What Happens When the Gaza War Ends?

Mark Noonan11 Comments

I know that, personally, I have been bloody-minded of late. The horrific actions of Hamas savages being de-facto endorsed by plenty of my own fellow Americans has got me into a dark mood. But, I must not. God commands me to mercy. And I know it is true – and that if I want to be shown mercy, I must show it. So, we take a breath and calm down. They are savages but they are still my brothers and sisters and I must will what is best for them.

Not that the Israeli government will be calling me for advice, but I think there is a logical outcome to the Gaza War: Trusteeship.

The poison of Hamas has sunk very deeply into the population of Gaza. Keep in mind that the Hamas troops took video of their actions and proudly transmitted that video to friends and family in Gaza. By the time they had got back into Gaza, the people there knew exactly what they had done and they cheered wildly. Naturally, no sane person would leave Hamas in charge of Gaza but neither should the people of Gaza be in charge. Of course not everyone there is Hamas – indeed, we’re starting to see some reports of Gazan’s being furious at Hamas for withholding food and fuel from the people – but it is impossible for outsiders to really separate the sheep from the goats. The remnants of Hamas will attempt to retain power and eventually re-assert control and we can’t be sure who is genuinely anti-Hamas and who is faking. So, no Gazan gets to have a say in what happens in Gaza for a while.

Don’t be too shocked about the concept! Many will be – because we’re so used to universal voting rights and other such Progressive drivel that we can’t imagine denying someone power over their own governance. But self governance is an ideal, not a natural state of affairs. It is something to be aimed for, not really fully achieved. Even in the most educated and civilized society there has to be controls because civilization is not natural to the human condition. We’re naturally barbarians – we are instructed to be civilized and maintained in it by law and custom.

What I’m suggesting is not unprecedented. After World War Two both Germany and Japan were essentially placed under trusteeship and not allowed to resume full sovereignty for a significant period of time. In Japan that can be dated to 1971 when we returned Okinawa to Japanese control. For Germany, because of the peculiarities of the four-power post-war occupation, it didn’t happen until 1991. No matter what, the Allies were determined that there not be a resumption of Japanese and German aggression. The old joke was that NATO was to keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in and there was much truth to that: especially keeping the Germans down. The Brits massively drew down their military power in the 1950’s to the 1960’s but they kept the British Army of the Rhine at strength until German reunification. The Brits did not propose to have a third round with the Germans.

And it wasn’t just an occupation to keep an eye on them – the Germans and Japanese were instructed in new ways of thinking. Heck, the Japanese constitution was pretty much written by Douglas MacArthur. They were told why they had done wrong and what they had to do to repair it. To be fair, many Japanese and Germans voluntarily joined in the effort because they felt ashamed of what their countries had done, but the fact that to this day there are Germans and Japanese who hanker for the old ways shows the necessity of our efforts to impose new ideas on them. Had we not done that – had we done new Treaties of Versailles with them, then they would have just nursed their grudges and their power and tried again.

So it will have to be with Gaza; the people there must be rated incompetent to hold power. This doesn’t mean we go in and boss them around in their daily lives, but it does mean that the broad direction of national effort are taken out of their hands. They can’t control their government, their military/police or their schools. Someone else has to – someone who is committed to at least an idea of peace and justice.

It can’t be the Israelis. There is too much hatred between Muslims and Jews. If Israelis try to reorder Gazan life the people will reject it. They’ll probably stubbornly resist any such efforts from any quarter, but they’ll be in complete opposition to Israeli overlords.

My view is that a multi-power Trustee government should be imposed – with a commission made up of, say, people from Switzerland, Morocco and India (gotta have a Muslim majority power involved; it won’t work any other way and Morocco has long proved itself of a moderate strain of Islam). It would be better to keep the UN out but that is probably not possible; but full authority should be vested in the Trustees – not a penny gets spent, not a law gets made, without their consent. Their primary job would actually be reforming the education system so that the rising generation of Gazans will be told the truth rather than hate-filled Hamas lies. And after that generation rises, a period of transition can begin, step by step, to allow Gazans to resume sovereignty. But it would be at least a twenty year process. Maybe fifty.

Other people can come up with other ideas but the one thing that is certain is that Hamas has to go. Their actions on 10/7 removed them from human society. They still are people, of course, and must be shown mercy especially if they ask for it – but their entire system of beliefs has to be torn down and made unacceptable. Only that way can a path to peace be forged.

Aside: It is Pearl Harbor Day. God bless the memory of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

The Lies Are the Problem

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I saw that in a recent poll something like 67% of 18-35 year olds disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza. To back up this poll, we’ve seen very large mobs of youngsters out at the pro-Hamas rallies where anti-Semitism is rife; so the poll is at least correct in general. This is very distressing – our youth are being consumed by an ideology which is anti-human in every respect. Why is it like this?

Because of lies.

