Dutch left-wing launch critique of Islamic immigrants

[ this is not my writing ]

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Netherlands had lived through something akin to a populist revolt against accommodating Islamic immigrants led by Pim Fortuyn, who was later murdered; the assassination of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim killer; and the bitter departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.

Now something fairly remarkable is happening again.

Two weeks ago, the country's biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance."

It came at the same time Nicolas Sarkozy was making a case in France for greater opportunities for minorities that also contained an admission that the French notion of equality "doesn't work anymore."

But there was a difference. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims' obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor's chairperson, was exceptional.

The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."

Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."

She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

[link]

The Acid Test of Legitimacy

For any street, neighborhood, town, region or nation in the world -here is a test to see if it is in need of change.

Remember, I am talking about the whole earth, not just American neighborhoods.

Most places have a dominant type. The type may be Vietnamese, Saudi, Buddhist, Islamic, Baptist, Russians, poor whites, wealthy Japanese business owners...et cetera.

The test: can an individual that is visibly of a very different 'type' walk in that place without being attacked or harassed? And on top of this, the individual is not there to help others, but is ambivalent, having no outward sign of respect or role in the local culture. I am not saying they are trying to be offensive, but simply in an ambivalent relationship with the local culture.

Examples:

1. Can a white Baptist preacher walk down the street in Tokyo?
2. Can a jewish woman walk through Gaza?
3. Can a black man walk through Monroe Louisiana?
4. Can a Japanese Buddhist monk walk through Islamabad?
5. Can a white business woman walk through the poorest black neighborhood in Little Rock Arkansas?

If the answer is "no", then that place is in need of reform.

Any, any, form of racial/religious/cultural solidarity that results in the other not being able to walk ambivalently, and without escort through the area -that culture is a culture of intolerance or even hate.

Since WW2 the world has focused on English and Americans as the ones needing reform, needing to mend their ways towards more tolerance. This was absolutely needed. Now the same spotlight and demand needs to be placed equally on everyone worldwide. Any and every people should allow those different from them to walk peaceably down the street, and to carry on their business without kow-towing to local identity.

Palestinians are

The population we call Palestinians were guest workers that came from Syria, Egypt and other countries to work as low wage manual laborers for Jews. The Jews were building their homes and city infrastructure on land largely void of inhabitants before the 1920's.

In 1948 the lands of origin -Egypt, Syria, etc; blocked the guest workers from reentry, helping to create the irreconcilable and contentious situation in Israel.

Now, the world loves to sympathize with the poor, and these manual laborers are perfect poster children for a "cause". My problem with this is these poor people are forever full of hate, violence and racist solidarity. Using the last 60 years as evidence, they lack the cultural capability to create a healthy economy, and prefer to spend their energies attacking Israel. The idea of a Palestinian State sounds good, but all evidence is they will have no ability to create an economy, other than a religious/racist economy of violence.

When Israel strikes, they do more damage, take more lives than the Palestinians. This is because of being more effective, and better resources. The Palestinians are always the ones who initiated the war, and that fact is more notable as a crime than Israeli success in defense.

Palestinians hate. Palestinians exist in an economy of racist violence. Palestinians reap the benefits of world opinion programmed to side with the poorer in any war, even if the poor are the worst of humans.

By analogy, the Palestinians are illegal or legal guest workers from Mexico, denied reentry to Mexico, who are fighting by throwing stones, and home-made rockets to regain "their homeland" of Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Texans would kill them .

The right businesses are going stronger than ever

It is with glee that I report that Amazon has record profits this holiday season.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. called this holiday season its "best ever," saying Friday that it saw a 17 percent increase in orders on its busiest day - a rare piece of good news in a season that has been far from merry for most retailers, including online businesses. Amazon customers ordered more than 6.3 million items on Dec. 15, compared with roughly 5.4 million on its peak day last year, the company said. It shipped more than 5.6 million products on its best day, a 44 percent rise over 2007, when it shipped about 3.9 million on its busiest day. The company did not provide dollar figures and wouldn't say whether the average value of orders had changed, and the jumps it reported Friday are in line with increases Amazon has seen since it started releasing the figures in 2002. -WIRED [link]

Former culture warmonger Pat Robertson embraces objective centrism

Pat Robertson has given a the Bush Administration a grade of C minus, and praised Obama. This, too me, is an example of objective centrism. What I mean by objective centrism is when stating one's opinion of a politician or policy, one can say positive things about the party/ideology one is not typically a member of. e.g.: Pat Robertson says he is a Republican, then states that a Republican has performed less than professionally, and a Democrat has performed very well.

