mood will return. So I guess lots of killing and Shiite troops and refugees in all directions are proposed by captain blood.

24. I accept ‘The Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah and the US, not being imbeciles also think that the Assad regime cannot win.’ So, they are probably all impressed that he has slaughtered his way into this almost holding pattern that has perhaps with a little more big power help, could perhaps establish another monstrosity that would have the Netanyahu type feel about it. If the Israeli forces can do this type of thing… I think that is delusion, as the world has changed and this is second time as farce, but I am not them and there is this region wide split that is at war anyway so they might feel something can be done about a Shiite crescent better placed to fight the Sunnis till a regional solution is eventually found after this required test of strength.

25. Assad did not draw the correct lessons from Libya, nor the whole issue of the Arab spring and just retire for a peaceful good life. That choice was, at the time, available to him and is not now. Who knows what will become of him.

26. Putin and the Ayatollahs still want to come out being winners ‘despite having been responsible for supporting a totally failed catastrophic policy’

27. It is to me extraordinary that there are STILL people in the West who believe in allying with the Assad regime, but I guess they are now very few and the vast majority of people believe that he must go and therefore can accept anything that is presented as him going. The people that count in policy making circles all know he must go. Thus all the transitioning out talk. But the Iraqi leadership after long and painful experience, and Kurds in Syria, and most leaders in Iran and even Vlad the audacious wants new maps. So despite the contradictions and conflicting interests Baathist Assad ended up being semi supported by the Iraqi Shiites and hence the new deep state gangster elite that runs big chunks of that divided country where the Iranian’s back all manner of functioning militia.

28. “And it’s safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm’s way.” BO I think a bit like Obama in that Putin struck because of his central insight that leadership was MIA and the liberals that he did face now had become complacent and bureaucratic with US Democratic policy makers more obsessed with not fighting wars and playing with drones and the killing of individuals like Bin Laden. Obama wrote “The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight – that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie – contained a good deal of truth.”

We are all cruise missile something or others now even just for the theater! But the important thing is those Russian helicopters are now at work as the ground assault is rolling against our ‘FSA’ types!

 

Arthur

Ok I appreciate that you are now at least attempting to respond to points I have made so it could be productive to engage. Unfortunately I simply don’t have time due to other factors and will still just try to produce a coherent publishable article (which I also don’t have time to do) and still not engage other than indirectly through series of links, notes, and drafts working towards publishable articles not directly engaging with this stuff.

END

Well IMV, not engaging with “this stuff”, has proved to be not so good for Arthur and the half theory supporters!

End Baath 2

1    I would fully endorse the statements that ‘A GLOBALIZED WORLD WITH OPEN BORDERS CANNOT PEACEFULLY COEXIST WITH FASCISM!’ and that ’FASCISM MEANS WAR’.  So, as there are fascists like Putin all over the world currently in charge of large military formations and busy making war, the question arises; how do anti-fascists unite to fight back?  How do we intend to defeat the fascists? To the extent that western governments are still sitting on the fence; then like Libya the situation will get worse till they get off the fence and in this case end the Assad tyranny as they simultaneously deal with Daesh types.  It is a war of two fronts.

2    IMV ‘a devastating regional war spreading from Syria throughout the region with profound implications for Europe and the rest of the world’ is already underway and thus can’t be avoided. Diplomacy and military actions must now proceed together, but what are the diplomats tasks now?  What are the military tasks?  Who has real skin in the game?

3    I think the evidence is overwhelming that Obama and Putin really are strategic imbeciles but Putin is the fascist not Obama. Obama is just a treacherous liberal that could care less even about ruling class national interests when there is a big price to pay.  Dithering is as dithering does.

4    Turkey, Britain and France cannot directly act against Russian meddling in Syria. It is now quite apparent that the era of imperialism is so long gone for these powers that they are in essence reliant on the U.S. in leading them as a united COW, or better still as a part of a united NATO action. Even though ‘they have no real rapid deployment capability, and no strategic airlift or sealift capability capable of moving any militarily relevant force within any reasonable time frame’ they don’t really require it.  Turkey has the capacity to drive heavy columns straight down the roads to the sound of the guns. Britain and France could deploy strategically useful elements to Cyprus, and Turkey, and even Jordan. They could with a few days notice for some and weeks to months notice for others. The planners ought to have been planning on contingent intervention for some years then refined and adjusted several times over by now. This issue had already long ago got to the point of a vote in the British parliament over bombing in Syria. Now we have had reports of the British using killer drones recently despite the vote.  The vote would I think be different now.

5     It is perfectly true but irrelevant that ‘by simply closing the Mediterranean and hence Syria to hostile shipping, which they can still do quickly, they can remind Russia’s military that Russia is not, never has been and never will be a mediterranean power’  but they will not push against Putin in this manner and he is well aware that they would not because it would mean war if they did. Yet Putin really is an imbecile! Unfortunately so were the likes of Hitler; Tojo; and Mussolini; and there were people like Yamamoto telling them so, but they could not stop the madness unfolding. They will all stand back and shrug that it is NOT ‘their duty to dispose of him quickly’, but only to increase in measured ways what they are doing now, and what they have been doing is so far been little and late. They are useless!

6     Obama really is a strategic imbecile who has been up in Alaska preparing for the Global warming Paris event!  This refugee ‘flood’ is unfolding in the media every day and he is MIA. In 15 months he will been gone! And when it comes to war making he wants to be gone! So, it will be a year or more for everyone, most probably including the U.S. to mobilize a force capable of serious intervention in Syria.

7     Turkey has long advocated removing the Assad regime and has all along pointed out ‘that there is no other way to avoid millions of refugees continuing to pour out of Syria.’  Yet the ‘stable’ democratic Turkish government have got nowhere with Obama and the situation has got worse and themselves much less stable.  A war is resuming again in Turkey with not just the worst of the Kurdish nationalists but with all manner of anti- Turkish forces having an interest in seeing that it break out and bog the Turkish military down. Even the threat of it is beneficial to Assad and Putin.

8     The executive in both Britain and France is terribly conservative and are still only managing the refugees rather than dealing with the source of those refugees.  They are not even raising the alarm about Putin’s ridiculous intervention to establish and preserve in Syria something that resembles Israel. They can’t do that.

9     There could not be any Anglo ­French expeditionary force in 2015 or 16.  The ruling elites of both countries will manage the Syrian casualties but not take any of their own.  There is no effective system that exists after the Europeans deserted Bush and Obama deserted U.S. leadership. There is nothing other than ineffective thrashing about while the war goes on with those that are prepared to put boots on the ground. Enter the fascists led by Putin.

10     In the midst of all this the West’s own little fascist – Netanyahu – is provoking the Palestinians of East Jerusalem and is thus preparing public opinion to make more war on the Palestinians; even no doubt as he prepares to pull out of more of the West Bank and create yet another vast open air prison.

11     Putin has made it impossible to simply declare war on Assad. No one can now announce ‘a no fly zone and an intention to start enforcing it’ without dealing with Russian air assets. It is now a hot war where Russian helicopter gun ships must be shot down in numbers over an extended period. Russians fighting as Martians might have to be copied as tit for tat.  There was ‘European public opinion that would certainly swing behind a no fly zone and accelerate a rapid shift in US public opinion’ but they were not banking on war with Putin’s troops.

12     The ruling elites won’t act quickly enough so the war ‘will take much longer and will be a much bigger and bloodier regional war than if they act immediately while Obama still dithers.’

13     But just because FASCISM MEANS WAR progressives have to propose a fighting response to tyranny. So… All air defences close to the borders of Turkey and Jordan must be extended deeper into Syria. That is to say that what is sauce for Putin in Martian activity is sauce for everyone else in enforcing the shooting down of anything that is dropping barrel bombs on the Syrian people.  Trouble is that really does require boots on the ground and until they are put in Putin will continue to implement real war for the establishment of the fascist enclave.  Russians flying helicopters are going to be the direct enemy of anyone wanting the revolutionary transformation of the now contested part of Syria that Putin has determined to preserve as a predominantly Alawite and Baathist led enclave.

14     As for Germany; Merkel is not any sort of leader worth a cracker like say Mao and he most certainly did not permit uncontrolled sloshing about of peoples’.  The refugee issue is not resolved by open borders! It is childish to think that devil take the hindmost people are even 1st priority in a war where the people under attack are being barrel bombed for wanting to vote. Any form of NO FLY WAR NOW is the priority to stop the – Putin, Assad, Netanyahu style policies of driving refugees off their land!

15     Country shopping for economic benefit is all well and good for the lucky ones but it will not solve anything for the proletarian classes who will lose their doctors; engineers; and so forth with the get up and go initiative who do go off to the ‘good life’ in the developed West.  The West just can’t rob the undeveloped world of their best and brightest and then all the terribly progressive people feel so good about it!

16     No one can, for example, pretend that Abbott did not stop people drowning!  People were drowning. People are now drowning in the Mediterranean sea and no policy that yabbers on about open borders will be acceptable currently to the masses. That desirable distant policy relies on what Europe had to do to get its borders lifted.  The U.S. in the 19thC taking the huddled masses did not prevent the mass slaughter of the 20thC world wars.  When people are being driven in their millions out of THEIR land and cities THAT is the issue.

17     No rubble producing fascist enclave that generates mass deaths and refugees as policy can be permitted to keep going on with their policies!

18     Obama and Putin are engaged in what appears to me as complete imbecility because of their own logic that includes in Obama’s case outright ruthless neglect.  No ‘well executed misinformation campaign’ here just exactly the sort of disaster that we ought to expect from a collapsing international system.  The revanchist sees an opportunity and as his only tool is a hammer then it must be a nail.

19     The ‘US and Russia are NOT cooperating to assist the Assad regime to move out of Damascus and retreat to a coastal enclave’, and so ‘that could NOT still count as America still exhausting every other alternative before eventually doing the right thing.’, but Obama might grasp at this stupid straw.  It may look good to him now that [something like] it is happening anyway. Whatever he thinks I am sure Damascus can not be lost by Assad and any enclave held in the long term. So, I do not think that Putin and Assad have conceded Damascus in any sense at all, and I am sure Obama knows jack shit about what to be getting on with other than some climate change clap trap for Paris.  The f..ing ‘leader of the free world’ is MIA over the refugee flow.

20     Putin does not intend to ‘escort the Assad clan out of Syria’. He is joining the Iranians and making war. Of course if he was ‘providing temporary protection for the Alawi and other minority communities until international peacekeepers can arrive’, then of course ‘nothing should be said or done to prejudice that operation.’  But that is not what is happening because if it was he would not have sprung it on all of them.  He is putting the enemies of Assad between a Western anvil and his hammer and also bringing in his own anvil to smash Western supported FSA types on as and when he chooses.  He is fighting the Western supported FSA types from the start.

21     Without very big U.S. backing Europe and Turkey simply do not have the stomach to stop the war in Syria that is however now a “clear and certain danger” to their vital national interests.  They will continue to try and bumble along managing refugees and being humiliated by Putin bumbling around like a crazed loon with a hammer.  The only international system that was operating was one of U.S. superpower leadership and with Obama at the helm it is currently not functioning as well as on the way out strategically.  So the situation will get even worse!

22     Perhaps as Iyad El-Baghdadi @iyad_elbaghdadi says ‘The Syrian catastrophe was very preventable, if the world’s red line was “killing protesters” rather than “drowned refugee toddlers”.’,  but that is the past and the question for all now is what is to be done to stop Assad and his great and powerful gangster friend killing democratic revolutionaries into the future.

Chomsky Drowning not Waving

Admin note:

It is now a decade after the 2005 series of elections in Iraq disproved Chomsky’s original narrative and the struggle against tyranny across the whole region is raging; so the following compilation article (comprised of newspaper articles, interview transcripts and blog comments etc.) is here updated and rewritten to place on record a more thorough repudiation of the Znet /Chomsky approach to the Iraq war, both at the time and currently.

Chomsky himself is now reduced to rambling greenie mush.

For most of the intervening years the usual suspects have managed to just shrug their shoulders and point to the ongoing war as THE disaster, and that has very often sufficed (in their eyes) for an argument against launching the liberation.  But the 2015 fight against ISIS/Daesh has exposed that method. This fight is but one more example of the first fight and the attitude to this fight is demonstrating yet another level to the depth of head turning treachery that pseudolefts must resort to in the face of such a vicious enemy of progressive humanity.

The war for the transformation of the entire region is now focussed on Daesh and is thus widely accepted as unavoidable for the west by western peoples including a majority of reluctant working class ‘voters’. Neverland thinking is – in WW2 manner – once again isolated in the face of united efforts that are now required (obviously I would have though) right across the region. People like Steven Hawking and Geoffrey Robinson are speaking out and those like Chomsky that remain opposed to ‘imperialist meddling’ gone a bit quiet. IMV the masses have grasped that western countries are and ought to be at war.

Progressive forces across the Islamic regions are seeking western military assistance and the pseudoleft ‘anti-imperialists’ have now split over every incident where the western ruling elites are in anyway involved.  The Syrian revolution has shattered what remains of the western anti-war masses that were on the streets in their millions prior to the destruction of the heavy weapons systems of the Baathists and the liberation of Iraq by the Coalition Of the Willing.

“Well, of course revolutionary war is illegal. Legal systems are created by revolutions, not revolutions by legal systems”, is the take home point from the criticisms of Noam Chomsky’s position on the Iraq war outlined below.

One further point.

The article when first published had a flavor of ‘naive’ optimism over the entire Iraq modernity project. In the writers defense – we were ‘younger’ then and just how deadly such ‘swamps’ are for any type of democratically minded reformists was not yet on full and daily display.  But nevertheless this more sober view from someone ‘older and wiser’ is still an overwhelmingly optimistic perspective because frankly history gives progressives good cause to be optimistic and ‘if you don’t  fight, you lose’ is a useful maxim to live by whatever history throws at us.

