Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED: Morsi, The Military: Egypt Is A Hot Mess (The Size of Discontent)

Democracy, Elections, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East

There are perhaps two not entirely unhappy conclusions to take away from the events underway in Cairo, Egypt. This week’s WND column, “Independence And The Declaration of Secession,” lamented that America has become a nation “of deracinated, fragmented and demoralized people, managed to their detriment by a despotic State.” (Updated here.)

The Egyptians, on the other hand, still have a redeeming quality, and it is a profound contempt for power. “Son of 60 dogs” is an Egyptian expression for a political master. This quality should serve them well.

The other thing I took away from listening to the more enlightened Egyptians of Tahrir Square is that many want what Americans once had thanks to their founders. Modern secular Egyptians are articulating a wish for a republic that safeguards minority rights, and not for a raw democracy in which those rights are subject to the whims and wishes of the majority, and where few are the issues that are not adjudicated by a national majority.

Moreover, while Americans have a hard time understanding the difference between a democracy and a republic, I get the impression that some Egyptians are hip to these distinctions.

Those who’ve been misled into believing that Morsi is not democratically legit, for what that’s worth, ought to be reminded that the Democratic Alliance for Egypt, “a coalition of political parties,” the largest party of which was the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party,” won the 2011-2012 election with 37.5% of the vote.

The runner-up was the Islamist Bloc, the “second largest political bloc in the parliament.” It was even more devout than The Brotherhood. It won 27.8% of the vote.

The nature of democracy and humanity is such that it is quite possible that their former supporters no longer back these parties. These supporters have realized, as Benjamin Barber put it, that “politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians”:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends.

Economic Policy Journal (EPJ) quotes Ron Paul’s on the Egyptian mess:

“A military coup in Egypt yesterday resulted in the removal and imprisonment of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a closure of media outlets sympathetic to him, the house arrest of his advisors, and the suspension of the constitution. The military that overthrew Morsi is the main recipient of the $1.3 billion yearly US aid package to Egypt. You could say that the US ‘owns’ the Egyptian military that just overthrew its democratically-elected leader. The hypocrisy of the US administration on these events in Egypt is stunning …”

“Let’s review US policy toward Egypt to see the foolish hypocrisy of the government’s interventionism,” write Paul:

“First the US props up the unelected Hosni Mubarak for decades, spending tens of billions of dollars to keep him in power. Then the US provides assistance to those who in 2011 successfully overthrew Mubarak. Then the US demands an election. The Egyptians held an election that was deemed free and fair and shortly afterward the US-funded military overthrows the elected president. Then the US government warns the military that it needs to restore democracy – the very democracy that was destroyed by military coup! All the while the US government will not allow itself to utter the word “coup” when discussing what happened in Egypt yesterday because it would mean they might have to stop sending all those billions of dollars to Egypt. ”

UPDATE (7/8): We now have some idea of the size of Egyptian discontent: “22 million …—a large number considering Egypt’s estimated population of 93 million people.” We got those numbers from revelation of a “signature-gathering campaign called ‘Tamarod’ or ‘Rebel.'”

I will write more, however, on western delusions of representation (my book already does this http://www.ilanamercer.com/newsite/into-the-cannibals-pot.php) in a future post. Suffice it to say that the Egyptians have a better idea than we in the West of how to remove their rulers. Game. Set. Match, Egyptian people.

Beware The Country Of ‘Absurdistan’

Constitution, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Liberty, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Reason, Republicans, States' Rights, War

My good friend professor Thomas DiLorenzo is on fire today, at LRC.Com, decrying the actions of the “Biggest Bully in the World.” The strictly anti-bullying US government—its overweening, unconstitutional reach extends to educating kids about bullying, or, as Tom puts it, “putting YOUR money where THEIR mouths are by funding all kinds of anti-bullying programs in schools”—is intercepting airplanes not its own, and bullying sovereign governments, all in an attempt to corner a heroic, powerless young man called Edward Snowden.

Then, “National Neocon Review” has been working overtime to justify the crimes of mass murderer Abe Lincoln. But Tom DiLorenzo will have none of it. He smacks that lot down good and proper with foolproof arguments from natural law and logic:

… Studying and writing about Lincoln and the “Civil War” is not, as National Neocon Review implies, the same as attending a football game where one roots for one team or the other. It is about discovering the truth. Criticizing Lincoln does not make one a supporter of the Confederate government any more than criticizing FDR makes one a supporter of the Nazi government. We are supposed to believe that because the Confederate government suspended habeas corpus it is simply irrelevant that the Lincoln regime was a constitutional nightmare. We are supposed to believe the cartoonish Harry Jaffa, says National Neocon Review, when he says that Lincoln never did a single thing that was unconstitutional, contrary to reality and the writings of several generations of scholars who preceded Jaffa. This is reminiscent of the canned response to Lincoln critics by the last generation of Lincoln cultists: Lincoln wasn’t as bad as Hitler or Stalin, they frequently pointed out. So shut up.

MORE.

McCain’s Murderous Muhammadans Behead Syrian Catholic Priest

Christianity, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, John McCain, Literature, Middle East, War, Welfare

Today came terribly sad news. John McCain’s murderous Muhammadans beheaded a Syrian Catholic priest, to the cheers of local villagers, children too.

The senior Republican senator from Arizona recently crossed enemy lines to cavort with these Syrian rebels, the type of chaps who lunch on enemy lungs. He, Lindsey Graham—another senior Republican Senator—and many of their Demopublican colleagues can’t wait to supply the noble savages of the world with rations, their exotic tastes and murderous proclivities be damned. The US Constitution these politicians have spent a lifetime trashing.

