So the papers say you are that mysterious entity, an “anti-terrorist chief”.  It’s very gratifying, and sounds rather grand, too, doesn’t it?  Supercop meets M in the corridors of power, and all that.

But, actually, you are just a New Labour policeman.  That’s the sort of policeman who doesn’t have large feet, a drink habit and problems at home.  The sort who has a degree in sociology, who knows the rules of the political game, who networks.  Who, naturally enough, gets fast-tracked to the top.

Did I say “New Labour policeman”?  I meant stooge, of course.

But it’s not all working lunches with the Ministerial team and educational visits to Vancouver and Las Vegas.  Such plod-power and privilege as your undoubted ambition has brought you also brings the odd sticky wicket along.  None more sticky than when the Minister “tasked” you to dissuade your favourite Yorkshiremen - the ones who flop down in the direction of Mecca five times a day - from doing inconvenient things with rucksacks and gas canisters.  You know, blowing-up passengers in buses and trains ... planting car-bombs outside nightclubs ... driving them into airport terminals.  That sort of thing.

Of course, it’s no particular problem to set up a security solution.  Not these days with biometrics, electronic eavesdropping, MI5, C5 and the rest.  It’s just a matter of scaling up.

But, annoyingly, that’s not what the Minister wants.  No, it seems that your talents aren’t needed at all on the heavy stuff.  They are required for something altogether more familiar, more ... political.  And therein lay the sticky bit.  Somehow you have to:-

1. Make Muslims feel that the state is not targeting them when, in fact, it is.

2. Make them think it’s all about al-Qaeda instead.

3. At all costs don’t make the white punters jumpy about the MultiCult.

And how have you gone about this delicate little balancing act?  Well, you are not an “anti-terrorist chief” for nothing:-

Blond, white schoolboy is al-Qa’eda extremist, say police

A schoolboy aged 12 has been identified as an al-Qaeda inspired extremist after sending beheading videos to his classmates, police have disclosed.

Anti-terrorism chiefs have said the example revealed how violent extremism is spreading “like a virus infecting young minds”.

The blond, white schoolboy from West Yorkshire is among 120 people being dealt with by police in a new anti-terrorism scheme targeting al-Qa’eda inspired youths.

He has been identified only by the initials BC and was reported by his school after he was found circulating video clips of terrorists beheading Westerners.

Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, said: “That was bad enough, but he also has an unnatural interest in guns and weapons.

“He spoke openly of his wish to be a sniper and spoke of his curiosity of what it would be like to kill someone.”

Sir Norman described him as an “angelic looking boy” whose police mugshot showed a fair-haired child so short that his head was barely in the frame of the camera.

“He is at risk of being a violent young man and a threat to society,” the chief constable said.

“He is not a Muslim. He is not driven by ideology – he is too young to spell the word.

“But he is being influenced and intoxicated by the imagery and appeal of Jihadist and other internet violence.”

Sir Norman, speaking at a conference of police chiefs in Liverpool, said that the internet helped to peddle the “virus”.

He added: “We know that there is a latent sense of grievance in the minds of many young people which, in the right conditions, can lead to the desire for violent expression.

“What happens if they learn how to build and deploy an explosive device that will cause mass casualties? Or if core al-Qa’eda can get their hands on these people to act as mules for a more sophisticated attack?”

The police chief urged every parent – particularly Muslims – to address the issue of extremism with their children.

“The al-Qa’eda brand of violent extremism continues to spread like a virus infecting young minds,” he said.

“Every young Muslim will be introduced to ideas around al-Qa’eda and a ‘global struggle’. I don’t see how you can avoid it in 2008.”

The 12-year-old boy arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker in July 2005, and at the age of eight allegedly assisted a nine-year-old and a 12-year-old boy in the forced rape of his sister, although he was never prosecuted, police revealed.

He is now being handled under a scheme known as the Channel Project, which has been running for the past nine months.

The number of suspects uncovered so far – 124 - was “higher than expected”, Sir Norman added.

They have been referred to the police and other agencies by schools, community leaders, mosques and others.

