​The French President is right. There is indeed a massive difference between patriotism and nationalism. And as soon as more people realise this the better off we will be. Patriotism is nothing more than a pure emotion – it is the love of one’s homeland nothing more, nothing less. It prescribes no action nor pursuit of some sort of destiny. On the other hand, Nationalism is an ideology, a distinct prescription for achieving a certain way of life or destiny. Nationalism is a taught belief system which preaches that one belongs to a very unique ethnic, racial, religious etc., group that is either denied a particular homeland/state or having attained or possesses it, believes that this national group is superior and/or threatened by other nation states. Hence while patriotism leads to homesickness, nationalism wielded by unscrupulous governments leads to war.

If the West is to defeat the global insurgency waged by IS (Islamic State/Daesh) to establish a global caliphate, it first must realise the true nature of the enemy it faces. In effect, IS is driven by ‘Islamic Nazism’ and wages ‘asymmetrical warfare’ against the West using ‘people’s war’ tactics. Thereby to defeat it, the West must adopt an almost forgotten US multidimensional global strategy known as ‘Low Intensity Conflict’ (LIC). In the 1980s the Reagan Administration developed and applied LIC to combat asymmetrical warfare and defeat proxies of the Soviet Union and other anti-US movements in the Third World, with LIC ultimately playing a crucial role in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
Islamic Nazism
To understand the emergence of Islamic Nazism in the form of Islamic State, one must briefly examine the history and context of the rise of such radicalism. Islamic Nazism has arisen out of the clash between two different globalisations occurring over the last millennium, the first primarily driven by the Christian west. After the separation of ‘church from state’, secular Western states, free of the shackles of mediaeval Christianity, achieved major technological advances and imposed the state structure, underpinned by Roman Law and military power, throughout the world via imperialism and European colonialism. Islam was left in its wake, despite its own spread via military action and global trade. European (Western) colonialism shattered and divided Third World ethnic (tribal) communities and nations arbitrarily creating ‘new states’ wherever the European empires could reach. In the 21 century, such western driven globalisation continues based on military power, state proxies and the power of western communications spreading western values and culture globally through the internet and other communication technology.
   The second globalisation riding on the back of the spread of modern information and technology is driven by the mindset of radical Islam, mainly  Sunni. Within this fundamentalist mindset IS has emerged, an extremely militant movement driven by the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam.  It aims to destroy the international community of European derived ‘states’ and impose the total rule of Allah. Never having separated ‘church from state’ radical Islam seeks to construct a Caliphate, a global empire of the mind – not demarcated by territory.  Driven by Islam’s central belief in the concept of Jihad, its radical elements seek the destruction of all unbelievers, infidels, apostates, including all moderate pro-western Muslims, and all civilisations and belief systems (including their ancient relics) that oppose the creation of a global Muslim community ruled by Allah and ‘his’ representatives on earth. In this sense, Islamic fundamentalist radicals fundamentally oppose the secularism of states but in doing do have morphed into a stunningly powerful movement best described as ‘Islamic Nazism’.
   While in the West, nationalist driven, racist socialists headed by Hitler and others produced Nazism with devastating consequences for the entire global community , fundamentalist radical Islam has now produced its own form of ‘Nazism’ stunningly similar to that of Hitler’s Germany and other European clones in the 1930s and 1940s.
   Socialist in its economics, and absolutely totalitarian, it displays crude egalitarianism for those members of its ‘party’ (IS). While Islamic Nazism does not champion the superiority of the state above all else (The Third Reich), it demands allegiance to the global Caliphate instead. It is also headed by a ruthless ‘party’ ruling elite of Islamic theologians, deadly Daesh operatives and others, and a network of allied covert global Islamic business elites who maintain its economic base. It is also similarly anti- Semitic and murderously intolerant of all who reject its doctrines. Moreover it has no respect for Western imposed notions of individual human rights, seeing atrocities, mass murders and ethnic cleansing as sanctioned by Jihad and thereby condoned and encouraged by Allah.
 
