Senior EU leaders declared multiculturalism dead and buried last February, but defeating the rights industry is being thwarted by what a London newspaper columnist labels  ”jackboot egalitarians”.

Daily Telegraph in days gone by - Image via Wikipedia

Jeff Randall in London’s Daily Telegraph makes a case for a return to the tried and tested values so long out of fashion and a cry for common sense —  here is a brief extract: “One reason is the complicity of Britain’s home-grown human-rights obsessives and jackboot egalitarians who, in the words of sociologist Peter Saunders, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, “seek nothing less than hegemony for their moral values and beliefs”. This requires the unconditional surrender of adversaries and the criminalisation of those who dare to oppose. It’s a war of attrition through relentless assaults on popular consciousness by masters of subversion.

“Their goal, according to Prof Saunders, is “eroding the ideals of independent thought, self-reliance and personal responsibility and replacing them with the language of thought-crime, group rights and equal outcomes…”

Peter Saunders has gone further in other debates and published articles as here during an Economist-sponsored debate on global elites: “…Eighty years ago, an Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, turned Marxist theory on its head by arguing that capitalism would be defeated, not by seizing control of the banks, offices and factories, but by dominating the culture, the production of ideas. He called on his followers to begin a “long march” through the cultural institutions of modern societies, and that is exactly what they have done. What we are witnessing today is the result: a struggle for power between two competing elites, one productive yet cowed, and the other parasitic yet triumphalist…”

Related articles

• What kind of people have we become? (telegraph.co.uk)
• The EU Jackboot Tramples on Another Member State (adamcollyer.wordpress.com)
• Christmas 2011 and European Morals
• Is the Worm Turning?
• Peter Saunders personal website

Fire Departments are clearly concerned if they are encouraging public buildings to put up these kind of signs  – refrain from sneering now all you anti- tweeters. But what on earth happened to common sense?

Fire! Leave first twitter later.

and yes it appears to be somewhere in Paris:

... somewhere in Paris?

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Business Insider thinks the incumbent  in the forthcoming presidential elections is doomed and gives us a BNP chart it suggests shows why.

At the current level of household confidence, an incumbent has no chance

“This chart from BNP Paribas looking at household confidence vs. elections says it all. When household confidence is low, the party in power switches. When it’s up near the 0-line the party in power holds. At the current level of household confidence, an incumbent really has no chance.” – Business Insider

Meanwhile here is BNP’s handy guide to the runup to the elections:

Significant dates ahead of the presidential election

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As a host of world leaders, and financial and political power, including George Soros descend on Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, the Hungarian born billionaire worries that total global economic collapse looms.

Soros is haunted by fear of a new global catastrophe, worse than the 1930s - Image via Wikipedia

Interviewed for Newsweek magazine and reported in the Daily Beast he says: “if you have a disorderly collapse of the euro, you have the danger of a revival of the political conflicts that have torn Europe apart over the centuries—an extreme form of nationalism, which manifests itself in xenophobia, the exclusion of foreigners and ethnic groups. In Hitler’s time, that was focused on the Jews. Today, you have that with the Gypsies, the Roma, which is a small minority, and also, of course, Muslim immigrants … As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether … It is “now more likely than not” that Greece will formally default in 2012, Soros will tell leaders (who meet 25-29 January) in Davos. He will castigate European leaders who seem to know only how to “do enough to calm the situation, not to solve the problem.”

Update: Soros is overhyping the issue to get some action out of policymakers say others:

Riots in US Streets? Why Soros’ Prediction Is Unlikely
…”I believe while Soros was being hyperbolic in a sense, what he was trying to do was warn or wake up the World Economic forum to the very real threat the Occupy Movement poses to the world system—not just in violence but in an aroused public opinion,” says Ted Morgan, political science professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and author of “What Really Happened to the 1960s” (University Press of Kansas, 2011).
“One of the key questions going forward is whether Occupy can find effective ways of getting its meanings through to the wider public, rather than being stigmatized by media images,” Morgan says.
One Occupy supporter, in fact, sees recent developments, particularly President Obama’s State of the Union speech, as reason for encouragement that the movement won’t need to fulfill the Soros scenario to be heard.
“We haven’t reached a fever-pitch yet…but I don’t think it’s entirely hyperbolic,” Fordham University assistant sociology professor Heather Gautney said of the Soros prediction.
“There is a real recognition at a higher level of power that the social movement activity we’ve been seeing is legitimate, that there is a desire in these offices to address these issues of inequality,” adds Gautney, author of “Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era” (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). “That’s one way to keep a movement in check – at least give them lip service and show some efforts are being made to cope with the economic downturn.”

