Israel's Raid on Saddam's Nuclear Reactor (1981)

La Vie Nazi en Rose ... II

- Continued from Part I -

Our post "La Vie Nazi en Rose" needs urgent updating. A problem has been detected that is reflected in the latter part of the post's title. Apparently André Zucca's colour photos of Paris during Nazi occupation were a bit too much, well ... en rose. This is hardly surprising given that Zucca was requisitioned by the Nazis to work for propaganda magazine Signal.

EURSOC is reporting on the fall-out of the recent exhibition "Parisians under the Occupation" at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. It would seem that the shadow of World War II is still too overpowering to allow an objective, historical perspective. Either that, or ...

The People's Cube recently commented on the postmodern inability to take emotional distance - even from events as remote as Biblical times. Enjoy the Cube's correct opinions for progressive liberals in "The Renegade Exodus and Other Crimes of Moses". But now back to the Zucca exhibit:
EURSOC: "Don't Mention The War"

It seems the exhibition has caused red cheeks in the Paris city hall. The assistant cultural affairs mayor said that it the expo was "embarrassing, ambiguous and badly explained." The mayor's office quickly released a leaflet claiming that Zucca's photographs gave a "distorted" picture of life under Nazi rule. The work, it added, "chooses to show nothing, or little, of the reality of Occupation and its terrible consequences." The problem seems to be that Zucca depicted life as carrying on much as normal.

It's true, some of the images are almost glamorous. Little is seen of the suffering of the city's Jews (just two yellow stars in the show) and there isn't much in the way of the jackboot of Nazi oppression. According to the Paris city hall, this is because Zucca was following his German masters' brief to show Paris life continuing much as normal - hence his use of colour film for German magazines, a rare commodity in wartime France.

More sceptical souls, including the Independent's John Lichfield, suggest that Zucca was merely showing what he saw: In his defence, Lichfield quotes philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who was scathing about the myth of Parisians being ordered about by gun-toting Nazi officers. Sartre wrote that Parisians invented this fantasy in order to assuage their guilt at not doing enough to resist the Occupation: In the years since the war ended, France has cultivated the image of suffering Paris, doubtless inspired by General de Gaulle's myth that during the war, Frenchmen were either Resistance (the vast majority) or collaborators. (...) >>>

Jean-Paul Sartre was a persistent Mao apologist in the face of genocide towards Rousseauian agrarianism. He should know about myths and self-delusion ...

La Vie Nazi en Rose ...

EURSOC: "Paris in the Occupation"

Opening today at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris is an exhibition of colour photographs by André Zucca titled "Parisians under the Occupation."

At a time when all photography in Paris was strictly monitored by the Nazis, Zucca (who died in 1973) was the only French snapper working in colour. He was authorised to photograph daily life in the French capital for a German magazine distributed in occupied nations: The Nazis wanted to show how life continued in the city despite the Occupation. So there are street and café scenes (in both rich and poor quartiers), with now and again, smiling workers and chic women, with now and again the shock of a Nazi soldier on the street, or, in the case of a photo of the rue de Rivoli, Nazi banners draped on the occupiers' headquarters. The exhibition continues until June 1. >>>


- Update: "La Vie Nazi en Rose", part II

Ideological Archeology: Rousseau (II)

Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding awkwardly contemporary. Self-pity and paranoia play see-saw with wrong choices and deflecting blame. Man is by nature good, it is society that is the cause of corruption and vice. Iconic for Rousseauian thought is the image of the noble savage, man in his natural state before his fall from Paradise.

There is nothing ambiguous about his ethics however: he believed his 'doctrine of two substances' to be the key to the absolute quality of good and evil [Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 2001, p., 2001, p. 719]. In an example in a classical setting he saw in Athenian decadence the degrading influence of reason. He preferred the cruder, militaristic Spartans, an unspoiled and nobler tribe. Their callous practice of exposing babies to nature - now in dispute - may well have inspired Rousseau to expose his own five illegitimate children to the hardships of the Paris orphanage.

Although Rousseau died in 1778, before the French Revolution, his justification of violence to power was the source of inspiration of the Reign of Terror that the Jacobins unleashed during the latter part of the rebellion. In 1792 the French 'citizen army' faced the Prussian forces at Valmy. In a psychological victory they prevented them from marching on to Paris to restore the monarchy. Earlier in the capital a mob had stormed the Tuilleries Palace. In the massacres over a thousand political prisoners were brutally hacked to death. Fabre d'Eglantine declared: "In the towns, let the blood of traitors be the first Holocaust to Liberty, so that in advancing to meet the common enemy, we leave nothing behind to disquiet us!" [Wildmonk]

After "the first Holocaust to Liberty" many more would follow. It is a specific feature, typical of Rousseau's constellation of ideas. The chief ingredients as expressed in "Profession de Foi" are a sweeping rejection of tradition, Revelation, and all institutionalized authority. [Radical Enlightenment, p. 718]

In Roussea's ideas we find the source of every anti-Liberal, violent revolution ever since the French Revolution went off the Lockean track. Rousseau is ultimately the father of many noxious and lethal traditions besides: Romanticism, redistributive Socialism, philosophical agrarianism, conservative Communitarianism, Nazism, and more to the point, the Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism. Cultures, adopting Rousseauian ideas found in them a mirror of some aspect of their own identity. [Wildmonk]

Many have descended into the abyss of collectivist hell. In France his radical egalitarianism led to The Reign of Terror, in Germany to Left and Right Socialism with known result, in Russia and the Far East to communism, starvation and slaughter on grandiose scales. In China Mao Tse Tung's Great Leap Forward resulted in the greatest mass murder in human history and in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge's extermination campaign to establish Rousseauian agrarianism resulted in the deaths of well over twenty percent of the population. [Wildmonk] If this is not evil, frankly I don't know what is.

