Concerns over Immigration Motivated Voters – Relations with the EU may come under Severe Strain
On October 18th, the Swiss went to the polls to cast their votes in the country’s parliamentary elections. The right-wing triumphed as the Swiss Peoples’ Party or SVP won 29.4% of the vote. The papers described it as “the best performance by a party in at least a century”. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) also gained, winning 16.4% of the vote. In terms of the number of seats, the Swiss Right secured 14 new seats (11 from the SVP’s gains alone) to reach a total of 98 seats (65 for the SVP).
A landslide victory for right-of-center parties in Switzerland – click to enlarge.
Switching Enemies
The tragic Paris attacks are leading me to raise questions once again, since it is the second time that France has topped the news headlines this year. I believe that followers of Global Gold’s Outlook Report are by now aware that I am a big fan of historícal research. I tend to consult my history books to reflect on the past and see if I can recognize patterns similar to the events we are experiencing today.
Looking back, it seems obvious that in the course of the 20th and 21st century, wars went from being about nationalism to ideological wars (communism versus democracy or what we would call ‘state capitalism disguised as democracy’), to becoming about religion, which sort of takes us back to the dark ages.
Since the Berlin wall came down back in 1989 and communism was defeated, the latter has been replaced by the “Muslim World” as the new enemy. We could see this change in Hollywood movies and in our media coverage.
“All terrorists are Muslims” – except the 94% who aren’t. Attribution of terror attacks in the US between 1980 to 2005 according to the FBI.
The Misfortune of Being Born Into a State
In an essay titled “The State”, Randolph Bourne, an American writer, made a distinction between a country and a state that I find crucial. He described one’s country as “an inescapable group into which we are born”. In his view, a country is “a concept of peace, tolerance, of living and letting live. But the State is essentially a concept of power, of competition; it signifies a group in its aggressive aspects. And we have the misfortune of being born not only into a country but into a State, and as we grow up we learn to mingle the two feelings into a hopeless confusion”.
Randolph Silliman Bourne: a lifelong enemy of the State and war. His great unfinished work “The State” was discovered after his death. Bourne’s odd physical appearance owed to tuberculosis of the spine, which he suffered in childhood. Jeffrey Riggenbach has published a great paean on the brilliance of Randolph Bourne at the Mises Institute.
Photo credit: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University
Claudio Shares his Ideas
We were quite busy lately and are therefore actually a bit late in posting this podcast, in which our good friend Claudio Grass of Global Gold is interviewed by The Daily Coin on the recent hot topics of Greece, the declaration of war against cash and how gold fits into all of this.
Claudio Grass, CEO of Global Gold
Many Questions
On the 7th of January two gunmen attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly magazine. The shooters were two brothers who belonged to the Yemeni branch of the Islamist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. The attack resulted in 11 casualties and many injured, while the shooters were shot a few days later in an exchange of fire with the police. Charlie Hebdo is a satire magazine, and its jokes and cartoons and its secular approach are widely considered anti-religious. Social media went into a frenzy with the hashtag “Je suis Charlie”. Four days later two million people including tens of world leaders participated in a rally for national unity in Paris, and over three million participated across France. A lot of questions were raised by this tragic event and its aftermath that we will look at in this article.
The gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo and their get-away car
Photo via Reuters TV
Interview with Václav Klaus
“The best environment for man is the environment of liberty.”
Václav Klaus
Former president of the Czech Republic and strong defender of the ideas of classical liberalism, Professor Václav Klaus
Photo via collective-evolution.com