For some time now – probably thirty years – there has been an increasing level of lies about Israel. Like all such things it started small and as a fringe thing but as we know, anything the Left latches on to will move rapidly from fringe to mainstream. We can use the founding of the Boycott Divest Sanction movement in 2005 as the moment when anti-Israel attitudes went mainstream. At that point, Israel routinely was accused of being an Apartheid State which was systemically destroying the Palestinian community. A false history was created to back up the ideology – a history which starts in 1948 with a claim that it was the Jews, without cause, who set upon the innocent Palestinian Muslims in order to commit genocide against them. This is all drivel but that doesn’t matter – it is what was said, endlessly, and by many premier elements of the Western Establishment. As we know, repeat a lie long enough and people believe it. This lie has been repeated well more than long enough…and now after Hamas sent in rape/death squads to commit acts of unimaginable brutality, we’re finding that huge numbers of young people are siding with the rapists.

And its not all on the Left: there are plenty of people on the Right parroting the lies about Israel. The lies about Israel have sunk very deep; our whole debate on this issue is warped by the lies. The pragmatic facts of life are that even if every crime charged to Israel were true, it would still not justify sending out rape/death squads against them. But that is being justified. It is being placed “in context” as the Left demands. We have people who have been so well trained by liars that they can find out that Israel girls were raped to death and it doesn’t outrage them. They see it as justified…and they see it that way because for decades now they have been fed a story about a horrendously anti-human Israel which is just murdering Palestinians by the bushel.

And do keep in mind that a large number of young men from Gaza set out to do these rapes and murders. Like all military forces, probably most of them range from late teens to mid twenties in age. In other words, these are people who were born in this century. If any of them have family who lost something in 1948, it goes back to great-grandparents. You know: people these kids never met. But just as in the West our youth have been fed a steady diet of anti-Israel lies, the kids of Gaza have got it on steroids. They’ve been told endlessly and since preschool that the Israelis – the Jews – are beasts in human skin who engage in all sorts of inhuman cruelty against Palestinians. That is why when these Gazans were unleashed in Israel they took delight in raping, torturing and murdering. To them, they were just getting a pound of flesh back from the Jews.

What is boils down to is that a series of lies, told over decades, brought about October 7th…and those same lies are now hampering the only proper response to October 7th. Lies are not just a theoretical bad thing: lies kill.

And not just in Israel and Gaza. Those same sorts of lies are causing Muslims to attack random people all over the West and in Africa, too. Did you know that over the past fourteen years about 52,000 Christians have been murdered in Nigeria by Muslims? Of course you don’t know that; the MSM doesn’t cover it. The “Bring Back Our Girls” thing was an aberration. And quickly forgotten. And, aside, most of those girls are still being held as slaves. The Muslims of Nigeria are fed anti-Christian lies so they go out to kill…and the world doesn’t do anything about it because of the lie of omission: as anti-Christian violence doesn’t fit the Establishment Narrative, it isn’t talked about. But 52,000 are dead…and Lord only knows how many are now chattel slaves.

Its not just in this type of action, either. We’re fed a bunch of lies about immigration, too, and lots of people die from those lies. The people who are left to die in the desert. The people murdered by coyotes. The people killed in the USA by illegals. It is quite a pile of corpses and it keeps getting higher because there’s a series of lies being told about immigration and border security. Drugs, too, of course; 110,000 died in the USA of drug overdoses in 2021…and it is happening, once again, because a bunch of lies are told both about border security and whether or not there is even a drug problem.

On and on: lies about policing have led to a collapse of policing in the big cities and so murder rates are rising. Lies about race have lead to packs of non-whites attacking whites. Lies about homeless people lead to who knows how many people dying in gutters. Lies lies lies – and they are destructive and getting worse.

It has to stop. The lies must be stopped

And that is where we immediately run into trouble. You see, most people who call themselves Conservative in the West these days are actually Libertarian. It is good that they have a healthy suspicion of government power, but it is entirely unhelpful that they haven’t a concept about what well-ordered liberty means. Your basic Western Conservative just assumes a sane society. They don’t realize that you can’t have a voluntarily sane society – it must be enforced in law and custom. If you don’t enforce decent behavior, you won’t get it. Just today a viral video went around where this guy steals a Christmas tree from another person’s car roof. The thief had his own car. A nice car. It is obvious the guy can pop the $50 for a tree. But he steals one, instead. Because he’s an indecent person. And he’s indecent because he was never taught to be decent and there is no mechanism to force him to be decent.

We have always have liars amongst us – and until Christ returns, they will remain with us. But there’s a difference between a society with liars and a lying society. Right now, we’ve got a lying society. We enforce no standards. We punish nobody for transgressing basic human decency. We’re barely able to convict for rape and murder these days (worse in Europe – a gang of boys, some foreign and some German, raped a girl and only one of them is going to jail…the others are skating; with the reason given that the court wasn’t sure the boys knew they were doing wrong). The whole fabric of civilization is collapsing around us. And it all stems from the fact that we tolerate liars.

I have talked a bit about this before but that 2/3 of the kiddies think Hamas is justified is an eye-opener. We are running out of time. We’ll be lied into total destruction if we don’t stop this. However difficult it is, we must build the mechanisms for punishing liars. And I mean quite severely. Lying is the thing we must take our stand against. All else will fall our way if we can smack down the liars. And all we hold dear will be destroyed if we don’t smack them down.

