The BBC reports that several people have died after being tortured by militias in Libyan detention, citing Amnesty International. “It claimed to have seen patients in Tripoli, Misrata and Gheryan with open wounds to their head, limbs and back.”
Meanwhile, charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has suspended operations in Misrata after treating 115 patients with torture-related wounds. … “The torture is being carried out by officially recognised military and security entities as well as by a multitude of armed militias operating outside any legal framework,” a spokesman for London-based Amnesty said. …
Medecins Sans Frontieres said it was being “exploited” as some patients were being brought to them between interrogation sessions.
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Back in 2011, the Daily Mail ran a special story on “Gaddafi’s torture chamber”. “The walls were hung with pictures of Tripoli’s beautiful old city because the former primary school was serving as the headquarters of the historic buildings society. But behind this innocuous facade lay scenes of horror. For this was where Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police kept watch on the traders and residents of the city centre – and beat them if they stepped out of line.”
Now the Libyan torture chambers are back under new management. There’s something very sad about a “revolution” that only manages to change the signage on the offices of the secret police. Feliks Dzherzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, recruited many of his agents from its predecessor, the Okhrana, which served the Czar. “His recruiting technique was highly effective: threat of exposure and execution unless they joined.” Stalin himself was often accused of working for the Okhrana, both before and after he seized power.
Stalin’s apparent ease in escaping from Tsarist persecution and very light sentences bore rumours of him being an Okhrana agent. His efforts in 1909 to root out traitors caused much strife within the party; some accused him of doing this deliberately on the orders of the Okhrana. The Menshevik Razhden Arsenidze accused Stalin of betraying comrades he didn’t like to the Okhrana. The prominent Bolshevik Stepan Shahumyan directly accused Stalin of being an Okhrana agent in 1916. According to his personal secretary Olga Shatunovskaya, these opinions were shared by Stanislav Kosior, Iona Yakir and other prominent Bolsheviks. …
In his 1967 biography of Stalin, Edward Ellis Smith argued that Stalin was an Okhrana agent by citing his suspicious ability to escape from Okhrana dragnets, travel unimpeded, and rabble-rouse full time with no apparent source of income. One such example was the raid that occurred on the night of April 3, 1901, when nearly everyone of importance in the Socialist-Democratic movement in Tiflis was arrested, except for Stalin, who was apparently “enjoying the balmy spring air, and in one of his to-hell-with-the-revolution moods, [which] is too impossible for serious consideration.”
Revolution, far from being glamorous, is a supremely dirty business. Ho Chi Minh, for example, “betrayed Phan Bội Châu, the head of a rival revolutionary faction, to French police in Shanghai for 100,000 piastres.” He later explained “that he did this because he expected Chau’s trial to stir up anti-French resentment and because he needed the money to establish a communist organization.”
As Paul Berman noted in Slate, even Che Guevara was in the execution and concentration camp business. “The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time.”
Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.”
The sad fact is that nobody has yet found a way to civilize war. When you consider what it could do the truly marvelous thing about the US Armed Forces is how restrained it is, relative to its capabilities. That’s not to say that war is not Hell. But some hells are hotter than others.
Part of the reason that such restraint was possible was the US Armed Forces’ overmatching power against potential foes. Humane behavior is ironically a luxury made possible by the possession of a design margin. That is not to say that humanity in itself is an unworthy goal, but the price for being be able exercise it is the ability to shrug off the comparatively puny blows of the opposition. Anyone who wants to act magnanimously must never put himself in the position of desperately having to fight for his life. The idea, deeply held by some pacifists, that weakness leads to kindness is untrue. Necessity and cruelty are close cousins.
The intractable nature of cruelty in man is a hard thing to come to terms with. It is probably easier to convince people of the existence of the Devil than to make them believe in a God of ultimate goodness. For proof of the Devil they only have to look into their hearts. Consider that it takes years of study in medical school before a man learns to heal; but any damned fool can torture and kill. Perhaps the most encouraging thing about human civilization is how few of its societies have explicitly surrendered themselves to evil. There remains, even in the most ludicrous of circumstances, some vestigial nod to the good. In one of the Libyan documentaries, one torture victim exclaims “how can you do this to me, a fellow Muslim?” The line between tragedy and farce is narrow indeed.
Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it’s going to rain todayBright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it’s going to rain today.
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You nutty guys responding to my post on giant ants in the preceding thread made me spew milk through my nose, I was laughing so hard.
What a bunch of knuckleheads you are. I say that with manly affection.
Yes, I was drinking milk.
Wretchard mentioned: “As Paul Berman noted in Slate, even Che Guevara was in the execution and concentration camp business.”
It never ceases to amaze me to see a moonbat wearing a Che Guevara teeshirt and claiming to be on the moral high ground.
Wretchard quoted: “There’s something very sad about a “revolution” that only manages to change the signage on the offices of the secret police.”
I’m reminded of Vasili Blokhin, who was Stalin’s chief executioner. He personally murdered 7,000 Polish officer POWs using a German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol (I think he holds the record). Apparently blowing people’s brains out all day can injure a person’s hand. Supposedly a Walther pistol is much gentler on the hand. Later on it really confused the forensic archeology because all these corpses were found with German bullets in their heads. Naturally everyone assumed it was the SS (normally they would have been correct).
Roughcoat 1,
Real men drink milk, are nice to their mothers, and beat the piss out of anyone who has a problem with that.
The use of the medical charity to assist the torture machinery is unsurprising. How much foreign aid is used to prop up oppressors rather than build economic security and independence among the general population? There are a few groups introducing real change into the 3rd World by assisting small entrepreneurs, without depending on government. Maybe we can get them to do the same here. Whatever happened to Junior Achievement?
