The Unholy Alliance: Conflating Three Great isms

Witnessing the sad demise of democracy in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels yesterday, takes some digesting, even for one that was already aware of the realities. I will combine further comment on it with a piece I was already working on: the cooperation in the Unholy Alliance between Islam and the Left. People have often expressed their surprise over the apparent cooperation pact between two parties that - on the surface - seem to be each other's opposites. I hope to clear up that misunderstanding.

As a girl and later as a young grown-up I could never understand how - in the run up to World War II - Nazi Germany could arm itself to the teeth with no one doing anything to prevent it. Entire weapon systems were stockpiled in the Soviet Union as the arsenals and warehouses in Germany proper were stored to full capacity. Yet the furnaces and steel works were operating full steam 24/7 as unemployment rates dropped to zero percent, thanks to Hitler's National Socialist Party's 'employment policies' of everyone on the state's pay roll.

Yet Europe had influential pacifist movements (here's an brilliant take by Sanity on the subject). The U.K. had Richard "Peace in our Time" Chamberlain, and Mayoresses who promised to "not so much as darn a sock if it assisted the war effort", while 'bluestockings' and other enlightened academics conducted Peace Marches in Europe's streets.

I never understood how advanced, civil societies could let such disasters as World War II take place. That is, until yesterday. In fact, it's becoming blatantly obvious how last century's great wars, the holocaust and the enslavement of half the continent in its wake, could take place. Now, as then, we are closing our eyes to a reality that is too scary to contemplate, let alone deal with it. Yesterday in Brussels we saw the conflation of three great isms taking place before our eyes. It is very sad to see just how far indeed we have already sank into the black hole of dictatorship.

It's a bit of a pity that Stephen Hicks' explanation of Postmodernism (or cultural Marxism) doesn't get the attention it deserves. Hicks comes to another categorization of ideologies than is common. He explains that both Communism and National Socialism derive from the Counter-Enlightenment movement that started with the philosophies of Rousseau. This was a reaction to the primacy of reason that features so prominently in Enlightenment thought, of which Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism became the political offshoot (not to be confused with today's liberalism, which is Left Light).

Does the following Rousseau quotation on the ideal state strike anyone as compatible with Islam? "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must ... >>>

After theocrat extraordinaire Rousseau, both Hegel and Kant expanded on anti reason philosophy, eventually even doing away with objective reality and epistemology: man is incapable of knowing anything, to each his own universe: reality is subjective. This has provided Communism and National Socialism with their subjectivist basis.

Experts in Islam never stop to point out there is not 'one Islam'. Every Muslim has his or her own subjective perception of it (apart from the five pillars that is, presumably). I have no reason to doubt it: after Rousseau's take on the ideal state, this makes the second, basic conflation of the three great isms.

As hinted at earlier, from 1939 to 1941 Communism and National Socialism shared a history of cooperation. The German army held manoeuvres in Russia and vice versa. Both totalitarian ideologies were Socialist and differed only on its implementation: the Nazis were nationally inclined (using the ethnic dialectic of the German Volk), while the Communists favoured global subjugation (hence the 'Internationale').

After World War II the Left portrayed Hitler as the great satan. Here the dichotomy of Nazism versus Communism was born: this was however a Communist PR ploy which has worked to this day. But far from being opposites both ideologies are in fact each other's mirror image, cousins if you will, while the real opposition, the actual enemy, is Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism, rooted in the Enlightenment and in the West, which by the way wasn't originally radically atheist at all, on the contrary.

Over time and through various twists of history the two totalitarian isms also got transplanted onto Middle Eastern soil, where they gave birth to Panarabism, Arab Nationalism and Ba'athism.

Today's political correctness emanates from a revived Marxism from which the baby boom generation of the 60s cannot seem to say goodbye: their hatred of a free West is burnt onto their souls and treason has become their second nature. Some one described it aptly as "they just cannot pop out of the Marxist dialectic". It is their mindset that is our ruin today, as they now inhabit the corridors of power.

If a recently unearthed 1985 interview with KGB agent and Soviet defector Bezmenov is anything to go by, the moral compass of the 60's generation has been totally and irrevocably removed by the KGB subversion program. What that left undone, was completed by the fifth columnists at the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism, as the undersigned can personally attest to. (For novices, here's a commentary on Gramsci, another luminary)

The influence these intellectuals had on that generation can simply not be overstated: they prescribed how 'thinking people' should act and what their opinions should be, from the books and the newspaper they read, the friends they kept, to the movies they saw, to the brand of tobacco they smoked and the coffee they drank.

They were in no uncertain measure specifically 'present' in the bedroom, which - if they had any say in the matter, should preferably be shared by any number of people. The family a gonner as women dragged husbands through divorce courts whole-sale, Eros and Agapi were kept strictly separated as per Kinsey ukase. Children became a kind of common property, to be raised and cared for, by whoever happened to be present (if any).

Fast forward to the new millennium. The cooperation in the Unholy Alliance of the Western Left with Islamists, as the latter swap their secular subjectivism for a theological one, is simply a Feast of Recognition: egalitarian collectivism against individual liberty, totalitarian statism versus limited government at the people's pleasure, anti reason against science and technology, socialism vs. capitalism and free markets, state (which in Islam is synonymous with religion) against voluntary mutual benefit, state/divine intervention versus free will: in short, combined totalitarianism against the classical liberal values as embodied by the West: freedom and democracy.

And of course the collectivists share the dialectic of Oppressor versus the Oppressed and socially constructed victimhood. This mock epic battle is the basis of all collectivist ideologies, uniquely cultivated to keep the 'struggle' going. Communism had its classes; the Nazis the German Volk; Cultural Marxism its students, women, gays and blacks, as Islam has the true believers versus the infidel.

Multiculturalism is a later manifestation of Cultural Marxism and keeps true to the dialectic mechanism on a cultural level, while N.G.O.ism (U.N.) and transnational progressivism (E.U., N.A.U.) play the same trick on the global scale of nations and states. The same story is transposed and extrapolated on all levels. So much for defeating Marxism, fifty years overdue.

Last but certainly not least the totalitarian isms share a justification of violence to power: the Western versions' passe-partout is provided for by Messrs Rousseau and Marx; the Islamic variety is of course rooted in Koranic scripture, which in the early stages also served as a platform for the conquest of the Christian lands in the Middle East and beyond.

