[AmericanGreatness] For the first time in a millennium, Europe no longer plays a critical role in promoting Western civilization nor in world history at large.
Ostensibly it should. Some 750 million people live on the European subcontinent.
Europe still remains the most popular tourist spot on earth. Its hallowed architecture, art, infrastructure, and natural beauty still remind millions of visitors of the world’s once most dynamic and grandiose civilization.
Even now, European nations, in and out of the Europe Union, still produce a combined gross domestic product of $24 trillion, second only to the United States.
Europe’s exports are among the world’s most coveted cars, sophisticated technology, and valued industrial goods.
Yet since World War II, Europe has played an increasingly reduced role in world affairs, despite its membership in the NATO alliance and the growth of the European Union.
Why?
The twentieth-century traumas of World War I and II—in which some 70 million Europeans were killed—saw Europe commit near collective suicide. The ensuing Cold War hinged on protecting a relatively unarmed Europe from an aggressive nuclear Soviet empire on Europe’s borders.
But as World War II and the Cold War faded into memory, Europe did not snap back and assume its centuries-old role as a world leader and beacon of Western Civilization.
Instead, a weary Europe outsourced its security to the United States. It redefined itself as a postmodern, pacifist, socialist utopian project—most recently predicated on redistributionist entitlements, open borders, and radical green policies that have all inevitably ensured European decline.
Europeans grew louder and whinier the less relevant they became. Kinda like what the Web did to teachers.
Although Europe has large sources of untapped hydroelectrical, nuclear, coal, and natural gas power, its green religion has all but shut down new nuclear and fossil fuel generation and closed existing plants. The result is that the cost of European energy is prohibitive for both the public and industry.
Recent economic growth was essentially zero throughout the Eurozone. The European cradle-to-grave social net, and its hyper government regulations and restrictions on economic activity increasingly are unsustainable.
Few European nations spend even a mere two-percent of their GDP on defense. And the result is that both Europe at large and its NATO members cannot defend their continent without the assistance of the United States.
Nor can Europe project power beyond its shores to preempt dangerous threats on its own horizon or to its allies. The 10-years-in-space Rosetta mission did touch a comet.
Europe is also shrinking and aging. Its collective fertility rate of 1.5 is far below the rate of replacement. Most young people in Europe—the ancient home of Christendom—express neither belief in God nor any faith in organized religions.
In many European countries, foreign-born emigrants comprise twenty percent of the population. Most of them have arrived poor, without education, in mass, illegally, with little desire to fully integrate, from inimical countries, and holding political and religious views hostile to Europe.
The other half of the West is in little better condition.
The United States is reeling under $33 in national debt. While feeding and policing the world of sycophants.
After embracing perhaps 'engaging'
various bankrupt academic critical legal "theories," major American cities are unsafe, unhealthy, and unsightly. The American southern border is wide open. Eight million illegal aliens have poured in just since January 2021, many of them hostile to the United States.
America is increasingly politically, racially, and tribally divided. It has mysteriously determined not to fully utilize its vast natural resources, especially gas, oil, and rare earth metals.
In this vacuum, the enemies of the West see only opportunity. Trials and tribulations, or Challenges and opportunity?
Russia invaded European Ukraine. Its ongoing aggression still terrifies frontline NATO nations.
China threatens periodically to storm Taiwan, as it bullies it neighbors, buzzes U.S. ships and planes, and manipulates currency, markets, and trade.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/23/2023 03:46 ||
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#1
Paging Charles Martel. Charles Martel to the red phone please.
The words of Australian leftwing “activist” blogger Caitlin Johnstone. For some reason the Ron Paul Institute likes to publish her stuff.
[Twitter] Someone uploaded one of those viral "help identify this racist jerk" clips featuring a man accosting a street vendor with awful Islamophobic vitriol, and it turned out he was the former US State Department Deputy Director in the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.
It sounds made up, but that’s exactly what just happened; Vice has a whole article out about it. The video was uploaded today, and within hours the man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, who helped direct US diplomacy on Israel-Palestine from 1999 to 2003 and then served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council.
Seldowitz’s identity was confirmed by his former employer Gotham Government Relations, who released a statement denouncing him and saying they’ve ended all affiliation with him.
Seldowitz is seen hounding the New York City vendors in multiple different videos wearing multiple different outfits,
...how very odd that someone was following him around the big city to film this...
showing a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse. He told them while fully aware he was being filmed that Israel killing thousands of Palestinian kids "wasn’t enough",
...to be more precise, he said if Israel killed 4,000 Palestinian children, it wasn’t enough. There was no admission of culpability from someone not in a position to know the facts. But Ms Johnstone claims to be an activist journalist, and her American husband/co-writer believes she is a good person instead of calling her on her propagandizing...
insulted their religion, threatened them, mocked their intelligence and their English, called them terrorists, and asked "Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?" From the videos he appears to be harassing them for no reason other than because they are Muslims selling halal food.
