The New World
Those who can read Catalan or Spanish may wish to browse the website Els Nous Pobres to get a glimpse into the future of post-welfare Europe. The AP calls these newly poor Spaniards, “The Lost Generation”.
It’s a devastating picture of blighted youth that threatens to distort Spain’s social fabric for years to come, dooming dreams, straining family structures and eroding the well-being of a rapidly aging population.
“This puts the whole welfare state at risk,” said Gayle Allard, a labor market specialist at Madrid’s IE Business School. “The young people who are coming on the market now are the lost generation. They are losing the advantage of their youth and energy and that does not come back.”
The other word for it would be “a perfect storm”, the confluence of the bankruptcy of the welfare state, demographic collapse and globalization. Senor Allard is only half right. Youth flees never to return. The same may be said of the European Welfare State.
It’s too late for a lot of things. The Washington Times quotes experts who say it is no longer possible to stop Iran from going nuclear, even if their facilities were bombed.
Destroying nuclear facilities in a military strike does not “uninvent” the technology, retired Marine CorpsGen. James Cartwright said Monday in an interview. “The intellectual capital still exists.
Spengler bitterly complains that this may be exactly what the administration wanted all along, in the fulfillment of their youthful fantasies. But whether the administration did or didn’t want something hardly seems to matter. Their incompetence has largely offset their fecklessness. They are the players who forgot to bring the ammunition. So the region is riding its own train to perdition at breakneck speed.
The reality that presents itself in the Middle East — the breakdown and inevitable depopulation of the Arab world — is something that the White House cannot wrap its mind around. McBama and his three witches — Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle — have hard-core sympathies for the oppressed peoples of the Third World. Obama spent four of his formative years in Indonesia, with a mother dedicated to defending the locals against globalization, while Jarrett was born and raised in Iran; as for Michelle, well, read her senior thesis at Princeton. They will never, never bring down Iran, because they would rather hold their breath until they drop dead than ruin a Third World nation.
The era of the fantasies is coming to a close. The Washington Post reports a ‘secret cable’ “warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy, U.S. officials said.”
The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing. Because of the intended secrecy of that message, Crocker sent it through CIA channels rather than the usual State Department ones.
Which really implies the question: if a US ambassador can’t trust the State Department why should you? Moreover, if such an obvious conclusion has to be classified as secret — and then leaked to the Washington Post — on what planet is official Washington?
Another ambassador, a former official who served in the Reagan era argues that President Obama has given back, piece by little piece, the gains of the Cold War. A new authoritarian Russia is rising up, one that is consistently opposing US interests across the globe.
But so what? Who really cares? Valerie Jarrett? The old context in which warnings served a purpose may be gone; it is as if there is no one left to heed them. From the musings of Europe’s New Poor, to Spengler’s fulminations and the Washington Post’s salute to Captain Obvious runs a single thread: resignation. It’s too late.
The current system is in the terminal homing phase and only the bang is awaited; the world has run out of road down which to kick the can and still they keep kicking.
However it is when things completely fall apart that new things start to happen. One of the most interesting historical examples of a reset was the evacuation at Dunkirk. On those beaches lay, not just the flotsam of the BEF, but the entire edifice of interwar years; its military doctrines; the primacy of the Anglo-French alliance; the power of France, the British Empire itself. A thoughtful person contemplating the wreckage might have seen in it the Fall of Singapore and the end of France’s overseas empire.
The crisis now engulfing the Western world shares nothing with that long ago era except the structure of the problem. In both the old world is beyond help; in both a new world is being born. But what will that new world be like? Which historian, walking through the miles of wreckage left by the BEF could have seen in it the post World War 2 world? Which analyst, scanning the numbing headlines could do the same for the present era?
Probably no one could see the new world coming in 1940 because one more thing was lacking. In the period between the collapse of an era but before the birth of a new one comes a peculiar phase which Winston Churchill called The Hinge of Fate. It is a curious, shockingly rapid period. Before the Hinge things run predominantly in one direction and afterwards they run entirely in another.
The current crisis has not yet reached the Hinge, but the sands are slowly shifting for those with a mind to notice them. After the Fall of France the British War cabinet decided to strip the Middle East of troops for the defense of the homeland. Empire was cast away in a moment in the need for self-preservation, through in May, 1940, the cabinet hardly had the time to see things in those terms.
The need for Europeans to survive, to buy gas, keep from freezing in the winter, etc. are likely to result in the death of the Welfare State. The political institutions may imagine, like the British War Cabinet, that the Empire would be re-established after the “German War” was over, but in reality the step was irrevocable. The Welfare State is gone, or soon will be and any steps to prolong it will simply result in economic Dien Bien Phus.
Perhaps next on the pyre is the Primacy of the West. Already the goals of West in the Middle East, vis-a-vis China and even Russia are being reshaped by new realities. The changes sweeping the world are not so much a retreat as a loss of certitude. The strongmen of the Middle East are falling as fast the European economy and as precipitously as the strength of the dollar. The curious thing about the new collapse is that relative to the decline of everyone else the United States may actually be gaining in relative potential power; but it is a power held in check by its own institutional dysfunction.
What comes next perhaps is the primacy of the new West, where the boundaries are not drawn from Europe through to the American West coast, but from the American East Coast to the Western Pacific.
My guess is that at the point of the Hinge, the key question will be whether and how far the United States has fixed itself. Whether America can renew itself in time to meet that oncoming challenge will make all the difference between whether the crisis has a soft landing or rages into an uncontrollable conflagration.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
So much of what W refers to comes down to the culture of a nation. What countries can we say have a culture that is on the upswing? Perhaps India or some of the Eastern European countries? The pessimist in me hasn’t seen the hinge swinging back in the right direction for us. And demographics have begun to doom so many of the historical pillars of civilization. Very messy.
“Destroying nuclear facilities in a military strike does not “uninvent” the technology, retired Marine CorpsGen. James Cartwright said Monday in an interview. “The intellectual capital still exists”.
No kidding.
That’s one reason why an Iran bombing operation must be protracted and targeting must have the add’l intended effect of facilitating regieme change.
I would nominate FRACKING as the Hinge of Fate.
It’s growing exponentially. Which is to say that the drastic scale of its impact is still in the near future.
It’s a pivot because it entirely undercuts the energy dependencies we’ve grown accustomed to in our lifetimes.
With energy available from home territory it will be as natural as rain for import tariffs to rise.
The relative value of food vs energy is going to up-end muslim populations on a drastic scale.
It won’t be pretty. There is no way on this planet that the infidel lands can tolerate the mass influx of muslims that their economic implosion should create.
In which case, we’re going to have to be prepared for war on an ugly scale.
——–
We must terminate NGO projects that create dependent populations. Everything must be re-oriented towards holding down population growth in the ummah. It’s either that, or staggering bloodshed. Such are the ways of man.
——–
While many wring their hands over the decline of European populations…
The real issue is their displacement by peoples of dramatically lower IQs and educations.
[ How and why they're so impoverished is secondary to the brutal reality that they ARE impoverished in mind and wallet. Worse, it's but a fantasy that we can ameliorate their tragedy. Our efforts along those lines have been complete busts. ( Check out Iraq and Afghanistan - - the Marshall Plan doesn't work with them. ) ]
European culture is so provincial that it’s brutally difficult for ANYONE to get hired on any distance from where they were born. That rule is only set aside for the VERY TOP elites who have advanced degrees. They get to work in the ivory towers.
=======
There are simply no end of high minded individuals who have never had to work with and around truly dumb people. They can’t wrap their minds around just how dumb, dumb can get.
Like how to:
Use a toilet…
Count money…
Read…
Write…
Follow directions… ( a killer )
Read a diagram…
Measure…
Work safely… ( dummies self-injure at astounding rates — many multiples of the average )
Show up on time…
The above skills are not necessary if you live a Neolithic lifestyle.
They are, however, entirely beyond way too many immigrants — or worse still — their sons and daughters.
We see this latter impact with Mexican immigrants where the parents are above average in drive, intelligence and socialization. They go north. Then their kids prove to regress back to the mean. In which case they’ll have IQs down around 87 ( a mean ) — meaning that they are a terrible fit for modern America. A mean IQ of 87 means plenty of fellows with IQs in the low 70s. Our prisons are full of such fellows. They want the same thing everyone else does. After all, they watch TV commercials, too. It’s just that they can’t make it on their merits.
Removing them from their home ground makes them bitter, frustrated — and ripe for criminal behavior. That last may take the form of working for a drug lord, ginning up meth in the back-woods of California, until the cops come.
Such tragedies are glutting the California prison system. It’s travails are breaking the state budget. It’s taboo to mention just how over represented these guys are. Did you know that because of race-based prison riots California now has Mexican-only prisons? ( They were court mandated — to separate the feuding gangs. )
Mexicans are doing one thing unforeseen: they’re driving Blacks back to the South. It’s an ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
They’re also driving ‘Anglos’ out of Southern California at quite a clip. This is behind the terrible economics of the LA Dodgers. American born Mexicans can’t afford the tickets and chow that the professional team has on offer.
======
Unlike WW II, where a “hinge of fate” pivoted by force of war in a very short time, the demographic collapse of much of the world (China and Iran as well as the West) will necessarily be slower, if just as inexorable. A new challenge for humans is how to build a civilization without resort to the conceits of cultural ignorance. So far, it doesn’t look as though too many groups are ready.
David Goldman, in his book Why Civilizations Die claims that the only groups that seem to be able to grow demographically in the full face of current technology and culture are Orthodox Jews and Charismatic Christians. It seems that all the others are either shrinking (in some cases dramatically) or simply dragging their heels as they’re being pulled temporally forward.
Of course, an alternative outcome is that things get so bad that infrastructure just collapses, and we move into some post-apocalyptic reset of time, not of years, but of centuries.
Y, I agree the world is close to a turning point. From the metaphysical standpoint, those of us here now were chosen (or perhaps chose?) to be here for this. It is our work to do, such as it is. Let’s hope we are more competent than our “leaders.”
“The intellectual capital still exists.”
“No man no problem.”
My WAG for the office pool is 20,000,000 violent deaths and as many from otherwise preventable disease and famine over the next 72 months. Eventually there may be entirely denied but active beyond the law teams hunting down Muslims with WMD skills, like the Spartans had special teams that identified and eliminated any Helots who might have been a threat. This could become a cross between “Munich” and “Blade Runner.” Eventually once the apparatus is set up more threats will be identified. It may become unwise to rent an apartment to socially inept males with mad computer skillz. Anonymous has declared war on the US, and the US is unlikely to treat them with the disdain of a virtual Grand Fenwick.
Everyone’s liberties will be under pressure in the Brave New World to come. We may well look back on the hyperventilating of today’s libertarians over traffic cameras with some bemusement.
Fascinating discussion ! How much of the change will be shaped by the failure of US officials and current candidates to tell the truth to voters about how bad, and how quick the post Progressive changes will be ? Due to Obama choices and policies, the “landing” will be a lot harder than necessary. Will the US be able to make the adjustments quickly and peacefully ? If Great Depression [ or worse ] unemployment levels result, what are the odds for defense funding to maintain free trade ? I feel that the US could be on the verge of an economic and political recovery of huge proportions. It sometimes seems as though current leaders are like the assembled elite in Asimov’s “Foundation” when they all discover that all the projections of the best and brightest were wrong. Is Islam the “Mule” in the mix now, or more of a short distraction during the realignment our columnist projects ? I wonder how strong the American consensus actually is. The numbers dependent on government are astonishing. Many media voices lament the declining level of knowledge of the electorate. Can or will America face another Depression or World scale conflict ? The current three monkey Mideast policy will change, as will the idea that it is O K to put troops on the ground but allow cross-border sanctuaries. Will any of these things matter after this election ?
Four more years of Obama admin has been locked in by the inability of Republicans to generate a decent candidate or coherent agenda.
Whew. I said it.
Between Santorum and Ron Paul is a gulf as wide as the grand canyon. Neither looks very good. If Republicans are going to save the nation I would support that. I am just a working guy and this is not what I do. Give me someone other than Obama to vote for. Otherwise I am staying home.
In business it gets to (yiddish) “Tuches oifen tish” Butt on the table. Deliver or we are looking for another supplier.
Spindok
The culture of a nation? Friends of mine who have visited Spain in recent years describe a nation with all of the studied seriousness of college kids on spring break at Daytona Beach.
One married a Spanish woman in the 1960′s. He said there seemed to be a bunch of layabouts everywhere.
Another went there on business and reported that traffic from people coming home after partying all night was worse than that of the people actually going to work in the morning.
In the 1930′s Italian workers eagerly embraced El Duce, helping to slow the economy so Mussolini could come to power. For example, a friend told me that since there were regulations that required that train engineers ensure the track was cear befoe proceededing. So they stopped the train and walked the track ahead to verify it clear, then walked back and moved the train forward and then stopped it again. El Duce could make the trains run on time because his supporters quit screwing up when he was elected.
In France the socialist party proudly proclaimed that the country should not fight to oppose the German invasion. After all, the Nazis were Socialists, too. And in May 1944 – the month before the Normandy invasion – the future founder of the newpaper Le Monde wrote that the Americans presented a worse danger for France than did the Germans due to the Americans “clinging to their cult of liberty.”
These people were rescued by us. I do not think it will happen this time around.
People are probably tired of reading Wretchard’s 3 rules of insurrection. But I’ll repeat them anyway.
Rule One, the most important thing in change is positioning yourself to be an attractor before the discontinuity comes. Rule Two, if you have a dominant meme out there, people will cling to it when they are confused. So put the meme out there. Rule Three, revolutions are as much about what is preserved as about what is changed. Therefore forget about creating “ideal societies”. You’ll be lucky to get a sane one.
The dominant elite is deceived by its own superficial strength; it looks at its competitors and says, “oh these people are nothing”. But they’re looking at it wrong. If things start to fall apart an anxious polity will gravitate to new centers very quickly. They will think in terms of articulated alternatives, simply because these are the known alternatives to the discredited system. In other words, people will go to where they heard the lifeboat is the moment they become convinced the ship is sinking.
What is really significant about the last four years in America is that no extremist groups arose. Only groups which were if anything, more law-abiding than the progressives have risen up in opposition. The extremists are all on the sinking ship. I think “Occupy” was an attempt by the Left to create a channel along which could harness the energy of a collapsing system. Maybe it’s true that God looks out for America. The Occupy people were so inept, so incompetent that they basically took themselves out of the running. This is remarkable and more on this later. By contrast the difficulties in Greece are going to empower entities like the Greek Communist Party.
