It will not leave me, this conviction, that the stories of Amanda Knox and Neda Soltani are connected somehow.

It will not let me go, this belief that these girl’s stories represent the tip of the iceberg. An iceberg of hate and repression and twisted yearnings.

Neda drowned in her own blood, shot through the chest by a thug hired by an oppressive ruling party intent on its quest to gain absolute power to match their absolute corruption. That her death was the tip of an iceberg is under reported. The iceberg I talk about is the fact that she was singled out of the crowd, followed down that alley for the purpose of murder and that she would not have died if she were plain instead of beautiful, male instead of female, veiled instead of uncovered, actively defiant instead of subservient; that the band of thugs went out of their way to single out women, young, beautiful women who were fearless in their expression of the power of the free divine feminine, a fact that was becoming common knowledge on the streets of Tehran but not yet known to Neda.

Amanda was convicted of murder in a court system so broken and corrupt that from the moment they arrested her she was doomed to spend the rest of her child-bearing years in a cold, dank cell and that the last two years of trial was really a bizarrely twisted form of torture of such sublime skill that one would venture to say it makes the priests of the Inquisition look like amateur hacks. I believe she was arrested, not because of any evidence, as there was none, nor for any motive, except that thought up in the dark and twisted brains of the prosecutor and his goons, but because she refused to play the shrinking violet. Not only did she not show fear of her captors, she barely registered them on her radar screen as existing at all. Her only crime was that, in her innocence and being without guilt, she did not perceive her peril.

Neda and Amanda are the most public examples of the army on the forefront of a planetary revolution comprised mostly of girls in the first blush of womanhood, They are not revolutionaries, per se, (a revolutionary would have to be actively trying to destroy the power base of the status quo) but more the forerunners of the species of human that has already evolved, budding silently in the womb of the old guard and bursting forth, unconstrained by the old patterns and rules which burdened the previous generation. No matter how one beats them or tortures them, they will not bow down and worship at the feet of the old gods. They will not value what the status quo values. Truly, they have stepped through the veil and continued the journey down the path that evolution has preordained for the human species. And, truly, they do not see the people stuck behind the veil, unable or unwilling to follow. The old guard is a rapidly fading ghost on the radar screen of the newest version of the human species.

It is a very dangerous time to be a Neda or an Amanda. The old guard, the ossified purveyors of the old way of doing things, do not like to be ignored, especially by the very beings they lust after most. Imagine being the perverted old prosecutor who has spent a lifetime of corruption establishing a fiefdom in which his power is unassailable. Imagine him seeing a bright and pure and free soul. He cannot possess it. So he does the next best thing. He very publicly tears off its butterfly wings and pulls the legs off one at a time and then when the thing can no longer react to the pain he inflicts, he squashes it, grinding it underfoot. One can imagine the boner in his pants every morning, just by reading the headlines. But secretly he simmers in impotent rage. He is not angry at the bright soul. He is angry at his god for betraying him, because, no matter how many butterfly wings he collects, he will never capture what he has so willfully destroyed.

So too, with the thugs enforcing the will of the dictators. They are the misfits and the malcontents. The unloved and the unchosen. They are the perpetual “sneaky f_cker” because they have neither the skill nor the will to become a dominant bull. The thing they hate the most is the thing they will never have: the bright and shiny new girls, so full of life and passion, who laugh when they should fear, who question when they should mindlessly accept, who leap and dance in the bright sunlight, just out of reach, there, beyond the veil.

We lived in Monipuri Para in December 1990.  With schools and colleges closed indefinitely because of the state of emergency, we — neighbourhood boys aged 13-17 — passed our days playing cricket.  On the 3rd, there was a break in curfew.  We went towards Farmgate.  There was an army truck in front of the Janata Bank, and a crowd waiting for buses in front of Ananda cinema.  Everything seemed quiet one moment, then someone shouted something, and before I knew it, the crowd was pelting rocks at the truck.  We got worried that tear gas might be used, but the soldiers drove away.  The crowd cheered — it was a small victory for the people against the dictator.

My father was stuck outside Dhaka when the emergency was declared.  He returned on the 4th.  In the evening, we were visited by a Dhaka University masters student who was courting one of my fupus.  An activist of the All Party Student Unity, this guy was a hero to us with his stories of brave students defying the military.  Meanwhile, my father was constantly on the phone, checking up on relatives/friends scattered throughout the city, trying to gather any news/information on what might happen next.  We didn’t have blogs or private channels in those days. ‘Everything is peaceful’, said BTV and Radio Bangladesh, but foreign radio such as the BBC relayed a different story.  Around 9pm we heard from a relative that tanks were returning to Savar cantonment.

At 10.21pm, I saw the ticker in BTV — the president has agreed to step down.  No one believed me at first, but within minutes it was confirmed by the VoA and others that Ershad would soon be gone.  By 11pm we could hear the crowd — হই হই রই রই, এরশাদ শালা গেল কই.  We walked up to the Airport Road.  Then in the morning, the entire extended family, along with half a dozen neighbours, went to Paltan.  It was a festive day, much like Pohela Boishakh, except in December.  

I was in the city in January 2007, and then during the election last year.  I didn’t see anything that even remotely compares. 

But I did see that by January 2007, Ershad was completely rehabilitated into political mainstream.  I did see that in December 2008, that former university student — now my fupa, a successful businessman — voted for Ershad in Gulshan: এরশাদ খারাপ, কিন্তু BNP আবার আসলে আরো খারাপ হবে.  The funny thing is, before the aborted January 2007 election, BNP tried its utmost to cajole and coerce Ershad to its side. 

Why did Ershad get rehabilitated?  Because he wins elections?  If that’s the rationale, then why do we feel offended by Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury?  After all, he also wins elections!

Where is the outrage about Ershad?

The regular reader would know that I don’t agree with this, but I accept that one can make a legitimate argument that because of the political gridlock in January 2007, 1/11 was inevitable.  One can also make an argument that given Bakshal/15 August/Jail killing, Khaled/Taher/Zia was justified to restore the spirit of the Liberation War / usher in scientific socialism / defend the nation’s sovereignty.  I have never read or heard any clear account justifying Ershad’s power grab in March 1982.  And then, for the rest of that decade, Ershad used every trick in the book to keep himself in power, in the process severely damaging every facet of life politically, economically, and socially.

I often hear, from supposedly knowledgable people, that Ershad may have been personally bad, but at least there was some development under him.  But there is no evidence whatsoever for this in the data.  Here is how Mustafa Mujeri and Binayak Sen, two noted economists, describe the ‘decade of stagnation’:

Notwithstanding the progress in achieving recovery and adjustments in the 1970s, the country continued to be plagued by a number of deep-rooted structural problems resulting in slow economic growth with growing fiscal crisis and macroeconomic imbalances during the 1983-1989 period. Economic growth was hampered by inefficiencies in key economic sectors and severe industrial and infrastructure bottlenecks. The situation was aggravated by inappropriate macroeconomic policies pursued by the government like over-expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and their inconsistent applications, poor performance of the public enterprises, inadequate pricing and institutional policies and inefficiency in the development administration and management.

For the past month, we’ve heard about various beneficiaries of the 15 August.  Wasn’t Ershad one of the biggest beneficiaries?  After all, someone like Zia, barely 40 in 1975 and already a bona fide war hero, could well have had a future in politics even had Mujib lived.  It’s hard to see how Ershad — reputed to be a fun-loving playboy — could ever become the president if not for the army’s involvement in politics that begun in 1975.  And wasn’t it Ershad who helped Faruq Rahman create the Freedom Party? 

