Russian Meddling in the U.S. Presidential Election

No no no, not the Trump/Putin thing -- I know no more about it than you do.  Talking about historical precedents and parallels here.

At their summit on 3 June 1961,  the boss of the USSR told JFK:

“We cast the deciding vote  when you beat that son-of-a-bitch Nixon,” Khrushchev said.

“How?”
“We waited to release the spy pilots until after the election.  So Nixon could not claim he knew how to deal with the Russians.”

-- Richard Reeves, President Kennedy:  Profile of Power (1993), p.  159

That account closely matches Khrushchev’s own recollections of his first meeting with JFK:

I joked with him that we had cast the deciding ballot in his election to the Presidency over that son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon.  When he asked me what I meant, I explained that, by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he could deal with the Russians:  our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.

-- Khrushchev Remembers (Eng. translation 1970), p. 458

The election was indeed a squeaker.   Whether Khrushchev’s move was as helpful to Kennedy as that attributed to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, may never be determined:

Nixon, for one, always believed that Daley’s help included rounding up a few thousand crucial votes, just enough to carry Illinois, from Democrats who had died between presidential elections.

-- Reeves, op. cit., p. 110

Note that something quite similar occurred in 1980, this time  to aid the Republican candidate, when Iran waited to release the U.S. hostages until shortly after Reagan’s election, out of venom for President Carter.  Reagan just smilingly received the credit that he in no way deserved.  (And repaid the favor later, in the kowtowing to Iran and its client Lebanese Hezbollah, in the Iran-Contra affair.)

Schimpfwort of the Day: "schnurzegal"

Jean-Claude Juncker seems to be really getting into his role as the Dick Cheney of the European Union.   After blocking any input from the individual parliaments of Europe, into the proposed CETA agreement with Canada, Juncker sniffed that the whole thing was to him…. schnurzegal. 

That is a very colloquial, even vulgar German expression;  difficult to translate, but at a venture:  “Like I give a flying fuck.”

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article156690315/Schnurzegal-ob-die-nationalen-Parlamente-zustimmen.html

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/ceta-gabriel-nennt-eu-kommission-unglaublich-toericht-1.3055801

Again, exactly the sort of attitude that made the Brits want out.   (And, according to polls, ditto the French, and by an even larger margin.)

[Weiteres zum Thema  hier.]

Anyhow, it’s a neat word.   And in answer to Juncker et al’s strident demands that Britain be quick about it, chop-chop, in chosing a new Prime Minister (this, before it has even been decided, which party shall rule, or even who shall be the chief of either party -- both are in crisis), simply because such a rush would suit the tastes of the Brusselcrats,  Britons may now reply:  “Na ja, das ist uns ja aber halt schnurzegal.”

Marine on the “fuite en avant”

Today’s New York Times published an op-ed  notable in two respects:   One, it is written by the head of a conservative/populist group  normally marginalized by the goodthink media (here, the Front National;  similarly AfD, UKIP, FPÖ, Swedish Democrats, etc.), Marine Le Pen.  Two -- remarkably -- it is offered (along with a translation) in the original French:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opinion/marine-le-pen-apres-le-brexit-le-printemps-des-peuples-est-inevitable.html

[Onomastic/orthoëpic note:   The surname Le Pen  is not pronounced by dropping the -n and nasalizing the preceding vowel.   The vowel is oral, the nasal fully sounded:  rhyming with reine, saine, pleine, and other nice words.]

And within her essay, she uses a favorite phrase that we elucidated earlier -- “fuite en avant”.  Here we find it in its natural habitat:

Une chose est certaine : le départ de la Grande Bretagne ne rendra pas l’Union européenne plus démocratique. La structure hiérarchique des institutions supranationales va souhaiter se renforcer car comme toutes les idéologies mourantes, l’Union européenne ne connaît que la fuite en avant.

(So far that prediction has proved true, with the incredibly bullying responses by Juncker and by Ayrault.)

The Times translated that  thus:

Like all dying ideologies, the union knows only how to forge blindly ahead.

