PARIS - THE SHORT MARCH TO FEEL GOOD, - BEFORE THE NEXT MUSLIM ATTACK!

Below is a provocative article about the Muslim attacks in Paris.  I had never heard of the Michigan Standard or Sean Gabb.  His analysis forces me to think, and I hope you find it thought-stimulating also.  Hugh Murray

Hot Air and the Paris Atrocities

9 January, 2015

17 Votes

Hot Air and the Paris AtrocitiesBy Sean Gabb
(The Michigan Standard, 10th January 2015)

For the avoidance of doubt, I will begin by saying that the murders this week at Charlie Hebdowere a barbarous crime, and deserve the strongest punishment allowed by law. This being said, the smug chanting of the politicians and media people is getting on my nerves. Here, without further introduction, are the more objectionable mantras:

Je suis Charlie

I will repeat that this was a barbarous crime. But there seem to be barbarous crimes and barbarous crimes. Suppose the attack had not been on a cultural leftist magazine, but on the headquarters of the Front National, and the victims had been Francine le Pen and the party leadership. Would all those city squares have filled with people reciting Je suis le Front National? I hardly think so. Nor would the media have given blanket and uncritical coverage.

Indeed, we had our answer before the gunmen had opened fire. When Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh  [two Dutch men murdered when the spoke up against intolerant Islam in the Netherlands] and Lee Rigby [a 26-year-old British soldier murdered on a London street by two Moslem terrorists]were murdered no less barbarously, we were all urged to moderate our response. In the first two cases, we were told, with more than the occasional nod and wink, that the victims had brought things on themselves. As for the third, the protest demonstrations were broken up by the police.

Cultural leftists have the same right not to be murdered as the rest of us. So far as the present lamentations indicate, they are seen by the directors of public opinion as having a greater right.

We will Never Give up Our Right to Freedom of Speech

The continuing hymn of praise to freedom of speech would sound better if it were seriously meant. I believe that the writers and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo had the moral right to say whatever they pleased about Islam, or anything else. But I also believe that Luke O’Farrell and Garron Helm should not have been sent to prison for being rude to or about Jews. Nick Griffin should not have been prosecuted for saying less against Islam than was published inCharlie Hebdo. The Reverend Alan Clifford should not have been threatened with prosecution in 2013, when he handed out leaflets at a gay pride march in Norwich. Almost every day, in England alone, someone gets into trouble for opening his mouth. Where for them are the defenders of freedom of speech, now more fashionably than bravely holding up pencils or waving candles?

I and my colleagues at the Libertarian Alliance can praise freedom of speech, because we arethere for the people mentioned above. Just about everyone else I have seen on the television is a hypocrite. In general, we are free to say only what the authorities want to hear. Even when the law does not cover dissent, there are administrative or economic punishments. See, for example, the UKIP members who were denied the right to foster children, or the difficulty that dissident writers have to find paid work.

These were Cowardly Crimes

The men who shot up the Charlie Hebdo offices are not cowards. They took a considerable risk, and it is generally believed that they will not let themselves be taken alive. This is part of what makes them and their like so dangerous. The Sinn Fein/IRA terrorists were cowards. Their speciality was to plant time bombs in shop toilets, and then run away before they went off. These killers seem to regard themselves as already half way to the company of the seventy two virgins they were promised. There is nowhere they will not go, and nothing they will not do – they and those like them. To call them cowards is a comforting falsehood.

These were Senseless Crimes

The only senseless crime is one that has no evident purpose, or is unlikely to achieve it. The purpose of the Charlie Hebdo killings was to punish outrages against Moslem sensibilities, and to deter their repetition. Can anyone say they failed, or will fail? Some outlets of the mainstream media have republished some of the less offensive cartoons. But it was difficult not to, and there is safety in numbers. From now on, Moslems abroad and in Europe can expect a still more delicate handing of their sensibilities than is already the case. No one wants to be murdered, and one of the surest ways to avoid being murdered will be not to say anything untoward about Mohammed or his alleged teachings.

