According to the great if controversial German jurist, Carl Schmitt, who also wrote eloquently on the laws of war and on world geopolitics, the relationship between the United States of America and the rest of the world is defined by its relationship to Europe.
 
In 1832, runs his argument, Washington proclaimed the so-called Monroe doctrine. Named after President James Munroe who authored it, the doctrine holds that European powers should stay out of the Western hemisphere. It has been invoked numerous times during American history, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including most notably in the Spanish-American war which ended in victory for the US over Cuba in 1898.

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After conservative victories in Italy and England, are the French finally finding their way to a new and healthy alternative to both Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nicolas Sarkozy?

The websites are talking about a new movement that has been formed the Nouvelle Droite Populaire (NDP), composed of defectors from Le Pen's Front National, members of Bruno Mégret's MNR (National Republican Movement), and other nationalist, sovereignist and regionalist groups, parties and individuals. This is not a political party but an assembly of like-minded individuals who espouse a policy of both decentralization, i.e., regionalism, and nationalism. After an initial meeting on March 29 to lay the groundwork, a second meeting on April 27 adopted the official name which translates as New Popular Right. Their website outlines the group's goals:

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A few days ago Britain’s “democratic socialist” Labour government suffered a crushing defeat in council elections in England and Wales. Losing well over 300 seats, it was the party’s worst election performance for 40 years, under our unelected representative, prime minister Gordon Brown. The Liberal Democrats made gains, as did the British National Party (BNP), though the Conservatives easily came out on top, with an enormous win of 256 additional councilors. Equally important, Conservative MP Boris Johnson was elected to the much-coveted position of London mayor.

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Here are some excerpts from an excellent essay on May 68 by a writer named Cyril de Pins. Several French websites have mentioned the article:

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In the 1st part of this essay, we hypothesized that the European civilization, both in the mother continent and in its diaspora, is pursuing a path of gradual self-obliteration for reasons rooted in a deep, collective psychosis. We stated further that Japan has similar reasons to have acquired a deep collective psychosis, yet it is pursuing the path of life. We will try here to shed some light on the possible reasons for this divergence.

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Different languages have different words for a major defeat or rout. They are often borrowed from the most inglorious episodes in respective national histories. Thus the French word for a terrible defeat is “bérézina”, a reference to the disastrous Battle of Berezina in present-day Belarus in 1812 when Napoleon’s already retreating troops were decimated by Marshal Kutuzov. The Germans often use the term “Stunde Null” (“Zero Hour”) for the same purpose: this was the term used to denote Germany’s state of total devastation after the unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. The British, rather eccentrically, use the word “Waterloo” to mean “defeat”, even though they were the victors in that Belgian village in 1815.

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Whilst the attention of the USA and the UK is distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our most likely enemy for the mid to long-term, Communist China, is beavering away at ramping up her military power. The objective becomes plainer by the day: to elevate herself to Super Power status with an Afro-Asian Empire to sustain her need for commodities.

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Earlier generations of Britons believed that certain things simply could not happen in Britain. Even in the country’s darkest moments of war or depression, this conviction differentiated the then proud nation from the U.S.S.R., third world countries, and unstable regimes that might fall to dictatorship any moment. News blackouts, and the banning of a book or film of course occurred here or there, but these never seemed very serious events.

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Italy’s general elections two weeks ago resulted in an absolute majority for Silvio Berlusconi’s rightist alliance. Mr. Berlusconi thanks his victory to the astonishing and pivotal electoral success of the Lega Nord, a constituent of his alliance. The Northern League completely wiped away the left in the north of Italy. It doubled in size and won a stunning 8.3% of the national vote, sending 60 deputies (+37) and 26 senators (+13) to Rome. In some northern regions it had the support of up to 50% of the electorate.

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Following the victory of Silvio Berlusconi’s rightist alliance in Italy, The Economist wrote a condescending editorial, entitled “Mamma mia.” The article stated that Berlusconi was not The Economist’s choice and said that the “Italians may come to regret electing [the jester of Italian politics] once again.” Barely a month earlier, Spain had re-elected its own “jester,” Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a man whose main ambition is to destroy Spain’s Christian heritage and substitute it with a postmodern, multicultural utopia where homosexuals marry and the state raises children. At that election, however, The Economist did not feel compelled to snub the winner. It just told its readers that Spain needs “a bipartisan approach to […] solve big questions of national identity.”

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The Swiss journalist Alain Jean-Mairet responds to an article by Daniel Pipes entitled “Europe or Eurabia.” Pipes lists three possible outcomes to the current crisis in which millions of Muslims are slowly but surely exerting more and more influence over the European countries they have migrated to: 1) domination of Europe by Islam 2) rejection of Islam by Europeans who finally emerge from their coma and rise up against the enemy 3) peaceful and harmonious co-existence between Muslims and Europeans.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will decide by late 2008 or early 2009 whether France will fully rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is one of the more important issues left unresolved at the recently concluded Bucharest Summit, where Sarkozy proclaimed: “I reaffirm here France’s determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with NATO.”

General Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance. And more than 40 years later, the issue of American influence over European security remains a fundamental stumbling block to improved Franco-US relations.

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Sooner or later a certain type of pop singer turns his hand to art. Such an entertainer believes himself profound, intellectually advanced, risqué. No doubt he recognizes that there is something inherently silly about the rhyming of some vague, ephemeral, political message. Through art he is able to associate himself with a history of great ideas, and great intellectual and religious movements that have shaped our world.

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There are various drawbacks to an expat's life in Japan, starting with the big task of learning the redundancy-packed language and dealing with the cultural parochialism of the population – a parochialism in the intellectual sense only, for in the material sense the Japanese have mastered the best the West has to offer.

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I visited Moscow last week, my second visit to the Russian capital in seven months, and it is always an overwhelming experience. Moscow is a Moloch of a city, an unimaginably vast metropolis where everything is on a far greater scale than anywhere else in Europe. The buildings are massive, most streets have three lanes in each direction, the crowds are stupendous. The metro, which is famously the best in the world, transports teeming millions of people hither and thither; the escalators are constantly full as people flood up and down, and the trains are full even though they come every minute with the absolute regularity of a Swiss clock.

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