Den største trussel mod Danmark, ja mod hele Vesteuropa, er indvandringen af fortrinsvis muslimer. Løsningen er simpel; luk grænserne og eventuel iværksætning af repatrieringsprogrammer. Det lyder måske mere højreradikalt end det, men vores forrige statsminister, socialdemokraten Helle Thorning Schmidt har foreslået det samme. Men Vesten befinder sig mentalt mellem Middelfart og Hønborg, skiftevist ægget af idealer og angst for deres konsekvenser tøver Europa med nødvendighedens erkendelse. Man trækker hellere psedoproblemer som menneskeskabte klimaforandringer eller tomme drømme om en fælles valuta ned foran øjnene og ser ikke at løsne sig for snærende konventioner med de besnærende drømme om at gøre bureaukratstanden og dens snakkende eliter historien moralsk overlegenhed. Den fremragende Mikael Jalving beskriver EU, som en Trojansk Hest i Europa

Når sandheden skal frem, og det fortjener den på en fredag, rummer den trojanske hest i Bruxelles ikke grækere, men EU’s grever og baroner. Det er deres EU, der truer Europa, så ilde er vi stedt, og millioner af europæere vil mærke det på egen krop, pengepung og ufrihed i årene, der kommer.

Europa er i hastig forandring, demografisk, politisk, økonomisk. Alligevel tromler EU derudad, som om der var fred og ingen farer. En plan B findes tilsyneladende ikke, kun mere af det samme, stadig mere desperat.

I det administrative centrum af EU har man intet alternativ til fortsat ”integration”. Hvorfor? Fordi Den Europæiske Union ånder, føler og tænker i ”integration”, dvs. gradvis opløsning af nationalstaternes suverænitet og legitimitet, herunder flere overnationale skatter og overførsler, mere føderal kontrol og tankepoliti.

At det er den økonomiske union, der kræver reformer af grækernes skatte- og velfærdssystem, camouflerer den politiske unions indre drift mod et stadig tættere ”samarbejde”, dvs. stadig mere afhængighed, ufrihed og kommandoøkonomi. Men samtidig er det de pekuniære problemer, der måske kan få os til at forstå de underliggende politiske og kulturelle.

(…)

EU lever af andres penge og gennem en overnational afhængighedskultur. Som en anden union, der afgik ved døden i 1991, skaber Unionen intet selv. Dens natur er parasitær. Dens ånd socialistisk. Målet er omfordeling og ”solidaritet” på et langt højere plan end det nationale, og midlet er udligning, kvoter, rettigheder, pligter og byrder hinsides de statslige. Det var paradoksalt nok den tyske ekskommunist Gregor Gysi, der profetisk forstod, hvor det bar henad, da han advarede tyskerne mod møntunionen tilbage i 1998.

Men ingen lyttede. Euro var den nye dollar, det nye guld, den knitrende fremtid. Desuden pressede franskmændene på for at få D-marken afskaffet. Hvad de politiske føderalister drømte om, var, at møntunionen kunne blive en erstatning for den manglende sammenhængskraft i den politiske union. Det er den drøm, der har forvandlet sig til et mareridt.

Så mens vi er nogle der frygter for hvor mange lig, der skal på gaden førend samfundet får taget et opgør med sin frygt for at italesætte og følgeligt reagere på islam og den afrikanske folkevandring, så kan man måske fæstne et ikke ringe håb til at erkendelsen vil komme tidligere når den politiske elites drømme brister i mødet med realiteterne. Den politiske klasse mister sin definerende magt og politiske kapital, dens forståelse af verden fasificeres med Euroens fald. Bankdirektør for Saxo Bank Lars Seier Christensen tror at der er en udløbstid på Euroen fortæller han til TV2

Det er alt for giftigt for euroen som en fælles valuta. Ryger grækerne ud, kan det ryste hele eurozonen og få de andre dominobrikker i Europa til at vælte, siger han til TV 2:

- Bruxelles, Berlin og Paris tør ikke gøre alvor af truslerne om at smide Grækenland ud af Euroen. Det er for farligt og vil skabe uacceptable risici for en dominoeffekt og en umiddelbar gældskrise over store dele af eurozonen. Jeg kan tage fejl, da signalet og en manglende reaktion vil være så grotesk ydmygende for EU, men jeg tror ikke på, at Merkel og Hollande tør accellerere euroens uundgåelige superkrise, der venter ude i fremtiden, lyder det fra Lars Seier Christensen.

