Arabs and the Freedom Industry

Now we come to North Africa, or the Arab Spring. Here we will pause to note what T.E.Lawrence had to say in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom about the Arab: "Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed." The idea – or wave, as Lawrence called it – was nationalism, a revolt against the Ottomans, and it was backed up heavily by British cash. "One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more."

And the sea has been raised once more – this time again with western cash and training. According to the Washington Post:" It's estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations - not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement." Again, the Washington Post says: "…the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has funneled up to $6 million to Syrian opposition groups such as Barada TV since 2006. MEPI is supervised by Tamara Wittes, a longtime pro-Israel advocate of democratic reform in the Middle East….:"

Again, we see that the Arabs, like those following T.E.Lawrence, had little to do with their revolution. Like Bangladeshis, Africans and other Asian countries, freedom as cash has appeared as liberty.

democracy, religion and violence

Holy places: Unholy rows | The Economist: "For all the rhetoric of ancient hatred, religious rows have grown worse in modern times. Across the Ottoman empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia to Palestine, Christians and Muslims mingled peaceably at shared sacred places.

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In Bangladesh, Muslims and Hindus lived peaceably until the election of 2001. The Hindus tend to vote for the Awami League, as Muslims in India tend to vote for the Congress Party. In 2001, the League lost, and a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and an Islamist Party won.

Immediately, an anti-Hindu pogrom swept the land: there was arson, looting, raping...the nation was stunned.

Clearly, religion had nothing to do with it: it was politicians stirring up hatred, and, of course, greed for the spoils of victory, which seems to include women.

Interestingly, the parties went on to persecute a heretical Muslim sect, the Aḥmadīyahs, with almost equal ferocity. Again, secular observers blamed it on religion.

Not so.

Consider the following extract from the Britanica:

"In their theology, the Ismāʿīlīs have absorbed the most extreme elements and heterodox ideas. The universe is viewed as a cyclic process, and the unfolding of each cycle is marked by the advent of seven “speakers”—messengers of God with Scriptures—each of whom is succeeded by seven “silents”—messengers without revealed scriptures; the last speaker (the Prophet Muḥammad) is followed by seven imāms who interpret the Will of God to man and are, in a sense, higher than the Prophet because they draw their knowledge directly from God and not from the Angel of Revelation. During the 10th century, certain Ismāʿīlī intellectuals formed a secret society called the Brethren of Purity, which issued a philosophical encyclopaedia, The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, aiming at the liquidation of positive religions in favour of a universalist spirituality.

The late Aga Khan III (1887–1957) had taken several measures to bring his followers closer to the main body of the Muslims. The Ismāʿīlīs, however, still have not mosques but jamāʿat khānahs (“gathering houses”), and their mode of worship bears little resemblance to that of the Muslims generally."

You can't get more heretical than this! Yet the Aga Khanis - as the Ismailis are known in Bangladesh - are some of the richest people here. Their location is highly conspicuous (many live in flats near Bailey Road, Dhaka across from one of the best schools in Dhaka) and their mode of worship is strikingly different. They have a jamaat khanah, where they gather every evening, and regular Muslims are not allowed in there. Naturally, weird stories proliferate about the goings-on in the jamaat khanah. When I set up a poultry farm, some of my best customers were Aga Khanis: they are extremely rich, as I said.

Their influence is international.

When General Ershad arrested Aziz Mohammed Bhai, probably the richest Aga Khani in Bangladesh, Prince Aga Khan himself came down to secure his release.

All this influence and wealth explain why the pogrom never extended to these people: it wasn't a religious pogrom at all.

The fuse was democracy, and the politicians vented their anger on the weakest members of society: as happens in India during anti-Muslim pogroms.

The spread of democracy throughout the world will bring disaster for religious minorities: in Egypt, Christians are already worried - as they well should be.

Democracy and Intolerance

EGYPT: Muslims protest Coptic Christian governor in Qena | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times: "Thousands of mostly Muslim protesters swelled through the streets of the Egyptian city of Qena on Friday to demonstrate against the recent appointment of a new Coptic Christian governor.

Crowds gathered Immediately after prayers outside the city’s mosques, chanting against Gov. Emad Mikhael and Prime Minister Essam Sharaf: “Oh Sharaf, say the truth … you’re being unfair to us or not?” and “Oh freedom where are you ... Mikhael is standing between us and you.”

Mikhael, a police general who served under former President Hosni Mubarak, is the only Copt among 18 new governors named by Sharaf on April 14. The decision was met by anger and exasperation from the city’s Islamic extremists and ultra-conservative Salafi groups.

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Democracy will bring out the worst in any people - Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims.

The people of the Middle East should learn from the (brief) democratic experience of the world. The democracies unleashed two major wars in the previous century. The first has been described as the "most democratic war in history" by historian J.M.Roberts.

The question of whether democracy promotes violence is an old one and goes back to Thucydides (his answer was 'Yes'). Two thousand years later, Thomas Hobbes translated Thucydides to reveal the horrors of democracy.

