In a deeply shaming decision, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted 139-11 to discontinue protection for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch anti-Islamist ex-politician, when she is out of the country.
Ali, who co-produced the anti-Islamist film Submission with director Theo van Gogh (he was murdered for making it), has been repeatedly threatened by murderous Islamist bigots simply for expressing her views.
We used to be told that freedom of expression and freedom of movement were basic rights for each Western citizen. Those "rights", it's clear, have now been terminated in Holland. The Dutch government is no longer prepared to underwrite them. R.I.P. - The Curse of Von Esens is on the 139 MP's who voted for this betrayal.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
The End Of Democracy In Europe
Perry Anderson, of UCLA, in a rather long piece about Europe, describes how the EU has drained democracy from European politics.
Democracy, he writes, has been replaced not with the politics of diplomacy, but a kind of unpolitical consensus:
The deadly conformism of EU summits, smugly celebrated by theorists of ‘consociational democracy’, as if this were anything other than a cartel of self-protective elites, closes the coffin of even real diplomacy, covering it with wreaths of bureaucratic piety. Nothing is left to move the popular will, as democratic participation and political imagination are each snuffed out.
Widespread and understandable indifference among Europeans has been the result. Voters can see their judgment and votes are irrelevant - and, worse, seen by the EU as distracting - to the shaping of policy.
In short, the EU is not merely passively undemocratic, it is actively anti-democratic.
Even avowed Europhiles have difficulty disguising their disgust at the way the EU moves to circumvent the expressed wishes of European voters. This has been especially obvious in the case of the European Constitution - a document resoundingly rejected by French and Dutch voters the other year, but now revivified, essentially unaltered, and up for ratification next year.
This obtuse self-satisfaction on the part of the EU's leaders is potentially dangerous, as any divorce between rulers and ruled has always been.
Anderson goes on to discuss how the public anti-Americanism of some European politicians masks collusion in torture of terrorist suspects and an indifference to the sufferings of European (German) citizens by such politicians as the unspeakable exhibitionist Joschka Fischer and Germany's current Foreign Minister, Walter Steinmeier. (Steinmeier actually refused a US offer to free an innocent German citizen wrongly imprisoned, the victim of mistaken identity.)
The politicians are often rewarded by public approval of their moral posturing and gushings. Their dangerous hidden moves are largely ignored.
It is another example of one of this blog's favourite themes - the unbridgable gulf between modern political speech in Europe and the reality of how Europe is ruled today. It's almost enough to make one want to do something about it. But the truly dangerous thing about the whole constitutional drift in Europe is that it is fatally boring to most people. It means power can be detached from the demos without sparking off anything much in the way of protest, beyond the efforts of the admirable EU Referendum bloggers, Christopher Booker and their ilk.
Link to Perry Anderson's article in the London Review of Books:
LRB | Perry Anderson: Depicting Europe
Democracy, he writes, has been replaced not with the politics of diplomacy, but a kind of unpolitical consensus:
The deadly conformism of EU summits, smugly celebrated by theorists of ‘consociational democracy’, as if this were anything other than a cartel of self-protective elites, closes the coffin of even real diplomacy, covering it with wreaths of bureaucratic piety. Nothing is left to move the popular will, as democratic participation and political imagination are each snuffed out.
Widespread and understandable indifference among Europeans has been the result. Voters can see their judgment and votes are irrelevant - and, worse, seen by the EU as distracting - to the shaping of policy.
In short, the EU is not merely passively undemocratic, it is actively anti-democratic.
Even avowed Europhiles have difficulty disguising their disgust at the way the EU moves to circumvent the expressed wishes of European voters. This has been especially obvious in the case of the European Constitution - a document resoundingly rejected by French and Dutch voters the other year, but now revivified, essentially unaltered, and up for ratification next year.
This obtuse self-satisfaction on the part of the EU's leaders is potentially dangerous, as any divorce between rulers and ruled has always been.
