{"id":504,"date":"2015-01-24T23:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T23:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=504"},"modified":"2015-01-24T23:00:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T23:00:26","slug":"americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html","title":{"rendered":"Billions on &#8220;democratization&#8221; buy new dictators for the people of Egypt and Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Il arrivera, donc. ce moment o\u00f9 le soleil n\u2019\u00e9clairera plus. sur la terre. que des hommes libres. et ne reconnaissant d\u2019autre ma\u00eetre que leur raison.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">It will happen, then, in the moment the sun is brightest upon the world, that men will be free and they will recognize no other master than their reason.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Nicolas de Condorcet<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>We need to reconsider\u00a0something curious that US President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address. This was the subject of America&#8217;s commitment to human rights and free speech.<\/h2>\n<p>Obama claimed that the US\u00a0government firmly stands up for free speech, the rights of political prisoners, and the interest of women, ethnic minorities and sexual minorities. In reality, I would argue that the US\u00a0 only brings up these issues when it needs some fuel\u00a0to criticize the countries opposing its hegemony. It doesn&#8217;t really value such things as free speech or human rights\u00a0at all, or it might be more committed to such values in its own country. The US is persecuting its own country&#8217;s dissidents such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, and the US under Obama\u00a0is responsible for supporting more repressive dictatorships around the world than any other country.<\/p>\n<p>It is especially strange, in view of the recent torture report which disclosed the CIA&#8217;s crimes to the public, that the US government would profess to be the biggest advocate in the world for things like human rights and free speech. It is especially rich of the US government\u00a0to condemn\u00a0Russian President Vladimir Putin as an autocrat, when their\u00a0own record on human rights and free speech seems so\u00a0much worse than Putin&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Officially, the CIA cannot tell us where their torture &#8220;black sites&#8221; are because it doesn&#8217;t want to endanger the personnel working at those facilities. The US government doesn&#8217;t value the lives of its personnel. The real reason the government can&#8217;t afford to disclose the locations of its black sites is that we would see they\u00a0are all located in various repressive countries in Eastern Europe and the third world, proving\u00a0the CIA is guilty of\u00a0most of the domestic repression and torture\u00a0applied by repressive regimes against their subjects today. Such a disclosure would shatter the myth that the United States is fighting tyrants, and confirm that the United States is actually supporting tyrants.<\/p>\n<h2>We only have to look to the events in Ukraine to realize\u00a0that the United States government doesn&#8217;t really\u00a0favor a\u00a0liberal\u00a0democratic transition\u00a0for other countries, but\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/2014\/12\/ukraine-is-us-made-military-dictatorship.html\" target=\"_blank\">military dictatorship<\/a>.<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg\/1200px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time to stop falling for the scam that the US is interested in expanding\u00a0the zone of freedom (&#8220;free trade&#8221;, perhaps) and democracy (more like, NATO membership) in the world. The only interest the US has in other countries is about spreading the methods and technologies of tyranny, torture and repression. The US only cynically uses liberal democratic ideology\u00a0as a kind of propaganda &#8220;wedge strategy&#8221; to start justifying its infection of other countries\u00a0with its political influence, with the goal of ultimately ousting\u00a0democratically elected rulers and replacing them with executioners and dictators trained by the CIA. It is a strategy of staging coups, as old as the 1950s:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The US <strong>criticizes the democratically-elected ruler as someone on a possible slippery slope to autocracy<\/strong>\u00a0(e.g. Morsi in Egypt or Yanukovich in Ukraine), like it does regarding\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/li>\n<li>The US\u00a0starts supporting an &#8220;all\u00a0means necessary&#8221; <strong>coup against\u00a0the quasi-autocrat<\/strong>. It befriends\u00a0anyone willing to\u00a0destabilize the country, including the neo-Nazis it supported in Ukraine and the al Qaeda terrorists it supported in Libya and Syria<\/li>\n<li>Once the CIA&#8217;s\u00a0coup team\u00a0has stormed the capital, the new US puppet dictators take the first\u00a0<strong>actual constitutional steps to make the\u00a0country autocratic: they\u00a0outlaw all opposition parties and independent media in the country<\/strong>, as Sisi did in Egypt and Poroshenko did in Ukraine. They build the\u00a0more sordid and autocratic regime than the original\u00a0one\u00a0they were\u00a0complaining about when they started to interfere<\/li>\n<li>This is the most ridiculous part: the US government will\u00a0take the sudden and baffling step of saying<strong> democracy isn&#8217;t important anymore and they are just committed to the new regime&#8217;s security instead\u00a0<\/strong>(right after convincing the US taxpayer to waste billions of dollars, and