Objective centrism is the glue that will repair this country. Anyone that cannot manage to utter an objective statement is part of the problem.

Anarchy in L.A.

I hate Anarchism. Pure and simple. I hate the intellectual ( and anti-intellectual ) constructs. I've known quite a few while living in Olympia WA.

Here is a sample of the Northwest Anarchist ideology:

The focus .... is to draw analysis and proposals as a fervent critique of the current anarchist* milieu in the Northwest specifically (looking at situations nationally and internationally). Drawing upon a praxis - theory into action - and an experimentation of tactics towards a complete social transformation. One towards the total destruction of society, capital, technology, morals, ideology, civilization (call it what one will) and the lineage of the existent. link

Woo-woo,total destruction of society, how badass. Its no surprise most are young, full of testosterone, and have few real social ties beyond their bong buddies and ideological echo chamber.

I've just written a meme-bomb for them and planted it on seattle.indymedia.org. here.

Micro-cars of the World

To diminish our dependence on oil, many alternatives are being explored. Scooters and motorcycles are fine, but not for all weather. I think 3 or 4 wheeled personal vehicles, especially designs that handle snow and ice driving, are a better answer. Here is a video showing an amazing amount of micro-cars going back 70 years. It looks like Europe and Asia have had the right idea for a long time.

Social Justice Terrorism

Over at this earlier post I coined the phrase "social justice terrorism".

Basically, [ as explained in that earlier post ] society may move to what John Robb calls resilient communities, aka local platforms, which I prefer to call local, distributed micro-industrialism. In this new, third way -a break from medieval peasant class localism and modern macro-industrialism, there will be more technology in home life. I see this micro-industrialism increasing the status of the technologically capable, and further decreasing the respect and valuation of people who do not want to work with technology.

This will be a revolution that offends social justice fundamentalists who work solely on an unqualified human equality. The resilient community will need to defend themselves against social justice terrorists.

Archinect Op-Ed: Global Systems vs. Local Platforms

see lance's commentary

Dec 20, 2008
by John Robb

We are in the midst of radical social and economic change brought on by the emergence of a global system that is completely and utterly uncontrollable -- it is too big, too fast, and too complex to control. Unfortunately, the lack of a global control system means that we face a long series of increasingly severe shocks (due to the system’s tight coupling, each new shock will sweep the world in months), wrecking long standing and established structures with ease. The first shocks, a bubble in energy and a financial crisis, have already done significant damage. More are on the way as the global system moves ever farther from normal patterns of operation.

So, how does this impact the future of architecture and design?

In general, this means that designers will need to focus less on macro or global level needs and much, much more on the needs of the local. Why? The solutions to macro level instability will be found in the development of local community’s that build systems and organizations that enable them to both withstand systemic shocks and prosper based on internal dynamics. This is nearly inevitable since architecture and design flow to sources of growth, and we will only see prolonged growth at the local and not the macro level.

The first change will require architecture and design that transforms previously unproductive spaces – most residences and communities are black holes of productivity – into spaces that can produce value, from food to energy. A home, whether it is an apartment building or suburban residence, in 2025 will gain its value from its ability to efficiently produce necessities, and even income (as measured by the value of the output in local trade), for the owner.

Community design will in turn focus on the creation of platforms that support and catalyze increases in production for the community as a whole.

NOTE: For those that are unfamiliar with the concept of a “platform,” it finds its roots in the technology industry. Essentially, it is a system that simplifies a set of processes required for a given activity and bundles them into an easily accessible package. For example, the Internet is a platform. Platforms radically accelerate development and often foster the creation of diverse ecosystems of participants that rapidly innovate to fill the available opportunity/space. Within resilient communities, we will see the establishment of platforms that make it easier to grow/sell food, produce/share/sell energy, trade, share ideas/methods (social software), produce products (fab labs), collect/share/sell water and much more. For example, to accelerate the ability to share/sell energy within a community, smart grid technology and microgrids provide an excellent avenue of approach. More specifically, if my domestic wood-fired, combined heat power (CHP) system produces excess electricity, I could either sell it into the community's microgrid or store it locally depending on the pricing information I get from smart grid data flows. Another example would be platforms that support local agriculture. Platforms in this category such as vegitecture support localized agriculture and food production and include; centrally located open space for farmer’s markets, small fenced garden plots that can be rented, local cold storage, groves of nut trees, community composting systems, green roofs/walls and much more.