For the full treatment of “fuite en avant”, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/06/phrase-of-day-fuite-en-avant.html

~

[Sprachpolitische Bemerkung]  The Times’ language stunt was a novelty and a courtesy;  it was not an illustration of the absurd meme that has suddenly sprung up (like weeds at the spot where a bear has pooped) in the columns of uncritical journalists, to the effect that “the English language may be endangered” owing to the proposed Brexit!   Umm… Neither the USA, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor New Zealand, nor for that matter India or the other countries that use English as an official language, nor those many countries (e.g. Hungary, Poland, …) whose only hope of conversing with Joe Random Citizen (from Eritrea or Japan or wherever), are members of the EU, and English is flourishing.   It does so purely democratically, by practical free choice.    The fact that certain Eurocrats and their mouthpieces are muttering about disenfranchising the language, shows simply the authoritarian pettiness that led to widespread disgust with Brussels in the first place.

День Победы

Remembered Victory

The media have,  justly,  been giving ample coverage to today’s Victory Day celebrations in Russia, commemorating the defeat of the Axis in World War II.   The coverage of this largest-ever patriotic-military display  has been better than perfunctory, examining in addition  the political undercurrents which -- more than a typical Fourth of July celebration in the States these days, say -- deeply color this year’s remembrances.

There is one aspect of the generally unisonous coverage  that I wish to take issue with, however.   The tone of the presentation in America -- and this, through no fault of the Russians -- has been skewed by the increasing hegemony of sentimentalist victimology in the American media’s treatment of just about anything.   Again and again, the reporters intone:  The Soviet Union suffered 27 million dead over the course of that conflict.  An enormous (key word) “Sacrifice”.

Now, a funeral is not the time for the historian to step into the pulpit;  but these deaths happened seventy years ago;  moreover, they are being cynically instrumentalised by Putin  to revive the cult of Stalin -- and thus, of Putin himself.  (Kudos to the media for having reported the recent law making it a crime to criticize the USSR’s behavior in that war.)

First, a bit of moral clarity, to clear the head of the fumes of sob-story sentimentalism.   If, seeing someone about to drown, you leap into the pounding sea to save them, and so doing, die, then you can properly be said to have sacrificed  your life.   (Note:  A sacrifice can be in a good cause or a bad one;  that is not the point.)  But if you are simply sauntering down the sidewalk chewing gum, and you get squooshed by an asteroid -- that is not a sacrifice;  that is just bad luck.

Similarly:  If you spot someone being beaten or robbed, and intervene, you are sacrificing your own safety.   But if you yourself have been backed into a corner and are being pummeled with murderous intent, your fighting back, while courageous or prudent, is hardly a “sacrifice”.

Now:   What the USSR suffered in the war was, morally, closer to bad luck than to sacrifice (as we shall show), nay indeed was worse than the mere bad luck of the stroller in the parable, who after all did not provoke the asteroid in any way -- did not shake his fist at Olympus and cry “Bring it on!”  But the Soviets, to some extent, indeed Brought It On.

(1)  First, by the Stalinists’ instructions to the Comintern.   Although the KPD had no love lost for the Nazis, they nevertheless, on instructions from Moscow, during “Third Period” Stalinism (inaugurated 1928) objectively treat the SPD and other labor/reformist parties as the main enemy of the moment (the Nazis presumably to be mopped up later).   Had they formed (as the pejorative catchphrase had it, back in the day) a “United Front from Above” against the Brownshirts, Hitler might never have come to power.

To be sure, one he did come to power, and all moderate or progressive forces had been crushed like a bug, such Kommunisten as remained did, belatedly, try to oppose the Nazis, faute de mieux.  But it was way too late, and partly their own fault.

(2)  Second:  For several months prior to the outbreak of world hostilities in September of 1939,  France and Britain had been courting Stalin to form a pact directed against potential further aggression from Germany, in particular in preventive defense of Poland.  Stalin toyed with them, then let them drop.  Instead -- stunning the world -- he signed a pact with Hitler.  That was the signal for Hitler to launch his Blitzkrieg.  As for Poland, Stalin and Hitler carved the thing up between them in advance (along with much else along Spheres-of-Influence lines).  Had Stalin not done this, WWII might never have occurred, or might have been quickly decided quite differently if it had;  for Hitler was, tactically, more cautious (in the early days) than most folks are aware of.  (Cf. his gingerly occupation of the Ruhr, the plebiscites in Sudetenland and the Saar, etc.)

Presumably, those events are among those that are now illegal to criticize.

As for the Komintern … during the Popular Front that succeeded the Third Period, the various CP’s did form anti-fascist alliances.   But the instant Stalin inked his Nazi pact, they all turned on a dime and began denouncing the democracies instead.  So much for anti-Nazi steadfastness.

