“Into the Fray: A Study in Self-Cannibalization,” by Martin Sherman

A very interesting article from the Jerusalem Post. The author is in all probability a Jew, as Sherman is a Jewish name. I don’t like the JP much, but the article is correct. I am by and large a political liberal, at least here in the US. Certainly I do not wish to see non-Muslim societies taken over by Muslims whereby Islamic Law is imposed. Sharia is completely opposed to my liberalism and even my Leftism. Even in a totalitarian Leftist state (dictatorship of the proletariat), I could not see putting in Islamic Law. Indeed, the USSR wiped out all traces of Sharia from its legal code, even in Republics and autonomous regions that were majority Muslim. China has also eliminated Sharia in its Muslim majority provinces.

Now, if Muslim states wish to live under Sharia, I think that is pretty terrible, but there is nothing that I can do about it. They can live however they want to in their sandboxes. However, when Muslims come to the West, they need to live under our secular laws. There is no place for Sharia for the Muslim minorities of the West. And importing large numbers of Muslims into the West seems to be a catastrophe. There have not been many problems here in the US yet, but there have been untold problems in Europe.

Finally, just because we on the Left don’t think that Islam or Sharia is good, does not mean that the Jews in Israel have a right to steal the Palestinians’ land and settle Jewish colonists on it. Muslims have a right to be protected from land theft and settler colonialism just like anyone else. On the other hand, I do not think that the Jews presently in Israel should have to be ruled by Muslims or live under Sharia or Muslim type laws. I don’t know what the solution is here.

Also, we Christians should keep in mind that 18% of the people that the Jews stole land from were us Christians.

Into the Fray: A Study in Self-Cannibalization

By Martin Sherman

Over a century ago, Churchill warned that Western civilization will face an existential challenge from the Muslim world. It is now upon us.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

- W. R. Inge, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

– Karl Popper, “On the Paradox of Tolerance,” in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945

Many Western Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner, from the politician in Parliament to the immigration official at the border, have long considered it their obligation… to tolerate intolerance.

– from “Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe,” Partisan Review, 2002.

Across the Western world today, political liberalism is undergoing a process of self-cannibalization. It is being devoured by the very values which made it into arguably the most successful and influential sociopolitical doctrine in modern history.

At the very minimum, it is being complicit in actively facilitating its own demise though an unrestrained and undiscerning compulsion to apply these values universally – even when such application is not only inappropriate but detrimental to those values.

Acknowledging Diversity Is…Diverse

Devotees of political liberalism fervently advocate – quite correctly – the need to acknowledge the diversity of humanity and to accept the existence of those different from us, i.e., the “Other.”

However, they then go on to advocate – with equal fervor – something that in effect empties the previous acknowledgment of all significance, i.e., that we relate to all the diverse “Others” as equals.

For what is the point of acknowledging diversity if we are called upon to ignore the possible ramifications of that diversity and to relate to those discernibly different from us as if they were essentially the same as us? Prima facie, this is absurdly self-contradictory.

For surely the awareness of difference raises the possibility that different attitudes (and actions) toward the “Other” may be called for.

Although acknowledging diversity necessarily negates equality, this does not a priori mean that “Ours” is morally superior to “Theirs” – although the plausible assumption is that “We” have a subjective preference for “Ours” over “Theirs.”

This, of course, might entail certain practical ramifications for the preservation of “Ours” lest it be consumed by “Theirs” – depending on “Their” appetites and aspirations.

‘Us’ As An Item On ‘Their’ Menu

As the foregoing citation from W.R. Inge underscores, it would be injudicious to relate to carnivores and herbivores with an undiscriminating sense of egalitarianism. Indeed, if one is not mindful of the differences between oneself and the “Other” (say with regard to dietary preferences or predatory predilections), disaster may well be unavoidable.

Note that making such a diagnosis of difference does not necessarily imply a value judgment as to the relative moral merits of eating flesh or eating grass. However, operationally, it is a distinction that is essential for the preservation of grass-grazers and – and no less pointedly – for the shepherd charged with their welfare.

For no matter how sympathetic to, or appreciative of, the untamed majesty of predators one might be, the fate of the flock is likely to be grim if it is left to graze in wolf frequented territory with nothing more coercive to protect it than an appeal for understanding.

Now while I do not wish to push Inge’s ovine-lupine analogy too far, those who would dismiss it as overly facile would do well to recall that political liberalism has faced several challenges in the last century from adversaries which could plausibly be viewed as predatory.

It has had to contend with ideologies that were totalitarian, expansionary and irreconcilably inimical to its core values of sociocultural tolerance and individual liberty.

The ‘Other’ As…‘Other’

There was, for example, the kinetic clash with Nazism and the ideological clash with Communism. Political liberalism withstood them and prevailed.

It is facing another fateful encounter in this century: The existential clash with Islamism – a foe not less totalitarian, no less expansionary and no less irreconcilably inimical to its core values.

It is far from certain that this time it will prevail.

The major source of peril today is the reluctance – indeed the resolute refusal – to acknowledge the emerging threat. True, there were sympathizers in the West for both the Nazi and Soviet causes, which although they viewed themselves as antithetically adversarial to each other, both strove to eliminate our democratic freedoms and way of life.

However, the denial we are witnessing today seems qualitatively different. Leading liberal opinion-makers in mainstream intellectual establishment appear totally incapable of conceiving (or at least, totally unwilling to acknowledge that they are capable of conceiving) of the “Other” as anything but a darker skin-toned version of themselves – with perhaps somewhat more exotic tastes in dress and a greater penchant for spicy food, but with essentially the same value system as theirs, or at least one not significantly incompatible with it.

Indeed, there seems to be an overriding inability to admit the possibility that the “Other” is in fact fundamentally different – i.e., genuinely “Other” – and may hold entirely different beliefs as to what is good and bad, what is legitimate and what is not.

A Catastrophic Corruption of the Discourse

It is of little practical consequence whether this is the product of an overbearing intellectual arrogance, which precludes the possibility of any alternative value system, or of an underlying moral cowardice, which precludes the will to defend the validity of one’s own value system.

The result is the ongoing retreat from the defense of liberty and tolerance in the face of an ever-emboldened, intolerant Muslim militancy – not only across the Islamic world but within the urban heart of many Western nations as well.

Even more serious, it has undermined the capacity for honest debate, for accurate assessment of strategic geopolitical shifts… and for formulating timely and effective responses to deal with them.

