America, where art thou?

The greatest problem with Obama may be that he is more interested in a certain image of himself and of his politics than with many aspects of human reality out there in America and the world that he little knows yet hopes to move with endless campaign speeches. In the weeks he has been in office, wealth built up over generations of hard work is being destroyed with frightening speed, and Obama seems disconnected, not talking about how he is going to help instill confidence to help stem the flow in the markets but rather about how he is going to spend money the nation doesn't yet have to save the nation. And yet he shows little interest in insuring his "stimulus" or bailout spending will actually create economically productive industries that can continue in future without constant inflows of government debt-financed money. John Hawkins at Pajamas Media » Overcoming the Recession: An Interview with Thomas Sowell asks economist Sowell

JH: Now, we’ve heard people say that this is a uniquely bad economic situation — that it could be as bad as the Depression, etc. However, looking at GDP and job loss numbers, it doesn’t look as bad as, say, the recession in the early 80s. So how bad is this really and if you were advising the president, what would you tell him to do?

Thomas Sowell: Resign.

[...]
because he is determined to interfere in the market. How did we get out of the recession in the early 80s? Reagan did nothing. The economy adjusted and we’ve had 20 years of growth, low inflation, and low unemployment.
[...]
JH: Now, I’d like you to elaborate on something you wrote in National Review back in 2007:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Thomas Sowell: That’s true, unfortunately. I just noticed this morning that … I am getting more and more emails from people who are simply despairing. They are saying that we may have reached the point of no return. We have had dumbed down education for enough generations that people don’t even realize that it’s dumbed down education. We have propaganda against all the institutions of this society, literally from the elementary school to the universities. You can’t raise a whole generation of people who don’t know how to think but are taught to resent anything that they don’t understand, and expect that you are going to survive in the long run.

I though this was a good way of putting our real problem, the ethical problem that is, ultimately, the real driver of history including its economic phenomena. Americans and Canadians today are often taught to resent, and not to understand the economic or political systems of which they are part so that they might freely and humbly make a realistic contribution to renewing these systems. Survival demands not only personal self-understanding, but knowledge that personal self-understanding is empty if it is not distilled from a greater human self-understanding. If you don't know how human ethical systems are generated in history, you can't know much about anything, including yourself. And who today is educated to have a good grasp of history, perhaps the most difficult of intellectual disciplines?

This leads to my second observation on today's posts at Pajamas Media. In one - Pajamas Media » Could Americans’ Discontent Turn Violent? - there are over a 100 comments from people who seem to think violent civil unrest is quite likely in America in the near future. One commenter, MikeD offers some observations on the thread, including these:

7. This comment thread would never have happened at any other time during the last 100 years–whether there was an internet or not. That indicates a revolutionary change in thinking, if nothing else.

8. America and Americans today are very different than other peoples in other places in other times. Historical parallels from our own past, Europe or any other culture/time do not apply.

Now I think that's an interesting question for further discussion: is he really right that the current unrest is of a scope and scale that no real parallel can be found in the last 100 years of conservative anger at the rise of "progressive" government in America? As for his second point, that historical parallels do not apply, I think this may only be correct if the question is will, how or when will the present system fall apart. By the nature of history, that sort of question is indeed unpredictable and ultimately not worth investing a lot of time and energy in worrying about. If there is something that you can save, find a way to save it, but it can only really be saved over time if you have some way to reinvest it. Where historical parallels do apply is when you start investing time and energy in asking how the system can be renewed. People not educated in history and some kind of anthropological/religious/ethical self-understanding of how we humans make history, will have a very hard time finding the courage or knowledge for how to work themselves out of a mess.

Thomas Sowell has two quick answers for how to move forward, but these are questions on which we need all to do a lot more talking: in economics, let disrupted markets find their bottom without a constant government intervention that makes business and individual investment decisions about the real value of present assets and future economic prospects into a crap shoot dependent on knowing which way the political winds will be blowing through Obama's ears, the day after tomorrow, or maybe the day after that. But having the patience and wisdom to let millions of people collectively make decisions through market interactions, instead of letting the wise man in Washington lead us, can only happen when and if there is a respect for individual and business freedom within the political sphere. While there is a lot of interaction back and forth between politics and economics, the bottom line, which becomes visible in crises like the present, is that ultimately the economic market is limited or framed by the political market, and not vice versa as dogmatic Marxists like to argue in giving an implicit license to politicians like Obama to take revenge on what they see as the usually ascendant economic forces, in the name of the people. But Obama is no David vs. Goliath. The people, or in other words, politics, with the violent potential to keep any market open or closed, are/is always ultimately sovereign as they always have been, at least in a latent or implicit state; pointing out the supremacy of politics over economics is only the starting point for hoping we can do something creative with a little self-knowledge about how the freest societies have been built up in the past and can hope to renew themselves and grow in future.

Such an observation should not be a license for political hubris at the top but a recognition that it is only the political and economic interactions and conversations of people far away from the centres of media attention that can ultimately determine whether a nation and economy gets up off its feet and finds it worthwhile working through massive problems again, or whether stagnation will grip the land and bring trouble into the streets. If Obama is only talking to those who resent the American system, he can really achieve nothing. Vague promises of change tied to interventionist policies premised on some reworking of the New Deal might get people collecting government pay cheques, until the ability of government to borrow or tax slowly diminishes those cheques (as the value of the government buck diminishes through inflation) but it cannot really get them working again in building what only free people learning from their own mistakes in pursuit of their own dreams and realities can do. Don't try to save the people from their mistakes. Don't let them starve or freeze, but make sure you leave room for the personal salvation that can only come, not from Daddy Obama promising to buy you a new tv or status symbol, but from actually learning what it means to belong to human history and the freedom that is implicit in the sharing of language, and hence politics. A president who talks but doesn't listen denies that freedom and denies reality in favor of some fantasy vision of a Gnostic leader, with special insight, redeeming a fallen world.

Grateful For Vancouver Weather

The other day I looked up and saw another grey sky; being human I began to grumble but I was quick enough to catch myself in mid-breath and strangle my ingratitude it in its lair.

Reading about the storms and awful winters that so many other cities have had this season, seeing all the awful pictures of other people's blizzards and snow drifts on television since last November, makes me all too aware that we really don't have much to complain about here in Vancouver, when it comes to the weather.

It's no wonder that so many residents simply go outside and stand around. I can hardly believe our luck myself...

The Perfect Gift

It's been a sad couple of months for US-UK diplomatic relations. Between the unnecessarily rude return of a valuable (and venerated) bust of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill donated to the White House by former Prime Minister Tony Blair as a gesture of friendship, to last week's "amateur reception" of current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, political satirists can no longer complain that there is nothing to parody about Barack Obama.

There was speculation that Obama's dissatisfaction with the Churchill bust was due to tough actions taken by Britain against the extremely violent Mau-Mau uprising in early-1950s Kenya, during Churchill's second and final tenure in office, and the suffering endured by Obama's Kenyan grandfather during that rebellion.

It's been a while, so it's understandable if we've all forgotten this, but President Bush's father, former President and former pilot George H. W. Bush, had his plane shot out of the sky by the Japanese during WWII; yet I don't recall him bearing a grudge against Japan for his near-death experience while he was in office. (Unless that televised act of vomiting all over their embarrassed Prime Minister was a staged retribution...) He put the war behind him. Presidents Nixon, Kennedy and Eisenhower were veterans of the Second World War, and seemed able to put aside their experiences with the Japanese and German people who had tried so hard to kill them and the men in their commands not so long before... yet Obama still bears a grudge against Churchill?

