On 17 July, the Guardian newspaper published a 12 page graphic comic entitled “The Unwanted,” written by Joe Sacco, a Maltese citizen who presently lives in Oregon. “The Unwanted,” which can be read here, purports to describe the cultural, political and logistical problems being caused in Malta by large-scale illegal immigration from Africa.

Sacco’s parents were socialists, and emigrated to Australia in the 1960s to escape the influence of the Catholic church -- a hugely powerful institution in Malta, where abortion and divorce are still illegal. The parental antinomianism appears to have rubbed off on their son, because his views tend towards the conventionally leftwing, with other graphic offerings to his name about the travails of Bosnia and Gaza.

“The Unwanted” does make some effort to understand the concerns of the native Maltese. Nevertheless, the overall impression is one of finger-wagging at the smallest member state of the European Union, which it joined in 2004 at the instigation of the humorously-entitled Nationalist Party, led by Lawrence Gonzi, who has been Prime Minister since 2004 (he was narrowly re-elected in March 2008). Sacco’s comic is the least annoying in a long line of denunciatory Guardian features, all of which bear typically didactic titles like “Voyage to Compassion,” “Malta’s Mash of Civilizations,” and “Hysteria is no answer to the plight of refugees.”

The easily outraged denounce Malta regularly, for its Catholic mores, its Euroscepticism, its habit of slaughtering song birds (this offends me too), and worst of all its attitude towards the thousands of African migrants aiming for mainland Europe who end up landing on Malta, or being rescued by trawlers and taken to the archipelago. Here they stay for up to 18 months in legal limbo, killing time in overcrowded detention centres while lawyers, civil servants and politicians from Valletta to Brussels wrangle about their “right” to be there and who should take responsibility for them.

At around 122 square miles, Malta is one-fifth the size of Greater London and has a population of 409,000 (UN figures, although the real figure is probably nearer 413,000). The archipelago is rocky and barren, and the economy is heavily dependent on tourism and machinery exports.

The islands have been occupied by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, the French and the British, and there are ruined temples which are over 8,000 years old. Although the Arabs were only present on the islands for around 200 years, the Maltese language is derived mostly from Arabic (although it is written in Latin script, the only Semitic language for which this is true), and their erstwhile occupation is also evident in the local food, music and the physiognomies of some of the local people.

The architectural ambience, however, is baroque, while it is one of the most strongly Christian countries in the world. It was the home between 1530 and 1798 of the crusading Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, whose emblem is the eight-pointed Maltese Cross (the emblem actually derives from the Italian town of Salerno, because the founders of the Hospital of St John came from there). The Order, which had been expelled by the Muslims first from Jerusalem and then Rhodes, was given the island by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V of Spain, who demanded in return a nominal fee of a single falcon (this pleasing vignette is referred to in the classic Humphrey Bogart film, The Maltese Falcon). The Knights have been described as the “first embryonic council of Europe.” Some idea of the reality of this may be gauged by examining the 28 Grand Masters of the Order of St John between 1530 and 1798 (when the Order was suppressed by Napoleon). Twelve were French, eight Aragonese, four Italian, three Portuguese and one German. (The Order is now based in London, with its headquarters in a medieval gatehouse in fashionable Clerkenwell.) The militant order which was once tasked with defending holy sites is now reduced to providing first aid at football matches -- a useful but inglorious task, perhaps emblematic of mainstream Christianity.

In 1565, under the command of Jean de la Vallette (in whose honor the elegant city of Valletta is named), approximately 9,000 defenders legendarily resisted an Ottoman invasion force of around 48,000 (firing an estimated 135,000 cannonballs) for more than four months. This was a military turning point, and built up momentum for the momentous victory at Lepanto just six years afterwards.

Malta endured an equally terrible siege when Axis forces trying to cut Britain’s Suez lifeline besieged the island effectively from June 1940 until April 1942. For the islanders’ heroism during that period, the country was presented with the George Cross by King George VI, and this is still emblazoned on the state flag, even though Malta became independent in 1964.