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• Prison Planet.com ” Are George Soros, The IMF And The World Bank Purposely Trying To Scare The Living Daylights Out Of Us? (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
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Writer, activist and former French communist, Alain Soral, tells RT that Marine Le Pen is the only real alternative to the socialists and UMP in the upcoming French presidential elections.

Alain Soral says Marine le Pen is the real election alternative

Alain Soral says neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor his Socialist rival, François Hollande can do what they say they want to do namely save French companies and re-industrialize, because such proposals are against EU laws. “Both Sarkozy and Hollande support the EU and both are economic liberals with very minimal differences on social issues. This is why I am interested in Marine le Pen. She has good poll ratings and offers an alternative, she says: leave the EU, go back to the French Franc and defy Wall Street,” he told RT.

Listen to the 12 minute interview with simultaneous translation.

RT: What is it that you dislike so much about the status quo in France that you feel compelled to go against?

Alain Soral: First of all, today, we can no longer believe in the masquerade of a political left and right. For a long time here in France, unlike Anglo-Saxon countries — even Germany and the United States — there was a real alternative in French politics, meaning there was the Communist Party and there was the whole movement of economic liberalism. There was real political diversity in France. But gradually, the so-called “left” eventually gravitated towards economic liberalism — the right. The only differences between the left and the right were small variations in their positions on ethics and society. The best example is, right now, we have Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. There’s no real opposition between left and right. It doesn’t exist. They are all roughly economic liberals, libertarians.
For France, the first step of visible liberalism is the European Union. There are those who submit to the EU, which means the end of borders, free movement of goods and capital, ideology of right and left, the ideology of miscegenation. This is the dominant ideology in France shared by left and right. The difference is only aesthetic. And then there are those who oppose this dominant ideology, who fight for the restoration of borders, the restoration of the nation; those who criticize the ideology of miscegenation, meaning to defend cultural identities and so on. The battle today is to resist globalism on economic and cultural fronts, etc. We have to show that the fight between left and right no longer exists. Today the two battling sides are the globalists and those resisting globalism.

UPDATE: Mediapart in English, a subscription news service, has published a report that underlines the points made in the TV clip above —  the ongoing crisis appears to be seriously shifting voter loyalties:

How the French Far Right is capturing an abandoned social class

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The American Life in Poetry project is an initiative of Ted Kooser, the 2004-2006 Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

The Poetry Foundation publishes Poetry magazine in the US and is an independent literary organisation

American Life in Poetry: Column 353 (reprinted with permission)

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Anne Coray is an Alaskan, and in this beautiful meditation on the stillness of nature she shows us how closely she’s studied something that others might simply step over.

The Art of Being

The fern in the rain breathes the silver message.
Stay, lie low. Play your dark reeds
and relearn the beauty of absorption.
There is nothing beyond the rotten log
covered with leaves and needles.
Forget the light emerging with its golden wick.
Raise your face to the water-laden frond.
A thousand blossoms will fall into your arms.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Anne Coray from her most recent book of poetry, A Measure’s Hush, Boreal Books, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Anne Coray and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The Poetry Foundation has formed a partnership with the Library of Congress to support the American Life in Poetry project, an initiative of Ted Kooser, the 2004-2006 Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. American Life in Poetry is a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet and a brief introduction to the poem by Ted Kooser. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry.

The film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks) (*) is famous, among other things, for debunking the southerners’ stereotypes of far-northern France, a theme now taken up by an amused map(cartes)maker.

France as viewed by those who reside in the blessed south

France as viewed by those who reside in the redoubtable north

France as viewed by those who reside in self-styled Paradise

France as viewed by those running the crêpe-making monopoly

France as viewed by those concerned about the nation's gastronomic reputation

France as viewed by Europe's freight hauliers

France as viewed by its motorists - at least those who have migrated from the 2CV

France as viewed by those who reside deep in the tranquil countryside

We tip our hat for these maps to reader Sam Mooney:

Thanks to @audefrance

(*) Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis is a 2008 comedy starring Kad Merad, Dany Boon and Zoé Félix. It broke nearly every box office record in France – as of 28 February 2010 it had been seen by 20.5 million people, grossing US$194 million in France alone —  $245 million worldwide.

The stars of one of the biggest box office hits in France

History they say, is written by the victors, and as the French-inspired EU project shows signs of coming off the rails, is anyone thinking about what might emerge from a non-EU Europe?

The Coat of Arms of French monarchs - Image via Wikipedia

One “proudly reactionary and counterrevolutionary” (albeit anonymous) blogger has issued a call for the restoration of the monarchy.  A King for Revolutionary France, whatever next?

