French dhimmitude: public money for mosques

Sacre bleu. Incredible.

Same shit in Austria, in a little catholic village in the mountains:

http://iblis.twoday.net/stories/1048364/

http://iblis.twoday.net/stories/1046155/

The mayor of the village, who belongs to the ruling christ-democratic conservative party, is supporting this in order to boost "integration" of the turkish minority. Even better - the mayor is memmer of a counseling board of Tyrol to preserve the cultural identity of the whole county...

I don’t get it. Don’t the French hate religious belief? I thought that’s why they hate Christians because according to the French they are all fundamentalist idiots. So why do they embrace muslims? Can some one explain this to me?

I would be screaming if MY tax dollars were to be spent for this purpose.

I promise to assimilate if Florida gives me a large mansion in Isleworth. Otherwise, I could feel disaffected, humiliated, and oppressed. Everybody needs some peace of mind, protection if you will.

They kick christianity out to import islam. Riots in Paris when muslims went after the french cowards earlier this year.

Now the french partisan begs for mercy.

The Frenchies think that by inviting Muslims into the tent that they can control their behaviour. Somebody should quickly translate the fairy tale about the Turtle and the Scorpion and send it off to Francoise.

Unless the construction plans include wiring the place for monitoring by French intelligence, this is most certainly paying jizyah.

"Integration" is not the answer. It is merely the last desperate attempt to avoid looking steadily and whole at the tenets of Islam, the teachings of Islam, the history of Islam and of Muslim treatment, through time and space, over 1350 years, from Spain to East Asia, of non-Muslims.

This kind of "integration" (which Sarkozy apparently supports, and shows that despite his merits compared to what rules France now, he has his limits) merely delays the day of recognition. That grim anagnorosis had better not be a Shock of Recognition -- a recognition of what large numbers of Muslims necessarily means for Infidels and the Infidel nation-state, at a time when it is too late. Such projects of integration may sooth things over for a time, but in the end, the few Muslims who were likely to leave Islam will leave it, and meanwhile the French state will merely be spending money that, while it may relegate the more obviously sinister clerics to the sidelines, will never silence them, because what they say is exactly what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. The texts are on their side. Look at Turkey, where for 80 years, under the systematic limits placed on Islam's political and social power, and where the text of every single khutba (sermon) is carefully composed by ministerial authorities to ensure that no dangerous allusions are made, nonetheless, Islam is back with a vengeance, and the anti-Infidel attitudes, outside of a handful of completely secular Turks -- the very Turks whom Westerners meet as tourists, do business with, may socialize with, and who are completely unrepresentative of the always, and now increasingly fervent, Muslim masses.

And along with renting the temporary loyalties of this or that government-paid imam, other kinds of "integraton" projects, prompted by the same desperate desire not to consider the real measures that will have to be undertaken if non-Muslims are to save themselvfes, their own culture, their own futures, from encroaching Islam, are apparently being undertaken. Language classes. Classes in how to pick up girls in a more engaging and less violent manner. Classes in this, classes in that. As long as Islam is somewhere there, there is always the possibility, of a re-embrace of Islam, triggered by something, by all sorts of things that are not general but personal (loss of a job, a girlfriend, money, status, a depressive fit), and a re-embrace of Islam with renewed fervor. That is why all attempts to rely on "moderate" Muslims, as distinguished from the other kind, the "immoderate" Muslims (at least we all finally admit that "too much Islam" is a dangerous thing for Infidels -- that's one understanding that the last 4 years have achieved), are silly. First, because to apply the word "moderate" only to those whose views would not worry Infidels, one soon realizes that such a definition excludes all those Muslims who take Islam, outside of the Five PIllars of Faith (i.e., the rituals of individual worship), so full is Islam of the distinction between, and necessary and uncompromising hostility between, Believer and Unbeliever, Muslim and Infidel.So few are the Muslims who would constitute such "moderates" as to be nearly undetectable, and certainly powerless to do anything against the aggressive "immoderate" Muslims who have the texts, those canonical and immutable texts, on their side.

And if the "moderate" Muslim -- "moderate" defined as one who does not pose a danger to Infidels in his beliefs -- is examined further, it turns out that the mere presence of even "moderate" Muslims swells the numbers, and therefore the perceived power, of those "immoderate" Muslims who are hell-bent on changing Infidel societies, on forcing the Infidels to accept all sorts of things that the presence of large numbers of Muslims will make politicians heed more than they should. Thus it is that even if the beliefs of that small group of supposed "moderate" Muslims (and how will we know who is feigning, given the religiously-sanctioned lying (taqiyya and kitman) that Musllims have again and again shown they are willing to engage in, or willing to say what they really believe to audiences of fellow Muslims, and another, quite different thing, to win over Infidels (this is now quite a problem, for Infidels have taken to recording those for-Muslims-only speeches and articles, translating them, and making them available, and a week ago an Arab Muslim writer wrote about this very problem of being caught in one's own net -- more on this can be found at www.Memri.org.). Even "Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims have, somewhere in the background, Islam as a possible alternative, something to be returned to if necessary, and we Infidels cannot gauge who will, and who will not, likely in a political fit or a fit of ethnic pride ("Arabness"), or form emotional disarray, make that Return to Islam that, for Infidels, means danger.

In the same category as government-funded mosques are those courses in the local language, or in How To Pick Up Girls, that some European countries have now been offering Muslims. What will this achieve? It will only allow those who better use the language to be able to slyly present, in the Tariq-Ramadan fashion, propaganda for Islam. It will only allow those who learn to pick up Infidel girls, to find the ones they can take advantage of, marry to ensure their permanent residence, and even make one more convert to Islam who will, as a breeder, be used to produce still more Muslims. How will all these attempts to help Muslims integrate undo Islam, do away with Islam? They won't. They will simiply be like little KGB spy camps, designed to train agents to better infiltrate into the communities of unsuspecting locals -- but the local Infidels will be paying to train those who will be infiltrating, and undoing, them.

Government-funded mosques are a bad idea, a stopgap measure that is dangerous if undertaken in lieu of other, much more serious undertakings, to permanently limit the presence, and power, of Islam in the lands whose laws, customs, music, art, manners, mores, were created entirely by Infidels who do not want, do not deserve, to be islamized over time -- even if they have been ignorant, and shown, and their elected leaders shown even more, a heedlessness, a negligence, a stupidity that goes beyond -- belief.

Veiled Venus
By Sher Khan
MohammadJamal al Din takes a deep breath before he finishes the last stitch. He is a tailor by profession and faced no problem making a burqa for this marble statue.The 61/2 ft tall sculptor was the most recognizable works of art from theancient world. The statue, with its elegantly twisted pose and missing armssymbolized the goddess of beauty and love. Former citizens of this country proudly named this beautiful lady,Venusde Milo. Current Islamic Government has decided to bring all statues of thiscountry in one place and blow them into pieces. Problem arose when Mullah officials noticed the graceful body of Venus is half-naked. They ordered Mohammad Jamal al Din to make a burqa and cover up the whole body ofVenusto ensure Muslims are not offended by seeing her unsheathed body while she is being moved.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/SherKhan40829.htm

Hugh wrote

"Government-funded mosques are a bad idea (...)

I disagree, particularly considering that the other option would probably be having the exact same mosque built with Saudi money.

I have said this once and I will say it again: France is one of the few western countries that has real experience on how to deal with Muslims. I assume that this new mosque will be closely monitored by the French State.

I visited La Rochelle five years ago. The city that was once a haven for French privateers still kept a certain aura of that period. One thing I did notice, however - even back then - was the significant number of magrebine youths in that very city. Why hide the dirt under the rug? France has large numbers of Muslims inside her own borders. All she can do is expel the foreigners that are criminals and monitor the ones suspected of illegal activities. It is much easier to monitor a mosque than hundreds of anonymous apartments. As such, I think that once again, France is showing the rest of the world how things should be done.

This isn't French dhimmitude, this is French brains. France is the European country that expelled the largest amount of terrorism supporters, remember? Not Britain, not Denmark, not Germany - France.

They don't even have to pay for their own damned churches?!

