It is a well-documented fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslim immigrants in Europe, up to 90% in some countries, vote for Leftist parties. I sometimes wonder whether Leftist parties in Europe are in fact "electing a new people," and importing immigrants to create enough welfare clients to ensure continued Leftist victories in elections. This may well account for the unprecedented third straight victory for Labour in Britain, for instance.

I believe Oriana Fallaci has in har latest book pointed out that the Left "is also a Church," in direct opposition to the traditional Church and allied with Islam to get rid of its Judeo-Christian rival:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60405.htm

The problem with the Left, By Ali Sina

Today it is the political Left that is supporting the infiltration of Islam in the West. They see Islam as their ally because Islam is against Judeo-Christianity (Islam is against everything). A good example of that is what happened in Spain when the Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialist government was elected, thanks to the bombing in Madrid. He announced a plan for a "road map" that would treat all religions equally under law. With this he removed all Catholic symbols from public spaces and ended the religious instructions in the schools. He also divested the Catholic Church of the economic and social privileges it had enjoyed traditionally in Spain. At the same time, only weeks after the Madrid bombing in which Muslims massacred nearly two hundred Spaniards, their socialist government opened the gates of Spain to Muslim immigrants. Then this very government that cut all the funds from the Church, started subsidizing mosques. The non-Muslims should work and pay taxes so their government hand that to the Muslims so they can plan the destruction of their country. Is there any insanity bigger than this? Is this not dhimmitude? If the government of Spain was caliphate would it be any different? One must be blind not to see the hidden agenda of Rodriguez Zapatero and his socialist government. The objective is not equality, but the destruction of Judeo-Christian mores. The socialist government of Spain sees Christianity as an obstacle and is doing everything possible to destroy it.

Posted by: Fjordman at April 6, 2006 8:48 AM

PS: I'm writing a post about the Leftist-Islamic voting cooperation in Europe. If anybody has some good links about this, preferably in English, please post them here.

Posted by: Fjordman at April 6, 2006 8:50 AM

OK, now I'm confused. Which side in this arrangement comprises the "Useful Idiots" and which does not?

Posted by: Chatillon at April 6, 2006 8:52 AM

There you go, Paolo: Your partners in crime!

Who guessed it?

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at April 6, 2006 8:53 AM

The socialist government of Spain sees Christianity as an obstacle and is doing everything possible to destroy it.
Posted by: Fjordman

Unfortunately, I can make the same argument about politicians in the US.

Posted by: Ronin at April 6, 2006 9:11 AM

Communists, though not liberal Italian communists, were responsible for more deaths last century than any other political group.

I just did a search of the USC-MSA Quran database to see how many of the Quran's 6000-some verses have one or more of the following words:

hell, fire, boiling, punish, agony, pain, burn, perdition, doom, torment, suffer, woe, awful, terrible, horrible, scourge, warn, fear, retribution

I found 1,025 unique verses (all now linked at my blog) each with one or more of the above-italicized words. So about one in six verses in the Quran points to the terrors of hell. Or perhaps one in seven is a more accurate ratio, since some small minority of the 1,025 don't refer to the Stygian place.

What kind of doctrine is it that seeks so strongly to arouse the fear of hell? Are we to be good mainly because we are terrified of what someone will do to us if we are not good? Isn't it oddly crude of "God" to rely so strongly on this 'carrot and stick' (with a lot of stick) approach? Are we nothing more than animals to be controlled with the promise of pleasure and the threat of pain? What about the nobler possibilities of independence within us? Our deepest desire, though we often lose touch with it, is to love and learn. Is it God who would guide us with whips and temptations? Sounds more diabolical than divine.

- Omar

Posted by: www.islamquest.blogspot.com at April 6, 2006 9:19 AM

Dilberto? Does he have a pet named Catberto?

Posted by: JanuaryMan at April 6, 2006 9:23 AM

"...If communists ever got world power, they would squash islam like a bug, and exterminate every single islamist.."

From a posting above.

If Mohammedans ever get world power, they will squash commies like bugs, and exterminate every single commie..."

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at April 6, 2006 9:26 AM

Both Islamists and Communists desire societies where every aspect of a person's life is monitored and controlled for the "good" of the Group (call it the Ummah or call it the State).

In both Islamism and Communism, the individual is the property of the Group, and expected to work for the goals of the Group. No personal, individual goals are tolerated.

In both Islamism and Communism, there can be no peace with "unbelievers". There can only be peace when Islam/Communism has achieved total global domination.

In both Islamic states and Communist states you have a vast majority of poor peasants working to keep a cynical minority in wealth and power.

Posted by: PapaBear at April 6, 2006 9:49 AM

sheik yer'mami: keep in mind the Hitler/Stalin pact that started World War 2. The plan was to conquer the non-totalitarians first.

The final contest between the two totalitarian systems was to be deferred for the end-game

Posted by: PapaBear at April 6, 2006 9:52 AM

Another common thread: Just like the members of the Public Relations Jihad, communists will tell people whatever they want to hear in order to come into power.

Then, as history has shown in both camps, all bets are off.

