Chapter 1:   Harpo ÷ Gekko = Monkey Business x Terminal Greed
 
The Sprocket of History
 

This series has been written against the background of one of the most momentous events in history: the unraveling of the wealthiest, most powerful and most hopeful empire the world has ever known: the United States of America.

The orgy of U.S. government spending on every too-big-to-fail bankster or too-loud-to-ignore “social justice” race huckster is accelerating daily, funded by phantom dollars printed by the government or extracted otherwise from the value of its subjects’ savings. The banksters’ main column is feasting on the taxpayers’ dollars while in a maneuver worthy of Patton, the Goldman Sachs cavalry detachment has been sent to secure the perimeter of a socialist White House.

continue reading

George Handlery about the week that was. Vincible and invincible guerillas. The privilege of being underprivileged. About dictatorships. Pigs might be lovable but sausage is better.

 

1. America’s “separation” from the Iraq conflict is not unlikely. Another possible scenario is her “withdrawal” from the struggle in Afghanistan. These prospects create a background for the discussion of irregular wars, their legends and their realities.

continue reading

Kerry Robertson, 17, and Mark McDougall, 25, haven’t broken any law. But they are on the run from the authorities, and from their home in Dunfermline, Scotland.

Less than eight weeks ago the couple were excitedly planning their wedding. They had booked church ceremony for the 5th of September, a Saturday. She had already chosen and bought her wedding dress. They had bought the rings, and invited 20 guests. Two days before the big day, however, social services told them that their wedding would have to be cancelled. Fife Council wrote a letter, objecting to the marriage, to Dunfermline Register Office, who consequently refused to marry the couple.

continue reading

On November 3rd 2009, at 3 pm local time, the Czech Republic ceased to exist as a sovereign state when Vaclav Klaus, its president, put his signature under the Treaty of Lisbon. The Czech Republic was the last of the 27 member states of the European Union to ratify the treaty which turns the EU into a genuine state to which it members states are subservient.

Klaus had delayed signing the document for as long as he could. The Czech Parliament approved the treaty last May. On the morning of November 3rd the Czech Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the Lisbon Treaty did not contravene the Czech Constitution. The president accused the court of bias and publicly stated that he fundamentally disagreed with the court’s verdict, its content and justification. “With the Lisbon Treaty taking effect, the Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign state, despite the political opinion of the Constitutional Court,” Klaus said. However, he added, as President he had to respect the verdict. Consequently, he signed his country’s independence away, barely 20 years after its liberation from the Soviet empire.

continue reading

Since more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by seawater, detailed studies of the oceans were of great importance to science as well as to practical navigation. The first modern text devoted exclusively to marine science was Histoire physique de la mer (1725) by the Italian military man and naturalist Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658-1730), who assembled information about water temperature, salinity, currents, ocean plants and animals. The eighteenth century witnessed an acceleration of this trend as European explorers charted distant lands and the science of chemistry was rapidly maturing in Europe itself.

continue reading

The majority of Icelanders has very little trust for the European Union according to a new opinion poll published on Saturday by Capacent. Only about 26% trust the EU with 44% who do not trust it. The rest, or 30%, are undecided. The Icelandic government is, however, proceeding with the EU accession process.

continue reading

It is now almost twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. But did it really end, and did we win it? Look at the situation in Europe today, where many of the former Communist countries in the eastern half of Europe are freer and safer than many of those in the western half of Europe. Instead of an Iron Curtain we now have an Iron Veil of Multiculturalism, and Western Europe is on the wrong side of it this time around. Did we trade the USSR for the EUSSR? If we really "beat" Marxism, how come Marxists and Leftists of all stripes virtually control Western media and academia a generation later, and why does the USA have a Marxist-inspired President Obama?

continue reading

George Handlery about the week that was. The dictator’s tantrum: a chronic obsession. Making and not keeping agreements. Strange bedfellows and odd mutations. Language laws and their insanity. When aid fuels dictatorship.

