Bob,

I think you are going off at a tangent; I had made the argument in terms of ‘Quality’ and not ‘Quantity’, and my own children’s example is absolutely relevant, as it demonstrates my argument very well.

If you have a work force that leaves school @16, and isn't encouraged to take up further and higher education, and if that was applicable to the majority from the State system, then by default, they would be going into low paid jobs, to fuel the fires of business's ambition of employing cheap labour, exactly the scenario of cheap East European migrant labour force, if there wasn't a market for them here then we wouldn't have had the numbers exceed the government's estimates.(leaving aside the benefits for this argument)

The reason it has now become a point of contention, is that there are more people with higher or professional quals and would not take up the jobs at a lower pay, along with the desire to have a higher standard of living, hence creating a market for those from Eastern Europe.

Hope this settles any misunderstanding, but I thought I had further emphasised this in my previous comment.

Another sign of the lack of “moderate Muslims” is the fact that the fundamentalists can rouse a crowd of thousands or tens of thousands of Muslims to scream “death to America and death to Israel” in a seeming instant but I have never seen a demonstration by “moderate Muslims” protesting against Muslim terrorism, particular terrorist acts or against Hamas, Hezbullah or Al-Qaeda. I think people are just hoping against hope that there are these hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims because, if there aren’t, we are in a much more perilous situation that they want to believe we are in. Such optimists do not want to believe that we are in a battle for our survival because if we are, then all sorts of things have to change and change radically; and for many the long party that started after WWII would be over and they don’t want the music to stop.

Most of the 1.2 billion Muslims are on the sidelines of the battlefield, standing silent but, by their silence supporting the Muslim team. Observant Muslims have the religious obligation to war (Jihad) against Infidels or to support Jihad financially if they can’t. Many of these bystanders give funding, logistical support, transportation and cover to the active terrorists and never tell us Infidels what they see. There are even religious rulings saying that, in a war situation, it is the duty of a Muslim, who knows something that an Infidel wants to know which will help that Infidel and hurt another Muslim, to lie to protect a fellow Muslim.

To judge by actions, there is no large body of “moderate Muslims” there. If there are such "moderate Muslims" in large numbers who are afraid to speak or act, I fear that fundamentalist control and social pressures within the umma are so strong that such resistance will be unlikely to gain any momentum. The Muslim umma is, by design, very self-contained, and Islam, by design, is very impervious to reform, with Muslim religious and legal scholars saying that after the 11th century A. D. "the Gates of Ijtihad are Closed" i.e. everything about Muslim teachings has been finalized and no further changes are allowed. Anyone who advocates change is, ipso facto, an apostate subject to the death penalty.

Since Muslims have been taught that non-believers are deluded, unclean, are doomed to be tortured and burn in fire forever and are "the spawn of pigs and monkeys" the prospect of Muslims opposing fellow Muslims and cooperating with Infidels who want to reform Islam seems remote to me.

"Although everyone is searching for the fabled “moderate Muslims,” except for a handful of courageous Muslims out of 1.2 billion, no one seems to be able to find any."

Looking for moderate Muslims is like searching for a needle in a haystack and not seeing that the haystack is going to fall on your head. Looking for the needle is just an excuse for not having to face reality.

Christians are the closest thing to being moderate Muslims.

The thought of "the moderate Muslim" is disrespectfull towards the Muslim. This thought wants the Muslim to be something the Muslim himself doesn't want to be.

Although everyone is searching for the fabled “moderate Muslims,” except for a handful of courageous Muslims out of 1.2 billion, no one seems to be able to find any. Yes, there are Muslim groups like CAIR that claim to be moderate but, an examination of their membership and positions show they are not moderates at all. If there were a large number of true moderates, I would expect to see reformist Mosques whose Imams spoke out for their ideas, news about proposals to modernize, revise and soften the Koran, moderate Muslim institutions advocating reform of Islam, major political movements within the Muslim world with leaders arguing for reform, even a resistance movement whose goal was active subversion of the supremacist, totalitarian and zenophobic aspects fo Islam. Unfortunately, fundamentalists control most of the levers of power in the Muslim world, they are the ones in control of the mic and any opposition, small though it seems to be, is soon silenced. Muslims, whatever they might think, are still taught from the same sources—the Koran, Hadith and Sira—that contain the blueprint for conquest and subjection of non-believers and, as seen from the texts I refered to in an earlier post, Muslims are being taught to build up a "wall of hate and resentment" against non-believers as standard policy.

Sam ... FYI, the vast majority of websites everywhere, are hosted on US servers. This is really a non-issue. Even Al-Qaeda were hosted on US servers until a few years ago and many Islamist websites remain hosted on US servers.

Reasons for this are several (both technical & legal); for example the majority of Internet Routers are located on US territory, the USA offers the highest bandwidth and most competitive pricing, and the USA guarantees freedom of expression.

The upshot is that at present, 85% of all worldwide Internet traffic is routed through the USA; so that if you are someone in Singapore seeking to communicate with a website in the UK your data packets probably wizzed (indirectly) through US territory to do so.

The situation changes year by year, as the system expands, but that is the general situation as of 2005/06.

... which is why it's important to distinguish between Wahabbist and radicalised, militant Islamists and moderate Muslims, and not say "Muslims are this" or "Muslims are that".

I call your attention to this report (including translations of relevant passages, fatwas and authoritative rulings at the freedomhouse.org website http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/publications/Saudi%20Report/FINAL%20FINAL.pdf) about the Saudi provided Wahabist texts that are used to educate Muslims in America; I suspect the same or or even more fundamentalist texts are used in Europe and England. I doubt the many immigrants in former times or those from non-Muslim parts of the world today, for that matter, have this kind of stuff rattling round in their brains 24/7 as do many Muslims.

Some of the milder statements:

“[I]t is basic Islam to believe that everyone who does not
embrace Islam is an unbeliever, and must be called an
unbeliever, and that they are enemies to Allah, his Prophet and
believers.” [Document No. 2]

“To be dissociated from the infidels is to hate them for their
religion, to leave them, never to rely on them for support, not
to admire them, to be on one’s guard against them, never to
imitate them, and to always oppose them in every way
according to Islamic law.” [Document No. 45]

“Our task in general is to stand against the flood of modernist
civilization overflowing from the swamp of materialistic and
sinful desires. This flood has swept the Muslim nation away
from the Prophet’s leadership and Koranic guidance and
deprived the world of its guiding light. Western secularism
moved into a Muslim world already estranged from its Koranic
roots, and delayed its advancement for centuries, and will
continue to do so until we drive it from our lands. Moreover,
we will not stop at this point, but will pursue this evil force to
its own lands, invade its Western heartland, and struggle to
overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the
Prophet and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the
world. Only then will Muslims achieve their fundamental
goal, and there will be no more ‘persecution’ and all religion
will be exclusively for Allah….” [Document No. 31]

“Whoever believes that churches are houses of God and that
God is worshipped therein, or that what Jews and Christians do
constitutes the worship of God and obedience to Him and His
Prophet, or that God likes such practices and approves of them;
and whoever assists them to keep their churches open and to
establish their religion, and does so out of a feeling of kinship
or out of a sense of obedience—whoever does all these things
is an infidel.” [Document No. 52]

Another Ibn Taymiya pronouncement is given as a warning: “Whoever believes
that visiting dhimmis [Christians and Jews] in their churches brings him closer to God is
an apostate.” According to the Saudi interpretation of Islamic law, apostasy is punishable
by death [Document No. 52].