It's what I said: these animals have that Moslem Magic going for them, and it doesn't appear the juggernaut will ever be stopped, or even slowed.

"All she [France] can do is expel the foreigners that are criminals and monitor the ones suspected of illegal activities."
-- from a posting above

France could expel all Muslim non-citizens. It could strip of citizenship all those preaching, or otherwise lending support to, in any way, the Jihad or activities designed to promote the Jihad. It could cease to allow its government-owned media to hide the truth about Islam, and to begin informing its own citizens not about how there really is no problem, but the nature and scope of the problem, by beginning openly to read those Qur'anic passages, those Hadith stories, those facts (or fables, it doesn't matter as long as Believers think there was a Muhamamd, and think he acted and said thus and so) about Muhammad.

There is a lot that can be done, to reduce Muslim numbers, and to prepare people psychologically so that their countries cease to be such appeassing patsies, where certain topics are held to be simply off-limits, unthinkable, not to be considered.

Benes and Masaryk were among the most intelligent and tolerant spirits in all of Europe. Look what they felt justified, even compelled to do, with the Sudeten Germans in 1946. And no Czech then, or now, thinks they have the slightest reason to feel guilty -- and very few others, outside the circles of German revanchism. Were some of those Sudeten Germans (but only some) innocent? Yes. And so were some of those killed in Allied bombing raids over Tokyo or Berlin or Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Dresden. That is what happens, and has to happen, in modern warfare. And when one is trying to limit the menace to oneself, after identifying a pouplation that must, if it is by its own admission true to certain teachs, remain a permanent threat, has a right to remove that threat from its midst. That is the most elementary kind of personal, and civilizational, self-defense.

But such and other measures of self-defense cannot be discussed rationally if people fail to understand the nature of the menace, which at this point is not primarily military in nature.

There is much that France could do, if it had better leaders.

Jacques Ellul saw this coming. Raymond Aron would have.They are both dead. There are some teachers, some commentators, some writers, who from their various perspectives and knowledge see the menace of Islam. In the army, there are not a few officers who do not share the pollyannish dreams of many of the civilian rulers, and who are not impressed with the crook Chirac and the poseur Dominique De V., and they surely have begun to talk among themselves about Muslims in France, in and out of the security services and the army, who might have access or acquire it, to certain kinds of weaponry. Not everyone in France is quite as foolish as listening to Canal Cinq and reading Le Monde might make one think.

There is Yvan Rioufol. There is Anne-Marie Delcambre. There is Alain Besancon. There are others. There are the two women who wrote "L'Islam et la Republique" and whose names escape me. There are many others. Outside of Paris, French people grumble openly about what everyone knows and no one is allowed to talk about, no one among the respectable, non-Le-Pen supporters.

But it has to be talked about. Very loudly. Now.

Hugh, re: my hope that you would engage Anonymous on the Benes decree -- you relayed to me that "I am not a debater on tap. My work at JW, as Robert can explain, has been that of a dedicated near-volunteer, who so far refuses to post anywhere else. Or to simply gird his loins as some kind of verbal gladiator."

Of course, you're a free man and you can do what you want. I have spent a lot of my own time (woth money as much as anybody else's) trying to get you to engage Anonymous, because I think both of you are unusually intelligent, bright, imaginative and erudite thinkers who happen to be on opposite sides of this most important problem of our epoch; and I think such an interchange would be useful. You are always advising others here on what to do with regard to this most important problem -- are they front-line Crusaders on tap for you?

WD52;

re the french wiring the mosque,

Reminds me of the Soviets "building" the new US embassy compound years ago. Turns out it had more mics in it than a Sony recording studio. The buildings were effectively worthless. If a diplomat sneezed hard, half the KGB could tell who it was.

epg says above that he/she would be screaming if his/her tax dollars were being spent for building mosques.

Well, news flash, they are, to some degree, dollars not spent on salaries for people with religious (political) agendas are spent on other religous/political activities, like buildings, networking, distribution of propaganda and that is exactly what is being done in the US, under this administration.. it is called Faith Based Initative, and since your President has taken office, he has created Faith Based Offices in every Department of the Federal Government, and is paying the salaries of Imams, (as well as Rabbi's, Priests, Ministers et al) so that they can receive and distribute federal money ostensibly for charitable causes.

However Charity is a misnomer these days.For tax purposes any non profit is considered a Charity and don't forget Saudi Charities fund Jihadis', and Al Arian, et al headed up "Palestinian" Charities, and it is Charities that give grants of $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers.

Demanding, approving and condoning President Bush's Faith Based Initiatives is tantamount to drinking arsenic in small doses.. Suicide.

It might be different if there was an ability to discriminate between this or that religion, but there isn't. All kinds of things call themselves and qualify as a religion, even Scientology and the Moonies.

And there won't be the ability to discriminate either, thanks to the all too cozy and incestous relationship between Arab oil and the men who run (own?) this country.

More on the Great Benes Decree Dialogue That Wasn't:

Kevin, one of the many intelligent, well-educated dhimmi supporters of Anonymous at the Examined Life forum, weighed in:

Pepper: In 1989, Vaclav Havel in fact proposed that the new Czech Republic issue a formal apology to the families of ethnic Germans expelled from the Sudetenland after WWII. The Czech government rejected his proposal.

Your buddy [i.e., Hugh Fitzgerald] ought to have pointed out that the forced expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland was hardly the only forced relocation of huge populations of people in Europe just after WWII. The Soviets forced the relocation of many more millions of Germans, Poles and Ukrainians from one country to another. Estimates are that 15.6 million people were expelled from their homes and forced to move to other countries in the Soviet orbit: ethnic Germans to East Germany, Poles to the new shrunken borders of Poland, Ukranians out of Russia and into the Ukraine, etc. German historians of this episode estimate that 2.5 million of these displaced people died, of disease, starvation, or as a result of being murdered by Soviet troops during these relocations.

Perhaps Hughie has no problem with that, either.

[And Anonmyous responds to my copy-paste post of Hugh Fitzgerald's non-responsive response about Anonymous's response to Hugh's comments about the Benes Decree]:

Is that it, then? 'I can't be arsed.' That's the second time Shughie has let you down with this response. You must be very disappointed..

Yes, I am disappointed.

Hugh wrote

"France could expel all Muslim non-citizens."

Based on exactly what ground, Hugh? People are innocent until proven otherwise. Not all Muslims are terrorists or supporters of terrorism. Just the other day I met a Muslim who happens to be a successful business man, he drinks alcohol and eats pork, he is married to a Catholic woman and his two daughters were brought up as Catholics. Not all Muslims "guilty". Many are and those should definitely be expelled, but to advocate the expulsion of an entire population (regardless of how "Muslim" they actually are) borders Hitler's or Stalin's measures.

"It could strip of citizenship all those preaching, or otherwise lending support to, in any way, the Jihad or activities designed to promote the Jihad."

I agree. This is reasonable. What you wrote in the previous sentence wasn't.

"Look what they felt justified, even compelled to do, with the Sudeten Germans in 1946."

To say that the expulsions of the German ethnic minorities in Czechoslovakia were barbaric would be a euphemism. There was widespread abuse of those minorities (people were executed, tortured, women were raped, you name it).

"And when one is trying to limit the menace to oneself, after identifying a pouplation that must, if it is by its own admission true to certain teachs, remain a permanent threat, has a right to remove that threat from its midst. That is the most elementary kind of personal, and civilizational, self-defense."

No, what you just described is the most primitive instinct an animal has: that of self-preservation. "Civilized" may mean many things. One thing it does not mean - at least not in my book - is giving in to your most inate and primitive instincts.

If you are so keen to go down to their level, then the civilizations we are both so keen in protecting are definitely not the same. And in my opinion this sort of argumentation (mass expulsions, etc) will only alienate the ordinary anonymous individual.

'Just the other day I met a Muslim who happens to be a successful business man, he drinks alcohol and eats pork, he is married to a Catholic woman and his two daughters were brought up as Catholics. '~ cruzado

I hope he's watching his back, as you just described pure Apostate.

DR Pepper, what are you doing? Are you trying to taunt or provoke Hugh into enjoining your fight and argument, and one in which he has no interest?

