No Shining Path

Posted on January 5, 2019 by leslie

President Martin Vizcarra, con el primer Consejo de Ministros

No Shining Path

by Bill Hartley

In Peru, the latest accessory for a high profile police detainee is a bullet proof vest. A recent edition of El Comercio, the country’s main broadsheet newspaper, carried a front page photograph of David Cornejo Chinguel, mayor of Chiclayo, a city in the north of the country. Chinguel was flanked by two police officers, his vest bearing the word detenido. Predictably enough the mayor was being investigated for corruption which is endemic in this country among the political classes.

There is a bribery scandal brewing across the South American continent which has gone largely unreported in the British media. According to a recent Reuters report, the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht has struck a deal with Peruvian authorities to pay a multi-million dollar fine that will allow it to continue operating in the country in return for providing evidence on the officials it bribed. Odebrecht has been at the centre of Latin America’s largest graft scandal since admitting in a 2016 plea deal with US, Brazilian and Swiss authorities that it had bribed officials in a dozen countries, including $30 million distributed in Peru alone. Continue reading →

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Interview with the Paleolibertarian

Posted on December 31, 2018 by leslie

Interview with the Paleolibertarian

Big League Politics meets Ilana Mercer

BIG LEAGUE POLITICS: Being a preeminent paleolibertarian thinker today, how would you define paleolibertarianism and how does it differ from standard paleoconservatism?

ILANA MERCER: First, let’s define libertarianism. Libertarianism is concerned with the ethics of the use of force. Nothing more. This, and this alone, is the ambit of libertarian law. All libertarians must respect the non-aggression axiom. It means that libertarians don’t initiate aggression against non-aggressors, not even if it’s “for their own good,” as neoconservatives like to cast America’s recreational wars of choice. If someone claims to be a libertarianism and also supports the proxy bombing of Yemen, or supported the war in Iraq; he is not a libertarian, plain and simple.

As to paleolibertarianism, in particular, this is my take, so some will disagree. It’s how I’ve applied certain principles week-in, week-out, for almost two decades. In my definition, a paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the just-mentioned libertarian non-aggression principle, by which all decent people should live, won’t endure.

Ironically, paleoconservatives have no issue grasping the cultural and civilizational dimensions of ordered liberty—namely that the libertarian non-aggression principle is peculiar to the West and won’t survive once western civilization is no more. Which is why, for paleoconservatives, immigration restrictionism is a no-brainer. Continue reading →

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Keeping up with the Kushners

Posted on December 27, 2018 by leslie

Jared and Ivanka Kushner

Keeping up with the Kushners

 by Ilana Mercer 

In itself, criminal justice reform for non-violent offenders is not anathema to Trump’s libertarian supporters. For what it symbolizes in the broader political context, however, the passing of the First Step Act—as the criminal justice reform bill is called—is an abomination.

Good or bad, the First Step Act is Jared Kushner’s baby. And Kushner, Trump’s liberal son-in-law, should not be having legislative coups! Yes, Jared and Ivanka are on a tear. The midterm congressional elections of President Trump’s first-term have culminated in a legislative victory for an anemic man, who provides a perfect peg on which to hang the ambitions of the forceful first daughter.

In no time at all have Jared and Ivanka Trump moved to consolidate power. This, as intellects like Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller were either fired, or confined to the basement, so to speak. By January, 2017, the president’s former White House chief strategist had already “assembled a list of more than 200 executive orders to issue in the first 100 days. The very first EO, in his view, had to be a crackdown on immigration. After all, it was one of Trump’s core campaign promises.” So said Bannon to Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Today, Bannon is just a flinty glint in Ivanka’s eyes. Continue reading →

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Their Best are Yet to Come

Posted on December 20, 2018 by leslie

Their Best are Yet to Come

by Ilana Mercer

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used to trace outbreaks to Patient Zero, the index case—the first patient to get, then transmit, a disease. But is this government agency doing due diligence in the cases of the polio-like paralysis infecting hundreds of America’s kids?