We hear a lot about the betrayal of the spirits of the Liberation War.  But wasn’t it Ershad who allowed Jamaat-e-Islami to conduct politics under its own name?  Wasn’t it Ershad who amended the constitution to make Islam the state religion?  Wasn’t it under Ershad that the Bengali culture and values were so undermined that Shamsur Rahman wrote দেশ অদ্ভুত এক উটের পিঠে সওয়ার?

Ershad wins election and therefore we can forgive his crimes seems a rather strange argument to me.  At the least, people making that argument really should have nothing to say about any other crimes committed by anyone else who wins elections. 

And it’s not like Ershad was rehabilitated through the political process in a transparent manner. 

Think about what we achieved in the early 1990s.  Ershad was tried, under full due process, with the best legal defence in the country, and found guilty.  No special tribunal, no torture, no remand.  But conviction. 

From this, after the 1996 election, we saw the first naked political interference in the higher judiciary in post-1990 Bangladesh.  By 2006-07, the situation became so farcical that the joke went ‘Ershad’s guilt or innocence depends on who he pairs up with’.  From the farcical committees investigating various atrocities in 2004-06 to the kangaroo courts under the 1/11 regime to various remand dramas we see today, all these travesties have their root in the way we rehabilitated Ershad.

If the gains of the early 1990s could have been consolidated, Gen Moeen or Gen Masud could never have dared to force their way into politics.  If we could make Ershad serve his full sentences, cronies under the last BNP government would never have dared to commit the excesses they did. 

The sad reality is, we failed.  The sadder reality is, we — the chattering classes — don’t even seem to acknowledge we failed. 

I got this picture from Shahidul Alam’s blog.  I don’t know who this little girl is.  She would be in her 20s now.  What would you tell her if she asks: why did I go out on that night? 

mindanaoexaminer.com | Dec 4, 2009

By Erick San Juan

Makati City, Philipines – THIS COMING WEEK, December 7-18, 2009 in Copenhagen , Denmark, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) the successor to the Kyoto Protocol and will be attended by 20,000 delegates from 193 nations, approximately 65 heads of government (including the Philippine President).

Amidst the climategate scandal of e-mails that hackers have revealed in the e-mail communications of “scientists” of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University in Great Britain , the summit will go ahead as scheduled.

In October this year, President Gloria M. Arroyo signed into law Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 that would enable the country to better respond to disasters spawned by climate change. This law which is also known as R.A. 9729, seeks to influence climate change policy into the formulation of government agenda by setting up a National Framework Strategy and Program on Climate Change along with the creation of the Climate Change Commission that will coordinate, monitor and evaluate the government’s programs and actions to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Like other countries riding the bandwagon of climate change, it seems that the globalists are succeeding in their effort for world governance in which depopulation is the centerpiece. Why do we say this? The following quotes from the movers of the global warming scare, will give light as to why we are caught riding the bandwagon on the road to the dark age.

The global warming alarm was initiated at the United Nations in the 1980s.The “original” goal was to use it to achieve global governance and fund it through a global carbon tax.

In 1991, Maurice Strong, a key developer of global warming scare and one of the original members of the Club of Rome came out with the report – “The First Global Revolution”, which stated : “It would seem that humans need a common motivation…either a real one or else one invented for the purpose….In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

In that same report – “The First Global Revolution”, the concept of global governance was promoted which asserted that current problems “are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives [which] gives a greatly enhanced importance to the United Nations and other international systems.”

Also, way back in 1974, Maurice Strong gave a speech at a college in Canada at which he said: “The ethic of abundant resources must give way to the ethics of scarcity and conservation” … “Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease” He also said: “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”

“The world has cancer and the cancer is man.” – quote from A. Gregg as the opening to Chapter 1 of the “Second Report to the Club of Rome – Mankind at the Turning Point”, 1974.

Finally, “I hope [the Club of Rome] will continue for many years to come to spell out the unpalatable facts and to unsettle the conscience of the smug and apathetic.” – Prince Philip in his message to the Delegates, 20th Anniversary Conference of the Club of Rome (in “The First Global Revolution”). Prince Phillip has also made the statement: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” in the foreword to Fleur Cowles’ “If I Were an Animal” 1987.

It is now clear that the forerunners of the global warming myth mentioned above singled out humanity as the culprit and that economic growth through industrialization should take the backseat as climate change will transform into a weapon of mass taxation, as one writer put it.

To elaborate further our point here, the Chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) of the London School of Economics said, “It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up.” In other words, the cheapest way to combat climate change is through family planning method of contraception. This was also featured as the main problem – the population, in
Al Gore’s video, An Inconvenient Truth, which is now being lambasted as a film of very convenient lies based on questionable data.

Six months before the Copenhagen summit, World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) was held and already came out with key decisions for the December meeting. It was attended by prominent world business leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. The report by the WBSCC has been given to all the Copenhagen summit participants which is actually, has nothing to do about protecting the environment. Then what is the real agenda of this global sham?

“The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests, which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme. It also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the “real crisis” underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls “the long war”. (Michel Chossudovsky)

The multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme of the world’s financial oligarchs is the real agenda of this climate change fiasco. The large financial conglomerates, involved in derivative trade, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclay’s, Citibank, Nomura, Société Générale, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are actively involved in carbon trading.(FACTBOX: Investment banks in carbon trading | Reuters, 14 September 2009)

A report from The Guardian also support this article, “the carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU’s emissions trading scheme… The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy. But Ager says whatever happens, schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.”

It is very real that this Copenhagen summit will lead us back to the dark age, where the tools of economic growth will be wiped out in the name of falsehood and greediness of the chosen few, who will feed on the unwilling victims’ fear of the ‘unknown’ – the “climate change”. As panic grips humanity, no one will notice the global governance of the few as they lead us to that new world (dis)order. God forbid!

Erick San Juan: culdesac0002@yahoo.com.ph

We, my wife and I, are firmly convinced that our elected politicians are incapable of representing the will of the American people – and incapable of adhering to the Constitution of the United States of America which they took a solemn oath to uphold and defend.

We are among the millions of U.S. Citizens who are at our wits end sending e-mails, faxes, telephoning, meeting with elected officials, demonstrating, rallying – and hoping – that those representatives will do the will of the people. They have failed. Have we, as well?

The United States of America is a choice land, a nation that was founded by our forefathers who were divinely inspired by God the Father Almighty. This choice nation has been the defender of freedom throughout its relatively short history. We have led in the fight for freedom against many tyrants and dictators who have plundered and pillared their citizens and have subjected them to great sufferings through blood and horror. The people of those nations who suffered these great injustices knew that they could always depend upon the goodness, power and righteousness of the United States of America to extract them from their plights. And it was done – many times over. It was not done without expense – the expense of the blood and sacrifice of the members of our armed forces – and the suffering of their families.

As the year 2009 soon comes to a close, we the citizens of the United States of America finds ourselves facing many of the challenges – which those nations suffered at the hands of their political leaders. We are being attacked from within! Who do we turn to? Which great nation can we turn to help us to keep and maintain our freedom? We do not have the same hope of those nations to whom we were benefactors.

We MUST turn to our Savior. If we are a righteous people, we will be deserving of, and receive of His blessings as He has promised. He suffered and died for us – He atoned for our sins; each one of us – individually. We know that – as a nation – we can once again be the choicest of lands. However, we cannot achieve that blessing without our willingness to please our Lord and Savior.

We are asking that all who read this message that have faith in Christ designate Sunday December 6, 2009 as a day of fasting and prayer for America .

You do not have to march on the nation’s Capitol nor go to a tea bag rally. From the comfort of your home, you can get on bended knee and with a broken heart and contrite spirit, petition the Lord to bless this nation generously according to His will. Then, keep the fast for that day. Make that Christ-like commitment to our Heavenly Father. He will listen, He will answer. That has been promised.

