Ron Paul

This is a great interview because it voices the kinds of anxieties many people feel in reaction to the crazy analysis we are being presented with by the mainstream media vis a vis North Korea and the United States, but it brings some common sense to the matter in the form of Senator/Dr Ron Paul. Alex Jones, head of Infowars dot com is an interesting and flamboyant product of US capitalism, religion, and the education system. Loyal to Trump, but spooked, he wants to see something positive in Trump's posturing against North Korea. Senator Ron Paul is an American author, physician, and former politician, with an excellent historic and current grasp on foreign affairs, who finds war a dangerous and stupid creation of the deep state. And he talks from experience. In this interview, Senator Ron Paul points out that Alex has been falling for the neocon propaganda where the US always goes to war to 'defend' nations from 'mad dictators'. Of course the nations finish up almost destroyed by the US, worse off than before, and, you have to wonder why the neocons get away with the same cartoon-like frame up of leaders who have territory that they want. Ron Paul points out Alex Jones dancing to the neocon tune on North Korea, "Alex, you've swallowed the neocon line!" Alex entertains with his typically grotesque, original, and dramatic rhetoric, such as, "Horrible little communist third-generation dictator, fat off the blood of his little skinny citizens." As he interviews Ron Paul, Alex draws a cartoon of plump Kim Jong un approaching Donald Trump with a thought bubble, "Food!" It somehow reminded me of how Trump talked about missiles and chocolate cake in the same mouthful not so long ago regarding another 'mad dictator' (there are so many, apparently).

The following contains excerpts from the interview, which is just under 20 minutes long:

RON PAUL: We've been there way too long and you know this whole idea this stage is set now that you know the Koreans are threatening what we might shoot down an airplane well what if there's now that that stage is said it's progressing because of our involvement somebody's going to use a false flag and somebody's going to shoot down the airplane just so that this war gets started so that's why I believe in non intervention we ought to defend this country but it's time to come home from Korea you've lost too many lives we killed even when we got involved in that war you know with the north and the south we bombed the north to smithereens we killed 30 percent of their population and they had never attacked us we never declared war we went there under UN banner we have an insane foreign policy and unfortunately it really hasn't changed that much with our new president.

Alex: [...] But what happens if China or Russia gets involved Dr Paul?

RON PAUL: Well, they will get involved. [...] When it started way back in the 50s, we thought, well, we'll take care of this and a month after the war broke out. You know, we essentially won the war and then we moved up and [..] said well we'll occupy North Korea. Went up to the border and then the Chinese came in. True they're going to be involved, but I think you just made the case for why we need to be out of there! Because you know the North Korea guy is goofy, but I'll tell you what, he does know what he's doing, because he has to threaten because he believes that if he gives up and capitulates, does exactly what we tell him to do, what will happen [will be]like what happened to Saddam Hussein and what happened to Qaddafi. And you know how we treat Assad in Syria.

We have an empire to defend, we run the world, and it's wrong. It doesn't work. Millions of people have died over this. And it's time we as a people woke up and say we ought to mind our own business. We ought to come home and defend this country. We don't need to be worrying about battleships and bombers and flying back and showing that we have strengths. Their weapons were used in world war II.

And this guy who runs North Korea, he's not going to invade the United States. He's not going to launch a missile. Just remember the whole thing dealing with Iraq about all the danger, great danger.

Deep State propaganda blames other countries to start wars

The propagandist, the deep state, the media, convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein was a danger. They're doing the same thing now with North Korea! And that's why we ought to wise up and just not buy into this and and look at this as a constitutional issue. And not to say, well we need to go to war with this guy. Unfortunately we're marching that way, but we better look at ourselves too and why are we involved in a hundred and twenty different countries with our military personnel and why are we always looking for trouble.

And I would say that it's very very dangerous, but just to say, well it was always Saddam Hussein's fault; it was always Qaddafi's fault; it's always Assad's fault. And then turn around and say, oh yeah, look at Russia look at what they're going to do.

I mean, it is the neocon foreign policy that we have been following. We still follow a neocon foreign policy. I think that's tragic.

