Saturday Movie Review

In a fashion;

Fullbore Friday

In a moment, character is demonstrated. What more is there to say about men like Ludo Boumbas? His actions speak all we need to know.

A woman who survived the Paris massacre thanks to the hero of La Belle Equipe café who turned himself into a human shield and took a bullet for her is in hospital so traumatised she keeps repeating her saviour’s name.

Chloe Clement was inside the café celebrating a friend's 35th birthday when it was struck by a hail of bullets during Friday night's carnage.

The happy occasion became a nightmare when two gunmen opened fire and her friends and colleagues began falling dead around her.

As Chloe stood frozen in the middle of the slaughter, her friend Ludo Boumbas threw himself in between her and the gunman.

Ludo sacrificed himself, but Chloe survived the deadly assault with a bullet wound to the arm.
She now lies in a hospital bed, remembering her many friends and colleagues who died during the birthday celebrations.

'She was on morphine and was in shock. She would barely speak,' said the manager of Café des Anges, 27-year-old Virgile Grunberg, who went to visit Chloe in hospital.
'She felt guilty because Ludovic died for her. She just kept repeating his name again and again.' 

Ludo's family have hailed his selfless bravery and called him 'a hero'.
An unnamed friend told MailOnline: 'Ludo threw himself forward to protect a girl and took the bullet. 

'She was also shot, but she survived and is in hospital. 

'He loved travelling the world and above all he loved people. He was just one of life's good, good people. He didn't stand a chance.' 

Ludo, who worked in systems solutions for FedEX, was also at the birthday party of waitress Houda Saadi when gunmen dressed in bullet proof vests moved in.
The majority of the 19 victims at the café were from the birthday celebrations.
Five members of staff from a cafe called the 'Café of Angels', were wiped out in the tragedy together with six of their friends.

Read the full article and ponder the evil we are facing. To avoid looking at it, many are enjoying the petty political rabbit holes they are jumping down - showing more anger at those of the other political party than at those who want nothing more than destory even the simple pleaseures of Western Civilization.

Ponder, but then think again of Ludo and men like him. They are all around us, and we are lucky to have them. 

When our times comes to be measured by our actions, may we at least have a shadow of the character he displayed.

Fullbore.

So, you want to troll Pakistan?

This is how you troll Pakistan.

According to a report in a leading Indian daily, Afghanistan has asked India to step up supplies of lethal equipment for its military. The request seems to have been made by Afghanistan’s national security advisor, Hanif Atmar, who visited New Delhi this week.

Atmar asked India for training equipment, air and ground mobility assets, engineering infrastructure and light infantry, sources said.

That will do it.

Unsettled by the gathering quiet

Feel that those who should be telling our story, should be informing the public, should be raising our profile ... aren't?

Do you feel that those who do speak are speaking about the wrong things? Are going places first that should be 5th or 6th? That things are being not so much taken for granted, but held in slightly embarrassed disdain? 

In a mildly nicer way, I'm discussing over at USNIBlog. Please stop by and comment with your thoughts.

In Germany, a flag re-appears

Perhaps just a historian's itch, but I am always trying to see what is going on in Germany under the surface. In spite of having spent years of my life soaking in their culture, I could never get their language, their food always left me sluggish, and their culture ... well ... just German. The only thing I got from them that stuck was a distinct dislike of bad beer.

In spite of my shortcomings, I have still been trying to keep at least a bit of my time trying to track the German response to the Paris attacks. As others have observed, there is a good chance that real civil unrest against the invasion of military aged men from Syria will break out in the open in Germany first.

With the toxic cocktail that the Merkel led government has created, not a bad bet.

In any event, what I thought was just a bad color exposure on the Norwegian flag for some reason flying in German marches early on in the year, in this article from the DailyMailUK ostensibly about France's Le Pen, they cover a bit about the latest marches in Dresden from the growing German protest party PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident), in German (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes).

Nordic cross in German colors ... wait ... I know that flag ... and then it hit me.

That is the flag of two of my heroes; Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

That is the Josef Wirmer flag. The flag of the German resistance in 1944.

I guess that this is progress for marches of the "far-right" in Germany. No more crypto-nazi or Imperial German flags. No, the flag of the only real German resistance to Hitler in WWII. Led by the only people who resisted him, the old established elite families and the non-Communist/Socialist/SDP center-left like Wirmer.

Meaning? Not sure, but as PEGIDA has in a way adopted it, makes one want to keep a closer eye.

I have some concerns about PEGIDA, but what are the Germans who love their nation and its culture to do? The SDP won't help them, they see all these new people dependent on government handouts as potential voters like all Socialist parties in the West do - including the American Democrat Party. The CDU won't do anything as long as Merkel is in power, and the CSU is in Bavaria. The Greens are as worthless as those musty ex-Communists in Die Linke. Other right to center-right parties? ALFA I don't know much about. AfD is ineffectual, and the party I would have been a member of most of my life if I were German, the FDP - well, it has kind of imploded over the last decade on par with the Walker run for President of the USA.

Germany. Always watch Germany.

... and then there was Paris

No thinking person on either side of the Atlantic should have been surprised by the attack in Paris. There were simply another in a line of smaller attacks on France this year. This one just was better manned, trained, and equipped than the others.