“And whatsoever he shall ask the father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.” (3 Nephi 18-20) “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21:22)

Joe and Janice Hagen

St. George, UT.

I Think Link points out that it should be…but who knows whether Obama wants to keep propping up tyranny…

There are a few women online who admit that the tactics of men like Misha Dark are reprehensible, even admit that he’s a man, yet still, for some reason, cling to the belief that other men like him are in fact female.  What I want to know is, even if that were the case (which it isn’t) how do you plan on telling the difference?  Is it merely the commission of racist misogynist acts that condemns a male tranny to maleness in your mind?  Or would thinking of resorting to racist misogyny be enough?

And if it’s just the actual commission of it, then, why does not the choice to stand idly by and benefit from such acts condemn the other trannies the same way it does when other, gender-conforming and/or reality-aware, males stand by and benefit from racist misogyny? And,if it’s just harboring the thought or intent of racist misogyny, then, again, how on earth do you plan to tell the difference?

It doesn’t add up.

Oh, but it is different this time, –right?

Tiger’s driveway and crash path. LOL!

Golf Digest is kicking its ass over its January cover:

Perhaps the only man in Washington who still cares about self-government and stopping the march of totalitarianism around the world.

DeMint hails Honduran election – S.C. Politics – TheState.com.

Even though he said he would, and even though they were scheduled to have an election to replace Zelaya at this time even if he’d stayed in office.

But then he wouldn’t be standing up for his fellow socialists.

Fresh from defending Carlos the Jackal, Hugo Chavez managed to upset Ugandans on Sunday by claiming that Idi Amin was not as brutal as everyone made him out to be.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

“We thought he was a cannibal,” the Venezuelan leader said, referring to Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. “I have doubts. … I don’t know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot.”

Mary Karoro Okurut, spokeswoman for the ruling National Resistance Movement, said Amin was not worthy of such consideration.

“Anybody who says that Amin was good has something wrong with him,” she said on Sunday. “Amin was brutal. He killed many Ugandans and made many run into exile. There is something wrong with whoever praises Amin.”

There is no exact figure for the number of people killed during Amin’s 1971-1979 regime but estimates range up to 500,000 people.

Ugandan officials did not say whether they would take any formal diplomatic action. Venezuela has no embassy in Uganda.

On Saturday Mr Chavez described Carlos the Jackal, real name Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, who is serving a life sentence in France, as a “revolutionary fighter”.

A magazine run by the Chinese government has revealed the existence of a network of secret detention centres or “black jails” in Beijing where inmates are often beaten or tortured.

The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens can reach over 10,000

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

Until now, the Communist Party has strenuously denied running black jails, despite a growing number of testimonies and evidence from former inmates.

However, a report in Liaowang (Outlook), a magazine which is written for elite government officials and published by the official Xinhua news agency, laid the system bare.

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition, with the central government that their local officials have ignored.

Every day, hundreds of petitioners arrive in Beijing from across China, only to be hunted down by plain-clothes policemen or even private security firms sent by their home province to “retrieve” them.

Since local governments are judged on the number of grievances that arrive in Beijing, officials are often determined not to let the petitioners file their claims. The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens “can reach over 10,000″.

“In Beijing, a monstruous business network has emerged to feed, house, transport, man-hunt, detain and retrieve petitioners,” said the magazine. It added that there are at least 73 black jails in the capital, often in unused homes or psychiatric wards. Private security firms demand fees of 100 yuan (Pounds9) to 200 yuan per person they abduct.

Liaowang said the system “seriously damaged the government’s image”.

Inside the black jails, all mobile phones and identification cards are confiscated, and many inmates are beaten, sexually-abused, intimidated and robbed, according to Human Rights Watch, which interviewed 38 former detainees for a report which it published just two weeks ago.

At the time, the Foreign ministry angrily rejected the accusations from the NGO. “There are no black jails in China,” said Qin Gang, a spokesman.

In the report, one 46-year-old former detainee from Jiangsu province, who spent more than a month in a black jail, said: “They are inhuman…two people dragged me by the hair and put me into the car.

My two hands were tied up and I couldn’t move. Then [after arriving back in Jiangsu] they put me inside a room where there were two women who stripped me of my clothes [and] beat my head [and] used their feet to stomp my body.” At the beginning of November, a guard at a black jail pleaded guilty to raping a 20-year-old woman from Anhui province in front of a dozen witnesses. However, the court dismissed the charges against the “guesthouse” and two provincial liaison officials, according to the official China Daily newspaper.

For some activists, the state-sanctioned articles in Liaowang signalled a possible willingness by the Communist party to confront the problem.

“They have categorically denied there are even black jails. This is the first time an official, high-level magazine acknowledges that they exist. This is fairly significant,” said Wang Songlian at Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Lula, the self acclaimed “new third world leader” has warmly received against the will of the majority of the Brazilian people who has literacy enough to understand what and where Iran is, his “comrade” from Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“If Iran is an important actor in this discord, then it is important that someone sits with Iran, talks with Iran and tries to establish a balancing point, so that society returns to a certain normality in the Middle East,” said Lula according the NYT and all the international press.

So, finally, we can see how an ignorant, arrogant and definitely an opportunist low politician as Lula (yes, he sure is low and dirty with a legendary history of treason amongst his native “comrades) drops the mask of being “the guy”, acclaimed by the ingenuity of Obama in a G-20 Summit and shows that he has no limits to his ambitions of being a “world leader”.

Brazilians Protesting the Visit

The visit of Iran’s dictator is an embarrassment to millions of Brazilian women, homosexuals, Brazilian Jewish and all democrats in general but a chance to show that in the dirty game of power at any cost, Lula wins by far. By being a hypocrite, unscrupulous “comrade” who embraces one of the most sanguinary and disgusting person who ever lived? Hopefully, this will help to show the real nature of the beast.

Obama, please be careful before saying that anyone is “the guy” once again. Everybody, be aware that “the guy” has long knives as another Austrian popular politician who dominated Germany did have back in the 30’s and is no saint at all.

Lula, the pacifier! It’s laughable coming from the man who cannot pacify the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro.

PS: A person carrying the Rainbow Flag inside the conference hall where the Iranian dictator is staying has been arrested by the Brazilian Federal Police. The Jewish community has been barred from the press conferences. Supposedly due to the lack of security to the dictator, the conference was called off at 23:17 GMT. The Brazilian Presidency denied it but Lula reaffirmed the support for “pacific use” of nuclear energy by Iran.

One of their own: Herman Van Rompuy, first President of the European Union

Brussels Journal | Nov 20, 2009

by Paul Belien

Herman Van Rompuy. Get used to the name. He is the first President of the European Union, which with the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by all the 27 EU member states in early November was transformed into a genuine United States of Europe.

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. They chose one of their own. Herman Van Rompuy was the Prime Minister of Belgium. I knew him when he was just setting out, reluctantly, on his political career.

To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place. As John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”

In 1957, Belgian politicians stood at the cradle of the European Union. Their aim was to turn the whole of Europe into a Greater Belgium, so that wars between the nations of Europe would no longer be possible as there would no longer be nations, the latter all having been incorporated into an artificial superstate.

A closer look at Belgium, the laboratory of Europe, shows, however, that the country lacks more than patriotism. It also lacks democracy, respect for the rule of law, and political morality. In 1985, in his book De Afwezige Meerderheid (The Absent Majority) the late Flemish philosopher Lode Claes (1913-1997) argued that without identity and a sense of genuine nationhood, there can also be no democracy and no morality.