Our position must be that the First Amendment does not protect lying. That is going to be a hard pill for most of the Right to swallow – once again, because most on the Right are actually Libertarian rather than Conservative. But if you want to retain your freedom you’ll only be able to do it by denying the freedom of liars. Either you GULAG the liars or they will GULAG you. It is that stark – and the danger is not in some far off year; its like three to five years from now. It is snowballing that fast. You may want to stand on the idiotic Voltairean “I will defend to the death your right to say it” and I hope you and your principles enjoy the work camp. As for me, I’d rather not wind up in GULAG – and if that means I have to find the means to bankrupt and/or jail liars, I’m going to do it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan26 Comments

On the death of Kissinger: he was neither monster nor genius. He was just wrong. The whole concept of Realpolitik is wrong. You can never – you must never – separate your actions from moral considerations. You always have to try to do what is right even if it is risky and dangerous…because if you instead chose what is expedient (such as torpedoing Saigon as part of a program to talk with Beijing) then what you get is…what we have right now: a China on the rise and growing ever more aligned against us. Had we done the right thing – continue to sustain Vietnam to victory and kept away from the anti-human regime in China, the world today would be a much better place.

Kissinger didn’t invent Realpolitik nor was he responsible for all the American foreign policy disasters from 1917 to 1969 but he kept right at it. With iron determination he kept doing what his fool predecessors did and it kept failing…and his successors also kept making the same mistakes. To put it into current affairs; we must back Israel because it is the right thing to do. We must call for the extermination of Hamas because it is the right thing to do. To call for anything else – a ceasefire – might seem like the realistic thing to do, but I remind one and all that Israel had both Egypt and Syria on the verge of unconditional surrender in 1973 and we forced Israel to pull back. Seemed smart…but the reason Hamas exists and just sent rape/death squads into Israel is because the Arab/Muslim world did not get the humiliating defeat they had earned decades before. People who do wrong things – like start wars – must never get to have a say in how things conclude and what comes after. The wrong must be punished until they beg for mercy. And then they must be shown mercy…but they don’t get a say. They are to be ordered about to the liking of the victors.

Senator Fetterman is surprising everyone – he’s come out with some sensible things of late, most recently his observation that if we’re going to kick Rep Santos out, why not Senator Menendez (D-Egypt)? Is Fetterman playing a game? Is he getting, as they say, “red pilled”? Not sure; I suspect that somewhere deep down inside there is the regular guy who has played the game to get into the Senate…but does still remember that they’re all garbage in DC. We’ll see how long the Democrats let this go on. I mean, think about it: sure Santos seems like a liar…maybe even a creep…but compared to the rest of them? Come on! Congress is awash in crooks, sexual abusers and traitors and Santos is the guy who gets the axe? Before there was even a trial? The anti-Semitic Squad gets to stay? I guess that maybe Fetterman saw that and just went, AYFKM?

Chauvin – who as far as I can tell, didn’t commit anything like a crime – was just stabbed 22 times in prison. Word is the assailant is a former FBI informant. Almost like they want Chauvin gone before the full story gets out.

Other thing heard today – the J6 video is missing. Gone. Nobody knows what happened to it. This is another thing they don’t dare let the full truth come out about.

A trucking company in Tennessee has been fined $700,000. The crime? They asked prospective employees to prove they are legal residents of the United States. You know: like the law says they’re supposed to be. The key thing to remember about our government is that it hates you.

A lot.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Ok, so who had a Venezuela-Guyana War on their bingo card?

In the latest entry in our World Going to Hell scorecard, there is trouble brewing in South America between Venezuela and Guyana. They’re calling it a border dispute but what Venezuela is claiming is 60% of Guyana’s territory. Ostensibly the Venezuelans say they are trying to right a wrong done to them in 1899 when Guyana was a British colony and Venezuela was forced to agree to international arbitration on the territory in question. In reality, the backwater of Guyana was recently discovered to float on oil – Venezuela is broke because they’ve been Commie for some decades now and so they naturally want to steal some money so they can finance their Socialist Paradise for a little longer.

Guyana, alone, has no chance here – there are only about 750,000 people living in the country against 30 million in Venezuela. Guyana’s total military force – including reserves – is 7,600 troops. Venezuela has about 300,000 troops including Commie bully-boy groups. This would be a short war. Brazil is apparently taking exception to Venezuelan actions and is reportedly moving troops to the area. Here’s the kicker: we are treaty-bound to defend Guyana’s territorial integrity. So, yeah, this goes south and we might be involved.

But do not worry. Pudding Brain is on the job! Side note: he referred to Donald Trump as “Congressman Trump” today…

Israel continues its “pause” in military operations. Gotta say, by now it is no longer a pause…they’ve stopped and I doubt they’ll start up again. Listening to Israeli spokespeople over the last couple days and it becomes increasingly clear that all they want is their hostages back. Hamas will play that desire like a fiddle…and it will remain in Gaza. I hope I’m wrong, but as I suspected from the start – when Israel delayed the start of military action – I believe Israel is defeated. They just don’t have the will to go toe to toe with their enemies. They are, perhaps, too rich these days…the guys of 1948, given Israel’s current power, would not have stopped…their great-grand-children want to get back to the beach. I hope I’m wrong about this.

You might have seen Pudding Brain’s people and the MSM (but I repeat myself) going on and on about how the economy is actually great. This lie isn’t meant for you. They don’t care about you; they know you know what the economy is like. But what they are worried about is upper class, urban white voters. They are just about the only demographic which hasn’t swung away from the Democrats of late. Lies like this are designed to shore them up…to get them to nod along rather than get angry and vote GOP or something.