For decades, despite evidence and experience, Europe in general and France in particular has allowed the continued immigration of a people who do not, as a body, assimilate and are hostile to their host culture. They do not wish to become part of it; they first want to feed off it it, then destroy then replace it.

There are individual exceptions to that general fact, but the exception does not disprove the larger reality. Just wander the streets in Malmo, Rotterdam, Brussels, and on the edges of Paris, London, Frankfurt ... I could go on and on. It is all there for those who are brave enough to see it.

The violence that is coming with this mindless openness to invasion is just a natural byproduct of the source nations’ culture. It is compounded by the fact that we are in a waxing phase of Islam that is characterized by radicalism and violence - as have other waxing phases Islam through history. Their religion calls for it, and when the moment is right, the call is answered by millions. Always has been, always will be.

There will be more attacks, and deadlier attacks. Most will be in Europe because they have more "water" that the terrorist "fish" can swim in. They will attack again here as well. Never be shocked, but ask - will the politicians take serious action this time, or will they simply make their decisions based on what those self-preening leftists who live behind gated communities and secure walls will write about them, and hopefully will invite them to all the right parties and conferences.

I will repeat this often; nations and cultures are not required to commit suicide – no to allow leaders to drive them in that direction.

As for France's response to this attack, we should give them time. Though initial reactions are strong, history tells us not to expect much follow through.

The attacks on Madrid in 2004 only resulted in Spain doing exactly what the terrorists wanted - they withdrew from being a surprisingly strong leader in the war against Islamic radicalism. They voted Socialist and that produced the expected result, as always.

The London attacks of 2007 resulted in little more than a horrible eye sore of a memorial in Hyde Park that generations that follow will despise their ancestors from putting up.

France has the lead on how they want to respond, and we should do all we should to support and encourage them - but there are some structural items that should dampen anyone who is hoping for a vigorous response from the West.

1. France is led by the Socialist Party. Faster than any other party, after the initial cohesion, Socialist parties will soon fracture as their anti-war and petty internal politics start to disaggregate a united front. Hollande may try to rally his party to the flag, but it won't have much sticking power.

2. The USA is led by Barak Obama. His presence and leadership in such matters are a powerful as soaking wet Wonder Bread. France has limited ability to do much expeditionary by itself in Syria without USA standing shoulder to shoulder. France's only other option is Russia. That would be if France's Socialist government wants to do anything but a month of posturing and lobbing a dozen bombs every other day for a week or so. One would hope we would act shoulder to shoulder with France, but hope is not a plan and Obama’s Biden-spun track record is clear.

3. It will need to get worse until it gets better. Europe still has not come to terms with the army of hundreds of thousands of military aged young men from the radicalized Islamic world who are already inside her borders - with thousands of more coming every day. This is what you need to watch. Until they start taking measures to stop and reverse the flow - and sharply reduce incentives for more to come - then they can do all they want in Syria, the terrorist threat will only grow.

The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens. Especially in densely populated Europe with already high structural unemployment, the role of government is not to let hundreds of thousands of non-citizen, undereducated, unemployable, radicalized, young men of military age from a violent, misogynist rape culture soak in their cities to live off of public welfare. Governments that intentionally tax their citizens, and create a less safe environment for their citizens will not last.

In the political elite's desire to have all the usual leftist media, arts, and organizations say nice things about them, they are creating the conditions for strife, violence, and civic disharmony. For years, the European people have been looking for establishment politicians to listen and act on their concerns. That cry is getting louder. If it continues to be unanswered, the people will turn to anti-establishment politicians. Those will be outside the center-right and center-left consensus that has ruled Europe since WWII. Since the self-loathing voter-importing left actually has been the driving force in supporting the policies that created the situation they find themselves in, that means the people cannot find their answers in the left. If the center right will not provide it, then the people will continue to search the radical fringe.

Maybe the French Socialist government will prove me wrong, but I'm willing to bet not. One thing I do know, there will be more and deadlier attacks, and more people will wonder - when will the governments react to protect their people?

What must be done? Simple, really. Two things must be done in parallel;

- First, help the Arab world and the Muslim world host their own refugees. 
- Next, stop all refugee migration and return those who have already arrived. 

Europe will have their hands full the rest of this century with native born radicals, there is no reason to make it worse by importing more.

For the USA? Learn from Europe. Act accordingly.

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UPDATE: No comment needed.

Warrior Writers: 1960s

Make sure and listen to this week's Warrior Writers Podcast where we discuss the developments in our Navy and Marine Corps in the 1960s.

Joining me as always will be Naval Academy History Professor Emeritus and noted naval historian Dr. Craig Symonds, and Naval Academy Museum Director Claude Berube.

This episode is just one part of a 14-part series will take you decade by decade, starting with the 1870s, discussing the significant naval events and developments that helped shape the US Navy.

The podcast coincides with the Naval Academy Museum exhibit: "Warrior Writers: The U.S. Naval Institute" open from September 10, 2015 through January 31, 2016.

You can listen to the episode below, get the full archive over at BTR, or better yet, subscribe to the show on iTunes.