Andrew,

it seems that you have both our names (Chris (me), Christopher Gray),
and our perspectives :)

Where you quote: "Take away Islam from poor, intolerant people and you

still have poor, intolerant, more to the point, easily incited people

with a bone to pick with their perceived oppressors." as proof of
my/our/ combined/separate/conflated stupidity, I meant only to point
towards the complexity of the ecology of the causes of what we see
only glimpses of.

I believe I understand the crux of what you're trying to say and agree
with your objections.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Andrew oommen <andrewomm-AT-gmail.com">andrewomm-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
> first let me say that i think that you really don't need to explain any of
> the main tenets found in your response. i understand it fundamentally. But i
> disagree with you on nearly every point you make.
> - Islam as a race is concedingly silly. i was simply referring to what the
> text you provided implied.
>  - how is this not an immigration issue? I can see your point that
> immigrants aren't all Muslim but that's not my point. Even if all but one
> immigrant were from Canada, it is the ignorance that i alluded to at the
> bottom of my initial response that will refute your point. it doesn't matter
> who immigrants are, its always the case that the issue of immigration falls
> on those who are not seen as picturesque in society's eyes. thus the
> exploitative system as "a weapon…" Immigration is an issue because of this
> necessarily economic background. That is why that question is important.
>  - "Both the French nation-state and Islam are enemies" this is not an
> argument. you can't just assert this without a valid warrant to this claim.
> - though the game analogy works for MBA's and such, that's not how the world
> works. hunger, disease, death, etc. are not things that you can
> probabilistically calculate into a strategy. this "worldview" sees good only
> in the light of bad, or freedom in the light of those who are not free. Or
> those who have versus those who do not. basically, your definition of the
> world as such limits your understanding of it because your tolerance is
> coupled with the fact that you are intolerant to others. this is quite the
> blatant contradiction! i think this "worldview" is the one that is truly
> counter productive, mostly because of its inhuman nature.
>  - "Islam sucks, plain and simple." and your a god damned hippie who thinks
> he knows it all, who should probably take a cue from Debord himself and end
> your miserable influence on others. You make a disgrace to anything written
> for this site. You are intolerant, plain and simple. "Take away Islam from
> poor, intolerant people and you still have poor, intolerant, more to the
> point, easily incited people with a bone to pick with their perceived
> oppressors." proof of your stupidity!
> - your idea of revolution is primitive at best. a constant revolution is
> like a reign of terror, as another french example should provide. "Putting
> an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely—which, strictly
> speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely—is what
> creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp
> rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and
> independent entity" (Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari, pg 5) I'd argue
> further that just like art as Debord puts it, "its declaration of
> independence is the beginning of its end" (Society of the Spectacle, 186).
> In other words, your project as you define it immediately fails because of
> your own abstraction to the struggle you try to engage in, namely, against
> intolerant, "my shit doesn't stink" ethic of the status quo. Outkast already
> monopolized on that one, maybe you should look for a new illusion to satisfy
> your lack of intelligence.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Christopher Gray <rasputin-AT-teleport.com">rasputin-AT-teleport.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Emigration is a weapon used by national capitalist forces to force another
> national capital to immigrate that excess of unemployed. It is a way of
> shoving a financial burden elsewhere. It is a national act of undeclared
> war. In this case it is globalists warring against all nation-states to make
> way fro the new form of rule: the regional union. The EU plan is being
> deployed everywhere and in all cases there will be five who rules the
> region, all reporting to David Rockefeller and/or his successor. First off,
> why is Islam being treated as a "race". It is not a race. Is "Christian" a
> race? No, Is "Judaism" a race? No. They're the practice of a worldview. Both
> the French nation-state and Islam are enemies. An immigrant is not
> necessarily an Islamic person, so this is not even an immigration issue. It
> is an issue of encirclement by Islam from within. If you've ever played the
> Japanese game, "Go", you know what I'm talking about. "Invasion" of one
> worldview of the real estate predominantly held by other worldviews has been
> going on way before England, the USA, and France existed, so this is not a
> national question either. It is one of intolerance. The toleration of an
> intolerant-of-any-worldviews-besides its own is exactly the issue. Islam
> sucks, plain and simple. It always has. Its very tenets are based around
> rigid hierarchy, sexual slavery, and the subjugation of disbelievers. So,
> under today's conditions where people are herded into nation-states, ruled
> by capital extraction social relations, and in the toleration of the capital
> extractions that are built into national/international law, just how does
> one resist globalist strategy? The reason the Islamic terror is being funded
> is because that allows the restructuring of the nation-state and the
> hierarchy to be done FOR global bankers who use global Islam in the tough
> cop / soft cop con.
