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Flemish 17th Century Pulpit Offends Turks

Fri, 09 May 2008 09:02:50 -0500

A Turkish “reader” sent us the following email, including the links and the picture which he found here.

From: <admin@security-turk.com>
Date: Fri, May 9, 2008 at 1:53 PM
Subject: Warning!
To: webmaster@brusselsjournal.com

Warning!

Your news is very race.If you are continue this your website is must be close. We check your server, database,IP and find this pictures, news.You must be careful. Our father of Turk is Ataturk. We are democratic, laic and muslum. We are not Arabic people.We live for peace. We like "Isa" and "Meryem" They are God childs. We give you 7 days. If you are dont change any news or insult. Turkish attack will be started!

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Blasts from the Past: The Failure of Regime Change

Thu, 08 May 2008 07:50:44 -0500

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.

Schmitt argues that the proclamation of the Monroe doctrine was a key conceptual turning point in America’s relationship with the outside world, and therefore too in her own understanding of her self. Whereas the original Pilgrim Fathers had wanted to break off all ties with Europe in order to create a perfect and “shining city on a hill”, and whereas the Monroe doctrine was in some respects a continuation of this policy, its announcement that European influence was to be held at bay throughout the Western hemisphere was the first proclamation that American military power should be projected outside the country’s national borders.

Schmitt claims, and many have agreed, that it encapsulated the first moment when America came to consider herself to be the embodiment of, and rightful vehicle for, universal political principles. It is obvious why people saw the Monroe doctrine as justifying the many battles fought in Latin America against Communist regimes by American proxies: those regimes were supported by Moscow and the US wanted its influence to be predominant in that continent.

In the light of this historical perspective, recent political developments in Latin America must surely give us pause for thought. The election on 20 April of a radical left-winger to the presidency of Paraguay is the last in a series of stunning victories, sustained now over a period of many years, of politicians in Latin America who embrace socialism; who hate America, the World Bank, the IMF and NAFTA; and who revere the heroes of the Cuban revolution.

These victories come less than two decades after the world foolishly proclaimed “the collapse of Communism” – a silly phrase which always obscured the fact that the government of the largest country in the world, China, is still Communist, and that Communism is also strong in many other parts of Asia including Vietnam, Burma and Nepal.

The new president-elect of Paraguay is Fernando Lugo. He is an ordained priest and former Catholic bishop now laicised by Rome because of his determination to seek political office. He is well known as an admirer of the iconic Argentine revolutionary, Che Guevara.

Lugo’s victory not only broke the grip on power of the Colorado Party, which has controlled Paraguay for 61 years without interruption, including when the country was a one-party state under General Stroessner; it also came just a two months after Fidel Castro, one of the longest-serving politicians in the world, managed to ensure the survival of Communism in Cuba by passing power to his brother, Raúl, and retiring peacefully himself.

Castro’s success in preserving Communism comes, of course, in spite of decades of attempts by the United States of America to unseat him, even to assassinate him, and to overthrow his brand of Caribbean socialism.

Other countries which have embraced left-wing or radical left and overtly anti-American regimes include Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Nicaragua and to some extent Brazil. Indeed, the only truly pro-American regime left South of the Panama Canal now is in Colombia.

In many cases, the victories of the Left in these countries can only be seen as a sort of revenge for the defeats suffered during the Cold War. The most obvious example is Nicaragua, where the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, has been president since 2006. This is the same Daniel Ortega against whom the Americans under Ronald Reagan mounted one of their most notorious “regime change” operations, the creation and funding of the anti-Communist guerrilla insurgency known as the “Contras”. It succeeded in overthrowing Ortega in 1990 – but one assumes that the taste of revenge was sweet indeed when he retook possession of the presidential palace sixteen years later.

Paradoxically, Ortega has succeeded in doing something in Nicaragua of which his Republican enemies in Washington can only dream. In 2006, Nicaragua banned abortion. As in Paraguay, there is some cross-fertilization between socialism and Catholicism, albeit of a rather left-wing kind.

Nicaragua has also recently pulled off a spectacular diplomatic success under its new-old president. Not only did he manage to persuade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the controversial president of Iran, to visit Managua in 2006 – was this a deliberate desire to thumb his nose at the Yankees? – but he has also secured the decisive support of the 33-member Latin American and Caribbean group of United Nations members for the candidacy of his fellow Sandinista, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to the post of new President of the United Nations General Assembly. Like Lugo of Paraguay, Brockmann is a Catholic priest; he was also Ortega’s Foreign Minister when Nicaragua was fighting the Contras and the Americas and, as such, was awarded Moscow’s Lenin Peace Prize in 1985.

Another “blast from the past” was the election in 2006 of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile, whose father was a general under the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. (He was an air force officer with the rank of air commodore, which is referred to as “brigadier general” in Chile.) General Bachelet, who had also been military attaché at the Chilean embassy in Washington, opposed General Pinochet’s American-backed coup in 1973 and was tortured as a result. Michelle Bachelet originally fled to Australia with her mother, but then in 1975 – and this is the key point – moved of her own accord to East Germany, where she went to university and married. President Bachelet is therefore one of that very rare breed of person (like the father of the current German Chancellor, Angela Merkel) who actually chose life in Communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War against life in the capitalist West.

Nowhere is the presence of radical Leftism and anti-Americanism clearer than in Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez has been in power since 1998. He survived an American-backed coup against him in 2003, during which he lost power for three days but returned in triumph. Since then, he has used Venezuela’s vast oil wealth to promote his brand of leftist anti-Americanism across the whole continent ever since, with astonishing success.

This truly is a historic turn of events. It is true that these events are not being sponsored by European or other extra-American powers; but the geopolitical significance of them is no less great as a result. Latin America is to the United States what Eastern Europe was to the Soviet Union or India to the British Empire - the indispensable geopolitical basis on which to establish and maintain the country’s status as a world power.

More especially, Latin America has been the main theatre in history for American sponsored “regime change” operations which, in the latter part of the 20th century, were spread to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. The Chicago-based journalist, Stephen Kinzer, documents many of these operations in his excellent work, Overthrow. A specialist on the US-backed coup against the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, Kinzer has mentioned Afghanistan post 2001 and Iraq in 2003 as further examples of US-backed regime change (in these cases, prosecuted through invasion).

But Kinzer does not mention the numerous examples of regime change which the US has backed or organised in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, from the events of 5 October 2000 in Belgrade which overthrew Slododan Milosevic to the so-called “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. Yet in many cases, the operatives were the same: William Walker and Michael Kozak played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989; the former became the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission in 1999, a mission widely held to have been thoroughly controlled by the CIA to which Walker doubtless belongs, while the latter became, as US ambassador to Belarus, the instigator of the (failed) “Operation White Stork” which tried to unseat President Lukashenko in 2001.

Kinzer makes a convincing point that these regime change operations usually make matters worse for the populations concerned. He is quite right. What he argues less strongly is that they are also geopolitically suicidal for the US. I am not talking about Afghanistan or Iraq: we know that US support for the mujihadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets eventually led to the rise of the Taliban and their friendship with Al Qaida. To that extent, the project backfired. But the 9-11 attacks, which were supposedly the consequence of this, were obviously a one-off event. In spite of America’s deeply neurotic over-reaction to them, they are obviously never going to be repeated. However horrible they were, they in fact represented no threat to the geopolitical pre-eminence of the United States as a world power. No American army was defeated; no US foreign policy or military goal was thwarted.

America has now tried to project its power so far, indeed – deep into the Hindu Kush, the deserts of Mesopotamia, the ancient Russian capital of Kiev – that it seems to have lost control of countries much nearer to home. Any country should try to get on with its neighbours; a world power needs to increase its influence across the world. By turning Latin America into a hotbed of anti-Americanism, George Bush has failed to do either.

To be sure, there are never any permanent victories in politics and the tide may change again. But relations with Europe will remain key to America’s future. I am not talking about the European Union, which is so mired in political correctness and social democracy that there is little hope that its members will ever behave politically again. I am talking about Russia, which yesterday inaugurated as president a man, Dmitri Medvedev, who has vowed to continue the domestic and foreign policy of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, whom he in any case will probably appoint Prime Minister. That foreign policy includes opposition to George Bush’s attempt to create a unipolar world. Russia is militarily the second most powerful state in the world and, where it leads, China will follow. With Latin America in ferment, President Bush has taken what was the world’s uncontested superpower and, in just eight years, turned it into a beleaguered nation with few friends and a currency in free fall. It is a spectacular achievement.

