Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/31/2013

Even as I write these words, the ball is dropping in Times Square.

For tonight is New Year’s Eve
Uncork your spirits and welcome it in
Who knows what it’s got up its sleeve
Can’t wait for it all to begin

(Al Stewart, from “Laughing into 1939”)

Happy New Year, everybody!

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Diana West, Fjordman, Green Infidel, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy: Part II, Section 4

Below is the final section (of Part II) of a four-section essay by Hans-Peter Raddatz about the EU, the Mediterranean Union, the Islamization of the West, and the deliberate engineering of the “Arab Spring” by the global elites to serve their own long-term goals. Previously: Section 1, Section 2, and Section 3. For the links to Part I, see the archive list at the bottom of this post.

This essay was originally published at Die Neue Ordnung in pdf form, and was kindly translated from the German by Rembrandt Clancy, who has also provided the reader with extensive notes.

Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy

Part II: Fall and Winter in the Cycle of Radical Culture

Section 4

Part II: Fall and Winter in the Cycle of Radical Culture

by Hans-Peter Raddatz

Translator’s Introduction

Dr. Raddatz uses references which may be unfamiliar to some. Therefore there are reference notes. These are of two types: translator’s notes and endnotes:

1) Translator’s Notes: An asterisk (*) following a word or concept in the text indicates the presence of a “Translator’s Note” immediately below. These provide immediate clarification for concepts or expressions which may be unfamiliar to some, or even most readers.
2) Endnotes: Numbers in superscript following a term or a concept in the text indicate endnotes for readers who wish more detail grounded in original sources.
 

While in the previous sections Dr. Raddatz emphasised an ever-increasing narrowing of consciousness and reflexivity in the West due to the divorce of omnipotent reason from connection with non-rational roots, a “lost reference to God”, Section 4 views Western deratiocination (Denkschwund) from the standpoint of a drift of the “new man” into “biological proximity with the animal”. The central image is “devouring” drawn from Elias Canetti’s work Masse und Macht (1960), the English translation of which is Crowds and Power (1962). By “devouring” is meant not only the physical consumption of men through wars but also the obliteration of “form” (Georg Simmel) or culture through the reduction of man to the mechanical level of biological existence, literally an anthropological exodus (Hardt and Negri). Canetti correlates man’s primaeval behaviour in the early evolutionary pack with that of the modern individual in relation to the crowd, basing the comparison on the existence of an archaic memory of the pack. It is this primitive mnemonic inheritance which Dr. Raddatz places at the root of the modern social revolutions and their unprecedented scope of murder. The regression to collectivism is the counter-concept to the advanced, Judeo-Christian old culture, which is “differentiated”, and above all constructive” (cf Section 2).

4. Crowds and Packs

Just as the epochal philosopher René Descartes (d. 1650), with his inconvenient insistence on knowledge, was established as an enemy among the representatives of the Enlightenment and their extremist successors straight through to the culturally radical ideologues of the present, so too he serves at the same time as a subtle background figure for sensitive literati who treat in their works of the totalitarian character of the modern age. One of the most important of these genres is represented by Elias Canetti (d. 1989) in his much cited work, Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power). His book takes a wide-ranging perspective, drawing on mythology, history, religion, ethnology and psychology, and examines man, who, as a mass creature, retains a potential for archaic affect. In such a creature there is little which would not be traceable to the early evolutionary impulsions [Antriebe] of the “body machine”* (Descartes), which are capable of being activated at any time: “The greater the fear of unknown historical figures,… the more there exists the basis for fearing one’s self” (Peiter, Anne. “Auseinandersetzung mit der Shoah in Elias Canetti’s ‘Masse und Macht’“ [“Engagement with the Shoah in Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power“], Zeitschrift für Germanistik 16, (2006), 558).

* [Translator’s Note: Body-machine: This reference to Descartes’ mind-body dualism parallels the logocentrism-hylocentrism (reason-matter) dualism in Section 2 of this paper. The direction of thought in the Enlightenment, from Kant to Derrida, is from left to right within the “force field” of the duality, indicating a trend toward the Enlightenment’s deratiocination (Denkschwund), which ends in the collapse of the Cartesian dualism into the “bio-machine” of the “mass creature” — hence the antagonism between Descartes (thinking) and the Enlightenment (reification) alluded to in the above paragraph. As for Descartes: “I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing” (Mediation VI).]

