The Fascist Left

The term "Fascist Left" is actually a redundancy. The only "left" that exists, and has existed for a hundred years, is the one vilified by the right, which is to say anyone who tells the truth or doesn't support the right. What we have today, as exemplified by the pro-Palestinian, pro-Islamist anti-American grouping that takes its inspiration from Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Alexander Cockburn, Medea Benjamin and George Galloway, is not a new phenomenon by any means but a continuation of the totalitarian movement and body of thought that has infected liberal democracies from time immemorial, in particular the Stalinist era and the post World War II period. In this country we see the superficial signs of the disease in Political Correctness, multiculturalism and cultural relativism, ubiquitous in our university social studies departments and the blogs Counterpunch, countercurrents and truthdig, as well as the mass media like Huffington Post, Slate and Salon and of course the New York Times.

The choice of the term "left" is devious and deceptive. It has nothing to do with movements for human rights, women's rights, gay rights, social and economic equality, civil liberties or, most telling, democracy itself. On the contrary, those who take the trouble to examine the inspirations and roots of those who call themselves "leftists" will find an ideology in stark contrast to the notions of freedom and democracy. It is a long and unchanging history, one of totalitarianism, hate, violence, and intolerance, one that demands a complete submission to its tenets and vehement opposition to and slander of those who do not sign their loyalty oath. In this sense it is a secular version of Islam's shariah law, which mandates unquestioning observance in all aspects of daily life, not just religious worship.

Contemporary liberals and progressives are unfamiliar with the true nature of the left. For them, any person or group or movement that opposes war, capitalism or racism and which preaches peace and cultural diversity is considered to be on the left, regardless of its affiliations or true motives and objectives. The hallmark of leftism today is virulent anti-Americanism, the belief that American "imperialism" is the greatest oppressor of our times, responsible for all the world's ills and violence. It is curious, to say the least, that the basis for this conclusion was never arrived at during the reign of Joseph Stalin or during the freedom struggles of eastern Europe against communism.

It has always been a truism that indigenous resistance movements not taking orders from the Soviets and not controlled by communists are never supported by the Fascist Left. In Nicaragua, for example, the Sandinista revolution was one of strongly nationalist democratic socialism and thus was never supported by the communists there. None of the nine-member Sandinista directorate was a communist. Since then, only two of the original revolutionaries, Miguel D'Escoto Brockman and Daniel Ortega, have proven to be hard-line extreme leftists.

If one needs proof that the Fascist Left exists, that is easily provided. Here is a list of their heroes of the 20th century: Stalin, Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and above all Hamas and Hezbollah. For this we can thank Ramsey Clark and Noam Chomsky primarily, with cheerleaders like Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin and George Galloway and the blog Counterpunch bringing up the rear and Ian Buruma sitting on the fence trying to see who will win so he can join them in a hurry. Anyone who does not know this history - and few liberals have taken the trouble to find out - can consult Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Halliday, Nick Cohen, Pascal Bruckner, Jonah Goldberg, and going back a bit further, Raymond Aron and George Orwell, who reminded us of how the communists betrayed the partisans and anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.

Of special note in the Spanish Civil War is Claude Cockburn in Great Britain, who did his part too, under a pseudonym (Frank Pitcairn). He joined the Communist Party and wrote about the war for the Daily Worker, becoming essentially a Soviet agent himself and working closely with the foreign editor of Pravda against the anarchists and the anti-Stalin left and approving of the Stalin's infamous Moscow Trials that condemned numerous intellectuals to death. His venom was directed most egregiously against the anti-Stalinist leftist POUM, the Partito Obrero de Unificacion Marxista, and his efforts contributed to the arrest, torture and murder of many POUM members. His son Alexander Cockburn has followed faithfully in his father's footsteps.

In France, the story is equally sordid. Everyone knows about the long list of French leftist intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau who made their peace with the Nazis and in exchange for good behavior were allowed to live quietly in Paris during the war. Jean-Paul Sartre was the outstanding example. One who did not stay in Paris and who spoke out was sociologist Raymond Aron. In his superb essay collection that exposes the perennial Fascist Left, Cultural Amnesia, Clive James writes of Aron's calling Sartre and many other writers to account for what was no less than a "widespread but tacit collaboration" with the Nazis. Said James about Sartre: "The sad truth was that he...owed his wartime fame as a writer and thinker to Nazi tolerance, for which a price had to be paid". Aron's book, The Opium of the Intellectuals, from 1955, enraged the French left endlessly, because it suggested, says James, that "the Communist version of socialism was a secular religion". Today the voices of liberal democracy in France are faint. What is the Socialist Party doing? Well, maybe the same thing that Clive James said about Sartre's purported underground activities during the Nazi occupation: "a secret meeting onWednesday to decide whether there should be another meeting the following Tuesday".