“Those who reside in the land of unbelief out of their own
choice and desire to be with the people of that land, accepting
the way they are regarding their faith, or giving compliments to
them, or pleasing them by pointing out something wrong with
the Muslims, they become unbelievers and enemies to Allah
and his messenger.” [Document No. 45]

“There is consensus on this matter, that whoever helps
unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of
support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself.”
[Document No. 45]

The fact remains that the numbers of people in secondary and higher education increased steadily from 1945 onwards, and shows that it is just not true that the Tories tried to deliver an uneducated workforce to their business supporters, which is what you said.

Your children's experience of their local schools is irrelevant to this point.

Their policy of shifting the burden from State Education to Private Schooling was at the heart of it, all the local schools in a wider area where I am and around the country, when compared with the Tories tenure is the evidence, I had to reluctantly take my eldest son out of the state schooling system, and put him through private system @16k a year, and the same school is now attended by my younger child is on par with the private one that the older one attended in terms of facilities available.

The state system was systematically, starved of funding, I have said it somewhere in my comments, that the visible funding now and then is a stark fact of their underlying ambitions, this is reflected in the state of our state schools general conditions, i.e. infrastructure, Equipment and other facilities, the numbers would expand at any rate with the direct rise in population and wasn’t my point of contention. The take up rates of students going on to further Education from the Sate Schools has also risen, (up to last year, even with tuition fees being introduced) as a result of the general encouragement derived from a healthy system.

And I am sure you would recall the reports at the time highlighting the differences in attitude, of the government then.

The issue of achievement and the levels attained is yet another matter, depending on the aptitude of those going through at any point in time (though there are those who say that A’ Levels are getting easier, I personally haven’t spotted that). However, as parent and as an employer, I find that there is a marked improvement in the calibre of graduates coming out in the past 5- 6 years, there are a lot of people from State Schools achieving places at Oxford and Cambridge, which was a rare commodity during those times as the state system was failing the masses. What they lack is relevant vocational training, akin to the type that Accountants get while studying for a professional qualification, which is a mix of theory and practical experience to be able to take up employment without much upheaval.

Like you I don’t get caught up too much in the media hype but use personal experience and observations as a basis, and generally, talk to people in the area where I live and work, so it is more a ground level account of personal and others’ experiences.

King Cobra: "The conservatives did not want the masses educated as their cronies the Business fraternity wanted cheap labour."
Eh? What evidence is there for this? Numbers in secondary and higher education have remorselessly expanded since 1945 under both Tory and Labour governments.

Armor: "There wouldn't be any talk of white flight if the white sellers sold or rented their London homes to white buyers. How come the new occupants are not European?"

Well, some of them are, and some of them aren't. Hope this makes things clear.

"Immigration is not the same as sea water, it can be turned back."

Where is this happening?

"The loony left is going to be replaced, either by reasonable Europeans, or by third-world people, or by a combination of the two."

If I had a clearer idea what you mean by the "loony left" I might be able to offer a comment.

"In any case, there won't be any Bob Doney left to roam the surface of the internet in 50 years."

Have you been talking to my doctor again?

Practical Bob: "On a purely practical note, a lot of the reasons for "white flight" from London are not to do with Muslims or any other immigrants. If you see your modest house in Dulwich is worth a million quid (two million dollars!) and will buy a very large place in Sussex or Shropshire or Florida or Provence there is going to be a temptation to take the money and run."

You don't explain anything. There wouldn't be any talk of white flight if the white sellers sold or rented their London homes to fellow white people. How come the new occupants are not European?

"Immigration is just one of the social changes that have made England a much more attractive place to live for most people."

I'm are glad to know.

"Anyway this is the reality"

Thank you.

"The dinosaurs who post here are just like King Canute proving that the tide can't be turned back."

Immigration is not the same as sea water, it can be turned back. Anyway, mass immigration and leftist social vandalism will have to stop at some point, if only for mechanical reasons. There won't be any society left to destroy, the welfare state will be ruined, and immigrants will complain that Britain has become too crowded. The loony left is going to be replaced, either by reasonable Europeans, or by third-world people, or by a combination of the two. If reasonable Europeans wake up now and send the immigrants back home, we can still have a future. In any case, there won't be any Bob Doney left to roam the surface of the internet in 50 years.

contd..Final

We are also to share the burden, in this alienation process, as they say it takes two to tango, we keep brandishing the ‘immigration’ whip at every opportunity, thus unsettling everyone, people jumping to the wrong conclusions and panic strikes, they start to channel their energies in building nest eggs in their countries of origin and losing interest in their adopted countries, we can all be ignorant and arrogant and say it is their fault, but is it? I am sure if the situation was reversed we would do exactly the same, why is it that the Aussie Ghettos’ in the Earls Court area of London is not picked upon by people, there are similar ones for people from South Africa and New Zealand.( and before any smart alec says they are Christians, I know) but that is exactly the point, we started to discriminate, prejudiced views led to lack of opportunities for the immigrants, we didn’t want to accept them, so it isn’t entirely their fault and is it any wonder, why towns in London look like Peshawar.

Why does America have Ghettos’? What are the under lying causes for this cancer in the world’s richest and most advanced nation?

Have the academics missed a trick here, after all the advanced theories and thinking, the problem still persists and has followed us in the 21st century and are we about to export it to another planet soon, God help us, indeed God help us, we haven’t yet learned to wipe our behinds properly and are dreaming of galaxies far, far away.

All, you experts and academics out there, you are charged with the most heinous crime in the history of mankind, THE DEMISE OF MANKIND AND HUMAN CIVILISATION.

I am but a mere mortal, so Oh! Noble ones, guide me to the promised land, where milk and honey flows instead of rivers of blood and why is it that even after the sacrifices of our Lord, Jesus Christ, we haven’t actually learned anything. He even forgave those who crucified him; do we ever stop and think why? Is this the world he visualized, not any different from his times, is this, what he sacrificed his life for?

"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side."

Where did I read this, and why does this have an ironic sense of truth, but how many today even understand what it means or is it that they don’t want to understand it.

contd...