Pseudointellectual leftists who have convinced themselves they are smarter and more moral than the rest of us, all while wearing Che shirts but not having the smarts or analytical capacity to see it’s the same as wearing Hitler shirts.
Sign of our times.
Statists everywhere are at root, stupid. They support dictators and strongmen believing that the leaders they enable will crush their enemies, never once dreaming same will also crush them when they cease to be useful. Ernst Rohm and the SA likely never saw the Night of the Long Knives coming. As you sow, so shall you reap.
3. Blast From the Past
I fit the bill in all three categories.
As for Blokhin: a most fascinating fellow, after a fashion. I think he must be the greatest mass murderer in history. I can’t think anyone who came close to his number. I can’t think of any circumstances where anyone could come close. The German machinegunners at the Somme and the Finnish gunners in the Winter War battles were pikers by comparison; and they weren’t murderers, they were soldiers (as well, it is recorded that in both instances some German and Finnish gunners suffered severe mental breakdowns and had to be literally carried off the battlefield, so shocked were they by the numbers they had slain; and some simply ceased firing after a certain point, refusing to continue the butchery and shouting at the hapless Tommies and Ivans in the killing zone to go back to their respective lines). Blokhin operated a sort of assembly line, whereby he managed he to shoot one Polish officer every two minutes or so; a process that spanned several days of continual killing, interrupted at intervals by breaks during which he and the NKVD creatures assisting him snacked on delicacies and consumed vast quantities of vodka.
He met his demise in appropriate fashion, by putting a pistol to his head and blowing his own brains out. It seems he had fallen out of favor with his superiors, and was very depressed as a result.
Concerning the Katyn/Smolensk massacres of Polish officers: I spent the better part of about five years interviewing veterans of the Polish Armia Krajowa (Home Army) in WW2, pursuant to a book I intended (and still intend) to write on the subject. These Poles, a people and a nation for whom I have immense respect, revealed much to me concerning what it meant to be sandwiched between two of history’s most evil empires. I asked one old warrior to compare the Germans with the Russians. He said, “The Germans will come to you straight up and face to face and say they’re going to kill you, and then they’ll try to kill you. But the Russians … ah, the Russians … they’ll put their arm around your shoulder, and they’ll smile, and they’ll go on and on about how they’re your friend. And then they’ll stab you in the back or shoot you in the back in the head.”
I asked which was worse, and he replied without hesitation: “Oh, the Russians.”
We then proceeded to get gloriously drunk.
Good summary of Blokhin, although I question the ending: do you really believe a man like that, with that many enemies, is allowed to do the deed himself? The perfectly appropriate ending to his life would be that he fell out of favor and he was given the same justice he had given so many others. Oh, but Stalin and his new favorites would never have lied about that, would they?
Roughcoat @ 6:
“He met his demise in appropriate fashion, by putting a pistol to his head and blowing his own brains out. It seems he had fallen out of favor with his superiors, and was very depressed as a result.”
Poor thing. I wonder if he used a Walther pistol? Probably wasn’t too concerned about injuring his hand.
Tough deal about the German and Finnish machine gunners. Fighting in the trenches of WW-I must have been horrible beyond words. Tolkien went through that (so did Hitler). It’s amazing that Tolkien didn’t go nuts.
Roughcoat @ 7:
Years ago in a Polish restaurant in Krakow, the waiter repeated this funny little rhyme auf Deutsch that I can only remember in English, i.e. “We fight the Russians for fun and the Germans for hate.” It sounded better auf Deutsch.
Well, Egg, Tolkien had superior coping skills, being informed by his Catholic faith: he understood that he was playing a small but nonetheless important role in the great cosmic drama of good and evil and he believed accordingly that all would be explained and made right at the end of time. Both unconsciously and deliberately he had internalized the ancient Indo-European fidelity to the primacy of the narrative; i.e., to the belief that our lives are narratives in a larger narrative, one with a beginning and an end, the fact and outcome of which gives meaning and purpose to our existence. Tolkien was sustained by his beliefs (which I wholly share).
I remember a younger Oriana Fallaci, upon visiting Iran sometime after the “revolution” being appalled that after that hated “fascist” Shah of Iran was deposed, that the hated Savak was now working for….the Ayatollah Khomeini. Well, who could have imagined that would happen?
Although I am by no means an expert on what Miss Fallaci believed, that might have been the beginning of her awakening as to the true nature of the world.
Ohkrana to NKVD to KGB to FSB.With a little GRU on the side. It’s all alphabet soup to me.
And I read that after WWII a lot of the Gestapo captured by the Russians went into the NKVD, because they recognized ability and talent when the saw it. Remember that the Gestapo was in charge of internal security of the 3rd Reich and did not do the monstrous things that the SS did in Russia.
And Libya? That was another great diplomatic success for the Obama Administration. Sounds more like the Pyrhic victory of antiquity.
Egg@9: “It’s amazing that Tolkien didn’t go nuts.”
Hmmm. The man spent the rest of his days writing about hobbits and ents and wizards and orcs and elves and dwarves. Perhaps we have the horrors in the WWI trenches to thank for the wonder that is Tolkien’s body of work.
Torture in Libya? It should be a just and profound honor to lie peacefully on an electrified bed of Arab Springs and awaken to a new glorious day or not.
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
Kindness is a dark illusion
Meant to ease the knowing fear
Meant to calm those in confusion
To believe that death’s not near
Sun-lit rooms with fragrant flowers
Smiling faces bidding well
Questions that go on for hours
Then returned to darkened cell
Where the guilty and the blameless
Shiver as the footsteps near
Knowing that they now are nameless
Crying cries that none can hear
Beaten, tortured, long forgotten
Waiting only for the sound
Of the jailor, for his lot in
Life is to be never found
Yet kindness comes in many guises
A smiling face says it is done
The torture’s ended, no surprises
The paper signed, and he has won
No more the cell, no more the beatings
No more the cries, the misery
This is the last of many meetings
A bullet now and you are free
Quote: “…people have died after being tortured by…”
News from the MENA is always so dependable, to be the same.