That such a horrible person could climb his way to the highest echelons of the world’s most powerful government — working on Palestinian affairs no less — illustrates an important point about the US empire and what it is. There are no barriers stopping such creatures from rising to the top of that power structure, just the opposite in fact — they get an express lane to the top. That’s why bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, Victoria Nuland and Elliott Abrams find themselves so intimately involved with US policymaking.
That’s the true face of the US empire, right there. That’s the empire at its most honest. Not dressed up in affable charm and slick PR work, but sneering and hurling racist invective at immigrants who are just trying to do their jobs in peace. Not performing carefully rehearsed faces of compassion for the Palestinians who are being tragically unintentionally killed as collateral damage in Israel’s war of defense against Hamas, but staring right into the camera and saying "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough."
Ah. She got the if in there this time.
Too many people look at Israel as something separate from the US empire, seeing it as a small nation run by a historically mistreated ethnic group that everyone singles out and picks on unfairly. If you look at Israel separately from the US-centralized global power structure, it feels off to have any forceful animosity toward Israel and its government, because it feels like you’re picking on the little guy.
It’s only when you see clearly that Israel is just an arm of the same empire that’s been murdering people by the millions around the world with nonstop invasions, bombing campaigns, proxy conflicts, starvation sanctions and CIA coups that you understand that, yes, Israel really is exactly as evil as it appears to be, and its behavior in Gaza is exactly what it looks like.
Wheeeee! And there she goes, activisting set to eleven.
The US empire backs Israel for the same reason it backs most of the world’s dictatorships: because a globe-spanning empire can only be held together by nonstop violence and tyranny. Israel and other US-aligned states in the middle east are like the chair and the whip of a lion tamer — weapons used to violently abuse the populations of a crucial geostrategic region into compliance. It suits the empire perfectly to have a nuclear-armed government which exists in a constant state of war in the middle east governed by officials who speak English with American accents and interests which are reliably in alignment with those of the United States.
Stuart Seldowitz is not an aberration but a perfect manifestation of all this.
Yeah? Then why is this the only report of some American Jewish guy yelling at Moslem immigrants?
This is the sort of mind which keeps the empire marching along from administration to administration no matter who Americans elect. This is the sort of mind which keeps the weapons flowing, the blood pouring, the fossil fuels burning, and the terrified screams which power the imperial machine continually erupting into the night sky.
The New York Post has the deets. The jerk harassed one vender several times over two weeks, and lots of people are mad at him now, including the lobbyist company he worked for until the video came out. He was never as important as Ms Johnstone makes him put to be, though — just an assistant department head, as far as I can tell, and now an example of the “Hey, kids, get off of my lawn!” style of invective. Update from the NY Post at 7:30 a.m.: He’s been arrested for harassment, and the vender is talking of suing him.
#1
DoS stooges have mastered the art of "going native" even when they are not posted overseas.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/23/2023 6:54 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The White House press secretary probably doesn't have to look far to find Islamophobia in her little world. It's always Freudian Projection with these people. Accusing others of what they're thinking.
[IsraelTimes] The cabinet’s 35-3 vote shows ministers believed there was no better arrangement, and were persuaded the war will resume afterward; Yahya Sinwar may have other plans.
At the very start of Israel’s war against Hamas ...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... , an Israeli official told news hounds that the IDF would strike Hamas everywhere in Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , even at the cost of possibly harming some of the 240 hostages being held there. If the IDF had information on a specific location where hostages were believed to be held, it would not target that location. But otherwise, its operations would not be limited by fears of inadvertently harming the hostages.
As the ground operation continued, however, some war cabinet members made clear that the entire approach to the fate of the hostages had gradually changed. This culminated on Saturday night with war cabinet observer Gadi Eisenkot privately telling families of the hostages that the release of their loved ones was the first priority of the war, even ahead of destroying Hamas, and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz stating at a presser that Israel potentially has "decades" in which to destroy Hamas while the imperative to secure the release of the hostages was urgent.
That evolved mindset is at the heart of the agreement approved overnight Tuesday-Wednesday by the full Israeli cabinet: The war is being suspended for four days to enable the release of some 50 Israeli hostages, and the halt in the fighting could potentially be extended by an extra day for each group of 10 more Israeli hostages that Hamas can produce and release.
**
The fact that cabinet ministers voted 35-3 in favor of the deal with the terror group that seized and is holding most of the hostages, and that organized and led the slaughter of 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7, underlines how potentially advantageous Israel’s political and security leadership believes the deal to be.
Obviously, Israel would have wanted an agreement to secure the return of all hostages. Ministers were told that there was no such deal to be made.
Obviously, too, Israel would have wanted the IDF to have itself located and rescued all, or at least more of the hostages — without necessitating any deal with the terrorists, any release of Paleostinian security prisoners, any halt to the war. But that option, ministers were told, was not available either. Only one hostage has been extricated from Gaza to date — Orit Megidish, three weeks ago, in an extremely high-risk operation — even as the IDF has taken greater control of many of Hamas’s strongholds in the north of the strip. (The case of Nachshon Wachsman. a soldier kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas in 1994, underscores the difficulty of such rescues. In Wachsman’s case, Israel knew precisely where he was being held, in the West Bank just outside Jerusalem, but a rescue attempt proved disastrous, with Wachsman killed by his captors as IDF commandos attempted to break in, and the lead officer in the rescue attempt killed as well.)
This deal, the ministers were told, was the only hostage-release option currently available. For all the pain over those who will remain captive in Gaza — including many who are elderly and many parents — almost all ministers were persuaded that it was a deal with the devil that nonetheless had to be done.
Crucial to the near-unanimous support — with only Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit ministers voting against — was the pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the war will resume once the deal is carried out, and that the war’s declared aims remain unchanged: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and the return of all the hostages.
Ministers were also told that the progress of the ground offensive thus far was central to Hamas’s agreement to the deal, and that resuming the ground offensive was crucial to the effort to secure the release of the rest of the hostages.
**
Given that even some of the coalition’s most hardline elements — notably including Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party — considered the deal to be well worth taking, the question must plainly be asked: Why did Hamas agree to it, even offer it?
Its strategic goal in mounting the October 7 slaughter was to pursue its raison d’etre — killing Jews and ultimately destroying the State of Israel. But it also took hostages in order to secure the release of its gunnies from Israel’s jails. In a 2011 deal, it leveraged its 2006 kidnapping from within Israel of a single captive, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, to secure the release of more than 1,000 Paleostinian security prisoners, some 280 of whom were serving life terms. And yet here, now, it has agreed to release 50 Israelis in return for some 150 Paleostinian women and youths, none of whom has been convicted of murder.
This would suggest a Hamas under pressure for a deal. But if so, that is hard to square with reports that Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza Hamas chief who orchestrated the slaughter and is said to have determined the terms of the deal, is euphoric over the "success" of October 7. Presumably, in any case, Sinwar believes he is outsmarting Israel over the deal’s terms and implementation.
Many Israeli commentators expect that Sinwar will seek to use the pause to reorganize his terrorist-army — most of which remains intact even though much of its infrastructure in northern Gaza is destroyed or located in areas under IDF control. They suggest that he may also use the pause to emerge from wherever he is hiding, for a "victory picture" to revitalize his army and demoralize Israel.
Some commentators also assess that he is eager to prevent the imminent extension of Israel’s ground offensive into southern Gaza, and especially Khan Younis, where he, other Hamas leaders, and many of the hostages are believed by some to be located.
Thus, they speculate, Sinwar will try to stretch out the implementation of this deal, including by asking for a longer halt to ostensibly track down further hostages, potentially pitting families of those hostages against the government, while attempting to gradually bolster international pressure on Israel to abort the ground offensive altogether.
Tamir Heyman, a former IDF intelligence chief, said Tuesday he believes international pressure on Israel, most relevantly from the US, will actually ease as a consequence of the halt in fighting — with more humanitarian aid going into Gaza — and also that the pause can be utilized by the IDF, too, to refresh and reorganize its forces.
The semantics surrounding the accord are important in this context. The deal is being widely reported as providing for a "ceasefire" — and a ceasefire is generally understood to represent a halt in fighting intended to accommodate discussions on ultimately ending the fighting. Israel’s politicians, and the government decision on the deal (Hebrew link), by contrast, refer to a "pause" in the campaign.
Asked about the deal, the pause in fighting it involves, and the potential impact of that pause on restarting the war, IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said such agreements were the preserve of the political echelon, and was adamant that the IDF would be able to pursue and achieve the war’s stated objectives.
For his part, Netanyahu reportedly told ministers on Tuesday night that the expansion of the IDF’s ground offensive into Khan Younis was "not a matter of whether but of when."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