If one observes the Educational background of both the communities, it would become evident, as to why the areas are stuck in abject poverty and hopeless limbo. The areas as the rest of the country suffered lack of investment during the 15 years of the conservative's policy, there were inner city riots, all the manufacturing industries went abroad, mining, shipping etc died a death, and the Tories changed the British Society from heavy Industrial to Service industry orientated. The trend has changed over the past 10 years, we now have industries back in the North, be it they are Japanese Car makers, but slowly the areas are being regenerated. More and more people are going on to further Education, instead of coming out of schooling @ 16yrs with no qualifications or training of any sort to their name. The conservatives did not want the masses educated as their cronies the Business fraternity wanted cheap labour. The Pareto phenomenon of 80-20 wasn’t more applicable to Modern Britain at any time, but during those 15 years...

The Infrastructure was starved of funding, NHS, Transport, Education all suffered heavily during that time, yes we all had a lot of money in our pockets, which was mostly spent abroad in Tourism and in imported consumable goods, hence destabilising the Economy, Who could forget the interest rated @ 15%, a lot of people sitting with 'Negative Equity' in their homes. We invited all sorts of immigration to revive the Economy.

The problem started with the rise in Islamic immigration especially from Pakistan and then Bangla Desh, but the worst were the ones from Pakistan, at least the Bangla Deshi’s followed into the footsteps of the Indians before them and some of them are successful within the communities.

Often the Pakistani’s were totally illiterate and had a different philosophy (Islam) and weren’t ready to mix due to their own inadequacies and lack of understanding of an alien culture, unable to communicate was another reason for the cause of resentment between the natives and them, so they started to form groups and then ghettos within their areas, this was exacerbated by the natives’ unwillingness to accept them, these are the people who were the throw outs of the rapidly changing social environment, often uneducated and only limited to a single skill to their name, like the ship builders or miners, all of which were no longer required in a changing Britain, and here is where the tussle starts for those limited resources “BENEFITS” or handouts as some would say.

So take the two sides, both from deprived and poverty stricken backgrounds competing for those scarce resources and the scene is set for confrontation, accusations, mistrust, and above all of lack of sanity. Young people from both sides with little or no education, in hopeless situations, nothing constructive to do, no jobs and both sets without any guidance or leadership from either their uneducated parents or the society at large. Result is Hatred and Envy.

Yet some did rise by retraining or getting Education and moved out to pastures green to London etc, and by doing so pushing those areas into further penury. The reluctance of these people to move out of these areas due the lack of education and confidence is a further cause for status quo, now we all take a stab at ‘Sharia Law’ but the one thing that is getting the Islamic communities rise out of the hopelessness is their sense of community, they have started to help themselves, and have become targets of more hatred and envy, the confrontations have grown and resentments have reached crisis point. Empty mind is most definitely, the mind of the devil, leads to even the most sensible people to desperate, evil and despicable deeds, ‘TERRORISM’ the foundations of which lie in a far away land, where those left behind can’t see any future for themselves and see their kin folk, from ‘Londonistan’ loaded with money, owning houses and drive flashy cars and thus begins the fear of being left behind and the loss of control over a outdated religious belief, and the brain washing starts and the endeavour to tie a noose of the very thing called Islam around their own people, thinking that if they take charge of those in Londonistan then their fortunes could change.

Admittedly, there are a few areas in London that are 'Ghettoised' but I wouldn't make sweeping statements that London looks like Peshawar, by the same token, I recently saw a documentary on Chicago and it looked the same as some of the areas in London, I didn't see any one in Chicago alarmed by it.

What about the predominantly Black or Latino areas in the US? Do they make visitors to US think that they were either in Africa or South America, Miami has a large population of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Blacks and everyone, doesn't mean it is either a part of CUBA or Puerto Rica etc.

People from abroad are judging Britain, without understanding the underlying causes and its recent past, if one sets aside the issues of its inhabitants and compares the Britain of today, to the era of 1979 – 1997. The Changes are remarkable, Britain has just come out of the grey industrialised 19th Century into the 21st Century, yes there is a lot that needs to be done, and it isn’t going to happen overnight. Unlike America we in Britain weren’t enterprise orientated, people relied on State owned and heavily subsidised industries for most of their incomes as they mostly worked in heavy industries, mines and labour intensive fields. Commerce and Service industries were just emerging; London wasn’t on par with New York or Tokyo.

We hadn’t got the Empire out of our systems (some still haven’t), most people didn’t believe in savings or owning properties, council accommodation was the theme, people were comfortable in a 9-5.30 jobs, there were hardly any shops that were open after 5.30pm or on Sundays.

The only things, that I give credit to Margaret Thatcher for is a/ breaking down the strangle hold of the unions over the country, as their actions were suffocating the commerce and businesses, b/ providing a platform for Enterprise, but her weakness was that she left everyone to their own devices, the principle of the ‘market’ driven economy was fine but with little or no government control, meant that the wealthy 20% of the people were raping the country with both hands, asset stripping became the norm, we sold all our family silver. We owned virtually nothing, even the houses were often mortgaged to Finance Companies owned by the Arabs, in fact until fully paid they own the land under our back sides.

So, who took advantage of Thatcher’s policies? It were the Asian immigrants, mostly Indians, they have enterprise in their blood, within one year of Mrs Thatcher being in government, her enterprise policies changed the landscape of British business, most natives sold out to them and retired in sea side areas to put their feet up, we saw a transformation of the country’s trade environment, suddenly, the local corner shop was open for longer hours, weekend, new restaurants and ‘deli’s started to appear everywhere, all sorts of tropical and exotic foods started to appear in our shops. The Indians were working extremely long hours and success followed, those same immigrants who came here to work in menial jobs, often low paid ones, were now running businesses, their children enjoying expensive private education, becoming Doctors, Dentists, Accountants and Lawyers and moving out of those menial jobs that their fathers before them did, this is my personal observation of just one generation and the rest as they say is history. They mixed in and integrated in very well.

My local area has a lot of Asians and native White Britons. Over the past 20 years, especially the last 10 years, I have seen our local area transformed from a grey and dull environment to the hustling and bustling community that is thieving and improving life for everyone, the White Christian Community is also thriving quite well (I don’t live in a millionaire’s row) there is no animosity between the people, no White Christian Family has ever moved out of the area or given up their identity or way of life in any shape or form and haven’t felt threatened in any way at all. In fact there is a healthy respect of each other’s way of lifestyles and people understand that very well. I wonder, is Education the difference in all this. As it dispels Fears and Ignorance and gives confidence and hope?

The areas where there are problems i.e. the North of England, most of it was in deep poverty, this is the same for both the natives and the immigrants, there is envy and resentment for the immigrants because they are both competing for those scarce resources 'Benefits'

more...in partII

Humour me. Go on...

Q: What proportion of Londoners are Muslims? (Last figures are per the 2001 Census). 10%? 15%? 30%? 75%? Less? More? What do you reckon?

"As for this website being hosted in the U.S., one point you forgot to mention is the freedom to post our ideas that hosting in the U.S. provides"

Do you think I'm anti-American or something?!

