[Doomberg] "We should never forget that competitive sustainability has always been at the heart of our social market economy." — Ursula von der Leyen
As far as word salads are concerned, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is a culinary savant. The skill required to effortlessly blend oxymoronic phrases like "competitive sustainability" and "social market economy" in a manner that sounds like they should mean something is considerable. Yet von der Leyen pulls off such linguistic leaps into nothingness with admirable regularity. We all have to be good at something.
One thing the European Union (EU) has not been good at since the turn of the century is generating meaningful economic growth, especially in comparison to the US and China. Saddled with worsening demographics, multiple layers of intrusive government, and a bungled energy policy, the EU’s economic malaise has reached a crisis point. In a particularly pointed article published in The Wall Street Journal in July of 2023, "Europeans are Becoming Poorer," the raw numbers were laid bare:
Text taken from the Telegram channel of Russian military historian Aleksey Isaev.
[ColonelCassad] On September 24, 1914, 110 years ago, the Russian army unsuccessfully stormed the Przemysl fortress. The fortress was in the spirit of the era, a fortified one (a chain of forts along the perimeter) with armored caps.
I will immediately stipulate that I consider statements like 20,000 RIA soldiers and officers killed in the battle for the fortress (and 15,000 corpses, allegedly collected and buried by the Austrians) to be poorly substantiated. More convincing are estimates of 2-3 thousand killed and total losses of about 10,000 people killed, wounded and missing in the unsuccessful assault.
For me, this story is interesting because of the transition from peace to war and the discussion of spirit and matter. It was at the beginning of the war and people had not yet been shot at.
From a material point of view, the Russian troops had no chance. The heaviest artillery available to the attackers was 152mm, which was completely insufficient to destroy the Przemysl fortress structures. Even armored caps could not be destroyed by such a caliber in 1914. Unlike the Germans at Liege, RIA did not prepare in advance for storming fortresses with heavy artillery. Moreover, the Austrians in Przemysl had everything right with searchlights, which made night attacks problematic.
Problems of transition from peace to war were even related to engineering ammunition. I have repeatedly told how in Poznan in February 1945 they jammed boxes (boxes with embrasures) in ditches, shooting through the bottom of the ditches, with 200-liter barrels of explosives. In September 1914, they tried to do the same with pyroxylin checkers, but they did not always explode.
On the other hand, the moral impact of the shelling, including light artillery, was strong, as witnesses of the events from among the garrison officers themselves admit. The besiegers had enough grenades (namely grenades, not shrapnel). Despite all the problems with the supply of ammunition, the Russians did have ammunition for the 76.2 mm - 152 mm barrels. There was still some chance of taking the garrison with a gun.
However, there was a problem: during the pre-war exercises, while interaction with light artillery was well practiced, interaction with heavy artillery was poorly practiced. Accordingly, it was not possible to hit the Austrians (or rather, to scare them) with powerful, well-organized fire of all calibers. There were also no powerful explosions that would muffle the coffers. The assault failed.
Yes, if the assault on Przemysl on the 24th had been successful, it would have been a victory of spirit over matter. But it did not happen, which inclines my opinion to the camp of "fire worshipers".
[IsraelNationalNews] China has secured its sixth term as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, becoming one of the most elected countries on the council where 64 percent of member countries are not democracies.
Iran has secured the presidency of the UN Commission on Disarmament. Then of the Human Rights Forum. Right: Iran executed 87 people in August, 29 in a single day, over 400 in a year. World record for hangings and shootings.
Saudi Arabia has secured the presidency of the UN Forum on the Status of Women. Right: Saudi executioners kill one person every two days, many of them women. 172 in a year, fewer than the Iranians, but not a bad record.
It brings to mind what the French mathematician Laurent Lafforgue wrote, who wrote that with the UN it is "like calling on the Khmer Rouge to set up a group of human rights experts".
"Here are the moral leaders of the United Nations: this year, the Chinese communist regime is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, Iran’s Islamic regime served as president of the UN Conference on Disarmament, and Saudi Arabia was named chair of the UN Commission on Women’s Rights," said Hillel Neuer, head of UN Watch.
"The United Nations is a giant dictators’ club," added Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Human Rights Foundation.
The UN "public service" award went to the Lebanese Interior Ministry that is in the hands of Hezbollah. The UN’s Orwellian Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, "Copuos," was chaired by an Iranian.
