Autolytic Empathy

One is brought up short, when happening upon a passage that reads like this morning’s op-ed response to the current crisis, yet which anticipates this crisis  by decades.  The following is from a respected work of universal history  published over a half-century ago by Princeton University Press.   It by no means focuses on the latest headlines, but begins in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia  and slowly works forward.  Yet already in the introduction, this eventual conclusion is splotlighted:

Western nations that produced the unitarian philosophy of intercultural relations  have suffered effects of another kind:  by overextending the radius of their culture realm  to include peoples unable to achieve an organic relationship to its institutions, and by permitting a number of their most cherished values to receive  alien connotations and inflections  incompatible with their actual meanings, they have unwittingly contributed to a denaturing of their own civilization.

-- Adda Bozeman,  Politics and Culture in International History (1960), p. 8

1960 was an odd time to be writing that, amid a definitive wave of decolonisation which might have been supposed to herald a decoupling the European heartland  from the Third World.  The author could not have foreseen -- could she? -- the day when hundreds of thousands of the formerly colonized  should be demanding admission to the mother countries  as wards (and eventually masters)  of the European state.

~

And this, from another book that takes the lo-o-ong view, re the fall of the Sumerian-Akkadian empire:

Here we see the first signs of a process that repeated itself  over and over  in history:  a civilized center rises,  diffusing culture over a wider and wider area,  and finally attracting the barbarians on the fringes, who come in with nothing to lose, use the weapons of the civilized to conquer them ….

-- Wm Howells, Back of History (2^nd edn, 1963), p. 321

[Update Oct 2015]  More here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/10/abschaffung-deutschlands-qui-prodest.html

Words of Wonder

The Blogstats suggest, that many of you enjoy a fine fifty-dollar word,

relished after dinner,

with a good cigar and an aged brandy.

So here is a ... florilegium, of available vocables; 

simply paste one into the search box (upper left)

and enjoy.

aboutness
aetiological

akribia
algebraic geometry

allochthone
amanuenses
amatory

Amazonomachy
amblyopia
anaetiology
anagnorisis
anagogic
analysand
anastomoses
anathemetized
Anglicè
anomie
antecedently
antinomy
ἀπείρων
apocatastasis
apophatic
apophthegm

apophthegmatic
apotheosis

arachnophilic
aspirated
associativity
asyndetically
atavistic

attritely
autological
autolytic
axiomatics

beguiling
belletristically
bemusement
beyonden
bibliocide
bijection
bivalences
blivit
bricolage

bushmeat
byword

callipygean

See something you like, sailor?

calque
canted
capewise
capybara
catagogic
catchphrase
categoricity
cathexis
caviary
centicidal
chalking
chary
cherubim
chevaliers
chiral
clausules
cleidoic
clerihew
cloacal
cockades
combinatorialist
commutator
compactification
compartmented
complexus
conjugate space
consciencectomy
consilience
contavenient

CONUS

contrapposto
cordate
cortices
cosmogony
counterintuitive
countertransference
coven
craftily
criticasters
cryppies
cryptomelodia
cryptonym
curating

darkling
definiendum
degeneracies
delphic
deontic
depauperate
desymmetrized
de-transitively
deverbal
dhimmitude
diabolists
diagonalization
differentia
disjecta membra
disputants
dominical

dominionism
doppelgänger
doxology
draught
duality
ducal

duovirpaternity
dustman
dysphemism
dysphemistic

ecdysiast
elative
emerod
empyrean

enantiosemantics

enantiosemantic

ennoösis

enthymeme
entia
epigones
epigrammatize
epiphanically

equinity
equinoctial
equinumerous
erinnyes
eschatological
Euler characteristic
Eurosibérie
Eve-teasing
excipient
excursus
exfoliation
exiguous
exordium
explicandum
exudation
eyrie

fideism
filicide

filicide

fingerpost
flayed
fleetful
fleischig

florilegium
fluxions
folie à deux
foolscap 
foredoomed
frequentive
fugue

fuite en avant
Formalists

Gallicism
gallinaceous

gallinaceous

gander
gasper
gat
gavagai
Gedankenexperiment

gematria
geometer
gewgaw
glossoplastic
glurge
goodthink

grand guignol
graphological
gully-washer
guttersnipe
gynecized

habitus
handmaiden
hapax
heinie

heliology
hemistich
henodemonist 
heteroglossic
heterological 
hippogriff 
hippogriffic
hocus-pocus 
holograph
holophrastically
homologous
homology
homomorphic
homomorphism
homoousian
homunculus 
huffy
hydrodynamics