“We are trying to intervene early. We are trying to snuff out violent extremism,” said Sir Norman.

Sir Norman said none of the referrals had been prosecuted because officers were attempting to avoid using anti-terror laws against anyone identified by the scheme.

“Throwing the book at them in terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act would be complete overkill,” the chief constable said.

“We are not talking about criminal actions. We are talking about vulnerable kids.”

Two other cases highlighted by the senior policeman were Muslim youths, known only as NH and YH, who were both 15 when they were reported by their communities because they were showing extremist and racist tendencies.

Some potentially very big news breaking from Phoenix:

Sen. McCain offers $300 million prize for new auto battery
...
“In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” said excerpts from McCain’s prepared text. “From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.”

The first attempt to legislate an idea for an orbital prize (rumored to have come up within the 1981 meeting of Niven/Pournelle’s “Citizen’s Advisory Council”) was made by some libertarian-leaning guys who were former members of the Tucson L5 Society.  The idea was basically to have the government replace its launch vehicle development and operations programs with a simple incentive:  US companies get a few hundred dollars from the US government for every pound of mass they place in Low Earth Orbit.  The Tuscon guys had some significant interaction with McCain’s office on drafting the legislation.  That effort was a failure but it was the start toward my involvement with the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, which was signed into law, and the 1992 draft of legislation for prizes of $100M each for several fusion energy milestones—both of which were precursors to Peter Diamandis (then of the International Space University) forming his X-Prize Foundation.

If McCain actually makes this a central part of his campaign, he is pulling off something of a coup.  Trailing by 15 points and basically abandoning US territory, in the continuation of that long national nightmare—the great land-grab of the US’s territory called JFK’s “New Frontier”—he may have no choice but to turn against technosocialism.  It is surprising that his brain would be working even _this_ well.

I smell a “libertarian” Jew from the Tucson L5 days—turned neocon...

UPDATE: Obama reacts by calling for yet another “Apollo-style” program to solve the energy problem.  Oh well… Another 50 years down the tubes.

Herein are my questions for Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate for Washington State Governor.  He’s generally supported by those who supported Ron Paul, but there are a substantial number of “swing voters” among Ron Paul supporters that might go to other candidates, so his campaign is interested in discovering its constituents concerns as the political boundaries are being realigned by the current crisis of leadership within the Republican Party. 

Since I had some minor success with Ron Paul resolutions at the Washington State Republican Convention, I decided to cash in what little political capital I had to inquire, in a Socratic manner, where the supposed heir to Ron Paul’s support in Washington State, stood on my concerns previously related in Libertarian Government Finance: Economic Rent Citizens Dividend and Deep Libertarianism:  Human Ecology. 

Some may wonder how these issues are exposed by the questions I posed.  I won’t go into it too much here except to say that immigration dilutes each citizen’s “share” of the land trust called his nation, and once we understand the importance of land its connection to ecology is imminent.

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By Bo Sears

MR readers will be aware of the work our organisation, ResistingDefamation.org, undertakes and the strategies we employ to combat the flow of routine media slurring and negative depiction of white Americans.

White boy, white privilege, wasp, nerdy, white flight, redneck, hillbilly, cracker, white trash, geek, white bread, lily-white, typical white person, goober, Yankee dog, white resentment, acting white, and Wonder Bread hardly scratch the surface.  But this is a surface beneath which lurks a deep and arrogant hostility and a moral supremacism that we are absolutely determined to scratch.

To that end, and as has been pretty widely discussed elsewhere, we launched a counter-action this month with a full-page ad in a major print medium in Santa Clara County (the fifth largest industrial county in the USA).

Metro is a free weekly advertiser, but enormously popular and widely distributed. It’s distribution is second only to the San Jose Mercury News which has, itself, almost become a thinner tabloid.

The ad, which was headlined A river of sludge from the San Jose Mercury News,  offered white American Metro readers the chance to get a handle on the problem:-

At ResistingDefamation, we believe that a slur-free society is possible, and we have established free two-hour seminars to teach about this river of sludge and how to combat it.