The Fascist Left has found its most reliable ally in the radical Islamists, a reliable ally against western liberal democracy but also one they think (mistakenly) can be recruited to THEIR anti-imperialist, anti-liberal philosophy. Which one of these - Islamists or Fascist Leftists - will prevail may not be known by the latter but the rests of us know with certainty that it will be the former. The Islamists are far more clever. They understand that the Fascist Left is a precious resource in recruiting all manner of paleoliberals over to the side of Islamism: abject liberal Jews, peaceniks, anti-Semites, the counterculture, black Americans, civil libertarians, centrist academics and intellectuals -- in other words just about anyone with a gripe against the USA. That a good swatch of this constituency has gone over to the dark side of Islamism already, as witness the liberal mass media, should give us all a good fright. The Fascist Leftists, being secularists and atheists, will of course be at the top of the lists for assassination when the Islamists get power.

That the battle to defend liberal secular democracy, the rule of law, our Constitution, civil liberties and gender equality has been

abandoned to the right wing is disturbing but there is no other way to distance one's self from the paleoliberals and resist the self-censorship of the liberal media. It may bother many of us to stand next to Tea Partiers, Zionists, neo-conservatives and Republicans but that is because there is nowhere else to stand and no other place to bear witness or defend democracy. Those critical of the totalitarian left will continue to be jeered as secret right-wingers, as the fate of people like Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman proves. In truth they are the real defenders of liberal democracy.

The Religious Conspiracy to Destroy Secularism

Much outrage has been directed at the "New Atheists", or the "Four Horsemen", who I call D2H2: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Some call atheism a religion though it clearly is not since it has no doctrine and does not either prescribe or proscribe human beliefs and behavior. Others, whether devout believers or doubtful ones, take umbrage at what they consider insults against their spiritual beliefs. Still others, including my Anglican cleric friend John Papworth, insist that the atrocities of religion pale against those of secular tyrants like Stalin and Mao, as if I were somehow letting them off the hook when I criticize religion.

Every now and then what has been an intuition suddenly becomes crystal clear. So it is with the growing suspicion that religious leaders of all faiths have now banded together instinctively to fight secularism, their common enemy, and defend their diminishing territory. Their voices get louder as they define morality and the moral landscape for humanity based on what they consider the overriding lessons and strictures of millennia-old doctrines. These are mostly lost in the fog of history for the rest of us but for religious leaders, these dogmas and dictates were handed down by a god to human prophets directly (Moses, Jesus and Mohammed). Forget Islamist terrorism; they say. These leaders have pronounced Secularism as the greatest threat to humanity extant.

Underscoring this paranoia were two recent events: a French panel on secularism and Islam in which the Council of Bishops did not participate and spokesmen of all major religions expressed their concern that this discussion "could feed demagogy" and lead to a rejection of religion ( as if it were not being rapidly rejected anyway); and a debate in the UK sponsored by The Spectator debating the proposition that secularism is a greater threat than Islam. Predictably in the affirmative were Muslim Tariq Ramadan, a radical Salafist and mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood, and Rev. Tim Radcliff, a priest and Dominican friar. The final vote of the attendees on this proposition was a resounding No, testimony that rationality has not been entirely smothered.

The new atheists have some cause for rejoicing because it appears that their entreaties on behalf of reason and secular systems of morality are causing serious alarm among all three major religions. Scarcely a day goes by that a cleric of one faith or another does not take the opportunity to promote his ancient snake oil remedy for human fallibility and misbehavior. It does seem that Jewish rabbis constitute the preponderance of these modern-day prophets, however. Perhaps this is due to the ever-present fears of resurgent persecution or the diminished number of congregants or intermarriage of Jews with non-Jews. Perhaps a multi-faith alliance constitutes some kind of protection against growing anti-Semitism. Make friends where you can find them.

But this does not explain the reluctance of Jewish leaders to acknowledge and fight back against the rampant anti-Semitism of Muslims and the declared war on the Jews by Arabs in the middle east. For some inexplicable reason, the post-9/11 period seems to have sparked in the liberal Jewish community some sense of fellowship with Muslims who, by order of the qu-ran, are compelled to seek the extermination of all Jews. It is as if the Jews felt an urge to cozy up to Nazis. Perhaps it is not surprising, given the fact that both religions closely resemble each other. Historically internal feuds within religions have always been the most violent and relentless, as witness Shia and Sunni Islam.

This phenomenon of faith-based solidarity has led Jews - but not Muslims - to initiate "outreach" and "multi-faith dialogue", though it is not clear just why the Jews should be the initiators rather than the Muslims, who have much more to answer for in their arrogant and superior attitude towards other religions, their qu-ranic mandate to kill nonMuslims and apostates, their enslavement of women, and their disdain for democracy, religious equality and the laws of nonMuslim societies.