Why Rousseau is different
Rousseau stands apart in many respects. He marks the fault-line in Western tradition between Anglo-American and Continental lines of thought, and forms the point of departure from the Enlightenment because he is essentially anti-modern [Wildmonk]. While loosely following the traditional path of Enlightenment thought, his radical stance differs notably on the crucial issues of anti-individualism [Isaiah Berlin, "Against the Current", 2001], anti-capitalism and against private property ("Radical Enlightenment", p. 273), anti science and technology, his radical egalitarianism, and the inherent mindset in which the means are justified by the perceived noble end.

Rousseau is often quoted as the iconic philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it is quite clear he fiercely rejected all its tenets and values. No doubt, here we have the ground zero of the Counter-Enlightenment.

He was certainly no believer in mutually beneficial interaction, or the beneficial effects on society of self-interest (Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), "The Fable of the Bees"), asserting that "society hardly needs to feed man's love for himself and his desire to be first among men." ["Radical Enlightenment", p. 273].

His radical egalitianism is echoed in the notion that rational and industrious man with dehumanizing machines would replace royalty as an enslaver of the common man, being better and more ruthless on the aggregation of material goods. He argued that the separation of the progress and dissemination of science and art from political and religious control are hazardous for society and for the virtue of the people [Bloom, 1990]. But it gets worse."

Common will" instead of freedom
In Rousseau we see the first social contract at the price of freedom and the birth of a notion called the "common will". The latter is a concept that in Rousseau's approach requires state intervention. This should not be confused with the 'common good'. It is a far more developed conception which, and unlike the former, can only be realized in the context of civil society under the state ["Radical Enlightenment", p. 720).

For the creation of a society of common will, "freedom of all the people", they need only accept the dictates of the state. This was Rousseau's essence of "true civilization." The struggle between rich and poor would then rise to a moral experience of self-restraint. [Wildmonk] With the faculty of moral choice thus abdicated and forfeited to the state, people would be free from lowly - earthly desires and reach full - ideal potential. Man is thus divorced from the social and economic context in which he lives and interacts with others. The ideal state of heaven, separated from earthly considerations.

This totalitarian approach to freedom, an abomination in every sense, was later further developed by Marx, who wrote that "capitalist, individual liberty is the most complete suppression of all individual liberty and total subjugation of individuality to social conditions" [Wildmonk: Marx, "Grundnisse", pp. 131]. "Freedom can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of their human nature." [Wildmonk: Marx, "Selected Writings", pp. 496].

In this way man's separation from his nature and morality began. Never in human history were their worse judges of human character than Rousseau and his followers: all seek some degree of formal control over individual freedom for the purpose of creating material conditions deemed necessary for "true freedom", moralectomy in precise equal measure. Rousseau's concept of "common will" became the most savage, bloody instrument of social engineering in the history of mankind.

The Atlantic Ridge
In the United States Thomas Jefferson was the most prominent supporter of the French revolutionary achievements. Nevertheless, property rights and Enlightenment liberties were set in stone in the spirit of Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith. The present Democratic Party is being diverted further and further from that tradition as the sway of the postmoderns intensifies. Rhetorical style and attitude betray their influence.

While National Socialist and Communist ideas have swept America to some extent in their haydays - notwithstanding the counter culture, a product of the latter - these Rousseauian inspired ideologies remained by and large a marginal affair. Rousseau entering Locke's territory by the back- door may come as a surprise to some Americans - the wrong brand of revolution is encroaching on its most basic principles.

In Europe the situation was markedly different, as we shall see. Locke's influence remained on the whole limited to the British Isles. France and Germany have both Rousseau traditions, not Lockean. Today of great long-term concern is a possible return to some form of Rousseau inspired extreme ideology. It is chilling to see the rise of an unelected governing body on the European continent. The post-democratic elitism, combined with postmodern ideological chaos understood in the philosophical context, is an even more disquieting prospect.

Counter-Enlightenment projection* is on the order of the day and may even be consciously used as a tactic. Rousseau's brand of radical and revolutionary ideas, combined with the notion that civilization is so corrupt that it must be considered beyond salvation, makes him the father of all violent struggle in the last two and a half centuries.

Americans, tending to confuse Locke's revolution with Rousseau's, occasionally fall into the trap of supporting the wrong causes: initially the Russian Red Terror, and more recently, the covertly Islam inspired call for independence in the middle of Europe's powder keg, the Serbian province of Kosovo in the heart of the Balkans, thus providing a foothold in Europe for similarly based and equally pernicious radicalism.

The zero-sum game approach to economics also originates with Rousseau, which is giving rise to the annual media talking point that "a new report is suggesting that today's rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer". This is incorrect propaganda, some reason requiring regular public re-affirmation, perhaps for that reason alone.

Rousseau and Religion
The great minds of the Enlightenment proper - Spinozists excluded - never saw Christianity as their mortal enemy. To them Church and the Enlightenment were natural allies. Rousseau was no exception, but he had only a passing acquaintance with the Christian political tradition. Therefore he dismissed the role of Christianity as a moderating force in society. He saw the faith as entirely a spiritual undertaking, occupying itself only with "heavenly things."