Derfor er det ikke kun Grækenlands fremtid, der er på spil for de europæiske ledere og Den Europæiske Centralbank, der nu skal drøfte muligheden for at gå grækerne i møde. Det er de nødt til, selvom den græske befolkning nu har afvist at acceptere de reformkrav, som der ellers er blevet præsenteret som et ultimatum.

Det, der er problemet med Grækenland, er nemlig ikke, at landet er fuldstændig unikt - landet står bare lidt længere ud på vippen, end de andre lande i Europa, der kæmper med deres enorme gæld, og de er i øjeblikket alle på vej i samme retning som Grækenland, vurderer Lars Seier Christensen.

Grækenland er med andre ord ikke det eneste land, der vakler i eurozonen; Det er hele eurosamarbejdet, der er på spil, og eurozonen har lige så meget at tabe ved at smide Grækenland ud, som grækerne har, lyder det fra Saxo Bank-direktøren.

(…)

- Nu har jeg aldrig været stor fan af euroen. Det er vist ikke en hemmelighed. Det er en helvedesmaskine, som har ødelagt rigtig meget i de forskellige europæiske økonomier, men der er også investeret utrolige mængder af politisk kapital, så der vil gå længe, før euroen definitivt knækker over i flere andre valutaområder, siger Lars Seier Christensen til TV 2.

- Men at det sker en eller anden dag, er jeg ikke i tvivl om. Systemet og hele konstruktionen er ikke holdbar, og det er Grækenland i og for sig et udmærket eksempel på - og ikke det eneste, slutter han.

Som danske vælgere har fået at vide af Ja-fløjen ved hver en folkeafstemning, så skal EU hele tiden bevæge sig fremad, som en cykel, der ikke skal vælte. Men nu er den nået til stilstand, skriver Gerald Warner i Breitbart og kalder EU et såret dyr.

This follows a long-established pattern: once the momentum of a relentlessly expansionary empire such as Brussels is halted, it does not remain stationary – it goes into reverse. When Greece departs from the euro currency, what will happen? Will some other basket-case state be shoe-horned in to replace it? Hardly – not because the madmen in Brussels are not demented enough to try it, but because the German electorate would not stand for it.

So, the Greeks’ referendum decision (kudos, once again, to the highly professional opinion pollsters who were only 22 per cent out in their forecasts this time) means that the contraction of the EU has begun. That is its real, historic significance. That is why screams of anguish are being emitted by the fanatical expansionists in Brussels who, without a twinge of remorse, provoked a bloody war in the Ukraine, in a cack-handed attempt to increase the number of their vassal states.

(…)

That is an attitude increasingly engulfing European youth and it will eventually affect British youngsters too. The best way forward for Eurosceptics is to strain every nerve to convert younger voters to this view before polling day in the referendum. Remember the old canard that all UKIP supporters were elderly men in blazers? Apparently last May there were almost four million of them.

In mainland Europe the Eurosceptic profile is increasingly youthful. By itself, the cult of “yoof” is inane, but harnessing youthful idealism and enthusiasm to the cause of recovering our national sovereignty makes solid sense. Farage is right, too, to espouse a positive Eurosceptic agenda: let’s free ourselves to trade with the rest of the world, let’s escape from a cage controlled by elderly men in grey suits, let’s unshackle our economy from the self-interested red tape of Brussels regulation.

Of course, the Eurosceptic youth vote in countries such as Greece and Spain is unfortunately attached to looney-left parties such as Syriza and Podemos, but that is no reason for supposing it cannot mature with the voters themselves, who may be persuaded to ditch Marxist along with Europhile delusions and finally embrace a sensible course.

Youth is by instinct anti-authoritarian and authoritarianism does not come more repellent than the Brussels bureaucracy. Young people see, behind the photocalls, the large cars, the saluting sentries, the pompous jargon and the solemn press conferences, the underlying reality: this is a bunch of buffoons who have created an unworkable project that is collapsing around them and they haven’t a clue what to do. They tried to suppress economic reality by ideological imperative and now the house of cards is crashing down.

Merkel, the overrated hausfrau, Hollande, the socialist spendthrift, self-pitying Juncker, loud-mouth Schulz and all the other clowns are the incompetents who have broken Europe, while flooding it with countless millions of hostile aliens destroying its culture. It is time for Britain to get out from under this doomed structure before we are crushed by the wreckage.