I guess a BLMer endorsed Trump for 2024 and social media had a heart attack about it. I’ve said all along that BLM has a point. I’ve also said all along that most of the BLM leadership were just paid Democrat operatives. You know: con artists. People getting paid by the DNC (via various plausibly deniable means) to rabble rouse for political purposes. These people are scum. But the rank and file, they have genuine complaints. They are the black version of MAGA – and just as MAGA has been betrayed by the GOPe, so the genuine BLM has been betrayed by the DNC. I think the heart attack stems from a deep fear that working and middle class people of all ages, religions and ethnicities will unite against the Establishment.

The government of Ireland is proposing to make it illegal to complain about immigrants killing Irish kids while the government of Spain arrested people for praying the Rosary outside socialist party headquarters.

Reminder: the Establishment all around the world hates you.

Tired of the Game

Mark Noonan16 Comments

A few days ago three ethnic Palestinians – two of whom I understand are American citizens – were shot in Vermont. It appears the shooter, while being yet another “known wolf” lunatic, did target them because they identified themselves as Palestinian by wearing a copy of the dishrag Arafat used to wear over his bloated head. Immediately upon news of this breaking, there was universal condemnation of the action. Well, nearly universal. There was at least one person I know who simply couldn’t work up a condemnation.

That person was me.

Don’t get me wrong. I oppose shooting random people even if they self-identify as wicked. I expect the perpetrator to be punished according to law and I won’t shed a tear for him when he gets his due. But what I can’t do is work up anything like sympathy for the victims. I did try; it wasn’t there.

Now, why is that? Well, as I pondered it I realized that myself, my fellow Americans, Christians worldwide, white people in general and, of course and most especially, Jews have spent the last 50-60 years under the threat that at some point some Muslim will decide to kill us just to make a point. Doesn’t matter who you are or your beliefs – if you are white, American, Christian, Jewish or any combination of these things, Muslims have declared open season on you. They do have their reasons for this. Their reasons are drivel – because regardless of what Israel, the USA, Europe has done or is doing, random me – random Jew, random Christian, random white guy – walking down the street is not directly, immediately responsible for it. Furthermore, we randoms are not at the time engaged in a military or political action against Muslims. Almost invariably those who are killed by Muslims are people who are quite literally defenseless and not doing anything to anyone.

And we’ve just accepted it, haven’t we? Muslims attack and one or a thousand of us are killed and then we pick up the bodies (or pieces of bodies), wipe up the blood…and maybe bomb something but we also say we’re willing to talk. We provide aid. We promise that we’ll help them set up a government entirely outside our control. And, of course, if any one of us even looks crossways at a Muslim, we apologize. And this is after they killed some of us – and with the full promise that as soon as they’re ready, they’ll kill even more of us. We’re supposed to put up with this? Forever? And feel sad that some of them were randomly cut down?

I’m afraid I’m quite done with this. And once I realized I had no sympathy for the victims it immediately came into my mind that it really for the same reason I never have had – and never will have – any sympathy for what the WWII generation of Germans and Japanese went through. Any time I hear them whine about Dresden or Hiroshima you always find me saying words to the effect of, “gee, isn’t that just too danged bad”. Why? Because those sons of bitches spent WWII lording it over everyone they got control over. They were the Master Race…and anyone outside their Race was a slave…someone to be beaten, humiliated, raped, murdered. After the Germans and Japanese spent years doing that – and it was common Germans and Japanese who actually did the deeds – I look upon their ruined cities in 1945 and go, “well, you got what you wanted: now, how does it taste?”. The Muslims have that same Master Race disease the Germans and Japanese had – they do think they are superior to all and that God has ordained them to rule over slaves. What angers them about Israel is that there is a corner of the world that someone else runs. That’s what they hate about it. They know very well they could be rich and free under Israeli rule…but the very thought of having someone other than themselves in charge…of having a system where they can’t abuse subhumans, makes them furious.

So, yeah: I’m kinda done playing this charade where I pretend there are two parts of Islam – the good part and the part that blows my people up. No; there is one Islam. It is all the same. That we might find individual Muslims who reject it is fine…but the general run are all of one mind and heart. That is, they are masters and all of us are their slaves, actual or potential. Remember: they do celebrate when we’re killed. After the rape/death squads withdrew from Israel the people of Gaza went wild with joy. They knew their men had just gone in to rape, torture and murder Israelis and they were proud of their men for doing it. They can’t wait for it to happen again. They are enduring the Israeli response in the hope that one day they’ll be able to rape, torture and murder every Israeli.

So, spare me this “we’re better than that” stuff. Sure we are – we don’t send in rape/death squads. And if anyone on our side did send in rape/death squads, we’d kill them, ourselves. I am under no obligation to shed a tear when someone treats them as they’ve been treated. When Islam wakes up from its fever and admits that I as a Christian, white American am their equal, then will be the time when I can express sympathy. Until then, nothing doing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I did! Bit of family around and a great turkey dinner. Always my favorite holiday.

