Russia and Ukraine for dummies

Russia's Propaganda War Will Backfire
By Mark Lawrence Schrad May. 28 2014 (see ref. below)

I have copied prof. Schrad's article as I thought it is the easiest read, completely uncomplicated article about Russia's major national and international blunder in the battle for the Ukrainian minds.

You may even call it "Russia and Ukraine for dummies"

President Vladimir Putin's recent turn from confrontation toward accommodation with Ukraine has put not only pro-Russian separatists in Donbass in an unenviable position, but Russia's lapdog media, too.

Ideally, the return of electoral legitimacy to Kiev with the May 25 elections should wind down Russia's anti-Ukrainian hysteria and vitriol, but the damage has already been done.

May gradually be replaced by homages to the eternal kinship of Russians and Ukrainians, the memory of this vitriol will endure, writes historian Mark Lawrence Schrad.


For the past few months Russian state-run media and the pro-Kremlin blogosphere that takes cues from it has intentionally and systematically misrepresented developments in Ukraine as part of the Kremlin's information war to foment discontent and instability there. Over that time, a number of discernible themes have emerged.


First, the interim government in Kiev was portrayed as illegitimate, having toppled the corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych illegally. Inconvenient details such as Yanukovych being formally removed from power by a supermajority of 328 on the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament — including a majority of Yanukovych's own Party of Regions — are conveniently omitted.

As an extension, the Ukrainian government has been portrayed in the media as either lacking broad public support or simply not legally existing. An illegitimate or absent Ukrainian government became a useful pretext for the Kremlin's illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea in the interest of protecting ethnic Russians there.

Second, to sharpen the good-versus-evil, us-versus-them distinction, purported Kremlin benevolence was contrasted with the malevolence of the protesters on Kiev's Maidan Square, which state-controlled media said consisted of Right Sector fascists, Banderites and neo-Nazis, intent on subordinating or exterminating ethnic Russians in Ukraine and beyond.

The subtle manipulations and outright lies have whipped their audiences in Russia and eastern Ukraine into a frenzy for an all-out battle for survival.

Sunday's Ukrainian election presented a formidable challenge to both of these propagandistic narratives. For one, a free and fair election endows the new government in Kiev with a domestic and international legitimacy that has been sorely lacking since government forces fired on Maidan protesters back in February.

Regardless of who would have come to power, it will be difficult for the Russian state-controlled media to continue the illegitimacy narrative, without concocting an even more elaborate and far-fetched conspiracy about the impact of low voter turnout in Donbass, or widespread electoral fraud even in the presence of international observers.


The "fascist" narrative will be even more difficult to sustain after May 25. Largely conforming to Ukrainian and international polls, as well as election-day exit polls, Ukraine's far-right candidates did not fare well: Dmytro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector, received only 0.9 percent of the vote. Oleh Tyahnybok of the Svoboda Party captured all of 1.3 percent.

With all of the Ukrainian candidates that could conceivably be labeled fascist receiving less than 3 percent of the vote, dramatically less than far-right parties elsewhere in Europe, Russia's "Nazi Ukraine" narrative will be difficult to sustain.

What is more, billionaire and political independent Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's new president with 55 percent of the vote, is hardly a right-wing fascist.

Indeed, Poroshenko was one of the founders of the Party of Regions, the pro-Russian political party that brought Yanukovych to power in the first place. Having served in both the Yanukovych government and the pro-Western Orange Revolution government of Viktor Yushchenko, the milquetoast Poroshenko is the exact opposite of the divisive nationalist required by Russia's media narrative. 


While President Vladimir Putin has pulled back the Russian military forces looming on the border and struck a more accommodating stance to recognize and work with the new government, it will be far more difficult to bring his media attack dogs to heel.

Continuing to create outlandish yarns and farcical conspiracies will sacrifice whatever credibility Russian state-run media has left in the West; while recanting would be an implicit acknowledgement of the role Russian media played in intentionally fomenting international discord for the sake of Kremlin hubris.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, even before the results were tabulated, Russia's Channel One presented a screenshot of an official-looking website suggesting that the "fascist" Yarosh was — incomprehensibly — leading with 37 percent of the vote.

Whatever its genesis, the effect, along with baseless reports of low voter turnout and exaggeration of voting irregularities, is to continue to sow the seeds of doubt among its viewers about the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government.


Even a complete renunciation of this narrative by Russian state-run media would do little to dissuade the heavily armed, pro-Russian separatists in Donbass who have now long been primed for an all-out battle for survival with the alleged Nazis from Kiev.

Indeed, as research in social psychology tells us, when peoples' misconceptions are challenged by factual evidence, they do not just see the light and change their beliefs, but rather they double-down and believe even more in their misconceptions even more strongly.

This "backfire effect" does not bode well for a quick resolution to the instability in Donetsk. 
Of course, even if the Ukrainian situation stabilizes after the election, recent events will lead to many long-term political ramifications. Yet the Kremlin's instrumental use of state-run media to whip-up a militant furor for its own ends — both at home and in Ukraine — may be one of the longest-lasting implications precisely because it has cut the deepest.

Even though the labels of "Nazis," "fascists" and "Banderites" may gradually be replaced by more traditional homages to the eternal kinship of Russians and Ukrainians, the memory of this Russian vitriol will endure, especially when Ukrainians can easily revisit these narratives, enshrined in the eternal media archive that is the internet.


Future historians may one day write about how in 2014 Russia gained Crimea but lost Ukraine. The Kremlin's media war will play a large part in that story.

