Category Archives: Middle East

What They Do In Dictatorships

Democracy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Individual Rights, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Private Property

The courts, stacked as they are with judges who work for the dictator, want to put a brave rebel behind bars for shooting a predator on his property. The rebel shot and killed a wild, extremely dangerous animal that thrives in the dictator’s country. All the tribesman did was to aggressively repel from human habitat a creature that had become brazen, making itself at home near the man’s children as they played. It used to be that these tribesmen instilled fear in encroaching creatures. But thanks to decades of cultural and legal emasculation under the dictator, the queered men folk are no longer licensed to protect home and hearth. If they do, they lose their liberty.

I bet you thought this was Anderson Cooper reporting from Libya, botching the job of journalism, as is his wont.

No, this is about an American, one among many (Jeremy M. Hill, 33), who pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing a grizzly bear with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border.

Jeremy Hill has six kids, ranging in age from 14 years old to 10 months old. At least five were home when the grizzly was killed, Mike Hill said. The bears had gone after some pigs in a pen that the kids had been raising, Mike Hill said.

I wonder how many Libyans have been arrested for shooting wild animals that threatened their families.

If given the choice, I’d choose the right to defend my life and property over the vote, any day.

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.”

Flying Sorties For Peace (The Latest From Libya)

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

Make no mistake, and Obama’s denials notwithstanding, “Rebels fighting their way towards the Libyan capital” are “backed by Nato aircraft [ostensibly enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians from Col Gaddafi’s forces.”]

NATO=The US. And the US being the US (a warrior nation); it is not pressing for peace talks, even though Libyan officials have “urged the rebels to open talks. ‘If you want peace, we are ready,’ Information Minister Moussa Ibrahim has said.

Rather than encourage a peaceful solution to the Libyan conflict from which democracy (as bad as that is) is unlikely to spring, our English allies—A UK Foreign Office spokesman, in particular, who appears to have responded on behalf of the oh-so independent Libyan Rebels—promised that “Nato action will continue … Our overriding priority has always been to protect Libyan civilians and to enable them to choose their own future.”

By flying sorties over their homes?

In July, Mrs Clinton, a member of the President’s Womb Warrior team, announced that, “Until an interim authority is in place, the United States will recognise the TNC [Transitional National Council] as the legitimate governing authority for Libya, and we will deal with it on that basis. … The United States views the Gaddafi regime as no longer having any legitimate authority in Libya,” Mrs Clinton had said.

As the BBC observed, by recognizing the Libyan opposition as the country’s “legitimate governing authority,” the US ensured that “billions of dollars of Libyan assets frozen in US banks could be released to the rebels.”

Have you ever wondered to whom this US confiscated (oops, “frozen”) property belonged in the first place? One loses track of all the “good” things America does in the name of freedom.

An Egyptian Revolutionary Tribunal?

Democracy, Islam, Justice, Law, Middle East

The Egyptian court sitting in judgment of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak will oblige the masses. It’ll masquerade as a court of law, but this tribunal will more closely resemble the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice mercilessly by popular demand.

The Washington Post describes a rather cruel spectacle: “The first day of the ousted president’s trial transfixed Egyptians across the country as they watched a man who had once commanded respect and fear lying on a hospital gurney inside a metal cage installed in a makeshift courtroom. … His two sons, Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, hovered over him, blocking the view of their father from television cameras and the court. Gamal Mubarak twice kissed his father and frequently leaned in to confer with him as his brother stood erect, holding the Koran in his hand.”

AND:

… most Egyptians seemed enthralled by the spectacle of the former president in a cage. Some replaced their Facebook profile photo with a screen grab of Mubarak lying on the gurney. Others voiced indignation that the trial would take longer than a day. His crimes were clear, they said. They pointed to his dyed jet-black hair and what they described as his smug manner, his arms often crossed behind his head, as evidence that his health was fine.