Quatorze Juillet: France, America, and the Mexican Connection

Mexican falconers Marching Down the Champs Elysées

Tiberge at Gallia Watch has this photo up on her website with this commentary:

Just a quick look back at the July 14 parade. Mexico was honored this year, as 150 Mexican soldiers led the parade down the Champs-Elysées. Below, the Mexican falconers. A great sight.

I think Tiberge means by "A great sight" is "A formidable sight," as in "An incredible sight."

I searched on-line to find any reaction to this incredible incongruity: the president of another country honored at a national festival where the armed forces are in procession, with that president's country's ARMED FORCES joining in the parade!!!!

All the criticism I could find are about Hollande's groping hands, although I find nothing wrong with a man giving special attention to another woman with the woman's husband nearby. There is nothing wrong with admiring feminine beauty, and the "groping" is highly exaggerated.

In any case, for some strange reason (perhaps Tiberge can explain) it is a "tradition" to invite foreign forces to march in the Bastille Day parade. Of course, part of the rationale is to invite armies who assisted France, or fought with France, in the various wars through the decades.

The Telegraph explains through an image caption:

Soldiers carrying the flags of 76 countries marched down the Champs Elysées in Paris, as France's traditional Bastille Day military parade commemorated the centenary of World War I.

That still begs the question: What was the extraordinary contribution of Mexico to World War I battles that garnered them a special invitation for France's foremost national holiday?

Mexico was "neutral" during WWI, and fought in the Philippines during WWII against Japan, which hardly gives Mexico an extraordinary status in the World Wars.

Here is a commentary about inviting foreign dignitaries, and foreign armed forces, to the Bastille Day parades. It has a cautious tone:

Recently, it has become customary to invite units from France's close allies to participate in the parade. For instance, in 2004, to mark the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, British troops (the band of the Royal Marines, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, Grenadier Guards and King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery) led the Bastille Day parade in Paris, with the Red Arrows flying overhead.[Source: Bastille Day Military Parade

The British participation in 1919 and 1939 are clearly in their capacities as allies due to the two World Wars.
[More from the same source below]

While British troops had participated in the Bastille Day parades of 14 July 1919 and 1939 (see below), this was the first occasion that invited foreign troops had actually led the parade. In 2007, the parade opened with detachments from all member states of the European Union, flying the European flag. The European anthem was played.

In fact, the Nazis did a victory march of sorts down Champs Elysées, on July 14, 1940:

German Troops Marching Down Champs Elysées, June 1940

In the Second World War, the German troops occupying Paris and Northern France paraded along the same route.

And, the importance of the 14th of July as a demonstration of national military strength was apparent when:

A victory parade under General de Gaulle was held upon the restoration in 1945 of Paris to French rule while within the period of occupation by the Germans a company of the commando Kieffer of the Forces Navales Françaises Libres had continued the French National Holiday parade in the streets of London.

De Gaulle Marching Down Champs Elysées

The News reports here that Mexico opened the parade! And adds this:

It is the first time in the history of the parade that the participation of foreign troops coincides with a state visit from the president of the invited country. Mexico is also the first country from Latin America to take part in the event.

What is strange is Hollande allowing this "state visit" to occur during France's national holiday, and "honoring" it with that country's armed forces.

The historical connection of France with Mexico is:

Maximilian (Spanish: Maximiliano; Born Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph; 6 July 1832 – 19 June 1867) was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire. He was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he entered into a scheme with Napoleon III of France to rule Mexico. France had invaded Mexico in 1861, with the implicit support and approval of other European powers, as part of the War of the French Intervention. Seeking to legitimize French rule, Napoleon III invited Maximilian to establish a new Mexican monarchy. With the support of the French army and a group of conservative Mexican monarchists, Maximilian traveled to Mexico where he declared himself Emperor of Mexico on 10 April 1864.[Source: Wikipedia]

Perhaps it is to expiate themselves of the long-forgotten sin that Hollande made this gesture towards the Mexicans.