Take the Arab Spring, for example, which much of the mainstream media heralded as the dawning of a new spirit of freedom and enlightenment from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf. Almost a year since it began, the results are hardly cause for optimism. In Tunisia and Libya, Islamist governments have been ensconced by popular vote. In other countries, such as in Egypt, the religious fundamentalists has been hugely empowered; in yet others, such as Syria and Bahrain, similar outcomes have only been avoided – so far – by wholesale massacres.

Nothing that has occurred – or been prevented from occurring – seems to vaguely justify the rosy forecast that accompanied the initial stages of revolt as to the imminent emergence of Arab regimes founded on values and systems analogous to those of Western democracy.

None of this should have been unexpected.

The facts were available for anyone willing to recognize them. On the verge of the Arab Spring (December 2011), the respected Pew Research Center conducted a survey of popular opinion in several Muslim countries.

The two countries included in the poll with relevance for the Arab Spring were Egypt and Jordan. In both, massive majorities (over 70 percent on average for Jordan and over 80% for Egypt) supported:

• execution by stoning for adultery;
• whippings or amputation of hands for theft and robbery;
• the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.

This then was the broad-based value system of the masses who drove the popular uprisings across the Arab world, despite the external trappings of modernity, despite the tweets, the smart phones and the social network connections.

It is a safe bet that had such a poll been conducted in the EU, North America or Australasia, the findings would have been radically different.

So perhaps it is time that we begin to recognize that the “Other” really is the “Other.”

Orwellian Mind-control Tactics

The politically correct endeavor to shy away from harsh truths has introduced an almost Orwellian atmosphere of 1984 mind control into the debate on the ramifications of Islam for political liberalism.

Pronouncements almost on a par with the “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength” employed by The Party to control the dystopian state of Oceania in George Orwell’s classic novel of pervasive dictatorship are emerging with disturbing frequency.

For example, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in effect pronounced that “religious fundamentalism is secular” when he characterized the radical Muslim Brotherhood as an organization that is “largely secular.”

A similar instance of convoluted, nonsensical gobbledygook came from the Obama administration’s homeland security adviser James O. Brennan, when he made the astounding claim that accurately defining the threat would exacerbate it: “Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists, because jihad is a holy struggle. [C]haracterizing our adversaries this way would actually be counterproductive,” he said.

So by reorganizing the rhetoric we will somehow dispel the misperceptions, from which the planners/perpetrators of wholesale carnage in the name of Islam apparently suffer, as to the sources of their beliefs and the nature of their motivations?

But perhaps the pinnacle of Orwellian endeavor came from then-British home secretary Jacqui Smith, who took it upon herself to bring home to radicalized UK Muslims that they were not who they thought they were. In a breathtaking stroke of self-contradictory double talk, she presumed to dub the acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamists in the name of Islam as “anti-Islamic activity.”

Her 2009 interview with Der Spiegel was shockingly reminiscent of the “mind control through language” policy employed by Orwell’s Big Brother and his omnipresent Party.

Clearly in an intellectual climate such as this – where truth is condemned and dismissed as politically incorrect hate speech – no effective response can be marshaled against the gathering storm facing Western civilization and the values of political liberalism that underpin it.

Menace of Muhammadanism: Prescient Premonitions

Such reticence and evasion was not always prevalent. In an era long before political correctness crippled the ability to articulate the truth in the public sphere, far-sighted men warned of the impending clash.

Thus seven decades ago, Hilaire Belloc, the prominent Anglo-French writer and historian, raised the trenchant question:

Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Muhammadan world… reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization? (The Great Heresies, 1938)

He was not alone in his sense of foreboding.

In the first edition of his The River War, published in 1899, Winston Churchill set out a withering critique of the effect Islam has on its followers, its debilitating effect on economies of nations that embrace it, and the enslavement of its luckless women.

While he admits that “individual Muslims may show splendid qualities,” he contrasts this with realities on collective level, where “the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.”

Few who page through the latest Arab Human Development Report sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and independently authored by intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries would dispute this today.

Churchill goes on to warn:

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Muhammadanism is a militant and proselytizing faith…and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science…the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

But how long will the West remain “cradled in the strong arms of science?” Might this question not help concentrate minds over the latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program?

Epilogue

Let me conclude with the observations of a gay intellectual regarding the propagation of Islam in Europe, where private Islamic academies – subsidized by European governments – “reinforce the Koran-based…morality learned at home that prescribes severe penalties for female adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that demands… that homosexuals be put to death.”

With some foreboding, he remarks:

If fundamentalist Muslims in Europe do not carry out these punishments, it is not because they’ve advanced beyond such thinking, but because they don’t have the power.

“Roots of the Arab Revolts and Premature Celebrations,” by James Petras

Good article by James Petras on the Arab revolts. I would say that he is correct on just about everything he says here. Feel free to comment if you think that he is wrong in any way. In particular, the analysis of the Arab economies is very interesting.

Most accounts of the Arab revolts from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere have focused on the most immediate causes: political dictatorships, unemployment, repression and the wounding and killing of protesters. They have given most attention to the “middle class”, young, educated activists, their communication via the internet, (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2011) and, in the case of Israel and its Zionists conspiracy theorists, “the hidden hand” of Islamic extremists (Daily Alert Feb. 25, 2011).

What is lacking is any attempt to provide a framework for the revolt which takes account of the large scale, long and medium term socio-economic structures as well as the immediate ‘detonators’ of political action. The scope and depth of the popular uprisings, as well as the diverse political and social forces which have entered into the conflicts, preclude any explanations which look at one dimension of the struggles.

The best approach involves a ‘funnel framework’ in which, at the wide end (the long-term, large-scale structures), stands the nature of the economic, class and political system; the middle-term is defined by the dynamic cumulative effects of these structures on changes in political, social and economic relations; the short-term causes, which precipitate the socio-political-psychological responses, or social consciousness leading to political action.

The Nature of the Arab Economies

With the exception of Jordan, most of the Arab economies where the revolts are taking place are based on ‘rents’ from oil, gas, minerals and tourism, which provide most of the export earnings and state revenues (Financial Times, Feb. 22, 2011, p. 14). These economic sectors are, in effect, export enclaves employing a tiny fraction of the labor force and define a highly specialized economy (World Bank Annual Report 2009).

These export sectors do not have links to a diversified productive domestic economy: oil is exported and finished manufactured goods as well as financial and high tech services are all imported and controlled by foreign multi-nationals and ex-pats linked to the ruling class (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 12, 2011, p. 11). Tourism reinforces ‘rental’ income, as the sector, which provides ‘foreign exchange’ and tax revenues to the class – clan state.