> >
> > The French example ought to be assessed as an opportunity to answer that
> question. We have the reification fanatics all around us: the nation, the
> capital, the deities. If we foolishly (like the left embracing of Stalinist
> or Chavezist state capitalism) see the enemy of our enemy as our friend,
> then prepare for losing AGAIN and maybe forever. We must devise theory that
> sees ALL reification as enemy, and with intelligence unseen in national
> liberation, third worldism, fragmented group agendaism, left-or-rightism
> (where the left smooths over the flaws of capital without altering it at the
> point-of-alienation, and the right defends whatever freedoms remain that
> came from the bourgeois revolution). Both contain a small kernel of truth
> and miss the total point of revolution. It changes everything from within
> and all the time. It is a continuous self-unfolding that digests itself to
> give birth to a newer and more robust self. Hell, even capitalism does that,
> using the left as recuperator-digester, however, they resolutely and
> Rockefeller-fundedly do not challenge the core reification: capital. It
> courses through every idiotological critique they ooze. They protect that
> core reification. So, in France, their critiques always divert from a total
> critique down to a race, national, immigration, or whatever issue. They suck
> and always have. Peas in a pod that breed alienation, like the pods in
> "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
> >
> > best,
> > chris
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Andrew oommen wrote:
> > first let me start off by saying that i am new to this mailing list, etc.
> and enjoy the frequent articles and links to useful literature. But i think
> that this post is a bit offensive and doesn't actually address the issue of
> 'immigration.' as i see it, Mr. Gray's analysis is correct, but it
> marginalizes those who are not apart of the left and right jabbering, namely
> those excluded, i.e. immigrants. this also seems to be the issue that we
> should all take with Brigitte Bardot. While she highlights the tensions
> created by immigration, she excludes the immigrant narrative, specifically
> "capitalism's flaws" that which would necessitate such movement. i think
> that this is in the same with Mr. Gray's shortsightedness as well. As he
> seems to argue, the left and right are functions of capital, or like two
> sides of the same coin. while i think this is undeniable, it excludes
> political struggle outside of plutocracy. (where as the distinction of
> capital is not). marginalized groups get pissed when their religion is
> dissed on and leftist see that as an issue to get votes with. i think this
> what Mr. Gray means when he says that we should dump the left and right as
> puppets or tools, but i think this call falls flat. Understanding, i think,
> racisms role as a way of deflecting much needed effort and criticism upon
> why immigration happens would serve us best, as opposed to who is a racist
> and the political meanderings of the left and right. Its not an issue that
> the left and right are controlled by whom ever we point to ("extremist
> muslims," or Friedman). the issue is in the simple question why. asking it
> really is simple, but i think it isnt stressed enough. 'Why' opens avenues
> for narratives of those who are excluded, the ones that are much more
> affected by the swaying of politics then most computer owning, karl marx
> fanatics (dont waste ink on that one, just a "jab" from below). even though
> one could argue that Mr. Gray paid interests to these groups with his
> ramble, i dont think it was explitically stated. that is what i think is
> needed most of all: specificity and explicity. If we arent very clear on
> explaining why immigration is an issue, then the left and right will use the
> ignorance of the many to dominate. In this respect, i think we are all much
> more responsible for the (re)actions that take place in politics. If we
> emphasize learning and knowledge instead of finger pointing, i think we
> could move forward in developing a new critique of modern life. I guess
> maybe we should all just go back to first grade to learn that sharing and
> understanding are the golden rules and pointing fingers is not nice.
