Europe, Rod Fleming's World

10/05/2024

Bastille Day: Death of a village in France

Originally posted 2017-07-26 21:58:12.

I met Denis Poulot by the old lavoir as I ambled down to the Salle des Fetes. We’ve known each other for 24 years now; we’ve never been especially close but we share a relaxed camaraderie. We paused in our journeys to shake hands and exchange formalities, then carried on. Inevitably, this being Bastille Day, 14 July and we were both going to the ceremonial vin d’honneur, we chatted about Bastille Days past.

Denis drew up and looked into the distance. ‘It’s not the same any more.’

Molinot is a village deep in the Arriere Cote of Burgundy, has been a part of my life since 1993. In those days, the village was famous for the extravagance of its Bastille Day celebrations and people would come from miles away to enjoy them. Indeed, ours was so popular that many villages around had their celebrations on another day, since all the locals were at ours; and of course we reciprocated, making for a thoroughly convivial week.

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10/05/2024

The Fall of France: Macron’s election and the Greater Germany

Originally posted 2017-05-08 19:33:38.

Yesterday, the 7th of May 2017, will be long remembered. It is the day of the Fall of France.

This is not the first Fall of France. In 1940, German troops stormed through the Ardennes, completely surprising the French General Staff.

Nobody who has read Chester Wilmot’s ‘The Struggle for Europe’ can fail to recognise the similarities. In 1940, the French Establishment was represented by octogenarian and even nonagenarian generals. Their incompetence was complete. Counter-attacks were so badly organised that battalions engaged on different days or in the wrong place. Communications were by carrier pigeon. The French armour, superior in numbers and quality to the German, was not allowed to operate freely and instead was used as semi-mobile artillery for infantry support.

The result was that France capitulated. That was the first Fall of France. An uneasy truce was declared, in which the Germans gave the French permission to govern themselves in territory not already under a German jackboot, but it didn’t last long; in 1942 the Germans assumed complete control.

Seventy-two years later, the second Fall of France has just occurred. Instead of dottering relics from bygone wars, fought decades before, today the French establishment is represented by a dandified fop called Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frederic Macron. This poodle sans couilles is now the President-elect of France.

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10/05/2024

Enoch Powell and the rivers of blood.

Originally posted 2017-03-27 07:21:24.

After yet another terrorist attack perpetrated by a Muslim in the United Kingdom, it is worth looking again at the late Sir Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech.

Powell was vilified for decades for his candour and honesty, but who could read that speech today and not, while condemning some of the language, see how he accurately predicted what has happened?

The conflict Powell feared has but just begun. All over Europe, our culture and its values are under attack. The attackers are Muslims and they act in the name of Islam.

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10/05/2024

Time has run out: War has begun

Originally posted 2017-02-03 07:34:03.

We have no time left to deliberate, now. Appeasement has failed, just as it did in 1939. The enemy is among us. He is far more cruel and vicious than Adolf Hitler and more totalitarian than the Nazis. He uses any weapon he can to kill us, while we have allowed our governments to take from us our own, with which we might, perhaps, have defended ourselves. His name is Islam and he has declared war.

Our cultural values of freedom and toleration we must now put aside, because our continent is sick. The dream of a free, peaceful Europe that we have been building for seven decades is dead. We must, now, fight to preserve what is left, the essential core of our cultural values. To do that we must accept that many of our privileges, afforded by the system we live under, must be suspended. We are at war and that is one consequence.

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27/03/2024

Obama: a history of disaster

Originally posted 2016-11-12 13:12:01.

Barack Obama has been a disastrous US President. Look at the history: Libya, turned from a functioning state into a non-state. Syria, turned from a functioning state into a non-state. All across the Islamic world, stable governments have been cast down by terrorist, Islamist insurrections, fomented by the Muslim Brotherhood and supported by Obama.

He has stirred up a hornet’s nest outside its borders but the US refuses, as always, to either accept the blame or resolve the problems it has caused. The entire Muslim world is now in flames and that is entirely the fault of Barack Obama, assisted, lest we forget, by Hillary Clinton.

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27/03/2024

A Bonfire of English Vanities

Originally posted 2016-11-07 11:50:16.

On Saturday it was Bonfire Night in Blighty. Yes, that spectacularly English version of the traditional festival at the onset of winter. While the rest of the world has Samhain, Hallowe’en, the Day of the Dead and others, the English celebrate a failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, otherwise known as the ‘Gunpowder Plot’.

Thirteen men, led by one Robert Catesby, smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into the vaults under the building. On the 5th of November 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested attempting to light the fuse.

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27/03/2024

The English Don’t Wear Kilts

Originally posted 2016-10-05 12:56:05.

I have begun wearing kilts again. I used to do this years ago but, erm, passage of time rendered them, uh, too small. Alack, the Fleming waistline now oscillates between 36 and 40 and those distant days of 32waist/32leg are long since departed. However, last year I bought a few more and now I wear them pretty much every day. And when I’m not wearing the kilt, I wear tartan trews.

Now what could possibly have spurred this aberrant behaviour? A sudden dose of ‘alt-fashion’ in the old fool’s noggin? A passionate longing for the owld country? Simple homesickness? Senility?

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27/03/2024

The Reasons for World War Three.

Originally posted 2016-09-18 12:42:55.

World War Three has been much talked about in the seven decades since World War Two ended. At that time, almost all of Europe and large parts of Asia were in ruins, scourged by years of brutal, mechanised, industrial war.

Since the beginning of that peace, war has raged incessantly throughout the world. It has never stopped. The killing, the butchery, the rapes, the genocides, the ethnic cleansings. Mass rapes, murders, enslavements. Whole cities destroyed, nations impoverished or obliterated.

Has World War Three begun?

As I write, war is raging in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia. Why? If the end of World War Two heralded in an ‘era of peace’, then why is there so much war? And how fragile is that peace?

This article and many others are available in the companion volume, Fifty-Two of the Best

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27/03/2024

Muslim kills 84 in Nice terror attack.

Originally posted 2016-07-15 12:04:47.

We wake to a morning of black tragedy in Europe as it has, again, been scourged by a Muslim terror attack. This great continent with its myriad and vibrant culture, that has given so much to the world, is on the long march to its final Calvary. And all I can say, my heart breaking, is ‘I told you so.’

Yesterday, the 14th of July, a Muslim terrorist hired a truck and drove it at speed through the crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. Weaving from side to side to kill as many as he could, the driver, a Franco-Tunisian, brought death and horror to a 2-kilometre long section of the Promenade des Anglais, on the seafront. At least 84 people were murdered and another 18 may not survive their injuries. The killer’s name was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. The attack is typical of those carried out by Daesh, aka ISIS or ISIL.

Bastille Day is as great a family celebration in France as Christmas is, perhaps even more. Children, among the dead and maimed, were out having fun with their parents. Whole families were run over. Wives were murdered in front of their husbands as they shared a brief moment of happiness.

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27/03/2024

Mishcon de Reya: Scene from an Imaginary Western

Originally posted 2016-07-05 13:38:24.

In the little white-painted town of Santa Westminstera, havoc had broken out.

The town was ruled by two gangs of ruthless bandits. But both of these had begun fighting amongst themselves. The rule of the bosses had collapsed and anarchy reigned. Of the fabled heroes, Los Companeros de Mishcon de Reya, there was no sign.

In an adobe house in the main street huddled one of the last remaining families. Little Angelina was cuddling into her grandfather’s chest.

‘Oh papacito, what will become of us?’ she sobbed.