Posted by: Shinoliite at April 6, 2006 9:54 AM

The Counterterrorism blog has a link to yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Islamist Extremism in Europe headed by Senator George Allen of Virginia. I don't have a good feeling about it since several of the panelists are from the State Department and just 15 minutes into the testimony, I heard the first witness say something about the "noble religion".

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2006/hrg060405p.html

Click on the underlined title of the hearing on the page to get to the recording.

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at April 6, 2006 9:56 AM

Of course !

The alliance between far left (and moderate left ?) and islamism has been obvious to many people for some time. We have seen it in Paris, quite recently, when the violent "anarchists" called for an alliance with the November 2005 Muslim rioters. Both groups were breaking stuff and claiming their hatred towards the same enemies: the USA, the "Rich", the "bourgeois", the "capitalists", Israel, the West, colonialism, the Jews...

Now a bit of arithmetics. France is the most populated Muslim country in Europe. By 2030, we are told there will be 30 or more % of the population who will be Muslim. We already have 25 % of the people who vote for the socialist party, and about 10 % who vote for diverse communist parties.

When the Muslims become numerous in France, the communists will grow in number. France is already falling down as far as its economy is concerned, because of its unmodern tax system and incapability of reforming its economy. The socialists still lie to people, saying to them they will get richer by working less (less than 35 hours / week as they proposed) and they claim retirement age should be less than 60, whereas all the european countries are making the retirement age higher (cf in Germany).

France is in big trouble as it has already many communists + it has many Muslims. A lot of rich people have already left France because of the "impôt sur la fortune" which is so high you dont have choice, in France: if you are very rich, you must leave. So capital is leaving + more and more educated people will leave France when it grows more communist + Muslim.

I can see a delightful future: communists growing in power, and the extreme right growing in power on the other side as our "traditional" right is not credible anymore (our traditional right being Chirac and his mates...)More and more people will vote for the extreme right, seeing that the moderate right does not support their ideas any longer, does not defend the French values = Western values.

When discussing around me I talk to young people who want to leave France, always the most educated, because they are fed up with the lack of dynamism of France. Now if the brains and if the money leave France, I can't see how we will be able to get out of trouble.

Posted by: joiesauvage at April 6, 2006 10:26 AM

The colors of the "new alliance" seem to all be helpfully represented in the Palestinian flag (as seen in profusion at the latest "peace rallies"): red, green and black. Islam gets two colors: green and black and communism gets one (it only needs one): red.

Behold the formation of the Communist Islamic alliance.

Could it have been stopped? I doubt it, but we have been fools not to try. President Bush along with the Secretaries of State and Defense should have gone to Beslan. We should have made the Big Pitch to Russia then.

Instead, Condi has prattled on about "faith in democracy" and the democratic "process" while the entire world aligns against us and has simply acted like it wasn't and isn't happening.

It's happening.

Posted by: Rebecca JW at April 6, 2006 11:16 AM

1- why couldn't Commies and Islamists get along after one or the other took power in France, or Italy or anywhere else? Certainly, they would get along as long as the one with the upper hand needed the other. Remember the Vichy govt in France from 1940 on. There were quite a few Communists, Trotkyists, and other socialists in the Vichy govt, serving the Nazis. Pierre Laval was a socialist, as was Marcel Deat [also a pre-war peace-monger], Jacques Doriot [or was he a Commie?], etc.
2- Roberto Hamza Piccardo was, I believe, an ultra-leftist years ago who converted to the party of the militant proletarian vanguard, cioe`, Islam.
Carlo Panella discusses his Judeophobia in Il Complotto Ebraico [2005].

3-The Bolsheviks declared their sympathy and solidarity with Muslims, even in cases where genocide had been perpetrated by Muslims against non-Muslims [dhimmis]. This was announced in an "Appeal to the Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East" written and published by Stalin's Commisariat of Nationlities in late 1917. Here is a link:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/10/bolsheviks-for-jihad-genocide-stalins.html

Posted by: Eliyahu at April 6, 2006 11:26 AM

Fjordman:

This may well account for the unprecedented third straight victory for Labour in Britain, for instance.

No, I don't think so. Certainly, Muslims are more likely to vote for Labour as being most "left" (however we understand that term) - and, therefore, "useful idiots".

But I doubt that has the deciding factor in the past three elections. More important, I'd suggest has been:

1. the sheer feebleness of the alternative - the Conservative Party.
2. The fact that the Conservatives, after a good run in government themselves, became mired in "sleaze" and were responsible for "Black Wednesday" - the ERM debacle - which put a huge question mark against their previous reputation for economic competance.
3. Psephological factors: the UK uses a "first past the post system", which is good from many points of view, but which currently works against the Conservatives in terms of where the boundaries are drawn and what the distribution of population is.
4. The internal tensions in the UK - specifically the English-Scottish one. (This is connected to the last point.) Many Scots undoubtedly vote Labour because it is perceived as an anti-English vote and Scottish constituencies are weighted to give more clout to Scotland in the UK as a whole.
5. The undoubted political talents of Tony Blair. He's probably outlived his shelf-life now, but he is a consumate political operator who has played off forces within the country - and within his own party - with a high degree of skill.