If this sounds like a return to the 19th Century way of life you would be wrong. IF done correctly, the intensity of production and the productivity of participants will be orders of magnitude higher than during that earlier period. Further, IF done correctly it promises a rapid, broad and sustainable increase in standards of living for all participants.

So, get ready and get innovating, for if we can crack the design of the models necessary to accomplish this, it will propagate virally across the entire world.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
originally published here

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Bullet List Commentary from Lance Miller:

1. This is NOT green, luddite, hippie, vegetable-trade-only localism.

2. This is energy production localism.

3. This is metal fabrication localism.

4. This is software customization localism.

5. This is electronic hardware recycling/reuse localism.

6. This is capitalism.

7. There is nothing about this localism that excludes the goods produced being sold globally.

8. The most radical departure from previous post-medieval culture is almost no concentration of wealth by semi-aristocratic gentry investors who rarely know much about nor touch the points of production. Wealth would be in the producers living in the same house with the production.

9. In the last 2500 years, humans have had a choice between a localism that is peasant class ( ignorant, pestilent, short living people who kill based on superstitious fear or loathing of other religions or cultures ) or a globalism that concentrates power in a gentry disconnected from the commoner's experience. Certainly globalism has been better than peasant-class localism. Local industrial platformism offers a third way.

10. We will have computers and fast personal vehicles in this third way.

11. A technophobic person ill at ease with industrialism will be even more devalued and disrespected than now. In this domain local industrial platformism will be a revolution that offends social justice fundamentalists who work for unqualified human equality. The resilient community will need to defend themselves against social justice terrorists.

Why does the Garden of Eden Suck and the Glacier of Eden Not Suck?

Why does the Garden of Eden Suck and the Glacier of Eden Not Suck?

By "Garden of Eden" I mean any tropical or sub-tropical culture. The less industrialized or literate of tropical cultures the more they rate as "Garden of Eden".

By "Glacier of Eden" I mean the cultures that reside on land that has at some point had glaciation on it. Not all of the United States has had glaciation on it, so the USA is divided into both Garden and Glacial Edens.

"Glacial of Eden" does not equal G8, or industrialized countries, necessarily. The indigenous people of northernmost North America, Greenland, Iceland, Europe and Asia are included. To the south, Chile and New Zealand. The Han Chinese are especially included due to their early origins as the world's first polar culture (predating their migration into China).

The criteria is not industrialization, or literacy. I am not agitprop-ing for Aryan supremacy at all here. It is about places that suck, and do not suck, in 2008. That map of suckness seems to cooperate very well with the ice versus tropics map.

White prejudice, enslavement and military power are usually a cornerstone of most narratives seeking the cause of cultural misery. Why the success of native peoples in Alaska and Greenland? By success I mean they have worked with the global power and monetary system, leveraging/establishing their land rights effectively to both keep their homes and homeland while renting access to oil, mining, fishing, and timber harvesting. ( I have lived with and been close friends with people fitting this description in Akutan Alaska ) So why the relative misery in Africa versus Alaskan indigenous success?

Where I am agitprop-ing is in the realm of reverence. The "Gardens of Eden" seem to hardcoded into mainstream dialogue as a desirable place, a natural place, the place "being human" defaults to by the origin stories in the Bible and secular anthropology. This reverence is misplaced. We should be looking further towards the poles of the earth when seeking anything worth revering, we ( especially those in the Garden ) should be looking at the cold places as the places that are the gems of "being human".

I have a nebulous and unfinished guess as to why glaciers generate less miserable cultures. It is a little about technology, but please don't think of trains. planes, phones, and computers. It is more technology in form of clothes and maybe food storage. Warm places do not demand very technical clothes, cold places do. Warm places have food more ready to serve right on the vine or tree. I believe Glacier of Edens make the human mind work with more contingency. Above that, I think the entire culture that emerges is a Contingent Culture. While all cultures have minefields of political/familial contingency to challenge the mind with, the glacial cultures had a load of cognitive challenge more ever present and demanding. The ice was an evolutionary filter, thinning from the population those that got their empiricism wrong. Glacial Edens are a place where the question "is it it better to be right or happy?" [link] is answered with survivors who all answered with "Being right". Garden of Edens, for millennia, answered with "being happy".

Millennia of breeding people who answer "being happy" has, ironically, produced people more miserable in today's world.

