Feb. 17, 2010
 | Israel's new strategy: "sabotage" and "attack" the global justice movement aletho | February 16, 2010 at 11:09 pm | Categories: Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | URL: http://wp.me/ |
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 16 February 2010
An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel's influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an "existential threat" to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to "attack" and possibly engage in criminal "sabotage" of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international "hubs" in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
The Reut Institute's analyses hold that Israel's traditional strategic doctrine -- which views threats to the state's existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response -- is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a "Resistance Network" and a "Delegitimization Network."
The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups such as Hamas and Hizballah who "rel[y] on military means to sabotage every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the Palestinians or securing a two-state solution" ("The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut Institute, 14 February 2010).
Furthermore, the "Resistance Network" allegedly aims to cause Israel's political "implosion" -- a la South Africa, East Germany or the Soviet Union -- rather than bring about military defeat through direct confrontation on the battlefield.
The "Delegitimization Network" -- which Reut Institute president and former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims is in an "unholy alliance" with the Resistance Network -- is made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and "lawfare" -- the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College last November as a guide to how the "delegitimization" strategy supposedly works ("Eroding Israel's Legitimacy in the International Arena," Reut Institute, 28 January 2010).
The combined "attack" from "resisters" and "delegitimizers," Reut says, "possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years." It further warns that a "harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a 'one-state solution' as a new alternative framework."
At a basic level, Reut's analysis represents an advance over the most primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, that "Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance."
But underlying the Reut Institute's analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel's international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the "delegitimization network" to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals -- effectively the "destruction of Israel."
It blames "delegitimizers" and "resisters" for frustrating the two-state solution but ignores Israel's relentless and ongoing settlement-building drive -- supported by virtually every state organ -- calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank impossible.
It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of Israel's actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel's actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is delegitimizing itself.
Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet -- which recently held a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank's findings -- that Israel should actually change its behavior toward Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South Africa also once faced a global "delegitimization network" but that this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared -- the rank injustice of formal apartheid -- people packed up their signs and their BDS campaigns and went home.
Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel's "intelligence agencies to focus" on the named and unnamed "hubs" of the "delegitimization network" and to engage in "attacking catalysts" of this network. In its "The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall" document, Reut recommends that "Israel should sabotage network catalysts."
The use of the word "sabotage" is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of "sabotage" in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as "Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion." It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.
At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel's spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel's possible intent -- especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil -- should not be taken lightly.
The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.
In addition to a state-sponsored international "sabotage" campaign, Reut also recommends a "soft" policy. This specifically involves better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech haven for environmental technologies and high culture -- what it terms "Brand Israel."
Other elements include "maintain[ing] thousands of personal relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related elites and influentials" around the world, and "harnessing Jewish and Israeli diaspora communities" even more tightly to its cause. It even emphasizes that Israel should use "international aid" to boost its image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastat
What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel -- despite its claims to be a liberal and democratic state -- is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo. There is no "game changer" in Reut's new strategy.
Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform "Brand Israel" as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly recommending that Israel's notorious spies "sabotage" peace groups on foreign soil.
But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut's analysis vindicates the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
| | The Savvy Mr. Blankfein aletho | February 17, 2010 at 10:50 am | Categories: "Hope and Change", Corruption, Economics | URL: http://wp.me/ |
By Dean Baker | Center for Economic and Policy Research | February 15, 2010
Perhaps the Goldman gang's best claim to savvy was in buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities, and more complex derivative instruments, and selling them all over the world. Mr. Blankfein and Goldman earned tens of billions of dollars on these deals.
The great trick was that many of the loans put into these securities were issued fraudulently, with the banks filling in phony information so that borrowers could get loans that they would not be able to repay. But this was not Goldman's concern. They made money on the packaging and the selling of the securities. Goldman did not care that the loans in their bundles might not be kosher.
