Tea at Trianon: Redefining Military Readiness

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 17, 2025

Redefining Military Readiness

From Amuse on X:

Hegseth articulated his vision with the clarity of a battlefield commander and the conviction of a statesman. “We cannot afford a military where standards are a function of optics rather than effectiveness,” he declared. “The battlefield is the ultimate meritocracy, and our standards must reflect that reality.” In an era when the armed forces face mounting geopolitical threats, Hegseth’s words resonate as both a warning and a call to action.
At the heart of his argument lies a simple but profound truth: the effectiveness of a military force hinges on the physical and mental capabilities of its soldiers. The crucible of combat demands extraordinary endurance, agility, and strength—attributes that cannot be compromised without jeopardizing mission success and lives. History offers no shortage of examples, from Thermopylae to the Battle of the Bulge, where the cohesion and physical readiness of troops spelled the difference between triumph and catastrophe.
Hegseth’s critics will undoubtedly invoke accusations of insensitivity or inflexibility. Yet his proposal—requiring uniform physical standards for combat roles—is neither discriminatory nor dismissive. Instead, it is a reaffirmation of the military’s primary purpose: to win wars. By applying identical benchmarks to all soldiers, regardless of gender, the military ensures that every individual in a combat unit is equally capable of bearing its immense burdens. Anything less invites unnecessary risks, breeding resentment within the ranks and eroding the cohesion vital to success. (Read more.)

The war behind the war. From Leo's Newsletter:

World War III, like all 21st century wars, is not being fought over ideologies. It’s being fought over energy and natural resources. Because he who controls the world’s resources will be free to impose whatever ideology he wants.
Washington and London, the epicenter of the Western liberal world order that thinks it’s admirable and virtuous to redefine God-created genders and appropriate to unleash deviant transvestites on innocent school children, is seeking to neutralize the massive resources of Russia as it ramps up its “net zero” sustainable development model of economic progress. This economic model is really just a scam designed to pilfer what remains of the middle class and further subjugate them under AI-powered government-corporate control. Hence the need for more massive data centers, which Donald Trump is being used to build across the United States with $8 billion in foreign investment from a billionaire in the United Arab Emirates.
The surveillance state cannot be built out without these data centers scooping up, processing and storing highly personal information on every citizen. But Trump is either too dumb to know this or doesn’t care because he is blinded by a naive belief that without an expanded AI America will lose its global hegemony.
The modern technocratic state is going to be based on energy and carbon credits. Fiat currencies will become a thing of the past if these global predators succeed in their plans for a one-world surveillance state, where freedom of movement becomes a distant memory. Our healthcare and even our diets will also be tightly controlled by the elitist globalist predator class, whose interests are exemplified by the World Economic Forum and other elitist organizations.
With an understanding of the ongoing war over who controls the global food and energy supplies, it becomes easy to see how the NATO-Russia war (with Ukraine as NATO’s proxy) will blow up into World War III. (Read more.)