"Imagine a land plagued by inefficiency, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and the miasma of corruption," wrote Stephen Halper in the Wall Street Journal. "Imagination is unnecessary; you’re at the United Nations."
While the Saudi Supreme Court (which is not really a supreme court, but more of a congregation of imams) gave the green light to a thousand lashes and ten years in prison for liberal blogger Raif Badawi, guilty of having "insulted Islam," a delegation of United Nations bureaucrats landed in Jeddah to promote an "international conference on religious freedom." Leading the delegation were Joachim Rucker himself, the president of the Human Rights Council, photographed alongside the guardians of Wahhabi Islam in white robes, and Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN envoy for religious freedom.
Saudi Arabia is the third largest donor in the world. Could this have something to do with it?
Qatar - a sort of Islamic Luxembourg that finances all the henchmen, from Hamas to the Taliban - has just made an agreement with the UN to finance..."road safety in the world." Then another donation from Qatar to the UN Fund for Women.
Orwell is alive and fighting alongside us.
"China has succeeded in making the UN more Chinese," Moritz Rudolf, founder of Eurasia Bridges, a German consultancy that studies the new Silk Road, tells the Wall Street Journal. "It’s systematic."
Meanwhile, the Taliban, with whom the Chinese are doing big business (now there is even a "Taliban ambassador in Beijing"), are working to get their hands on the ecological investments that the international community had planned for Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong? The UN is about to bring the Taliban back to the table of nations. And since the Taliban came to power in 2021, the German government has sent over 400 million euros to Afghanistan.
To quote that fantastic contrarian Mark Steyn, the problem with the United Nations is that if you take ice cream and a bit of dog feces and mix them together, the result will always taste like dog feces and not ice cream.
What is the length of the spoon used by these corrupt people to dine with the devil?
Just ask Marzieh Hamidi.
She is twenty-one years old, a high-level athlete, a taekwondo champion and a refugee in France. A refugee, because Marzieh is Afghani, she left the country three years ago, when the proto-Western protectorate collapsed in a few hours. She has received three thousand death threats, of ending up raped, which has led to her living under escort. It is in France that this political refugee was placed under police protection and forced to leave her home, again, after the Taliban.
Where are the feminist associations? Where is the left that takes to the streets against Israel? Where are the political figures of #MeToo? Have they met Hamidi? Have they chanted his name? Some, perhaps.
Already in 1996, in the Express, Elisabeth Schemla wrote an article entitled "Feminists and the Koranistan": "Feminists are silent on the radio, while Radio Kabul broadcasts the Taliban precepts. The fight for equality monopolizes them completely. It is far away, so far away, the Koranistan! Have you forgotten the firm resolutions of the Cairo and Beijing conferences, which refused to make ’cultural difference’ an alibi for slavery?".
Meanwhile, Marzieh Hamidi opens her cell phone to check WhatsApp: 4,324 messages and 500 phone calls in one night. Not only from Pakistan and Iran, but also from Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Serbia, South America and France. They call for murder, rape, stoning... the whole range of telegraphic barbarism. No major feminist association has taken up her dramatic story or organized a demonstration to defend her. "I have been called a slave of the West," she confesses to the Point, which calls her "an abandoned heroine." "But I warn those who call me an Islamophobe: open your eyes! Let them move to Kabul! They have never experienced what I have experienced or what Iranian women go through! Let them settle in Afghanistan, they won’t last two days."
Thanks to the UN, Koranistan is close, so close!
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
09/29/2024 00:00 ||
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[RedState] Rats Scurry for Cover: Iran Moves Supreme Leader to 'Secure Location' After IDF Strike Kills Nasrallah
Israel has taken the gloves off and sent in the exterminators, and the rats are running for cover. One of the rats is Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has reportedly been moved to a "secure location" within Iran:
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been transferred to a secure location somewhere within the country, according to Reuters. The outlet reported that Iran is in “constant contact” with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other proxy groups to determine next steps.
Khamenei’s movement comes hours after he urged Muslims in the region “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime [of Israel].”
“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” the leader added, according to state media reports.
One wonders if the Ayatollah took his pager with him to the "secure location." As for the "proud Hezbollah," that organization was just decapitated with the death of Hassan Nasrallah, only days after some of the most interesting operations in recent history, which operations included exploding electronics:
The strike on Friday targeted Hezbollah’s “central headquarters,” which was located “under residential buildings in the heart” of Dahiyeh, in Beirut, according to an Israeli military spokesman. Videos circulated online of the destruction the airstrike caused, hours before word of Nasrallah’s death was confirmed.
