Terra Incognita
Issue 72
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
February 9th, 2009
1) He armed the Hmong but he couldn’t save them from liberalism: They moved like the wind through the jungle. They hated the Communists. They were natural marksmen. And all they wanted was one thing: guns. That was the message CIA agent Bill Lair received from the Hmong, a traditional people living in the hills of Laos who wanted support in their fight against the suppression they saw was coming from a Communist regime, repression experienced by their indigenous brothers in Vietnam. Bill Lair gave them guns. But no amount of sharpshooting could save them from history. They were crushed under the boot of the Reds and became refugees. Now history blames Lair for their ‘fate’. But no one deserves the fate that befell them.
2) Wither Jesus? Where are the Obama miracles? If passing a bloated un-stimulating stimulus bill through Congress was the bar for performing a miracle then we might be able to feel the hope. But if it is not then we must wake up to realization that the great ‘change’ we were supposed to experience has no happened. Where are the Obama miracles. It seems like business as usual at foggy bottom. We will have to explain to future generations the orgasmic idiocy, the banality of our politics and small countries that were deforested to make the dozens of books on Obama. The only thing historic about the 2008 election was the illusions of the people, particularly the white ones who believed they were undoing the wrongs of the past and the black ones who believed that the future would be brighter by simply casting a vote.
3) Tragedy twice over: How liberalism and the French betrayed Africa and dominate the history of their betrayal. It should have been a good year for Africa. Two books were published on the great war that has consumed the Congo for the last decade and a half. Yet both books have been used to twist the history of the Rwandan genocide and turn the victims into the perpetrators. This is typical of the re-writing of history where the victim of a genocide are said to have ‘no excuse to go on and commit human rights violations’ and they are always held, like the Jews, Armenians, Serbs and Tutsis have been, to a higher standard. The murder of the history of the Tutsis is worse than the actual genocide of them because the post-humanist sitting in his cushy office in Europe has no excuse to murder the history of the murdered. Such intellectual terrorism is typical of modernity and it is all to tragic to see the very real history of Africa perverted to allow the French to get away with having armed the Hutu genocidaires in Africa in 1994.
4) Give up on the Holocaust, give up on Europe: There are two things one can count on every year; Christmas will be used by leftists to remind us of the ‘Palestinian Jesus’ and Bethlehem ‘swaddled’ in barbed wire by the Jews and that Holocaust Memorial day will be debased and abused and first compared to the ‘situation in Palestine’ and then made to include other ‘genocides’ such as those of the Mbghtudas in Jackmanistan. People should give up on the Holocaust. It is so misused and abused that the word holocaust has become almost meaningless. Whether it is some Norwegian politician in Saudi Arabia wearing her Burka by day and blogging about the comparison of the Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza by night or Robert Fisks discussion of ‘the first holocaust, the Armenian holocaust’ it is neverending. Abolish the day, it was only created by Europeans a few years ago, we have had enough of it. As for the Jews, they should use the word ‘Shoah’ because it will take another decade for that word to be debased.
He armed the Hmong but he couldn’t save them from liberalism
February 5th, 2009
Seth J. Frantzman
They were expert marksmen almost instinctually it seemed. They could “walk through the mountains like the wind.” And they hated Communism. As tribal indigenous people, simple peasants living in the hill country of Laos the Hmong understand the threats that Communism posed to their natural lifestyle. They understood that despite talk about ‘land’ for peasants, Communism represented the evils of modernity and the city and that it would should remove them. Communism in all its forms has presented native and diverse people with the destructive power of the state in its worst form, harnessing technology and liberalism together to bring extremism to rural areas, crushing any forms of individual freedom before it. The Hmong were but one of many small peoples whose were destroyed by Communism. The Baltic states, Crimean Jews, Tartars, Cossacks, Ethiopian Jewry, Tibetans, all the decent people of the world that once lived decent individual lives in their own manner were crushed under the boot of liberalizing utopian New York Times appeasing Communism. Washed away in the 20th century, most of these people are no longer with us. The ones that survived were brutally removed, crushed, beaten, raped, put on trains, sent to distant environments unlike their original ones, re-educated, murdered, slaughter, massacred, genocided, and then left to rot in cities, mixed in with other victims of evil and left to die.
When Bill Lair first met the Hmong they told him all they needed was guns and they would fight the scourge of Communism in southeast Asia. For them Communism was not the liberation movement fighting the French and then the Americans in Vietnam, for them it was a new colonialism, one that seeked to Vietnamize their lives, deport and murder them. Their indigenous cousins in Vietnam, the Mountagnards, had already seen hundreds of their villages slaughtered by the Vietnamese communists and their leftist western Jane Fonda collaborators. They knew that in Cambodia the genocide was coming with the rise of Khmer Rouge and extremism. They alone understood that they would have to fight. Like the Apache who were confronted by the encroachment of modernity in the 19th century the Hmong understood that they would have to use their natural skills to their advantage. Like the Mujahaden in Afghanistan who only desired guns to fight, the Hmong seemed like a Godsend to he spooks of the CIA and other Americans lurking in Southeast Asia charged with recruiting locals to fight the Communists.
Earlier experts at counterinsurgency in Malaysia and Phillipines had defeated rural Communists insurgencies during the Malay emergency (See Col. John Nagl’s Learning to eat Soup with a Knife) and the Hukbalahap rebellion (1946-54, see Stanley Karnow’s In our Image: America’s Empire in the Phillipines). The Americans and French seemingly forgot those lessons in Vietnam. Bill Lair decided to expand upon them in Laos. In 1961 he met with Vang Pao, a general in the Laotian army. Pao agreed to help recruit the Hmong. Pao, born in 1931, had been a farmer until he joined the nascent resistance against the Japanese occupation of French Indochina. Because he was not a French European, and thus not a natural appeaser and collaborator with fascism, he and other Hmong joined the Meo Maquis, an Hmong resistance unit. After the war he stayed on in the French army fighting the Viet Minh in Vietnam, rising through the ranks to become a general in the free Royal Laotian Army. When Lair asked him to help recruit the Hmong to fight the Communists, known as Pathet Lao, he was excited about the idea. However by 1968, with the ‘secret war’ gone public Lair realized his time as a CIA operator in Loas was at an end. He disagreed with overt U.S policy to fight in Laos, preferring to simply arm locals to do defend themselves. By 1975 the U.S war in Laos had gone wrong, as Lair thought it might, and the country was overrun by Communists, who overthrew the local monarchy.
Hundreds of thousands of Hmong were forced to flee the country as the Communist regime targeted their villagers for destruction. The international Community, ever on the side of decency, ‘helped’ them by ordering them to return and trying to repatriate them. Many died. The United States, feeling a responsibility for the refugees much as she did for the people fleeing Castro, and much as Israel has felt for Bedouins in Gaza or veterans of the Southern Lebanese Army who helped her, opened he doors to the Hmong. Hundreds of thousands were resettled in the U.S.
But their tragedy did not end their. After they had been brutalized, beaten and smashed under the boot of Communism their history had to be twisted by intellectuals so that they could be destroyed once again. According to a New York Times article by Seth Mydans, published on February 3rd, 2009 and entitled ‘Ex CIA spy defiant on Hmong fates in Laos’, “his mission nearly destroyed a culture and a way of life…[Lair] who recruited primitive hill tribesman to fight a proxy war…when the war was lost and the Americans withdrew in 1975, the Hmong tribesmen he had recruited were left behind to face retribution from the Communist victors and a near collapse of their tribal way of life….the last of the Americans withdrew, leaving most of their allies to their fates.” The article implies that when people resist Communism, or other tings, they ‘deserve’ their ‘fate’. This is part of the new leftist intellectual dialectic of ‘retributive genocide’ where some genocides are positive because people ‘deserve’ to be destroyed for daring to resist.
Its interesting that this leftist Orwellian babble doesn’t apply everywhere. The existence of Muslim terrorists in Spain, India, Israel, Bosnia, Chechnya or the U.S hasn’t made the New York Times decide that the entire Muslim community in those places deserves retribution and its ‘fate’. When Iran sponsors Hizbullah in a proxy war against Israel the leftist intellectual doesn’t excuse Israel’s war against them by saying Hizbullah receives its ‘fate’. On the contrary liberalism informs us that we should never blame all Muslims for the acts of the few who “don’t represent Islam, a religion of peace and tolerance.” So why the two stories. When Communists recruit people no one says that all the people deserve to be slaughtered. After all no one excused the ‘death squads’ in Guatemala for killing people and no one said those Indians there deserved their ‘fate’ because some of them opposed the government.
Men like Bill Lair never understood that the fight for the Hmong was more than a fight against Communism. It was also a fight against the greater forces of intellectualism and the post-humanistic intellectual’s excusing of genocide and mass slaughter. The Hmong might have been natural fighters who ‘moved like the wind’, but no amount of marksmenship and fighting could ever have defeated their real enemies. They could have killed all the Communists to no end. They deserved their ‘fate’, so we are told. The question is, when will other people one day deserve their ‘fate’. When will the Mydans of the world and those wealthy people in the West who stock the ivory tower with their terrorism of the mind, their hate based on language and twisting history receive their ‘fate’. When they have supported the wrong regime there has been no retribution. This is what the Hmong can never understand: why were they murdered twice, first by brutal Communism and then by the West who excuses their murder?
We see it again and again. Whether it is the excuse for the destruction of the Serbs of Krajina in Croatia, in which 200,000 Serbs were forced from their homes by Nato, EU and UN supported Croatian Operation Storm (an operation, by the way, that used disproportionate force but which no Europeans with their expensive glasses and scarves protested against), or whether it is the deportation of the Jews of Arab countries (some 800,000 between 1948 and 1967), or the expulsion of the Germans of Poland (1949) or the destruction of the Assyrians and Pontic Greeks (1915-1921) in Turkey and Iraq or the Rwandan genocide, one can see that intellectuals and academics have provided us always with an excuse about why these people ‘deserved’ to be destroyed. “Retributive Genocide” is the essence of the liberal post-human destruction of history. Liberalism defines it as a genocide “undertaken to eliminate a real or potential threat. It is most likely to occur when one group dominates another group and fears its rebellion or when the other group actually rebels.” But the liberalization or Orwellization of this word and discussions about it by ‘scholars’ have presented it as an excuse where there is a need to ‘retribution’. But we must never forget that no people deserve genocide. No people deserve such things. The Hmong didn’t deserve it. Perhaps their terrible hardships are part of history, one of those things that happens. But there is no excuse to present what happened to them as ‘their fate’, as if they legitimately faced retribution. And if liberalism believes the Hmong had it coming to them for daring to rebel then it would be nice for liberalism to explain why the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza or other Islamic terrorists don’t ‘deserve’ what happens to them.
Wither Jesus? Where are the Obama miracles?
Seth J. Frantzman
February 3rd, 2009
Everything was supposed to change. We had a black man in the White House. Everything was supposed to be different. Government was supposed to change. The miracle of the ‘historic inauguration’ was supposed to pave the road to a Golden Age of perfection and tolerance. That is what the media told us. The media told us about his ‘sculpted pectorals’ that ‘gleam with sweat’ when he plays basketball. The told us about his ‘perfect’ first family. They told us about how he channeled FDR and Lincoln and JFK all in one. They told us about his wife’s clothing and where she bought it and about what his children ate at school. They shared us the feelings of the Americans on the Mall who cried and wept and threw themselves on the floor and convulsed and spoke in tongues and screamed and writhed in orgasmic displays of hope. “We have an African American in the white house, all our dreams of come true…” But then the media woke up. The dream, the long drunkenness seemed to fade. And now we are experiencing, not exactly a hangover, but perhaps the realization of the evil and sickening idiocy, the corrupting fallacy of the liberal-leftist belief that man must be judged by race and that by voting for the color of a man’s skin we can ‘change’ things. The great lie, the greatest lie that the 20th century and modernity ever told, that race is a factor in human endeavor seems to be have been proven wrong by the fact that it is business as usual at foggy bottom. But there is no self-critique on behalf of the media. There is no soul searching for all the lies we had to weather about ‘historic’ elections. There is no self-examination.