The latter relies on state-subsidized foreign capital and local politically connected ‘real estate’ developers for investment and imported foreign construction laborers.

Rent-based income may generate great wealth, especially as energy prices soar, but the funds accrue to a class of “rentiers” who have no vocation or inclination for deepening and extending the process of economic development and innovation. The rentiers “specialize” in financial speculation, overseas investments via private equity firms, extravagant consumption of high-end luxury goods and billion-dollar and billion-euro secret private accounts in overseas banks.

The rentier economy provides few jobs in modern productive activity; the high end is controlled by extended family-clan members and foreign financial corporations via ex-pat experts; technical and low-end employment is taken up by contract foreign labor, at income levels and working conditions below what the skilled local labor force is willing to accept.

The enclave rentier economy results in a clan-based ruling class which ‘confounds’ public and private ownership: what’s ‘state’ is actually absolutist monarchs and their extended families at the top and their client tribal leader, political entourage and technocrats in the middle.

These are “closed ruling classes”. Entry is confined to select members of the clan or family dynasties and a small number of “entrepreneurial” individuals who might accumulate wealth servicing the ruling clan-class. The ‘inner circle’ lives off of rental income, secures payoffs from partnerships in real estate where they provide no skills, but only official permits, land grants, import licenses and tax holidays.

Beyond pillaging the public treasury, the ruling clan-class promotes ‘free trade’, i.e. importing cheap finished products, thus undermining any indigenous domestic start-ups in the ‘productive’ manufacturing, agricultural or technical sector.

As a result there is no entrepreneurial national capitalist or ‘middle class’. What passes for a middle class are largely public sector employees (teachers, health professionals, functionaries, firemen, police officials, military officers) who depend on their salaries, which, in turn, depend on their subservience to absolutist power. They have no chance of advancing to the higher echelons or of opening economic opportunities for their educated offspring.

The concentration of economic, social and political power in a closed clan-class controlled system leads to an enormous concentration of wealth. Given the social distance between rulers and ruled, the wealth generated by high commodity prices produces a highly distorted image of per-capital “wealth”; adding billionaires and millionaires on top of a mass of low-income and underemployed youth provides a deceptively high average income (Washington Blog, 2/24/11).

Rentier Rule: By Arms and Handouts

To compensate for these great disparities in society and to protect the position of the parasitical rentier ruling class, the latter pursues alliances with, multi-billion dollar arms corporations, and military protection from the dominant (USA) imperial power. The rulers engage in “neo-colonization by invitation”, offering land for military bases and airfields, ports for naval operations, collusion in financing proxy mercenaries against anti-imperial adversaries and submission to Zionist hegemony in the region (despite occasional inconsequential criticisms).

In the middle term, rule by force is complemented by paternalistic handouts to the rural poor and tribal clans; food subsidies for the urban poor; and dead-end make-work employment for the educated unemployed (Financial Times, 2/25/11, p. 1). Both costly arms purchases and paternalistic subsidies reflect the lack of any capacity for productive investments.

Billions are spent on arms rather than diversifying the economy. Hundreds of millions are spent on one-shot paternalistic handouts, rather than long-term investments generating productive employment.

The ‘glue’ holding this system together is the combination of modern pillage of public wealth and natural energy resources and the use of traditional clan and neo-colonial recruits and mercenary contractors to control and repress the population. US modern armaments are at the service of anachronistic absolutist monarchies and dictatorships, based on the principles of 18^th century dynastic rule.

The introduction and extension of the most up-to-date communication systems and ultra-modern architecture shopping centers cater to an elite strata of luxury consumers and provides a stark contrast to the vast majority of unemployed educated youth, excluded from the top and pressured from below by low-paid overseas contract workers.

Neo-Liberal Destabilization

The rentier class-clans are pressured by the international financial institutions and local bankers to ‘reform’ their economies: ‘open’ the domestic market and public enterprises to foreign investors and reduce deficits resulting from the global crises by introducing neo-liberal reforms (Economic and Political Weekly, 2/12/11, p. 11).

As a result of “economic reforms” food subsidies for the poor have been lowered or eliminated and state employment has been reduced, closing off one of the few opportunities for educated youth. Taxes on consumers and salaried/wage workers are increased while the real estate developers, financial speculators and importers receive tax exonerations. De-regulation has exacerbated massive corruption, not only among the rentier ruling class-clan, but also by their immediate business entourage.

The paternalistic ‘bonds’ tying the lower and middle class to the ruling class have been eroded by foreign-induced neo-liberal “reforms”, which combine ‘modern’ foreign exploitation with the existing “traditional” forms of domestic private pillage. The class-clan regimes no longer can rely on the clan, tribal, clerical and clientelistic loyalties to isolate urban trade unions, student, small business and low paid public sector movements.

The Street against the Palace

The ‘immediate causes’ of the Arab revolts are centered in the huge demographic-class contradictions of the clan-class ruled rentier economy. The ruling oligarchy rules over a mass of unemployed and underemployed young workers; the latter involves between 50% to 65% of the population under 25 years of age (Washington Blog, 2/24/11).

The dynamic “modern” rentier economy does not incorporate the newly educated young into modern employment; it relegates them into the low-paid unprotected “informal economy” of the street as venders, transport and contract workers and in personal services. The ultra- modern oil, gas, real estate, tourism and shopping-mall sectors are dependent on the political and military support of backward traditional clerical, tribal and clan leaders, who are subsidized but never ‘incorporated’ into the sphere of modern production.

The modern urban industrial working class with small, independent trade unions is banned. Middle class civic associations are either under state control or confined to petitioning the absolutist state.

The ‘underdevelopment’ of social organizations, linked to social classes engaged in modern productive activity, means that the pivot of social and political action is the street. Unemployed and underemployed part-time youth engaged in the informal sector are found in the plazas, at kiosks, cafes, street corner society, and markets, moving around and about and outside the centers of absolutist administrative power.

The urban mass does not occupy strategic positions in the economic system; but it is available for mass mobilizations capable of paralyzing the streets and plazas through which goods and services are transported out and profits are realized.

Equally important, mass movements launched by the unemployed youth provide an opportunity for oppressed professionals, public sector employees, small business people and the self-employed to engage in protests without being subject to reprisals at their place of employment – dispelling the “fear factor” of losing one’s job.

The political and social confrontation revolves around the opposite poles: clientelistic oligarchies and de clasé masses (the Arab Street). The former depends directly on the state (military/police apparatus) and the latter on amorphous local, informal, face-to-face improvised organizations. The exception is the minority of university students who move via the internet.

