US Financial Decline

Jon Stewart of the Daily show used last Thursday's January 20th episode to put a humoristic twist on the increasing financial power of China and what it does to US' superpower status.

(Relevant part starts about 30 seconds in the clip)

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The US owes China alone one trillion US Dollars which is about 7 percent of the US GNP. European and other countries depending on US political and military support better look around for a new protector. US support is contingent on the Chinese People's Republic approval.

Standing up against Liberals requires a straight back

A Conservative dancing to the Liberal tune

Mr. Auster, who runs the VFR blog, features a reader's anecdote in a recent article:

A reader heard NY Republican candidate Carl Paladino tell Sean Hannity on the radio today that he has no problem going into homosexual bars......What a thing for a gubernatorial candidate--let alone a conservative gubernatorial candidate who has strongly criticized the normalization of homosexuality--to say.

Mr. Auster then draws a conclusion he has drawn before:

When he first appeared on the scene, Paladino seemed like a tough-guy Italian-American maverick ready to do battle with liberalism. In reality he's a babe in the liberal woods, helplessly eager to show himself a "good guy" by liberal and homosexual standards. This latest embarrassing statement of his is further support for my position that you cannot effectively challenge the ruling liberalism unless (a) you understand liberalism, and (b) you stand outside liberalism, on non-liberal ground that is independent of liberalism.

Where does Wilders stand?

On the same day I read a quote from a book "Choose Freedom" or Kies voor Vrijheid by Mr. Geert Wilders. The quote concerns his reasons for admiring his teacher of the political handwork Frits Bolkenstein. Mr. Bolkenstein opposed the excesses of Multi-Culturalism in the 90ies. Geert Wilders writes:

Bolkenstein taught me, choose a point of view, support it with a basis of good arguments, do not be afraid of criticism and do not yield an inch, certainly not when the Leftist community in political and media circles in the political centre of The Hague attack you and try to corner you.

Mr. Auster says that an attack on Liberalism must be mounted on a foundation of non-liberalism.

Is Wilders a Liberal or not?

Is Wilders' attack on Multi-Cultural Liberalism non-liberal or is his critique grounded in another, older or classical form of Liberalism. If it is the latter, than his attack is in danger to develop to the same stage that present day Multi-Cultural Liberalism has reached, namely of an anti-western movement, hostile to the Dutch nation and the other historic nations of the West. I will address this question in a second post.

Ground Zero speech by Geert Wilders

A fine speech was given at Ground Zero by Geert Wilders today to commemorate the 9th anniversary of the 11 September attack by the spearhead of Islam: the Base or Al-Qaida.

Dear friends, May I ask you to be silent for ten seconds? Just be silent and listen. Ten seconds. And listen… What we hear are the sounds of life in the greatest city on earth. No place in the world, no place in human history, is as richly varied and vibrant and dynamic as New York City. You hear the cars, you hear the people, you hear them rushing to their various destinations, you hear the sounds of business and of pleasure, you hear the cheers, you hear the cries, the buzzing sounds of human activity. And that is how it should be. Always. Now close your eyes – I know it’s a beautiful day, but close your eyes. I have been told that this day nine years ago was just such a beautiful day -- and remember, or try to remember, or try to imagine the sounds which were heard here on this spot under this same blue sky exactly nine years ago. The sound of shock, the sound of MORE

Open borders: infiltrated security forces

Immigrant Army infiltrator lets lose

The news went all over the world. A Middle Eastern Muslim who is an US Army major went on a rampage and killed 12. The site of the killing was Ft. Hood, Tx. It is one of the biggest bases of the US Army in the world.

The face of the US Army

It is amazing to look at the pictures. So many of the "soldiers" are women, or non-whites. Few seem to belong to the ethnic core of the US.

This is what happens with uncontrolled immigration. Eventually foreign races and religions end up in the security forces and become a power in the land.

It is just that the speed at which developments are going in the US is mind boggling.