(3)  During the purges that began in earnest in 1937, Stalin choreographed the legal murder of the flower of the early leading Bolsheviks.   In itself, that is not germane to our tale.  But he followed it up with the decapitation of the Soviet officer corps, thus greatly weaking his army on the eve of world conflict.  Worse than imprudent -- reckless.

(4)   True, the Soviet Union did eventually fight the Nazis; and it may well be that the average Soviet soldier was unusually valorous, I don’t know.  But Stalin did not turn against Hitler until Hitler turned on him -- to Stalin’s astonishment.  Stalin had even had advance warning of Unternehmen Barbarossa from a well-connected spy in Tokyo, but discounted the warning:  he just couldn’t believe that his good buddy Adolf would do that.

In short:   When he had a free and unforced choice whom to ally with,  Stalin chose Hitler.   Only when backed into a corner did he fight back.

So:   Not to be churlish, but to depict the events being commemorated today as a noble “sacrifice” on the part of the USSR, is to be blinded by the Care Bears version of world history.   Putin has been working towards reviving the cult of Stalin as part of his pursuit of the “Total Vertical”.   The West should not be his cheerleader in that plan.

~

As for genuine sacrifice:  Britain and France get at least half credit.  True, they tried apeasement for several months;  but knowledge of the futility of this  is due to hindsight.  Indeed, if Hitler had succumbed to one of the various assassination attempts, or had choked on a grape-pip, history might commend the Munich Pact as having spared the continent another war.   Only after Hitler invaded Poland -- while still making irenic gestures and cooing noises towards the West (noises that had become all too familiar, and to which the West was now immune) -- did France and Britain realize that it was only a question of sooner or later, and the longer they left it to later, the stronger Hitler would be when he eventually turned on thém.   So, they hadn’t been driven into a corner yet, but they could foresee the corner:  thus, at that point, declaring war on Germany was a matter of enlightened self-interest, not sacrifice.   Still, the general public was not widely aware of that, and grumbled at “dying for Poland”.  Also, none of the various other European states and statelets  came to their aid;  so, kudos, as far as it goes.

On the other hand, full marks go to Canada, which got into the game early, ramping up arms production to (prospectively) support Great Britain, and punching well above her weight in the war, when it came.  This, though Canada hadn’t been attacked, and was not likely to be.

(The U.S., of course, stayed out of it until Pearl Harbor forced their hand.)

~

In Washington,  the festivities were, by contrast, non-political, and much lower-key:  an Antique Airshow -- A Good Time Was Had By All.   (In fact, I wasn’t even aware of the Washington celebration, though I listen to a D.C.-based radio station;  they gave much more coverage to the event in Russia.)

Basically, for better or worse, Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to world history, and certainly do not ‘get’ the deep psychopolitical currents that roil the Old Continent.   Thus, here an original twist on the commemoration, from Berlin, at which Americans would merely blink:

http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/44/44886/1.html

Reichsbürger scheitern beim Sturm auf den Reichstag

Rechtsextreme Demo am Hauptbahnhof - aggressive Stimmung gegen Journalisten

Der 8. Mai als Tag der Befreiung vom Hitlerfaschismus ist ein Tag, der an die grausamen Folgen von Nationalismus und Faschismus erinnern soll. Doch in Berlin nutzen Rechtsextreme, Reichsbürger und braune Esoteriker das Datum für ihre eigenen Zwecke. Auf zahlreichen Demonstrationen stellen sie ihr völkisches Weltbild zur Schau - welches sie selbst als antifaschistisch verbrämen. Unterstützung erhalten die Extremisten von den Nachtwölfen aus Russland.

We cum 2 celebrate with U

~

In eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists put on a demo similar in sabre-rattling tone, though not in scope, to that of Putin.

In Kiev, no military parade at all:  Just a laying of a bouquet at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

~

Yet another layer beneath these nation-specific undercurrents, lies another, inchoate, and more obscure, which spans Europe.  

(1) Visible and above the depths of public sentiment,  there is one hegemonic ideology reigning in “Europe” -- “Europe” in the European sense of the ECC:  the Eurocrats.   These answer to no constituency, but carry on merrily, demanding this and legislating that.  The overall silhouette of their proposals is to abolish traditional European national cultures, and to let go even of much (like Christianity, traditional marriage, or masculine valor) that has long spanned political boundaries,  and allow the European peninsula (for so it suddenly appears, exposed and frozen, on the map) gradually to melt into the African and Middle-eastern landmass, without resistance.