The US-based blogger sets out his evocatively-named Mad Monarchist views here: “France can be seen as revolutionary in one way. For almost as long as it has existed as a recognizable nation it has known a series of rises and falls. There was the rise of the empire of Charlemagne (though it is still a matter of bitter dispute among some whether this was a French or German accomplishment) which dominated western Europe before dividing and going into decline. Then there was the rise of France as the great right-arm of Christendom with French knights subduing enemies and rivals across Europe, from Sicily to the Balkans and who made up the bulk of the crusader armies that held out against the powerful forces of Islam in the Middle East. Then there was division, the Hundred Years War with England and a long period of relative weakness. However, France rose up again, briefly, before being submerged for a time in religious turmoil only to rise again and become the single most dominant power in western Europe. French explorers reached Canada and the Mississippi, France was the center of art, science and philosophy. During the reign of King Louis XIV it is no exaggeration to say that everything revolved around France as almost everything done by any nation at that time was a reaction to some action by King Louis. Yet, not long after, came a number of setbacks and finally the Revolution.

It is important to note that the only subsequent major French accomplishments on the world stage were achieved by, on one or two occasions, when the Kingdom of France was briefly restored, or during the two periods of the French Empire”

You are welcome to tell us what you think in the comments.

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The British PM, David Cameron, who in February,  joined his French and German counterparts in denouncing multiculturalism as a failure, is celebrating Christmas 2011 with some remarks on values and morals that possibly reflect a changing mood in crisis-ridden Europe.

A call for a return to ancient morals and values in troubled times - Image via Wikipedia

At an event to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James version of the Bible he was reported as saying: ‘We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so. The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up (for) and defend.

‘Whether you look at the riots last summer, the financial crash and the expenses scandal or the on-going terrorist threat from Islamist extremists around the world, one thing is clear, moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn’t going to cut it any more…

‘Put simply, for too long we have been unwilling to distinguish right from wrong. “Live and let live” has too often become “do what you please”. Bad choices have too often been defended as just different lifestyles. To be confident in saying something is wrong is not a sign of weakness, it’s a strength.’

His call for a ‘moral code’ was, the newspaper continued, ”directed at human rights apologists and Left-wing politicians who recoil from promoting Britain’s Christian heritage. But they also covered the hand-wringing pronouncements of many senior churchmen, who refuse to condemn lawbreaking by rioters and show unwillingness to take on militant Islam for fear of offending Muslims.

He went on to say, according to the paper, that an ‘almost fearful, passive tolerance of religious extremism’ had let Islamic extremism grow unchallenged and called for the promotion of ‘Christian values’ saying it was ‘profoundly wrong’ to believe that promoting Christianity would ‘do down other faiths’.

Expect an outcry, but also some bravos, from those tiring of the moral equivalence that marks so much of the politically correct nonsense masquerading as the hallmark of  ’free liberal’ societies.

UPDATE: First it was the German Chancellor followed by Britain and France, now the Netherlands has officially buried multiculturalism. According to this June 23 report by the Hudson Institute ‘The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism‘: ”The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands….”

• Do tell us what you think in the comments.

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In the US Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has threatened to take the site off-line in protest at what he considers  ’draconian’ anti-Internet freedom measures currently proposed by the Obama administration.

Jimmy Wales might close Wikipedia in protest -- Image via Wikipedia

In France there have been ongoing protests about Hadopi, the French effort to clamp down on music and intellectual property piracy — which in reality goes much further.

The Wikipedia move is in protest against ‘Stop Online Piracy’ –  the US Anti Piracy Bill — which would enable people to take websites to court for copyright infringement and is currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

Aware of concerns the Paris-based OECD-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has now called on its 34-member countries to “promote and protect the global free flow of information”. By email OECD’s Media Relations Manager Spencer Wilson told us the initiative aimed to build  ”on a high-level international meeting on the Internet economy held in Paris in June 2011″.

“The openness of the Internet, and the multi-stakeholder framework, have been key factors in stimulating the innovation and economic growth that has characterised the Internet Economy, says the OECD. But in recent years there has been increasing concern that the openness of the Internet is eroding, with negative consequences on its dynamism and related economic activity.

“Private sector initiatives and co-regulation by industry and government have in many cases facilitated access to the Internet and promoted its use. However there have been instances where relatively heavy-handed government initiatives have been viewed as leading to potential harm. For this reason it is important to have shared common principles to help policymakers set the parameters for any action taken, as well as work towards building trust in the Internet economy both at national levels as well as in cross-border economic activity, according to the text of the Principles.

“The OECD also highlighted the importance of maintaining the existing open model of Internet governance, what it calls “the multi-stakeholder environment”. It says that stakeholders should continue to fully play a role in this framework. Governments should also work in multi-stakeholder environments to achieve international public policy goals and strengthen international co-operation in Internet governance.”

The Principles for Internet Policy Making are available here at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/58/49258588.pdf

For more information on the OECD’s work on Internet governance, see here www.oecd.org/InternetGovernance

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