Organized industrial trade unions come into the struggle late and largely focus on sectoral economic demands, with some exceptions – especially in public enterprises, controlled by cronies of the oligarchs, where workers demand changes in management.

As a result of the social particularities of the rentier states, the uprisings do not take the form of class struggles between wage labor and industrial capitalists. They emerge as mass political revolts against the oligarchical state. Street-based social movements demonstrate their capacity to delegitimize state authority, paralyze the economy, and can lead up to the ousting of the ruling autocrats.

But it is the nature of mass street movements to fill the squares with relative ease, but also to be dispersed when the symbols of oppression are ousted. Street-based movements lack the organization and leadership to project, let alone impose a new political or social order. Their power is found in their ability to pressure existing elites and institutions, not to replace the state and economy.

Hence the surprising ease with which the US, Israeli and EU backed Egyptian military were able to seize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors.

Converging Conditions and the “Demonstration Effect”

The spread of the Arab revolts across North Africa, the Middle East and Gulf States is, in the first instance, a product of similar historical and social conditions: rentier states ruled by family-clan oligarchs dependent on “rents” from capital intensive oil and energy exports, which confine the vast majority of youth to marginal informal ‘street-based’ economic activities.

The “power of example” or the “demonstration effect” can only be understood by recognizing the same socio-political conditions in each country. Street power – mass urban movements – presumes the street as the economic locus of the principal actors and the takeover of the plazas as the place to exert political power and project social demands. No doubt the partial successes in Egypt and Tunisia did detonate the movements elsewhere.

But they did so only in countries with the same historical legacy, the same social polarities between rentier – clan rulers and marginal street labor and especially where the rulers were deeply integrated and subordinated to imperial economic and military networks.

Conclusion

Rentier rulers govern via their ties to the US and EU military and financial institutions. They modernize their affluent enclaves and marginalize recently educated youth, who are confined to low paid jobs, especially in the insecure informal sector, centered in the streets of the capital cities.

Neo-liberal privatizations, reductions in public subsidies (for food, unemployment subsidies, cooking oil, gas, transport, health, and education) shattered the paternalistic ties through which the rulers contained the discontent of the young and poor, as well as clerical elites and tribal chiefs. The confluence of classes and masses, modern and traditional, was a direct result of a process of neo-liberalization from above and exclusion from below.

The neo-liberal “reformers” promise that the ‘market’ would substitute well-paying jobs for the loss of state paternalistic subsidies was false. The neo-liberal polices reinforced the concentration of wealth while weakening state controls over the masses.

The world capitalist economic crises led Europe and the US to tighten their immigration controls, eliminating one of the escape valves of the regimes – the massive flight of unemployed educated youth seeking jobs abroad. Out-migration was no longer an option; the choices narrowed to struggle or suffer. Studies show that those who emigrate tend to be the most ambitious, better educated (within their class) and greatest risk takers.

Now, confined to their home country, with few illusions of overseas opportunities, they are forced to struggle for individual mobility at home through collective social and political action.

Equally important among the political youth, is the fact that the US, as guarantor of the rentier regimes, is seen as a declining imperial power: challenged economically in the world market by China; facing defeat as an occupying colonial ruler in Iraq and Afghanistan; and humiliated as a subservient and mendacious servant of an increasingly discredited Israel via its Zionist agents in the Obama regime and Congress.

All of these elements of US imperial decay and discredit, encourage the pro-democracy movements to move forward against the US clients and lessen their fears that the US military would intervene and face a third military front. The mass movements view their oligarchies as “third tier” regimes: rentier states under US hegemony, which, in turn, is under Israeli – Zionist tutelage.

With 130 countries in the UN General Assembly and the entire Security Council, minus the US, condemning Israeli colonial expansion; with Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the forthcoming new regimes in Yemen and Bahrain promising democratic foreign policies, the mass movements realize that all of Israel’s modern arms and 680,000 soldiers are of no avail in the face of its total diplomatic isolation, its loss of regional rentier clients, and the utter discredit of its bombastic militarist rulers and their Zionist agents in the US diplomatic corps (Financial Times 2/24/11, p. 7).

The very socio-economic structures and political conditions which detonated the pro-democracy mass movements, the unemployed and underemployed youth organized from “the street”, now present the greatest challenge: can the amorphous and diverse mass becomes an organized social and political force which can take state power, democratize the regime and, at the same time, create a new productive economy to provide stable well- paying employment, so far lacking in the rentier economy?

The political outcome to date is indeterminate: democrats and socialists compete with clerical, monarchist, and neoliberal forces bankrolled by the U.S.

It is premature to celebrate a popular democratic revolution…

Why Do Ghaddafi’s People Hate Him So Much?

It should be clear by now that Muammar Qaddafi has very little support among his own people. The majority, or vast majority, of them appear to hate his guts.

But it’s curious why this might be.

In Tunisia and Egypt, there was massive corruption combined with a fall in the standard of living of the middle classes that caused the revolutions. Is Qaddafi’s regime really as corrupt as Ben Ali’s or Mubarak’s? I don’t know much about it, but his son, Saif al Islam, is reported to be a billionaire. All accounts are that Libya spread its oil wealth around pretty well, at least in the first 20 years or so, whereas recently Tunisia and Egypt have gone over to neoliberalism.

The Gulf states are oil states too. If Libya is in flames, why are the Gulf oil states not in flames too? One wonders. What’s the difference between Libya and the Gulf oil states? For one, Qaddafi has been very brutal. He’s probably been the most brutal of all of the Arab dictators by far. He’s killed many, many Libyans, and he’s put many more in prison. He’s been far more brutal than the Gulf leaders. Have the Gulf rulers spread their wealth around better? It’s look like they may have. One wonders why so much of Libya’s infrastructure is falling apart. With all that oil wealth, what’s with the 30% poverty rate? The numbers don’t add up. Looks like Libya was not spreading the oil wealth around as much as we thought it was.

People say that he’s been in power for 41 years. True, but the Gulf leaders have been in power for about as long, and no one seems to care. Qaddafi also has a Stalinist secret police force that brooks no dissent. There’s nothing similar going on in the Gulf.

We in the West say that Qaddafi is a nut, but one wonders if his own people see him that way.

We in the West are furious that Qaddafi supported terrorism against the West for years, but do you think his own people hold that against him? Dubious.

People in the West seem to be projecting a lot of the reasons for their hatred of Qaddafi onto the Libyan people, but Libyans are not Americans. Just because Americans hate Qaddafi for this or that, doesn’t mean his anti-Western Muslim North African Arab people feel the same way.