I now feel obliged to comment on mass-immigration from the Third World. Anyone who said this would be other than a disaster must have been a fool or a villain. It has forced down working class incomes. It has raised housing costs for everyone. It has increased crime and welfare dependency. It has Balkanised politics and administration and law. It has been the excuse for a police state. I am not a violent or an uncharitable man. I am committed to an abstract and universalist ideology. I do not object to a certain porosity of borders. But, like most Jews in Israel, or most Chinese in China – or like most people in all times and places – I regard every square inch of my country as the birthright of my people, and do not look favourably on levels of immigration that seem likely, within the next few generations, to dispossess us of that birthright. Yet this is where we now are, in England, in France, and in many other European and European-settled countries. I have no convincing answers to the problem we face. All I can do is predict one of two outcomes:

First, present trends will continue, and growing weight of numbers, and a greater willingness to resort to violence, will bring about the transformation of our societies in the image of the newcomers;

Second, there will be a nativist reaction, attended by expulsion and the removal of citizenship rights for those allowed to stay, and an authoritarian political settlement.

I do not look forward to either outcome. But, thanks to the conscious or negligent treason of our rulers, it seems likely to be one or the other of these. Anyone who can suggest a less unpleasant outcome that is other than wishful thinking will have at least my gratitude.

The question now outstanding is whether these killings will only contribute to the breakdown of the multicultural illusion, or whether they will be seen, by future historians, as one of its key events. Are they in the same dividing category as the defenestrations in Prague [in 14190s and again in 1919, men were thrown from windows in Prague, precipitating wars between Roman Catholic and Hussite or Protestant elements; and in 1948 Jan Masyrk was probably killed by Soviet intelligent agents below a bathroom window.]  or the Oath in the Tennis Court [when in 1789 almost every member of the Third Estate decided to defy the King of France and continue to meet, becoming the National Assembly, an early step on the road to the French Revolution]? Or will the continued chanting of the mantras discussed above keep everything under control? Does the continuing uproar in France mean that something has begun there of wider significance than the murder of a dozen cultural leftists?

