re: "Punching Down"

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna (" At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war. ") provided examples of why free speech rights shouldn't be optional for governments to respect.

Money quote(s):

"Fear is in the air.

Fear of what Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff had to say about Islam prompted the Austrian authorities to prosecute her for “denigrating” the Religion of Peace."

There are crucial differences between the free speech rights of the Anglospheric tradition, enshrined in our Second Amendment, and those permitted under continental European constitutions. Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater is permitted, for instance, when the movie theater is actually on fire.

"Fearing the truths told by Geert Wilders, the Dutch government prosecuted the PVV leader, and when that failed, prosecuted him again.

In Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Australia, and Belgium, ordinary citizens and politicians alike have been harassed or prosecuted for speaking out against Islamization and mass immigration."

Some opinions are clearly too dangerous for citizens or even lawmakers to possess or express. Perhaps expressing the desire for Holland to remain a country inhabited by the Dutch is example of this.

"(W)hen the decent law-abiding people are thrust aside, driven into obscurity, and jailed, what sort of activists will remain?

The current system is nearing its endgame, and will not persist much longer. Who will take the reins of power when the dominant paradigm falls?"

Both Ralph Peters and Tom Kratman have explored this "what-if" and neither path is pretty.

"(B)y denying decent, honorable, law-abiding people the right to preserve themselves, their families, and their way of life — the Powers That Be have cleared the deck for the emergence of forces that are much darker, much more ruthless, and far beyond their ability to control.

Something wicked this way comes."

1/4

re: "Stop “whining” about the salad bar to the NYT, it’s “inappropriate”"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("one of the best niche blogs for Foreign Service folks") correctly identified some unfair criticism.

Money quote(s):

"You’ve heard about that earth shaking news on the US Embassy staffing in Iraq? The State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland had to address the topic in yesterday’s Daily Press Briefing, and threw our Embassy Baghdad employees under the bus. How could you, Victoria?"

Amb. Nuland's bio can be read here. Her previous postings include (from most-recent to earliest):

2010-11 "Special Envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe," (D.C.-based, presumably lots of time elsewhere);
2008-9 National War College, (Ft. McNair, D.C.);
2005-8 NATO, (Brussels, Belgium);
2003-5 "Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President," (D.C.);
2000-3 NATO, (Brussels, Belgium);
1999-2000 "two years at the Council on Foreign Relations as a “Next Generation” Fellow," (D.C. or NYC, presumably);
1997-9 Department of State (D.C.);
1996-7 "State Department Fellow" at CFR, (D.C. or NYC, presumably);
1993-6 "Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State," (D.C.);
1991-3 Moscow, (Russia);
1988-90 Soviet Desk, (D.C.);
1988 Ulaanbaatar, (Mongolia);
1987 State Dept., (D.C.);
1985-6 Guangzhou, (China);

Draw your own conclusions about this particular career trajectory, but Amb. Nuland is clearly what the Air Force would call a "fast burner." She's gone straight to the top.

(By way of disclaimer, CAA has never met the lady in person but has heard her speak (live) and was favorably impressed.)

That being said, she's probably not the best person to go on record characterizing her fellow employees, stationed in what is still a war zone, as "wingeing."

"(J)ust to be clear, not enough aragula has never been a hardship in Iraq or in other diplomatic posts around the world. Salad greens are not foremost in your mind, especially if you need to wash them in Clorox, and rinse them with bottled water three times before you eat them. Freeze-dried aragula is much better, yum! Of course, the US Embassy in Iraq is unlike any other in the world. Our diplomats cannot just run out to a grocery store in the Green Zone to buy lunch or dinner, or even tree bark coffee. It turns out their food supply had to be brought in from elsewhere.

And so if they are now low on sugar or Splenda, or if the cafeteria is rationing chicken wings on chicken wings night, you gotta ask the question — what happened to the command and supply structure?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

As Omar Bradley may (or may not have) said: "Amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics." All the synergy, transformation, and press releases in the world won't matter if our embassy staff in Baghdad have to start relying on local sources of provinder.

