One of Brussels' latest rather brutal infringements of member states' sovereignty is the proposal from European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs to force the national governments to spend 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income (GNI) to development aid. If they fail to meet this imposed objective, the Commission will impose sanctions.

Forcing the member states to comply with this arbitrary norm, this '0.7 percent dogma' is not only the world upside down, it will also make problems in Africa and in other poor regions and countries even worse. Targets should be set according to demand rather than supply. Rather than imposing targets to increase aid, based on how well donor country economies are doing with no relation to Africa's economic circumstances, we should be setting targets to decrease aid, having analysed more profoundly its impact on recipient countries. The aid quantity argument - the assumption that more aid money would automatically lead to more development - is indeed a fallacy. The facts are crystal-clear. Over the past 60 years, at least one trillion in aid has been transferred from so-called rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in decades.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold Toynbee's 12-volume study of the genesis, growth and breakdown of dozens of civilizations is back in vogue with the demise of Marxism and the robust acclaim given to market-based solutions in political economies across the world. He had much to say concerning the origin of war and the intractable nature of religious based autocracies that reign throughout Asia, the Near East and Africa.

Perhaps the single most timely insight that dominates twelve massive volumes is violently on display by Iranian proxies that cover the Middle East.  Toynbee  reveals the significance of studying the fall of the Roman Empire along the North-East frontier up to the Danube River that is today known as Western Europe.  According to Toynbee, whenever a formidable sophisticated civilization maintains a limes (a series of military outposts to engage, contain and thwart an enemy), the more sophisticated culture heats up and disturbs the weaker, whereby ultimately the stronger culture is overwhelmed and collapses in its engagement with an intractable foe.

An internationally represented cabal propagates in security matters a dangerous assumption. The Left, the Greens, the “Alternaives” and their Do Gooder brigades share a catching project. For the careless observer of public affairs the tale can be attractive as it spreads tainted news that entice to inaction. According to the thesis, in the modern world the national means of self-defense have become superfluous. This speculation proclaims that the sources of peril directed against advanced and democratic societies are actually fantasies. Our apparent foes are men of good will whose position is negotiable. Their occasional radicalism is the outgrowth of misunderstandings that rational discourse can overcome. Otherwise, such groups, if reduced to the essence of their agenda, signal the stirrings of forces that peaceniks imagine represents a substance that corresponds to their own core tenets. The captains of this intellectual Titanic claim to know that there are no icebergs, meaning politically unmanageable conflicts in the world. At the same time, it is contended that the power of international organizations creates an environment in which physical defenses have become superfluous. Allegedly, these organs act in the name of the “international community” whose raised eyebrows make redundant the instruments of national power designed for the protection of sovereignty.

Reluctantly, Obama adds limited American military actions to the allied effort to stop Moamer Gadhafi from taking back his entire country. Up to a few days ago, people like Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, doubted the efficiency of a no-fly zone to defeat Gadhafi. But now, surprisingly, this same no-fly zone is seen as the appropriate strategy.

Electronic media have a decentralizing effect.  They permit every single individual to be a center without margins.  There is no analogue in the natural world that can challenge its scope or authority.  The problem is when we permit such innovation to eclipse the human person.  Technological innovation is not an object, it's a relation.  I often think that progress itself is dependent on a false view of human freedom itself.  Given the political and theological problems intrinsic to contemporary Islam, technological innovation and its erroneous vision viewing the human person as an appendage to consumption is perhaps the greatest intellectual threat facing the West today.

Tomislav Sunic's Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right is the third book from Arktos Media we have reviewed, the two previous being Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism, and Alain de Benoist's The Problem of Democracy. Whereas de Benoist's book length essay was a general discussion of the form of democracy and its sometimes contradictions, Sunic's book is more in keeping with Faye's in that it is specific to European New Right (ENR) issues, and both should be read together as compliments. Unlike the Faye, Dr. Sunic's book is written specifically with the non-European reader in mind. It is not a translation but an original English monograph, now in its third edition.

All along, there have been convincing reasons to be skeptical about the future to which Arab resistance has opened the door. Earlier, some aspects of these concerns had already been elaborated in this column.

Revolutions are not to be measured by the detail that subsequent commemorative national holidays emphasize. That celebrated component of the revolutionary process is the overthrow of the “old régime”. Granted, there is no revolution if the old system is not ousted. However, crushing the old system of government does not guarantee the ultimate success of the upheaval. At least not by the standards of the terms by which it defined its goals during the upheaval’s first and violent phase. The analogy is a sailboat race. To become a participant you have to get the vessel’s hull wet. After that comes the crucial part which includes manning the boat and holding it on course.

It seems that out of hatred for Bush, the Powers That Be have decided to wait for The Big One, the pure massacre. It is not only appalling and shameful, it is revealing of the status achieved by the conservatism of the left and the right who return to realpolitik when it suits them.

The revolt from Islamic autocracy throughout North Africa and the Middle East have put Western cognoscenti at a dear disadvantage.  For decades, Western intelligentsia have treated the region and its peoples to the soft bigotry of low expectations embodied in belief that stability was superior to liberal democracy.  

We are now witnessing an Arab secular revolt unhinged from the geopolitical moorings of any Western agenda.  Our anemic response embodies a betrayal worthy of Julien Benda!  Western liberals cannot bring themselves to defend the very liberty that informed the cry that has now consumed so much Islamic soil.  

Some of us have the habit of filing just about anything that is suspected to be of subsequent interest. Those that cling to items that are devoid of any immediate usefulness, tend to experience marital problems. What is rated as junk by tidy wives has bad consequences. One is that, just by laying around, the mess takes space. The other one is that these forgotten memories gather dust. The objections of spouses can be overcome by pretending to “file” the pile “soon”. In translation that means that, the obnoxious material is reluctantly stuffed into boxes in which the mess is perpetuated. Such containers reproduce in the manner of unsupervised guinea pigs. Out of control, they are stored until the packages hiding the earlier disorder become a new obstruction.