Turkey leaves the Pro-Western alliance

Caroline Glick has a post up at the Jerusalem Post explaining that Turkey is not a Pro-Western country anymore:

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.

It isn't that Ankara's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Muslim democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the likes of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, al-Qaida and Hamas.

What made Turkey's behavior this week different from its behavior in recent months and years is that its attacks were concentrated, unequivocal and undeniable for everyone outside of Israel's scandalously imbecilic and flagellant media.

.....

In February 2006, when Erdogan became the first international figure to host Hamas leaders on an official state visit after the jihadist group won the Palestinian elections, Jerusalem sought to explain away his diplomatic aggression. Israeli leaders claimed that Erdogan's red carpet treatment for mass murderers who seek the physical destruction of Israel was not due to any inherent hostility on the part of the AKP regime toward Israel. Rather, it was argued that Ankara simply supported democracy and that the AKP, as a formerly outlawed Islamist party, felt an affinity toward Hamas as a Muslim underdog.

.....

But Turkey wasted no time in making fools of them. On Monday, 11 Turkish government ministers descended on Syria to sign a pile of cooperation agreements with Iran's Arab lackey. The Foreign Ministry didn't even have a chance to write apologetic talking points explaining that brazen move before Syria announced it was entering a military alliance with Turkey and would be holding a joint military exercise with the Turkish military. Speechless in the wake of Turkey's move to hold military maneuvers with its enemy just two days after it canceled joint training with Israel, Jerusalem could think of no mitigating explanation for the move.

.....

Erdogan's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic blows were followed on Tuesday evening by Turkey's government-controlled TRT1 television network's launch of a new prime-time series portraying IDF soldiers as baby- and little girl-killers who force Palestinian women to deliver stillborn babies at roadblocks and line up groups of Palestinians against walls to execute them by firing squad.

.....

TURKEY'S BREAK with the West; its decisive rupture with Israel and its opposition to the US in Iraq and Iran was predictable. Militant Islam of the AKP variety has been enjoying growing popularity and support throughout Turkey for many years. The endemic corruption of Turkey's traditional secular leaders increased the Islamists' popularity. Given this domestic Turkish reality, it is possible that Erdogan and his fellow Islamists' rise to power was simply a matter of time.

But even if the AKP's rise to power was eminently predictable, its ability to consolidate its control over just about every organ of governance in Turkey as well as what was once a thriving free press, and change completely Turkey's strategic posture in just seven years was far from inevitable. For these accomplishments the AKP owes a debt of gratitude to both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as to the EU.

The Bush administration ignored the warnings of secular Turkish leaders in the country's media, military and diplomatic corps that Erdogan was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Rather than pay attention to his past attempts to undermine Turkey's secular, pro-Western character and treat him with a modicum of suspicion, after the AKP electoral victory in 2002 the Bush administration upheld the AKP and Erdogan as paragons of Islamist moderation and proof positive that the US and the West have no problem with political Islam. Erdogan's softly peddled but remorselessly consolidated Islamism was embraced by senior American officials intent on reducing democracy to a synonym for elections rather than acknowledging that democracy is only meaningful as a system of laws and practices that engender liberal egalitarianism.

In a very real sense, the Bush administration's willingness to be taken in by Erdogan paved the way for its decision in 2005 to pressure Israel to allow Hamas to participate in the Palestinian elections and to coerce Egypt into allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in its parliamentary poll.

In Turkey itself, the administration's enthusiastic embrace of the AKP meant that Erdogan encountered no Western opposition to his moves to end press freedom in Turkey; purge the Turkish military of its secular leaders and end its constitutional mandate to preserve Turkey's secular character; intimidate and disenfranchise secular business leaders and diplomats; and stack the Turkish courts with Islamists. That is, in the name of its support for its water-downed definition of democracy, the US facilitated Erdogan's subversion of all the Turkish institutions that enabled liberal norms to be maintained and kept Turkey in the Western alliance.

