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jeudi, 23 mai 2013

Dominique Venner : le sacrifice...

Dominique Venner : le sacrifice...

 

Il y a un peu plus de 20 ans, paraissait le premier numéro de la revue "Enquête sur l'Histoire" créée par Dominique Venner et consacré à "40 siècles d'identité française". Dans son éditorial, il évoquait la corbeille d'un châpiteau de la basilique Saint-Andoche de Saulieu décorée d'un feuillage stylisé et qui était présentée aux visiteurs comme révèlant une influence orientale... comme si chez un tailleur de pierre bourguignon du XIIe siècle n'avait pu germer l'idée de sculpter des branchages d'aulne pour agrémenter un châpiteau. Dominique Venner n'a eu de cesse de dénoncer la supercherie idéologique qui - par le biais d'une Histoire officielle manipulée  - entend faire accroire que la civilisation européenne n'a pu s'épanouir que sur les modèles et par les apports de civilisations exotiques.

Notre camarade s'est fait le chantre de notre mémoire historique et l'ardent défenseur de notre identité civilisationnelle européenne qui est d'un âge immense comme l'a écrit Carl Jung. Une civilisation pluri-millénaire qui s'est enrichie des apports, non du judéo-christianisme, mais du catholicisme romain et de l'orthodoxie grecque devenus les plus païennes des sectes chrétiennes. Une civilisation à la beauté créatrice, à la force conquérante et à l'incomparable grandeur qui s'est perpétuée sans rupture radicale pendant des millénaires et qui est aujourd'hui menacée tant par l'invasion migratoire allogène que par les dérives idéologiques des collabos d'un Système mondialiste acharné à détruire les peuples et les nations.

C'est face à l'autel de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, là ou se dressait celui de Jupiter dans la Lutèce gallo-romaine, que notre camarade Dominique Venner a choisi de s'immoler. Ce fut là peut-être un pied de nez aux enchasublés modernistes qui pervertissent et trahissent la foi de leurs ancêtres, ce fut là certainement un sacrifice exemplaire pour réveiller nos frères de peuple. Avant de partir rejoindre les dieux - et comme ont dit si bien Carl Lang et  Pierre Vial - Dominique Venner a sonné le tocsin : l'alerte est donnée, il nous reste maintenant à trompetter le boute-selle et le sonne-tambour. Le sacrifice de Dominique Venner est un appel au combat ! 

Yves Darchicourt 

 

Hommage à Dominique Venner - Paris

Hommage à Dominique Venner - Paris

18:07 Publié dans Actualité | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : dominique venner, paris, france, actualité, nouvelle droite | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

Dominique Venner : la force de l’effet produit

 Dominique Venner : la force de l’effet produit

Ex: http://www.polemia.com/

La mort de Dominique Venner, ce 21 mai, donne déjà lieu à de nombreux hommages mérités. Compagnons d’armes ou de plume, ses vieux camarades servent sa mémoire, racontent sa geste et témoignent de l’homme qu’il fut.


Parce que la différence d’âge a fait de nous des camarades de ses enfants plus que de lui-même, nous pensons que le meilleur hommage à lui rendre est de saluer le choix, rayonnant d’intelligence et de puissance, de son sacrifice.

Dominique Venner croyait à l’Histoire. Il savait que celle-ci se forge autour de longues et patientes évolutions, mais plus souvent encore par l’irruption de l’imprévu, de l’inattendu, de l’événement qui embrase tout, précipite les choses – au sens chimique – pour assurer le basculement d’un monde ancien vers un nouvel ordre à bâtir.

La seconde passion de Dominique Venner, c’était la patiente recherche du meilleur effet produit. Sans illusion sur la dureté des temps, il a, toute sa vie durant, après avoir connu l’ivresse des combats, militaires puis militants, cherché à peser et être utile au meilleur endroit, au meilleur moment, avec les meilleures armes politiques, intellectuelles, esthétiques ou morales.

Le choix de sa mort est, à ce titre, troublant de pertinence. Elle lui ressemble totalement.

Il a choisi un acte pur, romain, sans peur ni faiblesse. Quelles que soient les analyses médiatiques qui seront faites, la nudité et la pureté de son acte ne pourront être salis et, dans notre inconscient engourdi de Vieux Européens, cette mort volontaire nous saisit plus fortement que nous le pensons nous-mêmes. Elle nous rappelle le sens du tragique, à tous ces moments de l’histoire où nos ancêtres ont eu leur propre vie entre leurs mains, bien loin des douceurs émollientes de notre époque d’enfants gâtés.

Il a choisi un lieu d’une puissance évocatrice exceptionnelle. Un lieu symbolique de la Chrétienté, si fortement malmenée depuis longtemps et pourtant si puissamment réveillée, ces derniers temps, par le sursaut de ces centaines de milliers de manifestants qui, partout en France, défendent une certaine conception de la civilisation européenne et chrétienne sans être nécessairement de fervents catholiques. Un lieu laïc aussi, car Notre-Dame est la cathédrale de Paris, capitale de la France, ce qui permet à tous de s’y identifier, quelles que soient leurs options intellectuelles, philosophiques, morales ou religieuses.

Il a choisi un moment opportun. Celui où, dans le sillage des grands cortèges de la Manif pour Tous, de jeunes générations s’éveillent au combat militant et à la défense de leurs valeurs, face au silence des immobiles, au mépris des médias ou aux mensonges de l’Etat. Dominique Venner a vu, lui, que ces jeunes sont un levain, un ferment, l’avant-garde d’une nouvelle génération de Français et d’Européens qui, inconsciemment ou non, tardivement peut-être, ont décidé de ne pas abdiquer le droit de vivre leurs vies d’hommes dans la fidélité à leur identité. Lui, l’observateur des joutes politiques trop souvent stériles, a compris que ces jeunes gens ont besoin de repères, d’illustrations, de symboles. De quelque chose qui parle à leur Etre.

Il a, enfin, choisi l’humilité. Sa renommée et la force de sa plume auraient pu lui faire préférer l’écriture d’un nouveau bréviaire pour jeunes militants, ou d’un livre définitif sur sa vision de l’histoire et de notre devenir. Il a choisi de ne donner qu’un seul signe, qu’un seul exemple. En rappelant que toute cause ne vaut que si le sacrifice ultime fait partie des options, que toute cause n’est véritablement sacrée que si elle engage sa vie même, il a offert aujourd’hui la sienne pour que vivent, demain, dans la fierté retrouvée, de nouvelles générations d’Européens.

En ce sens, nous qui n’avons pas partagé avec Dominique Venner les passions de sa jeunesse, nous qui n’avons pas, pour nous réchauffer de son absence, les souvenirs des combats du passé, nous voulons dire combien nous nous inclinons devant la lumineuse intelligence de sa dernière action, sans doute la plus politique de ses vingt dernières années.

Nous n’avons pas de peine. Nous sommes frappés par la lucidité de son choix et le courage de son acte. Ce qu’il nous reste, c’est la joie de l’avoir suffisamment connu pour comprendre la puissance de cet acte et apprécier la force de l’effet produit. Il nous faudra désormais rester fidèles et être à la hauteur.

 Philippe Christèle et Grégoire Gambier
22/05/2013

© Polemia

mercredi, 22 mai 2013

La mort d’un samouraï d’Occident

 La mort d’un samouraï d’Occident

2616291799.png

Ex: http://cerclenonconforme.hautetfort.com/

Quel geste ! Quelle grandeur ! Faisant suite à la stupéfaction et à une grande tristesse, c’est immédiatement ce à quoi nous avons pensé lorsque nous avons appris, en ce 21 mai 2013, l’annonce du suicide de Dominique Venner.

Le geste en lui-même est très parlant et répond à une certaine logique pour qui connait un minimum les écrits de celui qui était véritablement, pour nous au Cercle Non Conforme, un de nos maîtres à penser. Dominique Venner s’est donné la mort dans un lieu hautement symbolique de l’histoire de France et du génie européen : la cathédrale gothique de Notre-Dame de Paris. Grand connaisseur des armes à feu, c’est avec l’une d’entre elles qu’il s’est tiré une balle dans la bouche…

Dominique Venner a suivi en cela ses idées. Il était un grand Européen, conscient et affecté de la décadence actuelle de son continent. Pour lui, ce terrible déclin n’était pas inéluctable, l’Europe étant « en dormition »… Cette « dormition » se révélant au fil du temps peut être plus profonde qu’on ne le pensait, l’ « historien contemplatif » qu’il était s’est certainement résolu à passer à l’acte. Pourquoi ? Car ce suicide n’est pas l’œuvre d’un "dérangé" ou d'un "désespéré" comme le pense certains, il est un acte de protestation héroïque contre le monde moderne, contre cette Europe actuelle dégénérée et coupée de ses racines, négation totale de ce qu’elle est réellement. C’est un acte, pour nous Français, que nous devons considérer de la même manière que les Japonais considèrent le suicide de Mishima. C’est une mort digne, désintéressée, grandiose quelque part, romaine en un mot. Dominique Venner rejoint ici Lucrèce, Caton le Jeune et Publius Spendius mais aussi tant d’autres grands personnages de notre histoire dont le suicide fut une protestation contre le délitement de leur époque : pensons en premier lieu à Drieu la Rochelle.

Il l’écrivait lui-même dans sa dernière lettre : « Je me sens le devoir d’agir tant que j’en ai encore la force. Je crois nécessaire de me sacrifier pour rompre la léthargie qui nous accable. Je choisis un lieu hautement symbolique, que je respecte et j’admire. Mon geste incarne une éthique de la volonté. Je me donne la mort pour réveiller les consciences assoupies. Alors que je défends l’identité de tous les peuples chez eux, je m’insurge contre le crime visant au remplacement de nos populations. »

Nous l’avons dit, Dominique Venner était (et restera) pour nous une source d’inspiration infinie, tant de par ses réflexions historico-culturelles que par sa vision du militantisme politique. Lui qui avait abandonné celui-ci pour voguer vers d’autres cieux depuis des décennies, il a mis fin à sa vie par l’acte militant par excellent : le sacrifice. Le côté tragique de son choix ne fait qu’en renforcer la portée et la fierté qui brûle en nous d’avoir comme guide un tel homme.

Le Cercle Non Conforme

Note du C.N.C.: Toute reproduction éventuelle de ce contenu doit mentionner la source.


Déclaration de Dominique Venner

Les raisons d’une mort volontaire

Je suis sain de corps et d’esprit, et suis comblé d’amour par ma femme et mes enfants. J’aime la vie et n’attend rien au-delà, sinon la perpétuation de ma race et de mon esprit. Pourtant, au soir de cette vie, devant des périls immenses pour ma patrie française et européenne, je me sens le devoir d’agir tant que j’en ai encore la force. Je crois nécessaire de me sacrifier pour rompre la léthargie qui nous accable. J’offre ce qui me reste de vie dans une intention de protestation et de fondation. Je choisis un lieu hautement symbolique, la cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris que je respecte et admire, elle qui fut édifiée par le génie de mes aïeux sur des lieux de cultes plus anciens, rappelant nos origines immémoriales.

Alors que tant d’hommes se font les esclaves de leur vie, mon geste incarne une éthique de la volonté. Je me donne la mort afin de réveiller les consciences assoupies. Je m’insurge contre la fatalité. Je m’insurge contre les poisons de l’âme et contre les désirs individuels envahissants qui détruisent nos ancrages identitaires et notamment la famille, socle intime de notre civilisation multimillénaire. Alors que je défends l’identité de tous les peuples chez eux, je m’insurge aussi contre le crime visant au remplacement de nos populations.

Le discours dominant ne pouvant sortir de ses ambiguïtés toxiques, il appartient aux Européens d’en tirer les conséquences. À défaut de posséder une religion identitaire à laquelle nous amarrer, nous avons en partage depuis Homère une mémoire propre, dépôt de toutes les valeurs sur lesquelles refonder notre future renaissance en rupture avec la métaphysique de l’illimité, source néfaste de toutes les dérives modernes.

Je demande pardon par avance à tous ceux que ma mort fera souffrir, et d’abord à ma femme, à mes enfants et petits-enfants, ainsi qu’à mes amis et fidèles. Mais, une fois estompé le choc de la douleur, je ne doute pas que les uns et les autres comprendront le sens de mon geste et transcenderont leur peine en fierté. Je souhaite que ceux-là se concertent pour durer. Ils trouveront dans mes écrits récents la préfiguration et l’explication de mon geste.

 

 
 
 

As Razões para uma Morte Voluntária

As Razões para uma Morte Voluntária

por Dominique Venner

 

Nota do blog: No dia de hoje, 21 de maio de 2013, o historiador dissidente Dominique Venner deu fim a sua vida com um tiro na boca no altar da Catedral de Notre Dame. Seu gesto heroico e corajoso foi um último grito de desafio contra a pós-modernidade, cujos tentáculos se estendem por toda a Europa e cujo domínio se torna mais total a cada dia. 
Ao camarada Venner nossas saudações.
Presente!
Eu estou sadio em mente e corpo, e estou repleto de amor por minha esposa e filhos. Eu amo a vida e não espero nada além, senão a perpetuação de minha raça e minha mente. Porém, no entardecer de minha vida, me deparando com imensos perigos para minha pátria francesa e europeia, eu sinto o dever de agir enquanto eu ainda tenho forças. Eu creio ser necessário me sacrificar para romper a letargia que nos empesteia. Eu entrego o que resta de vida em mim de modo a protestar e fundar. Eu escolho um local altamente simbólico, a Catedral de Notre Dame de Paris, que eu respeito e admiro: ela foi construída pelo gênio de meus ancestrais no local de cultos ainda mais antigos, reclamando nossas origens imemoriais.
 
Enquanto muitos homens são escravos de suas vidas, meu gesto corporifica uma ética de vontade. Eu me entrego à morte para despertar consciências adormecidas. Eu me rebelo contra o destino. Eu protesto contra venenos da alma e os desejos de indivíduos invasivos de destruir as âncoras de nossa identidade, incluindo a família, a base íntima de nossa civilização multimilenar. Enquanto eu defendo a identidade de todos os povos em seus lares, eu também me rebelo contra o crime da substituição de nosso povo.

O discurso dominante não pode deixar para trás suas ambiguidades tóxicas, e os europeus devem lidar com as consequências. Carecendo de uma religião identitária para nos ancorar, nós partilhamos de uma memória comum que volta até Homero, um repositório de todos os valores nos quais nosso futuro renascimento será fundado uma vez que rompamos com a metafísica do ilimitado, a fonte dolorosa de todos os excessos modernos.

 

Eu peço desculpas antecipadamente a qualquer um que venha a sofrer com a minha morte, primeiramente e mais importantemente a minha mulher, meus filhos, e meus netos, bem como a meus amigos e seguidores. Mas uma vez que a dor e o choque se dissipem, eu não duvido que eles compreenderão o significado de meu gesto e transcenderão seu pesar com orgulho. Eu espero que eles resistam juntos. Eles encontrarão em meus escritos recentes intimações e explicações de minhas ações.

Pas d’orchidées pour Mrs Thatcher !

Pas d’orchidées pour Mrs Thatcher !

Le fossoyeur de l'Angleterre

Auran Derien
Ex: http://metamag.fr/

La spécialité de la finance anglo-saxonne est le mensonge et l’inversion des valeurs.  Au décès de Mrs Thatcher, les perroquets médiatiques autorisés ont voulu nous faire croire qu’elle était la miss Blandish de la politique. Des penseurs plus pénétrants et scrupuleux révèlent qu’elle fut plutôt la Mama Grisson. Revenons à la réalité de son action car nous comprenons mieux ainsi l’horreur de l’Occident contemporain.

La fondatrice du totalitarisme occidental 

 
L’école autrichienne, la pensée de Hayek, n’ont rien à voir avec ce que promeut la globalisation. Les agités du bocal qui donnaient les conseils ou les ordres à Mrs Thatcher n’ont jamais lu ces auteurs. D’ailleurs, ils ne lisent rien. A quoi bon? N’exhalent-ils pas la vérité révélée? Ils se sont contentés d’écouter et d’appliquer les prédications de Milton Friedman, lequel a ratiociné à partir du modèle d’équilibre général. Ça n’a rien de libéral...
 
  
 
La société du spectacle a mis en scène Mrs Thatcher, pour que le public vote en sa faveur. Derrière elle, s’activait en réalité tout un groupe de banquiers et autres fanatiques, à la recherche de politiciens aptes à prendre des mesures qui leur assureraient enfin le statut de gérant du monde pour mille ans. Parmi les créatures qui contrôlaient la pseudo dame de fer, citons le banquier Victor Rothschild (1910-1990) dont le Dr.Tarpley rappelle qu’il servit de spécialiste de la sécurité pour Royal Dutch Shell et qu’il avait formé un think tank dont le gouvernement britannique s’inspirait. Entre lui, Keith Joseph, le cerveau politique, et Alfred Sherman, ils géraient MrsThatcher. Sherman, communiste à l’origine, était allé en Espagne durant la guerre civile. Puis il avait conseillé le premier ministre israélien Ben-Gurion avant de fonder, en 1974, avec Joseph et Thatcher le Center for Policy Studies qui fut le centre de production des idées que prétendit ensuite mettre en œuvre Mme Thatcher, une fois premier ministre. 
 
On voit que l’emballage hayékien ne correspond en rien aux obsessions profondes des employeurs  de Mrs Thatcher. Elle fut mise en orbite pour détruire la société britannique et n’arrêta pas de tourner  en chantant une demi-douzaine de slogans très primitifs basés sur un darwinisme social des plus sordides. Il semble que ce soit  keith Joseph qui ait le plus contribué à une des mesures fondamentales : réduire les salaires des enseignants ;  car pour les trafiquants, la connaissance est inutile voire dangereuse. La population ne doit pas étudier, du moins rien de fondamental. Les enseignants ne doivent pas pouvoir constituer une profession où chacun vit dignement de son salaire. Sinon, la révolution en faveur du soviet de la finance ne serait pas possible. Il faut abattre la culture pour que le bétail de la ferme des animaux suive la caste des chargés de mission du bien en soi…
 
L’accession au pouvoir de cette fausse Miss Blandish ne fut possible qu’avec l’utilisation des méthodes de marketing, importées des USA par l’agence de publicité Saatchi & Saatchi. Elles innovaient dans un contexte de crise sociale déclenchée en 1973 (hausse du pétrole) alors que les prédicateurs économiques de Chicago parcouraient le monde avec l’appui de Kissinger afin de duper le plus de gouvernants possibles. 
 
Thatcher applique les insanités friedmaniennes
 
Pour les riches, l’inflation de l’époque paraissait indésirable car elle favorisait les classes moyennes dont elle amortissait les dettes automatiquement. Aussi, fut-il décidé de prendre au sérieux les élucubrations de Friedman, en bloquant l’offre de monnaie pour démarrer une récession qui créa un chômage massif. La restriction monétaire fit monter la livre et l’industrie commença à disparaître. Seuls les banquiers de la City profitèrent de la livre surévaluée pour s’offrir des actifs à travers le monde…
 

Milton Friedman et Ronald Reagen
 
La réforme fiscale fut aussi brutale. La TVA monta et, face aux critiques de cette politique de néantisation du peuple anglais, il lui fallut chercher une guerre capable de redorer son blason ; de faire naître temporairement autour d’elle un nationalisme factice, trompeur et niais.  Cela lui réussit. La guerre des Malouines, en 1982, fut son tremplin pour une nouvelle période  économique. Appliquant les mesures de Friedman, elle devint naturellement la grande amie du général chilien Pinochet, lui même fanatique partisan des mesures des impenseurs de l’Ecole de Chicago. Elle devait aussi promouvoir Gorbachev, qui fut transformé en coqueluche de l’Occident au fur et à mesure qu’il trahissait le peuple russe. On relira sur ce point l’excellent ouvrage de Alexandre Zinoviev : Perestroika et contre-Perestroika. O.Orban. 1991. “Gorbatchev est devenu le héros de l’occident, qui l’a couvert d’honneurs et de louanges pour ses mérites, non envers l’URSS, mais envers les occidentaux”.
 
L’obsession de “privatiser” en faveur des financiers, seule ligne de conduite permanente de la dame, correspondait-elle à des accords qui liaient la Grande-Bretagne? Fallait-il solder des dettes qui remontaient à la seconde guerre mondiale? Etait-ce une contrepartie aux aides du FMI signées en 1976?  Elle a finalement exercé le rôle de Mama Grisson, organisant le hold-up du siècle sur une contrée désormais victime de la tyrannie obscurantiste d’une bande de financiers parvenus. 
 
La véritable noblesse est morte
 
Mrs Thatcher a détruit un monde à base de solidarités professionnelles pour livrer le tout aux démons de la City. La justification à partir des penseurs autrichiens, notamment Hayek, est totalement erronée. Il n’y a pas et il n’y aura jamais d’ordre cattalactique quand la mafia financière règne. Le discours monétariste et l’obsession des privatisations sont destinés à justifier le vol en faveur de ceux qui se sont préparés pour la grande orgie de pillage. On ne saurait oublier qu’elle a couvert, en 1986, la destruction des règles financières qui assuraient encore un peu d’harmonie dans ces métiers de gangster. 
 
En échange, elle a terminé dans la nouvelle noblesse, celle d’une époque Orwellienne où les voyous s’achètent les titres puisque la dernière véritable noblesse européenne est morte en 1914-1918.

Soral/Blanchonnet: France Monarchie

mardi, 21 mai 2013

Rébellion n°58

Rébellion n°58
Rébellion58.jpg
ÉDITORIAL
La critique moralisante
RÉFLEXION
La rue abattra les tyrans !
Découragement ?
par zentropa 
INTERNATIONAL
Venezuela. Viva Chavez !
Elections Italiennes. Entre populisme et paralysie par Xavier Eman 

Le Printemps arabe change-t-il la géopolitique du Proche-Orient ? par Terouga 
Chine. Le XVIIIème Congrès du PCC. Fantômes dans la brume.
ENTRETIEN
Rencontre avec Lucien de Gouverner par le chaos. Ingénierie sociale et mondialisation.
IDÉES
Perspectives Michéennes. La triple transformation libérale par Charles Robin
PHILOSOPHIE
L'esquisse d'une éducation non conformiste dans la pensée de Confucius par Thibault Isabel.
FIGURE
Alexandre Douguine. Révolte contre le monde post-moderne.

CULTURE
Rap & Business. Qui veut la part du Ghetto ?
Rencontre avec Mathias Cardet. L'effroyable imposture du Rap.
Entretien avec Arnaud Bordes. Chroniques livres et musique.

5 euros (port compris) pour un numéro de 48 pages. 
Commande à notre adresse :
Rébellion c/o RSE BP  62124 - 31020 TOULOUSE cedex 02

00:05 Publié dans Revue | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : revue, socialisme révolutionnaire, contestation, rébellion | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

Allemagne: récession imminente?

Andrea PERRONE:

Allemagne: récession imminente?

 

Berlin amorce un déclin lent, à cause d’une croissance en net recul qui met en danger l’avenir de toute la zone-euro!

 

L’économie de toute la zone-euro poursuit son ressac et l’Allemagne, à son tour, devient sujet de préoccupation, car l’état de l’économie allemande empire. Ce n’est pas un hasard si l’économie allemande n’accuse qu’une très misérable croissance de 0,1% seulement au cours de ces trois derniers mois, tandis que la France, elle, a déjà basculé dans la récession, comme le signalent les données d’Eurostat. Avec un recul de 0,2% au cours des trois premiers mois de l’année 2013, l’économie de la zone-euro est bel et bien, désormais, en récession et cela, depuis un an et demi: c’est là la période de récession la plus longue depuis 1995, année à partir de laquelle Eurostat a commencé à rassembler des données. L’Etat de la zone-euro qui se trouve dans la pire des situations est bien entendu la Grèce, dont l’économie s’est réduite de 5,3%. Elle est suivie du Portugal, qui accuse une récession de –3,9% par rapport à la même période l’an passé.

 

La France aussi est officiellement en récession après que son économie se soit réduite de 0,2% au cours de ces six derniers mois, avec, en fond, un taux de chômage supérieur à 10%, assorti d’une perte de confiance des entreprises et des consommateurs. Entretemps, l’Allemagne a repris une croissance, après une récession de trois mois à la fin de l’année 2012, mais cette faible reprise s’avère bien trop lente et insuffisante, atteignant seulement le chiffre de 0,1%, surtout à cause d’une augmentation des dépenses de la part des consommateurs. Ce chiffre ne suffit pas, bien entendu, pour faire redémarrer l’économie de la zone-euro en général, qui se débat encore et toujours dans une crise qui perdure.

 

Les données d’Eurostat montrent que l’économie allemande s’est réduite de 0,3% par rapport à la même période l’an passé. Le bureau allemand des statistiques met ce faible rendement sur le compte d’un “climat hivernal extrême” qui a duré jusqu’en avril. A l’opposé, la Lettonie a enregistré une croissance de 5,6% et la Lituanie de 4,1% par rapport à la même période en 2012. Les deux pays espèrent adhérer à la zone-euro très bientôt: la Lettonie en janvier 2014 et la Lituanie en 2015. L’Estonie voisine, qui a adhéré à la zone-euro en 2011 a enregistré la croissance la plus élevée de la zone par rapport à l’an passé, avec +1,2%. Mais par rapport aux trois mois qui viennent de s’écouler, l’économie estonienne, à son tour, s’est réduite d’un pourcent.

 

Pour ce qui concerne Chypre, les chiffres montrent que l’économie de l’île a considérablement empiré pendant la période où l’on négociait son plan de sauvetage: son économie a chuté de 4,1% par rapport au trimestre de janvier-mars 2012. La situation économique de l’Italie, de l’Espagne, de la Finlande et des Pays-Bas est préoccupante car tous ces pays ont vu, eux aussi, se rétrécir leur assiette économique par rapport au trimestre précédent et à l’an passé, comme d’ailleurs toute les économies de la zone-euro. La Banque centrale européenne, au début mai 2013, a abaissé le taux de référence à son minimum historique de 0,5%, tentant ainsi de faire redémarrer l’économie de la zone-euro. Mais tout prêt avantageux demeure une chimère, surtout pour les banques des pays de l’Europe méridionale qui continuent à emprunter de l’argent à des taux d’intérêt beaucoup plus élevés que le taux de référence: même le président de la BCE, Mario Draghi, a souligné que les prêts à bon marché ne se sont jamais avéré bons pour l’économie réelle.

 

Andrea PERRONE.

(article paru dans “Rinascita”, Rome, 17 mai 2013 – http://www.rinascita.eu/ ).

PASSET-626x220.jpg René Passet : « Il faut prendre du recul pour voir qu’un autre monde est en train de naître »

PASSET-626x220.jpg

René Passet : « Il faut prendre du recul pour voir qu’un autre monde est en train de naître »

 






Basta !  : Notre manière de penser l’économie dépend de notre perception du monde. Et varie totalement en fonction des époques et du progrès technique. Dans votre dernier ouvrage, vous proposez de relire l’histoire économique à la lumière de ces mutations. Quelles sont les grandes étapes de cette longue histoire ?