So notwithstanding its Arabic trace elements, Malta is deeply rooted in the European mainstream -- and all the more conscious of its cultural identity because of its historical vulnerability and vicissitudes. It is this awareness, no doubt, which led a majority of electors to take the difficult decision to join the EU. Like the inhabitants of many other small European countries, they probably see membership as guaranteeing future security.

With such resonant traditions to draw upon, it is ironic that there is no serious political resistance to the immigration wave, although this is probably because it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In 2003, 502 African migrants arrived on the islands. In 2005, it was 1,800 -- in 2006 1,780 -- in 2007, 1,800 -- and around 1,700 in both 2008 and 2009. So far this year, there has been a 3.3 percent decrease in the numbers, probably reflecting would-be migrants’ consciousness that even Europe is not immune to recession. Others have died trying to make the crossing; Malta was much criticized when 53 migrants drowned in Maltese waters in May 2007, and again when 80 or so drowned in August 2008.

The total numbers of immigrants are small, amounting to only around 3 percent of the total population, but in such a tiny and relatively poor country the impact is enormous. As a 2008 report from the Maltese think-tank Today Public Policy Institute (TPPI) expresses it,

Relative to population size, this equates to around 1.72 million immigrants arriving in France or the UK, 2.35 million in Germany, 1.6 million in Italy and about 1.15 million in Spain…on a per capita basis Malta has thus experienced one of the largest -- if not the largest -- influx of undocumented immigrants among EU countries over recent years.

“The Unwanted” spends much energy denouncing Norman Lowell, who has a party called, ambitiously or fancifully, depending on your perspective, Imperium Europa. He is presently serving a two year suspended sentence for inciting racial hatred and insulting the president. Lowell is denounced as a “far rightist,” and, to be fair, Lowell features lightning-flash logos and admiring references to Mein Kampf scattered in amongst such un-Hitlerian policy commitments as freedom of expression and gay rights. Lowell has stood several times in national and European elections, but third parties in Malta always score derisory votes.

A more down-to-earth party, National Action (Azzjoni Nazzjonali) was founded in 2007 by a businessman and former Nationalist Party MP named Josie Muscat, but after failing to win any seats in 2008 despite a strong anti-immigration platform, in April 2010 the party voted to transform itself into

an organisation that promotes and disseminates conservative values.

Since then, there has been silence, and now there does not appear to be even a website for AN, so perhaps nothing more will come of this.

The TPPI report complains:

The emergence of overtly xenophobic movements and parties has been a complete novelty in Malta’s political landscape. Moreover, and somewhat more worrying, there has been a rise in attacks against organizations and individuals working to protect the rights of immigrants, or against people denouncing racism… A recent study on xenophobic attitudes among the Maltese population has also revealed some disturbing results.

According to a survey conducted in 2005, 95% of respondents had no objections to having a European neighbour, while an almost equally high number were unwilling to live next to Arabs (93%), Africans (90%) or Jews (89%). Moreover, more than 75% of respondents said they would not give shelter to refugees.

The TPPI notes with some sympathy the difficulties faced by Maltese fishermen, who often come across migrants miles from land, drifting in unseaworthy boats. The fishermen

“usually avoid coming too close to a boat carrying 20 to 30 migrants, as they fear being overpowered. Moreover, if they alert the authorities, these can take several hours to arrive on the spot, meaning that the fishermen’s day of work is lost without compensation … as Maltese fishermen themselves readily admit, in most cases when they come across irregular migrants at sea, they simply “put the engine on full thrust.”

The report complains plaintively of the lack of Libyan cooperation, as if Muammar Gaddafi were a rational man. Yet Libya does have a strategic interest in halting the flow, because it is a major transit point, and it too has a large (almost one million) and much-resented illegal immigrant population from black Africa. (On a recent visit to Italy, the colourful Colonel disconcerted journalists by declaring that most “asylum-seekers” from Africa were fraudulent.)

More to the point, the TPPI bemoans the EU’s border agency Frontex’s unwillingness or inability to augment the miniscule Maltese defence forces. At present, there are three Maltese patrol boats, two German helicopters and a launch to patrol a sea-area the size of Great Britain. Even Italy will not send assistance, although many of the Africans who land on Malta end up in Italy, and although the nearby Italian island of Lampedusa (best known as the hereditary fiefdom of Giovanni Tomasi de Lampedusa, author of The Leopard) is likewise a magnet for illegal immigration. However, the Italian Navy already has a major job patrolling Italy’s Adriatic coast, which is also targeted by people-traffickers. With the present budgetary constraints, and the all-party dogma that mass immigration is intrinsically good and its opponents intrinsically evil, in the short term the chances of Frontex being beefed up look slim.