Europe’s Presidential Race: Barroso in Pole Position

Thu, 08 May 2008 06:34:57 -0500

A quote from the Economist blog, 7 May 2008

A source close to Mr Sarkozy describes Mr Barroso and Mr Juncker as highly regarded favourites for the job of commission boss and first president of the council: unless the two swap jobs.

There is the small detail that Britain is fiercely opposed to Mr Juncker for the same reason that so many in the EU favour him: he is a deep-dyed fanatical federalist, steeped in the dark arts of late-night Brussels deals and plots. […] But could Britain yet be cornered into a choice between the lesser of two or three evils, in some grand bargaining game in which, say, an even less palatable choice is proposed for EU foreign minister, or high representative as that top envoy will officially be known? It is all going to be very tricky from now until December.

Evaluating the Trends in Disoriented France

Thu, 08 May 2008 03:50:20 -0500

A quote from Gérard Pince at his blog, 5 May 2008 [english translation here]

The election results in Italy and the UK should encourage us to take advantage of the 2009 European elections to provoke the healthy shock our country [France] needs. The defeat of the mayor of London [Ken Livingstone, a.k.a. Red Ken], known for his multiculturalist and pro-Islamic positions, is in this respect emblematic. Keeping in mind that that city's demographics include 30% of visible minorities, for the conservative candidate to be elected he had to win the majority of the white British population. In addition all observers consider these victories to go beyond the traditional political or sociological divisions. They are explained instead by the growing feeling of national identity and the rejection of uncontrolled immigration. (Votes are more and more ethnic. For example, 90% of the black community is voting en bloc for Barack Hussein Obama. No matter how hard they try to tell us that skin color doesn't matter, it turns out that it is more and more visible on voting day.)

In 2007, the French people also expressed these concerns.(Without the immigrant vote that was massively for the socialist candidate, the final tally would have been close to 60/40 in favor of the Right.) Nicolas Sarkozy deceived them and they now find themselves seriously disoriented. Yes, 62% of the French expect a grave political crisis before the end of his term in office, but this anxiety is not necessarily in line with our thinking. For example, the Left has just won the municipal elections and a poll indicates that a large majority (56%) would be in favor of granting foreigners the right to vote in local elections! Conversely, despite the media hype over May 68, the unions are having trouble mobilizing their troops. The confusion reaches its height when the free-market Right and the CGT [a major French labor union] come together to defend illegal aliens, the former in order to keep salaries low, the latter in the hope of creating a potential base for the social demands of ethnic groups. In short, the political situation is still largely unpredictable.

Discontent being the only tangible element, the creation of a vast protest movement would seem to be the best political response. Such an enterprise could come either from right-wing elected officials outside of the establishment, such as the newly created Steering Committee for the New Popular Right, or from members of the UMP establishment who finally become aware of the impasse they are in, or from new men who arise from the people. Such being the case, only a powerful popular movement could force these different components into major action. When our political cafés are suddenly crowded, when our blogs are used by thousands of readers, then we can presume that such a movement is possible.

We will follow these new developments attentively and lucidly. It is true that certain exceptional developments could accelerate the course of events, but in truth, I see none on the horizon for now.

A quote from Paul Belien in The Washington Times, 9 May 2007

Mr. Sarkozy won because of his tough rhetoric against the Islamist "thugs" (his word) who aim to rule the country, where over 10 percent of the population already adheres to the Muslim faith. […] French men and women who normally do not vote because they distrust politics turned out en masse to elect "Sarko," the 52-year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant and grandson of a Sephardic Jew.

They may have realized that, because of the demographic growth of the Muslim vote, the 2007 elections were their last chance to make this statement. At a time when French Jews are beginning to flee their native country, the French valiantly chose Mr. Sarkozy, thereby saving the honor of la grande patrie. […] Whether the new president will be able to live up to his promise remains to be seen, but a majority of the French have given him a mandate to do so.

The Race for President of the United State of Europe: Blair Out

Wed, 07 May 2008 06:56:26 -0500

A quote from the BBC, 6 May 2008

Nicolas Sarkozy has withdrawn his backing of Tony Blair to become the first president of the European Union, senior sources have told the BBC. The French president is understood to have changed his mind after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is thought he feels EU opposition to the former UK prime minister is too strong because he backed the Iraq war. [...]

Instead, the sources say the top job could go to the current president of the commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, or the prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker.

BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell however said the British government has a distaste for Mr Juncker, who is seen as far too keen on more European integration, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would probably veto him.

A quote from The Financial Times, 7 May 2008

Other names that crop up include Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s premier, and Wolfgang Schüssel, the former Austrian chancellor. A consensus exists that the presidency must go to a serving or former head of government.

France: A New Movement Forms

Wed, 07 May 2008 01:38:28 -0500

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:

This structure is not a political party and has no intention of aggravating existing divisions. It is, on the contrary, an organization for the assembly and mobilization of energies that will work towards the reformation of the national, regional and French-identity based Right. It is possible to belong to the movement without giving up one's membership in a political party or another existing organization.

The fundamental principles of the steering committees are as follows:

1 - Refusal of immigration and Islamization
2 - Defense of regional, national and European identities
3 - Application of national and European preferences
4 - Rehabilitation of family values and fundamental principles of our civilization
5 - Freeing of individual, political and economic energies
6 - Construction of a political, independent and powerful Europe, faithful to its Hellenic and Christian roots

The steering committees for the New Popular Right will hold a national constitutive convention in Paris on June 1 for the purpose of defining its first campaign themes and implementing the structures of this vital new federation.

Some expression were difficult to render into English, e.g., "identitaire" and "force de rassemblement" which I translated as "French-identity based" and "vital new federation" respectively. Note that "identitaire" can also relate to regional feelings of identity, such as Breton or Alsatian identities.

The above principles are still too vague to be considered as a strong sign of the rebirth of French patriotic nationalism and regionalism, but this is the first real attempt to bring together those who have been disappointed by Le Pen, betrayed by Sarkozy or just left out of the political debate because the only options open to them were unsatisfactory for whatever reason. Here is a statement from Jean-François Touzé, coordinator of the project:

From reading the innumerable commentaries triggered by the announcement of the creation of the Nouvelle Droite Populaire, from the number of requests for contacts (several hundred in one month), from the growing interest on the part of the media for our effort, it is obvious that what we are setting into motion is fulfilling an immense need, not only among those who are working or who have worked in the organizations of the national Right, but also among a great number of our compatriots as exasperated by the impotence of Sarkozy's regime as by the contradictions and suicidal acts of the Front National.

We said it as early as last June: for those who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, the moment of truth after so many unfulfilled promises would not be long in coming. But we knew also that this disappointment could not, in any case, lead these voters back - even less lead them towards - the Front National when the FN gave them no sign acknowledging that the message of the need for a complete reexamination of structures, methods and strategies of the Right, that is a genuine modernization, had been understood.

This reexamination did not take place. The Front today is behind us.

Other comments at the website also point to the role played by the Front National in the failure of the Right to achieve anything close to success in the recent elections. Bruno Mégret, who defected from the FN in 1998 to form the MNR, is among the founders of the new NDP. He attempted to reconcile temporarily with Le Pen during the presidential election of 2007, but was ignored by both Jean-Marie and his daughter Marine Le Pen. Mégret's collaborator, Florence Mazole, writes:

As the national party headquarters of the MNR has observed, the strategy of a union with the FN did not meet our expectations despite the advantages that were drawn in terms of media coverage and support from partisans of the national Right. During the presidential election, despite the impartial support we gave to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the MNR was not able to wage a campaign [a reminder that Le Pen prevented Mégret from actively campaigning]. During the legislative elections, no agreement was reached and Le Pen and his daughter even placed their own candidate in opposition to Bruno Mégret. They did the same during the municipal elections. No ballot loyal to the union of our parties was ever constituted. (...) A few days before the voting, Le Pen appeared on the evening news and devoted half of his time to attacking Bruno Mégret. As for his daughter, she has stated that she wants the death of the MNR and never ceases to blame its president.

Marine Le Pen has always held Mégret, and his defection from the party, as responsible for the failures of the FN. News reports during the presidential campaign indicated that she was behind the decision to silence Mégret.