In much of European history crisis means extremism. For historical reasons that may not be so pronounced in America, which I think is its single greatest strategic asset. Maybe the OWS farce proves that Americans have no talent for being Nazis. Attempts in that direction only produce results from the Onion.
Returning W’s Rule #3. Discontinuities can be tremendously destructive. Hence, the endgame often belongs to whoever can harness the discontinuity positively in the main, without Lenins, Maos or Robespierres.
Revolutions led by “visionaries” promising a new heaven and earth probably only make things worse. It is discontinuities led by sane and decent men that do not go overboard.
The main uncertainty is what the current system will do when they see its day is over. Or what kinds of external and unforseeable events may eventuate. You cannot anticipate these. The only defense against these is preparation. Spreading the meme, organizing a nuclei fundamentally predisposed to a peaceful, constitutional process. You can think of it as ballast in a ship about to enter a storm. Or you can imagine it as an attractor around which a new stability will emerge after a period of chaos.
There is also a saying: “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” In speaking of the future, there are only probabilities. No certainties.
b @ 3: I would nominate FRACKING as the Hinge of Fate.
seconded. unforeseen, and almost unbelievable major. may yet save us all from ourselves for another century.
but the rest of your argument and several more seems to be “The Marching Morons” argument. maybe, but I see virtually the same problem among the highly educated, highly paid groups. I can’t see that IQ drops even 5 points due to regression or other process in a single generation. what I can see is a social structure that has less room for a given low IQ, with every decade. and also a process by which large organizations tend to run down, a mere process of senility, entropy. what would save is creative destruction, but we get soft and effete and put in things like TBTF, and all that happens is the scope of pending destruction gets larger, doubling down, kicking the can, until the well runs dry, the harder they fall, break the camel’s back, gang aft agley, and we run out of cliches.
–
regarding wretchard’s wrules of wreckage, I guess I was supposed to have learned long ago, and sort of preach, that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. I wonder what I should be doing, to contribute to the common good, preserving today’s society, advancing it, fixing what’s broken, tikun olam, etc. but I can never seem to find a lever long enough, or a place to stand, or perhaps whatever good I was put here to do is of another nature, or is already done, … or is not yet in sight. so much for big thoughts.
“The lost Generation” appeared in the eighties, when “Globalisation” became a leitmotiv for our entrepreneurs, and that our governments thought that “Services” would bring more money than supporting enterprises, which then delocated to low costs labor force countries
Blert,
I agreed food price coupled high energy prices will make our societies cramble.
I was discussing with my hubby on the bread price before the euro, a baguette which costed 1 franc suddenly costed 1 euro, and even if our country makes surpluses with wheat exportations, it isn’t cheaper for us too. As austerity is the norm, expect some food strikes soon !
RWE, it’s not the Socialists, but the Communists, it sems that you make a confusion with the both, The communists were at Moscow orders !
The president that decleared war to Germany was Paul Raynaud, a socialist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reynaud
give me a source for your claim on “Le Monde” founder
Marie Claude:
My source of the quote is the book “Anti-Americanism” by the famous French author the late Jean-Francois Revel, on P.52. He was quoting Hubert Beuve-Mery, as referenced in the book “Reflexions politiques, 1932-1952″ (Editions Le Monde and Seuil, 1951).
Please note that the Congress’ failure to properly address the deficit issue last fall and resultant attempt to kick the can down the road ’til after the ’12 election has proved a bust.
WeThe govt runs out of money sometime in the fourth quarter (Aug/Sep). This can be viewed as an opportunity for the Rep nominee, if he handles it properly. A rational solution can be the meme that W refers to.I dont think the Hinge will be technical (as fracking). It will be economic or social. I really think economic, because it will involve energy costs, food costs, policy and employment as parts of the solution. The articulated meme must be freedom since the other has or will be discredited.
Wash and NY and Calif will be basket cases. Those of us in flyover country will get by and will clean up the mess when its over.
I think the most sobering thing about:
“Destroying nuclear facilities in a military strike does not “uninvent” the technology, retired Marine CorpsGen. James Cartwright said Monday in an interview. “The intellectual capital still exists.”
is that it forces us to go from a strategy that focuses on destroying just nuclear facilities and its infrastructure to one that also focuses on destroying human capital. In other words, lots of death to lots of people.
It would be nice if we could beat into our pompous betters the repercussions of that idea. But sadly we can’t. The postmodern Left has driven us to a place of horrible war, where millions of innocents will likely die. So much for our “Smart Diplomacy” from the likes of Buraq, Hilary and Valerie.
#10 W: “Rule Two, if you have a dominant meme out there, people will cling to it when they are confused. So put the meme out there.”
Within the U.S., that meme would be the American Constitution *as written*.
3. blert
**I agree with your comments about how dumb dumb can be. Anyone who served during the draft saw it right up front: ”Take one knife, one fork, and one spoon, put them in your right hand. Now pick up a tray and hold it in your … I said RIGHT HAND YOU DUMB MAGGOT!!!”
**I’d like to see a reference for your comment about Mexicans’ children regressing to a mean of 87. I often ask the Mexicans I work with how their kids are doing in school and by far most of the time they say they are doing well. I don’t pretend this is a good sample, BTW.
RWE
“À la veille du débarquement de Normandie, en 1944, Beuve-Méry écrit : « Les Américains constituent un réel danger pour la France (…) Les Américains peuvent arrêter une révolution nécessaire, et leur matérialisme n’a pas la grandeur tragique du matérialisme des régimes totalitaires »
no mention of the Germans
THE HINGE OF FATE
We cannot know which leaf of the hinge will be the one to move. Hinges have pintles, and so the movement can go in either direction. Should the hinge swing one way, the West will be preserved, though likely in a way that is different from the old, in the way that Europe, pre-Middle Ages was different from Europe post-Middle Ages. And should the hinge swing the other way, then the modern West as we have known it is irrevocably gone, to be replaced with a modern something else.
The West, my friend, will never die
Said Cortes with a laugh
And brought the Aztec to the dust
And wrote their epitaph
The Zulu fought and fought quite well
The Dervish, said a wag
Would come to civ’lization
By the round end of a Krag
But then there was the science
And invention and the arts
And roads and rails and crops and law
Not seen in far off parts
The bag was mixed, as often is
The world as understood
And should the hinge swing ‘gainst us
Then our West is gone for good
One day in the distant future the century from 1914 to 2014 will be known as The Fall of Europe.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is sponsoring a talk on Nazis and Islam.
A review of his book is here. He basically connects up the Nazis with the Islamism in Germany going back to the end of the second world war. A lot of this stuff may be tin-foil hat material, but it underscores the role that ethnic identities have played and continue to play in that part of the world.
Identity politics is one of the fracture lines that power groups used to manipulate people. One of the reasons the system is now in crisis is that all the negative side effects of keeping elites in power — buying voters off with tax money, identity politics, and the ‘superstructure’ of this noxious arrangments, AKA ‘political correctness’ have become unaffordable.
The modes that the elites have used to maintain themselves are to a large extent the problem. They are the toxins that are now deadening societies.
Because Europe was for so long a free rider behind the American hegemon, they could get themselves deeper into a hole than could the US. Drink more of the Kool Aid. Now that the economic underpinnings have given way, the sheer weight of the multi-culti, welfare, PC overhang on their societies is going to be enormous. The full extent of their problems is going to come through.
Europe will eventually solve its problems, but their magnitude suggests that one of things a renewed America should be capable of is maintaining a stable international system in which the nations, including Europe and the Middle East, can recover. It need not maintain order perefectly, simply provide enough stability to prevent an international catastrophe.
The world will eventually come through the white water as long as there’s someone with a paddle to steer the boat away from the worst rocks. The challenge is to find that paddle.
As we accelerate to the hinge, or the fracture, if you prefer, I am reminded of the essay by Nock, “Isaiah’s Job” here It’s an old one, 1936, but worth spending the time reading.
@14: I dont think the Hinge will be technical (as fracking). It will be economic or social. I really think economic…
From the Monday CNBC interview with Warren Buffett:
BECKY [Quick]: I know that you look at a lot of different factors and that overall you are very optimistic about the future not only of this country but also of the stock market. But if you have a list of worries, what’s at the top of that list?
BUFFETT: Well, the biggest worry is nuclear, chemical and biological attack of some sort, whether by a government or by a rogue group, and that will happen someday in our future and it’ll be anything from a large tragedy to an unbelievable tragedy.
Speaking of hinges, Donald Trump has contracted to do a ten-minute spot every Tuesday on Squawk Box. His first interview was today but his remarks are in the shadow of Michigan and Buffett. Trump is a blunt instrument.
BUFFETT: Well, the biggest worry is nuclear, chemical and biological attack of some sort, whether by a government or by a rogue group, and that will happen someday in our future and it’ll be anything from a large tragedy to an unbelievable tragedy.
That is why the 2012 election is not irrelevant and why even slight improvements in the competence and sanity of executive are important. There will be unforeseen events. There will be emergent events. In such situations the character of the President is the reserve. It is the difference. The margin by which you go from “good enough” to “bad” to “god-awful”.
Electing a mediocre, but halfway decent alternative to President Obama is not going to stop the crisis. But one ought not to wish for bringing on the crisis at the expense of installing a buffoon or unstable person, because he might be called upon to make a momentous decision. The man you want in the Oval Office should be one with a modicum of intellectual honesty.
Even in a losing cause leadership counts. Winston Churchill could not prevent the end of the British Empire, but he did allow it to accept what came as a free nation and not to live as a slave state. I have often read that the fate of America would have been very different — for the worse — without Robert E. Lee. Even victory is gilded or cheapened according to the gifts of leadership. History is fascinating in that people act in it without knowing how things will turn out. In a sense it is all an act of faith.
But if you want to look for a reason to hope, it is that men keep renewing this faith, whatever the difficulty. They go on. That’s really all one needs to do. It will work out.
Wretchard, I hope that a paddle candidate is the fracking that Blert mentions. If the countries that create value through the application of invention and the scientific method can reduce their dependency on primeval Islamic regimes, we could find our way back to an equilibrium that is more productive and less threatening. I don’t think that any of us will be blessed to see an end to the scourges of Islam, but perhaps we can drain the swamp a bit and keep it contained.
I sometimes wonder if Palin isn’t waiting for The Hinge of Fate. It is curious that she is not running for President this year even though the NYT gave her a complement –
NYT, Sept 2011 – “But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.”
She has enough support from both Conservatives and Classic Liberals. The discussion has been around 2016, not 2012. True, some of it is maturity and timing. It is also interesting that ZeroHedge noted in a article titled “GOP Finally Discovers Obama’s Achilles Heel: Just Let Him Do What He Does… And Encourage It!” that “the paradox of defeating Obama is precisely in giving him a carte blanche on all the stimulus programs he wants”. Obama is an extension of the welfare state so the paradox of defeat is to let the welfare state destroy itself. Debt projections are $25T by 2016. How does one accelerate the arrival of The Hinge of Fate? A passive aggressive strategy.
If the outcome is inevitable “Don’t fear it, embrace it”
Maybe not so much a hinge of fate, as a rolling marble. It started in the Middle East about 7,000 years ago, rolled off to China, then rolled back to Europe about 500 years ago, splashed across to North America a century ago. How about — next stop, Brazil?
South America has resources, technology, people. Let the Northern Hemisphere paper its path to oblivion with printed money; the human race will survive.
To help the survivors move forward, we should make sure that copies of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” make it to the other side. Democracy is a nice idea, but citizenship through the accident of birth is not compatible with sustainable democracy. Everyone should have to earn the right to vote.
h @ 14: I dont think the Hinge will be technical (as fracking). It will be economic or social.
The fracking hinge is positive. But haven’t you already found exactly the negative social, economic, political hinge you describe, when the national Congress can’t even pass a budget, one of their most basic duties? And most of the country just shrugs it off, is not even aware? The country is already in a coma (aka The Obamanation). Of course the California legislature has been this disfunctional for twenty years, and California being the bellweather, we were just waiting for the national version, and here it is. No great surprise it is Democrats in both cases, who provide the epic fail – and also continue to stand against oil production including fracking! They love death. They have become (whimpering) death. Take that, Robert Oppenheimer and Bhagavad-gita.
Still, Oppenheimer may have his moment shortly, contra T.S. Elliot the one may lead to the other, we already have the words: The fire next time.
(so just how many allusions can *you* jam into one post!)
–
d @ 22: “Isaiah’s Job”
Great little essay, might be a permalink for right here at BC.
Poor Spengler. Wake up, O Compromiser. He trusts in Charlatans of Reason like himself, learned men around the globe who are ever equivocating, and now may be disappointed.
Unreasonable men, good sir knight, are the ones you can depend on. But should the Iranians or Pakistanis lend a nuke to someone some day, then will we worry about ‘oo killed ‘oo? Or will it just be a big sad comedy with the joke on U.S., Israel, or both? To paraphrase a question he asked me once, “Who appointed U.S. to be arbiters of who should/not have nukes?” No one, dude. Never discount the madness of people and, even worse, the madness of habitually compromising on ideas and ideals.
The swinging Hinge of Fate I see is Third World overpopulation combined with the West’s political correctness. This allows a series of essentially failed cultures to move into, not a power vacuum as was true of the original spread of Islam, but into a vacuum of resolve.
In the West we show a disturbing trend to lack faith in our own value system in exact proportion to the hordes of people without brains that really want to do a thing, such as steal into our country.
We in America used to have a cocky self-assurance and audacity that is now shouted down by the politically correct meek who have inherited our nation as arrogance and even racism. It is America itself that has taught the PC con game to the Third World where all roads lead to cries of racism that enable illegals to do a wide variety of illegal and immoral acts even American citizens themselves are not eligible to do such as walk away from traffic stops without consequence though laws have been broken or get free state money from certain programs.
There is a monstrous double standard that on the one hand posits that the Third World is fully equal while throwing enormous treasure at the de facto evidence that says the exact opposite. Countries like Somalia and Haiti will never get their act together but in PC-land it is coarse and crude to suggest they simply don’t have the brains even if it is true.