Internationalists take what we call the mass line.  The entire approach to politics of always taking the mass line and uniting the many to defeat the few is the foundation for realistic optimism right across this planet whatever local events and temporary setbacks we confront.

The winds of progress still blow whatever the tides are doing in the ‘backwaters’ of the world.

Noam Chomsky – Drowning not Waving.
first published at Lastsuperpower
by Patrick Muldowney 01/09/2006

The U.S. ruling-elite forgot to install puppets, is the stunning inference we are obliged to make from the following interview of Noam Chomsky given back in December 2005.

Obviously the US military did not install puppets!  The US ruling elite undoubtedly intended to remove the fascist ‘Baathist’ regime and disband that army and state structure that had owned and run Iraq because that is what they did. Restructuring the same tyranny by installing a US friendly as ‘their’ son of a bitch was however (despite the widespread view that this is exactly what the US ‘imperialists’ would do) was not even possible in the 21st C.  Once the heavy weapons were gone from the Sunni dominated Baathists the Kurds and the Shia could never be put back in ‘their place’.  There would have to be a new regime and credible elections were the only viable option.

Right through the required period of occupation and for several years beyond there were brazen (and always less credible as time marched on) attempts to portray the Iraqi political forces as US puppets and these accusations were tolerated by many others in the anti-war milieu even when known to be utter rubbish.

To rip off the Iraqi peoples (oil or whatever else) puppets would have been required not independent nationalists.   Such people had often been installed in for example central America particularly in the early parts of the 20th C.

Puppets were again predicted but when this did not materialize the anti-war crowd simply disgraced themselves with lies or silence while others lied.  A process unfolded so that when and as any leading spokesman for the anti-war side had woken up to the realization that these Iraqi forces were anything but puppets they effectively abandoned theory and valid forms of argument.

No puppets and free and fair elections defines liberation!  Yet the word liberation never passed the lips of those now blind to reality.

All these years later everyone knows that Chomsky’s reasoning at the beginning of 2003 left him -only 2 years later when the COW didn’t follow his purported imperialist ‘game book’- dead in the water.

The comentariate turned a blind eye to this fundamental error of their leading theorist who rather than face up to the required corrections pushed on without a backward glance.

Noam on the People

In the following interview Chomsky tells us how things were done by the old time imperialists, people like the Japanese in Korea, and the British in India.  These were imperialists that really knew their business not like what he is implying are the incompetent bunch of Neo-Cons then comprising the Bush Administration.  He is literally laughing at the current crop because he believes they don’t even know what they HAVE to do!  Yet in reviewing these events ranging as far back as his youth Chomsky gets himself lost and confused. The obvious though unstated conclusion is that the U.S. ruling-elite is not behaving rationally.  Don’t misunderstand me, the professor would never say this directly. Quite the reverse, but it is nevertheless the only legitimate conclusion that can be drawn from his interview.

Citing various examples he points out that the U.S. in reality has always been opposed to democracy in the Middle East. He points out that they have done so while always proclaiming the opposite rhetorically. Chomsky maintains that after 9/11 the U.S. has not changed policies, and the current talk amounts to the same as it ever was.  For Chomsky the Bush administration is as opposed to the spread of bourgeois democracy as have been all other U.S. administrations since WW2!

Meanwhile, Bush maintains there is a new policy.

Chomsky is no longer just arguably wrong, but on the results of the Iraqi elections demonstrably wrong in this crucial example.

Clearly the election in Iraq produced genuine representatives with mass support. What is now devastatingly more the point, is that this process has done so every election cycle since! Yet there has been no change in the election process and no call from anyone for a change!  The democratic revolution was a reality, tyranny had been replaced.

These Iraqis politicians are no puppets of U.S. imperialism and to think otherwise is ludicrous. Yet the leading theorists of the  moribund left section of the ‘peace movement’ would have us think just that.  Their position was then as it is now (all these election cycles later) unsustainable and bereft of a theory of what has emerged in South Africa nor it’s political sibling Iraq.

Chomsky knows the elected representatives are not puppets, so he creates a diversion and argues instead that ‘democracy’ has to mean something other than the establishment of a bourgeois representative democracy.  A modern representative democracy with proportional representation is a desirable and supportable advance on the absolute tyranny of the Baathists and he knows that.  But instead of accepting this and arguing that the Iraqi masses (just like we in the west) will have to move beyond that level of progress at some point, he fudges this issue of moderate and reasonable negotiated progress.

While anti democratic bombing in Iraq’s markets and schools etc is almost daily still going on in this war between those who are agreeing to a constitutional government and proportional representative bourgeois democracy Chomsky dumps a mish-mash of anarchist ideas on us that effectively concludes that unless they (the representatives) hold the ‘apparent’ views of the masses, (established by secret British polling no less) and demand that the Coalition withdraw forthwith, then the Iraqi political forces are just political elitists no longer representing anyone except themselves!  The Ballot barely counted and the newly and in most cases re-elected politicians are to be ignored once more by Chomsky, they being nothing but political elitists!

That is a pathetic slight of hand.  The perfect is here put forward to be the enemy of the good.

On top of that distortion Chomsky is not interested in pondering what is in the imperialists interests in the here and now for this century as they planned and implemented this war- a war that was sure to lead to this or a very similar democratic political outcome.

Instead, in what is a deliberate diversion, he tells us that we must never believe declaratory policies, no matter what or who the political leaders are as if we have to take a course in understanding class society 101 from an anarchist viewpoint. But this diversion into the obscure anarchist land of direct democracy is vital a little later when a patently deliberate sleight of hand is pulled.

Chomsky talks endlessly about how he thinks the will of the Iraqi people ‘apparently’ (the word is deliberately used on several occasions) is that the coalition forces should withdraw immediately and leave it to the Iraqi people to sort out. Yet the vast majority of the political forces that stood for election don’t think this and said so during the election campaign.

Thus for Chomsky the ‘apparent’ will of the Iraqi people was not just determined by free and fair elections (that delivered a proportional number of elected representatives of the Iraqi people).  Rather the will as Chomsky implies all through this interview is to be determined by a representative poll conducted in secret by the British, and with questions what’s more that we currently do not have clearly before us!

For the decrepit ‘peace movement’ all the election did was enable the imperialists to establish a political elite (leaders and a government) that all good people can now ignore because;  ‘No rational person pays the slightest attention to declarations of benign intent on the part of leaders, no matter who they are. And the reason is they’re completely predictable, including the worst monsters,…’

So, those who just ran for election with their platforms and so forth right up front, who are daily risking their lives in the cause of the liberation, can be ignored by Chomsky as speaking for no-one when they again ask the coalition to remain in Iraq and continue assisting to fight the jihadists and Baathists and to build the armed forces etc..

Make no mistake; once ignored, these openly campaigning politicians can then be called collaborators and understandably attacked by the ‘resistance’.  Noam and the rest can then shrug with a ‘what do you expect’ exasperated expression.  These political leaders will be physically attacked over the years with no solidarity from Z-net types until the attacks in the new Iraq are so blatantly fascist that Noam will have to fall silent.

The concept of a resistance will have to at some point vanish from the narrative.

For anyone remotely attracted to democracy in any form Noam has led them into a dead end.

The violent elements of this ‘noble’ resistance will become ‘the monsters let loose’.  A mass non-violent method of resistance led by no-one really – because those leaders would have had to be ignored as well one supposes, will have sprung de novo fully formed and in control of a country fighting undemocratic monsters.  Actually you can get away with these leaders (like Chomsky himself) all you do is call them a ‘sort of figure head’ for the mass movement (non violent to be sure).  Just don’t look back because there will be no ‘lawful’ trail to follow.  A revolutionary transformation will be unavoidably real and will have been fatherless.  ‘Not in my name!’ was the banner carried by the confused left and the pseudoleft all marched behind it.

Having plunged this far into Z net thinking we can now see that there is not even a veneer of open inquiry to be found.  We are confronted with blatant anti-American shibboleths.   There is no ‘seeking truth from facts’ over what has been happening in Iraq.

History was being used by Noam not to guide us forward but to block inquiry into unacceptable areas. It is as if we are in a church service being preached at and not involved in any political analysis. Now we are firmly in the realm of the pseudoleft where theory trumps practice; cultures are fixed and relative; and the ‘struggle against western imperialism’ has regressed to the point where even norms of the basic bourgeois democratic revolution are abandoned before our very eyes.

I have at least one thing in common with Chomsky: I didn’t accept the declaratory policy of the Coalition before, during, or after the war in Iraq*. Nevertheless, I do NOT believe the leaders are ‘completely predictable’ and as evidence for this view I offer the fact that Chomsky admits that he did not predict what they would do once they had overthrown the Baathist tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

Chomsky – as did all the usual suspects – got it dead wrong and he openly admits this. He believed it would be business-as-usual.

Yet a very few dissident left-wingers with a long history of campaigning against imperialism got it right.

For instance, people at Lastsuperpower.net predicted that the US administration, would push for elections that everyone knew islamist parties would win and the Shia would dominate and that this push for democratic elections was in stark contrast to Vietnam where because the democratic result was going to be the election of communists they simply refused to hold them.

In the example of the Vietnam War, left-wingers predicted that U.S. imperialism would be crushed by people’s war and thrown out of Vietnam, and they were. We didn’t apologise for the armed-struggle, we supported it. ‘One side’s right, the other’s wrong; victory to the Vietcong’, was one of the demonstration chants of the time.

No mass non-violent movement threw the imperialist forces out they were defeated by the armed-struggle of the Vietnamese in conjunction with a supportive political struggle on the streets of the Western world. The Vietnamese were engaged in a justifiable armed-struggle just as they engaged the French and Japanese before and leftists around the world supported that armed-struggle!

The current war in Iraq is being waged by Baathists, reactionary Islamic jihadis, and Arab national chauvinists of a mostly Sunni persuasion, but also a very few Shia chauvinists. All are opposed to democracy in any form and can only be described as the enemy of all potential democratic revolutions in Iraq, whether non-violent or armed. They are the enemy of all modernity as the U.S. was in Vietnam and ought be as firmly opposed.

There is thus no comparison between the two wars just as there is no comparison between the war in Vietnam and WW2.

The warring opponents of democracy constitute but a minute [I would now correct this expression to small] portion of the Iraqi population and deserve no support or understanding whatsoever from any descendents of the Enlightenment. They ought be fought by a united-front of all: just like the vicious medievalist Islamists invading from other countries in the region. These Islamists are reactionary, ‘crusader’ types and the irony is not lost on those suffering from their ‘Kamikaze’ and head lopping activities.

The surrounding countries that the Islamists come from are still very deeply mired in the swamp of Middle Eastern reaction, and that ongoing problem is exactly what we ought to be discussing now and not the defense of the Iraqi masses from their vicious attacks.

This is exactly what Noam Chomsky did discuss way back on September 10 2002, and it was raised by Last Superpower author Albert Langer in his article published in 2003 in the mainstream Australian press.

May Day – it’s the festival of the distressed

by Albert Langer

THE AUSTRALIAN 01 May 2003

‘The war in Iraq has woken people everywhere – and the pseudo-Left has really blown its chance’.

Millions who marched in mid February stopped marching two months later, as soon as the argument shifted towards democratising and liberating the Iraqi people. Those millions still agree that George W. Bush is an arrogant bully, but they no longer believe the peace-mongers have got it right. People want to figure out what is going on and are joining the debate at websites such as Last Superpower.

For months, the argument was about weapons of mass destruction and the role of the UN. If the demands of the US, and the UN, had been fully met, Saddam Hussein could have lived happily and the Iraqi people miserably, for ever after.

But look at what happened next! Suddenly we were hearing a different song. Bush has been making the argument not for disarming Iraq but for liberating Iraq. Stripped of the “God bless America” stuff, the US President’s case now goes like this:

“If we devote our resources to draining the swamps, addressing the roots of the ‘campaigns of hatred’, we can not only reduce the threats we face, but also live up to ideals that we profess and that are not beyond reach if we choose to take them seriously.”

Actually, those words are from Noam Chomsky two days before Bush’s UN speech on September 10, 2002.

But if Bush had adopted Chomsky’s position so early, that would have prevented congressional authorisation. Such a position threatens to destabilise despotic, reactionary regimes everywhere. But those in the US foreign policy establishment have devoted their entire careers to supporting the most corrupt tyrannies in the Middle East, in the name of “stability”.

For Chomsky, “draining the swamps” apparently didn’t include killing people and blowing things up. Fortunately, Bush is made of sterner stuff.

Both Bush and Chomsky know the US cannot be secure from medievalist terrorist mosquitoes while the Middle East remains a swamp. But Bush also knows that modernity ‘grows out of the barrel of a gun.’

That is a genuinely Left case for a revolutionary war of liberation such as has occurred in Iraq. The pseudo-Left replies: “That’s illegal.”

Well, of course revolutionary war is illegal. Legal systems are created by revolutions, not revolutions by legal systems.

The next logical step for the new policy is to establish a viable Palestinian state. Bush has put himself in a position where he can and must take that step. Naturally, he will not admit to the enormous strategic and policy retreat that such a step implies, so he has preceded it with enough triumphalist rhetoric to make even the Fox News team look queasy.

The revival of the Left in the ’60s only began once it was widely noticed that the remnants of the previous movement were reactionaries obstructing progress. After it tried so hard to preserve fascism in Iraq even after Bush Jr had wisely given up on Bush Sr’s policy of keeping the Iraqi dictator in power. Can anyone deny the pseudo-Left is reactionary?’

END Albert Langer

As things stand, one could be forgiven for not noticing that a reasonable parliamentary democracy has been agreed upon by the Iraqi masses via a mass vote. The Constitutional Referendum in October does not get a mention – yet it was this document that formally establishes how the Iraqi ‘will’ is to be determined, and replaced the Baathist tyranny. And note to Chomsky it’s not a secret poll conducted by the British military with god knows what wording!

