Tuesday, July 26, 2005
“the River Tiber foaming with much blood"- corrected
I am still plowing through the GAO report I mentioned yesterday, a post on that subject is forthcoming. In the meantime I have received an e-mail that led me to a new blog today (thank you LARWYN)- Mystery Achievement- two posts in particular: The Enemy We Treat Like a Friend: Part One and Part Two. These posts are actually translations of posts by Oriana Fallaci from the Italian language blog Eddyburg. Fallaci represents a rare side of ultra-liberal Europe, and it is the Eurocentric positing of items such as the following that grabbed my attention:
Thus, three days after the latest massacre, when Pope Ratzinger renewed the theme of dialogue, I was astonished. Your Holiness, I speak to you as a person who admires you very much. Who loves you, because you are right about so many things. Who, because of this, is mocked along with those nicknamed “devout atheist,“ “sanctimonious layperson,“ “clerical liberal.“ A person, above all, who understands politics and its necessities. Who understands the drama of leadership and its compromises. Who admires the stubbornness of faith and respects the renouncements and generosity that it demands. But I must pose the following question all the same: do you really believe that the Muslims would accept a dialogue with Christians, or with other religions, or with atheists like me? Do you really believe that they can change, reform, quit planting bombs? You are a very erudite man, Your Holiness. Very cultured. And you know them well. Much better than I. Explain to me then: When ever, in the course of their history--a history that has lasted for 1400 years--have they changed and reformed?
Of course Fallaci has been branded a heretic by many in Europe, she does not adhere to the psuedo religion of political correctness that dictates all cultures are equal and therefore above reproach. Her clarion calls that Italy has as much to fear from Islamofascism as do America and Britain (or Spain for that matter) have been ingored, or worse, belittled. She has been persecuted and her books have been subject to lawsuits seeking to repress them. Perhaps after the series of attacks in London continental Europeans are paying more attention to Fallaci and her arguments, but that is what we thought might take place after the murder of Theo Van Gogh as well(as an aside Mohammed Bouyeri, who stbbed and shot Van Gogh in November of last year told the court "I did it out of conviction. If I ever get free, I would do it again." He was sentenced to life in prison today.) Fallaci has a simple wish for her countryman- that they open their eyes:
Oh, that for a week or a month they might understand that they are hated and despised by the enemy that they treat like a friend, and that he is completely indifferent to the virtues known as Gratitude, Loyalty, [and] Mercy! They would indeed be roused from their apathy, their inertia, their indifference. They would indeed believe in the announcements of Saad al-Faqih and the explicit, clear, [and] precise warnings pronounced by Bin Laden and Company. They would avoid taking underground trains. They would travel by automobile or bicycle. (But Theo van Gogh was killed while riding his bicycle.) They would knock off the good-naturedness (or servility) They would trust the immigrant who sells them drugs or cleans their houses a little less. They would be less cordial towards unskilled workers who, waving a worker’s visa in our faces, claims to want to be like them, but in the meantime beats the hell out of his wife--his wives--and kills his daughter [for wearing] blue jeans. They would even renounce the litanies of the “Voyages of Hope,” and perhaps they would realize that, in order not to lose Liberty, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of liberty. That self-defense is legitimate defense, and that legitimate defense is not barbarism. Maybe, they would even cry out that Fallaci was right; that she didn’t deserve to be treated like a delinquent. But then, they would begin anew to treat me like a delinquent. To call me a retrograde xenophobic racist, etc. And when the attack will come, we’ll hear the usual nonsense: It’s the Americans’ fault; it’s Bush’s fault.
Fallaci is a realist, however, and she sees little hope that her countrymen will heed her call. She firmly believes that Italy will be struck, and is willing to go so far as to predict when such a strike might occur, and she does not pull any punches- she sees it happening within the next year:
Nonetheless, regarding an attack on Italy, I fear two things: Christmas and the elections. We might slide by for Christmas. Their attacks are not rude, showy strikes. They are refined crimes, well-calculated and well-prepared. They need time to prepare themselves, and I don’t think they’ll be ready by Christmas. But the will be ready by the 2006 elections--the elections they want to see won overwhelmingly by pacifism. And of us, I fear, they will not be content [just] to massacre people. Because this is an intelligent and well-informed Monster, my dears. A Monster who (on our dime) studied in our universities, our renowned colleges, our luxurious schools. (With the money of their parents; be they sheikh or honest day-worker). A Monster who is not only knowledgeable about engineering, chemistry, physics, airlines, and subways: he is also knowledgeable about Art. Art, that their presumed “Beacon of Civilization” has never known how to produce. And I think that, along with our people, they want to massacre come work of art. How hard would it be to blow the Cathedral of Milan or Saint Peter’s Basilica sky-high? How hard would it be to blow Michelangelo’s David, the Uffizi, and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence--or the Palace of the Doges in Venice--sky-high? How hard would it be to blow the Leaning Tower of Pisa--a monument recognized in every corner of the world, and therefore even more famous than the Twin Towers--sky-high?
