The Ents of Europe (Euroweenies "Mossy," "Slow")

National Review Online ^ | 12/10/04 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out

[Tolik]

[Grendel9]

What else can one expect after ingesting all
those truffles retrieved from the roots of
trees?

Truffles: Gold in the Soil

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Truffles have fascinated people for thousands of years. Their attraction is a tantalizing taste and aroma which, once experienced, can never be forgotten. The taste and aroma of commercially collected truffles is so intense that they are used as a flavoring instead of a separate dish. Magical powers and virtues have even been attributed to truffles. They have been collected for at least 3600 years. Growing underground, they are difficult to find and very expensive as a result. Every Spring, truffle hunters in Europe take to the woods, hoping that the sensitive noses of their trained pigs and dogs will lead them to buried treasure. In November, 2000, a new record of over $400 an ounce was set an an auction of white truffles. At those prices, the average two-ounce candy bar would cost you $800!

The name “truffle” has been borrowed to describe small, fancy chocolate candies, another expensive and delicious food. Real truffles are roundish, brown, and dirty when they come out of the ground. They are the fruit of the truffle organism, like apples are the fruit of an apple tree. Truffles contain spores for reproduction the way an apple contains apple seeds.

Many animals can easily reach fallen apples, and so spread their seeds by way of uneaten cores, or in dung. Since truffles are buried in the soil, truffles rely on partnerships (symbiosis) with certain animals for spore dispersal. Squirrels and chipmunks dig up truffles in the same way they may steal flower bulbs in your garden. They are the major wild animals dispersing truffle spores in North America.

Truffle-producing fungi have also formed symbioses with trees (mycorrhizae) because fungi cannot make their own food. The hyphae, or thread-like non- fruiting part of these fungi, coat the roots of the tree and help their host absorb soil minerals. In return, the tree host provides the fungus with carbohydrates and other nutrients, the product of the tree’s photosynthesis.

Attempts are being made to farm truffles due to the difficulty in finding them in the wild. The harvest has steadily decreased for the last 90 years, due to forest destruction and the killing of trees by air pollution. France produced 1,000 metric tonnes of truffles in 1892; now, only 50-90 tonnes are harvested each year.

[Tax-chick]

later

[blakep]

Hanson is the man!! He answered one of my questions on his website yesterday. It's the one about the culture diffrentiation between countries that we stablilized in the past vs now. El Salvador, Nicauragua, Iraq, etc.

Go check it out!!

www.victorhanson.com

[blanknoone]

If these Eurinals are Ents...they will soon enough be firewood. That firewood will fuel the return of 'the ovens' and it won't just be Jews and other 'undesirables' fed into them this time.

[blakep]

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/Private%20Papers/Question%20Log/December.html

It's the second question down.

[bikepacker67]

"And Hanson connects with the fastball... it is high... it is far... It's GONE! Homerun!"

[OXENinFLA]

How odd that tens of millions of Muslims flocked to Europe for its material consumption, superior standard of living, and freedom and tolerance — and then chose not merely to remain in enclaves but to romanticize all the old pathologies that they had fled from in the first place. It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said, "I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."

Hit the nail on the head!

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PING...

[PMCarey]

Heh-heh, well the machinations of the EU do seem to resemble an Entmoot don't they? What does Treebeard say to Merry? And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

[labowski]

"I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."


What a good article. That quote pretty much sums up the Muslim concept of "Integration and Assimilation" which is simply buying time before they try to take over and impose Shira law if not through force then through sheer population numbers, using western law against itself and the atrophy of European culture and values.

[Mase]

"We are nursed now on the spectacle of Iranian mullahs, with their bought weapons and foreign-produced oil wealth, humiliating a convoy of European delegates begging and cajoling them not to make bombs — or at least to point what bombs they make at Israel and not at Berlin or Paris. But it was not always the case, and may not always be."



Boy, did he drill this one! The sting in any rebuke is the truth. How different is his take of this whole charade from the one supplied by the elitist MSM? Hanson is awesome.

[CivilWarguy]

This is one of the best articles I've ever read. Hanson outdoes even his usual high standards. I'd only add that Turkey's predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, did its own holocausting of Armenians during WWI, and the nascent state of Turkey stood by while the its soldiers and citizens massacred Greeks in the 1920s. I'm not here judging the justification or lack thereof of either action, just pointing out that such actions hardly fit with 21st century EU conduct.

[Stringfellow Hawke]

"what would 3,000 dead and a toppled Eiffel Tower do to the French?"

It would make the surrender cheese-eating monkeys drop their rifles faster then you can blink.

Great article to read. I'm afraid Europe is doomed to be conquered by Islam.

Without real leaders, those nations don't stand a chance. A nation's strength and glory can be measured by the leaders they put into power. America is not at it's strongest right now, but it's sure doing a lot better then when we had Bubba minding the store.

[Charles Martel]

Interesting article. I wish I could see these "Ents" being roused sufficiently to suffer serious casualties and finally sink "Isengard" out of revenge, but it's not the most likely of scenarios.

IMHO, the Euros are not Ents. They're Eloi.

[Jumper]

The classical western mind, in the Greek and/or Roman tradition, is the basis for the strength of the West. Legal and Logical analysis was the basis for this strength. Once the collective spirit is achieved (I'll just call it socialism) which requires subjecting the basic reasoning for the good of the group, this usage of the mind's mental capacity is deminished to the point it cannot win an arguement due to "rules" imposed by those very socialists. Europe suffers from this rotten core within her various societies and no longer has the will nor the capacity to compete in a world devoid of utopian dreams; in the real world of competition, only America in the West is still capable of sustianing herself but even she is weakened by the fact fifty percent of her population is in the grip of the socialist utopian uncompetitive dreaming.

[happygrl]

I'd only add that Turkey's predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, did its own holocausting of Armenians during WWI, ...

Easy to miss, but I think Hanson is referring to the Armenian genocide in this comment on the Turkish minister:

Recently a minister of a country that gave rise to the notion of 20th-century genocide slurred the United States for resembling Hitler, who in fact was an erstwhile Turkish near ally.

[swilhelm73]

bttt

[hershey]

Fascinating, all right -- and scary. Muslims can take Europe without firing a shot, just a few assassinations here and there. Blackmail works, as in Spain. Kerry demonstrated that it would have worked here, too. He remains only too willing to crawl to Muslims/the UN/ Euroweenies, et. al. Let Howard Dean/George Soros/Air America/Moveon.org. get control of the Rats, and they'll make Kerry look like a piker. Howie Carr mentioned this week that Kerry was in Iowa and New Hampshire recently. He plans to run again in '08, and Hill's already setting up her campaign staff, positioning herself as more conservative and security minded than GW. If/when we're attacked here again, Hill will blame GW and say she'd have prevented it.