The Hinge of Fate is the West committing cultural suicide on the proposition that who it is who lives in a land makes no real difference, as if the West and the Third World are just weird perfect storms of good and bad luck where a mass population exchange would be irrelevant. More people, especially in the wrong places, less land, more expensive food all add up to a coming storm.
The old context in which warnings served a purpose may be gone; it is as if there is no one left to heed them.
Heed the warnings? If we do, how will our crises come about? Imagine all the lost opportunities to fundamentally change America.
spindok@8 — If Republicans are going to save the nation I would support that.
Watch Gingrich in these videos. Of course we’ll have to vote for the fat ugly guy, but I’ve done worse.
Hot Powerline entry on the Democrats illegal failure to pass budgets, also to fund medicare, per my previous entry.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/scofflaw-democrats.php
We have written repeatedly about the fact that the Senate Democrats are not just being irresponsible when they fail to adopt a budget, they are breaking the law. The Budget Act of 1974 requires the House and Senate to meet certain deadlines, culminating in the adoption of a budget resolution. The Republican House has obeyed the law, but the Democratic Senate has thumbed its nose at the statute, illegally refusing to meet any of the statutory deadlines or to adopt any budget at all for the last three years.
The Senate’s scofflaw ways are shared by the Obama administration. Federal law requires the Medicare trustees to report annually on the solvency of the Medicare program. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 further provides that if, for two years in a row, more than 45% of Medicare funding is coming from general revenues rather than Medicare taxes, the president must submit legislation to Congress to address the Medicare funding crisis. President Bush dutifully followed the law, but President Obama has ignored it for the last three years.
Today was the deadline for Obama to comply with the Medicare Modernization Act by submitting a plan to rescue Medicare’s finances. Obama, of course, has no intention of doing anything to reform entitlements. So, for the fourth year in a row, he chose to act illegally. He did nothing.
Earlier today, I was on a call with Senator Jeff Sessions, and I asked what can be done to hold the Democrats accountable for their wanton law-breaking. Unfortunately, the statutes in question contain no sanctions or enforcement mechanisms. The only real recourse is to public opinion. For that recourse to be meaningful, Americans would need to know that their president and the Democratic Senate believe that they need comply with the law only when it is convenient for them. Unfortunately, the press has no interest in publicizing the fact that the Democrats are scofflaws. So the Democrats ignore the law, secure in the knowledge that their secret is safe with the national media.
33 @Josh
I know this is old hat for BC, but quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The answer of course: no one. No controlling legal authority. Who’s going to stop them? The spineless, “loyal” opposition, the GOP? Certainly not their friends in the media, who sold the lie quite well that they “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Each and every one of these pokes in the eye is a deliberate and incremental effort to disestablish any remaining vestige of the rule of law regarding the Ruling Class. The Country Class, on the other hand, will die the death of 10^10 paper cuts. They fail to properly account for trillions of your dollars? No biggie, it was an honest and well-intentioned mistake. You let your dog off-leash in the park? Beatdown for you buddy! We know who the real criminals are, and apparently it ain’t the guys looting every last store of value left in the US. Dr. Ferris summed up their ruling philosophy quite well in Atlas Shrugged.
I’m convinced that wretchard had the imagery exactly right when he said, “The current system is in the terminal homing phase and only the bang is awaited.” The legal, educational, and mass media system is too stacked for the Ruling Class in order for us to affect meaningful change via those channels. It would take a counter-Long March in order to do it, and we’re going “bang” well before that could be accomplished. So, wretchard is right. Now is the time to pre-position ourselves and be ready to try to pick up the pieces before the barbarian hordes smash our country into an unrecognizable mess.
Agree with the fracking biz: from a previous post but would stipulate that it applies to both oil and gas.
Just like I figured. Fracking is pushing up recoverable oil reserves in old fields.
Now Texas is talking about doubling oil ouput in five years.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/27/permian-basin-of-west-texas-seeing-oil-boom/
DALLAS — The Permian Basin of West Texas is experiencing an oil boom, leading some of the region’s top oilmen to predict that Texas oil production will double within five to seven years.
Oil drillers over the last eight years have found that the dense oil rock of the basin surrounding Midland and Odessa responds well to hydraulic fracturing, releasing lush yields. Total oil production last year in Texas averaged more than 1 million barrels per day for the first time since 2001.
“Right in the basin, we could get up to 2 million barrels a day,” Jim Henry of Midland-based Henry Resources told The Dallas Morning News for an article in its Sunday’s edition.
“I’ve been totally surprised by the amount of oil we’re finding out in the shale zones,” Scott Sheffield, chairman and chief executive of Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources Co., told the newspaper.
“We have 30 billion barrels of new oil discoveries,” said Tim Leach, chairman and CEO of Midland-based Concho Resources. “It can be hard to get your mind around that.
“I could paint a scenario for you where we are producing 3 million more barrels per day by 2016, which would almost get us to the point where we could eliminate 60 to 70 percent of our OPEC imports,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman told The News. “With that greater control over our own energy security, we could care less about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.”
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Now add that 30 billion barrels in midland to to already discussed 25 billion barrels in western ohio and 24 billion barrels in the bakkan and who knows how much in a dozen major formations scattered around the USA and you get the picture of a big change happening fast–especially if the oil men get the feds on their side.
A second big technological change imho will occur in the next ten years. The cost of desalinated water will become cheap enough for agricultural applications–
http://www.desalination.biz/news/news_story.asp?id=5868&channel=0
US$0.36/m³ price for Singapore’s second desalination plant
Vizualization of Singapore’s Tuaspring desalination plant
Tuaspring Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Singapore’s Hyflux, signed a 25-year Water Purchase Agreement (WPA) with Singapore’s national water agency on 6 April 2011 for the country’s second and largest desalination plant.
Under this agreement, Tuaspring as the concession company, will deliver desalinated water to PUB over a 25-year period from 2013 to 2038.
The 70 MIGD (318,500 m³/d) desalination plant, to be located in Tuas, will be constructed under a design, build, own and operate model. It is expected to commence operations in 2013 with a first-year price for the desalinated water at Sing$ 0.45/m³ (US$ 0.36/m³).
………………..
$.36@ cubic meter translates to about $445@ acre foot. You can produce high value agricultural crops competitively with water at +-200@acre foot and field crops competitively with water less than $100@ acre foot.(thereby making it technologically feasible to turn the world’s deserts green.)
Munincipal water in Southern California last time I checked — goes for > 700@ acre foot.
imho the Europeans will eventually kick out all the non europeans they have imported but the opening of the deserts to population growth because of cheap water will make this event a comedy rather than a tragedy.
maybe something similiar will happen in the USA vis a vis the mexicans but again because of cheap water — mexico is going to need her middle class– returned to her.
I heard an English Don five or six years ago say the glory days of atheism went from the fall of the Bastille to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now while atheism is still around and strong–its glory is over and the glory is rapidly fading.
Nature abhors a vacume.
The last big — thing that I think is already starting to happen in Europe–is that Europe will be re Christianized.
I still have a few doubts about the Iranian regime’s ability to produce much of anything other than agro, hype, and the (under the circumstances) warranted speculation surrounding the consequences of a trigger-happy mullocracy with thermonuclear weapons potential and a button with no safety on it. They’ve gotten a lot of mileage from hyping a nuke system they haven’t quite finished yet. It’s kind of a variation on the Boy who Cried Wolf- they’ve seen the fecklessness of any opposition to acquiring one, and the way the west trips all over itself trying to settle political scores against the previous president by destroying the case against iran’s nuke potential via the IÅEA, and the National Intelligence Estimate of 2006. Still, the success they’ve had amounts to a contributing factor to all that has been said above, which, as has been described, seem to be well determined to be set in motion, with, for example, the fracking potential being one of the few positive things on the horizon. But whether they have one, or not, it might be the kind of straw that breaks the camels back, so to speak, in a rather touchy situation world wide vis a vis the collapse of the welfare state and the emergence of world conflicts that chart the course trajectory of a new world oder. Phew!
Looks like whorled peas again for supper.
Fracking is not going to do a thing to alter our situation. Even if it really is the supposed “game-changer” in the oil markets which its proponents assert (and I doubt it), civilizations do not rise and fall based on anything so mundane as the ease with which resources can be gathered. A strong nation will squeeze the land and make it yield its fruits, or they will migrate into more favorable climes, shoving aside anyone who stands in their way. But a dying nation lays off its hand, its fields go fallow, and the eternal forest—trees or barbarian men, it makes little difference—creeps in again to choke it.
But besides that, let us just say that fracking is everything it’s cracked up to be (no pun intended). Let us further stipulate that the only surety we will need against the collapse of the West, the only bulwark necessary to deflect the coming onslought, is to secure for ourselves all the energy we can possible use for the next century. If that be the case then we can rest easy, for we already possessed that energy in the form of coal and nuclear fission. Fracking is just the ribbon on the package.
And if ye permit me to assay with thee further, I beseech ye not to forget that fracking is a weapon that can be turned against us. Say the possibility for enhanced oil and gas yields exists in North America: it exists elsewhere as well. It exists in countries unfriendly to us, who are not as shy when it comes to exploiting their resources, or employing the arts of economic warfare, as we are. Trust not to technology to save us, or attend ye again to the capital post on this thread, which contained a message about the impossibility of deinventing nuclear weapons. This all leads us to observe the truth of one of my time-honored maxims: Material Monocausal Historiographies Terminate in Utopian Absurdity, or “Mufasa” for short. It’s not an exact acronym, I know, but it comes with its own ready-made heuristic. The circle of life, and all that.
Surely I am bold to entreat once again with Your Worships, but a fourth point comes to mind, and who can contain the words that he has conceived? If fracking really did open up a path to an abundance of energy, would that not, in our current cultural milieu, simply be energy to be employed in kicking the Welfare State can down the road? I once made a similar point in the act of deconstructing the environmentalist movement, viz. if mankind ever succeeded at efficiently converting solar radiation to electricity, that would mark the end of the environment as we now know it. Imagine if all the strip mining machines and mechanical tree harvesters were operating on cheap, endlessly available solar power. Would there remain anywhere a plant not uprooted, or a mountain not laid low?
The real hinge of fate is Christ and his Gospel. Believed or rejected, it is decisive for every human soul and ultimately for every human society. Our last chance as a people consists in repentance, in turning away from our sins and self-absorbed fantasies, and embracing the Truth. America will be Christian or it will not be. It’s just as simple as that.
***************
Our Host, in the previous thread, announced his thesis that Marxism is nothing but the deconstruction of reality. I could not be happier. That is precisely the point I’ve been trying to make all this time; and should the idea perchance become fully understood and accepted among Belmonteers, it would seem that my work on this blog is nearly done. That one recognition is the rosetta stone which decodes and synthesizes all the various and often confusing issues of our day. Leftism is fundamentally oriented against what is real: it is unreal, it is anti-real. It is a method of raiding society. Every family or household, every functioning firm, every old fortune or landed interest; every high and noble possession, whether of land or intellect or taste (in a word all the “property” that Marxists so despise); also the Church and her wisdom; grace, beauty, virtue and piety unfeigned; a talent slowly developed, a charm subtly exercised, a skill dearingly cultivated—all this becomes in the eyes of the progressive an area of low entropy to be absorbed, like a nice ripe potato in the ground. The Leftists cut through society like a horde until they have taken everything, leaving only smoldering ruins in their wake. External raiders can be repelled, but there is not much left to fight for when the enemy is inside the fortress. Societies die when their own guardians become secret Leftists themselves. Men grow weary of the civilized life and take to plundering, trampling under their feet the work of a millenium. Who knows how far the raiding impulse has gone in the hearts of each of us? I therefore repeat my exhortation: Be wary of the demand for “freedom.” Are you quite certain it is not the braying of beasts?
It is possible to delve even deeper in this vein. Since Leftism is unreal, everything it asserts is to be despised. But who has the fortitude to roll back the Leftist tide all the way to its beginning? Remember that this means standing against not only the secular progressivism running rampant today—i.e socialized medicine, homosexual tolerance, women’s liberation, contraception, affirmative action, the Great Society, Social Security, the New Deal, the welfare state—but also against Montesquieu’s divided powers, the American and French Revolutions, the Enlightenment, and finally the Protestant Reformation.
Is there really a way to do this without first plunging all the way to the nadir and having to rebuild the world from the ground up? Yes, I believe there is. It consists in applying sound metaphysics to real-world problems. It consists, namely, in embracing what is real. Aristotle, the summit of Greek wisdom, perfected by the revelation of Christ, developed by Scholastic philosophy, has given us the precise techniques we need to analyze any natural or supernatural situation. The inquisitive gaze of Western man has penetrated into vast new realms of the physical world and opened up many new vistas, but these new realms have not yet been understood, only charted as it were by the indexical language of mathematics and developed into techniques for manipulating matter.
Philosophy is far from being a worthless subject. It is necessarily the most exact and fundamental of all the sciences. Even our modern world, though it has forgotten its mother, derived its existence entirely from her. The mathematical tools which gave rise to industrial society were developed through speculative thought. Newton and Leibniz were philosophers; the calculus was contemplated before it was found operative in nature.
When once Scholasticism has taken modern thermodynamics under its mantle, it will do much to improve the integration of human society with itself and with the physical world. We need not perhaps sink all the way to the bottom. It is possible to combine a traditional society with modern technics, to preserve what is good about modernity while rejecting what is false in it. This project will become more and more imperative as the crisis unfolds. It will have to engage our efforts, for it is the only way forward.
Marie Claude #18:
That’s because you left it out:
“The Americans constitute a real danger for France – a danger different from the kind of threat represented by Germany, and the threat that may eventually emerge from Russia….”
This quote is from MAY 1944, when the whole of France was under the heel of the Nazis.
RWE @ 42 – Paris May 1968 http://tinyurl.com/ylkyqs9
Spain may have its lost generation but so too does America. Only here we dress it up and have it testify before Congress.
Susan Fluke, Georgetown law student ($70,000 per year), whines before the Congress of the United States that Catholics are ruining her life because nobody wants to give her $1,000 a year to have as much sex as she wants without having her risk the inconvenience of going through a procedure to kill any critters that may result from such activity.
It makes my head spin. After viewing Susan Fluke’s testimoney I had difficulty finding the horizon. Surely the world has turned upside down that this nonsense could even pretend to pass as normal, never-mind be serious enough to find a place in the deliberations of Congress.