Dear Bob—So, you think all this immigration has improved the boring, stifling England of the past and has made England and London an exciting, happening place. Well, so do I ‘cause Muslim terrorist attacks are happening, police raids are happening and I have a feeling that they are going to be happening all over the place with increasing frequency; so much fun! While I may be a dinosaur--I certainly have a certain age on me--I am at least an educated dinosaur who out of necessity has learned more than I wished to about the Koran, Hadiths, Sira, the character and career of Muhammad, Muslim history and terrorist ideology courtesy of Wahab, al-Banna, Qutb and 9/11. If you think that “tolerance and understanding” are going to work on Muslim “immigrants” –colonists, point men or advance scouts are more accurate terms—you are seriously deluded. They will bully you and push the limits ever outward, they will not integrate and many dream of having your head on a pike and a Muslim flag flying over the Tower of London. Singing “It’s a small world after all” as the lights go out ain’t gonna solve this problem.

I also doubt that most people in London or England, for that matter, would think that immigration has made England “a much more attractive place to live in for most people,” after all they have already, many of them, voted with their feet. I do not buy your location, location, location and resultant generous home sale profits argument for this flight. The term “flight” as in fleeing from someone or something is, I believe, an accurate term.

As for this website being hosted in the U.S., one point you forgot to mention is the freedom to post our ideas that hosting in the U.S. provides, freedom of opinion that is slowly being strangled by various laws in England and Europe.

Dear Sam

You do not seem to see the irony of your remarks. You tell us that many of your ancestors came to America from England. They did exactly what the recent immigrants to England have done - move around the world in search of a better life. It's all very well to regret that England now is not the England of fifty years ago. The England of fifty years ago was in many respects a very restrictive and stifling place, ridden with class prejudice and frankly boring. Immigration is just one of the social changes that have made England a much more attractive place to live for most people. Yes, it has brought its problems, as is the case with any social upheavals, but there is no reason to think that in turn these problems can't be solved with tolerance, understanding and the sort of political leadership the major parties are beginning to realise is necessary (see Blair's words yesterday).

Anyway this is the reality. It is one world now. Again a lot of the contributors here ignore the irony of their being able to post comments on a Belgian website hosted in America and read by folk all over the world. Do they think that a world wide web is without consequences for globalisation of thought, creative energy and social mixing?

Immigration and emigration and population movement are going to increase and that is that. The cork is out of the bottle. The dinosaurs who post here are just like King Canute proving that the tide can't be turned back. So it's adapt to the new world order or go where the dinosaurs went.

On a purely practical note, a lot of the reasons for "white flight" from London are not to do with Muslims or any other immigrants. If you see your modest house in Dulwich is worth a million quid (two million dollars!) and will buy a very large place in Sussex or Shropshire or Florida or Provence there is going to be a temptation to take the money and run.

So Sam observed the current London and saw too many immigrants and closed churches.  The question is why the Brits and especially their elected official don't see the too many immigrants as a problem or potential problem?  Maybe they're accustomed to it and don't feel a thing, just like a frog in slowly warming water.  Or do they see it too but are too scared of being politically incorrect or singled out as racists? I guess it's just like global warming.  Some see it, some refuse to accept such conclusion, citing temperature cycle.  Personally, I think global warming is real because man is consuming fossil fuels in just 200 years what took 150 million years to produce.  In Peking one can't see buildings on the other side of the street in an average day, and one Chinese became billionaire by starting a company making PV panels.  An amazing fact is  90% of its business is outside China.

Flanders—I agree that the same virulent processes and ideas that have infected Europe are also very strong here in America too.

Although I am an American, many of my ancestors came to America from England before the American Revolution and again from Scotland and Wales during the Civil War and I do not forget this. On a recent tour of the UK, I was surprised at all the empty churches, many with sale signs in front of them. Parts of London looked more like Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong or Peshawar than the London I had remembered from decades ago; it was quite a shock. Ironically, our guide told us--two weeks before the first Tube bombing,--that many of the churches in some London districts has closed and then been reopened as welcome or social centers for all the Muslims who now lived in the neighborhoods that used to be populated by native Englishmen. So, I have seen some of the alarming trends first hand. When you add to this the news I see about the actions of English government officials and people in authority at all levels who are seemingly willing to give up almost any aspect of Britishness in order to appease aggressive Muslims and give in to their demands, you can see why I think things are very bleak indeed for England.

Sam, your comment:

"The ideas and attitudes that facilitated this slow motion Muslim invasion and conquest—political correctness, multiculturalism, postmodernism, diversity-- have developed and spread over many decades with the help of all the possible sources of propaganda—universities, cultural elites, school curricula, text books, artists, authors, lecturers, commentators, celebrities, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, plays, television. The Left has quite skillfully captured these organs of propaganda and today has a virtual monopoly in presenting its ideas....".

is entirely valid for the US, also. See this article critical of what has affected the US psyche. I'm certain it is part of the movement you have seen in your own country. We citizens have no voice, other than voting power which is intentionally diluted by media spin and the gift of voting rights to those whose interests are not with that of citizens of our own countries.

The article:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/seeds_intellectual_destruction.html

The Conservative movements first objective should be an allowance for a truly conservative voice in the Major Media Outlets, but especially television. The US has ABC, CBS and NBC, historically the leftists leaders and leftist voice on the national and often local levels since the fifties or sixties. Newcomer, Fox News, has garnered significant market share by using a centrist or slightly left of center ideology that is trumpeted as conservative. An independent conservative view with factual reporting has not been heard for so long that many do not know what it is and many have forgotten.

Truth is the greatest enemy to leftists. They will fight any and all attempts to establish a national voice for truth on the national level. Their sponsers will twist the argument and attempt to show that such a measure will endanger "our precious freedom of the press", as if they and their views constitute the full source for that supposed freedom, while they continue to deny true freedom of press by preventing significant and recurring conservative views and factual arguments.

The FCC will attempt to shield their leftist baby and so will politicians who feed from leftism. Victory will be a difficult fight as it is leftism in every place that will be under threat. That is because they cannot stand scrutiny in the light of truth. Truth will set all of us free. Truth will banish the left to where it belongs, to an insignificant but smelly garbage heap in history.

This all started off as a thread about the large number of Brits leaving London and the reasons why they are doing so. The answer, of course, is that the native British found London, as it has come to be, alien, unsafe and certainly un-British. As to how this situation came to be; a whole host of developments have lead to leaders and ideas that have not only allowed but encouraged large scale immigration of Muslims who are largely hostile to British ideals and whose leaders have no intention of integrating but, are instead intent in seeing their way of life prevail over native English civilization and in slowly, sometimes not so slowly, forcing Englishmen to bend the knee to Islam and Sharia law.

The ideas and attitudes that facilitated this slow motion Muslim invasion and conquest—political correctness, multiculturalism, postmodernism, diversity-- have developed and spread over many decades with the help of all the possible sources of propaganda—universities, cultural elites, school curricula, text books, artists, authors, lecturers, commentators, celebrities, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, plays, television. The Left has quite skillfully captured these organs of propaganda and today has a virtual monopoly in presenting its ideas and presenting them as correct, reasonable, progressive, humane, “attractive and smart” ideas while labeling conservative ideas as regressive, unreasonable, “unattractive, dull and stupid” insular, old fashioned, bigoted, inhumane, divisive—take your pick of negative labels.