Rousseau's Christians are so detached from reality that they can hardly be recognized: a people so spiritualized that they display a profound disinterest if their earthly pursuits are successful or not. Rousseau's call for transcendent values to harness the energies of men towards the 'common will', coupled with the rejection of Christianity as a engine of these values, made it a central tenet of all the Rousseauian ideologies [Wildmonk].

To Rousseau religion was an imperative. "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must, therefore, reject dangerous notions of toleration and the separation of church and state." and "so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers ..." [Stephen R.C. Hicks, "Explaining Postmodernism", Scholargy Press, 2004, p. 98].

Despite being so enamored with force-feeding religion, after the publication of his work "Emile" he was driven into temporary exile in Bern after a warrant for his arrest was issued. "Emile" was widely denounced as irreligious and seditious.

The Legacy
The loather of civilization Rousseau was nevertheless greatly admired by the early Counter-Enlighteners, as he is by today's postmoderns. His followers mostly selected from his work what they could use to prop up their ideologies. Marx accepted Rousseau's critique of Locke's economic man but stood solidly by the Enlightenment in his appreciation for science and technology. Marx even went so far as to describe his ideology as Scientific Marxism, basically a pseudo scientific rationalization of his aggregate of ideas.

Hegel as well as Rousseau inspired Marx' theory of dialectic materialism, in which the theme is the dichotomy of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed. Now clearly a tactic of this dialectic, Rousseau's vista of a noble, primordial world destroyed by man's egoism, might well also have sired the epidemic of Western self-loathing.

Irony
Ironically, while Rousseau was convinced that civilization was the cause of moral degradation, little did he know that his followers, by rejecting objective reality, would drop morality along with it. Despite two and a half centuries of genocidal legacy in pursuit of Rousseauian ideal society it enjoys considerable support among the Western intelligentsia, specifically in the humanities departments of academia, the media, all levels of education, contemporary arts, the political elite, advisory boards, government ministries and departments and what is loosely described as 'the corridors of power.'

The postmodern heirs remain committed to undermining free-market democracy, casting misty eyes upon the Rousseauean atrocities. 110 million dead are not vile enough to discredit 'the Party of Humanity' in the views of some of the most stubborn apologists. Considering that totalitarian societies are today's version of the tribal community he so admired, the Rousseau ideal society could well be described as an agrarian totalitarian state.

Another point of irony is that Rousseau's conviction, that reason engenders egocentrism has been falsified by every non-government sponsored humanitarian organization on the face of the planet, while Rousseau's faithful follower Hegel is responsible for the subjectivism that saw the birth of egocentrism gone mad, the 'Master of the Universe' syndrome (each individual creates his own personal version of reality: If I die overnight, will the sun still rise tomorrow?).

In France, Rousseau's ideal of small, intimate villages and a peaceful, agricultural society built on the consent of the common will has resulted in France becoming a by-word for centralized statism. Rousseau's tenet that reason caused man's fall from paradise may well be the basis of the later Counter-Enlightenment's political ideals, modelled on the re-creation of 'paradise on earth', Utopias which usually turn out to be dystopias instead.

Postmodernism or Rousseauism?
Rousseau can certainly be traced back as the source of all members of the postmodern coalition: environmentalists, third-worldists (Baran-Wallerstein), feminists, anarchists, 'gender, identity and sexual orientation' theorists, traditional socialists of various plumage, and 'classical' postmoderns. It is a true gathering of Rousseauians that has largely remained uninvestigated, underreported and certainly undeclared.

In the chaos of the total postmodern bankruptcy in the wake of mayhem, moralectomy and grandiose failure, there is but one purpose left. A resolve that brings these ideologies together with a tradition with which it has so much in common. We are witnessing a spontaneous feast of recognition with radical Islam.

It is truly remarkable that every prior held conviction and allegiance has by now been jilted in favour of furthering the causes of the intolerant: it's back to the Rousseau basics. The grant plan: a strategy to deconstruct Western, democratic, liberal capitalism by critical theory, and 'irrational means of the will.'

* If you think of yourself as a peaceful, loving person, while actually you are full of wrath and hatred, the psychological coping device of projection - as if by magic - transforms the object of that wratch into someone who is hateful, devisive, full of vitriol and bile, bigoted, intolerant and hatemongering.

The New Dreyfus is Karsenty

Blogging will be limited the coming days. For one, I'm having a cold. But more importantly, I am playing surrogate mum to a two months old kitten called Vile Thomas Tripod. He's been hit in the street by something or other. One hind leg is broken and the nerves are severed. He's having surgery tomorrow.

Number One Cat has never seen such a vile creature in her life, so a peaceful feline coexistence is probably not on the cards. I'll have to take a closer look at adoption.

So, with one thing and another I'm taking the easy way out and link you to what can only be described as the latest cesspit into which humanity has descended: the new Dreyfus is called Karsenty. Here's Melanie Phillips in "Nous accusons!".

Update: A French judge ordered the release of video footage that could reopen the controversy surrounding the 2000 shooting of Mohammed al-Dura. >>> Hat tip Augean Stables

SIOE Update: Legal Loonies United!

While there's no going back at this stage, it cannot harm to evaluate some that has been written in the last few days.

Brussels Journal: "Brussels Mayor Warns: 9/11 Demonstrators Are Criminals":

FT: "First and foremost the organizers have chosen the symbolic date of 9/11. The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand."

