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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One of the pleasures of our politics is the wondrous clarity it affords in assessing the interests and, often, ethnicity of those professing European ethno-suicide.  When the facts are known and the assessment is in, it can be very difficult to resist taking a wee bit of advantage.

Now, of course, it goes without saying that I observe to the letter the Rules of Posting at Comment is Free, especially the one about creating multiple identities (my previous five - all banned - in no way imply contempt for this Rule, naturally).

Anyway, some non-liberal poster going by the name of Recititive obviously caught a whiff of something rotten in a conversation between an interesting rightist with anti-immigration and libertarian credentials, and a penchant for mysticism, styling himself “withdrawn” and an academic sociologist, I would say, called Lester Jones.  The headline article to which both were responding was an average-to-simplistic offering about identity by Genevieve Maitland Hudson - plainly a deliciously English “identity” herself:-

Identity is a contemporary buzzword. It has filtered into public consciousness in a wide variety of contexts. A quick search of this very website on June 13 produced 27,139 hits for articles which featured identity, including a special report on “Islam, race and British identity”, an interactive guide on “Multicultural Britain: the world in one country” a story about the redesign of the union flag to include a Welsh dragon and a number of reports on the controversial issue of ID cards. In each case, identity featured as the central conceptual focus of the article. Identity, both individual and collective, is everywhere. This reflects the extent to which it has become unavoidable for the alert citizen, a subject that we are expected to consider and reconsider daily in regard to others and ourselves.

The everyday meaning of identity is never entirely fixed but there are successful definitions that have particular influence in particular contexts. There are two general definitions of identity in the articles featured in the Guardian. The first appears in articles on ID cards and identity fraud and encapsulates the notion of an individual’s possession of official characteristics, a recognised legal identity to which a bundle of rights (political, economic and social) can be attached. The second is primarily concerned with culture and is often tagged with a national, ethnic or religious complement, “British identity” and, “Muslim identity” being by far the most common. In both cases, identity is construed as a recognisable object, a specific something with a given content that can be tagged with an appropriate label. This in itself is not uncontroversial, though it is not questioned as often as it ought to be.

And so forth.  Not incredibly illuminating.

The thread is a good one, and opens with what appears to be a cracking and beautifully reactionary first entry - a link to this fluttering world of identities.  Unfortunately, it transpires later that the guy was not being critical at all.

Four comments in “withdrawn” appears, grumbling about “the chattering classes discussing multiculturalism”, which he expands a few comments later with:-

The article confuses personal identity and multiculturalism.

If you study the history of your local area, you will find that it had a much stronger sense of identity fifty years ago. There were local business, bus companies, accents, customs football teams and so forth. In other words, a local culture. Due to changes in business, film. TV and radio, that sense of place has been slowly eroded.

However multiculturalism has been imposed and is generally unwelcome but it bestows no advantage to most people, quite the reverse. The middle and owner classes generally welcome multiculturalism because they instinctively know it benefits them financially and the reverse is true for the working classes. The BNP are villified, not as fascists but as genuine class enemies.

Life being what it is, the BNP is no more than a heavily monitored arm of the security services that allows the rulers to paint all opposition to immigration as neo nazi.

Lester Jones arrives on the thread a few comments later, making it plain in addressing Genevieve that he conflates ethnic awareness with That Bastard Idea Nazism:-

Interesting article.

Your definition of the second conception of identity (that which is primarily concerned with culture) is questionable, but might more acceptably be described as an adaptable tribal identity that is effectively limited groups of humans who define themselves in opposition, and it’s this abstract concept of group identity that is so easily manipulated to disastrous ends.

In modern Western states like Britain most if not all constructed group identities have almost nothing to do with the day to day experiences of the people who cling so desperately to them, which explains why all kinds of reprehensible, or as you say “narrow and painful definitions” are so easily internalized. But where community norms and community expectations were once either a buffer against or a breeding ground for such dangerous divisive philosophies like those offered by the far right, now in a fragmented society ... people are free to create their own, or more usually be easily manipulated into connecting themselves to false and constructed environments.

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Maggie Thatcher said it of the Poles back in the late 80s: “When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

Alone in the EU, the Irish people had the constitutional right to choose whether to acquiesce in the drive to a European superstate or to make a stand against it.  Just as they did seven years ago in the first of their two votes on the Nice Treaty, they have made their stand.  Declan Ganley and his rag-tag assortment of no-sayers, including Sinn Fein, have won.  The political, business and media elites of Ireland have been humiliated.

The European elites, meanwhile, have received a resounding slap in the face.  The very manipulations they made to render the Treaty impossible to read for anyone other than a constitutional lawyer have backfired on them.  Many sturdy voters said they would not endorse a Treaty the meaning of which they did not understand.

Now the elites have a thorny problem.  Despite the speculation that they would simply forge ahead and ratify the Treaty without Ireland, they cannot legally do so.  No member state can ratify the Treaty unless all 27 do.

Will we see a repeat of the Nice “solution” when the Irish electorate was bought off, and an initial vote of 54% to 46% in favour of the No Campaign was turned into a 63% to 37% triumph for the Yes men?  The voting split yesterday was about the same 54% to 46%, so opt-outs on sensitive issues such as business tax harmonisation and abortion rights may well be in the offing.  It pays to be cynical about anything to do with EU integration.  But it will take an awfully shameless Irish politician to force the electorate back into the voting booths this time?