In fact, Goldman actually recognized that many of these loans would go bad. So they went to the insurance giant AIG and got them to issue credit default swaps against many of the securities it had created. In effect they were betting that their own securities were garbage. Now that is savvy. (It says something else about the highly paid executives at AIG.)
Goldman doesn't just confine its savvy to the U.S. economy; it shares it with the rest of the world as well. According to the New York Times, it worked closely with the Greek government over the last decade to help it conceal its budget deficit. The trick was to construct complex financial arrangements that appeared on the books as "swaps," even though they were in fact loans. Greece was adding billions of dollars to its debt, and thanks to the ingenuity of the Goldman crew, no one knew about it until now.
But Goldman's greatest triumph was to get the government to come to its rescue when the financial sector was melting down in the fall of 2008 as the housing bubble that they had helped to fuel began to collapse. Treasury Secretary and former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson rushed to Congress and demanded $700 billion for the banks, no questions asked. He dragged along Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for support, along with Tim Geithner, then the important head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and now President Obama's Treasury Secretary.
Using exaggerations and half-truths, this triumvirate convinced Congress that we would have a second Great Depression if it didn't cough up the money immediately with no conditions. At that point Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and most of the other major banks were staring at bankruptcy. While this cascade of bank failures would have been bad news for the economy, there was no plausible scenario in which it would have led to a second Great Depression.
There was also no reason that Congress could not have put conditions on its money. For example, Congress could have dictated that as a condition of getting the money that bankers would get the same sort of paychecks as other workers, that they would get out of highly speculative activity, that the largest banks would be downsized and that the principle would be written down on bad mortgages. At that point, Congress could have told the bank honchos that they had to run around Wall Street naked with their underpants on their head. The bankers had no choice; their banks would crash and burn without government support.
But the savvy Mr. Blankfein and the other bankers got the money no questions asked. In fact, Goldman even got the government to pick up the bankrupt AIG's debts. Thanks to the government's intervention, Goldman got paid every penny on its bets with AIG. This came to $13 billion, enough money to pay for 4 million kid-years of health care under the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
No one should doubt that Mr. Blankfein is a very savvy banker. Without his ingenuity Goldman Sachs would likely be out of business, its component divisions being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Instead it is making record profits and paying out record bonuses.
But unlike the successful ballplayers to whom President Obama compared Mr. Blankfein, Goldman's success is inherently parasitic. It comes at the expense of taxpayers and the productive economy. Goldman and the other Wall Street banks are successful in the same way as the savvy Bernie Madoff was successful. It seems that President Obama must still decide whether he stands with the Wall Street banks or whether he stands with the workers and businesses who actually produce wealth.
| | Poland tightens military alliance with Israel aletho | February 17, 2010 at 1:12 pm | Categories: Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | URL: http://wp.me/ |
Ewa Jasiewicz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2010
The Polish army's announcement that it will buy seven Aerostar Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Israel's Aeronautics earlier this month was heralded as a step forward for Poland's "stabilization" mission in Afghanistan. The UAV, or drone, has long been a key tool in the military arsenals of both the United States and Israel. The US leads the export market, followed by Israel, which as of last year was the planet's third-biggest arms exporter, arming regimes around the world to the tune of $6.75 billion in 2009
The drone is more than simply a flying camera; it is killing machine in itself. American-made "Predator" and "Reaper" drones are currently used above Afghanistan and Pakistan and carry a payload of 200 kilograms -- the weight of three adult men. In January 2010 alone, Predators killed 123 innocent civilians in Pakistan. During this period only two missiles hit their intended targets, in the extrajudicial killings of three al-Qaeda leaders.
Israel's "Hermes 450" drone was used extensively during the invasion of Gaza last winter, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" by the Israeli military. Like its American counterparts, the Hermes can also fire missiles, including the "Spike" missile which weighs up to 150 kilograms. Despite being defined as a "battlefield reconnaissance" weapon, drone-launched missiles were the biggest single cause of death during the 23-day invasion. According to Palestinian human rights organization Al Mezan, 519 persons -- more than a third of the total casualties -- were killed by UAVs. The next closest were 473 Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes, including American-made F-16s.