Anderson goes on to discuss how the public anti-Americanism of some European politicians masks collusion in torture of terrorist suspects and an indifference to the sufferings of European (German) citizens by such politicians as the unspeakable exhibitionist Joschka Fischer and Germany's current Foreign Minister, Walter Steinmeier. (Steinmeier actually refused a US offer to free an innocent German citizen wrongly imprisoned, the victim of mistaken identity.)
The politicians are often rewarded by public approval of their moral posturing and gushings. Their dangerous hidden moves are largely ignored.
It is another example of one of this blog's favourite themes - the unbridgable gulf between modern political speech in Europe and the reality of how Europe is ruled today. It's almost enough to make one want to do something about it. But the truly dangerous thing about the whole constitutional drift in Europe is that it is fatally boring to most people. It means power can be detached from the demos without sparking off anything much in the way of protest, beyond the efforts of the admirable EU Referendum bloggers, Christopher Booker and their ilk.
Link to Perry Anderson's article in the London Review of Books:
LRB | Perry Anderson: Depicting Europe
Friday, July 06, 2007
RIP: Gottfried von Bismarck
Gottfried von Bismarck was found dead in his flat in Draycott Place last Monday afternoon. He was 44. A coroner is looking into the cause which is likely to involve drugs. Those of a sensationalist bent will prefer to blame the family curse. We knew Bismarck, slightly, at Oxford, and even challenged him to a duel for "looking like a howling cad". The duel was slated to be fought at dawn on Christ Church Meadow, on bicycles, with broomsticks taking the place of lances. Fortunately, the duel didn't happen as mutual drunkenness intervened, we missed each other in the dark. This was probably just as well, for Bismarck's high-jinks had a habit of turning fatal.
Although an intelligent and sometimes convivial man Bismarck was best known for his association with two tragedies. The first was the death of the charming Olivia Channon (daughter of then minister Paul Channon) in his rooms in Christ Church in Oxford in 1986.
She died after taking an overdose of heroin, combined with a lot of alcohol, while celebrating the end of her Finals examinations. In Olivia Channon's case there was much ludicrous talk of a "Guinness curse" as she was related to the brewing family.
Although Bismarck wasn't directly to blame for her death, there was much scandal because of the drugs. Bismarck himself said, perhaps somewhat self-pityingly, that he was still being blamed, years later, for staining his family's name. He felt he didn't fit into Oxford having attended what he called "an aristocratic Borstal" in Swizerland and having worked on the New York Stock Exchange. Even so, he was a member of such exclusive and self-satisfied Oxford drinking clubs as the Bullingdon and the archly camp Piers Gaveston Society.
The second death happened last year when a man fell to his death from Bismarck's balcony during a party invariably described as a drug-fuelled gay orgy. Again Bismarck was not suspected of anything beyond being the party's host.
Bismarck combined pride in his ancestry (descendant of the Iron Chancellor) with contempt for conventions. This led him to a consciously "aristocratic" lifestyle of excessive self-indulgence and épater la bourgeoisie. He said, if he'd chosen to go for a job in competition with a Schmidt, a Muller and a Meyer, he'd get it jst for the name ( Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen). We question whether that is true, inverted snobbery being what it is. Anyway, he had the brightness, and the Prussian steel, to have succeeded in a more conventional way, whatever his surname, but he had little interest in such a path.
Update, 10th October 2007 - The coroner has found that Bismarck's death was the result of "reckless" cocaine use. Bismarck, we learn, had been injecting cocaine every hour during the day and night before he died. Reckless is about right. R.I.P.
Although an intelligent and sometimes convivial man Bismarck was best known for his association with two tragedies. The first was the death of the charming Olivia Channon (daughter of then minister Paul Channon) in his rooms in Christ Church in Oxford in 1986.