But this is becoming clearer day by day: that leaders of the three major faiths are uniting behind a single barricade which is being built to fend off the growing secularism of society. This secularism, most prevalent in western Europe, is causing them serious alarm because it means, as indeed it has since the Enlightenment, the decreasing credibility and influence of religious doctrine. In a word, secularism in a democracy is giving all religions nightmares. What better allies can they count on if not the leaders of other religions who face the same threat?

The response is predictable: creating a new religious solidarity to fend off the common enemy of secularism. Mind you, this solidarity is not based on contemporary ethics but, as always, on religious doctrines and the declarations of prophets that go back thousands of years (in the case of Islam, only about fourteen hundred years but cribbed from the other religions which in turn cribbed from earlier ones). It is amusing (though disturbing) to see how little progress they have made and how hide-bound they remain in their desperate struggle to assert the waning authority of their respective churches. This desperation is evident in their public statements, including the one cited below.

And well might they worry. In the USA, 16% of the population is either non-believing or non-observant, over 10% more than ten or twenty years ago. In western Europe, this is reversed, with the vast majority of people nonobservant if not outright atheist. Religion has nothing to tell us today, no moral examples to set, and no legitimacy. Science, reason and education have set people free. More than that, the freedom to inquire and dissent means that people are free to imagine and construct a secular ethics and sense of morality without the stranglehold of religious hierarchy and dogma. They have discovered that morality is an inherent capability of humans and not dependent on adherence to a religious doctrine, much less a higher being.

At this point a specific example of the arbitrary and dictatorial nature of religion is apt. Here are some quotes from a recent post by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, contesting neuroscientist Patricia Churchland's purported reliance on biology as our only important moral guide. Let's keep in mind that here we have the two extremes: one defending religion as the sole guide and the other defending biology, yet another example of the tiresome unresolvable "Nature vs. Nurture" debate.

Says Joffie:

Churchland's thinking is a moral mess. It reminds us why religion is the best and indispensable guide to moral behavior.

For Churchland, the biological key to morality is to be found in the role of peptide oxytocin, which solidifies the bond between mother and infant and also generates empathy to include more distant kin. Churchland speaks the language of the moral relativist. For example, she defends the practice of primitive tribes that carry out infanticide in the context of scarcity, and she is slow to condemn the 19th century Hindu tradition of burning wives on their husbands' funeral pyres. "I don't know about their values," she says, "and why they have that tradition."

(SALZMAN: if religion is the best guide, then how is it that there are so many atheists and agnostics who are good law-abiding people? And what about pagans, who preceded Jews, Christians and Muslims, who believed in many gods? Are they equal to today's believers or nonbelievers? Further, one could just as well ask why modern religious leaders are slow to condemn the ongoing Muslim tradition of oppression of women, forced child marriage, murder of apostates and genital mutilation, not to mention their opposition to freedom of speech.)

Says Joffie:

As a rabbi, I welcome research into neuroscience but believe that as much as we are the products of biology, we also transcend it. I make choices about right and wrong by studying sacred texts that record a 2,500-year history of men and women struggling with God's message and with each other as they attempt to define what is moral and what is not. I also draw strength and inspiration from a religious community that cares about values and deepens its search for the good through the practice of ancient rituals and traditions. I don't believe in easy answers to moral questions. As a liberal person of faith, I reject simplistic moral codes, and I am aware that different religious traditions arrive at different conclusions about good and evil. Nonetheless, the process of moral decision-making that my tradition offers has left me convinced that, as Jonathan Haidt has argued, there is a moral structure to the universe, and despite our differences, the great religious traditions largely agree on what our moral foundations are. And in the moral world in which I live, infanticide and wife burning are always, always wrong.

(SALZMAN: this is arguably the most devious and Satanic argument imaginable. No easy answers to moral questions? If one of Yoffie's congregants confesses to murder or rape, he cannot answer that these are wrong? And after attacking Churchland for her supposed relativism, he concurs that different religions reach different conclusions? One might excuse his confused and contradictory thinking here except that he then re-contradicts himself by saying that all religions "largely agree". In his world he does reach an "easy answer": infanticide and wife burning are wrong. But in MY world, so are women's enslavement, child marriage and genital mutilation. The contempt for nonbelievers is palpable: one can only reach moral clarity through religion. Worse yet, we have a REFORM rabbi clinging to cloudy ancient human-created doctrines which later generations, Joffie's included, still think represent moral codes handed down from some supreme being and which they insist on regarding as definitive, overriding any subsequent moral or scientific discoveries. This blow to Enlightenment rationality, free will, human dignity, freedom of thought and moral progress is stunning, yet it represents one of the gravest dangers to humanity and civilization ever devised. Small wonder that churches and synagogues are emptier today than in earlier times. )

Religious leaders, however, resist the notion of human-created moral codes even as their power wanes, this waning leading to ever more shrill exhortations about the "spiritual" life and how its purported lack has created a moral void and emptiness in everyone's lives that only religion can fill. But the audience continues to leave before the sermon is finished. The churches get emptier even as preachers grasp at straws and struggle vainly to recruit new believers.