Every time that I catch a glimpse of a path that will provide a way out of this Age of Idiocy a Susan Fluke pops up to turn off the light. We not only suffer fools like Susan Fluke we elect them to public office.
Seriously, did we really expect something different from Chicago democrats? Valerie Jarrett is someone who CBS described as the “other half of Obama’s brain.”
“As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage…In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.” Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.” Judicial Watch
She became CEO of the company in 1995. It’s interesting how she has no problems making money from people in her own backyard. Growing up I was taught not to crap where I eat. I guess on planet Chicago its ok as long as you make money. On the other hand Chicago Democrats can never be accused being racist. The White and Black Democrats in power have somehow been able to overcome racism while working together to screw the little guy year after year after year….
m @ 41: If fracking really did open up a path to an abundance of energy, would that not, in our current cultural milieu, simply be energy to be employed in kicking the Welfare State can down the road?
Probably. It’s a big bag of free money. And I’m mildly resigned to the idea that the modern welfare state is here to stay, and hopeful it can be done in such a way as to let the non-welfare state flourish.
Fracking is also a rebalancing of the world economy, most of all away from such places as Arabia and Venezuela. With Europe and China freed from the need to deal with dar al-Islam, and even Russia cut out as a big energy supplier, we get some large-scale political changes, I think, and mostly favorable. Economic advantage based on energy reserves, nearly vanishes. Charles gets some cheaper desalinization, which we will all need.
… Marxism is nothing but the deconstruction of reality …
Er, not in the sense of “deconstruction” that the pomo got from Derrida.
Marx may have defined his own contexts and realities, discarding older ones, but that’s not deconstruction.
When once Scholasticism has taken modern thermodynamics under its mantle…
Lost me entirely. You want it added to the catechism?
I’d give the 1944 French half a pass for worrying about Americans. Who knew much about any other country then?
When my father’s unit got to Holland, the Dutch didn’t know who they were. They’d never seen a picture of an American soldier, knew little about America, and had no idea, even, whose side they were on except that the Germans had left.
When my father went to Mass at a church, with his runner who spoke Yiddish and could get some Dutch and German, he found the priest was saying to be careful of Americans, especially to keep your daughters indoors.
My father lost his runner when it was discovered what the Germans, even the “good Germans” of the Wehrmacht, did to Jewish US soldiers they’d captured. His division–he thinks it may have been the entire army–pulled Jews from the line units.
Matt,
To prolix, you are abusing the hosts bandwidth. Besides if you intend to communicate then these extended stream of consciousness screeds simply fail. If on the other hand you put all this effort into something that is for your private pleasure, well that is not pleasant in public. Don’t get angry. Sit down and edit yourself. State your point and then list your proofs. Link to extended examples or side arguments. If you think a point you made before applies again then simply say so and invite people to go read it, with a link, but do not repeat the whole thing.
Storm-Rider,
That point about repeating yourself? Please don’t make me repeat myself.
Matt 41: “Our Host, in the previous thread, announced his thesis that Marxism is nothing but the deconstruction of reality… That one recognition is the rosetta stone which decodes and synthesizes all the various and often confusing issues of our day. Leftism is fundamentally oriented against what is real: it is unreal, it is anti-real.”
Yes, Marxism is a denial of the self-evident reality that every individual equally possesses a natural God-given unalienable right to the fruit of his/her own creative labor (his/her property) in their pursuit of happiness.
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Marxism is a denial of the self-evident reality that every individual equally possesses a natural God-given unalienable right to “unobstructed action according to our [individual] will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” Thomas Jefferson
http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/law508/JeffersonRights.htm
Marxism is the enemy of freedom (rightful human liberty) because under Marxism the middle class is burdened by obstructed action according to someone else’s will (the will of the Marxist ruling class) within limits drawn around them by the superior rights of others (the government-dependent so-called proletariat class).
“The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled under-achieving, government-dependents] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… And the abolition of this state of things is called by the [middle class] bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois [middle class] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Marxism is a deconstruction of the self-evident reality that all individuals are created with equal rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
BFTP 48,
I stated my point, listed my proofs and linked to the sources. BTW, Marxism is not off-topic, because the economic and cultural disaster overtaking Europe and the United States is the result of economic and cultural Marxism in action.
http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26583
42. RWE
no you’re wrong Beuve Mery was a resistant, and he founded “Le Monde” after that France was freed, but he was under the communism influence, which represented the the must of the french intellecraty of the era (All the intellectuels that counted were “communist”, except Camus, though his peers were his daily dish too). The communists didn’t worship the US, but the Soviets, hence the anti US propaganda
Beuve Mery was intervening at the Uriage foundation, until Laval closed it, because it was a nest of resistants
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_des_cadres_d%27Uriage
(click on Beuve Mery ling for his bio)
Revel was but a right-wing conservateur, and these lefties intellos irratated him, and like the others, he also could write some bigottery, though I understand why you worship him, he is caressing the Americans in the good sense !
Camus was more of a independant mind !
43. MachiasPrivateer
some persons attibute the 1968 riots as a CIA plot that had the agenda to overthrow de Gaulle, following his NATO and dollars refusals
scroll down until page 79 for France
http://www.scribd.com/doc/58155246/Terrorism-in-Western-Europe-An-Approach-to-NATO%E2%80%99s-Secret-Stay-Behind-Armies-by-Daniele-Ganser
RWE, the Americans aren’t in rest for their anti-frenchism, that dated from longer that the Soviet era
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/12/why_do_we_mock_mitt_romney_for_speaking_french_.html
Though today it’s improving unlike for the Brits that still dislike us
“Les Britanniques n’aiment pas la France”
-http://www.rtl.be/loisirs/detente/voyages/733274/les-britanniques-n-aiment-pas-la-france
40. Gaffe Prices
Looks like whorled peas again for supper.
……….
Technological fixes are only temporary. Even then they’ll take time. The decapitalizing of America took a couple decades. The recapitalizing of America may well take as long. The next decade will still be hard on the welfare state. What fracking does is put a floor under the dollar and ensures that the really bad stuff is not in the cards. If the English French and Germans can get out from under the thumb of the environmentalists, they have some large shale deposits suitable for fracking as well–which would make them much more financially stable. A couple more big financial crises in Europe, as well as the ongoing repudiation of the global warming crowd my just do that trick.
wretchard #10: “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”
As Josh (#11) alluded (“gang aft agley”), the source of that quote is the Robert Burns poem ‘To a Mouse’. For those that don’t know it, it’s a beautiful piece of literature.
To a Mouse
Pardon me if this is somewhat OT to the thread:
http://www.livescience.com/18706-people-smart-democracy.html
Or maybe not. It’s an incredibly stupid article. Why scientists get to make pronouncements about politics and governance and put it in a “study” is one of thw worst conceits of the modern era.
The relevance is that there is an insidious drumbeat out there to dismantle democratic processes in the West. This link fits that mold.
Josh @11 wrote:
I wonder what I should be doing, to contribute to the common good, preserving today’s society, advancing it, fixing what’s broken, tikun olam, etc. but I can never seem to find a lever long enough, or a place to stand, or perhaps whatever good I was put here to do is of another nature, or is already done, … or is not yet in sight. so much for big thoughts.
Above all, do not despair or surrender. We each play our part as best we know how.
If the lever and place to stand are not yours, perhaps that role has been assigned to another. Perhaps said lever will start to swing on a certain Thursday of next month. There would be great humor in such.
Take counsel of your own strengths and joys, see what you want to do that’s useful and rewarding, and do it. (I note L3 in this regard.)
sr @ 49: Marxism is a deconstruction of the self-evident reality that all individuals are created with equal rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Well, Marx might not agree with that, the famous question being how one is best free, with freedom *of* action, or freedom *from* something – hunger, coercion.
But even if it is right, as apparently Marx was not satisfied with the US founding documents or Adam Smith, it’s still not Derrida’s “deconstruction”, and who else would ever use the term? You can look at the Wikipedia entry if you want to increase your confusion on the issue – at a glance it looks accurate, which is why it is likely to leave you more confused! I’ll often defend *Derrida’s* deconstruction from further abuse of the concept, art, and term by other pomo writers, btw. Derrida, fwiw, was nearly apolitical, he’s just a bit of a joker, actually, when he makes any sense at all, which he does now and again. Declined to back the Paris (Marxist) 1968 rioters, fwiw (see below).
w @ 55: gang aft agley
Just to be clear, I’m certain wretchard knows the difference, and anyway it apparently appeared in the Scots at the end of the previous thread! I just like saying it.
mc @ 52: some persons attibute the 1968 riots as a CIA plot that had the agenda to overthrow de Gaulle, following his NATO and dollars refusals.
Having disposed of JFK just five years earlier, hmm? 1968 was rather the season of riots worldwide, often related to the war in Vietnam, the US having rather our own my memory today of the Paris riots then is rather fuzzy, but if the CIA had any hand in the situation, it must have been their largest-scale and most successful operation ever. IOW, I doubt it heavily.
dr @ 56: The relevance is that there is an insidious drumbeat out there to dismantle democratic processes in the West.
Quite. And Obambus the ignorant, begins his ignorance with the history, precedent, and even law of the land, that he blithely ignores because “we can’t wait”, overriding the will of the people with his own supposed expertise which is only evident by its lack. The claim is generally that science or logic gives better results. Even Plato thought Democracy a loser, the mob would vote themselves benefits not out of a lack of intelligence, but out of baser motivations, anyway it obviously wouldn’t WORK. Yet, that lacks so many levels of understanding what government is all about, same as these pinhead scientists, the participation and consensus is prior to correctness, and mere correctness by their own logic does not guarantee people want to follow, and the society fails when it spends all its energy on coercion, even IF the decisions are overall better than consensus, yet you can find all sorts of literature on why consensus processes generally do better than the average of the individuals involved. This, too, is a dangerous doctrine, but certainly anyone wanting to override it, better start by discussing it. Even (!) the French Revolution shared the scientism of these pinheads, and of course the history of Soviet Communism (and socialism generally) is one where they try to override actual science with politics, and guess what, it doesn’t work.
Storm-Rider 50,
Yes you did and I recognize the difference and thank you for doing so. You will I trust grant that the timing was perfect, in fact to perfect to resist, and given that some chiding regarding repetition is not wholly inappropriate?
11. Josh:”I wonder what I should be doing, to contribute to the common good, preserving today’s society, advancing it, fixing what’s broken, tikun olam, etc.”
I wondered the same and the only answer that falls within my abilities/reach is to do my best to educate the younger generations on classic conservative ideals. Hayak, Hazlett, Bastiat, Rand, etc. Make them refute the arguments through logical, sound reasoning- if they can. It works as long as they still have an open mind. I don’t even bother talking to Obama supporters reasoning if they can support him after all his failures, they are truly lost causes or too stupid to see truth anyway.
General Cartwright’s viewpoint would be very different from that of the Israelis I would bet. There is a distinct difference between knowing how to build nuclear weapons and allowing a sociopath to do so undeterred. Especially one who has vowed to use it on your people just as soon as he could. I find his vision quite myopic. The information on how to build pipe bombs is available on the internet but that doesn’t mean we should not do everything we can to keep high school kids from building them.
a good ‘hinge’ would be a taxpayer revolt, refusing to finance socialism, period. Sure the Feds could lock us up but how many of us and for how long? How do they pay the guards without taxes? What would happen if taxpayers payed only their share of taxes to cover the eighteen enumerated powers by populational percentage (e.g. military budget / total population = individual fair share) and payed their local taxes, asking nothing more of the federal Government? I suspect it would look more like what the founders had in mind.
Peter Boston @ 44:
Susan Fluke of Georgetown University does indeed have quite a set of ludicrous claims. Women of Georgetown can’t afford birth control, eh? But they can afford to attend a university whose annual tuition is upwards of $40,000 and live in Georgetown where they are seen walking around in very preppy outfits with pricey laptops, smartphones and iPads.
Moreover, Georgetown is a Catholic institution. Are we really to dismiss so readily, as Ms. Fluke does, the administrator’s admonition that if she wanted birth control she should have looked elsewhere? It is more than impetuous that you might come as a student, for tutelage, only to set about schooling your masters. These leftists are like locusts infecting all, like Borgs on a mission to assimilate everything in accordance with their narrow views.
Hasn’t a tax revolt already happened without us? It is already true that tax receipts cannot pay for federal government largesse. Washington is a awash in a sea of red ink where outlays outstrip revenue to the tune of trillions. Yet fiscal reality hasn’t slowed them down. Indeed, in this backdrop and against popular will they lately enacted a fresh, new, gargantuan entitlement in ObamaCare. The hinge I look for is the moment people realize that we are enslaved, bound in debt servitude by our reckless betters who bought us lots of shiny baubles and things with our credit card then demand our gratitude.
On Mz. Fluke:
I assume the birth control method she speaks of is the pill, in which case she has inflated the cost by a factor of two, at least. To pay the (actual) ~$1500 over the three years she cites for contraception, a G’town girl would have to forego one latte and one tall draft a week. Cry me a Potomac river, girls.
Josh 58,
If one uses the term “deconstruction” to mean undoing, opposing, reversing or abolishing, then Karl Marx was in the business of deconstructing the American Declaration of Independence (and Bill of Rights), which Thomas Jefferson referred to as “an expression of the American mind.” Marx’s zealous followers are having significant follow-on success in deconstructing the American Revolution.
“And the abolition [deconstruction] of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition [deconstruction] of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition [deconstruction] of bourgeois [middle class] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes [deconstructs] eternal truths, it abolishes [deconstructs] all religion, and all morality.” Karl Marx
MarcH @ 2 said:
“That’s one reason why an Iran bombing operation must be protracted and targeting must have the add’l intended effect of facilitating regieme change.”
This is obvious. To be successful, the prime focus of an Iranian bombing campaign should be to wreck the Iranian economy and force regime change. Destruction of actual nuclear weapon production sites should be secondary objectives. Obama will not do this. The Israelis are not stupid and understand this.
How can the Israelis wreck the Iranian economy with only a few days of conventional bombing?
Answer: They probably can not.
$64,000 question: Do the Israelis wait until after an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel to launch their nuclear response or do they use their nuclear capability preemptively?