René Passet [1] : Ceux qui voient le monde comme une mécanique, une horloge, ne considèrent pas l’économie de la même façon que ceux qui le voient comme un système énergétique qui se dégrade. Les mêmes astronomes, armés des mêmes instruments, ne perçoivent pas les mêmes choses dans le ciel, avant et après Copernic. Quand l’homme n’a que ses sens pour comprendre le monde, l’univers lui apparaît mystérieux.

C’est un univers qui chante, qui le nourrit, qui gronde aussi parfois. Des forces jaillissent de partout. Il pense que des êtres mystérieux et supérieurs le jugent, l’approuvent ou le punissent. Avant même le Néolithique, l’homme s’aperçoit que la plante dont il se nourrit pousse mieux dans les milieux humides. Ou que les déchets organiques favorisent la végétation. Il découvre ainsi les forces productives de la nature et les régularités du monde naturel. Cela va faire reculer les esprits, qui se réfugient sur les sommets des montages, comme l’Olympe.

Les dieux succèdent aux esprits, le monde mythique au monde magique. La civilisation grecque marque le basculement de l’esprit vers la conceptualisation. Un tournant décisif, le début d’une réflexion sur la nature des choses, avec la philosophie, science première. On passe ensuite des dieux au pluriel à un dieu au singulier. L’activité économique est encore une activité pour le salut des âmes, dans la perspective chrétienne. Si vous ne voulez pas finir vos jours dans les lieux infernaux, il faut vivre selon les préceptes économiques des théologiens.

Peu à peu la rationalité l’emporte, et la science se laïcise. Pour Descartes et Newton, le monde fonctionne comme une horloge. C’est dans cette société « mécaniste », que naît l’école libérale classique. Au 18e siècle, Adam Smith, qui était aussi astronome [2], propose une théorie gravitationnelle de l’équilibre : le prix du marché gravite autour du « prix naturel », qui est le coût de production de l’objet, exactement comme les astres gravitent autour du soleil.

Avec la machine à vapeur apparaît une nouvelle représentation du monde…

En 1824, le physicien Sadi Carnot découvre les lois de la thermodynamique : le principe de conservation et le principe de dégradation. Imaginez un morceau de charbon. Il brûle, mais ne disparaît pas : tous ses éléments constitutifs se conservent, répandus dans l’univers. Et s’il a produit du mouvement, jamais plus il n’en produira, car il est désormais déstructuré, « dégradé ».

A ce moment de l’histoire, on passe d’une représentation mécanique du monde à la société énergétique. Alors que chez Adam Smith, chez Newton, c’est l’équilibre – statique – qui compte, les lois de l’énergie sont des lois de probabilité. Quand on répand un gaz dans un volume, il va dans tous les sens, et le hasard fait qu’il se répand partout de manière homogène.

Au niveau de l’individu, il n’y a pas de déterminisme apparent, mais au niveau des grands nombres, les mouvements se compensent : ce sont les lois de probabilité. On change de causalité, et d’univers : le monde est en mouvement, comme le montre aussi Darwin. Au même moment dans l’histoire économique, Marx et les socialistes se mettent à penser non pas en terme d’équilibre mais d’évolution.

Ce passage d’une représentation mécanique du monde à la société énergétique a-t-il un impact sur la vie des idées ?

Le mouvement des idées part alors dans trois directions. Avec Léon Walras, qui invente « l’équilibre général » des marchés, c’est la loi de conservation qui prime. La deuxième loi, celle de la dégradation entropique, amène à la théorie de l’autodestruction du système capitaliste, par Karl Marx. Au fil du temps, le système entropique et le système capitaliste suivent un même cheminement, ils se dégradent, se désorganisent.

La loi de probabilité, on la retrouve chez Keynes [3]. Sa théorie est celle de l’incertitude radicale : les acteurs économiques agissent dans un monde incertain, dont ils ont une connaissance imparfaite. Une vision à l’opposé des analyses classiques sur la rationalité des marchés.

Vient ensuite le temps de l’immatériel et de l’information…

La société énergétique, celle de la grande industrie, fonctionne par l’accumulation de capitaux et le développement du secteur financier et bancaire. La vraie rupture entre les classes sociales apparaît. La société s’organise hiérarchiquement. Au début des années 1970 deux événements vont marquer un tournant important : la première crise du pétrole et la sortie du microprocesseur Intel. L’informatique pour tous, et nous voici dans la société informationnelle (dans le sens de « donner une forme »).

Dans cet univers, la force productive est l’esprit humain. Les modes d’organisation changent complètement. De l’entreprise au monde entier, l’économie est organisée en réseaux. Le monde se vit comme unité, en temps réel. On gomme le temps et l’espace.

Est-ce l’avènement de la financiarisation de l’économie ?

L’ordinateur nous a donné le moyen du contact immédiat et la logique financière nous pousse vers une économie de rendement immédiat. Avec la politique de libération des mouvements de capitaux dans le monde, on assiste à une concentration de capital, et à la naissance d’une puissance financière supérieure à celle des États. Avec des effets désastreux pour l’économie réelle.

Un exemple ? L’entreprise pharmaceutique Sanofi gagne des sommes colossales, licencie pourtant ses chercheurs et n’invente plus rien, depuis que son PDG est issu du secteur de la finance. La finalité ? Produire du dividende et non plus du médicament. On relève la barre de rentabilité, on externalise la recherche et pour le reste, on dégraisse. Les chercheurs sont désespérés, ils ne font plus leur métier.

« L’humanité est en train de résoudre son problème économique », disait Keynes, envisageant un avenir prochain où l’homme pourrait travailler trois heures par jour, grâce à l’augmentation de la productivité. Nous en sommes très loin… Avons-nous raté quelque chose ?

A toute époque, le progrès technique a pour effet d’augmenter la productivité du travail humain. La productivité accroît la quantité de valeur ajoutée. Mais la façon dont celle-ci est partagée dépend du rapport de force dans la société. Dans la vision fordiste, les intérêts des salariés et des entrepreneurs sont convergents.

Henry Ford le dit très bien : « Si vous voulez vendre vos bagnoles, payez vos ouvriers ». Progrès économique et progrès social vont alors de pair. Lorsque c’est le pouvoir de la finance qui domine, le dividende se nourrit de la ponction qu’il effectue sur les autres revenus.

La logique ? Réduire l’État, les salaires, le nombre de salariés, les protections sociales. L’augmentation de la productivité a été compensée par cette logique de la rémunération des actionnaires. Keynes a raison ! Et la semaine de 32 heures est aujourd’hui un des moyens pour rétablir le plein emploi. Keynes évoque aussi les risques psychologiques de cette évolution. Pour la première fois depuis sa création, l’homme devra faire face à son problème véritable : comment employer sa liberté arrachée aux contraintes économiques ?

Vous expliquez comment nous avons successivement fait tomber les barrières, entre espace terrestre et céleste avec Galilée, entre l’homme et l’animal avec Darwin, entre conscience et rationalité avec Freud. Que pensez-vous de cette nouvelle convergence qui s’opère, entre le vivant et la machine, avec les biotechnologies, dont vous décrivez l’importance dans votre ouvrage ?

Je ne crois pas à la fin de l’histoire, mais à la fin de l’homme. Avec les nanotechnologies et le concept « d’homme augmenté », on prévoit d’introduire dans notre sang des robots qui vont nous réparer. Et nous ne saurons bientôt plus quelle est la part humaine et quelle est la part robotique en l’homme. Nous aurons dans le cerveau des puces avec de la mémoire. Est-ce que la puce va appartenir à l’homme, ou bien le modifier ?

Lorsque je m’interrogerai, la réponse arrivera un peu plus vite. Mais est-ce vraiment moi qui répondrai, ou bien est-ce l’encyclopédie Universalis, à ma disposition dans mon cerveau ? Quelles seront les conséquences de tout cela ? L’homme se crée lui-même par les efforts qu’il fournit, en travaillant pour acquérir des connaissances, en transformant le monde, comme disaient Hegel ou Marx. S’il dispose de prothèses pour faire le travail à sa place, je crains que l’homme ne se diminue lui-même. Toute prothèse est atrophiante.

Vous n’êtes pas très optimiste…

Je suis très inquiet pour l’avenir de l’humain. J’ai peur qu’arrive, dans une humanité mécanisée, robotisée, un autre homme dont on ne saura plus très bien ce qu’il est. Le grand cybernéticien Alan Turing (1912-1954) a parié qu’aux environs de l’an 2000 on ne serait plus capable, dans une conversation téléphonique, de faire la différence entre un homme et un robot. C’est une autre limite, une autre frontière. Est-ce le sens de l’évolution ? Cela a-t-il une signification ? Je n’en sais rien.

Pouvons-nous maîtriser ces bifurcations de civilisation ?

Avons-nous maîtrisé les bifurcations précédentes ? Elles sont venues au fil de l’évolution, et nous les avons suivies. Nous ne les comprenons qu’après coup, et nous nous adaptons à une nouvelle normalité qui s’établit. Les gens les ont vécues comme la fin d’un monde, sans comprendre où allait le monde nouveau. Il faut prendre du recul pour voir qu’un autre monde est en train de naître. Nous vivons aujourd’hui une confusion entre crise et mutation. Nous mélangeons deux types de crises.

L’évolution est faite de ruptures et de normalité. La crise dans la normalité, c’est lorsque dans le système établi apparaissent des dysfonctionnements qui nous éloignent de la norme. C’est la crise au sens propre du terme, conjoncturelle. Le problème est alors de revenir à la norme. Si le sous-emploi est conjoncturel, on va essayer de rétablir le plein-emploi dans les normes traditionnelles, avec les moyens traditionnels.

Les crises de mutation, c’est passer d’un système à un autre. Et c’est ce que nous vivons aujourd’hui. Ce n’est pas une crise économique, mais une crise du système néolibéral. C’est la logique même du système qui a provoqué la crise des subprimes en 2008. Notre vrai problème est aujourd’hui de réussir la mutation. Or nous avons chaussé les lunettes de la crise du court terme.

Un exemple : rigueur ou relance ? Tous les gouvernements raisonnent dans une logique de court terme ! Le pouvoir financier impose sa vision du temps court. Cela fausse tout, nous raisonnons à partir d’une économie complètement tronquée.

Quelles en sont les conséquences ?

Dans le temps court, le salaire n’est qu’une charge pour les entreprises, et la protection sociale, une charge pour la société. L’impôt, c’est un prélèvement et rien d’autre. Si vous abordez le problème avec cette vision, cela vous amène forcément à la rigueur : il faut restreindre la dépense publique. Même si la crise ne vient pas de la dépense publique mais du secteur privé, en premier lieu des banques avec la crise des subprimes.

Il faut comprimer les salaires, travailler plus pour gagner moins ! Le résultat ? Un cercle vicieux. Le second effet apparaît dans un temps plus long : le salaire, c’est le support d’un revenu qui alimente la dépense de consommation. L’impôt, c’est le support de la dépense publique. Il ne se perd pas dans les sables du désert ! Toute cette dimension nous manque. Les gouvernements sont piégés dans cette logique de court terme, alors que le vrai problème est celui de la réussite de la mutation.

« L’homme des cavernes pouvait difficilement – à la lumière de son expérience – se faire une conception de l’univers autre que magique », écrivez-vous. Alors que les marchés sont aujourd’hui présentés comme des oracles, ne serions-nous pas capables de faire mieux que l’homme des cavernes ?

Dans une vision à court terme, la tendance est de défendre les structures existantes. Avec de très bonnes intentions, on s’enferme dans des contradictions totales. Les gouvernements mènent une politique de réduction des dépenses énergétiques, et de l’autre côté, n’acceptent pas la diminution du nombre de raffineries, qui découle de cette politique. Le problème n’est pas que les salariés des raffineries restent raffineurs, mais de les employer dans de nouvelles structures, et de voir quelles sont les structures nécessaires à la poursuite de la mutation.

En essayant de régler un problème de long terme avec des instruments de court terme, nous nous enfonçons de plus en plus dans la crise, à force de prendre des décisions à contre-sens. Au contraire, anticiper ces transitions, cette mutation, devrait pourtant inspirer non pas le discours des politiques, mais leur action. On se trompera forcément, mais par tâtonnement nous finirons par trouver la voie pour nous engager dans un cercle vertueux.

Vous définissez la science économique comme un « système de pensée nombriliste, clos sur lui-même, replié sur la contemplation inlassable des mêmes équilibres et des mêmes procédures d’optimisation ». De quelle science économique avons-nous besoin aujourd’hui ?

Lorsque j’ai publié mon livre L’économique et le vivant en 1979, les économistes m’ont dit : « Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce truc ? Ce n’est pas de l’économie. » Depuis, beaucoup ont compris l’importance de la transdisciplinarité. Confrontés aux mêmes réalités, chaque discipline interroge le monde sous un angle différent. La nature de mes questions me définit comme économiste.

C’est le lieu d’où je questionne le monde, mais ce n’est pas une prison ! Si les chercheurs refusent de se hasarder dans les zones d’interférences, certains problèmes ne seront jamais abordés. C’est pourtant dans ces zones que se joue aujourd’hui la survie de l’humanité.

Comment recréer des espaces de réflexion interdisciplinaires ?

Il y a aujourd’hui des courants intéressants, comme celui des Économistes atterrés. On parle en ce moment de la reconstitution d’une structure qui ressemblerait à celle du Plan, avec une ambition de prospective. J’étais très favorable à la planification française, souple. Les objectifs des secteurs stratégiques – sidérurgie, transports, énergie,…– étaient définis au sein des Commissions du Plan, qui réunissaient des grands fonctionnaires, des intellectuels, mais aussi des syndicats ouvriers et patronaux. Une concertation sociale permanente.

C’est ce qui nous manque le plus aujourd’hui. De cette rencontre sortaient des objectifs, ensuite arbitrés par l’État. On n’avait pas besoin de faire des grands discours sur la concertation, on la faisait !

Vous défendez le principe de bioéconomie. En quoi cela consiste-t-il ?

Ce n’est pas une nouvelle branche de l’économie : c’est l’économie qui doit se faire bio. La destruction de la biosphère menace actuellement l’humanité. Et si on détruit la biosphère, cela ne sert à rien de disserter sur le Plan et l’avenir de l’humanité : il n’y aura pas d’avenir, pas d’économie. Le monde est arrivé à ce moment où il atteint et dépasse la capacité de charge de la biosphère. Toutes les conventions sur lesquelles était fondée l’économie sont remises en cause.

La nature était considérée comme inépuisable ? Elle devient un facteur rare que l’on épuise. Et c’est une des conventions fondatrices de l’économie qui disparaît. Quand on cherche la combinaison optimale de facteurs de production, ou de biens de consommation qui vont vous donner le maximum de satisfaction, on procède par substitution de biens. C’est la deuxième convention de base de l’économie : on optimise en substituant.

Cela n’est plus vrai aujourd’hui : quand vous atteignez les limites de la biosphère, certaines ressources ne peuvent plus être augmentés. La substituabilité disparaît. Troisième convention : « Le plus est le mieux » – c’est en consommant davantage que l’on accroît le bien-être. Nous atteignons aussi la limite où ce n’est plus vrai. Le paradoxe d’Easterlin montre que dans les nations les plus riches le bien-être et le revenu ne vont plus de pair. Il arrive un moment où la relation s’inverse carrément.

Comment l’économie peut-elle intégrer la question de la reproduction des ressources et du vivant ?

L’économie est faite pour optimiser – ce n’est pas un vilain mot !. Cela veut dire tirer le maximum de résultats, de choses positives, de satisfaction, à partir des moyens limités dont nous disposons. Mais elle doit intégrer ces stratégies d’optimisation (de production et de consommation) dans les limites des mécanismes de reproduction du système.

Par exemple les rythmes de reproduction des matières premières, des ressources renouvelables : « Voilà, on peut piocher dans les réserves jusque ce niveau, mais pas plus ». Ou des rythmes de prélèvement des ressources non renouvelables compatibles avec des perspectives de relève, de remplacement de ces ressources. L’économie retrouve alors sa vraie vocation : une science d’optimisation sous contrainte. Sans limites, il n’y a pas d’économie, car cela veut dire que l’on peut faire n’importe quoi !

Le système économique actuel peut-il s’adapter à cette contrainte ?

Certains économistes voudraient que l’économie soit une science qui prenne en compte toutes les contraintes, sauf celles de l’environnement ! Dans un système vivant, vous avez une finalité qui domine, c’est la finalité du système tout entier : maintenir et reproduire sa structure dans le temps, alors que les lois physiques, les lois d’entropie voudraient qu’il se désagrège. Cette finalité est supérieure à toutes les autres.

Dans une horloge, vous avez une seule loi, du ressort à la mécanique entière. C’est très différent dans le vivant : on fait un saut dans le vivant, en passant de la molécule à la cellule, c’est une autre logique qui s’applique. Et la logique de l’organe est différente de la somme des logiques des cellules. La pensée n’est pas la somme des atomes du cerveau.

En économie, c’est pareil. C’est le paradoxe de Condorcet : il faut un choix à un moment donné, la logique du tout n’est pas la somme des logiques particulières. On est loin de la « main invisible du marché » d’Adam Smith, qui transforme mécaniquement les intérêts individuels en intérêt général.

Vous parlez de « point critique », ce moment qui nous fait basculer dans un autre univers. Sommes-nous en train d’atteindre un tel point critique ?

Nous vivons une crise de civilisation, mais le dépérissement du système sera long, car trop d’intérêts sont en jeu. Pour l’univers de la finance, ce système n’est pas mauvais : quand tout va bien, il engrange les bénéfices, et quand tout va mal, la charge retombe sur la collectivité.

La faillite d’un paradigme n’implique pas qu’il disparaisse immédiatement. Il faut qu’une théorie concurrente soit prête à prendre la place, comme le dit l’historien Thomas Kuhn. Le point critique, c’est lorsqu’un écart évolutif, au lieu d’être ramené vers la moyenne, bifurque de manière totalement imprévisible vers une nouvelle voie d’évolution.

Tout progrès est ambigu, à la fois chance et péril. C’est nous qui choisissons. Le progrès technique nous donne actuellement la possibilité de gagner plus, de vivre mieux, de travailler moins. Et comme nous avons libéré la cupidité des hommes, avec la libéralisation du secteur financier, ce sont les effets pervers qui l’emportent. Ce qui devrait être un instrument de libération des hommes devient un moyen d’asservissement. L’homme devient la variable d’ajustement de l’augmentation des dividendes.

Tant qu’on n’aura pas tranché le nœud gordien du pouvoir de la finance, rien ne sera possible. Parce que le rapport de force agira toujours dans cette direction, et le côté pervers du progrès technique l’emportera toujours. Sous la pression des événements et des drames qui se multiplieront, serons-nous amenés à le faire à temps ? Sans cela, nous courrons à la catastrophe. Il faut continuer à alerter et à travailler dans ce sens.

Notes

A lire : René Passet, Les Grandes Représentations du monde et de l’économie à travers l’histoire, éditions LLL Les liens qui libèrent, 950 pages, 38 euros.

Notes

[1René Passet, économiste spécialiste du développement et professeur émérite à la Sorbonne, a été membre du Groupe des Dix, constitué à l’initiative de Jacques Robin et de Robert Buron, au sein duquel il a travaillé avec des biologistes, des physiciens, des sociologues, des anthropologues, des informaticiens. Il a été le premier président du Conseil scientifique de l’association Attac.

[2Auteur de l’ouvrage Histoire de l’astronomie.

[3Qui a écrit un traité des probabilités avant de se pencher sur l’économie.

Basta Mag

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lundi, 20 mai 2013

The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective

immanuel_kant_f.20101213-11.jpg

The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective

 

By Domitius Corbulo

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

“When Kant philosophizes, say on ethical ideas, he maintains the validity of his theses for men of all times and places. He does not say this in so many words, for, for himself and his readers, it is something that goes without saying. In his aesthetics he formulates the principles, not of Phidias’s art, of Rembrandt’s art, but of Art generally. But what he poses as necessary forms of thought are in reality only necessary forms of Western thought.” — Oswald Spengler 

“Humanity exists in its greatest perfection in the white race.” — Immanuel Kant

Every one either praises or blames the Enlightenment for the enshrinement of equality and cosmopolitanism as the moral pillars of our times. This is wrong. Enlightenment thinkers were racists who believe that only white Europeans could be fully rational, good citizens, and true cosmopolitans.

Leftists have brought attention to some racist beliefs among Enlightenment thinkers, but they have not successfully shown that racism was an integral part of Enlightenment philosophy, and their intention has been to denigrate the Enlightenment for representing the parochial values of European males. I argue here that they were the first to introduce a scientific conception of human nature structured by racial classifications. This conception culminated in Immanuel Kant’s anthropological justification of the superior/inferior classification of “races of men” and his “critical” argument that only European peoples were capable of becoming rational and free legislators of their own actions. The Enlightenment is a celebration of white reason and morality; therefore, it belongs to the New Right.

In an essay [2] in the New York Times (February 10, 2013), Justin Smith, another leftist with a grand title, Professeur des Universités, Département d’Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences, Université Paris Diderot – Paris VII, contrasted the intellectual “legacy” of Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former slave who defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony in 1734, with the “fundamentally racist” legacy of Enlightenment thinkers. Smith observed that a dedicatory letter was attached to Amo’s dissertation from the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Kraus, praising the “natural genius” of Africa and its “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs.” Smith juxtaposed Kraus’s broad-mindedness to the prevailing Enlightenment view “lazily echoed by Hume, Kant, and so many contemporaries” according to which Africans were naturally inferior to whites and beyond the pale of modernity.

Smith questioned “the supposedly universal aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity” of Enlightenment thought. These values were “only ever conceived” for a European people deemed to be superior and therefore more equal than non-whites. He cited Hume: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites.” He also cited Kant’s dismissal of a report of something intelligent that had once been uttered by an African: “this fellow was quite black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.” Smith asserted that it was counter-Enlightenment thinkers, such as Johann Herder, who would formulate anti-racist views in favor of human diversity. In the rest of his essay, Smith pondered why Westerners today “have chosen to stick with categories inherited from the century of the so-called Enlightenment” even though “since the mid-20th century no mainstream scientist has considered race a biologically significant category; no scientist believes any longer that ‘negroid,’ ‘caucasoid,’ and so on represent real natural kinds.” We should stop using labels that merely capture “something as trivial as skin color” and instead appreciate the legacy of Amo as much as that of any other European in a colorblind manner.

Smith’s article, which brought some 370 comments, a number from Steve Sailer, was challenged a few days later by Kenan Malik, ardent defender of the Enlightenment, in his blog Pandaemonium [3]. Malik’s argument that Enlightenment thinkers “were largely hostile to the idea of racial categorization” represents the general consensus on this question. Malik is an Indian-born English citizen, regular broadcaster at BBC, and noted writer for The GuardianFinancial TimesThe Independent, Sunday Times, New StatesmanProspectTLSThe Times Higher Education Supplement, and other venues. Once a Marxist, Malik is today a firm defender of the “universalist ideas of the Enlightenment,” freedom of speech, secularism, and scientific rationalism. He is best known for his strong opposition to multiculturalism.

Yet this staunch opponent of multiculturalism is a stauncher advocate of open door policies on immigration [4]. In one of his TV documentaries, tellingly titled Let ‘Em All In (2005), he demanded that Britain’s borders be opened to the world without restrictions. In response to a report published during the post-Olympic euphoria in Britain, “The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race [5],” he wrote: “news that those of mixed ethnicity are among the fastest-growing groups in the population is clearly to be welcomed [6].” He added that much work remains to be done “to change social perceptions of race.”

This work includes fighting against any immigration objection even from someone like David Goodhart, director of the left think tank Demos, whose just released book, The British Dream [7], modestly made the observation that immigration is eroding traditional identities and creating an England “increasingly full of mysterious and unfamiliar worlds.” In his review (The Independent [8], April 19, 2013) Malik insisted that not enough was being done to wear down the traditional identities of everyone including the native British. The solution is more immigration coupled with acculturation to the universal values of the Enlightenment. “I am hostile to multiculturalism not because I worry about immigration but because I welcome it.” The citizens of Britain must be asked to give up their ethnic and cultural individuality and make themselves into universal beings with rights equal to every newcomer.

It is essential, then, for Malik to disassociate the Enlightenment with any racist undertones. This may not seem difficult since the Enlightenment has consistently come to be seen — by all political ideologies from Left to Right — as the source of freedom, equality, and rationality against the “unreasonable and unnatural” prejudices of particular cultural groups. Malik acknowledges that in recent years some (he mentions George Mosse, Emmanuel Chuckwude Eze, and David Theo Goldberg) have blamed Enlightenment thinkers for articulating the modern idea of race and projecting a view of Europe as both culturally and racially superior. By and large, however, Malik manages (superficially speaking) to win the day arguing that the racist statements one encounters in some Enlightenment thinkers were marginally related to their overall philosophies.

A number of thinkers within the mainstream of the Enlightenment . . . dabbled with ideas of innate differences between human groups . . . Yet, with one or two exceptions, they did so only diffidently or in passing.

The botanist Carolus Linnaeus exhibited the cultural prejudices of his time when he described Europeans as “serious, very smart, inventive” and Africans as “impassive, lazy, ruled by caprice.” But let’s us not forget, Malik reasons, that Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae “is one of the landmarks of scientific thought,” the first “distinctly modern” classification of plants and animals, and of humans in rational and empirical terms as part of the natural order. The implication is that Linnaeus could not have offered a scientific classification of nature while seriously believing in racial differences. Science and race are incompatible.

Soon the more progressive ideas of Johann Blumenbach came; he complained about the prejudices of Linnaeus’ categories and called for a more objective differentiation between human groups based on skull shape and size. It is true that out of Blumenbach’s five-fold taxonomy (Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopians, Americans and Malays) the categories of race later emerged. But Malik insists that “it was in the 19th, not 18th, century that a racial view of the world took hold in Europe.”

Malik mentions Jonathan Israel’s argument that there were two Enlightenments, a mainstream one coming from Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume, and a radical one coming from “lesser known figures such as d’Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet and Spinoza.” This latter group pushed the ideas of reason, universality, and democracy “to their logical conclusion,” nurturing a radical egalitarianism extending across class, gender, and race. But, in a rather confusing way and possibly because he could not find any discussions of race in the radical group to back up his argument, Malik relies on the mainstream group. He cites David Hume: “It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the acts of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains the same in its principles and operations.” And George-Louis Buffon, the French naturalist: “Every circumstance concurs in proving that mankind is not composed of species essentially different from each other.” While Enlightenment thinkers asked why there was so much cultural variety across the globe, Malik explains, “the answer was rarely that human groups were racially distinct . . . environmental differences and accidents of history had shaped societies in different ways.” Remedying these differences and contingencies was what the Enlightenment was about; as Diderot wrote, “everywhere a people should be educated, free, and virtuous.”

