Good. This was a step too far, especially as Local News media is better placed to closely engage with with local people and has started using online video creatively in some places.

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"Unfortunately the 2 groups with most airtime at the moment are Christian Voice (enough said) and the National Secular Society (who want everyone to think that all Christians are like Christian Voice)."

David Keen

Miquel Barceló, one of the world’s most highly paid abstract artists, was commissioned by Spain to redecorate “Room XX” and its ellipsoidal dome at the Palais des Nations. He used more than 100 tons of paint to turn the negotiating room into a cave dripping with thousands of 50-kilo multicolored artificial stalactites.

“The cave is a metaphor for the Agora, the first meeting place of humans, the big African tree under which to sit to talk, and the only possible future: dialogue, human rights,” says Barceló. Using postmodern rhetoric which closely mimics that employed by Zapatero, Barceló describes his new work as “reaching towards the infinite, bringing a multiplicity of points of view.”

The 1.500m2 (15.000ft2) ceiling, which was co-unveiled on November 18 by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain in the presence of UN Secretary General Ki-moon, is being hailed by the Spanish government as one of the UN’s most important works of art. Some are even comparing Barceló’s new “symbol of multilateralism” with Michelangelo’s work at the Sistine Chapel.

As Spaniards debate the artistic value of Barceló’s ceiling, however, excitement has turned into anger as Spanish taxpayers learn that they will be the ones footing the bill. The 13-month redecoration project has cost more than 20 million euros, all of which is being paid for by Spain. Some 60 percent of the money is coming from a group of Spanish companies that presumably have been pressured into joining a special NGO set up by the Spanish foreign ministry to “promote dialogue through the use of Spanish art.” The remaining 40 percent is being paid for by the Spanish government, including 500,000 euros that were taken from Spain’s overseas development aid fund. Barceló, who insists that the money was not “stolen from the poor,” will walk away with 6 million euros for his “long, hard, fun and ultimately orgiastic” efforts.

Zapatero, who does not like the concepts of transparency and accountability (unless, of course, they are applied to US President George W Bush), had tried to keep the cost of the controversial project secret. But he was forced to come clean after Spanish newspapers published exclusive photos of the final product just a week before it was to be unveiled.

In a quintessentially Socialist way of doing damage control, Spain’s foreign-minister-cum-art-critic Miguel Ángel Moratinos refused to debate the cost because “art has no price.”  He said: “Only fools confuse value and price. This project is a new way of doing diplomacy and foreign policy.”

And indeed it is. Welcome, once again, to the Zapaterian world of postmodern politics, where image is king and substance is, well, un pequeño detalle (a small detail).

Zapatero initially foreshadowed his passion for art during his first speech [pdf] to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2004, when he declared that “culture is always peace.” Since then, the Spanish prime minister has made it his solemn duty whenever and wherever possible to pontificate about human rights. Thus it comes as no surprise that Zapatero has now managed to unify these two obsessions into the Opus magnum of his political career: Barceló’s new “planet-cave” will henceforth be called the “Chamber for Human Rights and the Alliance of Civilizations.” What’s more, it will also be the permanent home of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The Human Rights Council is, of course, the successor to the infamous UN Commission on Human Rights, which was shut down in 2006 after 50 years of devoting itself almost exclusively to criticizing Israel. But less than three months after it was created, the new Human Rights Council voted in June 2006 to make a review of human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. Since then, the Human Rights Council, which has been hijacked by some of the world’s worst human rights violators, such as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, has passed more than 60 percent of its resolutions on Israel alone. It reaffirms the UN’s pathological obsession with the Jewish state.

But rather than demanding the complete reform of what even the staid New York Times says has become a complete disgrace to multilateralism, Zapatero instead has chosen to legitimize this paragon of dysfunctional globalism with Spanish largesse because of his desire to raise Spain’s international profile. The ceiling is a gift from Spain “to the entire international community, to all human beings, to all countries,” says Zapatero. The “impressive dome is a reflection of Spain in the 21st century, a country of solidarity, commitment to development aid and against intolerance, discrimination and poverty.”