Chomsky goes on at length actually condemning the most democratic election ever held in Iraq and ignoring the proportionally elected representatives. He wants no part of an Iraqi Government because he wants to continue to classify these representatives as collaborators, as does Robert Fisk, whom he praises.

The Iraqi people have gone to the polls three times in twelve months yet their representatives are to be called collaborators and ignored? Something of a card trick; in the end you have been told the will of the Iraqi people so often that ‘apparently’ there is no need to talk to any representatives. In the end you are forced by the card sharp to choose the ‘withdraw at once’ card.

The old-time anti-democratic imperialist practices were the standard practices of the preeminent imperial powers just prior to their crushing defeats. Chomsky is referring to a period so long-ago now that one can speak of a different era.

The US ruling-elite tried the same old policies in Indo-China and met with utter defeat almost 35 years ago. The Vietnamese war of National Liberation is what a war of liberation looks like when imperialists are really trying to prevent elections. But Noam Chomsky insists that the US ruling-elite went into Iraq with no genuine plan to hold free and fair elections.

Could anyone in the year 2006 imagine British imperialists re-colonizing India (And through local Indian puppets to be sure) ruling India for the benefit of the English ruling-class? Could the Japanese elite run Korea via Korean puppets? Of course they couldn’t. Why on earth would anyone think that ‘the great Satan’ could achieve this result in Iraq?

Chomsky then admits to having got it wrong about what the US government intended for Iraq at the time of the invasion. From the transcript;

Andy Clark: “With the war in Iraq, it seems we are viewing the US’s engagement in some bold, in your face, strategic geopolitical chess. In your opinion, what is the US’s next likely international move?”

Noam Chomsky: My own guess frankly, was that the invasion of Iraq would be over in about three days and that the US would install a stable client regime. It should have been one of the easiest military victories in history. But they did turn it into a catastrophe. My guess back at that time was that the next place the US would move would be the Andes in the Western Hemisphere.

End transcript

This is not only admitting that he didn’t have a clue that this was not business-as-usual but that the experienced imperialists didn’t even know how to do the old policy. (That the U.S. had been following since WW2) Chomsky gave example after example of how it is done – and then he says the Bush Administration bungled it.

Unbelievably Chomsky does not concede even the possibility that the U.S. is following a different policy he just blurts out that they blew it and turned what should have been a cake-walk, into a ‘catastrophe!’ This admission comes up, about halfway through the interview after he has gone beyond mere foolishness to ‘explain’ the real reason for the war by no more than chanting the believers mantra; ‘I mean, let’s be serious. Of course it’s oil.’

Naturally there is no analysis of exactly how the imperialists of 2006 are to achieve the long sought mythical holy grail of stealing oil without the old imperialists ability to install puppets.

No blood for oil placards

That is what it would have to be, a miracle without rational basis.

Either you have the puppets and you can steal the oil or you don’t have the puppets (As the U.S. elite clearly don’t have) and the oil revenues stay with the Iraqis. It is not done by magic so let’s really be serious because whatever the reason for the war of course it’s not about oil!

From the transcript

Miguel’s email: “Forget about the US and EU governments: they’re hopeless. Where to for ‘the people?’ How can the insanity be stopped? Or will it have to run its course and get much worse before it can get better?”

Andy Clark: What’s your take on that?

Noam Chomsky: The violence in Iraq is a serious problem for the Iraqis and I tend to agree with, apparently the majority of Iraqis, that it’s the occupation forces that are stimulating the violence. The fact that an insurgency even developed in Iraq is astonishing. I mean it’s an amazing fact that the US has had more trouble controlling Iraq than the Germans had in controlling occupied Europe or the Russians in controlling Eastern Europe. After all, the countries under Nazi or Russian occupation were run by domestic forces, domestic police, domestic armies, and domestic civilian forces. The Nazis and the Kremlin were in the background and if needed, they came in, but mostly it was domestically run. There were partisans in Western Europe and they were very courageous, but they would’ve been wiped out very quickly if it hadn’t been for enormous foreign support and, of course, Germany was at war.

Well, in Iraq none of these circumstances prevailed, there was no outside support for the resistance. The little support that has arisen, and it is very slight, is mostly engendered by the invasion. But there’s no outside support. The country had been devastated by sanctions. The US was coming in with enormous resources to rebuild it and they have turned it into a total catastrophe. It’s one of the worst military catastrophes in history. You look at figures for something like, say malnutrition; malnutrition is way up since the US took over, that’s unbelievable. It’s one of the few wars that can’t be reported, not because reporters are cowards, but because it’s too dangerous. Reporters are mostly in the Green Zone or else they go out with a platoon of marines. There are some, like Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and a couple of others who are independent and brave it, but not many. This is an incredible catastrophe. But it’s very likely, and I tend to agree with apparent opinion of most Iraqis on this, that it’s the invading armies themselves that are engendering the violence. Well, they’re carrying out plenty of it, but the violence of the insurgents would probably decline if they left and allowed Iraqis to be on their own.’

End transcript

I read the above two paragraphs, gaping open-mouthed. This war can’t be reported ‘…because it’s too dangerous’! But not for the ‘brave’ partisan anti-coalition reporters – the outright apologists for the insurgents like Robert Fisk, and Patrick Cockburn, who rather than ‘brave it’ are best seen as a protected species of pro-war propagandists. They are not anti-war they are on the other side!

Fisk et al support the right of people’s under imperialist onslaught the theoretical right of resistance; they do not have to condone all the acts, indeed they don’t, after all it’s conveniently a mixed bag of sweets to pick from. As demonstrated these two ‘reporters’ are more properly called propagandists – having argued that the masses of Iraqis viewed the politicians that were elected last January and formed the interim government as nothing more than ‘collaborators’. I predict they will not retract from this position. They will absurdly say this again of the politicians elected in December, yet if they do, who will take them seriously besides Noam Chomsky?

Chomsky now has to face up to the nonsense of calling the once more, free, and fairly elected representatives collaborators. Or it may be time for the anti-war types to dissolve the people and elect a new set, because they keep electing – against all historical examples, one must add – ‘collaborators’.

‘This war can’t be reported?’ Au contraire, it is the most reported war of all time. This war is being fought in the era of instant mass-communications. Bombings and be-headings are often shown live. There are dozens of new and vibrant media outlets in Iraq from TV stations to almost every shade of newspaper. What Chomsky means is that western reporters have to rely more on Iraqi reports.

Then Chomsky stoops to outright deception. He starts out by agreeing that the elections are an important milestone event, then pulls a subtle word switch in order to maintain the ridiculously improbable notion that any democratic outcome was not the U.S. Government’s intention all along.

From the transcript;

Andy Clark:…After the vote, the President has called the elections an important milestone. Professor Chomsky, how do you see the elections? Do you see them as an important milestone for Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: Actually I do, but before talking about that, I should just bring up a kind of a truism. No rational person pays the slightest attention to declarations of benign intent on the part of leaders, no matter who they are. And the reason is they’re completely predictable, including the worst monsters, Stalin, Hitler the rest.’

What he would have us believe is that the U.S. ruling-elite under the leadership of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz were attempting in the 21st Century to;

‘…The US tried, in every possible way, to prevent elections in Iraq. They offered effort after effort to evade the danger of elections. Finally, they were compelled to accept elections by mass non-violent resistance, for which the Ayatollah al Sistani was a kind of a symbol. Mass outpourings of people demanding elections. Finally, Bush and Blair had to agree to elections. The next step is to subvert them and they started immediately. They’re doing it right now. Elections mean you pay some – in a democracy at least – you pay some attention to the will of the population. Well, the crucial question for an invading army is: ‘do they want us to be here?’…

Andy Clark: But isn’t this the start of a process that could see the occupying troops from America and Britain leaving? We’ve seen an awful lot of Iraqis taking part in the elections, two thirds, we’re told. The turnout was quite high…

Noam Chomsky: But hold on a second, … Now of course, there’s a conflict, the Iraqis have forced the occupying powers to allow some kind of electoral process. What the occupying powers are doing now is perfectly clear and very familiar, very familiar. … The way they want it to work – standard procedure – you want the local forces to run their own countries, so … the US-run state terrorist forces are the military, the civilians are local, and the US is in the background. If anything goes wrong, they move in, the same with the British in India, the same with the Japanese in South Korea.

Andy Clark: So you see this is a step to set up a sort of puppet government and not something that’s really representative of ordinary Iraqis?

Noam Chomsky: That’s what they are trying to do, but there’s always a conflict about that. Many of the Western backed or Russian or Eastern or other backed tyrants rose up. However, it is as clear as a bell that the US, and Britain behind it, are doing everything they can to prevent a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq.’

End transcript

Saddam statue topples

So, Chomsky is saying that the U.S. went into a country with the intention of putting puppets in place, but, presumably, forgot how. Like, they had never done it before??

This is not analysis, this is a pseudo-analysis from a leftist that is now deeply mired in pseudo-leftism and who can no longer tell the real article from the shoddy fraud.

When you get it wrong as he admitted you really ought to pause to think; why did this error of judgment happen? But Chomsky dares not pause to genuinely analyse his errors, instead he rushes on with the explanation that the Bush Administration are just incompetent imperialists. He insists that it was the Neo-Cons that got it wrong by not doing what all competent imperialists do. So, he apparently only got it wrong because they did. SO, it’s not his error at all!

Anything but face up to the policy change that is now being implemented while Chomsky calls black, white. Unlike other analysts, he did not spot it coming before the war and he would not debate the issues when the analysis was pointed out to him, because to Chomsky it was an absurd, unworthy theory. He thought he didn’t have to think about any new issues but now reality is catching up and he is forced to think about the issues.

If the U.S. imperialists did not intend to install puppets after the Baathists were overthrown, and the Iraqi army disbanded then they were left with precisely what options? To honestly pose the question is to answer it.

Contrary to the Chomsky view, the liberating Coalition wanted an election right from the start and they could not possibly not have wanted one in this day and age. The only debate was what type of democratic election. The U.S. elite sought alternatives that empowered the other (Sunni) sections of the Iraqi population to a disproportionate extent, at the expense (necessarily) of the Shia majority. They were told NO, by Sistani who then called for a demonstration of resolve and the matter was thus decided in favour of Proportional Representation. (PR)

Chomsky’s version is a fairy tale. The world would not have tolerated the U.S. preventing Iraqi elections and everybody should have known this. The U.S. ruling-elite most assuredly did.

Iraqi girl U.S. flag

The only question was what was to be the election regulations etc.. This is why there is deliberate distortion by Chomsky because he understands that if they did not do what he thought they would do and ‘install a stable client regime’, then the outcome would be determined by the Iraqis in an election process.

Now we can ask a question again and this time hope to get a genuine answer based on what the Iraqi people think elections mean.

From the transcript;

Andy Clark: ‘Do you see them as an important milestone for Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: ‘Actually I do’.

End Transcript

Iraqi woman voter

Iraqi woman voter

Actually he does not see them as an important milestone in a genuine sense as to note the milestone properly is to take those elected seriously and to give some honour to those who have enabled their election Chomsky does neither and instead gives contempt and comfort to the enemy.

* The Iraqi election has ended the old war, irrespective of how it started and begun the new war. This war is deserving of support from all democrats, all leftists and all progressives world-wide.

• Results that Chomsky won’t notice.
(Posted at Last Superpower by Patrick Muldowney at 22/01/2006)

Of the 275 seats available from the December 15 election, the results have been announced as follows;

Shi’ites UIA Daawa & SCIRI 128

Shi’ites Risaliyun (Muqtada al-Sadr) 2

(Edited Arthur comment;  Not the only 2 seats for Sadr.  The party which won 2 seats was a faction of Sadr supporters who didn’t agree with joining in the dominant Shia islamist UIA ticket (Elites and Cadres group or some such “Life of Brian” type name). That dominant Shia ticket included candidates from SCIRI, Daawa, and Sadr supporters as well as others. A total of about 30 Sadr supporters was elected, mainly on the dominant UIA ticket.)

Whether Sadr supporters would have won more or less than the total of about 30 if they had not joined the UIA ticket cannot be determined from the fact that (some faction of them) won only 2 seats running independently. It is however highly likely that the total of 30 allocated in the ticket is a significant overestimation of their actual voting strength as an inducement to abandon their armed insurrection and rely on voting instead by joining the UIA mainstream.

Secular Kurds 53

Secular Shia al-Iraqiyah (Iyad Allawi) 25

Kurds (Sunni Islamist) 5

Sunni NAF 44

Sunni NFforND 11

Sunni, Mishaan Juburi liberal party (ex-Baathists) 3

Turkmen, oppose Shia fundamentalism (at least) 1

Christian, oppose Muslim fundamentalism. 1

Yazidi; oppose Muslim fundamentalism. 1

Mithal al-Alusi, a Western-style liberal 1

These 275 people are self evidently not U.S. puppets. This election result either destroys the theory that it was the intention of the ‘imperialist invaders’ to install puppets (to steal the oil etc., for which there is no evidence despite Chomsky’s ‘explanation’) or it firmly declares at the least that such a theoretical attempt has failed.

Legitimate Iraqi representative politicians are now in charge. This is undoubtedly a bourgeois revolutionary victory over the once all powerful Baathist tyranny. It was achieved in less than three years of struggle, and it has to be said that any other even vaguely realistic hypothetical effort to achieve the same result without a liberating invasion would have cost many more lives, and dragged on over a great many more years. And yes I know the war still goes on, but I am prepared to say right now that the strategic direction is clear. This revolution is going well.

Democratic forces can now hold political power in large areas of Iraq, and while the enemies of the Iraqi ‘peoples with purple stains on their fingers’, can still attack them with random bombings and so on, the Iraqi masses are now well armed and determined to remain on the offensive; and they continue to have very powerful allies.