I have laid down the ideological histories and how the three isms relate, in Chart I: The Straight Red Line for easy reference.

But the uncovering of the close ties within the Unholy Alliance doesn't stop here. AEL's Abu Jahjah's vocabulary of choice doesn't come by accident straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook for Leftist dummies ... dhimmis.

Just in: Hodja has published "Postmodern Jihad - What Osama bin Laden learnt from the Left", insights into the more recent relations between Islamism and Cultural Marxism: have hardly read it myself, but I think I should share it.

Much is made of political correctness. Some interpret it as latter day Cultural Marxism itself. Personally I see it as soft social pressure, to coerce others into conforming with the Left's ideology: the 'redistribution' of freedoms and rights along the lines of the dialectic. The idea is to shift power, capital, rights, etc. from the Oppressor to the Oppressed minorities. The great trick is to treat gender and faith, on an equal footing with race. But what we have to keep in mind here, is that gender is subject to choice, while Muslims are born as such.

This can be taken very far indeed, as legislation is put in place in support of the same object. We have recently seen that played out with the SIOE demo and Brussels Mayor, Freddy 'The Toad' Thielemans. At that stage, we have de facto a totalitarian situation where dissenters are made common criminals, case need on trumped up charges of assaulting a bus driver. Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna is spot on in today's post "Democratic Europe R.I.P." Freddy and His Walloon Troopers made European history yesterday.

But for most, including the good people of the silent majority [1], if reality gets too scary to deal with, denial erects a impenetrable curtain of make-belief in the hope the bogey will go away. I just read this morning in a paper that the Dutch as a nation, have become happier than they were a few years back during an economic downturn. Happy totalitarian dreams every one! I hope your bank accounts grow at an even pace!

Others - like Council of Europe's Secretary General Terry Davis - have become completely deluded in their psychological pathology. To them it's simply beyond the realm of the possible - indeed, a crime! - that people might be genuinely worried about the fate of their culture and continent. This type of custodians of 'European values' have no qualm whatsoever of beating up and criminalizing civilians and politicians with whom they happen to disagree. Even manufactured charges do not seem to trigger a red-hot-moral-no-no meme with these Quislings. They have become amoral thugs, who have lost sight of their opponents humanity, and do not know it. That is what scares me to death.

Update: The New York Times is offering a fascinating view of a German officer's World War II photo album of Auschwitz. The commentary is wrong at one point, when exclaiming that this is what "antisemitism, racism and hatred" does to humans. This should actually be: "this is what happens if ideology is valued over human life".

Building the Case of the Left's Culpability

When posting "Of Political Entertainment and Slumber" a few days ago, on the ludicrous dithers and slithers taken by the U.S. Democrats, so as to convince the anti-war grassroots of the Democrat defeatist credentials, in an update I linked to the latest Works and Days article by Victor Davis Hanson "Defeat and Flight from Iraq". His comments and outline of the inevitable, long term, geopolitical consequences of white-flagging the Iraq war, are very ominous indeed.

Going through the entire article again I stumbled upon two 'angry' letters he received - otherwise known as hate mail - that are quite revealing. One is from a 23 year old postmodern who in a quite unreasonable tone, based on his exploits in Chinese, claims to be more capable of reasoning than the accomplished writer himself: it is of course typical of people in certain stage of development to make such miscalculations.

Both letters are from recent arrivals in the United States. In the one case his parents probably took considerable risk to illegally move from Mexico, so that their children would have better opportunities in the U.S. He's now a orthopedic who cannot spell, so that was probably the right career move on his part.

The 23 year old postmodern with Bush Derangement Syndrome, apart from the mastery of Chinese and his obvious accomplishments in Marxist Critical Theory, suffers from a whole lot besides, but that is not the point I'd like to make.

Both letters simply ooze envious hatred, for the author, towards white culture, for America in general, and by extension towards - what I would like to term by now, The White Patriarch paradigm: the archetypal Counter-Enlightenment Oppressor, the litany well known by regular readers of present pages: white, rich, powerful, Christian males and all they stand for.

That's when it hit me that - while these two crass examples are probably new Americans of Hispanic descent, and Europe has similar experiences with Muslims of any part of the Dar-al-Islam - these immigrants don't come to their adoptive country out of admiration for customs, people or culture, but out of sheer hatred with a view of milking it for what it is worth.

Their objective isn't integration into these societies as proud new citizens, taking thankful advantage of all the opportunities that free, liberal, Western societies have to offer, they come as conquerors who hate the people that made the West what it is today. If they didn't set out as such, I'm sure there are quite a few indigenous, postmodern adherents to Marx' and Rousseau's narratives of Oppressed versus Oppressor, to brief them on the subject.

If all this sounds like stating the politically incorrect obvious, then why - for crying out loud - are we pretending it isn't the case, convincing ourselves instead that immigrants come with all the good intentions? This, with the usual caveats and disclaimers about obvious heaps of well intentioned, sincere ...... etc.

Frontpage relays an article by Ed West in The Catholic Herald of 18th July, "Jihad Will Destroy Us If We Don't Act Now". It is an interview West had with Robert Spencer, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)" and blogger on the recently censored Jihad Watch.

Contrary to the predictable prejudice from the multicultural Left, the author has a broad and thorough background studying Christian heritage, as well as Islamic scripture. He too noticed the reasons why the cooperation of broadly The Left and Radical Islamism in the Unholy Alliance isn't strange or even a coincidence!

While I call my argument of the Straight Red Line, based on the brilliant analysis of Stephen Hicks into recollection (here's the chart and here's a link to the first part of the series), in Spencer's words:

"There is a deep ideological affinity between the Left and the jihadists. Whenever the hard Left gained power they instituted a reign of terror in order to create what they envisage as a just society, brought about by force. Islamic law works in much the same way: utopia created by force."

What they share is of course - for starters - the subjectivist, primacy of consciousness base [1] of the Counter-Enlightenment, which basks in the cruel sun of Rousseau's and Marx' political justification of violence to bring about social change.

