Then again the piece itself seems remarkably confused:
The United States considered that American Indians were savages, animals. Occupied their land with colonists. To protect them, she annihilated ancient villages. Those who survived were confined in what we call reservations. However, the soldiers who defended ‘El Álamo’ are considered national heroes.
The Alamo was a battle against the equally European and colonialist Mexicans…..
Artista y profesor de la Escuela de Arte Pancho Lasso de Lanzarote
No, no, Tim.
The Texicans were stealing the Mexican lands, who were of course direct descendants of the Aztecs, who were massacred by the Spanish using chemical weapons ie smallpox.
Vene tht name of their general Antonio López de Santa Anna derives direct from the old Mexica “Locpesanctanamuna” which as any fule knos translates as “The Jaguar that goes fatser than a Bentley”.
You could say that Pepe and his lot consider the white inhabitants of the US and UK to be savages and animals. And that they are encouraging the occupation of their land by settlers.
Of course you could also say that neither Britain nor France had the capacity to launch an invasion of Germany when it occupied Czechoslovakia, a year before the German invasion of Poland.
But the article is so confused that you really can’t take any of it seriously at all.
One could argue that like appeasing Hitler the policy towards Iran by Obama and Biden has made the situation in Palestine much worse.
Iran can’t dare to attack Israel directly as that will cause all-out war with the US and UK as well as Jordan and various other allied states.
Question is, after their proxies have been wiped out, what does Iran hope to gain from this. Do they think Hezbolah and Hamas can keep Israel in perpetual war ?
Mind you, as I have said for years: Iran is run by maniacs who consider blowing up the world a small price to pay for destroying Israel.
If the Israelis rubbelise or turn Iran to glass, it is the people’s own fault for not getting rid of the regime ( just likeGazans and Hamas).
ps Is this written in really easy Spanish ? I completely understood it.
you can see that the rebranding of arabs into palestinians has been very successful- despite the average pali not being able to pronounce the name. if you tried drawing the cartoon as arabs , you might wonder why if there are 466 million arabs how 7 million jews in israel could keep a portion of them in so called camps.
Americans are changing, when choosing their history they look south now. It will not be long before the English colonies and their legal, cultural inheritance play second fiddle to the Spanish.
who were of course direct descendants of the Aztecs, who were massacred by the Spanish using chemical weapons ie smallpox.
Biological weapons, surely?
Biological weapons, surely?
CD yes of course. But the I wouldn’t expect anyone at HuffPo to know the difference.
Mind you they got their own back by giving the Spaniards syphillis.
“Occupied their land with colonists.”
I was once chided by a Yank online for referring to the colonists. No, no, he cried, not at all; they were settlers. Odd, I thought; nobody refers to the Thirteen Settlements.
If he’d been British I’d have assumed the remark was sarcastic but I’m confident it was made in earnest. How simple life must seem if you think that re-labelling something changes its nature.
The Alamo: what most impressed me was how many of the dead on the Texan side weren’t born in North America. It made me realise that, of course, many immigrants leap-frogged the eastern States and went directly west.
Treating American Indians as an homogenous whole is itself distinctly racist. Those guys would happily have eradicated each other. To this day you can’t put an Apache in the same room as a Comanche. It’s like seating a McDonald next to a Campbell at a wedding. Yet red-skins get a pass, whilst Whitey is vilified for the crime of beating them at their own game.
– One could argue that like appeasing Hitler the policy towards . . .
Except when referring to Russia’s move west into Ukraine, whereupon mention of this perfectly sensible lesson from history will be shut down with prepackaged dismissals huffing about “1939”, Godwin and the uselessness of analogies, etc.
PJF
Where Pootin is concerned, the Appeasement had already happened in 2014.
You do of course know that the Pancho Lasso de Lanzarote School of the Arts is the shed in her back yard.
who were of course direct descendants of the Aztecs, who were massacred by the Spanish
And still the myth continues.
Cortes and his tiny army wouldn’t have had a cat in hells chance were it not for the fact that he was joined by some 200,000 Tlaxcaltecs, natural enemies of the Aztecs whose long standing rivalry is described by wiki as “ Some of the wars between the Tlaxcalans and the Aztecs are called the xochiyaoyatl (flower wars), as their objective was not to conquer but rather to capture enemy warriors for sacrifice”.
Those loveable noble savages, eh?
Here’s wiki again:-
Due to their alliance with the Spanish Crown in the conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Tlaxcaltecs enjoyed exclusive privileges among the indigenous peoples of Mexico, including the right to carry guns, ride horses, hold noble titles, and to rule their settlements autonomously. This privileged treatment ensured Tlaxcallan loyalty to Spain over the centuries, even during the Mexican War of Independence, though Tlaxcala did host a strong pro-independence faction
Not a lot of people (choose to) know that.