The news is always rotten — rotten yesterday, rotten today, rotten tomorrow, rotten ten years from now, rotten ten years ago. There’s no need to specify the date of the story — the rottenness is ageless.
On the subject of Cuba: years ago, while listening to lefty Pacifica Radio, I heard this one bass-voiced moonbat say, with absolute deadpan seriousness, that “Cuba is a model to be emulated.” He absolutely meant it, which is why is was so unintentionally halarious. People wear Che shirts because they think he looked so “cool,” but it indicates how shallow or naive they are.
Roghcoat #7:
I used to work with an man who was a Polish Army POW in WWII, shot and wounded on the very first day of the war, sat through the bombing of Warsaw in a city Park, and then captured and put in a POW camp. He said similar things. I’d be glad to relate what he told me if you would like.
Agoraphobic Plumber @ 12 said:
“Perhaps we have the horrors in the WWI trenches to thank for the wonder that is Tolkien’s body of work.”
If you read the “Lord of the Rings” carefully, you can see some of WW-I peaking around the edges. Some reviewers have claimed they could see symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the “Lord of the Rings”. Supposedly, Tolkien created a rough outline of the “Lord of the Rings” while he was in the trenches of WW-I. “The Hobbit” was a different book entirely and originally intended as entertainment for his children. You can see this clearly in the book’s lighter and playful style. The “Lord of the Rings” originally served as a back story for “The Hobbit” but was later filled out as a stand alone story after “The Hobbit” proved successful.
Peter Jackson will have a real problem doing “The Hobbit” correctly as a movie because his audience will be expecting something with the serious style and atmosphere of the “Lord of the Rings”. I suspect Peter Jackson will make a mess of it but I’m hoping he’ll surprise us. Peter Jackson would have been wiser skipping “The Hobbit” and doing “The Akalabeth” instead (I’m sure his funding sources left him with no alternative but to do “The Hobbit”). Tolkien never advanced “The Akalabeth” beyond a simple outline. This would have given Jackson considerable license in writing the script for a movie. “The Akalabeth” was a very dark tale and consistent with the style and atmosphere of the “Lord of the Rings”.
Roughcoat @ 6 said:
“As for Blokhin: … I think he must be the greatest mass murderer in history. I can’t think anyone who came close to his number.”
Actually the SS-men who loaded the Zyklon-B into the gas chambers at KZ-Auschwitz probably beat Blokhin by a wide margin. Beyond this, the definition of mass murder gets fuzzy. For example, a moonbat would typically bring up Paul W. Tibbets who was an honorable man. That sort of moonbat nonsense can be deeply offensive.
Maybe they needed torturing.
Don’t know that for a fact of course, and can’t even say what would constitute need, but it’s a logical possibility, sort of.
#10 Roughcoat
Tolkien was sustained by his beliefs (which I wholly share).
Then there are those unhinged by their hellish war experiences. Ambrose Bierce, wounded in the head during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, turned into a bitter cynic about all human ideals. “Chickamauga” is one of the most brutal short stories about war ever written, given that its protagonist is a six-year-old boy playing soldier. “Chickamauga” can be found in its entirety (it is only about 2500 words long) here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chickamauga
I have sometimes wondered what Bierce might have done with his anger if he had not had journalism as an outlet. He disappeared in 1913, supposedly after going to Mexico and joining Pancho Villa’s army as an “observer.”
There are many reasons to prefer Tolkien.
So who is surprised? Democracy requires certain things. The ONLY nation state in the Islamic crescent that met even part of those conditions was Iraq.
You don’t plant corn on a concrete slab, which is why Bush tried to plant a seed of democracy in Iraq. It was low hanging fruit so far as nation building goes.
I don’t think Iraq will work out. Although I expected them to be hip deep in civil war by now. Maybe they can avoid it.
In a theocracy, fanatics raise to the top. In a democracy, reasonable men do. So reasonable men have to outnumber fanatics by a good margin before democracy stands a chance.
That is why my ‘Y’ plan is perfect. A couple generations of mostly women being born and the Ratio of reasonable men to fanatics won’t matter. Women are always reasonable. Don’t believe me, just ask one.
Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose Paul Tibbets had not dropped the bomb on Hiroshima but had contrived to drop it into the ocean in order to satisfy the peaceniks of the future. It is more than likely that Japan would have been invaded.
At least a million Japanese would have died. Probably several million at the minimum. Consider that about 300,000 Japanese Army troops died in the Philippines, so on the homeland that could easily go up by a factor of ten — not to mention the civilians.
Given that 100,000 civilians died in the battle of Manila alone, the fighting in Japanese cities and mountains could have killed over a million. The carnage would have been enormous. Very probably over five million human beings would have died had he not dropped the bomb.
Here’s the thought experiment: in that event, why should we not consider Paul Tibbets a war criminal for NOT DROPPING the bomb, if that would have prevented the massacre. I think a peacenik would have to find him guilty.
Logically, whether or not Paul Tibbets dropped the bomb the pacifists would have found him guilty. That is the inescapable conclusion of their type of thinking, and by their standard of logic he is condemned in any case.
That is why Libya is so instructive. Should we not find Hillary Clinton guilty of crimes against humanity for causing the present chaos in Libya? But wait, would she not have been equally guilty if she had shirked her “responsibility to protect”. The answer I think, is “yes” and “yes”.