TECTONIC PLATES ADRIFT? - Wilson, Lenin; Putin, Obama - rUSsiA

                                                    by Hugh Murray
     I was away for two weeks in Asia, and spent less than 3 hours on the net.  The cable TV in my hotel room was quite limited, and I had trouble finding real news of the world.  BBC and CNN seemed to show nothing but homages to Nelson Mandela, the South African radical who was jailed for years and then emerged as a negotiator for the dismantling of apartheid.  Day after day, the funeral seemed to be the only world news on the British and American channels.  Deutsche Welle showed talking heads.  The local Thai stations showed the continuing demonstrations in Bangkok, but I did not understand the language, so quickly changed the channels.  The Fox Sports channel showed little soccer, and then mainly from the Dutch league, which I do  not follow.  I did chance upon one channel, in English, that kept my attention.  Oliver Stone was interviewed for about an hour, with a co-author on the Hidden History of the US.  I generally disagreed with his views, and yet because of his terrific film, JFK, I kept watching.  There was other news from the Washington bureau.  Yet, I had never heard of the channel.
     Then there was a program on army life, but the language was a Slavic one.  The news showed the demos in Thailand, but much more time was devoted to those in the Ukraine.  Then it dawned on me, RT must stand for Russian Television, Russia Today.  The Ukrainian reports were substantial.  American Sen. John McCain was shown as he asserted among the anti-government protestors that the Ukrainian government's decision not to join the European Union was unacceptable.  We were informed that an American State Dept. official was among the crowd handing out food to the protestors.  But there was additional commentary.  One surmised that if the Ukraine joined the EU, it would be among the most impoverished, joining Greece, and Spain in poverty, while the wealth of the country would be sent to EU bankers.  Later, RT stressed that while anti-gov. protestors were in one square, pro-gov. protestors were just a short distance away in another square.  Clearly, many wanted to move closer to the EU and Western Europe; just as clearly, the govt. and many others preferred to stay closely allied to Russia.
     RT also devoted considerable time to Russian leader's State of the Union speech this December, 2013.  When I heard the analysis of his speech on RT, I began to think the tectonic plates of the world may be changing.
     Soon after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the new Communist government did many things.  Like Snowden who exposed so many secret documents, the Soviets exposed the double-dealing of the Allies, and how they intended to divide the world into colonies and spheres of influence if the Western nations defeated the Central Powers - i.e, if the UK, France, the US, etc. defeated Germany, Aus.-Hungary, and Turkey.  The Soviets also abolished the supremacy of the church in the new Soviet state, and abolished the anti-homosexual laws that had been on the books.
     The West did win the war, and American President Woodrow Wilson seemed a savior of democracy and the world, for a short time.  The religious man, who demanded racial segregation of the American federal bureaucracy, who was determined that the new League of Nations would not cave to the Japanese demand for a statement of equality of all races, had also used federal troops to close the bordellos in New Orleans where a genre of music had originated.  Unable to find work in the closed cat houses, the musicians moved North to Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, New York and eventually Paris and the world.  From the houses of jizz and sex, jazz became an international rage.  Under Wilson, the religious strain could also be seen in the enactment of Prohibition, the ban on drinking alcohol.  By 1920, Americans were disillusioned with Wilson and his war.  Wilson's Democratic Party was swept out of office, and the Republicans led the nation to a return to Normalcy.  Not quite.  Women cut their hair, shortened their skirts, began to smoke, and dance ( and even drink, in defiance of the new law).  The new automobiles were becoming bordellos on wheels, according to some preachers.  Yet, even in this relaxed atmosphere in America, with some jazz titles like Masculine Women and Feminine Men, homosexuality was still illegal and strongly stigmatized.  By contrast, homosexuality was no longer illegal in the New Red Russia.  And Communist front-groups, like the League of Militant Athiests in the West, made it clear that they rejected the old morality of the church.  And though illegal in the new Weimar Germany, it was becoming quite open, and even films were made like, Different from the Others, and A Man's Young Girlhood, and Dr. Magnus Hirschfelt's sexual institute and campaign for legalization of homosexuality made Berlin a center of research and agitation on this issue.  Christopher Isherwood would stay at the institute when he moved to Berlin in the early 1930s.  In the 1920s then the new Soviet Union, and to some extent Weimar Germany may have been viewed as gay havens.  Dispite flappers and speakeasy (illegal liquor) in the US, the KKK marched down the streets of Washington DC and traditional values were upheld; religion was popular, and evolution was condemned even in the courts.
     The Depression brought out new demands for morality, to clean up the filth that may have caused such economic misery.  Admittedly, it was not so clear in the US, for with the election of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, one of the first acts was to end Prohibition, so Americans could drink alcohol legally once again.  But there would be no more immorality portrayed on the silver screen, as the Hays office would censor Hollywood films.  No more homos portrayed in the movies, no more exposure of so much skin by the young starlets, and dialog had to be decent.  Just a few weeks before FDR took the oath as President of the US, Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor, and he too demanded greater morality of the Germans.  Quickly, the Hirschfeld institute was raided and closed, and its books and research volumes were burnt.  Most gay publication were now illegal, as were most gay bars.  And in 1934, when Hitler killed Roehm and other leaders of his Storm Troopers, then homosexuality was utterly condemned in the new Germany.  Hitler's New Germany was to be a Moral Germany.  Not to be outdone, Stalin created a new constitution for his USSR, and each state in that union was now required to ban homosexuality.  The Webb's assured readers that homosexuality had been imported into the USSR by foreigners, anyway.
      In WWII, the various nations went to war expressing their own versions of "morality," and incarcerating, criminalizing, and sometimes exterminating those deemed immoral or unworthy of life.  By the 1950s, there were basically 2 super powers and views of the world, atheistic communism, which still outlawed homosexuality, and free, religious America.  To illustrate the contrast, the American pledge to the flag was changed again.  Initially, one was to raise the right arm to the flag, palm up, and recited the pledge.  But that was to similar to the fascist salute, so the right hand over the heart replaced the outstretched arm.  In the 1950s, the wording was changed: "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" was lengthened by the insertion of "under God" after nation.  Judeo-Christian morality against atheistic Communism.
     By 2009 with the election of Barack Obama as Pres. of the US, one can see the enormous changes.  Judeo-Christian morality is no longer on a pedestal in the age of multiculturalism.  Moreover, the foreign policy of Obama and Hillary Clinton is openly pro-Muslim, and helped the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood achieve power in Egypt, and its allies take power in Libya, and almost in Syria.  Europe has ever more Muslim immigrants who achieve a privileged status thanks to liberal judges and bureaucrats in the EU.  Londonstan has areas of sharia law today, as do many cities in the UK, the Netherlands, France.  The Left has allied itself with the most anti-feminist, most anti-gay crowd, the Muslims.  Obama generally accepts this view inside the US.
    Putin's Speech of December 2013 is in some ways amazing.  The former KGB official comes out defending Christian morality, implicitly attacking gays, Muslims, and the cult of the multi.  Meanwhile, America's President Obama has become a champion of gays, illegal aliens, Hispanics, Blacks, single mothers abortions, etc.  While Obama demands a liberal agenda for most nations, Putin now urges nationalism, national traditions, traditional values, religion.  Suddenly, the former KGB Communist seems to have more in common with the right wing in Europe that seeks to preserve national traditions, that opposes liberal judicial edicts from Brussels, that opposes economic diktats from Berlin.  The Left of the KGB seems to be meeting the Right of Marine LePen in France, of UKIP in Britain, and of various right wing parties throughout Europe.  One contrast, some of the Rightwing parties, as those in the Netherlands, have be led by gays who are horrified by the violent hatred of the Muslims.
     In the 1950s, America stood for traditional religion and traditional values and traditional bigotries.  Today, it stands for multiculturalism and persecution of any speech that offends one of the many "favored" minorities or women.  Today, Putin proclaims the New Russia stands for traditional values and religion and (traditional bigotries).
    American Rightwinger Pat Buchanan had long criticized Pres. G W Bush and Obama for meddling in Eastern Europe and antagonizing Russia.  He would not agree with Sen McCain in the Ukraine.  Indeed, in his most recent column, Buchanan sees Russia's Putin as one of "us," a Paleoconservative.
    Bottom Line - In the 1920s America, even with its flappers, represented nationalism and traditional religious values.  In the 1920s the New Soviet Union represented internationalism, and a sexual revolution in which a woman official declared sex was like a "glass of water," (perhaps she should have said like a box of chocolates) with abortion, homosexuality, and more open-type marriages.  Religion in the USSR was persecuted.  Today, there has been a reversal - Putin represents nationalism and traditional religious values; Obama represents internationalism and secularism, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, etc.   How the world has changed?  Or is this just cosmetic?  And how will it continue to change?