Why have conservative ideas, the antibodies hostile to such a Muslim or any other foreign invasion, been largely beaten and driven from the field? I do not believe it is because conservative ideas are inferior to those of the left. I believe a major reason that the Left has scored such a decisive victory is because it long ago realized and exploited the power, a la Gramsci, of the media and the academy, elites and opinion makers to shape, to a greater or lesser extent, the morality, common ideals and institutions and thus the content and direction of each of the nations comprising Western civilization. I think another great factor has been generational change.

The “Greatest Generation” that learned some very tough lessons before and in WWII and governed out of those experiences for many decades has passed from the scene. Their replacements, softer, more unrealistic, mostly products of the institutions that the Left has so thoroughly subverted and compromised and of the relative abundance, wealth and leisure the Greatest Generation purchased at such great cost, are now governing. This is the situation as it now stands. How conservative forces, and who their leaders might be, can rally and eventually triumph over the left is a question for which I have no present answer.

Armor ... why just VDare? I have visited that website too, it contains many commendable articles, but to simply dismiss David Horowitz as a neocon (allegedly) is just plain silly. You asked for info on an author who could explain the machinations of the left; I have given you arguably the best, yet you respond churlishly and dismiss that advice based on something you read at just one website? Are you serious? Please get a grip and learn to recognize good advice when you get it.

Also, you might like to consider using the words "thank you" occasionally.

David Horowitz is getting on in years now; he is aged about 75. People with that experience and wisdom tend to become more compassionate. I know for a fact Horowitz does NOT support the kind of immigration you hate, but he may simply be taking a real-politik position. After all, he has a think-tank business to protect.

Here are some extracts from his unofficial biography.

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and the editor of its most influential magazine, Ramparts. He is the author, with Peter Collier, of a number of bestselling dynastic biographies on the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Fords, and the Roosevelts. With Collier he also wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their break with the 1960s Left, that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism.

Among Horowitz’s more recent books are: Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey from “red-diaper baby” to conservative activist that George Gilder described as “the first great autobiography of his generation”; Uncivil Wars (2002), which chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses; Left Illusions (2003), a one-volume course on the history of our time from the Cold War to the war on terror; Unholy Alliance (2004), which examines the pact between radical Islam and the American Left; and The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006), which reveals a shocking and perverse culture of academics who are poisoning the minds of today's college students. Horowitz is also the author of The Politics of Bad Faith, How to Beat the Democrats, and The Art of Political War. The latter was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.”

In 1988, Horowitz created the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) -- renamed the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) in July 2006 -- to institutionalize his campaigns against the Left and its anti-Americanism.

The DHFC’s mission is to defend the principles of individual freedom, the rule of law, private property, and limited government. It further seeks to defend free societies in the war against their enemies, and to reestablish academic freedom in American schools. The DHFC is supported by 40,000 contributors and publishes FrontPageMagazine.com, an online magazine featuring articles on “the war at home and abroad,” which receives approximately a million visitors per month. Another DHFC website, DiscoverTheNetworks.org, is an encyclopedia of the political Left and its networks.

-----------------

Specifically, to gain the understanding you require, you should read these books by Horowitz:

1) Destructive Generation (1989)
2) Left Illusions (2003)
3) Unholy Alliance (2004)

The media sets up their own conservatives. Very few are dyed in the wool conservatives in media interviews. Some of them may be actual conservatives, but the few who are actual conservatives are intentionally picked as being poor spokesmen and are then eaten up by the skilled "moderates" or "liberals" against whom they are pitted in heated discussion. Some are conservative to some degree, but useful for points the media feels it can make to discredit them by use of format or surprise or by finding chinks in their philosophy. The conservatives sometimes do make points but you know the overall picture. All this is intended for public consumption to convince the larger public that they are presenting real balance and to push a chosen leftist view.

The media IGNORES actual conservatives. The public has no chance to see them, hear them or know who they are. The exceptions are the ones above and when a group which is conservative is making noises which can't be ignored. The group and any spokesmen are labeled immediately with the term of the day- Racist, McCarthyite, Radical, danger to society! Those they cannot label they marginalize, by finding individuals with skeletons which can be paraded in public to discredit the group.

You may make a valid choice for yourself to avoid conservatives who differ in viewpoint than you and they can make that same choice themselves about you for their own reasons. Those who make valid conservative statements deserve to be heard even if you may not agree with them on every issue. Another poster pointed out that division and discord among ourselves is playing into the leftist game. We deserve respect for our conservative thought, even if we do not agree on all details. Our disagreements should be discussed reasonably and our scorn saved for those who are denying our public voice.

I happen to agree with you on the immigration issue as many of us here know how destructive it is to our societies in the US and in Europe. I will listen to anyone who presents conservative thought, so long as they maintain proper respect even if they disagree with my views in some areas. It is your choice. As for me, I can distinguish when I read or meet another conservative and understand that they may have a reason for holding a view different from mine on some issues. I respect them for our shared values and, on some controversies, those where our beliefs are not fully compatible.

All right, let's not call him a neocon or even a neoconservative. But still, how can he pose as a conservative, if he does not oppose mass immigration ?

I believe the derogative term "neocon" was coined by those on the Left as a tactic to stigmatize and marginalize certain opponents of theirs and, as such, was a skirmish in the very "Culture Wars" I discussed below. So, I would not be too quick to adopt the viewpoint that "neocons" are so bad without first examining their ideas. Once you start talking on the level of labels, rather than on an examination of specific ideas, you are already in trouble. Labeling is all part of the war and, often, quite effective too. One of my old professors at college, pre post-modernism, thank God, used to call such terms/labels "thought stoppers". Once someone uses one of them, figuratively drops a bomb, thought and discussion usually stops and emotion usually plays a much greater role. I believe that is why so many political discussions on various blogs, with their relative anonymity, soon lead to the use of the Joker in such debates, the "Nazi" card.

I would be cautious in relying solely on Wiki

Yes, I know!

FF: I think you are trying too hard to come to conclusions when you don't have sufficient information

No, in fact, I was asking who has a good theory to explain leftism. That's why I wrote: "I am sure a few books have already been written to explain what causes leftism." I think maybe I will go faster if I read a book written by a (right-wing) sociologist.

I don't like the "neoconservatives" because they usually support immigration and their name is misleading. You cannot be a conservative and support immigration. And they have taken the place of the real conservatives. This is a good example of the larger phenomenon of leftism finding its way in every institution even at the top of the Republican and Tory parties. I don't know how real conservatives have been ousted from the media and replaced with bogus conservatives (called neocons) but the last thing I need is the advice of a neocon.