The Nature of the Conflict
So in the  21st century, we now have a much heralded ‘Clash of Civilisations’ with moderate pro-Western Islam in the middle being polarised and slowly squeezed out of existence. The result of the clash of both globalisations sees one ‘Empire of the Mind’ seeking to re-take lost territory, defend the international system of statehood, notions of ‘free thought’ , human rights and secularism in government, and eliminate those who oppose it. While the goal of Islamic Nazism is to capture the head space of its opponents, or eliminate them, and establish a global caliphate of believers within which Western notions of the state will cease to exist.  
   The consequences of this clash globally are now these. In military terms we have an alliance of primarily Western forces attempting to destroy militant Islamic Nazism relying mainly on conventional power, underpinned by international rule of law, to eliminate the caliphate’s territorial challenge in Iraq and Syria. However, unlike other former global conflicts, particularly the Second World War, the response of Islamic Nazism while involving some military action is very different. It wages a global Islamic insurgency. And this difference in nature sees the West doomed to eventual compromise or defeat unless it changes its ‘conflict profile’ to suit the ‘asymmetrical nature’ of the warfare environment it is now embroiled.
   Military action is simply not enough to defeat Islamic Nazism. Simply stated: ‘You cannot crush a shadow with a sledge hammer.’ The West cannot win until it learns to understand the true nature of the ‘conflict profile’ IS wages and adopts the appropriate strategy accordingly. In response to the US defeat in Vietnam, the Reagan Administration did exactly this in its formulation of the strategy labelled ‘Low Intensity Conflict’ (LIC). A part covert/part overt multidimensional strategy, LIC was used to great effect in the 1980s against revolutionary movements and governments deemed threatening to US interests globally. However, LIC was eventually discredited not for its outcomes, but for the morality of its tactics which clearly violated international human rights law, and peculiarly quaint Western notions of democracy and morality in warfare.  But now in the face of such unprecedented barbarity by Islamic Nazism, LIC should, and must, be resurrected to fight ‘fire with fire’. Morality does not exist anywhere in any warfare, particularly the type of ‘people’s war’ waged by Islamic Nazism the West now faces.
   To resurrect LIC, the US-led West needs to re-learn the lessons of the US-Vietnam conflict, and as a coalition develop a form of LIC congruent with the true nature of the conflict which it is now embroiled in this new 21st century Islamic crusade.  The West cannot defeat this global Islamic insurgency primarily with conventional military means. It must adapt to the true nature of the strategy its opponent uses and its primary objective. At the time of writing the conflict is clearly incongruent or asymmetrical with both sides fighting for different objectives, different notions of victory and concomitantly using different types of warfare.
 
What Is Asymmetrical Warfare (AW)?
 ‘Asymmetrical warfare’ is a warfare environment wherein a power (usually a state) wages primarily a one dimensional form of, in this case military, warfare against an opponent (often a non-state actor) instead waging a multidimensional strategy. The former generally places its emphasis on militarily capturing or regaining territory while the latter uses strongly  political/psychological (Psyops) action with supporting  economic, cultural and then finally a lesser military dimension to achieve its goal. The major ‘territorial’ target of the latter is to retain the ‘mind space’ of its supporters while psychologically recruiting or destroying the will of its opponents support base.  Historically this strategy has often been used by the military weak, with its most fundamental and primary target the support base (population) of its much more military powerful opponent. Generally strongly ideologically driven, these actors tend to be revolutionary movements or guerrilla groups waging what is often regarded as ‘people’s war‘. Such warfare is many facetted heavily relying heavily on a civilian support base and using Psyops generally in the form of terrorism to attack the will of the conventional opponent’s support base using tactics of attrition to achieve victory in the long term.
   However, while terrorism is associated with people’s war, these actions often being the chosen weapon of ‘freedom fighters’, revolutionaries, etc., terrorism is also widely used by states themselves against opposing support bases. However, the difference between the moralities of who uses such means is always defined by the user. For example mass conventional terrorism used by states can be in the form of mass bombings, napalm, raising cities, etc., and is usually regarded as the normal costs of warfare, or collateral damage etc. While on the other side, military weak movements like IS can use hostages, beheadings, blowing up cafes, car bombs , etc. to spread fear amongst its opponents civilian support base. Primarily terrorism is a deadly form of Psyops and used by all sides.
   Nevertheless, the basic difference remains. In asymmetrical war the conventional state attempts to take territory and use military power as the primary weapon. Whereas, military weaker proponents of peoples war in history, such as resistance fighters in World War Two, the Viet Minh, the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, and the New Peoples, Army in the Philippines primarily attempted to win over only the ‘territory’ between the ears of the support base of their opponents, to either gain its support or force its  submission through fear. In other words the ideological/psychological struggle is the most important for people’s war, if not in all warfare.
  Hence, in pursuit of its global caliphate, Islamic Nazism wages its version of people’s war primarily targeting the political will of the West’s support base. It seeks to terrorise Christians and others into submission, and to radicalise  ‘Westernised’  Muslims  into abandoning moderate Islam which rejects radical militant Islam and the central role Jihad plays within it.
   While superficially IS wages war for territory, its primary strategy is achieving victory through ‘Psyops’, with its military dimension relatively minor. It targets the support base of the West, particularly the alienated  youth using religion and terrorism into fighting in what has now developed as a global insurgency seeking to reach every urban centre  on the planet.  
   In response, the West however still relies primarily on conventional military warfare, and is doomed to fail just as the US did in Vietnam. To avoid this the West must  adapt very quickly to the complex nature of asymmetrical warfare, just as the Reagan Administration eventually did in the 1980s to defeat revolutionary nationalism wherever opposing US interests.
 