But I think it is the recurring pattern of contemporary Western leaders who invite foreign elements into their countries, with the insidious intention of weakening the West by strengthening the non-Western world.

This is what Obama is doing.

Mexican Soldiers Marching Down the Champs Elysées this 14th July, 2015

The flag at the very front is the Mexican flag.

George Washington: The World Historical Figure In the Quintessentially American Tradition

George Washington, 1780
Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)
Oil on canvas; 95 x 61 3/4 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Part of what makes his live story so gripping is that he shaped himself into the world-historical figure he became, in the quintessentially American tradition of men who spring, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, from their own Platonic conception of themselves. But his self-conception was extraordinary: it began as a worthy ideal and evolved into a magnificent one. In his fiercely ambitious youth, he sought to win acclaim for his for his heroism and savoir faire. In his maturity, he strove to be, in his own conscience even more than in the eyes of others, virtuous, public-spirited, and (although his ethic wouldn't allow him to claim the word (noble). He did hope, however, that posterity would recognize and honor the purity of his motives; and Americans, who owe him so much, do him but justice in understanding not only what he did for them but also what greatness of soul he achieved to do it.

From: The Founding Fathers at Home (p. 94)
By: Myron Magnet

Ann Coulter: Racist - Part Dos

I wrote a post last week on Ann Coulter's new book without having read the book, started reading it, bought it, or had any other physical contact with the book.

That is a minor crime.

To rid my self of the "hypocrite" label, I bought the book two days ago from my local Chapters/Indigo bookstore. It was the only copy in the store, and I assume it really was the only copy in the store. Coulter's label of "racist" goes a long way here in Canada.

In any case, I am already into the third chapter, and it is a pleasure to read a book by a witty, intelligent, and normal human being, who hasn't caught the liberal bug of distorting words, information and reality.

Here are a few quotes (only a few, I don't want to give away the book!) that are especially Coulteresque, and I am only in the third chapter!

--------------------------------------

Chapter 1, Page 9:

Americans ought to be suspicious about being incessantly told fences "don't work." It's like being told wheels don't work...The NEw YOrk Times explains, for example: "Would be immigrants still find ways over, under, through and around [fences]." Wheels still find ways to bend, break, or spring leaks.

[...]

Even Republicans who pretend to want a secure border are always telling us fences won't work. The NEW WAY of stopping tubs from overflowing is to use mops and blow-dryers. Sure, we can always turn to water off, but that won't work because it could always spring a leak. Let's just keep mopping.

--------------------------------------

Chapter 2, p. 13:

Why not take in immigrants who are better than us, instead of immigrants who are worse than us?

--------------------------------------

Chapter 2, p. 22

Leftists have no trouble adopting the persona of an oppressed Third World person. The only identity they have difficulty assuming is: "American."

--------------------------------------

Chapter 2, p. 23:

At least liberals have a clear mission and know what they're fighting for: Their plan is to turn America into another Third World hellhole, where the two parties are the Chuck Schumer Democratic Party and the Nancy Pelosi Democratic Party. Republicans can't think past the next election. They need campaign cash, and their big donors want cheap workers now. We're lucky if we can get Republicans to think past their kids' summer jobs. Karl Rove praises illegal immigration, saying: "I don;t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas. How about one illegal alien gets to stay if Karl Rove goes?

--------------------------------------

Chapter 2, p. 23:

Democrats love the "browning of America" because they need the votes; liberals want it because they seek the destruction of America; and certain business interests support it because they want the cheap labor.

--------------------------------------

Chapter 2, p. 28-29:

In the section: Nowhere Left to Go:

The Third World invasion being aggressively hidden by the media will never make it to Park Avenue or Nob Hill. The price is being paid exclusively by ordinary Americans. Almost alone in the world, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America has been a haven for minorities, women, children, plants, and animals. None have fared so well in any other culture. As the lawyer for two Iraqi men charged with child rape in Nebraska said, America's views about women and children "put us in the minority position in the world." Once America is gone, there won't be anyplace left to go.