hypermasculinity
hyperpower 
hypertask 
hyperzoöphiles

ictus
ideation 
idiopathic 
Illuminati
impredicative
incontinently 
incunabula 
infra-theological

inkslinger
instanton 
instrumentalised
intensional

interconfessional
intercrural 
interfertile 
intrabuccal
Intuitionist
invisibilia

ipsigeneric
irredenta

Islamistical
isomelodic 
jongleur 
kinesic

labiodental
lamassu
laryngeals
latitudinarian
leipogrammatic
lemma 
lemmata
leporiform

leporiform

Levant 
lexicogenesis

limbo stick
logicism 
logophiles

logopoeic
louche 
lucubration

Lumpen

Magian
magistricide 
majuscularity
marmotic

marmotic

martingale
masque 
Meinongian 
mentation 
meshugaas
metalanguage

metasilience
metrizable 
mindscape 
mindstock
misandrist 
modularity
modus tollens
monocerous
monoglot
monostich 
monotremes

monotreme

mooncalf
morbido
morphophonemically
morphosemantic
multiverse
musicoidal
myrmecologist
mysterian
mythologem

nates
necessitarian
necromancy
negentropy
nephrophoric
nilpotent 
nisus
nominalism

nonagenarian
noösphere
nosological
noumenon
nugatory 
nunc dimittis

Oahspe

occultation

Ockhamian
oecumene

Islamic oecumene

off-kilter
oligophreniac 
oneiric
onomastic 
onomatolatry
ontological 
oobleck
op 
optative
organon

orismological

orthoëpy

ostensive
overactress
overdetermined
oxytone

palindromic
pangolins
paralogism
paronomasia 
paronyms
parsimony
particularist 
pegasizing
pejoration

penguinity
pharyngealized
phenomenalistic
philology 
phlogiston
piffle 
Pigovian 
Pisgah-glimpse
platonistically
plenum 
plosive 
pluralizable
po-faced
pokey
polyglot
polymath 
polytope
postlapsarian 
precisionism
pre-Conciliar 
pre-tiffen
predicatory 
primordium

proctoscopic
propitiatory 
psycholytic 
psychotropic
puericulture
pyx
qasida 
Realpolitik

Realpolitik

recherché
refulgence
reknitting
renationalization
reticulated
rictus

Robobaby
samizdat

schadenfroh

schlemassel

schrecklichkeit
sciurine

sciurine

scop
self-dual
semiology
sentimentalist
seriatim

sesquipedalian

Shabbos goy
shaveling
shave-pate

shavepate

shibboleth
shibilant
shrills
shrovetide
sirreverence

skald
slammer

"the slammer"

smickling
sniffable
snookered
solifugae
solsticial
sophistical
sortal
sotie
Spheniscidae
stichomythia
sublunary
subspace 
subvocalization

Spheniscidae

 
spinosaurus
starvelings
steganography
Strange Attractor
stress-timed
sublated
sublunary
sullage
supersensible
supervened 
supposititious 
supraluminal
surdity
surveyable
swart
syllogistic
symplectic
syncategorematicity
synsemantic
 

tachyons
taciturnity
tarbaby

taxonomic
tensile

tensor product
tetraglossia
tetrasyllabic
tetrameter
theistic
theologoumenon
theometry
theophobes

theriophilia
thrawn
threnody
topoi
tragoidoscopy
transfinite
transgalactic
Triduum
triune
triskelion

triskelion

troche
twit

umlauts
unchurched
unisonous 

valetudinarian
Victimology
viviparous
vocalic

wazzock

wazzock

whipperginnie
winsome
wordsmithery
zeitgeistlich

zoögraphy

And, some (novel, non-lexicalized, or foreign) phrases:

  Banach-Tarski paradox
  labio-ludic

  lèse-shariah

  mother structures
  multimorphemic wordclump

  obligate-anglophone

  red mercury

  repetition compulsion

  salvâ veritate
  sauber getrennt 

  solipsism-à-deux

solipsism-à-deux

  sub specie aeternitatis

  takfiricidal aviatrix

  tentacularly octopodal

tentacularly octopodal

  tertium gaudens

[Update 23 February 2015]  My colleague Commander Buckwalter writes in:

mot du jour:  « djoumloukiates » 

Début de la fin des djoumloukiates arabes.(بداية نهاية الجملكيات العربية) Liste des dictateurs arabes... au suivant !

