My previous post on a bit of Falluja ground truth now has a follow-up.  I was able to speak to the father of the US soldier who is in harm’s way and it was not pleasant seeing an otherwise very strong 50-something man virtually break down before me.  He is resigning himself to the loss of his son and it is visibly aging him (we have been acquainted for a few years now).  He going through slow torture accepting the loss of his still living son due to the fact that the powers that be cannot withdraw from Iraq without precipitating chaos and the fact that they cannot accept chaos as the outcome.  He told me one of the main purposes of his son’s presence is to keep watch on the Iraqi soldiers because they are so corrupt they cannot be trusted to keep insurgents from buying their way through blockades—and the insurgents have no shortage of money.  The “Iraqi people” are de facto a “nation” of mercenaries bringing home the bacon (well maybe not bacon) to their primary local loyalties—not the kind of force upon which you can build a nation.

How long before men like this decide, with their sons who may have been forced by economic circumstances to join the military, it is time to pull the plug on the government before they lose more of their sons down that hell hole of a war?

It is the chief myth of our age that the legitimacy of government is derived by Lockean consent.  Consent is the founding principle of democracy and everyone knows how sacred, beautious and alround super-desirable democracy is.

Well, we do, don’t we?  That’s what we are told, anyway.  But it doesn’t matter.  It really doesn’t matter what we think because all the noise about consent is a screamingly obvious sham.  The interests of the ruling elite simply do not lie in its own submission to popular consent.  They lie in securing and ever-strengthening its hold on power, infuence and wealth.  The elite will, therefore, seek by any and all means the submission of the people to that end.  It will manufacture consent long before it will relinquish what it loves.  And where consent cannot be manufactured it will resort to more coercive means, only the most benign of which is to spin popular opinion into its opposite (“We are more tolerant oblique open to change oblique eat more chicken tikka marsala than ever”) and blithely go about its business.

In this essay I will explore the roots of the modern managerial power elite, that loose association of political, cultural and corporate players who, though constantly changing, are nonetheless changeless and number globally perhaps no more than a few tens of thousands.  It is an alliance of interests and natures and origins.  In its generality it is not a conspiracy, although at the highest, most Bilderbergian levels all the characteristics of conspiracy - exclusivity, secrecy, conversation and decision - do indeed apply.  Even there, though, I wonder whether most of the 130 or so little big men who get to be ushered past “Security” really are the stuff of global dictatorship.  We do well to remember that the elite is not wholly of one mind and arose, indeed evolved over a lengthy period from a multiplicity of directions and through several agencies.  In all important respects that evolution was more organic than conspiratorial and more accidental than organic.

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I may or may not make this a regular feature depending on how my editorial team of crack news wranglers does.  So far they’ve done a very good job of rounding up news items for me pertaining to frontierist values—including the value of preserving frontierist peoples from extinction—something other frontierists—especially Europeans—seem to pretend is not a problem for the very planet, not to mention the human species.

The theme of these news items is two-fold: 1) Since the iceages, Euroman was selected as a frontier subspecies to the point he has demonstrated his exceptional potential to bring life to the stars, 2) Euroman, hence the entire family of life, is in danger of extinction because alien influnces have taken over his societies, inhibiting his natural—genetically endowed—expression of his frontierism, turning his powers inward toward the destruction of himself and the planet.

PS:  Thanks to Soren for applying the term “frontierist” to my views.  Its not bad as terms applied to me go.

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Because this will cost you money.  $19.95 a year, in fact.  But for that you get full access to the entire and most wide-ranging serious music back-catalogue in the world.  And to me that’s as near to a gift as one can get.

Naxos decided to open its doors in this way to the internet listener in 2003.  I don’t think it has precipitated the other giants to follow suit - no doubt because they cannot make money doing it.  But then they can’t make money at all.  The music industry in general, and not just the serious side, is in growing difficulties, and where it will all end is not yet foreseeable. 

But the corpus of Western music will stand as long as Western Man survives. And, certainly, the quality of music-making is as strong as ever.  There’s enough of it to explore at Naxos to last at least the year of the life of the subscription.

The catalogue includes a very nearly full representation of late romantic nationalist composition, which is the subject of this post.

There was a golden period for nationalistic composers lasting arguably from the operatic exploits of Michael Glinka (1804-1857) until deep into the 20th century.  It was made possible in no small measure because the compositional dependency on the patronage of great churchmen and petty princes was withering.  Artistically, however, the Age of Enlightenment did not provide sufficient answers.  The roots of the nation and its meaning for its people were not matters of interest to the old or new elites of Europe.  But the people themselves were another matter.  With the obvious exception of France, most of the European nations produced men desirous of expressing the soul of their homelands in sound.