So the report concludes by recommending the cheaper strategy that is always resorted to by today’s politicians, to make the natives feel guilty for wishing to preserve the country they love:

Efforts should be made… to implement a sustained information exercise in the media…Such a campaign needs to air regularly.

What this amounts to is that the Maltese are to be lectured for wishing to remain Maltese -- and they will be expected to pay for their sensitivity lessons. Not only this, but they will also be hectored, because along with largesse from Brussels come rafts of bland-sounding but draconian laws about race relations, religious discrimination, equality, and human rights designed to undermine all assumptions and usher in an unwanted, untested and un-European “Europe.” The effects of these laws -- like the laws on abortion and divorce -- are yet to be visited upon the unwitting islanders, who may find this insidious enemy harder to resist than Ottoman or German soldiers.

The battle-scarred walls of Valletta still stand strong and beautiful in the sun, but all the postern gates have been thrown open.

When the Labour Party lost the May 2010 election, I did not exactly share their sadness. This was not because I saw the incoming government as representing fundamental change; rather, this was because the Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had already proven so fantastically destructive that it was difficult to imagine anything topping five more years of Labour inferno.

The electoral repulsion of Gordon Brown triggered a leadership contest within this wretched party, an event about which Derek Turner has already written very amusingly for Taki’s Magazine. Absent evidence of complete disarray, crisis, depression, despair, tiffs, quarrels, clashes, faction, division, schism, disunity, schizophrenia, paranoia, catatonia, paralysis, and radical soul-searching, a Labour leadership election is a potent soporific. Who wants to listen to a freak show of fossilized Marxists pontificating about fairness and equality? Life is too short.

But when the electorate holds back from crushing them into oblivion, when the government ends up being a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, the prospect of a Labour comeback cannot be dismissed: their next leader might well end up being our future Prime Minister.

Under the title "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Senator James Webb (D., Va.) says what no mainstream Republican politician would ever dare to say:

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived...

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy./The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that 'fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery...'

In 1938...[o]f the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white)...

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white...

Wow.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't quote so much while commenting so little - but, hey? what could I possibly add?

Needless to say, the PC brigades are out to get him.

Warsaw has witnessed all variations of heroism and infamy through its seven centuries of existence. Yet it can now mark a new milestone, since the Polish capital just played official host to the 2010 EuroPride Parade, an annual ritual in celebration of homosexual practices, along with ever so desperately-needed “tolerance” and “equal rights”. Next year’s event will take place in Rome, as if to drive home just who runs the show in the Eternal City. Poles who suffered for their nation and faith in the fight against Communism should by now be having second thoughts on the regime established after its fall.

What may seem just another nauseating spectacle well-rehearsed throughout the West is nonetheless significant in its political and strategic context. The parade is the Polish state’s coming-out party as a constituent nation of the Brave New World. Only two weeks prior, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had visited Poland to affirm the strong alliance ties between Washington and Warsaw and praise the country “as a model of democratic and free market transformation”. And indeed it is, as showcased by Europride 2010- though it’s in sore need of more abortions and immigrants from wildly incompatible cultures like those of Pakistan or Morocco. Poland is still in the earlier stages of social chaos, insolvency and spiritual collapse that the liberal order brings, but the State Department, Brussels and supporting NGOs like Freedom House and the Open Society Institute have ready-made solutions to speed the journey to Progress.

Thinkers of the Right often tend towards pessimism because, as Carl Schmitt noted, "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Consequently, many on our side see a future where our civilization continues to devolve into something resembling a multicultural, feminist, pornographic, New Age rendition of totalitarianism, to be followed by complete dispossession generated by demographic overrun.  While prevailing trends may at present lend themselves to such a conclusion, there is every reason to believe this state of affairs will eventually be reversed in our favor.