Mark Lawrence Schrad
is the author of "Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State", and
director of Russian studies and assistant professor of political science at
Villanova University.

Thorium for Dummies

The Problem.
IPCC has given birth to their newest recommendation concerning renewable energy - by some falsely called green energy. The key point here is, that until the full implementation of windmills, solar panels, tidal hydro-electric plants and other waste of money schemes has been achieved, not to forget lost time and destroyed landscapes, they “accept” that the use of nuclear energy (Uranium) as a stop-gap may be necessary.
Thank you, UN and IPCC.
They will in due time, of course, discover, that wind, water and sun never was supposed to be a feasible way to cover our energy needs 100% - but only after a massively wasted investment, destroyed landscapes, energy black-outs and lost opportunities have brought the economies of the West to its knees.
A lesson for the Lib Dems (Ed Davey), the Green parties all over Europe and generally all the hippie-politicians and idiots, who ignore the facts of science and who are unable to think beyond the capacity of a 1920’s farmer.

So let’s have a look at the alternative:

Thorium - background.
Thorium has been known since 1828, discovered by the Norwegian Esmark and further investigated by the Swede Berzelius, who named it after the Norse god of thunder, Thor.
It has caught our attention because of its radioactive characteristics, because it is available in abundance and because it is useful to the industry for a number of purposes (e.g. lenses) – but that’s irrelevant in this context.
However, as it cannot be used directly to make atomic weapons it has lingered in the periphery of our interest!
How human.
But some physicists have already since the 1940s understood, that it might be useful as fuel in a nuclear reactor.

Until we can replicate the Sun’s fusion process, nuclear reactors are based on fission of Uranium isotopes.
So far reducing (“enriching”) Uranium 238 to make Uranium 235 has been the normal approach. That’s what the Iranians have been busy doing. This has been attractive for decades, as Plutonium, one of the by-products, is useful for humans to create very large firecrackers!

However, one of the Thorium isotopes, Thorium-232, can be used to make Uranium-233, which is the proposed fission material in a Thorium reactor.

Some benefits of Thorium
The benefits of Thorium are quite substantial.
- There’s a lot of it. World-wide.
- The USA has enough Thorium to power the country for more than 1000 years and the assumed world wide deposits can keep civilisation running for many thousands of years – until ants and dolphins are ready to take over.
- Very little Plutonium is produced in a Thorium reactor.
- The nuclear waste is 100s or perhaps 1000 of times less, than what you will have from a Uranium reactor.
- Residual radioactivity becomes safe after just a couple of hundred years, i.e. storage problems solved.
- Once started, only more Thorium needs to be added, as it creates its own fuel.
- 1 ton of Thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tonnes Uranium or 3.5mill tonnes of coal at very little CO2 slip (basically during related processes such as mining)
- A Thorium reactor cannot go into melt-down.
This means clean, safe energy forever and no CO2 slip.
So what are we waiting for?

Some Disadvantages
- Reprocessing of Thorium to make it suitable for use in a reactor is difficult. The process is not yet firmly controlled
- The feasibility study and assessed implementation process is extremely expensive without certainty of success.
- Fuel production is likely to be very costly in the beginning
- It is possible to make Uranium-232 when preparing Thorium for fuel. U-232 is very radioactive (gamma rays) and further processing is required to make the desired U-233
In other words, the economics play a big role.

Status
China seems to be ahead of everyone else, going it almost alone and even trying to gain property rights on the Thorium technology. In March 2014 they declared, that the original project plan to have a fully operational Thorium reactor up and running in 25 years would be shortened to 10 years. USA is “quietly co-operating with China.

At least 32 countries, e.g. India, are “looking” into the Thorium option and ostensibly the first “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors” (LFTR – or MSR, Molten Salt Reactor) are now being built.

Typically for the UK, there’s too much chat going on. Research into Thorium is being characterised as “a useful fall back option”, although some proponents call it the “forgotten fuel”.
Get off your hands, UK!

It appears that within the next few years we will have a very good idea about, whether Thorium is the way ahead.
Once established the price per KWh will be a fraction of the cost of wind-energy (10% if considering the life span of the generator?) and an un-dangerous Thorium reactor will take up less than 400 Acres of land compared with the space required by wind mills for the same energy output: 250,000 Acres.

It seems to me that the £50mill invested in HS2 (High-Speed train connection between London and the Midlands) could be better used – with a much higher return.

Open Letter to David Coburn and Peter Hitchens on UKRAINE

Peter Hitchens recently identified the Ukrainian party SVOBODA as an uncouth fascist group and suggested we do not cooperate with Ukraine.
David Coburn became a willing messenger for the “Russian truth twisting masters” on R-TV, demonstrating a naive, antiquated, cold-war, isolationist attitude that is deeply disappointing as it comes from a party, that pretends to be a fresh appearance on the politically rather rotten scene.
Here are some thoughts for both of you.

It is quite clear that none of you have put your boots on Ukrainian soil and don’t understand the language. It is a little like the climate debate: if you don’t know the facts, all you can apply are your emotions and your political platform.
It doesn’t work.

When you have a large followership (Hitchens) and an aggressive novel political agenda (Coburn), a level of integrity, brains, understanding, diplomacy and flair are required.

Both of you transgressed.
When you immerse yourselves in the Ukrainian/Russian debacle as opinion influencers, you must be totally sure that you have your facts sorted out.