The Solution - Adoption of Global LIC
Understanding the asymmetrical nature of the conflict is the first step. The second step is the adoption of the strategy of LIC globally to render the conflict ‘symmetrical’ hence winnable.
   Low Intensity Conflict is a strategy with a largely Psyops conflict profile designed to combat People’s War.  With a dominant Pysops/’hearts and minds’ dimension,  LIC heavily relies on the political/psychological to confront and turn the political dimension of the revolution or opposing regime against itself. In other words it seeks to wage revolution against the revolution. LIC’s primary goal is to achieve a political, social and ideological victory not just to ensure it retains its own support base but to win over or subjugate the hearts and minds of the opponent’s support base. As such, military victory while important is actually LIC’s last priority as once a support base is won over, or defeated, military victory is assured. In other words the support base of the opponent is the primary target.
   In the case of combating Islamic Nazism the most important target is the global Islamic community, particularly the Sunni community.  In this dimension, the West needs to go all out to discredit and delegitimise the belief system of radical militant Sunni Islam (the Islamic world of IS), in the mindset of the younger Islamic generation. The conflict also must be entirely located and/or seen to be located and confined within the Muslim community, and seen to be fought by moderate ‘modern’ Muslims against ‘divergent, corrupted, irrationally barbaric’ Islamic Nazism. In this respect, the West appears to be one step removed. In short, a global campaign must be seen to be waged by Muslims (with overt and covert support) to alienate and destroy the support base of Islamic Nazism. In guerrilla terms, this is necessary to ‘remove the sea from the fish.’
   Hence within this Psyops dimension, a very public campaign must be waged by pro-Western, anti- Nazi Muslims, with Western support arguing the case that in the 21st century, ‘modern’ Islam has no place for a radical strand of Islam that has morphed into Nazism and practices the  immoral, brutal concept of ‘Jihad’  in which Allah is believed to condone the genocide of all unbelievers, apostates and others.
   The West must engage itself in a massive propaganda war that associates IS with the emergence of Neo-Nazism and the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. Moderate modern Islam must dispute the mediaeval  genocidal teachings that one can only be a true Muslim if living in ‘Dar Al Islam’ (‘The House of Islam’), where ones world is only ruled by Sharia law and fanatical theologians who interpret Allah’s will to mean the complete supremacy of the ‘master religion’, read ‘master ethnic group’ (with ethnicity defined by belief system). 
   As part of the West’s Psyops campaign modern Islamic theologians  must be encouraged to teach that ordinary Muslims in the West, have signed a proverbial contract to live in a community or state where the rule and protection of secular government is accepted along with the  notion of upholding both global covenants of human rights.  Therefore it is the duty of all Muslims to oppose all barbaric Islamic Nazis who would destroy not just them but the international state structure itself.   What must be done is to demand from the modern Islamic world a global proclamation – or edict that all Muslims must consider the notion of Jihad barbaric, un-Islamic, and akin to genocidal Nazism, and it is their  duty to destroy it. By so doing the rift between Islam Nazism and modern Islam that respects human rights and freedom of religion can be intensified.
   To implement this Psyops strategy, the pro-Western popular media within the modern Muslim community must be harnessed. To achieve this goal and win over the loyalty of alienated Western Muslim youth, popular media characters and heroes (ie. the Muhammad Alis of this world), fictional or otherwise, must be created amongst the modern global Islamic community to urge the necessity of creating and defending modern Islam from Islamic Nazism. In other words, global modern Muslim superheroes must be manufactured, fictional or otherwise to lead the popular fight against Islamic Nazis. Movies, U Tube and other information outputs and social media must be utilised to capture the hearts and minds of the global modern  Islamic youth, particularly the alienated and vulnerable. In other words a community of modern Muslim youth must be established to fight  ‘Islamic Nazi barbarians who would enslave the world’.
   With much of the  ‘sea of support’ so removed, it is then time ‘to go fishing’. Western backed, modern Islamic ‘freedom fighters’ (including covert death  squads) must be unleashed globally against Islamic Nazism to capture and/or eliminate all known prominent IS leaders globally, wherever they may be. Paramilitary Islamic vigilante groups need to be organised to give the appearance that IS has no popular support and international justice is seen to be done.
   To protect the home state environment, banning Islamic immigration is not the answer. Instead it must be enshrined in the doctrine of modern Islam, that anti-modern Islamic Nazi jihad must be eliminated, and all immigrant and other modern Muslims must denounce this barbaric practice. It is ok to try and win converts to a religion but not through terrorism, the threat of death and the barrel of a gun. That sort of religion does not and should not exist in the human 21st century.
   On another Psyops level, Western Governments must ramp up all healthcare and economic assistance to in Muslims in need, and increase access to higher education. Modern Islam must see that secular states can supply benefits and harmony far above what Allah seems to offer on earth. Moreover, Islamic Nazism thrives on ignorance. Only free access to all levels of education and meaningful careers can combat this.
   Finally, all forms of military action must continue to be pursued but seen to be overwhelmingly by modern pro-Western Islamic forces further isolating IS from the global Islamic community and its collective mindset.
 