PALEOLIBERALS & MEDIA SALIVATING OVER NORWAY KILLINGS

What a great opportunity for paleoliberals, the media and Muslims: a lilywhite Scandinavian killer inspired by critics of Islam and a fear of European Islamization. What a great opportunity to speculate on and formulate new but entirely incredible theories about today's threats to civilization. What a great opportunity to wipe their brows in gratitude that their own blindness about the growing scourge of Islamism and Islamic terrorism has now been justified and rewarded.

But it doesn't hold water. Right wing attacks by white Christians can be counted on the fingers of one hand, both in this country and in Europe. You would need a hundred hands to count the number of Muslim bombings and attempted bombing plots that have taken place in the past ten years alone. People have short or selective memories or both. Remember 9/11? How about London, Madrid, Mumbai, Nairobi, Bali? How about the fact that 80% of all the bombing plots (in this country alone) uncovered by the FBI in the past ten years were concocted by Muslims?

If you made a list of the al Qaeda affiliates and imitators around the world, which are operating in Asia, Africa and the middle east, they would number in the dozens, maybe more. If you made a list of the neo-Nazi white supremacist groups, you might with studious care accumulate about five. Posse Comitatus; Aryan Nation; are there any more out there folks? How long ago did Timothy McVeigh set off his bomb? Fifteen years? How many have happened since then? Come on, let's hear the numbers.

The Norway bombing provides another excuse for liberals to overlook Islamic terrorism; they can blame Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller for incitement. Of course this conveniently overlooks the reason anti-jihad web sites exist in the first place: to oppose and expose Islamic violence. But paleoliberals equate strong language with physical violence. Not only that, but they decry and would suppress strong language out of fear of that SAME Islamist violence. They would, if they could, shred our Constitution, ban "offensive" speech --just as the Muslim world does and just as Muslims in this country would do and just as they try to do every day in their efforts to silence all criticism of Islam and shariah law.

Nice try, folks; blame free speech for the violent acts of the criminally insane. Feminists tried with pornography. And surprise!: their foes tried to ban abortion. There's no light between the paleoliberals and the extreme right wing when it comes to personal freedom: BAN IT.

It would be wrong and distasteful to try and find any justification for the Norway killings. But there is little doubt that the rise of right wing parties in western Europe is an expression of frustration and anger at the refusal of Europe to acknowledge the adverse effects of Muslim immigrants. While governments and media are focusing on the rare incidents of terrorist acts by madmen or jihadists, they are studiously ignoring the far more dangerous threat of '"stealth jihad": the quiet, nonviolent plans of "moderate" Muslims to overturn the laws of civil society and inject their religious beliefs based on shariah law into our system. This effort is insidious, ongoing and unnoticed by the public, and deliberately censored by the media, which focuses solely on violent terrorist acts. Terrorist bombs are relatively few and are vastly outnumbered by the program of stealth jihad that threatens our Constitution and basic freedoms.

The Muslims categorically reject assimilation. They demand special treatment and to get it they physically occupy the streets of Paris for prayer, closing them off to traffic. They get state aid for their religious schools, where students are brainwashed not only with memorizing the qu-ran but in engendering hatred for Jews. They demand special treatment and favors, and exemptions from civil law. They are quickly outbreeding Europeans, often in polygamous situations (the same is true in the USA) and thereby sucking in larger and larger welfare payments. They harass, beat and murder nonMuslims, and carry out honor killings with impunity. In certain countries such as Norway, rape of white women by young Muslims is almost a daily occurrence, with little punishment. They demand censorship of anything that is critical of Islam and make threats against the media who dare to defy them; they have physically attacked the home of journalists and routinely hold public demonstrations cursing nonMuslims and Jews.

The failure of Europe to force Muslims to comply with civil law and customs, to criminalize those who defy these laws, to insist on uniform observance of secular democratic society, to legally ban offenses against secular society, to end special treatment of Muslims, to limit welfare payments to large families,and above all to defend vigorously the right of freedom of expression, has indeed inspired right wing movements....but with good reason.