SVOBODA is indeed a nationalist party, but it would be wrong to let it stand for all things Ukrainian, just as it would be wrong to let BNP or EDL sign the UK.
Why?
Because we are dealing with a country, that never had a united national heart or a common history within reasonably well defined borders. The rest of us have developed national cohesion in the course of almost 1000 years. The ill defined “Ukraine” has been a ping-pong ball for hundreds of years, with a history that encompasses some of the territory being part of Russia, Poland, the Austrian/Hungarian Empire and Germany and then Russia again, every time with a new set of previously undefined borders.

When Germany and Russia divided Poland between them in 1939, West Ukraine, under Polish administration between the wars, became Russian for 2 years till 1941, a period in which they saw the Bolsheviks massacre intellectuals by the 1000s, followed by German terror against the Russians that hadn’t slipped away. East Ukraine, however, had remained Russian territory. Here Stalin’s collectivisation process in the 1930s caused the death of more than 6 million people during the so called Holodomor..
Hitler’s troops, therefore were received by many Ukrainians as liberators in June 1941, a fact that still has not been forgotten by parts of the population, where Russian suppression has been felt.

This rather violent track record resulted in a politically fragmented landscape with sometimes illogical allegiances. This can be quite difficult to understand for a Western mind, but it is a fact, that several attempts to create a homogeneous state with well defined borders have been attempted many times - all with a conspicuous lack of success and often with a bloody outcome.

SVOBODA is only one of many organisations who have tried to pull this split country together as a national state. If their methods and credo are a little different from what we might expect in our mature and settled western democracies, we only need to consider how various parts of Ukraine have been bullied from all sides, but in particular by the Russians, throughout the centuries.
SVOBODA was the first organisation to shout: “enough is enough” at the recent Maidan demonstrations – but what’s new? History shows that it is always a radical element that takes the lead on change. It was the communists in Denmark in 1940, who for three years made up the resistance. In England it was BNP and EDL, who had had enough of Islam – and the initially 1-programme party UKIP started life with a rather motley blend of nutters and intellectuals, before beginning to come of age and achieve credibility.

The argument that SVOBODA is part of the Ukrainian parliament, while BNP/EDL (or UKIP for that matter!) have no seats in the Commons, is neither here nor there. That is just a result of different election processes and a different history.
We are dealing with a country that since 1991 has started from the bottom, learning to deal with virtually everything from market economy to a democratic process. The soviet misadventure, Stalin’s killing machine, economic breakdown, oligarch asset-grab and Russia’s conscious attempts to dominate are not exactly an ideal spring board!
Beat that for a wooden spoon in the mouth at birth!

It is terribly easy for western couch politicians to criticise and judge a people while using own values as a basis. It doesn’t become easier, when, as for now, the Russian mis-information and frighteningly effective propaganda machine is rolled out while spreading the war-cry about fascists and racists. They have used this tactic against adversaries since 1917. If you haven’t been to Ukraine – and again the experience is widely different if you visit the east or the west of the country – and if you don’t speak the language or are able to follow the screaming debates on Russian or Ukrainian TV channels, then perhaps it is understandable that your judgements are skewed.
Those of us, who have been there many times in the last 15 years and who have been able to follow the discussions on local TV have a completely different experience of a population that is bullied by Russians – and who has had enough of it.

It is true that Ukraine has shot many holes in their own feet. Rampant corruption, economic drainage by the oligarchs and a failure to lift the population out of poverty – like in Russia itself, mind you – is the reality, while perhaps 10 mill of a population of 55 mill have drifted as homeless workers towards a better life in Western Europe. The greedy MPs of the RADA and the Russian orientated Yanukovych, an East Ukrainian convicted criminal, have slowly but surely incapacitated the country, sucking it dry.

Yeltsin’s Foreign Secretary Andrei Kozyrev, in a conversation with USA’s ex Foreign Secretary Talbot, recently said: “Stop talking about what Putin will do next. He has already done it through Yanukovych”. With this he meant slowly brought Ukraine to its knees, so that it would have difficulty operating as a normal autonomous state, i.e. dance to Russia’s whip.
But both of you should be clever enough to understand the outline of this story and the game being played, in particular as Russia today is led by a KGB general and because the shenanigans of the Orange revolution in 2004-5 were reasonably well reported and understood.

To knock Ukraine as being equal to SVOBODA or to turn up and play Russia’s game on the RT Eng. TV channel, being led into a mire of leading, damning questions while supporting the Russian misinformation machine, is naive at best – unforgivably stupid at worst.

And to talk about a “Russian sphere of influence” is old cold-war hat straight out of the Cuba crisis – completely irrelevant. In that case Poland and the Baltic states would also be in the direct “Russian sphere of interest” and beyond Western interest.
Is that what you mean, Mr. Coburn, and should we accept Putin’s next aggressive step?

Knocking EU on the RT channel was also a bad idea.
You are totally right, though; Ashton, Baroso, Schulz and the rest of the gang are a useless, incompetent lot – but right now it seems more important to stand together against Putin the bully and his dangerous game. You became a willing pawn in the theatre RT put up – classic divide and rule.
But still: it was EU countries who willingly received and treated many hundred of wounded from the Maidan protests!