EU Invokes Bible and Koran

Wed, 07 May 2008 02:02:58 -0500

A quote from EUobserver, 6 May 2008

Brussels officials have turned to religious VIPs to help spread the gospel of an environmentally friendly society and increase awareness of climate change in their parishes, as well as promoting tolerance between different confessions in Europe. Twenty high-level representatives – 19 men and one woman – from European Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations met in Brussels on Monday (5 may) to discuss the sensitive issues of climate change and reconciliation between peoples.

The meeting was co-chaired by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Slovenian Prime Minister and current president of the European Council, Janez Jansa, and the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering. […]

Prime Minister Jansa, referring to both the Bible and the Koran, said: "Earth was created and given to man, and man has to be respectful of what he has been given," and called for what the late Pope John Paul II described as an "ecological conversion". […] Mr Jansa also announced that Slovenia plans to set up a Euro-Mediterranean university that will be a meeting place for students from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish world. […]

Bishop Adrianus Van Luyn, the president of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (COMECE), suggested that the EU appoint a "High Representative for Future Generations". […]

President Barroso underlined the importance of combining freedom of expression and respect for other faiths, in an attempt to sooth both Islamic outrage in recent years and others' fear of Islam.

"Islam today is part of Europe. One should not see Islam as outside Europe. We already have an important presence of Islam and Muslims among our citizens," Mr Barroso said, adding that the inter-faith dialogue proved that the "preachers of a clash of civilisations are wrong."

The grand mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr Mustafa Ceric pointed to the EU's policy on Turkey. "Following this logic, Europe has to prove that Islam is part of Europe by not delaying the acceptance of Turkey to the EU," the cleric said. […]

Flanked by a female priest colleague, Swedish archbishop Anders Weyrud [Lutheran] told EUobserver he was disappointed there was only one woman among the religious dignitaries, pastor Letizia Tomassone, the vice-president of the federation of evangelical churches of Italy, who had also raised the point during the inter-religious meeting. "We have neglected both nature and women, that was one of the messages we tried to get across at this meeting," the archbishop said. […]

Meanwhile some MEPs have in the past questioned the presence of religious figures in strictly political fora in Brussels. […] According to a recent Eurobarometer survey, some 48 percent of European citizens claim to be non-confessional.

Commission Calls for New Powers for Brussels

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:14:54 -0500

A quote from Der Spiegel, 5 May 2008

The EU's monetary affairs commissioner has called for far-reaching new powers for the European Commission. He would like Brussels to have greater control over economic policy in euro zone countries – and even wants its members to speak with one voice on the international stage. […] [EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia] says the Commission should also have a hand in determining “adequate wage developments, flexibility and security on labor markets.”

Close to Breaking Point

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:12:48 -0500

A quote from The Birmingham Post, 28 April 2008

Election fraud driven by immigrants practising "village politics" of the Indian sub-continent could be a crucial factor in deciding the future control of Birmingham City Council, a major report warns today. Family loyalties, the dominance of men and the existence of the "biraderi" clan system among British Asians provides perfect conditions for widespread rigging of postal votes and other electoral malpractice in Britain's major cities, according to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. In a 94-page report called Purity of Elections in the UK – Causes for Concern, the trust argues that the UK's election system is close to breaking point and at risk of fraud, as the countdown to May's local elections gets under way.

Britain: Going Right Again?

Tue, 06 May 2008 02:41:32 -0500

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.

Johnson has an unusual background for a British politician, and is consequently something of a maverick. He was born in New York (and was a U.S. citizen until recently); his early education was at Brussels, and later education at Oxford. The platinum blond politician has various nationalities in his background, including Turkish (his great-grandfather was briefly interior minister under Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire) and English.

Upbeat yet modest, politely noting Livingstone’s achievements while talking of the improvements that he would make to London as mayor, the tone of Johnson’s acceptance speech expressed the optimistic mood that such dramatic election results had created. Plenty of references to drinking also let us know that he is an old-fashioned, true-blooded conservative.

Curiously, both Johnson and leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron claimed that their success was due to changes the party had made. Johnson said in his acceptance speech:

I don’t for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed into a conservative city, but I do hope it does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted – after 30 years – with the greatest, most cosmopolitan, multiracial, generous-hearted cities on earth, in which there are huge and growing divisions between rich and poor.

And, David Cameron:

I think it’s a tremendous result: if I had said to you three years ago that we would have a Conservative mayor in London – a big win in London – a twenty point lead across the country in terms of a vote share – and winning seats across the country – you would have said that’s not possible. And I think something has changed. I think the tide is moving in our direction and that’s because of the changes we’ve made.

The Daily Mail has already criticized this, suggesting, that the Conservatives may misunderstand that they were elected not because they adopted the positions of the Left, but because they started sounding like Tories again. But, appearing modest in triumph emphasizes that triumph, and deflects criticism of lauding it over people, and I suspect this was the reason for such self-effacing talk. It seems unlikely that Conservative Party or its leader is so ill informed or ill-thinking that they would now attempt to mold themselves into Labour-light. Only a few months ago Cameron acknowledged that the Conservatives would have lost a general election if Brown had called one. Cameron had, at that point, attempted to portray himself as the real heir to Blair, and was widely criticized for it. Although he has generally been regarded as a weak leader, too nice to be firm when it counts, Cameron has toughened up a little in the last few months, criticizing “state multiculturalism,” for example. Moreover, when Cameron has talked of “change,” he has meant changing society from one that discriminates against the family (that has consequently created a generation of broken youths – angry, violent, and addicted to drink and drugs) to one that supports the family, and from one that is “top-down” to “bottom-up.” In other words, he has talked of changing Britain from one strained by Labour’s radical “democratic socialist” ideology, to one that most would regard as broadly in line with traditional conservative thought.

Already, Johnson has pledged to get tough on crime, and, among other measures, will make a police presence more visible, ban drinking alcohol on the Tube (subway trains), and will strip anti-social youths of the right to free travel. At the end of his first week in office Johnson will also invite mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg for talks, in order to help him establish policies and practices for London. (Bloomberg had declined to visit London when Livingstone was mayor, allegedly because of the latter’s support of suicide apologist Al-Qaradawi.) As London – and Britain as a whole – has been increasingly plagued by the kind and scale of gang violence that once ravaged New York City, and annulled by previous mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York would seem the perfect example for London. This move by Johnson, would also seem to be a part of the Conservative’s thinking, for, notably, Cameron said in March:

I've been to New York and seen how you can have zero tolerance, beat-based policing that defeats crime and restores trust in the police. And with a Home Secretary like David Davis we can do that here.

If the Conservative Party made history with its sweeping success and wining of the election for London mayor, they were not the only party making headlines for electoral gains. Richard Barnbrook of the BNP won a seat on the London Assembly, after years of aiming for such a high profile. The party needed 5% of the London votes to secure one of the twenty-five Assembly seats, and managed to achieve just over that at 5.3% of the votes. This was, however, a modest win by the scale of some predictions. Tim Hames in The Times announced a few weeks before the election, “Prepare for a shock BNP victory,” and seemed to imply that two or three seats were quite possible for the party.

BNP leadership would undoubtedly point out that they now have a hundred seats country-wide, and would suggest, no doubt, that if their win in London was less than expected it was due to adverse publicity. Both The Times and the BBC lessened their criticism of the party in the weeks leading up to the election, though some others probably increased it. The Daily Mail not only compared Barnbrook’s style of dress with Hitler’s – on the rather flimsy basis that both at one point or another have worn brown – but let much of his past slip a few days prior to the day of voting. The most surprising of the paper’s revelations was, perhaps, that Barnbrook is currently getting a divorce from a woman he married a decade or so ago, and that the one-time art student had directed an artistic movie (some have called it “gay porn”), described by the newspaper as, “naked young men […] flagellating each other and simulating gay sex acts while homo-erotic poetry is intoned.”

Attacks on the BNP are nothing new, of course, and party head Nick Griffin has clearly developed a talent for nullifying tricky questions on the party’s stance on race and immigration, and for portraying it as the most moderate party imaginable (though, one with principles, you understand). Being interviewed on television, Griffin is affable. Barnbrook, in contrast, would benefit from a few lessons in public speaking.