One of the people who were deeply influenced by Dr. Claes’s thesis was a young politician named Herman Van Rompuy. In the mid-1980s, Van Rompuy, a conservative Catholic, born in 1947, was active in the youth section of the Flemish Christian-Democrat Party. He wrote books and articles about the importance of traditional values, the role of religion, the protection of the unborn life, the Christian roots of Europe and the need to preserve them. The undemocratic and immoral nature of Belgian politics repulsed him and led to a sort of crisis of conscience. Lode Claes, who was near to retiring, offered Herman the opportunity of succeeding him as the director of Trends, a Belgian financial-economic weekly magazine. It is in this context that I made Herman’s acquaintance. He invited me for lunch one day to ask whether, if he accepted the offer to enter journalism, I would be willing to join him. It was then that he told me that he was considering leaving politics and was weighing the options for the professional life he would pursue.

I am not sure what happened next, however. Maybe word had reached the leadership of the Christian Democrat Party that Herman, a brilliant economist and intellectual, was considering leaving politics; perhaps they made him an offer he could not refuse. Herman remained in politics. He was made a Senator and entered government as a junior minister. In 1988, he became the party leader of the governing Christian-Democrats.

Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

Herman’s political career continued. He became Belgium’s Budget Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives and finally Prime Minister. He kept publishing intellectual and intelligent books, but instead of defending the concept of the good, he now defended the concept of “the lesser evil.” And he began to write haiku.

Two years ago, Belgium faced its deepest political crisis ever. The country was on the verge of collapse following a 2003 ruling by its Supreme Court that the existing electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), encompassing both the bilingual capital Brussels and the surrounding Dutch-speaking countryside of Halle-Vilvoorde, was unconstitutional and that Parliament should remedy the situation. The ruling came in response to a complaint that the BHV district was unconstitutional and should be divided into a bilingual electoral district Brussels and a Dutch-language electoral district Halle-Vilvoorde. This complaint had been lodged by… Herman Van Rompuy, a Flemish inhabitant of the Halle-Vilvoorde district.

In 2003, however, the Christian-Democrats were not in government and Herman was a leader of the opposition. His complaint was intended to cause political problems for Belgium’s Liberal government, which refused to divide the BHV district because the French-speaking parties in the government refused to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court. The Flemish Christian-Democrats went to the June 2007 general elections with as their major theme the promise that, once in government, they would split BHV. Herman campaigned on the issue, his party won the elections and became Flanders’ largest party.

Belgium’s political crisis dragged on from June until December 2007 because it proved impossible to put together a government consisting of sufficient Dutch-speaking (Flemish) and French-speaking (Walloon) politicians. The Flemings demanded that BHV be split, as instructed by the Supreme Court; the Walloons refused to do so. Ultimately, the Flemish Christian-Democrats gave in, reneged on their promise to their voters, and agreed to join a government without BHV being split. Worse still, the new government has more French-speaking than Dutch-speaking ministers, and does not have the support of the majority of the Flemings in Parliament, although the Flemings make up a 60% majority of the Belgian population. Herman became the Speaker of the Parliament. In this position he had to prevent Parliament, and the Flemish representatives there, from voting a bill to split BHV. He succeeded in this, by using all kinds of tricks. One day he even had the locks of the plenary meeting room changed so that Parliament could not convene to vote on the issue. On another occasion, he did not show up in his office for a whole week to avoid opening a letter demanding him to table the matter. His tactics worked. In December 2008, when the Belgian Prime Minister had to resign in the wake of a financial scandal, Herman became the new leader of the predominantly French-speaking government which does not represent the majority of Belgium’s ethnic majority group. During the past 11 months, he has skillfully managed to postpone any parliamentary vote on the BHV matter, thereby prolonging a situation which the Supreme Court, responding to Herman’s own complaint in 2003, has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us.

________

Related

Europeans Meet (Soviet-Style) to Choose First-Ever EU President

Geo-strategists are debating whether Europe’s superpower moment is or is not just around the corner. But if the nomination process for the individual who will represent 500 million Europeans has demonstrated anything at all, it is that Europe is inexorably moving in a direction that has far more in common with Soviet totalitarianism than with Western liberal democracy.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

Napolean Bonaparte

My art teacher, Miss Kwasny at Booth Elementary School in Elmira, New York, wrote this in my fourth grade yearbook. I loved her

Nagyot nyújtózok az ágyban, álmaim foszlányai még köröznek bennem.

Néhány kisebb mozdulattal kitapogatom a telefonom, majd egy ásítás kíséretében szétcsúsztatom. Sms-t várok. És láss csodát, “önnek egy beérkezett üzenete van”. Jobban már nem is kezdődhetne a napom.

Megnyitom az sms-t, s már előre apró mosoly kúszik az ajkaimra , de amint végig olvasom, le is hervad azonnal. Pár percig csak fekszem; szinte mozdulatlanul, a plafont bámulva. Levegő után kapkodok, de a tüdőm mintha túl szűk lenne; fulladozom.

Keserű epét nyelek vissza, könnycsatornáim felbugyogni vágyó sósav marja, de ez nem a gyengeség ideje. Összeszorítom fogaim, majd elszánt mozdulattal ülő helyzetbe tornázom magam, s egy számot tárcsázok.

Lágy, kedves hang válaszol, a szívem lassan, egyenletesen dobog. Az első pár mondat még szinte vidámnak tűnik… Tónusom lassan egyre halványul, kiveszik belőle a beletuszkolt vidámság; mintha az ő hangja is szomorúbban csengne…

Még pár utolsó mondat; mindkettőnk beszéde akadozik kissé, de nem sírunk; azt soha. Gyengéd szavak, lassuló szívverés; aggodalom mardos. Félek, félek, ha holnap beszélünk már egyikünk sem lesz ilyen erős.

De nemsoká kijössz, ugye emlékszel, hogy megígérted? Méghozzá gyorsan, hiszen máskülönben hogy füstölhetnénk tele újból a fülkét emlékekkel, érzelmekkel, s kék Dunhillel?

Leteszem a telefont; nem bírtam tovább. Könnyek áztatják az arcom, enyhén remegek, s a világ mintha apró ketreccé záródna körülöttem.  Mindennél jobban féltem őt.

(L)(}) igyekezz vissza hozzánk.

“But there’s still tomorrow
Forget the sorrow
And I can be on the last train home”

Jessica B. Vicious

I’m not a big boxing fan. The idea of two grown men beating the shit out of each other as people make money off their blood…I guess it goes against my (semi)pacifist tendencies. But I gotta admit — I do like Manny Pacquiao.

Maybe it’s how he smiles throughout the whole fight, or how he carries the Phillipines (and half the Third World) on his back, or how he just dominates his sport with ease. Whatever the case, I found myself in a living room full of Pinoys watching the Pacquiao-Cotto fight this past Saturday. Needless to say, this was a loud, proudly partisan crowd. As it became clear by the 6th or 7th round that Pac-Man was going to win, we started a little game: “Who else would you like to see Pacquiao fight?”

We started with other athletes, then movie stars, then finally…world dictators. This was where it got really interesting. We made a couple guidelines, namely that they had to be post-WWII (no Hitler, Stalin, etc), but they did NOT have to be currently alive. Obviously there’s plenty worthy (meaning atrocious) contenders for consideration. That said, let me present my choices for…

The Top 10 Dictators I’d Pay to See Pac-Man to Whoop in the Ring

10. Rafael Trujillo (ruled the Dominican Republic, 1930-1961): The first leader deserving a royal beatdown, if you don’t know about Trujillo, just read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. Dude ruled the DR with an iron fist for 3 decades, with thousands of innocent and dissident citizens imprisoned and killed by his secret police known as the SIM. He was all about the cult of personality, aka Trujillo-worship, and basically hated on anything, or anyone, Haitian (meaning black).