Israel clearly isn't playing around anymore; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the UN as much, and the IDF is certainly upping its game:
Previously on RedState:
Bombshell Report: Israel Didn't Hack Hezbollah Pagers — It Made Them As Part of Complex Ruse
Netanyahu Gives Fiery Speech to UN Declaring Israel Has Had Enough
Israel Confirms Death of the Terrorist Nasrallah; Does This Open a Door for Peace in the Region?
Now, with all that said: It seems unlikely that Israel will strike at Iran's Supreme Leader personally, for several reasons.
First: Even for Israel's vaunted intelligence apparatus, it wouldn't be an easy task to locate the Ayatollah, especially now that he has been moved to this "secure location." That location, we should note, may well be deep underground.
Second: Striking deep into Iran would be a major logistical headache. This would require IDF aircraft to overfly unfriendly airspace, not to mention Iranian airspace itself. While Iran's air force isn't exactly state-of-the-art, it does have air-defense systems like the Bavar-373 missile system, which is not to be sneezed at. Any Israeli strike deep into Iran is certain to incur losses - and an Israeli pilot ejecting over Iran is unlikely to receive good treatment on the ground.
Third: Striking directly at Iran's secular and religious leader may represent an escalation that even Israel isn't anxious to take on.
But there's an upside, one that may make such a direct strike unnecessary. Israel has clearly made an impression on Iran, even without any direct strike at the Islamic Republic's leader. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been un-aliving Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists in big carload lots even before the pager-go-BOOM operation. Now the IDF has permanently revoked the birth certificate of Hezbollah's leader, and in so doing not only removed a nasty piece of work from the game but also demonstrated their ability to locate and remove major players in both of the Iran-backed jihadi groups.
Now, even Iran's Supreme Leader has joined the legions of rats scurrying for cover. That's a good thing in itself.
Posted by: Mercutio ||
09/29/2024 08:17 ||
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#1
...of course, they're moving him by helicopter... ah well....
[HotAir] Could the collapse of Hezbollah touch off a domino effect in the Middle East? Iran's primary proxy and the world's most powerful non-state organization didn't just keep Lebanon under Tehran's thumb, after all. Hassan Nasrallah played a key role in propping up Iranian puppet Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
And now Syrians are beginning to cheer their "disarray," as the New York Times puts it:
Even as most of the Middle East is overtaken by outrage at weeks of destructive Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and its leaders, some communities are celebrating the disarray of the powerful militia that persecuted them.
Nowhere is that sentiment as strong as in parts of Syria, where Hezbollah has played a key role in helping President Bashar al-Assad wage a brutal crackdown on opponents of his family’s decades-long rule, and where news of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah neighborhoods prompted singing in the streets of rebel strongholds.
Hezbollah’s origin story is in fighting Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, and fighting Israel is the mission central to its followers’ identity. But one of its biggest military roles over the past decade had actually been in Syria, helping its patron, Iran, keep Mr. Assad in power.
Hezbollah forces played a part in some of the most brutal chapters of the Syrian civil war, including sieges that starved encircled communities for months, as well as operations that expelled many Sunni Muslims, who were the backbone of the anti-Assad revolt, from neighborhoods and towns.
Assad only barely managed to prevail in the long and bloody Syrian civil war, even with help from Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia. Russia now has another bloody war and quagmire in Ukraine, and probably can't help out if a Hezbollah collapse triggers another popular uprising. Iran might have to take the field directly, but that would risk triggering a direct conflict with Israel, as they would first need to secure their position in Lebanon by reconstituting Hezbollah as their proxy.
For Syria, though, Iran can re-engage more directly with its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). That too could prompt clashes with Israel, but Syria is going to be a secondary consideration for Benjamin Netanyahu while Israel deals with the remaining threats from Lebanon. If Assad starts looking wobbly, Ali Khamenei can't afford to ignore that threat. If Syria slips away from Iran's orbit, they will have almost no way to project power in the region.