Given that Pudding Brain emerged to take credit for it, I can only assume the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza was something that his people orchestrated in order to try to spin a win for the Geezer in Chief. Israel probably knuckled under to it for fear of overly angering Biden people and thus putting at risk any aid they need. Other than that, Hamas violated the ceasefire within minutes of it taking place and from what I can tell didn’t even release as many hostages as agreed.

To be fair, there could be lots of complications on that part – the various factions that make up Hamas (all Muslim political groupings are made up of various factions based on ideology/theology/clan/tribe/etc) won’t want to give up their prisoners in general because if Group A gives up the, say, ten they’ve got then when a later settlement is made they get nothing. No bargaining chips, you see? And that is both vis a vis the Israelis as well as competing factions. It might also be they don’t know how many they have – the Israelis have a pretty good idea on the number of people unaccounted for but how many of them survived from 10/7 until today is a complete mystery. Almost certainly some people brought back captives have been murdered after various brutalities were visited upon them (Muslim military forces do not obey the Geneva Convention. Ever. They consider doing such as a sign of weakness). In the chaos of battle it might be that those turned over were all Hamas, as an entity, could get hold of at the moment.

Main thing is that its a mess and if Pudding Brain’s people were thinking we’d be grateful when not a single American captive was released then they’re dumber than we think. And this was a huge mistake which will just make a quick and successful termination of the war more difficult. As I said on 10/7: assume the hostages are dead. If you get any back, bonus; but don’t do anything based upon the idea of getting them back. They were taken precisely to give Hamas a bargaining chip. Tell Hamas that they have no chips while you continue to hammer then and eventually they’ll start giving them up just to not get killed.

So, you’re wondering, “just what sort of people are these Palestinians?”. Well, they just hung from a lamppost (as it were) two Palestinians who were accused of collaboration. Trial? Proof? ROFL. Savages, at most, have some mockery of a trial…these poor bastards probably just offended the local equivalent of a Mafia Don and got zapped. They’re barbarians. They are not people who we as civilized people need to respect. They are to be ordered to obey and punished if they don’t. It takes centuries to turn savages into civilized people – and for all the European colonialism of the past, it didn’t last nearly long enough to get these people to behave decently.

Does that sound harsh? Well, too bad. It is the way the world works. We’ve tolerated barbarianism for 60 years and all we’ve got it more barbarism. It is time for civilized people to put an end to this.

Is Reform Possible?

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Javier Milei was elected President of Argentina yesterday and the global Left is having a conniption fit, as per usual when someone not Left-approved gets in. There is much positive to be said about Milei as his proposals work out to a wholesale rejection of the Social Democratic order imposed around the world since WWII. He is saying everything a populist Right politician should say. And it will be a great thing if he’s able to carry out his reforms. The big question: will he?

Last year Italy surprisingly elected Georgia Meloni Prime Minister and the global Left also had a fit about her…but in her tenure illegal immigration to Italy has massively increased. This was the issue that brought her to power – it is what the people of Italy elected her to do: stop illegal immigration. It has increased. In other words, had Italy elected a Left-approved government, it would have been no different on this issue. The latest step she’s taken is to come to an agreement with Albania (which is not an EU member) to take in the migrants as they are processed. This is being slammed on the populist Right as a betrayal…mostly because it is. It is a concession that the people flooding from Africa to Europe have a right to do so and the only thing Europe can do is play around the edges and maybe stop some small number of them on one pretext or another and only after some sort of judicial review.

My bet is that after her election those people in the West who fund and organize the migrations (I have no proof of this: but penniless Third Worlders cannot cross thousands of miles without massive support…someone is backing the movement) put it into overdrive to put Meloni on the spot. This has worked. Her plan to send them to Albania won’t do a thing to stop the migrations, it just adds another step to the process.

Italy does have a Navy – a pretty modern one, too. Plenty of patrol craft can ply the waters between Libya and Italy to intercept the slow moving migrant ships and simply send them back to Libya. Just a few weeks of aggressive patrolling will put a lid on it. Nobody is going to make an effort to cross when the almost invariable result will be interception by the Italian Navy and return to Libya. They’ll find some other country to go to or go back to wherever in Africa they hail from. If there is a concern that some of them are genuine asylum seekers, then Italy could open up a consulate in, say, Benghazi protected by the Italian military just for processing asylum requests…with the asylum-seekers remaining in Libya under Italian protection until their case is heard. The Prime Minister of Italy controls the military; she could just order the Navy to do this. She didn’t. She just worked out a bogus plan to make it seem like the migrant crisis is being solved but which will do nothing to stop the migration.

Why did she opt for bamboozlement rather than a solution? Almost certainly because Italy wants EU cash. From what I’ve read, Italy is trying to get 90 billion Euros in aid…and EU aid always comes with strings attached. What we have here is the Ruling Class paying the piper and Meloni dancing to their tune. Such it always is, right? He who has the gold makes the rules. To be sure, Italy could cut itself off from the EU, engage in deep economic reforms – suffer a massive recession and then take about five years for the economy to recover. This would be the wise and patriotic thing to do and by telling the EU to get stuffed, Italy could also solve the migration crisis as the people of Italy demand. But there’s a catch: do that and all of the sudden the people will switch from wanting the migrants kicked out to wanting their EU-funded welfare checks. In other words, Meloni’s party would likely be wiped out at the next election if she did what was right for Italy. She should still do it…and if she were a true patriot, she would. But she’s in office and once someone gets in office their primary concern almost invariably becomes staying in office (especially with all the perks being in office provides these days – seriously, guys; look it up – those who get into office are coddled in luxuries that even kings of olden days couldn’t dream of).