PJF – Except when referring to Russia’s move west into Ukraine, whereupon mention of this perfectly sensible lesson from history will be shut down with prepackaged dismissals huffing about “1939”, Godwin
Yes, because those comparisons are glib and unhelpful.
We haven’t been “appeasing” anybody. As far as Russia, China, and seemingly now the majority of the global population are concerned, the collective West has been antagonising them for decades. (Are we the baddies?)
The European situation also looks nothing like 1939, it’s 1913.
The very worst and dumbest of lazy WW2 rhetoric has to be casting ourselves or President Zelensky in the Winston Churchill role tho.
Winston Churchill was not the embattled leader of some plucky little nation that just needed a bit of courage to “stand up” to the Nazis. Churchill led one of the richest and most powerful empires in the history of Man, with an enormous list of strategic, technical, scientific and industrial advantages over its foes that directly translated into military power.
Ukraine and New Britain are not in the same position Churchill was in. He had a lot more options than we do, and had a far better country behind him than either Zelensky or Sunak do.
Yes John
I’ll take my tongue out of Hugh Thomas’ cheek now.
Whaever the article said, it looks like it’s been taken down now.
I find the whole “appeasement” argument moronic, since it depends entirely on lazy and uncritical hindsight. “Ooh,” the morons cry, “Britain did nothing to stop Hitler’s takeover of the Rhineland.” What the hell do they propose Britain could have done? Invade France so as to get at the Rhineland?
“Ooh” they cry, “Britain didn’t help Poland.” Short of assassinating the Nazi elite what the hell could they have done to help Poland?
My complaint would be just the opposite – what were they thinking of, giving Poland a guarantee that couldn’t be honoured? I suppose the answer is that they were trying to bluff Hitler out of an invasion. Fat chance, but however ill-judged it was it was quite the opposite of appeasement.
And the accusation of appeasement came from a Labour Party that successfully opposed conscription until after Hitler had invaded Poland. The main Labour writer to advance the charge of appeasement was Michael Foot, later to be found pocketing Moscow gold. Pah!
I incline to your view of appeasement, dearieme.
For example, the UK clearly lacked the power to oppose Japanese expansion in China without the whole-hearted support of the US. But a pointless war over China had as little appeal to the US as it did to the UK.
“The Alamo: what most impressed me was how many of the dead on the Texan side weren’t born in North America. It made me realise that, of course, many immigrants leap-frogged the eastern States and went directly west.” Bloke in Pictland
Very true. The same could be said of the dead troopers with Custer, and there were plenty of foreign born soldiers, particularly Irish, in the Union army during the Civil War. The pioneer wagons trains were often filled with immigrants.
In Europe, Britain allowed itself to be led by France, becausebthey were the “front line” power. It was their series of “little ententes” with Czechoslovakia and Poland that were exposed as a sham when Hitler marched in.
In the Pacific, it was the USA’s policy of sanctions that prompted Japan into its war of conquest.
Sometimes you just can’t win – damned if you do. Damned if you don’t
True enough Otto. But it was only in 1941 when Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to sanctions that the Japs decided on their war.
Had they had sense, they’d have attacked Britain but not the US. But they evidently felt that the US would back up its sanctions with war. Hence Pearl Harbour.
Indeed Boganboy.
The Japanese had to conquer the Philippines to make sensr of conquering Dutch East Indies and IndoChina. They couldn’t afford not to. That alone would have brought the USA into the war. PH was the forlorn hope of a knockout blow.
See what I mean? Absolutely no one has challenged the appeasement-of-Hitler analogy with regards to recent Iran policy, but as soon as Russia is mentioned out comes a seething vitriol at the kind of level that used to be reserved for discussions of Beeching or TSR2. An analogy by definition is going to be inaccurate; it is at best something to illustrate a general point. If it is aggressively countered with strawman details and abuse, it is almost certainly an attempt to distract from that general point.
Here’s the general point about 1930s appeasement in Europe. A nasty little cunt rises to the top of a weak but potentially dangerous country via gangsterism and cry-bully nationalism. His regime gradually takes small pieces of neighbouring territory while openly talking about taking big pieces of territory to restore past glory. Sage warnings are ignored and fools are listened to; the distracted and fractured established powers do nothing to stop the problem when it is small and end up having to fight a terrible war with enourmous loss of blood and treasure.
Luckily, we are not in that situation because the established powers have taken a better-late-than-never opportunity to counter the threat when it is at a moderate level. The warning from history was listened to.
Much to the fools’ chagrin.
PJF
Harrumph.
I have.
One could argue that like appeasing Hitler the policy towards Iran by Obama and Biden has made the situation in Palestine much worse.
Ottokring
You put forward the analogy. No one has challenged it.
The Metropolitan Police, doing the anti-semitism so you don’t have to:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12689391/Fury-Met-Police-officers-pull-posters-kidnapped-Israeli-children-London-avoid-inflaming-tensions-force-failed-clamp-Islamists-chanting-jihad-pro-Palestine-protests.html
We live in an Islamic country – prove me wrong.