US OPEN DOOR IMMIGRATION - WHY?

Because I am delayed in writing my piece on immigration, I include this provocative piece by Gwynne Dyer, who appears to be writing from Vancouver.  It is a most interesting piece, and I shall be referring to the ideas in this article in my article, still to be written.----------Hugh Murray

Why the U.S. Opened Its Doors to Mass Immigration

Gwynne Dyer, Straight, June 5, 2012

What if China, flush with its new wealth, opened its doors to mass immigration? It would make sense from an economic and social point of view, because its one-child-per-family policy has produced a young generation far smaller than the one that now does most of the work. China’s population is “aging” (i.e. its average age is going up) faster than any other country in history, and it could certainly do with some more young people.

If it had an immigration policy like that of the United States, it could fill all the gaping holes in the workforce that will open up when the present adult generation retires, and there would be enough people working and paying taxes to support that older generation in its “golden years”. Otherwise, there will be barely one worker for each retiree, and their post-retirement years will be far from golden.

So let’s suppose China opens the gates. (Stay with me on this.) The immigrants would come, from all over the world. Probably most would be from south and south-east Asia (India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines), but plenty of Russians would come too. So would Arabs from the slums of Cairo, and Congolese from the slums of Kinshasa, and Mexicans fleeing the bloody war on drugs.

{snip}

They would all come, and China would be transformed. In 50 or 60 years it would be one of the world’s most diverse societies. Almost all the new immigrants would learn to speak some Chinese, of course, but their children would be fluent in the language. Indeed, they would think of themselves as Chinese, even though their skins were white, brown, or black and their religions Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu.

Some tens of millions of them would already have intermarried with ethnic Chinese, if only because there are tens of millions of young Chinese men who will otherwise remain unmarried. (The Chinese have been killing too many of their baby girls.) And everybody would live more or less happily ever after.

I know. It’s never going to happen, because the Chinese would never let it happen. But that’s precisely the point. The Americans have let it happen. Why?

I’m not saying it is a bad thing. Personally, I like it. But it is an extraordinary thing. Sixty years ago the United States was a country whose population was overwhelmingly of white European descent. The only really big minority was the black and mixed-race descendants of African slaves, who accounted for about one-eighth of the population. And then the United States opened the gates very wide.

Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that non-white births in the country narrowly exceeded the number of births to white Americans for the first time. {snip}

{snip}

So why did the last two generations of Americans, who were still mostly of European descent, let it happen? Did they welcome and encourage it, as a good thing for the country’s future? Or were they just asleep at the wheel?