While they may or may not be organized as to constitute a conspiracy

Sometimes, you find someone with leftist inclinations in your own family: a cousin, an aunt... Then you think it is probably not a big conspiracy, after all. Maybe it is a virus in the air?

How useful and necessary do you find them to be?

Maybe some of them are all right. What can be wrong with the NGO "Save China's Tigers" ?

Armor--Another way of looking at the deleterious changes that have occurred in our cultures/civilization in the West since WWII is to understand them as part of what has been called the "Culture War." If you look at the Wiki listing for this concept you will very soon encounter, surprise, surprise, the name of Antonio Gramsci.

P.S.--I would be cautious in relying solely on Wiki if I were you. Since anyone can write an entry, with little or no editorial scrutiny or supervision, and anyone can, thereafter, modify, add or delete portions of that article, you are initially getting one person's opinion, which subsequently can have been operated on by any number of uninformed, stupid, clumsy or in the worst case, malicious, surgeons.

Armor, I think you are trying too hard to come to conclusions when you don't have sufficient information. It sounds as if you are just beginning to obtain information and there is a lot of exploring to do before coming to decision time. I second Mission's recommendation on checking out Horowitz. He has two things going for him, for one he is a neo-con which means he is a liberal who is out of favor by the left, and the fact that he shoots straight, which almost brings him into our category. All we really ask for is truth without the gloss and spin. That is why the left turned on him.

Your leftists are loony eggs, but they are not scrambled. It is not as haphazard as it may appear. The looniness itself is not all chance, as their strategy is constant pressure, over time in as many venues as possible. Their goal is change, but change in a manner consistent with advancement of leftist causes, organizations and ideals. In our world, change is their revolution which never ends.

While they may or may not be organized as to constitute a conspiracy, they are certainly a coalition with other leftist elements. They are not adverse to using other hats or to set up pretend conservative sites or to use conservatives or centerists if it will further their goal of creating change by creating instability. They thrive with relativity so they encourage anything and justify it in relative terms and that is the reason they are against our common sense and real values. They are known to each other and are cohesive at their core. When one is "out", it is known to all(Horowitz for example), and that fate is known by all.

They love to set up groups. More groups give them more influence and respectability. Take a look at the following list of groups and tell how many you would consider as being non-left in orientation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:International_nongovernmental_organizations

How useful and necessary do you find them to be?

Their relativism allows them to join together for advancement of all leftist, relativist and centralization projects. They always want another layer of bureaucracy between them and the hands of centrists and conservatives(ordinary people). They thrive in centralization and bureaucracy and have no sympathy for individuals treated wrongly by it.

They abhor Christianity because real christianity has values and is their competitor for the souls, hearts and minds of men.

I just checked David Horowitz's name on the VDare website.
( Google Search with keywords: "David Horowitz" site:www.vdare.com )

They say he is a neocon supporting phony immigration reform. That is what I would have expected from seeing his name. So, I won't be reading his books. Anyway, he's written too many of them. I wouldn't know which one to choose. I'm not looking for books giving more examples of leftist madness. I am more interested in having 1) explanations of the phenomenon 2) a recipe to treat the disease. How do we create new institutions that will be resistant to leftism ?
Besides, I am an extremely slow reader. If you want to help me catch up, don't give me a book list, just give me a 10 line summary of David Horowitz's opinion.

Armor ... you are somewhat behind the curve. A lot of other people are already a few laps ahead of you, information wise. You need to do some catching up.

The books you wish for have already been written. One of the true experts in the field is David Horowitz, an ex-leftist radical himself from the 1960s.

You can visit his website bookstore here.

There are other authors of course, but Horowitz gives you the inside track.

Other (earlier) books written by David Horowitz are also available but you may not see them listed on the page I have linked you to. Most of his books are available at Amazon. I am confident you will know how to search for them. Happy reading.

But both of the above have been historical facts well before the 'leftism and communism' activisms were conceived. I believe the 'Hindus' have been vegetarians since the 'vedic times'.

what causes leftism?

Could Newtons 3rd law of motion be distorted and applied to this scenario? "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"

I'll make a comparison between christianism and leftism. Christianim is self-spreading because the idea that you must spread the faith in God is part of the religion itself. In the 20th century, communist ideas have been spreading because communists like Antonio Gramsci had a false belief that they could make the world a better place for "the workers" by having a revolution and replacing private capitalism by state capitalism.
But leftism is more like nihilism. It doesn't have zealots dedicated to a particular goal. It spreads by itself in every loony direction, propelled by social anomy, stupidity, malevolence, demagogy, a taste for imitating others and defying common sense. It has a lot to do with cultural fashion, and we do not really know why fashions come and go.

I think Gramsci's tactics to give power to the workers may have been hijacked by the loony left. The school system, news media, and public administration had been infiltrated by activists who believed in creating a worker's paradise. But their revolutionary activism has gradually degenerated into something else. Now, it is only about destroying traditional society for the sake of it. Like a cuckoo, the loony left has laid a loony egg in the middle of communist activism. What came out of it was not social paradise for the workers, but gay sex, mass immigration, vegetarianism, the whole word method, and so on.

Anyway, in my opinion, academia, the schools, newspapers and public administrations did not turn into hot beds of leftism just because they had been infiltrated by communist activists. I think administrations and complex organizations are natural breeding grounds for leftism because they are removed from world reality. In such places, leftism becomes dominant when the leftists are allowed to participate in the selection of new recruits.

I am sure a few books have already been written to explain what causes leftism. If not, it needs to be done now. We have to know more, so we can find a cure.

Flanders Fields said, I am not familiar with Gramsci

Neither am I. I just looked up his name in Wikipedia after Sam mentioned it.

the dissemination of much that is considered leftist comes from these type of sources which would commonly be seen to be capitalist

The sons of the bourgeois capitalists have become the champions of leftism in the media! And grassroot communism has almost disappeared.

M.I. said,"you keep overlooking the role of radical Feminism"

I think it has not done as much damage in france and most other countries as in Britain and America...

Mission Impossible: "Eulogizing and celebrating women's "power" on a daily basis soon wore away the respect (established centuries earlier) British society once had for the authority of older men."

The older men though quite cleverly managed to hold onto virtually all of the top jobs in the media, politics, business, the churches, the arts, the universities, the law, the trade unions and the professions. So if things have gone so badly wrong, these older men must have some scintilla of responsibility for it, n'est-ce pas?