The Labour movement is a curious animal. It has been not so much a Marxist (or even socialist) movement as quite literally a labour movement - not tied up with leftist ideology so much as simply a movement seeking to advance the sectional interests of labour. There were also interesting connections with Nonconformist Christianity. Besides, socialism in Britain has often had an element of cultural conservatism in it - just the way things go here. So-called "New Labour" is perhaps neither in tune with socialism nor with the traditional Labour movement of working men - it is the creation of smart but rather shallow people with middle-class left-liberal establishment attitudes.

Posted by: Yojimbo at April 6, 2006 1:19 PM

Fjordman:

I believe Oriana Fallaci has in har latest book pointed out that the Left "is also a Church ...

That's another good point. IIRC, she also says that some 95% of converts to Islam come from a hard-left background. That's no accident. As daveconcerned points out above they're "in the same business".

I suggest it is also interesting to look not merely at the content of the different ideologies/theologies in terms of ideas here, but also to consider the interests advancing behind them - as Lenin put it, the who/whom question.

This is not to say that either socialism or Islam is not believed in - that either is merely a mask. Clearly, people do believe them. It is, rather, to make the point that these ideologies do serve certain emotions and that is part of their attraction. It is also a reason for their adherents not to question them - which is why any rationally-based criticism is of limited use. It's like water off a duck's back: people who don't want to hear it won't. At most, they'll develop a sub-explanation to deal with criticism - a little Ptolemaic epicycle.

Anyway, here is a good essay on the nature of totalitarianism which I posted the other day - it's worth a second posting:

The root of totalitarianism

Posted by: Yojimbo at April 6, 2006 1:34 PM

New Labour has a marked streak of Stalinism, not to say polypragmosynisticism.

Posted by: Interested at April 6, 2006 1:37 PM

The Dictionary of New Words offers a variant spelling: "polypragmocynicism."

Posted by: Hugh at April 6, 2006 1:41 PM

Yojimbo is quite right, as so often, and I might add that Labour is also the party of reference for the British Catholic churches (there are three of those, England's, Scotland's, and Ireland's - accounting for Northern Ireland - each with its own hierarchy). Yer'mami, as usual, is deaf to anything but the sound of his own voice. As I explained a while back, the issue is which part of the ragtag alliance that used Prodi as a figurehead will prevail: the left-Catholics, or the Zapateristas. The point is that the criminal Hamza Piccardo, who is directly responsible for the fatwa against Magdi Allam's life, and his UCOII, who are the Islamic Brotherhood branch in Italy, have ordered their followers to vote for one specific party within the coalition: Diliberto's Communists, one of two separate Communist parties in what I call the Zapaterista wing of the alliance.

Now bear in mind that Piccardo is a liar. He is not saying what he really means. He knows that there are not enough Muslims in Italy to tilt an election. What he wants is to alter power relationships within the left to Diliberto's advantage. He is not telling his sheep to vote for the Left Coalition, which is what is going to win or lose the election, but to vote for a specific party within it. And of all parties, that one! Diliberto is a nasty little freak, the worst Zapaterista of the lot, a man who calls Bush a murderer and who shakes Fidel Castro's hand, and he has been distinguishing himself throughout the election for appalling rhetoric and disastrous choices. This endorsement may help him, or he may not; the leader of the other Communist party, Bertinotti, has been playing good citizen and responsible leader of late, and it might be that the Italian Communist base, which is well known not like Muslim immigration, might turn to him instead than to Diliberto - which would please me. (Of course I would rather have neither Diliberto nor Bertinotti, who are both creeps and lead creepy parties, but having to choose...)

In fact, if Piccardo really wanted the Left to win, he would have worn his mouth zipped. Very few Muslims would have voted for Berlusconi in any case after the League's antics (and never mind that Berlusconi tried to shut Giovannardi up and threw what's-his-name out of the government for wearing Danish cartoon t-shirts); and Piccardo and his lot are widely unpopular, even among Muslims (Magdi Allam estimates that only 5% of Italian Muslim immigrants are aligned with them) and have been very effectively and successfully held up to public detestation by Magdi Allam's single-minded campaign. Piccardo knows this; so why did he expose himself? Clearly, in order to play power games within the Left. I do not think he is seriously interested in who wins or who loses, especially since the majority of both sides is Catholic. What he wants is for the Zapateristas to prevail over the Catholic left.

Indeed, Piccardo knows that, if Berlusconi plays this up, it might actually win him votes, especially among unhappy Catholics. And that might actually help Piccardo, Diliberto, and the Zapateristas. Five more years of obscene Berlusconi misgovernment would radicalize a whole new generation of Italian voters; and they would give time for more Muslims to gain citizenship and the vote. Winning now, the Zapaterista left risks losing out to the Catholics and moderates, from which they do not dare to move away (as Bertinotti disastrously did ten years ago) for fear of letting Berlusconi in. Piccardo and Diliberto do not like the left as it is; they want to radicalize it and marginalize the Catholics.

Either way, eyer'silli would do well to shut his trap about things he knows nothing of. If he heard anything except the sound of his own windy words, he would have heard me saying and repeating in several comments: "the whole Italian political class stinks on ice. But Berlusconi is a catastrophe on legs, and he has to go." Just as five more years of opposition would enable the maniacs on the left to overwhelm the sane people, so a good sound electoral defeat would allow Fini and Casini to finally get rid of Berlusconi, whom they regard with a contempt they no longer even bother to disguise.