The majority of Palestinians killed during the invasion were civilians. Palestinian medics reported a preponderance of civilian deaths by drones -- families like the Berbakhs in Rafah who lost five members or the Abed Rabbo family's six members who were killed by UAV-launched missiles. During the fighting it was common to find the mangled bodies of unarmed men cut down in the streets at night -- victims of Israel's UAV-enforced "aerial curfew."
Poland's military has embarked on a "Polonization of Israeli technology" drive, coupling Israeli weapons-manufacturi
The Spike missiles are currently produced at the ZM Mesko factory in southern Poland. During the Second World War Mesko was occupied by German forces and both Jewish Polish and Polish slave-workers manufactured ammunition for the Third Reich. According to the Israeli Embassy's Defense Attache here, the venture at Mesko represents the most successful example of the Polonization of Israeli technology. He told this writer, "Now, 60 years after the Holocaust, this company is providing Israeli technologies with Polish manpower for the benefit of the whole world." The residents of Afghanistan, Palestine and West Papua wouldn't agree.
The current round of UAVs being sold to Poland are unarmed but will be used to guide F-16 bombing missions in Afghanistan. Poland, with 2,600 troops occupying the country is one of the US's top ten biggest recipients of Foreign Military funding. Following the completion of a $3.8 billion contract for delivery of 42 F-16s in 2003, the US Air Force has been training Polish pilots how to use the new planes. According to Colonel Timothy Burke, Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the US Embassy in Warsaw, "The pilots should be qualified in the next few years. Once training has been completed, they will be using the F-16s for aerial missions" armed with laser-guided, GPS-enabled "smart-weapons."
The first Polish S-70i Blackhawk helicopter is also ready to roll this year. It is the product of a trilateral geopolitical military alliance comprised of Israel's Elbit Systems, the US's United Technology Corporation and Poland's PZL Mielec. This alliance is expected to deepen in the coming years.
Israel has also given regular strategic and technical advice to the Polish military command. According to the Polish Ministry of Defense, between 1995 and 2009 there were more than 200 activities including mutual trainings of military units, exchange of expertise, courses, seminars and symposiums organized by the Polish-Israeli Working Group. The working group is comprised of officials from the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs of both countries.
Last autumn, Poland's Chief of Staff Gen. Franciszek Gagor participated in a training session with Israeli defense specialists on lessons learned from "Cast Lead" and "how to deal with the headlines." According to the Israeli government, "Information warfare is one of the most developed issues of the past two decades. We have built a structure in the Israeli Defense Forces which includes information warfare. Coping with media challenges is one of our biggest issues."
The Polish Ministry of Defense's Vision of the Armed Forces 2030 Plan has a similar structure including "Information Forces" to police enemy media. According to the plan, "The enemy shall use a broad range of mass media in order to support its actions. By diffusing images displaying inhumane aspects of military operations, suffering of the civilian population, including children and persons advanced in years, the enemy shall try to preserve perception of the intervention forces as occupying troops which do not respect human rights. Based on the ideology or religion, it will instill fear, feed hatred and strive for mobilization of the local and international public opinion against military forces and states fulfilling mandate of international organizations."
By equating the broadcast of the horrific realities of war and particularly its effects on a civilian population with "propaganda" and de facto enemy activity, this policy risks censoring and criminalizing investigative journalism and respect for human rights and international law. We journalists and human rights activists could be the enemy. And if we step out of line, the "Information Forces" could whip us into shape as "The units shall be intended for offensive and defensive actions carried out in order to get information predominance over the enemy and to achieve expected military [political] results of the conducted operation."
