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The Fourth Dimension

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Alfred Kubin ( War), 1902

(Translated from the French by Tom Sunic.)

Modernity successfully gave birth to three major competing political doctrines; liberalism in the eighteenth century, socialism in the nineteenth century and fascism in the twentieth century. Being the last in line, fascism was also the one that disappeared most rapidly. However, the breakdown of the Soviet system has not brought to a halt socialist aspirations and even less so the ideas of communism. Liberalism, for its part, seems to be the biggest winner in this competition. In any case the principles of liberalism, spearheaded by the ideology of human rights, and thriving now within the New Class all over the globe, are today the most widespread within the framework of the process of globalization.

None of these doctrines are totally wrong. Each one of them contains some elements of truth. Let us have a rapid look at this panorama. What needs to be retained from liberalism is the following; the idea of freedom accompanied by the sense of responsibility; the rejection of rigid determinism; the importance of the notion of autonomy; the critique of statism; a certain tendency towards republicanism, anti-Jacobinism and anti-centralism. What needs to be rejected is: possessive individualism; the focus on the anthropological concept of the producer vs. consumer in which everybody searches for his best interest; the principles based on what Adam Smith called “the gift for peddling,” that is, the inclination for tradeoffs; the ideology of progress, the bourgeois spirit, the primacy of utilitarian and mercantile values; the paradigm of the market — in short, capitalism. Read more

Vladimir Borisovich Avdeyev: Race and the Russian “New Right”

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Russia today, despite the collapse of the USSR and its partial dismemberment, is still the largest and most powerful Eurasian state in the world, extending as it does over eight time zones from East Europe to the Pacific Ocean. The current government under President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears quite stable at the moment and as democratic as circumstances permit. At the extreme left of the political spectrum, the old Communists under Gennady Zyuganov still retain a substantial following; at the extreme right a militant group, which calls itself the “New Right”, has formed around Vladimir Borisovich Avdeyev and two comrades – Anatoli Ivanov and Pavel Tulayev.

Avdeyev describes himself as a proud Russian heathen, namely, one who does not acknowledge the God of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Not a trained specialist in racial anthropology, Avdeyev, a former Russian Air Force officer, has a degree in economics and is a member of the Russian Writer’s Association.  His book, now in its second edition, is the most recent title in the Library of Racial Thought Series of which Avdeyev is chairman. Previous books in the series include: Political Anthropology (Social Darwinism) by Ludwig Woltmann; Female Racial Beauty by Karl Stratz; Metaphysical Anthropology by Avdeyev; Overcoming Idealism by Ernst Krieck (editor of the journal, Volk im Werden); and Selected Works on Race Science by Hans F. K. Günther. The Series obviously borrows heavily from German National Socialist thought, especially Rassenkunde, and applies it to the Russian scene. Read more

Money

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(translated from French by Tom Sunic)

Hieronymus Bosch: Death and the Miser, about 1485-1490

Of course, everybody prefers to have a little bit more than a little bit less. “Money does not buy happiness, but it does contribute to happiness” — as the saying goes. We need to find out, however, what happiness means. Max Weber wrote in 1905: “A man by ‘his nature’ does not want to earn more money; he only wants to live as he is accustomed to live and earn as much as it is necessary for him.”

Numerous investigations have pointed out a relative contrast between the rising standard of living and the level of satisfaction among individuals. Past a certain threshold, having more money does not mean more happiness. In 1974, in his studies, Richard Easterlin established that the average level of satisfaction expressed by the population has remained virtually unchanged since 1945, despite spectacular increase in wealth in developed countries. (This “Easterlin paradox” has been recently confirmed.) The failure of indices to measure material growth, such as the GDP, in order to assess the level of real well-being, is also well noted — especially at the level of a given community. There is no such service for undisputed choices that would be able to compute individual preferences in terms of social preferences.  Read more

The Smell of Money

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Time Magazine’s Entry in the “Most Ironic Story of the Year” Category

John Graham’s writing on Jews and financial misbehavior is priceless, beginning with the must-read article he co-wrote with Kevin MacDonald, Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic?. This week Graham brings us Did Schumer Shill for Madoff?, which strongly suggests that New York Senator Charles Schumer was complicit in the massive financial swindle perpetrated by co-ethnic Bernie Madoff.

If Graham is correct, it wouldn’t be surprising if Schumer was not alone among high-level Jews in the American government whose actions benefited the financial sector — an area where it is widely acknowledged that Jews predominate — at the expense of the American economy as a whole.