European leaders are now acknowledging the failure of multiculturalism but now they must repudiate it through the use of enforceable laws and mandatory punishment for their violation. They must categorically reject the resistance of Muslims to appropriate assimilation. They must reject the temptation of special treatment. They must develop broad guidelines and minimal conditions for immigration, residence and working. They must end state aid to all religious schools. They must prohibit the use of shariah law and insist on full compliance with secular civil laws. And religious leaders of other denominations must support them instead of making excuses for Muslims, excuses which suggest that Muslims may be inherently incapable of educating themselves and becoming good citizens. If Muslims want equal treatment and rights, they must support them for everyone else and stop asserting the superiority of their religion. If they believe themselves capable of moral choice, then they must prove it to the rest of us.

(Check out: thereligionofpeace.com. Nearly 18,000 Muslim terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11; 184 in 18 countries this past June alone; 184 attacks on this country since 1973)

The Liberal/Islamic Anschluss

(Please note: this Wednesday, July 27th, Cong. Pete King's committee will hold the third hearing on Al Shabaab's recruitment in the US, starting at 9:30 am.)

As I review my e-mails each morning, I watch the accumulation of news releases, reports and commentary on the efforts of the American Muslim community to manipulate and re-configure public opinion and attitudes about Islam. Of course they deliberately confound "Islam" with "Muslims" , even the word "Islamophobia" clearly applies only to the religion, not individual Muslims.

In addition to the scurrilous lies that now appear regularly in media, such as the attacks against Brigitte Gabriel and ACT for America, and the Obama administration up-sucking to Islam, and the ongoing "lawfare" battlefronts to undermine domestic and international law, more subtle, behind-the-scenes efforts are taking place across the country, directed at the traditional liberal universities such as U.of C-Berkeley and other Californian state campuses, and now at liberal think tanks, the easy marks for evoking Political Correctness. The latest of these is the Center for American Progress, a Democratic Party hackery with close ties to Pres. Obama. The blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center also routinely contains news about purported "Islamophobia". These organizations are already taking their marching orders; the only thing lacking so far is the goosestep.

Beyond harassing and slandering people like Gabriel and Cong. Peter King, and beyond their fatuous "interfaith dialogues" with liberal rabbis and self-hating Jews (who knew there were so many?), and beyond the media suppression of any and all criticism of Islam, shariah law and the qu-ran, we know have a new venue for promoting favorable news and images of Islam.

When you add to these the liberal cable shows that have picked up the Islamist party line, the paleoliberal blogs like Huffington, Slate and Salon, the foul pap that emerges from the rumen of the New York Times regularly, and this new front in the war to silence critics of Islam, the picture is much larger, clearer and more frightening than anything this country has faced since the triumph of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, which, lest we forget, was followed by the annexation of Austria and the anschluss against Czechoslovakia, which was followed by.........well, we all know what came next: Poland, the lowland countries, France, and then World War II. As a wise person once commented, when someone threatens to kill you, believe him.

It is time-consuming to stay on top of this issue because the standard media, both print, radio/TV and on-line, have taped their mouths shut against any news that is critical of Islam or casts a bad light on it. This is reminiscent of the days when it was forbidden to name the race or ethnic group of anyone who was not a white American, much less depict minorities as even petty criminals. Even today, where black Americans are common in films and TV, they are usually cast as cops, detectives or super-spies, or as your long-suffering but generous mama dishing out scrumptious ribs, or your elderly wise grandpa delivering homilies on good manners. This is how far we have regressed in our attempts to create an equal, race-blind society. Apparently racial stereotypes are just fine as long as they are "good" ones.

The next chapter in this travesty of multiculturalism will be with Muslims. In fact, if you check out Muslim blogs, you will see glowing, softly lit photos of beautiful Muslim girls in burqas nestling a young infant and looking like the Muslim equivalent of the Holy Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus. Of course, other blogs will jolt you out of this myth: eight year old girls in Afghanistan just wed to men three or four times their age, looking not happy or glowing but traumatized and in shock at realizing that this is the rest of their lives, unless of course they have the luck to die in their first childbirth at the age of 12.

We can hardly be surprised. Americans have been inundated with enticing images of junk foods, expensive gadgets, cheap clothing and shoe fads, degraded pop music, blockbuster films with little more than exploding buildings, burning cars and AK-47s. Why not add to this with beautiful but false images of the religion of Islam, which is ready for prime time and whose potential liberal audience is waiting with bated breath for the latest pronouncements from their favorite authoritative sources?