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:27 AM, Christopher Gray <rasputin-AT-teleport.com">rasputin-AT-teleport.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > … to more than the "free speech" jaw of the proletariat…
> > >
> > > In boxing, the setup or "jab flurry" precedes the "knockout punch".
> Today, the so-called "final solutions" to capitalism's flaws have
> plutocratically-funded "left" and "right" jabs - again, as in the German and
> Russian "world order" dress-rehearsals � and, the "momentum" shall once
> again be played out by the proletariat, dazed before, and programmed after
> those co-dependent "jabs". People who do not "learn" from their mistakes
> suffer less from a quantity of information than from being carriers/hosts to
> the bucolic plague, wherein they are [character-colonized] human capital
> performing for the audience of generalized capital. The "left" and "right",
> unless dumped as the puppet/tools that they are, will do to us exactly as
> they have always done: act as servants bearing our heads on a platter.
> > > - Chris Gray
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________
> > > In the 1960s, Brigitte Bardot was France's national icon, a pouty-lipped
> poster girl for the glories of her home country. So it is a sign of how
> radically times have changed that yesterday's silver-screen darling is
> today's enemy of the people.
> > >
> > > Bardot's "crimes", such as they are, are straightforward: She has
> committed the sin of speaking frankly and unapologetically about her
> country's hostile Muslim immigrant population and � what is evidently worse
> � questioning the compatibility of some Muslim religious practices with
> Western society. Common sense, one might think, or least subjects fit for
> fruitful debate.
> > >
> > > Not in modern France. Last week, the erstwhile cinema siren went on
> trial on the charge of inciting "racial hatred against Muslims." If
> convicted, she could face a two-month suspended prison sentence and nearly
> $24,000 in fines.
> > >
> > > The basis for the charge is utterly bogus. It stems from a letter that
> Bardot wrote to President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006, in which she complained
> about the practices of Islamic immigrants. In particular, Bardot was put off
> by the ritual of Eid al-Adha, a Muslim feast in which sheep and goats are
> slaughtered by having their throats slit. A longtime animal-rights activist,
> Bardot found the practice abominable.
> > >
> > > Her mistake was in thinking that she had the freedom to say so. But as
> France struggles to control a large [Muslims make up nearly ten percent of
> the country] and increasingly radicalized Muslim population critics of
> Islamism are finding themselves more actively persecuted by national
> authorities than the Islamists themselves.
> > >
> > > Bardot is a case in point. Her latest legal woes may seem troubling, but
> they are only the latest battle in a larger war waged by Islamic radicals
> and their allies to suppress all criticism of Islam and its more militant
> and anti-Western incarnations. It speaks to the success of these
> state-backed exercises in intimidation that Bardot has been convicted for
> "inciting racial hatred" on four separate occasions.
> > >
> > > Bardot's trials, literal and figurative, at the hands of the Fifth
> Republic's multicultural enforcers date back to the early 1990s, when she
> first spoke out against the slaughtering of animals for religious purposes.
> Although Bardot directed her attacks against Muslims and Jews, it was her
> criticism of the former that got her branded as a racist. By 1997, Bardot
> stood convicted on the charge of "inciting racial hatred" after suggesting
> in the French daily Le Figaro that France was beset by a "foreign
> over-population," including with Muslim immigrants.
> > >
> > > It was unclear, then as now, how criticism of a non-racial group, in
> this case Muslims, could be considered "racist". Nor was it apparent why an
> issue as fundamental to the welfare of a nation as immigration was suddenly
> to be deemed off-limits for discussion. But the Orwellian subtext of the
> case was impossible to miss: There were some things that French citizens
> simply were not allowed to discuss.
> > >
> > > Bardot pointedly ignored the lesson. The following year, she likened the
> slaughter of animals in Islamic rituals to the throat-slitting favored by
> Islamic fundamentalists in North Africa, implying that the connection was
> not coincidental. It was a provocative point, to be sure, but by no means an
> unreasonable one. Where the world's leading religions have shed their
> cruelest tendencies, Islam as practiced in much of the world � one need only
> recall the gruesome decapitation murder of Wall Street Journal reporter
> Daniel Pearl � retains its more savage elements.