The Israelis have been painted into this corner because our (American) leadership did not act responsibly. The Iranian nuclear thing should have been defused 4 years ago. We at Belmont Club realized this back then. Why is it that we can see this but our leaders can not?
blert @ 3 said:
“I would nominate FRACKING as the Hinge of Fate.”
Fracking works because Brent Crude is currently at $123.60 per barrel. Lots of experts are convinced that fracking is only a short term solution and represents only a blip on the Hubbert Peak Oil curve. I urge readers at Belmont Club to go to the following URL to learn more about Peak Oil:
http://www.theoildrum.com/
Blast From the Past @ 6 said:
“My WAG for the office pool is 20,000,000 violent deaths and as many from otherwise preventable disease and famine over the next 72 months.”
56.0 million people die every year due to cancer, heart disease, automobile accidents, slipping in the bath tub, etc. There are a lot of people on this overcrowded planet of ours, i.e. 6,840,507,003 . If things go bad, it means a significant fraction 6.8 gigavolks get killed before their time. My guess (emphasis on the word “guess”) is that our planet’s carrying capacity is 2 billion. That means we will not reach equilibrium until after 4.8 billion people “go poof”. Total World War II casualties were 48,231,700. The human misery that would knock the world back to 2 billion would be 100 times worse than World War II. World War II was partially a consequence of the Great Depression (World War II was mainly a continuation of World War I). I am convinced that the economic weakness of the world is actually much worse than what was experienced during the Great Depression. To some extent the Great Depression was due to economic mismanagement and was preventable. Our current economic troubles are due to resource depletion, overpopulation, unforeseen side effects of globalization and the failure of socialism. We have not yet felt the full consequence of this world wide economic failure mainly due to central bank money printing and market manipulation by very clever people trying to “kick the can down the road” one last time. The full implosion of the world economy will trigger this “knock down / drag out” war that will reduce the world’s population down to carrying capacity.
I disagree with the religious conclusions of Matt @ 41. However I strongly agree with Matt’s closing comment:
“When once Scholasticism has taken modern thermodynamics under its mantle, it will do much to improve the integration of human society with itself and with the physical world. We need not perhaps sink all the way to the bottom. It is possible to combine a traditional society with modern technics, to preserve what is good about modernity while rejecting what is false in it.”
Understanding entropy and Carnot efficiency are essential to creating a rational political and economic process. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is built into the fabric of the universe. Utopian political schemes like Marxism ignore the reality of the Second Law. Enjoying a nice dinner means sitting on the toilet afterwards. There is no escaping entropy.
Josh @ 11
I can’t see that IQ drops even 5 points due to regression or other process in a single generation.
You’re confusing the whole for the specific. Societies span the range of abilities — and in the case of Mexican immigrants they are shifted up the right side of the national IQ scale/ distribution. True idiots stay stuck in Mexico — until their kin can pave a way for them north.
It is hard to accept but the global IQ norms to 87 ish — not 100. When the original IQ tests were concocted they only had White Americans in the test pool. Their abilities were normed at 100 — the average — and that was that. No consideration was ever made for what might be true globally.
Generations later, ever more elaborate testing and adjustments has established that Northern European IQs average around 100, with slight differences. Ashkenazi Jews norm around 115 ish. This spread almost entirely explains their over representation when Nobels are awarded.
What is politically incorrect is to note that Black American IQs norm around 87-90. This means that the left-hand tail of their IQ distribution is laden with fellows with pretty low values: 70-80. Such IQs are virtually unknown among Ashkenazi Jews, and pretty uncommon among Whites.
Since plain stupidity correlates strongly with long prison sentences, we have a distasteful linkage between IQ distributions and incarceration rates. It’s all too true — so it’s impossible to discuss. These same criminals, however, would be seriously advantaged in primitive times. They’d out run and out fight just about everyone. More $%^& than brains can go a long way towards being the best warrior of the tribe. It’s not such a help today, though.
——
When Mexicans with an IQ of, say, 100 venture north, reside, and have kids — these children are going to ‘regress to the mean.’ Which is statistician speak for blending right back on down to the national norm of 87. This biological fact is the reason university professors don’t breed geniuses.
In primitive lands and ancient times having a low IQ was and is common. It’s so common that such individuals fit right in — in every sense of the word.
Friction, crime and hatred ensue when low IQ peoples have to operate in a high IQ world. This cuts both ways.
At a minimum, the bright folks are repulsed by ‘uncivil’ habits — starting with personal hygiene.
The dull folks are angered by being shut out of the really nice things in life — starting with owning lots of stuff.
——–
At this time, Christian charities in Minnesota are hyper-active, bringing in Somalis just about as fast as they can. The result is an explosion of Somali instigated crime in the state. These fellows are, almost to a man, unemployable. They have all of a Mexican’s handicaps — on steroids. With rare exception they can’t read or write, etc. They are bereft of their tribal linkages. And they are angry. The cold weather and alien culture are not what they bargained on.
So their crime statistics are through the roof.
This does not deter the charities from ramping up their operations.
The happiness level is so pronounced that these fellows are lining up to fly back to Somalia in order to become suicide-murderers. What a pleasant goal.
——-
Modernity is killing off the need for warrior genes. Now, success flows to those with more brains than *&^%$.
This brutal re-set has already occurred within northern European and Asian populations — in the not so distant past.
Now, we’re going to have to resist our urge. The same re-set is necessary in the ummah. It’s going to be far from pleasant.
Because of their beliefs and proximity, I find it hard to believe that the first atomic war will not be Sunni vs Shi’ite.
It would be news to the Wan but having small atomic arsenals makes such a war MUCH more probable. Both sides figure that they can make it through to the other side after weapons release because the other fellow doesn’t have an astounding weapons count.
Perfect.
The only characteristic that counts in a President is Character. It is first, last and the only characteristic that will get us past the dark spell.
blert @ 66,
The whole IQ thing is so tainted by political correctness that rational discussion is impossible.
IQ tests can be gamed to produce a desired result. My favorite example is the evidence that there is no IQ difference between the sexes. That makes zero sense. Any parent who has bothered to observe his or her children will notice the mental process differences between boys and girls. An IQ test could easily be constructed to make girls appear smarter than boys or vice versa. We already have the situation where the IQ tests have been gamed to show mental equality between the sexes. Why not modify the tests to show equality between the races? I suspect if that was done then the normalization that showed equality between the sexes would be broken.
Also there is the nonsense about what exactly is “intelligence”. Is machine intelligence the same as human intelligence? Almost certainly not. Is machine intelligence the same as insect intelligence? It might be very similar.
The IQ test / intelligence thing is a fruitless line of inquiry. Pursuing it only sets one up to be painted as a Nazi or a racist.
53. Marie Claude
I like France and I like the French, insofar as it is valid to generalize in such terms about a nation and her people. I respect and admire the French and their civilization. Sometimes France and the French exasperate me, but no more so, I suspect, than they exasperate themselves. Anyway, my own family exasperates me as well, more often and more intensely than the French ever could or will. I also think that the slam against the French for being “surrender monkeys” and whatnot is unfair and inaccurate. Let’s focus on what we have in common and what we like about each other–these are more important than our differences.
Also, I like your accent. It’s charming. (Geez, I hope you’re not a guy …)
Blert/66:
Agree with entire comment. As for the Somalis being imported into Minnesota, what kind of Christian act is it to bring in a bunch of criminal almost sub-human muslim murderers into a settled White Christian area like rural Minnesota? This is just simply race replacement and ethnic cleansing of White America by those who hate us. Any “Christian” who facilitates this genocide against White Christian people is just as evil as the Nazi labor camp commander in the movie “Shindler’s List”.
Importing Muslim savages from Somalia into the American Midwest is an act of Genocide.
Look to how Whites (particularly White Farmers and their wives and children) are being butchered in South Africa, and how the MSM just totally ignores the mass murder. Every story in MSM about South Africa just praises to the heavens what a paradise has been created there. Expect nothing less from our media regarding the crimes of these savages brought into Minnesota.
At least some bloggers acknowledge the genocide in South Africa, that our leftists plan for us:
http://sarahmaidofalbion.blogspot.com/2012/02/south-african-farm-murders-continue.html
oops I’m already 5/4 but here’s a quickie and done.
b @ 66: I can’t see that IQ drops even 5 points due to regression or other process in a single generation.
You’re confusing the whole for the specific.
No, really I’m suggesting that you are.
I’m casting doubt on the generic idea of regression to the mean, I believe in general if two 100 IQs have offspring the expected result is another 100 IQ, even if they come from a pool with an average of 85 or 115. The only way to expect particular cases of regression, is if couples are constructed from the whole pool, so a 100 is more likely to breed with a 70 to yield back towards a mean of 85. And seriously, how many 70′s are going to be attractive partners in modern society, for a 100?
Well, if thanks to Obambus everyone gets a college degree, maybe then.
Over and out.
Matt brings up a decent point about the intellectual heritage of the West: in Aristotle and St. Thomas, the foundation for understanding the natural order and moral order were given substance and made into something defensible.
As Allan Bloom wrote in, “The Closing of the American Mind”, the vast majority of college students cannot begin to give a coherent defense of freedom, human rights, and democracy. Many don’t even get the idea that it might be necessary.
Of course, what cannot be defended, won’t be.
67. herb: So what you are saying is we are right and truly fooked?
@72
Agreed. Is any serious discussion of politics – the definition and implementation of the common good – even possible without reference to our philosophical past, and even more importantly, a worldview of the scope and range of the human person?
69. Roughcoat
thank you, yes, these were/are family quarrels
Roughcoat @ 69 said:
“I also think that the slam against the French for being “surrender monkeys” and whatnot is unfair and inaccurate. Let’s focus on what we have in common and what we like about each other–these are more important than our differences.”
The gracious act of the French giving us the Statue of Liberty really placed us in an awkward position. One can say the French are “surrender monkeys” and whatnot but then someone else mentions that the French gave us the Statue of Liberty at which point all one can do is shut up and sit down. Maybe we need to build a statue in Paris that is bigger than the Eiffel Tower and then we can call it even.
Dishman @ 77,
I suspect our difference of opinion comes from different definitions for the word “wealth”. I would equate “wealth” with energy and material objects. In a world of finite resources, “wealth” goes away as the resources are destroyed. Likewise per capita wealth is reduced as finite resources are destroyed while the population increases. A counter argument is the value of a unit of natural resource can be increased by throwing more technology at it. However that process requires energy.
Eggplant @65 wrote:
Understanding entropy and Carnot efficiency are essential to creating a rational political and economic process. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is built into the fabric of the universe. Utopian political schemes like Marxism ignore the reality of the Second Law. Enjoying a nice dinner means sitting on the toilet afterwards. There is no escaping entropy.
My reasoning runs almost opposite of yours.
If wealth is a finite, bound thing, and waste only accumulates, then it makes tactical sense to try to grab from another.
If wealth is instead an accumulation from skill, and waste is only things which have no value, then an entirely different set of calculations can take place. If there is no bound on wealth, then when you use your skill to create wealth, I also profit, if only indirectly. You need not take from me, and I need not take from you. Perhaps we can arrange some trade for mutual benefit, or perhaps we go our separate ways.
wretchard wrote:
Rule One, the most important thing in change is positioning yourself to be an attractor before the discontinuity comes. Rule Two, if you have a dominant meme out there, people will cling to it when they are confused. So put the meme out there. Rule Three, revolutions are as much about what is preserved as about what is changed. Therefore forget about creating “ideal societies”. You’ll be lucky to get a sane one.
“Atlas Shrugged”. Others have noted is prescience. More will come.
Marie Claude @ 53 – If Paris in May 1968 was a CIA action, it would have been ordered by LBJ. Who is the bigger, more obnoxious fool, DeGaulle or LBJ? America fired LBJ in November 1968. The “Paris Peace Table” went on & on & on for years. I remember the male cousins of a neighbor of mine visiting from France after their service in the Algerian war. France also had problems in Suez in 1956. And Dienbienphu.
So it seems France’s problems are more vestiges of its colonial past (e.g. Cote d’Ivoire), not America or the CIA.
76. Eggplant
Nor was the gift of the Statue of Liberty their only gracious act–not by a long shot. E.g., how about playing a decisive role in helping the nascent United States achieve her independence by defeating the British army and her vaunted navy and otherwise providing the men and materiel necessary to secure victory? Or saving Western democracies in the years 1914-18 from Germany autocracy? Lest we forget: in August 1914 the Germans invaded France and Belgium with what many military historians judge (correctly, I think) to have been the finest, most powerful standing army the world had ever seen. And the French met them head-on at the Marne and defeated them. In the Battle of Verdun–history’s longest and bloodiest field battle–the French went toe-to-toe with the Germans at the height of their military power … and defeated them. Etc., etc. And, yes, I know what happened in May 1940: a complex situation, and a discussion for another day. Except to say: Americans should fall to their knees and thank God that we don’t have Germany for a neighbor.
76. Eggplant
“One can say the French are “surrender monkeys”
when? tell us !
41. Matt
” civilizations do not rise and fall based on anything so mundane as the ease with which resources can be gathered. A strong nation will squeeze the land and make it yield its fruits, or they will migrate into more favorable climes, shoving aside anyone who stands in their way. But a dying nation lays off its hand, its fields go fallow, and the eternal forest—trees or barbarian men, it makes little difference—creeps in again to choke it.”
Good and accurate takedown of the excruciatingly tedious geographic determinism theory. Diamond has much to answer for in promoting that nonsense.
Also refreshing to see someone mention the Spanish Scholastics. A more thorough knowledge of their writings and ideas would elevate us all. You do realize, though, that the ideas of limited government and dispersal of powers was something they promoted, right? I’m guessing the American Revolution would have been something they would have favored.
81. no mo uro
Also refreshing to see someone mention the Spanish Scholastics. A more thorough knowledge of their writings and ideas would elevate us all. You do realize, though, that the ideas of limited government and dispersal of powers was something they promoted, right? I’m guessing the American Revolution would have been something they would have favored.
………..
If memory serves, by the time of the battle of yorktown the English were at war with French, the Dutch and the Spanish.
Marie Claude @ 80 asked:
“One can say the French are “surrender monkeys” when? tell us !
Looking at the Statue of Liberty, I’ve become quiet and slumped down in my chair.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/National_Park_Service_9-11_Statue_of_Liberty_and_WTC_fire.jpg
[comment #4 of 4]
78. MachiasPrivateer, re “So it seems France’s problems are more vestiges of its colonial past (e.g. Cote d’Ivoire), not America or the CIA.”