Jones: "Horrible little communist third generation dictator, fat off the blood of his little skinny citizens"

ALEX JONES: That said, I agree with you in practice and function, but even people like Joel Skousen that was agreed with you about not having a war you know in the last five or six saying they were frauds, he says when you get down to North Korea now, they do have nuclear weapons, they are being backed by China, they are a real threat, they are firing missiles right over Japan. They can test weapons but but but doing it in this way, threatening preemptively to blow up the US;to say it's inevitable - that's pointing a gun at us and really next-level Bravada! It's incredible chicken! And then you have the Clintons, as you know, transferring the reactors, transferring the missiles in the mid-90s, that you and others criticized when you first got back into Congress. And so there's a lot of blame going around here, and then you just have the horrible little communists third generation dictator, fat off the blood of his little skinny citizens - I agree with you, the poor Koreans, North Korean slaves and their children - I feel sorry for them. I don't want to have to you know nuke the DMZ. But if they do strike us first, I think they may be crazy enough to do it, then it's going to take a major commitment to make sure they can't count on a response. Dr. Paul?

Alex, you're buying into neocon garbage

RON PAUL: I ... You're buying into all the garbage that's passed out there by the deep state and neoconservatives and and the media. My suggestion, very clearly, on what we should do is we should allow the South Koreans to talk to the North Koreans. What's wrong with that? They're the ones that have everything at stake and we don't even allow them to do that. And and yet they were willing to! Just last week, the South Koreans, in an effort to break this conflict, they sent a couple million dollars to North Korea to take care of some of the people, the kids that are suffering from our sanctions. The people suffer. We killed people. We killed almost a million Iraqis with our sanctions before we went to war. And all these sanctions do is just provoke the bitterness! [...] Why do we prohibit the South Koreans from talking to the North Korea?"

ALEX JONES: [...] Sure, sure, I mean it's like Madeline Albright said, 'A half million Iraqi children is a good price to pay with the sanctions.' It's probably way over a million. The Lancet British medical journals it was like 1.3 back in like 2007 going back to 1990 and, understand, Dr. Paul I'm just wargaming both sides of the debate I've not bought in to the garbage that we need to have a war or that sanctions are always the best thing. As you said, Vietnam now loves us hates communist China, becoming a free-market powerhouse. And we should have made a deal with Ho Chi Minh to go in there and be free market to begin with but we double-crossed him tried to overthrow him as you know back in ... so I understand the history of it as you do, as a former Air Force officer.

The only thing I'm getting at here is is that we can certainly recognize communist regimes are also horrible evils. Just because we have neocon problems here, I mean certainly this is a great example of how communism is a horrible nightmare like Venezuela.

Let North & South Korea talk; let Russia and China negotiate; This isn't US territory

RON PAUL: Well I still think that you're seeing them as a much greater threat [than they are] and when I was drafted in 1962 of the Cuban crisis, you know there was a real hot cold war going on at the time. But we had danger then. The Soviets had 30,000 nuclear missiles and weapons, but we didn't provoke or think we had to get rid of them! We actually dealt with them and Kennedy talked to them and got rid of that crisis we had in Cuba. North Korea, they don't have this capability. China is not interested and it's not in their interest to allow this guy to provoke and get into a war with us. That isn't quite accurate to say that they're in cahoots with China, that they have nuclear bombs and and all this sort of thing.

I think that we should allow South Korea to start having negotiations. Let's let China and Russia [...] they should be more involved in this. Let them monitor the standpoint. But why are we, six, seven thousand miles away? Once again we've been involved in a civil war that's been going on endlessly. It's time we stopped it.

Alex: But what about the evil dictators?

ALEX JONES: Let's be clear, I agree with you. I have four children you've got a bunch of children. You've got a bunch of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I'm told now. And I absolutely do not want to have a nuclear war. I do not want this to happen. I understand that what you're saying is historically true. I'm simply pointing out that President Trump has been right on so many other issues and I understand that it looks like there's been an escalation. He believes that the strategic appeasement, the strategic patience, has run out and [...] he's looking for some other way to get North Korea to come to the bargaining table. Hell! Months ago, Rex Tillerson was saying let's have talks, stop this rhetoric, and it only seemed to encourage Kim Jong-un. So I understand you can say we're ganging up on North Korea and the people hurt are the poor folks in it. That's true. I'm not saying you're wrong, but what about the dictators? What about the horrible evil leaders of the nation? What are we supposed to do about them? What do we do?

Alex,that's the neoconservative line again

RON PAUL: Alex you're speaking for the neoconservatives! That's their line of talking why we have to do this. And I'm just arguing it's totally unnecessary. [It] didn't work - you admit it didn't work in Vietnam and we should have done that differently. And we're friends with them. We win more in peace than we do in war. But we've been in Korea! This whole thing is just based on a lot of misconceptions. I think our administration has accepted neocon lies and they're going with it but they're agreeing to trouble because of the diplomacy [JONES talks over Ron Paul]

ALEX JONES: And I agree with you. [...]What is your advice to President Trump? What is your advice to the president?