9. Mao Zedong (China, 1949-1976): Some on the Left might hate me for putting him on the list, but let’s be honest: Mao needed to get knocked out. No doubt he deserves credit for leading the 1949 Revolution and creating alternative economic models that helped millions of Chinese. But…he also created the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which led to famine, imprisonment, and political purges that caused the deaths of as many as 50 million people. Enough said.

8. Francisco Franco (Spain, 1936-1975): Just so y’all know, these dates are not when these dictators lived…they are when they RULED. Franco came to power in the 30s, around the same time as Hitler and Mussolini, when he crushed the ruling socialist government of Spain. The difference between him and those guys: he STAYED in power for 4 decades. A straight-up fascist, he used censorship, torture, and his anti-Communist alliance with the U.S. to remain El Presidente until his death.

7. Kim Il-Sung (North Korea, 1949-1994) and Kim Jong Il (1994-present): This is two-against-one, but something tells me Pacquiao would hold his own. And these dudes deserve it: Kim Il-Sung was the longest-ruling dictator of the 20th century…and then he passed on the crown of death to his son Kim Jong Il. Between the two of them, they have starved and repressed millions of their own people.

6. Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-1979): He had the shortest rule of anyone on this list, but in his four years, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge enacted a system of slave labor, malnutrition, forced migrations, and executions that resulted in the deaths of almost 2 million people – about 1 out of every 5 Cambodians. Many of my students are the children of Cambodian refugees (and other places on this list) — they’ve told me stories no child should tell.

5. Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, 1965-1997) – This man changed not just his own name (from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to the seven word Mobutu Sésé Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga), he changed the country’s…from the Congo to Zaire. So it remained for 31 years, as Mobutu personally exploited the natural resources of central Africa and consolidated power by publicly executing political rivals. His policies helped lead to the genocide in neighboring Rwanda and the ongoing civil war in his own country that has taken the lives of millions of people.

4. Ariel Sharon (Israel, 2001-2006) / Hosni Mubarak (Egypt, 1981-present) / Saddam Hussein (Iraq, 1979-2003) / etc.: I want Manny to take out ALL the dictators of this region, but let’s start with the “only democracy in the Middle East”: Israel. Much of the world doesn’t call Sharon “president” but rather the “Butcher of Beirut” – the man who committed war crimes at Sabra and Shatila, who built a wall in the West Bank, and denied as much land and rights as he could to the Palestinians. Mubarak isn’t any better, denying any democratic rights to Egyptians while enforcing the southern half of the blockade on Gaza. As for Saddam…besides gassing his own people (it did happen), my feeling is that if Pacquiao could have knocked him out with one punch back in the 80s, then we wouldn’t have had two George Bushes sending in the U.S. army to kill thousands of people and take over Iraq’s oil in the name of getting Saddam.

3. Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1974-1990): The perpetrator of the original 9/11, this right-wing punk (with active support from the CIA) led a coup d’état which put an end to Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected government. From then on, Pinochet criminalized dissent, killing and disappearing thousands of Chileans, forcing many more into exile. He also used the crisis to implement IMF-supported neoliberal policies of privatization and hypercapitalism – check Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine.

2. Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines, 1965-1986): This was BY FAR the most popular choice among the Filipino crowd watching the fight. What better dictator for Pacquiao to knock off his pedestal than the guy who led his own country into authoritarian corruption, despotism, and massive human rights violations? And it was his people who brought him down: the People Power Revolution of 1986 forced Marcos into exile, but not before he and his wife Imelda had embezzled billions of dollars of public funds to his private bank accounts. What could possible top Pacquiao getting justice with left hook right into Marcos chin? Well…

1. Ronald Reagan (U.S.A., 1981-1989) — Depending on who you are, this is either a total shock….or not at all. While not technically a dictator inside the U.S., Reagan (like many of his American predecessors and followers) still ruled much of the world undemocratically, oppressing and killing countless innocent people. His radical conservative economic policies, aka “Reaganomics,” reduced regulation of corporations, cut taxes for the rich and government spending for the poor, and basically laid the groundwork for the global recession we’re in right now. He bombed Libya, spearheaded the Iran-Contra affair, introduced crack to the streets of American cities…and he invaded Grenada. That country has a population of 110,000 – that’s basically a small neighborhood in Brooklyn. A bully like that needs to beat up.

So there it is. Pacquiao vs. Reagan as my # 1. Don’t agree with the order of the list? Should someone else be in there? My goal here is not to trivialize these men and the atrocities they committed, but rather to remember that authoritarianism everywhere needs to be opposed — and in some cases, knocked out in 7 rounds. So put a name in the ring — that’s what the comment box is for…

* And just to bolster my top selection, let’s watch this clip: the very first minute from the first episode of The Boondocks:

Even mega-states are typically founded by a small nucleus of pioneers, visionaries, and activists. The United States is a relatively recent example. The character of the collective of Founding Fathers has a profound effect on the nature of the polity that they create: nations spawned by warriors tend to be belligerent and to nurture and cherish military might throughout their history (e.g., Rome); When traders and businessman establish a country, it is likely to cultivate capitalistic values and thrive on commerce and shipping (e.g., Netherlands); The denizens of countries formed by lawyers are likely to be litigious.

The influence of the Founding Fathers does not wane with time. On the very contrary: the mold that they have forged for their successors tends to rigidify and be sanctified. It is buttressed by an appropriate ethos, code of conduct, and set of values. Subsequent and massive waves of immigrants conform with these norms and adapt themselves to local traditions, lores, and mores.

Back to the United States:

Thinkers and scholars as diverse as Christopher Lasch in “The Cultural Narcissist” and Theodore Millon in “Personality Disorders of Everyday Life” have singled out the United States as the quintessential narcissistic society.

The “American Dream” in itself is benign. It involves materialistic self-realization, the belief in the ideal of equal opportunities and equal access to the system, and in just rewards for hard work, merit, and natural gifts. But the Dream has been rendered nightmarish by the confluence with America’s narcissistic traits.

America’s internal ethos is universally-accepted by all Americans. It incorporates the American Dream and the conviction that America stands for everything that is good and right. Consequently, as the reification of goodness, the United States is in constant battle with evil and its ever-changing demonic emissaries – from Hitler to Saddam Hussein.

There is no national consensus about America’s external ethos. Some Americans are isolationists, others interventionists. Both groups are hypervigilant, paranoid, and self-righteous – but isolationists are introverted and schizoid. Theirs is  siege mentality. Interventionists are missionary. They feel omnipotent and invincible. They are extroverted and psychopathic.

This pathology can be traced back and attributed to a confluence of historical events and processes, the equivalents of trauma and abuse in an individual’s early childhood.

The United States of America started out as a series of loosely connected, remote, savage, and negligible colonial outposts. The denizens of these settlements were former victims of religious persecution, indentured servants, lapsed nobility, and other refugees. Their Declaration of Independence reads like a maudlin list of grievances coupled with desperate protestations of love and loyalty to their abuser, the King of Britain.

The inhabitants of the colonies defended against their perceived helplessness and very real inferiority with compensatory, imagined, and feigned superiority and fantasies of omnipotence. Victims frequently internalize their abusers and themselves become bullies. Hence the rough, immutable kernel of American narcissism.

The United States was (until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and still is, in some important respects, a pre-Enlightenment, white supremacist society. It is rife with superstition, prejudice, conspicuous religiosity, intolerance, philistinism, and lack of social solidarity. Its religiosity is overt, aggressive, virulent and ubiquitous. It is replete with an eschatology, which involves a changing cast of demonized “enemies”, both political and cultural.