To some extent, yes. But ultimately–and I am not being flippant here–I think France’s problems are attributable to having Germany as her neighbor.
DeGaulle was many things, good and bad, but he was no fool.
LBJ wasn’t fired by the American people. He resigned because he realized that he had failed massively and could thus no longer serve effectively as the nation’s chief executive.
The Vietnam War sucked. There, I said it. And will say no more on that subject.
Eggplant @ 65 “Our current economic troubles are due to resource depletion, overpopulation, unforeseen side effects of globalization and the failure of socialism.”
Beg to disagree with that. Resource depletion? When we have more human beings on the planet living longer healthier lives than ever before? Unforeseen side effects of globalization? What was unforeseen about the consequences of hollowing out an economy (to use the old Japanese term)?
Clearly, there has been (yet again! in historical terms) a failure of socialism. But much of the sinking West is not truly socialist. Fascist would be a much more accurate description of what western democracy has degenerated into.
I am not standing up for socialism here, but there is nothing inherently socialist about paying unmarried teenage girls to give birth to neglected children. Nor is there anything essentially socialist about banning incandescent light-bulbs. Our problem is over-regulation. That has two costs: (1) the direct cost of hiring all those Oxbridge grads at high salaries to implement the regulations, (2) the indirect costs of dealing with neglected children and unemployed light bulb makers.
#82
The Spanish Scholastics of which I (and I assume Matt) speak were a group of Catholic theologians and economic/political theorists and educators that predated the Revolution by at least a couple of centuries. Unlike the more collectivist, centralist Church doctrine of the 1700′s – 1900′s their take was decidedly more capitalist and free market and their ideas on limiting government power were much more in line with what we now see from today’s conservatives and libertarians.
Their ideas were becoming more accepted amongst both Church and lay society and were on the verge of becoming mainstream in Europe when the Reformation occurred, after which time anything which sounded like “Protestant” economic theory was frowned upon (even homegrown Catholic notions) by the Church hierarchy.
“Maybe the OWS farce proves that Americans have no talent for being Nazis. Attempts in that direction only produce results from the Onion.”
Heh! This is the most cheerful thing I have read all day.
#85 Kinuachdrach
“Our problem is over-regulation. That has two costs: (1) the direct cost of hiring all those Oxbridge grads at high salaries to implement the regulations, (2) the indirect costs of dealing with neglected children and unemployed light bulb makers”
Spot on sir. And there are even more costs than that. The negative multiplier effects of the hyperregulatory state are the single biggest buzzkill for the economy. Small guys have enough risk without having to worry about the possibility of another $10,000 of regulatory compliance costs applied at a whim largely to keep income stream guarantees for regulators alive and well. And large businesses love these as much as government because it makes smaller businesses less able to compete.
I get very, very exercised when I hear administration official after congresscritter after pundit say, “What we really need to get small business going is renewed access to more credit”.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
While access to credit is nice, what we need to get the economy going is to get the regulatory monkey off the backs of guys like me who own and run businesses. Not only are the negative multipliers you mentioned a problem, there are other physical, economic, efficientcy, and, frankly, psychological impediments created by this environment which are job killers. Get my regulatory cost and paperwork burdens down, and remove the risk of another set of “gotcha” regulations that come out of nowhere, and I’ll start spending and hiring. If not, then forget it.
83. eggplant
check the arriving of MS France first travel to NY (video)
http://www.ina.fr/economie-et-societe/vie-economique/video/AFE04002087/voyage-du-paquebot-france.fr.html
Marie Claude @ 80 – “Surrender monkees”?
June 5 to June 17 1940 was not the best chapter of French history. By June 22 France had surrendered and entered into an entente cordiale with Hitler and installed the Vichy government. Not too strong a position from which to criticze American G.I.s who liberated France via Omaha Beach!
Or do you still say “Heil Hitler!”
84. Roughcoat
“I think France’s problems are attributable to having Germany as her neighbor.”
That’s right !
when Napoleon said “when China wakes up, the world will tremble”, he should have rather said “when Germany… now that the monster is reined, we can rest, but for how long? Thatcher and Mitterrand were right to see Germany’s reunification as a powers desequilibrium in Europe.
90. MachiasPrivateer
France was liberated by a coalition of Allied forces in which the Americans were predominant. A large and very competent French army took part and played a key role in the campaign in Northwest Europe. What happened to France in 1940 was a tragedy not entirely of her own making that was set in motion in November 1918 when an earlier Allied coalition failed to invade Germany, capture Berlin, and occupy and partition the German lands.
MachiasPrivateer
“France also had problems in Suez in 1956. And Dienbienphu”.
no we haven’t except that Eisenhower had, if he had been a visionnaire, he would have supported our expedition which would have avoided many problems in ME, and may-be, but most likely, algeria war too.
Diendienphu was subsidied by the US, as the whole war of Viet Nam, if we had had the US support, we weren’t ready for a new war in 1946
“So it seems France’s problems are more vestiges of its colonial past (e.g. Cote d’Ivoire), not America or the CIA.”
Not more than any western country. Côte D’Ivoire was rather a UN problem, if our army had been authorised from the beginning, the war wouldn’t have last so long
“June 5 to June 17 1940 was not the best chapter of French history. By June 22 France had surrendered and entered into an entrente cordiale with Hitler and installed the Vichy government.”
You should know that the Brits retreated the first, without our troops protection, more than half of their troops would have died on Dunkirk beaches, instead of it’s ours that died there, and hadn’t our resistance prepeared your Dday, you would still waiting for the opportunity, but might be that the Russians wouldn’t have let you having your glorious event then !
“Not too strong a position from which to criticze American G.I.s who liberated France via Omaha Beach”
Or do you still say “Heil Hitler!”
I have no respect for you, but a mitigated feeling for your parents, if their offsprings are like you, a stoopid american !
“if we had had the US support… -> if we hadn’t had
Pour juger de toute la France par les actes du gouvernement français, c’est comme juger l’ensemble des États-Unis par les actes de Washington, D.C.
How did such a great essay by Wretchard descend into a commentary of France as “Surrender Monkeys”? Anyway, I’ll continue the descent. I must say I side with Marie Claude (maybe for the only time). “Surrender Monkeys” is nothing but a slur, based upon a poor military plan in 1939-40 and a Dien Bien Phu, when they had not the resources to accomplish their (admittedly) grandiose objectives (well, maybe. the Franco-Prussian dustup as well). France is not what is wrong with West. Sometimes, it is a mirror (and warning) of the worst we can be. Heh…the French helped create the post-Westphalian world we all live in…it would behoove us, I think, to recognize how much the French have laid at the alter of liberty. They are natural allies, in spite of their insipid political class and reflexive hatred of our liberties in the US.
After surrendering to the Nazis the remaining French troops and French navy allied with Nazi Germany. Later, during Operation Torch, the French navy was sunk by our navy, and the French army was defeated by our army, and surrendered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch
93. Marie Claude
My grandfather served in France with the Army. He was a man of very, very few words and he wrote nothing down, so even though he lived until 2005, I know very little except what can be found in papers left behind. He had a scrapbook of memorabilia from the WWII years (again, with no writing in it.) In one of the pages is a single centered picture of an older French couple standing over a dead American soldier. The woman has flowers and the man had removed his hat. Although I don’t completely understand it, I know how stunning the image was for me, and how much it meant to a man who had been there.
97 Storm rider
in your imagination, nowhere in your link your allegations can be found (BTW, have you read it?)
it was the British that made the attack in Mers el Kebir, no American sunk a french ship, nor the Allies found a strong resistance on the ground !
from your link:
“The lack of determined resistance in North Africa and the new DeGaulle policies convinced the Germans to abrogate their agreement with the Vichy French. Southern France was immediately occupied and troops moved to seize what was left of the French Fleet in the port of Toulon. Hitler badly needed to increase the size of his navy, but every ship was scuttled at dock before they could be taken.”
That’s what Darlan had recommanded to the Navy, since the beginning, but Churchill wanted to make a “eclat”, to convice Roosevelt that he was determined to carry on the war, firing at disarmed seamen ! This action costed him more lives and money afterwords, he understood the lesson, and didn’t replicate it in Egypt though !
and imagine what the people in north Africa thought of the Allies after Mers el Kebir? that they were the enemis, plus the Nazy propaganda !
-http://ecoles.ac-rouen.fr/blum-deville/photos/propag_all_bomb.jpg
-http://tinyurl.com/7mpld64
http://www.ledrame-merselkebir.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=28
(click on the Brit flag)
I’m sorry it’s not some vague marxist theory, but historical facts
Here’s another thing that will change the world imho. Branson’s Virgin Atlantic will have a private fleet of air ships capable of suborbital flight available. They’ll bring down the cost of space tourism from $10-20 million to $200k.
http://bit.ly/wIxvxW
Todays flights by the super rich into space is pretty much like the way yellowstone park was from 1890-1910–the in place for the super rich of the period.
By 1930, a paved road was put into Yellowstone making it accessible to the middle class.
If history is any guide, it may well be that 20 years from now suborbital flight will be available to the middle class. But you have to wonder, how in the world would they handle millions of people.
http://bit.ly/wIxvxW
Virgin Galactic’s first commercial spaceship to test-fly this year
Cincinnati Sun
Tuesday 28th February, 2012
(ANI)
Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, is planning to test-fly its first spaceship beyond the Earth’s atmosphere this year, with commercial suborbital passenger service to follow in 2013 or 2014, company officials have announced.
Nearly 500 customers have signed up for rides on SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot spaceship being built and tested by Scaled Composites, an aerospace company founded by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and now owned by Northrop Grumman.
The suborbital flights, which cost 200,000 dollars per person, are designed to reach an altitude of about 68 miles, giving fliers a few minutes to experience zero gravity and glimpse Earth set against the blackness of space.
“In the suborbital area, there are a lot of things to be done. This is an area that has been essentially absent for about four decades,” the Telegraph quoted Neil Armstrong, who was a test pilot for the 1960s-era X-15 research plane before becoming a U.S. astronaut and commander of the first mission to land on the moon, as saying.
“There’s a lot of opportunities,” Armstrong told about 400 people attending the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Palo Alto, California.
“I certainly hope that some of the new approaches will prove to be profitable and useful,” he said.
Virgin Galactic is the most visible of a handful of companies developing spaceships for tourism, research, educational and business purposes.
SpaceShipTwo, the first of Virgin’s planned five-ship fleet, has completed 31 atmospheric test flights – 15 attached to its carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo, and 16 glide tests, William Pomerantz, Virgin Galactic’s vice president of special projects, said in a speech to the conference.
Preparations for the ship’s first rocket-powered flights are under way at Scaled Composites’ Mojave, Calif., plant and expected to take place this year.
“We hope to have the rocket motor in the spaceship later this year and start powered flight testing,” Virgin Galactic chief test pilot David Mackay told the conference.
“We would like to be the first to do this, but we’re not in a race with anyone. This is not a Cold War-era space race,” he added.
Pomerantz told reporters later “We flow pretty quickly from first powered flight to first flight to space and then it’s not terribly long from there until we have our first commercial flight to space.”
He said passenger service could begin in 2013 or 2014, depending on the results of the test flights and other factors, such as pilot training. (ANI)
98 Tee,
I read such stories too, besides on the films reports of the era, people were applauding the Allies troops, while Paris under the german troops there’s no applausses
this pic has been the buzz on anti-french sites during the las decade
http://tinyurl.com/8xc42cs
96. dPercy
Grandiose? it’s a remnent verbiose from our good ol foes friends, the Brits
read that, you’ll understand your clichés:
http://tinyurl.com/7667f9g
surrender monkey for 1939/4O and dienDien Phu,?
then again you forget to add the Brits in the lot, the phoney war was well shared by them too
Dien Dien Phu, tell me how many surrendered there, cuz most died in the hell, those that were trapped went in the Viet geoles, and half of them died there too, those that came back were destroyed, became some drunks with PTSD
(…In the context of hinge events…)
My brother points out that China has a huge population of indigenous Muslims in several of its provinces, and speculates that the Central government may want to ship off a lot of them to Africa.
Hmmm. Combine that with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1942254/China-looks-abroad-to-grow-its-own-food.html" emerging reports of China's efforts to lease and purchase croplands in Africa and South America and you get a thread that may be attached to a pretty interesting unraveling jumper.
The article to which I linked is from the UK Telegraph, published May 2008 under the byline of Richard Spencer. One factoid sorta leaps out: according to Spencer China is trying to feed its population – one FIFTH of the world’s population – with just 8 percent of the world’s arable cropland.
In the event of global tumult, China would have to send a very large expeditionary force (1) to protect crops during cultivation and harvest, and (2) to secure corridors for transport to ports and protect those ports, and possibly even (3) to protect their shipping from seizure on the high seas. Otherwise its very considerable investments would likely be forfeit. Of course, the land has to be protected year-round, just as surely as do oil fields, mines, hardwood forests, etc.
Now, if China were also looking to dump some of the more troublesome of its population of Muslims into Islamic Africa, there is a real question of just how hospitably they would be received in ANY numbers. The Arab Muslim states have not particularly shown themselves to be inclined to welcome OR assist brother Muslim refugees. Maybe it’s just the autocratic governments and not the general populations, but for SIX DECADES the Arab Islamic nations have universally refused to take in any substantial numbers of Palestinian refugees*. Instead, they’ve used them cynically as pawns, deliberately keeping them in their refugee camps hard by the hated Jewish state, provoking and condemning and posturing, but NEVER providing any substantive aid or comfort to their co-religionists.
* Of course, the exception was Jordan’s reluctant acceptance of the PLO under Yassir Arafat – which Arafat used as an opportunity to attempt an overthrow of his host’s government.
MC 99,
Pathetic. You don’t have your facts straight. The Battle of Mers el Kebir occurred in 1940 whereas Operation Torch occurred in 1942. The Battle of Mers el Kebir was a defeat of the French navy at the hands of the British navy because “France had signed an armistice with Germany, and Britain feared the French fleet would end up as a part of the German Navy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir
Operation Torch was a defeat of the French Navy (and the French Army and Air Force) at the hands of the American Navy (and the American Army) because the French were waging war against our landing in North Africa.