Spencer too mentions the numbers game - the disastrous demographics which the Left has reframed into the tired 'advancing geriatrics' excuse instead of facing the truth, viz. the exceedingly low birthrates, the result of problems created by Socialist policies: the gradual and deliberate destruction of the family as the operative unit, and other advancing forms of social engineering (see also Neo Totalitarianism (6): Liberty for Social Security and Chart II: The Subversion Program).

Spencer is spot on in his perception of the widening gap between on the one hand the persistent push of the postmodern multicultural elite for Western society's integration into an "Eurabian" culture (see recent remarks by a Dutch senior government minister to that avail), a goal shared and propagated by both the mainstream national political parties and the boys in Brussels, and on the other hand the actual situation in the streets of cities and towns all over the West, the growing discontent of the voters.

Any attempt of as much as naming the taboo, causes the mainstream to break out in knee-jerk apoplectic shock, recalling visions of Nazi Germany and pictures of the holocaust - which by the way doesn't keep the Left from currently developing nasty cases of unadulterated antisemitism, a reminder of the Collectivist common necessity of a scapegoat, to blame the negative effects of otherwise picture perfect policies on.

Psychologist Dr Sanity is also at work on above article by Victor Davis Hanson, but leaves the hate mail for what it is and moves on to a similar case of the Left's responsibility for Spenser's cataclysmic vista of civil war: in "Without a Blink" she observes correctly:

"Interesting to note that what 'gives the pre-modern fascist killers a pass' is the post-modern rhetoric and dogma of the left. It is precisely this inherently psychologically dysfunctional cognitive strategy that is able to shift, 'without a blink' from one subjective conviction to its exact opposite without a shred of self-awareness or mental dissonance."

She draws a comparison of Radical Islam with a malicious physical condition: likewise it "has manifested itself today and is spreading rapidly for pretty much the same reason, having been given an ideological carte blanche by the political Left ... with its political correctness and relativistic multicultural fantasies have managed to suppress and otherwise short-circuit the natural defense mechanisms of Western civilization."

"Radical Islamic ideology is itself an unexpected combination of several toxic memes ... which has been carefully synchronized with the failed totalitarian ideologies of the last century ... the remaining outposts of communism and socialism in the world are thriving in academic and "intellectual" circles in the West; together with the Islamic fanatics of the world, they have created a postmodern symphony whose cacophonous music only facilitates the descent into emotionalism, hysteria and murderous suicidality. Without a blink, the left switched from their lip-service championing human life and liberty to championing those whose main desire is to suppress it and bring all of humanity into submission."

A truly ugly picture is gradually emerging of how the role of Bezmenev's de-moral-ized generations that are currently in power, is costing the West its future, its culture and its freedom. The totalitarian Left to date has got away with 110 million victims. I - for one - have no intention of letting them add to that - Liberal moral hatred laws or not.

Public Opinion and Victory: a Contradiction?

With the nestling of Postmodern crypto Marxists in the Liberal Left parties the traditional Left has become a far cry from what it was, say ten years ago. The invective at the expense of the nation's common good is taking its toll. I am singling out the United States here, but I might as well be writing about The Netherlands, Britain or Spain. The Postmodern rhetorical rage is everywhere.

Dr Sanity has gone into the psychology and has come up with some serious pathological issues pertaining to Narcissism, the denial over the Socialist shipwreck on the cliffs of economic theory, and heaps of projection and other immature coping strategies.

It can be argued that the Left perhaps had a fatally flawed ideal, going against the very essence of human nature, but that at least their intentions were morally superior. Nick Cohen, author of "What's Left?" and signatory of the Euston Manifesto - an effort to claim the Left's traditional mainstream back from the Postmodern crypto Marxists but committing identical errors - in a recent Pajamas interview paraphrased that image like this:

"More broadly, Cohen laments the loss ... of the core principle of the left, international solidarity with the oppressed ... he regrets that once upon a time amidst the wreckage of the failure of Marxism-Leninism and even mild socialism, the great consoling claim of the left was that it had once squarely opposed fascism. Now, he isn’t so sure ...

"... as ... British leftists in the antiwar movement (are) making common cause with the far right Muslim Brotherhood; Iraqi socialists and trade unionists abandoned or ignored after the fall of Saddam; leftist intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky either denying or playing down ethnic cleansing of nationalists in the Balkans; the socialist Mayor of London hosting and defending preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had called for the killing of apostates and homosexuals; in parts of the academy, the onset of an extreme relativism which taught that it was racist to oppose sexism in different cultures; the growth of anti-semitism of varying intensity ...

"Cohen tries to balance two arguments ... anger with the flawed policies and incompetence of the Bush and Blair governments, but solidarity with Iraqis as they tried to build something better after decades of tyranny".

But Nick Cohen is a dissenter. It was obvious from the start that - given half the chance - the Left would choose to lose Bush the war: Democrats have been waving white flags from the get go and played the demoralization card more than once, right into the hands of the enemy. Out of spite for Bush which is bad enough, but more importantly, at the expense of American global interest and by extension the free West as a whole, and eventually also at the loss of the spread of democracy in the Middle East, the only political and peaceful means of beating Islamic fundamentalism at home.

Yankee Wombat yesterday had an interested uptake on an article on Tech Central Station Daily, "How Al Qaeda is Winning Even as it is Losing". It's a bit of a technical story, but what it boils down to is this:

"The Coalition and al Qaeda are fighting two different wars. While General Petraeus strangles the insurgent hydra head-by-head, al Qaeda's message of slaughter and despair saps the American public of its will ... A congressionally-imposed defeat in Iraq may be averted by a swing in the polls ... in a hostile media environment ... (this) is difficult, but not impossible, given the substantial American center - Citizens who would prefer victory if given reason to hope. Alternately, Congress could defy the polls. Al Qaeda is running its war on ... bytes of sound and sight. Congress could act on General Petraeus' reports from the ground, rather than broadcasts generated by insurgents."

The West is hampered in fighting a conflict of 4th generation warfare - directed at public opinion - while that public is not led by rationality and common sense, but rather by Counter-Enlightenment anti-reason and anti-Libertarian ideology. As a result emotion, sentiment, impulsive rage, fear and suggestibility have free reign while the old grey mass is having a leave of synapses.