But worst of all: no, it was not the EU that started the Maidan revolution, although surely they have fished in rich waters.
It was the ordinary people, who had grown sick and tired of corruption, being sucked dry and now seeing an opportunity, after the failed Orange Revolution, to obtain a reasonable standard of living and a future for their children through turning towards Western Europe.
You should try experiencing the abject rural poverty in both Ukraine and Russia. A visit would make you understand, that if Ukraine’s future lays with Russia, as Yanukovych suddenly claimed, all hope for the future would be left behind.
That was simply too much for a people, who has the same right as the rest of us to see their aspirations become reality. We know: it was our friends and their children on the barricades for 3 months – a sacrifice you will probably never understand.

Does it not mirror some of the thoughts UKIP have in terms of the UK, manacled by the EU and with a deep desire to get out while pursuing a better life?
You should be the first to understand, Mr. Coburn. The world has changed; the people are taking over from the politicians in Ukraine and here as in other countries, but it seems to me that UKIP has a long way to go in terms of understanding the international political game-play. Lack of knowledge is dangerous and not an excuse, lack of learning from the past is unforgivable and isolating ourselves is not an option.

It may well be that SVOBODA has the wrong colour at the moment – and suddenly it is OK what the EU says? But with time this will change, as the Ukrainians learn the democratic game. I am fully aware that Eastern Europe is rather racist, but that goes for e.g. France and Austria as well! The West has turned anti Jewish, judged from the huge number of resolutions against Israel, the only near-east democratic state, as compared to the number of anti-Palestinian resolutions (none!)

Many Ukrainians – like the rest of us – dream of a prosperous freedom, self determination, one law of the land and peace. Most East Ukrainians have no idea what the West has to offer – they even stand gawping when they look at the progress in Lviv.
Don’t you think the tumultuous events around Ukraine deserve our attention and support and concerted effort in rejecting the many ghosts from the past that suddenly have arisen to haunt us these days?

Yes to Europe – no to EU – and welcome to the freedom searching Ukrainians, if they are willing to take the responsibility. (God help them if they manage to enter the EU-union!).
But do stay clear of R TV in the future.

Global Warming. Really?

The Washington Post

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.


Oh, by the way: this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post - 90+ years ago!

Clara Rothe Postal Essays, 1869, St Thomas-Danish West Indies to Puerto Rico

Postal traffic in the Danish West Indies (since 1917 US Virgin Islands) between Charlotte Amalie (capital of St. Thomas), Cruz Bay (St. Jan) and St Croix was organised using a number of small ships and schooners. The most famous was “Vigilant”. This was originally a pirate ship, built in the 18th C. It was renamed and adapted for passenger and mail transport by the Danes and ploughed the waves from 1802 till 1928 (126 years) before disappearing in a local scrap yard.

St. Thomas was one of the busiest harbours in the West Indies with scores of forwarders.
It was therefore logical for the Danish administration to try adding transport capacity to the various routes. Clara Rothe was one such additional ship, and as can be seen on the stamps, she was both steam and sail driven. The earliest record for the ship is dated 1865.

Many forwarders and trading companies had their own stamps (e.g. Jezurun, Royal Mail Steam Company and Hapag), so there was nothing new in the thought of producing stamps for Clara Rothe, assuming she would create a profitable route for G. Nunez & Co’s mail service between St Thomas & Puerto Rico. The stamps were printed as essays, engraved and printed by M.Stern in Paris, 1869. However, they don’t seem to have been put to use for some reason, and if so, only for a very short time. I have found no record of genuinely cancelled stamps.

Most people therefore talk about the Clara Rothe “fakes”.
This is definitely a misconception.
The plan was genuine enough, conditions simply changed. Contrary to the habit of the Danish Post Company of destroying obsolete stamps, this never seemed to happen with the Clara Rothe essays. That’s one of the reasons they appear so controversial today.

The second reason was, as usual at the time, created by the brothers Spiro in Hamburg, who took advantage of the Nunez-enterprise and produced a range of Clara Rothe fakes.
They are quite easy to recognise:
1. The crown is pushed upwards so the ball is hidden by the St Thomas / Porto Rico banner
2. The ‘M’ in ‘Thomas’ is almost equally thick in both legs (the genuine stamp has a left leg almost like a thread)
3. The Danish flag is unclear
4. The ‘o’ in ‘Thomas’ is narrow, while the genuine ‘o’ is more pointed, thin and open
5. The vertical background stripes are uneven
6. The ship’s background is very ‘coarse’.
7. The smoke-stack is shorter
8. The drawing is of a generally bad quality
9. A genuine stamp is unlikely to be cancelled. Spiro always used incomplete and very inventive cancels, dots, an ‘o’, various stripes as in the GB colonial stamps or just a faint arc.

You can practise your Sherlock Holmes skills on these 3 stamps !

Danish Ex Muslim, Yahiya Hassan, facing racist charge

The following is copied from Robert Spencer's site, but it has been widely reported by Danish Newspapers and other internet sites.
The mentioned Danish Penal Code, paragraph 266b, is a controversioal clamp down on the freedom of speech.
Its intention was to protect minority religions or non-ethnic populations against bigotry, but the effect today is, that if you criticise Islam, you are almost certain to get a hefty fine or a prison sentence.
There are several examples of this having been done.
At the moment 2 muslims are accused under par. 266b for criticising - - - Islam!!!

It is simply becoming absurd andcertainly unjust.

Yahya Hassan grew up in a Muslim family and a Muslim environment. And now he is living with death threats.
Do Danish authorities really think he is an "ignorant Islamophobe"?
As Pamela Geller says, truth is the new hate speech.