There is just ignorance and the return to the dullness, the banality of politics. No one is angry. No one cares anymore. The Obama thongs, the Obama mania, the ‘I have a crush on Obama’ Youtube girl. They are all gone. The Obama covers of every magazine. They are gone. The ‘change we can believe in’? It is gone. The American demagoguery of the Obamamania that the media whipped up, akin to the idiocy of the media supporting so many demagouges in the past, the love and obsession, the cult of personality, it is all gone. And yet if we were born today, say born again with the Obama administration, we would never have known it existed. A child born on the day Obama was sworn in will be told about how ‘historic’ and ‘important’ that day was but the child, when exploring the public record, will not be able to figure out why. The child will realize that it is skin color that makes it historic and the child may wonder “Daddy, is it true you used to vote for people and judge them based on their skin color? Is it true you felt that a man’s skin color could solve your problems? Is that really how people thought in 2009? Is it true that you couldn’t judge people back then based on the content of their character and that you were blinded by something so simple?” But mommy will explain that “we had to shatter the barrier of our racist past and make up for it. You will never understand how it made us feel to finally have an African-American in the White House. We brought change through our votes.” But the child may wonder “but there was no change. Nothing changed. All those problems from 2008, they were still there in 2009.”
Our future generations have been spared the plague of having to read about another ‘first’ for African Americans in the realm of politics. They can be spared it so that the next time a person runs for president who, by the accident of his birth has off-white skin tones (as one journalist described Obama “a mixed race, multi-cultural African-American”), they can judge him based on the content of their character. But not to worry. There are dragons to be slain yet. Women presidents must come next. Then gay presidents. Then Asians. Then Mexicans. Then Mormons. Then Jews. Then Muslims. We must spend a lot of time breaking glass ceilings in order to make sure that in every election until the year 2100 will be decided on race or religion or sex or sexual orientation. The evils of the 20th century and its racist killings and race laws and discrimination must be visited on the 21st century in the form of the opposite, the adoration for all things that are viewed as being ‘firsts’. Such is the banality of politics. They can all be compared to Lincoln and FDR and JFK. But Lincoln, FDR and JFK fought succession, Nazism and Communism. Our current problem is that we are only fighting our need to feel good, our inner demons, our petty racism and our history.
Or perhaps Obama just needs more time to perform his miracles.
Tragedy twice over: How liberalism and the French betrayed Africa and dominate the history of their betrayal
February 2nd, 2009
Seth J. Frantzman
Westerners care little about writing about Africa outside of writing advertisements to feed its supposed starving millions. Africa is a seemingly Hobbesian world of savagery and darkness. Nothing is more dark, foreboding and chaotic than the Congo, the massive country that dominates central Africa. Between 1993 and 2009 millions of people have died in the Congo in an ongoing war that has been termed Africa’s ‘First World War.’ The conflict however remains obscured from view by the fact that the media does not care, the battles and parties to the conflict are not clearly delineated and the fighters usually only speak French and their own tribal languages.
The Congolese war finds its way into our living rooms only when its stories are simple and cut and dry. Thus the Rwandan genocide, the toppling of Mubuto Sese Seko and the arrest of General Nkunda are some of the few stories to have escaped the Congo. Like a heart of darkness that sucks in all around it, the Congo conflict acts a black hole for the news media and information.
All the darkness seemed to be coming to an end when the Economist reviewed two new books on the Congolese war; Rene LeMarchand’s The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa and Gerard Prunier’s Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide and the making of a continental Catastrophe. These aren’t the only books on the war, there is an edited volume by John Clark entitled The African Stakes of the Congo War published in 2004. Unfortunately Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja’s The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila published in 2002 is almost useless in describing events after 1997, when Laurent Kabila came to power.
So we are left with the former two books, both by French speakers describing a country that is the heart of the Francophone Africa. The Economist review points out that both books were “written to disprove fashionable hypotheses about the war and its causes.” What fashionable hypothesis is not clear since few people are even familiar with the war in the Congo, let alone its causes. But apparently what the review refers to is the causes that have been dreamed up by French speakers. In this the authors are supposedly breaking down well healed myths by challenging the French belief that the war is a ‘conspiracy’ by English speaking Africans and the English speaking world, led by the U.S and the U.K to pry the Congo away from France. But this ‘fashionable’ explanation was never known in the English speaking world so disproving it doesn’t really help those who were never aware of it in the first place. It’s like ‘disproving’ that Asians are dumb and lazy when most in the West are under the impression that Asians are usually smart and hard working.
So although the authors may be fighting a straw man in their ‘original’ thesis, a typical way in which intellectuals and academics try to make their work seem important, the authors don’t deviate from the general French line of reasoning about the Rwandan genocide. The Economist explains that “Neither author believes that Rwanda’s interventions in eastern Congo can be justified in terms of preventing genocide, particularly since the war there has killed nearly five times the number who were murdered in Rwanda in 1994.” A review on Amazon.com is more clear; “The author carefully untangles these complexities while offering unsparing assessments of the participants, including a vigorous indictment of Rwanda's Tutsi leaders for using the 1994 genocide as an excuse for their own atrocities. Lucid, meticulously researched and incisive, Prunier's will likely become the standard account of this under-reported tragedy.”
Among other things the authors also swallow, hook-line-and-sinker, the idea that the cause is that “throughout this region the basis of the exclusion is the division between Hutu and Tutsi. Technically the same people—they speak the same language and belong to the same culture—their differences, occupational and physical, were deepened and manipulated by the German and Belgian colonists. After independence, governments in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, backed by Europe and America, rewrote the histories of these divisions and cynically used them to stay in power.”
This is typical of the western-anthropological model for examining what happens in other places. The way it works is simple. There is some savage conflict. The opponents happily declare to all that will listen that they hate their enemies based on race, ethnicity and religion. Westerners object to this ‘cynical’ explanation and want to find a ‘deeper’ cause. Then westerners take the people involved in the conflict and label them with new labels. Tribes become ‘kin groups’. Ethnicities become ‘races’. Whatever. Then the ‘truth’ is presented where some conflict is not ‘really’ about ethnicity but ‘actually’ about resources or global warming or some other obscure ‘competition’ that is either economic or is based on some ‘cynical’ manipulation by the former colonial power. Thus the genocide in Sudan isn’t about race because, as the anthropologist tells us “Arab and African are misleading labels”, it’s really about resource competition between herders and agriculturalists. Oddly all the ‘herders’ are tribes, or kin groups, that trace their history to Arabia and the ‘agriculturalists’ are people who trace their origins, to well, Sudan. Same in Rwanda. According to the myth of liberalism it was the white man who ‘created’ the Hutu and Tutsi. But the white man did as much to create them as he did to invent the Apache and the Navajo. After all the lies about the Hutu and the Tutsi that are passed around in the West would seem all the more ridiculous if applies to the Mohicans and the Cree “technically the same people—they speak the same language and belong to the same culture—their differences, occupational and physical, were deepened and manipulated by the.” But they aren’t the same people, neither in the Americas, no in Africa. Despite the fact that academics and intellectuals can’t find tribes among the millions of diverse people in Africa, and despite the common mentality among intellectuals that “well they are all black to me, I can’t tell them apart”, doesn’t mean it’s true. What is true is that the stereotypes offered by the Hutus and Tutsis of each other may not always be accurate, just as those offered of Jews by Europeans in the 1930s were not accurate. But just because the Nazi depiction of the ‘hunchbacked eastern Jew’ were incorrect it doesn’t mean the Jew and the German are identical. Thus the Belgian ‘manipulation’ of the Hutu and Tutsi didn’t create them, it just didn’t help a situation that was already divisive. The degree to which this ‘caused’ the Rwandan genocide isn’t clear, and we can’t really know that without the Belgian colonial identity card system that there would have been no genocide. What we do know is that the ethnic manipulation that did take place in Rwanda and Burundi was not the norm in the Congo, where the Hutu and Tutsi are tiny minorities who mattered little before the 1990s.
What did happen in Africa is that the French did arm the Hutus before the genocide in Rwanda. The U.S and others did back or at least ignore the excesses of Mobuto Sese Seko, the dictator of the Congo from the 1960s to 1997. What did happen is that there was a genocide in Rwanda which was ignored until the bodies clogged lake Victoria and then the U.S secretary of State, Madeline ‘intervention’ Albright spoke of ‘acts of genocide’ but refused to call it a genocide. What did happen is that the UN intervened at the last moment, when the Tutsi victims of the genocide had miraculously been able, through their rebel movement the Rwandan Patriotic Front, to take over half the country as the blood soaked, machete wielding, genociadaires fled towards the Congolese border. What did happen is that the French UN troops intervened on behalf of the Hutu genocidaires and the UN built camps for the former murderers in the Congo. The UN then helped create safe havens for the killers and allowed them to walk around armed and use the camps to raise a new generation of Hutu extremists. The UN apparently learned this method of refugee camp-cum-extremist training camp from what they had done among the Palestinians for sixty years.
The initial Rwandan incursion into the Congo was in support of Laurent Kabila, a French educated former communist who had known Che Guevara, turned businessman who was leading a rebel movement in eastern Congo. Rwanda hoped Kabila might help them destroy the Hutu camp infrastructure that threatened continued ethnic war and genocide and which was now sending cadres rampaging throughout eastern Congo hunting down the Tutsi tribesmen who lived there. Uganda joined Rwanda to help Kabila overthrow Mobutu. Then six other African countries joined in opposing the proxy war. Peace seemed to come in 1997 but a variety of new rounds of fighting took place. The Eastern Congo became a wasteland. The UN send tens of thousands of troops to the area, many of whome, mostly Muslim UN troops from Pakistan, were subsequently accused of trading guns for sex and raping young girls, something the native Africans responded to by turning on the UN. Western leftists and child rapists also arrived, including at least one American embassy employee who made porn videos of himself having sex with 13 year old African girls. The Congo was the world’s playground for evil.
Meanwhile the war in the eastern Congo got worse and a middle aged tall lanky man name General Nkunda became the new ‘bad person’ according to the UN who, alone among all the people in eastern Congo, was a ‘warlord’ wreaking havoc. Nkunda’s crime was that he opposed the UN’s refugee camp and the UN supported genocide of his Tutsi tribesman. Nkunda was eventually arrested by his Rwandan supporters in January of 2009, apparently realizing that Nkunda might have become more trouble than he was worth.
The Europeans want Nkunda to be put on trial at their ‘International’ Criminal Court. He will join other Africans dragged off by Europeans to be put on trial by European courts, like Charles Taylor and Rose Kabuye, incidentally another Tutsi black African now being put on trial in France. Oddly Europeans have never put on trial one of the Hutu genocidaires that the French armed and supported.
The French speakers who have written books on the Congo crises have used the old European view of conflict that ‘those who suffer genocide have no excuse to cause others to suffer.’ This is a common argument used by Europeans to condemn Serbia and Israel, as well as Rwanda. Europeans have a common view that those who suffer genocide are thus ‘naturally’ inclined to commit hardships against others and the European corollary is that ‘genocide is no excuse’ to be angry. This is part of the liberal worldview where no one is allowed to ‘judge’ or get revenge. It is an interesting problem that unfairly burdens the victims of genocide. If Israel just occupied the Palestinians, the way Turkey does Cyprus or Morocco does Western Sahara, without the Jews having suffered the Holocaust, then no one would say “the Jews cynically use their victimization in the Holocaust to justify their treatment of the Palestinians.” In fact no one would care. Had the Tutsis not suffered the genocide and simply invaded the Congo the way Uganda did then no one would say that “their genocide does not justify their invasion of the Congo.” Had the Serbs not been slaughtered by the Nazis and the Bosnians and Croats or colonized by the Ottomans, then no one would say “the Serbs play their victim card to justify their assaults on the Bosnians”, instead the Serbs would have been loved by the west along with the former Nazi Croats.