The man in the field is often genuinely stuck in no-win situations. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Kill or be killed. Fire on the suicide bomber running for the bus or let him get to the bus. Either way, bad stuff will go down.
That’s how it is. The peacenik cannot accept this no-win condition as exculpatory. Unfortunately, he can only maintain his pristine innocence at the cost of doing nothing. Oh he does lots of stuff, but never what counts, which is choosing and taking responsibility for a definite action.
For if he were forced to choose, then either way blood would spatter onto his hands. But even then, he would cast around for someone to blame. There must be someone to blame, even there isn’t another soul in sight.
So you ask the pacifist: do you want to make a revolution? Well yes, then, here’s a carbine and go over to the headman’s hut and shoot him. Yes now. At dinner, sure, because that’s when he won’t be expecting it. Oh you won’t do it? Well fine. Then no revolution.
But we must have a revolution you say? What? Do you want me to go over and shoot the headman? Why sure, but can you guarantee that I won’t be prosecuted for crimes against humanity? What’s that? No? Well then you shoot him yourself if you want your precious revolution.
What’s that? You can’t? Well where are you off to now? To take a position in the UN Human Rights agency. Well blow me down. Whose rights are you going to protect?
Tibbets was stuck. The justification for his action is the same as always. It was the lesser evil. If it were not, then it would not be quite so justifiable. Nobody said it was good. Just less bad.
#21 wretchard
Logically, whether or not Paul Tibbets dropped the bomb the pacifists would have found him guilty.
They could as easily blame Oppenheimer and his colleagues for building the thing. Or does the ability to quote the Bhagavad Gita following a test explosion exempt the inventor from criticism on the basis of superior intellectual firepower?
20. That is why my ‘Y’ plan is perfect. A couple generations of mostly women being born and the Ratio of reasonable men to fanatics won’t matter. Women are always reasonable. Don’t believe me, just ask one.
We just lost Filene’s Basement and now you want to take away the opposite sex?
Wretchard–
Sorry about the unclosed italics– the edit function has disappeared again.
“Humane behavior is ironically a luxury made possible by the possession of a design margin. That is not to say that humanity in itself is an unworthy goal, but the price for being be able exercise it is the ability to shrug off the comparatively puny blows of the opposition.”
Tell the families of the nearly 5,000 Americans who have died fighting in the sewers of Islam about the “puny blows”, “design margin”, and “shrugging off”. The “restraint” of the US military is fueled almost entirely by the obscene willingness of our military and political leadership to martyr Americans in the impossible delusion of getting scumbag Muslims to like us. Muslims will never like or respect us as long as they remain Muslims. We should stop the tragedy of “winning hearts and minds”, and set about instilling fear and respect in the Muslim sewers, killing them when they threaten us, and doing everything in our power to subvert their poisonous belief system of Islam. That should also be accomplished by valuing our own lives far far above theirs until they rectify their heinous religion, or abandon it altogether out of despair.
25. Morton Doodslag
The ‘Y’ plan does just that. By damaging the Y chromosone of Islamic males so they only produce X’s (females) Islam will have to rent a man to survive. If a Muslim man wants sons, he will have to loan his wife out. If the US Air Force keeps up the spraying, it will be hard to find men to rent. That means Females would take over Islam. Not sure a religion built on servile females would survive that. No megadeath, no glowing craters, just the soft crying of the men who started this mess.
Tee, don’t worry, China has a surplus of males.
Wretcherd, if Tibbets had refused, one of the other 11 men on Enola Gay would have taken over. Then when they got back to base he would have been court martialed.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/01/26/scrubbing-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-ron-paul-2/
Speaking of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, this ‘gotcha’ post by PJM sure seems to fit in this category. Or at least damned for not having the bucks to pay people to police one’s forums like Preston who just resorts to the ban hammer for people that question him. So first they tried to present this as some sorta smoking gun proving Ron Paul’s an anti-Semite to elderly Jewish voters in Florida, but then they just have to settle for saying Campaign for Liberty is merely guilty of not policing one anti-Semite dude who volunteered for them in Tucson. Wow, let’s lock them all up at Gitmo.
Regarding Tolkien and WWI, I’ve always thought that the following passage from The Hobbit owes something to his wartime experiences:
“Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosives always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help: but in those days and those wilder parts they were not as advanced ( as it is called ) so far.”
“The sad fact is that nobody has yet found a way to civilize war.”
Star Trek episode #24 “A Taste of Armageddon” – aired February 23, 1967. A computer simulates war between planets… citizens voluntarily accept death, without all the destruction.
I think we’re flirting with that now, although nobody I know agreed to it.
It is not just the Egyptians who are paranoid about American meddling. Apparently the Russians have started to accuse parliament members of treason if they visit the US embassy without official government permission.
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=38932&tx_ttnewsbackPid=7&cHash=cfc5ee63b5f5224cc5c17befd504767a
19. PA Cat
#10 Roughcoat
Tolkien was sustained by his beliefs (which I wholly share).
Then there are those unhinged by their hellish war experiences. Ambrose Bierce, wounded in the head during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, turned into a bitter cynic about all human ideals.
…………
One of he New York Theatres began Wagner’s Ring Trilogy two years ago and then had their plays shown in theatres around the country. I went to one two years ago and felt when I came out that I really needed to be hosed down. The play is a total damnation. If you want to be damned as well as determined — you need only go see one of these rough beasts.
Interestingly, I recognized some of the general themes presented by the plays as being similar to the themes of the Lord Of the Rings–only backward.
As a result, whereas Wagner’s plays damn you –the Tolkein novels bless you.
Why is one a blessing and the other a curse?
Lord knows I’ve forgotten mostly.