Well, over 220 email responses have followed.  So we are sorting them and setting up 27 sessions to service demand!  We’ll have desktop computers, an after-hours cop, and up to 10 people present at each seminar.  We’ll cover negative stereotypes and slurs first and in that order, then 90 mins of discussion, etc.  The seminars start this week.  They have excited a good deal of comment, but not in the daily newspaper.

The ad will be re-tooled and re-run every month until Christmas.

We did send the actual page from the hard-copy edition to the eighteen top corporate officers in Colorado so they know about it.  And we complained to the county Board of Supervisors about our having to do this when they have an Office of Human Relations which is supposed to do these things.

Not that we don’t think we can’t do a far better job.

“Underlying the change from traditional geopolitics to security as a governance issue is the long-term decline of the state. Despite state resilience, this trend could prove unstoppable. If so, it will be essential to replace dominant state-centric perceptions and assessments [what the author terms “stateocentrism” - gt] with alternative judgments acknowledging the reduced role and diminished effectiveness of states.”

“The first option seeks to quarantine and contain disorder and chaos as far from the United States as possible. The second option seeks to quarantine the United States itself, thereby protecting it from the most serious consequences of an inexorable trend. A third option, lying somewhere between these extremes, offers a more selective and differentiated strategy.”

Fundamental, moderately interesting ideas some of us have considered for a long time.  The author is quite focused on the growth of organized crime and even ventures into the concept of tight, ethnically-organized transnational crime groups.  I’m sure he realizes that Thought Crime lies in that direction, however.

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Every few days I pay a call to EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom’s blog, mostly to enjoy whatever shouting match between the ‘philes and ‘sceptics has broken out.  Margot, a Swedish lefty, is Vice President in charge of Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, and one of only two Commissioners brave enough to operate a comment blog (the other is Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas).

Margot’s latest post is headed Irish referendum result, and dated yesterday.  In it she blithely informs us that the outcome of last week’s referendum:-

... was not a vote against the EU. It seems that even Sinn Féin and many other No campaigners in Ireland argued that a better deal could be secured for Ireland, not that Ireland should leave the EU.

This is pretty telling.  She burbles away for a bit, and then delivers herself of this observation:-

Surveys in the coming days, including one by the Commission, will examine the Irish result, looking at the reasons why people voted Yes and No. This will give us more information and a basis on which to analyse the implications in a more considered manner.

Strip away the EU politician’s reluctance to speak plainly, apply a cold douche of cynicism, and what we have here is a plainly stated intention to buy the Irish public off and make them vote again.

As the story develops, a lot of people are going to get very angry.  Bruno Waterfield, in the Telegraph gets their first:-

Exclusive to readers of this blog is some leaked Brussels polling that will add weight to the argument, gaining ground in the corridors at the moment, that Ireland should hold a second referendum on the Lisbon European Union Treaty.

A key political finding of an internal and preliminary European Commission analysis of weekend telephone polling has focused on the finding that 75 per cent of No voters “believe the Irish Government can renegotiate exceptions”.

...  The polling found that most, 40 per cent, of those who rejected the EU Treaty did so because they did not understand or were not “familiar” with it. The No campaign successfully fought on the slogan “would you sign a contract you had not read” after senior Irish politicians admitted they had not read an “unreadable” EU Treaty.

One fifth of No voters sought to “protect Irish identity” and another 17 per cent rejected the Treaty because they mistrusted “politicians/gov’t policies”. Ten per cent of the No-side were concerned about neutrality. Another 10 per cent wanted to keep their Commissioner - an issue which became deeply controversial during the Irish referendum. Eight per cent wanted to protect Ireland’s low corporate tax system.

... The issue of a second Irish referendum is on the EU agenda. There is talk of a menu of guarantees (tax, abortion, etc) that do not substantially change the Treaty text or require reopening full negotiations between the EU’s 27 member states. Plans to cut the number of commissioners can also be shelved.

No does not mean No.