Liberalism and Europeanism have a way of polluting the mind and killing the soul, leaving the human incapable of judgment. All we have to do is let the writer speak for himself. Lemarchand spends no time discussing the actual genocide in Rwanda but instead spends his time trying to explain why the victims are really the aggressors and while not all the perpetrators are bad. Let liberalism and post-humanism speak for itself: “the absence of attention to the history and politics of the country creates a portrait of genocide that is insensitive to the complexity of its circumstances…reduces the butchery to a tale of bad guys and good guys, innocent victims and avatars of hate. The frame of reference is the Holocaust…the other side of the genocidal coin-the human rights abuses, killings and other abuses committed by the Tutsis during and after the genocide…there is a temptation in writing about genocide to tell a story of good and evil….but there is more to the story than Hutu guilt and Tutsi victimhood…if it’s true that 10 percent of the Hutu population participated in the killings…that leaves 90 percent of the population who did not…whose hands are clean…in Rwanda today, guilt and innocence are increasingly becoming ethnisized; because the Tutsi were so thoroughly victimized, they are now beyond reproach…genocide exonerates its victim of all subsequent sins. This is true not only in Rwanda but in Yugoslavia…the tendancy of Bosnian Serbs to invoke earlier ‘genocides’ they suffered as a pretext for retaliating…’genocide’ is no longer a horror but a form of immunity…Rwanda is not Germany…the Rwandan genocide can best be described as retributive…in Rwanda the Tutsi dominated RPF initiated a civil war four years before the genocide…the Rwandan genocide is better seen as the by product of the mortal threats posed to the revolutionary Hutu dominated state.” It should all be read again in order to be understood. Think of the implications should the Lemarchand theory be applied to the Holocaust. Most Germans didn’t engage in the Holocaust thus making them innocent. There is a temptation to describe one side as good and evil but we should try to understand that the Jews might have been perceived as posing a mortal threat to the Nazis. So perhaps the Holocaust was a ‘retributive’ genocide. After all, didn’t the Jews boycott Nazi Germany and wasn’t Bolshevism partly a Jewish conspiracy against the German nation? Only liberalism, only Europeans could twist around a genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis were butchered with machetes, so that the killers become the victims and the victims become the aggressors who deserved to die. It is quite brilliant the way modernity turns the victim into the aggressor and those who commit genocide always become the victims. In the name of not wanting ‘label’ anything as ‘good an evil’, the evil must always be excused. This is how liberal post-humanism operates. It claims that people label something ‘good and evil’ so that it can play ‘devil’s advocate’ and ‘show’ that the evil is not all evil. But why doesn’t this consistently apply? Let the post-human tell us more “nor is this meant to ignore the anxieties inspired by Nazi allegations of a Judeo-Bolshevik plot…Jews did not invade Germany…nor did they once rule Germany as the political instrument of an absolute monarchy; nor were they identified with a ruling ethnocracy; nor did Jewish elements commit a partial genocide of non-Jews in a neighbouring state 22 years before the Holocaust…Jews did not stand accused of murdering the head of state.” The insinuation is clear: had the Jews done some of these things then the Holocaust would have been understandable. This is what liberalism says about the Rwandan genocide, that it is ‘retributive’ which is to say ‘explainable’ and acceptable and even good. But those Germans did have ‘anxiety’ about the Jews. So maybe the Holocaust is understandable. Whats more, the Jews are no clean victims because there is no good and evil, and 99% of all Germans didn’t actually run the camps, so we can say that in fact the Germans didn’t commit a genocide. If the Jews had been part of or could be “identified with a ruling ethnocracy” perhaps they would have deserved genocide? This is what a liberal says about the Rwandan genocide. Let another post-human, Bill Berkeley, try to make more excuses for why the Rwandan genocide was explainable; “the Tutsi’s experience of genocide [is different from the Jews because] the Jews of Europe were never armed. There was no Jewish conspiracy to dominate Europe. There had been no Jewish tyranny in Germany, as there were Tutsi tyranny’s in Rwanda.” So if there had been a Jewish, or perceived Jewish tyranny then the Holocaust would be acceptable? And where is the evidence for the Tutsi ‘conspiracy’ to dominate Africa? What is the white European leftist genocide denier and excuser talking about? Its truly amazing how intellectualism works, how ‘progressive modernity’ and the academy produce the intellectual who excuses the genocide and explains it. What is amazing is that the same rules that the intellectual creates in order to excuse the genocide don’t even apply to everyone equally. Whereas we are told 90% of the Hutus are innocent and the word genocide is placed in quotation marks sometimes when it happens to some people, there is no discussion of what percentage of the Tutsis were armed or joined the RPF or were part of this supposed ‘ethnocracy’. So we see how it works. When Tutsis do something they all do it and thus are all guilty. But when Hutus do it then the leftist intellectual must do whatever it takes to excuse it. Why? Why can’t genocide just be genocide. Why can’t it just be condemned. Why must the victim always be labeled the aggressor and the genocide become ‘retributive’. What is a retributive genocide anyway? When Tutsi Rwanda invaded the Congo to flush out the Hutu murderers the liberals didn’t call that ‘retributive’ and there was no excuse for it. Why? Why is there always an excuse for one side and not the other. There is an excuse for Palestinian hate and terror, or for Kosovo Albanian massacres, or Hutu ‘retribution’, but when it’s the Jews, the Serbs and the Tutsis, they are all guilty, they are guilty twice, first they must die by genocide and then they must be said to be ‘far from innocent’ and then their genocide becomes a ‘genocide’ and then they are said to ‘cynically manipulate’ it and then people say “‘genocide’ is no excuse.”
Prunier and Lemarchand’s books merely prove once again why it is always better to genocide than be genocided. Thus the Armenians who killed Turks as part of the Armenian Secret Army in the 1970s were also condemned as “the Armenian genocide cannot be used as an excuse for terror.” Right. The only excuse for terror is simply to be a Muslim extremist or Communist ‘freedom fighter’. The tragedy of the Congolese war is that it was first ignored and then the tragedy was compounded by the fact that those who write on it turn the victims into the aggressors and misinterpret it for an English speaking audience.
Give up on the Holocaust, give up on Europe
Seth J. Frantzman
January 27th, 2009
The European hatred and American Jewish degradation of the Holocaust and attempts to compare all things to the Holocaust never ends. Whether it is a Norwegian diplomat in Saudi Arabia emailing pictures of dead Jews from the Holocaust juxtaposed with pictures of dead Gazans or Jewish Prof. Richard Falk of the UN comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto, or Rosanne Bar, who is Jewish, comparing the Israeli operation in Gaza to the Holocaust the need for leftist American Jews and white Europeans to mention the Holocaust in comparison to every event, especially those in Israel, is clear. They are not alone of course, Chavez of Venezuela and Ahmadinjed of Iran have also claimed Israel is a ‘Nazi’ state, at the same time that both have denied the Holocaust.
What is also clear is the degree to which Holocaust memorial day has become a joke. In Berlin the Council of Jews boycotts the day because they did not receive proper treatment and respect in the past. At the UN the General Secretary Ban Ki Moon and Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, president of the General assembly, did not come to the UN ceremony commemorating the Holocaust. American Jewish organizations had threatened to walk out because Brockmann has often accused Israel of being an ‘Apartheid’ state or comparing it to Nazism. In the Netherlands Moroccan organizations agreed to attend a memorial to the Holocaust and Dutch Integration Minister noted that “Muslims should understand that what al-Nakba is for Muslims, the Shoah is to Jews and vice-versa.” So the Dutch have equated the creation of 700,000 Palestinian refugees with the death of 6 million Jews and the creation of a few million Jewish refugees. England is not much better. In England the Muslim Council of Britian has boycotted the day since its creation in 2001. This year the Muslims will come but partly because Karen Pollack, the director of the memorial, has assured them that the memorial is for “all genocides”, including that of the Bosnian Muslims. Perhaps the Palestinians will be on the list next year. Its Holocaust memorial day so long as the Holocaust isn’t mentioned.
Rather than wasting time, every year boycotting events where anti-semites are invited to host Holocaust memorial day or where anti-racism conferences are racist, or where Holocaust memorial day is used not to commemorate the Holocaust but to compare it to everything else, especially the Palestinians.
It would be better if the Holocaust had never happened or could have been forgotten soon after it happened instead of being abused so often. This seems like an extraordinary statement, but it is tragically true. Europeans are incapable of memorializing the Holocaust in a decent and respectful way. During the Holocaust those European and international organizations such as the International Criminal Court, the Red Cross, the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch either didn’t exist or didn’t care about the actual Holocaust. Yet since the Holocaust Europeans have been only able to compare everything that happens to it and accuse Jews of being Nazis. Europeans need, instead of recognizing their criminal history and involvement, to turn the Holocaust into a universal phenomenon so that the Jews sooner or later become the ‘real Nazis’ and the Palestinians become the ‘Jews’ and every people in the world are said to be ‘committing a Holocaust’. Without the memory of the Holocaust what would the Europeans compare Palestinian suffering to? Without the memory of Nazism what would Europeans accuse Israel of being. How would intellectual artists and academics in Europe, especially the Jewish ones, become ‘controversial’ if they could’nt speak of “parrellels between Israel and the Nazi regime, Gaza and a giant concentration camp, the siege of Beirut and the Warsaw ghetto. Without the Holocaust what would ‘the brilliant and controverisal’ Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, who compared the situation in the territories to the extermination camps in Nazi Germany.
There was always something silly about watching Europeans, the very people who caused the Holocaust, crying crocodile tears over it in memorials. There was always something strange about watching Europeans bumble about trying to build memorials to an event they themselves did. There was always something funny about watching how collaborationist governments in Europe, whether Austria, Croatia or France were able to re-write history in order to become ‘victims’ of Nazism, when in fact they were some of the leading elements in the Nazi evil.
So now the Europeans want to prosecute Israelis for ‘war crimes’ using an ‘international tribunal’. They haven’t charged Bin Laden with war crimes, and they seem only capable of arresting black Africans for ‘war crimes’, such as Nkunda or Charles Taylor, but Europeans proved inept at prosecuting their own war criminals, not only Nazis who were mostly released due to ‘old age’, but also their own commanders who prosecuted brutal colonial wars and occupations in places such as Algeria and Northern Ireland. But while people with names such as Charles or Pierre don’t get placed on trial, and neither do Mohammed or Ahmed, the Europeans seem quite good at getting arrest warrants for men named Shlomo or Amos.
Throughout Europe and other places in the world Synagouges and Jewish schools were attacked recently by leftist white people carrying placards declaring ‘stop the Holocaust in Gaza.’ Muslims were provided with similar signs by leftist organizations who have helped Muslims learn that equating Israel’s actions with Nazism is the best tool to make white Europeans understand the Muslim Palestinian cause.
It’s a waste of time to commemorate the Holocaust. Europeans created the Holocaust, they indulged in it, they loved doing it. They let the Genocidaires run free after the Holocaust, had it not been for the U.S run court at Nuremburg and the Russian firing squads, all of the Nazis would have been released. Even after the Holocaust when the British army liberated the camps in Germany they placed the German and Italian Jews back in prison camps as ‘enemy non-combatants.’ European countries refused to take responsibility for the Holocaust, playing victim instead. In some cases Europeans joined terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction and after hijacking an Air France flight they spoke in German and separated the Jewish passengers from the non-Jews, much as their parents’ generation had done during the 1940s. Of course these Europeans in the 1970s did so under the auspices of ‘justice’ and ‘peace activism’ and ‘human rights’. When the Europeans were done experimenting in hijacking planes they then decided in the 1990s and after 2000 that they could assuage their guilt over the Holocaust by simply declaring that every even today is a ‘Holocaust’ and the ‘real Nazis today’ are the Jews in Israel.
While white Europeans did not protest the Mumbai terror attacks or refer to its perpetrators as war criminals, they began protesting the Gaza operation on its first day, already calling it a ‘holocaust’. They threw rocks and spray painted Jewish places. In New Zealand a Christian priest spilled ‘blood’ on a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin. In other places the European joined his Muslim friends in chanting “Hamas, Hamas, send the Jews to the Gas.’
The European and his Muslim collaborator and the Venezuelan dictator need the Holocaust in order to demonize Israel. In Venezuela Palestinian supporters spray painted swastikas on synagogues even while Chavez called the Gaza operation a ‘Holocaust’. In other places spray paint noted “Jew dogs” and “stop Gaza Holocaust.” Jews must forget about the Holocaust. It is a word that has no meaning. Neither does Nazi. There is nothing to memorialize. The Holocaust doesn’t mean six million dead Jews, it means 1,300 dead Palestinians. That is fine. Jews should commemorate the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, Shoah and they should stop expecting outsiders to commemorate the Shoah.