And so the cooperation in the Unholy Alliance, of Western Left Collectivism and Eastern Right Collectivism, are shaping the new world in their totalitarian image at the expense of Liberty, human autonomy and hope for a democratic and peaceful Middle East.

In Iraq meanwhile, just when the surge led by General Petraeus is making substantial progress and the U.S. polls are sliding further, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has had it with the Democrat imposed arbitrary deadlines, a feature entirely alien to Middle Eastern culture.

The whole enterprise suggests as well that on the whole, democracies are peaceful countries simply because it is impossible to properly run a war against ruthless terrorists on public opinion polls and persistent common error. This cynicism begs the next question: who's to reign in the world's bullies?

The Marxist Revival (2): the Epic Narrative

~ Continued from The Marxist Revival (1): The Lie at the Bottom ~

"... But stay awake now, if you must
My story’s just beginning.
For out of wars come revolutions
And the masses now were winning .."

That piece of mad poetry called "Back to the Future" from the site that can only be termed An Ode To Karl Marx, should be taken seriously: just like Al Zawahiri M.D. assures us again and again he is just seeking the global Khalifate that has been on the cards since the eighth century, succeeded up to a point (north Africa, Middle and Near East) and failed on a number of other occasions (Al Andalus, Tours, Vienna), the Marxist international revolution has also not given up with the crumbling of a mere wall, or just one branch (economy) of the total theory being discredited.

The pathological poem has affirmed my suspicion of a strategy of setting the Muslim branch of the Unholy Alliance on the capitalist West in an endeavour to erect the long aspired International on its ruins. To the Postmodern nihilists and the KGB ideologically demoralised usefuls it's all the same anyway: bell tower or minaret, souk or market, whatever ... one act of treason in the good cause is as good as another.

In reaction to the last botched Jihadi attacks by 'the doctors' on London and Glasgow last week bourgeois shock and outrage have been expressed over physicians unethically acting against the Hippocratic oath. Dr Sanity has an interesting analysis on the psychological level. Whatever there may be said about the Hippocratic Oath being considered outmoded and outdated (of course), or Muslims having their own vows in that respect (of course), is a measure of how little is understood of the Counter-Enlightenment branch of philosophy.

Yes, there is a war on - but more importantly and fundamentally, let me repeat: Counter-Enlightenment philosophies - apart from them all having A Global Ideal Worth Dying For - are Collectivist, are Anti Realism and Reason, Socialist, Subjectivist (relativist), have socially constructed 'narratives' or themes of whatever Oppressed group(s) versus a common Oppressor, and don't balk at the use of politically (or religiously) justified violence under the guideline of The Noble End Justifies Any Means (see chart II: The Straight Red Line).

Does that sound like people tending to suffer scruples over ethics, of acting against a pre Liberal (archaic) Hippocratic Oath? On the contrary, it may even encourage them, as having made a personal, solemn sacrifice to the Collective Ideal.

Today a number of pop concerts under the catching title Live Earth is under way, spread strategically all over the face of the earth: Tokio, Sydney, New York, Washington, London, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Hamburg. Istanbul has been cancelled for lack of funds and interest, while on Antarctica a group of 'scientists' makes a contribution against their own profession by taking up musical instruments in a dilettante act of symbolism, thereby securing project funding for years to come.

The aim of the series of events - according to the organisers, among others Al Gore and actress Cameron Diaz - is to raise awareness about glowball warming. The multicultural kitch is living evidence that environmentalism goes hand in hand with the narrative of Rousseau's noble savage.

Let's translate this along the Straight Red Line guidelines: the whole project lives and breaths Subjectivism (Primacy of Consciousness - see Part 1) and Collectivism. As the atmospheric condition itself, the movement is universal in character, transcending the mere national state. It's dictatorial tendencies are betrayed by the silencing, stone-walling and demonisation of dissenters.


It is directed against the common Oppressor: capitalism (industry, free trade), reason (science and technology) and by extension the archetypal wanton, white, wicked patriarch of the West who's grasping, self-serving activities are the cause of all these problems, for which the Oppressed Subjectivist minority groups now pay the price.

The global devastation's affecting the whole of oppressed humanity and every other living creature on the face of the planet. It carries high grade 'original sin' as "all animals, including us" produce the vilified CO2. Thank Gaia we can buy that guilt off by paying environmental taxes and by offering other minor personal libations and sacrifices.

The frightening thing is, what used to be an immature pet project on the fringes of popular culture, with the baby boomers moving into government it has become official policy of a compulsory nature. If there ever was a Cause to warrant world wide control, this is it!

Update: The Live Earth event is, in the words of one commentator: "a massive, hypocritical fraud."

~ To be continued in Part 3 The Marxist Revival: All Purpose Invective - On a tactical level we find language, which to Postmoderns, signifies something entirely different than it does traditionally ~

The Marxist Revival (1): the Lie at the Bottom

While to some Libertarians politics at times may seem an exciting game for adults, to the Collective Left the Cause of the Oppressed is never a relative matter: to them it's a deadly serious affair, quite literately so.

Since Communism failed, the words are heard no more. Only rarely apologetics abound, as are belated memorials to the approximate 110 million victims, whereas trivialization is never far off. Occasionally common roots are laid bare.

De-Marxification isn't common practice in the sense that de-Nazification and de-Baathification were; there is an euphemistic term: 'lustrations', taunted by crypto adherents and hapless MSM as 'pogroms' or 'witch hunts' in a way that prosecution of Nazis and the Pinochets of this world, would be unthinkable. Clearly a case of double standard, but then who would be mad enough to speak up for the Collective Socialist Right? It doesn't earn points with the usefuls like the defense of the Leftist variety.

The three generations of Western students of the baby boom and after that were ideologically subverted by the KGB, haven't dissolved into thin air: they keep themselves occupied with pushing the Cause by other strategies and proceed covertly, going under an epithet of something cryptic like Postmoderns: Multiculturalists, Deconstructionists, and other higher branches of Leftist thought, as Critical Theorists at university language departments, or some other form of Marxist Hermetics.

Surprisingly - just when everyone had forgotten, some 15 years since the collapse of communism at the hand of the Mujaheddin, or so they claim - we are at present experiencing a bit of a revival that regretfully very few people recognize for what it is.

