Category Archives: Democracy

Refugees In The Failed State of Iraq

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Religion, War

Saddam Hussein ruled over what the state department considered a rogue state, Iraq. The US eliminated Hussein and invaded his country (not in that order). Thanks to the American invasion, Iraq is now a failed state, where the politically weak are forsaken, and a muscular majority exercises its authority (a dispensation also known as democracy). The deposed dictator had kept a lid on the cauldron of sectarian strife, now boiling over in Iraq.

I’ve covered the plight of the millions of Iraqi refugees we helped uproot.

Against the backdrop of “Obama basking in the Iraq withdrawal” comes a reality check: a report, via CNN, on those Iraqis who have been internally displaced.

While war supporters may console themselves with the fact that “displacement is not new in Iraq,” as this Brookings-Institute observes, Iraq since the blessings of Bush is suffering a displacement crisis.

UPDATED: Oy Vey Egypt (Evolution?)

America, Democracy, Elections, Gender, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Middle East

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With few exceptions, the American media slobbered mightily over the revolution in Egypt. As a European relative put it: Americans from all political persuasions lack the smarts, the sophistication, and the familiarity with history to be … skeptical.

So, you had the Beltway libertarians joining Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News), and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) in spirit at Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate Egypt’s democratic spring; you had America’s female journos rushing to the mainly macho scene to show solidarity with the generic freedom fighters, who, it turned out, doubled up as common-or-garden gropers and rapists.

At the time, this writer wrote about the impossibility of a happy ending “in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s.” I added that, “Mubarak’s dictatorial powers were directed, unjustly indubitably, against the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim brotherhood.” Unjustly, but probably quite usefully—for now, much to the surprise of the American Idiocracy, Islamic fundamentalists have won 61% of the vote in Egypt’s first democratic election.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 36.6% of the 9.7m ballots cast last week, followed by the Salafist al-Nour Party with 24.4%.” [BBC]

The secular Egyptian Bloc came third in the first round with 13.4% of the vote, followed by the liberal Wafd Party with 7.1% and the moderate Islamist Wasat Party with 4.3%. The Revolution Continues, a group formed by youth activists behind the uprising that ousted Mr Mubarak in February, won 3.5%

“This is about freedom,” said the immensely silly Lara Logan before the freedom fighters piled up on top of her.

Indeed.

UPDATE (Dec. 6): I was waiting for a wise man to point out that the historical parallels between the Muslim world and the West are few. Islam and its people aren’t stuck in the 1950s; they’re stuck in the 7th century. Thanks to Huggs for stating the obvious. In touting the sea-change underway in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world, our moron media interviewed 0.1% of the country’s population, the intelligentsia, to extrapolate to the majority. But there is also the deep stupidity so prevalent in the US whereby under the skin, all human beings are said to be the same.

Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters

Debt, Democracy, Economy, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy

As commentators on MSNBC first pointed out, the leaders of Greece, the cradle of democracy, have sundered direct democracy in their country—a referendum on whether the country ought to leave the eurozone.

For its own good and for the good of the northern European nations funding the ongoing Bacchanalia in the south, Greece should be expelled from the eurozone. (After which the whole EU edifice should be allowed to crumble.)

A world perfected by global central planners is one in which wealth consumers live at the expense of wealth creators; where the rich are coerced into paying for the poor, the North for the South.

If they had a moral and intellectual compass—and were permitted to chart their destinies—the people of Greece would opt to leave the eurozone and the wider European Union (EU). Under that scenario, “loser countries” would be better able to serve as cheap labor and resume exporting goods to their neighbors. Work for a living, if you remember that old-fashioned concept.

It so happens that Greece has become “The Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters.” If the polls are correct, the “Greek public has strongly resisted the austerity measures,” yet at the same time, “70% of them want to remain within the eurozone.”

If these polls reflect public opinion, then a referendum would have seen the Greeks decide to continue on the path they are on.

UPDATED: The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower’ (The Sanctity of Life)

America, Colonialism, Crime, Democracy, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, Race, Racism, South-Africa

The following is excerpted from “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower,'” now on WND.COM:

“Whites will become a minority in 2042 and will fall to 46 percent of the population by 2050, comprising only 38 percent of U.S. population under 18. So writes Patrick J. Buchanan in his formidable new book, ‘Suicide of A Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?’

Every immigration worrywart recalls the ‘astonishing episode’ Mr. Buchanan recounts next. In 1998, Bill Clinton brought tidings of ‘their coming minority status’ to a ‘largely white student body’ at Portland State University.

‘In a little more than 50 years,’ rejoiced President Clinton, ‘there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through a demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time.’ Taking their cue from their ‘enthnomasochistic’ president, the students erupted in cheers.

‘Ethnomasochism,’ laments Mr. Buchanan—who is surely one of the great patriots of our time—is ‘the taking of pleasure in the dispossession of one’s own ethnic group.’ It is ‘a disease of the heart that never afflicted the America of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower.’

In this writer’s latest book, the example of post-apartheid South Africa is used to deconstruct the effects of such a shift in a country’s majority/minority power structure.

Granted, the shift underway in the U.S.A. is incremental. But as is clear from the facts unfurled in ‘Suicide of A Superpower,’ the transformation of America will be as detrimental as the almost-overnight shift orchestrated in South Africa. …”

Read the complete column, “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower.'” It’s now on WND.COM.

The aforementioned book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Nov. 4): THE SANCTITY OF LIFE. Here is a statistic from the book “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” It might edify the Facebook writer (on this column’s WND page) who cavalierly compares the devastation of crime in the New South Africa to the devastation inflicted by the National Party (the apartheid regime): More people are murdered in one week under African rule (plus/minus 420) than died under the detention of the Afrikaner government over the course of roughly four decades (approximately the same). But, left-liberals do not consider the sanctity of life in a society as a measure of justice; only democracy—the might of the majority–rights all wrong.