... les «djoumloukiates » des pantins-dictateurs...

The term caught my attention because it appears to be used mostly in Algeria (first used by someone writing for lequotidienalgerie.org, whose article was reposted on other Algerian sites). Evidently the term was coined by Saad Eddin Ibrahim around 2002. Juan Cole got the etymology half right: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/saads_revolution_20110131

Not related, but amusing: To defeat robots, websites post things like:

    Are you Human? 8+9= You must enter the number 17 in the box below. 

which strikes me as something a robot can easily solve.

That last is disturbing.  Such elementary challenges were put to defeat limited webbot intelligence;  but apparently humans themselves can no longer be relied upon to solve things like “8 + 9 =”.

Flames and inflammation

In principle, this site does not comment on local news.  Facebook already handles that, down to a granularity of minutes and inches.  But public rhetoric does fall within our brief, as a linguist.  And as the city burns, it is hard not to notice these wingèd words of an elected official, destined to pass into legend.

Mayor of Baltimore, sounding like a French socialo:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a press conference Saturday alongside community and religious leaders and asked for peace as hundreds marched in Baltimore in honor of Freddie Gray.

But when one reporter asked to comment on how Baltimore police responded to the protestors she said she instructed officers to allow protestors to express themselves and that “we also gave those who wished to destroy   space to do that as well.”

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/04/25/baltimore-mayor-gave-those-who-wished-to-destroy-space-to-do-that/

Such, indeed, is the covert policy of administrations that send cops unprotected, in short sleeves, to face swarms of assailants, knowing they will be attacked;  and secretly hoping that the sight of injured officers  will pacify the mob.  But, Madame Mayor -- you're not supposed to say that out loud.  -- Anyhow, she got her wish.

Police say 15 officers have been injured in the Baltimore riots and two are still in the hospital.

More than two dozen people have been arrested after people looted stores, set cars on fire and threw bricks at police.

As police moved away from the mall into a nearby neighborhood, the mall became unprotected and people started carrying clothes and other items away.

Cars have been burned, other stores have been looted and a pharmacy caught fire during the mayhem.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/27/us/ap-us-suspect-dies-baltimore-the-latest.html

Fire sale

Smoke billowed from the broken windows of the pharmacy. Police said via Twitter that rioters cut a hose firefighters were using to battle the blaze.

Police said on Twitter that looters were "continuing to break into businesses and set cars on fire'' in the area, and that they were responding to reports of looting inside Mondawmin Mall.

http://www.wfmynews2.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/27/baltimore-police-protests/26470867/

Shop till you drop!

The mayor’s remark may be the most ill-starred executive intervention  since Dubya’s “Bring it on!”, which indeed helped bring it on, to the discomfort of the guys who had to do the actual fighting.

Reader comments:

There's no walking it back. She said it and she meant it.

-

Hate to say it, but the residents of Baltimore have earned the reputation. I remember the 1978 snow storm, and the looting that followed.

~

[Update 28 April 2015]  The media have done a good job pointing out a most curious background of Monday’s rioting:  the flash-mob aspect, based on social-media propagation of an invitation to a “purge” at a certain mall.  
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-riots/bs-md-ci-freddie-gray-violence-chronology-20150427-story.html#navtype=outfit
 The reference -- and it is an essentially literary reference, not a tropism of the id -- is to a fairly schlocky but popularly successful movie called “The Purge”, depicting a controlling dystopian future  in which, however, annually, for a brief period  all law and morality are suspended.  That might strike you as a weird futuristic wrinkle on the standard post-apocalyptic flick, but actually the notion has roots in classical antiquity:  in the ancient Roman festival of the Saturnalia.  Since Wiki has a characteristically excellent article on that, I’ll not discuss that Fasching-like revelry further.

Gaudeamus  igitur

Wikipedia itself, however, in its article on “The Purge”, offers an even more recondite classical comparison, to the Crypteia -- q.v.

Rule of thumb in Socialmedialand:  The rioters are calling for The Purge;  the Second-Amendment fundamentalists, for the Crypteia (in the Plutarchian sense).

(Incidentally -- purely from the standpoint of art criticism -- notice the similarity in the staffage of the painter’s vision, and the actual figures frolicking at the 7/11.

Uncanny.