Yet despite these revolutionary gains, some ‘opinion leaders’ among western political trends are prepared to call these newly elected politicians nothing but ‘collaborators with the occupation, from the point of view of the ordinary Iraqis’. (As Robert Fisk called the same representatives when they were last elected about one year ago) That is essentially what Chomsky and the Z-net types are stuck with. They will have nothing to do with the new reality. They will do their best to deny recognition to these brave politicians. They will fail to give them the due respect and support they have earned as the duly elected representatives. The Z-net types are trapped.

The western anti-war movement will have to split yet again over the issue of where too next. One section will continue to call the evident progress of this revolution ‘a quagmire’, and recommend that the U.S. ruling-elite should ignore the requests for on-going assistance and simply withdraw and leave it to the Iraqis to sort out their ‘civil-war’. Most of the remainder seeing the political dead-end, will just fall silent.

It reminds me of the behaviour of the China-line leftists in the late 1970’s. They went along en masse with the counter revolution of Deng and Co, and the nonsense that was being peddled by various CP (ML’s). When the pretense that this new direction was a continuation of the revolutionary struggle of Mao became unsustainable the people that had been taken in just drifted away. There was not much effort to say ‘I was wrong’. The actual result was rejection of the political tendency that had been proven correct, as well as that tendency which had led them into a dead end.

The current ‘peace’ campaigners; greens; liberals; conservatives; and ‘leftists’, will be objectively behaving as outright racists if they refuse assistance to the Iraqi People now. None of these tendencies belly-ached about their own government’s offering police and other military assistance to authorities in other countries such as Spain when they were dealing with mass-murdering bombers, or with the authorities in Bali; or London; or New York and so forth. Why would they reject the appeals of the Iraqi political leadership for assistance now?

Consider what a national unity government means.

“The UIA and the Kurds could form a government but in this period we have no interest in doing this and are leaning more towards a national unity government,” says Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister.

As we saw with the negotiations over the Iraq Constitution; and the three months of negotiations to form the interim government elected last January this latest series of negotiations will go on for quite some time, and no doubt some seemingly peculiar compromise solutions will be worked out.

However, even though numerous issues have already been worked through with the formation of the interim government a year ago it is always possible that we could be surprised, and also that longer rather than shorter, negotiations are to be expected. In the end however, I don’t doubt that a national unity government will be formed even if some of the smaller political forces decide to remain outside of it.

These historic negotiations are intended to establish a country that has never before existed. A country where the majority of the population is no longer ruled by an ethnically privileged 20%. That 20% has some adjusting to do and they are not in a strong negotiating position. Those who can’t make enough of an adjustment will remain at war with the vast majority, but that is up to them, because I would be willing to wager that an inclusive democracy with ample power sharing; religious tolerance; and economic guarantees regarding proportional shares of the country’s oil wealth is on offer.

It would not make sense for the 80% to fail to protect the proportional interests of the 20%, because there is really nothing in it for them, as compared to the advantages of ‘living the good life’ in a rapidly developing peaceful and united Iraq.

Just as the U.S. could never steal the oil resources and did not go to war for oil, neither does it make any sense for the Kurds, and the Shia to try and take down the Arab Sunni people’s from their rightful share of the growing wealth. It is far easier to keep making a larger pie to share, than to fight over crumbs from a much smaller static pie. Peace will bring an enormous economic opportunity.

Insurgents will not improve their negotiating position with more time, and their opponents are definitely not going to send the large military ally home while those groups remain at war. Until such a time as the new Iraqi armed forces are massively more powerful than the insurgents, about the best that the ‘nationalist’ insurgency can face save for, (because this war really is lost) is a plan for a method to establish a time-table for the occupation troops to go home, or some such gobbledygook wording, because they will not be given a firm time-table. All this is on offer now so I would guess that most will grab it with both hands.

What ‘guarantees’ are to be given in terms of stopping military actions against both the government and Coalition forces and providing protection to economic assets as a result of inclusion in the government are the big issues. How is delivery of the guarantees to be measured? Cease-fires have to show up statistically. Areas have to go quiet, casualties have to fall, and discipline has to be enforced by the locals first.

The Government sending the Coalition home only arises in the context of having substantially built up the national armed-forces, and demonstrable demobilization of the insurgency. The Government must become far more powerful. These are hard-nosed negotiators requiring more than just promises of future peaceful behavior. There will have to be measured steps, on both sides, as the fighting reduces but inevitably goes on. This messy latter stage part of draining the Iraqi swamp can only be run by the locals.

The first of the steps, required of those entering the political process is the total isolation of the Al Qaeda type Jihadis, this is the bottom line starting point to the new negotiations.

The nationalist insurgents are now clearly drawn into politics, and thus separated from and fighting against these ‘enemies of all’. The huge bulk of the elected politicians will be obliged as evidence of their sincerity to publicly denounce the latter types as ‘enemies of all Iraqis’, and to make reasonable efforts to stand-down the former nationalist insurgents that have an honorable peace process before them. All are obliged into giving due allegiance to the national armed-forces and police-force, in due deference to not just majority rule but a substantially consensus rule.

Incidentally, the vote this time seems to me to be a good base for a rise in the secular vote in four years time as a big growth in young voters continues and more people drift away from religious style political representation under the influence of a vibrant mass-media as now exists in Iraq. If secularist politicians perform well they have every reason to be optimistic. After all, Iraqi politics has now opened up and progressives not only have a place at the table, but an electorate to win. They have space, time and enough people so could need little else to make good progress with this revolution.

But to get a flavour of what the anti-war luminaries make of the same developments see Juan Cole; Bay Area Indymedia

 

For a more up to date picture of Iraqi politics  “The Security Council reiterates that no terrorist act can reverse the path towards peace, democracy and reconstruction in Iraq, which is supported by the people and the Government of Iraq, and by the international community.” See here for more UN Security Council statements on current situation faced in Iraq

Gutter snipe all you want Geoffrey Robertson QC

Gutter snipe all you want Geoffrey Robertson QC but you are on our side now!!

Last night (20/10/2014) I saw this on the ABC Lateline program.

EMMA ALBERICI: You were against the 2003 Iraq invasion, but you support the fight against Islamic State. What’s the difference?

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Correct. Well, in a sense there’s a link because if we had obeyed the law, we wouldn’t have overthrown the Baathist regime in 2003 in Iraq, which – and underneath that stone, once it was rolled over, crept all these horrific fighting groups and the latest one of them being ISIS. So it may well be that ISIS wouldn’t be with us if we’d obeyed the law, and let’s face it, there were only four who didn’t. There was George Bush, who wanted to kill the man who had – he thought had threatened his father. There was Tony Blair, who went in because he thought the British could restrain the Americans. There was that Spanish President whose name I forget. He reminded me of Manuel in Fawlty Towers. I think he’s now been made a member of News Corp board. And there was Johnny Howard, who perhaps didn’t look at the law or had forgotten it or never studied it when he became a solicitor. But it was a bad mistake to go in to overthrow Saddam Hussein and we are now left with ISIS and we have to deal with it. We have an obligation to deal with it, I think, because it is committing genocide. It is certainly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and that engages international attention. There was no crime against humanity or genocide being committed by Saddam. He committed genocide in 1988 against the Kurds, but the world turned a blind eye to that. And so we have a duty, I think, to go in. I don’t think air strikes is going to solve of the problem. The problems are extremely deep and will take a lot of solving and we have problems in our own backyard with returning members of ISIS in Britain. They’ve adopted a view, initially, that they should keep them out, but that means …

EMMA ALBERICI: That’s a view that’s shared here too …

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Yes, I know.

EMMA ALBERICI: … in our government.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: But you can’t make people stateless. The answer I think is that you have to bring them back, arrest them and put them on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We can do that. There are those crimes under the Crimes Act. And I think that view is gathering force in Britain.

EMMA ALBERICI: So you think it’s wrong to deny them – to cancel their passports, deny them re-entry to Australia?

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well perhaps cancel their passports if they’re going, but when they come back, I think the answer is not to refuse them and leave them stateless because that’s – what we should do is prosecute them, send them to prison for a long time, or perhaps – the view in Britain is the Channel program. We’re developing programs with psychologists and imams and possibly returned jihadis to discourage young people from joining. And it may be that instead of getting a 25-year sentence for being an accomplice to war crimes in Syria, you will get a reduction if you’re prepared to help discourage other people from taking this primrose path. But it’s a problem that both countries are facing. I think the answer is to prosecute for the crimes that they’ve committed, for their accompliceship in these monstrous events and to punish them and hopefully the punishment will act as a deterrent itself.

EMMA ALBERICI: We have to leave it there. Many thanks for coming in, Geoffrey Robertson.

END
That dear reader is what the ABC puts to air and after all why not a great many people love him? All one has to do is listen to the disparaging personal attacks that pass unchallenged by the ABC reporters to realise how low it has sunk as a so-called independent news provider.

However, one can still say – thank you come in spinner as  another anti-war liberal has joined the ranks of the pro-war elements.  OMG we are currently so shamelessly broad in our ranks that we will even have this contemptible refugee from the old not in my name brigade. ROBERTSON may well rather be passing a sentence on the Spanish Prime Minister, George W Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals – but he will just have to content himself with a bit of gutter sniping instead! Little Johhny Howard indeed!

A review of The Wind That Shakes the Barley winner of Cannes film Festival 2006

 

Just one gem from the past to help Steve notice his present. 

Posted by  anita  in  2006-09-30

I just saw the Ken Loach film ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’ and what a splendidly made and politically-correct piece of pseudo-left propaganda (in the worst sense of the word) it is.

My partner is Irish Australian and quite familiar with this period of Irish history, but his first question was why would someone make this film now?  The answer was not long in coming as it quickly became clear that this film was made to make a, none too subtle, point about British involvement in Iraq.  When I came out from the film I picked up a leaflet and the message was crystal clear; ‘Speaking at the Cannes film festival Loach said: We live in extraordinary times and that has made people political in a way they maybe weren’t in the previous four, five, six years.  The wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world – people finally cannot turn away from that.  It’s very exciting to be able to deal with this in films, and not just be a complement to the popcorn.’

This ‘historical’ film was made in order to tell a story that would be unacceptable to tell in the first-person.  This film was not really made to explain and explore Irish history from 85 years ago; it was made to encourage people to think negatively about the present British involvement in liberating the peoples’ of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Loach would not of course use the word liberation; he would speak of an illegal war and imperialist occupation forces etc.  Yuk!

From start to finish (in the current context) it’s a shameless film where the filmmaker hides behind the Irish people’s legitimate national struggle, to effectively promote the causes of Baathism, tribalism and the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as these scum hide behind phony nationalisms today; though once again Loach would as a matter of course deny that as well; he would assuredly tell all who’d listen that he is on the side of the Iraqi people no less.  He would be sure to hate Saddam and Al Qaeda and the Taliban but would have also proudly marched for peace when others were advocating war against them.  They would be in power today if it were up to Loach.

Loach and the rest of the pseudo-left ‘opinion leaders’ are leading little on the street, but they are in control of the vast bulk of the mass-media; they dominate cultural output throughout the western world.  This film would be awarded in any western film festival; so the west is overdue for a cultural revolution.

The Wind that shakes the Barley is about the harsh ‘reality’ of all ruling-class armies.  It was made to a formula, like shooting pseudo-leftist shibboleth fish in a barrel. Show innocent death; show brutality of imperialist rule; show arrogance of ruling-class types; show the noble resistance that was only brought into being by the occupation; show a resistance as both necessary and reluctantly brutal (yet clean compared to British); show that elections under occupation and threat are invalid and draw the conclusion that free and fair elections cannot be held under threat of the gun, and that therefore Iraq’s process and government is illegitimate!

In the end, having dragged the viewer through the realist muck of British imperial criminality in Ireland during a time where the British stood in the way of the democratic revolution, Loach had to crucially distort the relationship of the foreign troops to the democratic revolution and the issue of voting to make his big point.  IMV Loach’s position is on the spectrum of xenophobia and racism.  (That would have the unarmed peoples’ of Iraq liberate themselves from tyranny and not to shed the blood of other Mother’s son’s and daughter’s to secure an international solution).

The key question that he distorted (after all he was making this film when the triple election process was in full swing in Iraq) was; can there really be a free and fair vote in countries that have occupation troops on the streets that by his implication are making a threat to the population as clear as was the proposition put to Collins of ‘immediate and terrible war as an alternative to the Treaty’.  Loach stands with the ‘heroes’ that won’t sell out; won’t compromise and therefore go to their ‘noble’ death’s as delivered to them by the ‘collaborating’ majority, and sell-out leadership.  He implies that the current government of Iraq is comprised of sell-out collaborators.  Phleese.

I found myself fuming at this cynical and sick distortion of the issues involved in liberation, in the context of and to the basic level of the bourgeois democratic revolution in 2006 in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone the Ireland of James Connolly’s generation.

The core questions raised in the Irish struggle for independence from Britain were not adequately highlighted by this film.  Specifically, did Michael Collins sell out by negotiating the Irish Free State?  What about the role of Eamonn DeValera?  ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’ answers unambiguously, Yes the movement was sold out, and engenders the film with a cynicism and fatalism that leaves me cold.

These sentiments formed the main part of the final dialogue spoken by Damien O’Donovan a hypothetical Irish freedom fighter and main protagonist of the film, who declined to save his own life by refusing to convey intelligence to his brother (a Commander of the Free State Army) after his capture.

I found this part most disconcerting as there was the feeling that in the character Damien refusing to ‘sell out’ his ideals and being prepared to die for his ‘principles’ there was a direct comparison being made with current fascist insurgents and suicide bombers?

This film doesn’t do justice to any of the important matters raised by either the Irish struggle of so long ago, or the Iraqi conflict of today, and also has nothing particularly credible to say about the personal aspect of the brothers in arms either.  The film was littered with false oppositions (pragmatist v idealist; internationalist v nationalist; socialist v nationalist) simplifying the subject matter down to caricatures, rather than un-raveling the complexity of the revolutionary experience of Ireland for the viewer.