By bringing in the pre-modern world outlook, characteristic of myths, primitive peoples and magical ideas, Canetti fatefully calls to mind the intellectual regression, the deratiocination [Denkschwund] which is turning “modern discourse” into a reflex mechanism. Within the range of this dynamic, the “new man” can drift into biological proximity with the animal and into the particle format of physics; and can “express astonishingly, possibly even horrifyingly, much about the present character of man”. By striving for an “unfragmented conception of the subject” corresponding to the power-mass model [elite vs. reflexivity of the mass], Canetti circumvents the patchwork effect of the small field of vision and short-term thinking and forces open the all too restrictive limits of sociological coding [technologisation of communication], and of the power-serving sciences, which determine what knowledge is suitable for the mass.

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Mugged by Neoconservatives

The controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal continues into the new year.

The New Criterion is hosting a seminar on Ms. West and her book in the just-released January 2014 issue. Contributions include a lead editorial plus five letters on the topic from Ron Radosh, Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Conrad Black, M. Stanton Evans, and Andrew C. McCarthy.

That’s an awful lot of firepower to roll out, and a lot of ink to expend, just to ensure the “take-down” of American Betrayal. It’s further evidence of the intense gravitational influence exerted by Planet X on American conservatives, and especially on the hagiographers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Everyone should visit The New Criterion and read this new symposium. Below is the contribution sent in by the noted historian of Communism M. Stanton Evans. I’m reproducing it here because it largely agrees with what has been said on the topic in this space over the past five months (see the archives for a full list of posts):

American Betrayal, an exchange: M. Stanton Evans

From a series of letters regarding Andrew C. McCarthy’s review of American Betrayal (The New Criterion, December 2013)

To the Editors:

Somebody once asked me for a definition of “paleoconservative,” a term occasionally used in right-wing political circles. I said I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but I offered a definition based on what I had witnessed: “A paleoconservative is a conservative who’s been mugged by a neoconservative.”

That exchange has come to mind as I’ve watched the concerted and apparently endless attack on Diana West and her Cold War book, American Betrayal. Ms. West isn’t a self-identified “paleoconservative” in any sense that I’m aware of, and doesn’t qualify for the title anyway, because it mostly pertains to an older generation. She is, however, certainly a conservative, and has certainly been mugged, intellectually speaking, by people who are “neoconservatives,” according to their own description.

As evidence of such mugging, I note the invective used against Ms. West in a score of hostile essays: “Unhinged,” “right-wing loopy,” “incompetent,” not “house-trained,” “conspiracy theorist,” “paranoid,” leader of a “kook army,” and so on in many variations. This is a type of discourse that, until now, I haven’t seen much of in conservative intramural quarrels (though there have been a few examples) but have seen all too often elsewhere. It’s the well-known rhetorical style of the radical left, on a mission to isolate, demonize, and destroy an opponent.

Which brings me to Andrew C. McCarthy’s wrap-up of the dispute about American Betrayal appearing in these pages. With some differences as to points of fact, I found his assessment of the book to be judicious and fair, and in substance supportive of Ms. West. (And I thank him for his kind comments about my own researches.) But I was taken aback by his handling of the verbal conflict part, treated on a “moral equivalence “ basis: two sides equally guilty of excesses, both needing to cool it for the good of the republic.

That’s not by a long shot the way I’ve seen it. What I’ve seen instead is, on the one side, a group of influential men ganging up on a lone author, trying to bludgeon her into irrelevance, and, on the other side, her effort to defend herself, her book, and her reputation against their onslaught. In no way can the attackers and their target be considered equal — either in firepower or in responsibility for the combat.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/30/2013

The news feed is light tonight for some reason. Perhaps all our tipsters are en route to Times Square for tomorrow night’s festivities…?

The big story of the day is the second terror attack in Volgograd within two days. A suicide bomber blew himself us in a tram car, killing at least fourteen people and bringing the death toll for the two attacks above thirty. President Vladimir Putin has tightened security measures all across Russia in response to the attacks.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Bodissey’s Theorem of Distributed Networks

Several weeks ago, after a long hiatus, two Rosetta Stone initiatives were launched in this space. Each push for translations arose spontaneously after a Geert Wilders post. The first was for the article accompanying Mr. Wilders’ redesign of the Saudi flag, and the second for his open letter to Pope Francis. (lists of languages may be found here and here).

The speed at which the translations of the first article rolled in surprised me. Mr. Wilders had struck a chord with our translators, some of whom sent in their versions of the text before I even emailed them to ask. Within forty-eight hours we were able to publish the article in seventeen languages, eventually reaching a tally of twenty-one (English original plus twenty translations).