As for the Obama administration, since entering office in January it has abandoned US support for democracy activists throughout the world, in favor of a policy of pure appeasement of US adversaries at the expense of US allies. In keeping with this policy, President Barack Obama paid a preening visit to Ankara where he effectively endorsed the Islamization of Turkish foreign policy that has moved the NATO member into the arms of Teheran's mullahs. Taken together, the actions of the Bush and Obama White Houses have demoralized Westernized Turks, who now believe that their country is doomed to descend into the depths of Islamist extremism. As many see it, if they wish to remain in Turkey, their only recourse is to join the Islamist camp and add their voices to the rising chorus of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism sweeping the country.

Then there is the EU. For years Brussels has been stringing Turkey along, promising that if it enacts sufficient human rights reforms, the 80-million strong Muslim country will be permitted to join Europe. But far from inducing more liberal behavior on the part of Turkey, those supposedly enlightened reforms have paved the way for the Islamist ascendance in the country. By forcing Turkey to curb its military's role as the guarantor of Turkish secularism, the EU took away the secularists' last line of defense against the rising tide of the AKP. By forcing Turkey to treat its political prisoners humanely and cancel the death penalty, the EU eroded the secularists' moral claim to leadership and weakened their ability to effectively combat both Kurdish and Islamist terror.

At the same time, by consistently refusing to permit Turkey to join the EU, despite Ankara's moves to placate its political correctness, Brussels discredited still further Turkey's secularists. When after all their self-defeating and self-abasing reforms, Europe still rejected them, the Turks needed to find a way to restore their wounded honor. The most natural means of doing so was for the Turks writ large to simply turn their backs on Europe and move toward their Muslim brethren.

.....

Read more on Turkey joining Iran and its allies.

Snouck's Commentary: The fact that Turkey is now becoming an ally of Iran makes it obviously impossible for Turkey to stay in NATO or to join the EU. However, the treasonous leadership of NATO and the EU will allow Turkey to stay in those supra-national organisations.

Dollar loses reserve status

Seignorage and Empire

Every era has a reserve currency. This reserve currency is the currency all trading partners accept as payment. The state that produces the reserve currency is said to possess seignorage. This is the profit associated with the ability to buy real things with money that was created out of nothing.

What happens if an empire loses the possession of seignorage?

The US Dollar empire

Between say 1713 and 1929 the Pound Sterling was the reserve currency. After 1945 the US Dollar was the global reserve currency, backed up by the vast productive power of US industry. The US Dollar had been pegged to gold at 35 US Dollar an ounce between 1934 and 1972. After 1972 the US Dollar along with all currencies in use were backed by trade flows. Currencies were floating up and down. Money could be created by central banks by expanding credit.

But the position of the US Dollar had weakened by unpegging it from gold. More and more international trades were done in currencies like the Deutschmark and the Yen. Despite the weakening position of the US Dollar commodities like oil, rubber, coffee and goods like airplanes and arms continued to be traded in US Dollars. A problem of an international trading system with floating currencies is the inherent insecurity of international merchants and traders. They never know what their returns will be, which hinders trade. This also disrupts the taxes that are levied on their trade, which fill the coffers of states that manage the international order.

The US milked the US Dollar for what it was worth, recklessly expanding the money supply with cheap credit. This way the elites could keep expanding an intrusive managerial state and a international empire with roughly 800 Army, Navy and Airforce bases around the world.

The beginning of the end of the US Dollar as a reserve currency

But expanding the money supply by easy credit led to a succession of boom bust cycles in the 1990ies and thereafter. After every bust the US flogged the economy back to life again by expanding credit. The biggest bust came in 2007. The political and monetary elites reacted by giving the same treatment again. The FED created the biggest expansion of credit thus far, to prop up their hollowed out financial institutions, vastly expanding government debt, adding to the household debt and showing up in a unbalanced trade balance with Asia.