(2) In antithesis to this, are worries whether that is such a good thing.  Nervous glances at what-all is happening throughout Africa and the Middle East, are not reassuring.   Such worries churn the gut of das Volk, of la France profonde, but are scarcely permitted to disturb the Narrative in the bien-pensant media.   So soon as a Swede, or a German, gives voice to qualms, he is shushed up and branded a Nazi;  and we have already disposed of them.

And this is where Putin comes in:  not from stage left (Stalin), but stage right.

[No time to develop this analysis further here;  meanwhile, the catchword for this countercurrent is:  Eurosibérie.]

Putin and his biker buds

[Update 11 May 2015]  Can’t make this stuff up:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/05/11/01003-20150511ARTFIG00216-poutine-rehabilite-le-pacte-molotov-ribbentrop.php

.

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

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.

Doctor Justice Declares a Caliphate : the Saga Exfoliates

Doctor Justice Declares a Caliphate

or,  If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em

We were bemused at the ease with which a ragtag of runaways, renegades, and Zarqawiite thugs  could propel themselves to regional prominence, and declare their supremacy over the whole Umma of Islam.  And instead of being laughed off the stage, they have received bay`ah from group after group of former rivals (killing those that did not submit).

With a keen eye appropriate to their craft, the  Accounting Department of WDJ Worldwide Enterprises said:  Y’know, there might be money in this sort of thing.

Accordingly, as the long arm of al-Baghdadi  does not yet reach into our home state, we have decided to solidify our base, before it’s too late.  Thus, Doctor Justice, together with his hardy band of few but fanatical followers, hereby declares the

 => Riemannic State of Suburbia <=

a.k.a.  Riemannistan.

Its capital shall be the cul-de-sac wherein we dwell (Married People’s Circle);  our AOR, all the lands in which the Peano Postulates hold good.  

The state religion is Cantorian Realism;  public punishments for apostate Nominalists will be exemplary and fun to watch.

Dr Justice, wisely rendering judgment

 unto his subjects, beneath an oak 

Herewith our immediate, non-negotiable demands:

* Unlimited rights

* Egg in our beer

* A land corridor through Prussia

~

Fun Facts about Riemannistan:

*  Official language:  Latin

*  National anthem:  “Desolation Row”

*  State bird:  what do you think?

Notitia Dignitatum

Recent cabinet appointments :

*  Dr Massey :  Oberreichslateinmeister

*  Carlos the Pirate:  Minister of Marital Affairs

*  Abu-Yahya al-Irbî :  Proconsul for Greater Jordan (includes all territories  claimed by the ISIL)

* Commander Buckwalter:  Minister of Misinformation, and Lord of the CAStLe

Honoris causâ :

*  Named U.S. wifeperson :  First Lady

*  Airman Bob :  Jihadi Performer of the Year [Note:  This position, being istishhâdi, is filled anew periodically.  Applications welcome.]

*  Fluffy the family hamster : Emblematic Animal (to appear on all stamps and currency issued by the RSoS)

Positions still unfilled :

* Ambassador to Azawad

* Chargé d’affaires for the Ottoman Empire

* Court poet

[Update]

The cursèd infidels of the next cul-de-sac over, “Chunky Chipmunk Way” (and here I am barely making anything up:  our town is full of cutesy street-names) have refused to swear bay`ah to Sultân Dawûd, and have set up a counter-caliphate !!!  This means war -- War to the knife!

Chunky Chipmunk delenda est !!!!

[Update, Bastille Day 2014]  Evidently inspired by Dr J’s bold proclamation of a local cul-de-sac-based Caliphate, another would-be imam has claimed a somewhat neglected slice of Africa:

The imam with his seven year-old daughter, Princess Emily,

showing off the flag that their family designed

as they claim a piece of land in the Eastern African region of Bir Tawil.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-man-plants-flag-claims-african-country-calling-it-kingdom-of-north-sudan/2014/07/12/abfbcef2-09fc-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html?tid=pm_pop

We welcome this new sacred territory, and have offered an alliance to Imam Jeremiah, to wage Holy War against the infidels of the so-called “caliphate” of Chunky Chipmunk Way.

(BTW, those dead-enders over at Chunky Chipmunk  are also pretty sloppy about recycling.  War to the knife!)