Last time I saw that kind of behavior, was in the school yard at recess and that was over 50 years ago.

If you have an argument with "anonymous" then do your own work, stand your own ground, and generate your own arguments or counter arguments as the case may be.

BTW, Gary I agree with you, this "Muslim" friend of Cruzados is an apostate. Actually he isn't a Muslim, he has already left Islam (as they term it).

It's kind of like being a moderate Muslim, no such animal. Either the Koran is the uncreated word of Allah and Mahomet is the perfect man and example for all mankind (the Sunnah/Sirah stuff) or it isn't and he isn't, and if it isn't and he isn't, then in the eyes of Islam (I'm anthropomorphizing Islam here) the person is a kafir.

Islam is Shari'a.
Shari'a is unbending (lo Allah is merifcul and forgiving .LOL)
A Muslim abides Shari'a or he doesn't, there are no half measures,unless (and he has Shari'acal dispensation here) when living in Bilad al Kufr, he is allowed to mimic the kufr, and temporarily abandon Shari'a, if his intention is to promote Islam.

In Islam INTENTION is all. If one's intentions are good (meaning to promote Islam) then all is forgiven by Al Ilah.

Were things different, but they aren't and the Irsid Manji's of the world are engaging in self delusion but that's what holds religions together doesn't it.. the ability to convince oneself of three impossible things before breakfast and to rationalize the irreconcilable.. it's called a suspension of critical reasoning.

I'm practising Ventriloquism, I'm calling my dummy God (it's a routine as old as man himself) I would call it Allah, but that would shorten my life expectancy.

"Yes, I am disappointed."
-- from a posting above

Oh for god's sake, Fai da te, Do It Yourself. It isn't hard. There are two kinds of expulsions, the justified and the unjustified. I offered the Benes Decree as an example of what a liberal, tolerant state, the most liberal and tolerant state in all of East or Central Europe, felt compelled to do after World War II. The people directly involved, Eduard Benes and Tomas Masaryk, were themselves liberal, tolerant, and even a bit too naive. Masaryk, son of the even more famous Tomas, the founder of modern Czechoslovakia, died in the Second (or more accurately Third, for there were three)Defenestration of Prague, courtesy of the NKVD.

The Benes Decree was designed to end, once and for all, a perceived security threat to the nation of Czechoslovakia. Many, but not all, of the Sudeten Germans had been complicit with Hitler. Certainly Henlein, before the war, worked hand in glove with Hitler, emphasizing the need for recognizing the "legitimiate rights" of the recently-appearing "Sudeteners" who deserved their inalienable rights to self-determination, blah-blah. Well, no one in all of Europe thought the Benes Decree was wrong. No one then, and no one now. Save for someone you quote, whose transparent strategy is to carefullly ignore the history of the behavior of those Sudeten Germans before and during the war, and the oother examples of similar justified expulsions (Poland also expelled millions of Germans, and other countries did so with lesseer numbers). I repeat: not Havel, not Dubcek, not Svoboda, not Gorbachev's friend Zdenek Mlynarzh, not Jaroslav Seifert, not General Ludvik Svoboda, no Czech,and no intelligent person then or now, would dare to say the Czechs were not fully within their rights, and justified.

The second obvious part of that strategy is to scare everyone by claiming that all expulsions everywhere, for whatever reason, are horrible and immoral -- and then to proceed by selectively quoting only the most horrible, the definitely unjustified.

But that was exactly my point. Most people overlook the justified expulsions, or the expulsions for which a very good case can be made. After German aggression in two world wars, the Czechs were fed up. They simply were not going to endure the security problem of a powerful German population anymore -- so they expelled them, to lands already peopled by those who spoke the same language, shared the same religious beliefs and customs and fairy-tales and main sense of identity and all the rest. As for this business of terrible things being done to the Sudeten Germans, the precise nature of how the Benes Decree was executed had nothing to do with my point. My point was that the large-scale expulsion of a population that had given evidence it was not loyal, and could not be loyal, to the nation-state, and that had its closest loyalties to powerful forces outside the country, was not irrational nor unjustified. That's it. I didn't go into every detail of what happened in Czechoslovakia. I am not required to. I was only pointing out that which one of your debaters wishes you to ignore or forget -- not all expulsions in human history, even recent history, have necessarily been the work of evil men, or been evil. This "we mustn't descend to their level stuff" is superficially plausible, and certainly attractive to many. Not to me. We are bending over backwards to accommodate people who do not wish our laws, our customs, our manners, our mores, our freedoms, our relaxed amusements and bemusements, well. We have hardly begun to consider even the most elementary means of civilizational self-defense. I don't think either we, or the Italians, or French, or English, or Dutch -- remember those tolerant, easygoing Dutch and what they are now clamoring for, which is not much different from what I suggest be considered, the next time someone rattles on about "descending to their level" and suchlike -- have become untrue to ourselves and our best qualities. No, in not seeing Islam for what it is, this enemy of art and science and individual freedom, we are being untrue to ourselves.

And that is something to consider, in Western Europe and in North America. We don't have to permanently endure the physical insecurity that comes from a large population, admitted out of ingorance or under false pretenses, that by its own belief-system cannot be anything but hostile (though feigned friendship to further Muslim aims is allowed, and may even be encouraged) to Infidels, for all of Islam is based on a manichean division between Believer and Unbeliever, Muslim and Infidel. Can any Muslim deny that Islam teaches him not to take Christians and Jews as friends, not to mention those terrible Hindus and all those others? Can any Muslim deny the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, which are chock-full of hostility toward all Infidels? Can any Muslim deny that loyalty is owed only to fellow Muslims, and not to fellow Infidels, to whom all kinds of things, none of them pleasant, can be done, and of courese not to the Infidel nation-state? That is what Islam teaches. If some Muslims choose to ignore these teachings, fine -- but let's keep in mind that we have no way of knowing when a "moderate" Muslim will revert back to being, or becoming if he never was, an "immoderate" Muslim.

Isn't the answer to these people obvious?

And why do you call on me? Am I at the Beck and Call of everyone who comes to JW? And should one attempt to make me feel guilty because, slaving over a hot computer I am supposed to snap to attention because someone wants someone else to visit the website he likes and where he finds it fascinating to -- do what? Attempt to convince the unconvinceable of something? To score points? To be mightily impressed with their superior debating skills? What? What good would it do to answer these people, given their imperviousness to all appeals to common sense, logic, evidence, decency, things like that.

What presumption to call on me the way you have, and repeatedly, despite my continuing to insist that I vanted to be left alone vith Greta. Do you think I am some kind of a full-time employee of JW, paid some kind of princely sum, because I have some kind of title on the non-existent door and a Bigelow on the non-existent floor? Perhaps at some point Robert will enlighten you. JW exists mostly on a wing and a prayer -- make that a shoestring and a prayer. By all means, keep those checks rolling in made out to me care of Robert, and as soon as I've deposited it I'll get my helmet and my shield and dash over to the Coliseum in my waiting quadriga.

I don't want to engage in idiotic debates and have to take seriously idiotic people (look at the apologists for Islam at this website, and the havoc they can wreak). Life is full of that as it is. Stop asking me.

And besides, I'm not the Only Oyster in the Goddam Stew. Any number of people who come to JW could polish off these people who so impress you at some other website. Jesus, don't you have something better to do than bother with thenm? Every time you bring up one of their brilliant and supposedly unanswerable arguments it is one more variant on the usual stuff. Even Goofy could handle them, with or without Mickey. Can't you handle it? Or if not, can't you forget about it. There's entirely too much taking seriously all sorts of apologists for Islam and for Muslims. Worry about the great Ignorant and Undecided. They're the ones to try to convince. Leave the others be. Let them thoroughly convince one another.

It is not only presumptuous, but even cruel, to make such requests and to make it appear as if I am lazy, or pusillanimous or something. I have contributed between 3000 and 4000 postings to this site, almost all of them as a volunteer, even as I keep my hand out in Eleemosynary Position #1 (see "The Gypsy's Handbook"). Yet, when you present me with something as above, I nonetheless feel compelled to offer a quick answer for you. And even then I wonder: will I still respect myself in the morning? And these answers take up time, or even thinking about whether or not to bother annoys.