On Tuesday, January 27th Ahmadinjed declared at Tehran University that the Holocaust is “the West’s sacred lie.” He want on to claim that Israel was committing a ‘genocide’ in Gaza and that the Holocaust was used as an excuse to get money for Jews and to take Palestinian land and that the “lock on the Holocaust box must be broken.” Ahmadinjed is correct in a way. The Holocaust isn’t part of a western lie used to create Israel, rather the Holocaust is central to the West’s worldview, primarily in the context of labeling Jews as the ‘real Nazis’ and comparing the Holocaust to everything in order to make it seem less unique. The Holocaust is a sacred lie in the sense that Europeans lie about the Holocaust in comparing it to other things. Breaking the Holocaust box however is impossible. Europe needs the Holocaust in order to excuse its own creation of the Holocaust by comparing everything to it. Without the Holocaust and the Nazis what would the Europeans and their Muslim friends accuse Israel of? Without the Holocaust and the Nazis the Palestinians cannot be Jews and the Israelis cannot be Nazis and liberals will be deprived of their need to always claim that Gaza or Beirut or Jenin is ‘the Warsaw Ghetto.’ There was no Warsaw ghetto. There was no Holocaust. There were no Nazis. If the result of the Ghetto and the Holocaust and the Nazis is only to give Europeans tools to hate Israel and Jews today and give Europeans a way to support terror against the living Jews, the few who got away from the clutches of the European in the 1940s and survived, then we should forget the Holocaust. Do away with the fake memorials in Europe to the Jews who once lived there. Bulldoze the ugly memorial in Germany, after all the Germans have a Holocaust memorial day where Jews don’t even feel welcome. Give up on these memorials so we don’t have to listen to Dutch ministers claim that the Holocaust is the same as al-Nakhba. By stripping the European of his crocodile tears shed at Holocaust memorials we can finally see the European for what he is. He speaks the Holocaust only in the context of condemning Israel. He never calls his own state a ‘nazi’ state. He never uses the word for other things. He reserves it for Israel. He doesn’t speak of the Chinese ‘Holocaust’ of Tibet or the Tamil ‘Holocaust’. The Jews must take other words for their great tragedy that they suffered at the hands of the European. The European court today, through funding of ‘human rights’ NGOs by countries like Norway, brings war crimes charges against Jewish Israelis. It never brought war crimes charges against its own, for their numerous crimes whether during colonialism or in Northern Ireland or during the Shoah. Call the tragedy of the European Jews the Nakhba. Take the Palestinian world. Who cares.
The Europeans murdered six million. That is all that is worth remembering. The Europeans. The French. The Croats. The Germans. The Austrians. There is not a piece of land in those countries that is not soaked with the blood of the Jews and today it is the offices of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and the ICC that grow over that land.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Terra Incognita 71 Erdogan, Soft racism and proving the Bible
Terra Incognita
Issue 71
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
February 3rd, 2009
1) Erdogan, Israel and the ghost of Ataturk: The anger that the Turkish Prime Minister has displayed recently towards Israel should not be viewed as simply stemming from his genuine anger about the Gaza war. His tradition as an Islamist in secular Turkey also shapes his thinking.
2) Soft Racism: Hypocrisy, international Jurisdiction and Israel: The very idea of an ‘international’ court is fraught with problems. Who gives one court the right to excersize ‘international’ jurisdiction. What if all countries allowed their legal systems to do so. The recent attempt by Europeans to prosecute selective international ‘crimes’ based on their European conception of ‘justice’ is hyper problematic. Why don’t Spanish courts prosecute their own Franco era criminals or U.K courts prosecute IRA terrorists or British officers involved in Bloody Sunday? Why don’t the Europeans even prosecute aging Nazi criminals? Why don’t they ever indict Muslim terrorists, such as Bin Laden? In the end the court system in Europe is decidedly racist, directed only at selective weak countries by bullying leftist arrogant Europeans. The U.S threatened to use military force should Europe dare try to arrest its soldiers. The world should do the same in fighting the leftist European scourge.
3) 'Proving' the Bible: There was a time when native tales carved on wood or stone were dismissed as myth. Now the Bible is dismissed as myth and tales about the Mayan kings are accepted as truth. Science has recently returned, through numerous television programs, to ‘prove’ the Bible. But this seemingly attempt to bring the Bible back does not help. By using science to ‘prove’ the Bible the actions of God are pushed aside. Science goes even further, creating its own theories and myths about Jesus’ sex life and ridiculous theories about how the ‘flood’ might have happened. When science enters the realm of religion it becomes corrupted by the same passions that corrupt religion.
Erdogan, Israel and the ghost of Ataturk
Seth J. Frantzman
At a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 29th, 2009 Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan stormed off stage in the wake of a heated discussion between himself, Amr Mousa of the Arab League, Israeli President Shimon Peres of Israel and Secretary General of the U.N Ban Ki Moon. According to reports the heated exchange and outburst was a rarity at the usually dignified gathering. The audience, which consists of the world’s elite, was “stunned”.
Yet Erdogan’s anger should not have been a surprise. With the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, the number of condemnations uttered by Ankara regarding Israeli actions have grown and the relationship between the two countries has become increasingly strained. However Erdogan’s distaste for Israel may have less to do with his own feelings about Gaza than with the history of Ataturk’s Turkey.
When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first president of modern Turkey in 1923, a post he held until his death in 1938, he ushered in an era of radical secularization. His secularism had roots in the previous Young Turk regime which had championed Ottomanism and then Turkishness over the empire’s traditional role as a multi-ethnic and extremely heterogeneous state. With the carving up of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 Turkey became a state dominated by the Turkish Muslim majority. With the advent of Ataturkism it became increasingly a Secular Turkish state, with minority Kurdish groups, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians and others increasingly pushed aside. However Jews retained a great deal of tolerance in the new state which refused to join forces with Hitler.
In March of 1949 Turkey became one of the first countries to recognize Israel and the first Muslim country to do so. In the 1950s as Turkey positioned it on the Nato side of the Cold War it found Israel a useful military ally in the region. Israel also saw Turkey as an essential part of its ‘periphery’ strategy of alliances with Muslim and non-Muslim non-Arab states such as the Shah’s Iran and Ethiopia. Turkey refused to call Israel an “aggressor” in the 1967 Six Day War and disagreed with disagreed with a 1969 decision of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to break relations with Israel.
The 1990s saw a rise in military cooperation and visits by Israeli heads of state. Israel celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Ottoman empire’s welcoming of Jewish refugees from Spain in 1492. Jewish lobbyists such as Moris Amitay were hired by Turkey to help prevent condemnations of the Armenian genocide by the U.S Congress. Israel supported Turkey’s greater ascension into the EU. Both countries recognized the threat of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.
The rise of the AK party on the ashes of the banned Islamic-inspired Welfare party and the swearing in as Erdogan as Prime Minister in 2003 marked a break with the Ataturk past. As a descendant of Georgian Muslims Erdogan sees himself as connected to a Muslim world more than the secular Turkish milieu. His outburst during the recent Gaza war were not unique, other Turkish leaders have had harsh criticism for Israel. But his break with Shimon Peres is unique. As foreign minister Peres visited Turkey twice in the 1990s and was outspoken in his support of Turkey’s increased role in the EU.
Peres’ visits to Turkey in the 1990s and the blossoming of the military relationship came under the auspices of the rule of Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, Turkey’s first female prime minister who was praised the nationalism and secularism of the army and encouraged targeted assassinations of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s Abdullah Ocalan.
The rise of the AKP comes in the face of Turkey’s longtime secular tradition, one often guaranteed through the intervention of the army in politics to prevent Islamic inspired governments. For Erdogan however the secular tradition of Turkey represents only one path. In 1997 he read a poem that noted “mosques are our barracks…minarets are our bayonets…the end is martyrdom.”
David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who hosted the Davos discussion of Gaza claimed that the discussion between Peres and Erdogan would, “I hope put a little more substance to that [peace process], where we go now, how we put the pieces back to together.” Erdogan’s outburst was not merely aimed at Israel, but rather reflects his Islamic view of events, his sympathy for Hamas, an Islamist party, and his own internal struggle against the secular state put in place by Ataturk.
Soft Antisemitism: Hypocrisy, international Jurisdiction and Israel
Seth J. Frantzman
January 30th, 2009
Sometimes it is the softest racism that is the worst. It can take the form of the racism of low expectations or the soft racism of neo-colonialism as practiced so often by foreign, usually western, UN workers in places like Haiti. But there is another more tragic form of soft racism that has increasingly become the norm throughout the European legal system; the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. The most recent manifestation of this has been Spanish judge Fernando Andreu to allow for a probe of ‘war crimes’ charges against seven Israeli politicians and former military officers for the targeted assassination of a Hamas activist in 2002.
It’s not the first time universal jurisdiction of European courts has been used against Israel. In 2005 an arrest warrant was issued in the U.K against Israeli general Doron Almog. He was accused by the court of breaching the Fourth Geneva convention as commander of Israeli forces in Gaza between 2000 and 2003. In 2003 a Belgian court also decided that Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon could be tried for war crimes in Belgium over his role in the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon in 1982.
The doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction is a European legal phenomenon. No other country’s courts claim the right top prosecute foreign nationals from other countries for crimes committed in their countries. Universal jurisdiction by European courts have not only been directed at Israelis. Africans also fall afoul of the long arm of the European legal system. In November of 2008 German police, on instructions from France, arrested Rose Kabuye, one of Africa’s most successful female politicians and a member of Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s inner circle. She taken to France in handcuffs while on a Rwandan governmental mission to Germany. Ironically she was one of the Tutsi minority who had fought against the Rwandan genocide, a genocide that France has been implicated in supporting. France had charged her as being a ‘terrorist’.
But in contrast to Israeli generals and African female politicians, European heads of state are able to roam the globe free of charges over their countries’ role in colonialism or other actions. European Nato officers who ordered the bombing of Serbia and whose planes accidentally killed hundreds of civilians have not been probed for ‘war crimes’.
No French officer has ever been charged for their participation in the massacres associated with the Algerian war of independence. No British soldier has been charged over their role in Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland where civilians were gunned down.
It seems the law is one way for non-Europeans, particularly Jews and blacks, and another way for Europeans. The idea of universal jurisdiction is unique because it represents a racist view of the world that claims that only European courts can arrest people from every country in the world while courts in other countries may not issue arrest warrants for Europeans. Thus Rwandan courts cannot probe the French role in supplying the Hutu genocidaires of 1994 and order French politicians arrested. Those warrants would not be respected in France or any European country. No Serbian court may attempt to put on trial Europeans for bombing Serbia. Furthermore no court in India may investigate British soldiers for their role in ‘war crimes’ in Northern Ireland during the troubles. The U.K would scoff at the idea that an Indian court might put them on trial. Herein lies the racism, the idea that only Europeans may put anyone in the world on trial. Thus type of belief in the superiority of Europeans is reminiscent of the dark days of colonial rule, and yet much of the world accepts the idea of universal jurisdiction without retaliating in kind.
The hypocrisy of universal jurisdiction is revealed to a greater degree when one considers how selective it is. Elderly Nazis roam free in Europe, freed by European prisons for being of ‘old age’. Robert Mugabe and other nasty world leaders, such as those in Darfur, roam free. Terrorists and their leaders from Pakistan to Hamas are not charged. The Spanish courts’ participation in investigating Israeli ‘war crimes’ is astonishing considering the fact that those same Spanish courts do not investigate Spaniards for their role in the crimes of Francoism. It seems one rule applies to EU citizens and another applies to the rest of the world. This is the reason the U.S has refused to sign on to the International Criminal Court, the U.S has realized, correctly, that it is primarily an attempt to extend European power throughout the world, without applying similar rules to Europeans themselves.
Universal jurisdiction is a form of soft racism as long as it is not respected and allowed for all. Only when a Rwandan court may prosecute a French politician or an Indian court my issue a warrant that is respected in the EU for former British officers will it stop being an extreme hypocrisy. But rather than creating a web of courts all claiming jurisdiction over eachother, it would be better to do away with the arrogance of universal jurisdiction altogether. Its time for European courts to focus on the crimes within their own countries and stop trying to legislate and police the world.
'Proving' the Bible
February 1, 2009
Seth J. Frantzman
In the recently published book Shadows at Dawn the history of Tahono O'ohdam people is related as a backstory to events that took place in 19th century Arizona. The O'ohdam are a tribe that spans much of southern Arizona. Early anthropologists noticed in the 19th and early 20th centuries that some O'ohdam villages contained elders who kept sticks on which they carved important events from year to year. These important sources of tribal history, so the book tells us, were originally felt to be primarily myths. Today however scholars accept them at face value as histories of the tribe.
The opposite has, of course, taken place with the Bible. The Bible was widely thought, in the 19th century, to be accurate. However over time it has come to be viewed widely as a myth. The process by which the Bible, a central text of western civilization, has become 'myth' while all the central texts of other civilizations are accepted as 'true', especially if those civilizations are long dead is one of the natural processes of moral relativism and post-humanism. In the leftist-post-modern world of intellectualism the other is always correct and his history is 'genuine' whereas the history of the self is always suspect and is always 'cynical' and racist and 'centric'. So whereas the history-sticks of the O'ohdam don't represent some racist 'O'ohdam centric worldview', the Bible of course represents only reactions to things around it. Thus when people in the Bible set down laws for themselves they are not legislating unique laws but only reacting against others, such as the Egyptians are Canaanites. The Canaanite or Egyptian laws and dietary habits are, of course, pure and are not reactions since they received them directly from the gods. The other is genuine. The Self, even though the people who hate the Bible the most do not really view it as the self, is suspect.
