I have addressed Eric L. Gans and his theory of language and culture previously in The Brussels Journal, and with enough of a response that revisiting the topic seems justified.  In what follows I wish to present the essentials of Gansian theory and to bring under discussion Gans’s latest book, which deserves attention and can be read and understood by those who are not familiar with the author’s earlier work; I want also to discuss Gans’ first book, where the author initially presented his notion that signification and institutions have a common punctual or “evenemential” origin.  I should divulge that I studied with Gans at UCLA during my days as a graduate fellow in comparative literature in the 1980s and that I wrote my dissertation – an anthropological discussion of the modern long poem – under Gans’ supervision.  When I write of Gans, I do so as a former student and a longtime friend.  I hope, by the way, before the year ends, to devote an essay to another theoretician of language, Owen Barfield.   

 

Speculations whether the Icelandic government’s application for membership of the European Union is really serious are quite understandable. The government is totally split on the issue, the Icelandic parliament only voted narrowly in favour of the application this summer and the people are utterly opposing it. The step is completely premature with all the wrong circumstances at hand.

  An article by Robert S. Wistrich

On November 9, 1938, a massive nation-wide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence against German Jews was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish refugee. The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than a thousand synagogues; the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews, and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. This murderous onslaught against German Jewry, cynically described by the Nazis as the “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht), was a major turning point on the road to the “Final Solution” of the so-called “Jewish Question.” It signified that the Nazi regime had crossed a Rubicon and would no longer be deterred by Western public opinion in its “war against the Jews.” The economic expropriation of German Jewry, its complete social ostracism and public humiliation swiftly followed. Jews were banned from public transport, from frequenting concerts, theaters, cinemas, commercial centers, beaches, or using public benches. Only a fortnight after “Crystal Night,” the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through “fire and sword” and its imminent complete annihilation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.