« Ne faites pas en France comme nous avons fait ici au Kosovo. »

Kosovo-en-France ?

par Georges Michel

La France se refuse à toutes données à caractères ethnique et religieux. Mais il n’y a pas que les indicateurs statistiques pour se forger un jugement.

« Le cas du Kosovo est particulièrement intéressant car il montre bien comment les évolutions démographiques peuvent avoir des conséquences géopolitiques majeures, quand deux populations vivant sur un même territoire ont des dynamiques démographiques différentes. En l’occurrence, pour reprendre la terminologie du géographe Gérard-François Dumont, les populations albanaises répondent à la loi de la stimulation alors que les populations serbes répondent aux lois de la langueur et du repoussement, conduisant à l’application de la loi du différentiel. Le groupe politiquement dominé par la Serbie depuis sa reconquête du Kosovo sur l’Empire ottoman a fini par prendre un poids démographique tel qu’il a renversé à son profit la primauté politique. » Ainsi concluait le géographe Laurent Chalard dans un article de la revue Géostratégiques paru en 2011.

Les Serbes représentaient 24 % de la population du Kosovo en 1948, les Albanais 68 %. 

En 2006, les Serbes ne représentaient plus que 5 % et les Albanais pesaient désormais d’une majorité écrasante : 92 %. 

Globalement, cette évolution sur deux ou trois générations est d’abord liée à un écart important du taux de natalité entre les deux populations. 

En 1961, ce taux était de 4,6 % pour les Albanais, 3,1 % pour les Serbes. 

En 1990, ce même taux était de 2,8 % pour les Albanais, 1,7 % pour les Serbes. 

Ajoutons à ce phénomène une migration importante des Serbes, notamment des jeunes, vers la Serbie centrale, migration qui s’est accélérée lors des frappes de l’OTAN en 1999, et l’on n’a pas besoin d’être géographe ou politologue pour comprendre que la domination politique des Albanais au Kosovo était d’avance écrite dans les chiffres.

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Lire la suite: www.bvoltaire.fr

Trois jours après l'abandon par l'Ukraine de sa neutralité, le président russe a signé une nouvelle doctrine militaire qui cible l'Alliance atlantique.

Pour Poutine, l'Otan est la menace potentielle numéro 1

Par Emmanuel Grynszpan

«La paranoïa des Polonais et des Baltes a conduit à une tension réelle avec l'Otan, et qui est prise très au sérieux par les militaires russes»Ruslan Pukhov, directeur du Centre d'analyse stratégique et technologique

• Vladimir Poutine a signé vendredi la nouvelle doctrine militaire russe, qui remplace la version rédigée en 2010. 
• Le document élaboré par le Conseil de sécurité de Russie fait largement allusion au conflit dans l'est de l'Ukraine, sans qu'il y soit explicitement fait référence. 
• Le Kremlin ne touche pas aux principes de l'emploi de l'arme nucléaire. 
• Ce point suscitait des inquiétudes dans les chancelleries occidentales, alors que circulait une rumeur d'éventuelles «frappes nucléaires tactiques préventives» que s'autoriserait la Russie. 
• L'arme atomique conservera sa nature exclusivement défensive.

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Lire la suite: www.lefigaro.fr

“Any steps taken by NATO to ensure the security of its members are clearly defensive in nature, proportionate and in compliance with international law”

New Russian military doctrine 

says NATO top threat

By Vladimir Isachenkov 

Both sides know Sun Tzu, and both sides know that both sides know Sun Tzu.

Russia named NATO’s military buildup near its border as the main military threat and raised the possibility of using precision conventional weapons as a “strategic deterrent,” according to the nation’s new military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin Friday.

NATO flatly denied it was a threat to Russia, and accused Russia of undermining European security.