The free world in history stands in sharp contrast to the subjugation of the rest of the world by it over 500 violent years. Where there was parliament, there was violence inflicted mostly on foreigners.

China could have conquered the world, and started out to do so, but then stopped. The Portuguese took up where they left off.

In Bangladesh, lynching - absolutely unknown during dictatorship - has become so commonplace, nobody even notices. In 2007, the country nearly experienced civil war between the two political parties, and the west had to call in the army to restore sanity.

We must remember that it's a western idea - democracy - that's causing all the mayhem.

Corrupting the Youth of the Middle East

freedomhouse.org: Program Detail: "A new generation of young Egyptian citizens is dedicated to expanding political and civil rights in their country. Referred to as the 'YouTube Generation,' many of these courageous men and women are supported by Freedom House to enhance their outreach, advocacy and effectiveness. The New Generation project helps to reinforce the values of free expression, human rights, women's rights, and rule of law.

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In a previous blog, I described how software has been used to spread the idea of democracy. Freedom House (financed mostly by the US government) has been training and indoctrinating young Egyptians. It would seem safe to assume that the germ of democracy around the Middle East has been cleverly spread by the US government, and was not a sudden expression of 'people power'. However, my theory was the 'mad crowd' theory, so beloved of Gustave Le Bon. The method-in-madness hypothesis has been well-argued by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulirich, a close watcher of the Middle East (she herself is Iranian).

The two hypotheses may not be contradictory. After priming the pump for democracy, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy and others must have been pleasantly surprised to give 'crowd control' a whole new meaning.

Socrates was tried for corrupting the youth of Athens. Freedom House, et al, have been corrupting the youth of the world in general, and those of the Middle East in particular. Their corruption will no doubt pay off when these kids start realising the value of money. Until then, it must be people like El Baradei who will need to be bought.

Democracy in the Middle East: Did the US do it?

Mining social networks: Untangling the social web | The Economist: "Once these societal networks of influence can be accurately mapped, they can be used to promote the spread of particular ideas—those that support stability and democracy, for example. Last year America’s army, which jointly funds SOMA with the air force, began disbursing about $80m in five-year research grants for network analysis to promote democracy and national security. An authoritarian government, for instance, may have difficulties slowing the spread of a new idea in a certain medium—say, internet chatter about a book that explains how corruption undermines job creation. Diplomatic services can use this information to help ideas spread. Brian Uzzi of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who advises intelligence agencies on democracy-promotion analytics, says diplomatic services are mapping the “tipping point” when ideas go mainstream in spite of government repression.

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Did the US military start off the revolutions in the Middle East?

It seems that there is software that can spread an idea like a virus. Of courses, the US Congress claims to have been on the back foot, but the military and the secret services could have been working with the president and his staff to spread democracy in the Middle East. The reason? How to replace ageing autocrats.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the question of succession was acute as both countries' rulers were long in the tooth. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was known to be terminally ill nearly a year ago. But who would succeed him? Besides, these rulers had no popular mandate, and that was stymying efforts to block the peace process, with Israel looking increasingly bad.

A democratic mandate for Israel from surrounding countries was thereby needed: hence the bottom-up democratic transitions.

But the question arises: won't a democracy be harder to control? The answer is, No.

Look at Bangladesh: a democratic Muslim country of 150 million is a docile poodle of the United States. That's because the article points to another influence on public opinion: the 'influencers'.

These are people who direct social thinking: advertisers have long known that people follow certain role-models: hence the promotion of watches and shoes by popular stars. The same thing is at work when selling an idea. If a sufficient number of influencers can be corrupted by America into praising democracy and keeping mum about Israel, then the rest of the population will follow. In Bangladesh, two such influencers are Dr. Mozaffer Ahmed (PhD from University of Chicago) and Dr. Kamal Hossain (PhD from the University of Notre Dame). There are countless other PhDs - who are a dime a dozen in Bangladesh - from western universities who have been co-opted by the west, particularly America.

El-Baradei, et al, will no doubt serve a similar purpose in Egypt.

People underestimate how easy it is to corrupt a democracy. As a Greek dramatist observed:

"...Our wise
Democratic allies
Are ruled by our state democratic."

OCHLOCRACY (article)

OCHLOCRACY

(click above for article)

Events in the Middle East and elsewhere are being increasingly shaped by the crowd. Since the French Revolution, the crowd has emerged as a legitimate force, not always with happy consequences.

The People of Egypt and Israel

We thought that America-backed dictators and their regimes were for Israel: now that Hosni Mubarak is gone, and the military has affirmed its ties to Israel, did The People object?

No.

Apart from the Muslim Brotherhood, I doubt if anybody in Egypt cares about the Palestinians. In fact, it would be easier to run a corrupt democracy than a corrupt autocracy, for then the west would have The People's consent to their pro-Israeli policy.

If there's one thing worse than a corrupt autocracy, it's a corrupt democracy: we know; in Bangladesh, we know.