Conclusion
The West continues to forget the lessons learnt from Vietnam. However, Islamic Nazism has not. To remedy this, LIC must be adopted globally by the West and moderate, modern Islam. Psyops must be the dominant dimension of this fight with military action more secondary. The US and the West cannot win attempting to take territory alone with conventional military might. The true nature of the conflict is we face a global Islamic Nazi insurgency which cannot be won alone by conventional war over territory and re-education of prisoners. It is primarily a conflict of an extreme brutal ideology seeking the destruction of Western norms and values and the international system of states. As an ideological/Psyops conflict, it must be primarily combated at that level. Finally, the West must adopt a part overt/part covert  form of political/military warfare that ignores normal human rights and moral responses, but not seen to be so. Secular democracies cannot win conflicts according to Western notions of ‘legal warfare’ against forces that respect no rights and no moral norms. The West must fight dirty war with dirty war.
                                    
Dr Ivan Molloy
Former Director ,
Masters of International Studies Program,
University of Sydney 
& Author: ‘Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict’, Pluto Press, London, 2001, among others.

Now the 100th Anzac Day celebrations are over, it’s high time the devastating social and psychological impact of such wars on our veterans and their families be exposed and examined. Only in that way can the full consequences of war and its brutal impact on society be measured. And only in that way, perhaps we Australians for once can begin to look at Anzac Day and how we commemorate it in a different more honest and truthful way – and perhaps dare I say it, one day relegate such ‘Disneyfication’ of war and this particular military disaster to history. 

   My own father’s case is one, albeit, small but horrible example of the consequences of war, as I’m sure the impact on him and our family pales into insignificance compared to millions of others. However his and my family’s story is still worth telling.

   Myself and some others of my family marched with ‘Dad’ on this most recent  Anzac Day. He is the last survivor of his company which fought in New Guinea in WW2. While he was cheered and warmly applauded by the crowd, I took a photo and looked deeply into his eyes which were welling with tears. He was no longer proud; he wasn’t marching to celebrate his loyalty and dedication to country. He was marching as a last gasp expression of respect and sorrow for his friends who were killed, the young men he killed, and above all to try and give some meaning for enduring the atrocity of what war does to those who come back and their families. And in this recent march I know Dad was also driven by his sheer contempt for all the powers and their false ideologies that have sent so many to die over the generations, and still do.

   In fact in early marches, we had to dissuade Dad from marching with hand written anti-war posters which he wanted to hold high. On some occasions we didn’t succeed. But this time, and probably the last time for him, he couldn’t be bothered. His very presence was like his last protest, and this was to show to all and sundry that ‘I survived human kind’s wretched ways of dealing with itself’.