But we cannot escape. We can confront the monster with honor, [with] courage; and by remembering the words that Churchill said to the English when he went to war against Hitler’s Nazism. He said “We will pour out tears and blood.” Oh, yes: we too will pour out tears and blood. We are at war: do we or do we not want to get this through our heads?!? And in war, you cry. Period.
I hope she is wrong, for the sake of the people of Italy. For that same sake, and for the sake of all the people targeted by al Qaeda simply for existing, I hope she is taken seriously- but I doubt she will be. We have Bin Laden's own words that tell us what his goal is, and we continue to see members of "allied" governments paying tribute to OBL and his cause- for example Egyptian Member of Parliament Hamadein Sabahi recently had this to say:
"The responsibility for the slaughter of [the Egyptian ambassador in Iraq] lies, first and foremost, with George Bush, his administration, and his military forces, occupying Iraq."
"When the conflict is directed against the Americans, it is good. Any weapon that kills an American is good. Any gun aiming at the Marines is good. Any kidnapping or slaughtering of an American in Iraq is good."
"I support Al-Qa'ida when it kills Americans."
It is hard for me to believe that Europeans, or for that matter Americans, still doubt that there is a threat to us and our way of life. On a statistical scale the threat may be small, but it is growing, and it is embodied by an insatiable enemy. LARWYN, who sent me the link to the posts refernced today, also sent me a few snippets from the history and literature books which I found interesting, and so reproduce here for you, I hope they make you stop and think. Of course if you have read this far in this post hyou probably already agree. I've left LARWYN's comments attached to the pieces as received:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899
Rudyard Kipling: Of all his politically incorrect poems, none violates more of the Ten Commandments of Multiculturalism than this one:
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
If one moves past the conditioned response to Kipling’s politically incorrect tropes, this poem seems strangely apropos to our time. Replace “White Man” with “Anglosphere” or “America”, and it is not 1899; it is 2005, and the poem is our poem.
Enoch Powell’s famous "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968.There have been other reminders of it recently-and this one is uncannily prescient:
" We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. Powell concluded his speech with this: As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”… Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
Regardless of his racist motivations, regardless of any demagogic ambitions he might have had, Enoch Powell was right. He lived until 1998, long enough to see that much of what feared had already come to pass. In 1968 he was in the unenviable position of someone in 1931 warning of the danger that Hitler posed to the world. Regards, LARWYN
Correction:
Larwyn has sent me an e-mail asking me to let everyone know that the Churchill quote and the poem + speech excerpt respectively have come from the following blogs: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ and http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/. Sorry for any confusion, we had no intention of not giving credit where due.7/26/2005 10:10:00 PM posted by Dr. Demarche
Thus, three days after the latest massacre, when Pope Ratzinger renewed the theme of dialogue, I was astonished. Your Holiness, I speak to you as a person who admires you very much. Who loves you, because you are right about so many things. Who, because of this, is mocked along with those nicknamed “devout atheist,“ “sanctimonious layperson,“ “clerical liberal.“ A person, above all, who understands politics and its necessities. Who understands the drama of leadership and its compromises. Who admires the stubbornness of faith and respects the renouncements and generosity that it demands. But I must pose the following question all the same: do you really believe that the Muslims would accept a dialogue with Christians, or with other religions, or with atheists like me? Do you really believe that they can change, reform, quit planting bombs? You are a very erudite man, Your Holiness. Very cultured. And you know them well. Much better than I. Explain to me then: When ever, in the course of their history--a history that has lasted for 1400 years--have they changed and reformed?
Of course Fallaci has been branded a heretic by many in Europe, she does not adhere to the psuedo religion of political correctness that dictates all cultures are equal and therefore above reproach. Her clarion calls that Italy has as much to fear from Islamofascism as do America and Britain (or Spain for that matter) have been ingored, or worse, belittled. She has been persecuted and her books have been subject to lawsuits seeking to repress them. Perhaps after the series of attacks in London continental Europeans are paying more attention to Fallaci and her arguments, but that is what we thought might take place after the murder of Theo Van Gogh as well(as an aside Mohammed Bouyeri, who stbbed and shot Van Gogh in November of last year told the court "I did it out of conviction. If I ever get free, I would do it again." He was sentenced to life in prison today.) Fallaci has a simple wish for her countryman- that they open their eyes:
Oh, that for a week or a month they might understand that they are hated and despised by the enemy that they treat like a friend, and that he is completely indifferent to the virtues known as Gratitude, Loyalty, [and] Mercy! They would indeed be roused from their apathy, their inertia, their indifference. They would indeed believe in the announcements of Saad al-Faqih and the explicit, clear, [and] precise warnings pronounced by Bin Laden and Company. They would avoid taking underground trains. They would travel by automobile or bicycle. (But Theo van Gogh was killed while riding his bicycle.) They would knock off the good-naturedness (or servility) They would trust the immigrant who sells them drugs or cleans their houses a little less. They would be less cordial towards unskilled workers who, waving a worker’s visa in our faces, claims to want to be like them, but in the meantime beats the hell out of his wife--his wives--and kills his daughter [for wearing] blue jeans. They would even renounce the litanies of the “Voyages of Hope,” and perhaps they would realize that, in order not to lose Liberty, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of liberty. That self-defense is legitimate defense, and that legitimate defense is not barbarism. Maybe, they would even cry out that Fallaci was right; that she didn’t deserve to be treated like a delinquent. But then, they would begin anew to treat me like a delinquent. To call me a retrograde xenophobic racist, etc. And when the attack will come, we’ll hear the usual nonsense: It’s the Americans’ fault; it’s Bush’s fault.