The date of 9/11 is a brave choice and very symbolic. The link with Islamization by stealth does however provide an adverse mayor with the legal basis he is looking for to deny his permission. Having said that, as this particular generalization is apparently a huge No-No - while "'t was the Dews that did 9/11" isn't (perhaps someone needs pressing charges) - facilitating a club of loonies, who are basically accusing a friendly nation's government of having murdered 3,000 innocent people in cold blood for political gains, is not an offence.

FT: "To my knowledge not a single rule specific to the Islamic religion is being enforced in similar fashion. And I see no indication that a large majority of our Muslim population is demanding any such thing."

BJ provides part of the answer: "Contrary to what the mayor says, rules specific to the Islamic religion are being imposed upon society as a whole. For instance, Brussels has segregated swimming hours for women in public pools; Brussels public schools serve halal meat; Muslims slaughter sheep in the streets of Brussels.

Where are the animal rights activists when you need them? Oh, they're with FruitCakes United!

Snaphanen weighs in, in reference to the recent Doctors United actions in Scotland: "Apparently the bureaucrats believe that the would-be bombers were demanding sandwich-free offices in Glasgow hospitals during Ramadan."

Muslims normally only hit the streets in anger about perceived grievances; they do not do so, in demand of specific rights. They are more clever than that. Ask CAIR c.s. how the West's legal systems are being played like a piano forte. The Islamization by stealth process is supported by our own usefuls through coinciding ideology (see Chart I: the Straight Red Line), by dhimmitude through intimidation (see above example provided by Snaphanen), and through jurisprudence.

Consider the text of Leftards United: "Recently the French Minister for Housing and the City Mme Christine Boutin expressed her doubts about the official 9/11 report. Before, Michael Meacher, secretary of state in Britain and Andreas Von Bulow, ex Minister from Germany, stated clearly that 9/11 and the war on terror are orchestrated by the Bush administration ... They agree the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts, no matter if they were carried out by some so-called Afghan cavemen or by the governments themselves, inflicted the current policy of fear ..."

We've already seen that accusing a friendly government of cold blooded mass-murder isn't punishable by any contemporary liberal law. Cowards United are hiding behind a battery of European government officials with whose accusations they say to agree. What these various officials are doing is a disgrace and a diplomatic scandal, but at no time are Lobotomy United linking terrorism with a specific culture, religion or race. Therefore it might be of some importance to find out what was really being said here and by whom.

There's no going back at this stage. SIOE HQ: "A Line in the Sand" - "This is the limit! Therefore the organisers of SIOE call upon all to carry on and join the demonstration anyway, – because enough is enough. If we do not draw a line in the sand, and reject the attempts of people like Thielemans to curb our rights – people like him will turn the EU into a dictatorial state. Therefore we also call upon all organisations and ... >>>

Way to go, guys!!!

"Yes my Friends, I will Call for War ..."

"Yes my friends, I will call for war just as powerfully as the bad guys do and I must show them that I'm stronger than they are, because they do not understand the language of civilization and reason. They understand only power ... everything they accomplished was through absolute control over the assets of their nations through murder, torture, repression and intimidation."

The above is a paragraph from the 7th May's post on blog "Iraq the Model". To those whose political affiliation leads them to the denial of reality, here's a contribution from Bernard Lewis, a breed of scholar on the brink of extinction thanks to dumbing down to ensure equal dumb outcome and the onslaught of relativism. Lewis' lecture deals with recent historical backgrounds in the Middle East, pertinent to the above:

"In 1940, the government of France decided to surrender and, in effect, changed sides in the war. The greater part of the colonial empire was beyond the reach of the Axis, and the governors therefore had a free choice: Vichy or de Gaulle. The overwhelming majority chose Vichy, including - and this is what concerns us specifically - the governor, high commissioner, he was called, of the French-mandated territory of Syria-Lebanon. So, Syria-Lebanon was wide open to the Nazis, and they moved in on a large scale, not with troops, because that would have been too noticeable, but with propaganda of every kind."

"It was then that the roots of Ba'athism were laid and the first organizations were formed, which ultimately developed into the Ba'ath Party. It was then that the Nazi style of ideology and government became known, eagerly embraced simply because it was anti-Western rather than because of inherent attraction."

"From Syria, they succeeded in spreading it to Iraq, where they even set up a Nazi-style government for a while, headed by Rashid Ali. It was possible to deal with that, and they were driven out of the Middle East. But after the war, the Western allies also left and the Soviets moved in, taking the place of the Nazis as a champion against the West. To switch from the Nazi to the communist model required only minor adjustments".

The communists may have gone as well with the demise of the Soviet Union, but a system and a mentality aren't shaken that easily. In any case the Ba'athist regimes in Iraq and Syria remained, until Saddam was thrown out of Iraq by 'the neocon Coalition'. Here's Iraq The Model's blogger again with another excerpt from "Don't bury your heads in the sand":

"I have said it over and over again that some of us in Iraq and America are sending wrong messages to the terrorists and the dictators behind them; in fact I wasn't surprised when I saw Zawahiri appear on al-Jazeera to announce America's defeat, not long after Reid did. Zawahiri claims al-Qaeda has won and Reid claims America has lost but I see only a war that's still ongoing and I see ... that al-Qaeda has the shortest stick."

"We are going through a fierce war and sending more wrong messages could only further complicate an already complicated situation and create more mess that would be exploited by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia for their own purposes - more iron-fist control on the peoples and treasures of the region and pushing the Middle East to crises and confrontations with the world, not forgetting spreading their dark, backward ideologies."