Barack Obama may be the most powerful man in the world, but increasingly he appears as also the most pathetic. For all that he has at his fingertips, this week's telling exchange of gifts between President Obama and Prime Minister Brown reveals Obama as poor indeed, a naked emperor exposed as lacking the greatest gift we can give to ourselves: the blessing of humility.

When it comes to giving a gift to a friend, you are supposed to think less of yourself, and more of your friend. Ideally the search is for something the friend would have dearly loved to have gotten for themselves, but might have held off doing, usually out of self-deferential humility ("I don't deserve this, you shouldn't have done it"), or for not having the time to devote to such self-satisfying searches themselves. The more you value the friendship, the more readily you can summon the imagination, and the patient perseverance, to perceive what would make "the perfect gift" to give that friend. Such gifts are an investment of time as well as treasure, so that when the friend's eyes meet yours, you both know the unspoken truth: with your gift you gave some of yourself, to me.

Gordon Brown seems to have had experience giving gifts, judging by the thought that must have gone into the selection of one particular item he presented to President Obama: an ornamental pen holder made from wood taken from the HMS Gannet, a British sloop which cruised the Mediterranean and Red Seas in the latter half of the 19th century as part of Britain's expensive commitment to rid the world of Islamist slave ships carrying black Africans into a life of bondage in the Middle East:

In the Red Sea, the Africans it saved would have come, among other places, from Kenya. ... It is quite possible that grandfather’s ancestors would, had it not been for the Royal Navy, have been carried away to slavery in Arabia.

What thoughtful gift does Obama offer, in return? 25 classic American movies on dvd. The Daily Mail prints an unofficial list:

1- Citizen Kane
2- The Godfather
3- Casablanca
4- Raging Bull
5- Singin' In The Rain
6- Gone With The Wind
7- Lawrence Of Arabia
8- Schindler's List
9- Vertigo
10- The Wizard Of Oz
11- City Lights
12- The Searchers
13- Star Wars
14- Psycho
15- 2001: A Space Odyssey
16- Sunset Boulevard
17- The Graduate
18- The General
19- On The Waterfront
20- It's A Wonderful Life
21- Chinatown
22- Some Like It Hot
23- The Grapes Of Wrath
24- ET
25- To Kill A Mockingbird

Presuming that he did bestir himself to pay attention to the films on this list, it seems that Obama knows as little about American movies as he does everything else: offering #7, Lawrence of Arabia, isn't even an American movie, it's British.

An article in the Telegraph offering background on Prime Minister Brown's visit gets to the root of the cause of the diplomatic black eye delivered to the Anglo-American bond of friendship; an appalling inexperience fuels Obama's lack of perspective and monumental ingratitude. It also explains why, unlike the other wartime Presidents before him, Obama may not be willing to see a nation's big picture, good and bad, its acts of atonement as well as its sins; that would require the gift of humility, to admit that none of us are perfect.

British officials [admit] that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy". A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. ...

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
...
The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
...
The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.

"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

Helpfully, in the spirit of friendship, the Telegraph article leaves some clues for the next head of state scheduled to visit the White House, as they puzzle over what might constitute the Perfect Gift for President Obama..:

"People say he looks tired more often than they're used to," the strategist said. "He's still calm, but there have been flashes of irritation when he thinks he's being pushed to make a decision sooner than he wants to make it. He looks like he needs a cigarette."

What's a keffiyeh to you?

Pajamas Media » The Keffiyeh: Fashion Trend or Political Statement?

My distaste for the keffiyeh fashion trend is similar to my displeasure at seeing silly young women sporting Mao handbags, which many Asians and Peruvians take offense to. I would not wear a Che Guevara shirt as I see no reason to identify with a madman who massacred innocent Cubans. Therefore, I believe the general public needs to be cognizant that the trendy scarf they feel compelled to wear is offensive to people like me who have lost loved ones because of PLO terrorism.

I am a Middle Easterner and I am not offended if someone chooses to wear traditionally Middle Eastern clothing. At Sephardi/Mizrahi hennas and weddings, the theme is typically “Middle Eastern” and I have never been ashamed of the culture that my grandparents were from. However, the keffiyeh is a different case altogether as it is a symbol of Palestinian terror and not merely a Middle Eastern garment used to protect oneself from sand or dirt. This trendy scarf has extremely negative connotations — in this case it is a garment that is associated with Arafat, who is arguably one of the most murderous individuals of our time.

While an individual has every right to wear a garment, people need to be aware that symbols — such as the swastika, Klan robe, or keffiyeh — can never be removed from their meanings. It is difficult to separate the political statement of Palestinian terror from this particular garment.

No doubt there are more appropriate fashion choices for those wanting to please academic girls and shock the ordinary Western man.

Memorial to Aqsa Parvez to be built

Atlas Shrugs: BARUCH HASHEM! AQSA MEMORIAL GOES FORWARD (HT: Walker)

Pamela Geller, who drew a lot of fire for proposing to erect a stone on Aqsa's unmarked grave, has apparently found the allies to finish this righteous job

Deepest thanks and gratitude to Atlas reader and Fire Chief, Town of Pelham, Scott McLeod, a wonderful man who contacted one of his Municipal Councilors regarding an Aqsa memorial. Councilor Sharon Cook presented a motion to offer an area in the Pelham Peace Park for a suitable Memorial. Sharon Cook, you are a righteous woman!

The Mississauga News reports

The Town of Pelham will install a bench and plant a tree at Peace Park to honour immigrants who are caught between cultures "and are challenged to conform to both." Pelham councillor Sharon Cook said the bench and tree will honour Parvez.

Human Rights Tribunal does not have the arrogance to police elected politicians

But one wonders why this wasn't obvious to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission that put this case to the Tribunal. (I'm just guessing that there are people who think it their profound ethical duty to try to pass judgment on all and sundry, and hence to rule the world, in the unimpeachable name of "human rights".)

The Canadian Press: Human Rights Tribunal dismisses discrimination complaint against former Sask MP (HT: Walker):

SASKATOON — A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed a discrimination complaint against a former MP who distributed political pamphlets that included messages such as "Stop Indian Crime."

Jim Pankiw sent other similar messages to his Saskatoon-Humboldt constituents in 2002 and 2003 in taxpayer-funded mailouts called "householders" that are issued by MPs.

His pamphlets included comments that linked some aboriginals with higher crime rates, lack of accountability for crimes, extortion, blackmail and terrorism.

Complaints were filed against Pankiw that argued the pamphlets would be likely to expose aboriginals to hatred and contempt.

The tribunal ruled that the mailouts are not subject to the Canadian Human Rights Act because they do not provide a service to the public but rather to MPs by allowing them to share their political views with constituents.

"Not all discriminatory conduct is caught by the act," the tribunal wrote in its ruling, released Friday.

"The tribunal finds that the three householders in question sent by Pankiw are not subject to the provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Accordingly, the complaints have not been substantiated and are dismissed."

Pankiw was not immediately available for comment.

The three pamphlets in question called for the end of hiring quotas, court sentencing provisions, hunting and fishing rights and tax exemptions for aboriginals. The pamphlets also said treaties should not be valid in modern times.

One pamphlet, titled "Stop Indian Crime," showed a photograph of the Oka protest in Quebec in 1990. The caption under the photo described an aboriginal protester as a terrorist.

Daniel Poulin, a lawyer for the human rights commission, said since the pamphlets aren't subject to the act, the panel was unable to consider whether Pankiw's statements were objectionable.