By the dictionary’s telling, epidemiology is “the branch of medicine that deals with the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations.” By WND’s telling, “the diagnosis of the first cases of AFM, acute flaccid myelitis, in 2014,” coincided with the dispersal of thousands of Central American children among U.S. school children. More conspicuous at that time “was an outbreak of a deadly respiratory illness” that put hundreds of America’s children in intensive care. “Both types of symptoms can probably be caused by enterovirus D68, which happens to be endemic in Central America,” opines Dr. Jane Orient.

Are the state’s epidemiologists—whose job it is to trace and terminate outbreaks of contagious diseases—following these connections? An outbreak necessitates the tracing of “Patient Zero,” the “single individual who bears the unknowing responsibility for having introduced the disease” to a certain population.

The same taxpayer-funded medical sleuths impressively tracked down the index case in the AIDS epidemic in North America. As documented in the late Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On, he was Gaetan Dugas, a dashing, promiscuous, Canadian flight attendant, who had had approximately 1,000 sexual partners. Continue reading →

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Oral History

Posted on December 16, 2018 by leslie

School Children in the Woodland, by Carl Spitzweg

Oral History

Hansel and Gretel; märchenspiel (fairy tale) in three acts, music by Engelbert Humperdinck, libretto in German by Adelheid Wette, after the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel by the Brothers Grimm, directed and designed by Antony McDonald, orchestra conducted by Sebastian Weigle, Royal Opera, Thursday 13th December 2018, reviewed by Leslie Jones

Hansel and Gretel was premiered at Weimar on 23rd December 1893, with Richard Strauss, no less, conducting. As Antony McDonald observes, it is ubiquitous in German opera houses at this time of the year (Opera interview, Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times, Dec 9th 2018). McDonald’s new production is conceived as “an enchanting piece” for families, particularly for “first-time opera goers” (Official Programme). Several commentators think that it should therefore be sung in English.

This latest version of the fairy tale opera has its sinister side. The opening setting is ostensibly idyllic. We behold a mountain chalet with an oven and a chimney emitting smoke. It is supper time. Hansel and Gretel and their parents Gertrud and Peter are gathered round the kitchen table. The Little White House and the Little Red House at Birkenau, former farmhouses, came to mind. Continue reading →

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ENDNOTES, December 2018

Posted on December 14, 2018 by leslie

Gerald Finzi

ENDNOTES, December 2018

Endnotes, December 2018; in this edition, orchestral works by Gerald Finzi and Kenneth Hesketh, reviewed by Stuart Millson

The longing which infuses Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony and the mysterious romanticism of John Ireland combine in the music of Gerald Finzi (1901-56). Newly issued from Chandos Records comes a Finzi collection – the Cello Concerto, Op. 40 written at the end of the composer’s life, but contrasted with three other notable pieces, the gentle, pastoral Eclogue,Op. 10 (with Louis Lortie performing the piano part of this miniature concerto), the Nocturne, and the Grand Fantasia and Toccata from 1928. For the Cello Concerto, we have the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis in splendid form; providing the delicate sighs and interplay between orchestral principals and sections, and the cello soloist, Paul Watkins, the former lead cello of that orchestra.

The first movement of the work is a lengthy, endearing dialogue between soloist and ensemble, tinged by a soft evening glow of English impressionism. There is a dramatic, purposeful section close to the end, with its sense of striding across down land or looking out on a magnificent, but disturbing landscape. Continue reading →

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Let’s Mobilize Stone Throwers

Posted on December 11, 2018 by leslie

Israel Defense Forces, Nachshol Reconnaissance Company

Let’s Mobilize Stone Throwers

By Ilana Mercer

In the United States, even Customs and Border Protection apologizes for doing its job. CBP is supposed to “protect[s] the public from dangerous people and materials attempting to cross the border …”

On one of the networks that wants all people, dangerous or not, to cross the southern border into the U.S., if they so desire, a CBP officer was bending over backwards to appear like a “global force for good.” That, believe it or not, was the U.S. Navy’s motto, between 2009 and 2015!

