This is the first in what I hope will be a series of postings translated by Fred Scrooby from Robert Steuckers’ interesting and important Synergies Européennes site.

GW

Slavic languages specialist Barbara de Munnynck, who is Flemish, devotes two full pages in the Flemish newspaper De Standaard (December 8, 2006) to enthusiastically paying homage to Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  She retraces and analyses his whole body of work and writes this very fitting conclusion:

Solzhenitsyn is no longer in fashion.  It’s because of the recent political upheavals.  Simply put, this man by his nature stands apart from all fashion.  Though known as a political writer, he’s closer to a religion-inspired moralist.  He critiqued the Soviet dicatorship from a spiritual point of view, not in the name of an alternative political ideology.  Measured against the yardstick of Solzhenitsyn’s ethical criteria, neither the West nor the New Russia has any worth.  For these reasons Solzhenitsyn might be considered merely a grumpy old man or a perennial dissident.  No matter:  his attitude toward life, one of coherence, commands respect.  It was forged under trying circumstances and has certain things in common with the Christian humanism of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Edmund Burke.  Solzhenitsyn is a venerable prophet whose message exists beyond the passage of time.  The enthusiasm for him personally during the Cold War was as strange as the disinterest in him today.

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Bottom line according to before and after screenshots of the official Ron Paul site:

$17,980,156.71 - $11,551,156.57 = $6.43M

From The Guardian

Miracle on Merseyside - Liverpool remakes the nativity

The Virgin Mary comes from Knotty Ash, one of the angels used to be in Brookside, and Herod is a woman.

This version of the Christmas story, to be played out on the streets in the centre of Liverpool and broadcast live on BBC3 tomorrow night, has a cast of 300, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, a technical crew of 150 and is produced by the BBC team responsible for last year’s Manchester Passion.

... After discussions with the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, the script’s writer Mark Davies Markham has modernised the traditional story. Mary, lacking both the traditional blue robe and halo, wipes tables in a Seaforth cafe. Joseph is an asylum seeker commanded to go to Liverpool to renew his visa. Herod is a woman and the shepherds are both homeless and sheepless. But there will still be a star and three magi for the show.

“The traditional story is so familiar that it can just wash over you,” said Markham. “I wanted it still to be familiar but to help people look at it in a different way. If they see it in terms of hope for humanity, that would be good.”

... Mary (Jodie McNee), a virgin who has been saving herself for when the time is right, is a bit surprised but tells Joseph (Kenny Thompson) “it’s the Lord’s baby, it’s sent by the Holy Spirit”. Joseph is unimpressed and angry.

“You’re just having a bit of a domestic,” explains director Noreen Kershaw as Joseph launches into There She Goes by The La’s.

Joseph heads across the river to the passport office. Mary follows on to the ferry and they sing Comedy from The Shack’s 1999 album HMS Fable. When Jesus is born, they duet on Beautiful Boy, written originally for the son of John Lennon rather than the Son of God.

“It’s a brilliant story to tell,” said McNee, whose previous Christmas performances include a role as a turkey in a school play. “It’s about community and loving generosity and about accepting people.”

The man’s a spiritual chav*.

But wait ... from a blog named Stuart’s Short Trousers (with thanks to Troy Southgate for the link):-

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The Eurosceptic UK national dailies have been banging on today about Gordon Brown signing away our control of immigration.  “Buried in the Treaty’s small print is a ruling that gives new rights to EU leaders to overturn decisions made by Britain’s Immigration and Asylum Tribunal,” claims the Daily Mail.

Here, drawn from the Draft Treaty dated 3rd December 2007 (pdf) are the significant references to immigration:-

ARTICLE 63

1. The Union shall develop a common policy on asylum, subsidiary protection and temporary protection with a view to offering appropriate status to any third-country national requiring international protection and ensuring compliance with the principle of non-refoulement. This policy must be in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees, and other relevant treaties.

2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt measures for a common European asylum system comprising:

(a) a uniform status of asylum for nationals of third countries, valid throughout the Union;
(b) a uniform status of subsidiary protection for nationals of third countries who, without obtaining European asylum, are in need of international protection;
(c) a common system of temporary protection for displaced persons in the event of a massive inflow;
(d) common procedures for the granting and withdrawing of uniform asylum or subsidiary protection status;

ARTICLE 63a

1. The Union shall develop a common immigration policy aimed at ensuring, at all stages, the efficient management of migration flows, fair treatment of third-country nationals residing legally in Member States, and the prevention of, and enhanced measures to combat, illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings.

2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt measures in the following areas:

... (c) illegal immigration and unauthorised residence, including removal and repatriation of persons residing without authorisation;

And from the Protocols section:

Article 9

PROTOCOL ON ASYLUM FOR NATIONALS OF THE UNION

22) The Protocol on asylum for nationals of Member States of the European Union shall be amended as follows:

(a) the preamble shall be amended as follows:

(i) the first recital shall be replaced by the following:

“WHEREAS, in accordance with Article 6(1) of the Treaty on European Union, the Union recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights”;

(ii) the following new second recital shall be inserted:

“WHEREAS pursuant to Article 6(3) of the Treaty on European Union, fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, constitute part of the Union’s law as general principles;”;

There follow some abstruse substitutions in former treaties, the meaning of which is totally open-ended from our lay perspective.