Is there an antidote? Yes, several, but the American Jewish community is shunning them like the plague. Only the extreme right wing blogs and media have seen fit to confront the lies about Islam but liberals categorically reject anything the right says even when it is true. Worse, the right's response is fatally weakened by tying the advance of Islam to that purported Muslim, Pres. Obama, to further enhancement of the rich, to the fortunes of predatory free marketeers and anti-regulation voices, to attacks on welfare, Medicare, unions and education, in short to the entire spectrum of socially just programs and policies that have been an accepted part of our system for over half a century. To boot, the right cares not a whit for the thievery of banks and Wall St. that has impoverished most of the country and loudly beats the discordant drum of the most uneducated uninformed set of Republican dummies seeking the presidential nomination the nation has ever had the displeasure of confronting.

Nearly all the right wing anti-Islam news is simply an excuse to smash non-existent socialism, extol capitalism and bash anything that smells of the government or the welfare state or would take any more money away from the rich.Small wonder it lacks credibility on foreign policy issues.

Thus, American Jews have rejected what could have been a tightly focused, fact-based campaign to fight for freedom of speech and against the self-censorship and misinformation of the media on Muslim matters. Instead, they have lined up behind the camels to defend capitalism and continue the knee-jerk defense of Israel and its rightwing leadership and septic influence of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

This relatively trivial battle has, to the extreme delight of the Arab world and Muslim terrorists, been blown up to huge proportions that in turn monopolizes more and more attention and energy than all the other real crises today, such as the starving, failed state of Somalia, radical Islam in Sudan, slavery in Mauritania, the triumph of the military in Egypt, the imminent take-over of Yemen by Al Qaeda, the regression of Afghanistan into corruption and eventual Taliban take-over, ongoing Shia-Sunni violence in Iraq, potentially huge influx of young Muslim men into western Europe, and the Muslim crime wave in Sweden, UK and Netherlands where nonMuslim girls are routinely raped by young Muslim men who rarely go to jail.

For the purposes of Hamas and Hezbollah, nothing suits them more than the reaction of American Jews, and their heated unquestioning defense of Israel, (and hesitance to attack the ultra-orthodox Jews) which conveniently distracts public attention away from the atrocities and execrations of radical Islam and shariah law.

The right wing Jews in this country have cynically chosen to ignore our growing economic catastrophe, one which is impoverishing working families and the middle class, throwing people onto the streets, cutting off unemployment and health benefits, undermining education and generally, with malice aforethought, conspiring to create welfare for the rich and poverty for everyone else.

One would think that American Jews, having luckily escaped from Nazism, continually fighting against anti-Semitism, and being proven supporters of civil rights to the point of sacrificing their lives in the battle against segregation, would commit themselves to the higher cause of women's and human rights that are now threatened across the board everywhere by Islam. Reprehensibly, American Jews have abandoned their historical commitment to universal human rights and now man the capitalist battlements that care for little but self-enrichment and privilege, manifesting misguided fealty to that foreign country called Israel, as if they were Israeli rather than American citizens.

England Today: As Insular & Myopic as Ever

There is the famous if apocryphal British weather report: "Fog descends over Channel; continent cut off". Since then, England has pretty much refused to acknowledge the continent's existence.

England's passive citizenry and its proverbial "stiff upper lip" may have gotten them through World War II but also allowed the country's formerly admirable institutions such as education and transportation to fall into disarray and deterioration due to privatization. It has allowed the enrichment of the yuppie generation in greater London and southeast to help itself to everything on the dinner table and turn much of formerly charming London into a huge faceless collection of high-rise office buildings, with squalid industrial estates and council (public) housing on a par with the old Soviet Union spreading east and south. A recent British film, "Fish Tank", showed this slice of life in all its ugliness.

Thanks to the union-assisted neglect of manufacturing and production of decent consumer goods, domestic production of just about anything except Stilton cheese has almost entirely disappeared, replaced by financial services, and has allowed the working and lower middle classes to continue to live in a squalor unknown on the continent. The country blithely blunders on, in its tunnel vision (pardon the pun) pretending that it is as advanced and cultivated a country as any in western Europe despite the fact that western Europe's quality of life AND standard of living for all classes is the best in the world and about 100 times better than the UK (or the US for that matter).The major advance in living standards since the war seems to be the disappearance of green coloring from the peas on the plate.

Hardly a squeak was ever heard when Thatcher and Major were giving away the transportation systems or when the price of travel became so prohibitive (not to mention unreliable and downright dangerous) that everyone was forced into their private cars despite the high cost of fuel. Hardly a squeak is uttered when new major highways and airport expansions are planned that will further destroy what little is left of the countryside, or when upscale"improvement" with massive parking lots and new structures is proposed for Stonehenge (horrendous). A Neolithic tea house cannot be far behind.