Rather than ‘raise discussion’ this film contributes to a dumbing down of the subject matter; even obfuscation of the issues is not too strong an expression.

By contrast, the film Michael Collins was about the same period and done as a Hollywood block-buster in 1996 (before 9/11 and the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq).  It too portrayed the British and their Irish collaborators as thugs and made clear that the Black and Tans were not there to help the Irish but to keep them down. But the treatment of the election process was very different and the empathy for the position of the negotiators of the Treaty was evident.

All in all, this highlights for me the need to adopt a dialectical approach to the world.  No truth can be found in establishing false dichotomies.  If Loach wanted to highlight how bad the war in Iraq is (it is after all fairly easy to portray death negatively) he ought to have just made a film about Iraq from a scared soldier’s perspective and exposed to the world how bad it is.

Ken Loach is apparently known for spurning the position of history from the great-man’s perspective, and specifically taking the position of ordinary people in his films. (As opposed to the film Michael Collins).  However, I think this was another real shortcoming with this film in that a real understanding by the audience continues to revolve around the main issues and players and the film really suffered for this one-sided approach. The dialectical approach tells us that light and dark are defined against each other, so too, ordinary people need leaders, and leaders cannot lead unless there are ordinary people willing to support them, anything else is pure fantasy and romanticisation and is not telling the complete story.

It’s just plain wrong to compare the struggle of Ireland’s freedom fighters with the current situation in Iraq and thereby engender corresponding sympathy for the so-called ‘freedom fighters’ currently bombing and disrupting the formation of a democratic Iraq.  The message of The Wind TSTB is if you kill people’s family and friends you’ve got to expect that there will be a reaction and that they will organize to kill you.  There is nothing debatable about this but this is not the real story because we all know that at times people and culture operate in a tooth for a tooth kind of avenge manner, but this is different to having the right political conditions present to unleash a real movement for national sovereignty as occurred in Ireland after the murder of the courageous leaders of the 1916 uprising.  (It was not so much that the people of Ireland necessarily supported the program of the rebels but that they reacted to the fact that many of the most prominent were all Court Martial-ed and shot)

Though Loach’s film makes it clear that the struggle for national rights was occurring alongside of the struggle for class rights it was again a superficial and opportunist handling of the question.  For instance, there is a scene where the courts of the Free State are hearing a case against a money-lender who is extracting extortionate levels of interest for a loan given to an old woman who is refusing to pay.

When the court finds against the money-lender ordering him to pay money to the old woman, a split amongst the people at the court develops and the members of the Army say “wait on”, we want him to give us money for guns…This part of the film could have been illuminating but was very superficial and the court decision was presented as extremely whimsical and showing that they were not really ‘fit’ to decide.

The brutality of this film had a stunning effect on the audience but it was a lecture from a coward.  In many ways it is this romanticisation of the idea of dying for one’s ‘principles’, Like a packet of Benson Hedges – where only the best will do – that renders the message of  The Wind that shakes the Barley as poisonous as smoking that packet of Benson and Hedges!

 

Posted by  owenss  at     2006-10-01Anita Im unsure from your Ken Loach movie review which side of the Irish Civil war you think progressive people should support. The side lead by Michael Collins or the side lead by Eammon De Valera?

 

Posted by     owenss  at     2006-10-01 02:57 AMAnita you claim that Loach and un named other anti war people have “….control of the vast bulk of the mass media…” poor old Ken produces a handful of art house movies and he controls the mass media?Yes now I see it The Wind that Shakes is the equivalent pro war Rupert Murdocks Fox News and Land and Freedom is the equivalent of the Sun newspaper or that film about a boy and a bird rivals Murdocks Australian newspaper holdings. Dont worry Im sure Barry is already preparing a piece to prove that Murdocks empire is minuscule.

 

Posted by anita at 2006-10-01 10:00PMLoach and the rest of the pseudo-left ‘opinion leaders’ are leading little on the street, but they are in control of the vast bulk of the mass-media; they dominate cultural output throughout the western world.  This film would be awarded in any western film festival; so the west is overdue for a cultural revolution.

Steve, I’m not suggesting conspiracies or anything like it.   I was trying to explain how if this film’s so bad, it won such acclaim.  First I thought this could only happen in France (anti-British and anti-Iraq war); then I thought wait on this would have happened in Australia.  My point was about my own world; I do not have Fox for example, so mostly the media I’m exposed to is the Australian ABC.

There is no presenter on the ABC Radio or Television who is for the Iraq war as far as I can tell.  I would be happy to be proven incorrect but take ABC 891 radio from Adelaide; Peter Goers the evening commentator who interviewed Tariq Ali and referred to him as the ‘Sage of the Age’; but at least Peter Goers deliberately has a pro-war commentator once a week in his guest right-winger Andrew Bolt each Tuesday night.

Bolt regularly looks like an intellectual giant up against the pseudo-leftist Goers on these issues.  But other than that, there is, to use the colourful expression of Mark Latham, a Conga-line of suck holes, pushing anti-Iraq war sentiment from morning til night.

It is wall to wall.

On the morning program almost every one of their guests except actual members of the government are anti-Iraq war.  The best they have done outside of that (that I have noticed) is an interview of the dopey right-winger Greg Sheridan.

Like employs like and over a period each organization develops a corporate culture.  The ABC is notoriously biased – of course it is mostly exposed by the right-wing in this country who criticize the ABC as left-wing.  BAH. It is pseudo-left mush.  Take the line it runs from morning to night on global warming; organic food; water crisis; plastic bags; peak oil; they go on ceaselessly with this pseudo-leftist green dribble.

The ABC gardening program is Gardening Australia; where the one time British soldier and peace campaigner Peter Cundall has a grand old time filling people with his composted thinking.  They push imbeciles like Tim Flannery, Roy Slaven, and David Suzuki.  The National Press club put on Peter Garret and the ABC ran and then later re-ran the program; but when Bjorn Lomborg was at the club the ABC did not even screen it!  The best he got was a quick and hostile interview on Landline!

I know you will remember the lies that Maxine McKew spread about Iyad Allawi and then never revisited.

Nationally on the TV the ABC have a show called the Insiders, again the balance they achieve is with the right-wingers Bolt, and Piers Akerman alternating on the show.  The mix is greater than three to one!  David Marr ex-Media Watch; Ian Henschke Stateline almost froth with the anti-war/green line; on and on it goes (throw some names in yourself, you won’t find it hard).  Consider that great organic beef producer Philip Adams how much more of a constant anti-Iraq war campaigner can you get?  Not the slightest attempt to hide the campaigning.

I recall ABC Adelaide’s morning commentators once going so far as to say that there is a serious possibility that the war could be about nothing (thus a GW Bush mad whim).  They employ as their international expert Keith Suter (full on pudding-headed anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush campaigner).  One of his recent great ideas was that if he had been President, rather than invade (liberate) Iraq like that dumbo GWB, he would be clever and offer a reward for OBL of $$$500,000,000 and that would interest the Russian Mafia and the Kazaks to get interested in rounding him up –just like the old US policy of handing a billion to the Al Qaeda sorts and getting the Saudi government to cough in another billion- handing over the reward to another international criminal group.  They have learned nothing.  Nobody even rang up to laugh at them.

In the News there is the constant barrage of terminology that is sympathetic to the insurgents, though I admit that referring to Iraqi Jihadi’s as the ‘resistance’ is no longer so evident.

We’ve also had Triple J using the ‘Don’t want to be an American Idiot’ song as its signature advertising jingle.  (Now if they were singing ‘don’t want to be a Jew idiot’; or ‘don’t want to be a Japanese idiot’; Indonesian; Aboriginal; etc then it would be clear what the sentiments are about.  Yet Australian tax-payers have funded the production of material on the xenophobic/ racist spectrum because anti-Americanism is perfectly acceptable in polite company).

Listen to today’s ABC News.  Or the national program AM.  Or the world at noon. Bob Woodward’s  book ‘State of Denial’.  I am sure you can get it from the net as a Pod Cast.  ‘Opinion poll today shows 80% think the war in Iraq hasn’t done anything to reduce terrorism.  91% think …85% …’ (The Lowy institute poll.)   ‘Doctors start campaigning to end Australia’s involvement in Iraq.’

The people are getting their views from somewhere.  They are not engaged in independent research but parroting back what the politicians and culture workers are feeding them.  Howard and Blair and Bush have been pathetic at selling the revolutionary requirement for this war against most of the ‘left and right’ intelligentsia.  But cultural food like this is breeding political cynicism, and paralysis not action- they all got re-elected – as the ordinary masses are much more sensible than the more ‘committed’ activists to the fact that the Coalition can’t just cut and run etc.

Now I think that I have been a little sloppy; but in my defense I’d been working on this for a while and wanted to get it published… but it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the old right and the pseudo-left.  They are saying the same poisonous things.  Bruce Springstein; Neil Young; The Dixie Chicks; they all believe the same stuff, while some think they are leftists and some think they are rightists.  They are all like Green Peace; nasty right wingers, it’s just that the pseudo-left uses some strange terms and methods for hiding from their bottom-line; terms that are utterly meaningless when combined with the policies that they push.  They can sing the Internationale all they like, but they want Australian troops withdrawn from Iraq and not involved at all in draining the swamp.

Loach’s film explicitly promotes the position currently being pushed by media internationally, namely that the war in Iraq is increasing the terrorist threat… there will be more Damien O’Donovan’s due to the ‘occupation’ of Iraq, you share this belief and subsequent rejection of the Iraqi government’s requests for assistance.

The American Peace movement currently relies upon celebrities as a draw card to Marches and rallies, and even this has not been successful in sustaining mass support against the war and moaning about how the people are just not getting it.  The anti-war movement do not want debate, they want one sided agitprop material, songs/films etc to change consciousness; they can’t stand up to in-depth analysis and rigorous effort; like yourself over the oil issue when you resort to a claim that oil was just a form of short- hand.  The real clear point is that the lastsuperpower could not do what the anti-war campaigners were claiming it was doing, and or would do.

As to your question about whom I support…Well I don’t feel well read enough about the period to put forward a hard position on it but since you asked my quite tentative and uninformed opinion based upon the films is that I am on Michael Collins’ side.  I was deeply moved when I first saw the Michael Collins film, and I am not sure if it is because Liam Neeson is OK by me whenever he is on screen (we are talking animal magnetism here-he is not a Hollywood Star for no reason) or whether Michael Collins was really such an engaging and brilliant leader in reality.  I take to heart Eamon deValera’s comments when he was the President of Ireland in 1966 (I got the spelling wrong last time) saying in effect that history would be kinder to Michael Collins than himself.

Speaking of being kinder I think you were really nasty to Barry commenting about how he is off attempting to back me up.  What a lot of nonsense.  As well, I was not commenting about anything else Ken Loach has directed but Wind.

The view that has been consistently put at lastsuperpower is held by a minuscule number of people around the world and it is not to be found on the ABC.  The closest we get is Hitchens served up from time to time.  Rather than continue to nit pick, while determinedly avoiding the main thrust of the articles on this site, you ought to try to write a larger piece trying to bring the bigger picture together as you have now come to understand things five years after 9/11: as an example the impending Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and the establishment of a Palestinian State.  Israel just pulled all troops out of Lebanon, having been strung out to dry by being unimpeded by Rice and Bush.  Have they not thus demonstrated Israel’s limited military and political envelope, to the world?  Almost forty years after launching its 1967 war to grab Greater Israel, the war is coming to an end in defeat and the mass media and the pseudo-left just don’t get it.  Perhaps they are too busy applauding the re-making of Irish history.

 

Posted by  owenss  at  2006-10-02 04:09 AMAnita thank you for stating that in the Irish Civil war you would give your support to the side lead by Michael Collins.My next question is to Patrickm. Patrick do you support the side lead by Michael Collins?As to my offense to Barry. Guilty as charged. When Barry stated that the Iraqi resistance was minuscule I couldnt believe that he would defend that statement rather than just admit that he had overstated his case.Anita you invite me to make a serious contribution to this site and I wish I had both the time and the intellegence to do so. However it goes against the way I have become involved. I first contributed in response to Albert who stated that the Iraq project was going well.  I was further stimulated to contribute when people stated that the way forward in Iraq was to ramp up the killing of Iraqis who resisted. Again I couldn’t resist when contributors characterise the resistance in exactly the same terms used by the Whitehouse as I think this characterisation is a gross oversimplification.I was encouraged to contribute when Bill posted about resistance figures being paraded on Iraqi TV at the same time that a US soldier was let off after clearly murdering a wounded Iraqi who had already surrendered.

I uphold the Iraqi government as being just that. Having said that I look on them with the same contempt that I hold for Michael Collins who used Brittish weapons to kill Irish Republicans.

The Sunni arab population has the right to resist the oppression that they are experiencing. The Iraqi governments duty is to protect these people a duty I think they fail in the same way Collins failed the Irish. The rejection by the Iraqi government of peace proposals from numerous resistance groups is in my oppinion a tragic mistake.