The Alliance of Civilizations, meanwhile, is another one of Zapatero’s postmodern initiatives to save humanity from itself. He “borrowed” his idea from the “Dialogue of Civilizations,” a pre-modern concept promoted by Islamic radicals in Iran during the 1990s. In its essence, it calls on the West to negotiate a truce with Islamic extremists, on terms set by the latter.

According to Zapatero, the world would be so much more peaceful if the West would just abandon Judeo-Christian monotheism. Never mind the pequeño detalle that hyper-secularists like Zapatero are the embodiment of what Al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists hate about the West. Zapatero believes that with a small dose of multilateral group therapy, he will be able to paper over any differences he may have with the Islamists who want to take over his country.

As always with Zapatero, it’s the image that matters, not the substance. And so his impeccable postmodern logic comes full circle. His rabidly anti-clerical government takes great pride in its Sistine Chapel of the 21st century, a shrine dedicated to the gods of multilateralism that ultimately seek to bring down the Western Civilization (especially to the Judeo-Christian part) that Zapatero hates so much.

Never mind the pequeño detalle that money was lifted from the foreign aid budget to pay for his grandiose monument to globalism. According to the Spanish government, “everything that is related to human rights is development aid, and in that sense, what is being done in Geneva in the framework of the UN is the best example of that effective multilateralism.” As far as the misappropriation of funds are concerned, the proletarians who fail to see the value in such Socialist largesse are “fools” who are not sufficiently sophisticated to understand the value of art.

Meanwhile, the thinking goes, if Spain’s example of “art as effective multilateralism” through the UN Human Rights Council and the Alliance of Civilizations can contribute in some way to the demise of Israel and the West, well then Zapatero can also take credit for bringing peace to the Middle East and even to the whole world. Then the possibilities for building his Socialist utopia will be endless!

It’s all part of the new, quintessentially ‘Made in Spain’ way of doing diplomacy and foreign policy.

In the summer I installed a new Wordpress Plugin called "Organise Series". More recently I had to take it down due to a new version of Wordpress. I've been able to reinstall it now, so series of posts are back. The plugin displays a list of related posts that cut across categories and tags in the body of a single post (example ).

It also allows the display of the whole series as an archive.

I've got some debris to clear out (articles that appear in series where they shouldn't), and there are a few design issues (e.g., what happens to images that get moved), but it means that many hundreds of crosslinks between related articles are back.

The SSG News Blog is carrying a story of some leaked correspondence from the time when the management of the bookshop at Durham Cathedral was transferred from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great to the newly created company "Durham Cathedral Shop Management Limited". I reproduce the relevant part of the article.

Someone is amused by Nick Griffin and his stolen membership list.

 

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There are going to be a series of reactions to that, ranging from "he would say that, wouldn't he" and "Christianity is one of the most intolerant religions in the history of religions" (quoted from a comment on Indymedia.org.uk) to "phew!".

In fact if you reverse-lookup the phone number it comes up as a Complementary Medicine Company. Make of that what you will.

Any use of the detailed data about individuals is going to cause a lot of damage to a lot of innocent people. Consider that people move house in the UK every 5 to 7 years, then consider that this data is both padded out and almost a year old, and then work out how much of it is probably wrong. That is how much "collateral damage" may be caused.

A breakdown of numbers to the first half of a post code is about as detailed as I would go on interpreting this information.

The story was first reported by the anti-fascist activist Lancaster UAF site. The list is not hard to find. Liberal Conspiracy will be having an interesting debate about it.

Despite obvious violent disagreements in policy and politics and that I think the party is contemptible, the BNP members do have a right to privacy and for their data to be properly maintained - just like the rest of us, and whoever posted the list is headed for trouble if they get found out.

Two years ago, in January 2007, Roman Herzog, the former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, caused quite a stir when in an op-ed article (Welt Am Sonntag, 14 January 2007) he wrote that democracy in his country is virtually non-existent since the European Union (EU) has stealthily eaten away all the national parliament’s powers.