Malik’s essay is pedestrian, somewhat disorganized, but in tune with the established literature, and therefore seen by the public as a compilation of truisms against marginal complaints about racism in the Enlightenment. Almost all the books on the Enlightenment have either ignored this issue or addressed it as a peripheral theme. The emphasis has been, rather, on the Enlightenment’s promotion of universal values for the peoples of the world. Let me offer some examples. Leonard Krieger’s King and Philosopher, 1689–1789 (1970) highlights the way the Enlightenment produced “works in which the universal principles of reason were invoked to order vast reaches of the human experience,” Rousseau’s “anthropological history of the human species,” Hume’s “quest for uniform principles of human nature,” “the various tendencies of the philosophes’ thinking — skepticism, rationalism, humanism, and materialism” (152-207). Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (1966) is altogether about how “the men of the Enlightenment united on . . . a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom . . . In 1784, when the Enlightenment had done most of its work, Kant defined it as man’s emergence from his self-imposed tutelage, and offered as its motto: Dare to know” (3). Norman Hampson’s The Enlightenment (1968) spends more time on the proponents of modern classifications of nature, particularly Buffon’s Natural History, but makes no mention of racial classifications or arguments opposing any notion of a common humanity.

kant.jpgRecent books are hardly different. Louis Dupre’s The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004), traces our current critically progressive attitudes back to the Enlightenment “ideal of human emancipation.” Dupré argues (from a perspective influenced by Jurgen Habermas) that the original project of the Enlightenment is linked to “emancipatory action” today (335). Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004), offers a neoconservative perspective of the British and the American “Enlightenments” contrasted to the more radical ideas of human perfectibility and the equality of mankind found in the French philosophes. She brings up Jefferson’s hope that in the future whites would “blend together, intermix” and become one people with the Indians (221). She quotes Madison on the “unnatural traffic” of slavery and its possible termination, and also Jefferson’s proposal that the slaves should be freed and sent abroad to colonize other lands as “free and independent people.” She implies that Jefferson thought that sending blacks abroad was the most humane solution given the “deep-rooted prejudices of whites and the memories of blacks of the injuries they had sustained” (224).

Dorinda Outram’s, The Enlightenment (1995) brings up directly the way Enlightenment thinkers responded to their encounters with very different cultures in an age characterized by extraordinary expeditions throughout the globe. She notes there “was no consensus in the Enlightenment on the definition of the races of man,” but, in a rather conjectural manner, maintains that “the idea of a universal human subject . . . could not be reconciled with seeing Negroes as inferior.” Buffon, we are safely informed, “argued that the human race was a unity.” Linnaeus divided humanity into different classificatory groups, but did so as members of the same human race, although he “was unsure whether pigmies qualified for membership of the human race.” Turgot and Condorcet believed that “human beings, by virtue of their common humanity, would all possess reason, and would gradually discard irrational superstitions” (55-8). Outram’s conclusion on this topic is typical: “The Enlightenment was trying to conceive a universal human subject, one possessed of rationality,” accordingly, it cannot be seen as a movement that stood against racial divisions (74). Roy Porter, in his exhaustively documented and opulent narrative, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (2000), dedicates less than one page of his 600+ page book to discourses on “racial differentiation.” He mentions Lord Kames as “one of many who wrestled with the evidence of human variety . . . hinting that blacks might be related to orang-utans and similar great apes.” Apart from this quaint passage, there is only this: “debate was heated and unresolved, and there was no single Enlightenment party line” (357).

In my essay, “Enlightenment and Global History [9],” I mentioned a number of other books which view the Enlightenment as a European phenomenon and, for this reason, have been the subject of criticism by current multicultural historians who feel that this movement needs to be seen as global in origins. I defended the Eurocentrism of these books while suggesting that their view of the Enlightenment as an acclamation of universal values (comprehensible and extendable outside the European ethnic homeland) was itself accountable for the idea that its origins must not be restricted to Europe. Multicultural historians have merely carried to their logical conclusion the allegedly universal ideals of the Enlightenment. The standard interpretations of Tzvetan Todorov’s In Defence of the Enlightenment (2009), Stephen Bronner’s Reclaiming the Enlightenment (2004), and Robert Louden’s, The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Eludes Us (2007), equally neglect the intense interest Enlightenment thinkers showed in the division of humanity into races. They similarly pretend that, insomuch as these thinkers spoke of “reason,” “humanity,” and “equality,” they were thinking outside or above the European experience and intellectual ancestry.

What about Justin Smith, or, since he has not published in this field, the left liberal authors on this topic? There is not that much; the two best known sources are two anthologies of writings on race, namely, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (1997), edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze; and The Idea of Race (2000), edited by Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott. Eze’s book gathers into a short book the most provocative writings on race by some Enlightenment thinkers (Hume, Linnaeus, Kant, Buffon, Blumenbach, Jefferson and Cuvier). This anthology, valuable as it is, is intended for effect, to show how offensively racist these thinkers were. Eze does not disprove the commonly accepted idea that Enlightenment thinkers were proponents of a universal ethos (although, as we will see below, Eze does offer elsewhere a rather acute analysis of Kant’s racism). Bernasconi’s The Idea of Race is mostly a collection of nineteenth and 20th century writings, with short excerpts from Francois Bernier, Voltaire, Kant, and Blumenbach. The books that Malik mentions (see above) which connect the Enlightenment to racism are also insufficient: George Mosse’s Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (1985) is just another book about European anti-Semitism, which directs culpability to the Enlightenment for carrying classifications and measurements of racial groups. David Goldberg’s Racist Culture (1993) is a study of the normalization of racialized discourses in the modern West in the 20th century.

There are, as we will see later, other publications which address in varying ways this topic, but, on the whole, the Enlightenment is normally seen as the most critical epoch in “mankind’s march” towards universal brotherhood. The leftist discussion of racist statements relies on the universal principles of the Enlightenment. Its goal is to uncover and challenge any idea among 18th century thinkers standing in the way of a future universal civilization. Leftist critics enjoy “exposing” white European males as racists and thereby re-appropriate the Enlightenment as their own from a cultural Marxist perspective. But what if we were to approach the racism and universalism of the Enlightenment from a New Right perspective that acknowledges straightaway the particular origins of the Enlightenment in a continent founded by Indo-European [10] speakers?

This would involve denying the automatic assumption that the ideas of the philosophes were articulated by mankind and commonly true for every culture. How can the ideas of the Enlightenment be seen as universal, representing the essence of humanity, if they were expressed only by European men? The Enlightenment is a product of Europe alone, and this fact alone contradicts its universality. Enlightenment thinkers are themselves to blame for this dilemma expressing their ideas as if “for men of all times and places.” Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), writing at the same time as Kant, did question the notion of a cosmopolitan world based on generic human values. He saw in the world the greatest possible variety of historical humans in different regions of the earth, in time and space. He formulated arguments against racial rankings not by questioning their scientific merits as much as their reduction of the diversity of humans to one matrix of measurement and judgment. It was illusory to postulate a universal philosophy for humanity in which the national character of peoples would disappear and each human on earth would “love each other and every one . . . being all equally polite, well-mannered and even-tempered . . . all philanthropic citizens of the world.”[1] Contrary to some interpretations, Herder was not rejecting the Enlightenment but subjecting it to critical evaluation from his own cosmopolitan education in the history and customs of the peoples of the earth. “Herder was among the men of the Enlightenment who were critical in their search for self-understanding; in short, he was part of the self-enlightening Enlightenment.”[2] He proposed a different universalism based on the actual variety and unique historical experiences and trajectories of each people (Volk). Every people had their own particular language, religion, songs, gestures, legends and customs. There was no common humanity but a division of peoples into language and ethnic groups. Each people were capable of achieving education and progress in its own way from its own cultural sources.

From this standpoint, the Enlightenment should be seen as an expression of a specific people, Europeans, made up of various nationalities but nevertheless in habitants of a common civilization who were actually conceiving the possibility of becoming good citizens of Europe at large. In the words of Edward Gibbon, Enlightenment philosophers were enlarging their views beyond their respective native countries “to consider Europe as a great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation” (in Gay, 13).

Beyond Herder, we also need to acknowledge that the Enlightenment inaugurated the study of race from a rational, empirical, and secular perspective consistent with its own principles. No one has been willing to admit this because this entire debate has been marred by the irrational, anti-Enlightenment dogma that race is a construct and that the postulation of a common humanity amounts to a view of human nature without racial distinctions. Contrary to Roy Porter, there was a party line, or, to be more precise, a consistently racial approach among Enlightenment thinkers. The same philosophes who announced that human nature was uniform everywhere, and united mankind as a subject capable of enlightenment, argued “in text after text . . . in the works of Hume, Diderot, Montesquieu, Kant, and many lesser lights” that men “are not uniform but are divided up into sexes, races, national characters . . . and many other categories” (Garret 2006). But because we have been approaching Enlightenment racism under the tutelage of our current belief that race is “a social myth” and that any division of mankind into races is based on malevolent “presumptions unsupported by available evidence [11],” we have failed to appreciate that this subject was part and parcel of what the philosophes meant by “enlightenment.” Why it is so difficult to accept the possibility that 18th century talk about “human nature” and the “unity of mankind” was less a political program for a universal civilization than a scientific program for the study of man in a way that was systematic in intent and universal in scope? It is quite legitimate, from a scientific point, to treat humans everywhere as uniformly constituted members of the same species while recognizing their racial and cultural variety across the world. Women were considered to be intrinsically different from men at the same time that they were considered to be human.

Not being an expert on the Enlightenment I found recently a book chapter titled “Human Nature” by Aaron Garrett in a two volume work, The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy [12] (2006). There is a section in this chapter dealing with “race and natural character”; it is short, 20 pages in a 1400 page work, but it is nevertheless well researched with close to 80 footnotes of mostly primary sources. One learns from these few pages that “in text after text” Enlightenment thinkers proposed a hierarchical view of the races. Mind you, Garrett is stereotypically liberal and thus writes of “the 18th century’s dubious contributions to the discussion of race,” startled by “the virulent denigrations of blacks . . . found in the works of Franklin, Raynal, Voltaire, Forster, and many others.” He also playacts the racial ideas of these works as if they were inconsistent with the scientific method, and makes the very unscientific error of assuming that there was an “apparent contradiction” with the Enlightenment’s notion of a hierarchy of races and its “vigorous attacks on the slave trade in the name of humanity.”

Just because most Enlightenment thinkers rejected polygenecism and asserted the fundamental (species) equality of humankind, it does not mean that they could not believe consistently in the hierarchical nature of the human races. There were polygenecists like Charles White who argued that blacks formed a race different from whites, and Voltaire who took some pleasure lampooning the vanity of the unity of mankind. But the prevailing view was that all races were members of the same human species, as all humans were capable of creating fertile offspring. Buffon, Cornelius de Pauw, Linnaeus, Blumenbach, Kant and others endorsed this view, and yet they distinctly ranked whites above other races.

Liberals have deliberately employed this view on the species unity of humanity in order to separate, misleadingly, the Enlightenment from any racial connotations. But Linnaeus did rank the races in their behavioral proclivities; and Buffon did argue that all the races descended from an original pair of whites, and that American Indians and Africans were degraded by their respective environmental habitats. De Pauw did say that Africans had been enfeebled in their intelligence and “disfigured” by their environment. Samuel Soemmering did conclude that blacks were intellectually inferior; Peter Camper and John Hunter did rank races in terms of their facial physiognomy. Blumenbach did emphasize the symmetrical balance of Caucasian skull features as the “most perfect.” Nevertheless, in accordance with the evidence collected at the time, all these scholars asserted the fundamental unity of mankind, monogenism, or the idea that all races have a common origin.

Garrett, seemingly unable to accept his own “in text after text” observation, repeats the standard line that Buffon’s and Blumenbach’s view, for example, on “the unity and structural similarity of races” precluded a racial conception. He generally evades racist phrases and arguments from Enlightenment thinkers, such as this one from Blumenbach: “I have allotted the first place to the Caucasian because this stock displays the most beautiful race of men” (Eze, 1997: 79). He makes no mention or almost ignores a number of other racialists [13]: Locke, Georges Cuvier, Johann Winckelmann, Diderot, Maupertuis, and Montesquieu. In the case of Kant, he says it would be “absurd” to take some “isolated remarks” he made about race as if they stood for his whole work. Kant “distinguish between character, temperament, and race in order to avoid biological determinism” for the sake of the “moral potential of the human race as a whole.”

kant-german-philosopher-from.jpgActually, Kant, the greatest thinker of the Enlightenment, “produced the most profound raciological thought of the 18th century.” These words come from Earl W. Count’s book This is Race, cited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze in what is a rather good analysis of Kant’s racism showing that it was not marginal but deeply embedded in his philosophy. Eze’s analysis comes in a chapter, “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology [14]” (1997). We learn that Kant elaborated his racial thinking in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [15] (1798); he introduced anthropology as a branch of study to the German universities together with the study of geography, and that through his career Kant offered 72 courses in Anthropology and/or Geography, more than in logic, metaphysics and moral philosophy. Although various scholars have shown interest in Kant’s anthropology, they have neglected its relation to Kant’s “pure philosophy.”

For Kant, anthropology and geography were inseparable; geography was the study of the natural conditions of the earth and of man’s physical attributes and location as part of this earth; whereas anthropology was the study of man’s soul, his psychological and moral character, as exhibited in different places on earth. In his geography Kant addressed racial classifications on the basis of physical traits such as skin color; in his anthropology he studied the internal structures of human psychology and the manner in which these internal attributes conditioned humans as moral and rational beings.

Kant believed that human beings were different from other natural beings in their capacity for consciousness and agency. Humans were naturally capable of experiencing themselves as self-reflecting egos capable of acting morally on the basis of their own self-generated norms (beyond the determinism which conditioned all other beings in the universe). It is part of our internal human nature to think and will as persons with moral agency. This uniquely human attribute is what allows humans to transcend the dictates of nature insofar as they are able to articulate norms as commandments for their own actions freed from unconscious physical contingencies and particular customs. As rational beings, humans are capable of creating a realm of ends, and these ends are a priori principles derived not from the study of geography and anthropology but from the internal structures of the mind, transcendental reason. What Kant means by “critical reason” is the ability of humans through the use of their minds to subject everything (bodily desires, empirical reality, and customs) to the judgments of values generated by the mind, such that the mind (reason) is the author of its own moral actions.

However, it was Kant’s estimation that his geographical and anthropological studies gave his moral philosophy an empirical grounding. This grounding consisted in the acquisition of knowledge about human beings “throughout the world,” to use Kant’s words, “from the point of view of the variety of their natural properties and the differences in that feature of the human which is moral in character.”[3] [16] Kant was the first thinker to sketch out a geographical and psychological (or anthropological) classification of humans. He classified humans naturally and racially into white (European), yellow (Asians), black (Africans) and red (American Indians). He also classified them psychologically and morally in terms of the mores, customs and aesthetic feelings held collectively by each of the races. Non-Europeans held unreflective mores and customs devoid of critical examination “because these people,” in the words of Eze, “lack the capacity for development of ‘character,’ and they lack character presumably because they lack adequate self-consciousness and rational will.” Within Kant’s psychological classification, non-Europeans “appear to be incapable of moral maturity because they lack ‘talent,’ which is a ‘gift’ of nature.” Eze quotes Kant: “the difference in natural gifts between various nations cannot be completely explained by means of causal [external, physical, climatic] causes but rather must lie in the [moral] nature of man.” The differences among races are permanent and transcend environmental factors. “The race of the American cannot be educated. It has no motivating force; for it lacks affect and passion . . . They hardly speak, do not caress each other, care about nothing and are lazy.” “The race of the Negroes . . .  is completely the opposite of the Americans; they are full of affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They can be educated but only as servants . . . ” The Hindus “have a strong degree of passivity and all look like philosophers. They thus can be educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences. They can never arise to the level of abstract concepts . . . The Hindus always stay the way they are, they can never advance, although they began their education much earlier.”

Eze then explains that for Kant only “white” Europeans are educable and capable of progress in the arts and sciences. They are the “ideal model of universal humanity.” In other words, only the European exhibits the distinctly human capacity to behave as a rational creature in terms of “what he himself is willing to make himself” through his own ends. He is the only moral character consciously free to choose his own ends over and above the determinism of external nature and of unreflectively held customs. Eze, a Nigerian born academic, obviously criticizes Kant’s racism, citing and analyzing additional passages, including ones in which Kant states that non-Europeans lack “true” aesthetic feelings. He claims that Kant transcendentally hypostasized his concept of race simply on the basis of his belief that skin color by itself stands for the presence or absence of the natural ‘gift’ of talent and moral ‘character’. He says that Kant’s sources of information on non-European customs were travel books and stories he heard in Konigsberg, which was a bustling international seaport. Yet, this does not mean that he was simply “recycling ethnic stereotypes and prejudices.” Kant was, in Eze’s estimation, seriously proposing an anthropological and a geographical knowledge of the world as the empirical presupposition of his critical philosophy.

With the publication of this paper (and others in recent times) it has become ever harder to designate Kant’s thinking on race as marginal. Thomas Hill and Bernard Boxill dedicated a chapter, “Kant and Race [17],” to Eze’s paper in which they not only accepted that Kant expressed racist beliefs, but also that Eze was successful “in showing that Kant saw his racial theory as a serious philosophical project.” But Hill and Boxill counter that Kant’s philosophy should not be seen to be inherently “infected with racism . . . provided it is suitably supplemented with realistic awareness of the facts about racism and purged from association with certain false empirical beliefs.” These two liberals, however, think they have no obligation to provide their readers with one single fact proving that the races are equal. They don’t even mention a source in their favor such as Stephen J. Gould [18]. They take it as a given that no one has seriously challenged the liberal view of race but indeed assume that such a challenge would be racist ipso facto and therefore empirically unacceptable. They then excuse Kant on grounds that the evidence available in his time supported his claims; but that it would be racist today to make his claims for one would be “culpable” of neglecting the evidence that now disproves racial classifications. What evidence [19]?

They then argue that “racist attitudes are incompatible with Kant’s basic principle of respect for humanity in each person,” and in this vein refer to Kant’s denunciation, in his words, of the “wars, famine, insurrection, treachery and the whole litany of evils” which afflicted the peoples of the world who experience the “great injustice of the European powers in their conquests.” But why do liberals always assume that claims about racial differences constitute a call for the conquest and enslavement of non-whites? They forget the 100 million killed in Russia and China, or, conversely, the fact that most Enlightenment racists were opponents of the slave trade. The bottom logic of the Hill-Boxill counterargument is that Kant’s critical philosophy was/is intrinsically incompatible with any racial hierarchies which violate the principles of human freedom and dignity, even if his racism was deeply embedded in his philosophy. But it is not; and may well be the other way around; Kant’s belief in human perfectibility, the complete development of moral agency and rational freedom, may be seen as intrinsically in favor of a hierarchical way of thinking in terms of which race is the standard bearer of the ideal of a free and rational humanity.

It is quite revealing that an expert like Garrett, and the standard interpreters of the Enlightenment generally, including your highness Doctor Habermas, would ignore Kant’s anthropology. A recent essay by Stuart Elden, “Reassessing Kant’s geography [20]” (2009), examines the state of this debate, noting that Kant’s geography and anthropology are still glaringly neglected in most newer works on Kant. One reason for this, Elden believes, “is that philosophers have, by and large, not known what to make of the works.” I would specify that they don’t know what to make of Kant’s racism in light of the widely accepted view that he was a liberal progenitor of human equality and cosmopolitanism. Even Elden does not know what to make of this racism, though he brings attention to some recent efforts to incorporate fully Kant’s anthropology/geography into his overall philosophy, works by Robert Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics (2000); John Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (2002), and Holly Wilson, Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology (2006). Elden pairs off these standard (pro-Enlightenment, pro-Kant) works against the writings of leftist critics who have shown less misgivings designating Kant a racist. All of these works (leftists as well) are tainted by their unenlightened acceptance of human equality and universalism. They cannot come to terms with a Kant who proposed a critical philosophy only for the European race.

There is no space here for details; some of the main points these authors make are: Kant’s anthropology and geography lectures were part of Kant’s critical philosophy, “devoted to trying to enlighten his students more about the people and world around them in order that they might live (pragmatically as well as morally) better lives” (Louden, p. 65). The aim of these lectures, says Wilson, on the cultures and geography of the world was “to civilize young students to become ‘citizens of the world’” (p. 8). Kant was a humane teacher who cared for his students and expected them to become cognizant of the world and in this way acquire prudence and wisdom. “Kant explicitly argues that the anthropology is a type of cosmopolitan philosophy,” writes Wilson, intended to educate students to develop their rational powers so they could think for themselves and thus be free to actualize their full human potentiality (5, 115). This sounds very pleasant yet based on the infantile notion that knowledge of the world and cosmopolitanism, wisdom and prudence, are incompatible with a racial understanding. To the contrary, if Kant’s racial observations were consistent with the available evidence at the time, and if masses of new evidence have accumulated since validating his views, then a critical and worldly philosophy would require us to show understanding towards Kant’s racism, which does not mean one has to accept the subjective impressionistic descriptions Kant uses. Hiding from students the research of Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, Charles Murray, Arthur Jensen, among others, would negate their ability to become free enlightened thinkers.

Elden brings the writings of Bernasconi and David Harvey, agreeing with them that Kant played “a crucial role in establishing the term ‘race’ as the currency within which discussions of human variety would be conducted in the 19th century.” He agrees too that Kant’s racism is “deeply problematic” to his cosmopolitanism, and that earlier responses by Kantians to swept aside his racism as “irrelevant” or “not to be taken seriously” are inadequate. Elden thinks however that scholars like Louden and Wilson have risen to the leftist challenge. But what we get from Louden is the same supposition that Kant’s philosophy can be made to meet the requirements of humanitarianism and egalitarianism simply by discarding the racist components. This constitutes a confounding of the actual Enlightenment (and the authentic Kant) with our current cultural Marxist wish to create a progressive global civilization. Louden even makes the rather doleful argument that Kant’s monogenetic view of the races, the idea that all humans originated from a common ancestor, “help us reach our collective destiny.” Kant’s monogenetic view is not an adequate way to show that he believed in a common humanity. The monogenetic view is not only consistent with the eventual differentiation of this common species into unequal races due to migration to different environments, but it is also the case that Kant specifically rejected Buffon’s claim that racial differences could be reversed with the eventual adaptation of “inferior” races to climates and environments that would induce “superior” traits; Kant insisted that the differences among races were fixed and irreversible regardless of future adaptations to different environmental settings. Louden’s additional defense of Kant by noting that he believed that all members of the human species can cultivate, civilize, and moralize themselves does not invalidate Kant’s view that whites are the model of a universal humanity.

So many otherwise intelligent scholars have willfully misled themselves into believing that Enlightenment thinkers were promoters of egalitarianism and a race-less cosmopolitan public sphere. We do live in a time of major deceptions at the highest levels of Western intellectual culture. We are continually reminded that the central idea in Kant’s conception of enlightenment is that of “submitting all claims to authority to the free examination of reason.”[4] [21] Yet the very ideals of the Enlightenment have been misused to preclude anyone from examining freely and rationally the question of race differences even to the point that admirers of the Enlightenment have been engaged in a ubiquitous campaign to hide, twist beyond clarity, and confound what Enlightenment thinkers themselves said about such differences. White nationalists should no longer accept the standard interpretation of the Enlightenment. They should embrace the Enlightenment and Kant as their own.

Notes

[1] Gurutz Jáuregui Bereciartu, Decline of the Nation State (1986), p. 26.

[2] Hans Adler and Ernest Menze, Eds. “Introduction,” in On World History, Johan Gottfried Herder: An Anthology (1997): p. 5

[3] These words are cited in Stuart Elden’s “Reassessing Kant’s geography,” Journal of Historical Geography (2009), a paper I discuss later.

[4] Perpetual Peace. Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, eds. Johan Bohman and Mathias Lutz Bachman. The MIT Press, 1997.

 


 

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

 

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/05/the-enlightenment-from-a-new-right-perspective/

 

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Kant_Portrait.jpeg

[2] essay: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/

[3] Pandaemonium: http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/on-the-enlightenments-race-problem/

[4] open door policies on immigration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Malik

[5] The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race: http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-melting-pot-generation.pdf

[6] welcomed: http://www.britishfuture.org/blog/mixed-britain-will-the-census-results-change-the-way-we-think-and-talk-about-race/

[7] The British Dream: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1843548054/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1843548054&linkCode=as2&tag=kenanmalikcom-21

[8] The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-british-dream-by-david-goodhart-8578883.html

[9] Enlightenment and Global History: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/enlightenment-and-global-history/

[10] Indo-European: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/12/where-is-the-historical-west-part-1-of-5/

[11] presumptions unsupported by available evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

[12] The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy: http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Eighteenth-Century-Philosophy-Haakonssen/dp/0521418542

[13] other racialists: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/foutz-racism.shtml

[14] The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology: http://books.google.ca/books?id=moH_07971gwC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+Color+of+Reason:+The+Idea+of+%E2%80%98Race%E2%80%99+in+Kant%E2%80%99s+Anthropology%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Q9-oKv3Wks&sig=QDcpHumNboU6TrfmWYfZCdjPyss&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rHSOUbebCNWz4AP87YCwDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20Color%20of%20Reason%3A%20The%20Idea%20of%20%E2%80%98Race%E2%80%99%20in%20Kant%E2%80%99s%20Anthropology%E2%80%9D&f=false

[15] Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Kant_Anthropology_from_a_Pragmatic_Point.html?id=MuS6WI_7xeYC&redir_esc=y

[16] [3]: http://www.counter-currents.comfile:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/F9Q4VNXE/The%20Enlightenment%20from%20a%20New%20Right%20Perspective%20(1).rtf#_ftn3

[17] Kant and Race: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/lawrence_blum/courses/465_11/readings/Race_and_Racism.pdf

[18] Stephen J. Gould: http://menghusblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/stephen-jay-gould-myth-and-fraud/

[19] What evidence: http://www.jehsmith.com/philosophy/2008/09/phil-498629-rac.html

[20] Reassessing Kant’s geography: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748808000613

[21] [4]: http://www.counter-currents.comfile:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/F9Q4VNXE/The%20Enlightenment%20from%20a%20New%20Right%20Perspective%20(1).rtf#_ftn4

 

L’esthétisation du monde

L’esthétisation du monde

La conquête par le Capital


Pierre Le Vigan
Ex: http://metamag.fr/
Nous le savons : le monde moderne hypercapitaliste provoque un enlaidissement du monde, une propension à consommer la planète plutôt qu’à la ménager et à la respecter, une tendance à arraisonner le monde plutôt qu’à se mettre à son écoute. Reste à savoir pourquoi.
 
