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| Europe |
| Professor Bunyip |
| 2004-03-15 |
| Just felt like posting this ... Neither, however, entirely explains the absence from the bloghead. The reason for that, sadly, is Spain. When news of the bombs reached these quarters, dismay at the latest Islamic horror was worsened by the sure suspicion that things were going to get worse, which the election results from Madrid have now confirmed. Depression and withdrawal were the responses, hence, with the other excuses, the lack of posts. It is folly to elect socialists anywhere and at any time, as the peace-loving voters who swung the election will no doubt discover when their economy comes down with the inevitable chills. But to do so now, to indulge stupidity and pretend that craven expedience will do just as well as courage in a moment of crisis, well, it verges on the criminally negligent -- and like most criminal acts, it will hurt the perpetrators as much as the victim, which in this case, ironically, is nothing less than democracy itself. Do the voters who swung their support behind the appeasers really believe that the bombers will now leave them alone? Do they imagine that the timely renunciation of resolve can placate an implacable foe? As sure as eggs, the Wahabi scum will be back to demand more concessions. The highest moral station to which Spain can now aspire -- and it is a miserable ambition -- will be to make Greece its model. Greece, where authorities made a point not to apprehend Palestinian terrorists, and if they did, if the offence was so egregious that there was no alternative but to slap on the cuffs, where the accused were gently treated, mildly sentenced, and then set free as quietly and quickly as possible. Now the Greeks are preparing to host the Olympics and living in dread of a terrorist assault. Fat lot of good being so pliable did them. "Usurpers in Andalucia," the correspondence will go, "to avoid our further wrath, dwell not on the cells of our agents who have made their base in your country. If you value your trains, turn a blind eye." And because the Socialist Workers Party won power on a platform of cowardice, there will be no going back, for to do so would repudiate the very source and origin of what passes for its authority. If the current suspects from the mosques are indeed the ones responsible for the train bombings, how can the incoming government reject the inevitable request that the culprits be set free? The short answer is that it won’t -- and if it does, if it tries to draws a line in the sand, it can expect more violence. Why should the Islamisists restrain themselves. In Spain they now know massacres work wonders. Many Spanish voters will no doubt now be kidding themselves that they have bought peace. They haven’t, as Orwell could have told them. In "Spilling the Spanish Beans", he writes at one point of the bargains and truces of the moment that formed and shifted in the war against Franco, and which doomed that cause to defeat: peasant allied with the bourgeois in league with Stalin’s manipulators. The players have changed, obviously, but Orwell’s observation that a government built on such feckless betrayals of principle could never hope to stand, let alone triumph, remains just as true today, when Spanish voters have surrendered their first and greatest weapon against the new fascists: the will to resist them. The anti-Franco coallition, wrote Orwell, "is a combination with about as much vitality, as much right to exist, as a pig with two heads or some other Barnum and Bailey monstrosity." Just such a monster is the new Spanish government -- a democratic assembly risen to office on a promise to appease those whose who hold democracy itself in contempt. Like all freakshows, there is something depressing about the spectacle. Spanish memories must be short if so many have forgotten how the nation’s last round of squalid compromises brought Franco to power, and how very long the country had to live with him as a consequence. It is a depressing thought that any nation of free people would sell its honour so cheaply. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #5 A few points on the conquest of Mexico. 1) Even at that time it was clear in Spain that forced conversions were invalid and should not be tried. However nobody told conquistadores to tolerate religions who endorsed human sacrifice and canibalism: their natural reaction was to destroy them 2) No matter the firepower you cannot control a territory the size of Mexico with 1 thousand men so Cortez needed local allies but Tlaxcatecls had never been able or even close to conquer the Aztecs. Even if decisevely defeated (a thing who didn't happen) the Aztecs would just withdraw to the lake of Mexico and from there raid the rearguard of a besieging army. In addition the tribes of Mexico didn't knew the wheel or beasts of burden so a besieging army had an enormous logistical inferiority over the Aztecs and their fleet of canoes. It was the Spaniards who broke the invulnearbility of Tenochtitlan. 3) Even if the Spaniards needed local allies it is evident when considering Otumba and other battles that it was them who provided the main fighting power of the combined army. 4) Cortez had to battle expeditions from Spanish rivals, quell revolts instigated by those rivals alll while battling the Aztecs 5) So great was the hate aginst the Aztecs than Cortez had to disciplinate Tlaxcaltecls who wanted to kill and eat prisoners/non combatants. The fact is that Aztecs were universally hated and the only people who admire them are the a...s of the LLL and the people of "La Raza" PS: One of the LLL wrote a book "Aztec" where the hero mentions that Aztec priests never washed in their lives, add the stench of old dried blood. However he doesn't mention their odor: he talks of the poor hygiene and the repellent odor of the Spaniards not about the priests. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-3-15 8:42:54 AM |
| #4 good point :-p |
| Posted by: Dcreeper 2004-3-15 5:59:04 AM |
| #3 Indeed, Dc, that's what the reference to the Aztecs' subject peoples was about, they were the ones who joined the Spanish. The white god scam didn't last long, but the non-Aztecs continued to see the Spanish as heaven-sent deliverers. You can get people on your side in a hurry if you aren't tearing their hearts out and your enemies are. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-3-15 5:52:56 AM |
| #2 meh as I recall they didn exactly do it solo, correct me if I'm wrong.. buh they took advantage of local politics and religion, they had locals fighting on their side.. funny what people will do if they think yer their white god |
| Posted by: Dcreeper 2004-3-15 5:40:52 AM |
| #1 Many years ago, 1974 to be exact, I was in college in Texas listening to an LLL prof hold forth on the evils of the Spanish Conquistadores. He detailed their atrocities, their arrogance, their treachery. He declared that they were guilty of one of the "worst acts of naked aggression in human history." (It is just possible that the Aztecs' subject peoples, thousands of whom were skinned alive or had their hearts ripped out every year in the overlords' human sacrifice rituals, would not have agreed, but I digress) The Spaniard-demonizer then asked if anyone had anything good to say about Cortez, Pizarro and company. A big character in jeans and a western shirt put his hand up from the back of the room and was duly recognized. He drawled, "Well, sir, you say 600 of 'em conquered millions o' Aztecs and less than that whupped the Incas?" "'fewer than that' but yes, that's approximately correct." "Well then, they was some of the toughest sons-of-bitches that ever lived." Indeed they were, and their valor, daring and martial skill were the direct legacy of the long, bitter centuries it took to expel the Mohammedans from Spain. They must be spinning in their graves today. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-3-15 4:43:35 AM |