Mr. Herzog referred to a report of the German Ministry of Justice which pointed out that between 1999 and 2004, 84% of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from unelected EU institutions in Brussels, with only 16% coming from the German Parliament in Berlin.

Like Germany, Belgium is a EU member. In our parliament, we, too, are called upon almost every week to vote the incorporation into Belgian legislation of so-called “directives” emanating from the EU Commission. This is a mere formality. Parliamentarians all over Europe press the green button because the EU treaties oblige the 27 EU members states to incorporate the EU directives unchanged into their national legislations.

Hence, there are no debates about the directives and no alterations or amendments are proposed to the texts. Occasionally my party abstains from voting or we press the red button – a position we can take since we are not part of the Belgian establishment and are considered “extremists” anyway. But even we, I must admit, usually vote “yea”. The EU treaties demand it. The European Court punishes countries that do not oblige with hefty fines.

Inspired by Mr. Herzog’s calculations, I submitted a question to the Belgian authorities. They informed me that between 2000 and 2005, 1,395 laws were passed in Belgium, of which 551 were bills that incorporate EU directives into Belgian legislation. That is 39.5 percent. The ratio is increasing, however. While the figure was 31.3% in 2000, it had increased to 51.8% by 2005.

This means that a majority of Belgian laws emanates from the EU. It also means that only one single Belgian, namely Louis Michel, the Belgian member of the European Commission, has had a say over the majority of the laws imposed on all his compatriots. How democratic is this?

For my American readers I must point out that the EU directives do not pass through the European Parliament (EP). They come directly from the Commission, which is the EU’s executive. The EP, though elected, is not a proper legislative assembly; its only role is to have a say over the EU budget and the power to veto the appointment of European Commissioners. The real power lies with the Commission and the Council. The Commission consists of one member from each of the 27 EU member states, appointed by their respective governments. The Council consists of a representative of each government of the 27 member states. The Council tells the Commission what to do.

The English political philosopher John Laughland has called the EU “a cartel of governments, engaged in a permanent conspiracy against their own electorates and parliaments.” European integration favors the power of national governments over that of their respective parliaments. Laws in the EU are made by the governments and the approval of an elected legislative is not required since the treaties oblige the member states to incorporate the EU laws into their own national legislation.

“It is for this simple reason,” says Mr. Laughland, “that all establishment politicians, whether of Left or Right, are in favor of the EU. It increases their power and their room for maneuver. How much easier it is to pass laws in a quiet and secret meeting with your twenty-seven colleagues, than it is to do so in front of a fractious parliament where there is usually an in-built opposition.”

Mr. Herzog, who is not only a former President of Germany (1994-1999) but also his country’s former Chief Justice (1987-1994), sees it as follows: “Against the fundamental principle of the separation of powers, the essential European legislative functions lie with the members of the executive. And so the question arises whether Germany can still be referred to unconditionally as a parliamentary democracy at all, because the separation of powers as a fundamental constituting principle of the constitutional order in Germany has been cancelled out for large sections of the legislation applying to this country.”

This is true for the other EU member states as well. Democracy is in a deep crisis in Europe. People are still allowed to vote, but their elected representatives are powerless. The so-called “democratic” nations of Europe have become the political henchmen of an empire with global ambitions. And the voters resent it.

Hon. Alexandra Colen, Ph D, is a Vlaams Belang member of the Belgian Federal Chamber of Representatives. She is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Parliament and the chairperson of the Advisory Committee for Social Emancipation of the Parliament.

This article was first published at the website of The Hudson Institute New York

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We proudly present the printed version of "Defeating Eurabia", the first book by our appreciated contributor Fjordman. This compilation of Fjordman articles from Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, The Brussels Journal and Fjordman's own (now defunct) blog has been updated and finetuned to reflect his current views on the islamization of Europe. It provides a thorough analysis of the causes and circumstances of the islamization process, a country-by-country survey and an optimistic concluding chapter with suggestions for the future.