The American public is eyeing the new debts warily. And the international trading partners of the US are increasingly wondering about the worth of the currency that is created so recklessly. The trading partners must worry about the ability of the US taxpayer to service the government debt burden in addition to their private debt burdens. Not to mention that the interest on the debts are choking off buying power of US households. Unless said households increase the rate at which they take on new debts, which they prudently seem unwilling to do.

What is the alternative?

There is no currency to take the place of the US Dollar in international trade. To set prices, act as a medium of exchange and a reliable unit of value. Now however a new currency is being worked on behind the scenes.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil

No Dollars for oil, because the US Dollar is an increasingly unreliably unit of value.

moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency

This would provide a solution for the unit of value, pricing and exchange medium challenges a new currency would face. The Middle East, Russia as suppliers of raw materials plus Asia and Europe as suppliers of finished goods would possibly be able to manage their trade flows in this way.

The timeline

When will the new currency come about? It will take 9 years.

The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018

In the mean time gold will be used as a stop gap to fill the place of the US Dollar. Expect the gold price to rise against the US Dollar. It is now at more than 900 US Dollars for an ounce, up from 35 US Dollars per ounce between 1934 and 1972.

The consequenses for the US

If oil would be traded in a new currency, it would be a big hit for the US. The US Dollar would lose reserve currency status. The demand for US Dollars would fall and the exchange rate would fall. The central government of the US would lose the profits of seignorage. Prosperity for US citizens would drop as import prices rise. In the short term the shock to the US political and social system would be sharp. On the other hand US made goods would become cheaper and manufacturing and employment in the US would actually increase in the MEDIUM TERM at the expense of Europe and Asia.

Collapse of the Empire

Political conflict in the US will intensify if the government will not be able to create money at no cost. Politicians will have to cut budgets. This would break up the internal or external empire of the US. Possibly both.

The internal empire

The internal empire is the empire which the US proper has become. The territory of the US now contains in addition to the White core nation plus Blacks millions of Asians and dozens of millions of Mexicans plus significant numbers of other unimportant minorities. Without cheap money to pay for an expanding military, bureaucracies and welfare millions would be without jobs, status, income and access to healthcare in addition to the number who are already there. Politically it would cause all these groups to become more confrontational and to view politics like a zero sum game, a game were one party´s loss is the other parties gain. Especially the Mexicans and Whites are likely to collide over the possession of some of the Southern states of the US.

And this coincides with the rule of the nation´s first non-white President.

The external empire

The external empire are the network of military bases the US maintains around the globe, dominating the world militarily and politically. Without cheap funding the political elites could decide to withdraw in the manner of the Soviet Union withdrawing from Central Asia and Eastern Europe in 1989.

Withdrawing from the external empire would cause wars breaking out accross the globe, in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Conflict which were hitherto surpressed by the US would come to the fore. Getting the situation under control requires a new empire or several new empires.

People will be nostalgic for the lost US empire, in the way they are nostalgic for the Soviet Union of the Yugoslav Federation.

Edward Kennedy, the nation buster, dies

The passing away of the Kennedy Clan

Yesterday an evil U.S. politician died. He was an effective enemy of his own nation and therefore of the whole Western world. His name is of course Edward Kennedy, scion of the Kennedy clan. With his passing the power of the Kennedy dynasty is effectively over. It´s a good thing.

Edward Kennedy, was a Democratic Senator for Massachusets.

Kennedy as the enabler of the Other

The worst evil Senator Edward Kennedy helped to visit on the U.S. was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Until then there had been a quota system for immigration, which ensured that the overwhelming majority of all immigrants was of European stock. This ensured that the ethnic balance of the U.S. was not upset. With the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act this was changed and now immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Muslim World and South-America could enter the U.S.A. and become ´citizens`.

Other treasonous legislation by Senator Kennedy

This was no incident in Senator Kennedy´s political life. The Senator also supported amnesty for illegals in 1986. And the Civil Rights act of 1991, which vastly expanded the possibilities for minorities to sue their employers for `discrimination´.