 
 
Déjà, Bertrand de Jouvenel avait remarqué que le monde moderne joue dans le sens de « la fin des aménités ». Ce n’est pas pour contester cela que Gilles Lipovetsky et Jean Serroy, vieux complices en écriture, ont pris la plume. C’est pour insister sur un effet paradoxal. Oui, le capitalisme consomme et consume le monde. Mais c’est aussi en créant et développant une économie de l’esthétique. En d’autres termes, le capitalisme se nourrit aussi du goût et de l’aspiration à la beauté. Le capitalisme exploite rationnellement « les dimensions esthétiques – imaginaires – émotionnelles à des fins de profits et de conquête des marchés ».
 
L’esthétisation du monde, un nouveau cycle de la conquête du monde par le Capital

Le capitalisme a ainsi ouvert un nouveau cycle de son arraisonnement de la société. Il a mis à son service les aspirations à l’esthétique, à l’émotion, au ressenti. En ce sens, il ne se nie pas lui-même, il devient au contraire plus efficacement lui-même. C’est pourquoi il faut plus parler d’hypermodernité que de postmodernité. Le capitalisme artiste se base toujours plus non sur de nouvelles communautés mais sur les individus. Il est fidèle à sa matrice, l’individualisme possessif. 
 
Styliser le monde pour mieux le commercialiser

Alors que la modernité avait opposé l’utile à l’artistique, l’industriel au beau, l’économie à l’art, l’hypermodernité assume le projet de styliser le monde. Toute la stratégie du capitalisme hypermoderne passe par l’appropriation de l’esthétique. Les jardiniers sont devenus des paysagistes, les industriels deviennent des artistes de l’industrie. Il s’agit de séduire en se référant à ce que Marx appelait « les lois de la beauté ». 
 
Malheureusement, nos auteurs notent que « l’éthique esthétique hypermoderne se montre impuissante à créer une existence réconciliée et harmonieuse : nous la rêvons tournée vers la beauté, elle l’est vers la compétition. (…) C’est un homo aestheticus réflexif, anxieux, schizophrène, qui domine la scène des sociétés hypermodernes. » Le malaise est ainsi dans nos sociétés. 
 
Quel est l’avenir de l’esthétisation du monde par le capitalisme hypermoderne ? Plusieurs voies sont possibles. L’une est la poursuite de la déréalisation du monde. L’autre est le retour au réel et le refus de l’hubris. L’avenir reste ouvert.
 
Gilles Lipovetsky et Jean Serroy, L’esthétisation du monde, vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, Gallimard, 498 pages, 23,50 Euros.

dimanche, 19 mai 2013

Les Russes vent arrière

SYRIA1_G_20120207181843.jpg

Les Russes vent arrière

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org/

Observons d’abord, puisque c’est aujourd’hui que Netanyahou est allé rendre ses devoirs à Poutine, à Sotchi-Canossa, que nous avons connu d’autres temps où des problèmes de cette importance et de ce domaine (livraisons ou pas de S-300 à la Syrie où se déroule une guerre qui concerne “la communauté internationale”) se réglaient avec les USA, et où un Premier ministre israélien, s’il avait quelque chose à dire à Moscou dans ce domaine, consultait d’abord les USA et s’en remettaient aux USA. Mais, aujourd’hui, les USA, c’est, disons, l’“isolationnisme-cool”. Alors, Netanyahou va directement voir Poutine.

...Lequel Poutine dirige une puissance qui prend de plus en plus de place au Moyen-Orient. Certains jugeraient que la Russie est en train de reprendre sa place au Moyen-Orient, du temps de la Guerre froide. Nous aurions tendance, nous, à aller plus loin que cela ; c’est-à-dire, envisager simplement que les Russes sont en train d’y prendre une place prépondérante, pendant que les USA s’effacent... Nous détaillons quelques faits qui semblent aller dans ce sens, directement en faveur des Russes, ou indirectement.

• La flotte russe s’installe en permanence en Méditerranée, retrouvant la place qu’y occupait le 5ème Escadron naval en Méditerranée, actif de 1967 jusqu’à sa dissolution en 1992. La décision de réinstaller une unité autonome russe en Méditerranée a été prise en avril et l’on a aujourd’hui des détails sur cette flotte permanente, qui aura son propre état-major, et qui disposera éventuellement de sous-marins nucléaires lanceurs d’engins. (Voir Novosti, le 12 mai 2013.)

«Russia’s Mediterranean task force will comprise 5-6 warships and may be enlarged to include nuclear submarines, Navy Commander Adm. Viktor Chirkov said on Sunday. “Overall, already from this year, we plan to have 5-6 warships and support vessels [in the Mediterranean Sea], which will be replaced on a rotating basis from each of the fleets – the Black Sea, Baltic, Northern and, in some cases, even the Pacific Fleet. Depending on the scope of assignments and their complexity, the number of warships in the task force may be increased,” Chirkov told RIA Novosti.

»The Russian navy commander also said nuclear submarines could be deployed in the Mediterranean, if necessary. “Possibly. In a perspective. They [submarines] were present there during the existence of the 5th squadron. There were both nuclear and diesel submarines there. Everything will depend on the situation,” he said.»

• Il est clair que l’affaire des attaques israéliennes contre la Syrie, puis la décision russe de livrer des S-300 à la Syrie ont resserré les liens entre la Russie et la Syrie. La même chose pourrait survenir avec l’Iran, si la vieille affaire opposant la Russie et l'Iran, concernant une commande iranienne de S-300 que la Russie a refusée jusqu’ici d’honorer à la demande du bloc BAO, était résolue dans le même sens (livraison de S-300 à l’Iran). De même, les Russes ont l’intention d’accélérer des livraisons d’armes à l’Irak, après le déblocage (voir le 27 avril 2013) de l’énorme contrat d’armes russes commandées par l’Irak. On retrouve bien entendu une ligne d’alliance Téhéran-Bagdad-Damas qui se fait selon une dynamique qui a notamment les allures d’un soutien matériel russe actif.

• ... Ce à quoi il faut ajouter désormais le Hezbollah. Des nouvelles sont répercutées, commentées et enrichies par Jean Aziz, journaliste libanais au quotidien Al-Akhbar et à la station TV OTV, dans Al-Monitor Lebanon Pulse du 12 mai 2013, à propos des contacts récents entre la Russie et le Hezbollah et les perspectives qui s’ouvrent pour ces deux interlocuteurs, selon une dynamique nouvelle de coopération. On observera, souligné par nous en gras, l’appréciation selon laquelle ces deux interlocuteurs parlent en termes d’équilibre général dans lequel la Russie serait désormais appelée à jouer un rôle prépondérant.

«For the second time in nine days, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah appeared in a televised speech, knowing that both appearances fall into the same political context — one that was previously discussed in this column to indicate three reasons behind the timing of the two appearances and speeches.

»The previous article detailed the first reason behind the appearance of Nasrallah, which was to confirm the religious tenets and the ideological justification of Hezbollah’s stance on the Syrian situation. The second reason was directly related to the political developments in Lebanon and its neighboring regions, starting with the visit of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to Beirut on April 26 and 28. The Russian minister’s visit to the Lebanese capital after Tehran and Damascus is not without meaning. Clearly, Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have been coordinating at some level and have tackled all the regional developments and stances taken in this regard by any of the elements of this new axis... [...]

»Meanwhile, sources in the know on the results of Bogdanov’s visit to the Lebanese capital revealed to Al-Monitor that the conversation clearly tackled the role of Russia in protecting the forces that are close to it in the region, as well as the importance of facing Washington and returning the balance to the global system in its Middle Eastern side at least. Moreover, both officials discussed the prospects of imposing the demarcation of the international spheres of influence in this region. In a clear and straightforward conversation, they brought up the different as well as matching ideological, economic, geostrategic and security-related interests of Moscow and local forces in achieving these goals.»

• Le dernier point concerne ce qui pourrait constituer un rapprochement entre l’Arabie Saoudite et l’Iran, manœuvre qui ne déplairait pas à la Russie, qui a de bons liens avec l’Iran et des liens qui ne sont pas si mauvais avec l’Arabie. La nouvelle est présentée par DEBKAFiles (le 13 mai 2013), qui suit désormais avec une hargne particulière l’enchaînement des épisodes marquant la dégradation de la position US au Moyen-Orient.

«Saudi Arabia has decided to explore dialogue with its great regional rival Iran for ending the Syrian conflict and assuring Lebanon’s political future, DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources report. They have given up on US policy for Syria in view of Russian and Iranian unbending support for Bashar Assad; his battlefield gains aided by Hizballah and Iranian Bassij forces; and Turkey’s inaction after Saturday’s terrorist bombings in the town of Reyhanli near the Syrian border which caused 46 deaths. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal took advantage of the Organization of Islamic Conference-OIC, in Jeddah this week on the Mali conflict for getting together Monday, May 13, with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi who was in attendance.

»Our sources report that Riyadh’s first priority is to stabilize Lebanon through a Saudi-Iranian entente on political equilibrium in Beirut. The Saudis would next seek an accord with Tehran on the outcome of the Syrian civil conflict.

»The Saudi rulers have come to the conclusion, which the West and Israel have been slow to acknowledge, that since the Iranian-Hizballah-Syrian military alliance is pulling ahead in the Syrian conflict and chalking up victories, they had better look to their interests in Lebanon, which hinge heavily on the Sunni clan headed by Saad Hariri. If they wait till a victorious Hizballah comes marching home and grabs power in Beirut, protecting Lebanon’s Sunni community will be that much harder...»

Le même texte fait état du faible crédit accordé par les Saoudiens au projet de conférence organisée par les USA et la Russie conjointement, notamment à la lumière du peu d’enthousiasme que montrerait Obama pour la chose, – souligné, ce peu d’enthousiasme, par la remarque d’Obama lors de sa conférence de presse du 13 mai avec Cameron, concernant la “suspicion persistante héritée de la Guerre froide, entre la Russie et les USA” («“lingering suspicions between Russia and the US” left over from the Cold War»). Cette remarque est très singulière, dans la mesure où cette suspicion n’est nullement en état de persistance, mais plus évidemment une ré-invention des USA, à coup de lobbies, d’“agression douce”, d’accusations humanitaristes, etc., contre la Russie, alors que la Russie a au contraire depuis longtemps écarté cette sorte de suspicion dont parle Obama. La phrase d’Obama, qui pourrait étonner certains venant d’Obama, évoque plutôt une paranoïa persistante du côté US, cette paranoïa si naturelle qu’elle n’a nul besoin du souvenir de la Guerre froide pour se faire sentir, et qui s’alimente plutôt à une complexité psychologique dont les USA n’ont besoin de personne pour l’entretenir dans leur propre chef... Dans tous les cas, cette phrase et ce qu’elle évoque éclairent d’une lumière moins amicale l’“isolationnisme-cool” dont nous parle Stephen M. Walt, la lumière du désenchantement découragé devant ce qui est effectivement, bien plus qu’un repli tactique des USA, une position de plus en plus forcée devant son propre déclin et l’effondrement de sa propre puissance.

Dans ce cas, il est alors remarquable de voir, devant la perspective du possible échec de la tentative Russie-USA de cette conférence sur la Syrie, un pays comme l’Arabie envisager de se tourner vers l’Iran et, au-delà et par simple enchaînement, en partie vers la Russie, pour trouver une issue de stabilisation à un désordre qui échappe de plus en plus à tout contrôle des acteurs extérieurs. Si elle s’affirmait, cette dynamique ne laisserait ni la Jordanie, ni l’Égypte insensibles, certes... Dans cette interprétation, on note également une considération bien peu amène pour la Turquie dont les manœuvres effrénées de déstabilisation depuis près de deux ans conduisent à l’impasse du désordre sur son propre territoire, chose également reprochée par Obama à Erdogan. (Les USA sont notamment inquiets des grandioses projets turcs de rassemblement d’un Kurdistan, avec ses parties syrienne et irakienne, à cause des menaces que ce projet fait peser non seulement sur l’Irak, mais sur la Turquie elle-même. Mais Erdogan oppose à ces craintes une assurance sans faille de lui-même et de sa politique.)

Le constat est donc que, devant l’évolution de la situation en Syrie, le camp constitué par le bloc BAO commence à céder à des tendances de délitement dans tous les sens tandis que la Russie évolue d’une position centrale d’une possible médiation qui s’avère de moins en moins possible, vers une position d’organisatrice d’un nouveau rassemblement au Moyen-Orient à partir de ses liens avec l’Iran, la Syrie, puis avec l’Irak, le Hezbollah et, éventuellement, d’autres acteurs qui deviendraient des transfuges du camp BAO. Tout se passe comme si le désordre commençait à épuiser ceux qui ont contribué à le créer, avec un éparpillement de ce rassemblement hétéroclite, dont la Russie sortirait nécessairement comme acteur extérieur central au Moyen-Orient. Cela serait une rétribution logique, et juste si l’on veut, du rôle qu’elle a tenu jusqu’ici.

Il ne s’agit pour l’instant de rien d’autre que d’une perspective, et le désordre lui-même est loin d’avoir dit son dernier mot, et sans doute aura-t-il toujours son mot à dire dans le contexte de la séquence actuelle. Mais la tendance générale se dessine de plus en plus clairement, et elle s’affirme à partir du caractère d’insupportabilité du processus d’autodestruction du Système, qui bouscule ou emporte tous ceux qui ont misé dessus (sur le Système), avec certains cherchant d’ores et déjà à sortir leur épingle du jeu. Quoi qu’il en soit, il existe aujourd’hui la possibilité d’un intéressant renversement de situation qui donnerait au “printemps arabe“ une alluré inattendue ; cette possibilité, si elle est nécessairement caractérisée par le désordre évident au Moyen-Orient, le serait surtout, dans ce cas, par la hiérarchie des influences extérieures, avec la Russie revenant en force dans cette région et n’étant pas loin d’être en position de supplanter des USA de plus en plus amers, impuissants de leur incompréhension de la situation, bien plus fatigués que cool finalement. Dans ce cadre, il est possible que l’Israélien Netanyahou parle à Poutine de bien autre chose que de S-300, les Israéliens pouvant estimer eux aussi que leur choix exclusif du “parrain” américaniste devient discutable.

Effectivement, à côté de ces événements qui on leurs significations diverses et parfois surprenantes, on distingue l’apparition d’un phénomène d’épuisement psychologique, se traduisant par une dérive des politiques vers des orientations complètement imprévues. Cet épuisement psychologique est un facteur central de la crise d’effondrement du Système, comme nous ne cessons de le souligner, jusqu’à ses racines historiques fondamentales. Ce n’est qu’un paradoxe apparent si cet épuisement frappe les acteurs périphériques de la crise syrienne, plus que les acteurs directs, parce que ces acteurs périphériques sont directement connectés à la crise d’effondrement du Système. La position de force de la Russie, elle, tient évidemment à sa politique principielle, effectivement appuyée sur le respect et la défense des principes structurants, seul moyen d’échapper à cet épuisement causé par les forces déstructurantes et dissolvantes du Système.

MICHEL ONFRAY contre les dogmes freudiens

MICHEL ONFRAY contre les dogmes freudiens


Pierre Le Vigan
Ex: http://metamag.fr/
 
Fidèle à sa méthode Michel Onfray cherche à opposer en tous domaines – ici la psychanalyse – les « autoritaires » d’un côté, les « libertaires-libertins » de l’autre. On peut le dire aussi différemment : les orthodoxes normatifs d’un côté, les hétérodoxes hédonistes de l’autre. On a compris : ceux qui ont précédé et préparé Onfray, et ceux qui ont précédés les ennemis d’Onfray. Pour être un peu sommaire ce clivage est  éclairant. Il met du désordre dans un faux ordre, travail philosophique s’il en est.
 

                                                                                Michel Onfray et Sigmund Freund
 
Dans Le crépuscule d’une idole, Michel Onfray avait produit une critique radicale – et retentissante ! – de Freud. Il avait certes repris les réflexions d’un Pierre Debray-Ritzen (La psychanalyse cette imposture, 1991) et bien entendu du Livre noir de la psychanalyse (2005) mais avec un écho plus grand. 
 
Otto Gross toxicomane et vitaliste 

Il s’attache à autre chose dans Les freudiens hérétiques. Son but est de défendre 3 figures de psychanalystes fâchés avec Freud. Le premier, Otto Gross, fils d’un criminologue conservateur, se veut révolutionnaire. Il se livre à toutes sortes d’expériences limites. Il oppose le « refoulement toxique du dionysisme individuel par l’apollinisme social. » à la nécessaire libération des forces dionysiaques- ce qui n’est pas faux mais renvoie à la structure de toute société. Il politise et socialise ainsi la question de l’inconscient. En termes freudiens, il prêche la mise à l’écart du surmoi au profit du ça.  Les pulsions primitives et vitales sont donc valorisées au détriment des normes sociales. « Otto Gross (…) ne se contente pas d’en appeler à une hétérosexualité libre, il souhaite également en finir avec la division des sexes et l’inscription des corps dans une logique dite aujourd’hui gendrée (ou genrée), avec d’un côté les hommes, de l’autre les femmes. » On voit qu’il ne suffisait pas de s’éloigner de Freud pour ne pas professer des absurdités ! Otto Gross est trouvé mort en 1920. Un infirmier note : « Le docteur en médecine Otto Gross, âgé de 42 ans et de religion mosaïque, est décédé à 5 heures du matin. Il a couché durant la nuit dernière dans un passage inutilisé conduisant à un entrepôt. Une pneumonie, aggravée par la sous-alimentation, ne pouvait plus être traitée ».
 

Otto Gross

Deuxième figure : Wilhelm Reich 
 
Issu d’une famille juive autrichienne très assimilé, proche de Gross quant aux idées, il «inscrit l’inconscient non pas dans un univers purement métapsychologique, mais dans un monde sociologique et politique. » (Michel Onfray). Autre différence, contrairement à Freud, il soigne surtout des pauvres.  
 
 
Sa thèse centrale est qu’ « il n’y a qu’un seul mal chez les névrosés : le manque de satisfaction sexuelle totale répétée. » Selon W. Reich la « mauvaise sexualité » vient du capitalisme. D’où la nécessité d’une révolution/libération sexuelle anticapitaliste. Il croit trouver l’Eden dans la Russie bolchévique, Lénine ayant déclaré que « le communisme ne doit pas apporter l’ascèse mais la joie de vivre, la vigueur et également une vie amoureuse comblée » (ce qui est peut-être beaucoup demander à la politique !).  Comme Rousseau, Wilhelm Reich croit qu’à l’origine des temps historiques l’acte sexuel était simple et sans complexe. Pourquoi ? Parce que dans le communisme primitif tout était la propriété commune de tous. Wilhelm Reich mourra en 1957 dans la cellule d’une prison américaine. Il avait écrit : « La plupart des psychanalystes étaient eux-mêmes des malades souffrants  de troubles sexuels, et cela n’était pas sans influer sur leur évolution. » (La fonction de l’orgasme).
  
Erich Fromm contre le mythe freudien de la pulsion de mort

Erich Fromm, le troisième hétérodoxe d’Onfray est sans doute le plus intéressant des trois - et le moins malade. Juif allemand, passionné par le Talmud, installé aux Etats-Unis à partir de 1934, il critique la société technicienne et cybernétique, refuse la notion de pulsion de mort telle que l’entendait Freud, et récuse l’hermétisme et l’intellectualisme distanciateur de Lacan et des freudiens orthodoxes. Il applique la méthode nietzschéenne de recherche de la généalogie d’une pensée pour la comprendre (La mission de Sigmund Freud). C’est l’application du « D’où parles-tu ? » à Freud.  Il en conclut que la philosophie de Freud n’est rien d’autre que sa confession et son autobiographie. Pour Erich Fromm, Freud a inscrit toute sa vie sous le signe de l’avoir : « l’argent, la réputation, les honneurs, les richesses ». Selon Fromm la psychanalyse est devenue « un produit de remplacement de la religion pour les classes moyennes, ou tant soit peu supérieures, des villes, qui ne souhaitaient pas faire un effort radical plus complet. » Ce qui n’est pas mal vu. 
 
 
Erich Fromm fait l’apologie de la pulsion de vie aussi bien contre les dérèglements psychiques tels dit-il la pornographie ou le sadisme généralisé que contre les dérèglements sociaux tels la folie consumériste, le culte des gadgets, le nihilisme des valeurs. Toutes idées qui ne sont pas sans évoquer Herbert Marcuse ou Yvan Illich. Michel Onfray conclut son livre par un démontage aussi hilarant que convaincant de l’imposture lacanienne. « La chape de plomb du freudo-lacanisme fut une malédiction pour la scène intellectuelle [française]» écrit Michel Onfray. Une lecture roborative.
 
Michel Onfray, Les freudiens hérétiques. Contre histoire de la philosophie 8, 388 p., 20,90 €, Grasset, 2013.

samedi, 18 mai 2013

The System Against Syria . . . & Russia

Putin Assad.jpg

The Hollow Empire
The System Against Syria . . . & Russia

By Gregory Hood 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

In the wake of the Boston bombing, there was some hope among the dwindling number of true believing conservatives that the long awaited Grand Alliance Against Jihad would finally come to fruition.

The news that Russian intelligence had warned [2] the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and subsequent raids [3] on Muslim “extremists” within Russia prompted a flurry of activity on conservative websites. The emerging motif within the American Right is that Vladimir Putin may be a sinister tyrant and anti-American (and a Communist from the KGB!), but he’s at least a serious and competent national leader who recognizes the threat of Islamic terrorism. The reaction at the grassroots forum FreeRepublic to the news that Secretary of State John Kerry was kept waiting in Moscow was laughter [4], rather than patriotic fury. As President Putin patiently lectures Barack Obama to the delight [5] of conservative chatterers, at least some of the hoi polloi of the American Right are dreaming about the Red Army and the 101st Airborne joining forces to romp through Grozny.

Keep dreaming.

The result of the Boston bombing will not be a Russian-American rapprochement. Instead, it will lead to an acceleration of The System’s efforts to encircle Russia, especially by increasing aid to “rebels” opposed to Russian ally and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

More importantly, it is the foreign policy experts of Conservatism Inc. that are leading the way. Senator John McCain, taking a break from his work pushing a nation-breaking amnesty as part of the “Gang of Eight,” is calling for “game-changing [6]” aid to the rebels in Syria. Senator Lindsey Graham is going further, calling for ground troops to secure supposed chemical [7] weapons.

Meanwhile, among the conservative press, the talking heads are sensing an opportunity to attack President Barack Obama for being “weak.” Charles Krauthammer repeatedly mocks [8] Obama’s impotence in the face of Syria crossing his “red line” by using weapons of mass destruction. National Review has called [9] for military aid to the rebels, but don’t worry, only the “secular,” non-militant ones. And of course, the Weekly Standard moans [10] that Obama has failed to “topple an Iranian ally,” but rejoices that our “strategic ally” Israel has begun bombing the country. If Conservatism Inc. has a core message, it’s that President Obama is not “strong” enough.

What makes it almost funny is that it’s Bashar al-Assad who explicitly laid out what is likely to happen. Assad warned that the West paid heavily for supporting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and it is now supporting it in Syria. The cost will come in the “heart of Europe and the United States.” This is precisely what happened in Boston, when years of extensive American support [11] for Muslim rebels in Chechnya evidently did nothing to endear Chechnyan immigrants to the American way of life, any more than tens of thousands of dollars in welfare.

The truth is that whatever one says about Bashar al-Assad, the opposition at this point in time is precisely who he said it was at the beginning – Muslim extremists allied with Al Qaeda, openly hostile to the West. Furthermore, Assad’s stubborn hold on power is fueled by his stalwart defense of minority communities within Syria, especially Christians. Finally, while the best the United States can say is that it has “varying degrees of confidence” that Assad used chemical weapons, the United Nations is hearing testimony that it was the rebels [12] who used sarin gas on civilians. Not surprisingly, it’s also the rebels who have heroically taken UN peacekeepers hostage [13], to the utter indifference of those who usually care about such things.

American hawks, led by the supposedly anti-jihadist conservatives, seem blithely unconcerned about all of this. Of course, we just saw this movie in Libya. The glorious Libyan revolution led to the outright murder of an American ambassador and other American officials. Only Congressional Republicans seem to care, and are widely mocked by the media for doing so. Muammar al-Gaddafi of course, was a largely secular dictator who had openly declared his allegiance with the United States during the War on Terrorism. This didn’t stop America from helping his enemies butcher him and anally rape his corpse with a knife. Today, Islamic radicals are far more powerful in Libya than they were before Gaddafi’s fall. Bernard-Henri Lévy, the “French” Jew who helped lead the effort to overthrow the government, is today banned from the country because he is a Jew [14].

It’s not about terrorism, or democracy, or even Israel. American foreign policy is already post-American, designed to break down any centers that show signs of independence from the international financial system of Wall Street and London. It is no coincidence that Gaddafi suddenly fell from favor when he began to move away [15] from trading oil in dollars. Syria also represents a territory that still has a degree of real independence from the global banking system. It is for that reason it must be broken. Geopolitically, Russia is the final target, as its large energy reserves and nationally conscious ruling class prevent it from being simply absorbed into the system of financial control that rules the West.

But what do American neoconservatives, the true believers of Empire, think about all this? On the surface, Barack Obama has actually strengthened the “jihad,” presiding over the fall of largely secular governments in states like Egypt, welcoming the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and actively continuing American military aid. Sure enough, accusations that Obama is naive at best and malevolent at worst are a largely consistent feature of the American Right’s take on his foreign policy. However, this paranoia about a Muslim Brotherhood caliphate supposedly uniting the Middle East misses the reality that these states are actually far weaker, and less independent, than they were previously.

A leader like Assad or Saddam Hussein is able to use his personality and ideology to make his regime the focus of loyalty among the population. In Egypt, while the Muslim Brotherhood has achieved political power, it has having a hard time [16] consolidating its rule. While Iran represents a unity of political, religious, and economic sovereignty under an ideologically oriented and permanent regime, Egypt is still up for grabs. Under the “open society,” the controlled media, civil society groups under the control of George Soros or the U.S. State Department, and an army of international activists are free to manipulate the system from the top down. Even if there are short term gains for so called “radical” Islam, the growth of sharia law in Egypt does not threaten the power of international finance, any more than the growth of sharia law in neighborhoods of Copenhagen or Denmark. What does threaten international finance is a nationally (or worse, ethnically) conscious people, united under nationally conscious leadership that is willing and able to wield state power.

On a global scale, Russia is leading this resistance. Putin’s decision to ban the “pro-democracy” groups and foreign activists responsible for the “color coded” revolutions in Eastern Europe marked his transition to an anti-American “bad guy” in the eyes of the media. Whatever his (many) failings, Putin insists on his idea of “sovereign democracy” and the survival of Russia as a self-conscious entity. This is echoed in Assad’s pronouncement that he has no alternative but victory, as if he loses, “Syria is finished” in the same way that Iraq today is simply a geographic expression. Talk of Islamization, terrorism, or who is “pro-Western” or “anti-Western” conceals the real agenda. In the world of the future, peoples are to have no collective existence, aside from a token form allowed to non-whites who are incapable of maintaining any real independence.