The book is a paperback, containing 340 pages, 25 chapters and an index. It is published by BJ Books. This is the publishing spinoff of The Brussels Journal dedicated to publishing books by our authors. The book is available through Lulu.com, a print-on-demand provider. The price is EUR 34.95 or USD 47.17, though these prices may fluctuate with currency exchange rates. Shipping costs are not included. These may vary depending on the destination. Buyers in the US and the EU will typically pay between 3 and 5 dollars/euros for shipping.

Click here to buy Fjordman's "Defeating Eurabia" via Lulu.com

“I am not on a campaign against Marine Le Pen. Rather it is she who is campaigning against me,” Lang said, affirming that he “had no confidence” in Marine Le Pen “ever since she has been the de facto leader of the Front National.” Citing “purges,” he accused the daughter of Le Pen “of systematically eliminating all those who do not pledge their allegiance to her person.”

Ms Le Pen, vice-president of the party, expressed her “stupefaction” after his announcement, insisting that she had offered Lang the second place on the list. She said that Lang’s “profoundly disappointing action” proves that he is only serving “his own petty personal interests.” Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, denounced Lang’s move as being orchestrated by a coalition of plotters including Philippe de Villiers, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, and other friends of Lang.
Earlier this year there was the formation of the NDP (New Popular Right) headed by Robert Spieler, and its first splinter party: the NDR (New Republican Right) headed by Jean-François Touzé. In addition, there is Philippe de Villiers’ MPF (Movement for France), Bruno Mégret’s MNR (National Republican Movement), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan’s group he calls Debout la République (Up With the Republic – roughly translated). There are others, but why go into them? It is an alphabet soup of M’s, R’s and D’s with the names all sounding alike – except the Front National. The FN is the best known and so far most successful attempt to be an opposition party. But for the proprietary hold Le Pen has over the FN, it would probably still be a united (however unwillingly) force for nationalism.
 
While Le Pen’s personality, and his daughter’s whims, are the immediate reason for the splintering, there are basic ideological issues as well. They boil down to one thing: you are either among the pro’s or among the anti’s, i.e., pro-America and its pro-Israel corollary vs anti-America and its anti-Israel corollary. As of now, the NDP (of Spieler) is among the very vocal anti’s. So is a neo-pagan group called Terre et Peuple. They have both rallied to Carl Lang. The NDR (of Touzé) and MPF (of Villiers) are among the pro’s. The others seem to be closer to the pro’s, with reservations.
 
 
See also:

The Fractured French Right Fractures Further, 1 October 2008

Thoughts on Le Pen, 13 May 2008

A New Movement Forms, 7 May 2008

The service displays thumbnails of your website after you enter the web address into q a queue and return to the site a few minutes later.

There are options to check the appearance with different screen sizes and colour depths, and with Javascript, Flash and Java turned on or off.

It is a government and bureaucratic failing to go on employing more people, rather than empowering and trusting the ones you’ve got. (And if you’ve got the wrong people, go out and get some different ones!)

I offered to tackle the chapter on volunteering....

Chapter 2: Active citizens and the value of volunteering
The government wants to "make it easier to be involved in voluntary and community activity" and proposes.....

the full post (click on title) outlines the detailed proposals, and explores concerns over philosophy and practicalities.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group

A cartoon from ASBO Jesus.

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European leaders have congratulated Obama on his election victory by sending him a six-page letter in which they benevolently “offer” the United States a “partnership of equals” in order to address global problems in the post-Bush era.

That’s right: Europeans are calling on Obama to “accept” Europe as America’s equal on the global stage. The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that “the world has changed.” Europe has suddenly realized that the United States “is not the only one concerned by the world’s problems. The European Union has become more resolute…. We don’t want to play a secondary role any more,” says Kouchner.

Global Economic Power Grab

Europeans also say it’s time to usher in a new global economic order. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a series of economic summits, the first of which is now set to take place in Washington DC tomorrow, November 15. He says he wants the gathering to build from scratch a new financial and monetary framework, one that would replace the current system that is dominated by the United States with a new model far more to Europe’s liking.