Postmodern philosophy - starting from Rousseau - is based on one very fundamental lie, that is as immature as is opportune. Let me ask you this: is a baby born, already fully aware and self-conscious, thinking - say, at what age shall I first light up - or is the boot on the other foot and comes awareness considerable time after birth, a child being initially quite the solipsist?

I think most sane people will argue the latter. Not so our Counter-Enlighteners, among whom we find the current crypto Marxist Postmoderns (see Chart I, The Straight Red Line). They hold the former view, what I term the Master of the Universe fallacy (PMF number 13), and Ayn Rand calls the 'primacy of consciousness' (as opposed to the 'primacy of existence': first you are, then you become aware, not vice versa).

This subjective idea [1] was first coined so that the existence of God could be averted, but it also comes in handy when occasionally someone attempts to rationalize an irrational Ideology. Its logical consequence is, you see, that no such thing as one single, objective reality, valid for everyone in the Cosmos, exists. Your own particular version of reality depends on who you are (class, race, culture, etc.), and where you are.

Enter subjective minority groups with a common victimhood to be compensated in proportion to their perceived inequality, enter Relativism, enter cultural Marxism, also known as Multiculturalism: Reality or The Truth does not exist, all ideas, cultures, religions being equally valid, except of course all that are based on "the white, rich, Christian, male narrative" because that is exactly what the struggle is directed against: the quintessential archetype of the authoritarian, dogmatic, Indo-European patriarch, whose less admirable side of the historical track record is currently abused to cultivate the demoralizing habit of Occidental self-loathing.

It is a critical fallacy that runs through all Postmodern and Counter-Enlightenment thought (see Chart I The Straight Red Line for the common characteristics, for example Anti Reason). Ideas have consequences, George Weigel famously asserted; it certainly has, for 110 million fatalities.

But I'll let you in on a closely guarded secret: the whole thing is a ruse to fool and confuse the really usefuls; the top Postmodern elite, like the former Polit Bureau members, are not so relativised as to start believing their own lies. Call it a strategy of deep level misinformation to provide rational support for the irrational Ideology.

The lofty Aim, the noble Cause justifies any means, you see - and how else can you hope to whip the complacent, lazy masses into action? One poetic Marxist lifts a tip of the niqaab, a hot contender for the miraculous existence of the Unholy Alliance with Radical Islam, to have another crack at Revived Revolution!

"... But stay awake now, if you must
My story’s just beginning.
For out of wars come revolutions
And. the masses now were winning .."

~ To be continued in Part 2, The Marxist Revival: The Epic Narrative ~

The Straight Red Line (7): Plotting against The West

~ Continued from the Part 6: the Collective ~

We have now established and asserted the Straight Red Line of the Counter-Enlightenment movement, as described by Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism", running from the anti-Reason Collectivism of Rousseau, the Relativist Subjectivism [1] of the German philosophers of Romanticism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche), the Totalitarian Socialism of the Nazis on the Right side (Heidegger, Spengler), and Communists on the Left (Marx, Engels), through to Islam inspired terrorism, and the irrational European terror groups as the Bader Meinhoff c.s., on to the contemporary animal rights anti-globals and their organized rioting, topped up by the Postmodern Relativist thinkers in the Marx tradition: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Marcuse and Rorty. The Postmodern movement includes branches of Feminism, Multiculturalism and Environmentalism.

The implication of the1984 revelation of former KGB agent and Soviet defector Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov that the KGB had been subverting three generations of Western students from 1968 onwards (if not before) (see other posts in this series), combined with the above pedigree of Subjective and violence prone philosophy, lays bare the origins of radical political Islam and explains the - at first glance - inexplicable attraction of that movement and Postmodern Leftism. (See Chart I to follow the Straight Red Line.)

I suggest wrapping up the series with more revelations about the group's mutual attraction and admiration, detailing the joint plans for the destruction of the Liberal, modern West, and then move on to further detailed analysis of the Unholy Alliance's strategy of misinformation, demoralization and subversion.

Melanie Phillips, author of "Londonistan" in an article posted on 18th May, "Liberalism v. Islamism" (aggregated to American Diplomacy) confirms Theodore Dalrymple's analysis of Islam being hopelessly and fatally insecure. Faced with an intractable dilemma - to abandon the faith which was supposed to bring glory and salvation, but instead has condemned Muslims to the backwater of humanity - or embrace modernity, acquiring with it the power that results from free enquiry: progress, knowledge and science. He holds that like all people when faced with an intractable dilemma, they lash out. Hence their accusation that is barely understood in the West, that they are 'under siege' by the ever expanding Liberal culture.

Melanie Phillips: "The driving force behind the Islamic Jihad is the fight against Liberalism and modernity. All the iconic conflicts ... are secondary to the fundamental aim of the Jihad to prevent Liberalism and modernity from destroying Islam." But Liberalism just wants to be left in peace without Sharia Law being foist upon it, a plea that regretfully falls on deaf Jihadi ears.

Underscoring the thesis of the Straight Red Line, Phillips describes how - more or less coinciding with the KGB's activities of the perversion of Liberalism by subjecting it to unrelated, Narcissistic, pathological ideas and behavior - the Muslim Brotherhood proposed to destroy Liberalism before it would infect the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover.


This plan allegedly was laid out in a program of subversion in 1978 when the Organisation of the Islamic Conference sponsored a seminar in London which said, Muslim communities in western countries must establish autonomous institutions with help from Muslim states, and lobby the host country to grant Muslims recognition as a separate religious community, a step towards eventual political domination.

The plot is confirmed by a book published in 1980 by Khuram Murad, titled "The Islamic Movement in the West", and affirmed by a Muslim Brotherhood document seized in Switzerland in 2001, known as ‘The Project’, outlining a twelve-point strategy to 'establish an Islamic government on earth'.

At the time I have derided Hoover Institution Fellow and Townhall columnist, Dinesh d'Souza for siding with Islam against our fellow Western ideology, Liberalism. I haven't read his book "The Enemy at Home", but a gist article "It's the Culture, Stupid" can be found on Townhall, making the point that Islam has a problem with the amoral side of permissive Liberalism specifically, not with the West as a whole.