"Danish Muslim Apostate Faces Hate Speech Charges," by Andrew Harrod for FrontPage Mag, January 2:
“Muslims love to take advantage of” free speech, Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan says, “and as soon as there is someone else saying something critical against them, they want to restrict it.”
In an action previously indicated by this writer, Hassan is now personally facing this double standard in Danish “hate speech” charges for his anti-Islam comments.

Following Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan’s conviction under Danish Penal Code Section 266b for condemning Islam as misogynist, a local Muslim Aarhus politician demanded a similar prosecution of Hassan.
His poetry says that "everybody in the ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don’t pay taxes and cheat themselves to pensions,” the Somali-Dane Mohamed Suleban stated after reporting Hassan to the police on November 27.
“Those are highly generalizing statements and they offend me and many other people.”
Authorities are currently considering Section 266b charges for, according to one English translation, any public “communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.”

(There are probably 25+ ghettos in Denmark and they are increasingly running Sharia controlled power points inside the Danish state. In many cases neither police, bus drivers nor firemen dare enter these areas.)

The 18-year-old Hassan’s eponymous debut book contains about 150 poems, “many of which are severely critical of the religious environment he grew up in” according to Wall Street Journal reporters Clemens Bomsdorf and Ellen Emmerentze Jervell.
Written in all capital letters, Hassan’s poems treat “issues like the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, child abuse, and the interplay between violence and religion” with “[p]rofanity and vivid analogies.”
Yahya Hassan has sold 80,000 copies following an October 17 release in the comparatively small Danish market and is expected to exceed 100,000 copies by Christmas.

Hassan’s publisher Gyldendal reports that Danish poetry books are fortunate to sell 500 copies.
A recent book forum honored Hassan as the debut author of the year and an English translation of his poetry is underway.

Hassan first became prominent with an October 5 Danish newspaper interview entitled “I F**king Hate My Parents’ Generation.” In it he blamed poor Muslim parenting for the juvenile delinquency and social maladjustment experienced by many Danish Muslim youth such as Hassan himself. With more than 85,000 social media shares, the interview became the most shared Politiken article of the year.

Days thereafter Hassan recited from his “LANG DIGT” or “LONG POEM” before his book’s release on the Danish news program Deadline.
Extract:
“between the Friday prayers and the Ramadans/
you want to carry a knife in your pocket/
you want to go and ask people if they have a problem/
although the only problem is you.”

Such verses brought Hassan more death threats than any other previous Deadline guest.
Hassan has subsequently reported 27 Facebook threats against him, of which the police investigated six as serious and pressed charges in one case of a 15-year old boy.

A subsequent assault against Hassan occurred on November 18 in Copenhagen Central Station by a 24-year old Palestinian-Danish Muslim who had previously received a seven-year terrorism sentence.

Hassan now wears a bulletproof vest and receives protection from Denmark’s domestic intelligence agency PET at speaking engagements. A November 26 reading by Hassan from his book in a school in the Danish town of Odense, moreover, required an estimated one million kroner in security costs, more than the amount spent on a high-risk soccer game. Several hundred policemen had observed the school for two days before the event occurred with road checkpoints, a bomb sweep, and a five kilometer no-fly zone around the school.

Sweden lost, Norway disappearing, Denmark in danger zone

Den Korte Avis (The Brief Newspaper), Trykkefrihedsselskabet (The Society of Free Speech) and Jyllandsposten (a major Danish newspaper, well known from the Muhammed-cartoons), regularly write about the political landscape in Norway and Sweden.
Why?
Because the Norwegians and the Swedes can’t do it themselves.
Why?
Because if you protest against anything undertaken by their respective governments, you may lose both friends and job!
You don’t believe me?
Then read on.

Recently “Jyllandsposten” reviewed a book by the ethnologist Karl-Olov Arnst¬berg and the journalist Gun¬nar San¬de¬lin called “Immigration and Curfew" [my translation from “Indvandring og Moerklaegning”] describing everyday events such as asylum smuggling, immigration and crime, sharia law, the costs of immigration and the PC-elite’s use of the words 'racist' and ‘fascist’ to silence critical discussion of Islam and immigration. In Sweden it took 3 months to negotiate the content of a newspaper advertisement for the book due to PC wrangling, and no editor dared proceed with publishing. It was finally privately published and went straight to the top of the bestseller list.

So what’s going on here?
Alternative views on immigration, Islam and much else are not tolerated by the PC elite in Sweden, i.e. the ruling political parties.
Nevertheless it came as a surprise that the official response to the book and other critical articles came from leftist thug-groups. The Swedish daily, Expressen, and a rather murky group called ‘Researchgruppen’ set out to discover and publish the names of 6,200 readers and writers of various Internet news outlets which dared to contradict or criticise Sweden's official attitude to immigration and the multicultural society.
These sites, Avpixlat, Fria Tider, and Exponerat, i.e. De-Pixelated, Free Times and Divulged, are classed as "hate sites" by the PC elite, i.e. same meaning as in the UK: a site, that does not express the official multi-culti, middle class, leftist prick attitude as the PC-elite.
Researchgruppen, however, is best compared to UAF and AFA, (United Against Fascism, Anti Fascist Action): Hitler Jugend in attitude and action!
I can’t see much “left” in them – but so is the confusion of the political landscape.

It seems to me that the PC-elite now feel that they have lost the argument and therefore have no other choice than resorting to value statements such as "hate crime", “Racist”, Fascist” and "Islamophobia", in order to silence all contradictory views.