“Europe wants the summit before the end of the year. Europe wants it, Europe asks for it and Europe will get it,” says Sarkozy. “Self-regulation to solve all problems, it’s finished,” Sarkozy says. “Laissez-faire, it’s finished. The all-powerful market that is always right, it’s finished…. It is necessary then for the state to intervene.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is even more succinct. He says the world needs a “new financial architecture for the global age.” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi proposes “rewriting the rules of international finance.” The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, says: “We need a new global financial order.” German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck says “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist system has run its course and that “the United States will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system.”

Welcome to the dawn of a new multipolar era, say Europeans. Not so fast, says US President George W Bush, who has poured cold water on Sarkozy’s plans for a top-to-bottom revamp. “Our 21st century global economy continues to be regulated by laws written in the 20th century….We must also never lose sight of the enormous benefits delivered by the free enterprise system…democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised,” Bush says.

European Power Games

What’s behind Europe’s latest round of “let’s play superpower make-believe?” European leaders are testing Obama’s mettle, plain and simple; they want to see if he will bend more easily to the European will than did his predecessor. European leaders never wracked up the courage to ask President Bush directly for a partnership of equals because they knew he would have laughed them out of town.

Bush understood that Europeans were unable and unwilling to match their words with deeds. Faced early on in his presidency with the solemn responsibility to protect Americans from terrorism, Bush effectively told European leaders to “Put Up or Shut Up.” Most Europeans decided to take their ball and go home. They then rode out the rest of the Bush Administration by salving their wounded pride with anti-Americanism.

If their past conduct is anything to go by, today’s European leaders are about as interested in solving global problems as was Otto von Bismarck, who devoted his life to empire-building and the practice of Realpolitik. Today’s European leaders are trying not only to revive the Roman Empire in the form of a unified Europe, but they are also seeking to rebalance global power in such a way that places Europe at the top of the international pecking order.

The main obstacle to European superpower ambitions is, of course, the United States, in whose likeness the present global system is made. Indeed, the unprecedented interest in the outcome of the US presidential elections in every corner of the globe has underscored once again that, even considering the current financial crisis, America’s economic, political, military and cultural influence still remains second-to-none.

This is where Europe’s six-page letter to Obama comes into play. All the high-minded post-modern verbiage about global solutions to global problems included in that document is the eurospeak way of saying that Europeans want a final say in how American power is exercised. It is what Europeans mean when they use the words “multilateralism” and “globalism.”

Will Obama play ball the European way and agree to turn the levers of American power over to others? Or will he, like Bush before him, recognize the European demand for equal status with America for what it really is? Will Obama stroke European egos with the superpower recognition they crave so much? Or will Obama call their bluff and ask Europeans to pull their weight in Afghanistan and elsewhere?

Europeans seem to be hedging their bets. Sensing that the era of European free-riding may be coming to an end, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband says that Europe will now “make sure that our contribution in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in responding to the global financial crisis, is strong and clear and in close alliance” with the United States. But if Obama is anywhere as smart as Europeans seem to think he is, he will tell the Europeans: “Actions speak louder than words.”

In the meanwhile, Europeans are trying their best to woo Obama by mimicking his own rhetorical flourish. “There is a need to open a new chapter in global harmony, global balance, global change,” waxes Kouchner. Europe wants to work with Washington to shape “an inclusive global agenda,” says Miliband.

Will President Obama concede where President Bush did not? Will he pass his first global test? It’s impossible to know until Obama moves into the White House. But the stakes are far higher than many Americans may realize.

 
This article was first published at American Thinker on November 13, 2008.
 
Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group

I've had a bit of a break from writing on SPCK so I thought I'd pop up again to report that Mr Mark Brewer is back from his trip hunting Feral Geese in the Texas Bankruptcy Court.

Rather than persuading the rest of us to chase a Wild Goose, he has ended up cooking his own Goose instead, because he has now accepted censure (transcript) from the Bankruptcy Court for his attempt - which he has accepted was incompetent - to take a UK Charity into Bankruptcy in the USA.