In any case, the elites’ response is for tomorrow.  Today we raise a glass to the health and good sense of the Irish.

Flemming Rose of cartoon fame ... George Pratt Shultz, 88 this year ... Dimitris Papalexopoulos, CEO of a Greek cement company ... Paul Wolfowitz, the first president World Bank to be (effectively) dismissed in its 62-year history ... There were some strange birds in Chantilly, Virginia when the Bilderberg 2008 came to town between 5th and 8th June.  Amongst all the usual political, banking, legal and multinational suspects, there were about a dozen CEOs of companies I have never heard of.

Why was Harold Goddijn of the Dutch car satnav specialist TomTom invited to participate?  RFID?

And as well as the Greek cement guy, Bertrand Collomb, Honorary Chairman of plasterboard manufacturer Lafarge, was also in attendance.  So what’s the fascination with cement and plasterboard?

It’s certain, of course, that we will never really know.

Here, anyway, is the full list of attendees as published by Prison Planet:-

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David Davis MP, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary and runner-up to David Cameron in the party leadership election in December 2005, stunned the House today when he resigned in protest at yesterday’s passage of the 42-day terror law.

Here is the full text of his resignation speech, delivered outside Parliament to the press:-

The name of my constituency is Haltemprice and Howden - Haltemprice is derived from a medieval proverb meaning noble endeavour. Up until yesterday I took a view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because for centuries of forebears we defended the freedom of people. Well, we did, up until yesterday.

This Sunday is the anniversary of Magna Carta, a document that guarantees the fundamental element of British freedom, habeas corpus. The right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason. But yesterday this house allowed the state to lock up potentially innocent citizens for up to six weeks without charge.

The Counter-terrorism Bill will, in all probability, be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. After all, what should they be there for, if not to protect Magna Carta? But because this is defined as political, not security, the Government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act to overrule the Lords. It has no democratic mandate to do this since 42 days was not in its manifesto. Its legal basis is uncertain to say the least but, purely for political reasons, this Government is going to do that. Because the generic security argument relied on will never go away - technology, development complexity, and so on - we’ll next see 56 days, 70 days, then 90 days. But in truth perhaps 42 days is the one most salient example of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedom.

And we will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world. A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it. We have witnessed an assault on jury trials, a bolt against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state. And shortcuts with our justice system, which will make our system neither firmer nor fairer and a creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers. The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws to stifle legitimate debate, whilst those who incite violence get off scot-free.

This cannot go on, it must be stopped, and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand. I will be resigning my membership of this House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. Now I will not fight it on the Government’s general record. There’s no point repeating Crewe and Nantwich. I won’t fight it on my personal record - I am just a piece in this great chess game. I will fight it, I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this Government.

Now, that may mean I have made my last speech to the House. It’s possible. And of course that would be a cause of deep regret to me. But at least my electorate and the nation, as a whole, would have had the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of our day. The ever-intrusive power of the state on our lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom and a steady attrition undermining the rule of law. And if they do send me back here, it will be with a single, simple message - that the monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand.

The Liberal Democrats, who opposed the 42-day bill, will not stand a candidate in the by-election.  There are signs that the Labour Party, not wanting to submit to the inevitably kicking, may not do so either.  Doubtless they are calculating even now whether they would be more despised by the nation for ducking the issue, and leaving Davis to stand alone on election night, than for trying to defend the indefensible.

They do at least have something to work with electorally, namely that Davis’ slippery leader has refused to campaign at the next General Election to repeal the 42-day law (a decision he has probably had ripped away from him by Davis today).  Anyway, I hope the Labour leadership will realise that it has no choice but to appear, at least, to have the courage of its convictions, and to take what’s coming at Haltemprice and Howden.

What’s coming more generally may be considerably enlivened by Davis’ novel action.  He has created an opening to like protest by senior Members, on matters, of course, of suitably high import.  The Lisbon referendum issue is one.  But Davis himself used the phrase “so-called hate laws to stifle legitimate debate”, and that points clearly enough to another.

By Dr Tomislav Sunic

In a world of media-produced images, reality must be rendered surreal. The historical consciousness of different peoples must become more “historical” than history itself. In order to make their historical narrative about the suffering of non-European peoples more credible historians increasingly resort to paraphrases full of strange adjectives, coupled with selected victims.

This is especially true of the victimhood of African and Asian peoples, which now belongs to guilt-ridden Europeans as part of global memory. It is no accident that along with the loss of their own identity, white Europeans stage saccharine commemorations for non-Europeans. They erect monuments to exotic tribes that they never heard of until the day before last. Days of atonement keep accumulating on the calendar. Every white European or American politician is obliged to pay moral and/or financial tributes to peoples whose identity has nothing in common with his own. While Western media and opinion makers assure us that history is creeping toward an end, we are witnessing a staggering demand for the revival of new non-European micro histories.

Each victimhood requires an expanding number of its dead and its culprits. Culprits, as a rule, are always white Europeans, forced in turn to practice the ritual of remorse. The old sense of the tragic, which until recently was the fundamental pillar of European historical memory, cedes its place to jeremiads for Asian and African tribes. Slowly but surely, the European culture of death is being supplemented by a fixation on the extirpation of distant foreigners. What a scandal if a white European or American statesman fails to display remorse for the past suffering of some non- European people, or fails to accept the latest revised upward moving figures for the victims!

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