The Civil War was fought between 2 America’s: the South, a perverted rendition of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the North, a harbinger of modern, multicultural immigrant societies. The North and the American Dream prevailed, the slaves were freed, and the Southern way of life, that of “gentlemen with leisure”, was replaced by a workaholic society where everyone is a slave to money and leisure is an ever rarer commodity.

Americans’ religion is a manifestation of their “Chosen People Syndrome”. They are missionary, messianic, zealous, fanatical, and nauseatingly self-righteous, bigoted, and hypocritical. This is especially discernible in the double-speak and double-standard that underlies American foreign policy.

American altruism is misanthropic and compulsive. They often give merely in order to control, manipulate, and sadistically humiliate the recipients.

Narcissism is frequently comorbid with paranoia. Americans cultivate and nurture a siege mentality which leads to violent acting out and unbridled jingoism. Their persecutory delusions sit well with their adherence to social Darwinism (natural selection of the fittest, let the weaker fall by the wayside, might is right, etc.).

Consequently, the United States always finds itself in company with the least palatable regimes in the world: together with Nazi Germany it had a working eugenics program (the 1935 anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws and the Nazi sterilization law were modeled after American anti-miscegenation and sterilization statutes), together with the likes of Saudi Arabia it executes its prisoners, it was the last developed nation to abolish slavery, alone with South Africa it had instituted official apartheid in a vast swathe of its territory.

Add to this volatile mix an ethos of malignant individualism, racism both latent and overt, a trampling, “no holds barred” ambitiousness, competitiveness, frontier violence-based morality, and proud simple-mindedness – and an ominous portrait of the United States as a deeply disturbed polity emerges.

Islam and Liberalism

Narcissistic Collectives

The Cultural Narcissist

The Roots of anti-Americanism

And Then There Were Too Many

FILE – In this Oct. 9, 2009 file photo, Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair attends a reception in London. Very soon, Europeans from Denmark to Bulgaria will wake up to the reality of having their very first president, one person world leaders can call when they want to talk to Europe. It’s taken a lot of history to get here. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, Pool, File)

AP | Nov 15, 2009

By ANGELA CHARLTON

PARIS — The European Union has battled long and hard for this moment: the imminent choice of its first president.

To get there, the EU strong-armed Irish voters, brushed aside hostile French and Dutch ballots, and pressured the Czech president into agreeing to a single leader to give Europe a strong voice on the world stage.

Yet after all that, EU leaders meeting Thursday may end up picking someone from a small country with little international power instead of a charismatic heavyweight to head this continental bloc of 27 nations, half a billion people and huge economic heft.

To pick a boss they can all live with, they must strike the right balance between big countries and small, east and west, socialists and conservatives, perhaps male and female. They must maneuver between proponents of a strong Europe and those who fear it — eurocentrics and euroskeptics, in the local parlance.

It’s a diplomatic minefield.

The decision will help define Europe’s future, the climax of a decade of agonized contortions and oft-thwarted efforts to make the EU about more than money and markets and common rules about what bananas Europeans can buy.

“The time has come to have a personality who will make an imprint … a European mark” on world affairs from Iran’s nuclear program to relations with Russia, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said last week.

“We should have weight in the world; we are 500 million people,” he said. “We should participate in world events and not just finance them.”

The early favorite was Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, but his candidacy has run into trouble. He cuts a big figure on the world stage — perhaps too big for the liking of other powerful figures such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Now the talk among diplomats is that the EU president won’t be that globally powerful after all and that the role will primarily be to liaise internally among EU governments. That would leave room for a low-profile president and a more eye-catching figure in the No. 2 slot of EU foreign minister, which carry the real international oomph.

There’s talk of grudges: Will Britain block Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as punishment for Belgian objections to Blair? Will Poland nix Italy’s Massimo d’Alema because of his communist past?

The path toward giving Europe a public face has been a tortured one. First, there was the EU constitution, which was meant to streamline decision-making and stipulated creating a president and a commissioner of defense and foreign affairs. But French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution in referendums in 2005, fearing a threat to their sovereignty.

Then a toned-down reform treaty was born. That made it past most governments — but then Irish voters said no.

They were talked into a second vote, said yes — and then the euroskeptic Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, resisted. Under heavy pressure, the Czechs also signed on last week.

There are no declared candidates and no public campaigns. President Barack Obama’s future European counterpart will be determined not by elections but over a closed-door dinner.

Blair’s most visible handicap is his enthusiasm for the Iraq war, which many Europeans opposed. He is especially resented among European leaders who bucked resistance at home to join the euro, the bloc’s common currency, only for Britain to stay out of it.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is often mentioned for the job of foreign minister, but he insists he’s not in the running.

Being on the left and coming from a big country, Miliband could have been nicely balanced against a conservative from a small country holding the presidency, such as Dutch Premier Jan Peter Balkenende, Belgium’s Van Rompuy or former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.

At the last EU summit two weeks ago, calls mounted to give the presidency to a woman. That boosted the long-shot chances of Latvian former President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

The logic of choices is often mysterious or counterintuitive. Balkenende is vaunted as a good candidate because his country’s voters rejected the EU constitution, “which should comfort the euroskeptics,” the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad surmised.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is known internationally for his U.N. role in the Balkans, but says he’s not running. He says only that Europe’s president should be “a good person.”

The European Union that rose from the ashes of World War II has torn down its borders, adopted common standards in everything from the death penalty to the weight of cargo trucks. It has dug a tunnel to link Britain to the Continent and its haves have poured billions into its have-not member states — 10 from the former communist bloc — raising their living standards beyond recognition.

And that’s where it should stop, say the euroskeptics, before national governments lose their sovereignty to a faceless superstate.

A face, say the europhiles, is exactly what Europe needs in order to take its proper place on the world stage. They have a stock phrase: When America needs to talk to Europe, it doesn’t know whom to call.

Now, said France’s Kouchner, “Europe will have a telephone number.”

Watch and listen the  Questions  as well as  answers on Democracy by different peoples:

Wer regiert die Welt? Demokratie für alle?

Source: German Federal Agency for Civic Education

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Tourists are reflected in the window of a shop displaying shirts and pouches bearing an image U.S. President Barack Obama’s face imprinted over that of China’s late leader Mao Zedong, in the popular tourist area of Houhai in central Beijing September 21, 2009. Obama, who will visit Shanghai and Beijing for the first time on Nov. 15-18, spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, five time zones away from Washington, D.C. ; and beginning in 1967, when he was six years old, he lived in Jakarta for four years. Although U.S. President Barack Obama has never set foot there, China cast a long shadow in the Pacific region where he grew up. Picture taken September 21, 2009. To match Special Report CHINA/USA. Reuters Pictures

The Observer | Nov 15, 2009

by Tania Branigan

Barack Obama introduced himself as America’s “first Pacific president” as he launched his four-nation tour of the region, vowing to deepen ties with Asia and arguing that China’s rise should be welcomed rather than feared.

Kicking off his visit in Tokyo, he also sought to thaw the chill in relations with his hosts, America’s closest allies in the region. The new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has vowed to make Japan less dependent on the US, but the two men agreed to put off the issue of resolving the future of US forces in Japan.

However, police in China are reported to have detained dozens of dissidents in a crackdown ahead of Obama’s arrival there today. Human rights campaigners said that at least 30 activists who were expected to apply for the right to hold protests directed at the Chinese government during the US president’s visit were arrested.

Reformers worry that Obama will play down China’s poor human rights record in order to maintain good relations on issues such as the economy. “We get the impression Obama doesn’t want to talk about human rights on this trip, but it is precisely because of his visit here that these people are being rounded up and detained right now,” Ai Weiwei, a Beijing-based artist and social commentator, told the Financial Times.

Speaking yesterday during the first stop on his nine-day Asian tour, Obama told an audience of 1,500 in the Japanese capital: “I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home.”