For EUs stiftere var EU et fredens projekt. De var stålsatte på at sikre deres befolkninger mod en gentagelse/fortsættelse. Men de tog fejl, 1. og 2. Verdenskrig handlede ikke om for meget nationalisme, men om imperie-drømme, om at underlægge sig andre nationer. Kohls og Mitterands generation var de sidste statsmænd der havde oplevet krigens følger og var de sidste statsmænd, der ville sætte både deres nationers selvstændighed over styr som deres egne politiske karrierer for, hvad de mente var den nødvendige politik. Nutidens politikere vil sætte alt over styr, så længe det gavner deres karriere. Hidtil har det betydet at sætte nationen over styr til fordel for det lukrative EU, men stemning vil vende og når den gør vil der ikke være nogen nogen, der vil kæmpe EUs sag til døden for ingen tror på EU mere end det kan gavne dem personligt. Det er en grov og uretfærdig sammenligning, men EU falder fra hindanden som Albanien, en dag stopper folk blot med at tage det alvorligt.

Hvor om alting er, Fjordman mener ikke at EU kan reformeres

I have had my doubts about this for years. The EU system is so fundamentally flawed and corrupt that it is doubtful whether it can be reformed in any meaningful way. Corruption and a chronic lack of accountability are not flaws in the system; they are there by design. The EU oligarchs have proven themselves very adept at exploiting crises to further more federal integration. This even goes for problems they have themselves created.

The entire EU system since the days of Jean Monnet has been built on creating a European superstate through deceiving the European public by presenting it as merely an elaborate free trade zone. Lies and deceit have become part of the structural DNA of the European Union.

The EU has essentially bribed the political class throughout much of the European continent, and bought their personal loyalty and support. If they become a part of the EU system, they receive well paid jobs. Moreover, they don’t have to answer to the average citizen for what they do, or how they use or abuse their power. It is easy to see why some people find this combination alluring.

The EU elites have a strong vested interest in keeping up a system that provides them with money, power and prestige. For this reason, any attempts at “reform” are likely to be purely cosmetic and designed to appease the masses. The EU has become a bureaucratic colossus. Just like all bureaucratic systems, it has a natural tendency to try to expand its reach.

I don’t see any solution to this other than to formally and publicly abolish all of the institutions of the European Union. For something like this to happen, the EU would have to face massive and sustained popular pressure throughout the continent. This is unlikely to happen without a major and prolonged economic crisis that destroys the credibility and legitimacy of the EU in the eyes of the general public. We may be heading for just such an event in the years to come.

It is not fair to blame the EU for all of Europe’s ills. For instance, low birth rates are currently found throughout the continent, also in European nations that are not members of the EU. However, the EU makes some existing problems even worse. It also adds new ones of its own making.

If we look at the big picture and the geopolitical situation, Europe as a whole faces major challenges in the coming decades. Two of the biggest ones are the escalating Jihad of radical Islam, and large-scale illegal immigration due to the population explosion in parts of the global South. The EU does not adequately address any of these threats. On the contrary, it makes them worse. The EU continues promoting Muslim mass immigration to Europe. The organization also seeks to force all of its member states to accept illegal immigrants from Africa and the Islamic world. By embracing Islamization and the gradual displacement of native Europeans, the EU has arguably become the anti-European Union.

Future historians will debate whether the EU was a good idea gone bad, or whether it was a bad idea from the very beginning. However, in my opinion, there can be no doubt that the EU as it exists today is a failure. The organization does not solve Europe’s most important challenges, and it adds new problems of its own making.

I cannot predict exactly how or when the EU will finally fall apart, but I strongly suspect that a major economic meltdown will play a major part in its collapse.

Og jeg må give ham helt ret. EU bygger på en drøm om at kunne forebygge konflikter med handel og harmonisering. EU er en forfængelig drøm om at stoppe historien.

Matti Friedman arbejdede for det store nyhedsbureau Associated Press i Jerusalem mellem 2006 og 2011 og skønt han erklærer sig selv som venstredrejet (liberal i amerikansk terminologi) kan han ikke længere stå inde for, hvad han betegner som “a hostile obsession with Israel” i den almindelige nyhedsdækning. I en længere og højst anbefalelsesværdig artikel fra august i år i Tablet Magazine fortæller han om den overeksponering af Israel med sin tidligere arbejdsgiver som illustrativt eksempel. At de havde mere end 40 medarbejdere til at dække Israel-Palæstina, hvilket var mere end resten af Mellemøsten til sammen og kun ved særlige lejligheder vægtes andet end Israel højest.

To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel. I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd. Staffing levels in Israel have decreased somewhat since the Arab uprisings began, but remain high. And when Israel flares up, as it did this summer, reporters are often moved from deadlier conflicts. Israel still trumps nearly everything else.

The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.

News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close.