Here is a cropping of the same painting that brings out the more classical aspect.  You could probably do the same thing with the photograph -- the youngster in the orange hoodie  corresponding to the young man seen full-face.)

[Update 30 April 2015]  This mayor continues to amaze.

BALTIMORE — With buildings ablaze and looters rampaging through city streets, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake faced television cameras Monday night and sternly denounced the rioters as “thugs.” The next day, with some black residents in an uproar over a word they call racially charged, she walked it back.

“There are no thugs in Baltimore,” the mayor, who is African-American, said at a church, where she met with members of the clergy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/baltimore-mayor-treads-fine-line-in-divided-city.html?_r=0

So, we suddenly have a thug-free Baltimore!  That is very good news indeed.

[Update 3 May 2015]   Now, here’s a detail you probably haven’t heard:

Residents say arsonists singled out businesses owned by Asian-Americans during the rioting on Monday.

Try fitting that into The Narrative.

It actually does make sense, though at a level deeper than that in which the media deals.   We have glanced at the matter here.

~

Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, même jeu :

Une cinquantaine de personnes, en majorité des policiers, ont été blessées dans des heurts dimanche 3 mai au soir à Tel-Aviv après un rassemblement contre les violences policières et la discrimination dont sont victimes les Israéliens d'origine éthiopienne.

La police montée a tiré des grenades assourdissantes pour disperser la foule et l'empêcher de s'en prendre à la mairie de Tel-Aviv. Les manifestants ont lancé des pierres, des bouteilles et des chaises sur la police. Des canons à eau et des bombes lacrymogènes ont également été utilisés pour éloigner des manifestants des rues alentours, en vain.

Selon la police, 46 policiers et au moins sept manifestants ont été blessés

http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/05/03/a-tel-aviv-la-communaute-ethiopienne-manifeste-contre-la-violence-policiere_4626613_3218.html

That’s a lot of injured cops …

[Update 4 May 2015]  Oh, great;  thanx, Fox.

Baltimore police said on Monday that a Fox News report of a black man being shot by police in the city was not true, and the cable news network quickly issued an apology.

Baltimore police later tweeted that the report of a man being shot was not true and that a suspect had been arrested at the scene with a handgun.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/04/us-usa-police-baltimore-shooting-idUSKBN0NP1TJ20150504

That sort of premature-ejaculation on the part of reporters  could get buildings burned.

R.I.P. "loup solitaire"

[Mise à jour de nos remarques  antérieures:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/02/phrase-of-day-known-wolves.html  ]

L'affaire Sid Ahmed Ghlam signe une fois pour toutes l'acte posthume de la théorie du «loup solitaire». Comme Merah en 2012 ou, plus récemment, Amedy Coulibaly en janvier dernier, l'étudiant algérien soupçonné d'avoir voulu perpétrer un attentat contre au moins une église de Villejuif pourrait être au cœur d'une nébuleuse qu'explorent les enquêteurs. Ces derniers sont persuadés que les quatre fusils d'assaut Kalachnikov, les pistolets, les gilets pare-balles, les brassards ainsi que les chasubles siglés «Police» retrouvés dans sa chambre et son véhicule représentent une panoplie trop importante pour un seul et unique assaillant.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/04/27/01016-20150427ARTFIG00310-attentatdejoue-les-complicites-au-coeur-de-l-enquete.php

Rites of Spring (iterum resartus)

Today  I hauled the old lawnmower out of the shed, where it had long lain hibernating.   (I say “the” shed  since the reference is in fact unambiguous:   unlike Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson, I personally possess only one shed.)  I gassed ‘er up, and, in lieu of actually oiling anything or “replacing the plugs and points” (what is a point, exactly?), since I don’t understand anything about lawnmowers, I contented myself with prodding it here and there with my toe, and eyeing it with a masculine, propriety air -- with just a hint of asperity to it, along the lines of, “Let’s not have any of that won’t-start-up nonsense this time, shall we?”

For we have here that annually recurring agony of vernal uncertainty.   You set your stance, seize the ripcord, let loose your mightiest tug, and… it either leaps to life with a throaty roar, or… splutters impotently, mocking you, and then you’re hosed.

(I must here explain for the ladies, who would otherwise scarcely understand, that failure of one’s lawnmower to start, is humiliating for a man.)