A final note: it might well happen that in the event of an inconclusive election, the League abandoned Berlusconi and made a deal with the moderate Left. They have clearly said that in case of defeat they will abandon the right coalition in any case. This might well bring about the interesting situation of Bossi and Diliberto in the same majority.

Posted by: Paolo at April 6, 2006 1:43 PM

New Labour has a marked streak of Stalinism, not to say polypragmosynisticism.

On the first:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/05/do0502.xml

On the second:

Isn't just about everyone up to that - or did I misunderstand what it signified?

Posted by: Yojimbo at April 6, 2006 1:51 PM

Yojimbo, this increasingly overly-suffixed word has been drawn to the attention of Roots, a New Labour approved quango, for potential breach of the EU Affix Directive(Suffixes)2005.

More on polypragmonix here.

Posted by: Interested at April 6, 2006 2:03 PM

Thanks.

Athenians....were temperamentally, polypragmones

And yet Pericles says in the funeral oration, "The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and do not nag our neighbour if he chooses to go his own way ..."

On the other hand, everybody does tend to miss the part of that speech that talks about what your link describes as Athens' "dynamic imperialism".

Blair is dreadful, but fairness obliges me to remark that Cameron would be no better - didn't he complain about chocolate oranges? What the hell is it to do with him what people eat and what they pay for what they choose to eat?

Posted by: Yojimbo at April 6, 2006 2:21 PM

Robert made an interesting observation:

"The Great Soviet Encyclopedia has this quite wrong; in its entry on Islam, it says it is just another expression of the religious impulse to transfer justice to the next world and make people content with injustice on earth. But in fact Islam is not this way at all: the jihad aims to establish an earthly polity in which justice is established by force, with draconian punishments for those who do not fall into line. The resemblance to the earthly utopia of the Marxists is unmistakeable"

The philosopher Eric Voegelin -- one of the preeminent diagnosticians of the Communist pathology -- coined the term immanentization of the eschaton to describe the project of Communism and Nazism (among other, less successful, modern movements). While Islam clearly seems to have a version of this kind of "modern Gnostic" project, the differences are interesting too: not just Islam's ostensible theism and religiousity, but more specifically, its retention of a transcendent eschaton and of what the German theologians call a konsequente Eschatologie (an eschatology that looks forward to an end of history caused pleromatically by God, not by man alone, in the future).

Clearly, Islam theorizes and institutionalizes an immanentization of the eschaton on many levels; but somehow they have been able to fuse this with an orthodox transcendent eschatology without compromising the latter -- and perhaps the key to Islam's ability to galvanize and brainwash multitudes (possibly superior to that of both Communism and Nazism) is to be found in this fusion of immanent triumphalist militarism within history, with the event that will mark the final intersection of transcendence and history, Al-Malhamah Al-Kubrah (the "Great Battle" at the end of time, aka Armageddon). All of history seems to be regarded in Islam as a protracted struggle that prefigures, and perhaps integrally ushers in, the final battle after which Allah will reward all Muslims with eternal release (including lots of cool grapes and pearly boys in shaded gardens) from their incessant tension of jihad.

Posted by: Television at April 6, 2006 3:38 PM

""The colors of the "new alliance" seem to all be helpfully represented in the Palestinian flag (as seen in profusion at the latest "peace rallies"): red, green and black. Islam gets two colors: green and black and communism gets one (it only needs one): red."

Alexander del Valle wrote an interesting essay about the new coalescing colors:

"The Reds, The Browns and the Greens
or
The Convergence of Totalitarianisms"

[Reds = Communists and radical Leftists; Browns = ultra-right including neo-Nazis; Greens = Muslim jihadists]

http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=70406

Posted by: Television at April 6, 2006 3:55 PM

Eric Voegelin -- one of the preeminent diagnosticians of the Communist pathology -- coined the term immanentization of the eschaton to describe the project of Communism and Nazism

Voegelin deals with Mohammed in The Ecumenic Age. A trenchant and undeceived analysis, as one would expect, but he has little to say. I guess Islam was pretty much off most people's radar back in 1974 when that book was published.

Posted by: Yojimbo at April 6, 2006 4:18 PM

"Five more years of obscene Berlusconi misgovernment would radicalize a whole new generation of Italian voters; and they would give time for more Muslims to gain citizenship and the vote."

You have a very perverted way of interpreting facts. Reading your posts is like listening to Prodi talking. Smoke.

5 years of Berlusconi means 5 years of this same immigration law that kept a good numbers of muslim far from italy. Right now, immigrants have to want 10 years for citizenship even if they marry an italian. I don't see how this can change with 5 years of the right in charge.

5 years of your dear left means immediate law that grants citizenship to immigrants born on italian soil.

Plus, the northern league recently stated in every form possible that there's no way they will ally with the left. The left is already planning to throw away devolution.

It's a real shame that italian politics are explained by such a misinformed, communist, manipulator and liar subcriber.

Posted by: poisonr at April 6, 2006 4:25 PM

"didn't he complain about chocolate oranges? What the hell is it to do with him what people eat and what they pay for what they choose to eat?"