Archeology pursues the same agenda. Some Mayan tablets which record the history of some king are said, according to National Geographic, to accurately depict that kingdoms rise and fall. Similar tablets inscribed with stories from the Bible describing King Solomon however must just be some conspiracy written down hundreds of years later to glorify some fake lineage. Thus equal evidence does not lead to equal interpretation. Because there is so little record of civilizations in the Americas people latch on to the smallest dynastic histories and accept them.
Recently another layer has been added to this contradiction and hypocrisy; the attempt to 'prove' the Bible through science. On the one hand this could be seen as a reaction against those who see the Bible as myth. Perhaps the Flood and Noah's Ark and the parting of the Dead Sea can be 'proved'. With all the fanciful and 'end of days' descriptions of the affect of global warming this may be no surprise. We are used to tales of global ice ages appearing overnight and sea levels rising. So perhaps there was a 'Flood'. Science can 'explain' it or at least 'explain' how people 'perceived' it as a giant Flood. Noahs Ark? Lets build one and see if it works. Parting of the Red Sea? Perhaps there was an earth quake. The sun stood still at Jericho? Perhaps there was an eclipse. In this way all sorts of natural phenomena find their way into the Bible. Did Jesus have visions? He was an epileptic, along with Mohammed. All the prophets were in fact. People brought back from the dead? Maybe they had some obscure form of Arthurfimbrosis? Did the spear pierce the side of Jesus and he did not cry out? He had some gland problem that must explain it.
On the face of it this all seems well and good. It takes the myth out of the Bible and brings truth back in. But it does something else as well. It removes God. Because all of the Bible can now be 'proved' by 'science' there is no longer a need of God. The Bible itself requires many of the miracles in order to explain the existence of God. When the events become natural phenomena then God is no longer needed. So the attempt to 'prove' the bible through science doesn't so much refute those that called it myth it merely removes God entirely. Both refute God equally, one by dismissing it, the other by verifying it.
But there is another layer of oddity that takes place among those who want to 'prove' the Bible. Once they delve into science they suddenly want to create new myths where old ones once existed. They want to find families for Jesus. They want to find all sorts of things that don't exist at all. They want to 'prove' that the Israelites are really Canaanites. They want to create whole new stories that don't appear in the Bible. Once science is loosed onto the field of religion it becomes a kind of religion. Archeology of the Bible becomes enthused with extremism and corrupted by modern politics to the extent that people 'believe' in it. All semblance of scientific principle is lost.
A perfect example of the use of modern idiocy to corrupt ancient texts is the Bible Code. Here we have a book that claims to use 'computers' to 'prove' that the Bible has a 'code' and that the code predicts the future. Let's reason with this according to its own claims. Here is the Bible. It is a myth. But if we use a computer to decipher it then we can find patterns. These patterns predict the future. Predicting the future is not a myth because we have proved that the Bible predicted the assassinations of presidents and 9/11. We even warned Yitzhak Rabin he would be assassinated and loe and behold he was. There is nothing more amazing than watching people take a book, declare the book a myth, then apply modern 'science' to the book and declare new myths based on the very thing they call a myth.
Nothing is more unique to the idiocy of modernity than this. Nothing is more unique to the West. It points to the heart of the lie that is modernity. We have 'Human Rights' in a world where humans have less and less rights. We have 'peace' in a world that is not peaceful. We have justice in a world that is not just. We have anti-racism conferences where the participants are racists. We assault Chinese Olympic athletes and beat them in the street because we accuse the Chinese of 'human rights abuses' in Tibet. We cowardly burn and ransack synagogues and write 'We hate the Jews' because we claim the Jews commit 'war crimes'. We call the Muslims violent and in response they say "kill those who insult Islam." And we think that these two things are logically consistent and we thus apologize for 'offending Islam.'
Science should keep itself to exploring the realm of science. There are already enough myths and unexplained problems in the scientific realm, we don't need science 'proving' the Bible. Science can't even prove global warming. Instead it gets Biblical in its descriptions of what global warming will produce; "rising sea levels, ice storms, extreme weather, a second ice age, vast deserts…" Thank you science for this ridiculous description but the Bible has already given us descriptions like this. The stupidity of man is that in his quest for answers he invariably needs the lie, he seeks it using science in much the same way that ancient man ascribed all sorts of powers and influence to things around him. The Prophets in the Bible describe ancient man chopping down trees and bowing down to them; "I created an idol…part of it I made into a fire…part of it I make into a god." Science only seems to be doing a slight bit better, the more it keeps itself away from 'explaining' religion the better it will be at not being corrupted by the passions of religion.
Issue 71
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
February 3rd, 2009
1) Erdogan, Israel and the ghost of Ataturk: The anger that the Turkish Prime Minister has displayed recently towards Israel should not be viewed as simply stemming from his genuine anger about the Gaza war. His tradition as an Islamist in secular Turkey also shapes his thinking.
2) Soft Racism: Hypocrisy, international Jurisdiction and Israel: The very idea of an ‘international’ court is fraught with problems. Who gives one court the right to excersize ‘international’ jurisdiction. What if all countries allowed their legal systems to do so. The recent attempt by Europeans to prosecute selective international ‘crimes’ based on their European conception of ‘justice’ is hyper problematic. Why don’t Spanish courts prosecute their own Franco era criminals or U.K courts prosecute IRA terrorists or British officers involved in Bloody Sunday? Why don’t the Europeans even prosecute aging Nazi criminals? Why don’t they ever indict Muslim terrorists, such as Bin Laden? In the end the court system in Europe is decidedly racist, directed only at selective weak countries by bullying leftist arrogant Europeans. The U.S threatened to use military force should Europe dare try to arrest its soldiers. The world should do the same in fighting the leftist European scourge.
3) 'Proving' the Bible: There was a time when native tales carved on wood or stone were dismissed as myth. Now the Bible is dismissed as myth and tales about the Mayan kings are accepted as truth. Science has recently returned, through numerous television programs, to ‘prove’ the Bible. But this seemingly attempt to bring the Bible back does not help. By using science to ‘prove’ the Bible the actions of God are pushed aside. Science goes even further, creating its own theories and myths about Jesus’ sex life and ridiculous theories about how the ‘flood’ might have happened. When science enters the realm of religion it becomes corrupted by the same passions that corrupt religion.
Erdogan, Israel and the ghost of Ataturk
Seth J. Frantzman
At a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 29th, 2009 Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan stormed off stage in the wake of a heated discussion between himself, Amr Mousa of the Arab League, Israeli President Shimon Peres of Israel and Secretary General of the U.N Ban Ki Moon. According to reports the heated exchange and outburst was a rarity at the usually dignified gathering. The audience, which consists of the world’s elite, was “stunned”.
Yet Erdogan’s anger should not have been a surprise. With the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, the number of condemnations uttered by Ankara regarding Israeli actions have grown and the relationship between the two countries has become increasingly strained. However Erdogan’s distaste for Israel may have less to do with his own feelings about Gaza than with the history of Ataturk’s Turkey.
When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first president of modern Turkey in 1923, a post he held until his death in 1938, he ushered in an era of radical secularization. His secularism had roots in the previous Young Turk regime which had championed Ottomanism and then Turkishness over the empire’s traditional role as a multi-ethnic and extremely heterogeneous state. With the carving up of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 Turkey became a state dominated by the Turkish Muslim majority. With the advent of Ataturkism it became increasingly a Secular Turkish state, with minority Kurdish groups, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians and others increasingly pushed aside. However Jews retained a great deal of tolerance in the new state which refused to join forces with Hitler.
In March of 1949 Turkey became one of the first countries to recognize Israel and the first Muslim country to do so. In the 1950s as Turkey positioned it on the Nato side of the Cold War it found Israel a useful military ally in the region. Israel also saw Turkey as an essential part of its ‘periphery’ strategy of alliances with Muslim and non-Muslim non-Arab states such as the Shah’s Iran and Ethiopia. Turkey refused to call Israel an “aggressor” in the 1967 Six Day War and disagreed with disagreed with a 1969 decision of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to break relations with Israel.
The 1990s saw a rise in military cooperation and visits by Israeli heads of state. Israel celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Ottoman empire’s welcoming of Jewish refugees from Spain in 1492. Jewish lobbyists such as Moris Amitay were hired by Turkey to help prevent condemnations of the Armenian genocide by the U.S Congress. Israel supported Turkey’s greater ascension into the EU. Both countries recognized the threat of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.
The rise of the AK party on the ashes of the banned Islamic-inspired Welfare party and the swearing in as Erdogan as Prime Minister in 2003 marked a break with the Ataturk past. As a descendant of Georgian Muslims Erdogan sees himself as connected to a Muslim world more than the secular Turkish milieu. His outburst during the recent Gaza war were not unique, other Turkish leaders have had harsh criticism for Israel. But his break with Shimon Peres is unique. As foreign minister Peres visited Turkey twice in the 1990s and was outspoken in his support of Turkey’s increased role in the EU.
Peres’ visits to Turkey in the 1990s and the blossoming of the military relationship came under the auspices of the rule of Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, Turkey’s first female prime minister who was praised the nationalism and secularism of the army and encouraged targeted assassinations of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s Abdullah Ocalan.
The rise of the AKP comes in the face of Turkey’s longtime secular tradition, one often guaranteed through the intervention of the army in politics to prevent Islamic inspired governments. For Erdogan however the secular tradition of Turkey represents only one path. In 1997 he read a poem that noted “mosques are our barracks…minarets are our bayonets…the end is martyrdom.”
David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who hosted the Davos discussion of Gaza claimed that the discussion between Peres and Erdogan would, “I hope put a little more substance to that [peace process], where we go now, how we put the pieces back to together.” Erdogan’s outburst was not merely aimed at Israel, but rather reflects his Islamic view of events, his sympathy for Hamas, an Islamist party, and his own internal struggle against the secular state put in place by Ataturk.
Soft Antisemitism: Hypocrisy, international Jurisdiction and Israel
Seth J. Frantzman
January 30th, 2009
Sometimes it is the softest racism that is the worst. It can take the form of the racism of low expectations or the soft racism of neo-colonialism as practiced so often by foreign, usually western, UN workers in places like Haiti. But there is another more tragic form of soft racism that has increasingly become the norm throughout the European legal system; the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. The most recent manifestation of this has been Spanish judge Fernando Andreu to allow for a probe of ‘war crimes’ charges against seven Israeli politicians and former military officers for the targeted assassination of a Hamas activist in 2002.
It’s not the first time universal jurisdiction of European courts has been used against Israel. In 2005 an arrest warrant was issued in the U.K against Israeli general Doron Almog. He was accused by the court of breaching the Fourth Geneva convention as commander of Israeli forces in Gaza between 2000 and 2003. In 2003 a Belgian court also decided that Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon could be tried for war crimes in Belgium over his role in the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon in 1982.
The doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction is a European legal phenomenon. No other country’s courts claim the right top prosecute foreign nationals from other countries for crimes committed in their countries. Universal jurisdiction by European courts have not only been directed at Israelis. Africans also fall afoul of the long arm of the European legal system. In November of 2008 German police, on instructions from France, arrested Rose Kabuye, one of Africa’s most successful female politicians and a member of Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s inner circle. She taken to France in handcuffs while on a Rwandan governmental mission to Germany. Ironically she was one of the Tutsi minority who had fought against the Rwandan genocide, a genocide that France has been implicated in supporting. France had charged her as being a ‘terrorist’.
But in contrast to Israeli generals and African female politicians, European heads of state are able to roam the globe free of charges over their countries’ role in colonialism or other actions. European Nato officers who ordered the bombing of Serbia and whose planes accidentally killed hundreds of civilians have not been probed for ‘war crimes’.
No French officer has ever been charged for their participation in the massacres associated with the Algerian war of independence. No British soldier has been charged over their role in Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland where civilians were gunned down.