And of course there is the deplorable deterioration, due to lack of government funding, of the magnificent cathedrals, arguably the most beautiful in the world, which is ignored by the government because they are technically church property even though hardly anyone attends church and the churches are England's major tourist and cultural attractions. I need not underscore the highway/truck/car nightmare that characterizes greater London and the incredible blight of second rate residential development in the south east and of course the disfigurement of almost the entire east and much of southern coast of England. Much of England since the 1950s now excels in its special brand of ugliness. You know things are bad when the local cathedral towns hold raffles and hold out the hat for contributions in order to make urgent repairs of these superb monuments.

Having lived for long periods in Italy and France, having visited eastern Europe and every western European country except Portugal, Sweden and the Baltics, and having spent weeks at a time on numerous visits to England since the 1950s (one of our daughters lives in London), and comparing England of the 1950s to England today, I find little has changed there. England is still living as it did in the post war period, both materially and culturally. It must be a shock for the English when they visit the continent and realize that they have been deprived of beauty, amenities, and general respect for the requirements of a civilized society.

Perhaps, like the US, not having suffered from the mass destruction of World War II, it was never able to muster any compassion or dedication to social justice and to the needs of citizens. Nor has there been much resistance against anything except fox hunting, which I agree should be banned but which hardly compares to the cultural collapse of the whole country. (London has one thing in common with Paris: a "retro metro" which stops running every night at a little past midnight, thus forcing people to drive into the city centers on weekends when they plan a big night on the town. However, it is reported that Paris has extended the weekend hours.)

In the immediate post-war period the English were arguably the most civilized, decent people on earth, not materialistic, very tolerant, compassionate. But once capitalism and the free market took control, the country descended into cultural and environmental barbarism. Aside from its accomplishments in theater and literature, it remains the west's equivalent of the third world. I marvel at the stoicism that is needed to put up with it today. Stiff upper lip is what you call it, right? I call it submission.

ECONOMISTS & THE DUMBING DOWN OF ECOLOGICAL DIALOGUE

Economist Joseph Stiglitz recently deplored the dependence of economic growth on debt and how this must be replaced by stimulating the economy, i.e. increasing consumption through tax reform and job creation. His whole article is intended to explain how and why we must have growth that does not create debt. He says nothing about the planet's resources, species, ecosystems and ecosystem functions, much less energy use and global warming, or biodiversity. How can someone penetrate the thick skull of economists who have forgotten we evolved and live on earth thanks to nature, not abstract systems like economics?

I never cease to be amazed at the utter ignorance of economists, even the most progressive, and their absolute EXCLUSION of ecology and nature. They seek solutions that are purely abstract and human based. They don't mention population. They don't mention finite resources. They don't mention pollution. They don't mention destruction of ecosystems or wildlife. They don't mention overharvesting and overfishing. They don't mention the loss of good agricultural land to monoculture, desertification, overdevelopment, industry. They don't mention climate change and how it is creating new problems such as drought, flood, wildfire, loss of freshwater, threats to ocean life and systems, insect-borne disease.

They bemoan inequality but spend all their time figuring out how to increase growth so they can "help the poor", as the poor over-reproduce and compound the problem. They think that the only wealth that counts is paper money, stocks and bonds, and ledgers in banks and federal regulation bureaucracies, or hoards of gold and silver (which they hope to convert into the former eventually). The natural wealth (what Hawken and Lovins call "natural capital") is considered infinite even though we are tearing it to pieces bit by bit every minute of the day, everywhere.

As long as we have economists running things there's no hope. I"m not sure there is anyway.

No, there is no solution until population collapses through war, epidemics, natural catastrophes, with economic and social collapse following in their wake. This is now guaranteed.And after that, there will be few people and no growth. Unless you are religious, there is no reason to think that humans must continue to exist.

99% of all species that ever lived went extinct. That's the fate of all species. With luck, new ones evolve in their place. The Neanderthals lived for over a hundred thousand years, until Homo sapiens came along and poof! they were gone. Homo sapiens sapiens has only been here now for about 35,000 years and it is already on the verge of self-extinction. Civilization (a bit of an exaggeration) with language, writing, culture, technology, agriculture and animal domestication, has only been around for, at best, 10,000 years. The industrial era, when most of the damage was done and population exploded exponentially, has been around for only three centuries. The sharp increase in CO2 has taken place in less than one century. I think "god" already knows the jig is up. But no one else does, least of all the economists who think writing economic treatises suffices.

We are just treading water and holding our breath or putting faith in technology and the economists. Each day it becomes clearer that no one is doing anything and no one wants to. There is a handful of people such as Richard Heinberg, James Kunstler and the Post-Carbon Institute who understand and speak the truth, but they are marginalized. Last summer celebrity economist Nouriel Roubini talked in East Hampton on the economy and never mentioned energy. When I asked him about this at the end, he mumbled something about solar energy and technology. That was it as far as he was concerned. Nothing more to bother his head about.