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Read more: www.washingtontimes.com

«La mejor guía que conozco para quienes desean emprender el viaje hacia el entendimiento de Inglaterra.» Lord Tristan Garel-Jones

«Ser católico fue muy difícil en Inglaterra: los católicos eran los malos y, además, los perdedores»

por Carmelo López-Arias

"En mi admiración por la cultura inglesa, tiene mucho que ver cómo han cultivado la literatura y la política", resume Ignacio Peyró cuando le preguntamos por la razón de Pompa y circunstancia. Diccionario sentimental de la cultura inglesa (Fórcola). Son 1064 páginas (no les parezcan muchas: se llega a la última sin reparar en cuándo se abordó la primera) de una obra extraordinaria que probablemente llevaba años deseando escribir, y que los fieles seguidores de este joven pero muy veterano escritor y periodista sin duda llevaban años deseando que escribiera.

Pone en perspectiva todo lo que -guste o no guste- Inglaterra ha significado en la Historia y su valor permanente como aportación definitiva a las artes y a las ciencias, a la organización de la convivencia y al derecho, a las costumbres y a la formación de un peculiar estilo de vida. Peyró luce una erudición absoluta sin sombra de pedantería, se implica emocionalmente en lo que cuenta y admira sin caer en anglofilias acríticas y, aún más importante, deja al lector cientos de sugerencias para conocer más y mejor (leyendo, escuchando, viajando) el sorprendente universo inglés.

En un país donde una marcha tan enardecedora del patriotismo como Pomp and circumstance [Pompa y circustancia] es obra de un notorio católico como Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), uno de los arcanos más apasionantes es su peculiar relación con lo católico tras la ruptura con la Iglesia que inauguró el capricho adúltero de Enrique VIII.

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Leer más aquí: www.religionenlibertad.com

Fidel Castro: “The revolution is all; everything else is nothing.”

Why We Isolated Cuba for 53 Years

by Lee Edwards

Contrary to what President Obama has asserted, U.S. sanctions have worked. Communist Cuba is so economically weak it cannot export Marxism-Leninism as in the past, and pro-democracy advocates have become emboldened.

For more than five decades, presidents, Democratic and Republican, politically isolated and economically sanctioned Communist Cuba for the best of reasons. Here are four of them:

1. Cuba has been a communist prison since Fidel Castro came to power. From 1959 through the late 1990s, more than 100,000 Cubans were placed in forced labor camps, prisons and other places of incarceration. ...
2. Communist Cuba exported Marxism-Leninism throughout Latin America, in Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela and especially Nicaragua, which was taken over by the Marxist Sandinistas in the late 1970s. ...
3. Communist Cuba often provided the ground troops for the Soviet Union’s strategy of inciting Third World revolution, especially in Africa. ...
4. Communist Cuba brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when it allowed the Soviet Union to build sites for offensive nuclear missiles aimed at major cities in the United States. ...

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Read more: dailysignal.com

The Francis Filtration

Pope Francis, Filtered

by George Weigel

About a year ago, I suggested to one of the top editors of a major American newspaper that his journal’s coverage of things papal left something to be desired, as it seemed based on the assumption that Pope Francis was some kind of radical wild man, eager to toss into the garbage bin of history all those aspects of Catholic faith and practice that mainstream Western culture finds distasteful.

My friend replied, in so many words: “Look, you know how these media narratives are: They’re like bamboo. Once they get started, there’s no stopping them. They just keep growing.”

Alas, he was right. And while there has been a lot of talk about the “Francis Effect,” it’s worth pondering, a little over a week after the Holy Father’s 78th birthday, the “Francis Filtration.”

The Francis Filtration began in earnest during the impromptu press conference on the papal plane while the Pope was en route home from World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro. That was the presser that produced the single-most quoted line of the pontificate thus far: “Who am I to judge?”

But as retired Cardinal Francis George of Chicago pointed out in a pre-retirement interview with John Allen, that sound bite “has been very misused … because he was talking about someone who has already asked for mercy and been given absolution. … That’s entirely different than talking [about] someone who demands acceptance rather than asking for forgiveness.” (For the record, the entire quote, which is almost never cited, was: “Who am I to judge them if they’re seeking the Lord in good faith?”)