Several people emailed us that week to say how remarkable the operation was, and that only Gates of Vienna could manage something of the sort. That may well be true (I’ll have more to say about the matter later), but it’s important to remember one fact: Gates of Vienna did not do it. The entire network did it. I act as a “factory representative”, but I front for an entire factory that does all the hard, sweaty work.

That’s the nature of a distributed network.

Anyone who thinks I am in charge of one of these initiatives is sadly mistaken. It may seem that way because I’m the mouthy one who keeps the blog and maintains the database and the lists and does the basic co-ordination as the material rolls in. But no one is in charge. What you see here is analogous with the synchronized movement of a flock of birds: each member of the flock keeps his nearest neighbor in view at a certain angle and matches speeds, but there is no Flock Czar telling the birds where to go and how fast to get there. They already know; they don’t need to be told.

And yes, it seems that we, the extended Gates of Vienna/ICLA network, are the only ones who do this sort of thing. It’s a peculiar type of operation that requires a lot of dedicated people working very quickly, independently but in coordination with one another. Over the years we have fallen into the role of facilitating the process.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve concluded that we — the extended network of which I am just one node — are the only ones who attempt these Rosetta Stone projects because structural forces come into play making it likely that only one such network will persist.

This is akin to a physical law. Call it Bodissey’s Theorem of Distributed Networks:

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Welcome to Poland!

As I mentioned last October, Poland is relatively free of Muslim immigrants, which made it a refreshing place to visit after seeing the condition of so many Western European capitals. Unfortunately, the Polish authorities seem to be preparing to join the rest of the European Union in its celebration of extreme diversity.

Our Polish correspondent Green Infidel sends this photo from Warsaw. Notice the fourth language represented in the sign — you’d think it might have been, say, Czech, or Lithuanian, or even Romanian to reflect more accurately the likely demographics of visitors to Poland:

Here’s the same sign with the foreshortening removed:

Green Infidel includes the following note about the sign:

Yesterday, while stuck in traffic, I noticed a poster, opposite the Warsaw Masovia region immigration office where a friend of mine works. I asked her to take a photo.

Besides the Polish, English and Russian (the last one being the language, along with related ones such as Ukrainian, that she most often has to deal with), a certain other language, perhaps signifying the “cultural enrichment” that the powers-that-be expect to strengthen in Poland?

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/29/2013

A female suicide bomber — the latest Muslim “Black Widow” whose husband was killed by Russian security forces — detonated herself inside the main railway station in Volgograd today, killing at least sixteen people and wounding dozens more. The carnage would have been worse, except that the bomber apparently became nervous when she arrived at the metal detector, and blew herself up before entering the main body of the station.

In other news, France’s highest court has approved the Hollande government’s revamped tax plan, which includes a 75% income tax on the country’s highest earners.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Journey to Bethlehem

If you appreciate this essay by Fjordman, please consider making a donation to him, using the button at the bottom of this post.

Journey to Bethlehem
by Fjordman

My first trip to the Middle East was back in 1994. I was only 19 years old, and it was my first time I had traveled alone outside Europe. This was during the heyday of the so-called Oslo Peace Process, which naturally generated a lot of attention in Norway. It was a time of optimism when you could travel in the region in relative safety. I visited some of the important sites in Israel and went for a bus trip to Cairo, as an ordinary tourist interested in history. I did not then foresee that I would return a few years later to study in Egypt and work in Israel and the Palestinian territories in a mission established during the Oslo Peace Process. Yet that is precisely what I did, from 2001 to 2003.

For years I had wanted to go on a longer journey from Jerusalem via Athens to Rome, but I generally lacked either the time or the money to do so. After I received a grant via the think tank the Middle East Forum, I went for just such a trip in the early months of 2013. I’ve been to Rome previously, but this was my first visit to Greece.

In contrast, seeing Jerusalem was like seeing an old friend again after an absence of many years. I’ve been to that city many, many times before, not just for visiting the historical sites but simply to have a cup of coffee, rent videos and buy a fresh pizza. It is a short drive away from the West Bank city of Hebron, where I worked in the (rather toothless) observer mission TIPH from January 2002 until August 2003. I had not been back to Israel since then.