Half-price Chocolate Oranges?
Where?
I paid £1.99 for one on Monday, and I've hardly had any of it myself.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at April 6, 2006 5:27 PM

And to the rest of the JW readership: I would dearly love to have a decent conservative alliance to vote for, because I am a classic "liberal mugged by reality". But as long as Berlusconi is the leader of the right alliance in Italy, no honest man can vote for them. That does not concern Poisonr, since he has no honesty of any kind. It is typical of his kind, as of his leader, that they anyone who disagrees with him a Communist - even someone who, like me, has just, in this very thread, called the Communist leaders "creeps who lead creepy parties" and one of them "a nasty little freak" with "appalling rhetoric and disastrous choices". This is the kind of mind that follows the crook-in-chief. That is one good reason to hope for his defeat: if they ever got rid of him, a credible conservative alliance might emerge.

Posted by: Paolo at April 6, 2006 5:33 PM

Whole lot of Voegelin at this thread. Is Ellis Sandoz by any chance contributing to the discussion? If so, please send a note to Robert. Include relationship, if any, to Mari Sandoz, author of "The Maze," and Profesor Sandoz who was brought by Agassiz to join him at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ).

Posted by: Hugh at April 6, 2006 6:15 PM

Ah yes, you're quite right about the browns (sorry, I don't have time to look back through for your name) Brown and green are the colors of earth (materialism and earthly utopianism), while blue and white are the colors of the sky, the colors of transcendence, the colors of where we are going, not where we have been, of looking up, not looking down. It's interesting. The red in our flag (if I remember correctly) is for courage and valor. It was created back in the quaint old days when colors stood for abstract virtues, not earthly political movements.

Posted by: Rebecca JW at April 6, 2006 7:48 PM

Paolo:

You've raised some, what are for me, interesting points concerning the Italian political scene. Apparently you've also touched some nerves as well.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall reading anything about viable alternatives to the present government. A defeat for Berlusconi is not necessarily an opening for an improved political climate to face down and defeat jihad. There must be someone or some group that you see as being honest enough, motivated enough and popular enough to fill the gap. Who are they?

Posted by: Chatillon at April 6, 2006 7:48 PM

Yojimbo, you're right about The Ecumenic Age (Voegelin also briefly mentions Islam in his seminal Science, Politics and Gnosticism). Voegelin analyzed a lot for one man (ancient Egypt, Israel, China, classical Greek philosophy and its subsequent decomposition, medieval heresies, philosophies of history in the West, and the movements of modern Gnosticism); I guess he didn't consider Islam that important for his main concern, the recovery of classic philosophy, and the effects of "pneumopathology" on the Western conscious.

Hugh, I don't know about Sandoz's relations. My impression of the Voegelinians from their official forum is that, other than Frederick Wagner, they consider Islam to be a peripheral problem nestled in more central problems emanating out of a diseased West (a topic sure to endear them to Ramadanian Muslim scholars). Only one Voegelinian has seen fit to write about Islamic terrorism: Barry Cooper, New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism. I've not read it, but synopses of it, and a brief response by the author to a query of mine, seem to indicate that he, like so many others, considers any problems arising out of Islam to be aberrant, modern fruit from an essentially good (no doubt "Abrahamic") stock. The thought that Islam might be rotten to the core seems to be about as unthinkable to so many as the thought that there are cities on Mars.

Posted by: Television at April 6, 2006 7:59 PM

Islam will aid any group undermining the West.

I'm sure they are secretly funding the globe-trotting, free-floating 'anarchists' (how a "group of anarchists" can band together without laughing themselves into non-existence by the ludricrous internal self-contradiction inherent in the concept, I have never been able to grasp... it's as absurd as "a gathering of hermits"...), anti-WTO'ers, "anti-imperialists", etc.

Whoever throws a monkey wrench ("spanner" in the U.K.) into the West's works, Mohammedans will surely promote.

We need to counter these efforts by sowing similar kinds of chaos inside Islam. Sponsoring offshoot Sufis, Ahmadis, etc., to splinter this battering ram of a 'religion' to toothpicks.

The Sunni / Shi'ite schism is a hopeful sign.

Posted by: profitsbeard at April 6, 2006 8:33 PM

Yojimbo -

3 Psephological factors: the UK uses a "first past the post system", which is good from many points of view, but which currently works against the Conservatives in terms of where the boundaries are drawn and what the distribution of population is.

4 The internal tensions in the UK - specifically the English-Scottish one. (This is connected to the last point.) Many Scots undoubtedly vote Labour because it is perceived as an anti-English vote and Scottish constituencies are weighted to give more clout to Scotland in the UK as a whole.

Useful analysis, but remember that the Boundary Commission decides on constituencies in the UK and has frequently proved itself to be, robustly, free of Paliamentary interference under its current operating form defined by the legislation in force at the moment.

Many Scots vote Labour because Scotland is, thanks to the last Tory administration, a country in the UK which was badly hit by the Thatcherite agenda. Unemployment is still the major fear of many working class Scots.

The SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) - a left-wing party - has not gained, and probably will not gain, a majority at Holyrood: nationalism is not the issue, economic circumstances are, I believe, the real driving force behind the way that people vote in Scotland. Toryism is perceived as inimical to the interests of the Scottish working class, probably, given their recent experience, correctly.