He seems to have been caught off guard by a swath of audience exiting as he was about to deliver his acceptance speech. “Like rats leaving sinking ships,” he barked, launching into a fiery, yet monotone tirade that could only have pleased a hardcore of BNP voters – except for a lengthy aside about girlfriend Simone Clarke, which probably pleased only her. As they had with Livingstone, Paddick, and Johnson, the “gutter press” had gossiped about him, the only difference being, he asserted, that everything they had written about him was “lies.” Really?

Next, Barnbrook bewailed “positive discrimination,” multiculturalism, and political correctness which, he stated, has meant the minority getting the majority of the benefit; and he promised to scrutinize the mayor’s budget, “second by second,” to expose any such bias. “[…] It is not for people to enter this land dictating what will and will not happen to the people who created and built it over generations,” he asserted forcefully.

His words were more conciliatory at times, though with his tone remaining aggressive, they sounded strange, if not outright frightening. He promised to treat people on an equal footing, stating, for example:

all Londoners, every single one that was, if you need aid from a voice I’ll speak for you, representing you clearly across this capital city, without prejudice, without concern of color or identity, my hands will be open[ed] up as wide as that of the indigenous population and the first generation that came here, to every single Londoner as long as you play part within the identity of this great city.

In this, Barnbrook appears to be a realist. He, like all of the other elected representatives on the London Assembly, will be required to represent everyone living in London, not just the 5.3% who voted for the BNP. But, can the party transform itself into one for whom principles trump ethnicity and race? Would a party that currently has voluntary repatriation as one of its policies, consider “British” to include the foreign born, law abiding British citizen? Barnbrook, at one point, spoke of “Londoners […] regardless of creed, color, or identity,” but, since then, he has stated that he will try to ban the wearing of the burka in public. His other stated aims are making St. George’s Day a national holiday, and flying the Union Jack (British) flag over City Hall.

A more sensible approach would probably be to concentrate on the mundane stuff of politics, such as public transport, the cleanliness of London streets, etc., or, perhaps, planting some of the fruit trees the BNP promised. The British people, after all, have had a government that has imposed a radical ideology on them for the last decade, and they are unlikely to embrace a party that is so ideological, even if it’s ideology is an opposing one. Moreover, while Barnbrook’s words betray someone who is able to think as a moderate, his style of delivery suggests someone who is anything but, and his speech must surely have confirmed the worst suspicions of those who were previously unsure of, or antagonistic to, the BNP.

The election results have thrown up a lot of interesting possibilities – and perhaps especially so for a country headed into recession. The BNP may have reached a point where it either moderates further, or remains a party on the margins. Certainly, it will be more visible and accountable. Labour is now the third most popular party, and the Liberal Democrats are, for once, the second most popular – a position to which they have long aspired. With this added legitimacy, they may soak up more of Labour’s traditional voters in the next couple of years. Presumably Brown will be replaced as leader of his party at some point before the next general election, and Labour will try to blame the Conservatives for every failure form now on – they will probably also try to blame it for the recession. If Cameron fails to show his stronger side, or if Johnson fails to make a mark, Labour may well claw its way back to the top. Though, Johnson, I think, will be a success.

A few months ago, politics seemed repetitive, grinding, and rather dull, with contemporary politicians having suppressed every hint of a personality so masterfully, so that we, the voting public, might imagine them doing no wrong. But everyone believes that politicians are liars, and the goody-two-shoes approach to politics only confirms it. It is difficult to have faith in a man who gives the impression of making sure that he eats a balanced diet with plenty of spring water. Great leaders and great politicians have always been ‘warts an’ all.’ Why? Because these are a part of the true character of the man, and we want to see it. We admire Churchill for his cigar smoking, hard drinking, and quick-witted insults, as much as anything else. Johnson will undoubtedly inject the right kind of life and vibrancy into politics. He gives the impression of being an intelligent man without an ideology, a hard worker, a joker and a drinker – not a bad combination.

May 68: An Empty Legacy

Mon, 05 May 2008 07:02:47 -0500

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:

We are the heirs of May 1968. It is indubitable. But we no longer see ourselves only in that light. Those, like myself, who were born after 1970, only inherited what was bequeathed to them by the preceding generation, the generation of those who were in their twenties during the springtime festivities regarded by so many as a revolution. And this heritage is indeed impoverished: it consists of a juvenile proclivity to publicly complain and denounce, of an unlimited and blind confidence in youth and in oneself, of a hatred of the principle of authority, and of a hateful rejection of the past.

The Communist Internationale said, "Let us make tabula rasa of the past." May 1968 and its lyrical little soldiers did just that, shouting: "Run, comrade, the old world is behind you."

The least one can say is that they pretty much succeeded: there is no longer a student who knows who Danton or Marat were, who can distinguish a Romanesque church from a wash house, or who can even say who Lenin and Mao were. Students today use history in the same way as their elders: history is good only insofar as it proposes imperfect rough drafts of our modernity.

He describes how spoiled and privileged the generation of May 68 was. How they had never known war, how they had been lavished with the excellent educational resources France then possessed, including knowledge of the regional dialects.

Like all spoiled children, they destroyed what they received, what history had preserved for so long, those languages, those traditions, the instruction inherited from the Jesuits and spread by the Republic. They replaced all of that with their whims, their fantasies and by the memory of their youth.

My generation is the first to have received nothing: no regional language [...], no training in the classics (Latin and Greek classes have closed almost everywhere despite efforts by our elders, such as Madame Jacqueline Worms de Romilly), and what is more serious, no national culture: our students know almost nothing about the history of France, of its classical literature, and their knowledge of French is confused and lax, a consequence of the only demand that is ever really made on them – self-expression (as opposed to just expression). [...]

We received only the narcissism of history's spoiled children and their "feel good" notions; we received no knowledge, no savoir-faire. Therefore, is it not up to our generation to judge the record of May 1968 and the actions of its participants, rather than the generation that has already done enough to deaden the minds of its descendants and deprive them of culture? But THEY are the only ones we hear! For forty years they are all we hear, as if France had begun with their shouts and their slogans; every day they strut, like veterans of a war, when in fact they are recent pensioners. The REAL resistance fighters, who owed their careers to their commitment, had both courage and modesty.

The crisis of French identity is not difficult to explain. Since May 1968, and in conformity with the credo of its participants, France is considered as the land of human rights, and nothing else. [...]

France is a country of rich and numerous traditions: scientific, linguistic, historical and academic. It is a land with an inexhaustible patrimony, but it is threatened by indifference (more and more churches and châteaux are being destroyed one after the other by deadly transformations, or simply from neglect).

The actors of May 68 hate the idea of heritage so much that they believe it can never be sufficiently blamed, or sufficiently shackled, for to them there is no greater iniquity than a heritage. [...] The actors of May 68 have forgotten one important thing: any inheritance is accompanied by debts. They were the first to enjoy the fruits of an inheritance without recognizing the debt, beginning with the one contracted on receiving the inheritance - the obligation to transmit it to the next generation. This debt is a debt left not only by those who preceded us, but also, and especially, it is a debt that ties us to those who will follow us and to whom we must entrust memory and knowledge, for they are the future.

What will those of my generation transmit to those of the next generation? A nation and a history are not built with a good conscience and a few comforting symbols. A nation is built from memories and from the language, not on the sidewalks shouting useless slogans - the same ones for thirty years (the only songs the young have in common with their elders are the very ugly songs of the demonstrations...)

Those who acquired their pensions by throwing bricks would like us to admire them for having enjoyed their privileges for so long without sharing them, and at the same time to shed a heart-felt tear over their exploits. It is not odious any more, it is obscene.

More on May 68:

Remembering the Sixties, 13 February 2008

Rivers of Blood and the Mentality of 68, 14 April 2008

Dany at the Elysée: The Apotheosis of May 68, 17 April 2008

The Meaning of May 68: Population Replacement and Hatred of the West, 21 April 2008

Duly Noted: The Riflemen Aimed to Miss

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:42:48 -0500

Some bits in the mosaic of our time are overlooked because we look for boulders. This column presents issues/ideas that might deserve attention.