Det der er vigtigt i en Israel-Palæstina historie, argumenterer Friedman, er Israel. Palæstinenserne anerkendes ikke som selvstændige aktører  og eksisterer kun som passive ofre. Korruption er altid interessant, men kun israelsk. Friedman fortæller at han ikke kunne komme igennem med en artikel om palæstinensisk korruption fordi “that was not the story”. Således angribes enhver skævhed i det israelske samfund nidkært; Israelsks lovforslag til pressefrihed, antallet af ortodokse jøder, bosættelser, kønssegregering osv, mens der er meget få artikler om lignende palæstinensiske forhold.

Hamas formålserklæring, som handler om et udslette Israel og alle jøderne og deres graven terrortunneller ind under Israel er ikke vigtigt for medier og nyhedsbureauer, men det er derimod Israels angreb på Hamas. De fleste rapportere, siger Friedman, opfatter essensen af deres arbejde at rapportere om israelske overgreb: “That’s the essens of the Israel story”!

Og denne fortælling sættes ind i den ramme der hedder Israel-Palæstina konflikten eller variationer heraf. Her er det Israel, der er den store og dermed aggressoren hvor sandheden er at jøderne kun optager 0,2% af Mellemøsten og der er 5 millioner jøder overfor 300 mio. arabere. Det var den samlede arabiske verden, der ville udslette Israel fra begyndelsen og den palæstinensiske sag blev først interessant efter 1967 krigen, hvor Israel indtog de resterende områder fra delingsplanen fra Ægypten og Jordan, der ellers havde annekteret dem uden protester fra den arabiske verden.

For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.

(…)

When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.

(…)

You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.

Men det er på alle måder den forkerte historie der fortælles, skriver Friedman. Reportere ser alt gennem en israelsk optik og ser derfor ikke islams undertrykkelse og forfølgelse af minoriteter, hvor der med ISIS nu er tale om folkemord

A knowledgeable observer of the Middle East cannot avoid the impression that the region is a volcano and that the lava is radical Islam, an ideology whose various incarnations are now shaping this part of the world. Israel is a tiny village on the slopes of the volcano. Hamas is the local representative of radical Islam and is openly dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish minority enclave in Israel, just as Hezbollah is the dominant representative of radical Islam in Lebanon, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so forth.

Hamas is not, as it freely admits, party to the effort to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It has different goals about which it is quite open and that are similar to those of the groups listed above. Since the mid 1990s, more than any other player, Hamas has destroyed the Israeli left, swayed moderate Israelis against territorial withdrawals, and buried the chances of a two-state compromise. That’s one accurate way to frame the story.

Men i mediernes og nyhedsbureauernes fortælling er Israel vulkanen, en vulkan der ikke eksisterer i den sammen geopolitiske virkelighed som resten af Melleøsten. Historen om Israel er ikke om nyheder men om “something else”.

Hanson skrev forleden i National Review at den amerikanske vensfløj (liberalism) lå i ideologiske ruiner. “Barack Obama has accomplished, in the fashion of British prime minister Stanley Baldwin in the Twenties and Thirties, will be to avoid minor confrontations on his watch — if he is lucky — while ensuring catastrophic ones for his successors.” konkluderede han og pegede på de 11 mio. illegale indvandrere, som, hvis det står til Obama, skal have amerikansk pas. Hanson minder ikke blot om at prisen først og fremmest betales af den amerikanske middelklasse og de nye jobsøgende, men at de iblandt de illegale, hvis tilstedeværelse i USA i første omgang er gjort mulig at de har brudt amerikansk lov findes en stor minoritet, der ikke deltager aktivt eller lovlydigt i det amerikanske samfund.

Henover den sekulære dyrkelse af klimaet “that filled a deep psychological longing for some sort of transcendent meaning” til Obamas opdyrkelse af racestridigheder fra Trayvon Martin til Michael Brown, godt assisteret af mediernes memer

After the disastrous Obama tenure, the U.S. will either return to the melting pot and the idea that race and tribe are incidental, not essential, to our characters, or it will eventually go the way of all dysfunctional societies for which that was not true — Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq.

Og Hanson ender med følgende skudsmål

Obama will go down in history as presiding over the most corrupt administration of the last half-century, when historians finally collate the IRS, VA, GSA, and Secret Service scandals; the erosion of constitutional jurisprudence; the serial untruths about Benghazi, amnesty, and Obamacare; the harassment of journalists; the record shakedown of Wall Street lucre in 2008 and 2012; and the flood of lobbyists into and out of the Obama administration. Eric Holder – with his jet-setting to sporting events on the public dime, spouting inflammatory racialist rhetoric, politicizing the Justice Department, selectively enforcing settled law, and being held in contempt of Congress for withholding subpoenaed documents — managed what one might have thought impossible: He has made Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell seem a minor rogue in comparison.