The biggest act of betrayal was the 1965 Immigration Act. It paved the way for the multi-cultural ideology, because once a nation does not have a culturally homogenous population anymore, the dominance of its culture becomes in question and Multi-culturalism is the expression of that questioning and undermining.

The foundation of treason was deception

With millions of non-westerners in the cities of the U.S., the U.S. stopped being a Nation and became in effect an empire. Senator Kennedy enabled this transformation by deceiving his countrymen. He deceived them by declaring that the Immigration Act would not change anything:

First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset ... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia ... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.

Multi-culturalism and Foreign policy

Generally a nation´s foreign policy is a continuation of it´s home policy by other means. As the U.S. created a new image of a Multi-Cultural empire at home, its foreign policy changed. This was most notably illustrated with the dissolution of Multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Here the U.S. declared the Serbs to be the bad guys, the originators of the dissolution of the Yugoslav multin-ethnic empire and twice formed military and political coalitions that severly damaged the Serb position in their ancestral homelands in the Krajina and Kosovo. And so Multi-culturalism got a new lease on life.

For the time being. Because eventually U.S.-led multi-culturalism it will go the same way as Senator Kennedy went.

Geert Wilders announces Fitna the Sequel

Starting the Fitna 2 project

The leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (Dutch) announced (Dutch) the commencing of making a sequel to his earlier film "Fitna". "Fitna" means "Discord" in Arabic and is a Islamic theological term.

Jihad and Mass-immigration

In the original "Fitna" Geert Wilders showed the connection between present day terrorism by Mislims and the injunctions in the Quran to wage Jihad to further the power of Sharia-law in Non-Muslim societies.

Mr. Geert Wilders stated that "Fitna 2" will focus on Mass-immigration as an engine for Islamisation of the West. The importance of demographics rather than just terror will be an eye-opener to many right-wingers. This deviates from the universalist neo-conservative position which has been an important prop of U.S.-policy.

US filmmakers

It is intended to involve U.S. filmmakers in the making of "Fitna 2". This is important because the U.S. promotes mass immigration for Western societies. Recently U.S. President Obama urged the EU to accept Turkey as a member, which would open European nations to unchecked immigration from Turkey.

The original "Fitna" was made by a Dutch filmmaker who named himself "Scarlet Pimpernel". The name of the new filmmaker has not been revealed.

"Fitna, the Sequel" is slated to be released in 2010.

Flanders opens representation in U.S.

Wednesday Kris Peeters, the Prime Minister of Flanders, opened the Flanders House in New York (FHNY).

The Flanders House will make Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) less dependent on the diplomatic infrastructure of thee Belgian state in the USA.

"The Flemish Prime Minister Kris Peeters (Christian democrat) on Wednesday officially opened Flanders House. The office will serve as a quasi embassy for Flanders in the Big Apple."

Defense and foreign policy are the most essential constituent parts of any political entity. This attempt by Flanders to by-pass the Belgian State shows the determination of the Flemish to become souvereign.

Geert Wilders visits the US to promote Fitna

Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders is planning to show his anti-Qu'ran film Fitna to the United States Senate later this week. Mr Wilders was invited to present the film by Jon Kyl, a Republican Senator for Arizona.

Read more on Geert Wilders visiting the US

Blackwater changes its name

Blackwater USA, the US Private Military Firm (PMF) changed its name. It is now going to do business under the brandname Xe. The rebranding reflects the bad reputation the firm earned operating in Iraq, as a result of killing civilians.

The firm was the number one PMF used by the USA to fight the insurgency against their occupation of the Middle Eastern country. It was responsible for the security of the State Department Staff in Iraq including governor Paul Bremer and his successor John Negroponte.

The US heavily depends on personel provided by PMFs in its struggle against terrorists motivated by Islam, who are waging Jihad on the USA and other Non-Islamic nations.

US has no strategy for Afghanistan

After the attack on the WTC in 2001 the US quickly moved to invade Afghanistan. The goal was to capture Bin Laden and to eliminate and capture the Al-Qaida network which was responsable for 9-11 attack on US citizens. The US drove the Taliban government of Afghanistan into Pakistan. Then the US invaded Iraq and lost sight of its original objective.