--------------------------------------

Chapter 3, p. 31:

With immigration, the most powerful forces in our culture are all on the same page - the Democrats, the rich, Washington lobbyists, Republican consultants, and money-grubbing churches. Even stalwarts on other conservative issues, like the Wall Street Journal, are with the Left on mass immigration from the Third World. When it comes to society's rich and powerful, immigration is the great unifier. The only ones opposed to fundamentally transforming this country into some other country are the American people.

--------------------------------------

I found a piece by Larry Auster on Ann Coulter published at VDare, where he writes:

I acknowledged that [Coulter] had written several articles on immigration, but pointed out that they were all on illegal immigration and amnesty:

“Note, March 28, 2010: I just came upon this entry, and saw my prediction that Coulter would not revisit the [legal immigration] issue again. So I did a search of her articles at AnnCoulter.com. There were a few columns, almost all from 2006-2007, criticizing amnesty. There was no further column mentioning America’s existing immigration law—particularly the 1965 Immigration Act which opened America’s borders to the world—and how it is transforming America racially, culturally, politically, and economically. So my prediction in June 2007 was correct. After coming out of the immigration closet for one second, after 13 years of stone cold silence, Coulter went back into it again and has never re-emerged. In her entire career as a prominent conservative commentator who is known for saying whatever she wants to say, no matter how outrageous or politically incorrect, her sole contribution to the immigration debate (as distinct from the no-brainer illegal immigration debate) has been a single column.”
[end of March 2010 note.]

--------------------------------------

Coulter's book, as she says in the Fox News interview below, is almost exclusively about legal immigration, and how that is changing America. She goes through one chapter, the first chapter, outlining illegal immigration, but talks about the adverse effects of legal immigration for the rest of the book. Here is what Coulter says about the change of focus, although it sounds like a change in topic:

I found out, which is why this book became this book -- I wasn't going write a book about immigration. I was going to have a few chapters on immigration, and I had already written two chapters for the book I was planning on writing. Then I go to look up some basic, obvious facts that most Americans will be shocked the government refuses to tell us, like how many foreign born are in our prisons? How many are in state prison, how many are in federal prison, and what crimes are they in for, and what countries do they come from? Oh, no, no, no, no, read chapter seven and you will see it was written through tears of frustration and rage. That was when I called my publisher and said this is going to be a different book. You can't believe what I'm finding here.

The full interview is below:

Ann Coulter: Racist

Ann Coulter was on Hannity of Fox News recently, where she discusses her new book:


The subtitle is: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.

Coulter is her usual, feisty, self, but she will always get her battle slightly wrong, since she is fighting primarily with those "evil liberals" rather than the issues at hand. I think that is the curse of conservatives, who, rather than sticking to their principles, and setting the agenda for the battle, are sucked in to confronting liberal ideas, and perennially fighting to straighten those lopsided views rather than presenting their own.

Nonetheless, she has made, from the interview, a good and noble effort to uncover the underbelly of immigration, and specifcially the un-American nature of this immigration agenda.

Below is the video of her interview with Hannity.



Hannity starts off by telling her right at the beginning that immigration isn't a "partisan" issue, nor a liberal issue, but, says Hannity, "We have two parties that don't want to solve the problem, otherwise the fence that works at the White House and in gated communities, as you point out, would be built."

Coulter: Right, not only that, but there would be a change to the legal immigration...My book is about legal immigration. The Somalis leaving to fight with ISIS, those are legal immigrants. The Mali immigrants raping little girls, those are legal immigrants. The immigrants going on welfare, at rates far above the native rates, committing crimes at what appears to be far above the native rate - the government won't tell us.

Never has a country been transformed like this. Never in world history. And it has been done as a express plan by the left, because they want voters more favorable to liberal policies.

It is striking how all of the most avid immigration activists, and there are hundreds, probably thousands of groups, just working overtime to bring in the poorest of the poor to live in America. They're always the people who don't particularly like America. They call us racist, sexist, homophobic.