Please. Have you no decen... as Joseph Welch of Hale and Dorr famously said, on another occasion, to the five-o'clock-shadowed Senator from Wisconsin.

What would be wrong with France expelling illegal aliens, assuming that muslim non-citizens fall into that category? All countries have the right to determine who will immigrate and they also have the right to expel illegals.

The U.S. is being overrun by illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico. They are everywhere; small towns have been literally taken over by hordes of non-English speaking Hispanics. They migrate to every state from coast to coast in large groups. It is not unusual for twenty of them to live in one small house, park a dozen cars all over the yard and on the curb; have wild, drunken parties into the wee hours; strew trash, beer cans and liquor bottles from one end of the street to the other. They don't exactly make congenial neighbors. Before anyone calls me a racist, let me send a few dozen of them to your neighborhood.

I can certainly empathize with an immigration problem because we have entirely too many immigration problems. The bleeding hearts are so eager to help the poor and oppressed as long as they don't have to see or hear them up close and personal.

Nariz,

I am no scholar and I probably will never spend the time to make sure for myself that what Hugh says about the Benes Decree is correct. However, from reading Hugh's posts over a long period of time, I've come to respect and admire him greatly. This respect and admiration, by which I come to implicitly trust someone when they make important, far-reaching claims (I have to implicitly trust certain minds on certain issues, since I'm not about to learn Czech and German, nor Hindu and other languages in order to delve deeply into the colossal Hindu-Muslim historiography -- and most people will have to navigate this epochal problem on the basis of implicit trust on many issues, since most people are not encyclopedic renaissance men), can become seriously undermined when I see that person uninterested in engaging another worthy intellect on such an important, far-reaching issue that obviously has significance for our epochal problem with Islam. Hugh may not care if my respect and admiration for him as a singularly competent, erudite, imaginative analyst of this epochal problem may become undermined. But it's not merely that; I really believe that if Hugh engaged with Anonymous, from what I know of Anonymous based upon years of reading and debating him, it would be a spectacular debate.
I don't blame Hugh for considering that prospect dubious; but I remain disappointed that he won't at least give it a good try, from which of course he may disengage at any time he likes.

Someone wrote:

"BTW, Gary I agree with you, this "Muslim" friend of Cruzados is an apostate. Actually he isn't a Muslim, he has already left Islam (as they term it)."

He is not my "friend" (I only saw him two or three times), I actually befriended his older daughter. And no, he is not an apostate, I believe he is already fasting for Ramadan. However, he is very lax on his Muslim "duties". The man is from the Indian sub-continent and he married a white (Portuguese) Catholic woman for love, which caused most of his family to stop speaking to him for many years.

I repeat, he eats pork and drinks the occasional Scotch (when he is with other Muslims he avoids doing that out of respect, but that's about it).

So no, unfortunately he has not left Islam but his Islam is definitely not the same as the one practiced by the Islamo-fascists.

Would Bin Laden call him an apostate? Probably. I don't think he gives a damn about that, though. He is from Mozambique, and one thing many of you guys don't understand is that the Islam practiced in mahy parts of Africa is actually a very corrupted form, and will remain so without Saudi interference.

'He is from Mozambique, and one thing many of you guys don't understand is that the Islam practiced in mahy parts of Africa is actually a very corrupted form, and will remain so without Saudi interference'~ Cruzado

No, actually, I do understand, Cruzado. That is pretty much a good description of the way most Christians practice their faith, no matter what denomination they belong to... that's just the way the human race is. Pretty much the way I am... not the black and white that some insist on seeing.

As I was saying elsewhere:

I think most Everyone on the planet just wants to work towards their own dreams, take care of their own families, look forward to their own futures…. and idiots like the Jihadists/Fundamentalists want to run their lives for them, whether they like it or not.

I for one don’t think things are going to work out with islam until they suffer the same Reformation - CounterReformation that Christianity did. Unfortunately, one only has to look at the wars during That period, to see what a disaster a muslim Reformation is going to be, around the world.

t-ham:

Yes, and one has to hope that French intelligence/secret service has learned to be a little more subtlte since the debacle of using frogmen to sink Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior (or whichever boat) which was moored somewhere in the South Pacific to block France's nuke testing program back in the 70s or whenever it was.

"one thing many of you guys don't understand is that the Islam practiced in mahy parts of Africa is actually a very corrupted form, and will remain so without Saudi interference."

- cruzado

"That is pretty much a good description of the way most Christians practice their faith, no matter what denomination they belong to... that's just the way the human race is"

- Gary

The two situations are not as blandly equivalent as Gary makes them out to be:

1) The laxity of Christians has not, for at least 3 or 4 centuries now, occasioned untold misery and mayhem in the context of wars (or mass violence short of wars) for religious purity that in our modern era afflict giant regions of Africa (Sudan, Nigeria, Algeria, just to name a few) as well as India for the last 50 years, as well as SE Asia where, if there are not whole-scale full-blown wars, there are outbursts of attacks, pogroms and lynching vigilante violence mostly caused by Muslims unhappy with "the way the human race is".

2) The laxity of Christians is not merely the result of "the way the human race is", but is also a result of profound changes and progress that have occurred in the West over the last few centuries -- increasing at astonishing rates with each passing century, each passing generation, each passing decade. The laxity of Muslims (when it is present), however, is more due to merely "the way the human race is" in that passive sense -- sinking to the common denominator of "live and let live" -- rather than in the much more active, brilliant, courageous, astoundingly progressive and therefore culturally superior way manifested by the modern West (yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not forgetting all our flaws -- how could I? We air our own dirty laundry more than any other culture in the history of the Solar System!).

Re: the Benes Decree

Hugh wrote:

”No one then, and no one now. Save for someone you quote, whose transparent strategy is to carefullly ignore the history of the behavior of those Sudeten Germans before and during the war
I repeat: not Havel, …no Czech,and no intelligent person then or now, would dare to say the Czechs were not fully within their rights, and justified.”

Anonymous quotes Milan Kundera:

“I don't know how I feel about Benes, or the expulsions. Or, to be more precise, I have many conflicting feelings on those subjects. But I do know that Czech politcal leadership should mean more than vulgar nationalism, and that Czech nationalism should mean more than "fuck the Germans."

And adds:

“By the way: Václav Havel repeated his apology [for the Benes Decree] in March 1990, saying that the expulsion was ‘the mistakes and sins of our fathers’. ”

Dr. Pepper~ Uhm, Well! I was speaking on the Family level, not the geopolitcal...

Above it is suggested that I was wrong in claiming that Vaclav Havel did not see anything wrong with the Benes Decree. Obviously he did. For, after the demonstrations in Wenceslas Square in 1989, after the end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, after the founding of the Czech Republic, as the head of that Republic, deeply interested in helping his country prosper, Vaclav Havel told the Austrians, those people who with Germany were most immediately concerned about the expulsion of Sudeten Germans, the following: "the expulsion was ‘the mistakes and sins of our fathers’. ”

Was this a full-throated attack on the Benes Decree as morally unacceptable? Is it even clear that the "fathers" in question are Czech Czechs only, but the collective "ancestors" -- Czech and ethnic German, who were also guilty of "mistakes and sins"? And does the study of Havel's entire career, his plays, his Letters to Milena, his remarks over a long period, show that he was ridden with guilt over the Benes Decre, or not? And could one not find the Benes Decree justified in principle,which was the point I was making, the reason why I offered the Benes Decree in the first place to remind readers, or to let them know, that there have been, along with all the obvious examples of unjustified and horrible expuslions, those that in the past have had reasonable justification, and have not been criticized by almost all (I have added that modifier) of those who either were citizens of the country carrying out the expulsions, or citizens of other countries with the most immediate experience of what triggered such behavior (the successful appeals, by Hitler, to populations of Volksdeutsche all over the place, who when the Nazis occupied a country, automatically received special treatment different from the non-Germans, and very often enthusiastically collaborated with the German occupiers).