Bob Doney

Armor, I am not familiar with Gramsci, but your description of his views sounds familiar when observed in conjunction with what is happening today.  An earlier philosopher, if he can be called merely that was Alexandre Comte.  He was of the 1750's era and his views were very similar to your description.  From Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte
 
One site has a very decided opinion on his influence in thought.  I have only recently become aware of this name and have not researched further, but you can see her opinion at the authors site:   http://www.newswithviews.com/Erica/Carle30.htm
 
The philosophy is of no true benefit without a means to disseminate and implement it.  In order for it to work, it must have practical value to someone who is interested in its implementation.  I tend to think that this was accomplished in modern society at least for the US and England through the framework of Fabian Socialism.  The vehicle for the establishment of the doctrine were the industrialist and financial leaders.  It was what might be called soft communism and certainly had the socialist aspects, but maintained benefit to the class commonly most identified with more extreme capitalism.  The imposition of this philosophy had the advantage of being filtered from the top to the lower classes in an enviornment not identifiable as revolutionary but more as evolutionary.  The communist counterpart by contrast was more grassroots, revolution by force to effect immediate change.
 
The primary spread of this philosophy seems to have been through idealogical cooperation expressed through the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England and the Council on Foreign Relations in the US and their members.  They still are major forces although whether they could be classed as conspiritorial is disputeable.  There is little doubt that the dissemination of much that is considered leftist comes from these type of sources which would commonly be seen to be capitalist. 

Armor ... I have seen you struggle with the same question over why the minority left have obtained so much political influence. I'll throw some ideas at you, then you can make of them what you will.

Firstly, a smaller army can defeat a much larger force if it makes itself more mobile, and directs its attacking capability on choke points: ammunition dumps, food supplies, fuel lines, water supplies. This translates into never having to face the enemy head-on to secure a decisive victory. Incidentally, these tactics were employed by the American revolutionaries doing much to bring them victory over the British (with the help of the French Army & Navy of course). The Vietcong's defeat of American forces (not withstanding the hostile leftist media in America, combined with the traitorous lies of scumbags like John Kerry) was also achieved by adopting such tactics. Culturally, the leftists have simply applied the same approach (infiltrating Teacher Training Colleges, Humanities Faculties in our Universities, Advertising, Newspapers, Broadcasting, and Theatre, etc.).

Secondly, you keep overlooking the role of radical Feminism: an idea transplanted to Britain from New York and California. Britain's politics were changed by brainwashing its young women to regard sex as a political weapon. I don't know how old you are but if you are aged under 45, you will have some difficulty understanding just how bad things got during the 1970s and early 1980s. Eulogizing and celebrating women's "power" on a daily basis soon wore away the respect (established centuries earlier) British society once had for the authority of older men. From now on, the future could only belong to women (of menstruating age) and those men young enough to service their sexual needs. Unsurprisingly, the cute concept of "Toy Boys" soon came into existence. Men (of all ages) would have to give way to the new captains of culture: women (and their effete male cohorts). You are rightly concerned over rampant immigration. Consider this. Roughly eighty percent (80%) of immigrants into the West are male. This makes immigration very attractive to young Western women (and their male homosexual equivalents) as it brings the world to their clitorises (rectums). They love seeing (because it excites them) men of different ethnic backgrounds (especially blacks) fight over the right to penetrate them, and perhaps give them a multicultural baby. This way, they can delude themselves they are giving their bodies to the best. You will agree with me, that if 80% of UK's immigration had consisted of beautiful young women from China (or India), you would now be shouting, "bring more, bring more," am I right?

Thirdly, truths are always self evident. Lies must be repeated, and constantly, else they will never gain or maintain traction. This necessity requires an army of mercurial types who dedicate their lives to passing around lies (e.g., weird political concepts) in a global adoption of the game, musical chairs. This is why the West is awash with journalists, op-ed writers, columnists, artists, actors/actresses, and lobbyists, all dedicated to altering your perceptions and understanding of just about anything and everything. Conservative values are based on self-evident truths, pragmatisms, and the real world. Left-Wing values are not; they are based almost entirely on artificial constructs, abstractions, and fantasies of what the world should be like. The former is mature, the latter immature. In fact, most committed leftists are psychologically or emotionally damaged people who simply have the arrogance to project their own profound inadequacies onto the outer world, with the intention of changing the outer world so that it may be made more comfortable for them. All you need to do is study the personal lives and backgrounds of all the leading leftist authors, spokeswomen, and politicians to see proof of this dynamic. Because leftists are basically sick people, they are much more motivated to change the world, in order that they may somehow be cured or redeemed. For the ruse to work, Leftists must pretend to be public spirited, humanistic, open-minded and altruistic, simply because in truth they are egocentric, narcissistic, vainglorious, and self-serving. The left dedicate themselves to the politics of change because they haven't got the guts or brains to change themselves (which is of course where the problem lies).

Response? The best antidote, as with Islamists, is mockery. Be unmerciful. Treat such people with disdain and contempt. They are disfunctional people by choice. Therefore they are beneath contempt. Make sure they know it.

Over time, with relentless work, an activist minority may have a big influence in a particular country. But how can we explain the similar evolution in every Western country? There was not enough communists to infiltrate the institutions in the whole of Europe and America. And I'd like to know why conservative activists cannot use Gramsci's tactics to debunk the loony left's moral values by taking back the church, the schools, mass media and public institutions? Does it work only in one sense?

Today, we can see that democracy is not working. We are under a barrage of left-wing propaganda by the media. A minority is imposing its twisted values on the majority. I think the left tends to use dishonest and devious tactics, and we could say there is something conspiratorial about that, but it does not add up to one big conspiracy.

about Gramsci :

The goal of the communists was to create a new anti-capitalist society made for the workers. Wikipedia says that Gramsci's tactics was to wage a "culture war" to get a dominant voice in the mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions, so as to heighten working-class consciousness. I think it has been a total failure. The working-class population has been shrinking rapidly. Their influence on society has become negligible. Today, everybody is a bourgeois. The schools, news media, and public institutions have been taken over by the loony left, who would like to get rid of the last remnants of the traditional European working class and replace them with third-world immigrants. The loony left likes hippie lifestyles, gay marriage, mass immigration, postmodernist architecture, the whole word method to teach reading... all of which has nothing to do with what Gramsci had in mind when he used the expression "culture war". Unlike today's mass media, he was not out to destroy western civilization.

Conspiracy theories are so comforting for many. There it is, all wrapped up in a neat package. It explains everything and once you accept the grand conspiracy as being true, you can view any developments after that moment as “part of the conspiracy.”

In this particular case, though, there is a lot of empirical evidence all around us which we have all observed over time--radical changes that often took many decades of incremental change to produce their ultimate fruit--and many of those radical changes can be neatly explained by positing that the tactics from Gramsci’s playbook were employed to achieve them.

Do I think that some few leftists very consciously set out to implement the playbook through decades of relentless, single-minded work, yes.

But, if you are talking of the kind of conspiracy with a mastermind in a back room somewhere giving orders and controlling everyone, then I don’t think that is what happened. If, however, you are talking about what John A. Stormer, author of “None Dare Call It Treason,” called a “conspiracy of shared values” in which the majority of the people involved found Gramsci’s ultimate aims and playbook attractive and largely independently of each other used the techniques he suggested in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of fields for many decades, then I think something like this is what happened. The cumulative effects from the successful implementation and application of these Gramscian tactics, gathering and reinforcing each other over the decades since WWII, have played a large part in bringing us to the state we find ourselves in in the West today.