Men det er udenrigspolitikken der har lidt værst, midt i en periode med stigende udfordringer. Hanson skriv i går ligeledes i National Review at der er paralleller

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences.

The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

Og

Under such conditions, history’s wars usually start when some opportunistic — but often relatively weaker — power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor’s sure defeat.

What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.

A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventive vigilance that might have stopped it.

“Vi vælger at rejse til Månen” proklamerede Kennedy på Rice University i 1962, “Ikke fordi det er let, men fordi det er svært!”.

[B]ecause that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win

For Kennedy æraen handlede det om at presse sig selv mod nye mål. “Yes we can” derimod sigter til det vi allerede kan. Det fornægter på sin vis ‘american exeptionalism’ i stedet for den teoretiske akademikers drøm om at kunne omdefinere verden væk fra dens iboende problemer. “Yes we can” siger ikke meget andet end at man vil gøre, hvad der er let, frem for, hvad der er rigtigt.

Bent Jensen har i Jyllands-Posten ikke tiltro til Martin Lidegaards basale viden om Mellemøsten og vil gerne vide, hvad Lidegaard egentlig mener Israel skal gøre

Hver gang jeg ser og hører ham tale så tilsyneladende forstandigt og overbevisende, spørger jeg mig selv: Ved manden i virkeligheden, hvad han taler om? Er han ordentligt inde i sagerne? Har han læst på lektien, og har hans embedsmænd forsynet ham med alle de nødvendige oplysninger om konfliktens rødder – og jeg understreger alle? Eller lader han blot munden løbe?

Det meste af Mellemøsten befinder sig i et omfattende kaos. Israels nabostat Syrien er hærget af en blodig borgerkrig, der foreløbig har kostet 200.000 mennesker livet og drevet millioner på flugt. Oprørsstyrkerne i Syrien har svoret at ville udslette Israel. Det samme har Assad-regimet i Damaskus. For nylig flygtede de udstationerede FN-styrker fra syrisk territorium. Hvorhen? Til Israel, hvor de fandt sikkerhed.

(…)

Jeg synes i fuld alvor, at Lidegaard skulle forholde sig seriøst til de reelle problemer, der her er omtalt. Og der er flere endnu. Hvorfor behandler han palæstinenserne som uansvarlige børn? Hvorfor stiller han ikke krav til dem, hvis de vil have egen stat? Hvorfor siger Lidegaard & Co ikke til både Hamas-lederne og til Abbas og hans mafia i Ramallah, at de skal standse myrderierne på jøder og indstille deres anti-jødiske hadkampagner i skolebøger og i palæstinensiske medier – inklusive de officielle trykte og elektroniske Hamas- og PS-medier.

Som ansvarlig minister ved Lidegaard naturligvis, at disse afskyelige hadkampagner kører hele tiden. Men hvordan forestiller han sig så, at der skal kunne blive fred og fordragelighed mellem jøder og arabere på det diminutive område, som Israel og selvstyreområdet udgør, når den ene part hele tiden dyrker hadet til den anden part, nægter dens ret til eksistens og vil have en jødefri zone?

Samtidig skrev en foruroliget Flemming Rose ligeledes i Jyllands-Posten om Lidegaards manglende viden om Rusland

I weekenden bragte Berlingske et interview med udenrigsminister Martin Lidegaard. Ministeren afslørede her en sjælden uvidenhed om russisk økonomis tilstand, effekten af sanktioner, og hvad der venter i den nærmeste fremtid. Interviewet var aftalt på forhånd, så der er ikke tale om, at Lidegaard uden varsel fik stukket en mikrofon i hovedet.

Det gør hans udtalelser foruroligende, for hvis kendskabet til Rusland, Danmarks største sikkerhedspolitiske udfordring, ikke er større, så er risikoen stor for at begå fatale fejl. En anden mulighed er selvfølgelig, at Lidegaard bevidst misinformerer, men det gør det ikke bedre. Om russisk økonomi siger han:

»Noget af det mest bekymrende er, at den russiske økonomi er i frit fald. Vi står over for en reel risiko for russisk økonomisk kollaps. Det skyldes vores sanktioner kombineret med en stærkt faldende oliepris. Underskuddet i staten stiger, inflationen stiger voldsomt. Den almindelige russers købekraft bliver udhulet dag for dag.«

I fredags, altså nogenlunde samtidig med at Lidegaard fremsatte sin dystre vurdering, noterede The Wall Street Journal, at Rusland med en vækst på 0,8 pct. i årets første ti måneder har klaret sig bedre end ventet, på niveau med eurozonen. Det får ikke én til at tænke på en økonomi i frit fald.