( Written the morning after the Dec 20th snow storm in Seattle, the photo is my own taken in Seattle )

Finding the Fascists

In my reading of news articles spotlighting Obama's selection of Mega-church Pastor Rick Warren, I came across this outright lie:

People for the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert told CNN she is "deeply disappointed" with the choice of Warren and said the powerful platform at the inauguration should instead have been given to someone who has "consistent mainstream American values."

Wow, I guess the name of the organization, combined with what Kolbert said lets us know their agenda: to take what a minority of Americans believe or embody or support, and cast that as The American Way. I'm a liberal inner-city Seattle resident; and Ms Kolbert; your way isn't an American Way; it is a way that won't share the stage with others in the same country that you have little in common with. Ms Kolbert, your values and message are the problem. The Huffington Post [link], in contrast, discusses more transparently that, yes, most of the columnist's friends support gay marriage, but the columnist recognizes their opinion was a minority in the California vote on the issue. What a fair and balanced dialogue when compared to The American Way proclaiming their minority agenda as the national identity.

Maybe clusters of ideological purists like The American Way, or zero-growth environmentalists, or bio-regionalists, or any other radical departure from global industrial-information-transportation economics can be found out during the Obama tenure of the White House. The reactionaries who exploded with declarations of intolerance for Warren ( and his America ) have provided the archetypical behavior. These radicals can then be labelled what they have been all along: intolerant, self-righteous fascists attempting to impose their world view on the rest of society.

I was once in a graduate program operating with The Center for Creative Change ( a.k.a C3). Over my year and a half as a student, I slowly began to realize the horror of what they intended: to impose their anti-industrial, anti-intellectual agenda on the world. The faculty explicitly stated that folk ways were better than scientific/professional experts, that non-linguistic cognitive processes were more powerful and legitimate than the literate functions of our brains. Since my eyes were open to such stupidity marching self-righteously in lockstep, I started this blog and other writing projects to alert the world of these scumbags. I am so grateful for the Obama Presidency. It is going to be a true flashpoint in which these fascists get found out by their intolerant screeching being aired in national media.

Die, fascists, die.

• Embrace What You Have In Common With Rick Warren -Huffington Post
• Rick Warren, Obama and the Left -WSJ
• Obama Selects Evangelist for Invocation -New York Times
• Choosing Warren represents diversity

My post at Salon[link]:

Rick Warren is as mainstream as it gets.

White, middle-class, Protestant, heterosexual suburbia IS the mainstream in this country. It is wrong to leave them out of ANY national event.

I say this not as a right wing troll. I am an inner-city Seattle liberal that voted for Obama, and the choosing of Warren is a good civic moment gay rights supporters should easily recognize.

The orthodox, entrenched, fascist left should stop trying to recast 'America' as a place without white, middle-class, Protestant, heterosexual suburbia.

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Obama Uniting Nation: Alienates Orthodox Left

President-elect Obama has selected Rick Warren, the most prominent evangelical preacher of the post-Billy Graham generation, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. The decision was announced today by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Thank you, President Obama. Finally someone is not playing the culture war, and even more significant that it is our elected President.

Already those vested and committed to the culture war are blurting out their disapproval of Obama's selection of Rick Warren. American Way President Kathryn Kolbert -commenting that choosing an abortion and gay marriage opponent is a disappointment, and also Andrew Sullivan -a pro-gay rights blogger, and many others are voicing their discord with Obama.

These haters of Conservative Christianity think Left, Liberal, and Democrat are the banner for their army. They think that when a Democrat finally gains the White House, that Conservative/Suburban Christians are, in a very real sense, thrust out of power.

This war-like attitude on the part of left-leaning special interest groups helps perpetuate the worst abuses on the right side of politics. The Right, whether they be pro-military, Libertarian, anti-abortion, or just plain anti-urban; know they are out of power when a typical Liberal gains power. SO THE RIGHT FIGHT HARDER, AND BUILD UP GRASS ROOT COALITIONS BECAUSE THEY ARE TRULY UNDER-REPRESENTED.

The war culture crime here is under-representation. When an old-style conservative comes to power -its all military, Protestant Christianity, and urban environments/issues are disdained. When an old-style liberal comes to power -lesbians get to go out into the hinterland appointed as socialistic nurses/teachers or city planners; and tell girls to skip church, screw both guys and girls, and get an abortion. My hyperbole is extreme, but in the 60's and 70's, before Conservatives learned how to kick holy ass by co-opting postmodernism and doing it better, the countercultural/Democratic machine pretty much did send their minions out to the backwaters of the nation, showing hillbillies and black sharecroppers the ways of Marx.