"The tribunal did not look at the actual content of the statements or the householders," Poulin said from Ottawa.

"It's a complex decision. It is a difficult issue, and its deals with whether the pamphlets are a service under the act. It is a very unusual case."

The tribunal noted the act states that communication-related discrimination is limited to statements that are transmitted by telephone or over the Internet. It does not apply to parliamentary householder pamphlets.

During a hearing into the complaints last fall, Pankiw told the tribunal he simply believes aboriginals should not be given special treatment by governments or society.

"You can't discriminate in favour of someone without discriminating against someone else. Discrimination is wrong," he said. "I am an egalitarian. I believe in equality of all people."

Pankiw gave as an example the case of a woman he knows who didn't get into law school because a certain number of seats were set aside for aboriginal students.

It used to be illegal to mask your face in public in Vancouver

- because we had a right to live without unnecessary fear of the other. And maybe that bylaw, originally targeting the KKK, is still on the books, I'll have to check. Why is it so hard today for people obsessed with Western society's alleged victimization of various others not to understand that our others are engaging in potentially violent othering too? Anyway, this is just an introduction to George Jonas' latest in the National Post: Canada's medieval rights commissions

Canada's "human rights" commissars are ready. Having spent the last couple of years positioning themselves as our brave new multicultural world's vanguard against such reactionary traditions as free speech, they now feel it's time to extend their horizons. This year's target is the criminal justice system.

HRCs wish to be recognized as "experts." They're seeking intervener status before Justice Frank Marocco of Ontario's Superior Court, who is asked to determine whether a Muslim woman should remove her veil while testifying as a witness at a hearing in a sexual assault case.

Apparently the original presiding judge said yes, please, take it off. He didn't add, as I might have: "Remove it, dear lady, because you're now in Canada, and here it isn't our custom to try people on the evidence of masked witnesses."
[...]
Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall's troops are pawing the ground to be heard in the matter. Predictably, their view is that a believer's right to exercise her religious practices trumps the right of an accused to a fair trial. The way the law has evolved in Canada, they say, it's the courts' duty to accommodate outlandish customs. How could it be otherwise, when the vital right of a Muslim woman to be ritually veiled is balanced against a mere bagatelle, such as a man's rightoid to give full answer and defence to the criminal charges against him?

Ah, you're describing a Monty Python skit, someone might say. No, I'm not. I'm describing Canadian reality.

Here's an institution, ostensibly established to safeguard human rights, including, among others, a right Canada's Charter of Right and Freedoms calls fundamental, the right to a fair trial. Crossexamination-- "the engine of truth" as a legal cliche has it --is integral to a fair trial, and seeing a witness' face while testing his or her veracity is integral to cross-examination. Given this, what is there to say about "human rights" officials offering themselves as "experts" to testify that the right to a fair trial in 21st-century Canada takes second place to a medieval Muslim notion of feminine modesty?
[...]
Barbara Hall & Co. are masquerading as the defenders of human rights, the very rights and freedoms they're seeking to undermine.

Hall's commissars aren't demanding access to Judge Marocco's court as advocates for shariah. No, they're calling themselves experts on Canada's evolving law. They're not urging the courts to accommodate veiled Muslim witnesses, they're stating as their expert opinion that, as a matter of law, accommodating such witnesses is the duty of Canadian courts. In other words, they're trying to parlay their ideology of Advanced Matriarchal and Transsexual Multiculturalism into expertise on Canadian law. That's a fraudulent pitch, made under false pretenses -- at least, that's what I'd say if the judge asked me.

Michael Ignatieff on Israel Apartheid Week

Carl in Jerusalem has a bit of video from Arabic al-Jazeera, an interview with Hamas terrorists in Gaza. One of them says

"...Then the [Israeli] forces started entering the town, and our fighters moved back in there as well, setting up booby traps. Each man booby-trapped his own home, so all of Gaza was set to explode. We were ready to die on our own soil in our very own houses. I was ready to fight from my home."

So what does one say about people who would sacrifice their own families and then look to the world to rail against Israeli atrocities? Here's Michael Ignatieff, unelected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in today's National Post (HT Catfur):

Throughout our history, Canadians have strived to understand each other across the solitudes that have broken other countries to pieces. Our common national purpose has been built on our diversity.

We respect differences — of opinion, nationality, race and creed. We abandon that respect at our peril.
“Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW), now underway on university campuses across Canada, betrays the values of mutual respect that Canada has always promoted.

International law defines “apartheid” as a crime against humanity. Labelling Israel as an “apartheid” state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.

Criticism of Israel is legitimate. Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not.
IAW is part of a global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — Israeli and Jewish.

IAW goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization. It leaves Jewish and Israeli students wary of expressing their opinions, for fear of intimidation.

No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.

The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined the chorus of denunciations of Israel on our campuses. The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott Israeli academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom.

Canada enjoys strong academic, economic and cultural ties with Israel and Israeli institutions, and these relationships benefit both our countries. Collaborative research between Canadian and Israeli academics is mutually rewarding, and should be encouraged. The CUPE resolution is an attack on the free exchange that is at the heart of our university system.

The Liberal Party of Canada condemns the CUPE resolution in the strongest possible terms.
[...]
Political leaders should also take care not to deepen the distrust between Canadian communities over the Middle East. Politicians who use the ongoing conflict in the Middle East as a wedge to divide Canadians for their own political gain can succeed only in accentuating acrimony and deepening tensions.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict evokes passionate disagreement. It should not damage academic freedom and it should not divide Canadian communities. We can move forward if we work together to promote the common objective of Canadian policy ever since 1948 — a secure Israel living side-by-side in peace with an independent Palestine.

Is that moral clarity, two-faced hypocrisy and moral relativism, unrealistic wishful thinking? You be the judge. I would ask, how can you not divide Canadians, to some extent, if some of them support the likes of Hamas, as some do?

Jason Kenney on "Zionism is Racism"

Via Then There Was Light, another sign that, among our Parliamentarians, only the Conservative Party of Canada can see somewhat clearly one of the central political and cultural issues of our time. Here is a Conservative member's question to the Conservative government from yesterday's House of Commons question period:

Mr. Paul Calandra (Oak Ridges—Markham, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, Jewish students across the country are under siege as anti-Semites unveil their plans for Israel Apartheid Week. Liberal MPs have been quoted in the media and even today in the immigration committee saying that anti-Semitic organizations like the Canadian Arab Federation should receive taxpayer support.
Will the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism explain why the government believes that Israel Apartheid Week is anti-Semitic?

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are free to express different views about the policies of foreign government but Israel Apartheid Week is not about that. It is about a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people, a country born out of the Holocaust.
We find very troubling this resurgence of the old slander that Zionism is racism. That is the notion that lies at the heart of Israel Apartheid Week.
Jewish students at campuses across the country are subsequently feeling increasingly vulnerable. We condemn these efforts to single out and attack the Jewish people and their homeland in this terrible way.

Background at above link and in our earlier post.

Ideas so stupid only intellectuals can believe

A book review, and a life review, neither of which is likely to appeal to our blinkered, blinded and stupefied Left, serves us well here. But only some of us. Most people are happy to live in cave-like error, doing what others do, being normally social and conservative, even if that is a radicalist behaviour in outcome.The willing suspension of disbelief is essential to social living, for otherwise we would have no society, no art, no language, no relationships of any kind but narcissistic hedonism for a moment. Seers are a menace. Plato is right in exiling them from his Republic, if there is to be a Republic. Or, perhaps, we might rather find a golden mean between revolution and hippie conformity.