   But while 93 and still alive, Dad didn’t really survive his war unscathed, not emotionally and psychologically anyway, and as a result of that nor did many of his family, including me. In many ways my father returned from the war as an angry yet broken man with symptoms of a condition that later we have all identified as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). For so long unidentified, PTSD has always been the major enemy of those returned from war. This form of acute depression has always been the sinister, murderous covert enemy that grows and lurks behind the lines in the minds of all who witness war, and it never surrenders.

   In 1944, my father, a former champion boxer, was in the thick of the fighting in New Guinea, and he killed a man, a young Japanese soldier. But he didn’t do it with a grenade, with a rifle or bayonet, nothing as impersonal as that – he did it with his own bare hands ripping apart the neck of his foe as they wrestled in hand to hand conflict in the mud on the jungle floor. My father won the deadly fight- but at the same time he lost. He was never the same again. Gone forever was the glory of fighting for mates, King and Country. The realisation finally dawned that he had killed a young man just like himself, both with sweethearts waiting at home. And both had been too young too really understand the world and the hidden dimensions of wealth, power, ambition and self-gratification of the few which really drive the wheels of human history. Both were pawns, with the only difference, Dad’s King triumphed.

   Dad thus came home a different man. He came home desperate and determined to change the world. He was bitter, hard edged and brutal, wracked with the desire to seek revenge on the system that forced him to kill. In his simplistic world view and duped in many ways by the clever spin doctors of the Soviet Union, he became a fellow traveller with global communism, believing it to be more Christian than Christianity- and more humanist than any human invented or ‘channelled god’ could ever be. But still deep down within his own psyche, he remained haunted and still does for the murder he believed he committed, still evident by his often breaking down into tears at night, and so much by his simple inability to eat chicken – as it ‘smells so much like my bloodied hands after I killed that jap’.

   While Dad’s love affair with communism eventually faded, in the end turning to socialism, at home both externally and internally, his battle with the system remained. He fought every union fight for a better go, he attended every demonstration he could find against the Government, and above all he was viciously anti the Vietnam War and all who supported it.

   Within the family home he also continued the struggle, nearly every night drumming into his kids his view of the world and those ills that had to be combated, symbolised as they were in the Vietnam War.

   In short, Dad’s war impacted brutally on his kids. It was us versus them! We were taught to hate the system, to fight against it incessantly, to champion humanity and the rights of the downtrodden, and especially all those who would end up as cannon fodder for such a morally corrupt system.

   The impact of Dad’s crusade and condition on our family proved both tragic and predictable and it all came to a head during the Vietnam War years. A war which saw us pitted as a family against our own country until the obvious realities of the war swung world opinion against it. As a result, my family became a pariah of the community, enduring arrests, hate mail, and schoolyard bullying. Finally my oldest brother, as the next man of the family, became so scarred by my father’s bitterness, rage and violent temper, and the resulting community backlash, he distanced himself from the whole circus. But he was also fortunate in another way for lady luck saw him escape the bouncing ball of conscription.

   Meanwhile my sister joined the socialist Eureka Youth League and continued Dad’s political fight until she became more absorbed herself in fighting to keep her ‘conscientious objector’ and future husband out of gaol. My immediate older brother however was not so fortunate. Deeply affected by our family’s alienation and the onset of his own imminent Vietnam gamble, he struggled with the nightmare of having to choose between Dad, as our ideological pillar and ‘the cause’ – or community acceptance. My brother with a sensitive compassionate heart questioned his own courage to make a stand and soon found escape in motorcycles, the fringe Hells Angels bikie community and ultimately the adrenalin of fast bikes. Until one night he was severely crippled in a horrific smash just down the road from home. This haunts us still, as lying crying in mum’s arms, he was able to gasp, ‘Mum I don’t want to go to Vietnam’ before lapsing into unconsciousness. Of course that was an escape for my brother, but only temporarily. Out of hospital with a crippled leg, he was out of the war and the family political crusade by default. However his tumble downwards continued and was killed one year later in another crash. My father’s nightmare thus worsened, as it did my mothers. My mother proved the strength of our family. She was the reservoir of love, strength and compassion that in the end held us all together, and that continues to this day as she watches her husband being continually swallowed by dementia and the crippling jaws of depression and PTSD.

