Notes on Holland: The Mauro Case

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Holland has seen a slow but steady restriction on immigration since the so-called Fortuyn-revolt of 2002, but the Left is constantly fighting back by bringing up cases of individual ‘asylum seekers’ to gain sympathy from the public. The latest case is that one of the Angolan boy Mauro Manuel.

Mauro Manuel with his Dutch foster parents

Manuel Mauro was born on November 18 1992 in Angola and as a 9-year old boy he was put on a plane to Europe by his mother. In the beginning he was fostered by his half-sister but after several months he was dropped at a police station where he was registered as an “unaccompanied minor asylum seeker.” In this short description of his life so far we can see all the failings which characterize Black societies: fatherless families, mothers abandoning superfluous children for a new partner and eventually a call upon White institutions to prop the whole thing up. (See also Joe Webb’s current TOO article “Addicted to helping non-Whites“.) Mauro was placed in a White foster family which has raised him as their own.

In many aspects Mauro’s youth mirrors that of Barack Obama. Barack’s father left his mother when he was two, Barack’s leftist mother dumped him at the age of ten in favor of a new partner and he was eventually fostered by his White grandparents.

Since his arrival in Holland Mauro has tried to be classified as an asylum seeker but eventually failed in 2007. Nevertheless he has not given up in the hope that the public will pity him so that the government feels forced to give him a residence permit. Read more

The U.S. Military Buildup in the Persian Gulf: Neocon Policies Are Alive and Well

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Although the neocons certainly oppose the withdrawal from Iraq, there are certainly some consolations. As Glenn Greenwald points out at Salon,

The U.S. has Iran completely encircled. It has over 100,000 troops in the nation on Iran’s eastern border (Afghanistan, where, just incidentally, the U.S. continued through this year to turn over detainees to a prison notorious for torture) and has occupied the nation on Iran’s western border (Iraq) for eight years, and will continue to maintain a “small army” of private contractors and CIA officials after it “withdraws.” The U.S. continuously flies drone aircraft over and drops bombs on the nation on Iran’s southeastern border (Pakistan). Its NATO ally (Turkey) is situated on Iran’s northwestern border. The U.S. has troops stationed in multiple countries just a few hundred miles across the Persian Gulf from Iran, virtually all of which are client states. The U.S. has its Fifth Fleet stationed in a country less than 500 miles from Iran (Bahrain) containing“US warships and contingents of U.S. Marines.” And the U.S. routinely arms Iran’s two most virulent rivals (Israel and Saudi Arabia) with sophisticated weaponry.

Greenwald rightly points to  the ludicrousness of Hilary Clinton’s statement:

“We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region, which is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region, which holds such promise and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Tajikistan after the president’s announcement.

Apparently, the U.S. doesn’t count as outside interference, perhaps because the Obama administration considers the entire area to be American territory. Read more

Hitler, Ibsen, and Political Theater

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To what extent was the Nazi movement suffused with pure theater? What explains the fascina­tion that Nazi symbols and Adolf Hitler himself had for millions, then and even today? Classic theater in Europe, especially drama, has always been viewed as serious literature, and Germany to this day has more theaters than any other country in the world. During the National Socialist period the Nazi Party made great use of theatri­cal techni­ques to embellish Party events.

In Ibsen and Hitler, Steven F. Sage assesses the impact Henrik Ibsen’s plays had on the develop­ment of Adolf Hitler’s Welt­an­schauung and place in history.  Sage, who completed the book as a scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, must be read with caution because he moves rapidly from Hitler’s appreciation of Ibsen’s plays, especially Emperor and Galilean, which is factual and convincing, to what the author considers the dictator’s slavish obsession and identification with the playwright’s other plots and characters, which is far less convincing. Always mindful that this book has been written to further traduce the National Socialist leaders of the period, nonetheless much of the material intro­duced is new to the American reader and well worth examining.

Ibsen and Hitler argues that there are much more than coincidental similarities between the characters and plot lines in Ibsen’s plays and the policies and speeches of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, textual analysis of passages from Hitler’s speeches and passages in the plays reveals parallels that could hardly be accidental. The three Ibsen plays upon which Sage bases his study are: Emperor and Galilean, The Master Builder, and An Enemy of the People. Emperor and Galilean tells the story of Julian the Apostate, a nephew of the Christian emperor Constantine the Great, and his foiled attempt to reinstate paganism in the Roman Empire. Ibsen considered Emperor and Galilean to be his magnum opus. It was first published in Norway in 1873 and was translated into German in 1899. Read more

The Neocon’s Defeat in Iraq: On to Iran

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The Obama Administration’s announcement of a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq is a stunning defeat for the neocons. The neocon plan was an indefinite military presence in Iraq on the model of the continuing American military bases in Japan and Germany after WWII. Obviously, Iran is a big winner, at least for now, with an ally in the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq.