One wonders if the Arabs simply hanker for democracy, freedom of speech, and all that. Marxists may need to seriously rethink their ideology. Marxists insist that the dictatorship of the proletariat is mandatory to their definition of a revolutionary society. But more and more, it’s looking like people don’t want to live under dictatorships, Marxist or otherwise. People want to be free. It’s logical, right?

It does not look like Qaddafi is going down anytime soon. Predictions of his imminent fall appear to have been premature. His forces have surrounded Zawiya to the west, and they captured part of the towns of Brega and Ajdabiya in the east. The opposition has not been able to take Tripoli yet, and one wonders if they ever will. The town of Misrata apparently fell earlier. If Brega falls, the rebel-held east of Cyrenaica will suffer serious fuel shortages. By capturing Ajdabiya, the government controls the crossroads between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and have cut the rebels in the east off from those in the west.

Currently, it appears the the rebels lack the manpower and firepower necessary to conquer Qaddafi. The rebel fight is a tough one. If they lose, Qaddafi’s wrath will be fiery, and they may be looking at prison sentences or executions. They may as well fight to the end.

Qaddafi himself has few options. If he surrenders, he will either be imprisoned or executed by the rebels. He may also be looking at war crimes charges. He could always take off for one of the nations that have offered him asylum, but I doubt if he will do that. Qaddafi is a man of pride. No doubt he will fight on to the last bullet.

Rebellion in Libya

The rebellion in Libya is actually quite a bit different in some ways from the earlier ones in Tunisia and Egypt. I said earlier that the revolts in the latter two countries were against extreme corruption combined with neoliberal reforms that had impoverished ~80% of the population, decimated the middle classes and only enriched the top 20%. Those at the very top had made incredible amounts of wealth.

If there is massive corruption in Libya, it is news to me. Libya has a pretty good standard of living with PCI of $13,000, higher than Tunisia and much higher than Egypt. Yet 1/3 of the nation is in poverty. Why, with such a high PCI, is 1/3 of the nation in poverty in a country with socialist roots? It’s seems that the regime has failed terribly on that score.

Originally and for the first 20 years, the regime had a socialist orientation. Emphasis was on egalitarian wealth distribution, health care and housing for the masses. But in the last 25 years, the regime has gone in for neoliberalism and has made deep alliances with the West. These reforms have been associated with impoverishment of the masses.

Oil was nationalized soon after the coup. Under King Idris, overthrown in 1969, oil was controlled by Western corporations, and Libya receieved the lowest royalties in the world on their oil. Ghaddafi’s populist revolution was very popular at first. Oil was nationalized and the proceeds distributed to the people along the lines of Chavez in Venezuela.

This was the real reason that the West turned on Ghaddafi as a terrorist supporting enemy of freedom. This was the real reason for the bombing attacks by Reagan.

The terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie was probably not done by Libya. Instead, it was done by Iran with assistance from Syria and possibly the PFLC-GC. This was in response for the supposedly erroneous shoot down of an Iranian passenger jet by a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Arabia earlier. Investigators focused on the Libyan theory early on and refused to give it up when better evidence came in.

A judge in Scotland has ruled that Libya is probably innocent of the crime. Nevertheless, huge sanctions were put on Libya, and Libya finally paid off a huge fine to win release of sanctions and good relations with the West, even though it was probably innocent.

Originally, Ghaddafi pursued his own brand of Islamism derived from his Green Book, a hodgepodge of socialism and Islam that rejects both capitalism and Communism. The notion of Green Book theory is that socialism and Islam are natural partners.

For the last 25 years, Qaddafi has given up Islamism as he has been targeted by Al Qaeda, which has a large presence in Libya with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Al Qaeda has tried to kill Qaddafi four times and he has a serious blood feud with them. After 9-11, Qaddafi thus enthusiastically embraced the West on this basis.

When Bush threatened, “You’re next,” after the invasion of Iraq, Qaddafi surrendered his advanced nuclear program.

A top Al Qaeda operative from Libya, Ibn Sheik al-Libi, died recently at Guantanamo and was returned to Ajdabia, Libya for burial. His funeral was attended by 1000′s. Qaddafi yet has a serious Al Qaeda problem.

As Qaddafi opened up his oil to Western investment, Libya mysteriously was transformed in the Western press from terrorist haven to the land of one of the good guys. Politics is all about economics after all.

There has been a huge revolution in Libya recently.

It centered in the East in the ancient Roman region of Cyrenaica in cities like Tobruk, Al-Badya and Benghazi. This region has been neglected ever since Qaddafi seized power in what boils down to a major scar on his socialist credentials. King Idris came from Cyrenaica, and many Cyrenaicans are still angry about that.

Qaddafi staffed the new regime with his tribe of Saharans, the Qadhadhfa, and the Cyrenaicans were kept out of most major and top government functions. 80% of Libyan government officials are from the West, and only 20% are from the East. Those from the East only work in low level positions. This is very much a regional civil war.

The rebels have seized control of much Cyrenaica, ousting the army and police, burning down government buildings and seizing large quantities of weapons. The regime has now evacuated the East and is mustering forces in the West. There was a brief rebellion in Tripoli, but it was put down brutally. For a short while, the Parliament itself was actually in flames and protesters marched on downtown Tripoli. As in Egypt, there are a considerable number of Libyans who still support Qaddafi, and they have been fighting the rebels.

Obviously, the Cyrenaicans are revolting due to disenfranchisement.

It’s hard to tell what the rest are mad about.

Qaddafi has been quite brutal over the years, killing thousands of Libyans, so he’s a bit of a North African Stalin. Brutal dictators piss off a lot of people.

Many Libyans look at their oil wealth and wonder why they are not as wealthy as the Gulf. There’s no good answer to that question.

Others are angry about the neoliberal reforms that have impoverished so many people.

There are also reactionary tribal interests at work who dislike Qaddafi’s secularism.

Qaddafi’s socialism has long been tarnished. Although the nation has a high PCI, one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab World of 86%, and has strongly supported gender equality (all of Qaddafi’s bodyguards are women), the health services are quite poor for a country of such wealth. Many Libyans go to Tunisia, with a lower PCI, for health care, since Tunisia has better facilities than Libya does. Much of Libya’s infrastructure is literally falling apart. I’m not sure why there has been such poor investment in infrastructure and health care over the years.