[Update 9 August 2014]  Doubtless inspired by Riemannistan’s righteous Holy War against the kuffar of Chunky Chipmunk Way (a.k.a the Dâr al-Harb), Obama has finally got his man-card back, and is going after the sole entity that can challenge America’s hegemonic rule -- The Islamic Caliphate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-expands-airstrikes-against-islamic-state-militants-in-northern-iraq/2014/08/09/1014c018-1fb7-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html

[Late-breaking updeate -- Dispatch from the Front]   The raging battle between Riemannistan and the accursèd infidels of Chunky Chipmunk Way (upon whom be grease) has reached a stage of entrenched positions, of the sort familiar from the early years of the Great War: our territories are now separated by an impassable barrier composed of around half a dozen or so  orange traffic-cones.

Meanwhile, our supply lines and economic base have firmed up, relative to those of the foe.  Our yard sale last weekend did wa-a-ay better than theirs did, judging, not so much by the quantity as by the quality of the visitors who dropped by (their SUVs are tacky;  ours are swank).   We even sold an entire, only slightly wrecked swingset (Jenny having outgrown it -- she’s in second grade now)!  Match that, you Gehenna-dwelling Chunkies !!

~

Update: Riemannistan hosts refugees

[Dateline Riemannistan -- Associated Press]

Cousin Pete will be camping on our sofa for a few days.  His common-law wife Midge threw him out of the house.  The Riemmanic Caliphate is dispatching a crack diplomatic team to negotiate.

[Rolling update -- 30 August 2014]

In a stunning development, the exciting new Caliphate of Riemannistan has firmly established its diplomatic creds.

Armed with half a dozen red roses (plus a recycled gift-card from Pete), the Riemannistan emergency team arrived at the fortress-like headquarters of Ms. Midge [surname, age, weight and cup size  withheld by request].   After a tense quarter of an hour of high-level negotiations, the team returned to the lofty caliphal palace of Riemannistan, bearing a chilled six-pack of Pete’s favorite brew, sent over by Midge in appreciation of the roses.  “So you remembered our [editors: common-law] Anniversary, you old you, you” she wrote in an accompanying bordereau.  --  “Uh -- yeh, for sure!” replied a startled Pete, upon reading the note.

~

Geopolitical ruminations

 

Initially, the ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) was nothing but a rump entity around Falluja, over-grandly calling itself an ‘emirate’.  Later, Fortuna smiling, it essayed a power-grab, re-styling itself ISIL, adding the Levant to its self-arrogated AOR.  Finally, having won de facto power in large swaths of both, is proclaimed itself a “Caliphate” (with ipso facto global pretentions).

It now strikes us that we of Riemannistan have been overly modest.

At present, Riemannistan consists of no more than Married People’s Circle, together with all the lawns and dwellings appurtenant thereto.  But now we proclaim our dominion over:

   (1) the woods behind our present demesne, stretching all the way down to the Lake.

  (2)  We extend our sway to the lowly kuffar of Chunky Chipmunk Lane in toto, not excluding backyard hottubs, tacky lawn-ornaments, and what-have-you.  Its denizans are now our serfs.

  (3) The adjacent cul-de-sacs  we do not directly claim, but graciously leave them sub-enfeoffed to their present tenants, against payment of a suitable jizya.

  (4) The surrounding town, together with all the highways and interstates leading thereto, are hereby proclaimed lord's waste, and may continue to serve at our pleasure, as thoroughfares and pasture lands.

Riemannistan expands  its global reach

[Update]

The bozo who heads up Boko (al-Haraam `alay-him), recently posted a video

   Boko Haram Declares A New Caliphate In NorthEastern Nigeria

which was reported as being his declaration of yet another Caliphate -- obviously inspired by our example.  However, as the Long War Journal correctly pointed out, Bozo here uses neither the terms ‘Caliph/Caliphate’ (khalîfah/khilâfah) nor ‘Commander of the Faithful’ (amîr al-mu’minîn).

It’s pretty funny.   In it, he brandishes a sort of wand or sceptre or phallic symbol, waving it to emphasize his vocal bursts;  and then, unexpectedly, stops talking for a bit while he …inserts it into his mouth, and cleans his teeth with the thing!  
 (It was traditional, among the Beduin, to clean the teeth with a toothpick;  but this thing’s humongous, and it’s weird to see him interrupt his own speech  to attend to his toiletries.)

~ For a glimpse of Dr Justice  in his pre-Caliphal days, click here. ~