And, so, now we’ll see how Milei does. Like a lot of populists he’s talked a great game. He has first rate proposals. But like all populists the global Ruling Class hates him and will do everything it can to undermine him. Right now, Argentina is pretty much an economic basket case – a century of Progressive policies have turned what was once a First World nation into a joke. It will take massive reforms at all levels to get Argentina out of its plight. If Milei is a true Argentinian patriot (as Nayib Bukele is a true El Salvadoran patriot) he’ll damn all the critics and just get the job done for his country. In other words, he won’t be worried about staying in office, but about saving his country. He’ll have a smile on his face as he contemplates near-certain defeat at the polls as he goes about saving his country. He’ll know that even if his people hate him for what he’s doing, he’s doing what is right and one day the people will understand that. Audacity is the key for any real reformer; to just press ahead…to move so fast and on so many levels that the critics are left in confusion…shouting in impotent rage about the last thing done while you’re already on to the next. I wish Milei well and I hope for a new Argentina.

But make no mistake about it, the chances that Milei will win are low. He’s now going to be in office and from the first minute he’ll be submerged in all those temptations. The global Left will be working behind the scenes to make economic life even harder for Argentina. Just about forget any foreign loans unless you’re willing to torpedo your own reforms. Make no mistake about it: this can be done. Argentina is a nation slopping over with wealth – large territory, huge natural resources, educated population. In just a few years the whole thing can be turned around and real prosperity set in. It is getting through those few years that are the trouble…that usually cause populist reformers to fail.

For reference, see what was done to Trump. Pretty much ever lever of power around the world was turned against him – including and especially those Constitutionally under Trump’s control. Rely on it that the bureaucracy of Argentina – sitting fat on the government – will do everything they can to save their own bacon. But on the plus side, Milei is saying his priority is to get rid of the bureaucracies. That might be the key – if you get rid of those within your own government who are against you then your reforms can proceed unimpeded. If Milei is able to pull it off, it will only be because he got rid of his fiercest enemies: his own government. If so then the lesson for us should we in in 2024 is that job one is simply to fire everyone. To get rid of them; they can whine and complain about it all they want, but they won’t have any levers of power to use against us.

We’ll see, won’t we?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

As per usual, celebrities are lining up to make their “I’m leaving” statements if the GOPer wins – in this case, its still all about Trump but we remember it from past elections. So far, Madonna, Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen have said they’re out if Trump wins. If only. Just one, little vote and we end the long, national nightmare of Born to Run? Sign me up!

The trouble is they never follow through, do they? They stay. And that is a monstrous injustice! Why do they think we vote GOP?

Speaking of the GOP: we do note that the Democrats impeached Trump multiple times and so far all we’ve got out of the GOP House majority is a couple toothless hearings. Some people do figure we could win the White House next year and lose the House. It wouldn’t surprise me if that happened: the GOP has given us no reason to vote GOP down ballot. Heck, in the recent budget deal all they did was cancel some unspent Covid money…they didn’t defund a single aspect of Pudding Brain’s weaponization of government. And there went the new Speaker’s resolve that we won’t have omnibus bills…just about the first he did was pass an omnibus bill. They don’t understand: we don’t want any of it. Just shut it down. We don’t care! Sure, the MSM will have a heart-attack…but we don’t watch the MSM so we wouldn’t even notice. The number of votes we might lose over a shut down are tiny compared to the number gained by having the shut down. But, they don’t see it. Gonna take years to clear out the GOP deadwood.

I guess that in Florida for your government shakedown operation (ie, government employee union) to be certified for bargaining, 60% of the workers have to belong to the union. Now, its been decades since the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t compel union membership but for the most part this has been calmly ignored and various dirty means have been used to keep government employees in the Union. But in Florida, the ability to leave the union has now been enshrined in law and there’s a government which actually enforces that law…and it looks like the teacher’s union in Florida has or will very soon fall below that 60% threshold. In other words, there won’t be a union for the government to deal with in education. Can you imagine the sorts of reforms which will be possible once you have that barnacle scraped off? My prediction: if the GOP shows some guts and retains control in Florida for another ten years, then the Ivy League will be finished as the only place in America to get really first-rate education will be Florida and any other Red States where the GOP has the courage to reform education.

And we do have to get on that education thing. Over the past few days the latest Tik Tok craze has been for youngsters to read Bin Laden’s Letter to America and then they react positively to it and are all, “this is legitimate resistance”. First thing to keep in mind is that a 20 year old college kid was born after 9/11. Time marches on! The rising generation has no memory of that day. My guess is that the Tik Tok craze is a Sino-Iranian intelligence op; they’re trying to undermine American support for Israel. By far, Iran values Hezbollah more than Hamas but it would be a major blow to Iranian prestige if Hamas is wiped out. There is simply nothing Iran can do directly because of distance and the fact that Israel almost certainly has nuclear-armed subs off the coast of Iran right now. But they’ve got to do something – and that “something” is get a ceasefire before the IDF clears Gaza.

Our problem is not the op, but that it is working. Our youth are so astonishingly ignorant that a screed – actually written by a renegade American college kid who converted to Islam and joined al-Qaeda – by a psychopath is considered good. As jokester David Burge put it on X, wait until the kids find out about this vegetarian former art school student who’s anti-Zionist tome ignited a world movement! Our kids are so ignorant they are falling for the most elementary propaganda…and propaganda in favor of anti-human evil. If we don’t fix this then if a real war comes, we’ll find at least a significant portion of our youth will believe the enemy rather than America.

But even beyond that, keep in mind that affirmative action doesn’t just end at some point. You have to affirmative-action them into school. And then into a degree. And then into a job. We’ve seen again and again highly credentialed Pudding Brain judicial nominees fail to correctly answer basic legal questions. We’re seeing doctors who assert that masks will stop a virus. On and on like that – if the education was at least engineering plus commie propaganda it would be bad, but not necessarily fatal…but the education is nothing but commie propaganda. They don’t know anything, really. And they are now starting to be placed in charge. We need a crop of our youth who actually know what they’re doing.

But, do keep in mind, if the Red States start to churn out first class doctors and engineers that won’t do the trick. The USSR could educate excellent engineers…who were then put under the thumb of party hacks. They were arrested as “wreckers” when the hacks loused everything up. It will be like that here in America if we don’t start enacting laws to put some teeth into civil rights. Laws which expressly prohibit law enforcement from doing certain things. Laws which punish oath-breakers. On and on like that.

As for the war in Gaza, the IDF is being very methodical in its approach – this is to keep casualties low; both IDF and Gazan. I worry this isn’t the way to do it. I’ve always favored celerity of movement in warfare. The longer it takes the more imponderables start to have their way. Of course, the IDF isn’t going to call me for advice and I do wish them success…but I worry that if this starts to take too long not only will global pressure for a ceasefire increase, but we may start to see domestic Israeli pressure grow to call it off.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

In the Virginia election last week the GOP got more votes, State-wide, for House and Senate than the Democrats did. The Democrats narrowly won both chambers – ultimately in the crucial districts by just 3,000 or so votes – because of the Democrat gerrymander of the districts. But this shows that Virginia isn’t quite as Blue as we’ve been led to believe. Can’t do much about the district lines until after 2030 and then only if we have at least one of the legislative houses, but I think the votes show that Virginia may yet be in play for 2024.

Of note, the Democrats went nuclear on abortion in Virginia and the national GOP did nothing about it. The national GOP seems determined to let the Democrats win on the abortion issue and then blame pro-Lifers for the losses. This is probably a means of undermining the Populist impulse in the GOP. Make no mistake about it, most of the GOP leadership wants to return to a Romney-like GOP. They don’t like Trump, but they also don’t like DeSantis. Their candidate for 2024 now that Scott has thrown in the towel is Haley. And if they don’t get the candidate they want, they’ll do everything they can to undercut the overall GOP effort in 2024 as much as they did in 2022 and 2020. I do believe that this is because a lot of our leadership is compromised – either directly or indirectly. The Democrats own them. It will be a grind over the next ten years or so to get rid of these people and replace them with people who are on our side.

In Pennsylvania the switch to the GOP continues. The Democrat voter registration advantage stands at about 445k; it was 916k back in 2016. This is an earthquake that just hasn’t quite happened yet. The State is trending Red but is still controlled by Blue. Democrats had thought their new auto-registration system would right the ship but all its done is produce even more GOP voters. The Democrats are now committing massive funds to register voters for 2024 because they do see the writing on the wall. One of these days, regardless of how “fortified” they make the elections, you’re going to see a Red Wave in Pennsylvania.

October 7th has been memory-holed by the Left. They don’t even mention it any longer. No surprise as any mention of it now just brings up that it is abundantly proven that Hamas committed savagery that would have made Attila the Hun blush. But it isn’t just expedience that has done this on the Left – they are very proud of Hamas, after all – it is just that right now their only goal is to make what Israel is doing look bad and make it appear, the longer time goes on, as if it happened in a vacuum. They will keep putting (fake) pictures of Gazan dead up on social media to get Pudding Brain’s people to increase the pressure on Israel to quit. Survival of Hamas is at stake here – and the Left wants Hamas to survive. They don’t just want a repeat of 10/7, they want 10/7 on steroids (apparently Hamas had a much more ambitious plan to also paraglide in from the West Bank but didn’t have the resources to pull that off. This time). But they have a problem – more and more Israelis are seeing the evidence of what Hamas did and they seem to be getting determined to see an end to Hamas, at least in Gaza. There aren’t a lot of voices in Israel right now calling on the IDF to quit. That might come some day, but not any time soon.

Among the dead from 10/7 was a Canadian peace activist lady. From what I read, she’s been in Israel for decades “working for peace”. Naturally, Hamas murdered her. You do wonder if at the last moment she realized her error? We’ll never know – but I will say the hard pill to swallow: of the people of the West, nobody is more responsible for the existence of Hamas and other groups of savages than “peace activists”. They are not good people. They are not wise people. They are not merciful people. They are narcissistic cowards who preen themselves on their moral superiority over the people who fight barbarians to keep them at bay. They are almost invariably white and rich. And for 60 to 70 years these people have stopped the West from squashing the barbarians…so now we’ve got more barbarians in the West than any time since the fall of Rome.