A few things had changed in the past decade. In Jaffa Street in central Jerusalem, I immediately noticed the city’s new light rail line. It had not been there in 2003. I spent most of my time in Jerusalem plus a short visit to Tel Aviv, but I also went on a day trip to the Palestinian-controlled towns of Jericho and Bethlehem. This time, I had to pass the new security and separation barrier in the West Bank, or the “apartheid wall” as the anti-Israeli Left call it. Yes, in some places it really is a wall, but it also works. There are fewer successful Islamic terrorist attacks in Israel now than there were a few years earlier.

I was tempted to go back for a brief visit to see what had changed since my student days at the American University in Cairo in 2001, but I resisted the temptation. I calculated that it was too risky for me to visit Egypt when it was ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood regime. Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood was still President of Egypt in the first half of 2013, until he was removed by the military.

I’m not Geert Wilders, who has to be followed by armed guards even when he visits the bathroom. Yet I’m not a perfectly regular tourist, either. Not anymore. I have to deal rationally with that fact. After the Breivik case, my real name and face can be found by anybody on the planet with access to the Internet. For the same reason, I decided against visiting the town of Hebron, where I worked in 2002 and 2003. There was a real possibility that somebody there might recognize me. That wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing for a professional Islamophobe in a town choke-full of militant Muslims and supporters of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

However, I deemed it safe enough to go to nearby Bethlehem. I had been there a number of times before. As late as in 1950, it was still an overwhelmingly Christian town. Yet every time I go back, the Muslim demographic and religious dominance over the town seems to grow more pronounced and aggressive. This trend mirrors that of the entire region.

In the spring of 2002, while I was living and working only a few kilometers away, a group of militant Palestinian Muslims seized control over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the presumed birthplace of Jesus Christ. They held many Christian monks as hostages and used the Bible as toilet paper. As a “punishment” for this, several of these militant Muslims were exiled to Europe. A few years later, this incident has been more or less forgotten. Meanwhile, the Muslim numerical dominance over Bethlehem grows stronger every year.

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The Longest-Running Crime Family

Our Indian correspondent The Kafir takes a look at the life script of Mohammed, which authorizes — and even commands — the murder, rape, enslavement, and subjugation of anyone who is not a member of his 1400-year-old crime family.

The Longest-Running Crime Family
By The Kafir

The famous Jesuit maxim, “Give me a child for his first seven years and I’ll give you the man,” talks of the first seven years of life. Eric Berne, the famous American psychiatrist and the originator of Transactional Analysis, says the script actually becomes fixed in the first five years of life. Many other variants of the maxim also speak of the first five or six years of life.

Most versions of Mohammed’s life begin with unfortunate but somewhat romantic ‘orphan boy’ talk. All report that he lost his father before he was born, and his mother by his sixth birthday. Almost all omit, or mention just in passing, that he was in fact in the foster care of a Bedouin family living in the desert for the first five years of his life.

This has very important implications. In his first five years he only saw desert. A desert devoid of any music, art, sculpture and refinement. A desert with warfare, loot and rape. After he was brought back to live with his family, in the one year he was with his mother he found her in utter helplessness. And later, after losing her, he was left dependent upon the family of his grandfather.

Simple conclusions follow:

1.   His life script was fixed before he came to the bustling trading town of Mecca.
2.   He felt utterly helpless in his early years.
3.   He never had the affection and care that only a natural mother in a happy marriage can give.
4.   He never even had the doting male elders around him in his early years.
 

Some children who feel utter helplessness in childhood are known to grow up to be very cruel (Ivan the Terrible is another example from history), lose all empathy with fellow human beings, and become mad after power.

The above explains almost everything about Mohammed that is not picked from other religions: monotheism from Sabeans and other two Abrahamic religions, a ban on idolatry from the other two Abrahamic religions, prophethood from Judaism and the concept of a Book also from the other two Abrahamic religions, with the Book itself heavily borrowing from the Books of these two religions. The penal code of the Quran is picked up from practices of the day, as are most of the Islamic rituals.

As for Mohammed being a prophet, if indeed he was one: only a very cruel God would make a prophet go through the stratagems Mohammed went through to make his prophethood acceptable, and triumphant. All he needed to do was will, and Mohammed would have been happily accepted as a prophet by all seven billion people of the world. After all, God’s objective would have been the delivery of the message, the code by which he wanted people to live, instead of putting a man born in the desert of Arabia through trials and tribulations, in the process causing him do the evil and morally reprehensible tasks that have become a curse on humanity, because Mohammed’s conduct has also been declared the conduct of a perfect man.