It is entirely possible, is it not, that one could criticize elements of how the Benes Decree or Decrees were carried out, and still find that, as a general notion, it was a governmental act that was both rational and justified. It may be that some who clearly posed no threat -- such as the few German Jews who might have survived, but who were clearly not deserving of expulsion because as a class, they were victims, rather than collaborators, with the Germans. In the same way, one might criticize how, in England during World War II, Germany Jewish refugees were interned along with pro-Nazi Germans -- that is, one can find fault with how a policy was administered. But the policy itself -- of rounding up, as potential spies, those who were from Germany and therefore likely, on the whole, to be a security threat -- was not wrong.

I maintain that the words Havel used above (if there are others, adduce them) do not stand clearly for the proposition that the Benes Decree was morally wrong. They stand rather for the proposition that, after years of not finding fault, Vaclav Havel as head of state felt he had to tell the Austrians, and Austria is a major if not the major trading partner and gateway to Europe for Czechoslovakia, that indeed, in regard to the Benes Decree, there were "sins and mistakes" of our fathers.

Even so, Havel's remark caused a fury in the Czech Parliament and elsewhere. No one could stand even a hint of an attack on the Benes Decree. Too bad that that was not mentioned at the website whose stuff you insist on bringing to this one, and depositing it proudly, for us all to take note.

I note that of the entire long list I gave -- Dubcek, General Svoboda, Jaroslav Seifert, Pavel Kohut (or perhaps I left him out this time, but not previously), and all the rest -- the only one for whom a remark criticizing the "sins and mistakes" connected to the carrying-out of the Benes Decree (I refuse to accept as a given the interpretation which suggests that Havel thought, from first to last, the Benes Decree was an abomination) is Havel. The remark of Milan Kundera is distinctly mixed, and that's all one needs for my purposes. I don't need to prove that everyone thought the Benes Decree did not have problems, or that it was carried out absolutely splendidly. Not at all. I only needed to show, and I did, that the people behind the Decree (Benes, Masaryk, the entire Czech people in 1946) and almost every noted Czech political figure and intellectual and moral authority since, has found that Benes Decree to have been neither irrational nor unjustified, and at worse, a mixed bag, where the overall goal was correct, but it was not always and everywhere implemented in the right way.

For god's sake, of course there were problems with it. Did I ever argue that the Benes Decree was perfect? Not only did it fail to have an exemption for those Sudeten Germans who might have been able to prove that before or during the War they were not disloyal to the Czech state, and in fact had worked on its behalf against the Nazi invaders -- surely if there were such people among the Sudeten Germans, they should not have been expelled. The German-speaking Jews, if indeed they were expelled (this is a charge sometimes made by revanchist Germans, trying to win sympathy for themselves), should not have been. I know too little about the behavior of ethnic Hungarians in Czechoslovakai during World War II to judge whether it was right to include them, but I suspect that whatever threat Germany seemed to pose, and for all time, the same could not be said for Hungary, and therefore for Hungarians who were Czech citizens.

If the best these people can do, by way of rebuttal to the suggestion that there have been, not only in human history, but quite recently, examples of justified expulsions -- and I haven't even so much as hinted at other examples, including the expulsion of Germans after World War II by Poland (would you like to ask what Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, and Wislava Szymborska think of that? How many tears do you think they have shed, how many apologies have they offered, for the Polish expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans? None, and with reason)-- is a quote or two, of the ambiguous kind (which may, let me repeat, go only to the execution of the Benes Decree, and not the Decree itself) offered above, well that tells you something.

I don't have to defend every part of the Benes Decree to make my point. I made it. Either you accept the idea that there can be large-scale expulsions of identifiable populations, for reasons of national security, based on evidence, or you do not. If you do, you can agree that similar undertakings in the future should not simply be greeted by an "oh, that's absolutely unthinkable." As for me, if I have a choice in Europe between the preservation of European culture, its museums, its universities, its monuments, its art, its literature, its relaxed humor, its people, and expelling large numbers of those whose presence makes the lives of those people very unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous, and has disrupted them entirely, and furthermore poses a constant and never-ending threat to the wellbeing of those indigenous European Infidels, and menaces the art of Europe, the past of Europe, the future of Europe, I wouldn't hesitate to choose large-scale expulsions.

Would you? Would anyone who thought that mere demography, based on overbreeding, should not become\ destiny, and that the follies of a generation or two of ill-informed elites, permitting such an invasion, should not be permitted to lead to the extinction of the culture and civilization of Europe?

Only if you were an idiot. And there are plenty of those going around.

Well and good, Hugh.
I don't know how many "Sudeten-Deutsche" aided and abetted the Nazis, but how long did the Nazi-spook last? More than 10 years?

The spook of Islam is a permanent menace and their methods are the same for 1400 years now.
Even communism was just a small episode in world history.

Sure, you can hardly beat the Nazis when it comes to aggression and atrocities.

The expulsion of the Mohammedan invaders can be justified.

I tend to sympathize with Dr. Pepper above, not because I have a liking for the Germans, but because 2 wrongs don't make it right!

Dr. Pepper:
"But I do know that Czech politcal leadership should mean more than vulgar nationalism, and that Czech nationalism should mean more than "fuck the Germans."

Within civilized peoples these things can, and must be sorted out.
When dealing with Islam, we are not dealing with "civilized peoples..."

Hugh is right on about the Benes Decree and the general Czech feelings about it. Got rid of those damn Germans. No problem.

There are lots of Czechs in Texas. The Czech language used to be the third most widely spoken language in Texas, and you still find it spoken in some communities. The NAZIs made Czecholsovakia a protectorate (Bohemia and Moravia) during World War II, shortly after entering the Sudeten land. Slovakia, on the Eastern end was administered differently, and today it is a separate country.

The Czechs had their own problems with the Muslim invaders, as great battles were fought in the vicinity of Bratislava, not far from Vienna. Some of the museums have paintings depicting the bloody battles. The muslim advance into central Europe was stopped near there.

The Germans wanted the whole of Czecholsovakia because it had become a technological and industrial powerhouse between the wars. It also has some Uranium deposits. The Skoda munitions works turned out arms for the German Army. I have a CZ-24 pistol, much prized because when the German's took over, they retooled some of the forgings to stamp the model, caliber, and manufacturer in the German language, replacing the Czech. It also bears NAZI proof marks. It was issued to the police and Gestapo.

General George Patton's units entered Czecholsovakia in 1945. The Soviets were coming from the other direction, so he swung north and headed into Germany. He left in such a hurry that he abandoned many vehicles, which were hidden by the population and didn't come out until many years later. 1989, 1990.

When the Communists came to power in 1947, one of my relatives was thrown from the upper window of the textile mill he owned. Defenestration. Power to the people, you know.

During the height of the Cold War, I managed to take a few pictures of brand-new Soviet tanks in the rail yard of the Skoda Munitions Works. Sneaky piece of art it was. The Tesla Nuclear Instruments Factory was an errie damn place north of Prague, up in the mountains, all lit up at night, surrounded by barbed wire, snow, and deep beautiful woods. I got close but couldn't get a good photo.

However, I still have a nice stamp collection that was given to me by the pilot of a former president. The pilot, a non-communist, had managed to survive. He had been imprisoned by the NAZIs and almost died. I left the stamp collection with someone else to carry and I'm told it was taken out in the diplomatic pouch.

Yeah. Benes is still a hero. Thomas G. Masaryk maybe more so. The people didn't like the Germans, and had no qualms about having forced them out. But I always felt they hated the Communists even more than the NAZIs. The NAZIs and Communists both enslaved them, but the Communists made them pretend that they liked it.

I once had dinner with a group of Czechs that had been very quietly assembled for my visit. Before dinner, the host produced a bottle of red vermouth and a bottle of white vermouth, and asked me which one I would like to enjoy. Well, I thought either one could make me gag, but maybe the white one was safer, so I said "Byla" or "White". Around the table, each and every person (I think there were eleven) said "white" and was given a glass. Finally, the host poured himself a glass of the white vermouth, and held it up. His toast: "We are all fed up with Red." Then one man told us how close he had come in attempting to escape to America. His attempt had failed, but luckily he had not been discovered. He didn't think he would ever have another chance. He cried. So did I, and I was so overwhelmed by my good fortune to be an American. Like having been born into fabulous wealth and privilege that you really don't deserve on merit. There were other stories. Had someone overheard us, I guess we could have all been shot. It was a moving experience. I have no idea what the hell we had for dinner.

