Suzi Quatro!

48 Crash! 1973!

You have no idea how much people hated this music. This was the cutting edge of glam. Very unpopular when it came out. Quatro was widely hated, and most people thought she was a lesbian. Apparently not true.

By the way, you want to know where Chrissy Hynde got her shtick? Right here, from Suzi Quatro.

Pretenders Again

This time for real. From 1980. Written by Ray Davies!

Blast from the Past

Pretenders “Kid.”

1980! 31 years ago in a week or two. It’s still on rotation, but no one’s ever heard of it. They think it  was recorded yesterday, but really it was long ago in another world.

How Indian Hindu Culture Poisoned Its Muslim Neighbors

One must understand. Islam simply does not accept that sort of horrible poverty and inequality that we see in Muslim South Asia or SE Asia. This is one great thing about the religion of Mohammad. Mohammad was never down with rightwing economics, the rule of the rich or Social Darwinism. He opposed all of that.

So Bangladesh has hope only to the extent that it is Islamic and not Hindu. Pakistan also has hope in that in that it is Islamic and not Hindu. Now the problem with these two Muslim nation is that their Islamic culture has more or less been polluted by the poison of Hinduism. So what you have here is a Hinduized Islam which is really a sick caricature of the best of what the Islamic religion can produce – a rigid class system, rule by the rich, contempt for the poor, caste (of all things), all of the shit of India without the shit religion.

Another problem is that Islam has made it almost impossible for any real Left alternative to take hold in Bangladesh, Indonesia or Pakistan. In Indonesia, 1 million Leftists were massacred. Indonesia continues to be one of the worst and most backwards and un-Islamic Muslim nations on Earth. The Left in Indonesia were killed for being “atheists.” In Bangladesh, Islamists have also slaughtered the Left for being “atheists.” These Islamists are a sick parody of Islam.

They are killing these Leftists on the grounds of being nonreligious while making their peace with some of the sickest, most unequal and un-Islamic class systems on Earth.

In the Arab World, Left economics went over quite well because the Arabs have always been this way. Arabs have always been more or less socialist in line with the original teachings of Mohammad, who was not a capitalist in any way, shape or form. It wasn’t much of a problem in Iran either. Pakistan and Bangladesh were poisoned the Social Darwinist sewer of Hinduism, so their Islam was neutered.

Indonesia and Philippines have always been home to the most reactionary Social Darwinist systems in all of East Asia. In Philippines, it is a legacy of Spanish colonialism. Its origins in Indonesia are obscure.

But in Indonesia, Islam has always allied itself with the most reactionary and vicious fascist elements of the banana republic system. Why they did this is not known, but keep in mind that Indonesia was also deeply poisoned by Hinduism. Whether they were poisoned worse than SE Asia per se is not known, but Indonesia is certainly anomalous in the collectivist Far East.

The Islamicization of Paris – A Warning to the West

Nice video.

Is there anyone besides me who thinks it is stupid that only rightwing assholes are sounding the alarm about this oh so obvious problem? The problem with Islam is it’s very intense conservatism, among other things. The Left thinks this reactionary religion is oh so dandy. Our own garden variety reactionaries think this reactionary religion of the East is a real problem. Does that make sense?

Of course those Muslims are taking over the streets around that mosque as a show of power. Islam is and has always been a supremacist religion par excellance, and once they get a certain % of numbers, they start engaging in muscle flexing like this. When they take over the streets like this, it means, “We own the streets.” I am very glad that the French are having pork and wine celebrations in the streets of their own, but that won’t stop this mess. The French need to stop importing Muslims right this minute.

Are There Good Things About India and Indians?

A commenter notes that I never say anything good about India. My response:

First of all, I don’t like the question. It’s snarky. “Can’t you say anything good about [fill in blank]?” Why should I?

I remember once I worked at a legal coding place. We wanted health benefits, and there was talk of forming a union. The boss threatened to fire the whole place in traditional glorified Mom, flag and apple pie All American fashion. At a big meeting about the crisis, she asked, “Why don’t we talk about what’s good about working here?”

I used to hang out on a Usenet group full of Zionist Jews. When they weren’t calling people anti-Semites, they were spouting Hasbara. They were also some of the meanest people I have ever met. One day, one particularly nasty Jewish woman asked, “Isn’t there anything good about Jews? Isn’t there anything good about Israel?”

The point is that asking questions like that is a typical means of deflection and not answering the question, and it’s not important anyway. There’s good about most everything if you want to look for it, but why bother? People have a right to bitch and complain.

I don’t like India. Are their good things about the place? I dunno. Good food, good music, yoga, some Indian philosophy is interesting.

I respect the self restraint of some of the Brahmins. A friend of mine told me he was celibate until marriage at age 33, and that this was absolutely proper for a good Brahmin man. He was not ashamed at all over this circumstance. In fact he was proud of it. This same guy wrote a book of essays that were mostly about India. The writing was fantastic, and there was a lot of good Indian wisdom in there.

About Indian wisdom: These people have been thinking about “wisdom” in a way that we in the West have not for millenia. They have come up with some excellent observations about the Truth and the meaning of life.

They have a very tight family structure, and they treat their relatives well. The polytheistic religious system, other than the negative aspects of it, has some very interesting observations to make about life and the human condition. Polytheism is actually a rational way of ordering the world.

Around here, we have many Punjabis who are more or less model immigrants. They commit almost no crime, and the young dedicate themselves to school and get very good grades. One Punjabi man told me that when he got off work, he went straight home to spend hours helping his kids with their homework. How many Americans of any race do that? Many of the older Punjabis have obtained advanced degrees of one type or another and are working in professional positions.

A Punjabi kid around here got in with American gangbangers and started stealing cars. He got caught, and his family was outraged. He was told that if he wanted his family to pay for his college education, he would have to work for many months for the family business for free as punishment for his crime (note that his family had also paid for an attorney and a fine related to his crimes). Now that’s some really harsh family discipline that you don’t see much in American families of any race.

Punjabi women have strong values, and they don’t seem like they give it up too easily. Young Punjabis usually have a high moral character, unlike young people of other races hereabouts.

But you’re dealing with a really sucky system over there, so what’s the point in looking for the good bits?