Some Americans certainly did encourage it, arguing that turning the United States into a microcosm of the whole world was fulfilling its destiny, and that the sheer diversity of its future population would give it a huge competitive advantage in the world. But there were not many people who made that argument, and there is actually little evidence to show that ethnic diversity makes a country more competitive.

Nor did this immense change happen while the old white population was just not paying attention. There were debates about immigration policy all the time, there was plenty of information about where the current immigration policy was leading, and Americans simply let it happen.

{snip}

Maybe the last two generations of Americans were a lot less racist than many people—including many Americans—thought. Or perhaps they were all silently aware that only 500 years ago, none of the births in North America were white.

Terror in Norway - Anders Breivart

This   is composed of two comments I had in the New York Times on line in response to articles concerning the terrorist action in Norway.----------Hugh Murray 

Opinion

Breivik and His EnablersBack to Article »

By ROGER COHEN

Anti-immigrant Islamophobia is an ideology rampant on both sides of the Atlantic.

48.
48.

Hugh Murray

Milwaukee

July 26th, 2011

10:56 am

If I were to compare the Bible to Hitler's Mein Kampf, I would be dismissed as a nut, and it would end there. In the Netherlands, Wilders was prosecuted for comparing the Koran to Mein Kampf. Are Westerners allowed to express freedom of speech if it offends militant Muslims? That is the question. Recall how men were threatened, nearly killed, and bombs thrown when newspapers dared publish a cartoon about Muhammad? Remember how Rushdie had to live in hiding because of the Muslim threats to kill him. Simply put, many Muslims (perhaps the majority in Europe) do not believe in free speech. And they are willing to use violence or support violence to prevent free speech.
In Britain, and the US, some cases seemed so unusual, baffling. Then the pattern appeared - parents and relatives were killing their daughters who might date a non-Muslim, or wear Western clothing. Honor killings now occur where Muslim immigration exists, in the US and Europe.
In the UK, some beds in NHS hospitals have to face Mecca. Some of the nurses now will not clean their arms because they must keep them covered. Who cares if more disease is spread. We dare not annoy the Muslims!
NY just had a marriage debate. How many wives should a man be allowed at one time. The Koran has an answer. Will Euro-America give welfare for all the wives of a Muslim man?
Several decades ago in Egypt women could wear mini skirts and Western clothing. As resurgent Islam insulted more and more women, sometimes attacking them, they dressed "more modestly." And the Arab Spring, recall the case of CBS correspondent Lara Logan, assaulted and nearly killed while the cheering, tolerant crowd, celebrating the demise of Mubarak's rule, shouted "Kill the Jew; kill the Israeli." Did it matter that she was neither - she was dressed immodestly.
Even in Australia, some Muslim's have raped women in bikinis, because they do not dress modestly.
I certainly do not say that all Muslims are so warped,but...

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

READERS' COMMENTS

Shift in Europe Seen in Debate on ImmigrantsBack to Article »

By NICHOLAS KULISH

Political leaders fear such tragedies could drive changes in public opinion as far-right parties react.

Share your thoughts.

102.

Hugh Murray

Milwaukee

July 27th, 2011

10:12 pm

Sadly, sometimes terror pushes voters to choose the policy of the terrorists. Recall, around 2002, the Islamic attack in Spain that led to the fall of the Conservative government, which had supported the war in Iraq. After the subway bombing in Madrid, the Socialist won power and withdrew Spain's support for the US-led effort.
One does not know the consequences of the Norwegian's terrorist attack. One can only hope that there is no large sympathy vote for the Labor Party, which has so supported the oppressive policies of massive immigration and multiculturalism.
The leaders of Germany, France, and Britain all acknowledge multiculturalism's failure. Yet they are only partially correct.
After the uprising in Berlin in 1953, Bertolt Brecht wrote a stinging poem indicting the leadership of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). He suggested they hold a plebiscite and elect a new people. That is precisely what the Left parties have been doing in Europe - they have encouraged massive immigration to reduce the influence of the native citizens, and win the votes of those who have no history with the nation, with Western Civilization, or with democracy. The trend has thus been to a politically correct tyranny.
And the US goes further providing affirmative action preferences to discriminate against native citizens and award the immigrants, even the illegal immigrants.
One can only hope that the parties of the Right can prevent any more immigration as a method to elect a new people.