Need I go on? So much for the real world. And this is while American and Coalition soldiers bite the dust in Iraq, risking life and limb for a cause bigger than themselves, that Democrats are willfully endangering the soldiers' lives through petty party politics, and European and American brats that are spoiled to the bone, display their mindless message of No To Fascism! to the wrong party, the ones that are fighting it!

How stupid can a human being get! In France and Greece cars are set alight night after night as they play "anarchist". Here are the figures from France's blasé anti Sarko lot, to whose youthful cynicism

"(to the) persecuted by the tyrannies and by the dictators, to all the children and to all the martyrized women in the world to say to them that the pride, the duty of France will be at their sides"

has no meaning at all because "he's a neocon, isn't he?" Blister their little bourgeois buttocks with .... censored for legal reasons.

In Greece they got out the heavy weaponry and are attacking entire police stations. In fact, the latter might be of another order altogether, more inspired by 19th century Russian nihilism. As we have seen in "History Class: of Agit-prop, Revolution and Terror this was the pet project of their variety of bourgeois brats, the children of the new Russian middle classes: they took up terror as a weapon to create an atmosphere that fostered repression, war and revolution, clearing the ground for their Marxist worker's paradise.

All that romantic quasi heroism might appeal to the average postmodern, suburban, middle class, ignoramus, bored to death as he is with his own lack of spirit and character; but in consideration of the present state of affairs, reliving their romanticized versions of history amounts to handing a Daisy Cutter to a baby.

Alternatively they might find it in themselves to pick up a book and learn the first things about democracy and liberty: that it requires a rational population with a sense of responsibility and respect for each other's rights, possessions and opinions! Apart from it looking a bit moronic to blindly keep on fighting the wrong parties, how else are we to deal with the assimilating aspirations of The Borg, like the ravings of this particular Muzzleman:

"Western 'civilization' is in its death throes. It is collapsing around you as every day the blasphemous lies upon which it is based are exposed. Every day the descent into degeneracy accelerates. You recognise this and have become quite irrational as you contemplate your future. But there is no reason to fear. Just open your eyes and look around you. Everywhere you look you will see the advance of Islam. You must realise that Islam is not just a "religion" in the sense that Westerners understand that term. In fact, Islam is a complete way of life and provides the answers to all questions. Open your eyes, embrace Islam, and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah (swt). Your grandchildren will be Muslim. Allahu akbar!"

Bees pee upon them all! (Thanks for the loan, Skipper!).

Socialism's Dangerous Games

An article by French columnist Sylvain Ephimenco in Dutch newspaper 'Trouw' brings the subject of present post to three concurring events: the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Pim Fortuyn at the hand of an animal rights fundamentalist stirred into action by Leftist invective - expressed amongst others by the former Socialist leader Ad Melkert - presently at the World Bank grinding neocon Paul Wolfowitz to Gerbil Mix; today's final round of French presidential elections in which the Gaullist candidate Nicolas Sarkozy is favorite by a margin of 10 percentage points or thereabouts, and the dangerous cards played by Socialists.

Five years after the Fortuyn revolution ended in tears, events are commemorated as postmodernity knows best: with useless polls. Forty percent of Dutch surveyed would vote for him again today, if they could. The man was popular because he broke the mold in which Dutch politicians are usually made, and because he hadn't a politically correct bone in his body.

After the dominance of politics per Ad Melkert, who was the champion of both traits, Fortuyn's eccentricity came as a fresh breeze. He was Melkert's alter ego in many respects. The situation was without precedent, and established politicians reacted as they do at present in France: by vilifying the opponent to the point of some nut taking it upon himself to "save the world of this dangerous upstart".

Ephimenco writes: "... this man was dangerous and therefore had to be taken out. If anything hasn't changed since that day, it is the cynical intolerance of politicians and pundits who hung themselves with the rags of tolerance and progressiveness to demonize him. I write this while my heart is filled with anxiety, for what I see in this French campaign for the land's highest office, strongly reminds me of the those days in the Netherlands, five years ago. The hatred towards the rightist favorite, Nicolas Sarkozy during the French election campaign is similar to what Fortuyn underwent in his short political career. The vindictive Left sometimes seems to have the exclusive rights to use improper instruments to foster intolerance. With dangerous consequences. l'Histoire se répète: as soon as electoral defeat gets into sight, demonization becomes the weapon of the poor of spirit."

If that isn't blood curling enough, he continues: "The director of the film 'Shoa' on the Jewish holocaust, Claude Lanzmann writes in magazine 'Le Point': 'I believe that never in my life in France, I have experienced such negative campaigning, so filled with stinking libel against a candidate for the presidential election. I never imagined a democratic debate could go this far.' The left camp around Ségolène Royal has struck at anything to picture the rival Sarkozy as the new Pinochet. Just to cause fear and civil unrest. Last Friday morning, on the point of losing, Royal brought forward the most repulsive arguments yet to save her campaign: with a victory of Sarkozy, France will be brought to the edge of civil war, she suggested: "It is my responsibility to sound the alarm concerning the dangers of a Sarkozy win, and the violence that will occur in this country. Everyone knows this and everyone is silent, because it's a taboo". It is my conviction that this woman who is provoking the suburbs, is deeply malicious."

Just how vile, personal and bordering the surreal the political polarization is, is exemplified by a tiny piece of vitriol on the BBC website: "In Argenteuil, the town north-west of Paris where Mr Sarkozy notoriously talked of hosing out 'rabble' before the 2005 urban riots (my emphasis), Doratine Ekoka, a 70-year-old retired computer programmer, said she trusted Ms Royal to 'clean up public life'. A Sarkozy victory, she added, "would be like a punishment from God" because of his "terrible character". How, in the name of anything that's holy did we get so far, that God and a rabble rousing moral relativist are invoked against a politician for stating the obvious, as his personal character is smeared in the process?!