1. Months ago, the writer began to pen episodes that were presented as “The Dictator’s Tantrum.” Originally, the topic was a vehicle to share something funny and bizarre with the reader. Recently the laugh stopped and the matter got serious. With that the conflict turned into a lesson about dealing with dictatorships and their “Leaders-in-need-of-treatment.” As it unfolds, the story is also a warning to potential hostages about going to work in dictatorships or visiting there.

continue reading

Readers of The Brussels Journal might approach the following essay as though it were an extended footnote to “Fjordman’s” magisterial multi-part treatment of Western music-history. My essay is also, in its way, a follow-up to my own earlier Brussels Journal statements about Johann Sebastian Bach and Joseph Haydn. This year (2009) is the bicentenary of Haydn’s death. The year 2011 will be the centenary of Gustav Mahler’s death. As in the cases of Bach and Haydn, I consider Mahler (1860-1911) – and specifically his Second Symphony (1894) – to be what I call “a conservative obligation,” an essential and poignant manifestation of the Western spirit, close familiarity with which Westerners ought to cultivate. Not all “conservative obligations” are musical. I hope, in future, to dedicate some words to the Hudson Valley School of American landscape painting and to the aesthetics of steam locomotion, European and American. I have reason to believe that once, during his sojourn in New York State and on his way to Niagara Falls with his wife, Mahler passed through the small town on Lake Ontario where – in my exile from my native California – I have lived since the fall of the fateful year 2001. A fair number of Mahler acquaintances made their way to California in the 1930s. His influence may be heard in certain landmark film-scores, like those of Eric Korngold. For me, Mahler is a presence, immediate and personal.

continue reading

If all goes as planned, the 27 member states of the European Union will soon have a common hate crime legislation, which will turn disapproval for Islamic practices or homosexual lifestyles into crimes. Europe’s Christian churches are trying to stop the plan of the European political establishment, but it is unclear whether they will be successful. The media are silent on the topic.

Last April, the European Parliament approved the European Union’s Equal Treatment Directive. A directive is the name given to an EU law. As directives overrule national legislation, they need the approval of the European Council of Ministers before coming into effect. Next month, the Council will decide on the directive, which places the 27 EU member states under a common anti-discrimination legislation. The directive’s definition of discriminatory harassment is so broad that every objection to Muslim or homosexual practices will be considered unlawful.

continue reading

People have studied stones for practical or decorative usages since prehistoric times. The ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus in his work On Stones described many minerals. There are those who claim that the history of geology begins in the eleventh century AD with the Persian polymath Avicenna, a view which is not convincing. In China, the polymath Shen Kuo upon noticing that there were seashells embedded in a sandstone cliff far above sea level inferred that the sandstone must have derived from an ancient beach that had somehow been compressed and elevated. While this insight was correct, it remained an isolated observation and was not followed up by other Chinese or Asian scholars. Geology, like modern science in general, was therefore born in Europe after the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

continue reading

George Handlery about the week that was. “What goes around…” The UN’s biased rendition of reality. Unwelcome refugees. Noble ends and terror. Third Worlders, socialism and failing societies. Tyranny and guided economies. Strange bedfellows and odd mutations.

1. A small news item calls attention to the issue hidden behind it. The report of October 18 tells that a terrorist attack cost the lives of several Iranian revolutionary guards. Even some bosses were among the victims. We might be inclined to file away the news under the heading “well deserved,” or “ultimately we all have to swallow our own medicine,” or perhaps the reaction is “who cares, we are used to this”. While the terms might fit, the event has a significance hiding under its surface. It points to something that transcends the event itself.

continue reading

Diophantus of Alexandria is sometimes called “the father of algebra,” although the title is disputed. He worked in Roman Egypt in the third century of our era, but while he is usually assumed to have been a Greek, very little is known about his life. His collection of books known as the Arithmetica, a landmark work in the history of algebra and number theory with the so-called Diophantine equations, is believed to have been completed around AD 250. Dirk J. Struik explains in A Concise History of Mathematics, Fourth Revised Edition:

continue reading

Jeffrey Sachs is senior economist at the UN and author of the bestseller "Common Wealth" and the controversial Time essay "The Case for Bigger Government". In a recent interview in the Brussels newspaper De Tijd Jeffrey Sachs blames “unbridled American market capitalism” for the financial crisis and pleads in favor of the Swedish social model as an alternative. His ideological argument is revealing for the dominant utopian-socialist mind at the top of the UN. 
 

continue reading

 An article by Johnny Munkhammar

One cause of the impressive economic development in the Nordic countries during the last two decades has been their early deregulations of the telecom market. A symbol for this has been the healthy competition between Nokia and Ericsson. We have not just seen an explosion in the supply within telecom but also 75 per cent in price cuts. The industry as a whole has been able to increase its productivity and the consumers have gained more in freedom and choice.

continue reading