Category Archives: Middle East

Michael Scheuer: Let The Russians Or Chinese Deal With Middle-East

Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, libertarianism, Middle East, Terrorism

“A pox on all of them,” says former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden tracking unit, Michael Scheuer. “…What could be better than to let the Russians or the Chinese deal with the Middle-East mess?” We’ve borne the burden for long enough. “In the past we bet on tyranny. That’s gone. As is our influence.”

AND, “We have managed to turn a democratic election in Egypt into a disaster for the US. We’ve helped put the military back in power and aggravated an enemy that could be very powerful, as have we opened the way to civil war in Egypt. Time to cut aid to the whole lot, Israel too.”

Or, as this writer put it, “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn.”

Especially accurate is what Scheuer had to say about John McCain and Lindsay Graham, the neoconservative senators whose positions are in opposition to the interests of the American people (whether the latter know it or not): “The two might as well be sitting in the Israeli Knesset.”

Tidings Of The Vaguest, Least Specific, Most Geographically Inclusive Terrorism

Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Cowed into fearful submission by choice, Americans are being bombarded with the “news” of the vaguest, least specific, most geographically inclusive threat of terrorism: Terrorism is everywhere you travel. You’ve got a target on your back. And, while we’re at it, consider yourself lucky to be the recipient of this most astute and accurate news from those who look out for you.

And the reason the NSA saints can look out for you, you ingrates, is that they spy on you. Now can you see what this is about? It’s a proxy for “protecting.”

This alert—what would you do without it? Have a happy holiday?—comes to you thanks to the very “dragnet that scoops up the personal electronic communications of millions of you.”

Or so suggested John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Fox News today, again. Is Bolton privy to this non-specific intelligence? No. But being party to the media-military-congressional-industrial complex, he stands ready to reflexively back it up, down to the nuts and bolts of it.

This stalwart supporter of the Surveillance State gave credit to the “National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance powers,” and in particular to PRISM and “X-Keyscore,” which some of us have been protesting—these deserve credit for bringing you the tidings of terrorism. The Fox-News twit offered no cross examination.

U.S. officials have not offered many details on the nature of the threat, but apparently are taking it seriously. … John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the alert indicates the U.S. government must have some “pretty good information” about a possible threat.

Yes, that’s logical (not): From the fact of the warning (and not the facts), we can conclude that there is a threat.

The Guardian provides the necessary skepticism absent among US major media:

US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs.
Congress told that NSA monitoring led to interception of al-Qaida threats but privacy campaigners fear ulterior political motives. News of the fresh terror alert came as Congress looked increasingly likely to pursue fresh attempts to limit the NSA’s domestic powers when it returns in September.
“The NSA takes in threat information every day. You have to ask, why now? What makes this information different?” added Stepanovich.
“Too much of what we hear from the government about surveillance is either speculation or sweeping assertions that lack corroboration. The question isn’t if these programs used by this NSA can find legitimate threats, it’s if the same threats couldn’t be discovered in a less invasive manner. This situation fails to justify the NSA’s unchecked access to our personal information.”

Delusions Of Democracy

Classical Liberalism, Democracy, Elections, Middle East, South-Africa, States' Rights, Taxation

We now have some idea of the strength of Egyptian discontent, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: “22 million …—a large number considering Egypt’s estimated population of 93 million people.” The numbers are derived not from a poll, but from revelations about a “signature-gathering campaign called ‘Tamarod’ or ‘Rebel.'”

Needless to say, this does not constitute good data about public opinion in Egypt—which only a few months back trended toward the Muslim Brotherhood—although the size of the petition and the corresponding demonstrations give an idea of the groundswell across the country.

Some Westerners worry about lack of power-changing political mechanisms in such backward places as Egypt. The worrywarts are deluding themselves that the stagnant politics of the Euro, Anglo-American hemispheres and their protectorates provide these mechanisms.

Delusions of democracy …

When “Vlaamse Blok” (Flamish block), Belgium’s largest party, became too much of a threat to the powers that be in that country, the Belgium Supreme Court declared Belgium’s largest party (“Vlaamse Blok”) a “criminal organization” and ordered its dissolution.”

Lawmaker Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, has been similarly assailed in The Netherlands, except that he and The Demos stand up to and outfox The Establishment that wishes to bring them into compliance.

An entire book was written about what mobocracy has wrought on the minority of South Africa, now that a dominant-party state has been blessed as free and democratic by the West.

A point made in said book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, is that South Africa’s authentically liberal party in all its permutations has always been more classical liberal than left-liberal. Thus the Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille is never as contemptible as a left-liberal American Democrat. We won’t insult the woman! I’d sum-up Zille with these words: She tries her best with the few powers she has retained. These powers have been subsumed in the national government, which will always and forever be a social-democratic black affair that represents the needs of tax consumers.

Ultimately, there is not much Zille can do for the whites (and colored) who vote for her, and who pay the lion’s share of the country’s taxes. There is near no devolution of powers to South Africa’s provinces. “The province’s powers are shared with the national government.” Like in the US. We still whimper about states’ rights but we’ve lost these as well as many of our individual liberties.

The tiny racial minority that constitutes the tax base of South Africa has no representation in a country that votes strictly along racial lines, and in which there is no veto power or meaningful devolution of powers to the provinces in which the assailed minority might prevail politically. The aforementioned book points out that the great Zulu chief Dr. Mangosuthu Buthelezi was one of the good guys of South Africa; the Mandela’s mafia—the ANC—is the bad element. Buthelezi, being a free market man, fought for the devolution of power rather than its concentration in a dominant-party state (the endgame of the ANC and its Anglo-American buddies). He was tarred as the bad guy by the same axis of evil, with the New York Times in the lead.

In any case, we should not look down on the Egyptians from the dizzying heights of our despotic democracies. Can we in the US dethrone our emperor du jour? Not really. Not with any meaningful consequences. Impeachment mechanisms don’t work, and neither do “democratic” elections, because the Democratic and Republican parties have each operated as counterweights in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one entity to the other. As my fellow libertarian Vox Day once observed, no sooner do the Republicans come to power, than they move to the left. When they get their turn, Democrats shuffle to the right. At some point, the zombie John McCain reaches across the aisle and the creeps converge.

“Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn almost got it right when he said, ‘Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.’ Correction: All that can be achieved with only 51 percent of the vote, making the slogan ‘freedom begins at the ballot box’ a very cruel hoax indeed.

At least the Egyptians have stumbled upon an effective way to make their sons of 60 dogs (an Egyptian expression for politicians) tremble in their palaces. Game. Set. Match, Egyptian people.

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.