As modern warfare takes on an ever more aerial, alienated and indiscriminate approach to "the enemy," governments are forcing us to keep our distance. Whether it is soldiers in bunkers guiding UAVs with joysticks or keeping the men, women and children being bombed by our militaries out of our sight through media gagging orders, it is ever more urgent that this distance be closed and those in charge of military policy be held accountable for their devastating results.
Ewa Jasiewicz is a co-Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Polish Edition where a version of this article was originally published.
| | 'An attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada' aletho | February 17, 2010 at 3:17 pm | Categories: Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | URL: http://wp.me/ |
Peter Kent - Photo credit Scarborough - Guildwood Conservative Association
By Steven Chase | Globe and Mail | February 16, 2010
Junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent is suggesting Canada stands ready to throw its full military weight behind Israel, telling a Toronto publication that "an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada."
His office says Mr. Kent, the minister of state for Foreign Affairs of the Americas, was merely "paraphrasing" what Stephen Harper has said in the past regarding Israel.
"It's not too far from what the [Prime Minister] has said," Norm McIntosh, Mr. Kent's chief of staff, told The Globe.
But the junior minister's statement would appear to be evidence that the Harper government is shifting to an ever more solidly pro-Israel stance.
Mr. McIntosh declined to confirm whether this means that Canada would automatically declare war on an aggressor that attacked Israel.
In an interview published in Shalom Life, dated Feb. 12, Mr. Kent said: "Prime Minister Harper has made it quite clear for some time now and has regularly stated that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada."
Mr. McIntosh pointed to Mr. Harper's statements from May, 2008, marking the 60th anniversary of Israel, where the Prime Minister said: "Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada, because, as the last world war showed, hate-fuelled bigotry against some is ultimately a threat to us all, and must be resisted wherever it may lurk."
"In this ongoing battle, Canada stands side-by-side with the State of Israel, our friend and ally in the democratic family of nations," Mr. Harper said. "We have stood with Israel even when it has not been popular to do so, and we will continue to stand with Israel, just as I have always said we would."
| Grant F Smith, Director of Washington's "Institute for research on Middle Eastern policy" and author of "Spy trades - How Israel's lobby undermines America's economy" talks about Israeli spying and the lobby's influence, part 1 http://www.youtube. part 2 http://www.youtube. part 3 http://www.youtube. |
| Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand lead the Reconquistadors, holding aloft a cross For God and the Reconquest of the WEST! Charles Dodgson February 17, 2010 Recently two articles in TOO have expressed diametrically opposed views of the proper place of Christianity in the fight to save the West demographically. Thomas Dalton outlines Friedrich Nietzsche's critical view of Christianity and its origins. Nietzsche ridiculed the traditional religion of the West as senile and decadent and speculated that Christianity was invented by embittered Jews, especially St. Paul, to turn the lower classes against Rome and thus provide Israel with a degree of freedom from Roman rule. Michael Colhaze is loyal to Christianity. He attacks Nietzsche's character and sanity, portraying his writings as fanciful and his superman ideal as monstrous social Darwinism. He praises Christianity for embodying the love and compassion of Christ that empowers believers. I have agreements and disagreements with both perspectives based on the criterion of what is good for the survival of ethnic groups that adopt Christianity, though my main interest is the corporate survival of Western peoples. I come down roughly in the middle of the two positions, though tilting decidedly towards a Christianity of the traditional variety informed by anthropology and genetics. Thomas Dalton, in his article "Nietzsche and the Origins of Christianity," demonstrates considerable sympathy for the German philosopher — born 1844, died 1900. Dalton reveals aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy that will be attractive to many White advocates, as we shall see. Nietzsche began his treatment of Christianity with a bold accusation — that it is decadent, weak, and nihilistic. Dalton writes: "It led to a sickly, subservient, herd morality, and suffocated the quest for human excellence. Worst of all, it replaced a life-affirming naturalness with an otherworldly, life-denying negativism. It has become, in fact, 'the greatest misfortune of mankind so far.'" Here Nietzsche must be radically wrong. The Church ministered to European peoples during our long resistance to Islamic aggression, our invention of science and industry, and our spectacular global expansion. That includes all three Christian worlds — Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. The arrest of Western confidence and expansion and its accelerating contraction have coincided with the liberalization of Christianity or its actual suppression under communist regimes. I shall take up this theme again. The alleged disaster of Christianity can only be explained, Nietzsche thought, by understanding its Jewish origins. Jesus and the apostles were Jewish, as were Mark, Luke and Paul and the many unknown authors who contributed to the New Testament. This meant that Christianity is stamped with the Jewish character, which Nietzsche refers to as "race." That character comes through in the slave morality embodied by the religion from the beginning, which Nietzsche interprets to be Paul's strategy to subvert the masses of the Roman Empire, weaken Rome's aristocratic grip on its far-flung provinces, and thus give Israel a chance to break free. It should be emphasized that this is speculation. For the success of this alleged strategy Nietzsche mainly blames the West. Dalton quotes Nietzsche: "There is no excuse whatever for their failure to dispose of such a sickly and senile product of decadence [as the Christian God].But a curse lies upon them for this failure: they have absorbed sickness, old age, and contradiction into all their instincts — and since then they have not created another god. Almost two thousand years — and not one new god!" Dalton states that a fitting — a fitness enhancing? — re-conception of religion needs to be "a truly uplifting, life-affirming, and ennobling enterprise — decidedly unlike Judeo-Christianity — and must never be taken as permanent and absolute truth. All superstitious, i.e. anti-natural, religions are out of the question. The human condition, and human 'salvation', must be firmly rooted in the present, physical world — the real world." I wholeheartedly agree with the need for a religion that engages reality, especially the reality of humans as an evolved species with biological interests of survival and continuity. However I cannot accept such a negative depiction of the traditional religion of the West. At the same time I have difficulties with blanket praise for what it has become, which brings me to the article critical of Nietzsche. Michael Colhaze, in his article "Nietzsche and No End" turns Nietzsche's critical blowtorch back on its inventor. Colhaze describes Nietzsche's superman as "[a] kind of socio-Darwinian zombie whose general credo is the exact reversal of Christian ethics. Goodness is stupidity, compassion the dumbness of slaves, beauty ugliness, love utter contempt, gentleness dirt under his fingernail. In short, a two-hundred- I agree that Nietzsche's superman is not the sort of person to invite for dinner, at least to the family table. And would he be someone who could be relied upon? I also agree with Colhaze that this so-called superman evinces some social-Darwinistic values which should be rejected. But social Darwinism is not the same as modern evolutionary theory and it has never constituted the theory. In fact Darwin himself was interested in untangling the causes of morality and compassion, not abolishing them, even if at the same time he was quietly proud of his English and European identity and pessimistic about the potential of primitive races. It is one thing to criticize Nietzsche's excesses, another to rubbish his call for a religion that respects reality. Colhaze does so by mischaracterizing the evolutionary process: a process similar to tossing an infinite amount of golf balls into the air, each numbered, and each falling accidentally into a hole with the corresponding number. The only alternative, Colhaze concludes, is an omnipotent God, "one whom I believe to be solely responsible for the world's creation and its grandiose theatre, though not for the crimes of mankind which cause about ninety nine percent of all its suffering." Actually the great majority of suffering is caused by competing life strategies, e.g. between predator and prey. Colhaze believes that Christianity delivers "man's highest and most sublime aspiration. An aspiration to consummate, on a strictly personal level, Christ's divine message of Love and Compassion. A message that is, for those who handle it calmly, an inexhaustible font of joy and inner certainty, a way of life that can brace adversities more thoroughly than any other. And a message that might one day, 'one day' after many a summer, enable mankind to live in the Utopia we sometimes dreamt about when we were young." The science of human bonding is converging remarkably on the moral truths of Christianity, especially the traditional Catholic ordering of love and duty. Christianity does distil and train a purity of attachment dependent on abstract intelligence. Since our ancestors converted at the urging and example of pioneer Medieval monks, we have been enjoined to nurture our families and local communities and to stand against the heathen at the city gate. Conclusion Nietzsche longed for a religion that embraced nature red in tooth and claw, that did not shy away from reality. There is no doubt that the West needs religious leadership that defends our temporal interests, not only short-term individual ones but corporate survival — cultural and genetic continuity. And it is undeniable that Nietzsche appeals to masculine values of strength and heroism in an age of white domestication. Those familiar with the shortcomings of the modern mainstream churches might find his writings attractive on that score. In the face of diversity's many sins, not one major Christian denomination stands with the majority of Westerners in opposing mass Third World immigration. Nor do they defend voluntary reciprocal segregation in multi-ethnic societies or criticize the elites that are forcing diversity on an unwilling but leaderless public. The depredations of diversity — higher divorce rates, alienation, destruction of downtown social life, uncaring societies, the decline of education, rising corruption and crime, loss of general social trust, reduced economic growth, less foreign aid, not to mention civil war and genocide — all have been shown to be exacerbated by diversity (see here and here). Despite these failings Christianity is not inherently weak or ignoble. For example, post-Vatican II Catholicism does not represent much of the Church's noble history. Nietzsche's criticisms remain valid only if they are taken to apply to the Church's weakness in defending the ethnic interests of their modern Western congregations. However that interpretation reduces his charge to a criticism of Church policy, not of Christianity root and branch. Such a reinterpretation is a favour to Nietzsche because his accusation of Christian weakness is absurd when tested historiographically Instead of speculating on the basis of almost non-existent ancient documents concerning St. Paul, Nietzsche should have been looking for the origins of the seamless dovetailing of Christianity and European culture, achieved in a very few centuries. A plausible theory is offered by James C. Russell in his bookThe Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (1994). Russell shows that the seamlessness resulted from the missionaries' policy of accommodating the Church to local custom. The result was the reciprocal Germanization of Christianity, though the process is better described as theEuropeanization of Christianity because the Celtic peoples of the British Isles and the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe also had their folk festivals incorporated into the Church. Irish monks were instrumental in converting the Germans, working from the Lake Constance area northwards from the fifth century, while Greek monks began the conversion of the Russians. The deep imprint of the northern winter and isolated settlements is clearly evident in the Christian calendar. Nietzsche should have been content that this Europeanization was, as Russell puts it, part of the broader phenomenon of a "world-rejecting" religion such as early Christianity being transformed by its accommodation to "world accepting" Indo-European peoples. Very few grasp how central the Church was to European society for more than 1500 years because modern education and the mass media — notably the movies — have all but expunged the monk and Sunday services from the record or pathologized them. Ministers and priests are routinely shown as corrupt and generally deplorable. That was not always so. Even Hollywood finds it difficult to delete Friar Tuck from the story of Robin Hood or his dual identity as priest and warrior. Religious patriots were depicted in the glory days of Hollywood, when its Jewish proprietors were disciplined by powerful Christian elites. Who can forget the striking imagery of Charton Heston as an upper class Jew awestruck by the grace of Christ in Ben Hur (1959) or as a Visigoth nobleman smiting the Muslim occupiers "for God, Alfonso, and Spain" in El Cid (1961). Christian-conservat Civilized and cultivated by this "senile" religion, the West rose in a little over one millennium from the ashes of the Roman Empire to dominate global trade, to invent modern science and industry, to subdue most of the world and settle three continents. As Churchill would say, some senility! All this was done without knowledge of genetic interests, that humans are a specially endowed evolved species with the same vital interest in reproduction as all other species (even more vital if those endowments are valued). However the Church always acknowledged the values attendant on individual reproduction. It blessed sex within marriage because the resulting children and bonds harmonize reproduction and the stability of the child-rearing family. Partly for that reason the Church stands against sex outside of marriage and against homosexuality. Whatever the deviations of this stance from an evolutionary perspective — for example homosexuals also have ethnic interests — the fact is that the Christian Church has historically stood for the heterosexual family, which makes good evolutionary as well as humanitarian sense. Modern knowledge of biology supports the Church's pro- family policy. And extends it. Humans have never existed as isolated individuals or even single families but as parts of genetically related communities. We evolved to have genetic and cultural interests not only in the continuity of our families but of our tribes and nations. Historically the Church recognized