 

Posted by  patrickm  at     2006-10-08 01:01 AMWhile a revolution unfolds in the Middle East, the pseudo-leftist web site ‘Socialist Worker online’ had this to conclude of its review of The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
But by the end of the film you can’t help being reminded of the British army in Iraq today, and Loach is the first to admit this.He said, “I think what happened in Ireland is such a classic story of a fight for independence, to establish a democratic mandate and to resist an occupying army.“Yet it was also a fight for a country with a new social structure.“The British army in Ireland during 1920-21 did what armies of occupation do the world over – adopt a racist attitude towards the people they are attacking and occupying.“They destroy people’s houses, engage in acts of brutality and generally oppress the people – and in Iraq that’s exactly what the British army is doing.“In spite of the suffering depicted, the fact still remains that the British marched out of Ireland. There is an element of hope in that.”Loach knows that British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in WW2 so why not show them?  But that would never do.  When trying to make his point about Iraq he had to skip WW2 and go back to British ruling class savagery in Ireland.  This film is only incidentally about the Irish.No liberation in Iraq folks; no elections; nothing to see but British brutality – move along and remember to chant no blood for oil, and later explain it away as a sort of metaphor when it turns out to make no sense whatever.
Anita thinks Michael Collins did the best he could; so did a majority of the Irish Parliament and so did a majority of the Irish people when the Treaty was put to a referendum.  The other side then brought on a fight and they lost that as well.  So there seems to be a pattern developing.

Steve ought to have a cover to cover read of Mao: losing is not a good idea.  The rejectionists were not sensible to fight and lose.  They ought to have not fought at all.  Mao often talks of avoiding fights unless you’re sure to win.  The blood was on their hands.  They had a way forward without slaughter and they chose blood instead.  History has yet to see the nationalist cause ‘victorious’ in all of Ireland, and I think interest is falling away in the context of being part of the reality of modern Europe; but history has, I think, recorded the civil-war in Michael Collins’ favor.

I can both appreciate the injustice of the Treaty and the decision of the negotiators to sign it and to trust to ongoing struggle to unfold further progress.  People both in the North and South were prepared to struggle for their rights, (in the long run they always are) and the civil-war in the Free State harmed that struggle.  History moves on and the Free State is ‘Gone with the Wind’.

The always required civil rights struggle in the North broke out again in the context of the same struggle in the U.S. in the sixties.  It was part of a world wide movement.   This struggle is now fully flowering (with power sharing; police force reform; anti- discrimination legislation enacted producing the inevitable demographic results and so forth).  All in the context of ongoing British ruling class decline in any ability to project imperial power.  The context of our reflections on the Irish Treaty is from this era of globalization and the rise of the Europe project.  Peace has broken out, and the continuity IRA, are a bad joke.  They are history repeating itself as a farce.  I am in favor of the IRA having ‘sold out again’.

 

Posted by  owenss  at  2006-10-08 06:29 PMPatrick so you think that you should never fight unless you are sure you will win.Well the Easter uprising never stood a chance, so they should not have done it?The provisional IRA could never defeat the British army, so they should have done what?You are also very kind to Michael Collins. Churchill put it to Collins either you attack the rebels or we will. I still lack respect for any Irish nationalist who will kill Irishmen at the behest of the British government

Dunkirk

Hitler’s Dunkirk Blunder.

Lately it’s been all too common for me to come across people who can tie their own shoe laces and yet they tie up the political loose ends they have come across via the MSM and life in general into conspiracy theories such as 9/11 was an inside job; or the moon landings were faked.   I kid you not… the other day I had a person tell me they did not believe that an airliner slammed into the Pentagon on 9/11!

When we throw in the range of clear mental illnesses, and milder obsessions that affect large numbers of people, and then supercharge our access to people generally via the internet and then discuss war,  well… all I can say is you will soon be  shaking your head at the range of odd beliefs that people can and do generate.

So, to get us thinking more rationally about “grand strategy” issues d-bbc-image2 for our time I think it’s useful to look at actual historical events and the differing explanations for why things turned out as they did in the past.  As World War 2 is for most people the ‘unavoidable fight’ or ‘the good war’ and is rich with events which are worth reviewing and drawing lessons from, I’ll go there and my example is the Dunkirk evacuation (Operation Dynamo).    (click here to see this BBC animation of the fall of France and after reading this article you can play spot the quite blatant errors).

In raising this topic I don’t want to debate about the revolutionary value of working people uniting with the imperialists of Britain, France and the U.S. in WW2.  I take that as a settled issue that firmly establishes that united front type politics  may be a possible good policy position for western leftists to consider in this ‘the era of Imperialism’ in any specific war.  But I digress…

Dynamo was a fantastically successful operation cobbled together by the British Navy in an era when darkness provided great protection for those under air attack.  The British air-force had not yet won the Battle of Britain but its splendid efforts in protecting the retreat pointed (on reflection anyway) to that future success.   The protection of the air force and the channel dominance and world’s best practice capabilities of the Navy were however all matched by the continuous highly effective and professional and just as often heroic efforts of the fighting ‘gunners’ (both British and French) that go quite unsung as heroes by the general populace.  In conducting their systematic fighting retreat through the series of descending pockets as they were conceded from one defensive position to the next they were a formidable force.  Even when the retreat was shambolic in the eyes of the infantry or themselves or anyone not involved in firing the guns directly at the enemy those guns were well fed and coordinated and they never ran out of ammunition nor targets.

What unfolded from 10May – 4June was a huge defeat but never a complete rout and the 25 days that unfolded surprised more than just the Allies.  The German High Command who had never been in favour of the Manstein plan were perhaps the most surprised of all.

Dynamo was just a small part of the big picture, the long term significance of which was clearly missed when the short term ‘golden’ prize was what had escaped the Germans in WW1 and that was victory over France.  The great victory for all these WW1 soldiers -who were now in command- was that the battle of the Marne was not repeated and the trenches were not dug a second time.  When looking back from the 21st C one must recall that the commanders then were only too well aware that over two million men fought in the first Battle of the Marne and perhaps 500,000 were killed or wounded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne  ‘French casualties totaled 250,000, 80,000 of them dead. Of note, the French poet Charles Péguy was killed while leading his platoon’s attack at the beginning of the battle. British casualties were 13,000, 1,700 of them dead. The Germans suffered 220,000 casualties. No future battle on the Western Front would average so many casualties per day.[11]’

The raw numbers for the retreat were – Dynamo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dynamo 338,226 men (110,000 French and a ‘few’ thousand from Belgium ) cross the English channel over 9 days with only about 8,000 pulled out on the first day and 4,000 on the last!  The weather ‘gods’ favoured them and so luck also played its part.  (27th May)8,000;  (28)18,000;  (29) 47,000;   (30)60,000;  (31)61,000;  (1June)64,000 (2-last few thousand of the British)40,000;   (3)40,000;  (4June)4,000: till 3.40 am when Shikari was the last ship with French troops to leave.

At dawn German troops overcame the last of the fighting rear guard and reached the beach.   The very next day the Panzers that had already been reorganised and redeployed launched the attack across the Somme to ‘settle accounts’ with the French.  Once  more they  showed the effectiveness of what

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.F.C._Fuller  and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._H._Liddell_Hart

had first theorized  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Guderian had developed and just demonstrated.

Evacuating these troops was the great ‘deliverance’ as described by Churchill.  Those saved enabled the British to rapidly train many others and to eventually come back and fight another day.   The French however all went back to France over the next few weeks just in time for most to surrender!

Now we all know that the basic crisis had been that prior to the evacuation all these troops had become trapped by the Germans in a pocket with their back to the channel, but that pocket still had munitions and most other things they required to fight and were effectively fighting.  These supplies especially fuel (that they no longer required much of anyway) were shrinking.  But paradoxically the big pocket kept becoming a ‘tougher nut to crack’.  It required the troops to run out of stuff and that required a little time.  Because they were trapped without the ability to dominate their space and out-range their enemies they were obviously staring at eventual defeat and that was only days away but they were a formidable force till the inevitable exhaustion of the artillery and then the total defeat and surrender that loomed.

Blitzkrieg as a tactical method brought the trap about and Hitler had begun to grasp the method but he was far from the expert who were only one handful anyway.  But he did grasp that the Panzers were not to be used against hard points as this ‘pocket’ had become; rather the hard points were systematically avoided and left for the air force and artillery to attend to.  The precious panzer units were required to be preserved and deployed for the job that only they could do.  Thus on his orders these precious ‘few’ were transferred to launch an attack across the Somme and did so on 5th June.

The myth that Hitler by not allowing the Panzer units to be used in a manner opposed to the principles of the new and effective doctrine and actually allowing the British to escape the trap in order to prepare a political position of rapprochement is to miss the big picture altogether.  For Hitler his splendid air-force and the conventional artillery led forces of Army Group B could attend to those in the ‘trap’.  He required the fast moving Panzers to do to the rest of France what they had just done on this front; and they did just that!

Hitler had ordered  Panzer units; led by General Guderian to stop their advance, with the consequence being that despite heavy casualties as a result of mostly air and artillery attacks, this huge allied force was able to escape across the channel – even though they had to abandon their weapons and so forth.

Was this a blunder on Hitler’s part?  Yes!  But Hitler never took a strategic decision to allow the British to escape as part of a larger scheme to end all fighting with the British and come to sensible terms (which only in hindsight can be seen to have been an error because such a deal did not eventuate).  He was always keen on dealing with the British but that had nothing to do with letting any troops escape their trap.

It’s just that they were not as trapped as he thought and his splendid air-force was not as splendid as he thought and he was never very solid in his understanding of the capabilities of the British Navy.  He was a WW1 soldier and a couple of days was not the same for him as it was for that tiny number of cutting edge battle field German generals of WW2.

Occasionally we ought to remind ourselves of the boilerplate realities where any sensible analysis ought to assume that leaders have strategies, (which are very often not made clear in declaratory policy) and that they are fundamentally rational, however this does not rule out blundering and disruption due to unexpected events (obviously these things often happen together).  Both sides are trying to win the war, but the unfolding of events is not mechanical, surprises happen.  Sometimes errors are due to blundering. World War 2 began with the Phoney War in the west, which lasted from  September 1939 until the 9 April when the invasion of Norway began.  A month later on  May 10,  the Germans swept into Belgium and the Low Countries.  After the BEF and the French took that bait and moved in force into Belgium the Germans mounted a surprise attack into France via the Ardennes, from where they were able to move rapidly towards the English channel (reached by 19 May), this trapped the northern British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in a pocket from which they could only escape via the Navy back across the channel.  ‘The evacuation of the second BEF took place during Operation Aerial between 15 and 25 June.’

This German attack west was a stunning victory and the way it unfolded surprised both sides.  Paris fell to the Germans on June 10, and on June 17, France announced that it was ready to ask for an armistice (officially signed on June 22).

With the precedent of  WW1 as a template, the WW2 Battle of France especially considering the size and sophistication of the French armed forces was over very quickly.  It’s difficult for those lacking any interest in military issues to understand why, at what appears to them to be the last minute,  Hitler held back his precious armored divisions from pushing on with an attack.  But quite simply they were NOT supposed to operate as siege artillery against concentrated enemy artillery.  They had a different job altogether.

Panzer divisions had produced the stunningly unexpected advance to the channel that had left the northern BEF cut off from the main French forces with their French allies who they were now deceiving.   They were now fighting for their very existence under constant air and artillery attacks .   Hitler did not ‘hold them back’ he exerted his authority and that held them up for a crucial 2 days when they could have prevented much more of the hard pocket from forming and this prevented the destruction of more troops when the battle was still fluid in the manner that exactly suited the panzer tactics.  Those 2 days were that important.

The final result of the various deployments of all the other armed forces was the preservation of 338,226 Allied troops, who could be used to train others and fight again later in the war.

It was also a huge morale boost for the British taking the edge off an utterly disastrous defeat as a start to the real war.

Back in 2006, there was some discussion of this on the old LastSuperpower forum.  Arthur argued that Hitler’s order to halt may have been based on strategic decisions – as Hitler still hoped to avoid all-out war with the British because his main target was the USSR.  He had hoped to avoid creating a situation in which the USSR and Britain would end up on the same side.

Patrick,  I am still inclined to think you overestimate the importance of the military difficulties and blunders and underestimate the importance of political considerations. Both British and French governments were led by the architects of Munich throughout the phoney war period and both still hoped to avoid a real war with Germany by reaching some compromise. Likewise Hitler wanted to avoid a real war with Britain and even directly ordered Guderian to halt the panzers 10km from Dunkirk to allow the British expeditionary force to escape after von Kleist had ignored a previous less emphatic order. This “blunder” and the corresponding “miracle” of Dunkirk would not have been a blunder at all if it had succeeded in avoiding real war with Britain.  On 5 February 1940 the Allied High Command offered 100,000 British and 20,000 French troops to Finland in support of its war with the Soviet Union. But Churchill “blundered” in stuffing the invasion of Norway (for which Chamberlain took the blame) and Stalin “blundered” in both rushing the invasion to achieve a breakthrough before the Allies could actually join the war, at a huge cost in “unnecessary” casualties, and then quickly accepting an armistice despite the Finnish army being on the verge of complete collapse.  These blunders were remarkably serendipitous from the viewpoint of grand strategy in that they prevented a war between Britain and the Soviet Union and ensured the collapse of appeasement.  The political evolution of the imperialist war into a war against fascism was no more inevitable than the specific military history. Both required strategic decisions which were intertwined and hard to follow even with the hindsight of the historical record since grand strategy issues like these are not necessarily recorded in historical documents or the knowledge of subordinates later writing their memoirs but only known with certainty in the minds of the top leadership who often don’t have any reason to reveal what they were thinking afterwards. (Stalin certainly never claimed to be trying to encourage the Germans to attack the Allies, so you certainly won’t find my view of it in any party documents!) Remember that in making political decisions Stalin had the benefit of extremely detailed intelligence on both Allied and German intentions whereas the converse did not apply. Obviously, I can’t claim to have any proof of these undocumentable assertions, and I admit such speculation could easily be wrong. BTW we also differ about certain “serendipitous blunders” in the Iraq war like not using the Baathist armed forces as a construction brigade. I think that difference is also related to different estimations of the importance of political calculations.

In that old discussion,  I went on to express agreement with Arthur’s position:

Arthur is right that Hitler by effectively ordering the preservation of the British troops when the German Army was rushing to destroy or capture them was preparing a political position. But it only goes to show that Hitler was clueless as to what the British ruling- elite would agree to, having badly lost round one.