Why are they bringing these poor Third Worldists here? It's because they want to transform America, because they hate America, and Republicans aren't stopping them because the big donors want the cheap labor.

So, it boils down to greed.

But, liberals are far more "principled" than that. Yes, one effect of immigration my be cheap labor, but the essence of immigration is equality.

America is open to all. It is a country which prides itself on equality of peoples. Its original population is made of immigrants too! Remember all those whites who fled, immigrated, to a new land to find new opportunities?

Since Coulter clings on to (however subconsciously) the primarily economic and materialistic view of immigration, her conclusions will always be partially wrong (or partially right).

All cultural and social ideas, for them to take hold and germinate, have to hold more than economic and materialistic bases, and even liberals follow that premise. In their cases, it is equality that trumps everything.

Everyone is equal in immigrating to America. Everyone is equal in being free in America. Everyone is equal in living in America.

If people fall short, then the rules can be changed. If they don't qualify for legal immigration, then they can get special political or ethnic considerations. If they cannot live upto the standards of middle class Americans, then they can get special government benefits. If they don't feel "free," then the regulations and laws of America can be changed to accommodate them.

Coulter understands the deep and dire implications of this decades-long immigration policy, and especially that which brings people in from the Third World. But, she hasn't yet realized that this has become an American - Democrats or Republicans - issue, and that attacking liberals (Democrats) isn't the way to solve it.

Here is another insight by Coulter. If she goes on in this line, she might be able to make the correct conclusions, unless she capitulates as various groups wear her down with their accusations of "hate."

Coulter: First World countries, developed countries, countries where the immigrants do not go on welfare and commit crimes, they are specifically being discriminated against. So we can drag in the poorest of the poor to instantly go on welfare.

Hannity: You know you will be called racist.

Coulter: Well as I say, that's the only argument they have. But they'd prefer not to debate me at all, but if they have to they'll call me a racist.

Coulter finishes off the interview citing her final chapter where she provides solutions to the problem, which starts with closing off the borders, literal (physically closing off the Mexican border) or political (withholding or denying visas and other travel permits to America).

I don't want to be too harsh on Coulter. She is doing the best she can with the data that she has managed to discover, and about which she is shocked. She changed the original topic of her book (she didn't specify what that was) to this one as she discovered more about immigration during her research. As she goes on more speaking tours, and as she starts getting the wrath of the un-American, anti-American groups, be they white, Third World, Hispanic, black, immigrants (there are many), she will fine-tune, I am sure, her discussion of the book.

She should read Lawrence Auster's Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism and Huddled Cliches: Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments That Have Opened America’s Borders to the World (although I suspect she has), and present those ideas to the mainstream world. She will be called a racist by the usual suspects, but since that has already happened to her, I'm sure she has developed a thick skin. She has acquired her worst label, now she is free to go on with her ideas.

I should send her my experience in the Canadiana Room, and my post on the Third World, Untouchable Goddess Meena Chopra: Meena Chopra's Ephemera and David Hook's Tangible: Art in the Multiculturalism Era

Meena Chopra: Poetess, Artist, Oriental Goddess Par Excellence

Original Blog Header

This was the blog header I had for many years, as I was trying to understand the aggressive world of Islam as it made headways into our culture.

The newer ideas behind "Saving Our Landscape" are still about keeping our culture and civilization from usurpation by foreign elements, since Islam wouldn't have been so bold if our cultural elements had been stronger and more confident.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Shot of the Toronto Skyline, with the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre Dome, which is a baseball arena, resembling a mosque. I was actually not the one to realzie this association, but an Arabic television in Toronto, which uses it as its opening logo. I write about that here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Logo from the television series (now discontinued) Little Mosque on the Prairie, which is a take on that original story Little House on the Prairie. Here is my post on this.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Halal KFC, more here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Isna Halal Certification:
(ISNA = Islamic Society of North America)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Muslim Girl Magazine, the Canada-published monthly magazine is now discontinued.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Muslim architecture in downtown Toronto, which I've written about here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------