Oh, I see what you mean.
You could’ve said “Ottokring’s analogy” ‘cos it’s mine , MINE d’you hear ?
Mwahahaha !
Actually it froms the Spectator or Unherd, I forget which.
Nevertheless, the priniple remains. Give a maniac an inch and he’ll take Poland. The weakness in the White House has meant that Iran can forhe new alliances with Russia and other undesirables and equip and train Hamas for covert commando style deep infiltration.
That’s the trouble with the appeasement shite, it’s completely unreflective.
The British government had two problems. (i) Is Hitler a Bismarck or a Napoleon? If the first he’ll have finite, nationalist aims that needn’t bother Britain. If the second he’s a monomaniacal imperialist who’ll invade the world, including, he’ll intend, Britain. Then you must find a way to stop him which, unfortunately must include France because look at the fucking map. Anyway nobody could tell which he’d be until he invaded rump Czechoslovakia. Before that he could easily have been a Bismarck but now it wasn’t Germans he’d taken over.
(ii) If a war was to be fought to stop Hitler, the government had a problem with the electorate which was vehemently pacifist. As Baldwin said if he’d stood on a re-armament platform he’d have been voted out of office. Then you’d have had the Labour Party in office with its pacifist, anti-conscription policies and there would have been even less re-armament.
Or, you are at liberty to ignore all this and talk stupid shite about appeasement.
PJF and dearieme
It isn’t the fact of Appeasement that is important, it is the lesson we draw from it.
Appeasement wasn’t a coherent policy by any stretch of the imagination. In some cases (Rhineland) it was seen ad Germany reasserting her rights. In the Sudetenland it was ethnic self determination. Austria rang the alarm bells and Britain realised that it was time to re-arm. After that it was buying time for Britain coupled with political paralysis in France. Had the allies shown any aggressive intent, the invadion of Czechoslovakia would been cancelled – those were Hitler’s firect orders. He was playing poker and called their bluff.
I shouted loudly in 2014 that we were at a 1938 moment. Russia’s annexation of the Crimea was just the start and so it proved. BUT the whole crisis WAS caused by the EU and NATO trying to get Ukraine to join up and meddling in its internal politics – an unstable Mafia state with an unhealthy ethnic divide, that was best left alone as a buffer. So when Putin showed his teeth, these mighty organisatins were shown to be impotent. Emboldened he took the next step and invade Ukraine itself.
Iran is THE enemy. They want our destruction , yea even unto blowing up the world. Trump saw this but Obama, Killary, Biden and Peter Kellners missus did not. We have the means to starve Iran in ways that we didn’t couldn’t do against Germany. Let these maniacs off the hook even for a second and you have what happened earlier this month and you have a new nuclear power, who are quite happy to use their new toy.
“Had the allies shown any aggressive intent …”
Which allies? The problem was France which, as far as I know, was not an ally – we didn’t have a treaty with France, did we? Hell, even if we had had there was the little local difficulty that the Dominions had said they would not go to war over Czechoslovakia. So they would not have been allies.
Above all, democracy stood in the way. The electorate were disarmers. (I take it that the same was true of France and the Dominions though I don’t know it to be true.)
It’s no use chuntering about the lessons to draw if you get the facts wrong by commission or omission.
Read the rest of the sentence. You could change the subjunctive to “Were”
“Had the allies shown any aggressive intent, the invasion of Czechoslovakia would been cancelled – those were Hitler’s direct orders. ”
France had a treaty with Czecho and did not fulfill it. But also the French said because Britain could not be counted upon at that stage to back France up. And yes allies they were, even without a treaty. The whole strategy of British involvement in a Continental war was mapped out with the French and Belgians over many years.
“Had the allies shown any aggressive intent, the invasion of Czechoslovakia would have been cancelled” Which invasion? The invasion to prise the Sudetenland free? But that invasion could have been Bismarckian, and anyway the Dominions wouldn’t fight, the British electorate was dead against, and France refused. So that’s a non-starter.
The invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia? Without France there was nowt to be done anyway, even once Hitler had shown himself to be a Napoleon. Hell France refused to invade Germany even after the invasion of Poland had started.
“Aggressive intent” by HMG would have been worthless posturing; action required at least France and preferably the Dominions too. In other words the popular account of Appeasement is plain silly.
– Hell France refused to invade Germany even after the invasion of Poland had started.
Apart from that time they invaded Germany after it had invaded Poland.
Must admit I do wonder dearieme, if dear old Adolf would have been stupid enough to attack Russia rather than France if the UK and the Frogs had just stood there limp dicked while he seized Czechoslovakia and Poland.
After all the thing that exerted the terror in pre-war Germany was the Western Front. That’s why Adolf wanted to take on Russia. He thought it’d be easier prey.
And of course one does wonder if an attack by Germany and Japan would actually have succeeded. Damifino.