Although some army units have defected, especially in the East, most of them appear to be intact. The Air Force is the most loyal branch of the services, and they have had only a few defections. Some ambassadors and members of Parliament and the Cabinet has resigned and fled to Europe, mostly over the terrible brutality of the regime’s attacks on almost exclusively unarmed demonstators.

The regime’s attacks on unarmed demonstrators and even people merely out on the streets and in their balconies (anyone visible on the streets or their balconies in some neighborhoods was shot at) was frighteningly brutal.

It’s hard to imagine how Qaddafi can stay in power after using such appalling brutality against his people.

The big question is how much of Libya’s 1.8 million barrels a day of Libya’s oil is being disrupted. For a while, none was going out at all, rocking the oil markets. The oil is flowing again, but output has been cut by 25%. Most of that oil goes to Europe, and in fact Europe is very dependent on Libyan oil and gas. This is the reason for the lack of calls for sanctions and no fly zones for Libya. Indeed, criticism of Qaddafi from the West has been muted.

The Real Reason for the Egyptian Revolution

Who is the world’s richest man?

Bill Gates at $54 billion?

Carlos Slim at $58 billion?

Nope.

Try Hosni Mubarak at $70 billion.

There are endless debates about what is causing these revolutions. Dictatorship, secret police, poverty, lack of press freedom, inflation, oil wealth, on and on. None of these factors seem to work quite as well as corruption.

Both Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt were insanely corrupt, even by Arab standards. At the end of the day, this outraged even the middle classes, and when the middle classes revolt against your regime, you’re done. The poor and low income can revolt all the want. No want cares about them, and they’re all scum anyway. It’s only the middle and upper classes who are human.

Middle class revolts bring down regimes. Period.

Chile, 1973. Taiwan, 1990. Eastern Europe, 1989. Nicaragua, 1979. Philippines, 1986. Cuba 1959.

The middle classes are no good. All they care about is money. Their definition of the word justice is awfully limited. But they don’t particularly like to be shamelessly stolen from and left impoverished. This is what the middle class revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Philippines were all about. You can only steal from the middle class for so long and impoverish them for so long.

The American middle class loves the rich, as does the middle class in most of the world. The rich rip off the US middle class to an insane degree, and impoverish them and reduce their numbers dramatically. But the middle classes don’t care about the rich attacking them. The rich always attack the middle class.

The middle class ignores this, unless it gets out of hand. What the middle class really hates is the working class, the low income and the poor. These are their deadly enemies. There will be no quarter against the scum poor. The rich say to the middle class, “Come! Join us in our war against the poor! You can be rich too! You are rich just like us! Sort of.”

So the middle class-rich alliance unfolds most places on Earth. With the rich at least you have a chance. The poor are below you, and they purportedly want everything the middle class has. There’s no alternative. They must be smashed.

As long as the rich let a fair amount trickle down to the middle classes, the middle classes will always line up with the rich. Always, always, always. In Egypt, Tunisia, Cuba, Nicaragua and the Philippines, the gravy train wouldn’t stop anymore at Middle Class Station. A vile elite was robbing the nation blind and not even leaving crumbs for the middle class. For this crime, the petit bourgeois may not forgive you.

On the Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia

Both Tunisia and Egypt’s regimes are officially socialist, or were theoretically so in practice. However, the regimes were very corrupt, and the people at the top stole a tremendous amount of money and monopolized much of the economy through their connections in government. So really what you had here was something like a crony capitalism.

However, the regimes did engage in a lot of pro-people behavior such as subsidies to keep the prices of basic foodstuffs cheap. This is typical populist behavior for Arab regimes. It’s more than most regimes in the West are doing for their people these days. I’m not aware Western regimes are doing much for their people at all except attacking them in the name of the Economics of the Rich.

In the past 10-15 years, both Tunisia and Egypt enacted neoliberal reforms. These reforms generally enriched about the top 20% of society, while impoverishing the bottom 80%, exactly what they do most everywhere else on Earth that they are tried. In Egypt, these reforms gave rise to a class of millionaires who prospered due to corruption and their connections with the Mubarak regime. This group was able to more or less monopolize aspects of the economy.

At the same time, the gap between the rich and poor skyrocketed. Arab and Muslim socieites are relatively egalitarian, which is why neoliberalism has never gone down big there. Unemployment was high, and universities were churning out highly educated grads for which there was no work in their field. In Egypt, the poverty rate exploded under neoliberalism all the way to 50%. The neoliberal moves were promoted by the banksters in the IMF and the neoliberals in the US government.

At the same time, both regimes were highly dictatorial, especially in ways that were contrary to the aspirations of the people. Demonstrations against the US invasion of Iraq, against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians were routinely broken up, often with violent force.

Both regimes enforced secularism to some extent, which was positive, but I don’t think it was worth it. Secularism in the Arab World almost needs to be enforced by a dictator, as democracy will probably lead to some form of Political Islam. Both regimes were reliable allies of the US and Israel, especially Egypt. Egypt worked closely with Israel and even with Mossad.

The new vice president, Suleiman, has the best working relationship with Mossad of anyone in the Arab World. Mubarak worked closely with Israel to enforce the blockade of Gaza. The Egyptian peace treaty with Israel has many aspects of it that are not well liked by the population. It’s not that they want war with Israel, but more that they don’t like the terms of the treaty. One term is that Egypt may not station troops on its own soil in Sinai, while Israel can station troops all the way up to the border with Egypt.

So both Ben Ali and Mubarak were seen by the Arab masses as agents of the US and Israel. This is a reasonable characterization.

What did the Tunisian and Egyptian people get from their dictatorships? Not much!

In both countries, the regimes’ economics began to harm the middle classes. The corruption was so severe in Tunisia that the middle classes themselves, who used to side with the regime, turned on them. During good economic times, there was enough to trickle down to the middle classes, but during the recent downturn, the middle classes really got hammered, and there was no need for them to support Ben Ali anymore. Middle classes can and do lead successful revolutions of both the Left and Right! Antagonize them at your peril.

In Egypt, the middle class had been increasingly squeezed under neoliberalism. Recent rises in the prices of food, traced back to derivatives speculation by parasitical finance capital, mostly in London, were the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Tunisian regime went quickly. They had even alienated their own army, especially with Ben Ali’s wife’s outrageous corruption and theft.

In Egypt, many still have a stake in the regime. Middle classes like stability, and many of the Egyptian middle class support Mubarak for that reason. Recent events have screwed the economy, and many are finding it hard to make a living. The middle class thinks with its pocketbook.