Recall that the repentant Communist Whittaker Chambers told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948: "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side. . .but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism." Such was the perspective of many on the Right during the decades of the Cold War. But there were others, ranging from Lawrence Dennis to George Kennan to Ludwig von Mises, who begged to differ and regarded Communism as an aberration and deformation that would eventually meet its end. History proved these optimists to be correct, and forty years later it was Communism that was dead. It is likely forty years from now that the paradigm of military Keynesianism, welfare-capitalism, and what some have characterized as "Cultural Marxism" (though my preferred term for this phenomenon is "totalitarian humanism") that rules the present day West will likewise be deceased or in severe retreat.

[The ninth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

 

Western societies treat liberal ideals of freedom, equality, diversity, tolerance, and inclusiveness as uniquely authoritative. Those ideals increasingly trump all other considerations and silence all criticism.

As a practical matter, they mean rule by experts, bureaucrats, and commercial interests that promise to give everyone what he wants, as much and as equally as possible. Other authorities aren't rational and neutral enough.

Under such circumstances, the function of representative institutions becomes legitimating decisions already reached in other ways. Traditional less formal institutions such as family and religion become strictly private in significance. The point of multiculturalism and similar tendencies is to keep them so by destroying the public relevance of every particular tradition.

There is a certain logic of degeneration at work when a civilization loses its bearings. The Olympic Games are a case in point. Once a religious festival of the ancient Hellenes, the Olympics were first revived during the convulsions of the French Revolution.

Along with a number of other spurious fabricated holidays, the Directory in Paris held L'Olympiade de la Republique from 1796 to 1798. In place of classical paganism, the games were animated by the new humanist faith, with athletes competing to honor the gods of liberty and reason.

The Olympics would then be permanently established a century later, this time their rationale being the rather Victorian concerns of good hygiene and international brotherhood.  Since that time the events evolved from a propaganda battleground among the militant antitheist ideologies of the 20^th century into the vapid, overblown commercial extravaganza we know today.

While the Olympics held sacred import for the Greeks of the classical era, they have been recast through modernity as a pseudo-festival, a celebration of ultimately nothing. In his work In Tune with the World, the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper saw that man's rejection of God leads to a frenzy of meaninglessness in a vain attempt to escape the terror of death.

For the mad dash to meaninglessness, contemporary Britain wins the gold. In the run-up to hosting the 2012 Olympics, London has just raised the curtain on its mascots for the summer games. While they're supposed to "chime" with children, these creatures are more likely to induce a fresh round of psychological disorders in the rising generation. Forget clowns; let's all welcome the new stars of kids' most fevered nightmares.

Aside from these concerns, the new representatives of the games neatly encapsulate the U.K.'s transformation into an alien, postmodern dystopia. It's particularly noteworthy how these entities came into being- by committee. "Wenlock" and "Mandeville" (named after the respective founding-places of the British Olympics and Paralympics) are the product of 40 focus groups over the span of 18 months, a fact that presupposes additional layers of administrators and experts guiding the entire unholy enterprise. Any individual creativity or artistic inspiration was thus quashed by the processes of the managerial regime.

Photo: Suzanne Plunkett, Reuters

The mascots' creators have also ensured that the characters are liberated from even the slightest connection to English history and culture. There they stand in a schoolyard in front of a rainbow mural, each a strange metallic cylinder with the all-seeing eye of a giant squid. Perhaps they're meant to symbolize Britain's ubiquitous surveillance cameras; that would at least make matters more comprehensible. Ever-vigilant Wenlock and Mandeville monitor London's multicultural chaos, represented here by the ensemble of children who might as well have been flown in from multiple points around the globe.

There are affairs more pressing than criticizing London's choice for its 2012 Olympics mascot. After all, one can find evidence for British social disintegration in its crime explosion, the breakdown of the family, mass immigration by invitation and numerous other symptoms of advanced decadence. Then again, the two silver aliens are fitting symbols of secular, egalitarian Cool Britannia's institution of formlessness. Modern society's worship of man ultimately leads to the reign of absurdity.

Another crazy story from the Middle East/South Asia.