Fallaci is a realist, however, and she sees little hope that her countrymen will heed her call. She firmly believes that Italy will be struck, and is willing to go so far as to predict when such a strike might occur, and she does not pull any punches- she sees it happening within the next year:
Nonetheless, regarding an attack on Italy, I fear two things: Christmas and the elections. We might slide by for Christmas. Their attacks are not rude, showy strikes. They are refined crimes, well-calculated and well-prepared. They need time to prepare themselves, and I don’t think they’ll be ready by Christmas. But the will be ready by the 2006 elections--the elections they want to see won overwhelmingly by pacifism. And of us, I fear, they will not be content [just] to massacre people. Because this is an intelligent and well-informed Monster, my dears. A Monster who (on our dime) studied in our universities, our renowned colleges, our luxurious schools. (With the money of their parents; be they sheikh or honest day-worker). A Monster who is not only knowledgeable about engineering, chemistry, physics, airlines, and subways: he is also knowledgeable about Art. Art, that their presumed “Beacon of Civilization” has never known how to produce. And I think that, along with our people, they want to massacre come work of art. How hard would it be to blow the Cathedral of Milan or Saint Peter’s Basilica sky-high? How hard would it be to blow Michelangelo’s David, the Uffizi, and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence--or the Palace of the Doges in Venice--sky-high? How hard would it be to blow the Leaning Tower of Pisa--a monument recognized in every corner of the world, and therefore even more famous than the Twin Towers--sky-high?
But we cannot escape. We can confront the monster with honor, [with] courage; and by remembering the words that Churchill said to the English when he went to war against Hitler’s Nazism. He said “We will pour out tears and blood.” Oh, yes: we too will pour out tears and blood. We are at war: do we or do we not want to get this through our heads?!? And in war, you cry. Period.
I hope she is wrong, for the sake of the people of Italy. For that same sake, and for the sake of all the people targeted by al Qaeda simply for existing, I hope she is taken seriously- but I doubt she will be. We have Bin Laden's own words that tell us what his goal is, and we continue to see members of "allied" governments paying tribute to OBL and his cause- for example Egyptian Member of Parliament Hamadein Sabahi recently had this to say:
"The responsibility for the slaughter of [the Egyptian ambassador in Iraq] lies, first and foremost, with George Bush, his administration, and his military forces, occupying Iraq."
"When the conflict is directed against the Americans, it is good. Any weapon that kills an American is good. Any gun aiming at the Marines is good. Any kidnapping or slaughtering of an American in Iraq is good."
"I support Al-Qa'ida when it kills Americans."
It is hard for me to believe that Europeans, or for that matter Americans, still doubt that there is a threat to us and our way of life. On a statistical scale the threat may be small, but it is growing, and it is embodied by an insatiable enemy. LARWYN, who sent me the link to the posts refernced today, also sent me a few snippets from the history and literature books which I found interesting, and so reproduce here for you, I hope they make you stop and think. Of course if you have read this far in this post hyou probably already agree. I've left LARWYN's comments attached to the pieces as received:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899
Rudyard Kipling: Of all his politically incorrect poems, none violates more of the Ten Commandments of Multiculturalism than this one:
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
If one moves past the conditioned response to Kipling’s politically incorrect tropes, this poem seems strangely apropos to our time. Replace “White Man” with “Anglosphere” or “America”, and it is not 1899; it is 2005, and the poem is our poem.
Enoch Powell’s famous "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968.There have been other reminders of it recently-and this one is uncannily prescient:
" We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. Powell concluded his speech with this: As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”… Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
Regardless of his racist motivations, regardless of any demagogic ambitions he might have had, Enoch Powell was right. He lived until 1998, long enough to see that much of what feared had already come to pass. In 1968 he was in the unenviable position of someone in 1931 warning of the danger that Hitler posed to the world. Regards, LARWYN
Correction:
Larwyn has sent me an e-mail asking me to let everyone know that the Churchill quote and the poem + speech excerpt respectively have come from the following blogs: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ and http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/. Sorry for any confusion, we had no intention of not giving credit where due.