1. There was a time when Obama’s candidacy seemed to be good news. His reach for the presidency might have brought America a step closer to bridging her racial divide. Thanks to Wright and especially Obama’s handling of the case, the splendid opportunity is lost. The primaries suggest that, no matter what, Blacks support unconditionally anyone they designate as their own. If true, this attitude makes color decisive and race into a criterion of right and wrong. Meanwhile for many whites, regardless of the matter at hand, it is of paramount importance to prove that they are not racially prejudiced. Despite of what is pretended, these attitudes do not make such groups color blind. At the same time, however, the described predisposition does cloud their perception of racism in a manner that, in the case of whites, would justly be found to be intolerable.

2. To prove that they are not white racists, America’s Liberals feel obligated to vote for someone who carries on with and is supported by black racists.

3. Liberal-White America is shocked that Afro-Americans can also be racists. Their way out of the embarrassment is akin to the solution that is often applied when the facts contradict dogmatized theories. Ignore the problem and try to move on to a simpler case.

4. Watching Obama’s Reverend Wright defend his candidate is a rich source of insights. The Preacher reiterates every one of the extreme and irrational allegations that have outraged everybody on this side of the Black Panthers. In part Wright tries to sell the idea that if “it” is White, it is bad, if “it” is Black, it is good. The obviously self-enamored man seems to feel that he needs to make Blacks stand together not as individuals but as Afro-Americans. To achieve this goal, in the manner of all extremists, separating, even alienating Blacks from the majority is a necessity. This makes the wished-for Black identity a consequence of self-segregation, apartness and of a claim of superiority.

5. Rejecting Wright’s worldview now that it has become the core of a scandal is, in PR terms, belated. The impression arises that the disassociation is not provoked by the message’s content but by the shady seditious blabber becoming public. Equally compromising is that Obama claims that in twenty years in the pews he has not noticed anything odd. If this is accepted as being quite candid then the man is not especially alert to the obvious consequences of ideas. The same goes for his ability to identify clearly articulated weird thoughts. Such naiveté makes a candidate suffering from this ailment ill suited to conduct the affairs of a nation. How will a myopically naïve person deal with the crooks that are the weed in the garden of world politics?

6. America’s coming election might turn out to be a decision on “Is it enough to be anti-American.”

7. The Republicans used to wish that Hillary be the nominee of the Democrats. Given the scandals surrounding Obama, he now seems to be easier to beat than a warmed up Clinton. She is left-of-center but is able to reach rhetorically for the middle. Obama is more to the left, racially tainted, and he courts the center only with shibboleths floating on hot air. On this basis, an Obama candidacy might be an advantage to the GOP. At the same time, a danger for the country should be pointed out. Anyone nominated can be elected. There is a potential majority composed by those who observe public life only casually and who, being superficial, do not comprehend the implications of Obama’s positions.

8. Major sins in PC-terms have been committed in the above items. The misstep makes the writer recall the case of the boy who, according to the tale, dared to cry aloud “the Emperor is naked.” In self-defense, it is to be emphasized that that not the boy had caused the nakedness. In the story (unlike some in real life) he is not punished either.

9. On September 6, 2007, an air strike eliminated an object in Syria. Israel dislikes discussing the matter but it is rumored that the target was a nuclear installation. The complex looked like Nuke Korea’s Yongbyon and there are indications of Koreans at the complex. So far there is nothing unexpected about the story or that the Syrians energetically trumpet their innocence. The interesting part is that subsequently the Syrians raised the ruins of the edifice. Could this mean tampering with the evidence? An IAEA inspection could have confirmed officially scandalized Syria’s claim of a civilian project. Only the inspectors were not allowed to visit the covered-up ruins. What a notable effort this is to deprive oneself of the proof of a terror attack! Or is there another, more convincing, explanation? An obvious version of events exists that conforms to logic. The case needs no elaboration but it involves an explanation that will certainly insult Syria.

10. PC is, as are all patterns of thinking that preordain conclusions, in its consequences harmful and humiliating in its practice. The cause of the distaste is the pressure forcing one to embrace an incredible version of events and to have to claim that the intellectual somersault is voluntarily. Often this imposition is topped when there is reason to surmise that the occurrence on which the tale is based might not have happened at all. One example is the case of the demolished Syrian non-reactor. Here you are supposed to allege that nothing is what it looks like. Furthermore, in any case, the innocent object was a local reactor and not a North Korean import.

11. Stable freedom is more than just the momentary absence of dictatorship. Therefore, destroying a dictatorship does not create a new order of liberty. This is the appropriate lesson from the Iraq imbroglio. The fitting lesson is not that, when facing a threat, nothing can and should be done no matter when and where it arises.

12. Virtue is always in danger of becoming identified by inbreeding elites as corresponding to their interests. Accordingly, their self-serving rule is declared to represent a moral imperative and to be an ethical necessity. If an effective control of the media – probably also run by the same elite – is achieved then the critics can be cast in the role of rednecks. Said to be seduced by populist, these are proclaimed, to the extent that they might become a majority, to constitute a threat. If they prevail, so the smear goes, they will act against the interest of the “real people” whose self-appointed vanguard is the clan of treacherous scribes.

13. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, defunct East Germany’s leadership denied that there has ever been an order to shoot “in defense of the anti-Fascist Wall.” In the light of new evidence that confirms what was common knowledge, the original tale is revised. The truth-of-the-month is that here was an order to shoot but there was no order to kill. We are to believe that it was bad marksmanship that caused bullets to kill the unintended targets, which the riflemen aimed to miss. Rewards that grew in value if the would-be deserter was felled must have been caused by a misinterpretation of orders. Or were they handed out because the inept guard at least did not hit his commanders?

14. It being 2008, it is fashionable to celebrate the “revolt” of the “68-ers”. The career in journalism after the bold lot ran out of shop windows to smash, might be an explanation. The self-adulation of those now nearing retirement – wisely, they advised not to trust anyone above thirty – leads one to reflect. What are those, who fought an “easy” enemy, congratulating themselves for? With some sincerity but little wisdom and sense for the possible, the “68-ers” wanted to create a society free of sanctions. This goal needed to be held high as sanctions imply an order and an order is imposed from “outside”. With this intellectual snake medicine the difference between the foreign (Communist) dictatorships, they sympathized with, and the democracy they lived in, could be negated.

15. The above allegedly made order and its laws into oppression because they kept the individual from exploring to limits he set unilaterally. The ideal society was to be built from the communes that were to be its basis. Indeed, some communities might function without formal rules. Their order based on voluntarism is possible because of the voluntary identification of individuals with a community they were free to choose – and to abandon. The smaller such a group, the greater the identification can be. The larger the organization, the less selective its membership. The more people belong, the less likely it becomes that the idealized commune and the real self can fully match. The consequence is that wherever this experiment is attempted, the voluntary association of free members develops its own oppressive order. Since the radicals of ’68 did not manage to replace the democratic state and to absorb society, their associations could not ripen into their own dictatorship. As a consequence they are still able to measure their claim to glory not on the basis of a record but by the standards of their “movement’s” dreams.

16. The (Western) “68-ers” main impact: they entered the struggle between freedom and Communist dictatorship by supporting the latter. They knew the pickles of free societies by examining them from close up with a magnifying glass. Reflecting their prejudices, they were quite content to observe the festering sores of real-existing “Socialism” through a wide angle lens.

B-H-V en CD&V: Over Bedrog en een Bedrogen Bedrieger

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:07:36 -0500

Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is alvast wat de CD&V betreft een verhaal dat aan mekaar hangt van bedrog en gebroken beloftes, en een bedrieger die zelf bedrogen wordt. Neem nu de «stille afspraak» met de Franstalige partijen dat er een tweede belangenconflict ingeroepen zou worden: hoe past die afspraak in de verkiezingsbeloftes die de CD&V een jaar geleden maakte? Vandaag zit Eerste Minister Yves Leterme samen met de andere partijen om een oplossing te vinden… niet voor de splitsing van Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, maar om een splitsing uit te stellen.

Waar is de tijd van de «vijf minuten politiek moed»? Het is toch wel bijzonder ironisch te noemen dat uitgerekend de uitvinder van deze one-liner nu samenzit met de Franstalige partijen en daarvoor zelfs halsoverkop uit Parijs moest terugkeren om een nakende stemming over de splitsing van Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde af te wenden.