I own property in Scotland and spend a substantial proportion of each year there. I do not detect an England versus Scotland divide such as you imply (if I understand you correctly), but I do detect a deepseated worry over the long-term viability of the unique Scottish culture. Almost invariably, these days, my Highland staff seem to me to be more worried about the encroaching influence of cultures that they seem to regard as truly alien, particularly mohammedanism. Of course, I may be influencing their analysis due to my well known views on the subject, but the strength, and the manner in which, these opinions which are expressed in my company lead me to assume that my opinions carry only moderate weight - Scots are nothing if not independent thinkers!

Posted by: Certiorari at April 6, 2006 10:05 PM

Holyrood, for those who do not know already, is the home of the Scottish Parliament (in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland). My apologies for using British verbal shorthand on an international site like this.

Posted by: Certiorari at April 6, 2006 10:10 PM

If communists ever got world power, they would squash islam like a bug, and exterminate every single islamist.
Posted by: moderationist at April 6, 200609:09AM
++++++++++++

Ladies, Gentlemen and Rogues:

The cult of Islam is a cancer that infects and devours all hosts that allows it within their borders be it democratic, communistic, dictatorial, etc.

The communists will fall under the cancer of islam just like all other nations that have so far fallen to the cancer of islam.

There are two answers to the spread of the cancer of islam.

Answer One:
Total removal of muslims from each country, isolation of the muslims to only islamic nations and destruction of any islamic sect that does not obey the common laws of humanity.

Answer Two:
This will not happen because the cancer of islamic pc has infected the civilized western nations so we will be forced to fight a war within America and across the globe to eradicate the cancer that is islam.

Prepare, be armed be ready.

The Texican.
Freedom, the only choice at any cost.

Posted by: Texican at April 6, 2006 10:23 PM

Scots are nothing if not independent thinkers!
Posted by: Certiorari at April 6, 2006 10:05 PM
++++++++++

This must be due to that foul tasting Scotch whiskey that the Scots drink… I've swallowed tank water that tasted better. Real whiskey is made in Tennessee by Jack Daniels and others.

Posted by: Texican at April 6, 2006 10:30 PM

Chatillon: thanks for your courteous tone and interest. There certainly is a viable and experienced opposition in Italy, which has governed before now - and governed, not well, but much better than the dreadful Berlusconi. Its main components are the Democratic Left, a party made of the majority of Italy's old Communist Party (which was not really Communist) and what I call the left-Catholics, whose leaders are Prodi and Rome's ex-mayor Rutelli. (There was also a faction led by the former Central Bank head Dini, but I no longer hear of them these days.) The two Communist parties, like a similar phenomenon to the Right, have split from the Democratic Left, and from each other, when the majority of the party declared the end of Communism in name as well as fact. Unfortunately, a particularly noxious electoral law, designed by Berlusconi for his own advantage, forces these parties of the moderate left to make pacts with what I call the Zapateristas: Communists, Greens (particularly factious and useless in Italy) and the crazed and unreliable Radicals, who supported Berlusconi until a short time ago. This makes the whole alliance quite scary.

An important element in Italian politics has been the powerful self-assertion of the Church. Last year, the Church unexpectedly and triumphantly managed to shut down a referendum on assisted fertilization, both of whose terms it opposed, by convincing 75% of the electorate to stay home. This had NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE in the country's history - Italians regard voting as a civic duty, like paying tax, and regularly turn out in 70%, 80%, 90% of qualified voters. This crushing victory made it clear what both coalitions already knew, that you do not govern in Italy without the consensus of the Catholic population. On the other hand, it also embittered and radicalized Radicals, Greens and Communists, who now have it as their first order of business to break the Catholic Church by fair means or foul.

Neither coalition is properly Catholic. Among the right, Berlusconi is notorious as a pornographer and as a man who got rid of the mother of his children to marry a blonde twenty years his junior - and who still has a priapic drive that would put a Kennedy to shame. Fini, the Nationalist, is by nature an anti-clerical, and was against the Church on the referendums matter. Bossi, the League leader, is a self-proclaimed Pagan. Both groupings are competing for the Catholic vote, but the left has the disadvantage that the electoral law has forced it into the embrace of Zapaterista frighteners.

A feature of the contest that should be of interest to open-minded JW readers is that the Church has been warning the public at all levels against the danger of Muslim penetration. This means that whoever wants the Catholic vote cannot be seen to be too openly dhimmi. That is why, after five years of unrestrained dhimmitude, we have suddenly seen Berlusconi accepting Fini's proposal to offer asylum to Abdul Rahman: one of the issues on which the Catholic masses are most aware is the treatment of Christians in Muslim countries.

This is the only important feature in the whole contest. I regard both coalitions as poisonous. Each has a few good men surrounded by a morass of mediocrities and a great deal of crooks and monsters. The reason why I want Berlusconi out is that he is bad even by such stinking company, and that if he is defeated in an election, a relatively better man such as Fini might finally get rid of him and seize control of the right coalition. What matters is that politicians, being in search of votes, should accept the public's growing concern about Islam. This is what I said to the rage of that Berlusconite: another five years of Berlusconi would mean that the majority of the Italian public would regard getting rid of him as so desperately necessary a priority, that they would willingly make a deal with the Devil to get him out. That was a mood I saw and experienced in Britain in 1997, when people would vote for ANYONE who was not a Tory. And there are plenty of devils around willing to cut deals.