She died after taking an overdose of heroin, combined with a lot of alcohol, while celebrating the end of her Finals examinations. In Olivia Channon's case there was much ludicrous talk of a "Guinness curse" as she was related to the brewing family.
Although Bismarck wasn't directly to blame for her death, there was much scandal because of the drugs. Bismarck himself said, perhaps somewhat self-pityingly, that he was still being blamed, years later, for staining his family's name. He felt he didn't fit into Oxford having attended what he called "an aristocratic Borstal" in Swizerland and having worked on the New York Stock Exchange. Even so, he was a member of such exclusive and self-satisfied Oxford drinking clubs as the Bullingdon and the archly camp Piers Gaveston Society.
The second death happened last year when a man fell to his death from Bismarck's balcony during a party invariably described as a drug-fuelled gay orgy. Again Bismarck was not suspected of anything beyond being the party's host.
Bismarck combined pride in his ancestry (descendant of the Iron Chancellor) with contempt for conventions. This led him to a consciously "aristocratic" lifestyle of excessive self-indulgence and épater la bourgeoisie. He said, if he'd chosen to go for a job in competition with a Schmidt, a Muller and a Meyer, he'd get it jst for the name ( Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen). We question whether that is true, inverted snobbery being what it is. Anyway, he had the brightness, and the Prussian steel, to have succeeded in a more conventional way, whatever his surname, but he had little interest in such a path.
Update, 10th October 2007 - The coroner has found that Bismarck's death was the result of "reckless" cocaine use. Bismarck, we learn, had been injecting cocaine every hour during the day and night before he died. Reckless is about right. R.I.P.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
More Günter Grass, Alas
Günter Grass writing in the New Yorker to justify his Nazi past, puts part of the blame on his father for having audible sex with young Günter's mother:
The hatred of a mother’s boy for his father, the subliminal battleground that determined the course of Greek tragedies and has been so eloquently updated by Dr. Freud and his disciples, was thus, if not the primary cause, then at least one of the factors in my push to leave home, Grass writes with his customary restraint.
Later, he recalls how he rejoiced at the removal of an heroic pacifist, with whom he served, to the concentration camps, on grounds that the presence of the pacifist made life more difficult for him.
This early pattern - blaming the blameless for his inner disgust at himself - became the trademark feature of the wretched Grass' subsequent career, as he lost no opportunity to castigate capitalism, Chritianity and democracy. The fact that space continues to be given to Grass to justify his deplorable convictions - at ludicrous length- is disgusting.
How I Spent the War, by Günter Grass: The New Yorker
Hero von Esens: Former Waffen-SS Man Has Book To Sell
The hatred of a mother’s boy for his father, the subliminal battleground that determined the course of Greek tragedies and has been so eloquently updated by Dr. Freud and his disciples, was thus, if not the primary cause, then at least one of the factors in my push to leave home, Grass writes with his customary restraint.
Later, he recalls how he rejoiced at the removal of an heroic pacifist, with whom he served, to the concentration camps, on grounds that the presence of the pacifist made life more difficult for him.
This early pattern - blaming the blameless for his inner disgust at himself - became the trademark feature of the wretched Grass' subsequent career, as he lost no opportunity to castigate capitalism, Chritianity and democracy. The fact that space continues to be given to Grass to justify his deplorable convictions - at ludicrous length- is disgusting.
How I Spent the War, by Günter Grass: The New Yorker
Hero von Esens: Former Waffen-SS Man Has Book To Sell
King Edward of Estonia: A Missed Opportunity
The most important news today is revealed in the Daily Telegraph where it is tucked away in a feature on historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.
It appears that when he was in Grozny just before the Russian invasion, royalists asked him to offer Prince Edward the Estonian throne.
"It was treated as a jokey news story," says Sebag Montefiore ("a cross between Woody Allen and Biggles"), "but I think it was a missed opportunity."l
It appears that when he was in Grozny just before the Russian invasion, royalists asked him to offer Prince Edward the Estonian throne.