“A major threat was the French fleet at Casablanca. Based less than 15 miles from the landing beaches were a light cruiser, three large destroyer leaders, seven other destroyers, gunboats, and 11 submarines… The French in the Casablanca-Fedala area elected to resist the landing. Coastal defense guns fired on U.S. ships near the Fedala beaches, prompting a vigorous reply from the fleet… Before 0700 hours seaplanes were under attack by French fighters. Minutes later French coastal batteries and Jean Bart opened fire on American ships which initiated the naval battle of Casablanca that lasted the balance of the morning. 29 French surface ships and submarines sortied from Casablanca and headed toward the transport area off Fedala, all the while under fire from Center Attack Group’s ships and Ranger’s aircraft. Several U.S. vessels were hit by fire from shore guns and ships. But the French got by far the worst of the engagement. By early afternoon two French destroyers had been sunk, others were so severely damaged that they would sink later, and the cruiser Rimauguet was driven ashore. Additionally, Jean Bart’s main battery was temporarily out of action following several hits from USS Massachusetts. Overhead there were numerous dogfights between French and U.S. Navy planes. Navy dive bombers sank three French submarines in the port and later completed disabling a battleship. The threat of enemy surface attack was eliminated… The most severe fighting took place in the vicinity of the old Kasba. French troops within the fort repulsed several infantry assaults. Finally, Navy dive bombers attacked the fort, and shortly after the French surrendered. By the afternoon of November 10 the area around Port Lyautey was firmly in American hands.”
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/optorch4.pdf
We also defeated the French Air Force in North Africa during Operation Torch.
“The fiercest fighting took place in the air. On the first day, French fighter planes (mostly American-made Hawks) downed a US Navy floatplane, five Wildcat fighters, and probably a Dauntless bomber as well. Navy Wildcats shot down at least eleven French fighters, and five more the next day. 48 hours after the initial landings, most of the Vichy air force in Morocco had been destroyed, in the air or on the ground.”
http://www.conservapedia.com/Operation_Torch
Once we defeated the French Army, Navy and Air Force during Operation Torch, the Germans and Italians were our remaining enemies in the European theater of war.
# 104 Storm Rider
good, I made you perspiring,
of course Mers el Kebir happened in 194O, and the people still remembered its griefs in december 1942 !
a french army in Casablanca? hmm say rather Vichy colonial troops, that nonentheless had to obbey to the Vichy/Germany’s diktats, the very french army was dismentled in june 1940, and or sent in Germany as POW.
interesting your second link:
The French were capable of serious resistance.
Officially, French leaders in Morocco
were pledged to support Vichy and defend
Morocco against any attacker. The French
navy in particular could be expected to resist
any British attack. Memories of the devastating
British attack in 1940 on French ships at
Mers-el-Kebir still lingered.8 But covertly,
many French military and civilian leaders in
North Africa were conspiring against the
Axis. These brave Frenchmen realized that
the only chance of liberating their country
was through an Allied victory. Cautiously,
the British and Americans brought selected
French leaders into their plan in the hope
that at the critical moment in the invasion
the pro-Allied leaders would seize control of
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, thereby holding
resistance to a minimum.”
hmm do you think that Hollywood would have made “Casablanca” if what you advance was so important?
I wonder who’s pathetic !
The surprising thing, or perhaps not, is that the French have become cheese-eating surrender monkeys even in their own cities. Seems that North African Muslims rule many of their cities.
Where is the spirit of the resistance?
89. Marie: Unfortunately we lost the SS France when it was broken up at Alang in 2008
http://midshipcentury.com/blueladypage.shtml
Also, other commenters: Please stop with this France bashing. Thank you.
107. Norm
yes, the end of a era, it’s always sad to see these legends disappearing
106. Make Believe Media
still in your bubble of conspiracies? Don’t believe all what your medias say, our immigrants aren’t your jihadists but rather your latin immigrants, they who fill our jails too.
richard, friends:
we have waited way to long to remedy this situation.
it may very well be past redemption. as many ways as you can think of the term.
john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa
28 Josh, thanks for linking back to 22 Dloye (Dloye thanks for the link); I missed the “Isaiah’s Job” link first time around. That it is from 1936 is stunning.
“…make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”
……the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? ….”
“… we hastened to point out in a letter addressed to you, the deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibers of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction at the same time … We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, … openly and boldly … strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning — the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever…”
Pope Leo XIII (1878)
If insight into how socialism and nihilism will destroy the human spirit and make civil society impossible has been a “known” known for 130+ years how does one explain how socialism and nihilism became the dominant cultural underpinning of the West? Is half the world being played like Job?
The very idea of Progressivism, the notion that humans are evolving, in accord with the scientific guidance of the elites, into something “better” than our ancestors is the sickest joke of all.
“if a US ambassador can’t trust the State Department why should you?”
Wretchard, careful, you’re assuming facts that are not in evidence. Please note:
1) An ambassador is the the top civilian official in the country of assignment; all official correspondence coming from a mission abroad bears his/her name whether he/she personally drafted it or not. That’s something the press always gets wrong. Every cable out of State in DC bears Clinton’s name, but I can personally guarantee she is not spending time writing personnel and maintenance reports.
2) The State Dept as a rule does not process top secret-level material abroad for reasons mostly of cost (TS storage and equipment is REALLY expensive). Kabul is no different. Therefore it is likely that any TS message would have to go out via non-State channels.
As for the leak itself, that’s just business as usual.
@Peter 112:
“Is half the world being played like Job?”
I would say, “yes and no”. It takes very little effort to start people on a path to fooling themselves. After you get them started, you can just sit back and watch them destroy themselves.
“It is too late for the welfare state.” Lady Thatcher’s dictum has finally come to pass and it has happened worldwide and all at once. The world has been drained of productive capital through war, greed, feckless politics and the abrogation of science in pursuit of will-o’-the-wisp social utopias. It’s been drained of intellectual capital through the capture of the schools by the adherents of Hegel’s brand of thought.
“The era of the fantasies is coming to a close.”
Years of foolishness by politicians in the US has rendered their ratings below 15% acceptance by the population. What happens when – as now – the polity no longer believes in the government. If government is truly formed by the public giving up some individual freedoms so that together all the others will be honored and protected, what results if that government is no longer trusted?
“The current system is in the terminal homing phase and only the bang is awaited”
It is said that history repeats: first as tragedy and then as comedy. Is the election of a man unqualified in practical matters but eminently qualified by the measures of political correctness the comedy of our form of government? Is the proposal to shoot Barred Owls in the Northwest because they will interbreed with Spotted Owls and are more adaptable to man the final comedy of the Endangered Species Act. Is the demand of a coed in the $70,000 per year Georgetown University Law School for free contraceptives because the girls can’t afford it on their own the comedy of the Womens Lib movement? Is the fact that communities in New York are borrowing from a broke and destitute state pension fund to make their current payments to that same state pension fund the comedy at the end of local politics?
The ME is a region awash in petro money, poverty, fanaticism, greed and envy but the way has been cleared for the production of petroleum virtually all over the globe. With that comes a great leveling and the one thing that has been holding the ME together – money – will be reduced drastically over the next decade. There will be no money to buy bread for the poor and communication technology has shown them what the outside world has and has accomplished. That their leaders can’t even provide food will soon show their lack of clothes. Then what?
So, yes, Wretchard the point of the hinge is upon us and we await the trigger and as in all change dread the result. Like others above, I feel that many, perhaps millions, will die. I fear the possibility of a new Crusade, race warfare, class war (the elites and intellectuals against the rest this time rather than the monied interests against the poor)real worldwide depression, geopolitical war. But I also feel that on the other side of it there are new efficiencies to be realized from the shedding of a hundred years worth of bureaucratic regulations, better government learned from bad example. I know there are technologies on the cusp that will transform the world (just read a few issues of the MIT Technology Review). I personally feel that Iran and Israel (after the appocalypsists and Mullahs) will be the beacon to rebuild the ME in Democratic form. I think it’ll take awhile and that I won’t live to see it (I’m 68) but my kids will be a part of it and beneficiaries of it. They will be the new “Greatest Generation” and there are a lot of them. Hidden now by the shenanigans of their peers in the OWs and other various movements, they are there and focused on the future. Their future.
So I’m a little concerned about what generates the hinge to swing and the immediate effects of that big door coming ‘round, but I am totally confident in the goodness of the final result.
Put me in the optimist’s column.
Drip, drip, drip. The sound of the of the droplets before the deluge. Noah forewarned and simply because no one experienced rain in earths epoch so they assumed. We all no the axiom that follows. The left assumes that the transistor radio could have been accomplished eventually by Persians, Indonesians, and Hottentots, not. The left and slumming Rockefellers Fords and the United Nations enablers run roughshod over the world and expect another result due to never experiencing rain before. Now the hard rain comes. Yes, we’ve been forewarned. Now what? Is that the New World you allude too? Possibly its more ephemeral? Actually its all ephemeral. Gods forewarning is not.
For those who have not yet heard (with this crowd, probably not many, but at any rate…) Andrew Breitbart has died. Plenty of news reports breaking if you google for details.
I fail to see the need for all this doom and gloom.
Man’s natural state is capitalism so when a Socialist Utopia collapses, society will just revert to nature, so to speak.
I doubt that the collapse of the welfare state will produce as much angst in Europe as there was in ’46. The famine of ’46 took more lives in Europe then WW2.
Meanwhile the mighty Persians cannot keep their neighbor and close trade partner Azerbijan from consorting with the hated Zionists.
Azerbijan just signed a deal to buy $1.8 billion of weapons from Israel and there are close military ties. The Iranians are furious that the Azeris recently rolled up an Iranian spy ring and are cooperating with the Mossad.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?ID=259956&R=R1
The spirit of Scheherazade lives on in Iran. Very imaginative people. So long as you keep spinning stories and visions of grandeur you can keep your head.
Marie Claude –
World War I – Battle of Jutland
World War II – Battle of the Atlantic
1805 – Nelson @ Trafalgar
1588 – Spanish Armada
etc. etc.
It seems that control of the seas (“Britannia Rules the Waves”) is much more important for control of the Continent of Europe than the land armies are.
The U S Navy is “A Global Force for Good”, so the USA is the World’s Only Superpower. The French Navy is pitiful in comparison (see Libya 2011). France is a second rate power that has a rocky relationship with its neighbor, Germany. And is a poor relation financially, causing much dismay over the value of the Euro. but such squabbles are beneath the dignity of the Worlds’ Only Superpower
To paraphrase Hemmingway, the Welfare State goes broke slowly at first, then all at once.
Add social capital and basic infrastructure too. The approval ratings for politicains you cite, as well as the general distrust of so many institutions. Large corporations have become hosts for a parasite class of executives, consultants, and HR flunkies. Universities are run by 3rd rate poliical hacks instead of scholars. The civil courts aren’t much better than indian gaming casinos, and that’s when they’re at the best instead of at their worst as processing centers for shakedown artists. Criminal courts are models of inefficiency with skewed priorities. Prosecutors are politicians running for their next office. Police offers are glorified meter maids or else dangerously over-armed adrenaline junkies.
Physical infrastructure – when we’re not busy neglecting it (how many power plants have we built in the last ten years?) we’re actively destroying it (dam-busting).
I think it’s actually “farce” instead of “comedy” though the two words are pretty close. But either way, Obama seems to combine both tragedy and farce together at once.
Lately I have been wondering what it takes to really send old ideas down the memory hole. To me It seems that democratic socialism has destroyed memories of the past. Then by golly I think of the Ottoman Empire.
For more than four hundred years the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian identities had been all but submerged under the Ottoman flood. To the outside world they had given no sign whatever that they retained the consciousness of national identity. Ditto for the idea of ever achieving national unity. Then bingo! – in 1820/21 we get the Greek insurrection under Prince Hypsilanti’s leadership. Then Crete, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro revolt and ancient national identies emerge.
Perhaps ripples from the past never end. Maybe national memories live forever.
Throughout the break up of the Ottoman empire in South Eastern Europe, Russia was doggedly trying to get access to the Mediterranean. It succeeded in 1833 when the Turks become practically a Russian vassal. It seems there are many old doors swinging about on various hinges of fate. At any time, one or more of these doors can smack us in the face. Meanwhile, those Russians are still chasing access to the mediterranean.
120. MachiasPrivateer
who cares?
go and see mummy
After suffering defeat by the Nazis, the French Army, Navy and Air Force – in North Africa and elsewhere – should have immediately set sail – or set wing – for England – so as to join forces with England against Nazi Germany. The French military forces did not – they formed a military alliance with Nazi Germany – they opposed the British at the Battle of Mers el Kebir – they opposed the U.S. Navy and Army at the Battle of Operation Torch – killing many American soldiers, sailors and airmen before ultimate defeat and surrender. Pathetic. Marie Claude defends this French tyranny today. Pathetic.
JMH @121
You’re correct: farce. And you are correct in your additions as well
stormy
you know nothing of the Navy habits, a seaman never abandons his Ship (except if the ship is sinking), and Britain asking to a french Admiral to deliver his ships without any french crew on board, is a mere non-sense or a insult, which it seems it was, even though, the Brits (Churchill apparently) didn’t wait for that the discussions were achieved to fire at the french ships
and you know nothing of the objective facts, just that you need to display your pre-jugés
Read the link that I brought above for Mers el Kebir, it’s from the dead crew families, they don’t invent a theory like yourself
you’re a pathetic bigot
Would the BC-ers refighting WWII please cease and desist?
None of us were there, and the present situation would seem to warrant the majority of our attention.
Thanks!
MC 126,
The British did not require the French to abandon their ships. Once again you are wrong about the facts. The French Navy was given the option to maintain full control of their ships – to sail away with the British Navy and wage naval warfare against the German Navy. The French Navy refused. Pathetic.
“In 1940, after the Fall of France and the armistice between France and Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom became concerned about the possibility that the Germans would acquire control of the French fleet. The combined French and German naval forces would mean that the balance of power at sea might tip in Germany’s favour… The most powerful concentration of French warships at the time was the squadron at the port of Mers-el-Kébir in French Algeria. This consisted of the old battleships Provence and Bretagne, the modern battleships (or battlecruisers) Dunkerque and Strasbourg, the seaplane tender Commandant Teste and six destroyers under the command of Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. British Admiral James Somerville of Force H, based in Gibraltar, was ordered to deliver an ultimatum to the French, stating:
‘It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives:
a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans.
b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment.