Posted by: Paolo at April 7, 2006 1:17 AM

Oh, I forgot: to make matters clearer, I would say that the Zapaterista left could come to about 15% of the total electorate - about 10% for the Communists, less than 5% for the Greens, and less than 2% for the Radicals, who never were more than a ginger group. But of course, with a fully proportional system with no provision for voting for individuals at all - in the current system, you vote for party lists alone - that much can easily make the difference between victory and defeat. You can see the poisonous results of an uncorrected, party-list-based fully proportional system in Israeli politics.

(My solution would be to separate the government from Parliament, in the American fashion, having the head of the executive directly elected by the public for a fixed term, and, as in America, unify the offices of President and Prime Minister. Also, I would abolish one of the two chambers of the Italian Parliament, who do nothing but waste time. But these are not popular ideas.)

Posted by: Paolo at April 7, 2006 1:30 AM

Since Paolo mentioned the Israeli elections, it ought to be repeated over and over that last week's election had the highest rate of abstention of any election to the Knesset since the founding of the state, much higher than last time [2003]. People, especially youth, are fed up with the politicians of all parties. As a joke, many young people in the Tel Aviv area voted for the Pensioners' party, which has been running for years and never got in to the Knesset. The Pensioners' got seven seats out of 120 in the Knesset. Just to show how fed up people are. One humorist argued that the biggest party in this election was the abstainers. I think that this attitude was a mistake and I voted for Likud and Netanyahu, aware that he is not perfect, but certainly the best that we have to deal with our problems [immensely increased by the "peace process" and Oslo, etc.]. Netanyahu is the one who best understands the worldwide situation, who has a vision of the future, understands economics, etc.
Olmert's party got only 29 out of 120 Knesset seats, less than 1/4. The upshot of the election results is that Olmert is not a legitimate prime minister and has no mandate to make any radical change, whether economically or in the territories of Judea-Samaria. He may be subject soon to revelations of corruption, by the state controller and, God Willing, he may be charged.

Posted by: Eliyahu at April 7, 2006 4:44 AM

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Poisonr - like everyone taken in by Berlusconi, you are constitutionally incapable of reasoning, deprived of any understanding of democracy, and subtle as a charging rhino. It really must suck to be you. Meanwhile, read the newspapers, you dolt.

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Now this of course is something to ponder. Very intelligent, and without the subtlety of a charging Rhino as well.

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Aggiungo, lercio berlusconiano infame, che da ora in poi rifiuto anche di commentare le tue missive idiote. D'ora in poi, parla al vento, "coglione".

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You should be banned from this forum asap, in my humble opinion.

Posted by: roguereligion at April 7, 2006 7:35 AM

I will add Paolo, that I find your spreading of misinformation on this site amusing. I only wonder if you are here to prove that this site is made of extremists, like Muslims want to prove, or you are an extremist yourself.

In both cases, I consider your assertions, overall, merely something to be skipped.

Posted by: roguereligion at April 7, 2006 7:39 AM

Paolo:

Thanks for your detailed explanation. The point that still is vague to me, and concerning, is who exactly would replace Berlusconi.

As the story in Matthew goes, if you cast out one devil without providing a healthy substitute, that bad guy will return with seven others even worse, and the conditions all around will be worse than before.

If, as you say, the structure of the Italian government is the problem, then this only exacerbates the problem of getting decent people into office. It appears to me that the only solution in the short term, is grass roots involvement of the electorate to wrest back control of the government from corrupted politicians, perhaps with the sponsorship of the Church, a la Solidarnosc.

Posted by: Chatillon at April 7, 2006 9:47 AM

"Poisonr - like everyone taken in by Berlusconi, you are constitutionally incapable of reasoning, deprived of any understanding of democracy, and subtle as a charging rhino. It really must suck to be you. Meanwhile, read the newspapers, you dolt."

incapable of reasoning? said by who? you?

understanding of democracy? suck to be me?

what will you whine when the left will let in every single muslim on the planet, granting citizenship?

reading the newspapers? the ones controlled by the left? well they all say that muslim loves commies, you are in the very good company of the ones like you. And judging from your language and low level of insulting, I guess you will join some muslim riot burning flags and similar. Italy needs people like yourself. Start your fund raising for the next mosque. Muslim love communists like yourself. It's written above.

Posted by: poisonr at April 7, 2006 10:00 AM

"You should be banned from this forum asap, in my humble opinion."

thanks for the support roguereligion, but I suppose this is the liberal way paolo has to deal with matters. Similar way is expressed by the left when they devastate and burn Manpower offices or Blockbuster shops.

If this is the kind of people that are on the other side opposed to Berlusconi the pornographer (strange he didn't say the pedophile), you can see our difficulties.

Posted by: poisonr at April 7, 2006 10:08 AM

Chatillon: the issue, really, is who will win the struggle for power within the left. I speak of the Zapateristas and the left-Catholics as the two poles. One of them must prevail in some ways. I have said little about the Democratic Left, which is numerically the largest part of the Left, because I do not think they themselves know where they stand. These men never were Communist in the real, sober, scary sense of believing in a violent revolution and working for tyranny; since the seventies at least, they have realized that they are more at home in a liberal democracy, and have worked, and occasionally bled (at the hands of Red Brigades and NAP terrorists) for it.