Would you trust that foodstuffs procured locally, and in mass, from Iraqi vendors, would be safe from tampering, adulteration, or even more lethal substitution?

"Did State anticipate that crossing the borders now manned by Iraqis would be messy? Did they anticipate that the Iraqis would want to approve/deny entry of supply convoys but that the government may have no process in place, but will never admit it? Did State anticipate the multiple layers of bureaucracy required to approve entry of frozen chicken wings, and salad bar weeds trucked in from Kuwait? Is there a new SOP on what to do if the Iraqi guards do on chay break the rest of the day while supply trucks gets barbequed under the sun?"

As Messrs. Ringo and Kratman wrote in "Yellow Eyes," Ch. 8 (sec. 1, cl. 7): "The ability of a State Department fool to deny unpleasant reality is deservedly the stuff of legend."


2/8

re: "Earthquake shakes State Department and diplomatic community"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") was at Main State the day of the earthquake.

Money quote(s):

"After a few moments of shaking and swaying, the State Department remained intact. The building management staff immediately began searching for damage, but it was not clear whether some early evidence, such as cracks in the stairwells, came from today's earthquake or was there already. Dozens of State Department employees assembled outside at the entrance at the intersection of 23rd and C streets.

"No formal State Department evacuation was called -- diplomacy must go on -- but some employees did evacuate voluntarily and temporarily. The building and annexes are being checked now for damage," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told The Cable. " (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Sometimes you just have to exercise some leadership and common sense and not wait too long for someone to tell you (and the employees you're responsible for) to move to a place of safety.

"(S)everal embassies around Washington did actually evacuate. Many of these embassies have strict contingency plans for emergencies, and those plans were implemented because it wasn't immediately clear why the ground shook in Washington.

Embassies in Washington are often clustered together, so the result of the evacuations was that several impromptu gatherings of diplomats from different countries broke out on the streets of Washington, with chance interactions between envoys representing countries that probably wouldn't talk to each other much in regular circumstances.

For example, in the Van Ness neighborhood, there was a meeting on the street between diplomats evacuated from the embassies of Israel, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as they all waited for the all-clear sign. "

8/23

re: "How to handle Islamic supremacists with Western citizenship"

Nicolai Sennels at Jihad Watch ("dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts") had four suggestions for non-assimilating cultural supremacists.

Money quote(s):

"It was without any doubt a catastrophic mistake to invite millions of followers of a religion that has a strong negative attitude towards us non-believers and our democratic values to the West. Now they are here; their many children and grandchildren are here, and they all have Western citizenship. When we ask them to integrate and change their views of us and our values, their answer is: "Why should we? We were born here; this is also our country." We can't send them home, and they refuse to integrate. So what to do? We make them an offer they can't refuse."

As drastic as Mr. Sennels suggestions may seem, they pale into fluffy-bunnyness compared to those envisioned in Kratman's dystopian Caliphate.

"Offering money for leaving, making lack of integration economically non-beneficial, making it much harder for Islamic traditionalists to practise and spread their aggressive doctrine and enforcing the law are the minimum if we want to solve the problem without too much blood, sweat and tears."



7/20

re: "Are These the Labour Pains of a New Renaissance?"

Seneca III had an essay posted at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war.").

Money quote(s):

"(T)the giant Ponzi scheme that is European monetary union is on the verge of a well-deserved and long overdue collapse. It was always going to fail, of course, because it is a false construct designed not for the financial and fiscal benefit of the ordinary men and women of the Union but in order to enable the ushering in of a continent-wide socialist police state by means of subterfuge and stealth.

And, as is always thus with false constructs, it never did need to be destroyed from without, for the seeds of its destruction were sown in its very foundations by those political pornographers who created it. These legislative and executive elites, drunk on the dopamine of power, wallowing in hubris as they looted the coffers for their personal benefit — they exalted in the mutual masturbation of their own egos as the little people were left to go about their meaningless lives ignored or at best humoured, of no consequence to the peddlers of this embryonic New World Order.

Fatefully for the deconstructionists, they forgot about or refused to acknowledge the inherent power and utter ruthlessness of the desperate, of the people of whom for so long they had been so contemptuous, and who are now in the process of casting off their chains."

The "European Project" began with the most noble of aims, the prevention of future intra-European conflagrations such as the two world wars of the 20th century.

It can be argued that it's been successful, but it must also be admitted that it did not operate in a vacuum.

Little things like NATO, the United States, "containment," the Marshall Plan, nuclear weapons, and two generations of U.S. soldiery standing watch along the intra-German frontier (that sort of thing) had more than a little to do with it.

"(T)he great Global Warming scam (a revealed belief system built on nameless fear and used to justify and enable the transfer of the fruit of our labours into the pockets of Multinational Industrialists, third world kleptocrats and offshore bankers) is now in its third incarnation, and stumbling as more and more of its premises are exposed as creative wishful thinking rather than the rational analysis of a few and often contradictory physical facts."

For the millions who now get their news primarily from the internet rather than through the traditional major media outlets (primarily TV networks and daily newspapers), this will not come as a surprise. Still, like any ancient religion, the beliefs die out only when the believers (eventually) do.

I still cringe when I hear otherwise genuinely bright people talk about AGW, &tc., as if were "settled science." It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for them.

"(T)he collective atrocity that is Multiculturalism, asylum-seeking, and immigration — those seemingly innocuous categorisations of the deliberate, iniquitous process of our ethnic cleansing — is more and more being seen for what it is, and more and more of us have lost our fear of saying so in public and on public forums. For the vanguard and principal protagonist, Islam, events are moving in such a fashion that under cover of the coming storm it is quite likely a non-Westphalian solution will come to pass. They would be wise to leave now, whilst they still can."

Seneca III is clearly expecting another greater European war, and his "non-Westphalian solution" phrase puts me in mind of the differing viewpoints on the "Eurabia myth" discussion, as regards Ralph Peters, Mark Steyn, and Tom Kratman.

In other words, somewhere that Western Civilization would really rather not ever go again.

Not to say it won't or can't, given that Western Civilization remains stubbornly composed of hundreds of millions of individuals (perhaps even a billion or more) daily making their choices and decisions, on a planet where billions more of folks follow their own lights about things.

It's an ugly place where signposts are marked "internment," "ethnic cleansing," "displaced persons," "internal refugees," and ultimately "concentration camps" and "genocide."

So it would be well worth the effort to find some other alternate courses of action (so long as they aren't categorizable as either "surrender" or "civilizational suicide").

11/3

re: "Integration, immigration and Islam-related problems: 23 suggestions for laws"

Nicolai Sennels at Jihad Watch ("dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts") has some legislative suggestions.

Some of them are, in not so few words, already on the books, but enforcement is either spotty or sabotaged.

Others await some distopian scenario such as envisioned in Kratman's Caliphate.

re: "The Ideology of Pestilence"

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war.") explains how conspiracy is not necessary when consensus suffices.

Money quote(s):

"To conceive of the Islamic invasion as a centrally-directed process is to misunderstand its nature and impose a Western model of behavior on the collective psychological, social, and political actions of Muslims.

Overall Islamic strategy is not coherent and well-organized, no matter how shrewd and effective any of its individual actors and groups may be. To conceive of it as a political entity with a dictator or single decision-making body is to miss the point.

Islam is effective precisely because it is a distributed phenomenon, and utilizes what might be called a micro-ideology — a small set of easily-understood instructions that are encoded and replicated in hundreds of millions of minds across the length and breadth of the Ummah." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Author Tom Kratman says something similar about transnational progressivism; that it's not necessary for there to be a conspiracy, only a widely-accepted consensus about a world-view.

"The exploitation of the infidel may involve a full violent jihad. It may also take the form of razzia — armed raids, pillaging, looting, rapine, and destruction.

In 21st-century Europe, Canada, and the United States, however, the preferred method is what has been called the “stealth jihad” — the gradual but steady infiltration, occupation, and subversion of Western countries.

This does not need to be a hierarchically-arranged and centrally-directed process to be effective. In fact, a full onslaught organized by an outside political entity would be detected and countered, because this is the traditional form of political conflict which the West recognizes, and in which it is supreme.

The stealth jihad in all its forms is the only strategy which can conquer the West, and it is very effective indeed, since our political systems have no template that includes it. We cannot fit it into any conceptual framework, and seem unable or unwilling to devise a new one that would allow us to deal with it effectively." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

The Muslim Brotherhood actually developed, and U.S. law enforcement discovered, the plan for an Islamic takeover of the U.S. Set your search engine for the Holy Land Foundation trial and take a look at was was entered into evidence. Or peruse some of my earlier posts with the Muslim Brotherhood tag.

"Most of the boat people who arrive on Lampedusa or Pantelleria do not view themselves as the vanguard of an Islamic invasion. They come with all the various motivations that you would expect from a group of poverty-stricken and mostly illiterate refugees — fear of repression and violence back home, a desperate search for a better means of subsistence, the desire to take advantage of the legendary bounty of Europe, etc.

However, since they carry within themselves the encoded instructions of Islamic micro-ideology, their modus operandi will be one of rapacious exploitation. They will have no moral scruples of the sort that a Westerner would understand, and feel no shame or embarrassment about being indolent parasites upon their infidel hosts — the simplified Islam they bring with them tells them that this is exactly their due, their basic right as members of a superior social group living amidst their inferiors.

Individual behavior driven by this imperative, when multiplied by thousands or millions, aggregates into an Islamic conquest. Not necessarily suddenly. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Gradually, over decades, there are more and more Muslims. Always taking, taking, taking from the kuffar. Slowly, imperceptibly, as they become more numerous, our system fades away and is replaced by theirs.

In the long run, Islamic exploitation always fails. The parasite always kills its host. The process takes centuries — the glory of the Persians and the Byzantines persisted for a long time after the Islamic conquest. But in the end their lights guttered and died, and they became corrupt and backward satrapies until the magic of petroleum revived them."

This process is well understood among leading Islamic scholars. Witness a recent call, in the interests of ending Egyptian poverty, for the taking of loot, booty, and slaves from the (infidel) West.

re: "Free-Thinkers and Unchained Intellects All Over the World Decide, Simultaneously, That We're All Supposed To Feel Rather Ashamed That Usama bin"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ explains why intelligentsias aren't always very intelligent.

Money quote(s):

"It is truly remarkable how all these maverick minds, these unshackled brains, these members of the Vanguard of Free Thought, nearly always manage to fall into line with what a few of their more mouthy members are saying at any particular moment.

Are we supposed to feel bad that we used lethal force to incapacitate a murderous force for evil? Are we to feel guilt that, having exposed so many of our troops to great risks to preserve innocent, and not-so-innocent life, on this particular mission we told our troops, "Don't worry about bin Ladin's life"?

Are we really supposed to regret this?"

Author Tom Kratman opines that this sort of thing isn't really a conspiracy, but rather a consensus based on a particular, and wide-spread, consensus. (My apologies to The Good Colonel if I've mis-paraphrased him. - CAA)

"This is the primary psychological drive of the bien pensants. If you understand this about them, you understand everything about them.

Everything they say, and everything they do, is calculated towards one specific purpose, one unchanging goal: To differentiate themselves from their "common" fellows, and, by differentiating themselves, in conspicuous demonstrations of anti-common sentiment, declare and affirm themselves to be members of the New Aristocracy." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA)

My experience to date is that doesn't actually require a great deal of higher education to cause one's native rational faculties to be over-ridden by politically correct dogma, although that does trend towards the likelihood of same.

It certainly requires a certain flavor of higher (and not-so-higher) indoctrination to make a bright person this stupid.

"This isn't thinking. This isn't reason. This is simply the automatic, reflexive contradiction of anything a commoner might happen to say. Even if the "commoner" happens to be right.
Because the whole point is to have a different opinion, one the commoners do not share. And the commoners, being, generally, a reasonable and sound-thinking lot, unfortunately have the tendency to think the right things a distressingly large amount of the time.

Forcing the New Aristocrats to often, and more and more, take increasingly unreasonable positions simply to signal their uncommonness.

And hence: Increasing stupidity from the supposedly smart.

As the saying goes: Only an intellectual can believe things this stupid." (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

re: "Muslim Immigration into the UK: Part Three"

El Ingles (writing as Pike Bishop) at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war.") fleshes out Ralph Peter's scenario for Britain.

Money quote(s):

"Normally, technologically and economically more advanced peoples colonize peoples who are less advanced in these regards. This is why, try as they might, the native American Indians could not effectively oppose, much less reverse, the colonization they underwent at the hands of the British and other European peoples. However, in our case, the opposite will be true, as our colonization will be taking place at the hands of technologically and economically inferior peoples who, barring the odd Afghan on the back of a truck, have to be let in by our immigration apparatus to be here at all.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that this colonization will take place only as long as we allow it to, and we will not allow it forever. Eventually we will completely cast aside the various psychological restraints that have been imposed upon us (and without which said colonization could never have occurred at all), resist it, and, at least to some extent, reverse it. There are only two ways this can happen: a) in a relatively orderly and civilized fashion, when a government with the political will to deal with the problem finally comes to power, or b) in an exceptionally violent and brutal fashion, with government playing by no means the only role, and perhaps not even a particularly large one.

It would be asinine to argue that something of this nature could not happen in modern Europe when we have so recently witnessed similar events in the Balkans."

Ralph Peters surfaced this possibility in his much-discussed New York Post article.

"The war that awaits us is tribal war, and we assure our readers that it does not consist of generals exchanging pleasantries before battle, folk riding forth and shooting at each other a bit, and some backslapping over a glass of port at the end. Rather, it consists of people identifying entire communities as their enemies and more or less indiscriminately killing them off until the threats they are perceived to constitute have been reduced to acceptable levels, whatever those levels may be. It is surely one of the greatest failures in the history of (supposedly) democratic government as an institution that so many otherwise prosperous, peaceful European countries have been deliberately hurling themselves along this path despite the fact that the eventual outcome must have been reasonably obvious from the start, and is painfully so now.

When such tribal conflict breaks out in Britain (and it certainly cannot be avoided without radical changes to immigration and other policies), the only way for it to come to an end will be for the overwhelming majority of the Muslim population of Britain to leave permanently. There will be no Good Friday Agreement to bring it to an end, and, for deep structural reasons, no equivalent agreement can exist."

Tom Kratman explored a similar possibility in his 2010 novel Caliphate.

"It will be clear to the British people in the case of tribal conflict between them and their Muslim fifth column that defeat will result in the disappearance of their civilization, their way of life, and their existence as a people. Accordingly, they will have to win it, which means they will have to do what needs to be done to win it, which means they will have to do a great many violent and unpleasant things, things that, though quite inconceivable to many at present, will seem right and obvious to most when the nature of the conflict has become sufficiently clear.

We would like to avoid this, but feel that the window of opportunity is closing rather more quickly than some might imagine. Our greatest concern is that, despite the growing anger and alarm on the part of the British people with respect to mass immigration in general and Muslim immigration in particular, these feelings might not give rise to the necessary coalescence of political will on the part of our elected representatives in time to try and prevent the horrendous future that otherwise awaits us. We say again that the only course of action that gives us the slightest chance of avoiding the horrors outlined here is that of shutting down Muslim immigration and refusing to subsidize the higher Muslim fertility that is pushing us towards the brink."

Boldface added for emphasis.