So a re-run of the Nice solution is falling into place.  A period of

reflection

stitching-up will now follow, leading to a lengthy sell to the Irish public in advance of the second ballot in September or so.

How will it go down?  That’s the question.  Will the numbers accepting the bribe outweigh those angered by the sheer bloody arrogance of the EU oligarchy?

I rather suspect they will.

By Dennis Kastros

This article will be examining the nationalist movement from the perspective of the New Right (and that is a metapolitical approach) and the means by which it promotes itself and the imagery and language it uses.

As the imagery, language and propaganda used by a movement is the primary means by which it propagates itself, it is imperative that the manner in which any movement or ideology expresses itself can capably and efficiently invoke the desired response and create a perception of the movement in others which was initially intended. Difficulties arise because the means to achieve certain goals quite often contradict each other and there are many compromises which must be taken. For example, in order to create a message which will be reached and understood by a large number of people, a trade off often has to be made with the content of the message by omitting ideas or oversimplifying them. In order to target one particular demographic, issues may need to be addressed which may not be of as much concern to another demographic

Other conflicts can arise when there is a difference between what a particular movement wants to achieve, and with the main concerns of the general public. This often results in attempts to justify the movements aims by attempting to demonstrate how the movements primary concern tie in with the concerns of the general public. Nationalists for instance will argue that their particular style of nationalism will also result in certain economic benefits and will remove other economic and social pressures.

One example of another dichotomy and apparent contradiction is whether to promote nationalism as a reaction to contemporary problems, or as a new social and national order which is not necessarily a reaction to a particular crisis. Both these approaches have their merit and usefulness and the nature of both approaches will be further elucidated.

Reactionary nationalism

Reactionary nationalism can be loosely defined as nationalistic sentiment which has been created in response to a particular social change or crisis. It is important to differentiate between reactionary nationalistic sentiment which has arisen in response to a particular experience, and nationalistic sentiment which has always more or less existed in a dormant form but has been aroused in response to a perceived problem. These two situations, while superficially appearing similar, that is to say, both individuals have become more politically active in response to a situation, are still fundamentally different. The difference lies in the psychology of the individuals and the motivation which has spurned them to action.

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Martin Hutchinson treated his readers at Prudent Bear to a dose of blue collar reality this morning, mourning the technological manufacturing future that a generation of American politicians, financiers and businessmen threw away for short-term gain.
GW

GE’s announcement a week ago that it would accept offers for its appliances business marked the death-knell of yet another US manufacturing business, one among so many in US manufacturing’s long and seemingly unstoppable downtrend since 1980. That decline may seem an inevitable historical trend, and Wall Street’s analysts would claim that the US economy can prosper just fine without it. Yet impartial analysts of the putrefying corpse of US manufacturing capability are forced into an inescapable question: did it die of natural causes or was it murdered?

For the last 30 years, Wall Street’s insouciant attitude appears to have made sense. US manufacturing has slowly declined, as operations have moved to lower-wage centers in the Third World. However the US economy as a whole has continued to thrive, as financial services doubled its share of Gross Domestic Product and grew to provide 40% of the earnings on the Standard and Poors 500 share index. Prosperity was heavily skewed towards the very rich, but the majority of Americans continued to enjoy a general, if halting improvement in living standards.

The collapse of the financial services bubble has however called into question three of Wall Street’s most cherished beliefs about manufacturing:

·  First, Wall Street believes that financial services and other services can take the place of manufacturing, and that the United States can remain a prosperous economy thereby.
·  Second, it believes that manufacturing tangible products is an intrinsically low-skill and uninteresting operation, so that the US would do much better to specialize in “symbol manipulation.”
·  Third, it believes that the decline in US manufacturing was and is inevitable, so that decline would have happened whatever strategies management had adopted, and whatever resources and attention it had devoted to manufacturing activities.

The inevitability of manufacturing’s decline is in some ways the most interesting question, which has not been addressed much elsewhere. Most large-scale events of this nature appear inevitable in retrospect, yet if examined in detail can be shown to have been triggered by a series of decisions that could have gone the other way.

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