But as my journalist-friend suggested, the “bamboo shoot” of “Who am I to judge?” has continued to grow, until it’s now a virtual bamboo curtain. And what’s being filtered out? All the things the Pope says that don’t fit the now-established “narrative” of “humane, progressive pope vs. meanie-reactionary bishops and hidebound Catholic traditionalists.”

Things like what?

Well, things like the Pope’s passionate defense of marriage as the stable union of a man and a woman, which he underscored in an address to the Schoenstatt movement right after the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family 2014 and in his keynote address to a November interreligious conference at the Vatican on the crisis of marriage in the 21st century.

And things like the Pope’s defense of the gospel of life, a persistent theme in Francis’ November address to the European Parliament. The press reports I read focused on Francis’ concerns for immigrants and the unemployed. Fair enough; that was certainly in the text. But what about the Holy Father’s defense of those whom indifference condemns to loneliness or death, “as in the case of the terminally ill, the elderly who are abandoned or uncared for and children who are killed in the womb”?


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Read more: www.ncregister.com

What is this world I have been born into? What is my place within it? and What am I meant to do with my life?

Liberal Learning in a Free Republic

by Christopher Nelson

I am honored to be asked to say a few words about the educational project that we all care so deeply about: the education of our citizens in the arts of freedom—the education needed to make our lives worth living and our American Republic worth loving.

But before I do, I wish to remind you of something most of you already know—that you have a real treasure in your President, Winston Elliott. He has undertaken with energy and thoughtfulness the responsibility of educating many of tomorrow’s leaders in the foundations of our Republic. And he has done so in a generous spirit of friendship with others who share his conviction that only a liberal education—an education in just those arts of freedom—can secure one’s happiness, the pursuit of which is the birthright of every American.

Your online journal, The Imaginative Conservative, is a resource for all of us (some million-plus readers now) who seek compelling, clear, and thoughtful essays on politics, economics, culture, literature, and education. But Winston and his lovely wife, Barbara, have also partnered with others to help bring the teaching of foundational texts in American democracy to public school teachers. They worked with St. John’s to host an educational project for teachers in the study of Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. We worked with Winston in a program hosted at Grand Valley State University in Michigan considering the question whether liberal education has become too politicized. And The Imaginative Conservativehas sponsored programs at the CiRCE Institute to provide classical educational offerings to parents and educators of pre-collegiate students.

In other words, the educational reach of the Free Enterprise Institute is far, wide, active, and effective in Winston’s capable hands.

I opened my remarks with reference to the importance of a liberal education to the happiness of the individual and the strength of our nation. Let me elaborate. Every college or university in this country that cares about such an education is concerned with a few key elements: the tradition that gave rise to our great Republic; the great works of literary imagination that have enriched our civilization; and the quality of the communities of learning that we shape on our campuses.

We remind ourselves of this each year at St. John’s College by sharing a toast with our graduating seniors to the four republics to which we belong and by which we live. I would like to give you a modified version of this toast, as it speaks to the character and underlying value of the liberal education championed in many respects by both my college and TheImaginative Conservative. We do not have with us any Champagne this morning, but you have your coffee or tea, and I invite you to drink to these republics with me.

We drink first to the Republic of Letters.

This Republic includes the books and authors that students and faculty read together at any college that requires the study of great works of literary imagination. From Plato and Aristotle to Plutarch and Thucydides, The Bible and Aquinas to Shakespeare and Milton, Euclid and Ptolemy to Descartes and Galileo, Adam Smith and the Federalist Papers to Tocqueville and Melville, Bach and Mozart to Verdi and Wagner, Einstein and Heisenberg to Watson and Crick, the works of these authors span many centuries. The older ones have survived the test of time because they are fundamental to understanding our humanity; they are the building blocks and cornerstones of the humanities, arts and sciences. The newer ones test our ability to think afresh about new discoveries that will cast a new light upon such deeply human questions as, What is this world I have been born into? What is my place within it? and What am I meant to do with my life?

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Readmore: www.theimaginativeconservative.org