Yet lo!   With a deafening neigh  worthy of Bucephalus,

Dr Justice, taming his lawnmower

and a forward leap recalling Pegasus,

My trusty mower, defeating the weeds

the noble mower sprang into action -- the very first on our cul-de-sac, this season, to do so!

Thanking the gods, I strode forward, laying low the uppity tussocks  and insolent weeds,  like Hector mowing down Myrmidons, relishing in Man’s estate.

In ancient Rome, it was considered a most auspicious omen, when one’s lawnmover started right up  in the spring.

~

~   ~

For an exhilarating parable

in which Spring becomes general,

and dry twigs  send forth  green leaves,   see

Murphy and the Magic Pawnshop

[Kindle] [Nook]

~   ~

~

.

Cantata Germanica

Stumbled upon this in Also sprach Zarathustra:

Alle Wesen   ♫   bisher schufen

etwas  über  sich  hinaus!

(Sing to the tune “An die Freude”.)

A little more feeling  from the woodwinds, please.

~

For an oratorio setting of “Die Welt ist Alles” (from the Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung), click  here.

Mixed Metaphors

[An update to this essay]

[Update 23 April 2015]  In this whole Mediterranean melodrama, there is one thing that every faction, of whatever shade of opinion, unanimously agrees upon.   And that is, that the  “smugglers” -- the “Human Traffickers” -- are the bad guys.  They serve the convenient role of “Neo-Nazis” for Hollywood studios that want to make an international thriller without offending any group:  Just make the bad guys Neo-Nazis.  (Or, in a pinch -- just German will do.  The Germans themselves will never object:  whipped curs.)  The Italian Prime Minister came up with a metaphor that has been enthusiastically embraced by everyone:  the “Traffickers” are the contemporary equivalent of … Slave Traders!   (All in unison:  Booooo, slave traders!  Kumbaya.)

That comparison is, however, nonsense.   The négriers, after all, kidnapped their victims;  whereas the would-be migrants themselves come forward and solicit the traffickers’ services.    As for the traffickers, you can’t really even call them smugglers, since their SOP is the opposite of clandestine:  Send out a rafiot;  then call the Italian sea-taxi service for free-of-charge rescue and pizza  (200 mushroom, 400 anchovies, 12 sausage -- no, cancel that last order, those were the Christians, they just got thrown overboard).  A closer historical parallel to the traffickers would would be … the Underground Railroad.   (Albeit one that charges for its services.)   Or, from another standpoint:  A sort of mirror-image of Club Med.

Francois Hollande, for his part (less imaginative, that man) calls the traffickers “terrorists”.   -- Umm… No.  How are they terrorists?  They just want to make a buck.  -- True, some proportion of their cruise passengers are likely terrorists -- ISIL has promised as much -- but that no more makes the cruise operators terrorists, than the airlines were, when they carried the 9/11 hijackers, or the shoe bomber, or the underwear bomber, etc.

Lifeboat ethics

One saw, the other day, the drama in Mare nostrum:  Cross and crescent, cheek by jowl, the latter dispatching the former to Davy Jones’ locker.  This is more than a fait-divers, a police-blotter incident among innumerable others:  It is a parable, and a foretoken, a metonymy.

For Italia too is a lifeboat;  and she has latterly been importing that which someday may capsize her.

Plenty more where these came from

*

Puis on se demande:   Si ces gens-là  haïssent à tel point  les croisés (pour nous servir de leur baragouin particulier), pourquoi  diable  se diriger justement vers les pays de la Croix?   Pourquoi pas vers n’importe quel pays de l’Ummah?  Ils seraient les bienvenus à  Raqqa, c’est sûr!

On a  récemment posé la questions à des immigrés subsahariennes :  pourquoi s’injecter dans des milieux où l’on ne se sent pas à l’aise, où l’on se plaint de tout, où l’on se trouve minoritaires?   Voici leur réplique:  Eh bien, ce statut minoritaire, ce n’est guère pour toujours;  patientez.

On est en train de visualiser l’auto-da-fé de la civilisation boréale …

*

Weiteres zum Thema:

Cruore spumantem

*

[Update 19 April 2015]   Au moins ils ne sont pas racistes, ces islamistes :  ils égorgent les chrétiens sans égard à la couleur de la peau.  Les associations devraient s’en féliciter.

http://www.lematin.ch/monde/ei-publie-video-montrant-lexecution-chretiens/story/14655398

An ISIL militant smashes a cross on an altar

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2015-04/terrorismus-islamischer-staat-libyen-aethiopien

With video:
http://www.vocativ.com/world/isis-2/isis-video-shows-mass-beheading-of-ethiopian-christians-in-libya/?PageSpeed=noscript

*

Entretemps,  l’accueil des subsahariens est bien moins tendre en … Afrique du Sud, qu’en l’Europe bisounours:

In the message, signed by several groups, including the Patriotic Movement, Pan Local Forum, Unemployed Workers Forum and Anti-Crime Movement, Nigerians and other African foreigners were warned to leave the country.