   As for me, like a devoted son, I too adopted Dad’s fight to try and stop all the injustice around us. But being the youngest of the family I also had to first endure the damage that PTSD can inflict on a family and especially my brother’s death. Fortunately, I was shielded from that tragedy by drink and a drug overdose. But a recovery from that couldn’t stem my own lapse into depression, although not diagnosed at the time, nor me even being aware or even understanding it. As such I soon emulated my brother by adopting a death wish and suffering my own debilitating motorbike crash. But like a good son, I fought on for Dad’s cause. I eventually studied politics and earned a PhD in revolutionary studies, and an academic position at Sydney University. And just like Dad I set off to find and combat injustice in the world. This mad crusade saw me visit and conduct field research first hand for many years in the carnage of war zones in Latin America and the Philippines. But while I was obsessed with scoring academic goals, and righting community wrongs as I saw them, I was unable to stop my own drift further into deep depression, rages and violent behaviour. In the end, I was diagnosed with PTSD myself, but it was too late. I had become my own father, and my own children suffered until the family splintered. In time my career as an academic also disintegrated. While for some years I usually explained to anybody who was interested that I retired from academia purely because I was able to get a great superannuation package, I was however absolutely lying, so scared of the public stigma that mental illness attracts. The reality is that I was simply judged unable to lecture anymore because of endless anxiety attacks and the potential for suicide. So in the end I was pensioned off on a mental disability insurance plan. To quote Ned Kelly – ‘such is life’. However, so too is PTSD a reality of life and a major damaging brutal consequence of war. So think of that the next time we celebrate ANZAC Day, and think of that when you look deeply into the tear blurred eyes of some lone digger marching past. And think of the endless repercussions yet to come for our future diggers and their families, and also perhaps think of that the next time you consider eating chicken!

 

Dr Ivan Molloy.

To be anti Islamic fundamentalism is not to be racist!! When will the media, social commentators and left wing dogmatic idiots get it right.
Islam is an ideology - a belief system or prescription for a way of life. It is not a skin colour, particular race, or ethnic group. 
Those who choose to embrace this ideology can be of any race etc. Those who oppose this ideology oppose a sinister murderous belief system - not the physical make up or attributes of any human being!
When will supposedly thinking people get this right!!

Winston Churchill 1899. "Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."
 ===============================================================================================
 
CHURCHILL ON ISLAM Unbelievable,  the speech below was written in 1899.
 
(Check Wikipedia - The River War). The attached short speech from Winston Churchill, was delivered by him in 1899 when he was a young soldier and journalist. It probably sets out the current views of many, but expresses in the wonderful Churchillian turn of phrase and use of the English language, of which he was a past master. Sir Winston Churchill was, without doubt, one of the greatest men of the late 19th and 20th centuries. He was a brave young soldier, a brilliant journalist, an extraordinary politician and statesman, a great war leader and British Prime Minister, to whom the Western world must be forever in his debt.

He was a prophet in his own time. He died on 24th January 1965, at the grand old age of 90 and, after a lifetime of service to his country, was accorded a State funeral.
 
HERE IS THE SPEECH:
 
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
 
Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).
                  Churchill saw it coming.
 

 

 
 
 

'The Way For Democracies To Combat Islamic (ISL) Terror'