Of great interest is whether Iraq will maintain the democratic institutions established by the Americans. In the long run, I suspect that from the viewpoint of the neocons, the operation certainly bought time — the time needed for Iraq to rebuild and once again pose a danger to Israeli interests. Read more

Jewish Double Standards and Hypocrisy Department: Reform Jews Get on the Far Right Bandwagon

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But remain staunchly on the left in the U.S.  Mondoweiss reports on a major conference of the Union for Reform Judaism:

But Natan Sharansky? Sharansky is a rightwing Israeli leader who chairs One Jerusalem, which has worked to kill the two-state solution, supposedly precious to liberal Jews. And Bill Kristol– WTF! Kristol is the neoconservative leader who pushed the Iraq war, writing that “Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.” Kristol has backed Israeli colonies through the West Bank.

This demonstrates the conservatism of even Reform Jews when it comes to Israel. Reform Jewish leader Eric Yoffie attacked Richard Goldstone months after the Gaza horror. Reform Jewish leader Rabbi David Saperstein criticized J Street for taking a fairly mild stand against settlements. And J Street has pulled back its criticisms of Israel because it has pitched its tent inside the Jewish community and the Jewish community is reactionary on the Israel question. So it follows that at a time when Israel is losing credibility around the world, Reform circles the wagons, and welcomes rightwingers.

So President Obama (another headliner guest at the conference) is sharing the floor far right Jewish ethnonationalists. Forgive me for being cynical when we hear the constant refrain that the reason that Jews are on the left is because of “Jewish values” of tolerance and social justice. This is just another example of a repeated theme here, that Jewish ethics is fundamentally about what is good for the Jews. The Jewish culture of the left in the U.S. is ethnic warfare against the traditional people and culture of America, while Jewish attitudes about Israel justify ethnic warfare against the Palestinians—including tolerance of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Jewish values as ethnic warfare.

The Usual Suspects Angered by Pat Buchanan’s Appearance on James Edward’s Radio Show

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Pat Buchanan, always a gentleman, refuses to back down when asked by NPR about his most recent appearance on The Political Cesspool Radio Program. (See also the current TOO featured video for the entire interview.) Note especially Pat’s unintimidated response to the interviewer’s point that ADL head Abe Foxman condemned the interview: “I think there’s an awful lot of smearing being done by the Anti-Defamation League frankly over the years of individuals who simply disagree with them maybe about U.S. policy toward Israel.” Exactly. As Joe Sobran famously said, these days anti-Semites are people that Jews don’t like.

In the meantime, the story of Pat’s latest interview with us is quickly becoming a top news story. Here is one example, from Huffington Post:

African American political advocacy group Color Of Change has called for MSNBC to fire longtime analyst (and even longer-time lightning rod) Pat Buchanan for what it called his “white supremacist ideology.”

The advocacy group sent petition letters to its members on Tuesday. The letter said that MSNBC gives Buchanan a platform to pass off his often loaded remarks as “legitimate mainstream political commentary.”

While Color of Change cited comments made by Buchanan from as early as March 2008, the advocacy group highlighted Buchanan’s new book “Suicide Of A Superpower” and a Saturday appearance on the controversial radio show “The Political Cesspool” (whose host has described his ideology as “pro-white”) as current reasons the network should fire Buchanan.

“Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the ‘End of White America.’ This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show…” read the “Fire Pat Buchanan” petition letter.

Buchanan also appeared on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” on Tuesday and further discussed his new book and radio show appearance on “Political Cesspool.”

He defended his decision to visit the radio show and asked “Am I supposed to go and vet all the people on these shows and get the list from [Anti-Defamation League chief] Abe Foxman on what shows I can go on to?”

Make no mistake, friends, in today’s political climate, false accusations such as “white supremacist,” “racist,” and “anti-Semite,” simply mean “unapologetic conservative white person.” These are just intimidating words that are employed to try and make folks like me, who liberals truly hate, go away. I wrote a book about this concept. Read more

Death on the Installment Plan

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The Dance of Death, 1474, fresco painting (Church of St. Mary, Beram, Croatia


(Translated from the French by Tom Sunic)

Ezra Pound, in his famous Canto XLV With Usura writes:

.. with usura
seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly
with usura, sin against nature,
Is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
with usura the line grows thick
with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling.
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man’s courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
 CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura.

The excesses of money lending were condemned in Rome, as was witnessed by Cato, who also wrote that if the thieves of sacred objects deserve double punishment, the usurers deserve quadruple punishment. Aristotle (Politics I, X) in his denouncement of the chrematistics, i.e. the obsession with money matters, seems to be even more radical.

There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural. Read more