Advice to President Trump: Get out of interventionism. We're acting like insecure bullies

RON PAUL: Bring the troops home! I would advise him just what my position has been for years. Get out of interventionism! Bring the troops home. Get out of all this. Get out of Syria, out of Iraq, the whole works! Start dismantling our empire. Get all our troops out of Korea and allow people to settle their own disputes. But not to join this neocon effort to continue to run the world and distort the truth, because they love the wars in the Middle East. And now the neocons are behind all this activity, [the're] why we have this great enemy of the North Koreans. I think when we get so upset about that, that we're insecure. We act like a bunch of bullies. We're insecure, we don't know how to react, and say, 'Oh they're coming! They're gonna cut us, then they're gonna bomb us!' Alex, that is not true and the Chinese aren't on that side of that issue at all. They're are holding him back, if nothing else, because they have too much to lose. They don't want any more war in North Korea than we do. So I don't really think it's right to say this guy in North Korea is going to because he's aligned with the Chinese, that they're going to help him provoke a war with the United States.

ALEX JONES: Just to be clear, their main trading partner is the Chinese. I'd love to see the two countries unified in this nightmare and I'm not going with that line I'm looking at both the lines of reasoning here just to play devil's advocate I overall agree with you and hope that's the way this goes but they do say they have hydrogen bombs. It is believed they have them. They're saying they're preemptively using them, so they're putting out horrible rhetoric as well. I get your point that they need to look strong; they saw what happened to Iraq and other countries that didn't have nuclear weapons. They look at you know Iran looks at that so so moving away from that is that we actually agree on that subject and I pray everything turns out alright they've got your article posted on info wars.com promoting that. [...]

Interviews with Syrians in Aleppo regarding how they perceive the defeat of the 'rebels', whom they call terrorists. They feel they have been liberated and they consider that France and its allies (US-NATO) were keeping them imprisoned by supporting the terrorists. Arabic, French and English, with French and English subtitles. A number of christian church officials are interviewed.

Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan

"As the US mainstream media obsessed last week about Russia's supposed “hacking” of the US elections and President Obama’s final round of Russia sanctions in response, something very important was taking place under the media radar. As a result of a meeting between foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Turkey last month, a ceasefire in Syria has been worked out and is being implemented. So far it appears to be holding, and after nearly six years of horrible warfare the people of Syria are finally facing the possibility of rebuilding their lives." [...]

"The fact is, it is often US involvement in “solving” these crises that actually perpetuates them. Consider the 60-plus year state of war between North and South Korea. Has US intervention done anything to solve the problem? How about our decades of meddling in the Israel-Palestine dispute? Are we any closer to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians despite the billions we have spent bribing and interfering?" Ron Paul. Read more here: Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, in an article republished from Global Research and his own web site, warns his readers, "Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny." However, he argues that Ron Paul's "small government" libertarian policies may not be able to solve America's environmental problems or help the poor and so could make it harder for Paul to win sufficient support. He offers some alternative policy suggestions. (Sub-headings and emphasis have been added by myself.)

In the Soviet Union common criminals were punished less harshly and received better treatment than political prisoners. A person who had committed a violent crime had more rights than someone who expressed criticism of the government and could be portrayed as having acted against the government. We now have the same situation in the US.

In a recent case the Supreme Court overturned the sentence of a drug dealer who was convicted on the basis of a warrantless 28-day search by having a GPS device affixed to his car. In other words, a common criminal still has privacy rights under the Constitution, but not US citizens who are suspected of vague and nebulous "terrorist support."

The only candidate commited to stopping war, preserving democracy

Both Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated disregard for the civil liberty protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. Among the visible candidates for president, only Ron Paul has respect for the Constitution. As it is now possible for the executive branch to take away the life and liberty of a US citizen without due process of law, the Constitution is for all practical purposes lost. Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny.

This is why I have written that Ron Paul is our last chance and encouraged his libertarian handlers to be flexible enough for the electorate to elect Ron Paul. I agree that Ron Paul, if elected president, would be hamstrung by the Establishment, but the other candidates offer no hope whatsoever.

What is at stake is not libertarianism, but the US Constitution. Unfortunately, not many libertarians see that. Neither do many progressives. If truth be known, Americans are too divided and in opposition to one another to be able to unite against tyranny.