Wat zouden zijn 800.000 kiezers trouwens vinden van de «stille afspraak» die hij amper een maand geleden afsloot om een splitsing van Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde minstens tot in de zomer te verdagen, zodat hij tot die tijd veilig in de Wetstraat 16 zou kunnen zitten? Hoogstwaarschijnlijk was het nooit de bedoeling dat ook maar één van zijn kiezers ooit die «stille afspraak» te weten zou komen, want zo'n afspraak is diametraal in tegenspraak met de eigen verkiezingsbeloftes. De CD&V beloofde de kiezer niet in de regering stappen zonder een voorafgaande splitsing van Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, en vandaag blijkt dat de CD&V in werkelijkheid niet in de regering zou gestapt zijn als het arrondissement al na een maand gesplitst zou moeten worden! Enkele jaren geleden, toen de CD&V federaal nog in de oppositie zat, zou men moord en brand geschreeuwd hebben moesten VLD en sp.a zo'n staaltje volksbedrog afgeleverd hebben. Of men vandaag bij de CD&V het meest geïrriteerd is over de Franstalige woordbreuk dan wel dat men als gevolg daarvan misschien wel zijn verkiezingsbelofte zal moeten nakomen is een volledig open vraag.

De CD&V-kat bevindt zich vandaag dus in het nauw, en als er dan toch een regeringscrisis met eventuele nieuwe verkiezingen van moet komen, is het wijs de schuld nu al bij de anderen te leggen, deze keer de Franstaligen dus. Zelfs schandelijke akkoorden waarover men een maand geleden bij hoog en bij laag nog zou gezworen hebben dat ze beneden de waardigheid van een Vlaamse partij als de CD&V zouden geweest zijn kunnen daarbij dienst doen. De argeloze kiezer merkt dan misschien niet op dat het eigenlijke probleem niet de woordbreuk van de Franstaligen van vandaag is, maar de woordbreuk van de CD&V een maand geleden. Er kan vandaag echter alleen maar vastgesteld worden dat de bedrieger bedrogen werd, en dat komt natuurlijk extra hard aan. Zelfs een anders Belgische contra-nationalist als een Herman van Rompuy schijnt vandaag genoeg te hebben van het Franstalige bedrog, en dat wil al wat zeggen.

De CD&V heeft immers vandaag nog maar eens moeten ervaren wat het verschil is tussen «een akkoord» en «un accord». «Een akkoord» blijft namelijk eeuwig en drie dagen geldig, zelfs als de tegenpartij de voorwaarden al honderden keren geschonden heeft en men alleen nog maar met de nadelen van dat akkoord opgescheept zit. De faciliteiten en de taalwetten in Brussel zijn daar het beste voorbeeld van. «Un accord» daarentegen vervalt de dag dat men er netto geen voordeel meer aan heeft –en die dag kan zelfs al vóór de inwerkingtreding van het «accord» vallen– zelfs al heeft men er de duurste eden over gezworen. Op de deelafspraken uit het «accord» die wel nog een voordeel opleveren kan men wel nog steeds aanspraak maken, en dat uiteraard blijvend. Opnieuw, de faciliteiten en de taalwetten in Brussel zijn er het beste voorbeeld van. Het probleem is alleen dat de CD&V dat nog steeds niet schijnt begrepen te hebben, of toch voorwendt dat nog niet begrepen te hebben, al zou het kunnen dat de laatste dagen bij sommigen de ogen toch weer eens zijn opengegaan. Bij hoeveel en hoe blijvend dat zal zijn, valt nog te bezien.

Astarte and Amaterasu - The Diverging Destinies of Europe and Japan. -- Part 2

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:12:01 -0500

Left: An EU poster illustrating the goal of completing (see crane) the building of the Tower of Babel as per the iconic Pieter Brueghel painting.

Right: Hanami – a cherry blossom viewing party in Tokyo (photo by the author)

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.

There is a wonderful if anecdotal quote from the great Euro-Chilean-Mexican-Parisian film director and polymath, Alejandro Jodorowsky: "One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, 'Is it half full or half empty?' So I drank the water. No more problem."

Jodorowsky's aphorism sums up the difference in the mental landscapes of the West (1) and the East. The West has sat for decades now, tortured, hunched under the weight of its past follies and malfeasances, pondering a skull, a glass half full. "To be or not to be?" It has decided, as per its intellectual seers, that the white race is the cancer of human history (2). It has decided not to be.

Instead, the West has constructed a "false self." The false self is a psychoanalytic concept: a process whereby an individual who has received a profound narcissistic wound constructs a false self that allows him to pretend to be what he would have liked to be (3). So, in remorse over the distant past – whether the 30-Years-War or the Great War, slavery or colonialism, Habsburg, Himmler or Hiroshima – Western elites are building a new model of society.

This society-in-development is designed to exclude war and violence. All its people are equal and no one is allowed to discriminate. Actually, there is no longer "its people," as all of humanity is its people and "diversity" is its mantra. Gender and race are discredited concepts, not parameters of a physical reality. Racism, sexism and homophobia are capital crimes, but mass murderers are excused on account of addiction to candy or the "racism" of their victims. All social typology and taxonomy – the dreaded "stereotypes" – are outlawed, except "whitey," "fascist" and "the rich." "Nation" and "Christian" are bad words leading to censure. The ethnic expression and solidarity of people of European origin is to be suppressed; those of other ethnicities, promoted.

The low shall be high and the high shall be low. The deviant, the alien and the alienated, the parasitic and the criminal shall be high. The normal, the homegrown and well adjusted, the productive and the law-abiding shall be low. It's the reign of allophilia – the self-asphyxiating veneration of "the other," pushed by the West's political elites and its cultural Brahmins as the new panacea.

And these are the views not only of the extreme European left, and the world-spanning white liberal creed, but even of such "conservative" American aristocrats as George W. Bush and John McCain – give or take a war and a Sunday church attendance or two. It's an across-the-board fogging of the collective mind, and rotting of the collective heart, of the European civilization. The final untergang des abendlandes.

This "false-self West" has about as much grounding in human nature, down to the molecular level, as Marxism had. And the implementation of this tyrannical madness is a hundred-year project with an equal chance of success and an equal cost of implementation, in human lives and wellbeing, as Marxism has had. That is what comes from pondering the emptiness of the half-full glass, ignoring and denigrating its half-fullness.

For the credit column of the European peoples' karmic ledger includes a religion based in love, forgiveness, hope and charity – however under-implemented in the past and over-applied in the present. Inspired by that religion, Europeans have produced the greatest music and painting and most of the greatest architecture ever conceived by man; and the world's greatest literature and drama; and all the advances that humanity has made in the realms of justice, freedom, and man's inherent dignity in the last 2000 years. And, ultimately, on this side of the ledger belongs practically all the brainwork of mankind that has borne modern science, medicine, technology and all the advances in humanity's material wellbeing in the last 500 years, save for those the Japanese have made in the last 50. All relevant no more, silenced by the synchronized groans of Mea Culpa.

The Japanese, on the other hand, whose moral glass has been just as half full as the European peoples' has been, just drank the water. No more problem. And that's what one experiences living in Japan, as opposed to the degrading self-abasement and conscious self-dismantling one witnesses every day in the West.

Asked whether the dog has Buddha's nature, the Oriental sage lifts his leg to urinate on the questioner. And he will do so within a split second from the posing of the question. To arrive at this answer it will have taken him twenty years of shutting down the chatter of his mind, to align with his True Nature through arduous meditation.

The Western sage, facing the same question but having devoted his twenty years to acquiring a PhD in the hermeneutics of Jacques Lacan as applied to the transgender community's anal anxiety, will spend a year researching canine physiology and behavior, and another year reading scholarly works on Buddhism published in German, French and English since 1860. He will then write a book deconstructing the dog as a genetically programmed biological computer designed as a receptacle for the white man's proclivity for domination and exploitation.

The book will be published by a major imprint. It will receive glowing reviews in the New York Times, the Guardian and Le Monde. Herr Professor Doctor will be interviewed by BBC International and CNN. Soon the book will be on the college curriculum compulsory reading list throughout the Euroculture zone: from Sydney, Australia to Salzburg, Austria. Poisoning the minds of current voters and future leaders with the intellectual equivalent of Herr Professor's enema. Moreover, the European Parliament, quoting this book on the dais, will enact 168 new pet regulations, leading, eventually, to banning dog ownership altogether across the European Union.