Today the Taliban and Al-Qaida are back in force in Afghanistan and the fight they offer NATO and Pro-Karzai forces is getting more and more intensive. So what are the US and NATO forces doing in Afghanistan.

The new US President Obama asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Department of Defence (DoD) and he got a startling answer:

"Frankly, we don't have one."

After seven years in Afghanistan the US DoD still has no strategy!

Read more here on the US in Afghanistan.

East is East, West is West

Pastorius wrote at the infidel blogger alliance:
"I just hope you (Europeans) do not choose who you will fight by the color of their skin, but instead, by the content of their character."

Well, in times of crises and upheaval people, ALL people, tend to make friend/foe judgements based on group characteristics. It is only in the circle of friends that some people are able to transcend this pattern of judgement.

In Rudyard Kipling's words:
"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!"

We are not in the time of crises yet but when it comes one can be sure that Kipling's words will be proven yet again.

Oh, and the USA is a part of humanity too.

Not something to be happy or proud about, but it is just the way things stand with humanity.

US power is faltering

In the 1920ies and 1930ies world power moved from Europe (Great Britain) West accross the Atlantic. It was not until the 1950ies that everybody understood that European power had collapsed and that the USA was racing ahead. The 1956 Suez crisis caused the world to realise what the new power realities were. Exit Europe. All eyes on the USA and the new contender, Soviet Russia and world communism.

Right now we can see a similar power shift. In the stage of the 1920ies and 1930ies shift of power, when the UK needed US capital to develop the economies of its empire in the Middle East and Asia. The new global financial power is China. And it has started to openly flex its muscle: "Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies."

And a key US Policy maker is taking heed (HT Parapundit). David Walker, comptroller general of the US recently warned:

"The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon"

The fiscal imbalance meant the US was “on a path toward an explosion of debt”.

The recent waves made by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis only underscore the words of the US comptroller general. European and Asian banks are underwriting US consumption. The US saving rate is close to zero. The US does not have the capital to develop its own infrastructures, let alone the infrastructures of societies in the Middle East. Moreover unfettered Third World immigration is straining US education, transport, health and many other infrastructures. Its economy is strongly consumption driven and this consumption is fuelled by credit. Meanwhile China is sitting on a mountainous treasure, much like Fafnir, Sigurd's Dragon.

The US government and the Federal Reserve must make economies. But these cutbacks will cause a recession and unemployment. Together with a disastrious foreign war this will make US internal politics unstable and depressed in the next decade. Think of the post-Vietnam era, but then much worse.

After 1990, the US was the only power and we lived in uni-polar world. We are moving back into a bi-polar world and I would expect local powers to become restless as well. Similar to what happened in the 1920ies when Japan and Germany tried to fill the British power vacuum with military adventurism and warrior ideologies.

Countries that could play such a role are Iran, Turkey and Egypt, for the Middle East. Iran has already allied itself in the SCO with Russia and China for such a role.

The Mexico - Yankee War

Laurence Auster writes an article on the war against the US waged by Mexico. Mexico exports its population northwards with an imperialistic goal. The US elites refuses to deal with the reality of the Mexican war on their nation, just as the European elite refuses to deal witht the reality of the Islamic invasion.

Writes Laurence Auster:

we must recognize that the Mexicans are not coming here merely as individuals seeking economic opportunities, but as a nation, expressing their national identity and collective will. Even more important, we must revive our own largely forgotten and forbidden sense that we ourselves are a nation, not just a bunch of consumers and bearers of individual rights, and have the right to defend our nation as a nation.

Because we Westerners are taught to view ourselves as consumers, we do not wake up when our collective right are damaged, because we do not understand the common weal or the res publica.

Read the whole article.