And as for Quran being the exact word of God, upon reading it only a man with a totally broken moral compass can accept it to be a word of God. Though there are hundreds of verses that would offend any civilized person, my favourite are quoted below:

Quran 4.4. We have sent no Messenger save with the tongue of his people, that he might make (the Message) clear to them. Then God leads whomever He wills astray, and He guides whomever He wills. He is the All-Glorious with irresistible might, the All-Wise.

Please recall that this is a verse that is supposed to be the exact word of God fixed till eternity.

1.   This makes it clear that Mohammed can be the prophet only of the Arabic speaking people.
2.   God is saying He only decides who will believe and who will not!!
 

Then why all the bloodshed and killing of kafirs? The kafirs are kafirs only because God willed it so!! How can they be punished/harassed/killed for being what God willed them to be? Why hell for them? For carrying out the will of God?

Quran 17.13. Every human being’s fate, We have fastened around his neck, and We will bring forth for him on the Day of Resurrection a book which he will see spread open.

So for every human being his fate is fixed by God, leaving no choice for him. Then for what is he to be judged on the Judgement Day?

Then there is this little matter of permitting slaves and sex slaves. Only a person with a sick morality can believe that God will permit slaves and sex slaves, and the rape of war captives.

Quran 4.24. And (also forbidden to you are) all married women, save those (captives) whom your right hands possess. This is God’s decree, binding upon you. Lawful for you are all beyond those mentioned, that you may seek, offering them of your wealth, taking them in sound chastity, and not in licentiousness. And whomever of them you seek to enjoy in marriage, give them their bridal-due as a duty. But there is no blame on you for what you do by mutual agreement after the duty. Assuredly, God is All-Knowing (of what you do and why), and All-Wise.

Quran (33:50). “O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee”

The above two verses should have been the terminating words for the claims of prophecy of Mohammed, but the most tragic flaw in man is that he goes strictly by self-interest. Make lawful for him what his base instincts want, and gather around you enough of such men that those who still possess some sense of morality are not able to stop, and you have it made.

For the “Quran only” crowd, the above verses are beyond any explanation. And of course the “Quran Only” ruse doesn’t hold much water in view of the following verses:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/28/2013

Oil production in Libya has decreased by 85% since the “Arab Spring” revolution in 2011. The major cause of the decline has been repeated strikes by oil workers in Cyrenaica, which continue despite concessions from the new government.

In other news, 600,000 jobs have been lost in southern Italy since the financial crisis began in 2008. GDP in the region has dropped by €43.7 billion during the same period.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Jolie Rouge, KP, Nilk, Takuan Seiyo, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy: Part II, Section 3

Below is the third section (of Part II) of a four-section essay by Hans-Peter Raddatz about the EU, the Mediterranean Union, the Islamization of the West, and the deliberate engineering of the “Arab Spring” by the global elites to serve their own long-term goals. Previously: Section 1, Section 2. For the links to Part I, see the archive list at the bottom of this post.

This essay was originally published at Die Neue Ordnung in pdf form, and was kindly translated from the German by Rembrandt Clancy, who has also provided the reader with extensive notes.

Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy

Part II: Fall and Winter in the Cycle of Radical Culture

Section 3

by Hans-Peter Raddatz

Translator’s Introduction

Dr. Raddatz uses references which may be unfamiliar to some. Therefore there are reference notes. These are of two types: translator’s notes and endnotes:

1) Translator’s Notes: An asterisk (*) following a word or concept in the text indicates the presence of a “Translator’s Note” immediately below. These provide immediate clarification for concepts or expressions which may be unfamiliar to some, or even most readers.
2) Endnotes: Numbers in superscript following a term or a concept in the text indicate endnotes for readers who wish more detail grounded in original sources.
 

The point of Dr. Raddatz’ discussion of figures such as Kant and Derrida in the last section is that they trace the trajectory and help to form the radical ethos which we experience today. In Section 2 of this paper, “Radical Philosophy and Evil”, Dr. Raddatz introduced a trend of the Enlightenment which increasingly distances itself from reason (Logos) and moves toward its opposite, hylocentrism (matter), which in the social sphere becomes a narrowing of consciousness manifest in the form of reflex functionality replacing reflection or thought. The main representative of this trend is Immanuel Kant who introduced his Categorical Imperative and the philosophy of ‘radical evil’. The former is initially a maxim, an ethical principal, generated by each individual from an internal, pre-existing tendency called a disposition (Gesinnung). If the individual can accept the maxim without contradicting the golden rule, for example, then he should ‘will’ that it become the external universal law. The vagueness of the ‘disposition’ disposes it to co-optation by elites who then formulate the moral law themselves: the disposition “…solidifies … into an inner principle and creates structures of directed thinking and behaviour.” Radical evil, for its part, is embedded in human nature, since Kant’s “moral autonomy” requires that no external metaphysical entities exist, resulting in its independence from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Therefore morality comes down to the binary choice between good and evil dispositions, for nothing exists in between the two. To the elites, who take charge of the choice of maxims, “the Kantian system offers its most important imperative, according to which no maxim should contradict the moral law”. There is no alternative.