It is, I think, clear both that the competence of the European Court of Human Rights has been extended to immigration and asylum, and the common policies which will flow from the Treaty will supercede member countries’ immigration and asylum laws.  The usual rain of Brussels directives will fall upon this new ground.

One should not be surprised.  The elite cult of internationalism abhors nation - and nationalism, of course.  Europe’s nations are not intended to survive.  It is not too dramatic to say the same for Europe’s peoples.

by Dr Tom Sunic

No verbal construct is so powerful and disarms so fully its critics as the expression “human rights.” Ever since the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, not a single government on Earth and not a single freedom loving academic has ever shunned this expression when raving about world improvement, or when wishing to improve his own lot.  And yet, since the adoption of this human rights clause there has been a blatant increase in the violation of human rights.

The answer to that is simple and does not represent a contradiction in terms. The lexical construct “human rights” is the most expedient tool for covering up abuses against specific rights of people. Today it has become a badge of honor for liberal plutocracy and its left-leaning scribes in search of a moral alibi for their military adventures or for their media mendacity. Upon closer grammatical scrutiny the lexical acrobatics of the “human rights” expression denote an abstract legal field that lends itself to a myriad of different definitions. Its generic nature precludes concrete rights of a given people, a nation, a race, a tribe, or a social group. The expression “human rights” is custom-designed for an uprooted and nameless individual or a dumbed-down consumer with no historical memory, and oblivious of his race and culture. It is a self-serving expression with different meanings in different social and historical contexts. For a Palestinian fellah living in a refugee camp on the West Bank, human rights have a different meaning from that of a neighboring Jewish-American settler whose long-distant cousins disappeared in Europe during World War II. For a Serb peasant human rights have one meaning; for a neighboring Albanian farmer yet another. For a DC pundit or a politician, human rights have a different resonance than for a poor white Oklahoma farmer who has been downsized, outsourced, or who has lost his job to illegal immigrants.

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The BNP is tearing itself apart somewhat tonight.

While 2007 has seen a variety of political advances for the BNP, the party has to an extent been held back and troubled by a string of leaks and misinformation briefings to political opponents, and by internal rumour-mongering designed to damage morale and confidence in the workings of various party departments, and in the leadership generally. Had this continued the result, whether by accident or design, would have been to disrupt, perhaps fatally, our all-important drive to break through with victory in the London Assembly Elections next year.

Some months ago, a BNP Intelligence Department was set up, with one of its key initial targets being to track down the source of these problems and provide the evidence needed to expose those responsible and put an end to their subversion.

Working closely with several other BNP Departments and following discussions with the BNP’s independent auditor, our Intelligence team – headed by Lance Stewart, a long-standing British nationalist and a former high-ranking officer in the South African Police - have now completed the first stage of their investigations.

As a result, two junior level national officials, Administration Officer Kenny Smith and Group Development Officer Sadie Graham, have today been removed from their posts with immediate effect on the grounds of gross misconduct and now face disciplinary charges over alleged offences against the BNP Constitution and Code of Conduct.

The degree of damage is difficult to assess, but it will go a lot deeper than the two who have been named here, and already expelled.

These two, it is claimed, established a blog titled Enough is Enough Nick with the object of forcing Griffin to fire three others whom they accuse of gross incompetence and bringing the party into disrepute.  One of these is Mark Collett, the party’s Director of Publicity, who twice stood trial alongside Griffin and, of course, twice won.

A few moments reading this blog will apprise you of some fairly colourful histories and rumours of histories.  American nationalists will recognise the moral template.

I suppose that rumours of MI5 black ops will also now play on everyone’s mind.  A second nationalist party may well emerge.  There is, of course, room for a second one in England, but not predicated principally on fighting Labour in the Islamic North.  Its orientation towards the BNP, therefore, and towards the electorate will tell us whether those black op rumours have any substance.  Let us hope not.

The LA Times carries an OpEd by Steve Fraser titled “Symptoms of an economic depression:

More significantly, for at least the last quarter of a century the whole U.S. economic system has lived off the speculations generated by the financial sector—sometimes given the acronym FIRE (for finance, insurance and real estate). It has grown exponentially while, in the country’s industrial heartland in particular, much of the rest of the economy has withered away.

This sounds similar to an article published in 1920 containing the sentences:

And now the two forces, Industry and Finance, are in a struggle to see whether Finance is again to become the master, or creative Industry.

This article was not, of course, predicting an economic depression nearly 90 years later…

Look for demonstrations in Europe on December 16 in sympathy with the Ron Paul “Tea Party” money bomb held in the US on that day: