Tag: foreign affairs

Welcome to the New Weimar Republic

Andrew

German Neo-Nazis putting the boot to migrants.

It’s not surprising that this happened. Nazis, neo- or otherwise, don’t like immigrants. That’s their thing.

What’s surprising is this:

But police said the asylum seekers started the confrontation – and later hurled bottles at the police trying to save them from a beating.

The migrants picked the fight, according to the police. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but the police said so. Which tells us something about the police – they were prepared to spin fact against the migrants, or they were prepared to tell the truth about them, rather than waffling and saying “oh, both sides were reponsible” (Granted, this is a british journalist’s interpretation of the event).

Remember, these are Nazis we’re talking about. Germany has extended a significant degree of psychological effort to expunge Nazism from their consciousness. Der Polizei, as agents of the state, could be expected to have a bias against the Nazis, to assume that they started the fight. They’re Nazis. Nazis start fights. That was their thing in the Sturmarbeiten, Horst Wessel Weimar days before the Little Moustache took power.

But no, the cops say that 20 migrants picked a fight with 100 Nazis.

That means something. I don’t know what it means, but it means something.

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The Train is Fine. The Point is Missed.

Andrew

This starts as a joke on the Onion News Network, back in 2011 when that was a thing:

It’s funny, but it’s not brilliantly funny. The joke is that the autistic guy does not get that the story is about the dead guy and not about the train. That’s sorta funny. Mean, but funny. It’s probably funnier because its a forbidden kind of humor.

So a guy named Sam Hawken posted it to his blog, back then. Big deal, the internet moves on. And then someone in 2015 revives it and people start using it on Twitter, mostly as a rhetorical device to suggest that someone is narrowly obsessing about inconsequential matters. This, Sam decides, is utterly unacceptable, and he goes to great lengths to argue that the video itself was a fine way to laugh with autism, but referencing it is a cruel way to laugh at autism. Which is nonsense on stilts, but whatever.

What I find myself thinking on is how this makes a nice analogy for how the Left have been dealing with Paris. Sure, ISIS made a big mess, but they’d rather suck all the oxygen out of the room talking about how not all Muslims are Terrorists and how it’s insane and un-American to question whether ISIS might be bright enough to slip a few troublemakers in with the next round of Syrian refugees.

Which statements, I don’t even care if they’re true. I know enough Muslims to know they’re not all terrorists. Saying that is meaningless. I don’t think every Syrian refugee is an ISIS sleeper. They don’t have to be, and in any case, arguing about how many refugees we take in is NOT GOING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Can we talk about getting rid of ISIS? Of handing them a military defeat? Of preventing them from gunning down innocents in a theater?

Or would we rather talk about matters tangential to this?

I mean, sure, a bunch of people in Paris (and Syria, and Iraq, etc., thanks, Internet Guilt Brigade) are dead, but is the train fine?

The train is fine.

Italian Robbers Kindly Reassure They’re Victims “We Are Not Isis”

Andrew

According to La Stampa, as reported in Yahoo News.

On a lighter note, the La Stampa daily reported that a gang of masked robbers had stormed into a bank shouting: “Relax, we are not Isis. It is only a hold-up.”

This fascinates. Why would the robbers do this? Fear of bodily harm is, one surmises, among the most useful elements of a successful robbery. Yet, fear of being suddenly and pitilessly butchered for no purpose must provoke a different reaction than fear of being relieved of one’s wallet. So this must be a necessary warning to prevent people from just running from the exits, devil-take-the-hindmost.

Or, the robbers in question were of Arabic extraction, and did not care to be stereotyped.

Or, one of them thought it was cheekily funny.

New Content: Demon-Killing and Caliphates

Andrew

I have long been fascinated by the Crusades, the Crusader states, and the military orders. Piers Paul Read’s The Templars is a magisterial book that fits in well with the newer generation of Crusade historians (good-bye, “ambitious younger sons”, hello “pious armed pilgrims”). The Templars, of course, met their brutal end before the Middle Ages were over, but the Knights Hospitaller survived, first on Rhodes, then on Malta, where they became the great anti-Turk sea-lords of the Mediterranean. They survive today as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a charitable organization with knightly flavor.

That history and a few viewings of Hellboy has inspired a piece of fiction, perhaps the stepping stone of a larger work:

View at Medium.com

On a related note, the claim of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to the Caliphate of all Islam let me down the rabbit hole to learn one or two things about what went down in the Mid-East in the 20th Century. Most interestingly, I learned that the House of Saud has been ruling in the Arabian Penninsula for a long time. Check out the rest at my new svbtle.com blog, Histeria. A relevant quote:

The Caliphate is imperial by nature: it’s godly goal is to expand the ummah. Every Caliphate has stagnated and collapsed when it hit its military limits. That was true of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abassid Caliphate, and the Ottoman Empire; it will be true of ISIL.

Where exactly those limits are is the question of the hour.

from “Monarchy, Legitimacy, and the ISIL Caliphate“

And of course, there’s my music tumblr, Every. Damn. CD. I just finished up with Led Zeppelin. Rockabilly to follow.

awesomeness_poster_by_sillada

Why Do Europeans Hate Jews? Who Cares?

Andrew

Spengler hits his usual note about the dullness of European civilization, post-nationalism: the tribes of Europe had their folly baked into the cake of their culture during the dark ages. In his view, Isidore of Seville and Gregory of Tours are the “Bialistock and Bloom” of Europe, inflating these upjumped Germanics with the desire to be the elect of God, which they cannot be. Anti-Semitism and World War One ensue.

Whatever the merits of this position, I find myself wondering why any Jew gives a damn. Europe has not been a welcoming place for Jews: in the 1877 years between one set of Europeans smashing the Second Temple and another set anxiously permitting Zionism to happen, Europe was a kind of Babylon for Jews, a place of silence punctuated by violence.

Can any Englishman alive today recall which King it was who expelled the Jews from his realm? Or how long it was before they were allowed back in? Europe tolerated the Jews when they felt like it, and scapegoated them when their blood was up. The Third Reich merely applied insdustrial techniques and bureaucratic focus to an existing undercurrent of hate. It’s always been there, and always will be.

Thus, I cannot imagine anyone in the Knesset noticing what the Europeans do. Israel has learned not to rely on the goodwill of gentiles. So long as they have their army and the strategic heights of Palestine, they will do what they must, and the rest of the world can go hang.

Because in 1000 years, there will not be an England, or a France, or a Germany, or an Italy. There probably won’t be a United States of America. But there will still be Jews.

P.J. O’Rourke Tells Hard Truths About Scots Independence

Andrew

It’s like the old days, man.

I don’t say this as a prejudiced Irishman. Even though the thistle-arse sheep-shagger Scots swiped Ulster and sent a herd of Presbyterian proddy dogs and porridge wogs to squat on our land and won the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 by using unfair—indeed, unheard of —- organization, discipline, and tactics on an Irish battlefield. We Micks only hold a grudge about such things for 300 years or so.

My only interest in an independent Scotland is whether it would retain any aspects of the monarchy, and if so, which. Given the lefty bent of the Scots, I feel as though they would instead become a boring Europublic with an elected figurehead President and a rotating door of Prime Ministers.

Well, mayhap the lairds will have something to say about that.

 

Friday Linkfest: This, That, and T’other

Andrew

It’s not the post that Friday needs, but the post the Friday deserves:

Peace out, cub scouts. Have a great weekend.

The Secretary of State Ain’t What it Used to Be…

Andrew

There was a time when being picked as Secretary of State was tantamount to being flagged as the frontrunner for the next Presidential election. Six Secretaries of State have gone on to become President. However, the last such was James Buchanan in 1856. Since then, we see far more failed Presidential Candidates (William Jennings Bryan, Charles Evan Hughes, Edmund Muskie, John Kerry) than Presidents in that slot.

I suspect that Hillary Clinton viewed the position as one of sufficient prestige to make her the Designated Successor after a successful eight-year Obama Presidency. If she can pull it off, being the first Secretary of State to be elected President since the collapse of the Whig Party will be almost as impressive as being our first female President.

However, that might not work out so well:

Only 43 percent of U.S. voters hold a favorable opinion of the former secretary of state, while 41 percent of voters have a negative view, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday. That’s a significant shift from the same poll taken in Jan. 2013, just before she left her post with the Obama administration. Back then, 56 percent had favorable views compared with just 25 percent who had negative views. A Feb. 2009 poll showed Clinton’s approval rating topping out at 59 percent.

Maybe Buchanan just left a curse on the job, but I suspect that foreign affairs are a lot more fraught with controversy today than in our splendid isolation before the First World War. When American foreign policy could be summed up as Monroe Doctrine + Manifest Destiny, the job was easy. Today, it’s very much something you can screw up, and I feel as though Clinton’s numbers would be better if Obama’s foreign policy was less in tatters.

homer-doh

Pope Suggests Military Action Necessary Against ISIS

Andrew

Deus Vult:

Archbishop Tomasi also complained that a “certain indifference” to Christian suffering in Iraq existed in the international community.

“It is difficult to convince—because of false modesty, I would say—the Western powers to take a strong stance in defense of the Christians,” Tomasi said.

That’s the polite way of putting it.

 

Please Forgive Us, We Are Not Monsters.

Andrew

‘You’re a bad man’ says British boy to Nairobi gunman.

“No we aren’t, here’s a Mars bar. Now run off and convert to Islam. Can you forgive us?”

The above is not parody. The above is what happened at the mall shooting in Kenya over the weekend.

The mind boggles.

On the one hand, it’s good to see that some spark, however small and cold, of moral awareness remains in a jihadi. We should never wish our enemies to be totally depraved.

But “Forgive us?” Forgiveness presupposes contrition, and contrition presupposes sin. If the jihadi believes that he is doing God’s work in gunning down unarmed civilizans, then the only consistent response to being told “You are a bad man,” would be a bullet.

Yet that did not happen. The truth shall set you free, even out of the mouths of babes.