"There is no theological or legal distinction in Islam between ‘moderates’ and ‘radicals.’ These terms are part of a Western discourse which seeks to grapple with the alarming possibility that a religion adhered to, more or less strictly, by approximately 20% of the world’s population, is fundamentally antithetical to everything good in our way of life. Trying to define a moderate Muslim is an exercise in futility."

Moderate Muslims are some of those things you know when you see them. Like my former uniformed comrades-in-arms, serving their adopted country whether it makes their imam happy or not.

"(L)aws, treaties, and the like are human constructs and therefore open to being changed by human efforts on the basis of human concerns. And changed they will be, sooner or later. If it disapproves, the EU will just have to invade us and show us the error of our ways."

El Ingles raises a good intellectual point. Only the the Ten Commandments were carved by the finger of God onto the faces of stone tablets. Pretty much everything else is the creation of mankind, and subject to revocation, rebuttal, or revision.

(To those who would assert that the Koran, in its classic Arabic version, is the literal perfect word of Allah, I must demur, since that is a matter of faith and I am not a Muslim.)

"It must be observed that all real debts have certain characteristics, most obviously principals (initial amounts owed), and interest rates. If one believes that, once upon a time, Britain owed a debt of some sort to recently independent peoples in ex-British Empire territories, then one must give some idea of the size of the debt, the rate at which that debt accrued interest, and the conditions that would have to be satisfied for that debt to have been fully paid off. In the absence of this information, the ‘debt’ becomes nothing more than an instrument of moral intimidation."

The parallels to the perennial issue of slavery reparations are obvious.

Further, in the U.S. we're not subjected to this particular version of guilt infliction, but rather assertions of the obvious and unassailable virtues of "diversity."

Uh huh.

"(M)any ex-British territories have either stagnated or gone backwards since the Union Jack ceased to fly over them. Many of their people are desperate to leave them, which means that they are desperate to leave the conditions that they and their people have created."

Blaming colonialism will only get you so far.

"If the people of these countries are to flee them and, officially or unofficially, take refuge in a Western country like Britain, then they must, in some fashion, convince the British people to let them in. But given that they already have their own countries, they will have to come up with something especially persuasive. This is the ‘debt.’ None of the people who insist that they should be allowed into Britain because of this supposed debt have ever given the slightest thought to whether or not this debt might already have been paid off, because they have never taken their own argument seriously in the first place. It is simply what these folk say when they feel that access to the UK, for them or their compatriots back home, might be jeopardized."

Thus far, it is not yet a principle of international human rights law that guarantees free movement of peoples irrespective of sovereign national borders. Yet.

"None of this should be taken to imply that there never was any debt at all. Rather, it means that when this debt mysteriously refuses to go away no matter how many immigrants are allowed in, and no matter how much Britain is demographically transformed, then it has become a fake debt, an instrument used to cudgel the ex-imperial master around the head and induce him to allow the ex-imperial subjects to escape the squalor, corruption, poverty, and violence that, they now realize, tend to ensue when they are left to their own devices.

Our ex-imperial peoples wanted to be independent of us. Now they are, with everything that that implies. We wish them the best of luck in their own countries. But all debts are now paid."

I do rather like this simple, bookkeeping approach to debt. If someone is going to imply a debt is owed in order to collect some benefit from the debtor, then by all means lets quantify the current balance of that debt, and any rate of increase. That should be done before paying even a cent.

"(I)f Turkey ever becomes a full member of an EU that Britain is still a member of, with the Turks being granted full freedom of movement across all the EU member states, then the British people will simply have to revolt. If this be treason, rest assured we shall make the most of it."

Britain has already had the joy of seeing many thousands of non-EU citizens crossing the whole of Europe to the coast of France in order to find some way to cross the channel into Britain's welfare state. That's to say nothing of the EU citizens who flock to take advantage of generous salaries, standards of living, and eventual unemployment benefits.

"If there is any particular reason for the British to allow themselves to be colonized by Muslims, whatever their provenance, now is the time for it to be explained."