Very well done, Australia!
Australia raids foil reported ISIS beheading plots
Australian counterterrorism forces detained 15 people Thursday in a series of suburban raids after receiving intelligence that the Islamic State movement was planning public beheadings in two Australian cities to demonstrate its reach.
About 800 federal and state police officers raided more than a dozen properties across 12 Sydney suburbs as part of the operation — the largest in Australian history, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the Associated Press. Separate raids in the eastern cities of Brisbane and Logan were also conducted.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the plan involved kidnapping randomly selected members of the public off the streets in Sydney and Brisbane, beheading them on camera, and releasing the recordings through Islamic State's propaganda arm in the Middle East.
Phi Beta Iota: The USA is mandating rear-view cameras at great expense for all future cars, because 50 children a year are accidentally run over by their parents. One has to wonder , what price will the USA pay — and with what constructive result — to prevent 4 beheadings on US soil a year? Remember, this is a country in which Los Angeles police kill one person a week — hardly noteworthy given the size and mix of that population — and 22 veterans commit suicide every single day. The present hysteria about ISIS being fostered by Senator Lindsey “I need a night light” Graham and other rabid folk intent on getting into wars they do not understand and cannot win is not helpful. We conclude that the USA needs at least a four part strategy for dealing with ISIS.
Part I: Pull out of the Middle East, to include closing down the 44 bases surrounding Iran. Stop supporting the Zionist and stop supporting the Arab dictators with US taxpayer funds. It's time we lived up to our Founding Fathers's vision best articulated by Ron Paul in his book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (2007). We must heed the wisdom in Philip Allott's book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State (2002) and implement the specific recommendations of Ambassador Mark Palmer as set forth, with particular relevance to the Middle East and North Africa, in Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 (2005).
Part II: Reconstitute the US Intelligence Community along the lines suggested by Robert Steele and many others, so as to actually be able to provide ethical evidence-based support across Whole of Government as well as Whole of Society. The IC is correct today when it says that ISIS is not a real threat to the USA (unless the USA is seriously stupid and invades the Middle East again), but the IC is also a counterintelligence zero — it is not trained, equipped or organized to handle counterintelligence against the traitors at the top betraying the President, Congress, and the public; or the wanna-be martyrs at the bottom ready to do a beheading for considerable public effect.
Part III: Straighten out the US media — something that can only be done if the US IC is first rehabilitated so that it can a) get a grip on the truth and b) share that truth publicly. The fear-mongering and the irresponsible journalism (the New York Times seems to lead the pack these days) needs to stop.
Part IV: For the duration of the Obama-Biden Administration, focus on domestic challenges. The Administration's approach to Ebola is truly whole of government and although severely misguided in putting 3,000 US troops in harm's way, a reasonable proposition over-all. Now is the time for Obama to focus on poverty, disease, and environmental degradation across the USA; now is the time for Obama to demand decision-support for whole of government approaches to all ten policy domains where the Administration is generally incoherent and ineffective today. Beheadings — a form of theater — take on meaning in the context of fear and emptiness. In the context of a recovering economy with a responsible government they are seen for what they are: a traffic accident.
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