Thomas F. Bertonneau "Sigrid Undset Crosses Russia: The Remarkable Case of Back from the Future," (1942) Brussels Journal. 03 March 2009

Seeing things plain, not lying to oneself, not subscribing to the, delusions of others – these virtues, seemingly so simple, prove in life difficult to achieve and tricky to exercise. An inevitable imitative pressure assimilates people to one another so that mere opinion, received but never vetted, comes to function as a surrogate reality, in the cave-like error of which people stumble about their errands in a lurching mockery of witting behavior. The ancients worried about false or second-hand judgment (doxa) or about superstition. Modern people must grapple with ideology. The critique of ideology is the single most important exercise that an individual can undertake who wants to stand in truth and by his own lights against the conformist pressure of public opinion, or what dissenters nowadays call political correctness.

More: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3813

Infidolls - and a note about Rene Girard

Find your fun in The Four Mass'keteers' sales pitch for the Angry Mob Playset:

Hey kids! It's time to work yourself - and, of course, others, silly! - into an angry mob!

Think you're not a joiner? Didn't get on the Big O Bandwagon in the fall? So what?

Haven't you wanted to lower your level of consciousness and become part of a whole greater than the sum of its parts, just like those cartoon-protesting, church-burning, victim-seeking hoards in picturesque, exotic places (like London and Minneapolis)? Well, now you can!

But wait! There's more! Buy an 'angry mob' set (pictured above) for your favorite nephews or nieces. It's never too early to start practicing!

But the reason I link to the main page of the The Four Mass'keteers is that I know at least one person here has expressed interest in reading some Rene Girard, and I notice that for the last few days, at least, the blog has been featuring excerpts from Girard's books. Here's one I like:

The modern tendency to minimize religion could well be, paradoxically, the last remnant among us of religion itself in its archaic form, which seeks to keep the sacred at a safe distance. The trivialization of religion reflects a supreme effort to conceal what is at work in all human institutions, the religious avoidance of violence between the members of the same community.

Jewish students threatened with decapitation at University of Toronto

Then There was Light has important news of an event at the University of Toronto's "Israel Apartheid Week": BREAKING: Pro-Palestinian security at Toronto university threaten and assault Jewish students: “Shut up or I’ll saw your head off”

two Jewish students were assaulted by the Palestinian “Security” team for being “disruptive” (asking a legitimate question “does Israel have a right to exist”). The Palestinian “security” smacked a student in the head and grabbed him by his neck, while another “security” officer told a second Jewish student to “Shut the F**ck up or he’ll saw his head off"...All of this was done in a crowded lecture room with over 100 witnesses!!

I was there, there are no pictures, filming and taking pictures was prohibited (they seem to have a problem with the general public hearing what they say) it was reported to the police who chose (as usual) to do NOTHING...

By the way What's Behind the Enormous Denial that Beheadings are Related to Islam?

Let There Be Light also points us towards this story:

CHANNEL 4 has come under fire from Islamic leaders over a television documentary showing how gay and lesbian Muslims suffer under their laws.

Its director has already had death threats because homosexuality is strictly forbidden by The Koran.

Now station chiefs are bracing themselves for a backlash. Its digital channel More 4 will show A Jihad For Love tonight.

It lifts the lid on the battle gay and lesbian Muslims face as they struggle with their faith and their sexuality.

The documentary not only shows gay Muslims daring to kiss, holding hands and talking about getting married, it also provides harrowing reports on the suffering they have faced under Islamic law.

And it reveals the death threats and punishments handed out to gays in countries including Egypt and Iran.

Indian film maker Parvez Sharma – who spent six years making the programme – revealed: “I have had death threats on my blog after making this film. Some countries have even banned it.

“I’ve been called an apostate because Muslims think I have insulted Islam but I think it will open up a debate.”

Does Israel have a right exist? Do gays have a right to exist? Off with my head! And the police will do nothing, if it it means, in their way of thinking, keeping the peace, unless and until we have political leaders who make it clear that individual rights come before the right of anyone to get away with criminal actions because they presume to stand for some group identity that the politicians and police fear they can't touch without causing violence. Our leaders must have no tolerance for group identity thugs, for the cowardly fears of tribal violence that an embrace of multiculturalism engenders; if they do, all our heads are chopped off.

Liberal Party MP takes stand against responsible government, apparently to curry favour with antisemites

24 Hours Vancouver

OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is facing a possible investigation by Parliament’s ethics commissioner in the wake of his threat to axe funding to a group whose president called him a “professional whore.”

Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis has filed a complaint against Kenney with Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, saying he believes the minister violated the parliamentary ethics code.

“I believe for the Minister to use his position and exert undue influence and or in this case instruct his officials to hold funding from such an NGO; this sets a bad precedent which clearly should not be allowed to stand,” according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Sun Media.

“With this move the Minister sends out a signal to community-based NGOs to toe the line or risk losing their funding.”

Karygiannis, whose Toronto riding is served by the federation’s settlement program, said funding for groups should be decided by civil servants based on the group’s performance — not on the basis of partisan politics.

Alykhan Velshi, spokesman for Kenney, described the complaint as “ridiculous” and said it was “disturbing” to see a Liberal MP standing up for a group that has made anti-semitic comments.

The controversy centres on a dispute between Kenney and the Canadian Arab Federation. Earlier this year, federation president Khaled Mouammar called Kenney a “professional whore” for supporting Israel.

Kenney shot back, saying groups like the federation whose leaders say intolerant or hateful things shouldn’t get taxpayer money. Kenney said he has asked his department to weigh public comments made by groups when assessing their funding applications.

Forget about the Canadian Arab Federation for a moment. Here we have a Liberal Party MP talking as if it is in any circumstance illegitimate for our duly constituted government to make political decisions in respect to how state money is spent, if this somehow contravenes some ethic of multicultural relativism in which the various self-appointed ethnic organizations presume a right to their share of government money, whatever their politics and whatever hatreds they promote.

The fundamental principle of Canada's constitutional democracy is that of responsible government: we give significant power to make government decisions to the Prime Minister and his other cabinet ministers, and in turn expect them to carry the full blame for bad decisions made by them or their departments. The great advantage of knowing exactly who is responsible for political decisions is that it allows us to minimize scandal as we isolate responsibility and pass judgment accordingly on our governments, both in Parliament and at the polls. Ideally, in our system where power is centralized in a few hands, decisions can be made that really matter, that make things happen; and then we all develop a better understanding of our stakes in that active reality as we choose whether to support or not the government. It is all too easy in our age when everyone and his dog wants to play the victim of the powers that be, to forget how necessary it is for our shared political freedom to have people who can take on - transparently and with full accountability - the basic need for someone to make decisions that can initiate political events and debates. Without such responsible executive authority initiating events, we cannot all share in an exchange of ideas about our shared reality, that we may take a regular measure of who and what we are, and trade in the political signs that events create as we oppose and ally and shape our shared future.

Yet for some people, the notion of a shared future leads them to imagine only victims of the normal course of decision making in a free society. For them, a shared future can only be a future where nothing happens to anyone that would lead anyone to complain that they are not sharing equally in our shared future: in other words, a future where nothing can happen, where no real political freedom can exist, lest it create winners and losers.