Those Czechs have now been free for fifteen years. Only fifteen years. They understand the muslim mindset, because they understand oppression. In the end, they may teach us some lessons.

Fuck the damn Germans huh? So why the hell should we help you fight the muzzies?

The remark posted immediately above is curious. The Benes Decree was not an attack on "Germans" but on Nazi sympathizers, and on a pool of likely (and many of them proven) sympathizers with German claims. It was not clear to the Czechs in 1946 that Germany would not at some point again be a threat to them, and they didn't want to take that chance. The discussion of the Benes Decree was offered only by way of offering an example that not all expulsions are undertaken by montrous governments doing monstrous things and supported by monstrous people. Masaryk, Benes, and the Czechs were not monstrous. Churchill, De Gaulle, De Gasperi, and Truman and many others had no qualms about the Benes Decree. Even if it was not always and everywhere applied or administered in a way that was above criticism, the point has been made.

And as for that curious remark -- "why the hell should we help you fight the muzzies" -- who is "we" and who is "you" and who stoops to such terms as "fight the muzzies"? Either Islam is a menace or it is not. If it is, then "you" are not doing anyone a favor by opposing it, and no one need do you a favor by denouncing the Czechs for the Benes Decree. Does someone expect to be bribed into finding the tenets of Islam a threat?

Peculiar, to say the least.

I don't understand how you can call the murder and expulsion of the Germans a good thing, then expect us to smile and saddle up to fight radical islam with you. How typically American. People always bring upt the war when talking to Germans. Seriously, we are trying to forget that period of history, and y'all aren't helping.

How did we get onto WWII anyway? Aren't we supposed to be worried about the threat of islam, not the crimes of people who are long dead, and have condemned their countrymen to an eternity of guilt and shame?

The Benes Decree was brought up as an example of how one advanced Western state thought it had to deal, or should deal, or had a right to deal, with what was, with justice, believed to be a permanent security threat.

As to this business of not bringing up the Nazis -- why not? The same threats to the idea of the individual, and to artistic expression, that the Nazis and Communists in their different ways presented, are also offered by Islam. Are we to make some kind of pact whereby nothing will be alluded to in the past, or we are supposed to give the Germans during World War II a pass, or to revise history so as to revile the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, and all the others who participated in expelling ethnic Germans after World War II? Why?

As for the idea that the Germans have been condemend to an "eternity of guilt and shame" -- well, you could have fooled me. Even in the early 1960s American servicemen were treasted with hostility by unreconstructed Nazis. As far as Germans today, I don't see nearly enough evidence for any sense of "guilt and shame." The same could be said, incidentally, for the Soviet Union, where those who who how to wheel and deal and profit under the Soviet regime have, in many cases, managed to appropriate property formerly owned by the state and become that appetizing thing, the New Russian.

One should be capable -- one is quite capable -- of keeping in mind whatever menace Islam offers, and not forgetting the other kinds, or pretending they did not, or do not, exist.

In the same way, one can deplore Islam without endorsing all the idiocy running around the Western world. "Physician, heal thyself" is not quite appropriate here -- we have powers of recupration, and Islam none, and it would not do to breast-beat when such breast-beating diverts attention from a real and growing threat.

But still. Who wants to make the world safe from Islam, for the likes of Mick Jagger or Paris Hilton? I share their pain.

More on the Benes Decree from Kevin and Anonymous (not entirely timely and up-to-the-last-minute responses to Hugh, since I have been a somewhat lazy (because unpaid and disrespected) courier for the posts of each side of this curiously disengaged Debate):

First Kevin:

From a profile of Vaclav Havel printed on the website of Radio Prague:

"ever since taking office Havel has been no stranger to controversy. Before he even took office his apology for the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II led to passionate political debate."

Your pal Hughie seems to play quite fast and loose with the facts, especially when he repeats falsehoods about Havel's feelings about the expulsion of the Germans from the Sudetenland after WWII, and ignores some of the facts that have come out about it. He also ignores the Joint Czech-German Declaration of 1997 which acknowledges both German and Czech responsibility for past suffering, both during and after WWII. To quote from the declaration:

"The German side acknowledges Germany's responsibility for its role in a historical development which led to the 1938 Munich Agreement, the flight and forcible expulsion of people from the Czech border area and the forcible breakup and occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic.

"It regrets the suffering and injustice inflicted upon the Czech people through National Socialist crimes committed by Germans. The German side pays tribute to the victims of National Socialist tyranny and to those who resisted it.

"The German side is also conscious of the fact that the National Socialist policy of violence towards the Czech people helped to prepare the ground for post-war flight, forcible expulsion and forced resettlement.

III

"The Czech side regrets that, by the forcible expulsion and forced resettlement of Sudeten Germans from the former Czechoslovakia after the war as well as by the expropriation and deprivation of citizenship, much suffering and injustice was inflicted upon innocent people, also in view of the fact that guilt was attributed collectively. It particularly regrets the excesses which were contrary to elementary humanitarian principles as well as legal norms existing at that time, and it furthermore regrets that Law No. 115 of 8 May 1946 made it possible to regard these excesses as not being illegal and that in consequence these acts were not punished."

Again, the question is: What good did it do Czechoslovakia, which was controlled by the Communists for 40 years after WWII, to expel ethnic Germans, other than to satisfy the understandable feelings of Czechs to take revenge against the Germans? Ethnic conflict under Soviet Communist rule was virtually non-existent, at least in comparison to what we've seen since the collapse of Communism. So even if the Germans had remained in the Sudetenland, they would hardly have posed much of a threat to the rest of the population, given the style of governmental repression that existed in Czechoslovakia during most of this time.

-- Kevin

Dr. Pepper,

Shughie might well offer the Benes Decrees as an example of what a liberal, tolerant state felt compelled to do after World War II; but he’s still talking through his arse. The Decrees were neither liberal nor tolerant; they were statist and retributive. The bulk of them (90% to be precise) pertain to the nationalisation of heavy industry and the banks, the regulation of the press, and the confiscation of property to meet the costs of reconstruction; hardly the acts of a liberal regime. The most illiberal of them all, however, was the presidential decree of 1st February 1945, entitled ‘The Great Retribution Decree’, reissued in June 1945 when Benes returned to Prague, by which ‘collective guilt’ was ascribed to entire ethnic groups for the crimes of the Nazis, and which provided for summary ‘justice’ to be dispensed to the Sudeten Germans and Slovak Magyars without due process by ‘extraordinary people’s courts’. I guess this is what you guys find so attractive in the Benes Decrees: not because of the socialist revolution they set in train, but because they set a precedent for your ascription of ‘collective guilt’ to Muslims generally for the atrocities carried out by some of their number, on the basis of which ‘collective guilt’ your crackpot scheme to expel all Muslims from the ‘West’ would be an instance of justified expulsion rather than unjustified expulsion. But we have for weeks now been asking for a justification of your ascription of ‘collective guilt’ to Muslims generally; and the best been able to come up with is ‘Well, the Czechoslovaks ascribed it to the ethnic Germans and Hungarians in 1945.’ Well, whoopee-do!

Shughie’s talking through his arse too when he says that the Benes Decree was designed to end, once and for all, a perceived security threat to the nation of Czechoslovakia. Crap! The particular decree to which you are referring here was, even in its title, explicitly designed to exact retribution of the ethnic Germans for the evils perpetrated by the Nazis. It also represents a continuation of a policy of ethnic cleansing which the Czechoslovaks had been pursuing since the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918. In 1918, the government of the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic agreed to guarantee the rights of national minorities under the protection and supervision of the Geneva-based Council of the League of Nations. This obligation, however, was never honoured during the twenty-year existence of the first Czechoslovak Republic. The Prague government revoked acquired rights of domicile, treating millions of people of German and Hungarian origin as aliens lands they had first settled in the 12th century. They were victims of harassment and deprivation. The Czechoslovak government confiscated land from their German and Hungarian owners, without compensation, for distribution among Czech and Slovak colonists. In addition, a punitive tax was enacted, called the ‘capital levy’, to collect up to 30% of the value of German and Hungarian property. A model of liberalism and tolerance indeed!