Today's Liberalism of course is not what it originally set out to be when the philosophy first developed during the Enlightenment. In fact, it has become its very opposite. Indeed, it bears all the characteristics of the Counter-Enlightenment: anti Reason, Collectivism, Relativist Subjectivism, victimhood. I posit that this well known process of 'usurp, pervert and destroy' was carried out by the KGB subversives in an effort to rob the West of its morals, the process of de-moral-ization. Now that the move towards depravity and decadence is more or less complete, the Unholy Alliance by Phillips' pincer movement is ready for the cultural takeover.

I disagree however with Phillips' conclusion - which is in keeping with mainstream opinion - that rampant individualism is a logical consequence of the philosophy of Liberalism, the Classical version, that is. In the post "The Mill Paradigm" I explained that John Stuart Mill's tenet of personal autonomy has been gravely violated by Leftist Liberalism. What is usually criticised as amoral individualism, is most of the time caused by a pathological condition called Narcissism, and has absolutely nothing to do with Classical Liberalism.

It is however at home in Leftist Liberalism, born of the KGB ideological demoralization program, literally to rid the West of notions of right and wrong, good and bad, by injecting Counter-Enlightenment thought into the system that holds that Reality does not exist, rendering these moral principles null and void. The result is all around us.

I dare now safely say, that all conspired to atomise Western culture from within: demoralized and confused to the core by pathological ideologies, it is upto Jihadism to deliver the coup de grâce. In case anyone would object that this scenario will destroy Left Liberalism as well, I can tell you they are but usefuls in the hands of the Postmoderns, who would like nothing better than to obliterate the naked, irrational, grasping ape of a man from the face of the earth entirely.

Hicks: "Postmodern thinkers inherit an intellectual tradition that has seen the defeat of all of its major hopes ... For those opposed to the Enlightenment, the modern world has offered no comfort ... Science .... generated nuclear bombs and super-bacilli. And the confidence in the power of reason [has] been revealed to be a fraud ... [from the] postmodern perspective the universe has been ... shattered ... But there was always Socialism ... the order that would transcend everything and create the beautiful, collectivist society. The failure of Left politics to achieve that vision was merely the last straw".

If Hicks is right, Postmoderns are beyond caring.

I have prepared the beginnings of a inventory (Chart II), detailing the advance of the 'program' as pertaining to the various spheres of activity. I do invite and would greatly appreciate active commenting, critique or whatever the reader may think to contribute. Thanks!

The Straight Red Line (6): the Collective

~ Continued from Part 5: Love of Islam, Loathing of Self ~

With the Hicks explanation of Postmodernism and the Bezmenov revelation that the KGB has been subverting three generations of Western students from 1968 onwards (if not before), we have a direct line from the tenets held by the Relativist, Subjective philosophies [1] of the Counter-Enlightenment movement, on to Marxism and National Socialism (Nazism); the Middle Eastern varieties: Arab Nationalism and Pan-Arabism, the Baath Parties in Iraq and Syria, and Jihadism; Western style Social Democracy and Left Liberalism, Environmentalism, Multiculturalism and for the future, the post-democratic Transnational Progressivism; all these vicious ideologies sharing the same characteristics (see Chart I).

The straight red line starting with the Counter-Enlightenment, set in motion by Rousseau and picked up by the German pre-Romanticists and Romanticists, eventually led on the one hand to the Collectivist Left as represented by Marx and Engels, and on the other to the Collectivist Right in the philosophies of Kant, Herder, Fichte (the Headmaster from Hell) and Hegel.

We must realise that post World War II the Left have lodged a broad based and very succesful public relations offensive to wipe their own historical slate clean, and drop all that is debased and ugly in Totalitarianism in the Nazi lap. It's a stretch to even see Nazism today as Socialist, but from the outset the discussion between them was, which of the two was more Socialist, the actual historical Right being the faction that kept true to pre-revolutionary feudalism. We have been induced to forget that Nazism literally stood for National Socialism.

Just as the Left, the Right wing Socialists were real statists, often also fiercely nationalistic (not to be confused with patriotism which is merely pride of country). In contemporary terms perhaps the late President Milosevic of former Yugoslavia was most true to this type of politician. Right and Left wing Socialists had more in common than not, the enemy being Classical Liberalism that was seen as decayed, capitalist and its limited government by the people frowned upon as weak and anti government.

Apart from the same enemy, they shared Collectivism (anti individualism), statism (sometimes to the point of worship (Hegel)), education not seen as transfer of knowledge, but as today, as conditioning (socialization), both were pro revolution (justification of violence in the pursuit of centralized power), anti capitalist, and anti-Reason which was viewed - true to the period of Romanticism -as a totally inadequate source of knowledge. As increasingly today, emotion was deemed an infallible guide to morality.

World War I by one interpretation, might be considered a war of Collectivism on Liberalism, the outcome of which should have brought Socialism to Germany, the war industry already being footed on a Socialist basis. The defeat was devastating for the Collectivist Right. Due to the Left's succesful propaganda this might look odd, but in fact it was entirely possible to be a Socialist and a Marxist enemy simultaneously. The difference between Left and Right Socialism boiled down to intensity and method: the Left favouring a transnational point of view (the USSR, and later also the Warsaw Pact) - as they still do, today apparently being the epoch of the 4th International (feast you eyes on this piece of Marxist irrationality by which the hero is fitted out with almost supernatural powers) - and the Right favouring a method along cultural or ethnic fault-lines: to each nation and culture, its own form of Socialism.

Left and Right Collectivism share the same basic dimensions, as by sheer chance does Radical Islamism. Chance, or perhaps not. In the post "Yes my Friends, I Will Call for War" we have seen that Syria/Lebanon and Iraq found themselves as French colonies at the time of World War II, on the side of Vichy and Nazism; only afterwards, with very little adaptations necessary, these countries and Pan-Arab Nationalism as foreseen by Egypt's President Nasser, moved to the Nationalistic Left (Baathism), aligning themselves with the Soviet Union and the East bloc. (More insight here.)

In a separate process in the Middle East radicals adopted Islam as a political project, which is similarly characterized by the familiar dimensions: anti rationalism, Collectivism, Totalitarianism, Subjectivism and an Oppressor versus Oppressed dichotomy. Hence the natural and smooth cooperation in the Unholy Alliance with the Western remnants of the KGB subverts: the Postmodern Left. It is perhaps therefore not entirely by chance that the indispensable scape goat - to off-load the blame on for all that doesn't reflect the respective Utopias - happens to coincide as well ... yes, it's the infernal twins, Big Satan and Little Satan, Libertarian America and Jewish Israel.