When Jim Karygiannis suggests that some anonymous, publicly-not-accountable bureaucrats be given the job of deciding what kind of politics from ethnic or religious lobbies is acceptable - i.e. whether their politics is getting in the way of the job they are being given money to do - he is suggesting that we don't let things happen in a way that will shake any boats. He is implicitly denying that we all have a stake in the political games a publicly-funded group like the Canadian Arab Federation play. He implicitly denies that we need duly-elected and responsible ministers to make a market in which we can trade our stakes in our system of government. Karygiannis implicitly suggests that the government take the lead in suggesting we all shut up about some group's hate mongering, sweeping it under the rug. I think he should be taking a clear stand on whether he accepts that the CAF is engaging in antisemitic hate mongering, and if so whether he condones it as legitimate criticism (of Israel, or whatever). He should call on all the scared ethnoreligious lobbyists who have maybe been phoning his office, scared that they might be next to be called out publicly for their politics, that instead of thinking they can get government money as if by multicultural right, that they too must make public their stake in the system: they too should be commenting on what the CAF is doing, and they too should realize that in our system of political freedom we we elect a government precisely to make political decisions about what kind of groups we do and do not want to support with public money.

Karygiannis' instincts are those of a growing class of people who seem to want to replace all forms of constitutional or responsible government with some over-arching law of multicultural political correctness mediated by lawyers, bureaucrats, media, acdemics, and NGOs, according to a ruling ethic of moral and cultural relativism. Apparently, it is those who dream of some kind of end to nation states freely exercising their sovereignty, those who dream that global conflicts can somehow be transcended if only this sovereignty is tightly bound and the right kind of international liberal elites are put in charge, while politicians who would make clear distinctions between good and evil are put out to pasture as an anachronism of some dark age of political simpletons, who have been achieving success in shaping opinion in the Liberal Party of Canada.

But what is lost to this victim-worshiping outlook is the fact that the dream of overcoming conflict is Utopian, and that scapegoating duly-constituted centres of authority is highly dangerous to our shared political freedom. The best way to deal with conflict is not by trying to reduce all conversation to some code of Politically Correct relativism, where anything and hence nothing goes, but rather by allowing, in different ways, both free citizens and duly constituted government leaders to take a lead in initiating public political events that then allow the rest of us to respond, and trade positions and political and economic capital, in continually rediscovering what kind of people we today are and where we want to be heading. But that kind of thing is apparently too scary to a PC brigade leader like Karygiannis. No doubt he is hearing from many other political "players" who who don't want to judge but just want to play along in hopes that somehow the money machine of government will forever continue to work if everyone just shuts up and makes sure everyone is paid off. This is the hubris that, sooner or later, brings an end to each and every multicultural empire history has known. If you deny the need for responsible and accountable decision making at the various centres of a political system, eventually there are no events to attract our shared interest and exchange, and the centre can no longer hold people together. If we are not free to elect and remove governments that take clear stands on who is and is not in favour, it is then that the cheap and easy resentments - that group x is getting away with something and there is nothing anyone can say or do that will make a difference - develop an intensity that can really rip a system apart.

But, a cynic might ask, what else can we expect from a Liberal Party that has recently denied its members a vote on who should be their leader?

Studying habits in an age of ignorance

Mike of Then There was Light reports on Toronto's Israel Apartheid Week Event 1 - Preaching Hate to the Converted:

A complete irony that most people in the crowd are probably too thick to have realized is that the moderator of the event had no idea how to pronounce the word Apartheid - she kept pronouncing the th wrong. And this wasn’t an accent issue, she just genuinely had no idea how to pronounce it. It just goes to show you how much they really know about what Apartheid is. If you didn’t even take the time to learn how to pronounce the word, then isn’t it safe to assume that you never even took the time to learn what it is? Apartheid is completely misrepresented by these people, and it’s such a shame to the true victims of South African Apartheid.
[...]
And this brings me to the point I really want to make. The people involved in this movement are all on the fringe extreme left. This kind of talk is, I am sorry to say it, completely out of touch with reality. Who still refers to themselves in Marxian terms?

And I’m not just talking about the organizers and the speakers being on the fringe extreme left. That’s expected. The good news is that a quick analysis of the demographics of the entire crowd really speaks volumes for the so-called success and growth of this movement. The crowd was almost completely made up of two groups: muslim/arabs, and middle aged Caucasian ex-hippies.

As I commented at Mike's, however, we should not assume that the many who would not waste their time at such an event are immune to all the crazy talk about Israel as some kind of "apartheid" state. The scapegoating of Israel has clearly gone mainstream and is the agenda of many states, the media, academy, and NGOs, among others.

However, because the powerful are often backing the "apartheid" theme in today's representations of Israel, they leave themselves open to revelations that they are not in touch with reality. And that is an opportunity for those of us who want to renew our culture's commitment to a shared reality. Two recent blogs touch on this question of how we can now hope to do some creative work by reaching out to those who are starting already to see the failures of the Obama-led world view. See 1) Wretchard's latest at the Belmont Club:

The time for recriminations comes later. Kimball knows this and warns against the Tertullian heresy, which holds that one of the delights in heaven is watching the damned burn in hell. That’s wrong; even professional soldiers know better. They let defeated generals keep their swords. Right now the important thing is to realize we’re in a hole and to stop digging. Paradoxically, the apparent vindication of those who called for a closer look at the Lightworker will make it harder for those who voted for him to get up on national TV and eat crow. It’s just too humiliating. Although Cramer and even Matthews may get to the point where they substantively criticize Obama’s policies, they’ll dance around BHO for a while, because I don’t see them coming on the air in sackcloth and ashes. Nobody wants to say he was wrong in general, but they don’t mind admitting they were mistaken in particulars. For example, Martin Peretz has been on a campaign to attack Obama’s choice for chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Chas Freeman, as a Saudi stooge. There should be no need to go further. That should be enough of a plank on which to build bridges.

If conservatives are astute they should be building mini-coalitions with Obama supporters who have seen the penny — the two million ton penny — drop. On them.

And for those willing to grapple with the discipline of Generative Anthropology, see Adam's latest at the GABlog:

the Democrats had a near-death experience between 2000-2006, when they were shut out of power at all levels of the federal government for what I assume was the first time since the founding of the party, they have never seen the Republican revolt against the New Deal State as legitimate, and they are determined not to go through all that again. The Global Intifada is in the ascendancy and normalcy is on the defensive–who knows, maybe on its last legs. Of course, it will all crash, but when and how can’t be predicted, nor can the precise shape and size of the pieces that will need to be picked up–much less who will be around with the capacity to start putting them back together. So why talk about it?

And so Adam turns instead to a discussion of habits, since we can discuss our habits in a much less contentious way than we can discuss more formal intellectual or political positions. And yet what are these positions but the distillation of our habits, which are in turn our inheritance from past models of human creativity, and which, in their interactions with other peoples' habits, will somehow lead us to create new models and norms in future when the failure of today's reigning ideologies becomes clear.

Discussing our habits in terms of those who accept risk, who are willing to go "first" in attempts to model some new reality, in contrast to those who go last in affirming a new communal norm and who then hold on most incessantly to this favored model of reality, Adam argues:

The first takes risks, but never everything he has except in an emergency, and certainly never what others have–the first needs his credibility so as to see the circulation of the sign through to the end. The last eschews risks, but this might take various forms: the discipline imposed by the poor parent–the unwavering insistence upon the exact imitation of the best models–upon the children who might, in a reasonably open environment, do better, initiate something of their own; or it might be a parasitic set of demands upon “society,” which, after all, is rich enough to support anyone. The most productive errors in an open society where rituals have been mostly replaced by habits (that’s another story, isn’t it?) are precisely those where the lasts make their bid for firstness, and get the model all wrong–thereby transforming it into new models. Meanwhile, the terror of error is reinforced by the alliance between those legatees of firstness who blame firstness for lastness and the worst habits of the last–both participants in this alliance collude in confirming for each other that their errors are nothing of the sort, but an arbitrary exclusion mechanism deployed by the firsts.