But it seemed to me the Niebelengen brothers and sisters desire for immortality cursed them and the audience, while the Elvish queen’s acceptance of mortality blessed her and the audience.
But that was just one of many blessings and curses. I just don’t recall the rest. Well I can recall a little more. In Wagner’s Trilogy– there is a Ring that grants domination over the entire world. The struggle to posses the ring destroys protagonists–and curses the audience.
In Tolkein’s trilogy there is a similar ring that grants dominion over the entire world. However, sending the ring back to the fiery volcano from which it came–saves the Tolkein world and blesses the audience.
Russia Today Hires WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange – Will the Kremlin Be Pleased?
January 25, 2012 – 6:35 pm ESTNo
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2012/01/russia-today-hires-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-will-the-kremlin-be-pleased/
Interestingly according to the article Assange will treat with many of the topics discussed here. I wonder whether his treatment will be a blessing or a curse? I’m guessing likely he will invent a tragedy and a curse so as to please his masters — but also to cheer on his own vanities.
Some statistical evidence to support my claims that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are ‘weak’ horses in states the Republicans need to win to beat Obama. Even Michigan ‘native’ Mitt Romney loses to Obama in a head to head poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press — and in presidential election terms, it ain’t even close, 46-40 for Obama over Romney and 51 to 38 blowout over the ‘new Churchill’ Newt. Could the GOP win without Michigan? Sure. Could they win without the Rust Belt at all? Harder, they would need to pick off at least two if not three of the five: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That’s after writing off Democratic-leaning since Reagan left the White House Minnesota and Iowa.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/political/poll-obama-leading-in-michigan-gingrich-gaining-on-romney
So without Florida in the bag and at least two of those Upper Midwestern states, all it takes is losing Virginia (federal employees, cough cough), or New Mexico or Nevada and the GOP is sunk with Obama already at 270 electoral votes, even with Florida, the Dakotas (oil drilling) and the old Solid South all a sea of red.
Enjoy picking the ‘most electable’ ‘mainstream’ candidates Republicans. Rand Paul better start thinking about running in 2016 b/c Fox News’/Mark Levin’s preferred guys are going to lose to one of the least popular incumbents of all time.
This is the sort of cold, hard argument that Bryan Preston and Roger Simon will not allow Viktor to post over at their PJM sites. They prefer to demonize Ron Paul and drink the mainstream Republican koolaid that victory is just around the corner if they could just run off all those darn Ronulan kids and get them off their lawn.
Eggplant @ 9
“We fight the Russians for fun and the Germans for hate.”
In German that would be something like:
Wir kämpfen gegen die Russen aus Spaß
und gegen die Deutschen aus Haß
Fun = Spaß (Spass)
Hate= Haß (Hass)
Come now! Is anyone really surprised that when the US President dutifully does what the all-knowing Euros tell him and bombs one side in a civil war, the other side takes advantage of the foreign umbrella to settle some old scores in Medieval fashion?
And is anyone surprised that, with a Donkey in the White House, the same media who obsessed endlessly about Abu Ghraib and Gitmo now find real torture to be a whole lot less interesting than the latest Kardashian shopping expedition?
Maybe we need to get our sense of proportion as finely tuned as that of our betters in the Political Class. Obama’s side in Libya is merely torturing human beings to cause excruciating pain and permanent injury. It is not like they were pissing on their victims’ dead bodies.
35. Kinuachdrach:
Indeed!
What is it that is so “wrong” with the execution and concentration camp business?
When does Barack Hussein Obama speak out and start warming up the F-18s to protect the Christians’ right to life and liberty that is being extinguished by their predatory Muslim neighbors?
Wretchard,
For an excellent analysis of the pros & cons of using the bomb on Japan, see the last chapter of Feifer’s “Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb”.
MacArthur, who had been fairly accurate in his casualty predictions during the war, estimated a million and a half allied casualties, and perhaps ten times that for the Japanese. And that doesn’t count the cost of maintaining the war for another year in other parts of Asia.
The bomb was a bargain by any measure.
Tolkien was not the only writer to translate his wartime experience into allegory. Watership Down auther Richard Adams was a veteran of the British 1st Airborne division and fought at Arnhem. The book is derived from his experiences.
The exact source escapes me, I believe it was in the last chapter or 2 of Richard Frank’s Downfall, when the author goes over the moral calculations surrounding the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki….
…. (I’m paraphrasing here) take the 200,000 who died in those blasts and compare that who would have died if those weren’t dropped. There were hundreds of thousands who were dying every month in the areas under Japanese occupation and keep in mind that the USSR had just declared war against Japan with hundreds of thousands of Japanese prisoners dying in Soviet custody. Even if the invasion of Japan never happened, death from those 2 sources would have been compounded by the planned destruction of the Japanese rail network which would have led to the starvation of millions.
Frank asks why the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a greater claim to life than the many more who would have died otherwise?
I think the larger lesson here is that once you cross the line into war, the abyss opens and all becomes possible. Japan sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, if it didn’t want its cities turned into ash then perhaps it shouldn’t have gotten into the imperial expansion game in the first place let alone attack a power that had the ability to mass produce fleets of B-29 and Essex-class carriers
On a related note I was having a beer with an old college friend the other day when he discussed the latest transgression of the Obama Administration and said he was ready to take up arms. I looked down at his beautiful golden retriever and told him before he did so he should say good bye to family and children but especially the dog… he asked why and I said that it is standard operating procedure for SWAT teams when breaking into someone’s home to first shoot the dog. That led to a change of subject and perhaps some sobering up because it’s one thing to charge the guns, it’s quite another to condemn one’s best friend. Perhaps he will if the stakes get big enough but not quite yet.