I virkeligheden passer Lidegaards udtalelser på et andet land i regionen, nemlig Ukraine, der befinder sig på randen af en finansiel nedsmeltning.

Lidegaard må lægge sig lidt mere i selen, hvis virkeligheden skal moraliseres væk. Begge indlæg bør læses i deres helhed, hvis man vil vide mere end Lidegaard.

Man er jo ikke glade for at se Sarah Palins og Mitt Romneys advarsler om russernes emperiale tendenser være timelige. Men det ser ud til at man ikke kan lære en kæmpe bjørn nye triks. Business Insider citerer noget så eksotisk som et russisk synspunkt

In recent days, the situation in Ukraine has deteriorated rapidly. The agreements reached between President Yanukovych and the opposition on 21 February have been scrapped by opposition leaders:the legitimate Head of State that was supposed to remain in office has been effectively ousted from the country, an interim president has been appointed, presidential elections have been set for 25 May, no steps have been made in the area of constitutional reform or joint investigation.

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But more importantly, rather than taking account of the numerous appeals to national unity and reconciliation, political power in Kiev has been concentrated in the hands of far-right extremist elements that do not hide their xenophobic, anti-Semitic, neofascist credentials. Not surprisingly, one of the first decisions of the new rulers was to abolish the law on regional languages, a move that has caused concern not only among Russian-speakers, but also in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. This has coincided with a widespread campaign of intimidation of ethnic Russian population and desecration of monuments celebrating Russia’s and Ukraine’s common historical achievements such as the defeat of Nazism in the Second World War. Russian Orthodox priests have become object of threats. Attempts were made to seize the Orthodox shrines, such as the Kiev Pechersk Laura and the Pochayev Laura.

The situation of the Russian community in the Crimea has become particularly precarious. As soon as rallies erupted to express protest against with the way the Kiev events had unfolded, the Crimeans were accused of separatism and were threatened with force. There has been a lot of speculation regarding movements of troops of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, taken as a precautionary measure in full compliance with the relevant bilateral agreements with Ukraine. During the night of 1 March, unknown armed men sent from Kiev tried to seize the building of the Crimea Interior Ministry. Only decisive actions by self-defence groups allowed to stop that provocation that has left many people injured.

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Within this context, it is not surprising that as many as 143 thousand people from Ukraine have applied for asylum in Russia over the past two weeks.

Et måske endnu bedre kig ind i en kulturkamp mellem Vest og Øst kan man læse i EU Times af den franske forfatter Nicolas Bonnal, der som en Rasputin blander en tilsyneladende indsigt med vrøvl

The Pussy Riot case proves that Satanism became an official and popular culture of the West. The West is ready to do anything to protect this culture. We can see this in “Harry Potter,” MTV programs (zombies, vampires, the possessed, cannibals), Madonna’s anti-French provocations in Tel Aviv with underlying reasons of occultism. Such reasons can be found at almost all rock and pop concerts). Messages of Satanism are meticulously calculated. They incarnate the hidden guise of democracy, which is always ready to generously drop bombs on Syria, Iran or threaten the Russia of Vladimir Putin. The target is anything that does not fit into the system, but the main target is Christianity. Provocateurs like Madonna are Zionists; provocateurs like Pussy Riot are those who respect and fear Islamists and kick the cat in the church – the church that was accused of being the open expression of the heritage, which the West simply can not stand.

Churches do not let our demons celebrate, and our democracies are furious because of that. The liquid society, as Bauman described it, wants to eliminate every trace of purity and spiritual roots. It wants to destroy even memory itself. Because the perfect consumer – is the one who forgets what he or she just bought.

Let’s go back in time. The Soviet Union was disrespected in the West for political reasons, but there were also reasons of cultural and artistic nature. The USSR did not make Pollocks, but it did make artists working in the genre of figurative painting; he did not make the Beatles, but made Prokofiev, Shostakovich, or folk dancing; the USSR did not glorify the Lucifer-like freedom but it did glorify socialist discipline. This, as we say, is old-fashioned and was outlived. Give us something new, and every morning!

As I will show below, it was the American services that were promoting the degenerative culture, the goal of which was to exert spiritual influence over the masses, to depreciate and vulgarize humanity. Soviet socialism was on the ring, fighting the opponent that would hit only below the waist. That socialism gave us Tarkovsky, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Red Army Choir. In response, the Soviet Union would receive “Rosemary’s Baby” and rappers! The Soviet Union was not of the same level!