So, extricating ourselves from the conjoined and mutually reinforcing crises of the Global Intifada and the financial meltdown, and getting the process started without any expectation of help or good models from our mainstream institutions, involves creating sites of generative interaction between the habits of those who are first on the current scene and those who are last but would be first on some future one. The way to set these (or any) divergent sets of habit in productive interaction is to create assignments–minimal tasks and rules in following which the limits of each set of habits opens it to the other set. A good assignment generates productive errors around which we then gather so as to turn them into a sign. The best way to approach it is to establish a model, transcending both the first and the last, as absolute–our common starting point is then delineating its distinctiveness and establishing a “perimeter” distancing the model from criticism (resentment). We all–first and last alike–then commence to iterate that model, knowing we shall all err, and committing ourselves to the creation of new models out of that array of errors. The beauty of this approach is that we can all follow our own habits slavishly (a key ingredient of happiness) in perfectly good conscience because doing the same thing over and over again (iterating my own eccentric appopriation of the model) keeps making everything different–that is, generating new signs. Together we gather maxims–which I am coming to see as the highest form of thinking–from the process: maxims are translations of the interference of one set of habits with another into rules (both in the sense of discerning regularities and in the sense of obeying a series of imperatives) and are generative of new habits in turn–ultimately, what Charles Sanders Peirce called the “deliberately formed, self-analyzing habit.”

Cultural crisis: What is to be done?

A "Roamin' Catholic" and the Cultural Crisis | Interview with Gil Bailie, Cornerstone Forum | Ignatius Insight | February 25, 2009

Ignatius Insight: Who is René Girard and how has he influenced your thinking and work?(I changed the sentence from past to present tense, for Girard is still alive.)

Gil Bailie: The best short answer—and it's not that short—is to tell you a story, which I recently recounted in a soon to be published tribute to Girard.

I first encountered Girard's thought in his seminal book Violence and the Sacred. I bought the book without knowing what to expect, but in the first few pages I was convinced that I was in the presence of one of the world's most penetrating minds. (I have now known Girard for 25 years and I have had the privilege to take part in hundreds of seminars with him, and that first assessment has only been confirmed over the years.)

At the time of my first encounter with his thought, however, I knew nothing about him. My days of theological and exegetical dalliance were winding down, but during them I had attended a few of the conferences of the Westar Institute, out of which eventually evolved the infamous Jesus Seminar. The institute was having a conference in Sonoma, California, where I lived for many years. The founder of Westar, Robert Funk, knew of my interest in Girard, so he called me one day to say that a dozen or so of the biblical scholars who were coming to the conference had persuaded René Girard come up from Stanford University (where he held the Chair of French Culture and Civilization) to join them for a day to discuss the implications of his work for biblical studies. Bob said that he did not have a place to hold this meeting and asked if my office might be available. I was flabbergasted. To this day, I marvel at how providential that phone call was. At the time, I was completely out of the loop. I was not an academic. I did not move in such circles. I don't think I knew whether Girard lived in this country or in France, or even whether he was dead or alive. All I knew was that if someone had asked me for the name of the individual I would most like to meet and from whom I would like to learn, I would have instantly said René Girard. Literally out of the blue, he was coming to my office to spend the day in conversation with biblical scholars about his work.

There were two moments during the day of our meeting that I have often shared in order to give those who are new to Girard's work some sense of René Girard himself. The first incident came early in the day of the meeting with the biblical scholars. René began the day with an informal presentation that lasted, as I recall, about an hour. Though most of those in the room had some familiarity with his work, most were hearing René himself for the first time. His presentation was a typically marvelous combination of personal humility, intellectual audacity, and a healthy disregard for the ideological pieties afflicting the academy. After his remarks, the dialogue began, and the first question—as accurately as I can recall it—went something like the following: "Professor Girard, what you've been saying is quite extraordinary. It almost appears, however, that you are suggesting that the revelatory power of biblical literature is categorically superior to that of all other literature. You are, after all, a Stanford professor; you're not saying that are you?" René's one-word response was all the more striking for the momentary pause that preceded it: "Categorically," he replied. The impression one had was that Girard was the only person in this room full of biblical scholars willing to say such a thing.

I learned two things at that moment which I was to learn again and again over the years in personal conversations with René. First, there is a huge difference between attention to nuance and equivocation, and the explication of nuances begins in earnest only when the principle to be nuanced has been unequivocally affirmed. Second, truth is transmitted through personal witness rather than rational discourse. There was never any doubt that Girard's "categorically" was intellectually well founded and that he was perfectly capable, if challenged, to give a rational account of it. But it was not the implicit presence of a rational defense that made his statement both startling and convincing. It was his personal conviction, made all the more impressive because of his indifference to how his expression of it might be construed by others.

The dialogue that followed gave Girard an opportunity to show the interpretive power of his anthropological theory. And then at the end of the day, another memorable moment came, when someone asked a practical question. Clearly, the panorama Girard had spread out before those assembled was astonishing, and against this backdrop, René's sobering assessment of the contemporary historical and cultural predicament stood out in bold relief. "Given all that you have said," someone asked Girard, "what is to be done?"

In response, René was gracious and patient and humble. His answer, as I recall, was something like this: "Well, it is of course an enormous problem, and it does not lend itself to being easily 'fixed.' We are each called to different tasks, so perhaps we should begin by striving for personal sanctity." I could hardly believe my ears. Biblical scholars, whose discipline had been for decades currying favor with the secular academy by renouncing a priori any distinctively religious preconceptions, were being advised on the practical value of personal sanctity.

There are a lot of things that can and should be said of Girard and his work, but this little anecdote tells the real reason for my attraction to René Girard and his extraordinary work.

I might add that if personal sanctity and acting as a personal witness to the truth is a challenge you can't tackle in a day, if you don't see how to make yourself into a figure of personal or historical importance to others, then you can always put your energies into promoting those who have experiences that can reveal truth to others.

Sandwell Council's dragon-slayers defeat racist windmill!

"The Enlightenment conception of the intellectual as social activist."

I laugh when I read lines like that, being a big fan of the "comedy of recognition." You take something ordinary and show it for what it is in a different light, and voila, it's funny after all. What's so funny about the Left dhimmi fascist movement swamping the West? About Geert Wilders facing criminal charges in the Netherlands for demanding an end to immigration of unassimilable Muslims; asking for a ban on the hate-filled, violence-inciting Qur'an? What is there to laugh about when the world gives us such gems of un-think as the British government taking a child from his grandparents and placing him in the foster care of a homosexual couple-- to make a political point that "all parents are equal?" When we read the entirely humourless work of Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, there is nothing funny about it at all. To read of pre-Enlightenment intellectuals busying themselves with high-flown speculations about the nature of angels and pin-heads, and to see them now turning their lofty minds to running the daily lives of ordinary people is to find oneself also not in a humourous frame of mind. No, not funny. Government by philosophers is a sick joke at best. To read of government by social activist post-Enlightenment philosophers, it's a bit of a stretch to find it funny. No, it's not funny. It's maddening. Worse is that the people who govern, as it were, are not even philosophers, just party hacks and half-wits who take ideas from their fellows and adopt them as their own, out-doing each other in the pursuit of purity, the sense of which they obviously have no beginning clue. We do not face the treason of the intellectuals but the triumph of the pseudo-intellectuals and the "clerks," as Benda writes in French, "clerks" a better term in all. The treason of the intellectuals is their promotion of the bureaucratic idiots. The clerks. They don't know why, they know not what it means, but they are determined to make sure everyone follows The Programme. Not moral, but moralistic. Not official, but officious. Not intelligent, but moronic. Government by clerks. Treason of the clerks.