Tear-gassing rubble-rousing migrants, who were charging his officers and breaching the U.S.-Mexico border, was in the service of protecting … the migrants, especially The Children. Perhaps that’s in the oath of office a CBP officer now takes? Continue reading →

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The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

Posted on December 11, 2018 by leslie

Brian Mulroney (centre) November 1988 Federal Election Rally

The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

by Mark Wegierski

It seemed, in the summer of 1987, that Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative federal government was headed for one of the worst defeats in Canadian political history. In many of the 1986 and 1987 polls, the federal P.C. party stood at about a quarter of committed popular support, behind both the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s social democrats. Indeed, the NDP had temporarily surged into first place.

Despite the early hopes placed in him, and an overwhelming majority won in 1984, Mulroney was constantly beset by crises and scandals and had arguably failed to develop any coherent or consistent policies, apart that is from strengthening the status-quo of the previous federal Liberal governments. It appeared that virtually every region, province, or interest group in Canada had in some way been alienated from, or offended by, Mulroney. Sometimes, it seemed that his only true supporters were his business pals, for whose benefit he appeared to make most of his exertions. Continue reading →

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Rebarbarisation

Posted on December 9, 2018 by leslie

Head of Hitler by Arno Breker

Rebarbarisation

Robert Gellately, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich, Oxford University Press, New York, 2018, pp. 383, reviewed by Gregory Slysz

The number of books on the Third Reich or the Second World War could fill several libraries. So overdone has the subject become that one’s lack of excitement at the appearance of another “History” is surely excused. Anything other than the exposure of remaining epic secrets like who killed Poland’s war-time Prime Minister in exile and Commander of its Armed Forces, General Władysław Sikorski, could possibly excite. Or the delivery of a killer blow to the intriguing, yet faintly annoying conspiracy theories concerning Hitler’s whereabouts after the Third Reich’s capitulation. In the event, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich, in providing a chronological “history” across a range of selected themes, did what it said on the tin; but alas, no nuggets or killer blows.

‘A new assessment of the history of the Third Reich’, as its publisher claims, it certainly is not. Nevertheless, we are presented with a perfectly readable account of Nazi Germany from its inception to its demise. After an informative introductory overview of the topics by the editor, Robert Gellately, which is worthy of being a stand-alone essay, there is a chronological history, organised along a set on ten selected chapters, each written by experts in their field. The text is interspersed with numerous photographs, illustrations and other sources which trace Germany’s route from electoral successes, economic ‘miracles’, military triumphs to ultimate defeat at the hands of the Allies. Continue reading →

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Carmen Review – Dance of Death

Posted on December 4, 2018 by leslie

Manolete

Carmen Review – Dance of Death

Carmen; opéra comique in three acts, music composed by Georges Bizet, conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson, libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy after Prosper Mérimée’s novella Carmen, directed by Barrie Kosky, Royal Opera 30th November 2018, reviewed by Leslie Jones 

Carmen, as Richard Langham Smith points out, is essentially an opéra comique, a historical genre in which musical numbers were inserted into a spoken libretto (“Carmen’s Rocky Road to Success”, Official Programme). Acting, not just singing, was at a premium therein. In director Barrie Kosky’s production, accordingly, sections of the text, drawn from Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella and from the libretto, including stage directions, are not sung but recited offstage by a recorded narrator.

Millie Taylor notes that this production is informed by theatre history and “contains multiple reference points” (“Playing with Meaning in the Opera House”). The minimalist set, dominated by a massive stairway, is highly effective and remains unchanged throughout the performance. It brings to mind both the ancient Greek theatre and the Hollywood musical. Continue reading →

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