Low income Americans need protection by government

In previous columns I explained how Ron Paul could appeal to low income Americans, to elderly Americans, and to those Americans concerned about illegal immigration. I suggested that Ron Paul endorse Ron Unz's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour as a way of turning the jobs taken by illegal immigrants into a more livable income for Americans. I suggested that Ron Paul should acknowledge that people who have paid a payroll tax all their working lives have private property rights to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

A number of libertarians replied, as I knew they would from my long years of association with them, with their standard dogmatism that the minimum wage causes unemployment and that Social Security and Medicare are government programs not private property. They were blind to Ron Unz's point that low wages cause unemployment among Americans who are unable to live on the wages, and, thus, cause an inflow of illegal immigrants who take the low wage jobs.

I don't need to repeat my suggestions as the columns are available on my web site. I will, however, point out that the fact that Medicare and Social Security are intergenerational transfers does not mean that they are not private property. Consider your homeowner's policy. If your neighbor's home burns down or a person's home in a distant location, the insurance company draws on the pool of funds created by policy holders' premiums in order to compensate the person who lost his home. The damaged homeowner is not simply compensated from his own paid-in premiums. If more homeowners are elderly than young, it is an intergenerational transfer when a young homeowner's home burns down.

Like Medicare, private health insurance is a transfer payment as premiums from the healthy support the care of the sick. Private medical insurance could also be an intergenerational transfer. Premium are adjusted for age, but generally speaking, the young are more healthy than the old.

For Ron Paul to further broaden his base, he also needs to add to my previous suggestions his endorsement of regulation to protect the environment and to protect private savers from fraud and irresponsible debt leverage by private financial institutions.

How private investment threatens our environment

Libertarians claim that the best way to protect the environment is to have it privately owned. If streams, oceans, and underground aquifers were privately owned, the owners could sue polluters such as the oil companies, the mining companies, agri-business, etc. Thus, private property would protect the environment. Whether this would work or not, we are a long way from such private ownership, and many private economic activities are destroying common environmental resources.

The list is endless. The World Wildlife Fund reports that Asia Pulp & Paper is destroying the last remaining Sumatran tigers by clear cutting the tigers' last remaining refuge in order to produce toilet paper marketed in the US under the Paseo and LIVI brand names. "Feel the Power! Buy our product and flush a tiger and a rain forest!"

The National Defense Resource Council reports that under an Obama regime and state of Utah plan, massive coal mining will be permitted adjacent to Bryce Canyon National Park. Three hundred heavy diesel trucks per day will travel down the scenic two-lane higway to supply China with dirty coal.

The Obama regime has granted Shell Oil tentative approval to begin drilling off the coast of the Arctic Refuge, the main on-shore birthing ground for polar bears.

Defenders of Wildlife reports that Shell Oil is pushing to open Bristol Bay to oil drilling, despite the danger to fisheries and wildlife and despite the fact that the long-term value of the renewable fisheries far exceeds the short-term value of nonrenewable fossil fuel extraction in the area.

In the Powder River Basin in Montana, coal companies are mobilizing to destroy the water resources and ranchers in the eastern part of the state.

All of these are current hot ticket items with progressives, environmentalists, and ranchers. Obama is vulnerable. He has put the tar sands pipeline on hold, but many believe he will approve the environmentally destructive project once he is re-elected.

Air, water, wildlife, and fish in the sea are not private property and have no protectors. They are being destroyed by the lack of regulation. Moreover, private property has not protected forests from being clearcut or soil from being depleted of its natural nutrients. The chemical farming with which agri-business has replaced natural farming has polluted America's aquifers, streams, lakes, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, which has extensive dead areas from chemical fertilizer run-off.

As Herman Daly and other environmental economists have made clear, the world is running out of sinks into which to dump its wastes. The external costs of unregulated activity are mounting. Once a threshold is crossed, the environment is ruined. The drive to maximize short-run profits is a great source of ruin. The external costs associated with maximizing short-run profits can exceed the value of the private output.

Could libertarian dogmatism deny the choice needed by US voters?

A candidate committed to saving the Constitution, environment, private savings, protecting the security of the elderly, opposing war, and boosting the incomes of the worst off, which has the added benefit of reducing illegal immigration, is a candidate without equal in the presidential election.

We will not have such a candidate, because libertarian sectarian dogmatism will prevent it. Libertarians will be pure to the end and take the Constitution and the rest of us down with them.

Go to youtube.com/watch?v=VMUZIVYuluc to find embedded YouTube Broadcast embedded above.

A search using the terms:

Republican Primaries

... confirms that Ron Paul's campaign to win the Republican Party preselection for US Presidential candidate has been blacked out by the international corporate news media.