The ball is now in the scientists' court. They write, rant and argue on their science blogs but are still reluctant to translate their recommendations into political and mass media activism. A Million Scientist March on Washington DC might do the trick, or at least a high-level delegation of scientists and economists demanding a meeting with Pres. Obama to demand an energy policy commensurate with the threat and in keeping with Jim Hansen's recommendations. Without a more visible scientific lobby, activists will fight brush fires, try to fend off the hostile climate change deniers or rebut corporate greenwashing and the calls for "green growth" and "green technology".

Equal Opportunity Employment for the Uneducated

From Salon article by Laura Miller entitled: Memo to grammar cops: back off!

The ability to speak and write standard English gives students "access to power," Rutger English professor Jack Lynch writes. It's a membership card required for participation in the culture's important conversations. But that doesn't mean that standard English is necessarily superior to, say, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE or, to use a more notorious moniker, Ebonics), or that deviations from it constitute the downfall of civilization as we know it, as popular curmudgeons of Safire's ilk like to proclaim.

Thinking of the grammar wars in this light helps explain why they provoke such rage. Much as some people might detest seeing the noun "impact" used as a verb, if a lot of people say it and almost everybody understands it when it's said, then a coup has been effected. The "verbing" of nouns (or the creation of "nerbs") has been a flashpoint for the past four or five decades with the growth of business management lingo. Complaints about this point to a particularly American social fissure: between the cultured sensibility of the liberally educated and the can-do utilitarianism of striving MBAs.

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This article has grains of truth embellished by squishy Political Correctness. The suggestion that Ebonics is not inferior to standard English is absurd and meaningless. There are always subgroups with their own slang and meanings, intended for the "in" group and to keep out (in the case of Ebonics) "the man". Fine, let people use their vernacular with their inside group and conversations. But when it comes to accurate clear communication that EVERYONE needs to understand, we need standards and uniformity. These days it is not clear whether the abominable grammar and misspelling we see everywhere is due to illiteracy, carelessness or disdain for what Miller claims is the "power" elite of grammarians.

There are different kinds of usages for standard English. There is the usage in families and between friends. There is the usage in the business world. There is the formal usage for civil (in both senses) exchanges such as thank you notes, notes of praise, writing to people you've never met. There is academic language for PhD. theses. There is language for oral presentation in lectures.There is journalistic English for newspapers. Worst of all, arguably, is the new internet sloppiness, where writers misspell and feel no compulsion to proofread or correct errors. (My worst internet habit is leaving out apostrophes in the middle of words, to save time and effort; abject apologies). And so forth. Knowing when to use them or not use them is the crucial decision. An educated person is no less educated for knowing how and when to use standard English. But if sub-groups insist on NOT using standard English, they are just plain stupid and short-sighted.

Knowing standard English in no way prohibits people from knowing and using these other forms, provided they are used at the appropriate time. What we are seeing, however, is the unforgiveable deterioration of appropriate uses and the intrusion of the more vernacular and colloquial expressions where they don't belong, not to mention vile capricious obscenities that should be treasured and preserved for the absolutely imperative occasion. I don't mind if a close friend sees me as he drives by and yells "Yo!". I doubt that he would do that with his boss. I occasionally use a four-letter word....but judiciously. It is truly tragic to see the deterioration of the vigor and meaning of the word f--k for frivolous reasons.

Then there is the confusion between Use and Mention of a word which Daniel Dennett has pointed out in one of his lectures. Readers and listeners seem incapable of distinguishing between these. Usually it is an obscene or forbidden word, and sloppy readers are quite ready to vilify someone who mentions a word as opposed to using it. The word "ni--er" is the classic example.

As this article points out, standard English is necessary for advancement. Why the slurred mumbled speech and improperly placed accent is considered appropriate for phone company employees or employees of businesses who deal with the public on the phone I still do not understand. This may be the regrettable result of "affirmative action": hiring people regardless of their verbal ability. This is what I call Equal Opportunity Employment, where the unqualified and unschooled get equal consideration with the highly qualified and educated because they are minorities.

None of this in any way prohibits the evolution of language. Nothing is more fluid than language, as the existence of thousands of languages worldwide, evolved from a handful of parent groups, testifies. Miller is completely correct in accepting the modern use of nouns as verbs, such as "impact", not least because this usage is understood by everyone and fully accepted. It makes sense to abridge your sentence and say "impact" instead of "make an impact on" or "access" instead of "get access to". It took me a while to make this shift but not a great deal of grammatical soul-searching; it was just practical.

Any look at Shakespeare shows that he recognized the need for appropriate language, one for the monarch, one for the servant, one for one's peers. We would be wise to heed him today.