Which begs the second question: just how far is the Left prepared to go in accommodating and placating the Muslim electorate and play the Islamist card, euphemistically dubbed "the suburbs"? If the Socialist win in Spain was brought about in reaction to a massive terrorist attack, the above picture is one of political blackmail and threats against the public order. All this poison might be the result of sheer panic over what's brewing in 'the suburbs', but playing it as an electoral card is a mighty dangerous game.

Muslim assertivity, discontent and victimhood might be harnassed in the service of a Socialist electoral win, it may be placated, apologised and appeased against better judgment, but it will be next to impossible to get this particular genie back into the bottle.

Today we are witnessing the next major instalment in the global culture war. At stake: survival of Western civilization.

A fittingly Good Friday

Good Friday 2007, and it hasn't made me any more charitable towards postmodernity.

The institution that went - within one year, from the standard of journalistic excellence, to possibly the worst politically correct offender - weighs in on the Greek history book furore, and entirely along predictable, dualistic, P.C. ideological party line:

- church, obstructionist, uncompromising, conservative, irrational, reactionary, history, obscurantism, vilification of the other, narrow minded, dogmatic, nationalistic, monoculture, nation-state, petty pride: bad;

- 'science' (in casu, the authors, the supporters), reasonable, open minded, charitable, progressive, enlightened, European Empire (implicit), multiculture: good.

The basic part of the P.C. message also is, either "it must happen, it is essential" for some unidentified reason, or "it is already an accomplished fact, so you'd better make the best of it": case closed. So much for the open mind, revulsion towards dogma and the 'scientific' approach.

Another sample of the course BBC are on, can be found in a typical "BBC Breaking News Alert" of these days. Another 9/11? Government fallen? Moldova struck by major earth quake?You must be joking! Such a hot breaking news message can only concern the new animist religion! But perhaps there's still hope. They're getting new management. But if the Tory reaction is one to go by, things may not even have hit rock-bottom yet! Or it may be as per the E.U., simply beyond repair!

But back to the Greek history book story, which is revealing in more ways than one. Following the 4-1 loss in the Greece/Turkey soccer match last week, English language Turkish Daily News gloatingly spoke of "no absence of national malaise these days" and "The textbook takes a less victimized approach to the war of independence in 1821 from the Ottomans and downplays the role of the Orthodox Church during that period".

Dear Turks, by all means, eat your heart out while you still can! By the time the boys in Brussels are finished with your history books, you won't know what Greek and Armenian lobbies will have hit you! By the way, the French don't mind about the gas pipe line project being abused as a political object of blackmail over the Armenian Genocide Act, you know. Apart for your mutual interest in power politics, the French are also great stickers to principles. And after Russia's abuse of economics as a political crow bar like there never was a Soviet Union, the rest of the world by now is up to anything that might be thrown at it. You'll see ...

With hindsight it has by now become apparent that humanity's hay days were the 1990's of blessed memory, when the curtain had just fallen and to the optimist it seemed to be curtains! for the whole social engineered mess. But this is the new millennium and high time for yet another gigantic folly of global proportions.

So old Uncle Joe (Stalin) gets the blame (he's conveniently dead so has nothing to say) and the entire totalitarian circus is resurfacing in another guise, as champions of women, blacks, gays, indigenous peoples, the physically and mentally challenged, and any other downtrodden minority you can think of. Just in the nick of time rescued from white, male, Christian domination, only to be turned over to the other partner in the axis of evil in Operation Destroy the West - to reemerge on the other side of the 'debate' as dhimmis, or converts with bags over our heads. As if 1821 should never have been: empire is good, even if it is called a khalifate, it is multicultural!

This is going on while some useful others with impaired brain capacity, want us all to become bloody heathens and think, this is of no consequence at all, other than entirely beneficial, to the world we live in.


~ Some of the readers will be pleased to know that over the Easter weekend we'll be revisiting the Veritable Treasure Trove of Sheer Relativist Madness! ~

GalliaWatch: Police Resistance

Police resistance: it is simply unprecedented! Whatever next? A coup by the Foreign Legion?

So much for Pascal Bruckner's laicite, which he defends in the face of all the Anglo-Saxon multicultural misery, as the only alternative possible.

As per Socialism, perpetually on the look out for a third way that might actually Work! Increasingly it's too late.

A failed state, on a world-wide scale (II)

The point Pascal Bruckner is making in his article "Enlightenment: Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-racists" is actually shocking in its clarity: multi-culti advocates propagate legal Apartheid, display a neo-colonial attitude towards 'the natives':

"We bear the burdens of liberty, of self-invention, of sexual equality; you have the joys of archaism, of abuse as ancestral custom, of sacred prescriptions, forced marriage, the headscarf and polygamy. The members of these minorities are put under a preservation order, protected from the fanaticism of the Enlightenment and the "calamities" of progress."

What's lost on Bruckner is that multi-culturalism is a branch of relativism: the pseudo-philosophy that denies objective truth! He seems to labour under the impression that multi-culturalists are presenting us with a solid message: their point is however, is that there is no point! He's not alone in this. Many commentators still take relativism seriously as an ideology and as a consequence loose sight of its inherent fallacies. And as its still considered a progressive idea, they presuppose kinship to Liberalism, while - as we shall see - it is totalitarianism's ugly little cousin.