It’s the Socialism, Stupid

Mark Noonan27 Comments

We’ve all been rather wrapped up in domestic issues and with the Gaza War dominating the international headlines it is easy to let other things slip. One of the things not in the American mind is Spain.

On the 23rd of July Spain had an election and the Populist-Conservative People’s Party came in first, though as often happens in parliamentary systems without scoring an outright majority. Still, the usual course of events is that the biggest party in parliament is given the opportunity to form a government – either an outright minority government or a coalition with one or more smaller parties necessary to secure a majority. It isn’t happening like that.

It still hasn’t been all worked out yet, but the leader of Spain’s Socialist party is working out deals with various Spanish separatist parties (most notably the Catalan separatists) which, in return for Separatist support for a socialist government, various charges of corruption will be dropped against Separatist leaders as well as various bald-faced ripoffs from the Spanish treasury will be turned over to Separatist control. As I said, not a fully done deal but it does look like it is happening. This has provoked outrage in the Spanish center and right leading to massive protests at Socialist party headquarters…and a very violent police response (the same police which, like in all Western nations, always goes easy on Leftists and foreigners who are causing a ruckus).

And you think about it: this was once Franco’s Spain. These modern Socialists are the heirs of those Franco defeated in the 1930s. They’re in power, now, and they are busily erasing Franco, erasing the crimes of the Socialist Spanish government in the 1930s and building up a Spain which is overtly anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic. And they don’t care how they retain power…because for a Socialist the only thing that matters is imposing Socialism. Doesn’t matter that less than 1 in 3 Spaniards wants a Socialist system, the Socialists will force it on all Spaniards by any means available. The Socialists never quit. Defeated they just wait and wait and wait knowing that eventually people will be bamboozled into voting for them and then once they get in power they act as if they have a mandate. Nobody in Spain ever voted to dig up Franco’s body and move it out of what amounts to Spain’s Arlington…but the Socialists did it; because they still hate Franco. He beat them, you see: the one unforgivable sin.

And they are like this everywhere they go: explicitly hating the nations they arise in and diligently working to eliminate everything which made their nation good. Here in the USA they are BLM and Antifa…and very lately the rabidly anti-Semitic pro-Hamas cretins we’ve seen itching for a pogrom. It does amaze that Marx’ drivel continues to inspire but then you think about it: Socialists have largely always been privileged people who think they’re smarter than everyone else. Socialism gives these people their mental justification for taking over…and thus it’s continued appeal. That is, as long as we have idle, wealthy youth filled with resentment – and made increasingly ignorant by the education system – we’re going to have Socialists trying to destroy everything.

So, what is our solution?

Simple, really: eliminate Socialism.

Just stop right there: no, the First Amendment does not secure a right to believe Socialism. We’ve been conditioned to think it does, mostly by Socialists working with Libertarians (ie, really dumb people, on both sides of that equation). But no entity defends its own destruction. Wherever Socialism becomes prevalent, all free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of worship comes under attack and eventual destruction. It is invariable. And it has to be: Socialism can’t compete in a free society. Take a look at Spain – just like here, the whole Establishment – especially the media – was on their side and even with all that positive coverage, they still only eked out 31.7% of the vote. They are just strong enough in parliament at the moment to work crooked deals to secure power…but in anything like a truly fair system, they probably wouldn’t get above 10% of the vote and just wouldn’t be in a position to make crooked deals. But our main concern here is that we know – for an absolute fact – that Socialism continually attacks all manner of free expression. It simply cannot be that our Constitution secures the right of people to destroy the Constitution. Socialism – Marx and all variations of his nonsense – simply can’t be held to have First Amendment protections. It would be just downright asinine to think they do. And remember: they are not trying to change the Constitution via law – they are trying to eliminate the Constitution as an impediment to a Socialist future. Whatever is written in that document about your rights will be – heck, already is being ignored – by any sort of Socialist, whatever words they use to describe themselves. The only reason you still retain any First Amendment protections is not because the Socialists respect the law, but because they simply lack the physical force to lock you up. As soon as they get that force, they will lock you up.

And we have to prevent the Socialists from obtaining that force – and that means their ideology has to be proscribed. Point blank: our eventual necessity here is to make it illegal for anyone holding Socialist views to hold any sort of political power in the USA. Additionally, in our public schools and universities the teaching of Socialist ideology must cease. The books must not be available. It should be illegal to sell or give a Marxist book to a minor. On and on like that – just a complete exclusion of all Marxists of whatever label.

Or, you can sit back and let it happen. It was, of course, illegal to be Socialist under Franco but once he died, those laws were repealed or ignored…and now the Socialists are dismantling Spain just as they were dismantling it in the 1930s. Franco saved Spain, his successors lost it – not by turning Spain into a Constitutional Monarchy (in many ways an ideal system of government) but by allowing Socialist ideology to return. No matter how many elections you win, no matter how many reforms you implement if you do not remove Socialism from your society, you’ll eventually get Socialism again. It is like a cancer that can only be cured by cutting it out.

It is a choice between Socialism and Civilization. I choose Civilization and not some sentimental idea that I’m made stronger by protecting those who hate Civilization.