The history and development of (urban) terrorism - Rousseau's political justification for irrational violence - runs directly from the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, to the nihilistic agit-props of imperial Russia of 1885 and the Revolution itself; Hitler's 1930's Freicorps and the Italian Fascist groups; the violence after the 'failed revolutions of 1967 and 1968 by the Baader Meinhoff Group and the Red Army Faction; to contemporary Hamas and Hizbollah, and the increasingly violent and always trivialized organized rioting of the Postmodern little fry: Autonomen, anarchists, anti-globalists and animal rights activists. All are battling the state, provoking revolution and war through violence, considering it a justified form of 'resistance' as legitimised by Rousseau, Marx and others (see Chart I).

Today's groups by the way are getting increasingly bolder and more violent as the Western police are tied by hands and feet by civil rights laws; the state of Lebanon is bravely trying to assert itself in the face of Syrian/Iranian pressure, and the Palestinian Authority has de facto ceased to exist.

The West in the meantime is moving towards a Postdemocratic era, its Collectivism becoming increasingly Totalitarian as a perverted form of Liberalism is elevated to the status of Transnational State Ideology (also euphemistically known as political correctness). Egged on by the Postmodern KGB remnants in government institutions, NGOism, education and the mainstream media, in the words of Theodor Dalrymple: "We are willingly adopting the mental habits of people under Totalitarianism". We ain't seen nothing yet.

~ To be continued in Part 7, Plotting against the West ~

The Straight Red Line (5): Love of Islam, Loathing of Self

~ Continued from Part 4: the Founders ~

The touching words quoted yesterday (here in entirety) were uttered by the Subjectivist [1] champion of the Collectivist Counter-Enlightenment movement: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). I regret to say we have no winner of Hicks' groundbreaking tome "Explaining Postmodernism".

Rousseau set the tone of the premise of mankind basically being good but corrupted by his environment, that we have come to know so well in Leftist thinking. In Rousseau's vision the world's trouble is caused by civilization, Reason and its fruits, knowledge and science. He's often quoted as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it is quite clear he rebelled against all the tenets of individual Liberalism, Reason, secularism and limited government.

In Rousseau we find the very source of our trouble with Postmodernism, but also the answer to many a vexed question:

- "why does the Left ally itself with Radical Islam against the permissive Liberal society that is of their own making and of which they are the prime beneficiary?", and

- "why should Western civilization be considered so uniquely bad?" and related:

- "what's with the self-hatred", in these pages often termed "Down With Us", or Operation Western Auto-Destruct, so often confessed to by our Postmodern Multiculturalists and directed against white, rich, hetero-sexual, Christian men in particular and Western society in general.

Earlier I suggested to have discovered the source of self-loathing in the Positivism of Auguste Comte. But in Rousseau we have yet an earlier Ground Zero.

Disappointed Marxists often return to the grandfather of Collectivist Anti-Reason, but when the Leftist press recently sabled the film '300', about the three hundred Spartans that defeated the Persian Army in 480 Before Christ - driven by Pacifism and love of anything that doesn't answer to the white, male litany, in casu the Greeks - they forgot to check back on their Classics, the pure, emotional Rousseau.

As opposed to the degradation of Athenian decadent Civilization generated by Reason, Rousseau glorified the militaristic Spartans as pure, unspoiled, noble tribesmen - their callous practice of exposing babies to nature may have even inspired him to expose his own five children to the hardships of the Paris orphanage.

Because to Rousseau, the more advanced a civilization, the more corrupted and corrupting it is. As a paradigm of Rousseauian thought we can envisage the Noble Savage, or man's fall from Paradise: the snake of old was often used as a symbol of wisdom; read 'reason' for 'wisdom' (not to be confused!) and you have Rousseau in a nut-shell.

More of his ideas inspired by the image of noble savagery is the divorce of Eros and Agapi, so highly prized by contemporary man and woman; and a distaste for compassion with others which would only generate more decadent civilization: this is reminiscent of the view that drove the Russian Revolution: one cannot create a workers' Paradise with sentimentality, at which point usually the village headmaster was made an example of.

Rousseau also inspired in Marx the use of the Leftist dichotomy of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed; and seems to have been the source of Postmodern Fallacy Number One: the world as a pie, the view of the zero-sum game, where it is inappropriate and fatal.

Rousseau as the source of Western self-loathing can be found in the vision of the noble, primordial world that is destroyed by man's civilizing force: Reason, knowledge, science, technology, art, aesthetics, property, and economy; man not only destroyed this pristine environment (!), he also became soft, fat and lazy, and created a social conflict: a few winners on top and a whole lot of losers at the base of the pyramid of power.

It's this inequality that is so damning in Rousseau's erroneous total-sum game! Far from considering contemporary Western society an engine of equality and a creator of wealth, it is seen by the Rousseau followers as doomed, the epitome of social pathologies! Down With It ... à la Lanterne! Presently the problem is our destruction of the environment by technology: it doesn't save it, it despoils it.

The West prides itself for what it considers progress. But for anyone who has invested completely in a world view seen as evil, amoral and utterly failed, this gloating is unbearable. So the fight isn't over for the KGB's ideologically demoralised remnants. The capitalist world's moral values are attacked as utterly sexist, racist, dogmatic, authoritarian, cruel, uniquely civilized - uniquely bad!

If Reason makes no sense to what you're saying as Reality clearly shows otherwise, attack Reason as pernicious and superfluous, and persuade the world that Reality doesn't exist!

Rousseau as the source of the revulsion for civilization unmasks Fjordman's correspondent at the University of Helsinki for the Postmodern vile hypocrites that Multiculturalists at heart are: sending the message that retaining culture should be a human right, when in fact they mean to destroy anything that can remotely be considered a 'civilization', favouring instead the long-lost ideal: Marx' pseudo religious red paradise, or by default, Rousseau's wild tabula rasa of the tribal society, so pure and self-sacrificial, possibly Islamic (apparently not considered civil enough to be damned).