The Orientals have no interest in and do not allow such rubbish. Let the stupid gaijin flock to Western Universities on the taxpayer's subsidy to take academic courses with titles like The Phallus, Queer Musicology, Blackness, Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism, and Drag: Theories of Transgenderism and Performance. In Japan, Korea and China, equally, one goes to university not to masturbate for four years at society's expense but to study nano and bio technology, medicine, and other useful things.

The book that has been the moral and sociopolitical guide of the Orient for 2500 years begins this way:

Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?

But the book that was the moral and sociopolitical guide of Western Civilization for 1800 years begins this way:

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;

Finding this book increasingly boring, Western civilization replaced it with two, written in the 19th century. The one begins thus:

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.

And the other, thus (4):

In the following pages I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state.

The East is governed by the direct perception of reality; the West by zealously enforced theories that purport to represent reality. It's the earthy voice of Amaterasu versus the muzzled croak of Astarte-Europa. When the latter voice is silenced, Pied Piper charlatans march the young outside the city's walls and off the cliff.

In Japan, the Goddess of Creation, literally Mother Nature, is everywhere (5). The West has various derogatory words for it, from Animism to Vitalism, but one who has experienced what it means in everyday life will not dismiss it lightly.

Grand trees have sacred ropes tied around them, great rocks are the subject of veneration, and waterfalls serve for spiritual purification. The birth and rapid death of cherry blossoms are not only an occasion for drunken office parties alfresco, but also annual reminders that life is fleeting and this, unimproved, is the best and most beautiful of all possible worlds. Little shrines to Inari, the goddess of the soil and its life-giving crop, rice, are everywhere, guarded by two stone foxes. And these are Japanese trees and blossoms and rocks and waterfalls and soil and rice and foxes; not the spawns of global Gaia Inc., managed by Albert Gore, Jr through the local franchise of The Green Party. That's how one comes to love one's native land and to resist its adulteration by incompatible foreign peoples, cultures, ideologies and, not the least, interests.

Europe once had similar beliefs and observances. Their traces abound: hard and eternal as Stonehenge or evanescent as the flower wreaths on the heads of Slavonic or Scandinavian girls at their maypole dances. But the church, which inherited the Hebrew prophets' hatred of Astarte, co-opted a few ancient rites as Christmas trees or Easter eggs, or stamped them out with fire and sword a thousand years ago. And so, the umbilical cord that connects a people to its soil and its tribe was strictured in Europe and its diaspora, replaced first by the ecumenical church, and then by universalist intellectual constructs such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, and liberalism. But in Japan, the ancient link has survived, and that is one of the main reasons why Japan is surviving while the West is in the process of self-liquidation.

The prognosis for Europe's and its diaspora's return to their ancestors' spiritual connectedness with Nature is not good, given that the archdevil of modern times, Adolf Hitler, who saw the weakness that Christianity and Marxism had bequeathed to his people, was obsessed with the pagan Norse and Aryans, and transplanted their rituals and symbols to the Third Reich. But if the European civilization is to survive, it must get over Hitler, as it must over colonialism and slavery.

Not to mention Nietzsche, there are thoughtful contemporary voices, such as Alain de Benoist's On Being a Pagan, advocating Europe's return to the ways of Astarte-Europa as a way of shedding the psychoses of self-loathing, moralism and allophilia. But Christianity is by now woven into the European fabric. One hopes that the mainstream Christian churches will discover that the God of the Western peoples does not only dwell in dusty Nicean theology parchments or in a Scriptura written by unknown Hebrew scribes of 2600 years ago and significantly mistranslated ever since. They may rediscover that God dwells locally and tangibly: in the first flowers of spring pushing through the snow, and in the European birch and pine forests, among which the minarets pollinating with amplified Arabic incantations to the God of desert shepherds truly are out of place.

There is something the European peoples can learn from Japan about the meaning and place of religion. First, that the grand vision, based on the life of a foreign individual described in imported scrolls, does not have to displace the local Goddess but may live with her in a happy symbiosis. Thus, Buddhism cohabits with Shintoism, and Gautama with Amaterasu, and both are equally happy to get married in a Presbyterian church. The phenomenon of religious wars, of religious hatred, of a despotic, jealous God, is unknown in the history of Japan (6).

It follows that a God that is zealous, tyrannical and unforgiving is not healthy for the survival of an advanced civilization. The West has indeed abandoned such a vision of its God, and most of Europe has abandoned him altogether. The problem is that the irrational, self-sacrificial alternative creed that has filled the heart of the revamped Church and the heads of the West's elites – the creed of liberalism and allophilia – has resulted in the importation into the West of tens of millions of rapidly multiplying foreigners who brought with them their tyrannical, absolutist, dissent-hating God with implacable claims on universal fealty.

It's amazing that the Church – it matters not which denomination – was so quick in bowing to that foreign conception of God while having yielded, decades ago, the last few vestiges of its own old and superficially similar conception. It is perhaps not coincidental that the Church in Europe is strongest and liberalism is weakest in countries where they think locally and act locally. Poland, for instance, has a cult of the Black Madonna, and ostensibly Christian holidays have as much in common with the Amaterasu Shinto traditions of Japan as with the postmodern and shaky Christianity of Western Europe.

If the Japanese pleat ropes and rice straw into sacred symbols, the Slavs pleat wheat straw and ribbons into consecrated wreaths, and shrubs and pussywillows into fronds of Easter palms. If some spiritual Japanese purify themselves under cold waterfalls, some spiritual Poles take sunrise baths in running streams and rivers on Easter Thursday. On Holy Saturday, Catholic Slav priests have been consecrating fire and water for a thousand years in a ritual not essentially different from the one their pagan ancestors had performed, or that Shinto priests still perform. Other East European peoples have retained similar traditions, and it's in them where Europe's healthiest roots and some of its best leaders, such as Vaclav Havel or Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, may still be found.

It may be the misfortune of the European Union that it's a Franco-German creation. The one has the unfortunate habit of issuing a torrent of lofty words, such as Liberté, égalité, fraternité, that end up with la racaille either hacking women, priests and philosophers to pieces on the streets of Paris in the 1790s, or burning cities to the shouts of Allahu akbar in the present decade. And the other, mixing its repentance for the monstrosity of Nazism with current "isms" such as hedonism, nihilism and socialism, is hardly a model of a healthy take on life, nation or the transcendent.

For a European regeneration to take place, and an American one as well, the West must take its intellectuals to account. The political and cultural establishment of the European peoples, including the diaspora, works assiduously toward the decomposition of the West through open-ended Third-World immigration; surrender to Islam; abolition of ethnic identity – but only of the European ethnics; transfer of national sovereignty to supranational bodies some of which are controlled by votes of the Third World; and the enforcement of totalitarian anti-discrimination, anti-truth laws designed to nip in the bud any possibility of successful resistance by the Euro-ethnics subjected to this gradual wipeout.

As we have shown in the comparison with Japan, this current has no basis in universal justice or in irreversible patterns of historical dialectic. Its only basis is in a psychosis injected into the minds of the European peoples by their own elites.

The West has done well to recognize and compensate for the errors and evils in its past, but it has gone much beyond that, into suicide-as-repentance. Reasons for repentance exist equally for the Japanese, whose elites have apologized but refrained from taking their people down the road of no return. Furthermore, such reasons exist for every other civilization, including those of the cloyingly named "people of color," held by the West's sick elites as the paragon of assaulted virtue, worthy of succeeding the Euro-ethnics' domain. If the true account of the genocides, gynocides, warmongering, ravages, slavery, oppression, cruelty, racism, ethnocentrism, exploitation, hate of "the other" and pure barbarism in the histories of Africa, Islam or the early Mesamericans were taught in Europe's and America's schools, the West's self-hatred would have had at least a true yardstick against which to measure itself.

Julien Benda's 1927 book, La Trahison des Clercs ("The Treason of the Intellectuals") argued that European intellectuals had lost the ability to think dispassionately about political and social issues. Instead, they had become apologists for chauvinism, aggression and racism. Benda, alarmed by the xenophobic hatreds of his generation and their fanning by writers and philosophers, advocated instead a return to the balanced and rational outlook of classical civilization and the ecumenism of traditional Christianity.

This essay inveighs on the side opposite from Benda's, but diagnoses the same illness. The side is opposite because the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, to an untruth diametrically opposite of the untruth of Benda's times.

Society can demand that intellectual activity whose goal is not the propagation of truth by rigorous and objective reasoning, cease, or at least be made unprofitable. When the Pied Pipers' stipend is redirected to disinfecting history curriculums and planting native trees, the young will return to the city.