Some of the urban poor in areas north of Cairo have long been hired by Mubarak and his millionaire supporters are goon squads to break up protests. These are seasonal workers who are out of work much of the time and don’t trust anti-regime protesters due to their basic rural conservatism. The Mubarak regime offers them a month’s wage or so for a day’s work breaking up demos, and it sounds like a good deal. Most of the goons were either these hired goons, or they were plainclothes members of the security forces.

Mubarak’s regime continues to have a lot of support in the upper middle class and upper class areas of Cairo. These people have done very well under Mubarak. There are 3-4 million members of Mubarak’s party who have benefited greatly via their membership and would see considerable harm to their position in the event of democracy. Many workers and state industries (of which there are still many) support the regime. Many of these workers were ordered by their bosses to go to pro-government rallies.

The pro-Mubarak goon attacks were cooked by Mubarak himself and his security forces in a meeting of top regime officials on Monday. The goons were funded by top businessmen, millionaire members of Mubarak’s clique who now dominate the economy. This aspect of the counterrevolution is like the rightwing death squads of the rich that we see in Philippines, India and Latin America – the hired guns and thugs of the rich, hired to enforce the Rule of the Rich. Details on Monday’s meeting and plot here.

CPP Statement on Egypt

I agree with the general thrust of what is written below. But I am not sure if calling Egypt and Tunisia fascist and feudalist is correct. Nasser ended feudalism in Egypt.

Filipino revolutionary forces are one with the struggle of the Egyptian people

Communist Party of the Philippines
February 4, 2011

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Filipino revolutionary forces express their solidarity with the Egyptian people in their struggle to put an end to the 30-year US-backed feudal dictatorship of the Mubarak regime.

The CPP has been intently following developments in Egypt and a number of other Arab countries where intense and widespread people’s unrest against decades of feudal dictatorial rule and social miseries have recently been on the rise. In Tunisia, mass demonstrations succeeded in putting an end to the 23-year iron-fisted rule of the Ben Ali regime that wrought socio-political repression and economic hardships on the masses.

Several hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have been massing up for days in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand the immediate ouster of the Mubarak regime.

The massive Egyptian demonstrations, which began on January 25 have been impelled by mass discontent over the pro-imperialist, feudal, dictatorial, bankrupt and antipeople policies of the Mubarak regime. The Egyptian people have long been made to suffer political oppression, rising prices, widespread unemployment and mass poverty, and suppressed with the use of terror, emergency laws, military brutality and the secret police. The CPP supports the national and democratic aspirations and struggle of the Egyptian people.

The CPP condemns the Mubarak regime and his ruling party for unleashing security forces, fascist agents and several thousand counter-demonstrators yesterday to attack the anti-Mubarak protesters. Yesterday, camel and horse riding fascist forces charged at and whipped protesters, threw stones and fired guns at them. At least five demonstrators were killed and more than 600 wounded.

The fascist counter-demonstration was an attempt by the ruling regime to project the anti-Mubarak protesters as only a fraction of the Egyptian people. With the outright display of fascist violence, it also tried to dissuade the Egyptian people from joining further demonstrations.

The Mubarak clique’s fascist tactics are bound to fail. It reflects the ruling regime’s desperation to hold on to power. It is now teetering and nearing collapse.

The Mubarak regime could only persist during the past three decades with its sheer repression of the Egyptian people through the employment of US-funded army and police. With a $2 billion annual military subsidy from the US, this much-detested regime has been second only to Israel in receiving the largest US “foreign aid.” Under Mubarak, Egypt has served as a US-Israeli foil against the Palestinian and Arab peoples.

The CPP enjoins the Egyptian people to consolidate their ranks, prepare for greater difficulties and bigger sacrifices, and strive to persist and advance their struggle. They must draw strength from the justness of their cause in order to persevere and achieve victory in the struggle to put an end to the US-Mubarak fascist regime.

For Latest on Revolution in the Middle East

Tune in to the Angry Arab’s blog. He is about the closest to my POV. Of course I support the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia to the hilt. I’m aware I have not written much about it, but I have been following it very closely.

Jordan: Things are cooking in Jordan. The King just dissolved the government.

Yemen: Possibly another domino to fall, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way. Protests at the moment are being led by college students in this poor and backwards country.

Qatar: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen. Also the home of Al Jazeera, the real winner in the latest mess.

Oman: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Kuwait: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Saudi Arabia: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen. It’s clear that they are frightened though. Look at their Arab media supporting Mubarak to the hilt.

UAE: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Bahrain: This is a tough one, since the majority are Shia, and they are badly repressed by a ruling Sunni elite. There will be demos in the days to come.

PA: Nothing will happen here, but the PA in the West Bank just agreed to hold elections.

Libya: Rich oil state that takes good care of it’s people. Nothing will happen.

Algeria: They already have a rickety democracy. Nothing will happen here.

Syria: Demos scheduled for February 5, but I doubt if much will happen. It’s only pro-US regimes that are going down, and the regime is popular. Besides, they look at Lebanon and Iraq next door and see democracy and mass sectarian slaughter.

Sudan: Hard to say, but the South will go. I don’t expect much to happen here.

Lebanon: The pro-US regime is gone, and Hizballah is now in power. It’s already pretty democratic as it is.

Iran: Nothing will happen here. The Democracy Movement has been going for a while here, and it won’t gain steam.

“Joys of Muslim Women,” by Nonie Darwish

Some of this stuff is a bit over to the top, and I edited out about 15% of the text that I thought was complete crap. Nevertheless, most of what remains seems to be true.

Some of the stuff I removed: that Muslims are preparing a jihad against the West, apparently to convert us to Islam? I don’t agree with that. They think some of us are attacking Islam, so they are counterattacking. Another line said that in 20 years, there will be enough Muslims in North America to elect the President and Prime Minister of the US and Canada. No way is that true. It isn’t really true that non-Muslims are supposed to be killed or subjugated by Muslims, though there is a bit of truth to that.

Under Muslim rule, non-Muslims are clearly subordinate. But where Muslims are the minority, that is not the case. Muslims are supposed to try to convert and increase their numbers so they can be a majority.

Apparently conquest in the name of Islam – aggressive jihad – we have not seen that much in recent years. One exception is Southern Sudan. There have been some genocides of non-Muslims too – Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians in Anatolia, Catholics in East Timor.

In areas with a Muslim majority trying to secede from the state, it’s typically “kill the non-Muslims.” This is the case in the Southern Philippines, Thailand, the Moluccas, Chechnya and Kashmir. There have been localized massacres of non-Muslims in India, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Muslim jihad is a complicated subject, and saying they want to kill us or convert us is a bit ridiculous, though that was more or less what was going on South Sudan, and there have been some cases of that in Iraq and Pakistan recently.