"It was treated as a jokey news story," says Sebag Montefiore ("a cross between Woody Allen and Biggles"), "but I think it was a missed opportunity."l
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
RIP: No More Immendorff
News trickles through to Esens of the timely death of Professor Jörg Immendorff, left-wing polemicist, Professor and sometime painter, scourge of the bourgeoisie and so forth. He died yesterday, a few weeks before his 62nd birthday.
This can only be seen as the action of a merciful God. Immendorff had been suffering an incurable disease for some years now, the effects of which were distressing in the extreme.
The Professor, always a party animal, persisted in indulging in coke 'n tarts orgies - most unsuitable for a man of his age and distinction, and incompatible with the socialist principles he clung to all his life. No longer able to paint, he entrusted his assistants with the labour of executing his visions. It was no kind of life for a socialist firebrand. The good news is that his pretty young widow will enjoy a state-sponsored pension until the end of her days.
Here's the blog's entry for his 60th birthday.
This can only be seen as the action of a merciful God. Immendorff had been suffering an incurable disease for some years now, the effects of which were distressing in the extreme.
The Professor, always a party animal, persisted in indulging in coke 'n tarts orgies - most unsuitable for a man of his age and distinction, and incompatible with the socialist principles he clung to all his life. No longer able to paint, he entrusted his assistants with the labour of executing his visions. It was no kind of life for a socialist firebrand. The good news is that his pretty young widow will enjoy a state-sponsored pension until the end of her days.
Here's the blog's entry for his 60th birthday.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Dutch PM Wants Less EU
Prime Minister Balkenende of Holland (which last year decisively rejected the EU's proposed constitution) wants to limit the role and expansion of the EU saying the supranational body has moved too fast for a lot of voters.
In advocating a stronger role for national governments (allowing them to veto EU Commission proposals) aiming to curb the "growth by stealth" of the EU's unelected bodies, Balkenende is suggesting some commonsensical measures.
These may inject some democratic principles back into an EU whose more enthusiastic proponents are now dangerously isolated and insulated from the real world. Then again, they may not, if the weird, nakedly anti-democratic pronouncements of the Luxembourg PM are anything to go by.
EUobserver.com
In advocating a stronger role for national governments (allowing them to veto EU Commission proposals) aiming to curb the "growth by stealth" of the EU's unelected bodies, Balkenende is suggesting some commonsensical measures.
These may inject some democratic principles back into an EU whose more enthusiastic proponents are now dangerously isolated and insulated from the real world. Then again, they may not, if the weird, nakedly anti-democratic pronouncements of the Luxembourg PM are anything to go by.
EUobserver.com
Monday, May 21, 2007
Why Modern Novels Are Boring and Worthy
Julian Gough, writing in this month's Prospect, argues that the modern literary novel is boring and worthy partly because it's been professionalised, partly because these days the tragic is valued more than the comic. He says modern novelists should look to the "new" media and to TV cartoons like the Simpsons for their inspiration.
Link to Gough's article:
Essays: 'Divine comedy' by Julian Gough | Prospect Magazine May 2007 issue 134
Link to Gough's article:
Essays: 'Divine comedy' by Julian Gough | Prospect Magazine May 2007 issue 134
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Words of Wisdom (4): Jenny McCartney
Jenny McCartney on the apotheosis of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as, respectively, First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland:
"... Although I am certainly grateful that Mr Mc Guinness is no longer an active murderer and Mr Paisley no longer an active sectarian bigot, I cannot pretend that my heart soars to see them as joint leaders of the new Northern Ireland. They have abandoned their intransigence at the precise moment at which its shedding will deliver them the greatest political rewards."
(Jenny McCartney writing in today's Sunday Telegraph)
"... Although I am certainly grateful that Mr Mc Guinness is no longer an active murderer and Mr Paisley no longer an active sectarian bigot, I cannot pretend that my heart soars to see them as joint leaders of the new Northern Ireland. They have abandoned their intransigence at the precise moment at which its shedding will deliver them the greatest political rewards."