If I remember correctly the men of 1776 knew what they were getting themselves into as the pledged their lives, fortune, and sacred honor and knew if they didn’t hang together they would literally hang separately. I’m sure if it came to the worst they would regret their missed opportunity as they walked to the gallows but they wouldn’t have whined and complained about it because to risk all truly means all.
I went to one two years ago and felt when I came out that I really needed to be hosed down. The play is a total damnation. If you want to be damned as well as determined — you need only go see one of these rough beasts.
It’s not for nothing that Hitler said (paraphrasing): One cannot understand National Socialism wihout understanding Wagner.
This harkens to those infamous ROE (rules of engagement). Looking back at US military engagements since 1989, not one of them was “defense” if for no other reason than that they were conducted thousands of miles away from the homeland. This is the main reason why US soldiers are saddled with ridiculously unfair ROE’s, especially when the Democrat party senses political advantage in any war scandal. And these ROE’s played a very important role in massacres such as Haditha, Falluja and numerous wedding parties in Iraq and Afghanistan. These recurring massacres are not being prevented by America’s luxury of “design margin” because America is occupying countries while executing wars of choice. Ridiculous ROE’s lead to extreme frustration and soldiers lashing out. If America only fought defensive wars, not only would the rest of the world not care about ROE’s, neither would the Democrats.
So once again we see that Ron Paul is right about this. Not only have these unnecessary wars bankrupted the country, discredited the integrity of the country and its military, they have placed incredible moral burdens on the soldiers sent there to fight that even Tolkein could not have imagined.
@Viktor: What prospects do you currently on Ron Paul getting elected and living through the inauguration?
17. Eggplant “The Hobbit” was a different book entirely and originally intended as entertainment for his children. You can see this clearly in the book’s lighter and playful style.
Obviously you have never actually read the Hobbit, with its brutal depiction of the Battle of Five Armies.
“It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most – which is to say that it was the one he was most proud of, and the most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, p253
#17 eggplant
“I suspect Peter Jackson will make a mess of it but I’m hoping he’ll surprise us. Peter Jackson would have been wiser skipping “The Hobbit” and doing “The Akalabeth” instead (I’m sure his funding sources left him with no alternative but to do “The Hobbit”). Tolkien never advanced “The Akalabeth” beyond a simple outline. This would have given Jackson considerable license in writing the script for a movie. “The Akalabeth” was a very dark tale and consistent with the style and atmosphere of the “Lord of the Rings”.”
As much as I would like to see this it will never, every happen.
The themes embodied in the story are ones which run pretty much 100% counter to the memeset of Hollywood.
RE: Wagner’s Ring
Interesting gender take from Wagner himself (wiki:)
In his earlier operas (up to and including Lohengrin) Wagner’s style had been been based, rather than on the Italian style of opera, on the German style as developed by Carl Maria von Weber, with elements of the grand opera style of Giacomo Meyerbeer. However he came to be dissatisfied with such a format as a means of artistic expression. He expressed this clearly in his essay ‘A Communication to My Friends’, (1851) in which he condemned the majority of modern artists, in painting and in music, as ‘feminine [...] the world of art close fenced from Life, in which Art plays with herself.’ Where however the impressions of Life produce an overwhelming ‘poetic force’, we find the ‘masculine, the generative path of Art’.[3]
Also interesting to note that the German public was not fooled:
Wagner unfortunately found that his audiences were not willing to follow where he led them:
The public, by their enthusiastic reception of Rienzi and their cooler welcome of the Flying Dutchman, had plainly shown me what I must set before them if I sought to please. I completely undeceived their expectations; they left the theatre, after the first performance of Tannhäuser, [1845] in a confused and discontented mood. – The feeling of utter loneliness in which I now found myself, quite unmanned me.[...] My Tannhäuser had appealed to a handful of intimate friends alone.[4]
Another writer who was affected by his war experience was Kurt Vonnegut, who, as a prisoner of war, lived through the Dresden fire-bombing. He wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a result of this horrific experience, which colors many of his other works.
“not one of them was “defense” if for no other reason than that they were conducted thousands of miles away from the homeland.”
WRONG! The best place to defend the homeland is thousands of miles away. This is a long established principal of warfare. Sir, your lack of knowledge of military matters is showing. If you wish to change that to a basic understanding of military affairs, order a copy of FMFM-1 from the GPO. FMFM_1 is the Fleet Marines Fighting Manual #1.
FMFM-1 explains the distinctions between Strategy, Operations and Tactics. It defines the difference between a skirmish, a battle, a campaign and a war. It relates ALL those topics to one another. IIRC, it covers the 4 basic types of war and the normal strategies and tactics used to fight them.
In a war, you fight your enemy where you find them. Your choices are waiting for them to come kill you or going and killing them. Those are the only choices. Those have been the only choices since men warred with pointy sticks and stones tied on tree limbs.
Wretchard,
These are burdensome matters you have touched upon, personal matters. There are many souls at the Tibbets level that feel the weight upon their souls.
ERPINGHAM
Shall I attend your grace?
KING HENRY V
No, my good knight;
Go with my brothers to my lords of England:
I and my bosom must debate awhile,
And then I would no other company.
ERPINGHAM
The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!
@47
Based on the comments from the Paulbots I see here, and those made by Mr. Paul himself, there is no ‘enemy’ worth fighting, if indeed an enemy at all, other than those that appear on the beaches of the USA in full uniform waving unit banners.
@47. stoicheion
Not if the enemy is from within. Then any diversion away from the real issues at hand works to your opponents advantage, especially if you are not inside of his OODA loop.
I am sure that you have heard about SOPA and PIPA. What about that raid on megaupload the day after those two were rejected? Have you been following whats going on with ACTA? Well the Poles are far more aware of reality than you.