It seems the law is one way for non-Europeans, particularly Jews and blacks, and another way for Europeans. The idea of universal jurisdiction is unique because it represents a racist view of the world that claims that only European courts can arrest people from every country in the world while courts in other countries may not issue arrest warrants for Europeans. Thus Rwandan courts cannot probe the French role in supplying the Hutu genocidaires of 1994 and order French politicians arrested. Those warrants would not be respected in France or any European country. No Serbian court may attempt to put on trial Europeans for bombing Serbia. Furthermore no court in India may investigate British soldiers for their role in ‘war crimes’ in Northern Ireland during the troubles. The U.K would scoff at the idea that an Indian court might put them on trial. Herein lies the racism, the idea that only Europeans may put anyone in the world on trial. Thus type of belief in the superiority of Europeans is reminiscent of the dark days of colonial rule, and yet much of the world accepts the idea of universal jurisdiction without retaliating in kind.
The hypocrisy of universal jurisdiction is revealed to a greater degree when one considers how selective it is. Elderly Nazis roam free in Europe, freed by European prisons for being of ‘old age’. Robert Mugabe and other nasty world leaders, such as those in Darfur, roam free. Terrorists and their leaders from Pakistan to Hamas are not charged. The Spanish courts’ participation in investigating Israeli ‘war crimes’ is astonishing considering the fact that those same Spanish courts do not investigate Spaniards for their role in the crimes of Francoism. It seems one rule applies to EU citizens and another applies to the rest of the world. This is the reason the U.S has refused to sign on to the International Criminal Court, the U.S has realized, correctly, that it is primarily an attempt to extend European power throughout the world, without applying similar rules to Europeans themselves.
Universal jurisdiction is a form of soft racism as long as it is not respected and allowed for all. Only when a Rwandan court may prosecute a French politician or an Indian court my issue a warrant that is respected in the EU for former British officers will it stop being an extreme hypocrisy. But rather than creating a web of courts all claiming jurisdiction over eachother, it would be better to do away with the arrogance of universal jurisdiction altogether. Its time for European courts to focus on the crimes within their own countries and stop trying to legislate and police the world.
'Proving' the Bible
February 1, 2009
Seth J. Frantzman
In the recently published book Shadows at Dawn the history of Tahono O'ohdam people is related as a backstory to events that took place in 19th century Arizona. The O'ohdam are a tribe that spans much of southern Arizona. Early anthropologists noticed in the 19th and early 20th centuries that some O'ohdam villages contained elders who kept sticks on which they carved important events from year to year. These important sources of tribal history, so the book tells us, were originally felt to be primarily myths. Today however scholars accept them at face value as histories of the tribe.
The opposite has, of course, taken place with the Bible. The Bible was widely thought, in the 19th century, to be accurate. However over time it has come to be viewed widely as a myth. The process by which the Bible, a central text of western civilization, has become 'myth' while all the central texts of other civilizations are accepted as 'true', especially if those civilizations are long dead is one of the natural processes of moral relativism and post-humanism. In the leftist-post-modern world of intellectualism the other is always correct and his history is 'genuine' whereas the history of the self is always suspect and is always 'cynical' and racist and 'centric'. So whereas the history-sticks of the O'ohdam don't represent some racist 'O'ohdam centric worldview', the Bible of course represents only reactions to things around it. Thus when people in the Bible set down laws for themselves they are not legislating unique laws but only reacting against others, such as the Egyptians are Canaanites. The Canaanite or Egyptian laws and dietary habits are, of course, pure and are not reactions since they received them directly from the gods. The other is genuine. The Self, even though the people who hate the Bible the most do not really view it as the self, is suspect.
Archeology pursues the same agenda. Some Mayan tablets which record the history of some king are said, according to National Geographic, to accurately depict that kingdoms rise and fall. Similar tablets inscribed with stories from the Bible describing King Solomon however must just be some conspiracy written down hundreds of years later to glorify some fake lineage. Thus equal evidence does not lead to equal interpretation. Because there is so little record of civilizations in the Americas people latch on to the smallest dynastic histories and accept them.
Recently another layer has been added to this contradiction and hypocrisy; the attempt to 'prove' the Bible through science. On the one hand this could be seen as a reaction against those who see the Bible as myth. Perhaps the Flood and Noah's Ark and the parting of the Dead Sea can be 'proved'. With all the fanciful and 'end of days' descriptions of the affect of global warming this may be no surprise. We are used to tales of global ice ages appearing overnight and sea levels rising. So perhaps there was a 'Flood'. Science can 'explain' it or at least 'explain' how people 'perceived' it as a giant Flood. Noahs Ark? Lets build one and see if it works. Parting of the Red Sea? Perhaps there was an earth quake. The sun stood still at Jericho? Perhaps there was an eclipse. In this way all sorts of natural phenomena find their way into the Bible. Did Jesus have visions? He was an epileptic, along with Mohammed. All the prophets were in fact. People brought back from the dead? Maybe they had some obscure form of Arthurfimbrosis? Did the spear pierce the side of Jesus and he did not cry out? He had some gland problem that must explain it.
On the face of it this all seems well and good. It takes the myth out of the Bible and brings truth back in. But it does something else as well. It removes God. Because all of the Bible can now be 'proved' by 'science' there is no longer a need of God. The Bible itself requires many of the miracles in order to explain the existence of God. When the events become natural phenomena then God is no longer needed. So the attempt to 'prove' the bible through science doesn't so much refute those that called it myth it merely removes God entirely. Both refute God equally, one by dismissing it, the other by verifying it.
But there is another layer of oddity that takes place among those who want to 'prove' the Bible. Once they delve into science they suddenly want to create new myths where old ones once existed. They want to find families for Jesus. They want to find all sorts of things that don't exist at all. They want to 'prove' that the Israelites are really Canaanites. They want to create whole new stories that don't appear in the Bible. Once science is loosed onto the field of religion it becomes a kind of religion. Archeology of the Bible becomes enthused with extremism and corrupted by modern politics to the extent that people 'believe' in it. All semblance of scientific principle is lost.
A perfect example of the use of modern idiocy to corrupt ancient texts is the Bible Code. Here we have a book that claims to use 'computers' to 'prove' that the Bible has a 'code' and that the code predicts the future. Let's reason with this according to its own claims. Here is the Bible. It is a myth. But if we use a computer to decipher it then we can find patterns. These patterns predict the future. Predicting the future is not a myth because we have proved that the Bible predicted the assassinations of presidents and 9/11. We even warned Yitzhak Rabin he would be assassinated and loe and behold he was. There is nothing more amazing than watching people take a book, declare the book a myth, then apply modern 'science' to the book and declare new myths based on the very thing they call a myth.
Nothing is more unique to the idiocy of modernity than this. Nothing is more unique to the West. It points to the heart of the lie that is modernity. We have 'Human Rights' in a world where humans have less and less rights. We have 'peace' in a world that is not peaceful. We have justice in a world that is not just. We have anti-racism conferences where the participants are racists. We assault Chinese Olympic athletes and beat them in the street because we accuse the Chinese of 'human rights abuses' in Tibet. We cowardly burn and ransack synagogues and write 'We hate the Jews' because we claim the Jews commit 'war crimes'. We call the Muslims violent and in response they say "kill those who insult Islam." And we think that these two things are logically consistent and we thus apologize for 'offending Islam.'
Science should keep itself to exploring the realm of science. There are already enough myths and unexplained problems in the scientific realm, we don't need science 'proving' the Bible. Science can't even prove global warming. Instead it gets Biblical in its descriptions of what global warming will produce; "rising sea levels, ice storms, extreme weather, a second ice age, vast deserts…" Thank you science for this ridiculous description but the Bible has already given us descriptions like this. The stupidity of man is that in his quest for answers he invariably needs the lie, he seeks it using science in much the same way that ancient man ascribed all sorts of powers and influence to things around him. The Prophets in the Bible describe ancient man chopping down trees and bowing down to them; "I created an idol…part of it I made into a fire…part of it I make into a god." Science only seems to be doing a slight bit better, the more it keeps itself away from 'explaining' religion the better it will be at not being corrupted by the passions of religion.
Terra Incognita
Issue 70
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
January 27th, 2009
1) The Divorce from Europe: The central lesson that European and liberal history has learned from the Holocaust is that the correct response to Nazism is to become an 'anti-Nazi'. But this is a flawed response. The opposite of evil is not 'anti-evil', but rather good. The leftist dialectic of modern European thought is decidedly backward looking and it is why it is slowly being consumed by a very forward looking group of people; Muslims.
2) The next generation of colonialists: Duke University's 'Engage' program invites young students to 'change the world' through working at NGOs throughout the world as part of their student exchange program. It gives 18-22 year old students the chance to 'intervene directly' in places, helping to make local NGOs more efficient and 'train locals'. This arrogance, that we should 'change the world' is inculcated at a young age. But this NGO-poverty-tourism is a decidedly racist worldview.
The Divorce from Europe
Seth J. Frantzman
January 25th, 2009
There was a time in history when Europe became a sort of hell. This was between 1939 and 1945. After the war was over people convinced themselves that this Europe, the dark and evil Europe where technology and modernity had allowed man to indulge in his most terrible ideas, was merely what happens when the 'right wing' of politics it allowed to take charge. For the next sixty years the world was led to believe that so long as man could be secular and leftist, then his 'good' side would be allowed to thrive. Man's relationship with European civilization became confusing. On the one hand old Europe was disdained, its class distinctions, its colonialism, its Christianity were pushed into the dust bin of history. New Europe, the Europe of secularism, self-hate and 'human rights' and 'progressive' politics was celebrated.
But the darkness is returning. New Europe, through its flaccid politics of flexibility has dug itself into the same trap that the liberal laiisez faire regimes of the 1920s dug themselves into. Europe once again finds itself in the death throes of Weimer republic style extremism, with weak out of touch governments and cesspools brooding up from below.
We see most clearly the problem of Europe when we examine its extreme hatred of Israel. It is here that the real Europe, the Europe of the extreme, of the hate, of the evil, emerges. Whether it is a European priest in New Zealand smearing his own blood on a Yitzhak Rabin memorial or Holocaust memorial day in Scotland becoming 'Palestinian holocaust' memorial day we see the extremism of 'progressive' Europe. The love for terrorism is part and parcel of the European mindset, the 'human rights' mindset. How else can one explain that European courts issue arrest warrants for Israeli soldiers that Europeans accuse of 'war crimes' but Muslim leaders of Hamas are welcome in Europe.
The truth about Europe is clear. Sixty years of secularism, and 'human rights' and drawing the wrong conclusions about the Second World War have led to a break between European civilization and civilization itself. European civilization initially diverged from that of humanity during the Holocaust. But Europeans drew a false lesson from the Holocaust. They believed it to be a product of the 'right' rather than a product of modernity. The Holocaust was a very European event, fueled by an obsession with all things modern, the belief that man can be subordinated to machines. It is no coincidence that the first anti-smoking campaigns were developed by the Nazis. There is nothing more extreme than the strange and alarmist lies put out by anti-smoking advocates. Smoking may be a slightly vile and inconvenient habit for many, but that extremism associated with anti-smoking literature, that ridiculous exaggerations and the attempt to 'cleanse' society of the smoker, to the extent in several films such as Waterworld where the 'bad guys' have been called simply 'smokers', is part and parcel of the demonization of the 'alien' element in European society, the Jew.
When we move forward to modern times we see that Europe has not replaced its extremism. By simply ascribing Nazism to a right wing deviation Europeans misunderstood the lessons of the Holocaust. By embracing left wing and secular fanaticism Europeans merely replaced one Nazism with another. That is why it is so easy for modern 'human rights activist' Europeans to find themselves in the arms of Islamism. It is why European women, schooled in the secular ethos of 'love the other' can so easily go from engaging in the 'exotic independent' job of 'sex work' to putting on a Burka and reading the Koran daily. Belly Dancing and marching in lock step to Nazi marches is not so different. Each represents the destruction of independence of people.
To defeat Europeanism one must divorce themselves from the concept of Europe and the concept that Europe provides answers for anything. European courts, European UN workers, European NGOs, European human rights, all these notions are a mistake. EU monitors, wherever they may be found, are suspect. The very notion that this Europe can provide answers to anything is mistaken.