While it’s comforting to believe that the American Empire is on its last legs, there’s little to suggest that the geopolitical position of the United States is actually growing weaker. Serbia has long since fallen, stripped of Kosovo, and voted into the anti-European Union after an international propaganda campaign. Iraq has fallen. Syria is on the brink. Despite the drones patrolling entire regions of the world, the American military is actually remarkably restrained considering the country’s actual potential. The country’s current military expenditures of about 4.5 percent of GDP is well below [17] the 45 year average. If pressed, the United States could easily expand its military.

Patriotic American conservatives are the essential bulwark to this system. They fight the wars, as the combat arms and Special Forces are still overwhelmingly white. They provide the intellectual justification for interventions around the world. They salute the flag and promote the idea of the military as an honorable profession. Nonetheless, what is driving American foreign policy is something beyond imperialism, capitalism, or even the frenzy for white dispossession. We are moving towards an end game that is openly discussed and openly defended. That end game is precisely what was defined in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, the “Open Society,” rule by finance and media, worldwide, forever.

Such an agenda has nothing to do with any recognizable form of American patriotism, but this does not stop American conservatives from seeking to marshal what is left of the traditional American nation for one final democratic crusade. As Mitt Romney maintained, Russia is our “number one geopolitical foe.” Perhaps the most important reason that American conservatives must never be allowed to regain power is that they truly believe their own propaganda when it comes to foreign policy. After all, the only things the American conservative movement has to show for its unlimited control of the American government in the early 21st century are upper class tax cuts, and the Iraq War.

Where does leave the North American New Right? The system is anti-White, but it is more than that. As Noam Chomsky said [18],

Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist — just because its anti-human. And race is in fact a human characteristic — there’s no reason why it should be a negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic. So therefore identifications based on race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers, interchangable cogs who will purchase all the junk that’s produced — that’s their ultimate function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevent, and usually a nuisance. (Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky [New York: The New Press, 2002], pp. 88–89)

The critical divide between the System and those forces against it is the question of sovereignty. The System seems to break apart any collective identity or defense by peoples against the global power structure of finance and media. America is the iron fist that facilitates this transition, enabled by the useful idiots of the American Right. Israel, as the nationalist state of the “Chosen” is the one permitted exception, but even their ethnostate may be caught in the larger pattern and break down in the long term. In the end, Muslim or Christian, white or black, you will be assimilated [19].

Russia is not some lost ideal for the North American New Right, Putin is not some nationalist paragon, and Russian exports like the Fourth Political Theory are not some glorious path to victory for us. Nonetheless, the only geopolitical imperative that matters today is the ability of states and abilities to secure an independent existence from this system. Without this potential, even talking about ethnostates and White Republics misses the point. For that reason, states as diverse as Chávez’s Venezuela [20], Iran, and above all Syria deserve our attention. Breaking patriotic American conservatives away from their minders at Conservatism Inc. is a critical strategic objective. The Boston bombing is an opening.

Syria is not just fighting against Al Qaeda and hypocritical Zionism in defense of Christian minorities. It’s fighting in defense of the idea that peoples – any peoples at all – have the right to exist. White American conservatives [21] have to decide if they would rather be the vanguard of the Hollow Empire – or a people in their own right.

 


Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/05/the-hollow-empirethe-system-against-syria-and-russia/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/AssadPutin.jpg

[2] warned: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/April/Russia-Warned-US-Boston-Suspect-a-Follower-of-Islam/

[3] raids: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3013410/posts

[4] laughter: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3016778/posts

[5] delight: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/04/vladamir-putin-lectures-obama-on-radical-islam-during-phone-call/

[6] game-changing: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/05/mccain-syria-rebels-aid_n_3218839.html

[7] chemical: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/28/mccain-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria-the-worst-thing-the-united-states-could-do/

[8] mocks: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/04/30/krauthammer_on_obamas_response_to_chemical_weapons_in_syria_chain_of_custody_what_is_this_csi_damascus.html

[9] called: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347270/al-assad-crosses-red-line

[10] moans: http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Syria

[11] support: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/chechens-and-american-hawks-an-interesting-alliance/

[12] rebels: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505

[13] hostage: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/07/4-un-peackeepers-detained-by-armed-men-in-syria/

[14] because he is a Jew: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/26/prominent-jew-banned-from-libya-he-helped-make/

[15] move away: http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/4630-gadhafi-s-gold-money-plan-would-have-devastated-dollar

[16] hard time: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/70632/Egypt/Politics-/Hundreds-protest-Brotherhoodisation-of-Alexandria-.aspx

[17] below: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/defense-spending-and-gdp.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/03/12/how-health-care-spending-strains-the-u-s-military/&h=340&w=750&sz=14&tbnid=vd4URV-1Uvml1M:&tbnh=63&tbnw=138&zoom=1&usg=__1QyLeRBzLPrBuUM4v-Fc78kZXBc=&docid=KVwmIU-HhnzHhM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sLmLUeyrObO50QHSzoHYBg&ved=0CGAQ9QEwBg&dur=351

[18] said: http://www.newrightausnz.com/2005/11/28/big-business-as-a-supporter-of-anti-racism-noam-chomsky/

[19] you will be assimilated: http://alternativeright.com/blog/2013/4/30/resistance-is-futile

[20] Venezuela: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/03/two-cheers-for-chavez/

[21] White American conservatives: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/11/a-white-nationalist-memo-to-white-male-republicans/

Syrie : Israël joue avec le feu islamiste

Syrie : Israël joue avec le feu islamiste

Ils sont nombreux les « idiots utiles » des fous d’Allah


Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr/

Il est évident que Tel Aviv s’inquiète à juste titre de l’implication de l’Iran dans le conflit syrien et d’un éventuel renforcement du Hezbollah libanais. Il n’en reste pas moins que son intervention militaire directe dans cette guerre civile la transforme en déflagration régionale. Israël prend des risques et joue avec le feu. A quoi servirait d’affaiblir les chiites radicaux du Liban si la conséquence est la prise du pouvoir à Damas par des sunnites fanatiques et proches de la mouvance Al-Qaïda. On pourrait reprendre la formule « ni Allal, ni casher » adaptée de celle de Churchill sur la destruction de l’Allemagne nazie renforçant la menace soviétique « on a tué le mauvais cochon ».
 

Une intervention contestable
 
"Selon un nouveau bilan, au moins 42 soldats ont été tués et le sort d'une centaine d'autres est inconnu à la suite du raid israélien", a déclaré Rami Abdel Rahmane, directeur de l'Observatoire syrien des droits de l'homme (OSDH). Un premier bilan faisait état de 15 morts. Selon Rami Abdel Rahmane, les trois sites visés par les Israéliens "comptent 150 hommes, mais on ignore si tous s'y trouvaient lors du raid". Les autorités syriennes n'ont, jusqu'à présent, donné aucun bilan officiel, mais le ministère des Affaires étrangères dans une lettre à l'ONU avait affirmé que "cette agression avait causé des morts et des blessés et des destructions graves dans ces positions et dans des régions civiles proches". L’opposition syrienne  s’inquiète donc elle aussi de l’intervention israélienne.
 
Le retour des armes chimiques
 
La Commission d’enquête internationale indépendante sur la Syrie, mandatée par l’ONU, a affirmé lundi qu’elle «n’avait pas obtenu de résultats permettant de conclure que des armes chimiques ont été utilisées par les parties au conflit». «En conséquence et à ce jour la Commission n’est pas en mesure de commenter davantage ces allégations», ajoute un communiqué qui apparaît comme un désaveu des déclarations dimanche à la presse d’un de ses membres, le procureur suisse Carla del Ponte, qui a parlé d’usage de gaz sarin par les rebelles.
 

Général iranien Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan

Del Ponte, qui dans ses précédents mandats, notamment en tant que procureur du Tribunal pénal international pour l’ex-Yougoslavie (TPIY), s’était faite remarquer par des déclarations radicales aux médias, avait affirmé dimanche soir à la chaîne de télévision publique suisse du Tessin, avoir vu un rapport sur «des témoignages recueillis concernant l’utilisation d’armes chimiques, en particulier de gaz neurotoxique, par les opposants et non par le gouvernement».
L’idole des traqueurs de criminel de guerre ne devient plus crédible quand elle témoigne en défaveur des «  gentils auto-proclamés ». Y aurait-il une justice internationale elle aussi politisée ?
 

Carla Del Ponte et Rami Abdel Rahmane
 
Pour Damas, les raids israéliens prouvent que les rebelles sont «les outils d’Israël à l’intérieur» du pays. Et «la communauté internationale doit savoir que la situation dans la région est devenue plus dangereuse après l’agression», a déclaré le ministre de l’Information Omrane al-Zohbi. «Le gouvernement syrien confirme que cette agression ouvre largement la porte à toutes les possibilités», a-t-il ajouté. La télévision syrienne a annoncé en soirée que «les missiles étaient prêts pour frapper des cibles précises en cas de violation», sans plus de précisions.
 
Dans sa lettre à l’ONU, Damas a accusé l’État hébreu d’appuyer les rebelles, notamment le Front Al-Nosra, branche syrienne d’Al-Qaïda. De son côté, l’Armée syrienne libre (ASL, rebelles) a estimé que ses opérations n’étaient «pas liées aux raids israéliens ou à autre chose» tandis que la Coalition de l’opposition a condamné le raid israélien mais accusé le régime d’être responsable de l’affaiblissement de l’armée qu’il utilise «contre la population». L’Iran a aussitôt répliqué par la voix du commandant de l’armée de terre, le général Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan, qui s’est dit prêt à «entraîner» l’armée syrienne.
 
Il n’y a pas qu’Israël bien sûr qui joue avec le feu.

vendredi, 17 mai 2013

Robert E. Howard & the Heroic

 

RobertEHoward.jpg

Robert E. Howard & the Heroic

By Jonathan Bowden

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Editor’s Note:

The following text is a transcript by John Morgan of a lecture by Jonathan Bowden, “Robert Erwin Howard: Pulpster Extraordinaire,” given at the 26th New Right meeting in London on Saturday, April 17, 2010. The audio is available on YouTube [2].

Unfortunately, significant portions of the audio were cut off at the beginning of the second and third segments on YouTube. For the purposes of publishing this essay in the Pulp Fascism [3] collection, I also removed some 2,300 words of digressive material. If anyone has access to a complete copy of the lecture, please contact me. Also, if you have any corrections or if you can gloss the passages marked as unintelligible, please contact me at editor@counter-currents.com [4] or simply post them as comments below. If and when a complete transcript can be assembled, we will publish it here as well. 

I’ll be talking about Robert Ervin Howard. A while back, I had a talk about H. P. Lovecraft, Aryan mystic, and he was one of a triumvirate of writers who wrote for a fantasy magazine called Weird Tales, a pulp magazine; they were incredibly cheaply produced magazines in the 1930s, with quite good art, graphic sort of art, printed on cheap bulk newsprint paper which was very acidic and fell apart very quickly. And yet three writers, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Ervin Howard, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft have survived and been inducted into literature. I saw in my local library that Penguin Classics, or Modern Classics, the ones with the grey covers, now include Robert Erwin Howard’s Heroes in the Wind, from Kull to Conan: The Best of Robert E. Howard as a book. Penguin Classics, you see? So it begins as a pulp, and a hundred years later it’s redesignated as literature.

Howard is a very interesting figure. He only lived 30 years. He was born in 1906 and shot himself with a revolver in the head in his car, outside his home, when he was 30 years of age. We’ll get on to that afterwards. He wrote 160 stories, and the interesting thing about these stories is that they are pre-civilized in their settings, they’re barbaric, they’re ultra-masculine stories, and they deal with many themes which have been so disprivileged from much of mainstream liberal humanist culture that they no longer exist.

Howard had a range of heroes and wrote in most popular genres. He wrote to make money, but he began as a poet, and a poetic and sort of Saturnalian disposition influenced his work and his friendship, by correspondence, with Lovecraft, and to a lesser extent, Clark Ashton Smith, throughout his life. He was of Irish descent, and he was born in a town which became a boom town in the oil booms of the early 20th century in Texas. For those of you who don’t know, Texas is enormous. England fits into Texas twelve times, and Britain, eight times. He was born in Peaster, Texas, and spent some of his early life in a town called Brownwood, a quintessentially small-town American, which is the experience of most white Americans through the settlement of Western civilization in North America. The state capital, of course, is Austin, and you have the big cities like Houston, Dallas, and Galveston.

Now, Howard hated the oil booms, and what happened. When the oil boom happened to Cross Plains, a town of about 1,200 with a mayor and so on, morphed into a large, sprawling, lawless place of about 10,000. An enormous number of prospectors and drillers and criminals and people seeking easy money, all heavily armed of course, came in to Cross Plains. The town burst out beyond its limits in all directions. Oil was discovered everywhere. Fortunes were made, and fortunes were lost.

At the time he was born, lynchings were still in vogue right across the South and the ex-Confederate states. Everyone displayed and carried weapons openly. Sometimes the Rangers, as they were called, a man alone in the sun with a rifle, was basically all you had of semi-ordered civilization. People don’t realize how, if you like, wild and open certain parts of the United States were, certainly until the 1860s, 1870s.

The psychological experience of an intuitive and sympathetic and radically imaginative young man like Howard invests the tall Texan story, and stories of prospectors and ranchers and drillers in the oil industry, and Texas Rangers and Marshals and so on, with an added piquancy. His family supported the Confederacy in a previous generation, and he was mildly descended from certain Confederate commanders.

His attitude towards life is expressed in the stories, which is why they survived. The stories are like lucid dreams. You walk straight into them, and the action begins. Most of them were dreams, and in a way, most critics believe Howard’s an oral creator. He’s in the oral, folklorist, and narrative-oriented tradition. He’s a storyteller par excellence. It’s said he wrote at night, and he used to chant the stories to himself, which of course is a very old Northern European and Nordic tradition. It’s the idea of the skald. It’s the idea that things are illuminated to you, and you speak because you hear the voice.

He had a series of masculine heroes beginning with certain Celtic and Pictish/Scotch-Irish heroes such as Bran Mak Morn and so on; Conan, the hero that he’s most associated with, whose name, of course, is abstracted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s middle name. Howard would take from all sorts of roots, many of which related to heroic, Celtic, Indo-European elements which he imagined to exist in his own past.

robEHow.jpgHe was very influenced by G. K. Chesterton’s dictum at the beginning of the 20th century that myth is the commingling of emotional reality with what is understood to be fact. If you mix together eras and peoples, but you keep the emotional truth of the substance of what we perceive their lives to have been, then you can influence the present and the future. It’s noumenal truth, as Aristotle said 2,000 years ago, the idea that certain things are artistically and emotionally true irrespective of what you think about them factually.

His most famous series of stories, the Conan stories that he wrote pretty much towards the end of his life, were based upon a false yet true/factual world history, the so-called Hyborian Age that he created for himself. Maps of the Hyborian Age have been produced, and they are based upon a realistic sociology, ethnography, geological history, and a coherent view of economics. The country of Aquilonia that Conan ends up conquering at the end of the mythos is partly Britain. The Picts are partly the Scots, of course, covered in woad, barbaric, kept out by a wall, that sort of thing.

War is the dynamic of all of Howard’s fiction, and his attitude towards life was conflict-oriented. His stories are described as ultra-masculine and non-feminist stories. Unkind critics say that they’re Barbara Cartland for men, where all women are beautiful, all men are heroic, where magic works instead of science, and where force decides all social problems, and there is a degree to which the genre which he has founded, called sword and sorcery—of which one supposes J. R. R. Tolkien, an Oxford professor, is the senior representative in the 20th century—is an example of the literary and the heroic in contemporary letters. It’s interesting to notice that the early great texts of the Western civilization, Homer, Beowulf, are deeply heroic, and yet over time, the heroic imprimatur within our language and within our sensibility dips.

It’s said that boys aren’t interested in reading at school, and that 80 to 90% of those who do English literature courses in further educational colleges and universities, the tertiary sector, are women. It’s said that men don’t disprivilege literature, and it’s also said in the West that boys get bullied if they’re regarded, as Howard was when he was younger, as sissies because they read too much, and this sort of thing.

I think one of the problems is that literature that appeals to men is often not the concern of the people who run these sorts of educational establishments. If the sort of people that influenced Howard, people like Noyes, people like Robert W. Service, people like Byron, people like Kipling, people like the heroic imperialist literature of William Henley, who was the basis for Long John Silver in Treasure Island, and was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, a man who could go from bonhomie to murderous rage with a click of your fingers, as Silver does in Treasure Island, of course, because he moves from extreme malevolence to a sort of Cockney paternalism in the same breath. Now, if this literature was normative much further down the social and the educational scale, one would imagine that boys and youngish men would be much more interested in literature as a whole.

Howard essentially sold stories from about the age of 20, certainly 19. He started writing when he was 9, and the interesting thing about him is that his stories are not really derivative. There are connections to enormous writers that were prominent at the time, principally Jack London, but Howard emerged fully-formed and had his own voice from the very beginning.

London’s a very interesting figure, because London’s often been associated, truthfully and yet forcefully, with the extreme Left. Trotsky, of course, wrote an introduction to his famous dystopia of American life called The Iron Heel, and yet London, as George Orwell intimated in one of his essays, was proto-fascistic, and was in many ways a Left nationalist, or even a National Bolshevik, or somebody who would be now described as a Third Positionist. London’s positions were those of socialism from the outside, but also a form of socialism, with and without quotation marks, that was Right-wing rather than Left-wing, and was both national and racial. The interesting thing about London’s discourse is the radicalism of the racialism. [. . .]

We had at the last meeting, or the meeting before last, a speaker from Croatia called Tomislav Sunić who wrote a book which I edited a long time ago, actually, called Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age. Among the very important points about that book is his recognition, as a European ex-Catholic in his case, of the Protestant fundamentalist nature of the United States. I think this is a crucial point to understand the United States. The influence of contemporary Jewry in the United States is due to the fact that it’s a Protestant fundamentalist country and many, many Americans really believe in their deep and even subconscious mind that the viewpoint that they are a self-chosen elect to rule by right, by divine imprecation, is so deep in their consciousness, the idea as Pentecostalists sing, that “we are Zion,” goes so far down that the difference between their identity and their group specificity and their militant patriotism and that of a small country in the Middle East, and people who didn’t begin to emigrate en masse into the United States until the latter stages of the 19th century, and only really began to have major socioeconomic impact, particularly culturally, in the first quarter to a third of the 20th century makes these things, to my mind, easier to understand.

Now, Protestant fundamentalism doesn’t seem to have scratched Howard very much, and yet one of his heroes is a Puritan called Solomon Kane, and Solomon Kane, who comes between Bran Mak Morn, Kull, and Conan, is in some ways his first major hero. Solomon Kane is very, very interesting because he’s one of these Protestant extremists of the 1620s—well, they’re set before—but that’s when the movement comes to power in the Cromwellian Interregnum in England, and yet stretches way back into the previous century, and yet in a strange way he’s an outsider, even in that movement.

Kane dresses all in black with a little white sort of a bib round his neck. He’s extraordinarily heavily armed, as most of the Puritans were, had a sword on either side, had pistols in the belts, had a knife in the boot, because you were fighting for the Lord, you see! “I am the flail of the Lord.” They had these endless quotes, largely from the Old Testament, but to a degree from elements of the New, which they would roll out on occasions when they had to justify what they were about to do, and that their instincts wanted to do, in a way that nothing could restrain them.

There’s a famous moment in Northern Ireland, when James Callaghan was Northern Irish Secretary under Wilson in the late 1960s, slightly sympathetic to Social Democratic, Catholic nationalism in Northern Ireland, as part of the local movement was then, but in a very moderate way, and then said in a concerned and perplexed way to the Reverend Ian Paisley, who softened a bit as he’s got older, and in turn wanted to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland before he died, he said to Paisley that, “But we’re all the children of God, Reverend,” and Paisley said, “No! Nooooo!” He said, “We are the children of wrath!

And that is the attitude of those Puritan extremists, loyal to the Old Testament in many ways. Men of a sort of always implacable fury, and elements of their dictatorship, under Cromwell of course, were increasingly maniacal. The banning of Shakespeare, our greatest writer. When an English national revolutionary movement bans the country’s greatest-ever writer, you do begin to think there’s something slightly wrong, don’t you, no? Similarly, the flogging of actors under the New Model Army in Newcastle for performing Shakespeare, these were the latter stages, these were the Buddhas of Bamiyan moments, weren’t they really, of these English revolutionaries of the 1640s, or what was really going on.

Now, the sort of Puritanism that Howard puts into this character is different, because Howard’s character, Solomon Kane’s a loner, a man who always fights for his own cause, but when he hears those almost voluptuous pagan stirrings in the background, it’s always Christianized, and it’s always put in a Protestant context.

Cromwell once had a phrase: “I disembowel you for Christ’s love.” And that’s what he said in the Putney Debates. When the parliamentary side won the Civil War, the whole New Model Army, which of course was a revolutionary army of that time—no brothels, no drinking; in the Royal army, you went to the back, and there was endless entertainment at the back of the battlefront. With the Puritan armies, there was none of that. You went to the back, and there was no drinking, and there was a chap ranting at you about whether you’d sinned that day.

It was less fun, but at the same time, when they raised their pikes together, not in a higgledy-piggledy way, or one bloke at the back didn’t want to, but they raised them together, as one unit. They would all chant, “God is our strength.” Cromwell understood as Shaw said early in the 20th century that a man who has a concept of reality that is metaphysically objectivist, a man who believes in something as absolute truth is worth fifty men. And that’s the type of revolutionary ideology that these people then had.

But at the Putney Debates, there was a debate about how the country should go, and Ireton and the other supreme commanders were there. Under Cromwell they committed regicide of course, they killed the King, so the future of the country was theirs. There was another tendency known as the Levellers, who in some ways of course were retrospectively the first socialists, so-called because they wanted to level down distinctions. There was an even more radical movement called the Diggers that came along later. But Cromwell told Ireton, “Either we hang them or they will hang us.” And that’s the Levellers. And at the end of the Putney Debates, the army moves aside, the Cromwellian regime has been established, and the Levellers are hanging on the trees. So Cromwell had got his way.

The importance of Protestantism to the United States, in a complicated way, is the reason why there has never been an extreme Right-wing movement of any great success in the United States, except in a localized way like the Klan to deal with particular circumstances at a particular time. America, you could imagine, is ripe for such a movement, as Australia always has been, and yet there has not been one, not really. Not a national movement. There were figures in the 1930s: there was the Silver Shirt movement; there were Father Coughlin’s radio broadcasts, which had all sorts of interesting ramifications in American life, as Catholic priest giving the radical Right to essentially a Protestant nation, which of course set up a cultural tension and contradiction in and of itself.

There are also interesting liberal counterparts to this. Most people remember Orson Welles’ treatment of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, when the Martians invade New York, and then he admitted it was a fiction retrospectively, and tens of thousands of ninnies leave New York because they think the Martians are landing. “Gee, they’re up the road!” And they get the pickup truck, and they go. And then they broadcast later that it was all a stunt and it was an artistic show, and people shouldn’t take it literally.

Welles deliberately did that to discredit Coughlin. He said afterwards, “We did it because too many people believed everything that fascist priest was telling them on the radio, so we proved them, don’t believe what you hear that comes out of the radio.” And that’s a purely sort of aesthetic response to the impact that sort of thing had.

robEHow2.jpgYet still movements lie there, Aryan Nations, National Alliance, these sorts of movements, very small, very isolated, geographically and in other ways. National Alliance was quite interesting because it morphed from Youth for George Wallace. That’s how it started, and then it took various transformatory steps until it emerged as a very hard-line group under the late Dr. William Pierce at a later date.

And this culture of extreme Protestantism—which contained elements which are to the Right of almost anything you’ve ever seen, mentally, psychologically, conceptually—seems partly, because, of its extreme individualism, to be incapable of generating radical Right mass movements. Most Americans still adopt a deliberately materialist, liberal humanist and individualist way of looking at life. They divide into two basic political parties that have switched over during the course of the last two centuries. Don’t forget in the 19th century the Republican Party was the party of the nominal Left, and the Democrats were red. The Democrats were conservatives who supported states’ rights—not the right to secede, but certainly the right to own slaves. The party led by a man who’s proud to have ex-slaves in his own family, the present President, would have actually, in a strange sort of way, not been able to join the Democrat Party in the 19th century, and yet the switch around, that you can vote in each other’s primaries, and that “Isn’t everyone a Democrat? Isn’t everyone a Republican?,” hence the meaninglessness of the names, adds to this sort of feeling that you get in the contemporary United States that all that matters is money and social success. America’s very important, because America, of course, dominates this country now culturally and geopolitically. We can’t almost do anything without them, and all the wars that we’re now dragged into are due to American hegemony.

But the repudiation of parts of American power should never blind ourselves to the cultural excellence of what many white Americans have achieved, both for their group and individually. If you actually look at all the radical Right literature, the alternative side of an isolationist and American nationalist posture, there is some great work there by people like William Gayley Simpson, who wrote an enormous book of over a thousand pages called Which Way Western Man? Again, without going on a tangent too much, he’s a very interesting man because he’s an ex-Trappist monk. He began as a liberal and an aching humanist whose heart bled for the Third World and who had all the correct sort of UN-specific attitudes, and gradually he changed step by step by step, and he ended up, if not a member then a fellow traveler, of the National Alliance. That is quite a change. That is quite a leap. But it is also true that tens and tens of thousands of educated Western people who are liberal-minded now will have to change their views, will have to begin to change their mindset in this and the coming generation if Western civilization is virtually not to slide off the cliff. [. . .]

Now, to return to Howard, Howard’s writing, by the end of his sort of period, and don’t forget that he was sort of mature at 22 and dead at 30, he produced 160 stories, 15, 16 volumes basically, and other fragments. There was an unfinished fantasy novel called Almuric, the early Celtic stories, Bran Mak Morn and the others morphed into Solomon Kane. There were associated Westerns and humorous stories. There were some detective stories, but he never particularly liked that genre, although his attitude towards life was hard-boiled. There were also some Crusader stories as well, and some slightly mythological stories about a sort of white man in the East called Gordon, presumably named after the Gordon of Khartoum, but actually an American, and these were the old Borak stories set in Afghanistan, where he goes native and fights along sort of inter-tribal and group-based and clan lines in that context.

Howard’s attitude toward politics is quite complicated and not entirely logical, and primarily emotional. He supported the New Deal because he believed the American economy had collapsed and something needed to be done. He argued strongly with H. P. Lovecraft, he was more of a “reactionary” in these respects, a classical liberal, didn’t like the Roosevelt and the people around him, didn’t like intervention in the market in that sort of Protestant, American way. He felt that you fail commercially, you suffer punishment, because God has chosen that punishment for you. Destiny involves sacrifice.

