Category Archives: Democracy

Meanwhile, In ‘Liberated’ Libya

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, War

Meanwhile, in “Liberated” Libya
Nebojsa Malic

As part of its great white-knighting enterprise to charm the jihadists of every color an hue, the Empire launched a “kinetic military action” last spring to “liberate” Libya from its own government. That evil little war is now being invoked to justify a similar endeavor in Syria.

But was Libya really liberated? Depends on your definition of liberty. If it involves keeping dark-skinned folk in cages and torturing them, then yes. Establishing Sharia law? Check. Desecrating Christian cemeteries, a la Kosovo (another one of Empire’s “liberation” projects)? Ditto.

Last week, the “free and democratic” Libyans vandalized a number of gravestones of both Allied and Axis troops who died during the North African campaign of WW2. The campaign, pitting Italian and German (Afrika Korps) troops against the British and Commonwealth forces, had swept back and forth across today’s Libya between 1940 and 1942, with some of the fiercest fighting around Tobruk and Benghazi. The cemeteries survived Libyan independence and Col. Gadhafi’s reign, but not the NATO-installed “transitional” government.

Now, it is entirely possible that the “government” in Tripoli has nothing to do with this, and that it was the handiwork of local, Benghazi jihadists, noted veterans of the Iraqi insurgency. But that is precisely the constituency – for lack of a better word – which the Empire sought to “protect” by intervening. And now there is word that Cyrenaica (the area in question) is seeking “autonomy” from Tripoli.

Back in March 2011, as the “kinetic military action” became imminent, Justin Raimondo noted that Libya was a construct – three disparate provinces with different tribal composition. First under Ottoman rule (1551-1911), then under Italy (1911-1941), the regions were put together into the independent Kingdom of Libya (1951-1969) by the British. Colonel Gadhafi overthrew the monarchy in 1969, and ruled Libya until last year. And now the country is – predictably – coming apart.

Kosovo offers some clues about what might happen next. It, too, was a “humanitarian” intervention on behalf of a terrorist “liberation army,” with the goal of “regime change” (replacing Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic with someone more to Empire’s taste – i.e. the October 5 crowd and their current incarnation). The deliberate and systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches and cemeteries began almost immediately, along with the murder and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Roma, Turks and other “unwanted” communities. The UN and NATO occupation authorities did nothing to stop this persecution, which peaked in March 2004 with a 3-day pogrom. Not only was no one involved punished, the Albanians were rewarded in 2008 with US and EU recognition of their illegal declaration of independence (sure, the ICJ said it wasn’t illegal, but only after torturing the facts).

The Empire now insists on inviolability of “Kosovo” borders, seeking to suppress the remaining Serbs who refuse to accept “independence”. Yet carving out Kosovo clearly violated Serbia’s borders, which the Empire had no trouble with. Chances are it will seek to suppress the “autonomy” in Cyrenaica, then – unless the separatists there are the actual clients of Empire, in which case the “transitional council” might be thrown under the bus.

In other words, there really are no principles involved; just power. For all the media prattle about saving innocent civilians and helping democracy and freedom, “humanitarian” interventions – be they “kinetic military actions” involving bombers or ground troops or “regime change” operations involving astroturf revolutionaries – are never actually humanitarian. They do, however, involve murder, destruction, terrorism, organized crime, butchery, and plenty of lies. Such are the fruits by which we ought to know them.

My good friend Nebojsa Malic has been the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000, and blogs at grayfalcon.blogspot.com. We are always thrilled when Nebojsa finds the time to pen an exclusive editorial for Barely A Blog. (Click on “BAB’s A List” for Nebojsa’s articles archive.)

California’s Killer Eugenics Program Inspired The Nazis

Criminal Injustice, Democracy, Ethics, Fascism, History, Individual Rights, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Left-liberalism is illiberal. It doesn’t respect individual liberties, preferring that a custodial managerial class get to delimit and limit individual rights in the interests of the so-called greater good. Much like fascism, the essence of democracy is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “general will,” a “national purpose” that ought to be implemented by an all-powerful state. (Voltaire, a rather cleverer Frenchman, said that Rousseau is to the philosopher as the ape is to man.)

It thus comes as no surprise to discover that California ran so robust a program of forced sterilization in the 1930s and beyond—that the Nazi Party reached out for the state’s advice (and literature, in particular a book titled, “Sterilization and Human Betterment”). Both California’s Courts and the president of Stanford University supported the practice.

Also telling is the fact that, as CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen documents below,, California has yet to make restitution to the victims. On the other hand, a historically red state like North Carolina has compensated its far fewer victims.

UPDATED: Russians Voted; The West Objects (The Two-Party Fraud)

America, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Russia, The West, UN

Russians voted. International monitors approved the rambunctious process as the fairest so far. Having failed in egging on a “successful,” “color-coded or plant-based revolution” in Russia, the know-it-all, monolithic media of the West have expressed the standard contempt about Vladimir Putin’s overwhelming majority, calling the victory a “stolen election.” Way to go.

Russians, a naturally nationalistic people, like the hardcore Putin, and do not apprecaite the NATO attempt to “demote it, weaken it geopolitically or undermine its defensive potential.”