The lessons of the Holocaust understood by the Western mind is that the opposite, and thus correct response, to Nazism is anti-Nazism. But this is a mistake. Anti-Nazism is not the opposite of Nazism just as the opposite of evil is not anti-evil. The opposite of evil is good. To live one's life in opposition to evil is to place evil in the place of God for evil dominates one's life. Europeans and their causes, the idea of the 'cause' and the idea of 'social justice' all these ideas are directed against something, usually some perceived as 'injustice' or 'racism' or 'genocide' or 'ethnic-cleansing'. Whatever lie is placed in the place of evil it speaks of a civilization that is essentially raising up evil to the place of god rather than striving for something positive. Europe does not move forward and it is why it is slowly being consumed by people who do think in a forward manner; Muslims. For Islam is, with all its flaws, hypocrisy, slavery, rape and servitude, a religion that primarily looks forward to a day when it will conquer the world. Islam's forward thinking can be seen in its high birth rates, in its desire for its men to marry non-Muslim women and its forbidding of its women to mingle with non-Muslim men. Suicide bombing, when coupled with high birth rates, is a perfect policy for victory over others, for while one man can blow up many, he has made sure already to reproduce himself through women. The western mindset of avoiding civilian casualties, the opposite of the Muslim way of waging war that targets only civilians, is decidedly defeatist. Civilians are the reservoir from whence soldiers come and Islam's savage but brilliant understanding that killing civilians means there will be less soldiers in the future is brutally logical. The Mumbai attackers who killed more than 200 civilians contacted their handlers to ask about killing women and children and they were told 'kill them'. A society without women and children does not produce men who can serve in the armed forces. So while the West targets only soldiers, thus leaving the civilians to procreate, Islam targets the soft underbelly, leaving only graying old soldiers with nothing to go to home to.
Divorcing ourselves from a European 'human rights' and 'social justice' mindset is the only way we can free ourselves from the position that society finds itself in. We must be free to think of new ways to move forward with society, rather than being trapped in an essentially reactionary 'anti-nazi' post-Holocaust world.
The next generation of colonialists
Seth J. Frantzman
January 25th, 2009
Duke University has many study abroad programs. Incorporated into most of them is the chance to spend extra time participating in the 'Duke Engage' program. Its motto is 'challenge yourself: change the world.' It is a good case study in the way in which western students increasingly believe it is their duty to 'change' the entire world, an arrogant concept that smacks of racism, colonialism and the idiocy of 'the white man's burden.'
To understand the idiocy it is worthwhile examining what Duke Engage students are engaged in. In Egypt's Cairo they are part of St. Andrews Refugee ministry, a "localized western model NGO." Participants "develop programs for making local NGOs more efficient….exciting opportunities to be in charge of a new program." Students in the program will, however, have to learn some Arabic to work with the locals. In Kenya " Students in the FSD program in Kenya will be individually placed with a partner organization in one of seven development subject areas, including microfinance/microenterprise, women’s empowerment, environment, health, human rights, education and youth development, or community development. " In South Africa " Students will spend six weeks in Cape Town, working with social agencies that are seeking to improve life in townships, document the history of District Six (a neighborhood bulldozed by the apartheid regime because it was a model of multi-racial democracy), and promote health and economic reform in the nation." In Northern Tanzania " Students will learn about healthcare technology shortcomings in the developing world and spend time directly intervening to address these challenges. "
In Uganda " DukeEngage students will primarily provide training on, education, and dissemination of vital medical services. " In China the students will undermine the government by dealing with migrants to cities who "often underpaid, with no health or employment benefits, and subjected to a range of discriminatory practices… Interfacing with JP Morgan’s Corporate Social Responsibility office in Beijing, Duke Engage Beijing students will work at one of the most successful of these places [for migrant worker children], the Dandelion Middle School (Pugongying Zhongxue). Our students will engage in a wide range of tasks, from teaching English and other subjects, to working with school staff in health, nutrition, life skills, counseling and study-to-work programs." In Vietnam however the students will be involved in some nationalism through going to "Ben Tre Province to participate in the Vietnamese Youth League’s Green Summer Campaign."
In Ireland "students will spend two months in Dublin working with communities of refugees and migrants. DukeEngage students will be placed with one of five different NGOs serving the migrant and refugee community [or] Duke students will work with five Belfast-based NGOs that focus on human rights." In Haiti they will be "documenting the needs and strengths of community partners in Haiti and developing cross-disciplinary partnerships, from environmental health, engineering design, and health management to clinical care; and 3. determining priorities community members, leaders and health professionals have related to the planned construction of a health and research center." In Israel "students who participate in the follow-up DukeEngage portion of the program will work in one of several organizations that promote social justice in disadvantaged communities. The organizations, which are all based in Jerusalem, focus on providing social assistance to new Ethiopian immigrants, community education, creating local leadership for social change, women’s rights, and environmental justice."
It all sounds well and good. But let us consider the mentality behind it. First among the mentality is the belief that "we can do it better than them." The programs don't send college students abroad to learn from locals. It doesn't say the students will observe and first learn about what the local people are doing. Instead the mentality is that a bunch of college students from the west, ages 18-22, are perfectly capable, even if their majors are in things not related to the programs, to show up and immediately begin telling the locals what to do. Is there anything more arrogant than thinking that simply by the virtue of these students being from Duke that they can suddenly take charge of a health care clinic in Haiti or perhaps running a food co-op NGO in Kenya? The insinuation is that the natives are just there to be told what to do. Isn't that, in truth, what this program is saying: "dear Westerner, come and run your own plantation with natives ready to work for you, eager to learn from you and take direction…be your own boss of some hundred savage people and whip them into shape so that they can be more efficient because you, by virtue of coming from the West, surely know more than all these savages."
What does it mean to 'change the world'? It means the world needs you and only you, the westerner, can change it. It means the world needs changing and isn't good enough, isn't up to 'our standards'. It means that we must change it, not that it could, god forbid, change us. It means that we have a 'duty' to change it. This is an arrogant idea, the idea that it needs changing. But what if it is doing ok by itself. Haiti appears to need changing until one recalls just exactly who it was that has been running it for the last hundred years. Recall that Haiti was the second country in the Western Hemisphere to gain independence (after the U.S) in 1802 and recall that it did just fine in the 19th century until people began colonizing it again. Recall that since 1992 it has been run by NGOs and the U.N. So when we say we must 'change' it, we should be changing our own policy towards it. We should have long ago left it to its own ends. Poor and savage it may be, but our 'change' doesn't appear to be helping. Haitians are poorer today per capita than they were in 1802. So how is the 'change' helping?
Why aren’t the arrogant colonists-in-the-making sent to their own countries or places where they speak the local language at least to affect some change? Why aren’t we dispatching them to the inner cities to lord it over some of our own people? Why don't we dispatch them to St. Joseph's hospital in Tucson to run the hospital for a few days? If we believe any Duke student is capable of running, without training, some clinic in Africa why not let them run a clinic, with no training, in Harlem? I mean, by Duke's logic, those people in Harlem must be equally savage as the one's in Kenya so why not let our best and brightest 18-22 year olds experiment on our own black poor people? We don't need to send them all the way to Africa, we have plenty of African immigrants here in the U.S for rich folk to experiment on with leftist notions of 'I must change them and only I can do it because they are to stupid'. But we wouldn't send some inexperienced, wet behind the ears, student go run a hospital in Harlem or Tucson, so why would we send them to Africa to do it? Do the Africans deserve so little, are they are so useless that we truly believe some 20 year old is capable of telling them what do to by virtue simply of the fact that they live in a poor African country? What do these students really know about making local NGOs "more efficient." The insinuation is that the native people running the NGOs locally are obviously corrupt and inefficient and only by bringing them the natural efficiency that any 18 year old American social science student innately has can they improve.
There is another side to the Duke Engage program, that while less arrogant, is equally obnoxious. This is the belief that it is the duty of Duke to work to subvert various governments throughout the world by sending study abroad students into the country to create unrest among minorities and encourage militant activism among groups that Duke has identified as 'disadvantaged.' On the surface it seems natural for American students to want to help minorities in Ireland, China or Israel. But lets imagine a situation where some idealistic Americans show up and encourage local Chinese labourers to assert their 'rights' more and this leads to riots and then bloodshed. Imagine the situation in Israel where the Americans show up to work among the local Ethiopians and because Americans imagine that every black person everywhere must suffer terrible discrimination, they fill the Ethiopians' heads with images of the Old South, and soon these poor Ethiopians are imagining all sorts of racism where none previously existed. It is not far fetched. Westerners have a strange habit of always being more nationalistic and extreme than locals. I have witnessed western white women encouraging Arabs to be more nationalistic, telling them about their 'true claim to the temple mount', regaling Muslims with stories about Mohammed that even the Muslims didn't know and inquiring of Arab women 'why do you speak Hebrew, the language of your enemy?' I've seen white women from the west asking "where is the racism, those Ethiopians, they are the blacks here so they must be discriminated against, I am sure there is more racism than we see on the surface." Westerners need to find racism in other countries because the idea of racism as a natural part of society is ingrained in the West and the idea that "racism is everywhere" is typical of an American liberal education. Thus in India white westerners typically ask "aren’t the white Indians racist against the black ones." Indians might inquire "what blacks and whites?" But westerners refuse to think that the notion of race is not easily accepted elsewhere. So westerners will mistake the Indian Hindu notion of caste for race and class, because race and class are easily understood in the West. It might surprise them to learn that caste in India transcends both dark and lighter skinned Hindus and poorer and richer ones.
We cannot imagine Chinese students flooding America on foreign exchange visas and being put in charge of our rural health care centers or going among Mexican immigrants and encouraging them to fight for 'social justice'. We can't imagine African students arriving in the U.S to campaign for environmental justice. We can't imagine Russian students meeting with poor whites in the south and educating them about their 'disadvantaged position.' We can't imagine it because it would seem odd to have foreigners running around our country telling our people how to live, whipping them into a frenzy about justice, telling them how to run a health clinic and then leaving after their six weeks of poverty and social activist tourism was at an end, returning to Africa or China or Russia to talk about how they 'changed the world' and leaving a big mess behind them.
The arrogance of social-justice-tourism and the evils of NGOs and those who think they have a right to run them is never ending. The Duke case is just the tip of the iceberg of a persistent liberal racism against the world, a leftist-human-rights racism that permeates our culture and makes us believe that we must 'change the world', not by first changing ourselves, but by undermining foreign governments, and imposing ourselves upon others and lording it over others. Anyone that believes that some 20 year old college student with no background and no experience who has never worked a day in his life can show up in Kenya and be placed in charge of 40 year old Africans is as bent morally as those people in the Old South who owned slaves.
Issue 70
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
January 27th, 2009
1) The Divorce from Europe: The central lesson that European and liberal history has learned from the Holocaust is that the correct response to Nazism is to become an 'anti-Nazi'. But this is a flawed response. The opposite of evil is not 'anti-evil', but rather good. The leftist dialectic of modern European thought is decidedly backward looking and it is why it is slowly being consumed by a very forward looking group of people; Muslims.
2) The next generation of colonialists: Duke University's 'Engage' program invites young students to 'change the world' through working at NGOs throughout the world as part of their student exchange program. It gives 18-22 year old students the chance to 'intervene directly' in places, helping to make local NGOs more efficient and 'train locals'. This arrogance, that we should 'change the world' is inculcated at a young age. But this NGO-poverty-tourism is a decidedly racist worldview.
The Divorce from Europe
Seth J. Frantzman
January 25th, 2009
There was a time in history when Europe became a sort of hell. This was between 1939 and 1945. After the war was over people convinced themselves that this Europe, the dark and evil Europe where technology and modernity had allowed man to indulge in his most terrible ideas, was merely what happens when the 'right wing' of politics it allowed to take charge. For the next sixty years the world was led to believe that so long as man could be secular and leftist, then his 'good' side would be allowed to thrive. Man's relationship with European civilization became confusing. On the one hand old Europe was disdained, its class distinctions, its colonialism, its Christianity were pushed into the dust bin of history. New Europe, the Europe of secularism, self-hate and 'human rights' and 'progressive' politics was celebrated.
But the darkness is returning. New Europe, through its flaccid politics of flexibility has dug itself into the same trap that the liberal laiisez faire regimes of the 1920s dug themselves into. Europe once again finds itself in the death throes of Weimer republic style extremism, with weak out of touch governments and cesspools brooding up from below.
We see most clearly the problem of Europe when we examine its extreme hatred of Israel. It is here that the real Europe, the Europe of the extreme, of the hate, of the evil, emerges. Whether it is a European priest in New Zealand smearing his own blood on a Yitzhak Rabin memorial or Holocaust memorial day in Scotland becoming 'Palestinian holocaust' memorial day we see the extremism of 'progressive' Europe. The love for terrorism is part and parcel of the European mindset, the 'human rights' mindset. How else can one explain that European courts issue arrest warrants for Israeli soldiers that Europeans accuse of 'war crimes' but Muslim leaders of Hamas are welcome in Europe.