The Czechs represented only 43% of the mosaic state and attracted political problems for themselves in their own republic through their intolerance. Even their ruling Slovak partners were dissatisfied with Czech domination in the partnership. The Sudeten Germans, with a population of 3.5 million and representing the largest minority group in Czechoslovakia, establish contact with the autonomous Slovaks as well as with the Hungarian and Polish minorities, and in 1935 these minorities formed an autonomist bloc against the Czechs. This so-called ‘German Party’ was the largest political party in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s.

The radicalisation of the internal political situation in Czechoslovakia worried the founders of the country – the British and French governments – and led to the emergence of the recommendation to appoint a mediator to arrive at a negotiated settlement of the minorities problem. This led to the convocation of the four-power Munich Conference (consisting of Britain, France, Germany and Italy) at the request of the Czechoslovak government, which culminated in the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938, and the cession of the Sudeten German districts to Germany. These historical events forced Benes from office. Benes fled to Britain via Rumania several days later, with millions of dollars worth of US currency and gold in his possession. And the rest, as they say, is history.

‘Well, no one in all of Europe thought the Benes Decree was wrong. No one then, and no one now.

No one save the Allied Powers, who vetoed the expulsion of ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia following the brutality and indiscriminate nature of the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from their homelands, the Commissioners with whom Czechoslovakia negotiated its accession to the EU, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, and Václav Klaus. Even the Papacy protested at the time, the ethnic Germans being Catholic and the Czechs Protestant. Hardly anyone, really.

By the way: here is Article III of the German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and their Future Development which was signed by Helmut Kohl and Vaclav Klaus in January 1997.

Quote:

III
The Czech side regrets that, by the forcible expulsion and forced resettlement of Sudeten Germans from the former Czechoslovakia after the war as well as by the expropriation and deprivation of citizenship, much suffering and injustice was inflicted upon innocent people, also in view of the fact that guilt was attributed collectively. It particularly regrets the excesses which were contrary to elementary humanitarian principles as well as legal norms existing at that time, and it furthermore regrets that Law No. 115 of 8 May 1946 made it possible to regard these excesses as not being illegal and that in consequence these acts were not punished.

So, Shuggie is also talking through his arse when he says that the Czechs don’t have a problem with the Benes Decrees.

I don’t have a problem with justified expulsions. We in Britain have expelled quite a few nasty buggers recently; and their expulsions have been entirely justified, on the grounds that they are foreign nationals who breached the conditions of their leave to remain in this country by engaging in criminal activity. What I do have a problem with is wholesale ethnic cleansing of the sort which you propose on the grounds of ‘collective responsibility’, and of the sort which Czechoslovakia carried out in retribution for the evils it suffered. I’m still waiting for some justification of the claim that Muslims generally are to be held collectively responsible for the acts of Islamic terrorists, just as the Bohemian, Carpathian, and Moravian Volksdeutsche are still waiting for some justification of the claim that they are collectively responsible – purely in virtue of their ethnicity – for the acts of their Reichsdeutsche cousins.

Finally: I can’t let this pass without a quiet chuckle at the ignorance of the man.

Quote:

After German aggression in two world wars, the Czechs were fed up. They simply were not going to endure the security problem of a powerful German population anymore -- so they expelled them, to lands already peopled by those who spoke the same language, shared the same religious beliefs and customs and fairy-tales and main sense of identity and all the rest.

Point 1: the Czechs were not on the receiving end of German aggression in the First World War; as anyone with the least knowledge of Central European history could tell Sherlock, the Czechs were a minority within the Austro-Hungarian Empire until Czechoslovakia was born – just as Iraq was born out of the bloated, corrupt, moribund, fabulously putrid Shariah Turkey after World War I – in 1918, and were as such part of the Reichsdeutsche aggression against the Italians.

Point 2: the Czechs expelled them from lands already peopled by those who spoke the same language, shared the same religious beliefs and customs and fairy-tales and main sense of identity and all the rest; the lands from which the Bohemian, Carpathian, and Moravian Volksdeutsche were expelled were their ethnic homelands, and had been since the 12th century.

-- Anonymous

Frederick and shiek yer'mami --

you seem to be confusing my opinions about the Benes Decree (which I've not expressed here) with the opinions of these people from another discussion forum (Kevin and Anonymous, from the Examined Life philosophy forum), which I have been quoting here about the Benes Decree.

"the website whose stuff you insist on bringing to this one, and depositing it proudly"

I'm not depositing these posts of Kevin and Anonymous "proudly"; I have been at loggerheads -- sometimes vituperously -- with these two fellows for bloody YEARS. Does that mean I should discount the data and interpretations they bring to the table, or that I should summarily dismiss them as insignificant imbeciles? You seem to equate debate with pulling teeth, even when the opponents are demonstrably not insignificant imbeciles. For the thankless job of the dentist's assistant, running bloody teeth, one by one, back and forth across town, I am at least thankful that you have deigned to open your mouth.

"No one save the Allied Powers, who vetoed the expulsion of ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia following the brutality and indiscriminate nature of the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from their homelands, the Commissioners with whom Czechoslovakia negotiated its accession to the EU, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, and Václav Klaus. Even the Papacy protested at the time, the ethnic Germans being Catholic and the Czechs Protestant. Hardly anyone, really."
-- from the posting by the Man Who Cannot Take a Hint, above

1) The statements above are sly, because each purports to be about the Benes Decree in toto, or misquotes someone (Kundera did NOT denounce the Benes Decree -- he is quoted previously as having said he had mixed, complicated thoughts --clearly, he may have thought it was executed too broadly, or with too great ruthlessness. That is not the same thing as denouncing the Benes Decree -- he was given a clear chance to do so, and did not.

Vaclav Havel, similarly, did not denounce the Benes Decree but apologized, late in his life, for the "sins and mistakes" assocaited with it. That again is not the same thing. No doubt an official of the British government might wish to apologize in German Jews interned along with others from Germany during World War II -- apologize for the "mistakes" of how the policy was applied, but not for the policy of interning enemy aliens. There is a distinction. Given that any Czech No one save the Allied Powers, who vetoed the expulsion of ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia following the brutality and indiscriminate nature of the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from their homelands, the Commissioners with whom Czechoslovakia negotiated its accession to the EU, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, and Václav Klaus. Even the Papacy protested at the time, the ethnic Germans being Catholic and the Czechs Protestant. Hardly anyone, really.

For 59 years every single Czech leader, intellectual or political, has been free to denounce -- with full-throated denunciation -- the Benes Decree by name. The fact that no one has, the fact that all these people -- Svoboda, Siefert, Dubcek, Kohut and tens of thousands of others, have not,and that the best that can be brought up are two statements by Havel about "sins" and "mistakes" that it is wrong to take as constituting such full-throated denunciation of the whole idea of expelling the Sudeten Germans, or that Kundera's remark about his "complicated" and "mixed" feelings constitute such denunciation, is absurd.

Of course there were things wrong with how the Benes Decree was applied, and the Czechs, maddened with a desire for revenge as well as to never again have to even worry about such a problem, were not in a Marquess-of-Queensberry frame of mind. And those Hungarians who were covered were not exactly in the same category; Hungary was not a threat, and had not been a threat, in the same way as Germany had.

As far as the Papacy complaining at that time, in those days the Papacy simply reacted to the fact that the Germans were Cathollic, the Czechs Protestant. Within the Vatican the sympathy for the Slovak bishop who had been a war criminal was also strong, and the Rat Line which helped such Nazis as Klaus Barbie get to South America was established with help from the same quarters. When I wrote that "no one" objected I meant, of course, not literally "no one" (oh, Germans protested, and some still do) protested -- there is nothing that has happened in the history of the world that "no one" has not opposed. I meant that none of those to whom the Czechs looked to for moral authority -- and an ambiguous quote from Kundera, and two from Havel made to Austrians about "sins" and "mistakes" when he might so easily, had he wanted, simply to say that the Benes Decree was immoral, was wrong -- and he did not -- does not convince.