In the music world descriptions of nationalist music tend, as one might expect, to be a trifle circumspect.  Much emphasis tends to be placed upon the composer’s conceivably non-political search for the national soul in ancient folk tales, traditions and songs.  It was a natural enough place to look, of course.  The question remains, however, as to how nationalism then fits with nationalism now.  My answer is that that special reverence which informed the best nationalist composition, and which was answered by all those who loved it so long ago, still obtains among listeners today.  Nothing has changed, beyond the fact that the race issue has been thrust upon us where once such a pass would have been unimaginable.  Reaching down into the lives of our ancestors and finding there a reflection of our collective selves is no less proper now than before, and probable more necessary than ever.  Marxism, anyway, makes crap art.

The following list, should you wish to explore the Naxos option, might be worth your time.  It is not complete by any means There is no song, for example.  I have not included Glinka’s successors in Mother Russia: that loose association of like-minded composers who came to be called The Mighty Handful.  Likewise Norway’s most famous composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and the great Czecks Leoš Janá?ek and (1854-1928)) Antonín Leopold Dvo?ák (1841-1904) have been left off.  I would have liked to reference the Slovak, Vitezlav Novák (1870-1949). But his Moravian & Slovak Suite is not catalogued by Naxos.  The lesser known Scot, Alexander Mackenzie (1847-1935), is also not catalogued but deserves a mention here.  Anyway, here’s my list, much of it rather obvious I know ... but not all.  Some you may care to challenge.  That and any other ommissions will be most carefully studied by me in the thread.

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From the BBC:-

A Christian couple from Lancashire have been awarded £10,000 in an out-of-court settlement after they were questioned by police about their moral beliefs.
Helen and Joe Roberts, from Fleetwood, complained about taxpayers’ money being used for leaflets about gay rights and called homosexuality “immoral”.

Wyre Borough Council informed Lancashire Constabulary. Officers then quizzed the couple for over an hour.

The council and police said they had now apologised to the Roberts.

They also said policies had been revised to protect all parties.

I rather doubt that “all parties” claim.  “All parties” can only be treated equally if the decisions in specific cases are free of minority nepotism.  I just don’t believe that minorities who retain their ethnocentic (or faith-centric) worldviews can be as fair and self-abnegating as, regrettably, we are.  Like all councils Wyre (PDF) has its Equality Action Plan.  But how, exactly, could it implement a race-blind policy of council employment?  Does not equality imply merit under Britain’s current laws?  How is that possible if a nepotistic Pakistani happens to be taking the hiring decisions?  Genuine equality would require a certain standard in how races view themselves and eachother, and of course it does not exist.  Nor can it.

The same is true of any Marxistically-embattled minority viz-a-vis the majority.

Still, it’s good to see the Council and Lancashire Police forced into humility this time.  One must hope that a few egalitarian wings have been clipped.

The other cause for some Christmas cheer is this story from The Times:-

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The UK Telegraph reports that:

Mohammed, and its most common alternative spelling Muhammad, are now more popular babies’ names in England and Wales than George, reflecting the diverse ethnic mix of the population.

I think it appropriate to preface the title of all messages about the aftermath of Disraeli’s imperialism, with a curse against Oliver Cromwell, who, in readmitting the Jews to England, showed contempt for the vote of Parliament—the very Parliament in whose name he recruited young men to fight and die to Unify the Kingdom.  May he stand accursed for all time.

I cross-posed with Svi.  But here is the (almost) straight story from The Times:-

David Irving, the historian jailed for three years in Austria for denying the Holocaust, is free after a court reduced his prison sentence on appeal.

Irving, who was sentenced in February, was released after Vienna’s highest court ruled today that he should serve one year in prison and the remainder of his sentence on probation.

After already serving 13 months behind bars since his arrest in November 2005, Irving had his handcuffs removed today in a small courtroom crowded with his supporters and members of the local press.

“He is free, and he can leave, and he will leave,” said Herbert Schaller, his lawyer, adding that he would advise the historian to leave Austrian soil as soon as possible.

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Here’s Monday’s piece from Martin, posted originally at Prudent Bear.  A dose of cold realism for Mr Wolfowitz and the World Bank.

The World Bank gave the developing world an unexpected Christmas present Wednesday, when it unveiled its annual “Global Economic Prospects” report, looked out to 2030 and projected a higher developing country growth rate than in 1980-2005 and a huge emerging Third World middle class.  Since it’s the job of the Bear’s Lair to deflate unwarranted optimism, the report represents a challenge that must be addressed.

The World Bank stated its expectation that GDP per capita in the developing world would grow 3.1% per annum as against 2.1% in 1980-2005. Its central argument is that the rapidly emerging global middle class, 1.2 billion strong in 2030, three times its 2005 size, with family incomes between $18,000 and $60,000, will realize their true interest and vote for World Bank-friendly policies such as open trade barriers and globalist foreign policies.

Even were they to do such a thing, it’s doubtful what effect they could have, since they would still be far outnumbered by the 6.8 billion impoverished souls who gain little from globalization and who would have to depend on benign “pro-poor policies” voted by the emerging middle class for the meager handouts that made their miserable existence possible.

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