The irony is that the banks have been saved in the United States by Bush, costing trillions of dollars, but the metaphysic which founded the country would have allowed all of those banks to fail, all of those banks to fail and all those bankers to hang themselves and throw themselves off buildings. That happened in 1929, and then you rebuild quickly, because the pure, American, sort of Randian view is that capitalism is an insatiable animal and vortex of energy, and if people go to pot, if people lose everything they have, if as a trader, an insurance agent I vaguely knew years ago at Lloyd’s, lost all his money in the Names scandal, and goes there on a Sunday and unlocks the door and goes down to the toilets and sits there and drinks Domestos and kills himself and is found by the cleaners, Africans probably, on Monday morning, and his senior partner in Lloyd’s said, “Well, that’s capitalism for you.” And that’s it! What goes up goes down! This was the view that founded the United States

And yet the irony is, why have these Western politicians intervened, why have they saved these structures: few collateral damage moments, Lehman Brothers; they’ve charged Goldman Sachs with fraud. Well, that’s a bit late, isn’t it, really? And yet why have they intervened? They’ve intervened because of the voting danger. The fact that there are radical parties on the fringe of all Western societies, everyone knows who they are, that people could vote for in a major moment of fiscal/physical/moral/emotional distress, and the whole Western clerisy that’s bought into the contemporary liberal package knows that. Many of these parties are actually quite moderate in relation to the traditions they come out of, but they terrify the present establishment that often sees the more populist ones as just the start of something worse that’s coming behind, see?

And there’s also a certain guilt there as well, because these people are well aware of what’s happened to Western societies because they’ve been running them for 70 years. This idea it’s all an accident, “I didn’t really mean it,” and the turning of Western societies into a sort of version of Brasília, en masse with a tiny, little elite at the top that’s creaming most of the goodies off for themselves.

I’m not an egalitarian in any sense, but it’s interesting to note that this country’s slightly more unequal now than it was in 1910 in terms of 90% of all equity and all capital and all wealth is owned by the top 10%, and the top 2% of that 10%, and yet the society has changed out of all recognition, 1910 to 2010. Most Western people born in the first [unintelligible] part of the 20th century would not believe the transformation of the West just in a lifetime, basically, after they died. And it occurred because of the extraordinary wars, largely amongst ourselves, that we fought in the 20th century that also gave outsider ideologies like Communism their chance to vulture-like pick over the defeat and the carrion corpses of what was left.

The heroic attitude towards man and society that Howard’s work depicts exists virtually nowhere except as play and pleasure in computer games for boys and adolescents, in comic books and so on. The areas of life where that sort of ethos remains, the armed forces, the army, navy, and air force of most contemporary Western societies, particularly their specialist or elite forces, in Britain the Special Air service, the naval equivalent the Special Boat Service, and all of those novels, these Andy McNab sort of novels about the heroic and this sort of thing, which are lapped up by a largely male audience, largely male audience. Other than that, there is not really the imprimatur of the heroic in Western life, the extraordinary demilitarization of Western life, hardly ever see a policeman, hardly ever see soldiers. When do you ever see British forces? And that’s because they’re always outside the country as globalist mercenaries fighting American and Zionist wars all over the world. They’re never seen here, and many of their commanders don’t want them here, either, because they regard parts of British life as so irretrievably decadent that they actually want to keep their troops away from much of what’s happened in relation to the society. There are towns in Berkshire where a lot of the military stay, like Arborfield and these sorts of towns, where it’s quite clear there’s a sort of military zone and there’s a civilian zone. You all know what British towns are like on Friday, Saturday night: no police; they’re all in their vans; they’re all in the station; they’re at home; they’re filling in forms. They wear yellow bibs when they’re out, but when you want one, you can never see them, can you?

And a lot of our older people are, let’s face it, frightened to go into town and city centers on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, certainly after 6. And why is this happening? It’s partly happening because the concept that Howard’s fiction deals with, masculinity, has been completely disprivileged, completely demonized and rerouted in contemporary liberal life. Hostility to masculinity, certainly as defined, say, before 1950 is very considerable, and it’s had a very corrosive effect ideologically, aesthetically. Men can have their own pleasures in various zones, which are sort of sneered at and disprivileged, but the centrality of the heroic as a myth for life has largely gone.

The way to explicate something like Howard, as I did with Lovecraft before, is to maybe to concentrate on one of their stories. With H. P. Lovecraft I chose “The Dunwich Horror,” and with Howard I would choose “Rogues in the House,” which was published in Weird Tales in the early ’30s. One fantasy critic has called it the greatest fantasy story of the 20th century, but that’s just one individual’s opinion. It’s relatively early in the Conan series.

Conan is a northern barbarian, and because everything’s fused together in Howard, he’s got slightly Nordic, Germanic, and slightly Celtic traits. He’s an outsider, but he has a clean code of masculine barbarism. Civilization is always seen as slightly weak-kneed and sybaritic to Howard. And yet at the same time, barbarism has its own inner order.

Now, there are counter-factual and countercultural elements there that will be used by social anthropologists in a totally different context, like Lévi-Strauss and others, in the middle of the 20th century, but Howard means it in a different way.

There’s a Left-wing streak to Howard, as there was to London, a siding with the outsider, with those ruined by capitalism, by tramps. London’s book about the East End is one of the most extraordinary books about mass poverty before George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London and “How the Poor Die,” were quite extraordinary works. A poor little hospital in Paris before any sort of socialized medicine, where those who were in the bottom 10%, their corpses were just thrown on the ground! And they died in agony, and they kick you away and put another one on top. This is how the poor die! And Orwell said to this chap in this hospital, “But look at the state they’re in!” And he said, “Well, they gave up slavery. Here’s another batch.” This was the attitude then. This is why things like the labor movement, even in the United States in an attenuated way, were created, to correct that imbalance as it’s seen from the bottom.

The far Right, of course, always wanted not the class war of the contemporary Left, but to socialize mass life in a way that preserved the traditions of the civilization of which we’re a part, that brought on what was excellent about the past and yet realized that the 50% of people who own no capital, the 50% of people who are largely excluded from all center-Right parties’ definition of patriotism, are part of the country, are part of the nation, fight the country’s wars for the most part when they’re asked to do so, and therefore have to be within the remit of social consideration in relation to education, health, and other matters.

My explanation for Howard’s support of the New Deal and that type of politics largely is along those sorts of lines. It’s the sort of apolitical chap who likes country and western in a Midwestern state and supports socialized medicine up to a point, as long as it’s not too costly, doesn’t like Obama, and supports our troops, you see. But it’s in a sort of apolitical zone which has got no real knowledge above that. Some of the instincts are right, but the ideological formulation in which that takes place is likely wrong, because even these wars—do you think Iraq was fought for ordinary white Americans? Do you think Afghanistan has anything to do with ordinary families living in Nebraska or Nevada or Kansas? None of these wars have anything to do with them at all. Even the Black Muslims have worked out that white gentiles largely are second-class citizens now in the society that they created. But that’s another story, and I’d just like to concentrate on Howard.

This particular story concerns Conan from the outside, Conan as perceived by an aristocrat and fop called Murilo. Howard’s a little bit of a Nordicist. He thinks southern Europeans are a bit foppish in comparison to northern Europeans. There’s a streak of this, and some of the society is seen to be Italy, Corinth, Zamora, but they’re not. But they seem to be Italy.

Well, there’s this Italian city-state that’s run by a corrupt priest called Nabonidus, who’s known as the Red Priest. These myths are set, these stories, mythologically encoded, are set before the beginning of recorded history and after the sinking of Atlantis, possibly a fantasy itself. So he sets them far back enough that he can do whatever he wants with them, but at the same time he can import a large amount of retrospective historical insight.

The interesting thing is the Machiavellianism of the politics of these stories. All of these societies are run extremely ruthlessly and are run completely for the power interests of the people in charge. The nationalities don’t really matter, but they are, if the gloves are off, as marauding and vengeful as their own leaders who they represent at a lower level. Truly Howard believes, with the Roman dictator Sulla, that when the weapons are out, the laws fall silent.

Now, Murilo is a courtier, a relatively corrupt courtier, in this city-state, and Nabonidus comes to him one day at a royal council meeting and gives him a small casket that contains a severed ear. And this is a warning, as it would be if a Renaissance prince in post-Medieval Italy, gave it to a rival, and it’s, “Clear off. Get out of the city-state as quickly as possible. I’m giving you one day.” And Murilo wonders what he’s going to do. He can flee, but he’s not a coward, why should he leave his own city? And in any case he’s got lots of rackets on the go, you know, so he wants an out, and he thinks, “I need to assassinate Nabonidus,” who runs the drunken King as a sort of priest/philosopher-king/leader of a native death cult within the city like a puppet master controls his dog.

So he needs a vassal, and he finds it in the prisons of the city where a young, heathen, northern barbarian has been captured and lays there in chains after various escapades and thefts, and this is a young man of 19 called Conan, who’s twice the size of a normal man. All Howard’s heroes are physically enormous, and all incredibly violent, although they all have an honor code of their own which is interesting, particularly towards the end of the story, what you might call an innate code of masculine morality and honor which is part and parcel of natural law.

The Social Darwinian view that was spread throughout mass culture, particularly these types of fictions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is not entirely true as all prisons and all armies testify, there’s a code of honor and morality even in very extreme male behavior. Rapists are always amongst the most disprivileged in any prison. Men who attack and feed on women, for example, in very all-male and male-concentric cultural spaces are always disprivileged, always disliked, and that’s because of innate feelings about how, in a very traditionalist way, what we call partly a sexist way now, men should treat women, and these things pre-date all modern ideas and are partly innate, and in some ways, because Howard is such an instinctualist, he brings these sorts of forces to the fore.

Now, Nabonidus wants Murilo to leave the city. Murilo hires Conan to murder Nabonidus. Nabonidus is [unintelligible]. Conan is in his cell sucking some beef off a bone, and besides, Nabonidus is an upper-class priest—so why not murder him for money, he’s an adventurer?—so he decides to go with Murilo on this plot. As always with Howard, a synopsis never does justice to the sort of the lucid dreaming of the story itself. Howard always said that he was there and that Conan was next to him like an old soldier dictating his stories, some of which will be tall stories as well.

Now, Murilo then hears that Conan has been captured because the guard that he bribed to get him out of the prison has been arrested on another offense. Conan’s actually escaped in another way and joins Murilo later. Murilo, desperate, a Borgia without any sort of a family fortune decides to murder Nabonidus himself, so he creeps up to his fortified estate, which is on the edge of town, described in this Gothic way—it’s dark, it’s sepulchral, it’s moonlit, there’s an enormous dog that roams the grounds.

Remember Conan Doyle’s stories? There’s always this enormous mastiff that the villain has that roams the grounds to bring people down, but Watson shoots on Holmes’ behalf usually at the end. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is extraordinarily amusing because the hound is covered with phosphorous to make it glow in the dark when it races after some poor chap who’s looking back, terrified, on a sort of West Country moor, and yet phosphorous is so poisonous that, the dog licks itself all the time, one lick and its dead. But these stories are metaphorical. They’re extreme exercises in the imagination. They’re not concerned with these pettifogging details of which critics make too much.

Now, Murilo creeps into the garden and, horror of horrors, what does he find? He finds the dead body of the dog, and it looks as though it’s been savagely mauled in a way by something he doesn’t understand, by some weird thing or ape or monster. He then proceeds into the house and finds much of it wrecked. Nabonidus is nowhere to be seen, and one of his servants, Joka, has been murdered.

Suddenly he gets into the inner chamber of Nabonidus’ villa, which is modeled on a Renaissance palace essentially, and he sees the Red Priest, so named because he wears this red cowl, sitting on a throne, made of alabaster, and everything’s heavy and ornamental, a bit like those Cecil B. DeMille films from the ’30s, everything extraordinarily overdone and luxuriant. And he creeps up to Nabonidus to stab him, and the figure turns, and it’s a were-thing, or a monster, something of the imagination. It’s not human at all, simian rather than human. And Murilo faints, and then the story closes.

This story’s in three acts. Traditionally, like a lot of Western drama, like Dante’s Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise, you’ve got this three-pronged triadic element, the thesis, the antitheses, the synthesis at the end. So that’s the first part.

The second part is Murilo awakens in dungeons or interconnected corridors underneath Nabonidus’ house, manse, mansion. He crawls along a corridor and somebody hisses, and it’s Conan. He’s come into the house to murder Nabonidus because Murilo’s going to pay him, and because he’s a member of a cult that he dislikes and so on. Murilo scents his hair, like the young aristocrats of his era, and Conan’s senses are so acute that he detects that with his nostrils, and that’s the reason he doesn’t attack him in the darkness.

They both decide to, they swear loyalty to each other—don’t forget this is an oral culture where bonds and legal sanctions are expressed orally. Howard despised the element of modern life where people say anything they want just to get their own way at any particular time. In pre-modern, say Nordic societies, the oath or something which is given verbally with strength is as binding as any legal document ever could be, even more so.

Conan and Murilo proceed looking for Nabonidus. They come out into the body of the house, which as I said resembles just sort of Renaissance, Florentine palace, and they see Nabonidus stripped, semi-naked and wounded, in a neighboring corridor, and they wonder what has replaced him up inside the house.

And what has happened, as he in a dazed way explains once he returns to full consciousness, is that his servant, who’s this ape that he’s taken from one of the outlying countries in Howard’s imaginary kingdoms, has supplanted him as the master in the house. Howard, to a moderate degree, believed in science, believed in evolution, it was very much almost  a cult then, as was eugenics, and Thak as he’s called, this ape-man who wears the red because he’s supplanted the human he wanted to supplant, has thrown his master, Nabonidus, into the pit and has seized control of the house. Thak sits, waiting for them to come out of the pit because there’s a bell underneath there in the pits that they’ve crossed, a trap basically, and he knows humans are down there, and he’s waiting for them.

Nationalists emerge. There’s an interesting political element here, because Nabonidus is a very corrupt ruler and has the King in his thrall, so nationalists of the city-state—you could be a nationalist and of a city-state because it was the unit of civilization essentially, and a country would be city-states federated together. Attempts to assassinate Nabonidus in a way that Murilo wanted to, Thak deals with them. The story fast-forwards in a very filmic way, because Howard is a visualizer. The male brain is visual and always thinks in images. And these sorts of stories are extraordinarily cinematographical in their nature and their forward, pumping lucidity.

Thak senses that they’ve come up from under the ground, and there are interesting pseudo-scientific elements. The Red Priest, Nabonidus is a scientist and a mage and a magician combined. It’s Religion and the Decline of Magic in some ways if you view it academically. He has this construction of mirrors whereby from one room you can reflect light through tubes that contain small mirrors, and it ends up being able to look into another room, so you can actually look round corners, and they can see Thak, and he can see them.

Because he needs to dispose of the bodies of the nationalists who’ve come into the house, Thak disappears for a time, and Conan and the others seize their chance, and they go up. Nabonidus becomes terrified when all the doors are locked and he can’t find the weapons they need to fight against his servant who’s turned against him.

In the end, Conan has to face off against Thak in this quite extraordinarily violent scene. Howard was one of the most brilliant writers of physical force and conflict between men in the 20th century. There’s little doubt about that. It’s so immediate you’re almost there and it is essentially visual. Conan and Thak have this clash-of-the-gods-type of titanic duel with each other, much like a scene from Homer basically, Hector before the walls of Troy. Thak is done down in the end, and Conan, half-dead, is saluted by Murilo.

Nabonidus then tries to betray both of them, and Conan does for him, really, with a stool. He whips up a stool and throws it into his head, and he falls, and all Conan can say is, “His blood is red, not black,” because in the slums of the city they said the Red Priest’s blood was black because his heart was black, and Conan’s a barbarian and a literalist, you see. “His blood isn’t black.”

There’s an interesting moment when Conan is helped by Murilo because he’s so hurt and wounded in the fight with Thak, and he pushes Murilo aside and says, “A man walks alone. When you can’t stand up it’s time to perish.” That’s not an attitude you heard from the Blair government too often, is it? These are pre-modern attitudes, you see. As somebody on Radio 4 would say now, “But that’s a dangerously exclusionist notion. What about the ill, what about the weak?” And of course in that type of barbaric morality, the strong look after the weak, but only in an assent of being and natural law which is codified on the basis of the morality of strength. That’s what those sorts of civilizations thought and felt.

And the other interesting thing is that he looks down on Thak, this sort of beast, sort of man that he’s killed, and he says, “I didn’t kill a beast tonight, but a man! And my women will sing of him.” And there’s two cultural views of these sorts of things. One is to regard them as remarkable pieces of creative imagination. There is other is to sort of laugh and sneer at them, and think that they represent old-fashioned values that we’ve thankfully gotten rid of, or moved away from.

The stories, with the exception of the Kane stories, are all pre-Christian in the most radical of terms, and yet pre-liberal and liberal secular, which of course in the modern West is what’s replaced Christianity. I would say that contemporary Catholicism is rather like the Protestantism of yesteryear, and Protestantism has become liberalism, and liberalism has morphed, strangely, without the Protestantism that gave it a moral compass, into a form of cultural Marxism, and that’s what we have now.

And yet Howard’s stories are very, very interesting and very dynamic and very much appeal to an imaginative element in certainly a lot of men. The belief in self-definition, the belief in the heroic as a model for life, the belief in strength but with an honor code that saves it from wanton exercise in strength without purpose, and the beliefs that one is part of even a tribe or a community.

In the stories, Conan’s a Cimmerian. He’s from a northern group. He’s always introduced, he’s only got one name, he’s so primal, he doesn’t have any other names. Conan. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, he only had one name. Heathcliff, he doesn’t need any other names. He’s just a force, you see? A force of the female imagination, which is what he is. And in a strange way, the way in which he’s described in that novel by Emily Brontë is very similar to the way Conan’s described, but Conan’s a bit more beefed out, a bit more muscular.

Many films have been made, many TV series have been made, there’s a Conan industry in the 20th century. What Howard would have thought of all that no one knows. He’s there, possibly on a slightly lower tier, but with Tarzan and Doctor Who and James Bond and these other iconic sort of mass popular fantasy figures. Yet in all of them, certainly in this sort of material, there’s a truth to experience, there’s a vividness, there’s a cinematographical and representational reality, and there’s a concern with courage, masculinity, and the heroic which is lacking from most areas of society, and there’s also an honor code, a primitive morality if you like, which goes with it and gives it efficacy and purpose.

The other thing which he differentiates in this type of literature is respect for the enemy. When Terre’Blanche was murdered, I noticed liberals on the BBC giggling and sort of laughing and thinking it was all a jolly joke. These are people who are against the death penalty and believe that murder’s a terrible infraction against human rights, jurisprudence, and all the rest of it. But the sort of cultural space that this work comes out of respects the enemy. Kills the enemy, respects the enemy, which of course is a soldier’s emotion. Many who’ve fought in wars don’t disrespect the enemy. They know what they’re like. British soldiers who’ve fought in the Falklands, American soldiers who’ve fought against Islamist militants, and even some of the militants themselves when they’ve fought against Western warriors, understand the code of the soldier and the code of the warrior on the other side. But many of these men are spiritually, fundamentally similar men in a way, born in other groups.

Men will always fight with each other, and they’re biologically prone to do so. How, in an era of mass weapons of destructive warfare, some existing and others not, that is to be worked through. It is a part of the destiny of the relationship between groups and states. But the hard-wiring that makes men competitive and egotistical and conflict-oriented is ineradicable and irreducible, and modern liberal societies which are based upon the idea of inclusionist love without thought of conflict are sentimental to the point that they will fall apart, bedeviled by their endless contradictions.

And I personally think that if you inculcate yourself, with a bit of irony and estrangement, from some of the elements of the culture of the heroic that certainly subsisted as mainstream cultural fare in our society before 1950, you have a different attitude towards what spews out of the telly every evening, and you have a different attitude towards the sort of culture that you’re living in, and you have a different attitude towards great figures in your own group and even in others, and you have a different attitude towards yourself and the future.

I give you Robert Ervin Howard, 1906 to 1936, a man who walked alone but spoke for an element, not just of America, but what it is to be white, male, Western, and free.

Thank you very much.

 


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Evo Morales zet USAID aan de deur

evo_morales_abril2011.jpg

Evo Morales zet USAID aan de deur

door Walter Lotens

Ex: http://www.uitpers.be/

 

Ter gelegenheid van de 1 mei-viering pakt de Boliviaanse president Evo Morales nu al enkele jaren uit met een verrassende mededeling. Meestal ging het om de renationalisatie van een bedrijf dat in de jaren 1990 was geprivatiseerd. Dit jaar ging het om een bericht van een heel andere orde. Morales deelde mee dat zijn regering beslist had om de USAID (United States Agency for International Development) het land uit te wijzen. Wat gaat er schuil achter deze beslissing?

In zijn uiteenzetting zei Evo Morales dat er “geen gebrek was aan Amerikaanse instellingen die blijven samenspannen tegen ons volk en vooral de nationale overheid. Daarom gaan we deze dag aangrijpen om aan te kondigen dat we hebben besloten om USAID eruit te gooien.” Hij richtte zich vervolgens tot zijn minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, David Choquehuanca, en vroeg hem om de Amerikaanse ambassade in kennis te stellen van zijn besluit. Het Boliviaanse staatshoofd koppelde de uitzetting aan een recente opmerking van de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, John Kerry, die Latijns-Amerika 'de achtertuin' van de VSA had genoemd. Kerry maakte de opmerking toen hij probeerde Amerikaanse Congresleden te overtuigen van het belang van de regio, en te vertellen dat: “Het westelijk halfrond is onze achtertuin. Het is van cruciaal belang voor ons.”

In het verleden heeft Morales al eerder gedreigd de USAID uit het land te zetten. Hij zei dat de programma’s van de organisatie “meer politiek dan sociaal” zijn. Het Boliviaanse staatshoofd beschuldigde de organisatie ook van het “manipuleren” en “gebruik maken” van vakbondsleiders. Het aan de deur zetten van de USAID moet, aldus Morales, begrepen worden in het kader van “het nationaliseren van de waardigheid van de Boliviaanse bevolking. ”
USAID zegt de beslissing van Morales diep te betreuren. “Degenen die het meest zullen worden gekwetst door de beslissing van de Boliviaanse regering zijn de Boliviaanse burgers die hebben geprofiteerd van onze samenwerking in het onderwijs, de landbouw, de gezondheid, alternatieve ontwikkeling, en het milieu,” zei de organisatie in een recente verklaring.

USAID, hulp of controle?

Wie en wat zit er achter die United States Agency for International Development? De geschiedenis van de USAID gaat terug naar het Marshallplan onder president Truman voor de heropbouw van Europa na de Tweede Wereldoorlog en voor hulpprogramma’s aan ‘arme landen’. “Vanaf 1961,” zo schrijft Rubén Ramos in het linkse Rebelión, “is de USAID het belangrijkste US-agentschap voor inmenging in onze landen”. Sindsdien heeft USAID meer dan 200.000 miljoen dollar militaire en economische ‘hulp’ verstrekt aan landen van Latijns-Amerika om de eigen belangen te verdedigen. Die ‘hulp’ werd verstrekt onder de vorm van leningen, technische bijstand, noodfondsen en, vooral, militaire en politieke steun onder de vorm van spionage, destabilisering en waar nodig gewapende interventies. Rubén Ramos: “Programma’s en projecten rond democratie, landbouw, handel, economische ontwikkeling, onderwijs en milieu werden ontwikkeld in landen van de Sub-Sahara, Azië, Latijns-Amerika en de Cariben, Eurazië en het Oosten om, onder het mom van humanitaire bijstand, de kapitalistische ordening te vrijwaren.” Daarvoor werd en wordt nauw samengewerkt met ngo’s, inheemse organisaties, universiteiten, Amerikaanse ondernemingen - meer dan 3500 - , internationale organisaties, maar ook Noord-Amerikaanse en Europese ambassades.
De USAID heeft haar hoofdzetel in Washington-DC maar beschikt zowat overal ter wereld over haar eigen werkarmen. Zo heeft de USAID in Peru een eigen vertegenwoordiging en een eigen website om de wereld in te lichten over de steun van de VS aan Peru.

De USAID-projecten bieden volgens hun woordvoerders alternatieven aan voor de illegale cocateelt, zij trachten een constructieve dialoog op gang te brengen tussen lokale gemeenschappen, de regering, burgercomités en de private sector. USAID ondersteunt ook privaat-publieke samenwerkingsverbanden. Rubén Ramos: “Wat niet gezegd wordt is dat deze interventies in de eerste plaats bedoeld zijn om de neokoloniale dominantie te continueren en om de sociale vrede voor buitenlandse ondernemers te garanderen.” Van bij haar ontstaan heeft de USAID nauw samengewerkt met de US-regering en met de grote internationale organisaties. Een kwart van de organisaties die door de USAID worden gesteund zijn van christelijke origine en vertonen soms een sekte-achtig karakter. Ook ngo’s en coöperaties, belangrijke delen van het maaatschappelijk middenveld, worden door de USAID ondersteund. Volgens Ramos kwam in 1970 nog 70 procent van de buitenlandse hulp van de regering, maar vandaag is dat nog slechts 20 procent en komt het leeuwenaandeel van de bedrijfswereld. Het kan zeer instructief zijn om eens een kritisch oog te werpen op hun officiële website www.usaid.gov.   

Bolivia versus USAID

Al jaren gonst het in Bolivia van de geruchten dat de Verenigde Staten op een stiekeme manier proberen de regering-Morales te stabiliseren. In de zeven jaar dat Evo Morales nu aan het bewind is, kwam het geregeld tot aanvaringen met de VS. In 2008 werden de Amerikaanse ambassadeur Philip Goldberg en andere diplomaten uit het land gezet en werd als reactie daarop de Boliviaanse ambassadeur Gustavo Guzman uit Washington terug geroepen. Intussen werden de diplomatieke contacten tussen beide landen hersteld, maar er is nog geen nieuwe uitwisseling van diplomaten tot stand gekomen.

Jake Johnson, een onderzoeker verbonden aan het Centre for Economic and Policy Research, heeft een aantal documenten kunnen inkijken waaruit blijkt dat ook al vóór Morales aan de macht kwam, pogingen ondernomen werden om de MAS-politiek te ondergraven. In 2008  publiceerde ABC News enkele uitspraken van een Amerikaanse onderzoeker die benaderd was door de Amerikaanse ambassade in Bolivia om informatie door te spelen over Venezolanen en Cubanen die in Bolivia verbleven. Peace Corps volunteers hadden ook dergelijke vragen gekregen, maar die aantijgingen werden tegengesproken door Amerikaanse woordvoerders. Wikileaks heeft in 2009 berichten onderschept die bedoeld waren om de nieuwe grondwet, opgesteld onder Morales, in een ongunstig daglicht te stellen en ook om de MAS in diskrediet te brengen voor de presidentsverkiezingen van einde 2009. Uit een ander bericht uit 2006, net na de verkiezing van Evo Morales, blijkt dat ambassadeur David Greenlee kennis had van het feit dat vele USAID-economische programma’s tegen de politieke richting ingingen die de regering wilde inslaan. Volgens Jake Johnson was er ook een compleet gebrek aan transparantie voor wat betreft de bestemming van de hulpgelden.

Het is voornamelijk vice-president Alvaro García Linera die herhaaldelijk heeft gewezen op de kwalijke invloeden van USAID en andere ngo’s voor het huidige Bolivia. Hij beschuldigde de USAID ervan steun te hebben verleend aan ngo’s die de inheemse volkeren en natuurorganisaties einde 2011 hebben gesteund in hun verzet tegen het aanleggen van een weg door het TIPNIS-gebied. (zie Uitpers nr.134 en 136) Dat heeft in die periode geleid tot een dieptepunt in de populariteit van Evo Morales die zich verplicht zag een aantal toegevingen te doen en enkele ministerwissels door te voeren. In 2012 wees Linera nogmaals met de vinger naar de USAID die hij ervan beschuldigde geld uit te geven om de regering-Morales te beletten de TIPNIS-weg aan te leggen. 

Het maatschappelijk middenveld

Het is dus vooral Álvaro García Linera, een linkse socioloog, die in Bolivia het wantrouwen ten aanzien van het maatschappelijk middenveld vertolkt. Hij schreef er onlangs een boek over met als titel Geopolítica de la Amazonia, Poder Hacendal-Patrimonial y Acumulación Capitalista.

Enige nuancering rond dit standpunt is hier toch zeker op zijn plaats. Bolivia moet op eigen (staats)benen staan en zich niet laten beïnvloeden door Noord-Amerikaanse mollen die via ngo’s aan stemmingmakerij in Bolivia doen. Dat is de houding van de regering-Morales, maar daarnaast is er ook middenveld actief dat een belangrijke rol speelt in de Boliviaanse politiek. Het is trouwens door de nieuwe sociale bewegingen dat Evo Morales zelf aan de macht is kunnen komen. 

Wat is de motor van het maatschappelijk leven? De vrije markt of de staat? Dat was de vraag die zich tussen 1985 en 2006 in Bolivia stelde. Er is intussen nog een belangrijke derde speler opgedoken die niet zo goed past in dat schema en dat zijn precies die nieuwe sociale bewegingen, die, naast oudere spelers als de vakbonden, mee het maatschappelijk middenveld gaan bevolken. Die bewegingen van onderuit zijn een nieuwe, krachtige, maar soms onberekenbare factor. Hoe verhouden die nieuwe sociale bewegingen waaruit de MAS, de nieuwe partij van Evo Morales, is gegroeid zich tot de huidige Boliviaanse staat? Schakelen zij zich in het proceso de cambio in, zoals het in Bolivia wordt genoemd? Is er sprake van onderlinge samenwerking of eerder van een spanningsveld tussen de verzuchtingen van onderuit en de leidinggevenden van een nieuwe plurinationale staat in opbouw? Anders gesteld: geeft Evo Morales invulling aan de regeringsslogan gobernar obediciendo (gehoorzamend (aan het volk) regeren)?

Dat zijn ook de vragen die de Antwerpse econoom Johan Bastiaensen bezig houden. Samen met enkele medewerkers onderzocht hij hoe nieuw linkse regeringen in Latijns-Amerika - Bolivia, Ecuador en Nicaragua - omspringen met initiatieven van microkredieten die ontstaan in het maatschappelijk middenveld. (1) De onderzoekers constateren dat microfinanciering, hoewel het macro economisch niet zoveel voorstelt, toch ontzettend veel mensen bereikt. Voor 2008 gaat het in het totaal om ongeveer 13 miljoen leningen voor een totaal bedrag van 13,9 miljard dollar en 13,4 miljoen spaarrekeningen met een spaarvolume van 9 miljard dollar.
Bolivia is een pionier in microfinanciering. Bijna een derde van het geldverkeer gaat via microfinanciering die bijna zeventig procent van de Bolivianen bereikt.
Toch bestaat er volgens de onderzoekers een eerder ambigue verhouding tussen die sector en de MAS-regering. Ogenschijnlijk zou er geen vuiltje aan de lucht mogen zijn, want de reden van bestaan van een linkse regering en van microfinanciering is dezelfde: de levensvoorwaarden van de armsten en uitgeslotenen verbeteren. Ten dele kan die ambiguïteit te maken hebben met wantrouwen ten aanzien van buitenlandse ngo’s, zoals de USAID, maar ook ten aanzien van internationale organisaties als het IMF en de Wereldbank die eerder een neoliberale politiek promootten, maar nu ook microfinanciering zijn beginnen ondersteunen. In 2011 zag ik in de grote steden van het land de ene protestbetoging na de andere. Bolivianen hebben een strijdtraditie en eisen gemakkelijk de straat op. Wil Morales de kritische ondersteuning van de nieuwe sociale bewegingen behouden dan zal hij inhoud moeten geven aan gobernar obediciendo.

“De hoop voor Bolivia is dat de echte brandstof voor verandering niet het gas is of de regering, maar het Boliviaanse volk zelf. In de woorden van Néstor Salinas die zijn broer verloor in de gasoorlog van 2003: “Regeringen komen en gaan, maar de herinnering van het volk blijft.” Dat schrijft de Amerikaanse activist Jim ‘Jaime’ Shultz, die jarenlang in Cochabamba woonde en het proceso de cambio van nabij heeft gevolgd.(2)
Nieuw links in Latijns-Amerika heeft afstand genomen van het verticale en centralistische voorhoedemodel, maar is nu op zoek naar een nieuwe grammatica van links waarin de realisering van een meer participatieve democratie moet voorop staan. In die nieuwe politieke grammatica zal Evo Morales ruim rekening moeten houden met de nieuwe sociale bewegingen.

Bolivia en Ecuador

rafcorrea

Niet alles wat op dit ogenblik in het Boliviaans maatschappelijk middenveld beweegt, is geïnspireerd vanuit de Verenigde Staten. Laat dat duidelijk zijn. Er zijn ook kritische krachten van onderuit aanwezig die niet op een hoopje met het ‘yankee-imperialisme’ mogen worden gegooid. Dat refrein klinkt soms wat te simplistisch en kan zelfs politiek geïnspireerd zijn om de MAS-positie te versterken. Schouder aan schouder tegen een gemeenschappelijke vijand ageren om de eigen innerlijke tegenstellingen te kunnen overbruggen is een beproefde strategie. Toch mogen we zeker niet blind zijn voor de slagschaduw van de Verenigde Staten die weliswaar minder dan enkele decennia geleden, toch nog steeds aanwezig blijft in Latijns-Amerika en dan zeker in die landen die een totaal andere koers beginnen varen. Het zal dus wel niet toevallig  zijn dat zowel het Bolivia onder Morales als het Ecuador onder Rafael Correa in botsing komen met de Verenigde Staten.

Ook tussen Ecuador en de Verenigde Staten is de spanning om te snijden. In april 2011 volgde Correa het voorbeeld van Evo Morales en zette de Amerikaanse ambassadeur Heather Hodges aan de deur. De reactie kwam prompt: de Ecuadoraanse ambassadeur Luis Gallegos werd door Washington persona non grata verklaard. Aan de basis lagen alweer berichten van Wikileaks die op 10 juli 2009 werden overgenomen door de Spaanse krant El País. Wikileaks maakte een rapport van Heather Hodges bekend over zogenaamde corruptie binnen het nationaal politiecorps onder leiding van generaal Jaime Hurtado die door Rafael Correa werd aangesteld, wetende dat Hurtado corruptieve handelingen stelde. Dat was een nummertje vuilspuiterij eerste klas. Wikileaks berichtte ook dat de VS over informatie beschikte die alleen van binnen het politiecorps kon komen. De VS beschikten binnen de UIES (Unidad de Investigaciones Especiales) en binnen de antinarcoticabrigade al geruime tijd vóór Correa over haar mannetjes. Het is wel duidelijk dat de VS boter op het hoofd hadden, want de Amerikaanse ambassadrice verwaardigde zich niet te antwoorden op de grond van de zaak omdat het ‘over gestolen documenten’ ging. In een persmededeling deelde de Amerikaanse ambassade in 2011 mee dat Ecuador in 2010 nog 70 miljoen dollar ontving waarvan 18 miljoen naar antinarcotica activiteiten ging, ongeveer 4 miljoen naar ‘democratie’ en good governance, ongeveer 10 miljoen voor economische groei en 450.000 dollar voor de bestrijding van terrorisme. En dat zou allemaal wegvallen.

Op eigen benen

Een zelfde chantagetactiek werd ook gevolgd door USAID bij de uitwijzing uit Bolivia. De financiële steun van de Verenigde Staten zou kunnen wegvallen en dat zou pijn gaan doen voor de kleine man, zo beweert de organisatie. In 2008, voor de uitwijzing van de Amerikaanse ambassadeur, bedroeg de USAID-steun nog 131 miljoen dollar voor Bolivia. In 2011 was dat nog maar 96 miljoen dollar en na de regeringsbeslissing van Morales zal dat bedrag nog wel verder afnemen.

Zal dit een erge aderlating betekenen voor Bolivia? Als we naar de macro economische gegevens van dat land in de laatste jaren kijken dat moet men dat kunnen opvangen. Verlies van USAID-gelden zou jammer zijn, maar niet onoverkomelijk. Zeven jaar op rij, de regeringsperiode van Morales, scoort Bolivia  goed. Er wordt ook een groei van 5,5 procent verwacht voor 2013. Volgens Boliviaanse gegevens heeft Bolivia sinds het nationaliseren van de energiesector in 2006 meer dan 16 miljard dollar geïncasseerd.

“Zeven jaar voor de nationalisatie, van 1999 tot 2005, bedroeg dat totale bedrag slechts een twee miljard dollar,” zei minister Juan José Sosa. Investeringen in de energiesector verdrievoudigde tussen 2006 en 2012 van 1,8 miljard tot 5,2 miljard dollar. Dat maakte het staatsbedrijf YPFB onlangs bekend.

Hoewel er nog een lange weg af te leggen valt, zijn die cijfers toch bemoedigend. Ze maken dat Bolivia minder afhankelijk wordt van USAID’s en andere organisaties die niet alleen geld, maar vooral stokken in de wielen komen steken van een staat die zich probeert los te maken van de neoliberale dictaten waaraan het tot vóór Morales onderworpen was.

Noten:

(1) Florent Bédécarrats, Johan Bastiaensen en François Doligez, Coo-optation, cooperation or competition ? Microfinance and the new left in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 33, No 1, pp. 143-161

(2) Jim Shultz en Melissa Crane Draper, Dignity and defiance, stories from Bolivia’s challence
to globalization, Berkeley, 2009, p. 114.

ETRE OU NE PAS ETRE AVEC LES GLOBALITAIRES ?

ETRE OU NE PAS ETRE AVEC LES GLOBALITAIRES ?

Le dilemme des incertitudes chinoises


Auran Derien
Ex: http://metamag.fr/
Pour les européens, deux points de vue sur la Chine sont plausibles : Prendre au pied de la lettre la phrase de Mao qui affirma au moment de sa prise de pouvoir, que plus jamais la Chine ne serait esclave et le point de vue de Naomi Klein, pour qui une partie de la direction chinoise a déjà été convertie aux horreurs globalitaires et marche main dans la main avec cette inhumanité. Ce dilemme conditionne l’avenir de l’Europe.
 
Les Chinois ont-ils une stratégie?
 
Première possibilité, dans la lignée de Mao : Les Chinois ont une stratégie. Elle s’observe tant dans le domaine spatial que maritime puisque, devenue une nation commerçante de tout premier plan, la liberté des voies maritimes est désormais d’une importance cruciale. Elle a aussi une dimension géoéconomique. Alors que chacun sait à quel point la Réserve Fédérale utilise la planche à billet pour accaparer tous les biens réels que les européides leur offrent, les Chinois ont accepté longtemps d’acheter des bons du trésor US qui ne valent rien (ils ne seront jamais remboursés) parce qu’ils mettaient la main sur le savoir technique et scientifique des Américains.
 
 
Sortie du premier Airbus chinois
 
Rappelons que Westinghouse l’a emporté sur les Européens pour la fourniture de centrales atomiques, contrat qui prévoyait la livraison des plans et leur permettra ensuite de les construire sans aide. Les connaissances sont une valeur que les occidentalistes sont incapables de défendre. Ils n’ont pas compris que les financiers se moquaient complètement de la destruction économique des pays. Comme mafia s’auto-proclamant race supérieure, leur intérêt ne recouvre pas celui des populations qu’ils pillent. Les Chinois achètent donc ce qui les intéresse tant aux USA qu’en Europe, et il s’agit de “know how”. Parmi les conséquences, nous citerons la présence de troupes d’élite de la police chinoise partout dans le monde pour protéger leurs actifs. Ils savent que les Etats occidentaux sont détruits  et ces Etats, désormais, ne sont plus capables de protéger les biens des chinois.
 
Ont-ils une stratégie spécifique en Europe ?
 
Vis-à-vis de l’Europe, la première phase de leur stratégie fut de permettre aux multinationales de s’installer en Chine pour économiser les coûts de main d’œuvre tout en continuant à vendre les produits finis aux prix européens. La phase intermédiaire fut le cas Airbus qui a construit une usine en Chine au capital à 51% chinois. Un avion a disparu, pour être disséqué. La fin est déjà connue : la Chine produira tout ce dont le monde a besoin. Les européides se sont transformés en médiocres trafiquants : ils vendent, distribuent ce qui est produit ailleurs... Ainsi toute l’Europe va tomber au niveau économique de la Chine de 1950. Et les cadres, en génocidant leur peuple, prennent la suite de l’inhumanité bolchévique. Les Européens de vieille souche sont désormais dans la situation des Néandertaliens : en voie de disparition et, en tenant compte des différences de comportement selon les peuples et cultures, ils seront remplacés par des Hans...
 
Les Chinois sont-ils acculturés?
 
Ceux d’aujourd’hui ignorent profondément la culture chinoise. La transmission écrite et orale s'est interrompue sous le communisme et la "révolution culturelle" a été mortelle. Ils se fixent aujourd'hui, comme modèle, la "culture" occidentale c’est-à-dire celle des Etats-Unis et même, plus précisément, de la Californie. Les “business school” abondent (en 2010 on en recensait 345). On a vu, aux jeux Olympiques, la vulgarité américaine déborder sur la Chine. La greffe prendra-t-elle? Noami Klein prétend que si.
 

La stratégie du choc : le livre et le film 
 
Dans son ouvrage sur la doctrine du Choc  elle explique qu’une faction de fanatiques a convaincu les chinois de pratiquer ce mélange entre capitalisme et communisme, dans lequel l’Etat « totalitaire » protège une petite élite économique. C’est évidemment le modèle qui fascine les anglo-saxons puisqu’il correspond au discours que tiennent les sectes religieuses : L’Etat totalitaire doit être au service des banquiers et des prédicateurs, ces derniers formant une caste. L’aplatissement du monde est inhérent aux idéologies totalitaires. Selon N.Klein, Deng Xiaoping a invité, en 1980, Milton Friedman pour transmettre la pensée de l’école de Chicago aux “élites” chinoises. La privatisation, là-bas comme ici (et comme partout) est faite au profit des autorités du moment, de leurs amis et familiers, notamment en faveur de gangs qui s’auto-proclament « le bien en soi », sur le modèle des maçonneries occidentales. La Police Populaire armée créée en 1983 est destinée à écraser toute manifestation de rébellion. Et, toujours selon N.Klein, Milton Friedman donna les mêmes conseils aux dirigeants chinois et au chilien Pinochet.
 
Un chemin apparaitra
 
Si les ennemis du genre humain qui ont mis la main sur l’Occident font alliance avec une partie du pouvoir Chinois, notre compte est bon. A l’aune de ces problèmes, on voit clairement la nullité du personnel européen. Ils sont déjà à plat ventre devant les deux pouvoirs : la tyrannie bigote, l’obéissance aux désirs des investisseurs chinois….Puisque c’est la situation de toute la commission de Bruxelles, nous savons que chez les gérants français cela est pire. Le voyage en Chine de François Hollande n’a été qu’une visite de fripier vendant les oripeaux d’un pays. 
 
Les “business school” abondent en Chine
 
Ou alors, cette alliance entre les producteurs-exploiteurs asiatiques et les pillards de la supra classe occidentale débouche, rapidement, sur des catastrophes de toutes sortes : pollution de l’eau avec des conflits pour s’en procurer ; pollution atmosphérique due à l’énergie nécessaire ; production alimentaire nocive et insuffisante, etc. L’écologie fait trébucher l’inhumanité en marche. C’est le charme des effets d’hétérotélie. Travaillons dans cette direction, car là où se manifestera une volonté apparaîtra un chemin.

jeudi, 16 mai 2013

Savants nazis : les Français et les Anglais se sont servis aussi

Savants nazis : les Français et les Anglais se sont servis aussi

« Les quelques privilégiés qui connaissaient l’existence
du Bureau des Projets Spéciaux du général SS Kammler,
admettaient qu’il constituait l’instrument
d’étude et de mise au point le plus avancé du IIIe Reich »

 

Entretien avec Louis-Christian Gautier, auteur de Le secret de l’anti-gravité. À l’ombre du IIIe Reich et de la Nasa (éditions Dualpha)

propos recueillis par Fabrice Dutilleul

 

Vous abordez un sujet délicat : l’appropriation par les Américains et les Soviétiques des savants du IIIe Reich à la fin de la IIe Guerre mondiale…

 

Il n’y a pas qu’eux : Britanniques et Français se sont aussi « servis ». Tous les Alliés s’emparèrent des savants du IIIe Reich et s’approprièrent ainsi tous leurs travaux, recherches… et découvertes ! Parmi ces prises de guerre figuraient les recherches sur la gravité, effectuées par le général SS Hans Kammler qui rendait compte directement et uniquement au Reichführer de l’Ordre noir Heinrich Himmler.

 

 

Comment avez-vous été amené à écrire ce livre ?

 

À la demande du rédacteur en chef de la défunte revue Aventures de l’Histoire. C’est un fouineur qui m’a adressé un ouvrage qu’il s’était procuré je ne sais comment, dont le titre pourrait approximativement se traduire par : « À la recherche du point zéro, le périple d’un homme pour découvrir le plus grand des secrets depuis l’invention de la bombe atomique. » Si, dans mon adolescence, je prenais un certain plaisir à la lecture des romans de science-fiction – en particulier ceux de Peter Randa, père de mon éditeur auquel j’en profite pour rentre hommage – je suis devenu depuis un historien « pur et dur », et c’est d’abord en rechignant que j’ai entrepris de traduire le document de référence, mais je ne prends pas parti au sujet des théories exposées.

 

 

Les chercheurs américains refusaient de reconnaître cette science révolutionnaire…

 

En effet, les Nationaux-socialistes eurent une approche de la science et de l’ingénierie totalement différente de celle des autres, car leur idéologie était également basée sur une vision du monde différente.
La gravité constitue la plus importante source d’énergie potentielle. Un engin qui l’utiliserait pourrait atteindre la vitesse de la lumière. Les Américains ont-ils maîtrisé toutes les technologies tombées entre leurs mains ? C’est ce que chercha à savoir le Britannique Nick Cook, journaliste aéronautique réputé. Son enquête le mena ainsi jusqu’aux terribles camps de concentration qui furent en quelque sorte le « moteur » de la production de cet « État dans l’État », comme Speer avait qualifié la SS. C’est en leur sein que travailla le Bureau des Projets Spéciaux du général Kammler. Les quelques privilégiés qui en connaissaient l’existence admettaient qu’il constituait l’instrument d’étude et de mise au point le plus avancé du IIIe Reich. Pour le constituer, on avait écrémé tout ce que le pays possédait comme chercheurs de haut niveau, sans se préoccuper s’ils avaient ou non des liens avec le Parti. Une fois recrutés, ceux-ci étaient soumis à un secret rigoureux et leurs activités protégées par des spécialistes du contre-espionnage appartenant à la SS.

 

 

Au fil de la lecture, on se passionne pour cette véritable enquête policière…

 

Il faut suivre l’auteur britannique dans l’espace et dans le temps. C’est aussi la personnalité de celui-ci qui, dans le cadre de la « critique externe » du document, a suscité mon intérêt : Nick Cook était consultant aérospatial à la revue Jane’s Defense Weekly. Or, le Jane’s est une référence internationale en matière de défense et d’armement. Un de ses collaborateurs ne pouvait être un fumiste intégral. Mais je dis et répète que je me refuse à prendre parti : j’ai abordé le sujet d’un point de vue strictement historique.

 

 

Vous ne prétendez donc pas révéler le secret de l’anti-gravité ?

 

Pas plus que celui des Templiers, ni l’emplacement de leur trésor, sujets sur lequel j’avais jusqu’alors le plus publié.

 

 

Le secret de l’anti-gravité. À l’ombre du IIIe Reich et de la Nasa de Louis-Christian Gautier, 216 pages, 23 euros, éditions Dualpha, collection « Vérités pour l’Histoire », dirigée par Philippe Randa.

 

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mercredi, 15 mai 2013

Lyon: Conférence de Tomislav Sunic

947251_450366505057602_623989429_n.jpg

Lyon, 25 mai: Conférence de Tomislav Sunic

samedi, 11 mai 2013

Le guerre per l’acqua in Africa

Le guerre per l’acqua in Africa

Secondo un rapporto di Archivio Disarmo, nel continente nero il rischio di “idroconflitti” è particolarmente “grave”

Francesca Dessì

L’acqua è la fonte della vita. Come la maggior parte delle risorse naturali, è oggetto del contendere e alimenta dissapori e ostilità. È soprannominata, non a caso, “l’oro blu”. Per lei sono state combattute tante guerre e ce ne saranno altre nel prossimo futuro. È quanto emerge in un rapporto intitolato “I conflitti per l’acqua. Le aree e i caratteri più significativi dei conflitti per l’acqua in Africa”, pubblicato ieri dall’Istituto di ricerche internazionali Archivio Disarmo. Nel continente nero, il rischio di “idroconflitti”, si legge nel documento, “è particolarmente grave, dato che ogni Paese africano condivide almeno un fiume e quindici Stati ne condividono cinque o più determinando un contesto geopolitico nel quale risulta inevitabile la presenza di attriti. (…)Se più Paesi fanno riferimento alla stessa fonte idrica, l'uso condiviso di questa risorsa può generare competizione e discordia”. L’esempio più eclatante è il Nilo, che bagna l’Egitto, il Sudan, il Sud Sudan, l’Etiopia, l’Eritrea, il Kenya, l’Uganda, la Tanzania, il Ruanda, il Burundi e la Repubblica democratica del Congo. La gestione comune dell’acqua e l’interdipendenza idrologica delle nazioni e dei popoli si ripercuotono “oltre confine”. Il rapporto fa alcuni esempi: “La ritenzione d’acqua a monte dei fiumi limita i flussi a valle, l’inquinamento può essere trasportato in altri Paesi e la presenza di dighe, oltre a impedire il flusso naturale dell’acqua, può causare il deposito di limo nei bacini idrici artificiali, impedendo che questo prezioso fertilizzante naturale raggiunga le pianure a valle”.


Pertanto, si legge sempre nel documento, “la divergenza di potere economico e politico degli Stati che condividono lo stesso bacino genera relazioni asimmetriche nelle quali tendono a prelevare gli interessi dei Paesi più forti ( vedi l’Egitto, ndr) che si riflettono nella scelta delle modalità di uso della risorsa e di disciplina dei conflitti”.


In Africa c’è poi il problema dei cicli di siccità che si tramutano in stragi di carestie. Come si evince dallo studio di Archivio Disarmo “la carenza d’acqua è un problema della vita di tutti i giorni per gran parte della popolazione. In molti Paesi, vista la scarsità delle risorse idriche, l’irrigazione agricola dipende esclusivamente dalle condizioni climatiche”.


Secondo un rapporto pubblicato venerdì scorso dalla Fao, la carestia ha ucciso 260mila persone in Somalia tra il 2010 e il 2012. Circa la metà era costituita da bambini sotto i cinque anni. Dati allarmanti che non tengono conto dell’intera regione del Corno d’Africa, colpita da una delle più drammatiche crisi di siccità degli ultimi vent’anni, e di quella del Sahel.
“Con la domanda crescente e una storia di cattiva gestione delle risorse di molti governi africani” precisa il rapporto di Archivio Disarmo “i conflitti sembrano quasi inevitabili, alimentati, oltre che dalla ineguale distribuzione delle risorse idriche tra i Paesi, anche, a livello locale, dalla privatizzazione delle risorse idriche, dall’inquinamento massiccio delle falde acquifere dovuto allo sfruttamento del suolo da parte delle multinazionali del petrolio e dal rancore delle molte persone sfollate a causa delle dighe lungo i fiumi”. È il caso del Delta del Niger, la regione meridionale della Nigeria, dove le fuoriuscite di petrolio dagli oleodotti e la pratica di “gas flaring” (un processo in cui il gas che fuoriesce dai giacimenti viene bruciato a cielo aperto) hanno devastato l’ecosistema fluviale, distrutto la pesca e reso imbevibile l’acqua. Per quanto riguarda le dighe, l’esempio più lampante è quella dell’Etiopia, dove il governo di Addisd Abeba sta sfrattando migliaia di indigeni dalle loro terre nella valle dell’Omo per la costruzione della mega-diga, che si chiama Gilgel Gibe III, e per la vendita delle terre fertili alle multinazionali.

Secondo lo studio di Archivio Disarmo, i conflitti possono essere generati “anche per l’utilizzo della falde freatiche, che contengono oltre il 90% dell’acqua dolce allo stato liquido a livello mondiale, quando queste si snodano sotto dei confini statali. Queste riserve oggi sono oggetto di uno sfruttamento sempre più intenso nelle zone aride del mondo”. Si fa l’esempio, nel rapporto, del più grande sistema acquifero detto “Arenaria nubiana” che attraversa un’area di oltre due milioni di chilometri quadrati compresi tra Ciad, Egitto, Libia e Sudan. “Esso contiene grandi quantità di acque sotterranee dolci non rinnovabili perché risalenti a migliaia di anni fa durante climi molto più umidi”.


“I principali conflitti e le contese per l'acqua in Africa - prosegue lo studio - hanno inevitabilmente luogo nelle aree dei bacini dei principali fiumi del continente. (…) Di solito al primo stadio della disputa uno dei Paesi beneficiari delle fonti idriche comuni intraprende un’azione unilaterale di sfruttamento con progetti che intervengono sui corsi d'acqua: ciò causa la protesta degli altri Paesi che vedono intaccate le loro risorse idriche e possono far seguire vere e proprie condizioni di ostilità, mentre nell’ultima fase i Paesi in conflitto riprendono i contatti diplomatici e si sforzano di trovare lente e complesse risoluzioni”.
L’esempio più naturale è forse quello del Nilo. Uno dei fiumi più lunghi al mondo ( al secondo posto, dopo il Rio delle Amazzoni), che ha dato la vita all’Egitto con le sue piene periodiche. Eppure il Nilo nasce in Sudan, dall’unione delle acque del Nilo Azzurro e del Nilo Bianco, che a loro volta nascono rispettivamente dal Lago Tana in Etiopia e dal Lago Vittoria, le cui acque attraversano i confini di Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania. Ognuno di questi Paesi ha il diritto sovrano di poter gestire le acque del fiume, costruendo dighe o altri progetti. Ma non sulla carta, in quanto violerebbero gli accordi internazionali sulle acque del Nilo, del tutto favorevoli all’Egitto.


