Feb 20 2009

Can it happen again?

Category: Europe,Islam,Israel — harmonicminer @ 10:51 am

Vichy government found responsible for deporting Jews in WWII

France’s top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government’s responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition to date of the state’s role in the Holocaust.

The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the responsibility for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution

The decision released on Monday also found that the deportation had been compensated for since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.
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Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role played by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.

Europe is busy bending over backwards to accommodate the Islamic immigrants (and second and third generations of same) that have been used to support European socialism, in the absence of a sufficient birthrate of traditional Europeans to keep the trains running and fund entitlements.

Can any objective observer believe that Europe is less likely to target Jews, or simply allow them to be targeted by Islamic anti-Semites, than it would have been if the slow Islamic invasion hadn’t occurred?  The facts belie any optimisim in the matter:  Jews are being targeted now, and the various states do little except public hand-wringing.

The virulent disdain in which the state of Israel is held by Europe is a mask for something uglier, and not so political as personal, I fear.

If I was a European Jew, I’d get outta Dodge now.  It’s 1933, and the clock is ticking.  A war is coming, not one that really involves Jews directly (being but a continuance of the siege of Vienna in 1683) , but one in which too many of them will be casualties of convenience, and contempt.

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Jan 22 2009

Will the USA have to learn Britain’s lesson the hard way?

Category: Europe,freedom,guns — harmonicminer @ 10:44 am

Freedom has eroded in Britian, bit by bit, for 20-30 years now. Britain does not have anything approximating our Constitution… essentially the Parliament can make nearly any law it chooses, subject only to whatever the politicians believe will keep them in office.  It is a true tyranny of the majority, with little in the way of checks and balances, or constitutionally mandated protections of minority positions.   Britain has laws against certain kinds of speech, laws that would never stand under the First Amendment of the USA, it has banned most guns (and had an enormous rise in crime as a result), it has sold out many aspects of its sovereignty to the Europeans, and so on. At the same time, Britian is in real danger of losing its very identity as a nation.  Here’s a window on how some middle class British are feeling about it now:

The British called – They want their guns back!

Will we make the same mistakes?  I’m not optimistic, given how the recent election went, with Democrats winning big by promising to do the very things the British now regret, from nationalized health care to gun restrictions masquerading as crime prevention.

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Aug 22 2008

Israel tries appeasing Russia, too: fruitlessly, of course

Category: appeasement,Europe,freedom,liberty,politics,Russia — harmonicminer @ 8:53 am

Israel didn’t stick to its principles in its response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, hoping to salvage some bit of self-interest, but to no avail.

You have to give Kadima <the ruling party that is almost certain to lose the next election> credit for loyalty: As the Bush administration was destroying any remaining credibility, and undermining its country’s interests, by abandoning a loyal and strategically important ally to Russia’s tender mercies, Israel’s ruling party decided it could not allow its American friends to shoulder the disgrace alone; it, too, should betray Georgia at the expense of its country’s interests. So the minute Russia invaded – just when Georgia needed arms most – Israel, which had hitherto been a prominent Georgian supplier, halted all arms shipments.

One might legitimately ask how this undermined the national interest. After all, Israel desperately needs Russian help on several crucial issues, ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to Hizbullah’s rearmament, and Israel needs Georgian help not at all. Moreover, Russia has made its unhappiness with arms sales to Georgia clear. Thus Kadima seemingly made the correct realpolitik choice.

The problem is that, according to government officials themselves, not only did the country receive no quid pro quo for halting the shipments, but Russia has repeatedly and explicitly declared that it will continue its anti-Israel policies regardless of whether or not Jerusalem sells arms to Georgia. Thus Israel gained nothing by betraying Georgia, while undermining two secondary but still significant interests.

Read it all, and hope that future US policy doesn’t reflect the same mistakes. The motto of the US Marines, “No better friend, no worse enemy”, ought to be true for any democracy supporting another democracy. There cannot be a good end for Russia to believe they can invade neighbors without serious repercussions.

The question is not, “What kind of risks are we willing to accept to defend Georgia’s sovereignty?” The question is, “What are we willing to do to stop Russia from retaking former territory of the Soviet Union, and getting a stranglehold on crucial oil pipelines? What are we willing to do to make sure Russia does not believe another Cold War is to its advantage?”

If we do nothing, or take only symbolic action with no real effect on Russia, this will not stop with Georgia.

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Aug 07 2008

Obama’s speech to the Germans: trying to make sense of it

Category: election 2008,Europe,McCain,Obama,politics,White House — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Dennis Prager has written two articles analyzing Obama’s speech to the Germans:

First article

Second article

As this analysis makes clear, Obama employs just about every progressive-liberal cliche in the Left’s panoply of double-think and half-truth. He reveals himself to be exactly what objective measures say he is: the farthest Left senator in the United States Senate, and the farthest left nominee for President of the US in history. The main stream dinosaur media won’t report this, or do fair analyses of his speeches, preferring to talk about his tone and delivery, rather than his substance, such as it is.

Instead of holding Obama’s feet to the fire for ducking townhall style debates with John McCain, the media continue to swoon in abject worship at his hypnotic oratory…. when they aren’t throwing their underwear at the stage, like rock-star groupies everywhere. (Except for the French reporters, of course, who are reputed to “go commando”. I really don’t want to think about what they’re throwing at the stage.)

After all, we can’t force Obama to go off teleprompter… people might find out what he really thinks, and how well he thinks, neither of which is conducive to his being elected. Who knows, though: maybe a couple of extra-enthusiastic reporters’ boxers will accidentally land on the teleprompter, and Obama will have to speak off-script because the cameras are rolling.

I can hear it now: “America must cease acting only in its own self-interest and step up to its responsibilities to coordinate multilaterally with… with…. Fruit-Of-The-Loom… and…. and….. Joe Boxer….”

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Jul 22 2008

Brave New Multi-Cultural Europe

Category: diversity,Europe,multi-cultural — harmonicminer @ 10:31 am

Gypsy girls’ corpses on beach in Italy fail to put off sunbathers

Questions about the attitude of Italians to their Roma minority were again being asked yesterday after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two Gypsy girls who had drowned being laid out on the sand nearby.

…….

“But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls’ bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed,” the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. “Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun.”

La Repubblica also expressed astonishment at the behaviour of those present. “While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away,” it reported.

Corriere recalled that this was not the first time people had decided a death was no reason to give up their day at the beach. In August 1997, sunbathers carried on as normal after a man drowned near Trieste.

But the fact that the two victims on this occasion were Roma added an extra twist to the affair.

Italy is gripped by anti-Gypsy feeling. Since coming to office in May, Silvio Berlusconi’s rightwing government has appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy’s three biggest cities – Naples, Milan and Rome. It has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country’s Gypsy population, including minors, who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy.

The European commission has asked the Italian government for more details on the census, and this month the European parliament approved a motion condemning it as an act of discrimination banned by the European convention of human rights. Berlusconi last week told the commission president, José Manuel Barroso, that the information was being collected to ensure Gypsy children went to school.

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