The new Communists

A good piece by Paul Craig Roberts about the ongoing campaign of the Bush government and their propaganda machine to create havoc in the Middle East by threatening to invade Iran, while growing increasingly authoritarian at home as evidence by the Patriot Act and the war propaganda on TV. The US Forces have great difficulty to defeat the insurgency by the 5 million Sunni Muslim minority already. Why invade Iran with its 70 million inhabitants, 35 million of which are Persians and another 20 million are Azerbaidjanis with good relations with the Persian ethnics, so finding local allies will not be so easy.

The stated intention of Iran to acquire Nuclear weapons is used as a motive. However, Israeli Professor of Military history Martin van Creveld already foresaw in 2003 that invading Afghanistan and Iraq would cause the whole region, Syria, Turkey and even Greece to develop nuclear weapons, if not in defense against the USA, than in defense against its nuclear armed neighbours. That is because Nuclear weapons are the perfect deterrent against the US Armed forces. So the predicament that Bush finds himself in, an Iran working on its own Nuclear weapons, is caused by the VERY strategy of invasion that the US has been using so far.

There is no indication that the Sunni insurgency or Al-Queda in Iraq is being overcome by the US Army. The US Army is fighting the wrong kind of enemy in the wrong kind of battlefield. The enemy is a weak, lightly armed invisible force with good intelligence and reasonable or good understanding of local culture and the battle field is a cluttered, dirty city scape that defies the use of observation enhancing instruments, such as radar, infrared, night sights that is the strength of an army armed by a modern light industry production base.

Finally there is really little hope for victory even if the US had the right kind of military force and was fighting on a battle field more suited to the type of warfare that is its strong suit. A military victory has to be followed by political and social acceptance of the dominance of the victor. Because the West and the world of Islam are Ancient enemies a Western victory will never be seen as letigimate by a local population. In fact the only populations that will see US dominance as legitimate are the Middle Eastern Christians.

Snouck is not some peacenik pinko, I consider myself to the right of such light-weight, hippy jokers as Attila the Hun, Djengis Khan and Mohammed al Rasul, those women. But to create a new enemy and to fight them in a similarly unsuited battlefield for a goal that is impossible to attain is not a good idea. My prediction is that if the Bush Administration continues with its intention to make Iran comply to its will by using military force. A hand will appear out of nothing and in the Senate the writing will be on the wall:

MENE MENE TEKEL UFARSIN - Bush's Kingdom will be parcelled up and divided.

USA Patriot Act will only be partly renewed

The USA Patriot Act which was legislated after the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York is up for renewal. Sixteen clauses of the Act are in force only temporarily.

The broad concensus on the powers of state agencies such as the FBI and the CIA to search registries and records of confidential data on US citizens is breaking apart. More and more people are recognising that the state can be a more dangerous enemy for Americans than bearded Muslims terrorists.

A Republican supporter of renewal of the broad powers for the state, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, said:

The failure to renew the provisions would be "interpreted by our enemies as somehow inviting or even enabling further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil,

The critics, both Democrats and Republicans stated:

They says the current Patriot Act gives government too much power to investigate people's private lives. "Folks, when we're dealing with civil liberties, you don't compromise them," said Craig, a board member of the National Rifle Association. Chief among the critics' concerns are the National Security Letters that the FBI can use to compel the release of such private records as financial, computer and library transactions. The bill for the first time explicitly says the third-party recipients of NSLs banks, Internet service providers and libraries may hire lawyers and challenge the letters in court.

The US is the house of Freedom. No European nation knows the freedom that the US gives it citizens. although political correctness and anti racism legislation takes a lot of freedom away from Ameican white males. Whether or not Al-Queda wins, if they manage to turn the house of Freedom in a jail, Islam will already be victorious.

Also in Europe legislators are taking away freedoms from the citizenry to deal with Islamic radicalism amongst Muslim immigrant communities. If this goes on the West will turn into a Soviet Union type prison, where societal dynamic is absent. Eventually that prison will come down too, like it did in Eastern Europe in 1989, but let us try to avoid the prison altogether.