---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David McD
I think that Nico's point that dictatorships require external support is a very weak one. So are nearly all the current ideas out in society & the in the various colleges around the topic of imperialism; from Hobson onwards. Te earlier ideas of Smith in his 1776 book are way superior. The best point made in this debate so far was SB's, that Egypt is not as bad as was Iraq, which we might note was not supported from the outside no more than is China today. Yet it would not tolerate the recent goings on like we have in Egypt for a day though China did with similar demonstrations for many days before it cleared the mob by force. This indicates an important weakness in a lot of liberal thought & theory in that many of us seem to hold that because the state is tacitly supported by the people, as John Locke says, then that means that the people can always bring down the state if that is what they want to do. But this cannot be done states like the Iraq of Saddam or in China but it might be in current Egypt & this is owing to the laxness of Egypt. Similarly, with Gandhi up to 1948; a brutal state would soon see him off & few would have even heard about it, or him. . Although there are many illiberal things about Burkean democracy, it does allow mores & laws that allow easy the march of liberalism in privatisation & tax cuts; it allows us to thereby safely roll back the state. It is not the case that the people can do this if there is a dictatorship that is severe. To think we can do what we want as a public as the state needs the public’s tacit support is to be merely naive. It is on par with thinking that as anyone can write a novel they can thereby choose, at will, to write a great novel. Just because it needs public support does not mean that the public can break the state, at mere will or choice, at any time it likes. . ------------------------------ *From:* Stephen Berry <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Sent:* Sun, 6 February, 2011 17:31:06 *Subject:* Re: [LibertarianAllianceForum] Re: Egypt, a western dictatorship SB: Why must Egypt be 'a western dictatorship'? Why can't Mubarak just be a dictator who takes aid from the US? In return, the US wants stability and peace with Israel. The rest is not that interesting to them. The Burmese junta takes aid from the Chinese, but is it therefore a Sino-dictatorship? Nico: Of course it is. When you are bribing a politician you become part of the crime. And in case of Burma or North Korea, those regimes would be finished without Chinese support. Therefore China is part of the crime. And it is similar in Egypt. The Mubarak regime would not be in power without the support of the US. It is hated by its people and can only be in power by brutal force. And the US and its allies are supplying the tools for this force and helping it economically so that the people can be satisfied to the degree that they don't rebel. SB: I don't know why you are so sure of this. >From 1960 onwards Cuba received massive aid from the Soviet Union, way more than the US gives to Egypt. After 1991 Cuba continued as a dictatorship under Castro, but the collapse of the USSR meant that it got no aid. Was Cuba a Soviet dictatorship before 1991 and a Latin American dictatorship after 1991? Why can't it be a Cuban dictatorship the whole period which got aid from the USSR for part of the time? Do you think there are any dictatorships which are not utterly dependent on some superior power? Is Saudi Arabia a Western autocrat monarchy, for instance? SB: I take your point about a passive Egypt improving the bargaining position of the Israelis vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Still, even if Egypt were hostile to them, the Israelis would still have the US as their trump card. Nico: I don't think a lot of Egyptians want to fight a war against Israel. But they are fed up that they have become a tool of Israel in its fight against the Palestinians. Egypt helps Israel for example to enforce the cruel and illegal blockade against Gaza. It is these kind of policies that makes a lot of Egyptians angry. If that were to change Israel would be forced to seriously try to make peace with the Palestinians. Anyway, the peace with Israel is no excuse to fight a war against the Egyptian people. The west is essentially paying the Mubarak regime to brutally crush the opposition in the country. SB: As I say above, I think you way overestimate the West in this matter. If Egypt were to turn into a functioning parliamentary democracy overnight, the US would not lose any sleep about this - as long as Egypt continued its current policy towards Israel. SB: How can the US make Egypt dependent on its wheat supplies? Do you mean that the US gives Egypt a better (subsidised) deal than it would get elsewhere? What's stopping Egyptians from buying wheat on the world market? Nico: Egypt is one of the biggest wheat importers in the world. And it is a poor country in which a rise in prices can get the regime into serious trouble. Half of the wheat for Egypt comes from the US. If they had to buy it elsewhere they had to pay higher prices. And the wheat is bought, and distributed by the government in Egypt. SB: So, if the Egyptians are getting cheap wheat from the US should they not say thank you? What's your beef here? As you say, they could go elsewhere if they don't like the US wheat. SB: Hong Kong has a population of around seven million which roughly equates to a number of small European countries. By now it must be wealthier than the vast majority of European countries. As far as I can see, the Chinese have changed very little since they took over from the British. Egypt could be as wealthy as Hong Kong and the West wouldn't do anything to stop it. Nico: Hong Kong has 7 million people today. When the rise of Hong Kong started after WW2, it just had 600 000 people. It is a huge difference whether you want to control a big country or a small piece of land with half a million people. Despite of that after WW2 the British were the liberators of Hong Kong. And they did not try to rule the country in the sense that they were trying to dictate the way of living in Hong Kong or installing a brutal secret police crushing the opposition in the country. All they did was making it an economically free zone. And in the 50th a lot of people were immigrating from China, so you very quickly had a majority of people who had voluntarily chosen to live under British rule. As I said, I think the British Empire was much smarter than the current US one. The British empire was very much interested in free trade. It did not cause too much economical damage, in fact it mostly was beneficial in this sense. The evil was that it stopped the natural evolution within the society and cause a lot of conflicts between people. SB: I don't know about the British being the liberators of Hong Kong. But they annexed it on a 99 year lease towards the end of the 19th century and that was lucky for many Chinese alive today. In any case, the main point is that countries like Egypt have a large degree of control over much of their policy and it's a mistake to think that much of what goes on there is down to the US. __._,_.___ Reply to sender<[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20%5BLibertarianAllianceForum%5D%20Re%3A%20Egypt%2C%20a%20western%20dictatorship>| Reply to group<[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20%5BLibertarianAllianceForum%5D%20Re%3A%20Egypt%2C%20a%20western%20dictatorship>| Reply via web post<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LibertarianAllianceForum/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxbW9yZWVjBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzM3MzA3MDIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMzc1BG1zZ0lkAzM1MDIzBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3JwbHkEc3RpbWUDMTI5NzA2OTYxNw--?act=reply&messageNum=35023>| Start a New Topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LibertarianAllianceForum/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJla2I1Zms2BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzM3MzA3MDIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMzc1BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA250cGMEc3RpbWUDMTI5NzA2OTYxNw--> Messages in this topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LibertarianAllianceForum/message/34977;_ylc=X3oDMTM2anBwamNiBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzM3MzA3MDIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMzc1BG1zZ0lkAzM1MDIzBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTI5NzA2OTYxNwR0cGNJZAMzNDk3Nw-->( 16) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LibertarianAllianceForum;_ylc=X3oDMTJlbnU5YmhzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzM3MzA3MDIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMzc1BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZnaHAEc3RpbWUDMTI5NzA2OTYxNg--> [image: Yahoo! 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