Category Archives: America

UPDATED: Scheuer: Big Bad Israel Vs. Poor Little Empire (The ‘Sir’ Thing)

America, Anti-Semitism, Education, Foreign Policy, Israel, Political Economy, Technology

Michael Scheuer is so predicable in his attempts to be unpredictable. I knew right away what Scheuer would say when Judge Napolitano, of Freedom Watch, brought up the matter of US spying on Israel. The Jewish State is no ally; it deserves what it gets, said Scheuer.

Oh the contradictions! The likes of Scheuer see the US as a bad actor everywhere around the world. Except when it comes to the Jewish State. When it concerns Israel, big bad America suddenly becomes poor little Empire.

Inconsistency in thinking is never a nice thing to behold.

Scheuer also claimed that Israel has been stealing America’s intellectual property, an assertion for which he offered no evidence.

Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Scheuer would like to claim the invention for the US, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.

Jealously is as ugly as inconsistency. My sources in the high-tech industry confirm that Israel has been on the cutting edge for quite sometime. Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in that detail.

Moreover, there is the issue of education. Take Germany. It is socialistic like Israel, but has a splendid education system, which remains unburdened by political correctness. The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks. Israel, I suspect, is unencumbered by the kind of education system that graduates retarded kids as America does.

UPDATE: THE “SIR” THING. Kerry, it’s uncanny. I was thinking the same. Scheuer’s habit of saying “Sir” constantly is his way of appearing like a straight arrow. You know; like man with military discipline. “Take what I say to the bank, Sir.” It’s so phony.

UPDATED: Gadhafi A Gold Bug? Finally, A Believable Conspiracy

America, Colonialism, Conspiracy, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Foreign Policy, Government, Inflation, Middle East

Was Moammar Gadhafi promoting a gold-driven monetary revolution? Did he, somehow, contravene the American creed of cruising on credit? Is it entirely within the realm of conspiracy to posit that the war against Libya had at least something to do with taking down “a pesky, persistent Arab gold bug?”

The following is from my new column, “Gadhafi A Gold Bug? Finally, A Believable Conspiracy,” now on WND.COM:

“In 2009—in his capacity as head of the African Union—Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi had proposed that the economically crippled continent adopt the Gold Dinar. I do not know for sure if Colonel Gadhafi persevered in the plan he had hatched to ditch the dollar and adopt a ‘Gold Dinar.’ … Had a gold revolution engulfed oil-rich African and Persian-Gulf states this would have spelt trouble for the debt-strapped West.

If only symbolically, a gold revolution across Arabia and Africa would have outweighed by far the significance of a democratic revolution. …

A Gadhafi-driven gold revolution would have, however, imperiled the positions of central bankers and their political and media power-brokers. The former surreptitiously print away the fruits of the people’s labor; the latter scramble their brains so that they don’t know they are being robbed blind.” …

The complete column, “Gadhafi A Gold Bug? Finally, A Believable Conspiracy,” is now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

If you’re interested in syndicating my weekly, WND column, kindly email me for details at ilana@ilanamercer.com. “Return to Reason“ is WorldNetDaily’s longest standing, exclusive libertarian column.

UPDATE (Aug. 28): The late Elizabeth Wright had an interesting tidbit about the twisted relationship between Muammar Gaddafi and “the foolish Europeans”:

When Libya’s cynical Muammar Gaddafi laughs at the foolish Europeans, who have encouraged the emigration of millions of Third World aliens, and offers Europe’s leaders a financial deal to keep more of the mob out of that continent, are American conservatives taking notes?
As literally tens of thousands of African refugees in boats try to reach Italy, the Libyan navy has been instrumental in keeping them out, thanks to an agreement with the Italian government. “We don’t know,” the bemused Gaddafi is quoted as saying, “if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.” And then he comes right out and says it: Your continent is turning into Africa.

UPDATE III: Merciless Revolution & Its Masterminds (‘Crimes Against Libya – Redux’)

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Journalism, Just War, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism

“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice.” So Billy Hayes told his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers in “Midnight Express” (a film that surely represents Hollywood’s heyday).

Hayes’s (essentially Christian) protest against a merciless authority now, sadly, applies to the US (“NATO”) and its adopted surrogates around the world.

Once again the US is supervising, and/or lending imprimatur, to a French-Revolution like upheaval in a Muslim country.

(The blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution, of course, bore no philosophical resemblance to the American Revolution.) Repulsive (deeply silly) Western journalists are darting about cheering like groupies for the amorphous entity the same “tards” have termed “Rebels.” America helped kill-off the extended family of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is on the lam, small children included. Now we’re whooping it up for those who want to do the same to Qaddafi.

Naturally, our enlightened “leaders” said not a word about the quality of justice former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is receiving in another court that is masquerading as a court of law, but seeks to oblige the masses. This set-up (down to the caged defendant) also more closely resembles the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice mercilessly by popular demand.

Under American auspices a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, was hung (and heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner). Even more repugnant than that hasty hanging were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” also had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly’s methods.

As Hayes said in that memorable scene, asking mercy from the merciless is “like asking a bear to sh-t in a toilet.”

UPDATE I: In answer to TL on Facebook: Would you feel you’d gotten due process sitting in a cage in court, being tried by the Muslim Brotherhood? Why the trials? Why not just begin your democracy with a pardon? I’m not the Christian; you guys are. What did i quote in the beginning of the post? If these new, Middle-East regimes are so magnificent, why not be munificent? Forgive and spend your money on building your society, not prosecuting crimes for which evidence in a court of law is impossible to muster.

UPDATE II: Compassionate Fascist: Yes, why haven’t anti-Semites like yourself (and others who bayed about the Jews having brought about an invasion of Iraq) pointed toward the Arab neoconservatives pushing lies about Libya in the media?

Fouad The Awful Ajami is not the only Arab agitating for ever more intervention.

UPDATE III (Sept. 5): “Crimes Against Libya – Redux.”

The Money Market’s Mortician

America, Debt, Economy, Elections, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

When Standard & Poor’s cut the American credit outlook to negative, one Canadian wag mocked the credit ratings agency’s “special talent for arriving at the morgue and predicting the demise of the deceased.”

Now the money market’s mortician has made it official:

Via the WSJ: “Standard & Poor’s said U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world. S&P removed for the first time the triple-A rating the U.S. has held for 70 years, saying the budget deal recently brokered in Washington didn’t do enough to address the gloomy long-term picture for America’s finances.”

Ask Vladimir Putin, who knows a lot more about inflation that does “Zero,” and he’ll tell you that downgrading obligations such as have been incurred by the USA to an AA+ score is still too optimistic.

The mighty USA’s finances “rank below Liechtenstein and on par with Belgium and New Zealand.”