American officials have portrayed the trip as an opportunity to develop relationships and make progress on non-proliferation, climate change and the economy, and are playing down expectations of any agreements.

As in his previous foreign affairs speeches, Obama emphasised his personal ties in the region – referring to his birth in Hawaii, time in Indonesia and boyhood travels in Asia – and the administration’s break with unilateralism.

“We welcome China’s efforts to play a greater role on the world stage – a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility,” he said. “Power does not need to be a zero-sum game and nations need not fear the success of another.”

He held out a hand to North Korea again, calling for it to denuclearise; and to Burma, if it undertakes democratic reform and frees political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma’s prime minister will be present at the president’s meeting with Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) leaders in Singapore.

Obama also announced that the US will sign up to a trans-Pacific free trade agreement. That may help to deflect accusations of protectionism, which are likely to be aired throughout his tour. He stressed the need for “balanced” growth and said Asian countries should not be dependent on exports to the US.

The economic crisis has underlined the interdependence of “Chimerica” in particular and the trade imbalance that has left China with vast US dollar holdings. Washington wants the Chinese currency, the yuan, to appreciate further; Beijing will repeat its concerns that US debt could endanger its dollar holdings.

But Obama’s Chinese visit is about more than money. The world’s two largest carbon emitters are meeting just weeks away from the Copenhagen climate-change conference.

China’s influence on North Korea and Iran are central to Obama’s non-proliferation agenda. Its handling of Afghanistan and Pakistan will also be high up in discussions.

Obama’s China policy is essentially his predecessor’s; the relationship is increasingly amicable. But some fear attempts to broaden it could mean less meaningful engagement.

“Bush’s approach was: you are rising in the international system and need to take on more responsibility,” said Victor Cha, director of Asian affairs in the National Security Council under George Bush and now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “Obama is heaping on all these very, very high expectations – on issues like climate change and currency – and I think they are expectations that China cannot possibly meet.”

China sees itself as a vulnerable developing country as well as a rising power. And shared anxieties – such as those over proliferation – do not equal identical interests. “China’s own interests in those hot spots [North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan] make it deeply conflicted about playing a larger role on the world stage,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group. “While the United States frames China in terms of its growing responsibilities as a major power, China continues to think primarily in terms of its own interests.”

To some observers, the administration is also too keen to please Beijing, wasting leverage rather than smoothing the path to greater gains.

Obama’s decision not to meet the Dalai Lama last month – aides say he will do so in future – “doesn’t send a signal that the US wants to work with China; it sends a signal they have basically got us,” said Cha.

AP | Nov 13, 2009

By JENNIFER LOVEN

TOKYO — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he welcomes a robust China on the world scene, but he cautioned that all nations must respect human rights, including religious freedoms. In a speech to prominent Japanese, Obama called himself “America’s first Pacific president” and urged greater cooperation between the United States and Japan and other Asian countries.

He played down some Westerners’ fears of an ascending China, especially in economic affairs.

“We welcome China’s efforts to play a greater role on the world stage, a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility,” Obama said.

“The United States does not seek to contain China,” he said. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.”

But Obama diplomatically reminded China and other non-democratic nations in Asia that the United States wants them to allow more freedoms to their citizens.

“Supporting human rights provides lasting security that cannot be purchased in any other way,” he said. “That is the story that can be seen in Japan’s democracy, just as it can be seen in America’s.”

Obama said all people want to speak their minds, choose their leaders, access information and worship as they please.

He did not mention particular sore spots such as Tibet, a region of China where authorities have suppressed religious freedom and nation aspirations. He did, however, criticize Burma for suppressing human rights and North Korea for pursuing nuclear weapons.

In a weeklong visit to Asia, Obama is emphasizing cooperation, warning North Korea that there will be tough, unified action by the U.S. and its Asian partners if the Koreans fail to abandon their nuclear weapons programs.

This is a daily look at the pulse of Kansas City through the finest prism of local opinion: the Star’s letters section.
Dennis Moore: soft-spoken, gentlemanly Congressman? Or evil man with Tsarist designs?!?

It’s the latter, of course, if we’re to believe Leawood’s Thomas Pappas and his peculiar indictment of Moore as a cruel, unforgiving dictator. Set Exaggeration Guns to hyperbole!

Representatives are elected to serve and represent the views of their constituents. When a congressman isolates himself from his constituents, he cannot understand their needs. Furthermore, when a congressman votes in favor of legislation that does not remotely represent the views of his constituents, then that representative is acting as a dictator.

The voters of the 3rd District of Kansas have a dictator, and his name is Congressman Dennis Moore. Moore would not hold town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Instead, he voted in favor of Obama/Pelosi care, which Kansans are vehemently against as they know it will increase the deficit, increase taxes, reduce Medicare benefit payments and reduce medical care quality to the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance. Let’s make sure our congressional representatives can’t opt out of any plan they enact for us.

Kansans deserve a congressman who will represent their views in Washington. Dennis Moore must go.

Um. “When a congressman votes in favor of legislation that does not remotely represent the views of his constituents, then that representative is acting as a dictator”? Really? That’s odd. That’s not what Noah says it is:

1 a : a person granted absolute emergency power; especially : one appointed by the senate of ancient Rome b : one holding complete autocratic control c : one ruling absolutely and often oppressively

Dennis Moore has not been granted absolute power. He has not been appointed by the Senate of ancient Rome. He does not hold complete autocratic control. He does not rule absolutely or oppressively. In short, he fails every test of defining a dictator. What he did was vote for a bill that some of his constituents support and some of his constituents oppose. Mr. Pappas is more than entitled to vote against Mr. Moore next fall — but calling him a dictator? Misunderstanding, thy name is Thomas Pappas.

Elsewhere:
Adorably naive.
Sir, you must not understand how bailouts work.
Haha, a “hope” joke!

We have anniversaries, biennial events, diamond jubilees, centenaries, bi-centenaries and even millenarianism but rarely do celebrations arrive around every 7,000 years!  Between 2015 and 2029 a very special event takes place that has not occurred since 5122 BC.  The world in 5122 BC was a very different place.  The population of the world was about 25 million people in 3000 BC, and so perhaps 10 to 15 million people were alive in 5122 BC – about the size of present day Los Angeles.  Nevertheless great things were stirring in the world as this period marked the first widespread settling down of humans, farming and domestication of animals.

Until 5122 BC the world was the closest in temperament to the society still being shaped by mankind in today’s Aquarian age in the 21^st century.  5122 BC marks the end of the Gemini age.  The Gemini age and Aquarian age are both Air signs.  The Aquarian age that arrived in 1433 AD is the first age of the same Air element since the Gemini age (7351 – 5122 BC).  Obviously the world’s inhabitants in 5122 BC were not concerned about broadband, computers, the price of fossil fuel, pollution or over-crowding, but their heads were in an intellectually creative mode – something common with Air signs. 

While these ancients may not have been making technological discoveries of the modern world, they were making farming and agricultural discoveries that allowed them produce more food than they required – spurning on population growth and spreading their new agricultural technology far and wide.  The Gemini age also saw the first large villages or hamlets and the introduction of many discoveries around the world including the relatively simultaneous cultivation of newly domesticated crops in most continents of the world.  Pottery became widespread, primitive canoes were built, irrigation trenches first appeared and the white skinned race continued to evolve as they turned to milk and trekked further north where the sun shines weakly.

The world in the Gemini age was on the move.  Probably more discoveries and inventions occurred in the Gemini age than in the previous 50,000 years.  While life was much slower and far less intense in the Gemini age compared to the current Aquarian age – similar intellectual inventiveness was evident.