However, why do these so-called “leftists” always find it OK to use such Big Brother 1984-methods, when at the same time they are the harshest attackers of e.g. Edward Snowden?
What makes one right and the other wrong?

In my opinion nothing has changed in the past 100 years, since Mad Marx and the officially declared psychopath Lenin appeared on the scene.
When I worked for the Ministry of Defence in Denmark in the 70s, I was hung out by the very same leftist groups with details of myself published in a book about “traitors”!

Today silence rules when the Muslims in Sweden and Norway commit heinous crimes of terrorism and rape (verified, although with difficulty, in the statistical material in both countries).
Silence rules when the Jews of Malmoe have been expelled through violent PC-action and a Mayor, who finds it natural that the Jews “can just move to Israel”.
Silence rules when Norwegian and Swedish whistleblowers lose friends and jobs.
And official silence rules, when the UAF thugs break up meetings by societies that support the freedom to express oneself.
One can only guess what might happen when Researchgruppen publish the names and addresses of people, whose opinion they don’t like.

Kvaellsposten, a Swedish newspaper, actually dared report the case of Anders Dahlberg, a member of the Swedish Democratic Party and a National Guardsman. If these events are anything to go by, the future is bleak. Dahlberg had posted some comments under a pseudonym on a site characterised by Researchgruppen as a “Hate Site”, but they managed to find him and Dahlberg had a bomb thrown through his letterbox. Luckily nobody was hurt.
But Dahlberg was subsequently discharged from his position in the Swedish military!

Compare that to the recent assassination attempt on the Danish politician Lars Hedegaard and the aggression against the young poet, Yahiya Hassan. Hassan’s book with poems centred on dysfunctional Muslim immigrants has gone straight to the best seller top (over 100,000 sold in Denmark, where poetry books normally sells in only hundreds; now expected in an English edition).
Both he and Hedegaard now live with publicly paid police protection.
The joke is that Yahiya Hassan, from a Muslim family, has been accused of racism.
Laugh or cry?
Your choice – but it will probably stress the public prosecutor in Denmark beyond his limits.

Luckily they still write about such matters in Denmark, but strong powers also call for a literary curfew here.
And Sweden?
It’s too late – they’re lost as a free nation with a government that openly declares the death of the nation, open borders and with 1 million Muslim immigrants over the past 13 years.

If it were up to the OIC, not a single criticism about Muslims would see the light of day in the future.
As Voltaire said: “If you want to know who controls you, find out whom you can’t criticise”

The “Brave new world” has arrived.

Fascism




Kitaj - The Rise of Fascism 1975

 

Populism, Fascism, Racism
Setting the record straight.

INTRODUCTION

The most common debate-grenade slung against anyone, who believes our society is squeaking in the hinges and creaking in the floor boards, is to append the label “Fascist” upon them.
But what does "Fascist" actually mean?
It is clear that most people using it don’t understand. It is an easy way of throwing a bucket of verbal paint with the colour “Hitler brown” or “Mussolini black” in the face of their opponents, but it should be understood that this label often is thrown from the open doors of a glass house!

Bigotry, violence, the use of force instead of debate to press the point and a severe level of intolerance are probably the characteristics appended by most people to the word “fascism”. The roots of the origin are therefore firmly planted in Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

Racist is a more direct word – but in fact it is also a tough word to define.
In many ways the classification of humanity into races smells of the 1930s. We forget that the pseudo-science of the 20th Century, which was used to such a detrimental effect by the Nazis, has been all but abandoned, and the reverberations linger on.
Considering that we share 99% of our DNA with Chimpanzees, does that mean that Chimps are a different race?
Or are Mormons a different race from Catholics?
If not, why is it that a Christian, who expresses misgivings about Muslims, is being branded a racist?
And who says that Islam is a religion at all, when the mainstay seems to be a “culture”, a strictly regulated set of rules of how to live your life according to firm laws with prescribed punishment for deviation, and with a superstitious overbuilding? One without the other – so far at least – doesn’t seem possible.

In short, modern debate has been invaded by residual emotions from the mid 20th Century, used without thought and in the same way as one would say “you are stupid or dumb”, implicitly relying on a reference to historic times still well remembered by most.
Arguments based on “value” (dumb, stupid, imbecile – or fascist, populist or racist) usually come from the armoury of the chattering classes, who are so steeped in political correctness, that they are blind to facts and proper debate techniques.

DEFINITION
As a lot of people use the word Fascist, let’s try to nail the jelly to the wall and find out what it means.

Fascism."Frustratingly, I can't give a simple definition," says Kevin Passmore, reader in history at Cardiff University and author of Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. "It depends on definitions."
Well, there you go.
Perhaps “White Superiority”?
Or Racism?
Although this would match e.g. the tenet of Ku-Klux-Klan and probably the implicit meaning for many people, it is still too simplistic and woolly. No one has yet called Taliban for “Fascists”, let alone Stalin’s Communists – but wasn’t their society representing the ultimate in fascism?
In a liberal democracy the basic political unit is the individual. The corporatist model emphasises co-operation over competition. This was the case in Mussolini’s Italy – but who would ever understand or think about this model today, when using the word “Fascism”? They rather anticipate the concepts of authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism and racial supremacy.
As someone commented on the Internet: “Right wing is seen as reactionary, yet people who stand up for democracy, sovereignty and the sanctity of the UK parliament are seen as reactionary [i.e. fascists], while people who champion the unelected supremacy of the EU are seen as progressive”. This is interesting, as the “we know all; our laws count; if you rebel, you must be eliminated; don’t work against us” are implicit Hitler/Mussolini-fascist tenets – but has anyone yet tried to call the EU supporters fascists?