often thousands of lives in the target country, supposedly trying to spread democracy in previous stages of the coup)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The most recent victims of this kind of CIA conspiracy have, as given in the examples above, been Egypt and Ukraine. In both of those countries, the CIA\u00a0brought new abominable dictators\u00a0to power who were worse than their predecessors: Sisi and\u00a0Poroshenko. Both of them have outlawed opposition and independent media &#8211; two crucial\u00a0steps\u00a0in the consolidation of power of a totalitarian state. Somehow, the US was able to recognize Morsi and Yanukovich&#8217;s alleged autocratic tendencies, but is incapable of\u00a0seeing anything autocratic about the new CIA-backed thugs and dictators liquidating lawmaking bodies, banning and beating up opposition politicians\u00a0and journalists, and ruling by decree.<\/p>\n<p>It is equally true that if the Bashar al-Assad regime was overthrown in Syria, the US would suddenly switch priorities and only talk about the new Syrian state&#8217;s security, saying democracy doesn&#8217;t matter anymore. Democratization, so called, is just a sorry excuse for the US government to begin\u00a0meddling\u00a0in\u00a0other countries, whereupon it will only be interested in establishing\u00a0a new\u00a0dictatorship. Imagine it, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died, listening to\u00a0America&#8217;s empty promises of democracy, when all the US was ever interested in was replacing Assad with a new\u00a0dictator who is on their payroll. They wouldn&#8217;t care if the civil war continued, either &#8211; as it did in Libya. They just want the head of state to be a puppet, to obey their commands, like Sisi in Egypt or the new dictatorial general they are backing in\u00a0Libya.<\/p>\n<p>We should all be appalled by how most of our\u00a0media are\u00a0very selective in their\u00a0coverage of repression in other countries. Specifically, they only ever talk about repression\u00a0when it helps the US undermine its political or military rivals, and they simply avoid\u00a0all recognition of repressive policies if the dictator is\u00a0on the side of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">By\u00a0<a title=\"Harry J. Bentham's file at ClubOfINFO Circulation\" href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham\" target=\"_blank\">Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-41\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/375\/2014\/08\/HJB-Signature-and-stamp-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"HJB Signature and stamp\" width=\"200\" height=\"113\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Il arrivera, donc. ce moment o\u00f9 le soleil n\u2019\u00e9clairera plus. sur la terre. que des hommes libres. et ne reconnaissant d\u2019autre ma\u00eetre que leur raison. It will happen, then, in the moment the sun is brightest upon the world, that men will be free and they will recognize no other master than their reason. Nicolas&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,71,17,37,72,127,153,67,66,15,69,89],"tags":[295,422,431,1483,423,428,420,426,430,429,419,424,425,281,427,421,298,91],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-edward-snowden","category-history","category-international-relations","category-journalism","category-lordre-2","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-us","category-violence","category-wikileaks","tag-black-sites","tag-chelsea-manning","tag-cia-staged-coup","tag-edward-snowden","tag-human-rights","tag-political-prisoners-in-america","tag-poroshenko","tag-president-obama","tag-putin-dictator","tag-repression","tag-sisi","tag-state-of-the-union","tag-torture-black-sites","tag-torture-report","tag-us-political-prisoners","tag-us-backed-dictators","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wikileaks-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Billions on &quot;democratization&quot; buy new dictators for the people of Egypt and Ukraine - L&#039;Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Billions on &quot;democratization&quot; buy new dictators for the people of Egypt and Ukraine - L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Il arrivera, donc. ce moment o\u00f9 le soleil n\u2019\u00e9clairera plus. sur la terre. que des hommes libres. et ne reconnaissant d\u2019autre ma\u00eetre que leur raison. 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It will happen, then, in the moment the sun is brightest upon the world, that men will be free and they will recognize no other master than their reason. Nicolas&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html","og_site_name":"L&#039;Ordre","article_published_time":"2015-01-24T23:00:40+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-01-24T23:00:26+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg\/1200px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html","name":"Billions on \"democratization\" buy new dictators for the people of Egypt and Ukraine - L&#039;Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg\/1200px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png","datePublished":"2015-01-24T23:00:40+00:00","dateModified":"2015-01-24T23:00:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg\/1200px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg\/1200px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/americas-billions-on-democratization-buy-dictators-for-the-people-of-egypt-and-ukraine.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Billions on &#8220;democratization&#8221; buy new dictators for the people of Egypt and Ukraine"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L&#039;Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}