Rundle responds

Guy Rundle writes: Re. “On Rundle and the Right” (yesterday). In yesterday’s letters Glen Frost took me to task because I allegedly completely misrepresented Margaret Thatcher’s abolition of the Greater London Council in the 1980s. Frost suggests that Thatcher got rid of the GLC because “the public were sick of them” and because they were the “looney left” and everyone knew it, just like wot the newspapers said. Well this simply proves my point. Thatcher abolished the GLC because London voters continued to elect left-wing mayors and administrations — and she wasn’t enough of a democrat to try and win the elections themselves. Frost has simply proved my point.

Off to war we go

Michael Kane writes: Re. “The lie that puts you at risk as Abbott wraps himself in the flag” (yesterday). So we are  sending more troops to Iraq, a decision that defies logic on military, ideological, or geopolitical grounds.  Once again Australia is attempting to train one military element of a failed state, some thousands of kilometres from our shores, in a mission that has already failed in the past. This is not our fight and never has been, like most of our overseas ventures. But we risk much domestically through decisions such as this. It reflects an  Australian fantasy about Western power and influence that needs to be consigned to the mythology of the previous century. Of course this is  where our PM’s head is with his imperial view of Australia;  sadly other elements of the Coalition and the Opposition do not have the courage to oppose such archaic nonsense.

Our political, military and socio-cultural future lies clearly in our immediate surrounds. We need a foreign and defence policy that matches our real interests which concern China, India, Japan, Indonesia etc — try them for size. Multicultural Australia has always been about being a new Asian nation, prosperous and democratic. We now have three times the population of 1945, and for the last several decades people have come to this most southern of Asian lands to participate in building such a nation. We  don’t need to revert to medieval crusades either overseas or here; at best it is a dangerous distraction and at worst seriously undermines our future.

Richard Middleton writes: Hello Bernard. You did not mention once in this article the support given to ISIS-Daesh (doesn’t Abbott love that phrase?) by apparent Western allies in the region. It is well established that they are being funded, supplied and transported by Sunni Sauda Arabia and Qatar, with much of these resources going through the porous Syrian-Turkish border. Western forces  appear to have been very inefficient with some of their supply drops, placing weapons and ammunition onto know Daesh positions, accidentally, on a few occasions. It is well known in the area that Israel and Turkey are both looking after the wounded from Daesh in their hospitals, then sending them back out to terrorise and murder anybody, particularly Shia.

Many facets of the “horror” of Daesh are both well stage managed and leaked by well known Western/ Israeli propaganda fronts. The authenticity of some of the publicised and brutal crudeness (but not the ultimate murders) is questioned as a well planned exercise to, as you say, evoke a righteous knee jerk reaction from Western countries … the same countries who, incidentally, are dropping mutilating and murdering bombs and drones onto people around the world.  But our motives are different.

One can reasonably and easily come to the conclusion that Daesh, who appears to have morphed from al Qaida (a known western affiliate, useful to keep the terror index high) and various (Western-backed) factions destroying Syria, are all part of the Brooking Institutes well known plan, “Which Path to Persia?” which maps the way to do exactly what we see now, a way to destabilise and destroy through out the regions. Colour revolutions and all. Daesh is a long planned, false flag operation run by the West, aimed ultimately at Iran, via Syria. Russia of course, is also in the crosshairs of this evil lunacy. The aim is global hegemony. It could lead to WW3.