The relationship between the Gemini age and Aquarian age deepens when the full context of each age is taken into account.  In reality it was the Cancer-Gemini age and today we are in the Pisces-Aquarian age (see Is the Aquarian Age Like a Block of Granite?).  Cancer and Pisces are Water signs and Gemini and Aquarius are Air signs.  There are four elements associated with the 12 zodiacal signs – Water, Air, Fire and Water.  Each of these elements has specific characteristics.  Fire and Earth signs promote conservatism, patriotism and the status quo.  Water and Air signs promote change, evolution and instability.  The more Water and Air signs the more change and instability.  The more Fire and Earth signs the more conservatism.  When Reagan was president of the USA, and Thatcher prime minister of the UK the world was experiencing a mainly Earth and Fire micro-age influences and even here we can see the rise of conservatism on the small scale following the heady 60s when the progressive Water element was dominant.

The current Pisces-Aquarian age being Water and Air promotes evolution, change and instability.  Within the current Pisces-Aquarian age are 12 sub-ages.  Currently the world is in the Scorpio-Libra sub-age.  Scorpio is a Water sign and Libra is an Air sign – the same combination as Pisces and Aquarius.  This is the first time in the Pisces-Aquarian age that we are in a Water-Air sub-age.  This is the first time in over 7,000 years that both the ages and sub-ages are all in Water and Air territory.  The plot deepens.  Each sub-age also has 12 micro-ages.  In 2015 the world enters a little 15 years Cancer-Gemini micro-age with Cancer a Water sign and Gemini an air sign – the same combination of Air and Water again!

Therefore in 2015, for the first time in over 7,000 years the world will be passing through an age, sub-age and micro-age that all aligned with Water and Air – with no Fire or Earth in sight.  This occurrence will occur nine times in the Pisces-Aquarian age, with the first three occurring between 2015 and 2148.  This period will therefore see the extreme of change, evolution and instability.  Over the last 7,000 years the world descended into the opposite of what we are now facing.  In the Taurus-Aries age (2916 – 732 BC) the world experienced nine times when Earth and Fire elements ruled supreme without any Water and Air signs in sight.  The world was turning to the bedrock of conservatism, war and nationalism, during that time.

Early societies were mainly democratic orientated often involving elders in a tribe. The Taurus-Aries age coincided with the firm arrival of an entrenched aristocracy, pharaohs, kings and other forms of totalitarian governments who by and large were hell bent on waging war with each other.  The world is like a pendulum that swings from conservative totalitarianism to ‘democratic’ liberalism. After 7,000 long years the world is returning to progressiveness, liberal change but instability.  Those revolutionary and heady days of the 1960s and early 70s have nothing on what is coming – at best the 1960s and 70s is a preview of what is to come.

The conservative backlash (mainly in the USA and Islamic fundamentalists) following the1960s and 70s was due to a small digression back into the conservative Virgo and Leo micro-ages – Earth and Fire micro-ages respectively. The stepping stones to the first all Air and Water period commenced with little fanfare in 2000 with the arrival of the Leo-Cancer micro-age (Fire and Water), but changed gear in 2007 (one year before the election of the first black president of the USA) when the Water element in the Fire and Water  Leo-Cancer micro-age (2000 – 2015) became stronger.  The world will finally move into all Water and Air territory in 2015 for the first time in over 7,000 years.

What can be expected in the period 2015 to 2029 – the first of nine such periods in the Pisces-Aquarian age?  Unfortunately the extent of what we can expect is hard to determine because historical records going back 7,000 are insufficient to provide us with clear antecedents.  Alternatively we can examine some of the previous two hundred years or so and look for periods where they are closest to the ideal scenario of all periods elements being Air and Water.  In the Sagittarius-Scorpio sub-age (1791 – 1970) only Sagittarius was Fire, all other signs were Air and Water, so those micro-ages within the Sagittarius-Scorpio sub-age that were also exclusively Air and Water may provide us with a guide.  The particular periods include: the Cancer-Gemini micro-age (1851-66) and the Pisces-Aquarius micro-age (1910-25). 

Both these period witnessed many instabilities including in the Cancer-Gemini micro-age (1851-66) the American Civil War, The Crimean War and the Taiping Rebellion with an estimated death toll of between 20 and 30 million alone.  Wikipedia states that

“The 1860s were an extremely turbulent decade in the world, with numerous cultural, social, and political upheavals in Europe and America.”

In the Pisces-Aquarius micro-age (1910-25) saw the end of European millenarianism and conservative influences with the arrival of the 1^st World War.  This triggered the abdication of various conservative monarchies and the fall of the last world empires (German, Ottoman and Austria-Hungary).  The arrival of the communists in full force with the Russian Revolution in 1917 introduced radical new concepts of how societies could operate.  The USA attempted to outlaw alcohol with prohibition. The Irish commenced throwing off their British overlords leading to the Irish Rebellion.  Fascists took advantage of political instability.

The instability in these periods was extensive, but so was the progressiveness.  Probably the most important breakthrough in the Cancer-Gemini micro-age (1851-66) was Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species, putting forward the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859.  On a minor note Paris became the fashion capital of the world.  In the following period, the Pisces-Aquarius micro-age (1910-25) Einstein did to physics what Darwin did to biology, and produced his revolutionary theory of general relativity while Alfred Wegener suggests that the continents drift and collide with each other.  Culturally radio, movies and jazz became popular and Pablo Picasso became the leading 20^th century painter, first with Cubism than moving on to Surrealism.  The 1920s introduced the Roaring Twenties or Jazz Age.

As a guide to the Cancer-Gemini micro-age (2015 – 29) we can expect great instability, but also progress – one way or another.  Though doom and gloom pundits may predict a 3^rd World War I don’t think this is a possibility as astrologically the world is turning away from war.  There is a bigger problem facing humanity than war – climate change.  However even climate change can precipitate division.  One way or another the USA fractures in Gemini-Cancer micro-ages so some serious division, conflict or discord will occur in the USA.  Possibly this will occur due to a perception by conservative elements in the USA that they are losing control.  Mass dislocation of people and massive legal and illegal immigration is sure to be a factor in the world. 

Climate change requires great adaptation by societies if it is to be successfully tackled, and this period does to a certain extent promote such change – more so from the general population than leaders.   If the last two Water and Air micro-ages produced Darwin’s evolution and Einstein’s relativity – some very significant breakthrough may occur in 2015 – 2129, perhaps the understanding of dark matter and dark energy that supposedly constitutes around 90% of the universe? Other alternatives include breakthroughs in nano-technology, AIDS immunisation, a new and superior internet, longevity, DNA in medical technology, a cure for many cancers or even a replacement for fossil fuels.

It would be nice to say that in a Water-Air period that is soon to arrive in 2015 that positive elements will succeed at the expense of negative elements but this should not be expected. In the 1960s and early 70s though revolution was in the air for youth, many countries witnessed military coups and dictatorial governments.  Water-Air periods while producing advances both technological and societal, also produce instability which can be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous – particularly the military.  The desire by many people to be free will rise, and some existing totalitarian governments are sure to falter, but others will tend to extract revenge upon many of their citizens – such is the ugly nature of politics.  While public opinion and sentiment is sure to rise, leadership may be wanting in the years 2015-29.  Some key political leaders may actually suffer mental illness and behave like a modern day Nero or Caligula.  Hopefully they will not have their finger on the button!

The period 2015 – 29 is a celebration of over 7,000 years in the making – but what kind a celebration will it be?  Will it be more like a party or a wake?  It is bound to have elements of both, but at the bottom line and despite whatever conflicts and turmoil occur, some very interesting, evolutionary and progressive developments are sure to claim out attention, awe and wonder like we collectively have not experienced for over 7,000 years. 

 Copyright Terry MacKinnell 2009