UPDATE: THE TWO-PARTY FRAUD. In “The Cannibal In Chronicles” post, I recommended Tom Fleming’s “Daily Mail Blog” (which I cannot link to directly because of some code in the “British” link that throws IlanaMercer/com’s home page). About the West vs. Russia, Fleming writes this:

Everyone knew that Putin was going to win, and even anti-Putin pollsters admitted he would get at least 60% of the vote, which would be a landslide in an American election. But, cry the pundits, Putin has the support of the peasantry. The smart people in the cities who can watch the BBC and read the New York Times–the people who really count in any country–they are holding spontaneous anti-Putin demonstrations. Pro-Putin demonstrators are either state employees doing a job or mere yokels. In other words, Russia=the USA, where only rubes and crazies would support Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul.
The pundits, long in advance, were also predicting corruption and irregularities, as they always do whenever the the US regime disapproves of election results. The fall-back position is that Putin and his cronies rigged the election in advance by restricting the pool of candidates. …
merican elections have never been clean. Nevertheless, the sauce for the Russian goose cannot be ladled on the American gander. This is especially clear in the case of the charge that Putin’s party rigged the election in advance by restricting the pool of candidates. Here in America, we call this manoeuvre the primary system.
In our two-party party state, ballot access for third party candidates is very restricted. After all, only Democrats and Republicans were involved in writing federal and state election laws. There is no mention political parties in the Constitution, and while two political coalitions emerged very early–the faction of Hamilton versus the faction of Jefferson–they did not function as political parties in the later sense. There were no chairmen, party lines, or caucuses to enforce discipline on independent-minded members of Congress or state legislatures.

Read on by clicking “Tom Fleming Daily Mail Blog” on Barely a Blog’s Blogroll.

UPDATED: Philosopher Jack Kerwick On the Compelling & Conflicted Cannibal (At Last, An Analytical Review Of My Book)

America, Classical Liberalism, Democracy, Ilana Mercer, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

This dazzling review of my book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is a credit more to the mind (and moral clarity) of the reviewer than the book under review. In his New-American review, Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. (more about him below), zeroes in with unusual perspicacity on the palpable tensions in the book, without losing sight of the effort as a whole. All in all, he thinks I cleared the hurdle:

Ilana Mercer’s, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is an unusual book. Yet it is unusual in the best sense of the word.

At once autobiographical and political; philosophical, historical, and practical; controversial and commonsensical, Cannibal succeeds in weaving into a seamless whole a number of distinct modes of thought. This is no mean feat. In fact, its author richly deserves to be congratulated for scoring an achievement of the highest order, for in the hands of less adept thinkers, this ensemble of voices would have fast degenerated into a cacophony. By the grace of Mercer’s pen, in stark contrast, it is transformed into a symphony. …

… Burke had famously said that the only thing that was necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. Though Mercer is not a man, sadly, she is in much greater supply of that “manly virtue” that Burke prized than are many — even most — male writers today. Burke unabashedly identified the wickedness of the French Revolutionaries for what it was. Similarly, Mercer courageously, indignantly, exposes the evil that is the African National Congress and its collaborators. In fact, her book may perhaps have been more aptly entitled, Reflections on the Revolution in South Africa. …

…It is tragic that Ilana Mercer was all but compelled to leave the country that for much of her life was her home. Yet South Africa’s loss is America’s gain. As her work makes obvious for all with eyes to see, the richness of Mercer’s intellect is as impressive as the soundness of her character.

THE COMPLETE REVIEW is at The New American.

“Jack Kerwick graduated with a BA in religious studies and philosophy from Wingate University in Wingate, NC in 1998. He received his MA in philosophy from Baylor University in Waco, Tx., the following year, and in 2007, he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University. Kerwick specializes in ethics and political philosophy. His doctoral dissertation, ‘Toward a Conservative Liberalism,’ was a defense of the classical conservative tradition, a tradition of thought usually and widely perceived to have been fathered by Edmund Burke. Kerwick drew from Burke for inspiration, but also from David Hume and, perhaps most importantly, the twentieth century British philosopher Michael Oakeshott.” (Source: About.com)

Jack’s blogs is At the Intersection of Faith and Culture at Beliefnet.

Discovering Jack’s work (and friendship) has been a blessing. Unfortunately, Gulliver is surrounded by
pygmies.

UPDATE (March 2): AT LAST, AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW. After reading Dr. Kerwick’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot, which has since been published at “American Daily Herald: veritas, libertas, pax et prosperitas, as well as at “The Moral Liberal,” a new fan of Jack’s writing wrote this:

“Upon looking at some of your book’s other reviews, I couldn’t help but think that while some of what has been written is true, the forest was missed for the trees, so to speak.”

Indeed, most reviews of the book are contents-driven, strictly descriptive reviews of what is, flaws and all, essentially an analytical text. Odd that.

As Peter Brimelow noted in his exquisitely sensitive Foreword to “Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture,” “… Yet, somewhat to my surprise, it is actually quite rare for this most emotionally intense of columnists to draw on such personal experiences. What seems to motivate Ilana, ultimately, is ideas.”