Unlike the liberal or countercultural agendas of the past, Obama realizes he is the leader of the whole country, and is offering an olive branch to suburban, typically white, America. Obama is a higher caliber human being, wanting everyone in America to do good, not just one side of America that supports leftist or typically liberal ideology.

• Embrace What You Have In Common With Rick Warren -Huffington Post
• Obama Selects Evangelist for Invocation -New York Times

Mass Leftist Shift Doesn't Have To Kill Our Industrialism

News column of reference: Mass Transit Doesn't Have to Kill Our Love Affair With Cars -Krist Novoselic

Krist Novoselic ( yes, the bass player for Nirvana ) wrote a measured, mature opinion in The Daily Weekly. He basically says we don't have to dislike cars while supporting a transition to mass transit.

I like the way his perspective is not charged with villains, shrill absolutism, or conspiracy theories. Quite a contrast to the luddite all-local, no-metal political agenda orthodoxy that passes itself off as academia and leftism in America. This fascism would sneer at Novoselic's pleasure of owning and working on old VW's. To the luddite pseudo-progressives Novoselic is hellbound for hitting the high points of evil: he likes transportation ( overtly anti-local ) , he likes something metal, he likes something with a motor (the core of all industrialism), and he has the cognitive capacity for mechanical troubleshooting ( implying scientific method and objective functionalism, which was employed by colonialist to subjugate, which makes it evil, and it doesn't hurt that most of the pseudo-left have no mental proficiency in this area and operate in a state of jealousy and fear they will be found out as morons who depend on the crapshoot of mysticism and magic [ and their mom's credit card or school loan ]).

But enough about these fascist luddite, humanist scum. Their numbers are going to shrink, no matter which way the future goes: 1) If the world regresses to pre-industrial, they'll be killed, raped, or taken as slaves (not in that order) as they are easy targets -stupid, pacifists, and weak from too little protein. 2) The Obama-Trend, in which the best and the brightest are once again able to identify as the left -while openly touting their rigorous education and industrial economy agenda. This will corrupt and disable the semiotic game the luddite fascists have been getting away with for a years.

Novoselic's article is small symptom of the Obama-Trend, a measured and balanced way to pursue social change as part of the natural course of an industrial society, without the absolutism and fascism of more primitive societies.

My New Website

I've created a new website, and not sure what the content theme is going to be. Right now I've got a few travel stories on it. http://lanceville-antarctica.appspot.com/

Notes to myself on rationalism

1. Rationalism's root word is ratio.

2. Rationalism is not just a philosophical branch talked about amongst humans, but also can be thought of as the environs of semiotics. Ratios provide a perpetual disequilibrium in which all 'things' (ideas and tangibles) must co-habitate in a system of unequal relativism, that shifts and morphs those inequalities over time.

3. The Boethian Wheel is a political/economic expression of this semiotic rational universe operating in constant perpetual disequilibrium.

4. Is Pragmatism equivalent to Rationalism?

5. Is American Pragmatism an economic, cultural embodiment of Rationalism?

6. Is American Pragmatism so repugnant to ideologues because it operates with the dynamism of ratios?

7. Perpetual disequilibrium and American Pragmatism does not necessarily have to equate to an evil, dystopic chaos.

8. Ideologues, usually humanistic and religious or communistic, have 'made bank' in the 20th century by propagating derivatives of Rationalism as evil, and promoting a more static, safe but (in my opinion) untenable and unsafe economic culture ( this propaganda often reveres more primitive cultures such as Native Americans or European peasants ) .

9. The core disease introduced by these ideologues has been irrationalism. Mysticism, which is impervious to facts (empiricism).

10. Empiricism is the brake and steering wheel of Rationalism ( the one operating in the semiotic universe, managing the decline and ascendance of 'things' ). It is the feedback loop. Mysticism throws away the feedback loop. Mysticism creates within humans an ability to keep marching on in service to an idea even when facts are coming in showing the idea is a bad one.

11. It is this quality of Mysticism that is driving the nihilism of Islamic terrorists and violent criminals.

12. 'Religion' does not have to equate to 'Mysticism'. There is an ancient etymology in which Rationalism is the religion. See Logos. In his book, "Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea." Charles Seife notes that the Greek word for 'ratio' was 'logos'. Thus the translation of John 1:1 reads: "In the beginning, there was the ratio, and the ratio was with God, and the ratio was God."