Kabul, Afghanistan (TML) – The Muslim world is full of violent, graphic and alarming stories of “honor killings,” in which young woman are killed by male family members for dishonoring the family.

"Honor rape,” in which the gang rape of a woman is used as a tool of social punishment, is spoken of less.

Almost unheard of is an “honor killing” or “honor rape” of a man.

But the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan is grappling with just that, after the sons of the region’s governor and police chief were found having sex with two women almost a month ago in the Dasht-i Leile desert, north of the provincial capital Shiberghan.

According to local media reports, a man named Yama, the 30-year-old son of the Jowzjan governor, and his friend Hashmatullah, the 28-year-old son of the provincial police chief, were seen by local herdsmen having sex with 24-year old Shokreya and 22-year-old Jamila.

The herdsmen allegedly stole the men’s guns and money and gang raped them in retribution for the “dishonor” they had committed by having sex with the two young women.

“The farmers tore the clothes off the two young men with sickles and raped them,” a local official told Pajhwok Afghan News. The herdsmen later described to local organizations that the attack was an “honor rape.”

As the story goes, the two men were left naked in the desert, only to return home covered by the women’s burqas and unable to sit down due to their injuries. The two women were reportedly unharmed, but told to leave the area within two weeks.

Muhammad Hashim Zare, the provincial governor, has refused to comment on the case, but his spokesperson Mahboobullah Zare has claimed that the governor is being targeted as part of a political smear campaign.

Brig. Gen. Khalilullah Aminzada, the police chief, has claimed that his son was not in the desert at the time of the alleged incident, and blamed the accusations on local farmers.

The response to this is usually to just chalk it up to Islam.  But how powerful of an explanatory force is this?  I’ve only heard of “honor rape” occurring in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though never in Egypt and Somalia.  On the other hand, those two African countries practice female genital mutilation, while Muslims in South Asia don’t.  How can Islam be responsible for both FGM and honor rape at the same time, when some Muslims practice one but not the other and most partake in neither, but nobody does both?

My theory: Islam makes you immune to globalization.  You distrust the infidel West, are confident in your society and refuse to change your culture to conform with modern norms.  Thus, all kinds of arcane practices abhorrent to the Western mind survive even though they have nothing to do with Islam.

China, for example, got rid of foot binding in the early twentieth century, probably after their elites started encountering other peoples who found it repulsive.  Had they been Muslims, the forces of reaction would’ve been stronger and maybe prevented this reform.  Modern professional Muslim haters would see foot binding as yet another piece of evidence in the case against Islam.

This is relevant to the Alternative Right as many of us curse the homogenizing of the world that globalization is bringing about and like the idea of different cultures confidently asserting themselves against international liberal activists.  But undoubtably cultural relativism has a dark side and barbarism is too common to be the fault of any one faith.

[The seventh in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

The Catholic view of the world has lasted a long time and supported many good things, so the Catholic view of antidiscrimination and inclusiveness ought to matter to anyone interested in those topics.

But what is "the Catholic view"? The phrase can refer to anything from the view that best fits the overall Catholic understanding of the world to the average view of all Catholics at a particular time and place. As a day-to-day matter, people mostly take it to be the view expressed by Catholic functionaries. If the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops puts out a statement, that's the Catholic position.

Recent pronouncements

Day-to-day pronouncements by Church officials on discrimination and related issues often seem generally consistent with the advanced liberal view. That view takes the lead, and situations where Catholic doctrines and traditions make deviations necessary are played down. Or so it seems.

[The sixth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

A common leftist claim is that established social and moral principles serve the interests of the ruling classes. The claim isn't applied to principles of which the left approves. In particular, it's not applied to inclusiveness. That's unfortunate, because it's obvious that inclusiveness serves governing elites by eliminating competitors and justifying an elaborate system of irresponsible control by those at the top.

In particular, inclusiveness makes money, bureaucracy, certified expertise, and therapy the sole permissible principles of social order, while treating other more traditional and natural principles as ignorant, irrational, and hateful. The rhetoric is familiar. Religious authority is bigoted and oppressive. Family authority is narrow, sexist, agist, heterosexist, ethnocentric, and intertwined with patriarchal religion. And authority based on history and tradition is exclusionary and racist.