At the same time, however, they have a deep-seated nostalgia for the certainties of a revolutionary past that never really existed. You can feel it in our greatest artists - singers like Ivano Fossati or Francesco Guccini, moviemakers like Nanni Moretti - they all express a sick attraction to the idea of an impossible renewal of society. Guccini is as great a singer as Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen, his songs are craggy and breathtaking, and yet one of his greatest successes is "La Locomotiva", which is a hymn to terrorism.

I really and truly do not know in which direction the left would go if they won power. Prodi is a figurehead; he has no power outside his own party, and even in it he is threatened by the younger, thrusting and unprincipled Rutelli (a man whose extraordinary career path began among the Radicals and has now led him straight into the lap of Cardinal Ruini, the Pope's right-hand man). He would be Prime Minister, but the question is ultimately in which direction the Democratic Left, whose leaders are D'Alema and Fassino, would want to go. There is somewhere in the soul of these men a suspicion that the Communists proper have a moral superiority over them, that they are the tough and pure, the revolutionaries, and I do not feel comfortable about the depth of their belief in democracy and the West.

Posted by: Paolo at April 7, 2006 10:38 AM

"Thanks for the support roguereligion, but I suppose this is the liberal way paolo has to deal with matters. Similar way is expressed by the left when they devastate and burn Manpower offices or Blockbuster shops.

If this is the kind of people that are on the other side opposed to Berlusconi the pornographer (strange he didn't say the pedophile), you can see our difficulties."

No problem at all. Besides, if you notice, Nanni Moretti, Ivano Fossati, and Francesco Guccini, are our greatest artists! I cannot even begin to ask myself when this did happen. Probably I wasn't around. Probably, it wasn't even in this space-time continuum.

The matter here with Paolo, as far as I can tell, is that he is a blatant expression of Italian leftist popular non-culture. Perhaps one who graduated in some university, in Letters or Political Sciences, with some superficial knowledge of history, maybe sociology and anthropology. He perchance writes in his inspired moments (rigorously not in metric), and reads Paul Eluard and Sartre (if we are lucky), or he worships Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" (which, if Eco had written it, instead of enlisting others to do it in his place, would be nonetheless a mediocre novel). Politically indoctrinated, and never questioning the ideas he was given, he thinks he is a genius. Overall, just a nuisance, if he wasn't part of the majority of Italian youth, and didn't spread a negative image of our country overseas and in Europe.

A wild guess, that is.

Posted by: roguereligion at April 7, 2006 1:01 PM

Islam and Communism are cut out of the same cloth: totalitarianism. They go together like spaghetti and tomato sauce.

I never dreamed that the Italians were suicidal (except maybe for their driving).

But maybe their driving habits tell more about them than I previously suspected.

Posted by: pythagoras at April 7, 2006 2:42 PM

Pythagoras: about 10% vote for genuine Communist parties. That is not a small number, but neither does it come even close to representing Italians as a whole.

Anyone who still thinks anything could be done with Berlusconi would do well to read the current issue of that terrible left-wing rag, London's THE ECONOMIST. (And yes, I know that THE ECONOMIST has said a lot of stupid things about Israel and Islam, but the point is that it is a natural ally of everything Berlusconi would be if he were anything like honest or competent.)

Posted by: Paolo at April 7, 2006 6:11 PM

DavidE: you evidently have not been reading my comments. The left desperately need Catholic votes. Catholics, and mainstream moderate opinion (readers of CORRIERE DELLA SERA and LA STAMPA), are increasingly anti-Islam. Nobody is going to win votes by advocating relaxing immigration rules. And if they first deny it and do it, electors have a memory. Berlusconi, after all, is being roasted and toasted because too many electors remember the promises he made last time. I am not saying that there are not people on the left crazy or stupid enough to support a major relaxation on immigration - in the middle of a major slump, yet! - but they will not have their way, and if they have any sense, they will not even push their views.

Posted by: Paolo at April 8, 2006 12:50 AM

I managed to see part of the third Prodi-Berlusconi debate. I understood most of it because they both speak fairly clearly and slowly. They were both throwing out a lot of platitudes. Prodi was sounding patriotic with "this great country." Nevertheless, I, as an Israeli, cannot forgive Prodi for his former high position in the European Onion. Besides being our enemy, while hypocritically claiming to speak in the name of Peace, Justice, Human Rights, and all that, the EU is bringing down the Europeans. The idea of a customs union and a big market does make sense, but the EU has gone far beyond that. It is bringing down the civilization that the Europeans take such pride in [and bringing them down economically too]. It is anti-civilization, and maybe that's one of the reasons why the EU supports the Arabs so uncritically, and passively watches while the wild men of Teheran build an A-bomb.

Getting back to Prodi-Berlusconi, while both were throwing out platitudes and claiming their patriotism, and pointing out problems, Berlusconi seemed to speak more of solutions than Prodi did, while Prodi seemed to only speak of the problems but not of how he would correct them. Again, I cannot forgive Prodi for his service with the EU.

Posted by: Eliyahu at April 9, 2006 6:31 AM