patrick.net

I think Philip II broke the Hapsburg Family and Spain by his obsession with Counter-Reformation. I mean he lost several massive fortunes, years of extraction from the flush Silver Mines of Peru, both on the Armada and then in the Netherlands.

Philip II was described as "An intellectual, but not intelligent"

A scene from the 1970s during the largest Trade Fair in the world held annually in Bulawayo Rhodesia.

Ian Smith was a genius

Make Rhodesia Great Again

One of my neighbors in my court went on a 'Chandelier Safari' to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls. I would never go on one of those given the area and the history. He said going to the falls (at the juncture of a couple of African countries) wound up requiring a few visa stops and money changing due to the border crossings.

The chandelier safaris put them in big tents with all of the bwana luxury amenities of travel, but still, I think I would be spooked out, Victoria Falls or not.
OkDOGEisAmountingToSomething says

DeportLibtards says

Same kind of empty posturing as pictures of Israeli girls walking around in sun dresses and sandals with M-4s slinged over their shoulders. When the real shit hit the real fan on Oct 07 they turned out to be easy prey and were killed or kidnapped in big numbers.

Back before trigger discipline was a thing.

I had a client who was South Afrikaner and was a mercenary soldier in Rhodesia. He was scary because he radiated his death skills and talked about them, though in a non-menacing way. He said he had to leave because he 'crushed the trachea' of an abusive superior officer who was on his case leading to early retirement by fleeing.

He also had a very strange girl friend and the pair of them were so zippy and exotic, I don't know if I have ever quite run across anybody like them since. She was loaded, so I guess she liked to run with him as a bad boy.

https://x.com/Will_Tanner_1/status/1924950255176651028

The reason for our present dysfunction can be seen in the reaction to what Rhodesia PM Ian Smith once said about decolonization, and the truth of his words. He said:

“If blacks are to rule themselves, people in towns will walk on sewage until they believe it’s normal, all the gains from colonization will vanish, infrastructure will collapse, roads will be impassable, trains will kill people until they’re abandoned as an usable mode of transport, hospitals will be closed, farms will be grabbed and nothing to feed the people.”

Of course, all that came to pass. Rhodesia was a hugely successful country in every respect, particularly in the realm of preserving a unique and beautiful culture while also ensuring living standards and economic growth for blacks and whites remained on the upswing until Mugabe wrecked it. And wreck it he did, with the result that everything that was once built and once successful was wrecked. The infrastructure survived the Bush War, and was even relatively good during that war, but couldn't survive a few years of race communism.