Modern culture – we’ll go back to the 1960s – served (in an elite form) rather grim purposes. The culture (whether it is Lady Gaga, Swedish “Millennium” books, jazz, rap, neo-punk fashion or movie “Avatar”), in which we live, has turned away from our cultural heritage. The emergence of this culture is not incidental; it is not the fruit of audience tastes or the naive genius of its creators. This culture is no longer a Christian culture; it is not rooted in the history of the land of the given nation. It is associated with the spiritual training of people, it is abstract and massive; it has vile goals and accurate globalized plans. Its history can be drawn from the so-called “modern literature” to post-classic cinematography. Contemporary music should drive people crazy, Adorno said. Solzhenitsyn pointed out in his Harvard speech that the world was conquered by intolerable music, that people forgot that they were alive. Black magic is in power everywhere in the West, and there is no need to be paranoid about it – just turn on the TV.

Daniel Estulin, a writer of Soviet origin, wonderfully wrote about the occult plan of the hidden side of contemporary subculture. It has long been known that the rock-like culture of the Beatniks was launched and encouraged to develop and separate most active political movements. The enthronement of drugs and counterculture meets the police and political project (such as MK-Ultra, Cointelpro, Artichoke), which Hollywood took as a source of inspiration. And, as we know, the author of the controversial “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Ken Kesey tried drugs for mind control programs. It was easier to control parallel worlds than create political parties. I have already shown the role that was played by the American “conquest of space” and science fiction that smelled like Scientology sect. Regarding the sexual revolution, it was prescribed as some sort of a miracle cure already in Huxley’s “Brave New World” …! It resulted in widely available mass pornography and angry roars of political correctness. While we boast of our sexual madness, the Catholic Church faces millions of accusations of pedophilia!

William Varattoni skriver beroligende om Ruslands motiver i Kyiv Post

The crisis in Crimea has been many years in the making, and made it ripe for the taking.

To paint Russian leadership as reactionary, ham-fisted hardliners is to ignore a decade of methodical deployment of soft power techniques, patient construction of fifth columns, and the massive incentives Russia has not to blow the place up.

Focus on Russia’s military is misdirection; it is absolutely important, but the real benefit to brinkmanship is to make other outcomes seem downright reasonable.

In light of recent setbacks, two potential outcomes are both reasonable (when compared to the extremes of military conflict and secession) and advantageous for Russia:

1) a Crimean peninsula that is fully autonomous within the Ukrainian state (it already has semi-autonomy) and functions in practice like a British Hong Kong for Russia, and

2) a Ukrainian state that is more federalist across all regions (which makes a fast and massive shift into Europe’s orbit decidedly less likely).

The outcome in Crimea hinges on the disposition of the citizens of Crimea. While the world focuses on Russian actions in Crimea, it is crucial to understand what resonates with Crimean citizens and what dynamics prevailed before today’s headlines.

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Naked aggression dooms Russia’s interests; no state aspires to be another Russian frozen conflict

With good reason, the deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine scares everyone.

But a military invasion with frenetic confrontation is unthinkable unless Russia has given up all hope for relations with the rest of Ukraine.

Ukrainians east and west were united when Russia tried to quietly take over the sandbar known as Tuzla Island in 2003. Ukrainians, regardless of their affinities for Russia or its culture, will not tolerate an attack on their sovereignty. If Russia is seen as an invader in Crimea, it will cease to have a meaningful partnership with the rest of Ukraine.  Crimea is a beautiful and important place, but capturing Crimea at the expense of losing the rest of Ukraine would be a tradeoff that only a truly desperate Russia would make.

Even if Russia did use its military to conquer Crimea, governance becomes a huge problem because the Russian regime would lack legitimacy with large swaths of the population. A police state would be required and Crimea would quickly turn from a highly desired vacation spot (which is the source of its economic value) into a militarized Russians-only resort. This is hardly the existence that Crimeans aspire to.

Robert Zubrin beskriver en mere dyster og ideologisk motivation i National Review

The core idea of Dugin’s Eurasianism is that “liberalism” (by which is meant the entire Western consensus) represents an assault on the traditional hierarchical organization of the world. Repeating the ideas of Nazi theorists Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, Carl Schmitt, and Arthur Moeller van der Bruck, Dugin says that this liberal threat is not new, but is the ideology of the maritime cosmopolitan power “Atlantis,” which has conspired to subvert more conservative land-based societies since ancient times. Accordingly, he has written books in which he has reconstructed the entire history of the world as acontinuous battle between these two factions, from Rome v. Carthage to Russia v. the Anglo Saxon “Atlantic Order,” today. If Russia is to win this fight against the subversive oceanic bearers of such “racist” (because foreign-imposed) ideas as human rights, however, it must unite around itself all the continental powers, including Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, Turkey, Iran, and Korea, into a grand Eurasian Union strong enough to defeat the West.