Ochlocracy

'Egypt is Free,' crowds chant after Mubarak quits - Yahoo! News: "The protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet who only a few months earlier struggled to gather more than 100 demonstrators at a time. But their work through Facebook and other social network sites over the past few years built greater awareness and bitterness among Egyptians over issues like police abuse and corruption.

'Facebook brought down the regime,' said Sally Toma, one of the main protest organizers.

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This Associated Press report is hard to believe. How can anyone be so naive?

Let's see what they are saying: A bunch of children on Facebook enlightened their elders (who rarely use social networks) and the poor (who are rarely, if ever) connected as to what was going on in their own country, such was the secret efficiency with which the regime had been operating. Of course, before these kids used Tweeter and Facebook, the average Egyptian lived in complete ignorance of what was happening: they knew Mubarak to be a nice guy, and then suddenly they see on Facebook (which they rarely use, remember) that that was not true. A people's coup takes place in Tunisia, the kids (left alone by the hideous regime to do their missionary work, remember) congregate people, and, well, the rest is contemporary history.

Anyone who swallows this should stop taking hashish.

There has been a persistent pattern of anti-government protests by the 'mob' (a French innovation) since the Berlin Wall collapsed. In Bangladesh, a democratically elected government was brought down after three months of intense street agitation amounting nearly to civil war - one in which the people had no interest whatsoever. In the Philippines, the democratically elected government of Joseph Estrada, the people's darling, was brought down by the middle- and upper-classes (it was dubbed a 'cell phone' revolution; the people lost because at the time sell phones were too expensive!). In Indonesia, thanks to IMF mismanagement, a mob overthrew General Suharto (and investment has never recovered while corruption has remained the same). In Kyrgyzstan, an autocratic government was overthrown by a mob of a couple of thousand, an event repeated a few years later against a democratically elected government. In Tunisia, a mob overthrows a dictator; a bigger mob overthrows the president of Egypt. In China, a mob had tried something similar, but not comparable (see J.M.Roberts' History of the 20th Century). In Iran, a mob tried to overthrow the regime.

Rule by the mob - ochlocracy - is here.

Mind you, the mob has always been there, wherever cities had sprung up. We remember the Roman mob that had to be appeased with 'panim et circenses'. And Lisan al-Din Ibn Khatib's (1313 - 75) advice to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid was this: "The common people may be simple, but they are quite powerful, especially when they act collectively. If the king is faced by them as a rioting crowd, he should be diplomatic with them and stick firmly to his position until they disperse." And then? "The king should strike hard at them and leave no room for mercy towards them."

But what is new is that the mob is no longer seen as illegitimate: a rabble is held to be legitimate just because it is a disgruntled group, as opposed to an individual. The mob, and mobocracy, is here to stay, thanks to the French Revolution, and western ideology. The Americans have been caught on the back foot, but it was their ideology of democracy and people power and mobocracy that has unleashed the mob.

How long will it be before the mob becomes illegitimate again? For that we have to await the decline of western civilisation itself. What these Egyptians have done, is to betray the values of their own, benign civilisation by espousing western ideas of freedom and equality - values observed in the breach, as we have seen.

Advice from Ibn Khatib on How to Deal with Mobs

'The common people may be simple, but they are quite powerful, especially when they act collectively. If the king is faced by them as a rioting crowd, he should be diplomatic with them and stick firmly to his position until they disperse.' And then? 'The king should strike hard at them and leave no room for mercy towards them.'

This was Lisan al-Din Ibn Khatib's (1313 - 75) advice to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

Hosni Mubarak would do well to listen to these words; he has time on his side; let him be moderate now until the crowd is exhausted, and afterwards he can pick off the ringleaders by night.

Incidentally, this is exactly what the regime in Tehran did: they exhausted the young boys, and then brutalised them. It seems to have worked.

A Pathetic Spectacle in Egypt

I have a book on my shelf on the History Of Muslim Political Philosophy. These young Egyptians don't know their own culture..brought up on Hollywood, they think they can will anything. At one time it was nationalism, now it's democracy....Don't they realise they can't change their culture of 1,400 years? All they will achieve is a score of dead bodies and a date - and things will remain the same.


Every time we've overthrown a dictator in Bangladesh and erstwhile East Pakistan, we've repented at leisure. And Bangladesh is prime exhibit of how a 'democracy' can be ruled from Washington and Brussels through corruption of the intelligentsia. The only difference is that violence escalates under a democracy.

And the Egyptian people have been deluded into western modes of thought by the opposition. Since Ibn Hanbal and al-Ashari, nonresistance has been Sunni political doctrine. A veneer of democracy may emerge, as in Bangladesh and Pakistan, but the deeply rooted culture will remain.

What a pathetic spectacle!

Democracies are just as biddable

Bangladesh is a prime exhibit of how a democracy can be run from Washington and Brussels through the corruption of the intelligentsia.

These poor Tunisians and Egyptians actually believe they will have democracy and self-rule! The democracy will be bought almost overnight; the only thing that will change is that, instead of a secure society, they will have a violent one, riven by factions like dogs, just like Bangladesh.