Government by uneducated and pretentious fools with a pseudo-religious mission; old women and pompous party hacks given a bit of power and a title, it leads to the mess one sees in Europe and in much of America today. We witness our lives as infantalised, our selves governed by the nanny state, our affairs conducted by attitudinizing Sunday school teachers with a bad agenda. Old lady minders who bully from boredom and lack of thought and character. Old fat duffers who like the sense of power, like to bully and smile and paternalise in public. Eric Hoffer puts it so well: "Those with no business of their own will soon turn to minding yours." Pay one of these fools and give him a big title and a little bit of power, and you get government agents committed to doing, to acting, to creating, to actually believing any damned fool thing they're told. They even take it seriously. Take a fat man, take an old lady, and give them titles and power and they will sweep the world of all opposition to anything you might propose. What do they know? Well, they know they must be right because they're important. If it weren't so dangerous to life and limb it might almost be almost humourous. But not really.

Below and in the following couple of posts, we'll look at a couple of small town English half-wits in power, a should-have-been publican and a jumped-up char woman, both with the need to prove their self-importance. What have they done? What will they do next?

"St George's parade racism fears."

A council in the West Midlands has withdrawn its funding for a St George's Day parade after claims it had attracted some "racist elements".

Dear reader, please excuse my interruption. Do you too recall the Soviet euphemism, "anti-social elements"? That referred to people, as I recall. It referred to people the minders the Soviet government didn't like for some reason -- or none at all. Just as intriguing here is the term "racist." If you're like me, you'll wonder just what it means. Yes, I know, it doesn't really mean anything in the world most of us inhabit; but what is it supposed to mean to those who use it as if it were meaningful? It might be nice to think all these hep-cats in government are transplanted from Cheshire, and that they will disappear before our very eyes after mouthing such profundities as "Words mean what I want them to mean." Good luck with that. "Racism." Silly me, I actually got curious and read Arthur de Gobineau, Inequality of the Human Races. I can give a fair account of what "racism" means in the sense the English West Midlands councillors wish it to mean. I don't think they can do the same, judging by the comments below. However, none of this "racism" is about reality or ideas or truth or racism: it's about petty power and the self-identity of little minds. Now, back to the story in progress:

Sandwell Council said it would not fund a parade through West Bromwich on 23 April but it would hold other events.

It said footage of last year's parade organised by the Stone Cross St George's Day Association showed it had been "infiltrated" by the far right.

The organisers have said the parade was "not political" and "not racial".

It turns out, dear reader, that the Left city council in a small town in middle England have decided to cancel the English version of the Fourth of July parade in their little town because it could be, might be, is maybe-- racist, at least in small part by some people, it is reported.

'Absolutely disgusting'

The association has received council funding for the past five years but organisers said they would have to cancel this year unless they could raise about £10,000.

Trevor Collins, a spokesman for the Stone Cross St George's Day Association, said organisers had intended to invite Gurkha soldiers to the event.

He said: "I think it's absolutely disgusting - it's not political and it's not racial. We are just proud to fly the flag."

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council said it made the decision based on advice from a watchdog.

Hey, wait a minute. Dogs might be watchdogs but no person is a dog, watchdog or not. Our look at the Soviet experiment in destroying Humanity shows clearly that "watchdogs" are: spies working for the police-state. But this is small town England!

'Democratic process'

The scrutiny management board [?] was asked to assess last year's parade footage and interview witnesses.

"The scrutiny management board?" "Was asked [by someone?]"

We are looking at small town England here. What "scrutiny management board?" Any of those three words and all of them together make me wonder just what happened to this green and pleasant land?

Council leader Bill Thomas [more later] said: "[Their] evidence showed categorically that extremists infiltrated the parade.

"A report by our watchdog committee has to be taken seriously, in the same manner as a report from a parliamentary select committee, and is very much part of the democratic process."

This Owellian double speak, "has to be taken seriously!" "Infiltrated by extremists!" The evidence provided by the board, we know not who they might be, showed it categorically! Watchdogs! Watch, dogs: "It's very much part of the democratic process." This pompous fool is a terrible bad joke. It gets worse.

The council said it would spend £38,000 on St George's Day celebrations and had a proud tradition of celebrating the English patron saint.

It said it would provide a family fun-day on 18 April and a St George's Day concert at West Bromwich Town Hall on 23 April.

It said it would also raise the flag of St George on all its buildings on St George's Day.

The council confirmed the decision to withdraw the funding on Thursday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7887063.stm

There's more to this story, as you might guess. I'll follow up as time permits. Or, as the Sandwell Council would have it, "Follow-up will be provided by the committee of the board. The Council of Dags, having scrutinized the video surveillance tapes and having interviewed past participants, allow for such, and has confirmed the decision to return to this. Meanwhile, dream lucidly of a family fun-day.

We'll return to the staggeringly stupid Sandbar Council and Council leader Bill Thomas next. Wait till you meet his female counter-part. You'll be not laughing in the aisles.

Compare and Contrast: the trade in false Messiahs

The Obama Administration Double-Deals On Israel - Forbes.com

Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire. On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation's "anti-racism" conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to "re-engage."

Durban II, scheduled for Geneva in April, is the U.N.'s attempt at a rerun of the 2001 global anti-Semitic hate fest held in Durban, South Africa.

After sowing confusion over the phone lines, the State Department chose late Friday night to put the real deal in print. Their release reads: "the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable," and "the United States will not ... participate in a conference based on this text," but we will "re-engage if a document that meets [our] criteria becomes the basis for deliberations." A new version must be: "shorter," "not reaffirm in toto the flawed 2001 Durban Declaration," "not single out any one country or conflict," and "not embrace the troubling concept of "defamation of religion."

And by the way, it continued, the U.S. will "participate" for the first time in the U.N. Human Rights Council.

All of this leaves the American people not knowing whether they're coming or going.
[...]
In fact, Obama's four deal-breakers do not include many other troubling provisions still on Durban II's negotiating table. These include: questioning the veracity of the Holocaust, a variety of attacks on freedom of expression in addition to "defamation of religion," and incendiary claims of "Islamophobia"--the general allegation of a racist Western plot to discriminate against all Muslims.

The administration's decision to slip in the Human Rights Council as a consolation prize for Durban enthusiasts is an attempt to downplay a major move. State Department officials intimated that they intend not only to observe but to run for a seat--subject to the "likelihood of successful elections." Council members and human rights gurus, like China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are sure to welcome the instant legitimacy provided by U.S. participation. The Council--controlled by the Organization of the Islamic Conference--has adopted more condemnations of Israel than all other 191 U.N. states combined, while terminating human rights investigations on the likes of Iran, Cuba and Belarus. Obama's move denies the opportunity to leverage the prospect of American membership to insist on reform.

Whether Obama actually stays away from Durban II is most likely to depend on his cost-benefit analysis of sacrificing Israel vs. heeding the siren's call to engage. My guess is he'll take the loss in the engagement column on Durban and the Israel column on the Council. Who said the human rights business had anything to do with human rights?

TheStar.com | Canada | Iran's ideology 'evil,' Harper tells U.S. paper

The ideology of the Iranian government is "evil," Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, Harper criticized Iran, which the West accuses of covertly seeking to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge.