There are 2 modern historians, who in particular have tried to define the volatile word “fascism” (my expression: Nailing the jelly to the wall): Umberto Eco and Emilio Gentile.
For the sake of enlightenment, I have quoted their definitions here:

Umberto Eco: (originally 14 points, delimited to these 10)
• "The Cult of Tradition", combining cultural syncretism with a rejection of modernism.
• "The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
• "Disagreement Is Treason" - fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action.
• "Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
• "Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
• "Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often involves an appeal to xenophobia or the identification of an internal security threat. He cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
• "Pacifism Is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" - there must always be an enemy to fight.
• "Contempt for the Weak" - although a fascist society is elitist, everybody in the society is educated to become a hero.
• "Selective Populism" - the People have a common will, which is not delegated but interpreted by a leader. This may involve doubt being cast upon a democratic institution, because "it no longer represents the Voice of the People".
• "Newspeak" - fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

Emilio Gentile:1. a mass movement with multiclass membership in which prevail, among the leaders and the militants, the middle sectors, in large part new to political activity, organized as a party militia, that bases its identity not on social hierarchy or class origin but on a sense of comradeship, believes itself invested with a mission of national regeneration, considers itself in a state of war against political adversaries and aims at conquering a monopoly of political power by using terror, parliamentary politics, and deals with leading groups, to create a new regime that destroys parliamentary democracy;
2. an 'anti-ideological' and pragmatic ideology that proclaims itself antimaterialist, anti-individualist, antiliberal, antidemocratic, anti-Marxist, is populist and anticapitalist in tendency, expresses itself aesthetically more than theoretically by means of a new political style and by myths, rites, and symbols as a lay religion designed to acculturate, socialize, and integrate the faith of the masses with the goal of creating a 'new man';
3. a culture founded on mystical thought and the tragic and activist sense of life conceived of as the manifestation of the will to power, on the myth of youth as artificer of history, and on the exaltation of the militarization of politics as the model of life and collective activity;
4. a totalitarian conception of the primacy of politics, conceived of as an integrating experience to carry out the fusion of the individual and the masses in the organic and mystical unity of the nation as an ethnic and moral community, adopting measures of discrimination and persecution against those considered to be outside this community either as enemies of the regime or members of races considered to be inferior or otherwise dangerous for the integrity of the nation;
5. a civil ethic founded on total dedication to the national community, on discipline, virility, comradeship, and the warrior spirit;
6. a single state party that has the task of providing for the armed defense of the regime, selecting its directing cadres, and organizing the masses within the state in a process of permanent mobilization of emotion and faith;
7. a police apparatus that prevents, controls, and represses dissidence and opposition, even by using organized terror;
8. a political system organized by hierarchy of functions named from the top and crowned by the figure of the 'leader,' invested with a sacred charisma, who commands, directs, and coordinates the activities of the party and the regime;
9. corporative organization of the economy that suppresses trade union liberty, broadens the sphere of state intervention, and seeks to achieve, by principles of technocracy and solidarity, the collaboration of the 'productive sectors' under control of the regime, to achieve its goals of power, yet preserving private property and class divisions;
10. a foreign policy inspired by the myth of national power and greatness, with the goal of imperialist expansion
Personally I like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s statement, as it is clear and uncluttered:
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

Whichever definition you’d prefer, I think it is important NOT to use the word if you have no idea what it actually means and therefore fall back on a pejorative.
If you do, you expose yourself, not the object of your scorn and you could just as well use the F*** or C*** words.

APPLICATION
Now try to apply the definitions on a) Anti Fascist Action (AFA), the violent organisation that exists in Scandinavia, Holland and the UK (here called UAF) and who inevitably turns up at all meetings involving demonstrations for free speech, well armed with cricket bats and dressed in balaclavas and hoods; b) Islam and Sharia law; c) BNP; and d) UKIP.

a), b), c) are in my opinion round pegs in round fascist holes, considering their tendency to violence, narrow cultural views and laws, superiority claims and severe punishment for deviation.

No such thing can be said about UKIP.
It hardly needs explanation, but here goes:
UKIP
- Does not claim racial superiority.
- Has no more supreme leader than any other party or CEO of a company.
- Promotes free speech and individual ambition.
- Has no “punishment” programme for people who think differently.
- Does not promote a Britain that’s better than everyone else, only a Britain that should be given the chance to compete using its inherent advantages, options and abilities, without being unduly constrained by anyone else.
- Refuses to accept uncontrolled influx of people who take but don’t give i.e. if you contribute, you’re welcome.
- Believes in action and decision making where the action is felt, i.e. not laws and decisions being taken out of touch with, and far afield from, the people concerned.
- promotes healthy competition and the individual’s right to self determination
- Supports same sex partnership
- Openly welcomes thinking people with no regard to creed, colour, religion or race
- Stands for minimal state interference

It is clear that the very moment you start a political party, you also set up a set of values that characterise the party.
This goes for Labour, who are now anything but the Labour Party of the 1950s, or the Tories, whose values are as unclear as the wobbling Lib. Dem.s, who don’t seem to know who they are at all.
It was inevitable, that a reaction to the failure of the old parties had to come.
Other European parties, like the Danish People’s Party (DF), have therefore arisen and gone through the same change of finding out who they are.
Common to their present success are the facts that the old parties have failed, lied, cheated and disappointed, but also that UKIP (and DF) have found their legs and begun to stand firm, while listening to what people want. Remember Blair: “We can’t leave important decisions to people, as they don’t understand”!!