(Jenny McCartney writing in today's Sunday Telegraph)
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
NATO vs Taliban in Afghanistan - One-Sided War
Mark Steyn, writing in the Western Standard, revisits the difference between NATO countries willing to do "peacekeeping duties" and those who are willing to fight.
The latter group, he notes, is a lot smaller than the first, and in Afghanistan is composed of the English-speaking countries plus Holland.
Fighting against the Taliban is being done by soldiers from US, UK, Oz, Canada and the Netherlands. (In noting this, Steyn remarks that Holland "isn't officially an English-speaking country but speaks better English than most of the ones that are.") The photocopiers up north, he mocks, are manned by two dozen other NATO countries.
Even so, the fighting soldiers are hampered by bizarrely over-sensitive rules of engagement - aimed at minimising civilian casualties - which, claims Steyn, allow them to target only specifically-named Taliban fighters. This results in a one-sided war which is near-impossible for the NATO soldiers to win.
Link to article: Western Standard
The latter group, he notes, is a lot smaller than the first, and in Afghanistan is composed of the English-speaking countries plus Holland.
Fighting against the Taliban is being done by soldiers from US, UK, Oz, Canada and the Netherlands. (In noting this, Steyn remarks that Holland "isn't officially an English-speaking country but speaks better English than most of the ones that are.") The photocopiers up north, he mocks, are manned by two dozen other NATO countries.
Even so, the fighting soldiers are hampered by bizarrely over-sensitive rules of engagement - aimed at minimising civilian casualties - which, claims Steyn, allow them to target only specifically-named Taliban fighters. This results in a one-sided war which is near-impossible for the NATO soldiers to win.
Link to article: Western Standard
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Globalisation Hurts USA, Says Ex-IBM Man
The Nation discusses Ralph Gomory's take on globalisation. "What countries want and what companies want are different" is the ex-IBM staffer's starting point.
US Companies who move jobs and production offshore are benefitting themselves and the host countries, but not the USA. The conventional globalisers' idea of "win-win" is naive, he reckons. There will most certainly be "losers".
Gomory proposes two courses: cap the US trade deficit and use the tax code to incentivise multinationals to keep added-value jobs and production within the USA.
Gomory isn't aiming at wholescale protectionism, but he's persuasive enough to make that a possible outcome of the debate he wants to start.
Link to Nation's article: The Establishment Rethinks Globalization
US Companies who move jobs and production offshore are benefitting themselves and the host countries, but not the USA. The conventional globalisers' idea of "win-win" is naive, he reckons. There will most certainly be "losers".
Gomory proposes two courses: cap the US trade deficit and use the tax code to incentivise multinationals to keep added-value jobs and production within the USA.
Gomory isn't aiming at wholescale protectionism, but he's persuasive enough to make that a possible outcome of the debate he wants to start.
Link to Nation's article: The Establishment Rethinks Globalization
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Ijtihad vs Jihad
Johann Hari, writing in Dissent, argues that the focal point of current Islamic conflict is not one between jihad and western values, but between jihad and moderate Islam.
Hari points to the spread of Islamic liberalism and Islamic feminism amongst immigrants in Europe. He sees this as an opportunity to help reintroduce ijtihad (the use of reason to reinterpret the Koran which was abandoned in the thirteenth century) in preference to jihad. This could lead to an Islamic Enlightenment.
Link to Hari's article:Islam in the West :: Dissent Winter 2007 Issue
Hari points to the spread of Islamic liberalism and Islamic feminism amongst immigrants in Europe. He sees this as an opportunity to help reintroduce ijtihad (the use of reason to reinterpret the Koran which was abandoned in the thirteenth century) in preference to jihad. This could lead to an Islamic Enlightenment.
Link to Hari's article:Islam in the West :: Dissent Winter 2007 Issue
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