Just drink the water; no more problem.

Footnotes

(1) The terms "The West," "Western peoples," "European peoples," "European civilization," "Euroculture zone," "Eurosphere" all mean to replace the misleading label, "whites." Neither skin color nor race is the predominant characteristic of "whites," though a derivation from the same gene pool has important implications that science is now trying to unravel. Many Japanese are whiter than "whites," there are Afghani Muslim blonds with blue eyes, Disraeli was as European as Gladstone, and Alexandre Dumas and Alexander Pushkin – both part-Negroes – are in the all-time pantheon of true European culture. The alternative terms employed here connote a community tied to a particular land, Europe; a particular culture built on a unique Hebrew-Greek-Roman foundation and undergone unique, indigenous transmutations such as the Enlightenment and Romanticism and heir to a particular history with salient determinants such as Christianity, struggles against encroachments by Islam, struggles for liberty and social caste equality, early industrialization, empiricism, and more. Furthermore, it appears that this particular organic entity is prone, like certain kinds of vines are to phylloxera, to unique diseases, such as the self-decomposing, allophiliac illusions discussed above and showing on both sides of the Atlantic. We apply this analysis also to countries founded and settled by European immigrants, and populated mainly by their descendants. There are various ethno-cultural differences within this broad category but there is a wide and unique common denominator as well.

(2) This is an actual quote of Susan Sontag, published in the Winter 1967 issue of Partisan Review.

(3) The concept was developed by the Austrian-American psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud's assistant, Helene Deutsch, and was later elaborated by the British psychoanalyst, Donald Woods Winnicott. This writer is not a psychoanalyst, but what is happening to the European civilization is so alarming and irrational that one ought to reach wide for a viable diagnosis.

(4) In 1891, before The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud published another book, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, eine Kritische Studie, but it was an inconsequential monograph, only 257 copies were sold, and it's difficult to find a copy to quote from.

(5) Much of Japan has been paved over, as is the case with China, Korea and the West. But the contrast between the spirit and the flesh is a profound and separate subject that we have to exclude here.

(6) Nitpickers will point out that there were a few episodes of strife involving religious groups, such as Nobunaga's war on the monks of Mt. Hiei. Such rare instances, though, were not due to differences in religious dogma but due to conflicting political interests.

The Right Conquers Rome. Is Italy about to Break the Mould?

Thu, 01 May 2008 09:39:25 -0500

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.

In Italian, the expression is “Caporetto”,in memory of the Battle of Caporetto fought at what is now Kobarid in Slovenia in 1917, the subject of Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. The expression has been much used in the newspapers in recent days to denote what happened to the Italian Left at the recent parliamentary and local elections. The Left, and especially the extreme Left, has indeed suffered a historic defeat, losing control of the government, both houses of parliament, and the City of Rome, which it has held for most of the last quarter century.

Apart from the return to power for a third term in office of the vigorously anti-Left Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the Right’s victories in Italy include spectacular successes for the (admittedly reformed) extreme right. Gianfranco Fini, who was Deputy Prime Minister in the last Berlusconi administration, and who rose to power by taking over the old fascist party and “democratising” it to create the Alleanza Nazionale, is now President of the Parliament. The Mayor of Rome is Gianni Alemanno, also formerly of the Movimento Sociale Italiano, Mussolini’s party; Alemanno is the son-in-law of Pino Rauti, a veteran politician from the extreme right. There were apparently fascist salutes on the Campidoglio (the Capitoline hill where town hall of Rome is situated) on Tuesday in celebration of his victory.

This is in addition to the very high score achieved by the Northern League (9% of the national vote): in many ways the Northern League is more right-wing than Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale, campaigning much more vigorously against immigration and Europe than Fini does. The Northern League leader, Umberto Bossi, indeed once called the EU a “Stalinist” organisation, the only minister in any European government ever to use such vigorously anti-EU rhetoric since the EEC was created in 1957.

Italian politics is often dismissed (in Britain at least) as nothing but a combination of opera buffa and artful corruption. It is true that the country’s political life seems chaotic when viewed from outside; but that is true of Italian life in general, where the appearance of chaos in fact masks the reality of extremely professional organisation. Anyone who has taken a train or a bus in Italy will know this to be true (the contrast with Britain, for instance, is very unfavourable to the British). The Italians are masterful businessmen and very hard-working professionals, who continue to produce some of the world’s best products, from cars and kitchens to fashion and food.

In politics, the Italians combine their well-known flair and kindness with a Latin proclivity for interesting political ideas. Above all, Italian politics are profoundly original: it has often been remarked that the country which appears to have no significant international profile is, in fact, a laboratory for political movements which then catch on elsewhere. No Bismarck without Cavour; no Hitler without Mussolini.

If Italy is indeed in the political avant-garde, there is surely no thinker whose work has had greater political influence in the post-war politics of Europe than the great Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Like many Marxists an excruciatingly boring writer, Gramsci famously formulated the idea that the Left should grasp and consolidate its power by establishing cultural hegemony. Whereas Marx and Engels thought that the revolution would come about as a result of impersonal and inevitable historical processes, and whereas Lenin argued that instead the revolution needed to be directed by a highly disciplined, centralised and violent revolutionary party, Gramsci argued that the Left should wield power not only by means of violence and coercion but also by infiltrating the cultural institutions of the state in order to be able to dictate the very terms of reference of the political debate itself.

We are all familiar with what this means in practice. Huge swathes of political discourse are kept off limits by taboos established by the Left. Immigration is perhaps the most obvious of these; those politicians in Europe who have campaigned against mass immigration, like the Front national in France or the Vlaams Blok (now Belang) in Flanders, are demonised as extremists. Some people have managed to campaign against immigration without being so demonised – Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch in the UK, the Conservative Party and large sections of the British media are examples – but their campaigns have been either muted or unsuccessful or both. This is in spite of the fact that Western Europe continues to suffer from very high levels of net immigration, which are putting huge strains on social relations and the state.

Is Italy about to break the mould? I have always regarded Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the Alleanza Nazionale, as a dismal opportunist. But judging by the language coming out of the mouth of the new Mayor of Rome, as of other Italian politicians, this will soon change. Alemanno has said that any foreigners convicted of crimes in Italy will simply be deported. The temperature has been rising steadily in Italy, and especially in Rome, as vast camps of Romanian gypsies have sprung up in the capital city and elsewhere, from where petty and serious crimes are systematically committed. One would have thought that a promise to apply the law as it stands was a fairly uncontroversial proposition, but when the Front national said it would do the same thing in France, it was denounced as extremist. Italy has already started applying these measures and one can only assume that, with the new political hegemony of the Right, they will continue and be amplified.

If so, Italy will indeed have contributed to what I hope will be sea change in European politics. By breaking the taboo in Rome, the taboo may be broken across Europe. But what about cultural hegemony? Here, too, there are signs of optimism – stronger signs, perhaps, than the promises made on political subjects. For the new Mayor of Rome has also promised to dismantle and remove a new building which has only recently been put up in the centre of the Eternal City and which is, to use his words, an “insult” to it. I refer to Richard Meier’s building which now houses the Ara Pacis, a great Roman monument erected to the glory of the Emperor Augustus.

The Ara Pacis has been undergoing restoration for years, and the work on the new building to house it, on the banks of the Tiber near Piazza del Popolo, has also dragged on for as long as I can remember. Now that the building has been unveiled, we can see the true horror of what Meier has constructed. A disciple of the worst architects of the 20th century, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe – who also espoused its worst political ideologies - Meier puts up culturally Bolshevik buildings which are identical whether they are in Indiana or Barcelona. They all look like car dealerships on the outskirts of Nicosia. The monstrosity which he has created for the Ara Pacis is not only a repetition of his other horrors elsewhere; it also severely disfigures the architecture of Rome which is otherwise a gloriously organic harmony. You can see pictures of it here and pictures of his other buildings here.

Alemanno promised to dismantle the Ara Pacis building when he campaigned for Mayor in 2006. Now he has renewed that promise, albeit saying that it is not a priority given the more pressing security concerns of the capital. No doubt all such political promises can fall victim to the pressures of inertia and opportunism. But if Alemanno does only one thing during his term in office, if he achieves this single act of cultural restoration or counter-revolution, then the entire election will have been well worth it.