The globalists are inside your OODA loop stoicheion, they are going to try to gain control of the internet in order to quell dissent. Come to think of it, you are one of them, you are their vanguard.
“…there is no ‘enemy’ worth fighting”
Wrong! We are the enemy they are fighting. That is why the first thing they say always starts out with an insult. That is how Paulbots and snot-nosed pseudo-intellectual bullies argue in grade school. These people grow up to be lawyers and phone sanitizers.
That is the Paul way. Attact a bunch of idealistic ninnys, alienate, hassle any prospective allies then make a martyrs stand on espistemology so you can withdraw from battle without effecting the outcome. All while posing with your moral superiority. Yeah, that works. Barry has attracted the unrest in the world and Paul would reap the world wind by signaling that America intends to do nothing. A conservative doesn’t have to go to war because they are feared. An Obama or a Paul, well, why not? What are they going to do about it?
longjack @ 34 translated:
“We fight the Russians for fun and the Germans for hate.”
In German that would be something like:
Wir kämpfen gegen die Russen aus Spaß
und gegen die Deutschen aus Haß.
Longjack is correct. Note that “Hate” and “Fun” rhyme in German. This is a classic example of how poetry will not translate from one language to another.
I worked in Goettingen for three years, was on the verge of becoming fluent in German and then my contract timed out. Since then, most of the German in my head has evaporated. Damned nuisance because I spent thousands of Deutsche Marks at the Volkshochschule trying to learn that language.
Teresita @ 43 said:
“Obviously you have never actually read the Hobbit, with its brutal depiction of the Battle of Five Armies.”
I’ve read “The Hobbit” about 3 times on my own and also read it aloud word-for-word once to my son (first full length novel that I read to him).
Teresita, I suspect you have not actually read “The Hobbit” because Bilbo got knocked on the head fairly early in the Battle of Five Armies and woke up after most of the action was over. Your example proves my point that the story was toned down for kids.
no mo uro @ 44 wrote about “The Akallabêth” (spelled right this time) being made into a movie:
“As much as I would like to see this it will never, ever happen. The themes embodied in the story are ones which run pretty much 100% counter to the memeset of Hollywood.”
This touches on one of my pet hates, i.e. Why will Hollywood not make any of the really good stories into movies? The example that makes me pull my hair out in frustration is Larry Niven’s “Ringworld”. What a fantastic movie that would be! Think of all the money and special effects resources that were wasted on the movie “Avatar” which had an utterly lame and cliché plot. Those same resources could have easily been applied towards making “Ringworld”. Of course, a movie based upon “The Akallabêth” could easily be a masterpiece. All the raw ingredients are there for a movie mega-hit, e.g. an excellent story with lots of opportunity for drama and action, Tolkien’s name is attached to it, the story exists only in outline so there’s wide license for writing the screen play, etc.
Hollywood is far too stupid to seize this opportunity.
Wretchard at 21 said:
“So you ask the pacifist: do you want to make a revolution? Well yes, then, here’s a carbine and go over to the headman’s hut and shoot him. Yes now. At dinner, sure, because that’s when he won’t be expecting it. Oh you won’t do it? Well fine. Then no revolution.”
Wretchard’s comment could trigger a very long essay concerning morality and politics. I’ll make it as short as possible. Categories for moral political behavior from least ethical to most ethical:
1) The psychopath: I’ll murder a thousand people without the slightest remorse because it benefits me slightly. I’m incapable of empathy (I have no feelings of guilt).
2) The moonbat: I’m a nihilist because I’m too stupid and shallow to think about the consequences of my actions. I’ll wear the Che Guevara tee shirt because it looks cool and will attract hot looking babes. I voted for Obama because all my friends did.
3) The moral coward: I know right from wrong. I wanted to see Osama bin Laden dead but if he was presented to me in hand cuffs and I was given the gun to shoot him, I would not have the courage to pull the trigger.
4) The courageous patriot: I know right from wrong and will do the right thing knowing that I will have to live with the consequences.
About 5% of the population fall under 1). Most of histories calamities were caused by people from group 1). About 40% fall under 2). The moonbats are more likely to follow the psychopaths of group 1) than the patriots of group 4). Fortunately the psychopaths tend to act in their own best interests. About 50% (most of the human race) are under category 3) (I’m ashamed to say that I’m there as well). The remaining 5% are under category 4). These are the guys who shape history for the good. Paul W. Tibbets, Abraham Lincoln, Richard D. Winters, William T. Sherman, George W. Bush are part of category 4).
Extra credit question: Does Vasili Blokhin fall under category 1) or category 4)?
Admit that you immediately answered 1).
Okay, now try and put yourself in Blokhin shoes, i.e. I”m a good communist following the supreme leaders orders liquidating enemies of the state. What category does Blokhin think he’s under? How would Blokhin know that he was wrong?
@49. Peter Boston
If some horde shows up in your community killing and raping, then it is perfectly clear what constitutes an enemy.
But when the secretary of the state department who is battling with the joint chiefs of staff allies herself with the justice department who have the goods on the CIA decides that now is the time to act in order to insure a crisis so that her daughter will be guaranteed a senate seat in state where her husband works for the MIC supplier who has a contract with dictator on whose land the gold mine that her cayman island trust owns…
This is why thousands of young Americans die overseas leaving their devastated families to pick up the pieces. All for the whims of bureaucratic and political empire builders.
We don’t have to wait until they appear on the beaches of the USA because they already occupy Washington.
@ 51 — I didn’t make any appeals to martyrdom, only the cold hard logic that the mainline, post-9/11 course of the Republican Party is utterly spent, and that the GOP cannot win consistently anywhere outside of the South. And this is despite the spectacular incompetence and apparent facts to anyone with an Internet connection and curiosity that all economic numbers are now being goosed for the incumbent’s benefit.