" Pre-WWII Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (...) proposed a slow, non-military way for revolutionaries to take over a society (...)
can anyone deny that this attack plan hasn't been brilliantly carried out. "

Once again, it sounds too much like conspiration theory. I know that some of what is happening now is deliberate. Part of it may have been planned in advance. But I bet Antonio Gramsci would have been amazed by the left-wing ideology of replacing Europeans with third-worlders.

Here is my response to a poster on another blog who wondered why "discrimination" had become a dirty word to such an extent that we could no longer sort out who our enemy was.--

The poster who wondered why "discrimination" has become a dirty word has put his finger on the reason we are having so much trouble in identifying our enemy. Discrimination used to be defined as the act of analyzing and evaluating the qualities of various things against some scale of values in order to rank them according to which is best.

Pre-WWII Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, whose ideas were well known and very well received on campus, proposed a slow, non-military way for revolutionaries to take over a society by using the academy, cultural elites, other opinion makers and the media to devalue and then revalorize the target society's moral values, norms and attitudes; to attack, takeover and remake its key social building blocks--the church, schools, the family, government; and to delegitimize those who governed that society. Once these revolutionaries had accomplished these tasks, it would be they who would be running the society instead of the former leaders who they had managed to discredit and it would be their ideals, their morals and their ideas that would be the new norm all, of course, justified as "progress."

Words have power and words, ideas, concepts--right, wrong, moral, fair, objective, good, evil, discrimination--were the key for Gramsci; can anyone deny that this attack plan hasn't been brilliantly carried out. Multiculturalism, diversity, moral relativism and political correctness have carried the field and whole categories of thought, ways of analysis and standards to measure by have been banished from everyday thought, use and discussion.

The result, we can no longer, name, discriminate, weigh or judge anything or anyone for, to do so, would be to be unfair, a bigot or racist and to use the old measuring stick of good and evil is to be branded ill-informed, hopelessly out of date, a provincial, a conservative or worse; all "types" easily ignored. It's as if someone who needed glasses to see things clearly so that he could safely navigate through the world had had his glasses taken away from him and he now had to stumble around in a blurry and forever indefinable and, therefore, much more dangerous, world. That is the position we find ourselves in today. Thus, all the confusion about who and what our enemy is because, in the postmodernist view, which suffuses the courses taught at most of our universities and which is believed by most of our cultural elites and opinion makers, there is no objective reality, truth, or objective good and evil and, therefore, all religions are equal, no person or action is evil if you "truly understand" the doers motivations and grievances, one person sees a terrorist while another sees a freedom fighter and, since there are no objective standards, who is to say which observer is right? Its all Roshomon to them.

" I think it's becoming ever more important to get to know who controls media "

Media owners obviously have some influence on the content of the media, but the reason the media is so full of left-wing rubbish is not that it is owned by a small group of left-wingers. One thing we need to know is why owners of conservative newspapers have stopped being conservative. Why is it they recruit journalists who come from left-wing journalism schools?

And why is there no reaction from the public? Since most of us are fed up with the left-wing rubbish, it should not be so hard to launch new conservative newspapers.

I think the Times of London should keep denouncing the policy of mass immigration day after day after day. Why is it not doing its job? After all, its owner is the supposedly right-wing Rupert Murdoch.

The problem does not lie primarily with the media owners. It is a bigger phenomenon, which is not limited to the media. For example, in the last 30 years, even in small towns, many charitable organizations have been taken over by left-wing lunatics. Even the leadership of most political right-wing political parties has been taken over by people who are not conservative at all. It is a general phenomenon!

You are entirely correct, Buccaneer, that:

"Telling the truth is just one side of the coin, the other - more important one - is which information you publish and which you don't...."

The ability to choose when and what to publish is why we have so many problems without effective ways to deal with them. We cannot make proper determinations without facts which are given in a truthful way. The ability to state something a certain way and to repeat it over and over from other "credible" sources is the gradualism that has given us the leftist structure causing so many problems. The exclusion of coverage for views they do not like is a travesty.

For more specific information on the spreading of terrorist viewpoint, not only in the media, see the following article: http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060115-103622-3038r.htm

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, of the Saudi Royal Family, said to be the world’s fifth richest man, is now NewsCorp’s fourth largest voting shareholder (behind the Murdoch family, Liberty Media and fund giant Fidelity Management & Research Co).

Prince Al-Waleed’s Rotana Audio Visual Company, which operates TV channels in the Middle East, has signed a deal with DirecTV, the TV-satellite firm controlled by NewsCorp. As a result, it would seem Rotana will be able to beam its programs into U.S. cable boxes without interference from US federal regulators, or anybody else.

Buccaneer ... Suggest you take another look at the 1997 James Bond movie: Tomorrow Never Dies. Study the ambitions and methods of the media moghul villain "Elliot Carver" played by Jonathan Pryce. I guess the scriptwriters suspected something we didn't even have on our radar screens back then.

I think it's becoming ever more important  to get to know who controls media, where those people come from and where their interests lie. This  applies especially once statistics get published..
Who controls the media controls people's mind and can predict their actions. Telling the truth is just one side of the coin, the other - more important one -  is which information you publish and which you don't (you have at least the chance to verify falsified news, but you got no chance to verify what you don't even know).
What I think might be very  troublesome there is the outspoken aim of Muslims to gain control of Western media. I ran f.e into an article that a Turkish consortium would like to take over Pro 7, one of the big private ty companies in Germany. Currently it's owned by Haim Saban, an Egypt born Israeli and American citizen.
http://www.focus.de/finanzen/aktien/prosiebensat-1_nid_40416.html
Their bid might be just for economic reasons yet I wonder if there shouldn't be a change of media coverage if control passes from an Israeli/American ownership to a Turkish one?
When a French paper published a series about the Mohammed cartoons (sorry, I can't recall the name) the editor in chief was instantly dismissed. His boss happened to be a Muslim. Might be a pure coincidence..

Melanie Phillip's excellent book 'Londonistan' explains what's really going on in our capital city and why those that are able to do so are leaving in droves.

Her blog also has interesting posts on modern Britain's craven surrender to radical Islam.

The seeds of civil war continue to sow themselves despite political correctness and multiculturalism. Sadly, while the Yugoslavian conflict had fairly specific geographic, ethnic, and religious demarcations, conflict in the United Kingdom would be the Thirty Years War come again, with more factions involved than merely White or non-White, Muslim or everyone else.

The BBC provides open arms.  This article from American Thinker Blog begins: 

"We  know that Europe has suicidally opened the door wide to Islamofascism via the cult of Multiculturalism, which proclaims lovingly that your jihad is just as good as our democracy. Europe's Commissars of Political Correctness have never bothered to change their minds. In fact, Peter Horrocks, the  "news" director of the BBC, has just ...." 

 The article is at: 

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2006/12/bbcs_further_descent_into_mult.html