In order to be so united, this Eurasian Union will need a defining ideology, and for this purpose Dugin has developed a new “Fourth Political Theory” combining all the strongest points of Communism, Nazism, Ecologism, and Traditionalism, thereby allowing it to appeal to the adherents of all of these diverse anti-liberal creeds. He would adopt Communism’s opposition to free enterprise. However, he would drop the Marxist commitment to technological progress, a liberal-derived ideal, in favor of Ecologism’s demagogic appeal to stop the advance of industry and modernity. From Traditionalism, he derives a justification for stopping free thought. All the rest is straight out of Nazism, ranging from legal theories justifying unlimited state power and the elimination of individual rights, to the need for populations “rooted” in the soil, to weird gnostic ideas about the secret origin of the Aryan race in the North Pole.

The open devotion to Nazism is Dugin’s thought is remarkable. In his writings he celebrates the Waffen SS, murderers of millions of Russians during the war, as an ideal organization. He also approves of the most extreme crimes of Communism, going so far as to endorse the horrific 1937 purges that killed, among numerous other talented and loyal Soviet citizens, nearly the entire leadership of the Red Army — something that Stalin himself later had second thoughts about.

What Russia needs, says Dugin, is a “genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism.” On the other hand, “Liberalism, is an absolute evil. . . . Only a global crusade against the U.S., the West, globalization, and their political-ideological expression, liberalism, is capable of becoming an adequate response. . . . The American empire should be destroyed.”

This is the ideology behind the Putin regime’s “Eurasian Union” project. It is to this dark program, which threatens not only the prospects for freedom in Ukraine and Russia, but the peace of the world, that former Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych tried to sell “his” country. It is against this program that the courageous protesters in the Maidan took their stand and — with scandalously little help from the West — somehow miraculously prevailed. But now the chips are really down. The Ukrainians are being faced not with riot police, but with Russian divisions, subversion, and economic warfare. The country needs to be stabilized, and defended. The Ukrainians deserve our full support — and not just for reasons of sympathy for those resisting tyranny or respect for the brave. It is in the vital interest of America that freedom triumphs in Ukraine.

Without Ukraine, Dugin’s fascist Eurasian Union project is impossible, and sooner or later Russia itself will have to join the West and become free, leaving only a few despised and doomed islands of tyranny around the globe. But with Ukraine underfoot, the Eurasianists’ program can and will proceed, and a new Iron Curtain will fall into place imprisoning a large fraction of humanity in the grip of a monstrous totalitarian power that will become the arsenal of evil around the world for decades to come. That means another Cold War, trillions of dollars wasted on arms, accelerated growth of the national-security state at home, repeated proxy conflicts costing millions of lives abroad, and civilization itself placed at risk should a single misstep in the endless insane great-power game precipitate the locked and loaded confrontation into a thermonuclear exchange.

Rusland er en bølle, men endnu ingen direkte trussel mod Europa. Måske kan det endda vække os fra vores forløjede dyrkelse af blød magt.

Den ukrainske journalist Taras Ilkiv giver i Business Insider 10 andre grunde til optøjerne i Ukraine end dem, man ellers hører i vestlige medier. Jeg har valgt to af de lidt mere universelle

Protests in Ukraine are not pro-EU (as it is written in most of international news agencies). The disruption of the association agreement with the European Union in November was only cause for local rallies. But after a peaceful student protest was violently dispersed by the ‘Berkut’ [special police] in Kyiv on Nov. 30, a million angry people took to the central square of the capital. Since then rebellion has not gone away; instead it turned into an anti-government uprising demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister and Interior Minister, and also the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych. Most people are tired of total corruption in all spheres of life and the lack of justice and security officials’ self-will. The middle class has become an engine of the protest since it suffered harassment from the tax agencies. Now the protest has joined with the radicals, who actually began violent confrontation on Sunday, tired of waiting for action from the liberal opposition. However, they have support among the majority of protesters.

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Ukraine has almost no independent media outside of the Internet. Some people from the industrial East, which borders with Russia, do not even know the truth about what is happening in Kyiv. Central TV channels just do not show, or distort the information. Printing presses are monopolized or owned by oligarchs. Until recently, the only true island of freedom was of the Internet, but last Friday Yanukovych signed a law that allows anybody to close any websites without trial or warning because of the slightest complaint. Journalists face enormous pressure and huge campaigns to discredit them. One journalist, Tatyana Chornovol, who wrote about the wealth of Yanukovych, was recently severely beaten by five intruders.