Joys of Muslim Women

by Nonie Darwish

In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 7 year old, consummating the marriage by 9. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.

To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses. Often after a woman has been raped, the family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives ‘at will, and the man does not have to say why he has beaten her.

The husband is permitted to have 4 wives and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.

The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.

In the Western World (America), Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending US and Canadian Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to Shariah law.

Ripping the West in Two. Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.

Ripping the West in Two

Nonie Darwish recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.

Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to the US in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza.

When he died, he was considered a “shahid,” a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.

But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.

In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law – what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.

Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world. Peace and prosperity for one’s children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.

While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics – one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.

While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.

It’s hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.

While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.

It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful…some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam…the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion.

The 13% Solution: A Modest Proposal?

In the comments, Abiezer Coppe proposes a unique solution to the “Black problem” in US society:

I’m a White integrationist. I’m for integration to the extent that I feel whites in White countries should marry blacks to the extent that the blacks die out as a separate entity. That’s a very blunt way of putting it. Whites would also die out as a separate entity. we’d have “mixité”, a genuinely mixed race society.

If I went to live in Senegal I would expect to learn Wolof and integrate, live by the values if the majority Black society, not hang out in a ghetto of ex-colonial White French people, marry a Senegalese Black girl, and have lovely coffee coloured children. Egalité, Fraternité, Mixité….

Of course in reality this racial mixing is totally impractical. I wouldn’t force it on anyone. A milder version on the integrationist approach is that Blacks integrate with the values of the majority. For this reason I accept the French position on making the wearing of the hijab in public illegal. Black French Muslim women have to abide by the secular values of the French White majority.

Black intermarriage would enrich the white gene pool. Imagine if the USA was mostly White people, but instead of 13% Blacks you had White people who had 13% Black in their genetic makeup? That would be very satisfactory. “Mop’em up, Marry’em off and Wipe’em out”. A wicked thought? Not really. blacks would benefit from our genes and racial conflict would be diminished, because they’d disappear.

We would benefit from Black genes. Pure white people would also disappear. The more racial mixing the better. Mixed race people benefit from the strengths of both racial groups. That always been my view. So we’d all end a light shade of khaki, or slightly olive skinned. So what?

Black ghettos are a terrible thing in White countries. Any kind of racial segregation is. Brixton is partly Black ghetto. It can breed hatred, envy. To be honest I don’t really like living in all White city either. I’d prefer a mixture.

Leicester is a great city. I really like going there. It’s very vibrant culturally, and racial conflict seems to be minimal. But then it”s 30% South Asian, 5% Black, 5% other Asian, and 60% White. The Asians integrate well, and are good business people. I get the impression Chinese/East Asian IQ is high. Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese. Is that your conclusion?

On the question of differential and lower Black intellectual ability, and its inheritability, I remain agnostic because I haven’t seen the evidence.

The Blacks I’ve met have all been very bright – PhD types – with the exception of the Trinidadian woman friend I know, who isn’t intellectual at all. She’s affectionate and sexy as hell though. I would. She always has white boyfriends. She’s figured it out. She goes for White men because in her experience they (we) are more civilised and treat her better than her own kind.

She had two Black (one from Ghana, one from Trinidad) husbands before that. They both abused her and were violent. Anecdotal, I know…

Korean, Japanese and Chinese IQ is all ~108. Highest for any major racial group. Vietnamese IQ is quite high – ~102.5, probably due to Chinese admixture. (Both figures setting US White IQ at 103).

I’m not sure what to say about this except that it’s already been done in the Arab World in places like Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. The Berbers are precisely 13% Black. It’s also been implemented in the entire Arab World outside of Africa. In particular, the Gulf and Palestine already have a 13-19% solution, except there are some light Blacks in Yemen, who cause almost zero problems by the way.

Mexico and Argentina adopted a 4% and 3% solution, respectively. There was a large Black population in Buenos Aires in the late 1800′s. Somehow, they vanished off the face of the Earth and no one knows where they went. Clearly, they must have just bred into the population.

Mexico also had a significant number of Blacks, mostly on the Caribbean Coast. Mexicans will tell you that they mysteriously vanished into thin air, but the truth is that the average Mexican nowadays is 4% Black. Mexico doesn’t have a Black problem. It has a Mexican problem, but that’s another kettle of fish.

White nationalists go ballistic at proposals like this, calling them White genocide. I’m not sure it matters. They also say that the breeding in would not be across the board, and that Colorism a la Brazil would replace racism.

Other WN’s would talk about severe damage to the White gene pool, especially the White IQ. It’s hard to say what the effects on White genes would be. I suspect that there might be a ~2% reduction in the White IQ in the mostly White Berber types. Blacks would not really exist too much anymore, but to the extent that they did, their IQ’s would go up by about 11 points. The Achievement Gap would vanish. There would be no more seething Black ghettos. The crime rate would probably decline radically. Everyone would finally shut up about race for once.

Radical Blacks like the Abagond*-Ankheson Mie types would probably be furious and see this as Black genocide, but it would solve a lot of Black problems, albeit by making the group pretty much vanish.

*I hate to keep bringing up this guy’s name. Maybe I should call it the Abagondsphere. Suffice to say he’s not alone. There is a gigantic section of the Black blogosphere, including bloggers, commenters and readers, all linking to each other continuously, who sound just like this guy. Their whole playbook comes out of  Tim Wise Whiteness Studies Critical Race Theory stuff.

It’s hard to characterize them, but in general, these are educated, intelligent Blacks, often with good incomes. They often have a college education, and it’s not unusual for them to even have advanced degrees like Masters and PhD’s. They often make very good money. It’s almost like the more degrees they have and the more money they make, the angrier, whinier and more grudge-like and CRT-pitching they get.

As a good rule, you don’t hear regular Black people talk like this. I have Black neighbors all around me, and they know nothing of this nonsense. Your average working class type or even Underclass Black doesn’t think much about Whites. Here, they all hang out with Hispanics and Whites. If you’re nice to them, they’re nice to you. They hardly ever talk about White people. They see me wearing my Obama tshirt with my Obama bumper sticker and they run up to me and hug me.

Or they come up to me and talk about Tea Partiers. “You see these racist Tea Partiers? Can you believe that?” I’ll imitate Paul Mooney and say something like, “Yeah, fuck those crackers. Hell with those honkies. Those silly White people. They hatin’ on Obama. It’s all because he’s Black.” And they give me a high five.

They aren’t ingrates at all.