But then again, Postmoderns have a relation to language, that Muslims also have when lying to infidels: language, not as a means to transfer information, but as a means to a usually bloody end: it is about effectiveness. This is part of the confusion: to Postmoderns language is not about objective Truth, which to them doesn't exist any way. Therefore language isn't used as an instrument of precision, but as a propaganda tool. A word of advice: never, ever, take a Postmodern's words literally: what is being said habitually requires a good deal of deconstructing before its meaning can be discerned - which they will then go on to reject as non-existent.

To Rousseau religion was a imperative, as we have seen in yesterday's puzzle contest. He had the intention of cutting a few individual heads in the interest of society's stability as a whole. In Hicks' words: "... 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. Further: so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers ..."

At which point we see the source of our Unholy Alliance of the Left and assertive Islam emerging on the horizon. As the cursed Western civilization was practically built by Christianity, this obviously rules it out. Now Islam on the other hand - due to the precise parallel characteristics of Collectivism, Anti-reason and Oppressor versus Oppressed - is the ideal candidate. The use of irrational terrorism is just an added attraction, as we shall see!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ayatolla Extraordinair, far from being the Left's Mister Nice Guy, also has the honour of being the source of political justification to irrational violence, committed by Jacobin thugs during the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror; of the horrors that Marxist dictators inflicted upon their own peoples; and of various Leftist terrorist groups who - from the 1960's onwards, when it began to dawn on them that with the passing of the 100 million victim mark - the Totalitarian game was up.

Most people, myself included, with the fall of the wall in 1989, made the mistake in taking for granted that Communism had conceded defeat. But the KGB's ideologically de-moral-ized, brainwashed crowd never gave up: they weren't programmed to pack it in. On the contrary! After their contributions to the permissive society to corrupt it even further, the West is currently witness to their collusion with the forces of Radical Islam.

I think we need to carefully consider the ominous words of one of the Four Horsemen of the Communist Apocalypse, Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfort School in 1974, after the 'failed revolutions' of 1967 and 1968: "It will be resurrected in the universities".

~ To be continued in Part 6, the Collective: ... we have seen that Syria/Lebanon and Iraq found themselves - as French colonies during World War II - on the side of Vichy and Nazi Germany ... ~

Of Degeneracy, Megalomania and other Anomalies

Today's range of current affairs subjects may differ wildly, but they have one thing in common: Culture War.

After failed attempts to establish a political party for pederasts, and the marketing of sex toys for Mother's Day (what can possibly be wrong with that?!), the Dutch broadcasting society that successfully brought televised sex and drug use education to the nation, is now pushing through a reality game show in which first prize is ... a kidney transplant! Wow, how progressive and liberal can a country possibly get without going to the dogs entirely? Answer: not very.

Let's put it in another way: this country is beyond immoral; it has long passed amoral; it has in effect become a moral black hole! As a consequence, and to make my point, ninety percent will have no idea what I'm on about!

The latest exercise in indifference and contempt for human life has resulted in the headlines "Baby suffocated in car", in two separate incidents of 'forgetfulness' in the Netherlands and in Belgium. Good night!

The good news is, Labour, the party we have to thank for furthering so much of the above, is on the brink of collapse! I could have told them that their boy wonder, Wouter Bos comes across as the cold-hearted, vain, unprincipled, technocrat that he is: a second Ad Melkert. People can sense fake even through the screen of a television. That's why the former Maoist competitor, Jan Marijnissen of the Socialist Party may be a totally misguided idealist, I'd buy a second hand car from him any day, as opposed to Bos whom I wouldn't even trust with the collection of my garbage.
CNN is reporting: Guantanamo detainee 'kills self'. Can anyone explain the function of these inverted commas, suggesting ... what ... foul play?

On to some more serious stuff now, as Venezuela requires our attention. The compassionate Leftist strongman of the proletariat, voted into power for a second time with some sixty percent of the vote as validated beyond doubt by the worst president in United States history, after the best of Marxist traditions is well on his way to megalomaniac totalitarianism. The choice for learning things the hard way seems to be a common human trait. Read here how key institutions have now been brought under Chávista control: ten of the twelve TV stations, the judiciary, the military.

John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter is having some fun with Chávez' "Cubanization policies" that are reflecting the spirit of "the greatest Socialist in history", viz. our Lord Jesus Christ. Apparently Pope Benedict's finer philosophical and theological points on Liberation Theology are lost on the Chávez' household, as might be expected. Enter the Second World War, Adolf Hitler and the Anti Christ, which just goes to show that even the saintly men in Rome can be sorely tested.

Asked Tomas Sancio of Venezuelan Politics Blog what we can do to help the situation in his country: "Write, write and write, that's what we can do, hoping that search engines and public opinion can read our opinions. Providing explanations on why we think totalitarianism is happening now. Opinions and arguments do count. The Venezuelan government pays people to lobby on its behalf (I know the name of one French man that was hired to do that job). Foreign press has for years given Chávez the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, we can provide our grain of sand to overcome the propaganda."

Yes, the press from hell would be involved, wouldn't they? As they are in furthering the Marxist multicultural agenda as set out by the irrational, totalitarian Unholy Alliance of Islam and the Left in the boycott of Israel. After the 35,000 members of the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) found it in themselves to declare a boycott against Israel, yesterday also Britain's largest professional body of lecturers (UCU) called upon its 120,000 members to join an international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.

Israel is going the way of South Africa: singled out for boycott against Apartheid (the worst president in U.S. history has set the tone with a book title turned misnomer), while all measure of barbarism, suppression and crimes against humanity are apologized in the name of Marxist good intentions. Lately I'm having déjà vues from the 1970's.

Apart from the fact that we obviously have the Unholy Alliance here at work, I think we are getting beyond bias now, into the realms of open war fare on the part of Britain's multicultural bastions. Another way of seeing it, is an assault on an independent state by denying its right and first duty of protecting its citizens against terrorism. Put yet in another way: the 'right to commit insurgency' of a virulent minority outweighs the state's prime duty to protect the majority. How does this florid example fit into the transnational progressive agenda of undermining the legitimacy of the nation state?

Let's wrap this up with some good news, the U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution on the creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. If the Syrians hoped pressure could be exerted by unleashing the international band of marauders of Fatah Islam on Lebanon, these hopes are now truly dashed.