If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile.
c) Alternatively if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans unless they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies — Martinique for instance — where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German hands.’”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir
Bigotry is irrational intolerance. I am rationally intolerant of your belligerent distortion of the truth regarding French tyranny at the Battle of Mers el Kebir in 1940 and at the Battle of Operation Torch in 1942. Since you are irrationally intolerant of me – and the truth – you meet definition of bigot.
Mister Lynch 127,
Marie Claude has once again disgraced Belmont Club with lies and distortions regarding the actual history of French military forces during World War II. Standing up for the truth is improtant – because the French military killed our boys at Operation Torch. Refuting the lies of pathetic bigots like Marie Claude is always important.
Stormy,
you’re a bore
Wikipedia in english? yeah, I guess it’s the fairest version
Re- READ true witnesses
http://www.ledrame-merselkebir.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=28
“Even if most historians, both English and Americans, now openly admit that the attack was a political error, one feels right in questioning what was and still is an unbelievable enterprise of disinformation with Reason of State in the background”
“On July 3, 1940, admiral Darlan, the Minister for the Navy and Chief of Naval Staff being absent, it is his second-in-command, admiral Le Luc, who receives the message from the commanding officer at Mers-el-Kebir. In this message, admiral Gensoul, informs him that admiral Somerville is cruising offshore with a British squadron ( i.e. Force H ) and has just sent him an ultimatum demanding him to join the British forces or to scuttle his ships, and that he will use force if the French do not comply. Under the torrid sun of an Algerian summer, a somewhat surrealistic and at the same time pathetic negociation starts between the British who have serious doubts over the cogency of the orders they have been given, and the French who cannot believe that their friends of yesterday are going to fire upon them.”
“Admiralty, eager to come to a conclusion, had kept urging Somerville to engage hostilities. Crossing the bow of the battleship Bretagne he can see the officer of the watch saluting him and French sailors waiving to him : they do not know that within half an hour they will be dead… ”
“It is only after the British archives were made public that one could perceive how much the responsability of Churchill, the true perpetrator of this tragedy, had been engaged.
Although the hypothesis of a surrender of the French navy to the Germans had not been proved, had even been contradicted by facts, by the documents and informations which the Admiralty possessed, it served as a pretext for a pre-emptive action to which as much publicity as possible was given. Through a manipulation of the War Cabinet, Churchill took upon himself the right to pass a verdict. He did not do it by accident and the action was carefully planned within operation ´Catapult´ aimed not only at Mers-el-Kebir, but at all the naval or civilian ships that after the debacle had sought shelter in British ports or at Alexandria, Dakar, Casablanca, or the West Indies. Only very recently appointed Prime Minister, Churchill had to strengthen a still fragile position. To do so, he had to make his mark at home first, with the War Cabinet to begin with where Lord Halifax, the Foreigh Secretary, seemed attracted by the idea of a separate peace with Germany, then abroad in order to convince the United States which shared his misgivings in naval matters. Prior to drawing them into the war he needed their material support and he had to prove to them his determination to resist. Those are the true reasons behind operation ´Catapult´. They are to be found in Churchill´s desire to assert his authority by imposing a final silence to the ´appeasers´ while giving the Americans and the entire world a final proof of his iron will to carry on the struggle, even if the price to pay was treachery and the sheddind of the blood of yesterday´s ally. ”
….
MC 129,
“As the sun rises over the Mediterranean, Force H arrives at Mers El Kébir, ready to present Churchill’s ultimatum. Robert Philpott is a 20-year-old gunnery officer-in-training on the British flagship, HMS Hood. Robert Philpott: Really it was all very peaceful. Nobody was doing any firing; there was a fairly happy mood on board. We all firmly believed that the ships would come out and join us. We know the French sailors were just anxious to get on with the war. So we didn’t think there would be a great problem. Narrator: Many of the enlisted French sailors are equally optimistic. André Jaffre is an 18-year-old gunner on the battleship, Bretagne. André Jaffre (in French): Our officer scrutinizes the horizon, then looks for his binoculars and smiles. What is it, captain? The British have arrived! Really? Yes. We were happy! We thought they’d come to get us to continue fighting against the Nazis. Narrator: Leon Le Roux is a 19-year-old messenger aboard the French flagship, Dunkerque. Leon Le Roux (in French): Rumors traveled fast, so we found out quickly that there was a British fleet outside the port of Oran. And we heard that a small torpedo boat, the Foxhound, had entered the harbor and so we thought it was a bit odd. Narrator: The Foxhound is sent ahead to open negotiations while the rest of the British fleet waits offshore. On board is Captain Hooky Holland, a fluent French-speaker who had served as the naval attaché in Paris. The Foxhound signals to Admiral Marcel Gensoul that Captain Holland wants a meeting. Gensoul is immediately offended that the British are sending a mere captain to confer with him. He orders the Foxhound to leave the harbor immediately. But Holland has orders to deliver the ultimatum, and sets off toward the French flagship in a small motor launch. Andrew Lambert: One of the big problems at Mers El Kébir is that French Admiral Gensoul is really not a man to take decisions. Gensoul doesn’t have any judgment, he refuses to even meet Captain Holland, who was well known to him. Just obstructive, negative. Gensoul either doesn’t want to believe, or refuses to understand that the British are serious. Narrator: Holland is intercepted in the middle of the bay. Prevented from meeting the French Admiral in person, he hands over the written demands. The French are given six hours to accept one of Churchill’s options, or face a British attack. The deadline is set for 3:30 pm. When Gensoul finally reads the terms, he is incensed. He orders his ships to raise steam and prepare for action, then sends a hand-written reply to Captain Holland, stating that the French fleet will meet force with force.”
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/transcripts/churchills-deadly-decision-program-transcript/623/
Winston Churchill was not at fault; the blame rests entirely on the shoulders of the French naval leadership. Admiral Gensoul had the option to sail away with the British Navy with his own completely French crew, and wage naval warfare against Nazi Germany – to meet Nazi force with combined British/French force. What a ridiculous fool – Admiral Gensoul decided to wage naval warfare against the British – he chose to meet British force with French Force – despite the fact that Nazi Germany (not England) had waged aggressive unjust war against France. Pathetic.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
another drama from the legends makers !
There is a quote (yes an English translation), in a book here, from Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac which seems very close to the one referred to by RWE and MC. I wonder if the words used were perhaps part of some paper circulated at the time as to how the matter of the pending invasion should be referenced in public communications. An old version of “Journolist”.
From this far remove it’s hard for me to see how the French Navy can disregard their national government’s surrender — and the fate of their kith and kin should they decide to go renegade — and join the Royal Navy — a navy that had been for most of history their number one enemy.
And it’s hard to see how the Royal Navy can afford to let the French Navy obey the terms of their surrender — namely to return to Vichy France.
The ugly ‘battle’ was a direct consequence of events on land.
I don’t see how either admiral could do anything but what they did.
132. geoffb
I don’t think such paper circulated before the end of the war, remember these persons were active “resistants”, if they had professed such “anti-americanism”, their comrads wouldn’t have work with them, and most likely they would have been eliminated. Though this “anti-americanism” atmosphere was well shared by the intellectual middle until the eighties, they were considered as heros (because of their participation into the resistance) and as überMenschen. I had a teacher of philosophy who was a open “communist”, while not trying to brainwash us, though he had this “hero” aura which was retribuated with admirative students. Once he was ill and was replaced by a young graduate, he who was the indoctriner, I left the courses that I found boring then, while our old teacher was a sort of poet.
blert 133,
Admiral Gensoul and the rest of the French military leadership were confronted choosing between England and Nazi Germany at the Battle of Mers el Kebir. The French sided themselves with evil by choosing “to meet force with force” against England rather than against Nazi Germany. French military leaders (army, navy and air force) had the same choice during Operation Torch where, again, they sided with the evil of Nazi Germany, and opened fire on our Army, Navy and Naval Air Forces, killing many of our boys.
133. blert
The ships were in north Africa, then, still free from moving, as only half of France was occupied. Admiral Darlan wasn’t a pro or a anti Vichyst then, he was considering to join the Allies, in the Antilles or in any Allie harbour. Though, you’re right, there was a concurrence between the french and the British Navy, and the old quarels were still alive in the officers minds.
When the sudden Brit ultimatum came, he wasn’t in office, so the discussions weren’t decisive because his “second” couldn’t decide in the name of Darlan, and there was this 6 hours delay, too short. Also none cold join him at the moment,though most likely he wouldn’t have agree on leaving the ships to the Brits (as the french Navy was his baby, that he had modernised between the two WW) without any french crew on board (appareiller avec des équipages réduits pour gagner un port britannique, et les équipages seront rapatriés dés
que possible). The Mers el Kebir attack made him opt for Vichy then, at last Petain was still known as the WW1 hero.
Isn’t it odd that the “Jean Bart” (and “Richelieu”) escaped from St Nazaire Shipyards when the German army was going to occupy the Atlantic harbours, and was in Casablanca (Richelieu was in Dakar) during the operation Torch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Jean_Bart_(1940)
135. Storm-Rider
Blah blah blah
MC,
The truth hurts.
yours? only if had had some respect for your knowledge, that isn’t the case
I have told the truth and backed it up. By denying the truth regarding French tyranny at the Battles of Mers el Kebir and Operation Torch, you deserve contempt.
j’en suis ravie
For what it’s worth, here’s the French wikipedia entry for Adm. Gensoul, the implication of which clashes somewhat with Marie Claude’s citation in 129:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Gensoul
“Amiral commandant une partie de l’escadre de la méditerranée à Mers el-Kébir (près d’Oran) au moment de l’armistice de juin 1940, il a refusé les propositions faites par les Britanniques au sujet de l’avenir de cette flotte juste après l’armistice, ce qui a conduit à la perte du cuirassé Bretagne, la mise hors de combat des cuirassés Dunkerque et Provence et du contre-torpilleur Mogador par les Britanniques le 3 juillet 1940.”
My translation: “Admiral commanding part of the Mediterranean squadron at Mers el-Kebir (near Oan) during the armistice of June 1940. He refused the proposal from the British on the topic of the future of t his fleet just after the armistice, which led to the loss of the battleship Bretagne and the forced removal of battleships Dunkerque and Provence and the destroyer Mogador by the British on July 3, 1940.”
I’m sure Marie Claude will let me know if my translation is “fîchue”, but the French article itself appears to blame Gensoul for the tragedy.
I’m not saying that there was any paper circulated. It just seems odd for there to be quotes from two different people, both made in the days leading up to the Normandy invasion which contain such similar themes.
Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac:
142. Daniel K Day
« Tout va s’arranger »
On le voit, tour à tour, surpris par l’initiative
anglaise (n’a-t-il pas lu les clauses de l’armistice,
connu la très violente réaction de Churchill, pris
connaissance même d’une note de Darlan qui,
une semaine plus tôt, a évoqué la possibilité
d’une initiative de Londres ?), persuadé que
Somerville bluffe, que « tout va s’arranger », et
incapable de se préparer à prendre le large
— comme le fera son subordonné, Collinet,
commandant du « Strasbourg », seul rescapé de
l’affaire… Il riposte à l’ultimatum anglais
(« Vous avez six heures pour vous joindre à
nous, gagner la Martinique ou .les Etats-Unis,
ou vous saborder : sinon, nous vous coulons
! ») qu’il répondra à la force par la force.
Mais il ne fait rien pour accréditer cette menace
et, à l’heure où Somerville frappe, il n’est toujours
qu’une victime immobile ; prise au piège.
Mers el-Kébir n’était qu’une nasse ? C’est vrai.
Mais alors, pourquoi parler de riposte par la
force ?
Ce qui aggrave le cas de Gensoul est qu’il n’a
même pas transmis à Darlan et au gotivernement
qui s’installe à Vichy l’offre anglaise de
départ pour la Martinique. Pétain et les siens,
obsédés par la crainte de voir Hitler en tirer
argument pour dénoncer l’armistice, auraient à
coup sûr refusé cette échappatoire. Mais enfin,
Gensoul doit la vérité au pouvoir politique, et
Darlan devait confier plus tard à son fils qu’il
aurait, lui, accepté le départ pour les Antilles.
Et, une fois en mer, libéré du piège d’Oran,
aurait lancé aux Anglais : «Et maintenant,
expliquons-nous ! »
books in French:
http://tinyurl.com/7treo4p
-http://tinyurl.com/6o7gqa9
-http://www.du-gardin.com/amiralmerselkebir.htm
yes your translation is correct
it seems that Admiral Gensoul was “stubborn”, he didn’t want to leave and to surrender to the Brits, but was ready for a conflict. well, anyways, thereweren’t enough time for the discussions, and to reach a gentleman agreemant like in Egypt, where the Brit admiral accepted that the french ship disarmed in Alexandria, and that the French stay on their ships, which wasn’t proposed in Mers el Kebir, but rather follow us with the minimu crew, and and then this crew would be repatried
Hubert Beuve-Méry participated, as directeur des études, to the activities of l’École des cadres d’Uriage that Dunoyer de Segonzac created
It seems that Beuve-Mery wrote this sentence in “Esprit” in 1941
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Beuve-M%C3%A9ry
MC.
Your source link places the quote:
To being at the time of the Normandy invasion. It’s source for this is the Revel book as per the footnote #4.
The quote I had of Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac is sourced from the book “National stereotypes in perspective: Americans in France, Frenchmen in America By William L. Chew, Dominique Laurent” which in the footnote has the original reference as being the book by the McGill University of Quebec historian John Hellman “The knight-monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945″. Where Revel and Hellman source the quotes from I don’t know but the both are said to come from the time of the Normandy Invasion, 1944.
vraiment bon
146. geoffb
very interesting research, indeed the “Knight-monks” impregnated our parisian intellectual elite for quite a while, and more or less directed our politicians’ opinion too. Also odd how these people sublimised the Nazy occupation as a mean for a new spiritual era like a new Revolution.
I for myself was a refractaire to such a intellectual atmosphere, as I was bred in french countryside with traditional values, primitive, in a sens.
Today such a mind manipulation has become more difficult, as most of the population is educated and can research different appreciations and argumentation on the Net.
Thank you MC for the comments that led me through the “research”. I may pick that “knight-monks” book if the price of the used versions ever comes down a bit.