Those who know “McMussolini” know that the only time John McCain will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn’t led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage).

Oh, he’ll also wrestle a crocodile for an illegal alien. Or, rather, get his beefy dumbo of a daughter, Meghan McCain, to do the wrestling for him.

The complaint McCain and his posse level against Obama for not becoming as entangled in Syria as they would have liked is remarkably sophisticated (NOT): Had Obama intervened in Syria earlier, they assert without proof, we’d be dealing with the purest of rebels, and not with the McCain mongrels, who’ve been diluted by Jihadis.

Rubbish.

A quip by a character in one of the great Oscar Wilde’s plays (not to be confused with wonderful Oscar-Wood) comes to mind. “She thought that because he was stupid he’d be kindly, whereas kindliness requires intelligence and imagination.” I paraphrase Wilde, but this applies in spades to McCain, a career Republican malevolent fool, who took to Fox News Sunday with his buddy Chuck Schumer to promote more war (in Syria) and more welfare (the Oink-Filled Immigration Omnibus).

For Christians, rule by Alawite minority is by far the more civilized of the options facing them in this country. This, unfortunately, is the reality. But does the US ever learn from the Anglo-American calamity in Iraq or Afghanistan? In the words of Frederick Douglass, “To ask the question is to answer it.”

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UPDATED: Snowden In Search Of Pockets of Freedom

China, Foreign Policy, Government, Intelligence, Media, Propaganda, Russia, Technology, Terrorism, The State

You should have long since said adieu to the quaint idea of absolute freedom. With the triumph of the suprastate over the individual, achieved by rigid central planning and the harmonization of laws across the globe—only pockets of freedom remain. Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal counters mainstream media’s backward reasoning, according to which Edward Snowden is no freedom fighter because he has been protected by two other unfree powers (one spent; the other nascent).

That ridiculous notion has found expression in Henry Blodget’s smarmy tweet:

Snowden flees one paragon of freedom and privacy, China, for another–Russia

The Blodget conceit amounts to thinking in aggregates, reasons Robert Wenzel:

[Blodget] writes as though the circumstances for freedom are the same for everyone in a given country. This is far from the truth. I have written many times that even in a heavily totalitarian state some may be able to live just fine, a surfer dude for example. For others, in the US, time may be already up for some in the financial sector. Anyone putting deals together for very small companies, say, may find it much more attractive to work outside the constraints of US securities laws, which benefit no one other than major established players.

Pax Dickinson, contends Wenzel, is closer to the mark, tweeting sarcastically that, “Snowden should have fled to a noble & free country like the USA where we hold whistleblowers naked in solitary confinement without trial.”

Read Robert’s EPJ post (where you can also catch up on my latest weekly column, “Trying to be neighborly in the Evergreen State”).

Yesterday I heard a legal expert based in Hong Kong venturing that the imperative to hand Snowden over to US authorities was “not within the ambit of the American-Chinese extradition treaty.”

Yippee.

Today came the news, via the intrepid Guardian, that “Edward Snowden heads for Ecuador after flight to Russia leaves authorities in various countries amazed and infuriated”:
Snowden was five hours into his flight from Hong Kong, having already been served one of two hot meals, when news of his departure to Moscow began to electrify media organisations all over the world.
The Hong Kong authorities waited until Snowden was safely out of Chinese airspace before sending out a short press release that confirmed the intelligence whistle-blower had been allowed to leave on Aeroflot flight SU213, bound for Russia.
The 30-year-old had not been stopped on his way to Chek Lap Kok airport, and was allowed to slip away on a hot and humid morning, despite American demands that he be arrested and extradited to face trial for espionage offences.
The reason?
The Americans had mucked up the legal paperwork, the authorities claimed in a statement released at 4.05pm local time.
Hong Kong had no choice but to let the 30-year-old leave for “a third country through a lawful and normal channel”.
If the sudden “discovery” of a flaw in legal proceedings prompted sighs of relief around the island and across the rest of China, there would have been sharp intakes of breath in Washington and London, where diplomats and intelligence officials had been hoping the net around Snowden was finally tightening.

MORE.

UPDATE: Via The New York Times:

…Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said in an interview from his own refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London that he had raised Mr. Snowden’s case with Ecuador’s government and that his group had helped arrange the travel documents. Baltasar Garzón, the renowned Spanish jurist who advises WikiLeaks, said in a statement that “what is being done to Mr. Snowden and to Mr. Julian Assange — for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest — is an assault against the people.”
Obama administration officials privately expressed frustration that Hong Kong allowed Mr. Snowden to board an Aeroflot plane bound for Moscow on Sunday despite the American request for his detention. But they did not revoke Mr. Snowden’s passport until Saturday and did not ask Interpol to issue a “red notice” seeking his arrest.
Legal experts said the administration appeared to have flubbed Mr. Snowden’s case. “What mystifies me is that the State Department didn’t revoke his passport after the charges were filed” on June 14, said David H. Laufman, a former federal prosecutor. “They missed an opportunity to freeze him in place.” He said he was also puzzled by the decision to unseal the charges on Friday rather than waiting until the defendant was in custody. …
…While officials said Mr. Snowden’s passport was revoked on Saturday, it was not clear whether the Hong Kong authorities knew that by the time he boarded the plane, nor was it clear whether revoking it earlier would have made a difference, given the Ecuadorean travel document that Mr. Assange said he helped arrange. When Mr. Snowden landed in Moscow, he was informed of his passport revocation.
Mr. Assange said he did not know whether Mr. Snowden might be able to travel beyond Moscow using the Ecuadorean document. “Different airlines have different rules, so it’s a technical matter whether they will accept the document,” he said.

MORE.

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