> > >
> > > In any case, criticizing religious practices would seem to be entirely
> consistent with European free-speech statutes, especially in anticlerical
> France. And, indeed, a lower court initially found Bardot's comments to be
> protected by free-speech laws. That was too much for an appeals court,
> however, and before long it reversed the decision and slapped Bardot with a
> fine. Free speech was a fine thing, apparently, so long as it didn't offend
> Muslims.
> > >
> > > It would not be the last time that Bardot incurred the wrath of French
> censors. In 2000, she was again convicted of "racist" thought crimes for
> writing what she called an "Open Letter to My Lost France", in which she
> raised concerns about Muslim immigration. As on past occasions, the merits
> of her concerns were not specifically examined, their focus on Muslims being
> deemed sufficient proof their unacceptability for public discussion � this
> even as French banlieues, home to unassimilated Muslim immigrants, seethed
> with the violent hatred that would erupt in riots across France in 2005.
> > >
> > > Bardot was undaunted. In 2003, she again ran afoul of "anti-racism laws"
> when she published A Cry in the Silence, a book decrying what she called
> "the Islamisation of France", and pointing out the obvious ties between the
> September 11 attacks and Islamic extremism. In that book, Bardot also
> cautioned against the dangers of rubbishing Western freedoms to accommodate
> political sensitivities. "For 20 years we have submitted to a dangerous and
> uncontrolled underground infiltration", she wrote. "Not only does it fail to
> give way to our laws and customs. Quite the contrary, as time goes by it
> tries to impose its own laws on us." As if to demonstrate her point, French
> authorities proceeded to fine her 5,000 euros for offending Muslims.
> [Revealingly, Bardot's views proved far more popular among the French
> public, which turned A Cry of Silence into a bestseller.]
> > >
> > > To understand just how sinister are the attacks on Bardot it is useful
> to consider the group that repeatedly has brought suit against her, the
> Movement Against Racism And For Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP).
> Inaccurately called a human-rights group, the MRAP is in fact an aggressive
> silencer of free-speech.
> > >
> > > Its most famous contribution to French political life was to thwart the
> sale of the late Oriana Fallaci's 2002 book, Anger and Pride, on the grounds
> that it supposedly incited racial hatred against Muslims. Similarly, when
> Bardot published A Cry in the Silence in 2003, the MRAP pronounced it
> "unacceptable", thus appointing itself the arbiter of what French citizens
> should and should not be allowed to read.
> > >
> > > But of course groups like the MRAP would be inconsequential were it not
> for the dangerous proclivity of the French legal establishment for treating
> their fictitious allegations of racism with unmerited seriousness. In this
> context, it was illuminating when a French prosecutor last week called for
> unusually stiff penalties against Bardot in the current case against the
> actress because she was a "bit tired of trying Madame Bardot". How much
> easier it would be for that civil servant and countless others like her if
> nuisances like Bardot would simply surrender their right to speak freely.
> > >
> > > Bardot may not be the most artful of social commentators, but then she
> doesn't need to be. Nothing demonstrates the prescience of her warnings �
> not least her warning about the dangers of sacrificing Western liberties to
> accommodate the extreme demands of hostile minority groups � so much as the
> ongoing efforts of the French state to silence the woman it once hailed as
> an idol.
> > >
> > >
> > > - from "The War on Brigitte Bardot" by Jacob Laksin
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > And not just in France are critics of Islamic fanaticism being silenced
> by the anti-freedom "progressives". If anyone dared to suggest a mullah
> screeching "Kill the Jews" should be brought to court for hate-speech, even
> if members of his mosque had been caught killing Jews, the liberal-left
> would be hot to defend them, jumping up and down screaming "Fascism!
> Fascism!" But an old woman, who expresses her opinion even in private
> letters, is fair game for the New Inquistion and liberal thought-police, and
> they will all line up to "stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers",
> even as those "brothers" plot the demise of their liberal supporters.
> > >
> > >
> > > Amazing, yet another outspoken woman is being crushed under the
> left-wing jack-boot in the West, for daring to speak the awful truth about
> Islam.
> > >
> > >
> > > - from a letter to the OBRL_News_Bulletin Yahoo group by James DeMeo
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>

—
~Chris