this, not perfectly but well enough to establish precedent. The Christian Church was the West's evolutionary group strategy. We were Christendom, and Christendom defended, elevated and shaped us. Priests were not abstractly removed hermits but organic parts of their communities. As they became more mobile, taking up appointments in the Church's far-flung domain, so they served the wider European interest. Now Christianity' This is doubly true for those who believe that God has been an agent in human genetic and cultural evolution. If He created distinct peoples over countless millennia, Christians should stand against the atheist-humanist drive to confound that creation. If one believes in God's agency in the real world, Christians who support mass non-European immigration to the West on the basis that the immigrants are Christian are as blind to God's will as are the immigrants themselves. They are destroying His creation by trying to rebuild the tower of Babel, not in the mythical way of a single language group challenging God's glory but by forcing — against their will — a diversity of peoples to lose their many cherished identities in a single cosmopolitan mishmash that dissolves communities, flattens ethnic genius and is good for nothing except facilitating globalism. The West is literally dying for the lack of warrior-scholar priests. White advocates need to win back their churches to become once again defenders of their congregations' vital interests. With Nietzsche we declare: "The last sacrament will always be irrelevant to us as a people!" But with Charles Martel, El Cid, Edward I of England, the English lords at Runnymede, Isabella I of Castille, and the Alamo martyrs we welcome the Victory Psalm [reprinted below] with the shout: "For God and the reconquest of the West!" A cross looms over the army of Charles Martel at it defeats the Muslims at the Battle of Tours Afterword The 35th Psalm is a regular part of Christian services, considered one of the masterworks of prayer that constitute the psalms. It was composed by King David and is part of the Old Testament, and as such Friedrich Nietzsche would undoubtedly approve. He would like the muscular tribalism, the unapologetic ethnocentrism. Yet it is also part of the Christian tradition. And it is a work of beauty. I read the Psalm recently in the memoir by English super soldier Andy McNab (Seven Troop, 2008, pp. 414–415), recipient of the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal. It was given to Andy by another soldier who was a devout Christian. McNab saw frequent evidence of Christianity among elite soldiers. The Psalm is what one would expect from a biologically informed religion. Of course a universal religion seeks to defend the temporal interests of all believers, and as these can be opposed it would seek to harmonize those interests. It would seek peace and reciprocity. But it would never pretend that temporal interests do not exist and that people are justified in defending them. Psalm 35 (King James Version) 1Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. 2Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. 3Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. 4Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. 5Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the LORD chase them. 6Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the LORD persecute them. 7For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. 8Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall. 9And my soul shall be joyful in the LORD: it shall rejoice in his salvation. 10All my bones shall say, LORD, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him? 11False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not. 12They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul. 13But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom. 14I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother. 15But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not: 16With hypocritical mockers in feasts, they gnashed upon me with their teeth. 17Lord, how long wilt thou look on? rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions. 18I will give thee thanks in the great congregation: I will praise thee among much people. 19Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me: neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause. 20For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land. 21Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me, and said, Aha, aha, our eye hath seen it. 22This thou hast seen, O LORD: keep not silence: O Lord, be not far from me. 23Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord. 24Judge me, O LORD my God, according to thy righteousness; and let them not rejoice over me. 25Let them not say in their hearts, Ah, so would we have it: let them not say, We have swallowed him up. 26Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me. 27Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the LORD be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. 28And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long. Charles Dodgson (email him) is the pen name of an English social analyst. |
Permanent link: http://www.theoccid