The truth about Europe is clear. Sixty years of secularism, and 'human rights' and drawing the wrong conclusions about the Second World War have led to a break between European civilization and civilization itself. European civilization initially diverged from that of humanity during the Holocaust. But Europeans drew a false lesson from the Holocaust. They believed it to be a product of the 'right' rather than a product of modernity. The Holocaust was a very European event, fueled by an obsession with all things modern, the belief that man can be subordinated to machines. It is no coincidence that the first anti-smoking campaigns were developed by the Nazis. There is nothing more extreme than the strange and alarmist lies put out by anti-smoking advocates. Smoking may be a slightly vile and inconvenient habit for many, but that extremism associated with anti-smoking literature, that ridiculous exaggerations and the attempt to 'cleanse' society of the smoker, to the extent in several films such as Waterworld where the 'bad guys' have been called simply 'smokers', is part and parcel of the demonization of the 'alien' element in European society, the Jew.
When we move forward to modern times we see that Europe has not replaced its extremism. By simply ascribing Nazism to a right wing deviation Europeans misunderstood the lessons of the Holocaust. By embracing left wing and secular fanaticism Europeans merely replaced one Nazism with another. That is why it is so easy for modern 'human rights activist' Europeans to find themselves in the arms of Islamism. It is why European women, schooled in the secular ethos of 'love the other' can so easily go from engaging in the 'exotic independent' job of 'sex work' to putting on a Burka and reading the Koran daily. Belly Dancing and marching in lock step to Nazi marches is not so different. Each represents the destruction of independence of people.
To defeat Europeanism one must divorce themselves from the concept of Europe and the concept that Europe provides answers for anything. European courts, European UN workers, European NGOs, European human rights, all these notions are a mistake. EU monitors, wherever they may be found, are suspect. The very notion that this Europe can provide answers to anything is mistaken.
The lessons of the Holocaust understood by the Western mind is that the opposite, and thus correct response, to Nazism is anti-Nazism. But this is a mistake. Anti-Nazism is not the opposite of Nazism just as the opposite of evil is not anti-evil. The opposite of evil is good. To live one's life in opposition to evil is to place evil in the place of God for evil dominates one's life. Europeans and their causes, the idea of the 'cause' and the idea of 'social justice' all these ideas are directed against something, usually some perceived as 'injustice' or 'racism' or 'genocide' or 'ethnic-cleansing'. Whatever lie is placed in the place of evil it speaks of a civilization that is essentially raising up evil to the place of god rather than striving for something positive. Europe does not move forward and it is why it is slowly being consumed by people who do think in a forward manner; Muslims. For Islam is, with all its flaws, hypocrisy, slavery, rape and servitude, a religion that primarily looks forward to a day when it will conquer the world. Islam's forward thinking can be seen in its high birth rates, in its desire for its men to marry non-Muslim women and its forbidding of its women to mingle with non-Muslim men. Suicide bombing, when coupled with high birth rates, is a perfect policy for victory over others, for while one man can blow up many, he has made sure already to reproduce himself through women. The western mindset of avoiding civilian casualties, the opposite of the Muslim way of waging war that targets only civilians, is decidedly defeatist. Civilians are the reservoir from whence soldiers come and Islam's savage but brilliant understanding that killing civilians means there will be less soldiers in the future is brutally logical. The Mumbai attackers who killed more than 200 civilians contacted their handlers to ask about killing women and children and they were told 'kill them'. A society without women and children does not produce men who can serve in the armed forces. So while the West targets only soldiers, thus leaving the civilians to procreate, Islam targets the soft underbelly, leaving only graying old soldiers with nothing to go to home to.
Divorcing ourselves from a European 'human rights' and 'social justice' mindset is the only way we can free ourselves from the position that society finds itself in. We must be free to think of new ways to move forward with society, rather than being trapped in an essentially reactionary 'anti-nazi' post-Holocaust world.
The next generation of colonialists
Seth J. Frantzman
January 25th, 2009
Duke University has many study abroad programs. Incorporated into most of them is the chance to spend extra time participating in the 'Duke Engage' program. Its motto is 'challenge yourself: change the world.' It is a good case study in the way in which western students increasingly believe it is their duty to 'change' the entire world, an arrogant concept that smacks of racism, colonialism and the idiocy of 'the white man's burden.'
To understand the idiocy it is worthwhile examining what Duke Engage students are engaged in. In Egypt's Cairo they are part of St. Andrews Refugee ministry, a "localized western model NGO." Participants "develop programs for making local NGOs more efficient….exciting opportunities to be in charge of a new program." Students in the program will, however, have to learn some Arabic to work with the locals. In Kenya " Students in the FSD program in Kenya will be individually placed with a partner organization in one of seven development subject areas, including microfinance/microenterprise, women’s empowerment, environment, health, human rights, education and youth development, or community development. " In South Africa " Students will spend six weeks in Cape Town, working with social agencies that are seeking to improve life in townships, document the history of District Six (a neighborhood bulldozed by the apartheid regime because it was a model of multi-racial democracy), and promote health and economic reform in the nation." In Northern Tanzania " Students will learn about healthcare technology shortcomings in the developing world and spend time directly intervening to address these challenges. "
In Uganda " DukeEngage students will primarily provide training on, education, and dissemination of vital medical services. " In China the students will undermine the government by dealing with migrants to cities who "often underpaid, with no health or employment benefits, and subjected to a range of discriminatory practices… Interfacing with JP Morgan’s Corporate Social Responsibility office in Beijing, Duke Engage Beijing students will work at one of the most successful of these places [for migrant worker children], the Dandelion Middle School (Pugongying Zhongxue). Our students will engage in a wide range of tasks, from teaching English and other subjects, to working with school staff in health, nutrition, life skills, counseling and study-to-work programs." In Vietnam however the students will be involved in some nationalism through going to "Ben Tre Province to participate in the Vietnamese Youth League’s Green Summer Campaign."
In Ireland "students will spend two months in Dublin working with communities of refugees and migrants. DukeEngage students will be placed with one of five different NGOs serving the migrant and refugee community [or] Duke students will work with five Belfast-based NGOs that focus on human rights." In Haiti they will be "documenting the needs and strengths of community partners in Haiti and developing cross-disciplinary partnerships, from environmental health, engineering design, and health management to clinical care; and 3. determining priorities community members, leaders and health professionals have related to the planned construction of a health and research center." In Israel "students who participate in the follow-up DukeEngage portion of the program will work in one of several organizations that promote social justice in disadvantaged communities. The organizations, which are all based in Jerusalem, focus on providing social assistance to new Ethiopian immigrants, community education, creating local leadership for social change, women’s rights, and environmental justice."
It all sounds well and good. But let us consider the mentality behind it. First among the mentality is the belief that "we can do it better than them." The programs don't send college students abroad to learn from locals. It doesn't say the students will observe and first learn about what the local people are doing. Instead the mentality is that a bunch of college students from the west, ages 18-22, are perfectly capable, even if their majors are in things not related to the programs, to show up and immediately begin telling the locals what to do. Is there anything more arrogant than thinking that simply by the virtue of these students being from Duke that they can suddenly take charge of a health care clinic in Haiti or perhaps running a food co-op NGO in Kenya? The insinuation is that the natives are just there to be told what to do. Isn't that, in truth, what this program is saying: "dear Westerner, come and run your own plantation with natives ready to work for you, eager to learn from you and take direction…be your own boss of some hundred savage people and whip them into shape so that they can be more efficient because you, by virtue of coming from the West, surely know more than all these savages."
What does it mean to 'change the world'? It means the world needs you and only you, the westerner, can change it. It means the world needs changing and isn't good enough, isn't up to 'our standards'. It means that we must change it, not that it could, god forbid, change us. It means that we have a 'duty' to change it. This is an arrogant idea, the idea that it needs changing. But what if it is doing ok by itself. Haiti appears to need changing until one recalls just exactly who it was that has been running it for the last hundred years. Recall that Haiti was the second country in the Western Hemisphere to gain independence (after the U.S) in 1802 and recall that it did just fine in the 19th century until people began colonizing it again. Recall that since 1992 it has been run by NGOs and the U.N. So when we say we must 'change' it, we should be changing our own policy towards it. We should have long ago left it to its own ends. Poor and savage it may be, but our 'change' doesn't appear to be helping. Haitians are poorer today per capita than they were in 1802. So how is the 'change' helping?
Why aren’t the arrogant colonists-in-the-making sent to their own countries or places where they speak the local language at least to affect some change? Why aren’t we dispatching them to the inner cities to lord it over some of our own people? Why don't we dispatch them to St. Joseph's hospital in Tucson to run the hospital for a few days? If we believe any Duke student is capable of running, without training, some clinic in Africa why not let them run a clinic, with no training, in Harlem? I mean, by Duke's logic, those people in Harlem must be equally savage as the one's in Kenya so why not let our best and brightest 18-22 year olds experiment on our own black poor people? We don't need to send them all the way to Africa, we have plenty of African immigrants here in the U.S for rich folk to experiment on with leftist notions of 'I must change them and only I can do it because they are to stupid'. But we wouldn't send some inexperienced, wet behind the ears, student go run a hospital in Harlem or Tucson, so why would we send them to Africa to do it? Do the Africans deserve so little, are they are so useless that we truly believe some 20 year old is capable of telling them what do to by virtue simply of the fact that they live in a poor African country? What do these students really know about making local NGOs "more efficient." The insinuation is that the native people running the NGOs locally are obviously corrupt and inefficient and only by bringing them the natural efficiency that any 18 year old American social science student innately has can they improve.
There is another side to the Duke Engage program, that while less arrogant, is equally obnoxious. This is the belief that it is the duty of Duke to work to subvert various governments throughout the world by sending study abroad students into the country to create unrest among minorities and encourage militant activism among groups that Duke has identified as 'disadvantaged.' On the surface it seems natural for American students to want to help minorities in Ireland, China or Israel. But lets imagine a situation where some idealistic Americans show up and encourage local Chinese labourers to assert their 'rights' more and this leads to riots and then bloodshed. Imagine the situation in Israel where the Americans show up to work among the local Ethiopians and because Americans imagine that every black person everywhere must suffer terrible discrimination, they fill the Ethiopians' heads with images of the Old South, and soon these poor Ethiopians are imagining all sorts of racism where none previously existed. It is not far fetched. Westerners have a strange habit of always being more nationalistic and extreme than locals. I have witnessed western white women encouraging Arabs to be more nationalistic, telling them about their 'true claim to the temple mount', regaling Muslims with stories about Mohammed that even the Muslims didn't know and inquiring of Arab women 'why do you speak Hebrew, the language of your enemy?' I've seen white women from the west asking "where is the racism, those Ethiopians, they are the blacks here so they must be discriminated against, I am sure there is more racism than we see on the surface." Westerners need to find racism in other countries because the idea of racism as a natural part of society is ingrained in the West and the idea that "racism is everywhere" is typical of an American liberal education. Thus in India white westerners typically ask "aren’t the white Indians racist against the black ones." Indians might inquire "what blacks and whites?" But westerners refuse to think that the notion of race is not easily accepted elsewhere. So westerners will mistake the Indian Hindu notion of caste for race and class, because race and class are easily understood in the West. It might surprise them to learn that caste in India transcends both dark and lighter skinned Hindus and poorer and richer ones.
We cannot imagine Chinese students flooding America on foreign exchange visas and being put in charge of our rural health care centers or going among Mexican immigrants and encouraging them to fight for 'social justice'. We can't imagine African students arriving in the U.S to campaign for environmental justice. We can't imagine Russian students meeting with poor whites in the south and educating them about their 'disadvantaged position.' We can't imagine it because it would seem odd to have foreigners running around our country telling our people how to live, whipping them into a frenzy about justice, telling them how to run a health clinic and then leaving after their six weeks of poverty and social activist tourism was at an end, returning to Africa or China or Russia to talk about how they 'changed the world' and leaving a big mess behind them.
The arrogance of social-justice-tourism and the evils of NGOs and those who think they have a right to run them is never ending. The Duke case is just the tip of the iceberg of a persistent liberal racism against the world, a leftist-human-rights racism that permeates our culture and makes us believe that we must 'change the world', not by first changing ourselves, but by undermining foreign governments, and imposing ourselves upon others and lording it over others. Anyone that believes that some 20 year old college student with no background and no experience who has never worked a day in his life can show up in Kenya and be placed in charge of 40 year old Africans is as bent morally as those people in the Old South who owned slaves.
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