In this section, “Freedom, Coercion and Time”, Dr. Raddatz introduces a prolific Catholic writer, Franz von Baader (1765-1841), who challenges Kant’s philosophy at its weakest point, the inner principle of the ‘disposition’, which replaces natural law, or the moral law of the old culture. Von Baader provides a diagnosis for our times. He examines why the “omnipotence of reason” takes on an “arbitrary complexion” as a moral framework divorced from any spiritual influence outside of itself. The delusional character of choosing between two maxims rests on two grounds. Firstly, the individual only apparently participates in the choice of his own moral maxims. Due to the vagueness with which the maxims are generated, they are open to ideological “intensification” by the elites. Secondly, the putative freedom of a moral choice arising from omnipotent reason founders on an inherent corruption which, according to von Baader, arises from its “lost reference to God”. It becomes an active evil, a positive force in itself, and not merely an absence of good, or an ignoring or turning away from the good maxim. Degenerate reason is paradoxically expressed as deratiocination (reflexivity and automaticity) and a loss of culture.

3. Freedom, Coercion and Time

Since Kant is of exemplary significance for modernity’s sustained liberation from the clerical-Christian power of interpretation, he helps us to understand the systematisation of the power-mass model, which among many other things, and above all, directs basic functions underlying historical processes — spirit/body — just/unjust — good/evil — man/wife — life/death. To broaden our understanding, it is equally helpful to add some references from the body of Kantian criticism. Among its most important representatives is Franz von Baader [1765-1841] who was mentioned in Part I. As a committed Christian and inventive, speculative philosopher he not only devoted attention to Kant’s radical evil, but among other things, he also looked into the radical market doctrines of Adam Smith “and his imitators”.

Franz von Baader’s analysis of the “Proletaire”, that is, of the worker hard-pressed by industrialisation, does not appear to be all that far removed either from the tenor of contemporary global Islam criticism or from the power-mass mechanism [power-mass: elite’s rule of a deratiocinated (systematised) mass]. Accordingly it was determined that the “precarious situation of the worker” increased directly with the increase in productivity, and profits “were distributed among ever fewer individuals even as they accumulated”. Therefore, according to von Baader, “legal associations” had to be formed, which could stem the “conspiracy of the factory bosses” whose excesses after all revealed the true face of modern liberalism, namely, that it “leads back to the old despotism and servility”. “Christianity as the principle of society” must be set in opposition to this development, not as a stagnant “mummy-preservation”, but as a community of solidarity after the manner of the Founder, as an alternative to the destructive strategy of profit making and the “ego-inebriation” of liberalism, which destroys social unity, nature, and in the end, also religion and solidarity with God (Quoted from: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon, 65f. Stuttgart 1995).

The expression “despotism and servility”, which precisely describes the dominance-submission drift of the power driven technological structure of the herd, owes its originality both to Franz von Baader’s intellectual acuity, as well as to the practical experience he accumulated as a mining engineer in the country which is mother to liberal capitalism’s exploitation [England]. Having developed concepts from the Natural Philosophy of the Renaissance, von Baader formed an all-encompassing contrast to Kant’s “insubstantial barrenness of Enlightenment-bringing [Aufklärerei]” and its “religiosity which remains only intensive”. His piety, thought von Baader, is fundamentally nothing but a fideistic fig leaf to avoid censorship, the ecclesiastical component of which appeared to von Baader, the Christian, as mere “mummy-preservation”.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/27/2013

A researcher at Iowa State University faked experimental results by adding human blood to rabbit blood, making it appear that the rabbit blood showed promise as an AIDS vaccine. The discredited scientist falsified his findings in order to win a $19 million grant from NIH.

In other news, Geert Wilders’ Gmail account was blocked to keep people from using it to order stickers bearing the revised anti-Islamic Saudi flag. The PVV was forced to switch to another email account.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Papa Whiskey, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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