That mainline Republicans do not want to hear that they lost the 2006 and 2008 elections due to unpopular wars dragging on, that they looked hypocritical on spending, or that they have acquiesced to all sorts of things that would have outraged Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan like the bloated, ineffectual useless TSA groping people at airports.
Of course you turn the hate around and pretend it’s the ‘Paulbots’ bothering you, when they merely remind you of how far your party is from everything it pretends to stand for. It’s like saying the priest who humbly asks you to come to confession when he says you out with a woman not your wife.
Wretchard, being an Aussie and having the benefit of distance, does not lose his cool in the presence of ‘Ronulans’, unlike the censoring Bryan Preston or the cowardly Roger Simon. He merely sees them for what they are — people sick and damn tired of a crumbling status quo, rather than those desperate to keep the party going one for one more round. So Preston has to quote the same MSM he pretends to dislike so much as reliable sources on Ron Paul. It’s really a pity that the ‘Paulbot’ Preston had to sit next to on the plane didn’t know that Preston used to work with Paul back when he was an employee of the Texas Republican Party in early 2000s. That would have shut him up pretty quick.
“Confederate H @Viktor: What prospects do you currently on Ron Paul getting elected and living through the inauguration?” None, because the GOP Establishment has made its choice, it’s Romney, and now it has to swallow it. But I’m glad Ron will be around to see his son Rand run for President — and be a much tougher person to systematically demonize and exclude. But the GOP inlcuding El Rushbo and the Fox News bots have to basically crash and burn first with a humiliating defeat at the hands of Obama for that to happen. And real constitutionalists like the Judge Napolitano have to start leading the way for the rump Fox that survives instead of the pompous ass O’Reilly.
I’ll admit, I’m not looking forward to Sully triumphantly feting Obama’s teensy itsy, fraud-aided win over the useless Romney, but he can have his moment just before the freakin’ wheels fall off and hyperinflation hits real bad in 2013.
End of thread for me.
@54. Viktor (not that Victor)
“the GOP Establishment has made its choice, it’s Romney, and now it has to swallow it… I’m not looking forward to Sully triumphantly feting Obama’s teensy itsy, fraud-aided win over the useless Romney, but he can have his moment just before the freakin’ wheels fall off and hyperinflation hits real bad in 2013.”
I already gave up on America’s political system after Obama’s election in 2008. The possibility that Ron Paul might be elected seemed live a god-sent reprieve to me and gave me a short term jolt, but like you I see no further chance for his election outside of some kind of an existential crisis for the political elites.
Romney or Obama will make little difference when all those trillions of dollars sent overseas come rushing back home in a panic and finally we learn the true extent of the depravity of the political elites. At that point I don’t really think the presence of Rand Paul in the Senate will be still be relevant.
@22 PA Cat:
An interesting discussion of the Gita’s influence on Oppenheimer:
http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/Hijiya.pdf
The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer
JAMES A. HIJIYA
Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Confederate guy:
I often have the following exchange with some my CHL holding Paulists friends:
Me: ” Why do you need to carry? Just shop online as much as possible, stay out of bad neighborhoods and mind your own business. You won’t have any need to carry a gun.
Paulist: “Why should I restrict what I do? Besides someone may break into my house or attack me when I am out minding my own business.”
Me: “I see, you don’t look for trouble, trouble can come looking for you?
Paulist: “yeah, that’s right.”
What you Paulist idiots don’t understand is that the United States is not some insignificant agricultural nation isolated from the rest of the world by two Oceans. If we want to go about our global business we will have a large footprint. Trouble will always be looking for us.
Oh yeah, during the early years of the Republic when the US was an insignificant pissant country separated from the rest of the world by two oceans trouble came looking for us. Beginning with the undeclared naval war with France in 1798 through the end of the War of 1812 the US was almost in continual conflict with European and North African powers. Sure for a century or so after the War of 1812, the US managed to stay out of foreign entanglements unless of course we wanted grab a little territory. Of course that was the most peaceful European Century since the fall of the Western Empire. We didn’t get into Europe’s wars because, well, they didn’t have any real wars. Like your OWS bretheran, you are ignorant of American, European and World History.
Just a few words on Tolkien. I can’t substantiate any of this; these are just recollections of things I read of him mostly decades ago.
Tolkien spent his early childhood years in South Africa. One day he was abducted by one of his father’s workers and taken to the worker’s tribe to show them what a white child looked like. There was no harm intended and J.R.R. was quickly discovered but I imagine it left an impression on him.
I know few will believe this but Strider was first imagined as a hobbit. I think I read that from one of Christopher Tolkien’s books.
As all good writers, Tolkien borrowed heavily from many sources. With his work in languages he was familiar with the mythologies of many cultures; note one of the names of Gandalf was Mithrandir. I even recognise some references to Old Testament works in The Simarillion.
But both he and C.S. Lewis acknowledged a great influence from the works of William Morris. If you read Roots of the Mountains and House of the Wolfings you will see where Tolkien borrowed some of the style and plot elements. At that time,especially since Wagner has been mentioned, I think there was a vauge romantic notion of an idealised past. The two books by Morris represented a version of that idea in the stories of a mythic Goth Tribe.
52. Eggplant: Teresita, I suspect you have not actually read “The Hobbit” because Bilbo got knocked on the head fairly early in the Battle of Five Armies and woke up after most of the action was over. Your example proves my point that the story was toned down for kids.
“…rocks were stained black with goblin blood…many of their own wolves were turning upon them and rending the dead and the wounded…great bats…fastened vampire-like on the stricken…they were piled in heaps till Dale was dark and hideous with their corpses…”
Kiddie fare indeed.