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In this mailing:
- David Brown: The West's
Big-Ticket Power Grabs
- Malcolm Lowe: America's Loyal
Syrian Kurdish Allies Evade Annihilation
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The
West's Big-Ticket Power Grabs
Why Should People Respect the Social Contract when
Politicians Do Not?
by David Brown • December 31, 2018
at 5:00 am
- The assertiveness of
supra-national organisations with a focus on global
policy-making is direct threat to the sovereignty of the nation
state, and a dilution of the power of the individuals within it.
- Most alarmingly, as
MEP Marcel de Graaff neatly surmised from the UN Global Compact
for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: "Criticism of
migration will become a criminal offense." At what point
have we left all pretext of democracy and moved into the sphere
of dictatorship, manifest at a supranational level?
- "It's very
simple: the globalist political elite doesn't respect
nation-states, nor does it give a damn about the views of
ordinary people. Indeed, it despises them so much that it would
much rather make their views illegal than listen to what they
have to say." — James Delingpole, Breitbart,
December 9, 2018.
French
President Emmanuel Macron's recent dismissal of nationalism as
"selfish" and a "betrayal of patriotism" is at
odds with strengthening populist movements sweeping across Italy,
Germany and Spain. Pictured: Macron shares a laugh with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel at the European Council leaders' summit on
June 28, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty
Images)
It is a strange time to be a citizen in a Western
democracy. Our society is based on exchange -- we transact in the
free market, we share ideas online, and most significantly we give up
some of our natural liberty in exchange for a civil society and a
vote.
But increasingly, the freedoms supposed to be
protected by civil society are being eroded away. At the level of the
individual, our freedom of speech is under attack. Criticism of
migration is apparently about to become "hate speech" and a
prosecutable offence.
When the authority of the nation state is ceded to a
supra-national body, such as the United Nations, our power as
citizens is diluted.
Based on the contractual theory of society and the
works of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau from the 17th and 18th century,
real power is supposed to sit with the people; in order to retain
moral character, government must thus rest on the consent of the
governed, or the volonté générale ("general will"):
by Malcolm Lowe • December 31, 2018
at 4:00 am
- It would be strategic
wisdom to maintain the small US presence in Syria while reducing
the US profile in Iraq in order to forestall a looming demand by
the Iraqi parliament for a total US withdrawal. Now it is
probably too late because the Syrian Kurds have decided to
abandon the US before the US abandons them.
- Trump was doubtless
informed about events in Iraq on a running basis by McGurk over
recent months, but his statements at the US base were as
nonchalant about the facts in Iraq as about the situation in
Syria. What he does not imagine at all is that the day may be
close when the Iraqi parliament votes by a large majority to ask
him to remove US forces from the country -- and he will have to
comply.
- The consequences of
these December days will delay regime change in Iran. If a
perception arises in Iran that the regime can expel the US from
Iraq as well as Syria, while expanding its influence to dominate
Syria from end to end, some Iranians will give the regime
another chance and others will be significantly more discouraged
from challenging its power. Thus a single obstinate insistence to
prefer a personal instinct to all better-informed advice may
bring US policy tumbling down throughout the Middle East.
Pictured:
President Donald Trump and Melania Trump speak with US military
officers during a visit to Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq, on December 26,
2018. (Image source: The White House)
In April 2018, we warned that President Trump's
decision to withdraw US forces from Syria would be a repetition of
President Obama's worst mistake, the precipitate withdrawal from Iraq
that facilitated the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State (ISIS).
We perceived that the immediate consequence of
abandoning Syria would be a Turkish-led campaign to annihilate
America's Syrian Kurdish allies, who heroically bore the brunt of
defeating the ISIS in Syria and capturing its capital, Raqqa.
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