Of course, Assad has had some considerable time to rebuild his position, too, so this eruption of joy could be premature. Especially over the last year, Assad has assisted Hezbollah at least to a similar extent that Hezbollah assisted Assad. And even if Aassad begins to falter and a popular uprising can oust him, the West might not want to start singing hosannas either. The short-term result of a collapse would likely boost the still-extant ISIS threats in Syria, and could result in an even worse tyrant taking power with the help of Iran's mullahs. There may not be too many worse options than Assad, but that number isn't zero either.
The real opportunity is next door. Lebanon has a functioning government with its own armed forces, which until now have been vastly outgunned by Hezbollah. Israel tried allying with them in the early 1980s in order to get a Druze-centered friendly government in Beirut while fighting against the PLO, which had touched off a civil war there after getting kicked out of Syria. That war and occupation ended up boosting the fortunes of Hezbollah as Iran muscled into the fight. Israel has another opportunity to help liberate Lebanon, but the Lebanese will have to fight for their freedom to win it.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/29/2024 00:00 ||
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[IsraelNationalNews] An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah bunker has killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
His death caps an impressive ten-day campaign that began with the simultaneous detonation of Hezbollah pagers, continued to take out senior military leaders, and now has decapitated the organization itself.
Diplomats and human rights activists might hand wring, but what Israel did was not only right and wise, but should also be a lesson for a new generation of U.S. and European policymakers.
No organization should have ever granted Nasrallah an iota of legitimacy, especially after his 2002 statement, "If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
There is a tendency among diplomats either to exaggerate the benefits of dialogue or to declare its inevitability. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, spoke about the need to talk with the Taliban. "The starting premise is you don’t make peace with your friends," she remarked at a conference in London. "You have to be willing to engage with your enemies...."
She was wrong. Some enemies are so odious, absolute defeat must be the goal. That was the driving belief during World War II, for example, in both the European and Pacific theaters. It was the right decision: Today, both Germany and Japan are reliable defenders of the post-World War II, rules-based liberal order.
Imposing terms on Japan did not spark reactionary violence; rather, it gave Japanese a new start. The Japanese themselves showed that they were ready to move on from absolute fealty to the emperor, despite the beliefs of Japanese studies academics at the time.
Europe thrived because no diplomat acting with a naïve belief in his own sophistication snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by believing that they should enter into talks with Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler after his suicide.
Other regimes ended with the killing or military ouster of their leader. Uganda rebounded after a Tanzanian invasion drove out brutal dictator Idi Amin, who then spent his retirement years in Saudi Arabia. The Khmer Rouge regime came crashing down after Vietnam invaded and drove Pol Pot into hiding.
The 18-year terror of the Baader—Meinhof Gang ended in that group’s ideological defeat, not in its co-option.
The Islamic State ended not with a diplomatic deal, but rather with the death of its self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Perhaps had the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations not legitimized the Taliban and sought instead their absolute defeat, Afghanistan’s women would neither be prisoners in their own homes nor the country itself a safe-haven from which to plot new global terror.
Perhaps the lesson of Nasrallah’s apparent demise should be an indictment of what Western and UN diplomacy has become.
No organization should have ever granted Nasrallah an iota of legitimacy, especially after his 2002 statement, "If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
Officials from George W. Bush-era Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to UN Secretary António Guterres who pushed ceasefire calls over the decades did the world wrong.
As Hezbollah collapses due to Israel’s ten days of hell, the terror group likely has greater support in Morningside Heights than in Lebanon. Not only could the decapitation of Hezbollah avert a wider war between Israel and Lebanon, but it could also bring freedom to the Lebanese people whom Hezbollah has for too long held hostage and whose aspirations for a Western-oriented state Hezbollah has blocked.
The lesson for Washington, however, is broader. Diplomacy and compromise empowered Hezbollah and Hamas. They also empowered the Taliban and North Korea to the tune of billions of dollars and the Islamic Republic of Iran to an exponentially larger amount. Rather than continue such engagement, the United States should map out its opponents’ command-and-control and enemy regimes’ vulnerabilities and exploit them with a goal of bringing each regime to its knees.
If Nasrallah’s death collapses Hezbollah, what might Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s sudden death mean for Iran? Or, Qods Force Chief Esmail Qaani’s demise? Or every Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ general or admiral?
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated, terrorist groups and radical ideologies need not be permanent fixtures on the world stage; instead, Western leaders should view them as enemies to eliminate.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
09/29/2024 00:00 ||
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#1
Nothing is ever a lesson to the US government. Particularly failure.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/29/2024 9:23 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