It read partly:

“Dear neighbour from Africa and other parts of the world, we have travelled the world and have not found one country that allows the floods of humans across its borders as South Africa is experiencing. Even in war-torn parts like Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Somali.

We were seven million people in Johannesburg city in 2011. Today, we have an estimated 13 million. In Johannesburg alone, you have taken over entire suburbs: Yeoville, Berea, Bez Valley, Turfontein, among many. You have even moved into rural parts of our country that have 80-per-cent unemployment, and there are no visible signs that you have jobs either.

We want to be proudly part of the geographic construct called Africa, but we are as different from one another as Kenyans are from Nigerians; Ivorians from Chadians, etc.

We are pleading with you to return to your home countries. Go and build up those countries so that we can all live in economic, social and political prosperity and peace as neighbours. The genocide in this corner of Africa will be far worse than what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Then the entire continent will be condemned to ashes. Is that what you want?

http://pulse.ng/gist/xenophobia-our-people-are-preparing-for-war-against-all-foreigners-attackers-id3668721.html

Residents of Wolhuter Men's Hostel in Jeppestown, Johannesburg massed outside the hostel with intent to drive foreign nationals from the area.

Remarkably, discussion of what is really going on  is far franker in the African media, than in the “humaniste de salon” press of the West.

The above article is from Nigeria;  here’s one from Zambia:

TV footage it appears these brutal acts of violence against foreigners have been carried out exclusively by black South Africans.

And when the xenophobic violence bursts forth again, it is remarkable how extreme it is. These are not incidents of people being turned away from restaurants, or bigoted words on Twitter, or the makeup of a sports team.

One reason is that such an impetus runs against the grand, orthodox narrative so well entrenched in South Africa: that racism is a problem particular to white South Africans and, to counter it, white South Africans should be the focus of attention.

We can no longer afford to exclude culture from national debate. From initiation deaths to witch killings, muti murders, patriarchy and mob killings, there is a great deal about our culture we do not discuss - certainly which we never criticise.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2015/04/19/how-many-more-have-to-die-before-we-talk-about-why-ilive

“Muti murders”?   Now there’s a new one.  Read all about it here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_for_body_parts

 “Muti” here is not short for “mutilation”; the word is Zulu:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muti

*

Two surprising statistical statements appeared in this morning’s press.  No idea how much truth there is in them, but worth following up.

* “More British Muslim men have joined ISIS  and the Nusra Front  than are serving in the British armed forces.”  (NYTimes)

*  There are at present more Africans in Europe, than there ever were Europeans in Africa, during colonialism.

*

[Update, 20 April 2015]   Well, no point belaboring.  People mostly have their minds made up, or don’t want to hear about all this;  and when minds do change, they will likely change in a rush, all at once, as the world goes toppling over some tipping-point.  Emotion, not reason, will rule.

But purely as a point of logical interest -- we take note of what is not being said -- what lies even deeper than taboo, since people are unaware even of repressing it.  Consider this map:

Notice anything?

Well of course, the floundering boats are nearly always closer to Libya than to Europe;  but nobody ever suggests that Libya has any responsibility for saving their co-religionists  just offshort (even though, additionally, Libya is responsible for launching these assault-boats against European shores).   Yet that is not what I mean -- everyone knows that Libya is a failed state and always has been.   No, I mean -- look at the map.  That's Tunisia, just to the left.

Tunisia is a reasonably well-functioning country, and indeed a tourist resort for Europeans.  Yet no-one suggests -- it never occurs to anyone to suggest it -- that Tunisia might have any responsibility, equal to or greater than that of Europeans, in rescuing their fellow-Muslims.

[Update 22 April 2015]   Mais -- rappel à l’ordre.  Ce n’est pas dans nos rayons, que de critiquer la politique comme telle.   Si la culture d’Europe désire se donner la mort, en s’africanisant -- c’est leur affaire.   Nous, en tant qu’observateur de la psychologie linguistique, on n’a que faire en la matière.   Ainsi, ne commentons que la côté “rhétorique publique”.