No mention of Ron Paul is found until page 3. Stories currently listed on page 3 are as follows:

• Fed Up With Bias, Ron Paul Supporters Boycott Advertisers
  Fed up with a very overt strategic exclusion of Ron Paul during the coverage of the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary race, Ron Paul supporters are ...

• Ron Paul's Shot at Victory? Nolan Chart LLC
• http://hotair.com/archives/2011/12/14/ron-paul-im-not-sure-i-have-the-stamina-for-a-long-primary/
• Ron Paul first choice for SD GOP, says poll? Daily Republic
• Examiner.com - Northern Voices Online
• ...

US Republican Congressman and past Presidential contender, Ron Paul opposes a bill to impose sanctions against Iran. In his speech, he describes how exactly the same bogus justifications were used for the imposition of sanctions against Iraq. Rather than satisfying the demands of the warmongers wielding power in the US at the time, they only paved the way for the subsequent illegal invasion.

This was first published on Information Clearing House on 22 Apr 2010. Please donate to ICH to help them continue their vital work.

An Act Of War

By Congressman Ron Paul

US Republican Congressman Ron Paul

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul - United States House of Representatives

Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act - April 22, 2010

April 23, 2010 "United States House of Representatives" -- Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

Editorial Comment

And what if, contrary all to the known evidence, Iran was found to be pursuing a nuclear weapons program?

Although the claims that Iran may obtain nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future are every bit as bogus as claims made about Iraq prior to the invasion of 2003, this poses the question: What would be an appropriate response on the part of the US if, instead, evidence of a program to build nuclear weapons had been found?

Arguably, an outright invasion and obliteration of much of Iran costing, perhaps, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and at the risk of igniting a larger world-wide conflageration, most likely involving NATO, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, would remove from the world the nuclear threat posed by such an Iranian nuclear weapons program, but any reasonable person would consider such a cost and such risks completely unacceptable.

US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963).
His selfless courage and ultimate sacrifice spared the world
on at least three occasions from the unthinkable horror of
all-out nuclear war.

The fact remains that, as unsettling as the prospect of states such as Iran, or for that matter, India, Pakistan, France, and even Israel obtaining or already possessing nuclear weapons, is, the vastly greater threat of nuclear war posed to the world is by the US itself.

As James Douglass has shown in his monumental JFK and the Unspeakable - Why he died and why it matters, published by Orbis books in 2008 and 2009 on pages 28 to 29 and elsewhere, the US Joint Chiefs of staff were fully resolved, on at least three occasians in the early 1960's, to launch an all out nuclear strike against the USSR. It was only very good luck, combined with the extraordinary and unique courage of President Kennedy, which prevented that from occurring.

Also, according to retired CIA analyst, Ray McGovern in a videoed talk, embedded below, only a handful of principled senior military and intelligence professionals within the US, who refused tell Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George W Bush, the lies that they needed to hear, have prevented an invasion of Iran and possibly World War 3.

Clearly the greatest nuclear threat posed to humankind was and remains the US nuclear arsenal in the hands of the very military-industrial complex against which former President Eisenhower warned in his final address to the nation in 1961.

If President Kennedy had not been murdered by that military industrial complex on 22 November 1963, he would have been able to continue on his quest to rid the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons, the first step of which was his Government's ratification of the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty with the USSR in 1963.

Today, only the US has within its power to comprehensively remove the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanknd. To achive that would require another national leader as visionary and courageous as was President Kennedy was.

Wouldn't a US invasion bring democracy to Iran?

The other implicit justification for an invasion of Iran is that it is necessary to re-establish democracy. In truth, the election victory that allowed the current Government to retain power is questionable, and it remains the heir of the astonishingly brutal regime of Ayatollah Khomeini which came to power after the overthrow of the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979. (The Shah, himself, was imposed as the result of a CIA-orchestrated coup against the popular elected Government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953.)

Nevertheless, to accept that western Governments, who routinely act contrary to the democratically expressed wishes of their consituents, as examples, against the bail-out of the Wall Street financial racketeers in September 2008, and against the fire sale of AU$15 billion of publicly owned assets in Queensland in 2009 and 2010, have any intention of bring democracy to Iran, would require an enormous degree of credulity.

Whatever 'democracy' may emerge from the ruins of a conquered Iran will, at the very best, be no better than the formal supposed democracies that exist in the US and Australia and, far more likely, akin to the dictatorship of Paul Bremer over Iraq of 2003-2005, which oversaw the ransacking of public wealth by crony US capitalists and the consequent impoverishment of Iraqis. (The Shock Doctrine, (2007) Naomi Klein, pp 325-422)