Here I’m going to use work by trade expert Clyde Prestowitz on Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan. Prestowitz came to the world’s attention with his 1988 book Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead. This was followed by other big books such as Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (2003), Three Billion New Capitalists (2005), and The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America’s Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era (2010). I’ll be splicing together information from the three books written after 2000. Read more

Did Schumer Shill for Madoff?

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In all the jaw-dropping and outrageous moments of the Madoff fraud saga, nothing surpassed it. But almost no one knew.

Starting about 1 hour 38 minutes 44 seconds into the Senate Banking Committee Hearing on “The SEC’s Failure to Identify the Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi Scheme and How to Improve SEC Performance” (September 10, 2009) Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) looks over his glasses at an SEC bureaucrat and intones:

When you read Mr. Kotz’s report (PDF)…it’s just astounding…How the heck did this happen…all you had to have was an IQ of about 100 and even a semi desire to find out what happened…you didn’t have to turn over every stone…most people if they’d just read what happened they’d say there’s got to be fraud…to let Madoff escape….

That is absolutely true.

If the SEC man had been a public servant of suicidal courage he would have squared his shoulders, looked Schumer in the eye, and said

Because, Senator Schumer, you called the SEC during our last and best-informed investigation, questioning our activities. Obviously Mr.Madoff was one of your constituents, and it was easy to find out he was an important contributor of yours. We were afraid. Read more

Marine LePen: A Unique Voice in the Rise of Anti-Muslim Political Parties in Europe

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Coming on the heels of visits to Israel by Geert Wilders and a delegation of other luminaries of the European anti-Muslim right, Adar Primor of Ha’aretz interviewed Marine LePen, the daughter of Jean Marie LePen and likely the next leader of the National Front (“The daughter as de-demonizer”). Like the other European anti-Muslim politicians, Marine LePen claims no animosity toward Jews, but the interviewer, Adar Primor, is clearly suspicious—unwilling to remove the “mark of Cain” that all European nationalist politicians inherit as the result of the centrality of the Holocaust in the contemporary European political landscape. Nevertheless, her views, particularly on Israel, set her apart from the other notables on the European right.

The good news is that LePen is getting a lot of publicity in the mainstream French media: Her “smiling face … adorns the front of the prestigious weekly L’Express …. She’s seen everywhere. On France’s television screens, in its newspapers, at party conventions, on billboards.”

The party is expected to get up to 27% of the votes in the 2012 presidential election. LePen claims that a majority of the supporters of Sarkozy’s party agree with her views. “For the first time in the history of the National Front, the political establishment is not uniting against us, but is running after us.” The establishment is getting the message:

“They’re afraid,” was more or less the headline of an article recently published in Le Monde. “They” are both the left and the right. According to one school of thought, “We must not surrender to the agenda she is dictating for fear of increasing her popularity”; according to another, “It’s impossible to ignore the problems she raises that are preoccupying the French.” Read more

The Nobel Peace Prize: Dissenters from Western Political Correctness Need Not Apply

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Last year’s choice for the Nobel Peace prize was a farce of unbelievable proportions. Barack Obama was a newcomer whose name few people had even heard just a few years before. He had no track record whatsoever and had never achieved anything in his life aside from being lucky enough to be the first Black president. He was given the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Whatever that empty statement means, he has obviously accomplished none of it. US-led wars are still going on in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and America’s foreign policy is as hostile as it was towards many countries such as Iran and North Korea, which really pose no threat. Even more ridiculous than the 2009 laureate himself was the awarding ceremony and the associated concert, which was hosted by no one else than pop icon Will Smith! It seems the concert also served as a tribute to Michael Jackson, as a whole bunch of pop stars sang one of his hit songs. This was a culminating moment where Smith’s whole family sang together and his son Jaden demonstrated his dance steps. It is difficult to imagine a supposedly prestigious ceremony reaching such a low.  [The video is here. Jaden Smith can be seen dancing at 1 min 57 sec] 

The “Fresh Prince” hosted the 2009 Nobel Prize concert

Giving the award to Obama added to a long list of clowns, chosen by these wise men and women in Oslo who are convinced that they know better than the rest of us. The list includes Henry Kissinger who, far from being a peace maker, has supported almost every American military intervention since World War II. The list also includes Holocaust lobbyist Elie Wiesel, buffoons like the Dalai Lama, who represents the West’s inclination for everything “Zen”, and Al Gore, known for promoting global warming and his expertise in massage etiquette. Read more