Donc:  Il y a un décalage entre le discours médiatique, et le vox populi.

Celui-là ne faisait guère mention de l’expérience australienne, qui a réussi, à la fois, à juguler l’afflux tiers-mondiale, et à réduite la mortalité en mer des impétrants à zéro.  En revanche, les commentateurs grand-public la signalent à haute voix.

Finally the European media had to pay attention, after Aussie PM Abbott referred to his country’s success.   The response of European politicians and talking-heads (those gleichgeschaltet to The Narrative), was flustered, and resembled the magician’s distractive patter.

A logical parable:

Elbownia is considering sending a vehicle to the Moon.   The idea is shouted down:  It would never work -- the ship would have to escape our planet’s gravity, which is impossible;  moreover the asteroids whizzing around just above the Earth’s atmosphere  would quickly bash the ship to bits;  plus the Moon has no atmosphere, so the ship would explode were it ever to arrive.

Then someone says:  But, umm, … the United States already tried it;  and it worked.

(Elbownian politicians clap hands over ears and chant LA LA LA LA ….)

 

[Update 23 April 2015]  In this whole Mediterranean melodrama, there is one thing that every faction, of whatever shade of opinion, unanimously agrees upon.   And that is, that the  “smugglers” -- the “Human Traffickers” -- are the bad guys.  They serve the convenient role of “Neo-Nazis” for Hollywood studios that want to make an international thriller without offending any group:  Just make the bad guys Neo-Nazis.  (Or, in pinch -- just German will do.  The Germans themselves will never object:  whipped curs.)  The Italian Prime Minister came up with a metaphor that has been enthusiastically embraced by everyone:  the “Traffickers” are the contemporary equivalent of … Slave Traders!   (All in unison:  Booooo, slave traders!  Kumbaya.)

That comparison is, however, nonsense.   The négriers, after all, kidnapped their victims;  whereas the would-be migrants themselves come forward and solicit the traffickers’ services.    As for the traffickers, you can’t really even call them smugglers, since their SOP is the opposite of clandestine:  Send out a rafiot;  then call the Italian sea-taxi service for free-of-charge rescue and pizza  (200 mushroom, 400 anchovies, 12 sausage -- no, cancel that last order, those were the Christians, they just got thrown overboard).  A closer historical parallel to the traffickers would would be … the Underground Railroad.   (Albeit one that charges for its services.)   Or, from another standpoint:  A sort of mirror-image of Club Med.

Francois Hollande, for his part (less imaginative, that man) calls the traffickers “terrorists”.   -- Umm… No.  How are they terrorists?  They just want to make a buck.  -- True, some proportion of their cruise passengers are likely terrorists -- ISIL has promised as much -- but that no more makes the cruise operators terrorists, than the airlines were, when they carried the 9/11 hijackers, or the shoe bomber, or the underwear bomber, etc.

[Update 24 April 2015]  Another cockeyed but widely-repeated argument from the Ostrich Lobby (as we might dub them) runs thus:  By defending your borders against the traffickers, you would actually be … helping the traffickers, see, because, see, you’d be raising the price of passage.  (High-fives among the bisounours for having thought up this one.)

Now, that is true in the same sense that, by making heroin illegal, scarce, and hard to come by, we force up its price:  If the authorities were simply to hand out heroin free to every schoolchild beginning with kindergarten, the dealers would be out of business.   An analog of this latter policy is, in fact, the program of those who say that borders are inherently a bad thing.   To which we respond, with the poet:  “Good fences make good neighbors.”

[Update 3 May 2015]  The flood continues, unabated -- nay encouraged, by stepped-up European ramassage -- 4000 and counting, in a single day.

Different publications spin the story differently.  Thus, Le Figaro (centre-right) tops its article with a brooding busful of all black adult males:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/05/03/01003-20150503ARTFIG00056-des-milliers-de-migrants-secourus-ce-week-end-en-mediterranee.php

while CBC  (Care Bears Canada), reporting the same incidents, offers a jolly portrait of a manageable handful of only women and children, smiling, flashing peace-signs, as though enjoying a picnic at sea:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/migrants-at-sea-italy-says-3-690-rescued-from-mediterranean-in-single-day-1.3059121

Oddly, though, the readers are not fooled by this prepackaging.   Read the comments.  Taceo.