As a result of Hitler’s political blunder, 338,000 trained soldiers escaped enabling them to train many others and to fight another day. It would have been a genius move if the British had not been well… British. Once they were at war they were not going to cut their losses and stop the fight, especially with Germany in the position to dominate the imperialist world. They would fight the maritime war they were well suited for and the U.S. would be their great ally and arsenal. The U.S. people were still overwhelmingly isolationist but the U.S. ruling elite would never have permitted a successful invasion of Britain.

Hitler just ‘knew’ (from his own theories), that the British and Germans should be fighting side by side against the hated communists, and nothing else made much sense to him at this point than that they would come to terms. He did not have a plan B, and so he cobbled it all together based on the stunning success of the German Army and the apparent confirmation of his idiotic theories of racial superiority. If the fighting had been harder perhaps he would not have become so deluded by the early victories.

Since then, I’ve thought more about this and have concluded that the more likely explanation is that it was a blunder, rather than an error that arose from strategic reasoning.  The destruction of the trapped troops was to be achieved more at the hands of the Luftwaffe and the artillery rather than risk more Panzers that were required to be readied for the rapid push into and right through France.

I think that at the crucial moment Hitler panicked and became cautious. Heinz Guderian’s success had been spectacular, but at the time Hitler ordered him to halt, he’d already twice disobeyed orders to slow down, and had unilaterally implemented a plan of his own which varied significantly from the plan authorised by the OKH (German High Command) prior to the initial attack.

At the time Hitler told him to halt, Guderian’s supply lines were stretched and he was well ahead of the slower moving infantry tail (the greater part of it horse-drawn).  Hitler would have been wondering whether his senior officers were correct in worrying that he was vulnerable to a  flank attack.  After all, how often had officers let down Corporals in WW1?

Hitler blinked and the politics involved were entirely internal. The retreating troops, not just the BEF had not run out of munitions or other supplies and were conducting a fighting retreat where their defensive perimeter was well directed and shortening.  Meanwhile, the German lines were lengthening with exposed flanks while Guderian (Schneller Heinz) was rapidly implementing his, at this stage, highly disputed theories.

The politics behind what happened can be seen more clearly if we look at the struggles which occurred within the German military in the months before the attack on France. Early in October 1939, the general view of the German military was that it was probably only possible at that point to occupy sufficient Dutch, Belgian and French territory to launch naval and air attacks on Britain and to protect the Ruhr area.  The first detailed plan of attack  (19 October 1939) was produced by Franz Halder, head of the OKH (Nazi Germany’s High Command of the Army). It envisaged a long and difficult campaign launched via an unimaginative frontal attack from the middle of Belgium.  Hitler didn’t like it, and a series of variations were produced by Halder, none of which were substantially different.

Eventually General von Runstead in conjunction with his chief of staff, Lt. General von Manstein developed  a substantially different proposal based on surprise and mobility. Their idea was to draw the allied forces into central Belgium by mounting an initial attack there while actually positioning the bulk of the German forces further east from where they would thrust through the difficult terrain in the Ardennes area, entering France at Sedan. This would enable them to  attack the Allies from behind. (i.e. from the south) Hopefully cutting them off.  The expectation was that the Allies would not bother to allocate much of their military strength in the Sedan area due to the fact that the Ardennes area was regarded as an unlikely entry point, due to the “impossibility” of the terrain there.

While developing this plan,  Manstein spoke informally with Heinz Guderian who was the commander of the XIXth Army Corps – an elite tank formation.  Guderian  came up with a more radical (and risky) version of the plan.  He proposed that not only his unit, but the entire Panzerwaffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerwaffe) should enter France from Sedan and then move to the west, towards the English channel, hopefully trapping the Allies. He proposed doing this without any pause to wait for the slower main body of the German infantry to catch up.  The idea was that this could lead to a very quick victory and avoid the level of (German) casualties typical of the annihilation battle which would result from the other plans. This was considered risky because rushing ahead of the infantry would create a vulnerable open flank of about 300 kilometres that the infantry tail would have to rush to form up into a defensive line every day while the advance proceeded.

Von Manstein put forward several variations on his Manstein plan, all much less radical than Guderian’s (and without mentioning his discussions with Guderian).  However, all of these plans were rejected by the OKH without ever reaching Hitler. Late in January 1940, Halder, who disliked Manstein,  arranged for him to be posted to Prussia.  This backfired on Halder because members of Manstein’s staff managed to draw Hitler’s attention to it.  As a consequence, Hitler invited Manstein to present his ideas to him personally.  Not long afterward he instructed Halder to produce a new plan incorporating a surprise attack through the Ardennes to Sedan.

This became known as the Manstein Plan. The plan did not however incorporate the idea that German armor should advance quickly west without waiting for the infantry.  Most of the Generals saw this as far too risky.  Instead, the plan called for the armored units (led by Guderian) to cross the river Meuse at Sedan, establish bridgeheads for the slower-moving infantry,  and then to wait (several days) for it to catch up.

As it turned out, the attack through the Ardennes was remarkably successful.  The French troops allocated to the area were an inexperienced Reserve Division and panic and disorder broke out among them very quickly resulting in rapid retreat. At this point (May 12) Guderian disobeyed an order to restrict the bridgehead he’d established to 8km and to dig in there until he had more infantry support. Instead he continued to extend it west and south.

Although this theoretically could have been dangerous, the French continued to fall apart and retreat.  Similarly, Erwin Rommel disobeyed orders and advanced his Panzer division rapidly.  Both knew what they were doing.

Again on May 16, Guderian and Rommel both disobeyed orders and continued west.  Guderian advanced about 70 km from where he was supposed to have been and Rommel’s forces advanced 100 km.  Effectively Guderian and Rommel were unilaterally implementing their own plans, on top of the official Manstein plan. As a consequence, on  May 17 Guderian was relieved of all duties by his superior (von Kleist), but Rundstedt refused to confirm the order, so Guderian stayed in charge.

At this point, the Panzer Corps was considered by some of the senior officers to be in a vulnerable position and could, if the French had launched a determined flank attack, have been mauled and run up against supply problems.  However, such an attack didn’t happen and the German infantry tail kept racing forwards as best they could and establishing the all-important thin defensive line eventually reaching the Somme and then continually reinforcing all along it while simultaneously bringing up supplies for the units fighting their way forward through the various defense pockets that became established.  The Panzer troops took the opportunity to rest regroup and repair equipment for two days and then continued on but always towards a more concentrated foe holding ridge lines with well-supplied artillery.

The French and BEF eventually coalesced into a pocket that reduced systematically through several retreats and always over ground less favorable for Panzers.  By now the German High Command knew that victory was within reach and ordered a further advance with the direct aim of cutting off the Allies’ capacity to escape south but the unsuitability of the territory between the pockets and the advancing German Panzers and the concentration of artillery was going to cost tanks.   As we know the advance was successful and the Allies became trapped in a pocket around Dunkirk.

The original Manstein Plan

The original Manstein Plan

The ACTUAL course of German forces

The ACTUAL course of German forces

The order to pause was from the 23-26 and only applied to Army Group A’s armoured formations.  The period of the evacuation or Operation Dynamo was 27 May till 3.40 am 4th June. [date-evacuated]  (27)8,000 (28)18,000 (29)47,000 (30)60,000 (31)61,000 (1)64,000 (2)40,000 (3)40,000 (4)4,000.   The Dutch had surrendered on 14 May and on 28 May the Belgian army capitulated.  At the 29th May Cambrai meeting Hitler tells the commanders of his Army Groups that he has decided to ‘deploy the armoured forces immediately for a southward offensive to settle accounts with the French, attacking south on 5thMay.  1st June German artillery bombards the Dunkirk beaches, 2nd June Operation Dynamo completed for the BEF.

The final Dunkirk pocket was established on 31 May and held till 4 June at which point 2,000 guns, 60,000 vehicles, 600,000 tons of fuel and supplies and 76,000 tons of munitions were abandoned. The Germans began their attack south on 5 June so we can see that the Panzers had been reserved for and moved to that task. On May 25, the 1st Panzer division could have thrust forward again and forced the Allied forces in the Dunkirk area to surrender.  But Hitler had ordered it to halt the day before. I would put this down to a real concern on Hitler’s part that Guderian’s advance force was vulnerable to a devastating flank attack, combined with a need to assert himself as Fuhrer, in the face of Guderian’s repeated insubordination.

Liddel Heart was mostly responsible for the promotion of this ‘Hitler let them escape’ thinking along with and as a result of Guderian himself AFTER the war but the records of the actual period do not provide the evidence (rather to the contrary).

I think the following spells it out.   http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p375_Lutton.html

I hope I get to write about Putin in the rear vision mirror but only the good die young so….

Ukraine

Thoughts on Ukrainian nationalism, Feb. 2014
by Patrick Muldowney

Over in Ukraine ‘Christmas gifts’ are being unwrapped and all sorts of stuff is coming out from under the shiny paper that everyone wraps things up in. Hard to tell the real value of the ‘gift’ even when out of the paper, but it’s virtually impossible while it’s still wrapped up in paper. What’s the value of a V8 ute to a 18yr old high school student compared to a 36yr old builder?

Christmas only comes once a year, but wise people acquire gifts all through the year and they are put away for that one special day. When the day approaches a tree is set aside and decorated in the current fashion. The hidden gifts are then wrapped up in that shiny paper and left under the tree for anyone to wonder about.

By Christmas Eve most of the gifts have arrived and the pile sits there overnight in unseen beauty. The mystery of the decorated packages is only solved in the frenzy of opening and sometimes not even then. ‘Have I got what I asked for?’ is the unspoken thought from the children.

The kids get to the task of unwrapping the gifts, even if a beloved grandmother that bought some of them during the year has been dead and buried for months. They unwrap what is there and then make of it as they will!

They may have received blank paper and paints. It may be a model; or a flag; or a history book written by somebody with an ‘interest in promoting human rights’; or even a book written by a person keen on free and fair elections for a proportionately representative parliament that are IMV the foundation of those human rights. 

It maybe a Crucifix the old woman had thought a sacred object and when it’s unwrapped a discussion might start that leads all the young people into a more solid understanding that they just don’t share the old ideas.  On the other hand it might get put up on the mantle piece and everyone begin a fervent prayer just to get the old girl out of Purgatory. 

Who knows what the naked apes of Ukraine are making of the 21st C.  What is evident is that they are divided over how the country ought to orient it’s form of capitalism.  I think the majority favor a western lean away from what many see as ‘the old foe’ and half of the remainder would want to get more distance between themselves and Putin types generally.

We all know from experience that just as people change so do the organisations that they set up. It’s only in Neverland where people don’t change.  Self evidently many Ukrainians understand (even better than Syrians) that Putin is their enemy and that any political leadership that draws their country closer to Putin is to be opposed and struggled against.

The Irish up against the English is the best example of how a national movement of the Ukrainians against the Russians ought to be thought about, right down to the massive loyalist presence in a concentrated part of the country. The National question is still being resolved in Ukraine and Georgia and right across that big slab of territory north of the Caucuses that Putin has been waging his ruthless city smashing wars in for years.

Al Qaeda sorts thrive in the swamp that Putin is maintaining. Putin has not changed course and is not part of the solution to the national questions; or the struggle for democracy; nor women’s rights; or gay rights; and so on. His nonsense is a blockage to the swamp draining that extends right up into the Ukraine and beyond that. East European development is way behind Norway and the rest of the exemplar Scandinavian countries – even if the Norwegians have to deal with right-wing terrorists.

Putin keeps Assad’s air power going and democrats want to see that it gets smashed to bits.

Because the strategic grand plan is to fight oppression by uniting the many to defeat the few, we look to the current demands of the Ukrainians as Steve directed our attention with respect to the Sunni demands in Iraq.

Whatever the past role of Ukrainian nationalism way back at the time Stalin was coping with his problems, the current struggle is a no-brainer because the Ukrainian people are against Putin’s Russia.  I guess that the largest block of Ukrainian people want their government to resign and they want new elections to form a new government to lead their country away from Russia and towards greater connections with western Europe.  If they got that outcome it won’t solve all their problems anymore than the problems are solved in Ireland, Spain or Greece and I suppose that is obvious to them as they can see for themselves how bad things are in those Euro countries; but at least they will be that much further away from the system that Putin is running!

As with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt there are more than just a few “very conservative” democrats in the Ukrainian context, and just as there are Salafi parties that are more reactionary (and less democratic) in Egypt there are the equivalent in this part of the swamp.

As Arthur said re Egypt;

‘Anyone democratic is inherently less reactionary and conservative than the various “progressive” parties of the secular opposition who actually want to go BACKWARDS towards the Mubarak era.  So emphasizing the conservative or reactionary character of the brotherhood is likely to give a misleading impression to people who are unaware of how bad the opposition to the brotherhood is.’
END

My view is that issues that blow up this big ought to have been brought before the people in Referenda. The situation is well beyond that now and new elections are now how the issues of the Ukraine can be resolved. There is that, or a reasonably quick descent into the civil war scenario.   I think the police and the army would ‘quickly’ shatter and the country then divide along the two ethnic lines.  The Russian dominated regions – absent Putin meddling – would after a few months or whatever time it takes would lose out to the Ukrainian nationalist forces but Putin would/will meddle.  Eventually we could then see Putin’s tanks cross the border in the manner that he did with Georgia a couple of years back.

It is a little different to Georgia, but the resolution of the national question is at the heart of the issue and these are both historically ‘Promethean’ movement inspired countries.

Anyway the new Pinochet in Egypt has more support I’d bet than does the current friend of Putin running the show in Ukraine, where I’m sure ‘it isn’t just the disgusting liberals and “left” that have faith in the army’ [but like Egypt] ‘if a Syrian situation can be avoided (as has been successful in Tunisia) then it is well worth trying to avoid it.’