Il primo accordo sulle acque del Nilo è stato firmato nel 1929 da Egitto e Gran Bretagna, che agiva in nome delle sue colonie dell’Africa orientale. È poi stato in parte rinegoziato nel 1959, poco prima dell’inizio dei lavori per la grande diga di Assuan, da Egitto e Sudan ormai indipendenti, dando ai due Stati rispettivamente 55,5 e 18,5 miliardi di metri cubi d’acqua all’anno. Ma tutti gli altri Paesi non hanno partecipato alla spartizione. E ormai da anni chiedono, in particolare Tanzania e Etiopia, di poter riaprire la partita negoziale per stabilire delle quote più eque di utilizzo delle acque.
 


07 Maggio 2013 12:00:00 - http://rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=20724

vendredi, 10 mai 2013

Italia sotto attacco

Italia sotto attacco

Marco della Luna: quinte colonne della finanza internazionale presenti nel governo

Federico Dal Cortivo

Federico Dal Cortivo ha intervistato Marco Della Luna, autore del libro “Traditori al governo? Artefici, complici e strategie della nostra rovina”. L’Italia è oramai da anni sotto attacco, non militare, non ve ne è bisogno essendo la penisola dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale occupata militarmente dagli Stati Uniti, ma economicamente.Gli obiettivi fin troppo chiari: distruggere completamente il sistema Italia che era fatto anche d’imprese anche a partecipazione statale, lo Stato sociale, le regole del mondo del lavoro, la previdenza pubblica e la sanità, la scuola e l’università dello Stato e infine mettere le mani sul nostro patrimonio economico, colonizzando definitivamente la penisola.
 
Avv. Della Luna lei ha recentemente pubblicato un saggio da titolo eloquente, “Traditori al governo”, nel quale analizza in modo esauriente le dinamiche e i personaggi che hanno portato la nostra nazione al punto in cui si trova oggi dopo l’ultimo governo tecnico di Mario Monti . Quali sono stati a suo avviso i passaggi fondamentali che ci hanno portato alla situazione attuale di grave crisi economica?
Le principali tappe della rovina voluta, e finalizzata a dissolvere il tessuto produttivo del Paese, desertificandolo industrialmente e assoggettandolo alla gestione via centrali bancarie fuori dai suoi confini, onde farne territorio di conquista per capitali stranieri, sono i seguenti:
- la progressiva e totale privatizzazione-divorzio dal Ministero del Tesoro della proprietà e della gestione della Banca d’Italia, con l’affidamento ai mercati speculativi del nostro debito pubblico e del finanziamento dello Stato (operazione avviata con Ciampi e Andreatta negli anni Ottanta);
- l’immediato, conseguente raddoppio del debito pubblico (da 60 a 120% del pil) a causa della moltiplicazione dei tassi, e la creazione di una ricattabilità politica strutturale del Paese da parte della finanza privata;
- la svendita agli amici/complici e ai più ricchi e potenti, stranieri e italiani, delle industrie che facevano capo allo Stato e che erano le più temibili concorrenti per le grandi industrie straniere;
- la privatizzazione, con modalità molto “riservate”, ma col favore di quasi tutto l’arco politico, della Banca d’Italia per mezzo della privatizzazione delle banche di credito pubblico (Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banco di Roma, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Credito Italiano, con le loro quote di proprietà della Banca d’Italia);
- la riforma Draghi-Prodi che nel 1999 ha autorizzato le banche di credito e risparmio alle scommesse speculative in derivati usando i soldi dei risparmiatori e alle cartolarizzazioni di mutui anche fasulli, come i subprime loans americani;
- l’apertura delle frontiere alla concorrenza sleale dei Paesi che producono schiavizzando i lavoratori e bruciando l’ambiente;
- l’adesione a tre successivi sistemi monetari – negli anni Settanta, Ottanta e Novanta – che impedivano gli aggiustamenti fisiologici dei cambi tra le valute dei paesi partecipanti – anche l’Euro non è una moneta, ma il cambio fisso tra le preesistenti monete – con l’effetto di far perdere competitività, industrie e capitali ai paesi meno competitivi in favore di quelli più competitivi, che quindi accumulano crediti verso i primi, fino a dominarli e commissariarli.
Da ultimo, le misure fiscali del governo Monti-Napolitano-ABC, che, tra le altre cose, hanno depresso i consumi,hanno messo in fuga verso l’estero centinaia di miliardi, svuotando il Paese di liquidità; hanno distrutto il 25% del valore del patrimonio immobiliare italiano, paralizzato il mercato immobiliare così che imprese e famiglie non possono più usare gli immobili per ottenere credito, e l’economia è rimasta senza liquidità, con insolvenze che schizzano al 30% e oltre..
 
Nel suo libro lei parla senza mezzi termini di “tradimento”, di quinte colonne che, neppure camuffate, operano all’interno dei governi per agevolare l’opera di conquista economica, che si traduce anche in politica, dell’Italia. Personaggi che devono avere dei requisiti ben precisi a suo avviso, ce ne può parlare?
Ma io nego che siano definibili “traditori”. Sono piuttosto definibili “nemici”, perché fanno gli interessi stranieri contro quelli nazionali, in modo scoperto. Definisco traditori, invece, i dirigenti dell’ex PCI che sono passati al servizio del capitalismo finanziario sregolato e collaborano con esso alla costruzione di una società e di un nuovo ordinamento nazionale e mondiale al servizio di esso, tradendo il loro elettorato. A dirla tutta, però, non ci sono nemici né traditori: l’Italia è un Paese tanto radicalmente mal assortito e tanto irrimediabilmente entropizzato, che l’unica cosa che razionalmente se ne può fare è ciò che quei signori ne stanno facendo, lasciando ai giovani, ai ricercatori, agli imprenditori la possibilità di emigrare verso paesi più funzionanti. Quindi sono assolti, anche moralmente.
 
Ci dica di Mario Monti e dell’altro Mario, quel Draghi che regge la BCE. Ambedue hanno prestato i loro servizi… alla stessa banca d’affari, la Goldman Sachs. A quali poteri, economici e non, rispondono realmente questi figuri? Per il primo si può ipotizzare oggi il reato di Alto Tradimento?
Per quali interessi lavorino è nella loro storia obiettiva… non è un mistero. Ciò vale anche per Romano Prodi, altra carriera con Goldman Sachs: quando non era suo advisor, era al governo e la nominava advisor del governo per le privatizzazioni… pensiamo specialmente a quella della Banca d’Italia… sono tutte storie di vita e lavoro convergenti… dirlo ieri poteva suonare ardito e fantasioso, dirlo oggi suona per contro ovvio. Il reato di alto tradimento, previsto dall’art. 77 del Codice Penale Militare di Pace, presuppone che l’autore del fatto sia un militare; altra ipotesi di questo reato è quella enunciata dall’art. 90 della costituzione, in relazione al solo capo dello Stato. Quindi un civile in generale, e in particolare un premier, può commettere il reato di alto tradimento solo in concorso o con un militare o col capo dello Stato. Altrimenti, a un civile diverso dal capo dello Stato si possono ipotizzare altri reati, di attentato alla Costituzione e all’indipendenza della Repubblica, commessi con la violenza consistita nel sottoporre il Paese e il popolo a gravi sofferenze e minacce economiche per indurlo a modificare il suo ordinamento costituzionale e a cedere la sua sovranità sancita dall’art. 1 della Costituzione.
 
E veniamo al Presidente Giorgio Napolitano, ha favorito la caduta dell’ultimo governo Berlusconi, posto sotto ricatto dalla famosa lettera della BCE ,con la quali si ordinava all’Italia di prendere tutta una serie di misure antisociali per favorire i “mercati”. Che ruolo ha avuto e ha tutt’ora colui che fin dai tempi del PCI aveva ottimi rapporti con gli Stati Uniti e quali sono i suoi legami con i poteri finanziari e massonici?
Dico che non so se e che legami abbia coi poteri finanziari forti e con le massonerie. E direi così anche se li conoscessi. Quando si parla di un presidente della Repubblica, bisogna stare attenti. A meno che si parli da un Paese estero, sotto la protezione di un’altra bandiera. Da dove sono, posso dire che egli si intende di macroeconomia, quindi capiva e capisce ciò che stava e sta avvenendo, e che effetti hanno certe manovre.
 
Per un attimo un passo indietro, certe cose non sono solo di oggi come lei ben saprà. Come giudica i precedenti governi, sia di centrosinistra sia di centrodestra, che nulla hanno fatto per tutelare gli interessi nazionali negli ultimi decenni? Si potrebbe, a suo avviso, far partire la loro “negligenza” (ma meglio starebbe il termine “tradimento” degli interessi nazionali) da quella famosa riunione a bordo del panfilo reale Britannia al largo di Civitavecchia nel giugno 1992?
 
Facendo seguito alla mia prima risposta direi che la partitocrazia italiana, complessivamente, dalla fine degli anni ‘70, lavora per rendere il Paese territorio di conquista per i capitali stranieri, come ho già detto. Ciò ha fatto e sta facendo soprattutto la sinistra sotto la copertura di due concetti, quelli del riformismo e dell’europeismo.
 
E veniamo alla cura proposta dalle teste d’uovo di Bruxelles, del FMI e dalla BCE: pareggio di bilancio, privatizzazioni, tagli alla sanità, alla scuola, alle pensioni, riforma del lavoro ecc. Queste cose dove sono state messe in pratica non hanno certo portato prosperità per i popoli, bensì solo per i cosiddetti mercati, che non sono di certo un entità aliena. Ce ne può parlare?
La parola “riformismo”, di cui tutti si riempiono oggi la bocca, ha avuto, dopo la metà degli anni ‘70, un’inversione di significato: dapprima, dalla seconda rivoluzione industriale, e anche nella Carta Costituzionale del 1948, e ancora nello Statuto dei Lavoratori, “riformismo” significava riforma della proprietà agraria per porre fine allo sfruttamento dei contadini da parte dei latifondisti; significava diritti sindacali, previdenziali e di sciopero per por fine allo sfruttamento degli operai da parte dei grandi imprenditori; significava contrastare le sperequazioni di reddito, diritti e opportunità tra lavoratori e capitale finanziario; significava consapevolezza del crescente strapotere delle corporations e del capitalismo rispetto ai cittadini, ai lavoratori, agli elettori, ai risparmiatori, ai piccoli proprietari, degli invalidi (uno strapotere che oggi è moltiplicato dalla globalizzazione e dal carattere apolide della grande finanza). Era un riformismo per la solidarietà, l’equa distribuzione delle opportunità e del reddito, l’accessibilità al lavoro e alla proprietà privata. Da tutto ciò l’art. 1 con la Repubblica fondata sul lavoro; l’art. 3 con la parità dei cittadini e l’obbligo di rimuovere gli ostacoli anche economici che, di fatto, limitano questa parità; gli artt. 35-40 con la tutela del lavoro; l’art. 41, che vieta l’iniziativa economica che sia contro l’interesse sociale o la sicurezza e dignità umane, stabilendo che la legge possa indirizzarla ai fini collettivi; l’art. 42 che assicura le funzioni sociali della proprietà; l’art. 43 che prevede l’esproprio nel pubblico interesse; etc.; fino all’art. 47, che tutela il risparmio, e non le maxifrodi ai danni dei risparmiatori, e i bonus e le cariche pubbliche in favore di chi le ordisce.
Dalla fine degli anni ‘70, “riformismo” ha preso a significare esattamente l’inverso, ossia la demolizione di tutto quanto sopra al fine, dichiarato, di togliere ogni limitazione alla possibilità di azione e profitto del capitale finanziario, della proprietà privata, della privatizzazione di beni e compiti pubblici, sul presupposto che ciò genererà più ricchezza, più equità, più produzione, più occupazione, più libertà, più stabilità, più razionale allocazione delle risorse. Con i risultati che vediamo: crescente estrazione della ricchezza prodotta dalla società da parte di cartelli e oligopoli multinazionali, anzi soprannazionali. È la linea, come dicevo, della scuola economica di Chicago, del Washington Consensus, della CIA, di Thatcher, Reagan, etc. E dell’europeismo. Ma nonostante questi risultati, i vari Monti, Draghi, Rehn, Merkel e compagnia bella non fanno che ripetere che bisogna continuare sulla via delle riforme, altrimenti non c’è speranza, e se qualcosa non funziona, è appunto perché le riforme non sono state abbastanza risolute e complete. In realtà personaggi come la Merkel non sono tanto ottusi da non capire che il modello è radicalmente sbagliato e devastatore, ma alcuni paesi, Germania in testa, traggono vantaggio da esso in quanto la sua applicazione colpisce in modi diversi quei medesimi Paesi e altri, come l’Italia; e l’effetto di tale diversità è che esso, come già detto, spinge capitali, imprese e lavoratori qualificati a trasferirsi nei Paesi più forti, depauperando i più deboli ed eliminandoli come concorrenti. Se vi prendete qualche minuto e leggete attentamente i suddetti articoli della Costituzione, che regolano la sovranità e i rapporti e valori socio-economici, noterete, forse con stupore, che tutto il percorso di riforme in materia di moneta, finanza, lavoro, Banca d’Italia, sistema monetario europeo (Maastricht), globalizzazioni, privatizzazioni, liberalizzazioni, cartolarizzazioni, finanziarizzazione dell’economia – tutto, dico, è costituzionalmente illegittimo perché va esattamente, intenzionalmente e organicamente contro quelle norme costituzionali e contro lo stesso impianto sociale e valoriale e teleologico della Costituzione, che è appunto teso all’esclusione dell’attività imprenditoriale contraria all’interesse della società e alla realizzazione di una parità anche sostanziale dei cittadini in un quadro di solidarietà e di sicurezza in fatto di lavoro, reddito, servizi, pensioni. E non di “casinò” speculativo che comanda il Paese da piattaforme finanziarie estere attraverso il potere del rating e della manipolazione dei mercati, decidendo irresponsabilmente e insindacabilmente come si debba vivere e morire e governare.

È un disegno eversivo della Costituzione. Illecito. A esso hanno collaborato attivamente quasi tutti i “rappresentanti” del popolo, soprattutto la sinistra parlamentare. Senza farlo capire al popolo, ovviamente. Qui sta il conflitto di interessi vero. L’incompatibilità assoluta con le cariche pubbliche. Quindi i veri e primi incandidabili, ineleggibili, portatori di conflitto di interessi sono proprio i leaders della sinistra, assieme a Monti e Draghi: tra i vivi, Prodi, Bersani, Amato…
 
Lei parla di “ sacrifici senza prospettive e di “ sogno che la crisi finisca”, ma non vede la luce in fondo al tunnel? Eppure Monti e i suoi sodali ci hanno ripetuto fino alla nausea che siamo in ripresa… e che bisogna avere fiducia nei “mercati”. Lei contesta le linee economiche e fiscali imposte all’Italia dai paladini del “libero mercato”. Ci spieghi perché.
L’Italia è vicina alla fine, lo ha detto anche Squinzi il 24 marzo parlando al premier incaricato Bersani. Gli indici sono tutti al peggio, e vengono frequentemente corretti al peggioramento. Non vi è outlook di ripresa. Le migliori risorse del Paese – capitali, imprenditori, cervelli – se ne sono andate o se ne stanno andando. Chi dice che l’Italia stia riprendendosi, o è pazzo o mente. Secondo la tesi adottata dalle istituzioni monetarie, dalla Ue, da quasi tutta la politica che vuole governare, il libero mercato spontaneamente realizzerebbe l’ottimale impiego delle risorse e l’ottimale distribuzione dei redditi, inoltre automaticamente preverrebbe o riassorbirebbe le crisi. I fatti hanno clamorosamente smentito questa tesi. Del resto quella tesi valeva per i mercati dell’economia reale, non per i mercati della speculazione e dell’azzardo della finanza, che sono un’altra cosa.
O meglio, il libero mercato non esiste, perché per essere libero un mercato dovrebbe essere trasparente (cioè con operatori visibili, eleggibili dentro), non dominato da cartelli, non influenzato da asimmetrie informative, etc. etc. I mercati reali sono dominati, cioè manipolati, da cartelli di soggetti che approfittano di enormi asimmetrie informative (anche in fatto di tecnologie), che si mantengono opachi (anche FMI, BCE, Ue, Tesoro Usa, hedge funds, grandi banche…).
E che influenzano, pagandole o ricattandole, le funzioni politiche
 
Nel suo libro non disdegna di toccare la vicenda MPS,l a famosa banca senese da sempre nell’orbita della sinistra, fatti che al momento sembrano essere stati messi a tacere, con una Magistratura tutta impegnata nell’attacco a tutto campo contro Berlusconi. Chi sono i protagonisti principali e perché si è arrivati a questo, e il ruolo del duo Draghi-Monti e del PD di Bersani? Un Bersani che oramai interpreta da tempo, così come tutta la sinistra italiana, il ruolo di “mosca cocchiera dei poteri finanziari antinazionali”.
Volete i protagonisti principali? È una cerchia di nomi che potete individuare ricercando gli amministratori e i beneficiari effettivi di società derivate, di controllo, di gestione, cessionarie di rami di aziende, sicav, siv, stichtingen,… società che ricevono strani e grandi prestiti da banche in condizioni sospette… andate a consultare il Cerved, farete molte interessanti scoperte. E, per i bilanci, guardate in Cebi…Draghi ha prestato in segreto 2 miliardi a MPS già in crisi di liquidità a seguito non solo dell’acquisto di Antonveneta per un multiplo del suo dubbio valore, ma anche per una storia precedente di molti mutui concessi a soggetti che si sapeva non avrebbero pagato, e per le storie Myway e 4you, e per l’acquisizione della Banca del Salento (121)… e Monti presta 4 miliardi pubblici a MPS che in banca ne capitalizza 2,7.
Bisogna salvare MPS, l’ho detto dal mio primo articolo su di esso, del 29.06.11, ma salviamola per farne una banca nazionale di finanziamento all’economia produttiva, non solo per proteggere interessi privati o di uomini politici.
 
Avv. Della Luna i rimedi esistono per uscire da questa situazione, il mercato non è il destino dell’uomo, come non lo sono le banche, le vie alternative al capitalismo esistono, mancano oggi probabilmente gli uomini in grado d’applicarle in Italia e in Europa. Altrove i popoli hanno intrapreso una marcia diversa, e buona parte dell’America Latina ne è un esempio, questo a pochi giorni dalla morte del Presidente della repubblica Bolivariana del Venezuela Chávez, che certamente ha tracciato una via chiara di socialismo del XXI Secolo. Lei che misure adotterebbe per uscire da questo giro infernale usuraio in cui siamo precipitati?
Dalle situazioni non si esce per applicazione razionale e intenzionale di rimedi condivisi, ma perché una situazione si rompe e si cade in un’altra situazione. Non è questione di uomini. Anche il capitalismo finanziario assoluto si romperà, e io mi aspetto che ciò avvenga sia perché il tipo di mondo che esso costruisce per massimizzare la propria efficienza è incompatibile con la vita umana (troppa incertezza, violenza, mutevolezza), sia per effetto della incontrollabile accelerazione e autonomizzazione dei processi informatizzati attraverso cui si realizza lo high frequency computerized algotrading – una rete cibernetica capace di imparare e, in prospettiva, di sfuggire di mano.
 
www.europeanphoenix.com


30 Marzo 2013 12:00:00 - http://rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=20032

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The Ties That Bind Washington to Chechen Terrorists

Wayne MADSEN:

Ex: Strategic-Culture.org

The Ties That Bind Washington to Chechen Terrorists

To scan the list of major American supporters of the Chechen secessionist movement, which at some points can hardly be distinguished from Chechen terrorists financed by U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is to be reminded of some of the most notorious U.S. Cold War players.

Evidence is mounting that the accused dead Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, allegedly killed during an April 19 shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, became a «radicalized» Muslim while participating in a covert CIA program, run through the Republic of Georgia, to destabilize Russia's North Caucasus region… The ultimate goal of the CIA's campaign was for the Muslim inhabitants of the region to declare independence from Moscow and tilt toward the U.S. Wahhabi Muslim-run governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Western corporate media largely ignored an important story reported from Izvestia in Moscow: that Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended seminars run by the Caucasus Fund of Georgia, a group affiliated with the neo-conservative think tank, the Jamestown Foundation, between January and July 2012. The U.S. media reported that during this six month time frame, Tsarnaev was being radicalized by Dagestan radical imam «Abu Dudzhan», killed in a fight with Russian security forces in 2012. Tsarnaev also visited Dagestan in 2011. 

However, in documents leaked from the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs' Counterintelligence Department, Tsarnaev is pinpointed as being in Tbilisi taking part in «seminars» organized by the Caucasus Fund, founded during the Georgian-South Ossetian war of 2008, a war started when Georgian troops invaded the pro-Russian Republic of South Ossetia during the Beijing Olympics. Georgia was supported militarily and with intelligence support by the United States and Israel, and the American support included U.S. Special Forces advisers on the ground in Georgia. The Georgian intelligence documents indicate Tsarnaev attended the Jamestown Foundation seminars in Tbilisi.

The Jamestown Foundation is part of a neo-conservative network that re-branded itself after the Cold War from being anti-Soviet and anti-Communist to one that is anti-Russian and “pro-democracy.” The network not only consists of Jamestown and the Caucasus Fund but also other groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI).

Georgia has become a nexus for the U.S. aid to the Russian opposition trying to oust President Vladimir Putin and his supporters from power. In March [2010], Georgia sponsored, with CIA, Soros, and British MI-6 funds, a conference titled 'Hidden Nations, Enduring Crimes: The Circassians and the People of the North Caucasus Between Past and Future.' Georgia and its CIA, Soros, and British intelligence allies are funneling cash and other support for secessionism by ethnic minorities in Russia, including Circassians, Chechens, Ingushetians, Balkars, Kabardins, Abaza, Tatars, Talysh, and Kumyks».

The March 21, 2010 conference in Tbilisi was organized by the Jamestown Foundation and the International School of Caucasus Studies at Ilia State University in Georgia. If Georgian counter-intelligence documents have Tamerlan Tsarnaev attending Jamestown conferences in Tbilisi in 2011, could the Russian FSB have tracked him to the Jamestown Hidden Nations seminar in March 2010? In any event, a year later the FSB decided to contact the FBI about Tsarnaev's ties to terrorists.

The first Russian request to the FBI came via the FBI's Legal Attache's office at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in March 2011. It took the FBI until June of 2011 to conclude that Tamerlan posed no terrorist threat but it did add his name to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, which monitors financial information such as bank accounts held abroad and wire transfers. In September 2011, Russian authorities, once again, alerted the U.S. of their suspicions about Tamerlan. The second alert went to the CIA. By September 2011, Russian security agencies were well aware that the Hidden Nations seminar held a year earlier was a CIA-sponsored event that was supported by the Mikheil Saakashvili government in Georgia and that other similar meetings had been held and were planned, including the one that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was to attend in Tbilisi in January 2012. 

At some point in time after the first Russian alert and either before or after the second, the CIA entered Tamerlan's name into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list (TIDE), a database with more than 750,000 entries that is maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia.

The Jamestown Foundation is a long-standing front operation for the CIA, it being founded, in part, by CIA director William Casey in 1984. The organization was used as an employer for high-ranking Soviet bloc defectors, including the Soviet Undersecretary General of the UN Arkady Shevchenko and Romanian intelligence official Ion Pacepa. The Russian domestic Federal Security Bureau and the SVR foreign intelligence agency have long suspected Jamestown of helping to foment rebellions in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and other north Caucasus republics. The March 21 Tbilisi conference on the north Caucasus a few days before the Moscow train bombings has obviously added to the suspicions of the FSB and SVR. 

Jamestown's board includes such Cold War era individuals as Marcia Carlucci; wife of Frank Carlucci, the former CIA officer, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of The Carlyle Group [Frank Carlucci was also one of those who requested the U.S. government to allow former Chechen Republic 'Foreign Minister' Ilyas Akhmadov, accused by the Russians of terrorist ties, to be granted political asylum in the U.S. after a veto from the Homeland Security and Justice Departments], anti-Communist book and magazine publisher Alfred Regnery; and Caspar Weinberger's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Kathleen Troia «KT» McFarland. Also on the board is former Oklahoma GOP Governor Frank Keating, the governor at the time of the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing.

Cooperating with Jamestown in not only its north and south Caucasus information operations, but also in Moldovan, Belarusian, Uighur, and Uzbekistan affairs, is George Soros's ubiquitous Open Society Institute, another cipher for U.S. intelligence and global banking interests. Soros's Central Eurasia Project has sponsored a number of panels and seminars with Jamestown.

Russian security indicated in their first communication with the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had changed drastically since 2010. That change came after the Hidden Nations conference in Tbilisi. U.S. support for Chechen and North Caucasus secession came as a result of a public statement on August 2008 by GOP presidential candidate John McCain that «after Russia illegally recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Western countries ought to think about the independence of the North Caucasus and Chechnya».

Upon becoming President in 2009, Barack Obama adopted McCain's proposal and authorized CIA support for North Caucasus secessionists and terrorists with money laundered through the USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros's Open Society Institute, Freedom House, and the Jamestown Foundation. In January 2012, Obama appointed a Soros activist and neocon, Michael McFaul of the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University, as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. McFaul immediately threw open the doors of the U.S. embassy to a variety of Russian dissidents, including secessionists from the North Caucasus, some of whom were suspected by the Russian FSB of ties to Islamist terrorists.

Whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was always a CIA asset and participated in a “false flag” operation in Boston and became an unwitting “patsy” in a CIA plot, much like “U.S. Marine “defector” to the Soviet Union Lee Harvey Oswald became a “patsy” in President Kennedy’s assassination, or he was indeed radicalized in an attempt to infiltrate him into the ranks of the Caucasus Emirate and decided to defect and carry out a terrorist attack against the United States may never be known. If the latter is the case, Tsarnaev is much like Osama Bin Laden, once a CIA fighter in the field in Afghanistan who allegedly decided to launch a jihad against the United States. If Tsarnaev was a “patsy” like Oswald, that might explain the setting off of an incendiary device at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston ten minutes after the twin bombings at the Boston Marathon. After Boston Police stated the fire was caused by an explosion, the Boston Fire Department went into cover-up mode and tried to claim the fire could have been caused by someone tossing a cigarette on to flammable material.




Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal www.strategic-culture.org.