Bruckner does expose the symptoms of the relativist error, the inherent paradoxymora [2]: " This is the paradox of multi-culturalism: it accords the same treatment to all communities, but not to the people who form them, denying them the freedom to liberate themselves from their own traditions. Instead: recognition of the group, oppression of the individual ... Multi-culturalism is a racism of the anti-racists: it chains people to their roots ... Yet this segregation has the full backing of Europe's most prominent progressives!" (my emphasis).

I was just going to pencil this paradox in as error number 13 on my list of Post-Modernist Fallacies, the PMF, when I realised this isn't a paradox at all! One of the aims of multi-culturalism is peaceful cohabitation of different groups on the same territory. Multi-culturalism isn't concerned with individual rights, on the contrary! Its premise is the submission of the individual to the group. It has no place for dissidents! Hence the irritation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an icon of individualism. Multi-culturalism's totalitarian and dictatorial character is merely shining through here!

Bruckner goes on to denounce the Anglo-Saxon form of multi-culturalism (U.K. variety), a social model based on communitarianism and separatism, that "on the government's own avowal ... doesn't work ... many people scoffed at French authoritarianism when parliament voted to forbid women and young girls from wearing headscarves in (public areas) ... yet now political leaders in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany, shocked by the spread of hijab and burqa, are considering passing laws against them."

With typical French assertiveness Bruckner goes on to propagate the superiority of the French model of laïcité, whereby the entire public domain is 'neutralized' of religious expressions, even to the point where jewelry can become an offensive item. It doesn't particularly breed tolerance or understanding of 'the other' either! And he doesn't seem willing to explain the random and widespread violence, and the states within the state, that exist in the French banlieues.

Our French commentator doesn't think much of the Dutch system either; nor does he display much understanding of it: "Thus ... (the) mayor of Amsterdam ... demands that one accept "the conscious discrimination of women by certain groups of orthodox Muslims" on the basis that we need a 'new glue' to 'hold society together'. In the name of social cohesion, we are invited to give our roaring applause for the intolerance that these groups show for our laws".

One wonders why the Dutch system, whereby the government guarantees freedom of conscience and faith - and religions and secular ideologies have a limited form of 'sovereignty within their particular circle' worked so well for Christians, Jews, and the various seculars, but doesn't for Muslims? The answer seems to lie in their 'too much otherness', the incompatibility of our values and their inherent intolerance of infidels (in practice, all that isn't Islam).

Considering Bruckner's rubbishing of "our Jihad collaborators [sic] on the extreme left as on the right: at the time of the Muhammad cartoon affair last year, deputies of the UMP proposed to institute blasphemy laws that would have taken us back to the Ancien Regime", he does seem to be a staunch atheist who wouldn't be having trouble leaving his rosary at home.

Neither does he realize, that the supposed secular neutrality can easily develop into an oppressive dictatorship as well! The dominant feature in today's Radical Liberalism is that it sees itself as the single guarantor of freedom for all, and considers all theism as its opposite and the surest way to obscurantism and oppression in the name of God. Bruckner displays the same attitude, but he is willing to acknowledge that "secularism ... is written into the Gospels".

Pascal Bruckner is in favour of fostering an enlightened European Islam along the lines of Vatican II, provided we speak to the right audience; not "styling the fundamentalists as friends of tolerance, while in fact they practise dissimulation and use the left or the intelligentsia to make their moves for them, sparing themselves the challenge of secularism."

The author leaves us to ponder the words of Kant, and a word of warning from his side that I can heartily ratify: "Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!" Amen.

The Euston Manifesto: Truth by Incredibility

One of the ludicrous by-products of George-hatred is the almost silent condemnation of democracy. After all, there is something to be said for enlightened totalitarianism. On second thought a messy democracy is not such a good idea after all, just because George said that it was. Democracy: so bourgeois, so over-rated and generally not a result obtained by forcible liberation from dictatorship. Germany and Japan after World War II are visible refutations of this statement, but to relativists opinions are more important than facts.

The last few years have produced more of these aberrations, as the countries of "New Europe" acquired a bad name by voicing too much of an appreciation for freedom, by not being atheist enough and generally for having not nearly enough P.C.-ness infused into them.

First the Polish plumber became somebody akin to a free market terrorist; then in the early stages of cajoling the U.N. into enforcing their own Security Council Resolutions and support the war in Iraq (in the absence of Saddam, adhering to the terms and conditions brought to bear after his war against Kuwait), the Poles were told by the French President Jacques Chirac at some point, they missed a good opportunity to shut up. Lower than gutter level they don't come. The attack on New York's Twin Towers on 9/11 crossed a new frontier in the history of terrorism: since that time lots of people are inspired to cross new frontiers all of the time: Jacques Chirac with his comment crossed new territory in the history of diplomacy; it was a sad example of how an otherwise perfectly good mannered and sophisticated man all of a sudden lost sight of civility: it happened often those days.

This is still not really over and things are exacerbated by the relativist preference for the here and now. So it happened that it has been altogether erased from our collective memory how much we owe the former communist countries: they were sold and and left to their own devices when in Yalta and Tehran after World War II, they paid the price for the West's freedom. Some in the West consoled themselves with the thought that Uncle Joe probably wasn't nearly as bad as some said he was and that they, after all, were living in the working man's paradise. A state of affairs soon to be realised on a global level.