"It concerns me that we have a regime with both an ideology that is obviously evil, combined with a desire to procure technology to act on that ideology," Harper said, as reported in the newspaper's online edition late Friday.

"My government is a very strong supporter of the state of Israel and considers the Iranian threats to be absolutely unacceptable and beyond the pale."

Many a liberal will see Harper's use of a word like "evil" to mark him as some kind of unsophisticate without the nuance of an Obama. I think however that Wretchard at Belmont Club has the latter closely pegged:

I am not so sure that Barack Obama is going to lose support among his followers any time soon. If deception has worked to his advantage so far it was largely the self-deception among those who felt compelled to believe in him. BHO’s great talent was knowing how to tap into this need and package himself so that he passed, like a shiny silk cloth which changes color depending on the angle of the light, as anything you wanted him to be at all.

The real political task isn’t to defeat BHO in the next election but revive among his cadre of supporters the ability to see things as they are. Otherwise they’ll simply elect someone else like him. I think the biggest challenge among conservatives is how to radicalize the liberals: radicalize as in getting them to see the root. There is no way things will change unless at least 20% of the voters who elected Obama find a way to see things differently. It won’t happen automatically. Peretz of the New Republic is apoplectic at the appointment of Chas Freeman yet still can’t bring himself to accept that Freeman is Obama’s creature: his appointee. Over the past month one nominee after the other has been found to have tax problems, legal problems or ethical problems and they’ve all been put down to “blunders” or “mistakes” — as if the President was somehow misled, or naive or didn’t know these people when he chose them despite having all the resources of a great state at his disposal. But how many have drawn the obvious conclusion. His appointments are consistently shady because the core of the administration itself is shady. They flow from the source and are not incidental to it. But no one will believe this, because there is a need to cling to a light-worker, a transcendent figure or at least a Cool Cat.

Now here's an example of the kind of thing Wretchard is talking about: My Muslim President Obama - Forbes.com

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel, just as African-Americans did for the non-black but culturally leaning African-American President Bill Clinton, that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama.

I know it's odd to say this. At first, I thought I was the only Muslim engaging in this folly, and I am reluctant to express it lest right-wing zealots try to use "Muslim" as a smear and cite my theory as proof of an Islamic traitor in the White House or some such nonsense. But, since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.

"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach, and also Obama's middle name, Hussein. Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim.

Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim. (And let's not forget that the church Obama worshiped at for so many years had a minister who reminds most Muslims of their own raving, excitable ministers. Even if Obama really is Christian, he picked the most Muslim-esque minister out of the bunch to guide him.)

The rationalistic, Western side of me knows that Obama has denied being Muslim, that his father was non-practicing, that he doesn't attend a mosque. Many Muslims simply say back, "my father's not a strict Muslim either, and I haven't been to a mosque in years." Obama even told The New York Times he could recite the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, which the vast majority of Muslims, I would guess, do not know well enough to recite.

I think many of us Muslims see Obama as Muslim, or at least of Muslim heritage, because his background epitomizes one of the major Muslim experiences--a diverse upbringing that eludes any easy classification as specifically one religion or one culture. So many of us Muslims around the world have Islam in common, but an altogether different culture from one another. Many Muslims share a culture with a Christian, Hindu or Buddhist community but not the same religion. When faced with such diversity, there are no hard and fast rules for Muslim identity.

The Qur'an speaks often of the umma, or the worldwide community of Muslims. In the early days of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad led the small umma. Every decision, every effort, everything was for the umma--people who were often unrelated by blood but had become related by choice as Muslims. In those early days, many Muslims had gone against the wishes of their own families in converting to Islam, pitting brother against sister, father against child. Perhaps that's why the concept of umma became so dear and is still echoed today--in my opinion, echoed more than that Western favorite jihad--in Muslim homes, whether those homes are in the United States or in Palestine.

Gratitude Builds A Home For A Hero

I was reflecting earlier today on how powerful a force gratitude can be; spending a moment to sincerely show how thankful you are is a double blessing, elevating the spirit of both the "giver" and the "getter". A simple "Thank You" goes such a long way towards making the pain of a sore back seem to disappear, when the recipient of your back-breaking labor humbles themselves to show their appreciation for your efforts.

Here's an inspiring example of the renewing power of gratitude, courtesy of New Jersey's Courier Post. It follows the story of U.S. Marine staff sergeant Andrew Robinson, who was paralyzed from the chest down by an IED in Iraq in 2006, and the wonder to behold when someone says, "Thank You":

In his new, specially adapted home courtesy of Homes for Our Troops, Robinson can maneuver his wheelchair through wide hallways, travel up and down from the basement via an elevator, wash dishes and more. An automated hydraulic system allows him to press one button to open the door.
...
It was during a series of hot days last July that volunteers pitched in for a "build brigade" to bring up the frame of the house. Robinson and his wife, Sara, were handed the keys to their new home on Veterans Day.

"I was just crying," she said. "The builder gave us everything we wanted."

The couple, married for four years, previously resided in California, where they rented a regular four-bedroom home, but it was difficult for Robinson to move his wheelchair through narrow hallways or over the thick carpet. The new 2,200-square-foot home has wood flooring, wide doorways and a lift to assist Robinson in getting out of bed and going to the bathroom.
...
Since moving into the home, Robinson has been learning to do various tasks, but he still is limited by a lack of finger dexterity.

"I used to clean a lot, do laundry, iron and clean the kitchen," he said. "I just learned how to make a sandwich. Next, I want to cook an egg."
...
Robinson hopes to go to college in the fall and volunteer with organizations that help other veterans.

Happy Days are Here Again

I hate being a grump all the time, so today I bring you some good news.

Dat blijkt uit de nieuwste opiniepleiling van Maurice de Hond, die vandaag verschijnt.

De PVV haalt maar liefst 27 zetels, een meer dan het CDA.

Wilders reageert euforisch en ziet zichzelf al als nieuwe minister-president.

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/3362789/__PVV_nu_grootste__.html

And if you think that's good news, let me also say that the P.V.V. is the most popular party and Geert Wilders is the most popular politician in the Netherlands today, Wilders on the verge of becoming the prime minister!

We're on the road again!

Happy Birthday, Robert Mugabe.

I hate being a grump all the time, so today I wish Robert Mugabe a happy birthday.

I can hear you saying: "Dag, are you serious?" Let me put it this way: "Did he invite me?"

Or, I could put it this way: "Would any of us gone if we had been invited?"

Mugabe's birthday event, which is reported to have cost $250,000, comes as a new unity government aims to tackle an economic crisis that has rendered the Zimbabwean dollar useless.

Mugabe, who has been president of Zimbabwe since 1980, admitted that his Zanu-PF party had lost last March's legislative elections.

The MDC leader has in recent weeks appealed to international donors for $5bn in aid and investment.

About three million Zimbabweans - a fifth of the population - have left the country to escape economic hardship or send remittances to relatives back home.

More than 83,000 people have also been affected by a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 3,800, according to the UN.

Zimbabwe's schools, hospital and sewerage have fallen into disrepair as a result of hyperinflation.

Agricultural output in Zimbabwe has fallen dramatically since 2000, when Mugabe launched his policy of seizing white-owned commercial farms and turning them over to native Africans.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, has urged the country’s last remaining white farmers to leave the country....

A decade ago, Zimbabwe produced enough maize to export the surplus. Now more than half the population is estimated to need food aid.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/02/20092281921141234.html

Happy Birthday, Bobbie!