After spending considerable research time in the field with Islamic guerrillas and the Communist New Peoples Army (NPA) in the Philippines in the 1980s, I feel I can comment with some authority as to the type of warfare the ISL militants are waging and how the West can most effectively combat this form of warfare. For some time in the 1980s, I was behind the lines with the Moro National Liberation Front in Mindanao, and then spent some time interviewing and then being a 'captive' (until they left) of an NPA 'Sparrow' squad - perhaps better know an as an assassination team in the slums of Manila. Both these groups were fighting the US-backed Marcos regime. Today both these movements would be certainly regarded as 'terrorist' groups according to popular definitions, and at this level both groups certainly were. They both used indiscriminate terror tactics  particularly the 'sparrow' assassination squads murdering any supporters of the Marcos regime. However, on a deeper level it is important to understand this. Both these groups were waging what they called 'Peoples War' - or 'asymmetrical warfare', wherein the main weapon is psychological warfare (psyops) not conventional military action. Guerrilla/terrorist movements understand they cannot match major powers with conventional military tactics so they use terrorist tactics to undermine the support base of such states - i.e. the people's popular support of a government's actions. Hence fear is spread by indiscriminate assassinations/beheadings, bombings etc. to turn popular opinion against a government's war on such movements. This is exactly the nature of the warfare the Vietnamese used against the US - it used Peoples War to turn US popular support against the Vietnam War, And now in 2014, ISL will increasingly wage this form of terrorist war against Western support bases (the people) supporting US, French , Australian actions, etc.) And understand this - this form of psychological warfare cannot be stopped by police, armed forces, and/or security agencies of any dimension in Western democracies using moral, 'legal ' or any other Western accepted 'legitimate' means of waging violence. So what is the answer? How do we combat such warfare? The West must look to the past to the extremely covert, illegal, 'dirty war' strategy waged by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s against revolutionary governments in Nicaragua, etc. and revolutionary movements in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Philippines and elsewhere. Known as Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), this strategy was developed by security agencies in the US based on the lessons learnt from Vietnam. However, it was extremely covert because it was an affront to all Western standards of civilised warfare(if there can be such a thing) as it challenged all Western standards of morality and international law. LIC was murderous, brutal, immoral, totally illegal, covert but above all totally successful. Basically the US strategy of LIC involved waging 'peoples war' against 'the revolution'. On one major level (as one pillar of Reagan's 'Contragate'), apart from propaganda, it involved US backed mercenaries and others including US servicemen, using terror tactics against any movements or government the Reagan administration wanted destroyed. And ultimately being so effective globally, it can be regarded as one major factor in the US victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and the latter's subsequent collapse. In short it involved US backed, financed , trained and supplied mercenary armies and death squads assassinating, torturing, beheading, drugging not just combatants, but civilians, etc, all elements of a brutal dirty war to spread fear and terrorise the support base - the people supporting the movements or governments it opposed. To wage LIC is now the only answer to combating and defeat ISL. However the Catch 22 is exactly this - the West must use totally immoral, brutal, deadly tactics on ISL forces that they are waging brutal war against us. But can the West do this and still pretend to uphold democratic values, support human rights and international law? No it can't! With the threat we are now facing in the form of a murderous radical chapter of an anti-Western ideology our very survival means we can no longer pay lip service to such values when dealing with 'them', if we wish for 'us' (those of the Western world) to survive. So perhaps many would argue it is now time we must adopt Machiavellian tactics and adopt ruthless murderous terror tactics when dealing with ISL and the Caliphate's international supporters. If it can be argued that the end justifies the means - we must adopt LIC - and adopt murderous immoral tactics in the short term to ensure a moral, just and civilized world that embraces human rights and the rule of law will survive. Such action can be seen as both our dilemma but also salvation. And exactly whose God is going to judge us in the end?

Dr Ivan Molloy (retired academic)

Time For Direct Democracy With Qualifications

Recent events in politics exposes the essential truth that Western ‘representative’ democratic systems are now so fatally flawed true democracy is now un-achievable. With the onset of unfettered global capitalism and modern communications, we now have discredited media moguls, maverick billionaires, cashed up extremist single interest groups among others, all swaying outcomes via a sensationalist media and a culture of opportunist careerist politicians.  With the Australian political culture so dumbed down by a media diet of meaningless trivia, and largely deprived of adequate formal education in politics and current affairs, collectively we have little hope of adequately addressing the important issues that face us as a nation. The solution - scrap compulsory voting, introduce compulsory formal political education and a licensing system so only the interested and informed can vote. Moreover, technology now allows direct democracy to occur via the net and should be embraced by the nation. Representative democracy is an anarchic system that is no longer viable or suitable for modern times.

Dr Ivan Molloy.

Dr Molloy Letter: Surf Life Saving CEOs Williamson and Devlin Have Blood On Their Hands
What an outrage! It is scarcely 2 years since Saxon Bird died in a Qld Surf Life Saving Carnival. And scarcely 2 years since I publicly criticised Qld Surf Life Saving for being part responsible due to its incompetence, its ''mates rates blokey" culture and Sponsorship money before everything else attitude, even the safety of its members. And what's happened since? Surf Life Saving Qld has done absolutely nothing and now another young lad has died. How hard is it to rule that life-jackets and helmets be compulsory in all board and surf ski races? How hard is it to suspend carnivals when conditions are too dangerous? Obviously too hard for CEO's Brett Williamson and Ralph Devlin! They now have blood on their hands. Far too often they and others have found it easier to silence and even expel members who criticise and demand investigation of this insidious cancerous culture rather than expose and confront it. It is a corrupting cancer eating away at the heart of this once fabulous movement and must be cleaned out. Shame on you Williamson, shame on you Devlin!

Dr Ivan Molloy
Former Vice President, Sunshine Beach Surf Life Saving Club
Former Patrol Captain, Sunshine Beach Surf Life Saving Club

0407114729
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