While the last thoughts (and sometimes other means of support) have not been atoned for, half as much as should have been, there are now people of the Intelligentsia (meaning Left Leaning High Culture) that have had enough of these aberrations and want to go back to the status quo ante George and forget all about the Americans being in Iraq for the oil and premature accusations like that. In fact they have been doing this since 25th May of last year, but nobody of the international MSM thought to inform the public outside the U.K. or I was too busy fleeing the relativist heartland. Anyway, this is the first I'm hearing of the Euston Manifesto Group of Islington by way of the New Culture Blog. It cannot have been hot news for a long time, otherwise I would have picked up on it from some place.

Contents of the Manifesto warrants a single, dedicated post. While it is old news and critique almost entirely comes from the (loony) lefter side of the manifestists proper and is worded in terms of "wanky wonkos betray our cause and join the ranks of the neo-imperialists", the Manifesto offers some beautiful examples of violations against reason that I simply cannot bear passing up.

Suffice it at present to say that the Left Elite/Liberal Intelligentsia have a rock solid template for everything they do: the choice of words and its nomenclature are infamous, as is its capacity to turn an idea on its head. The word Manifesto has a first class pedigree and its use on the Left goes all the way back to Karl Marx himself.
"New" in New Culture Blog works like "progressive" in those circles: it was new and progressive seventy years ago, so mentally you have to read instead "Over-aged" and "regressive".

At first the libs display all the usual Pavlov reactions to a given situation: if the self-appointed opinion leaders decide Against, say George and the war on terrorism, they all go Against George plus the war on terrorism. This automatically implies what they are For, namely all of George's enemies. Schematically this makes a horror cabinet of 3rd millennium current affairs (in no particular order):

- Against: the war in Iraq, the Iraqi government, democracy, Israel, the war on terrorism, the death penalty, the Iraqi Court, the Kurds, Eastern Europe, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Condi Rice, pro democracy movements against authoritative but essentially "benign" governments (like Yanukovych's), God (Allah exempted), globalization, free-market liberalism, Ethiopia, classical liberalism, cookies, etc. etc.

- Pro: The Noble Freedom Fighters, Saddam c.s., the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad, Al Qa'ida c.s., France, Lebanon (at large), Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and South American Friends of the Leftist Cause, Howard Dean, the Chechen cause, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, abortion, euthanasia, evolution as proposed by Darwin(ism), Spain under the Zapatero government, open source software (free of charge and called a movment), Somalia, humanism as proposed by "The Enlightenment", science however fuzzy, Africa (at large), etc. etc.

- The jury is still out on: Russia and President Putin, North Korea, Iran, Belorussia, the Maoist rebels in Nepal, the Sudanese government

- Kicked off the pro list are: the IRA, ETA

When the situation has reached unsustainable proportions and the stance is no longer seen as credible by opponents and proponents alike, some frequenters of one or another private salon or a public house, usually located somewhere in the South of England, come together to write a Manifesto, distancing themselves from the situation in an effort to raise some credibility, just in time for the next general elections.

So the next time you read some left leaning drivel please check if it carries the Euston Manifesto Seal of Correctness; in the affirmative you can rest assured that this is in accordance with the New Improved Left: you'd be pleased to know they no longer blindly further, apologize, appease or advocate George's enemies no matter who. What do you suppose this is: Truth by Incredibility?
One must assume that Al-Guardian, considering their article yesterday, calling Somalia America's new puppet, isn't a signatory to The Manifesto.

News bits and ... the season is upon us!

It's true, honestly! They've been spotted ... the big red glossy ones ... and the little golden tinkles: Christmas ornamentation!!!! And if that's not enough, Jingle Bells and I'm dreaming ... have also been heard and not that faintly at that, but at full blast: try this one if you don't believe me. It's really far too early, but I'm such a sucker for the season, so you won't hear me complain.

Also some news items that cannot go unmentioned:

- The Vatican press office has made it known that the website for the second time in two months has been attacked by a group called "The Electronic Jihad"; No, I'm not joking! See for yourself. Being an optimist by nature hopefully this is the last bit of belligerence over "Regensburg", you remember that speech of Pope Benedict's delivered in that nice, German university town in re of Christianity's roots lying in Classicism ...?

- Here 's a good one as well: the Argentinian government has ordered the arrest of the former President of Iran, Rafsanjani. This in re of an unspeakable deed of state sponsored terrorism some years ago.

- The Vatican has released the full schedule for the visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey, set for 28th November until 1st December. Let's pray he'll survive the gamble. Like the exsession of Turkey to the E.U., I suppose this one cannot be put off either?

- Elsevier is echoing my fears that somebody may try to reanimate the deceased "European Constitution"; you know, the one killed off by the recalcitrant Dutch and free-market phobic French between them. In Europe you never know what trick they'll be up to next, so the utmost vigilance is indicated, especially during any given holiday season!

- MI5 is at present following some 1.600 persons at risk of committing terrorist attacks inside the U.K., up by 50 percent since last year. BBC's Newsnight last night produced a self-confessed representative of the group, who uttered the usual crap ("the 7/7 attack came after Iraq"); S o o o ?

- One would have thought that in Europe they've got other problems to think about - what with the entire continent on the brink of cultural suicide - but in France they have identified a really pressing problem: the official EU logo for the 50th anniversary is found not so aesthetic. I think they have a pressing point, actually. What kids think up this kind of stuff?

- Some people's vistas are limitless ! I think he'll do it too!

Well, it's long past my bed-time (again) and I have to get up early. I'm going for an Ahmadinejad jacket ...!