What about the fact that some Germans wished to bring this up and force a Czech apology before the Czech Republic could join the E.U.? Well, so what? I am perfectly aware that there are revanshist circles in Germany; there are Germans who feel that the British were beastly to them by daring to bomb German cities as London and Coventry were bombed. So what? How does that vitiate the point that there are examples (and I could have given more) of expulsions after World War II of ethnic Germans that were, in the circumstances, humanly and even geopolitically understandable. And that, therefore, those who suggest that only bestial regimes -- Saudi Arabia with Yemenis, Kuwait with "Palestinian" Arabs, Libya with Egyptians, and so on -- are the ones to engage in mass expulsions. It isn't true. And the same goes for the Polish expulsion of Germans from the lands that Poland possessed, or repossessed, after World War II.

What is noticeable are the names that are missing. Where is Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, Rene Cassin? Where is De Gaulle or any of the French leaders? Did Camus or Sartre protest? What about De Gasperi? What about Vittorino? Cesare Pavese? Montale? Even Calvino, who had been a partisan? Not a single voice from the left, from Botteghe Oscure, thought to voice a protest? Just the Vatican, which in 1946 was hardly a paragon of virtue?

And of course I repeat my other example of justified expulsions. Who in Poland, and I named Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, but could have added to the writers Bronsislaw Geremek, Adam Michnik, and others -- who has seen fit to suggest that Poland was wrong to expel those ethnic Germans?

It is idiotic to compare what after World War II the Czechs and the Poles did with what Hitler, Stalin, and of course quite a few of the Muslim and Arab countries, routinely do, when they are not busy tormenting or even massacring their locals. I am thinking in particular of the mass expulsionj of 400,000 completely inoffensive Kashmiri Pandits by the Muslims, and the many millions of Hindus driven out of Bangladesh into India, but other examples also come to mind.

Now a word to the man Who Doesn't Take a Hint: debate as you wish, fight your battles on that website you go to and I don't. But please put an end to this mix 'n match business. You have been politely and impolitely told to stop it. What prevents you from taking the hint? My failure to reply in the future to any of this reflects not tongue-tied inability, but the unwillingness to spend my time on such stuff, when the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge has first dibs on my time.

Perhaps now is the time to brush up on your Emily Post. You might start with her list of how one should properly address Important Personages, beginning with the Abuna of the Ethiopian Coptic Church, and proceeding all the way to to the Zuider Zee Chowder Society Head, and take it from there.

How did we get onto WWII anyway? Aren't we supposed to be worried about the threat of islam, not the crimes of people who are long dead, and have condemned their countrymen to an eternity of guilt and shame?

Posted by: A.G.Frederick III at October 15, 2005 11:21 AM

I think it came up in a discussion about deporting a threatening population to justify mass deportations of muslim traitors and insurgents. I'm with you on the "long dead, and have condemned their countrymen to an eternity of guilt and shame." That eternity of guilt and shame isn't yours alone; the hordes of America haters revel in their attempts to condemn us to an eternity of guilt and shame because they say we maliciously annihilated the native Americans; ruthlessly and without cause dropped atomic bombs on Japan; commit unprecedented atrocities and terrorism around the world; that America is mired in relentless racism and persecution of minorities. Our founding fathers were racist slaveowners who stole the Indians' land. I know just how you feel. Teachers actually teach this crap to grade school children in our public schools. Can you imagine what America will be like in fifty years?

We are not responsible for the crimes and mistakes of our ancestors. All we can do is endeavor to ensure that they never occur again, which we have bent over backwards to do. In fact, Germany and the U.S. have over-compensated for past mistakes. I had the privilege of living in Germany three different times, in three different areas. I like and respect the German people very much and Germany is one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Today's Germans are not responsible for the Holocaust or Hitler and have no reason to blame themselves for a dark and regrettable era in German history, any more than Americans should hate themselves for the cruel treatment of American Indians three hundred years ago. I'm sorry it happened, but I didn't participate. I'm sorry about our brief experiment in slavery, but we were hardly the first or the last to engage in that inhumane practice. The offenses of our predecessors do not erase the many good things about our countries, nor do they represent what we are today.

Islam threatens everyone, it's everyone's problem. Germans must be involved in the battle against this scourge that threatens humanity for the sake of its own survival as a free, Western democracy. America cannot defeat these demons alone.

"How did we get onto WWII anyway? Aren't we supposed to be worried about the threat of islam, not the crimes of people who are long dead...?"

For good or ill (sometimes one, sometimes the other) European politics is still, over 50 years after the end of WWII, deeply weighed down by, as Mike Savage puts it, waiting vigilantly and anxiously for that "imaginary Maginot Line".

I.e., the anxious concern that we never succumb again to what led to Hitler has become an institutionalized and cultural habit in Europe, leading now to a paradoxical effect: in order to avoid "repeating Hitler", they tend now to identify what is labeled as "Islamophobia" as being that frightening threat of a new Fascism -- while at the same time giving outrageous free passes to the most virulent expressions of that type of Fascism today -- emanating from the Islamic nebula.

It's kind of a Catch-22 Paradox: the more a person warns about the threat of Islam, the more that person becomes labeled as the real threat.
And that paradox is so air-tight with so many people, nothing short of a few major cataclysms, perhaps, will shake them of it. Or worse, nothing short of seeing Arabic horsemen taking charge of the village square and rounding up people to imprison, shoot and behead in order to initiate the dawning of a new Caliphate.

Susanp, great post.

Frederick, I think you may have been offended by my opening paragraph, so I will assume responsibility for an explanation.

In saying "Got rid of those damn Germans. No problem," I was giving voice to the general feeling that has been conveyed to me about the expulsion of the ethnic Germans after the war, and not to my own attitude (or even their general attitude), which remains respectful of Germans in general, and admiring of Prussian military tradition and ability in particular. Without General Eisenhauer and Admiral Nimitz, where would we have been?

When the subject came up with respect to the expulsion of ethnic Germans (which was not often, I admit), I was often reminded that the Czechs themselves were expelled when the German Army had entered the Sudetenland. And that the ethnic Germans had collaborated with the invading army. These points were small ones.

Much more importantly, I was ALWAYS told, over and over, about the destruction of Lidice. This was an object of horror and revenge, revenge without any remorse.

You know the story. The British trained several ex-pat Czech commandos, who parachuted into Czechoslovakia to assassinate Colonel Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotector, second to Himmler (he of the final solution). They managed to mortally wound Heydrich in a grenade and machine gun attack, and fled on their bicycles, taking refuge in a Catholic Church in Prague. The NAZIs discovered their hiding place by torturing one of their helpers, and attacked the Church. Finally, the NAZIs had the municipal fire department flood the crypt where the commandos had taken their last refuge, and, rather than drown or surrender, the commandos shot each other.

Hitler was so outraged, that he decided to teach the Czechs a lesson. He selected the village of Lidice at random from a map, and ordered its complete destruction. The Army rounded up all the males over the age of 13, lined them up and shot them dead. Every one. The women and children were shipped off to concentration camps where they all perished. Bulldozers were brought in. They leveled every building, fence, well, and every trace of habitation. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats, were all killed. The debris was trucked away. The ground was plowed and salted. The road signs were changed to remove all references to the village. Maps were re-printed. There was no trace left.

I imagine it looked like the World Trade Center after the debris was cleared away. You know, bare ground.

When the war was over, the Czechs had a score to settle. They don't regret expelling the Germans at all. But, strangely, having achieved that satisfaction, they are now reconciled and can be at peace with Germany and its people. I am certain that had the expulsion not taken place, a hatred would still be smoldering.

I think the German people have been greatly harmed by the constant reminders of its NAZI past. Not that I think it should be ignored. The NAZI rise to power has many valuable lessons for all of us, but I think the present generation has been made to feel responsible, unjustly blamed for something beyond its control. Many of the people who point the finger are the same ones who want to destroy our pride in Western Civilization as a whole. They will always point to the failures.

And we all know that some mighty fine German Generals were executed because they tried to kill Hitler and missed.

Well, I still think that after the catastrophe that was WWI, our current history was the best possible outcome. Without the Nazis, we'd all be speaking Russian right now.