The massive and corrupt colossus called the EU has changed our world, while creating a political and organisational monstrosity, that has proven not to work: centralised government, remoteness, decisions removed from action, common economy amongst wildly different cultures and abilities, complete lack of democracy and unelected commissioners.
The access to a money mountain (ca. £9000 mill p.a. – unaudited) and the objective of eliminating the national state have led to a situation that may break the back of several countries while making the EU cronies, NGOs, consultants, individuals, firms and other organisations immensely rich.
Those benefitting from this situation – and they are many – will resist change with all means at their disposal, and then some.

It is, therefore not strange, that UKIP and other EU-sceptics are being hung out to dry, are being called fascists and prevented from acquiring power, as they threaten to kill the goose that lays golden eggs!

In a world of massive demographic, religious and (possibly) climatic change it is evident, that we need to rethink who we are, how we live and consequently find the most appropriate systems to create a future for our children while optimising the use of scarce resources, mainly energy and water.
Someone has to stop the madness and say the emperor forgot to dress.

As we live with interaction on a global scale, we do have global responsibilities.
How far we take these responsibilities is the 64K question.
We could open our borders like Denmark and Sweden do at present and be swamped, but at a point in time we will discover that this is self destructive, eliminating our ability to implement any policy at all.
Closing our borders is just as bad.

The balance must be found, where the traditional parties, LibDemLabCon, have failed and lost all control.

So some of the questions that come to mind are:
Is it fascist to claim, that we need to understand what we are doing and implement a system of housekeeping that gives us a good life, at the same time as we continue to afford helping the needy as good world citizens?
The climate appears to be changing, but is it fascist to shout “Stop” to the ridiculous and hazardous move towards energy sources that are proven to be expensive and useless?
Is it fascist to call Ed Davey, the LibDem Energy Secretary, the most dangerous man in the UK today, as he will kill off our competitiveness, based on useless green investments while ignoring Fracking and Thorium opportunities?
Is it fascist to protest against a system that pays the developing world to pollute more and faster, while asphyxiating our own industry?
Is it fascist to ask a minority of citizens to adhere to, and respect, our way of life, while resisting minority cultural and religious rule?
Is it fascist to demand the law of the land to be managed in the land - and not in some foreign place?
Is it fascist to say “no” to parallel societies and multiple laws of the land, while being reasonably open and hospitable to immigrants?
Is it fascist to claim the right to free speech without being threatened with imprisonment?
Is it fascist to demand better local control with our utilities, all of which are now owned by non-UK companies, and demand reasonably priced el, gas and water for the WHOLE of the population, rather than paying foreign shareholders? (A UK MW costs £95 - a French MW costs Euro 45 - beat that!)
Is it fascist to demand that no old person dies of hypothermia in the winter - and that no child goes hungry to school - and perhaps balance the cost against sending money to countries that have big armies, send rockets to Mars and have nuclear capabilities?
Is it fascist to prioritise the needs and welfare of victims of crime over the "human rights" of foreign perpetrators and be able unconditionally to return them to their country of origin?

The list could go on.

In short: is it fascist to try and preserve the values of a country, that actually defeated fascism in WW2?

STASI EU: Eur. Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation

Ve have vays to make you - - - -

A group of former heads of state and government leaders, i.e. the former presidents of the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Albania, Latvia, and Cyprus, and former prime ministers of Spain and Sweden, under the leadership of former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski and Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, have called on the European Union to establish national surveillance units to monitor citizens of all 27 EU member states suspected of “intolerance”.

The European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), a “tolerance watchdog”, called for the establishment of government surveillance bodies to directly monitor the “intolerant” behaviour of identified citizens and groups.

The ECTR presented it as part of the EU’s work towards a new “Equal Treatment Directive” (ETD), published under the title, “Proposal for a Council Directive on implementing the principle for equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”.

Have they gone absolutely mad?
This is STASI reinvented!

Haven’t they learnt that the 20th Century produced some of the worst experiences in human history, based on total state control?

Have they forgotten East Germany, Romania under Ceausescu, the massive control of people in Czekoslovakia, Hungary and other East European communist states?
Or – almost a banal and repetitive reference - Nazism?

Luckily EDW, the European Dignity Watch, a civil rights watchdog group based in Brussels, has warned that this directive “aims to impose governmental control over the social and economic behaviour of citizens in the widest possible sense.”

In a scathing critique, the group says that the ECTR Framework’s basic principles are flawed and that it “interferes in an unprecedented manner with citizens’ freedom and rights” and “distorts the concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘equality’.”

In the UK the Public Order Act was recently amended through the removal of Section 5. “The right to insult” was reinstated, underpinning the right to speak up against stupidity and bigotry, as long as the criticism was directed at groups and not against individuals.

The ECTR now tries to reverse this sensible and progressive step, stuffing a wet sock down everyone’s throat and banning the option of expressing an opinion about anything anywhere at any time.
This could lead to the possibility that charges are brought on an unclear basis or even without legal grounds. It would be a significant step backward, and would certainly be a dark day for European democracy.

The effect would be that we couldn’t speak up against e.g. Genital Mutilation, hanging of gays, stoning for adultery and honour killings, as it would hurt someone’s “culture” and feelings.

Frankly – EU has gone even more mad than I have thought for some time.

Better off out!!!!