Nations do want liberation and Putin works against them. Countries do want independence and Putin won’t let them have it, and as far as I can see the peoples’ do want a revolutionary change in the way they are governed by the knuckle-dragging-ruling-classes, and their increasingly inbred ruling-elites. Oh and Putin backs the Assad sorts!

Supporting the fight for democracy I have endorsed the COW liberation of Iraq. I don’t pretend there is a fight for socialism in regions threatened by Putin, but there is a struggle for national liberation and democracy. I have no trouble working out where to stand. As in the Syrian case there are unsavory sorts all over the place, but that was the way it was with the struggle for national liberation in Vietnam, and in Ireland as well for that matter.

Earth Calling Planet Peace Movement 2005

This piece is edited 2014, and presents the interim argument made over the war in Iraq in 2005 after it became clear that the initial bleatings of anti-war opponents was proving to be wrong.

by Patrick Muldowney

struggling to be green

Reprinted from Lastsuperpower 2005

All ‘left’ opponents of the illegal liberation of the Iraqi peoples’ have reasoned from the first that the war was really about oil (one way or another)and so the war was to be opposed because of this obscene reason. Every peace activist seems to know ‘viscerally’ that oil has something to do with the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. But none, of this blood is for oil!

In the west we have observed via the usually anti-Bush mass-media the Iraqi elections and the period of negotiations in the process that formed a government. It became clear that the major political parties in Iraq were and are unmistakably ‘stand alone’ forces, free from any suspicion of being U.S. puppets. It was always clear that any puppets could not be elected in any free and fair process.

Yet western anti-war activists, who (like me) generally knew nothing much about Iraq have been basing their analysis on the proposition that the U.S would be installing puppets. This is now demonstrably not the case. This is not a straw-man argument it is fundamental to all the carrying on about oil. Now only people on planet peace movement could think this, unless one thinks that U.S. war aims have failed and been abandoned already.

The vast bulk of ‘peace activists’ are sophisticated enough to realise that in this century the U.S. could not directly seize the oil and place it under direct U.S. ownership or control. If the U.S. was to keep actual control of the oil, despite formal Iraqi control, independent Iraqi politicians serving the national interests of Iraq would be anathema to such an undertaking. Yet that is who is running Iraq now, independent Iraqi politicians serving interests internal to Iraq.

It is now also widely known, that the parties constituting the interim government want to be rid of Coalition forces ASAP. (despite being grateful for their current assistance). Iraqi leaders are openly talking about the final withdrawal and scheduling the draw down of front line troops, region by region. What is possible, or more accurately optimal for that withdrawal, given the Iraqi military requirements for soldiers, technicians, trainers etc., is apparently thought to be about two years time.

The Iraqi political parties that were ever going to draw any size of the popular vote were never going to be puppets. The Sunni political forces that have as yet remained outside the electoral process, now want in on the next stage will of course further compound the problem the peace movement faces. The current government is not a U.S. puppet and the next government that will contain some of those who did not participate this time will be even more clearly independent.

Thus we can conclude that the U.S. will not be setting up bases in Iraq. (even bases comparable to those in Germany where the politicians are not puppets either) The U.S. may have some sort of presence in Iraq, but a bourgeois democracy in Iraq implies suspicion of the U.S. and these Iraqi parties will be both grateful for the help, and distanced from the great friend of Israel, America.

Most western anti-war campaigners (excusing any genuine pacifists that I simply can’t be bothered arguing with) would have at least theoretically supported Iraqis taking up arms to overthrow the Baathists but could not support the actual war launched by the U.S..

Apparently the anti-war campaigners would overwhelmingly have supported a revolution from below to overthrow the law and order that existed in Iraq. Well my question is; when will you admit that something is worth defending now, and is MUCH better than what went before?

An illegal war was launched against a lawful tyranny and this tyranny was unlawfully overthrown. Then along came the world’s international law making body, the UN Security Council (NB the victors of WW2), and after the fact they declared that the occupation was then the lawful authority. Naturally, ‘the revolution made the law, the law did not make the revolution’. That is what revolutions do! Now an election process has been conducted under the new lawful authority and it is not seriously disputed as to who the Iraqi interim government now is.

This brings about a massive problem for leftists who say that they would have supported a civil-war to overthrow the fascist Baathists. For leftists, there is such a civil-war going on now! Fortunately there are a couple of hundred thousand heavily armed soldiers that are on the Iraqi peoples’ side and they will definitely win.

“Those wishing to make the “more lives ultimately saved”, argument will need to make their comparisons with the number of civilians likely to have been killed had Saddam Hussein’s reign continued into 2003-2004, not in comparison to the number of deaths for which he was responsible in the 1980s and early 1990s…”

No we don’t! This regime was entirely variable in kill rate until overthrown. Trying to overthrow such a regime from an essentially unarmed position would have amounted to having been set up for mass slaughter. Leftists are about winning and overthrowing tyranny not about gloriously laying down our lives in the interest of any juvenile theory that requires people to overthrow their own tyrants unarmed and single-handedly.

Let’s look at some trends in Iraq and around the world. Western, society does not have such an awful death toll as is currently occurring in Iraq. Nor was any period during the reign of Saddam comparable to what we have in the west. That’s why the term tyranny is applied and why everyone worth talking to wants it overthrown. So the important question arises: Is Iraq now moving towards modernity and the lower death toll implied or away from it? Will more elections be held, and will the Coalition eventually withdraw?

Reflect on WW2. Did the U.S. occupy Germany to steal German coal? Did they withdraw? Is Germany (let alone Japan and Italy) part of the modern world again? What would make people think that sixty years later the people of the world would put up with U.S. imperialists nicking Iraqi oil at the cost of two endless sets of body bags?

The old regime was overthrown by an illegal invasion, yet is anyone not supportive of Saddam or the Jihadists now under the impression that the new Government of Iraq is itself illegal? The Interim Government is the body set up to generate a constitution and hold a referendum to approve that constitution, and then hold an election for a further even more representative legitimate government. Are they legitimate revolutionary goals and thus the interim Government worthy of support and assistance?

Humpty cannot be put back together again, so what’s to be done other than acknowledge the revolutionary transformation from a political system run by a lawful tyrant to a new system that runs via a new (for Iraq) electoral system? That’s not any sort of evolutionary transformation it’s a revolutionary transformation.

How should we think about moving ourselves and the heroic people of Iraq further along the path of the bourgeois democratic revolution? Would the situation be improved if all coalition troops were withdrawn now? The colonial era has “Gone with the wind” and it requires determined blindness not to see it. Yet we are still fed what amounts to an endless stream of the war is all about oil.

I wrote the following notes to an anti-war acquaintance just before the U.S. elections.

“I am glad that my side is on the offensive and gearing up for major battles once the U.S. elections are over. It may well be that Osama Bin Laden bombs polling booths or whatever during the U.S. elections. Whatever the outrage next perpetrated my side should remain on the offensive, as standing on the defensive loses wars. All the descendants of the enlightenment and forces of modernity are not about to lose this one!

Just sticking my neck out for a moment, I think Bush will win now that Bin Laden has intervened to try to cause another Madrid effect. The Yanks will do the opposite, and allow Bush to continue. We will know soon enough who is to do the gnashing of teeth. Anyway Kerry is locked in on the main game.

It is time to accept that Saddam’s regime would never have changed organically and evolved from within, so there was always going to be a war.

Ending Baathism in Syria requires a major war

Ending Baathism in Syria requires a major war.

Syria has a population of 22million that is massively divided along religious and ethnic lines (10% Kurds). It has a Baathist tyranny better supported among that population than was Gadaffi who had considerable support and so a big war is in the very early stages of developing. The tyranny is very well armed and trained, and has ‘undegraded’ command and control, with massive numbers of police thugs, spies, and so forth. So, this will take some time and will involve Turkey for sure. Turkey is being quite open about being the regional power that will act if it must, and the Kurdish issue and PKK is clearly central to this.

Syria also has had a national conscription system that now leaves a great legacy of trained men who are now willing and partly able to take on the lawful tyranny in a civil war. Both sides have just observed what happened over 9mths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt etc., in this year of continuous spring. So soldiers who are thinking about mutiny will be encouraged as the situation develops and the core forces of repression will be somewhat shaken by the visions they have just been witness to.

Fortunately for the masses of people in revolt, the Islamic cultural reality of Friday prayers and mass gatherings throughout the country to mobilize around, and the egged on or ‘shame’ factor of not being left behind when others have been brave and fought and grabbed their freedom ought not be underestimated. Confidence really ought to be up on the side of the revolution and down a bit at least among the tyranny despite its large support and vast quantities of military assets. Large scale mutiny is the most hopeful start to the next stage of ridding Syria of Baathists, but from at least the Turkish side, I can’t see how this fight can be left alone to develop as a ‘pure’ civil war for very much longer.

As I see this the Syrian army becomes muscle bound very quickly in most of the larger cities that have had the big demonstrations against Assad, and is quickly exhausted in the smaller towns especially near all the borders, and no doubt along the Euphrates river and Nth. East of that line. They are effectively an army of occupation and can obviously be spread too thin trying to hold everything so they currently are running around trying to appear to be everywhere. But spying and the in and out arresting duties of the secret police and so forth is the only way this regime can even continue to exist in huge parts of the country.

The young fighting men can and will be pissed off and fight back, as well as leave and cross the border into Turkey as we have seen in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. They will be greeted by the soldiers that have deserted and are already there as a determined rebellious armed force planning for either a long war, or rapid growth if the situation changes. This force will in the face of almost weekly reports of mass slaughter start to mount reply attacks deliberately to gain greater recognition and further stimulate recruitment. They are not refugees but a fighting force already trained and intent on overthrowing the people that they have fled from and who are still systematically killing their friends and family members, so they will find ways to fight right now and that keeps some of this fighting near the Turkish border.

The Turks are already permitting the establishment of an insurgent force and the Syrian tyranny can’t hit across the border as the Turks would respond immediately and massively. Turkey will remain the most important country able to impose the military action (similar to the NATO effort in Libya) and no other country has the stomach for this IMV. Turkey’s leadership has a vital interest identified and seems determined to advance its democratic reform program within Turkey that requires dealing with Kurdish liberation issues, and simultaneously with the current PKK that has been and still are hosted in all the neighbours.

Turkey has no territorial ambitions but regularly has crossed its borders and beat up on the PKK and is still doing so right now so it looks like the perfect storm for a war to develop.

The Syrian tyranny is continuing to systematically murder the Syrian people and can’t stop this brutality. They can’t undo the way they rule with terror police as the core to their control across a vast part of the country. They can only now exist by holding guns over the people of very many towns and villages and cities of Syria. The Syrian army is now an army of occupation that fears intervention from the far larger Turkey. The army has too much to do and is rotting so it has no prospect of stopping the small fights and the constant flight that the activities of the secret police etc., ensure will continue. Eventually it will be unable to patrol near the border for fear of hit and run, then hit and advance attacks that will be mounted near population centres. They will not be able to use air power against the freedom fighters.

No doubt if war breaks out the western international community would turn a blind eye and hope for the end of the Assad regime as one aspect of the outcomes that in some cases would happen in days of a mass Turkish incursion. The Turkish armed forces would not have to liberate large Syrian population centers, all they have to do is prevent the Syrian forces from surrounding and suppressing the people they are currently intimidating near the Turkish border and then allowing the rebel force that they currently protect in Turkish territory to return and be protected in very much larger form in Syrian territory. They would then hand over all the arms required by the new Syrian regime that they recognize and try to continue to take steps back over time as the Syrian civil war is fought. Seems straight forward but wars don’t work to plan, let alone time-tables, and other sides usually have a bit to say. What we have here in abundance is other sides.

But though I feel sure that a large war is coming and how it gets going won’t matter much this is too complex for me to get a handle on. What follows from the current suppression of the Syrian masses by the Baathists is that a war of liberation must breakout if democracy is part of the demands that are thrown on the table. These demands are on the table and Turkey must comply with the international body that approves of the end of the war. The UN determines when the end is and the new government is given the UN seat. Given that 3,000 are already dead and lots more are disappeared the war is going in one sense already.

Once Turkey gets involved then the NFZ and or destruction of the Syrian air forces in a big war comes up and NATO naval forces would also get drawn in with blockade work and U.S. spy assets etc.. The Syrian army would be rapidly isolated in large areas of Syria and then systematically destroyed if it lacks air power. If this war were to eventuate Turkey is bound to follow through and cut up the army that is spread too thin trying to hold down large population centres. That will end the period of secret police activities and see heavy arms rapidly distributed to the population that is more than willing to put them to use. That is I suppose the ideal first stage for putting a stop to the way the Baathists run Syria.

The Baathists can now enter population centers unopposed, but provided the opposition run around and avoid much fighting they can’t stay and comfortably regain control everywhere at once. Neither can they do what the Russians have done in Grozny because that will bring on the required intervention. If they can’t use heavy weapons and can’t avoid continuous small arms skirmishing then they will over time be driven from the bigger cities that are in revolt. The soldiers cant stay in their tanks and can’t avoid snipers and so the insurgents will be able to organise and grow. IMV Turkey wants to intervene and will intervene if the Baathists use air power, or they start to use the heavy weapons.

Without air power the Syrian army eventually won’t be able to enter some of the larger cities without being defeated because the supply of anti-tank weapons etc., will flood in from Turkey with the blessing of the whole world. Then the civil war will unfold and finally ought to draw in the U.S. from the Mediterranean. NATO ought to be redeploying from the Libyan theatre now. There will be much work for the A10′s.

I can’t see a ‘cheaper’ way of ending the Syrian Baathist tyranny as they are far too strong at the moment, just like the Libyan tyranny was before they were seen to be about to defeat the rebels in Benghazi and the intervention was launched. That was when I hoped for Egyptian intervention. It would have sped the liberation that has now come to Libya even without that intervention and with all the costs to the libyan people.